Raw Intel

Americas The US Marine Corps will acquire eight MQ-9A Extended Range (ER) unmanned air vehicles (UAV) for VMU-3 as part of the ARES Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (ID/IQ) contract. The fleet is expected to standup in late summer 2023 at MCAS Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. VMU-3 will operate these MQ-9A ERs to support training for the Marine Littoral Regiment. Insitu won a $160 million deal, which provides training, test and engineering, development of engineering change proposals, operations support, organizational level maintenance, field service representatives, land and ship surveys, hardware site activations, hardware installs, repairs, and development of noncommercia…

Americas KC-46A, #17-46034, was recently painted with a tail flash to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the city of Portsmouth and the 75th anniversary of the United States Air Force. It was flown to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to be painted at the 36,000-square-foot paint facility there in June. An AIM-120D3 air-to-air missile with production hardware was test-fired for the first time on June 30 from a F-15E. It was the first of five combined Air Force and Navy live-fires scheduled for the AMRAAM F3R program, which replaces 15 Circuit Card Assemblies on the missile. Raytheon says in a press release that an additional live fire for the Foreign Mili…

Well before Trump was even a Republican, here and other places in the natsec arena warned Germany ... hell ... begged Germany to step up. She needed to take her place on the stage as a responsible partner in the security of Europe - a full partner in the West. We tried to tell her she needed to spend her fair share, to make the alliance stronger ... but she always seemed to want to do just the bare minimum ... and then less. We were concerned about her weakness, but more we were concerned that she was allowing herself to get too close to Russia, too dependent on Russia ... but her Smartest People in the Room™ convinced their people they knew what was best. They sneered at…

Americas DARPA’s Operational Fires (OpFires) ground-launched hypersonic missile system has successfully executed its first flight test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Lockheed Martin built the system, which includes a Northrop Grumman rocket motor, and conducted the test. Lockheed Martin won a $23.4 million contract modification to exercise options for the engineering, design, and technical services in support of the MK 41 Vertical Launching System electronic systems and computer programs. The deal combines purchases by the US and the governments of Japan, Spain, Canada, and Chile under the Foreign Military Sales program. Work will take place in Maryland, New…

With the expected losses due to enemy action and mechanical failure, how do we plan to rescue aviators out of the water in the western Pacific? What few subs we have will be fully employed elsewhere and really shouldn’t show themselves in a lot of those waters. We don’t have a lot of surface ships with helos either to spare. As the USMC desires to make every island possible a fighting position, how do you supply them when their airfields – such that the are – are cratered by the PLARF conventional S//M/IRBM at D+1? If your major airfields are unusable due to enemy military action or host nation political uncertainty ... how do you conduct long range ASW and reconnaissance…

This week's Midrats is going to be the ever-popular everything goes melee format. You never know where in the natsec world the conversation will take us, but from Snake Island to the San Diego waterfront, from DC to the Baltic Sea - if there's a maritime issue worth considering, we'll try to pack it in for the hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern. As with the normal melee format, we have open topic, open chat, and open phones - so if there is an issue you'd like covered, now's your time. Join us live if you can, but it not, you can get the show later by subscribing to the podcast. If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes bu…

Americas Boeing won an $18.6 million delivery order to procure the long lead components and parts in support of MH-47G rotary wing aircraft. The MH-47G aircraft provides US Special Operations Forces (SOF) heavy assault, rotary wing aircraft support. This contract action supports a requirement for replacement of the aging fleet of remanufactured MH-47G aircraft that has airframe components dating back more than 45 years and maximize commonality with the US Army’s CH-47F Block II aircraft. The Boeing MH-47G is a special operations variant of the CH-47 Chinook multi-role, heavy-lift helicopter. It is in service with the US Army Special Operations Aviation Command. The majori…

So, how was your war? A little more than 15-years ago after 93-years on our little planet, one of the greatest US Navy tactical leaders passed away. He and his crew had an incredible record during WWII that I would encourage you to review in full here ... but after the Navy decided that they were running out of Navy Crosses to reward the man then all of 31-yrs old, he earned the Medal of Honor for events in his 11th Patrol. Attention to citation: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of USS BARB during her Eleventh War Patrol” along the east coast of China from 19 December 1945, to 15 Fe…

Americas Lockheed Martin won a $70.9 million contract modification, which increases scope to provide Reliability and Maintainability Improvement Program implementation and the Anomaly Failure Resolution System backlog in support of establishing improvements to the reliability, availability, and maintainability to the F-35 and continued improvements to the F-35 total ownership costs for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Foreign Cooperative Program partners, and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers. Work will take place in Texas. Estimated completion will be in July 2025. General Dynamics-OTS won a $7.8 million contract action for the 40mm MK47 MOD0 Advanced Lightweight…

In an age of long range sensors and precision guided weapons, do we have the option to, with the exception of the most important, "bypass and haulass" through the Pacific's constellation of small islands between Hawaii and the Western Pacific and Australia like our ancestors did? Generations of American planners have just assumed that the Pacific WWII granted the USA was a birthright. We fought wars and guaranteed peace with certain assumptions that, in real time, are fading away in the presence of a rising power who is serious, focused, and knows what it wants. It wants the Pacific and it seems we are helping them take it without a shot being fired; Kiribati President …

