Current Events in the Americas

From DefenseNews Containers, Motherships and Multimission Modules - Boxes as the U.S. Navy's New Vision? By CMDR. GREG PARKER Published: 8 March 2010 Last month, the Navy's first Littoral Combat Ship, USS Freedom, began its inaugural deployment to the Caribbean Sea and South America. Designed to address the Navy's capability gap in the "green water" near the world's land masses, or littorals, the LCS represents a change in naval design philosophy from mission-specific ships to a multi-function concept that has begun to pervade the service from top to bottom. With its interchangeable modules - large boxes resembling rail cars tailored for specialized missions…

From Flight Global DATE: 05/03/10 SOURCE: Flight International USAF considers options to preserve F-22 production tooling By Stephen Trimble Five months after the US Congress approved the cancellation of the Lockheed Martin F-22, the air force is still deciding whether to preserve or scrap the production tooling. The options under discussion include preserving at least the core of Lockheed's ability to build F-22 components and systems, although restarting production is not the USAF leadership's intent, says acquisition chief Lt Gen Mark Shackelford. Rather, USAF officials are considering the cost of preserving tooling to sustain the F-22, which could i…

From Jane's Dispute increases over Falklands oil drilling 17 February 2010 The executive order signed by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner stated that prior permission from the Argentine government would be required for all ships transiting Argentine ports or crossing Argentine jurisdictional waters en route to the Falklands, which remain the subject of a 177 year-old sovereignty dispute between Buenos Aires and the UK. An interdepartmental commission including representatives from several ministries would be created to enforce the decree, according to Aníbal Fernandez, Argentina's cabinet chief. Argentina has also warned oil companies operating in the Fal…

From Ares Airborne Laser Shoots Down Scud-Like Target Posted by Robert Wall at 2/12/2010 5:32 AM CST At times it seemed like the day might never come, but the Airborne Laser now has destroyed a boosting ballistic missile in what may be one of the biggest breakthroughs for laser weapons to date. The highly modified Boeing 747-400, designated YAL-1A, performed the feet at 8:44 p.m. pacific time at the Point Mugu naval air warfare center sea range off California, shooting down a liquid-fueled, Scud-like target. The Missile Defense Agency says the intercept sequence took place within 2 minutes of the target being fired. ABL has been years in the making an…

A possible future hypersonic strike weapon: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/sto...10/02/04/02.xml

From Aviation Week's ARES Blog: A Real Win For Rafale Posted by Robert Wall at 9/8/2009 1:57 AM CDT There will be some that say Brazil only is buying the 36 Dassault Rafale strike fighters because of France’s agreement to help develop and maybe buy ten KC-390 airlifters, or transfer extensive nuclear submarine technology, or whatever other reasons, but reality is that, for once, the French sales team orchestrated the campaign rather flawlessly. It is, without doubt, a huge win for Rafale. Not only is Brazil the first export customer for Rafale, it is a sizeable order and it came in a real competition. Libya and the United Arab Emirates – other countries that …

A tall order ... From Flight Global DATE: 04/02/10 SOURCE: Flight International SINGAPORE 2010: Lockheed says F-35s will replace USAF F-15s By Stephen Trimble Lockheed Martin has added all variants of the Boeing F-15 to an internal analysis of US Air Force platforms the company believes will be replaced by the F-35A Lightning II. Lockheed now predicts the F-35A will replace the F-15C/D air superiority fighter and the F-15E Strike Eagle. The USAF officially lists the F-35's conventional takeoff and landing variant as a ground-attack fighter complementing the air superiority mission, replacing only the Lockheed F-16 and the A-10. The speculativ…

From Navy Times Navy budget includes 9 ships, kills CG(X) By Philip Ewing and Andrew Tilghman - Staff writers Posted : Tuesday Feb 2, 2010 16:02:41 EST The Department of the Navy would build nine ships, buy 206 aircraft, postpone construction of the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and kill the advanced cruiser known as CG(X), according to the $179.1 billion spending plan it submitted Monday to Congress. The budget proposal includes $160.6 billion in baseline funding — compared with the $156 billion the Navy requested last year — and $18.5 billion in funding for what the Pentagon calls “overseas contingency operations,” better known as the Iraq a…

