Raw Intel

Americas Bae Systems won a $651.6 million contract for sustaining engineering services. This contract provides for services support for both the Minuteman III and Sentinel Systems Directorates to ensure the integration of current and future hardware, software, testing, and modifications with the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Weapon Systems. Work will be performed at Hill Air Force Base, […]View the full article

Geography doesn't change. To a slightly lesser extent, neither do historic patterns. Even if Ukraine wins the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russia will still be to the east from Central Europe. She will be back in one form or another. After the fall of the Soviet Union, liberation, and joining NATO - helped with a lot of ahistorical thinking on both sides of the Atlantic - there was a bit of hedging that there was time to rebuild Central European economies and civil society before a threat from the east came back. For almost three decades the former Warsaw Pact members of NATO let their military capabilities and investments fall closer to 1% of GDP as opposed to the 2% minimum. T…

Americas Sikorsky won a $34 million modification, which exercises an option to provide validation and test tooling in support of achieving a production quantity at full rate of up to 24 CH-53K aircraft per year. Work will be performed in Salt Lake City, Utah (86%); and Stratford, Connecticut (14%), and is expected to be completed […]View the full article

Since August of last year, this picture keeps cropping up, and for good reason. Images posted on the Chinese social media platform Weibo show five hulls of the Luyang III-class Type 052 destroyer under construction at the state-owned Dalian Shipyard in Liaoning province, northeast China China is building at a wartime pace - more than just these five - for a reason. They have plans ... or at least want to be ready to execute a plan ... one long in the making. While we're at it, let's bring up a picture of the People's Liberation Army Navy's first aircraft carrier Liaoning - without which they would be at least one if not two decades behind in building their carrier fleet.…

Americas Raytheon won a $72.8 million order, which provides non-recurring engineering in support of early identification, development, and qualification of corrections to potential and actual F135 propulsion system operational issues, to include safety and reliability/maintainability problems identified through fleet usage. Additionally, this order provides for continued engine maturation, evaluates component life limits based on operational […]View the full article

Does your opponent respond the same - or to the same degree - to identical incentives and disincentives than you do? Are you mirroring? Do you want your opponent to think a certain way because it is convenient to you and your priors? Are you doing your best to structure your actions such that they are conveniently aligned with your peacetime path of least resistance, or are they mindfully structured with your opponent's view of warfighting? That kept coming to mind yesterday during our conversation with our guest Toshi Yoshihara on Midrats discussing his new book Mao's Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China's Navy, and for the second half of th…

Americas Blue Force Technologies (BFT) and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have successfully completed a ground test for a novel carbon fiber composite propulsion flow path system for BFT’s Fury uncrewed fighter under the AFRL Bandit program. “On an uncrewed fighter like Fury, proper integration of the propulsion flow path is the most […]View the full article

From a navy of peasants to professionals on par with any Western navy; from coastal patrol to global reach, the slow and steady growth of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) crept up on some policy makers in the last decade, but as the PLAN eclipses the United States Navy in numbers and is accelerating their industrial capacity and capabilities, the decades of the American uncontested dominance at sea is no longer granted. Returning to Midrats to discuss this and the larger trends he raises in his new book, Mao's Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China's Navy, will be Dr. Toshi Yoshihara. Toshi Yoshihara is a Senior Fellow at the Center for S…

Americas According to news reports in Israel, the United States had approached Israel to release its stockpile of MIM-23 HAWK air defense missiles and transfer them to Ukraine. But the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s political-Military Bureau, Dror Shalom, reportedly told the Pentagon that Israel has not changed its policy of not sending weapons […]View the full article

In the first year of this blog ~18-yrs ago, we blowtorched the Navy for throwing away our riverine capability forcing the Army in Iraq to "reacquisition" fishing boats, and generally surrendering a primary logistics path - rivers - to the enemy. We covered the rise and rebuilding of riverine in our Navy, and if you followed the tag, the ahistorical stupidity of our Navy at once again throwing it away due to having the attentions span of a squirrel. Wherever there is war with any significant river systems, having a mature, well equipped riverine force is essential to controlling that logistics corridor and having the ability to defend from and project force quickly using t…

Americas Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky has delivered its 5,000th Hawk medium-lift helicopter to the US armed forces. The chopper is a variant of the UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter deployed for international military and civilian operations. “For more than 40 years the Black Hawk has remarkably supported Soldiers in every major contingency operation the Army has […]View the full article

