Raw Intel

Looking back at some overlooked but critically important - and successful - naval tactics that have a direct and sometimes dramatic strategic effect ... I found myself thinking of a great example from WWII. Can you defeat the worlds most feared warship with just some lumber and canvas? Maybe ... I'm pondering over at USNIBlog. Come by and give it a ponder with me ... and think why this may be of use today. 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=ZlRR0pcS22c:2NvUlcOXAbQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=ZlRR0pc…

It’s July, so I guess it is time for another overwrought ethno-masochistic virtue signaling article by CDR Wolf Melbourne, USN. You can read last year’s here where he strangely implies guilt on everyone, and this year’s here where he's making another run, both in Proceedings … if you are so inclined. A few of you asked my thoughts and being that I’m not one to ignore the audience, here you go. In its reaction to the death of George Floyd, the Navy has had to face the deficit between its own ideals and its reality. Despite many pioneering and rightfully laudable advances in racial equality and a genuine desire to be meritocratic, it remains clear the Navy continues t…

I'd love to bring you good news to help you try to move pass this horrible year, but that is not to be. I posted on this topic back in June at USNIBlog, but I re-read it again last night and it seems to have become even more clear and I wanted to bring it back here. You all know the warning I gave a decade ago about the upcoming "Terrible 20s" for our military, well it appears that there is a similar issue on the civilian side, the ‘Turbulent Twenties’ Read again Jack Goldstone and Peter Turchin's observations; Top leadership matters. Leaders who aim to be inclusive and solve national problems can manage conflicts and defer a crisis. However, leaders who see…

Americas Boeing won a $24.1 million contract modification, which exercises an option to procure additional software builds to provide correction of deficiencies, to include software enhancements or improvements, engineering analyses and evaluations, and integration and test activity in support of the P-8A Increment 3 Acoustics Multi-static Active Coherent Enhancements program. The Poseidon’s increment 3 focuses on a network-ready open-systems electronics architecture and network-enabled weapons for existing P-8A aircraft. The Poseidon is a militarized version of the Boeing 737 single-aisle jetliner, while the much-older P-3 is a militarized version of the Lockheed Martin …

Americas Sikorsky won a $36.4 million order, which procures spare parts and provides repair and maintenance support for the Lot 6 CH-53K low rate initial production configuration aircraft. Work will take place in Connecticut, Canada, Washington, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Missouri, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, West Virginia and California. Expected completion will be in December 2025. Boeing won a $12.4 million deal to procure upgraded flight control computer operational flight program with automatic ground collision avoidance system capable software for the F/A-18C/D aircraft. The F/A-18 Hornet is an all-weather jet aircraft that is used b…

See that beautiful bird on the right? That was the late-great Pershing II of the Reagan Era that helped the Soviet Union fall apart. It was exceptionally good for a nuclear weapon delivery vehicle with a very impressive accuracy. As it was nuclear only and we made agreements with an empire that eventually went away - we let that capability go. The Chinese and others have not. They have hundreds of conventional short/intermediate/medium range ballistic missiles in their inventory ready to go. We have ... well ... pictures. In the four decades since we decommissioned the Pershing II, a lot has happened. The Communist Chinese have - with our willing help - risen to challe…

Americas Alabama Shipyard won a $17.9 million deal for a 76-calendar day shipyard availability for the regular overhaul and dry-docking of USNS Washington Chambers (T-AKE 11). The T-AKE 11 is a Lewis and Clark Class Dry Cargo Ship. The ship delivers ammunition, provisions, spare parts, potable water and petroleum products to US Navy and other navy ships at sea, allowing them to remain underway and combat ready for extended periods of time. The contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the total contract value to $19,278,302. Work will take place in Mobile, Alabama, and is expected to be completed by March 20, 2021. The Wake Island Airfield, regarded as a…

Americas Sikorsky Aircraft won a $2.3 billion deal for procurement of 120 H-60M Black Hawk helicopters and related support for fiscal years 2022-2026, including options for an additional 135 aircraft. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. With more than 2,100 H-60 variants in the US Army’s inventory, the Black Hawk remains the workhorse and backbone of US Army aviation. As the US Army continues to develop its Futura Vertical Lift (FVL) programs – in which the company competes with its Raider X and SB-1 Defiant – they will continue to operate the H-60M for decades to come and alongside its future replacements. According to the US Department of Defense pub…

This is the 4th and a half draft of this week's DivThu ... a much more simplified version. I did have a very long post, but decided that was unnecessary. It was better, especially with Part 2 - the Navy's Reading List - added below, to keep this rather simple as I think it speaks for itself. Let's go. Part 1: Navy Task Force One. If you were going to try to get the temperature of race relations in our nation, probably the worst time to do it in the last 35 years would have been over the summer and fall of 2020. As our Navy reflects the society it comes from, it would be only natural that the high emotions, cultural climate, and all that happened in that time period w…

