Raw Intel

As always, we need to head to the chartroom. Take a look at the chart above that I yanked from NYT. What it represents are the Sea Lines of Communication (SLOC) out of the Persian Gulf/Arabian Gulf. Each of those dots is a tanker delivering the hydrocarbons that enable modern civilization to exist and keep three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the stable. The one center-screen? That is the SLOC our warships and their logistics chain use to move from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean and on to our fleet. See the city of Colombo? That is the main commercial hub on the island nation of Sri Lanka. The very center of the SLOC that flows south of Sri Lanka lies about…

Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said its units, working with military intelligence, struck Kirovske airfield in occupied Crimea overnight on April 2, destroying a Russian An-72P patrol aircraft and a site used to prepare Orion strike and reconnaissance drones for missions. The strike was carried out by the 1st Separate Center of the Unmanned Systems Forces […]View the full article

Poland is running operational tests of acoustic reconnaissance systems and electronic warfare equipment at the Central Air Force Proving Ground in Ustka, as the country’s Ministry of National Defense accelerates technology evaluation under its Tarcza Wschód — Shield East — border defense program. Seven acoustic reconnaissance solutions are currently undergoing testing at the Ustka range. […]View the full article

It was a dozen years ago that...we thought—really thought—that with the X-47B we could move from crawl to walk with large unmanned systems. From the OG Blog in July, 2017: I'm interested in how many can I physically wedge on to a carrier deck and/or hangar bay. I'll waive the flight control issue etc - but once you know how many you can actually pack in your helmet bag and carry (given tradeoffs for other aircraft etc) - then we can start to plan orbits, sorties, loss-rate mitigation, etc. Now, if there were a way to stack them like so many Pringles ..... Ponder. Of course, by the end of the year, the usual suspects killed it for all the worst reasons. We could have had…

A nuclear-powered attack submarine completed its scheduled maintenance period at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard nearly a month ahead of schedule, handing the U.S. Pacific Fleet a combat-ready boat 29 days earlier than planned at a moment when undersea readiness in the Indo-Pacific has become one of the Navy’s most closely watched metrics. USS Colorado, a […]View the full article

A soldier crewing an Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle spots a target through swirling dust or pitch darkness using a sighting system built decades ago, and the Army just committed nearly $56 million to keep engineers refining that system for years to come. DRS Network & Imaging Systems, a subsidiary of Leonardo DRS based in Melbourne, […]View the full article

Three Taiwanese-built drones have searched a stretch of contested airspace together, coordinated by artificial intelligence rather than a room full of human pilots, and the demonstration marks the moment Taiwan’s own defense engineers proved they can run that technology without American hand-holding. Shield AI, a California-based defense technology company, and Taiwan’s National Chung-Shan Institute of […]View the full article

U.S. Marines with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit ran two separate forward operating sites at once during a training exercise near Camp Pendleton, California, testing whether the unit can track ships at sea, direct combat operations, and keep aircraft armed and fueled from multiple locations simultaneously rather than a single base. One site, called a […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy will buy 10 of Saronic’s Marauder autonomous ships, a 55-meter (180-foot) uncrewed vessel built in Louisiana, after the ship passed at-sea testing under the service’s new Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel program. Saronic announced the production award on Sept. 30, a day after the U.S. Navy said it had given production agreements for […]View the full article

Swedish-Estonian boatbuilder Cross Water wants to turn the military rigid inflatable boat into a plug-and-play platform, with drones, sensors and mission equipment that lock onto the deck in minutes and software that will eventually let the same hull run by remote control or on its own. The company, which also trades as XW Production, builds […]View the full article

Americas The US Army will suspend use of its new fitness test as a requirement for graduation from training programs because of COVID concerns. A new version of the six-event Army Combat Fitness Test went into effect last week. The Army will encourages taking and passing the strength and fitness test, but the requirement to successfully complete it will be delayed until at least September 2021, the end of the fiscal year. Suspension of the use of the test reportedly comes as the Army acknowledged constraints on training and testing due to the quarantining, social distancing and other protections required during COVID-19 pandemic. Boeing won a maximum $149.6 million deliv…