Civil wars are nasty and unpredictable things. The longer they go, the more the thin veneer of civilization starts to strip away for even the most advanced nations and their people. Less advanced nations devolve to Madmaxistan rather quickly. All governmental efforts, money, and attention goes towards weapons, food, and fuel. Industries, infrastructure, and parts of civil society that do not support that get left as if frozen in aspic. If you don't live in a nation suffering that civil war, it is easy not to pay attention to that which does not effect you. There is one aspect of the Yemen civil war that no one should ignore - and it is at sea. This isn't a disaster that a…

Americas Raytheon won a $21.6 million modification, which adds hours to finalize the design, integration, and to conduct test and evaluation in support of Phase Two for the Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST) rapid deployment capability. Additionally, this effort provides for joint flight test to be performed which will provide additional data for MST integration of […]View the full article

Complacency, a self-serving bureaucracy, and a willful forgetfulness of the fundamentals of war is a common thread in most 21st Century defense establishments in the developed world, but these very human conditions are worse in some nations than others. Germany stands out. If you want a sobering view of the military situation of our German allies, Der Spiegel has a staggering report that provides a stark view of what small budgets, ill-fitting reforms, and just plain anti-military politicians can do to a nation who is - whether they want it or not - a keystone to NATO's continental defense. Though it isn't quite fair to use the end of the cold war force levels - everyone'…

Americas The United States will no longer pursue a plan to deploy the US Army’s Strategic Mid-Range Fires (SMRF) System in Japan. The US Indo-Pacific Command had proposed under its Pacific Deterrence Initiative to deploy these intermediate-range missiles to the first island chain as a conventional deterrent to China. Japan’s recent decision to acquire long-range […]View the full article

The Navy's tale of woe in trying to force the acquisition system to actually produce something besides process is almost too painful to recall, especially on the surface side of the house. We have the walking wounded of LCS, the squib DDG-1000, the gilded promise Ford CVN, and the never-was-has-been CG(X). We have hope that we can't screw up the existing Franco-Italian FREMM in the upcoming modified to American requirements Constellation Class FFG, but we shall see if our optimism is well placed. As we all wait with bated breath and gritted teeth on what may be with DDG(X), we should look around to see if there is a benchmark recently that did work. On the surface side o…

Americas The United States and the Philippines vowed Friday to “invigorate” defense cooperation to address shared security concerns including disputes over the South China Sea. Manila hosted a high-level security dialogue with its top defense ally as part of efforts by President Ferdinand Marcos to restore a seven-decade partnership that was unsettled by his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte. The […]View the full article

Officially the Navy may have a “new mission” but it is just putting in to law what has been in existence since the first Stone Age man outfitted his fishing canoe as a war canoe. In a modern society, words mean things and even what is self-evident must on occasion be put in writing. What is “Title 10?” That is what tells our Navy what it’s mission is. We now have newTitle 10 language, in Section 8062(a):“The Navy, within the Department of the Navy, includes, in general, naval combat and service forces and such aviation as may be organic therein. The Navy shall be organized, trained, and equipped for the peacetime promotion of the national security interests and prosperity…

Today is a great day; A hero pilot who shot down at least four Russian Migs in a classified dogfight at the height of the Cold War which saw his jet shot 263 times is to receive the Navy Cross. Retired Navy Captain Royce Williams was sworn to secrecy for more than 50 years over fears that his battle against seven Soviet fighters could spark war with Russia. Now the 97-year-old is free to tell his tale and is due to receive the Navy's second highest award for combat valor on Friday at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. Captain Williams first graced the pages of CDR Salamander almost 11-yrs ago. In honor of his well deserved Navy Cross, let's bring it back. No one will…

"Hey, we have this bizarre operation that has a shoestring budget, is in the middle of nowhere, and is asking for something to be done that has never been done before. Most likely, if the people sent are ever seen again, it will end in abject failure and humiliation for the officer leading it. Who should we send?" "Hey, who is that weird 40-yr old LCDR down the hall with all the strange tattoos and whose uniform is all out of wack? I have no idea what he does at that desk, I won't miss him." "Oh, you mean LCDR Geoffrey Basil Spicer-Simson?" "Yes, that chap. He has an eclectic background fitting his personality. I think he just might be the fit." And so starts a story …