Funny, but I don't quite remember this twist from the shower scene in Starship Troopers; Via the irreplaceable Kristina Wong; The training slide offers a “vignette” instructing soldiers on what to do if they encounter a female soldier who identifies as male according to the Department of Defense’s personnel tracking system known as Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS), but has not surgically transitioned and still has “female genitalia.” The slide, titled “Soldier/Unit Training Barracks, Bathrooms, and Showers,” reads: Vignette: Following his transition from female to male (which did not include sex reassignment surgery) and gender marker change in DE…

Americas The US Navy and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) are wrapping up a five-year joint effort to develop high-power microwave technology capable of knocking out adversary electronics. The High-Powered Joint Electromagnetic Non-Kinetic Strike (HiJENKS) weapon is undergoing a two-month test at Naval Air Station China Lake, California. The Royal Canadian Navy will have to continue relying on allies and a private firm to refuel its ships at seas after a project to build a new fleet of supply vessels was hit with more delays. The service was supposed to receive its first joint support ship next year, but that delivery is delayed because of pandemic-related work issue…

We opened Midrats last Sunday with a question to our guest Jimmy Drennan about what lessons he's taken so from from a maritime perspective during the Russo-Ukrainian War. This is a question I would like all of our navalists to think hard about. One constant we see throughout history is that small to medium wars will signal to you what you need to be ready for when the big war comes - and come it will. They always do. Well, yesterday another Midrats alumnus, Dr. James Kraska has a tightly written overview of some takeaways for him, and as always with Kraska's work ... his observations deserve close consideration. The setback for Russia was apparently tied to the oldest of…

Americas L-3 Communications Vertex Aerospace won a $23.5 million modification, which extends services and adds hours for continued depot level maintenance, logistics, and sustaining engineering services in support of the C-12 Navy aircraft and the C-12 Marine Corps Reserve aircraft. The Beechcraft C-12 Huron is based on the Super King and 1900 series platforms and serves with the United States military as a utility transport among other roles. Work will take place in Louisiana, Japan, Bahrain, Cuba, North Carolina and Maryland. Estimated completion will be in January 2023. Boeing won an $18.7 million modification, which exercises options to procure the following aircraft…

Some warning will only be given so many times. We were warned a few months in to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We were warned again five years later when we were trying to source what was needed to support the uplift in forces in Afghanistan while Iraq still had high demands. Our allies pretty much went Winchester in the 2011 operations against Libya. We can barely partially source small and medium sized conflicts ... we are not ready for a larger one. That is a simple fact that seems too painful for people to clearly look at. Like the US Navy excels in damage control by design and training, in theory the US military writ large excels in logistics. What good is the culture…

Americas Sikorsky Aircraft won a $32.6 million order, which procures one CH-53K containerized flight training device based on low-rate initial production Lot 4 configuration in support of CH-53K phase II training system efforts. The CH-53K King Stallion is a new-build helicopter that will expand the fleet’s ability to move more material, more rapidly throughout the area of responsibility using proven and mature technologies. There are four System Development Test Article CH-53K with Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron One (VMX-1). The squadron completed Initial Operational Test and Evaluation of the aircraft in 2022. There are 46 aircraft on contract, includi…

Americas The US Navy’s MQ-8C has tested the Single System Multi-Mission Airborne Mine Detection (SMAMD) system for the first time. Testing took place at Eglin Air Force Base in May, according to Naval Air System Command. “The team successfully demonstrated that the prototype SMAMD System effectively operates as designed aboard the MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter in relevant real world environments,” said Capt. Thomas Lansley, Fire Scout program director. “This cutting-edge technology could really enhance Fire Scout’s capability going forward.” Carrying out the tests in day and night, the team gathered data on drifting, tethered, and moored mines throughout beach zone…

Few navalists can look around them and feel content that their peers, government, and the American people understand - or for that matter seem to care - that our nation's wealth, health, and security is all based on the fact that we are a maritime and aerospace republic. Without excellence, mastery, and control of these two areas in the face of the challenge from China, all else is in danger. Inside and outside government, what needs to be done to create the conditions so we can provide for those generations who follow us the place and the world previous generations earned for us? Making a return to visit, our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to d…

It is a beautiful place today when you drive by it, but then you notice a curious red dragon facing a wood. The Welsh soldiers were just seven months out of training when they entered into combat at Mametz Wood. Many had never fired a round in combat, and used broomsticks rather than rifles at drill practice. In sharp contrast they faced the elite Lehr Regiment of Prussian Guards - highly-trained professional soldiers who were deeply entrenched in the dense woods. Their trenches were dug into chalk and thick wire stretched through the battleground, while the wood was heavily fortified with machine guns.As part of the Battle of the Somme was the Battle of Mametz Wood; Ma…

Today let's look not at tactical, operational, or even strategic challenges. No, let's instead look at the political, bureaucratic, and industrial structures that exist to enable everything else. There is a lot of money floating around the USA's defense budget and yet in the post-Cold War period no one feels we are making progress. On the naval surface side of the house, the promised future seems to underperform (LCS), be stillborn (DDG-1000), never arrive (CG(X)), or become limping testimony of institutional arrogance (FORD). On the land side, any attempt to move beyond Cold War era platforms fail to transition past prototype from self-propelled howitzers to amphibious a…