Raw Intel

The French Navy has ordered five additional CAMCOPTER S-100 unmanned aerial systems under its naval unmanned aviation program, expanding its existing fleet and deepening the service’s long-running use of shipborne rotary-wing drones across multiple vessel classes. The order was placed through France’s defense procurement and technology agency, the Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA), with Naval […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin, Seagate Space, and Firefly Aerospace have announced a three-way strategic collaboration to develop sea-based launch capabilities for national security missions, a partnership that brings together a defense prime with decades of missile heritage, an offshore launch platform operator, and a commercial rocket company whose Alpha vehicle has been carving out a role in […]View the full article

I’m not sure another nation has the same underlying concern for prisoners of war (POWs) that Americans do. I don’t think anyone else has a POW/MIA flag flying all over the place, even if we don’t have any POWs. As everyone was reminded this spring, we will go to incredible ends to stop our people from being taken prisoner if we have to. We will try to rescue them if we can. Perhaps it is the legacy of the British prison ships of the Revolutionary War, the nightmares of the American Civil War camps, or the memory of how our POWs were treated in Vietnam and Korea. In WWII’s European Theater, conditions were rough, but they were not so bad that we couldn’t make a comedy seri…

Somewhere in a Russian drone factory, an engineer looked at a satellite-jamming crisis that has cost the Kremlin countless drones and countless rubles, and solved it with the same tool Boy Scouts use to find their way out of the woods. A Ukrainian radio technology specialist says Russia has started bolting a basic magnetic compass […]View the full article

Germany’s first F-35A, designated MG-01, has moved into Aircraft Final Finishes at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth, Texas, production facility, where it will receive paint and a stealth coating before continuing toward delivery to the Luftwaffe, the company said Monday. The aircraft entered final assembly in March, when its wing, forward, center and aft fuselage sections […]View the full article

Lockheed Martin is building four more of its newest combat drones, the company announced September 14, doubling down on a program that’s still more than a year away from ever leaving the ground. The news came from the company’s secretive Skunk Works division, following a major Air Force conference near Washington, D.C., where Skunk Works also […]View the full article

The Florida National Guard fed drone video, unmanned boat data and troop positions from a training exercise at Camp Blanding, Florida, to U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs and to Joint Task Force-National Capital Region in the Washington area, where commanders viewed the information remotely. The link-up was part of Drone Crucible 26.3, which ran […]View the full article

What is Mandarin for "BOLTER"? I told you ... I told you .... you all owe me beer. China may be ready to launch its first aircraft carrier in 2011, Chinese military and political sources said on Thursday, a year ahead of U.S. military analysts' expectations. Analysts expect China to use its first operational aircraft carrier to ensure the security of its oil supply route through the Indian Ocean and near the disputed Spratly Islands, but full capability is still some years away. "The period around July 1 next year to celebrate the (Chinese Communist) Party's birthday is one window (for launch)," one source with ties to the leadership told Reuters, reque…

When I first saw these pictures of the new PLA Navy SSK, my first thoughts were of the old Golf class conventional ballistic submarines like the K-129 discussed in Norman Polmar's latest book Project Azorian. But as I look closer and think about it, I think what I am seeing is something of an evolution leveraging a similar design concept. You may have to open the third picture up and look closely to see what I'm talking about, but there appears to be some sort of large hatch built into the sail. If I was to guess based on what I am seeing, I think China has developed a special operations SSK to augment their Yuan class SSKs. I haven't seen this idea floated around…

Americas The Navy contracted Raytheon Missiles $ Defense with a $24.8 million modification for procurement of fiscal 2021 Navy Standard Missile-2 intermediate level provisioned items ordered spares; and to exercise one-year options for fiscal 2021 Standard Missile-2 and Standard Missile-6 repairs and maintenance. The SM-2 is the U.S Navy’s primary surface-to-air defense weapon and is part of the AEGIS Weapon System along Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke Class destroyers. The SM-6, also known as RIM-174, is a ship-launched extended range variant of the anti-air and anti-surface interceptor missile developed by Raytheon Company. It is also a key part of the AEGI…

R.K. Lembke has an article over at Small Wars Journal that had me nodding my head in agreement on the subject more than any I have read in a long time. Regular readers of CDR Salamander will see many of the issues we've raised here over they years, but Lembke's presentation, tying them in together while providing sound and well documented quotes from the start, is simply a powerhouse. I spent half a decade of my active duty life on, and for a few months, in Afghanistan. A wee bit early on at the Tactical, but most as a staff weenie on the in-theater Operational and Strategic levels at USA and NATO commands from Bush43 through to the first year of the Obama administratio…

