Raw Intel

From lay observers to professionals in the national security arena, for the last year most have been waiting to see what our Indo-Pacific Strategy would be. Words matter, especially in national strategy where those words drive funding, effort, and the attentions of industry and the national security apparatus. For reasons best known to those who made the decision, it was delivered last Friday, buried in a general Friday news dump before the Super Bowl weekend and Russia on the brink of invading Ukraine. You would be hard pressed to pick a worse time, but it is what it is. The timing does not take away our responsibility to read and comment, and this week we are going to …

Americas General Dynamics won an $18.8 million contract modification for lead yard support and development studies and design efforts related to Virginia-class submarines.The Virginia-class attack submarine is an advanced stealth multimission nuclear-powered submarine for deep ocean anti-submarine warfare and littoral, or shallow water, operations. Work will take place in Arizona, California and Pennsylvania. Expected completion will be by November 2024. Lockheed Martin announced it has terminated its agreement to acquire rocket engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc. for $4.4 billion. The decision to terminate the agreement follows the US Federal Trade Commission…

As described on Amazon, "Eight CIA officers are dropped into the mountains of northern Afghanistan on October 17, 2001. They are Team Alpha, an eclectic band of linguists, tribal experts, and elite warriors: the first Americans to operate inside Taliban territory. Their covert mission is to track down Al- Qaeda and stop the terrorists from infiltrating the United States again."Most may be familiar with one member of that team, Mike Spann. This Sunday we will spend the hour talking about that Team, the first few months of the Afghanistan conflict, and what the war and its future looked like early on as described in the recent book, First Casualty: The Untold Story of the C…

Americas Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems won a $28 million modification, which exercises an option to procure MH-60R/S aircraft mission computer (MC) and flight management computer (FMC) retrofit kits, wiring kits, and Lynx licenses. The quantities are: 190 MC Generation III/V configuration to GEN 3i/5i MC kits (96 for the Navy, 70 for Naval Supply, 19 for the government of Australia, and five for the government of Denmark); 15 FMC Generation VI configuration to GEN 3i/5i FMC kits (10 for the Navy and five for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia); 194 MC Generation III/V FMC configuration to GEN 3i/5i FMC kits (114 for the Navy, 51 for Naval Supply, 19 for the governme…

So, how tough will you be in your 50s? Jeff Schogol over at T&P has a benchmark for you; At 50 years old, (Paul) Douglas arrived at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island in 1942 to begin boot camp. The economics professor was more than twice as old as the average Marine recruit and Douglas remains the oldest recruit to pass through Parris Island. ... Initially, Douglas was assigned to the personnel classification section of Parris Island after becoming a Marine, but he was not content with the idea of writing training manuals for the rest of the war, so with the help of his good friend Fred Knox, who was serving as Navy Secretary, Douglas became an infantry offic…

A foundation stone of DivThu for over a decade and a half is this simple concept: in a multi-ethnic and multi-racial nation, the most destructive thing that can be done by leaders who value it is to encourage people to divide themselves along racial, ethnic, or other sectarian lines. No society in human history has ever prospered by doing so, Martin Luther King Jr. was right, the only solution is to judge someone by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. We once extended this concept to include race, creed, color and nation origin. Not only is that the only way to promote unity, and from that unity receive national strength and cohesion, but also …

Americas DARPA Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program has completed the maiden flight of a UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter without anyone onboard. Sikorsky completed 30-minutes of unmanned flight with the optionally piloted vehicle (OPV) over the US Army installation at Fort Campbell, Kentucky on February 5th with another flight on February 7th. Saab has won a contract to deliver of the short-range air defense systems RBS 70 NG to the Argentine Armed Forces. The Argentine Navy has been a user of the RBS 70 since 1984 and is now upgrading to the latest RBS 70 NG. The contract entails a further expansion of the country’s usage of the RBS 70 NG system to th…

Americas Boeing won a $95 million deal, which provides engineering services and supplies, to include capability defect package fixes and acoustic software improvement efforts in support of the continued development and sustainment of the P-8A Acoustic Operational Flight Program. Work will take place in California, Washington, Maryland and Missouri. Expected completion will be in January 2027. The US Air Force has published a RFI for the replacement of the E-3G Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS). The contract is expected to be awarded in FY2023 and the winner must produce two prototype aircraft within five years of the award. Middle East & Africa The South A…

Just take a moment to consider the mass of senior leadership present inside a commute distance of DC. The amount of money they have access to. The amount of direct control they can exert through official levers of power and simply a phone call. Look how they live. Now ponder how our most junior sailors have been treated. Come on over to USNIBlog with me to be scandalized afresh. 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=mKOOFIr89Dc:6ckDxnJrPHI:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=mKOOFIr89Dc:6ckDxnJrPHI:-BTjWOF_DHI http://f…

You know the Pacific theater of WWII. I'm not going to insult the intelligence of The Front Porch by repeating all the blood we expended to secure our stepping stones to defeat Imperial Japan. We have warships named after battles, islands, and heroes. Just look at the map above, you all know it. Since WWII, our victories with our allies secured the peace and established relationships generations ago with those who lived on these islands. Some are territories, others their own nations or commonwealths. Have we forgotten their importance? Do we act entitled to their friendship and the access they provide? Are we sending our best people with well crafted policies to ensure …