Americas Lockheed Martin won a $129 million contract modification, which increases the scope for the production and delivery of three MH-60R aircraft as replacement-in-kind for the Navy. MH-60R Seahawk is a multi-mission helicopter manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft. The rotorcraft replaces the SH-60B and SH-60F helicopters in the US Navy’s fleet and combines the capabilities of these aircraft. Work will take place in New York, Connecticut and Alabama. Estimated completion date is in May 2025. Honeywell International won a $10 million delivery order for V-22 spare parts. The deal was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 US. Code 2304 (c)(1), as stated in Feder…

It is time to return to a topic no one likes. It is one of the most damning of the military service and its leaders; the abuse of Command Investigation and the Inspector General process. Sadly, they often degrade to the lowest motivation from one or two of the players involved. If not properly led and managed, they can quickly devolve in to Star Chamber, Kafkaesque nightmare that no one gets out of alive. The more I've seen of them, the firmer I hold that no one can survive one intact. If you dig enough, you will run in to something or someone that can give and investigating body enough to destroy in a day what took decades to build. I give to you another example, this…

Ignoring all that we will be fighting during the Terrible 20s, I can't think too much about the fleet we have provided to our Sailors to fight with this decade too much without having a slow-building rage. Maybe you're happy. If so, head on over to USNIBlog and tell me where I'm wrong. Ho, ho, ho. 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=f-NqqpmrNds:8mIrpv-xOrE:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=f-NqqpmrNds:8mIrpv-xOrE:-BTjWOF_DHI http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=f-NqqpmrNds:8mIrpv-xOrE:V_sGLiPBpWU http:…

The last year, as most of the nation was focused on a highly contentious election and a global pandemic, the US Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard put on a the table multitude of documentation in to the conversation outlining our best minds' official view of where the Naval Services need to go; Tri-Service Maritime Strategy, CNO NAVPLAN, National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, Expeditionary Advance Base Operations, and more from recent years. How can one try to weave them together? Back for another run at CDRSalamander, regular guest Bryan McGrath offers the below for your consideration. Over to you Bryan! The Navy had a sudden burst of intellectua…

Just a cursory glance at any map will tell you the United States of America is a maritime nation whose economic power and national security is intimately linked to the sea. This simple reality is not as well understood as one would expect. Command of the sea and access to the world’s oceans has never been easy or an entitlement for any nation. It is something that each generation must understand, resource, and be a steward of for the next. With domestic distractions and competing priorities combined with the accelerating challenge by the People’s Republic of China, bringing the topic of maritime power above the natsec ambient noise has never been more important. This fall…

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 Boeing won a $3.5 billion deal for the C-17 Globemaster III Sustainment Program. The contract will provide support and sustainment services to the government product support manager/product support integrator for the C-17 weapon system. The contract involves Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, NATO Airlift Management Program Office, India, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Support includes: program management; sustaining logistics; material and equipment management; sustaining engineering; quality assurance; depot level aircraft maintenance and modifications; F117 propulsion system management; long-term sustainment plannin…

The historical reckoning of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) that members of the Front Porch knew was coming since we started ringing the bell in 2004 is finally being written. New scholarship continues to come forward with a fresh look in investigating the causes of and lessons from the LCS program. There are firm lessons not just on how to run or not run a program, but also how perverse incentives hard wired in to our politics, acquisitions programs, and … yes … culture enabled abuse and wholesale institutional failure. Over at War on the Rocks, Emma Salisbury is doing exactly that. For those new to the LCS story – and there are many – Emma’s article is a great startin…

Americas Boeing won an $85 million deal for overhaul of 40 ship-sets for the F-18 landing gear system, which includes a left side and right side main landing gear and nose landing gear assembly in support of the F/A-18E/F and EA-18G aircrafts. The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is the Navy’s highest priority aviation modernization program. It is replacing Navy F/A-18C/D Hornet combat aircraft. The Growler is a derivative of the two-seat F/A-18 Hornet, the US Navy’s maritime strike aircraft. Its primary missions are are electronic attack (EA) and suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD), particularly at the start and ongoing early stages of hostilities. Work will take place in Can…

Ever wonder how fast things can come at you in combat ... and how fast you have to react to survive? Simply stunning video from the shootdown of a Russian S-25 in Ukraine: No other aircraft has been so valuable - and no aircraft has been shot down more - than the SU-25 in this conflict. Many regulars here are very familiar with "time compression" in such situations. Time slows down a lot. If you have not experienced that, you may wonder how he is able to eject so fast to survive a direct hit at 200-meters (about 600'). Well, training is one, but time compression is another. This slow-motion video makes it a little closer to what it felt like to the pilot. RUS Su…

USN MH-60S test (click to view full) Hellfire I/II missiles are the USA’s preferred aerial anti-armor missile, and are widely deployed with America’s allies. They equip America’s helicopter fleets (AH-64, AH-1, OH-58D, MH-60S/R), AH-64 and S-70 helicopters flown by its allies, and even Australia and France’s Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopters. Range is officially listed as 9 km/ 5.6 miles. While Hellfires lack the fast-jet launch capabilities – and correspondingly extended maximum range – of the UK’s MBDA Brimstone missiles, Lockheed Martin’s missile has made big inroads as the world’s high-end helicopter-launched missile. It has also carved out unique niches as tripo…