...we have better start planning to fight the marathon. Now that we are contested at sea, we are setting ourselves up to be unable to return ships to the fight. Details from the GAO's latest over at USNIBlog. Give it a read and wake up. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=yIl2AUoC8zA http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=qj6IDK7rITs http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ljcXeWKB1UY:EKgL8FL2X5o:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ljcXeWKB1UY:EKgL8FL2X5o:-BTjWOF_DHI http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ljcXeWKB1UY:EKgL8FL2X5o:V_sGLiPBpWU http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ljcXeWKB1UY:EKg…

Ah, yes, The Terrible 20s. What if you had the leadership and malaise of the Carter Administration mixed in with the budgetary pressures of the Clinton Administration ... with a little bit of Biden Administration special sauce mixed in? We're not even a year in to the Biden Admin still at the start of the 20s...so you know this was coming. Via Joe Gould at DefenseNews; House progressives will have a few chances to hold down the defense budget this week, but it’s going to be an uphill fight. The House is set to vote this week on two Democratic amendments to cut the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act’s $740 billion top line. One would reduce it by roughly 10 …

More than a few times the last month I have found myself referring to the Sailors of the FITZGERALD and McCain. I've dug in to the archives from the summer of 2017 to look again at some of the things I wrote while things were fresh. This week, let's look back to AUG 2017 when I first wrote this. There can be only one FbF today, nothing else comes close. The supplemental preliminary inquiry into the collision involving the USS FITZGERALD (DDG 62) and the ACX CRYSTAL from 17 JUN of this year is out. The report is dated 11 AUG 17. You can get it from the SECNAV's site here, or read the whole thing posted below. I wanted to pull one extended quote from it for your review. I…

The People's Republic of China does not have to aggressively take our status as the premier world power. It appears that we are willingly giving it to them, sooner more than later. As a maritime and aerospace power, especially when it comes to the challenge west of Wake, if you want to understand how serious our nation's national security nomenklatura is toward the clear threat to the place previous generations died by the hundreds of thousands to place us in the last century - just look at what we are spending our money on. Megan Eckstein over at DefenseNews has the summary for everyone. It isn't pleasant reading, especially for those who have their eyes on the world aro…

Before the Russo-Ukrainian War kicked off in February, on the Top-5 lists of any navalist worth their salt was the Arctic. If you are an Atlanticist/NATO type, it was in your Top-3. Sea lanes/SLOC, resource access, resource protection, environmental protection and monitoring, and just good old sound military planning kept the Arctic on everyone’s mind. The fact that especially in the USA there was no small bit of “out of sight out of mind” neglect, specifically with our icebreaking capabilities, brought as much concern. The non-Arctic nation of China deciding she wanted to be a player only made it even more important that policy makers wake up. When you look at the playin…

Americas General Dynamics Land Systems was awarded a $21,998,374 modification for Abrams systems technical support. Work will be performed in Sterling Heights, Michigan, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 15, 2025. Fiscal 2024 research, development, test, and evaluation, Army funds in the amount of $21,998,374 were obligated at the time of the award. Army […]View the full article

Americas The US Department of Defense has signed an agreement with Australia and the UK to collaborate on “offensive and defensive” hypersonic technologies. The partnership aims to accelerate the development, testing, and evaluation of cutting-edge hypersonic vehicles and technologies, including long-range missiles capable of traveling considerably faster than the speed of sound. Northrop Grumman has delivered its Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) test missile to the US Air Force, which is designed to target rapidly relocatable threats. The test missile will be used to verify the safe carriage and separation of the weapon from its launch aircraft. In 2023, the US Air Force aw…

A Swedish-Estonian shipbuilder has unveiled a new modular rigid inflatable boat (RIB) designed to give defense and security operators the ability to reconfigure missions in minutes. XW Production, a startup operating across Sweden and Estonia, announced the launch of its XW Modular 750, an aluminum RIB platform tested by professional divers, border guards, and naval […] The post Swedish-Estonian team unveils modular combat craft first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

Embraer and Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announced on September 23 that they have signed an agreement for the purchase of one A-29 Super Tucano light attack and reconnaissance aircraft. The deal, revealed at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, comes ahead of an anticipated U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) case. […] The post SNC buys A-29 Super Tucano for future FMS case first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article