Americas System High Corp won a $104.9 million deal, which provides program services for the F-35 Joint Program Office to include program management, general security, information security, information security, industrial security, physical security, personnel security, counter-intelligence and foreign disclosure support. The deal also provides special security studies, program protection cybersecurity and security control assessments as well as and engineering services support. Work will take place in Virginia, Ohio, Germany, Texas, Maryland and Florida. Expected completion date is in February 2027. The US Navy has fired the AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missi…

Americas Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) completed acceptance sea trials on Friday for the amphibious transport dock Fort Lauderdale (LPD 28). The San Antonio Class ship, built at HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division, spent several days with the US Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey. Ingalls’ shipbuilders will now complete final finish work on the ship in preparation for delivery this quarter. General Dynamics won a $19.2 million deal for Environmental and Ship Motion Forecasting (ESMF) systems, which provides sea-based forces with environmental and ship motion forecasting as input to the common operation tactical picture, in order to forecast windows of opportunit…

This is kind of strange and different ... so of course, it is kind of growing on me. Via Megan Eckstein at Defense News; The U.S. Navy has promised a first deployment for its new aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford by this fall — but that deployment won’t be a typical one, the head of Naval Air Force Atlantic told Defense News. Ford won’t fall under the operational command of a regional combatant commander. Rather, it will conduct a “service-retained early employment” period where the Navy keeps full control over the ship’s activities and schedule, Rear Adm. John Meier said. The Navy keeping COCOM hands off their ships for awhile ... good. Nice habit. We should do this more…

Americas The first low-rate initial production MQ-4C in the B8 configuration, with multi-intelligence capabilities, has been delivered to NAS Patuxent River on February 1. The B8 is the first production Triton to be upgraded to the multi-intelligence configuration to meet the Navy’s critical maritime intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting needs. Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, said it is building nine additional CH-53K aircraft for the USMarine Corps. The CH-53K will support the military in its mission to conduct expeditionary heavy-lift assault transport of armored vehicles, equipment and personnel to support distributed operations deep inland fro…

Decades of peace and relative stability in Europe is suddenly shattered as armies start to mobilize on a scale not seen since WWII. No, not 2022...but 1987. What is there to learn for today from what could have happened at the end of the Cold War? In addition to the above teaser questions, this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern with our guest Michael Cee we will dive in to the research, tools, wargaming, and art of creating alternative historical fiction about what may have happened with the wrong people in the wrong positions of power at the wrong time in the late 1980s. Michael is the creator and author of World War III 1987, a blog that takes a detailed look at a hypothetical…

The American tradition in the relationship between officers and enlisted personnel is not mostly the norm for Western Armies. Some more than others, but roughly the norm. It was not always so in Western Armies - and in isolated cases, in our military either. Partially due to the revolutionary nature of our nation's birth, but mostly due to the example set by many of its earliest leaders and mentors, the habits established in the 18th and 19th centuries in our military fit a military of a free republic well. That relationship resulted from the benchmark set by great leaders whose actions set the example for others to follow. One of those leaders was Andrew Jackson. Most…

Americas Serco won a $22 million contract action in support of the Program Executive Office (PEO) “SHIPS” PMS 400D mission to design, build, outfit and test all DDG 51 guided-missile destroyer-class ships, increasing the design performance capability of the DDG 51 class ships. The Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) class guided missile destroyers provide a wide range of warfighting capabilities in multi-threat air, surface and subsurface environments. The US Navy currently has seven new DDG 51 Flight III destroyers under construction, Work will take place in Washington DC. Estimated completion date is September 8, 2022. JF Taylor won an $8 million deal for F-35 high fidelity crewsta…

Americas A crew from the 40th Flight Test Squadron successfully carried out the first AIM-120D missile firing from an F-15EX on January 25. The test took place in the Gulf of Mexico and a BQM-167 target drone was engaged by the air-to-air weapon. Maj. Benjamin Naumann, who fired the missile, said: “I am humbled to have the opportunity to fire the first weapon, but the bigger success is the verification of the F-15EX capability to live-fire a missile.” The US Navy will mark the centennial of its first aircraft carrier, USS Langley (CV 1) this year. CV 1 entered service on March 20, 1922. The ship fought against the Japanese during the World War Two and was sunk off Java o…

"The Long Game" series has been running here since 2004. 18-years. I'm starting to wonder if the title is all that accurate anymore. That which we have been warning about since the dawn of this blog is - if you are a believer that the PLAN is more than a job's program - here. Well, we're sticking with as it is what it is. If nothing else, you have to give a nod of respect to the People's Republic of China. They had a good plan and stuck with it. Sadly, we still have over 51% of the people who have access to levers of national power who don't get it. Things are getting better, but ... faster please. We are getting closer and closer to the critical mass needed to effecti…

Americas Lockheed Martin won a $1.4 billion deal from the US Air Force for the C-130J mission sustainment support effort. This contract provides for contractor logistics support and sustainment of the C-130J aircraft fleet. The C-130J is equipped with a Honeywell dual-embedded global positioning system/inertial navigation system (GPS/INS), an enhanced traffic alerting and collision avoidance system (E-TCAS), a ground collision avoidance system, SKE2000 station keeping system, and an instrument landing system (ILS). Work will take place in Georgia. Expected completion date is January 31, 2032. General Dynamics won a $20 million contract modification to support Virginia an…