Raw Intel

Even though it shouldn’t be necessary, I guess I should start this out by saying I actually support think tanks. I have a whole gaggle of acquaintances and friends who are associated with this think tank or another. They can produce good work – and even though some have clear biases in either their mission or their people – there is good value to read from smart people you disagree with on issues of substance. As long as you know they may or may not be objective – that is fine. As always, a serious read of contrary opinion will either by the strength of their argument make you reassess your previously held position, or by the weakness of their argument, further reinforce …

Americas Lockheed Martin won a $53.1 million modification, which adds scope for non-recurring engineering, delivery and installation of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Pilot Training and Maintainer Training technical refresh hardware. Work will take place in Florida and Texas. Estimated completion date is January 2025. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. The aerospace firms of Korea Aerospace Industries and Lockheed Martin have inked a “Teaming Agreement” on June 9 to jointly design, produce and promote an improved model of FA-50 in order to compete in the US market. The US Air Force and the US Navy plan to introduce about 280 …

Americas L3Harris won a maximum $13 million firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for Army Chinook CH-47 helicopter spare parts production and repair. The Boeing CH-47 Chinook is a tandem rotor helicopter. This is a five-year base contract with one five-year option period. Performance completion date is June 8, 2027. Northrop Grumman Systems won a $40.7 million order, which provides Full Scale Fatigue Test (FSFT) and Effects of Defects (EoD) for the Triton MQ-4C unmanned aircraft system, to include testing, analyzing, and documenting the results of both the FSFT and EoD test, as well as identifying post-test activities in…

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9GgO7_AJaPY/Uz6Ta8stBsI/AAAAAAAAIF0/BmY1-pVg-Qo/s1600/DentonwithA6.jpgWhen you honor a great man's passing, use the time to measure yourself against the man at his best. If in his shoes, what would you have done? How would history and the man in the mirror evaluate your actions? It is a little more than eight years since one of the greats passed. Jeremiah Denton, the Vietnam War POW who has died at age 89, uttered one of the great statements of defiance in American history. In 1965, he was shot down in his A-6 during a bombing run over North Vietnam. He became a captive for more than seven years and endured an unimaginable regime of torture, hu…

About the only institution I hold is more contempt than the UN in so far as its inability to do anything well related to its core mission is probably the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Over at the National Interest, Ramon Marks just about gives me an aneurism. How does one start here? I don't have much whitespace in my calendar today, so let me just pull this jewel out. The West is going to have to figure out how to resolve the Russo-Ukrainian War while simultaneously bringing lasting stability to Ukraine and Europe without pushing a paranoid Russia further into China’s arms. A Congress of Vienna-type approach could be an option under the mu…

Americas General Dynamics won a $133.2 million deal for MK80 series general purpose tritonal bomb components. The Mark 80 series are the primary US GP bombs. Army Contracting Command, Rock Island, Illinois, is the contracting activity. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of December 31, 2023. Boeing won a $30,7 million modification, which exercises an option to procure 63 Distributed Targeting Processor – Networked (DTP-N) B-kits (32 for the Navy and 31 for the government of Australia); and 56 DTP-N A1-kits (32 for the Navy and 24 for the government of Australia), as well as DTP-N cyber security support data de…

Americas Bath Iron Works won a $54.6 million contract modification to exercise options for accomplishment of lead yard support for the DDG 51 class guided missile destroyer program. The DDG 51 class guided missile destroyers are warships that provide multi-mission offensive and defensive capabilities. The majority of work will take place in Maine. Estimated completion will be by June 2023. Vice Adm. John B. Mustin, chief of US Navy Reserve, told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Defense subcommittee that the Reserve’s number one equipment priority is to buy the C-130J to replace the aging C-130T. The Reserve now operates 19 C-130Ts and 11 KC-130Ts in five fleet logis…

I wouldn't call this a "secret base" or that much of a surprise. China is secretly building a naval facility in Cambodia for the exclusive use of its military, with both countries denying that is the case and taking extraordinary measures to conceal the operation, Western officials said. The military presence will be on the northern portion of Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base on the Gulf of Thailand, which is slated to be the site of a groundbreaking ceremony this week, according to the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. The establishment of a Chinese naval base in Cambodia — only its second such overseas outp…

Americas Raytheon won a $52 million delivery order for the improved Bradley acquisition system Commander’s Viewer Unit. The Bradley fighting vehicle system is manufactured by BAE Systems Land & Armaments (formerly United Defence) and includes the M2 infantry fighting vehicle and the M3 cavalry fighting vehicle. The new Improved Bradley Acquisition System (IBAS) Block 2 includes enhanced capabilities to improve operational efficiencies and lethality and provides life-cycle cost and reliability improvements. The most notable enhancement to IBAS is the high definition high resolution color imagery. The performance completion date is March 31, 2026. Using military service…

When you discover that you need to become a sea power in order to secure your nation and its people ... it can't happen over night. In 1520, the Danish king Kristian II mobilized his fleet and seized Stockholm, thus strengthening his position and control of commerce. In order to oust the Danes and decrease their dominance in the Baltic Sea, Sweden needed a fleet. King Gustav Vasa purchased ten ships equipped with weaponry and arms from Lübeck and they were delivered on 7 June 1522 at Slätbaken, close to Söderköping, and since then, this day has been recorded as the birth of the Swedish Navy. ...sometimes it takes two years and you have to outsource it ... but ever since …