There is one area of agreement among navalists, the US Navy is beset with a whole series of hard, long building problems, ignored for too long. Many, including our highest ranking uniformed leadership, seem incapable of not only acknowledging them, but coming up with a plan to address them. As we enter 2021 and the third decade of the 21st Century, what are our greatest challenges, and what are some steps we can take to start the process of meeting them? Returning to Midrats this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss this and related issues he raised in this recent article, The Navy Has Problems and Must Be Bold to Fix Them, will be Bryan McGrath, CDR USN (Ret.), Manag…

One aspect of the Afghanistan conflict that I think will stick in time's craw the hardest is what we allowed Pakistan to do. I was lucky enough to be at the table at C5F when this all kicked off - one of the many quiet O4s in the back of the room watching and listening as the big guys got us ready for what was to come. From almost day-1, a regular refrain - besides looking for sidearms and chem gear for all the terrorists with mustard gas mortar shells that intel told us could show up any day from Iraq ... ahem ... - was how we could not let Pakistan be for Afghanistan what Cambodia and Laos was for the North Vietnamese. "No safe havens!" we told ourselves literally…

The Afghan army and government the Soviet Union left behind lasted over 3-yrs. The Afghan army and government the USA left behind lasted barely 1 month. This is a nugget everyone needs to hoist onboard. It is bolded and underlined for a reason. For those in the elder GenX cohort and older, we remember vividly all the comments made, especially after its fall, of the failures of the Soviet Union. We liked to talk about its stifling bureaucracy, oppressive government nomenklatura, busy body rules, crumbling infrastructure, military infested with political officers pushing ideology, corruption, and almost comical government officials - all so assured of their power, such bel…

If you are only reading commentary about Russian President Putin's speech of 21 Feb 2022 or watching short clips, you are doing yourself a disservice. While some reporting is good, there is a lot of spin, narrative shaping, and just plain lazy reporting. If you want to try to understand if not what is in Putin's head, but what he wants the Russian people to think is in his head, you need to read and watch the speech yourself. When someone tells you what they're thinking, listen to them. Putin isn't trying to bring back the Soviet Union, he's focused on something much deeper and meaningful, the Russian Empire...build back better, as it were. You can clearly see that he i…

Americas The KC-135 has set a new endurance mission record of 72 hours by two of the aerial refueling tankers from the 92nd Air Refueling Wing. The jets went airborne and landed repeatedly over the 72 hours and had at least one engine running while being refueled and serviced on the ground. Engine-running flight crew changes were also carried out over the three-day mission. Both aircraft refueled B-2 bombers, B-52s, an E-3 Sentry, and an E-6B Mercury. Engine oil servicing was only done during one of the engine running crew changes (ERRCs), allowing the crews to demonstrate tanker “drop-in” concept. The previous KC-135 endurance mission record was 40 hours and was also set…

Americas Lockheed Martin has selected Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop an advanced propulsion solution for the US Army’s future Long Range Maneuverable Fires (LRMF) missile. The LRMF is a precision-fire missile that can deploy from existing US Army launchers, including the battle-proven High Mobility Artillery Rocket System or HIMARS. Lockheed Martin has awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne a […]View the full article

Americas The Boeing won a $19.4 million modification, which exercises an option to procure two P-8A Increment 3 retrofit A-Kits in support of anti-submarine warfare capabilities upgrades for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Work will be performed in Jacksonville, Florida; St. Louis, Missouri; and Mesa, Arizona, and is expected to be completed in June […]View the full article

Americas Sargent Aerospace & Defense won a $15 million contract for the procurement of 104 linear direct valves used on the Virginia-class submarines. This is a stand-alone contract with no options. All work will be performed in Tucson, Arizona, and is expected to be completed by June 2039. Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity. In a comprehensive analysis of US Army aviation from 2000 to 2023, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has revealed significant trends in fleet size, availability, and utilization. The report, released in Sept. 2024, offers insights into the Army’s ongoing efforts to mod…

The United States Coast Guard has officially brought the medium icebreaker USCGC Storis (WAGB-21) into service at its Juneau, Alaska, base, marking the first acquisition of a new polar icebreaker in more than a quarter century. The ship was commissioned on August 10 as part of the Coast Guard’s effort to expand its polar fleet, […] The post USCG commissions first new polar icebreaker in 25 years first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article