From DefenseNews 'We Thought We Had It Licked' LPD-17 Woes Vex U.S. Navy, Northrop By christopher p. cavas Published: 25 January 2010 A fresh set of problems with the long-troubled LPD 17 San Antonio-class amphibious ships has sidelined two of the vessels, led the U.S. Navy and its largest shipbuilder into a passionate game of finger-pointing, and raised questions about Northrop Grumman's ability to deliver quality work and the Navy's ability to carry out proper shipyard oversight. The larger issues are coming from two core problems discovered aboard the LPD 17s, five of which are in service with four still to come. Of more immediate importance is a pro…

From Jane's DARPA looks to go deep with ASW sensor network By Richard Scott 20 January 2010 The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has disclosed plans for a deep ocean sensor network that could provide a long-range anti-submarine surveillance capability sufficient to protect 'blue water' Carrier Strike Group operations. This new initiative, which envisions a distributed system of sensors and sources on or near the ocean floor, harks back to the SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System) deep-water long-range detection capability deployed by the US Navy during the Cold War. It also signals a revival in interest in blue-water anti-submarine warfare (A…

In the news, but they're not novelty news: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/NGC-In...5468/#more-5468 But in retrospective, the case is worst. I remember to read some time ago the same thing in Norman Polmar & K.J. Moore "Cold War Submarines" about the very bad welding in Los Angeles and Ohio classes, giving for the Ohio class SSBN a test depth of 300 meters and for Los Angeles/Providence/San Juan SSN a test depth of only 290 meters (in consecuence, both classes only capable of intermediate depth in the PC game scale), compared with the gived test depth in the same book for the previous Thresher/Permit and Sturgeon classes of 400 meters (both classes capable …

From Aviation Week Drug Gangs, Iran Impact Latin America Jan 14, 2010 By Paul McLeary Washington Security issues in Latin America have largely been on the back burner in American political and military circles for years, with continued U.S. funding for the Colombian military and the belligerence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez only briefly engaging American consciousness. This has changed dramatically over the last few years with the explosion of drug cartels that threaten the stability of some countries, the growing influence of Iran and the hard-core anti-Americanism of the Venezuelan president. A report by Latin American analyst Sylvia Longmire l…

Excerpts of interest from Navy Times 2010 lookahead: What’s ahead in the new year Staff report Posted : Monday Jan 4, 2010 6:13:39 EST CARRIERS & STRIKE GROUPS • The Dwight D. Eisenhower is scheduled to deploy in January. [CV32: The Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group left Norfolk on 2 January, to be followed by the Carrier Air Wing Seven, the destroyers McFaul, Carney, and Farragut, and the cruiser Hue City. The strike group is headed to the Indian Ocean] • The Harry S. Truman will follow a couple of months later, marking its second eight-month deployment in as many years. • Enterprise, late coming out of the yard, will be back in acti…

From Navy Times Fleet scrambles to meet BMD ship demand By Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer Posted : Monday Jan 4, 2010 8:17:17 EST No sooner did the Aegis ballistic missile defense system become operational in 2008 than combatant commanders started asking for BMD-equipped ships to begin patrolling their areas. U.S. Central Command needed a “shooter” in the northern Persian Gulf. European Command wanted one in the eastern Mediterranean. Pacific Command already had Aegis ships with limited BMD capabilities on guard around Japan for a potential launch from North Korea. The demand for BMD ships is expected to increase, driven in part by rising concerns a…

This is interesting: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_warship_record Buddha

From Aviation Week New Bomber To Focus Heavily On ISR Dec 17, 2009 By David A. Fulghum The U.S. Air Force’s ISR chief says a new bomber design will be more about intelligence gathering and non-kinetic weapons than about bombing. The arsenal of this “long-range, ISR/Strike” aircraft may eventually include directed energy and network attack, says Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). Directed energy weapons under development by the Pentagon include a range of lasers and devices that produce pulses of high-power microwaves. Other non-kinetic capabilities include the attack of enemy sensors with…

Marine Corps TV - JSF Update Bah, link apparently crapped out. If you want to view, go to usmc.mil, then "News", then "MarinesTV"

In the wake of the Ft. Hood tragedy, I keep hearing about the need for diversity in the military. As a resident of San Diego, I've heard "diversity" used to justify everything from campus riots to illegal immigration, and I'm rapidly growing tired of the term. It's been close to 40 years since my Recruit Training experience, but it seems to me that diversity was one of the things the training attempted to eliminate, or at least minimize. Wasn't one of the points of shaving our heads, sticking us in uniforms, and generally treating us all like dogs to force us to forget our differences and bond as a unit? Isn't that what we want in a fighting unit? Or has political…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_uss_new_york Built with steel salvaged from the WTC wreckage. Buddha

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_speedy_warship Buddha