Americas The United States intends to test-fire the Patriot air defense missile system in Palau on June 15, the island’s ambassador to Washington D.C. has disclosed. The 1st Battalion, 1st Air Defense Artillery Regiment, from Okinawa will be deployed to Palau for this event. The firing is part of Exercise Valiant Shield which will involve Palau and Micronesia for the first time this year. The Patriot unit is to be deployed at Airai, according to Island Times. Laurel Technologies Partnership won an $12 million deal for production of Launch Control Unit (LCU) MK 235 Mod 17 and Mod 18 and associated components in support of the MK 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS). The LCUs a…

Along the spectrum from peacetime exercises to wartime combined operations, successfully integrating multinational forces is not a pick-up game. To do it right requires leaders and institutions years of practice, trust, and demonstrated ability. This is true of all military operations, but especially true when moving forces ashore during amphibious operations. In our constellation of allies, partners and friends along the shores of the Indo-Pacific theater, since 2015 the United States Marine Forces Pacific has led the multi-national Pacific Amphibious Leaders Symposium. Today we are going to dive in to not just the symposium itself to the broader topic of combined amphib…

This D-day anniversary I want to bring out a FbF I've run a few times over the years as it points out one of the hidden parts of the campaign that I want new readers to have a chance to read about. Most attention, rightfully, is paid to the beach and the move inland, but to enable that success, a lot of work was done at sea to keep the beach and seas open ... As the D-Day invasion was ongoing, the German Navy sortied what they could to try to drive the allies back across the channel. The most feared were the U-boats based in France. Please read the whole thing, but here is a nice summary of one of the under-told stories of WWII, Coastal Command. On night. One crew. Two…

Americas C4 Planning Solutions won a $236.7 million contract for the procurement of services to support Tactical Systems Support 3 (TSS-3). The TSS-3 contract will be used to issue task orders to provide professional engineering support services to provide US forces worldwide with continuous support of fielded tactical command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I) programs of record to ensure that Marines can successfully set up and operate fielded C4I tactical systems. Work will take place in California, Japan, North Carolina, Germany, Washington DC and Louisiana. The period of performance for the base award is from June 23, 2022, through March 6, 20…

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v8lmDX5bgFc/UuHSen27fhI/AAAAAAAAH04/WUIUmhEfNQw/s1600/McGinty_JJ.jpg Paul Vitello has a nicely done obit in NYT of a quiet hero from the Vietnam War. Mr. McGinty, who joined the service in 1958 directly after high school, was a drill instructor at the Marine boot camp in Parris Island, S.C., and a brig officer at the Norfolk, Va., naval base before volunteering for duty in Vietnam in 1966. “I didn’t want to be earning my pay guarding a bunch of AWOL sailors,” he told Edwin F. Murphy, author of the 1987 book “Vietnam Medal of Honor Heroes.” Mr. McGinty led one of four platoons in Company K of the Third Battalion, Third Marine Division, during a…

Americas South-east Welding & Manufacturing won a $1.2 billion deal for complex repair, maintenance and modernization requirements of non-nuclear Navy Surface Combatant (CG, DDG, and AMPHIB) class ships homeported in or visiting San Diego, California, homeport. These efforts consist of Chief of Naval Operations-scheduled docking and non-docking; continuous maintenance; and emergent maintenance availabilities of Surface Combatant class ships to be performed in the San Diego, California, port. Delivery orders will be competitively awarded under these contracts, which are to be performed in San Diego, California. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, DC, is the cont…

The greatest tragedies from war, both directly and indirectly, are those that were clearly foreseen, knowable, or otherwise clear as day to anyone who wanted to see them. They did not happen in the shadows, they were allowed to happen because people with access to levers of power did not want to expend personal, professional, or real capital to take steps to prevent something that would be too horrible to think of should they come to pass. Little pain now to avoid great pain later is a more difficult concept to accept than it seems. The world in complicated. It is a human failing to not want to expend effort NOW to prevent something that will force harder effort in the fu…

Americas The Government of Canada has awarded Bell Textron Canada Limited (BTCL) of Mirabel, Quebec, a contract valued at nearly $800 million for the extension of the life of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s CH-146 Griffon helicopter fleet into the mid-2030s. The contract affects 85 helicopters. According to the contract, BTCL will modify the first 9 helicopters and then manage a competitive process to award subcontracts to suppliers to modify the remaining 76 helicopters. Lockheed Martin won a $34.7 million contract modification for the C-5 Super Galaxy Replacement Multi-Functional Control Display Program. The modification provides for engineering and technical services t…

I may have to add Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) to my list of navalist leaders of merit on The Hill. My first reaction was to be mad that I had not made this point first ... but I will gladly enjoy this exceptionally important point being made by a Senator to the CNO in such a public manner; Via Caitlin Kenney at Defense News; “I think this committee wants to make sure we're providing our warfighters with the necessary funding to ensure that the equipment they're using is adequately maintained. It's pretty basic,” Tester told Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations; and Gen. David Berger, Marine Corps commandant. “That means getting the necessary spare parts and safety equi…

C-5 Galaxy (click to view full) When it was introduced, back in 1970, the C-5 Galaxy was the largest plane in the world. It also has the highest operating cost of any US Air Force weapon system, owing to extremely high maintenance demands as well as poor fuel economy. Worse, availability rates routinely hover near 50%. To add insult to injury, the Russians not only built a bigger plane (the AN-124), they sold it off at the end of the Cold War to semi-private operators, turning it into a commercial success whose customer list now includes… NATO. Meanwhile, the USA still needs long-range, heavy load airlift. The AN-124’s commercial success may get its production line res…