Raw Intel

All together now… (click to view full) Britain’s practice of “contracting for availability” for key equipment, rather than paying for spare parts and maintenance hours, may be its most significant defense procurement reform. In a world where older air, sea, and ground vehicle fleets are growing maintenance demands beyond countries’ available budgets, it’s an approach whose success could have global significance. Across the pond, the USA is significantly behind in this area. Fortunately, they have not ignored the model entirely. Recent changes to the contracts covering their B-2 Spirit stealth bomber fleet demonstrate that some progress is being made, via a $9+ billion …

Simply a superb almost 8-minutes from The Guardian of all places. Take some time to listen to the people who are living - and fighting - in eastern Ukraine. I find the part of the interview with Senior Lieutenant Misha Novitskyi starting at the 05:56 point especially to the point. Ukraine wants to be part of the 21st Century. Russia wants to drag her back to the 20th. 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=EfTO_YjToTQ:Tvoh-lNX8Xs:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=EfTO_YjToTQ:Tvoh-lNX8Xs:-BTjWOF_DHI http://feeds.feedbur…

Americas American firm AeroVironment received two firm-fixed-price orders totaling nearly $16 million from the United States Air Force to deliver Puma 3 AE unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and spares packages and Raven UAS spares packages. The hand-launched Puma 3 AE has a wingspan of 9.2 feet, weighs 15 pounds and can operate for up to 2.5 hours. The aircraft also has a range of 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) with a standard antenna, and up to 37.2 miles (60 kilometers) with AeroVironment’s Long-Range Tracking Antenna (LRTA). It also features reduced system packaging with a flyable configuration and GCS in one case. A US Air Force plan to transfer all A-10 Thunderbolt planes…

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:…

If you are only reading commentary about Russian President Putin's speech of 21 Feb 2022 or watching short clips, you are doing yourself a disservice. While some reporting is good, there is a lot of spin, narrative shaping, and just plain lazy reporting. If you want to try to understand if not what is in Putin's head, but what he wants the Russian people to think is in his head, you need to read and watch the speech yourself. When someone tells you what they're thinking, listen to them. Putin isn't trying to bring back the Soviet Union, he's focused on something much deeper and meaningful, the Russian Empire...build back better, as it were. You can clearly see that he i…

HH-60G, Afghanistan (click to view full) In 2006 the US Air Force awarded Boeing a contract worth north of $10 billion for 141 HH-47 combat search-and-rescue helicopters, but by mid-2009 the CSAR-X program was cancelled during its System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase by the Pentagon. At the time Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote that this program had “a troubled acquisition history and raises the fundamental question of whether this important mission can only be accomplished by yet another single-service solution.” That cancellation may have been warranted, but the underlying operational constraints are increasing as years go by, with a tentative repl…

After a summer where more and more people’s eyes have been opened to the divisive, sectarian, and even racist nature of Critical Race Theory and have risen in opposition to it and similar race-essentialist world view in to our schools, the next logical step is how people feel about it becoming an essential part of taxpayer supported public education. As we’ve discussed it in detail here, we know there is a problem in the US Navy where the Chief of Naval Operations has enthusiastically supported the works of one of the most high-profile advocates of the most cancerous forms of Critical Race Theory, Ibram X. Kendi. With that top cover, it was only a matter of time until its…

The Royal Thai Air Force has selected the BARAK MX air and missile defense system from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) as part of its plan to upgrade national base protection under its Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) program. The procurement contract, valued at 3.44 billion baht (approx. $107 million), includes one full BARAK MX unit, […]View the full article

Americas Lockheed Martin won a $37 million contract modification, which adds scope to procure special tooling and test equipment for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter production line in support of second source canopy tooling and other known capacity gaps for the Navy, Marines, Air Force and non-Department of Defense (DOD) participants. Work will take place in California, Texas, Australia and New Jersey. Estimated completion will be in August 2023. BAE Systems won a $117 million contract from Lockheed Martin to produce next-generation missile seekers for the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM). The seeker technology enables LRASM to detect and engage specific m…

Americas General Atomics won a $305.2 million deal for MQ-9 Reaper contractor logistics support. The deal provides for program management, contractor filed service representative support, depot repair, depot maintenance, sustaining engineering support, supply and logistics support, configuration management, tech data maintenance, software maintenance and inventory control point/warehouse support for the MQ-9. The Reaper is designed primarily to disable or destroy time-sensitive targets and has a secondary function as an intelligence-gathering platform. The service branch will obligate $65.4M at the time of award from its fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance funds. Work w…

We picked Option A it appears. I remember when we thought about Option C and believed Option B was too long. I have extended thoughts on the Afghanistan withdraw announcement today over at USNIBlog. It's been a long time coming ... but regular readers here know that. Come on by and give me your thoughts. 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=A_rxYai-AN4:JiIqTl4iUrM:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=A_rxYai-AN4:JiIqTl4iUrM:-BTjWOF_DHI http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=A_rxYai-AN4:JiIqTl4iUrM:V_sGLiPB…

Americas Textron Systems won an $11.3 million deal for the logistics and repair support of MV-22B, CMV-22 (Navy) and CV-22 (Air Force) Osprey components in support of the Joint Service Electronic Combat Systems Tester system. The V-22 Osprey is a joint-service, medium-lift, multimission tilt-rotor aircraft developed by Boeing and Bell Helicopters. Work will take place in Maryland. Estimated completion will be by August 2026. An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with a test re-entry vehicle was launched by Airmen from the Global Strike Command on August 11. During this launch, a Hi Fidelity Joint Test Assembly re-entry vehicle that detonate…

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…

Top Gun, redux (click to view full) In the 1980s movie Top Gun, the revolutionary “MiG-28s” operated by the enemy air force were actually painted F-5E Tiger IIs, derived from a family of fighters whose design concept dates back to the mid 1950s. The F-5 family of aircraft were produced in large numbers, as they were an extremely popular export item. Many are still operated by countries around the world, and the US Air Force used them for many years as “aggressor” aircraft in Dissimilar Air Combat Training (DACT). They remain excellent for simulating similarly small, low profile adversaries like the MiG-21s and MiG-19s that gave American pilots such trouble over Vietnam.…

Ordinary men often find themselves in extraordinary times, become extraordinary, and then return to ordinary. That does not prevent us from remembering them. On the eve of the Second World War if you found yourself in Birmingham, England you may have found yourself in the company of a middle aged optician Edward John Hicks and his wife Ethel. Perhaps their 19-yr old daughter Barbara or 15-yr old Pamela, born a few years after what they would call "The Great War," might make an appearance. They lived in a simple duplex at 46 Brompton Road. That one on the right. You wouldn't know that your neighborhood optometrist who makes your glasses was also this man.Say hello to Lie…

Americas The US Air Force announced that two F-35A Lightning II aircraft recently released B61-12 Joint Test Assemblies, or JTAs, during the F-35A’s first Full Weapon System Demonstration, completing the final flight test exercise of the nuclear design certification process. The 422nd and 59th Test and Evaluation Squadrons led Air Combat Command’s portion of the test effort, with Airmen from the 57th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, 926th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron and Bolt Aircraft Maintenance Unit leading all maintenance efforts. Thales has unveiled a new ground-based multi-mission radar with simultaneous ground and low-level air surveillance, providing early UAV dete…

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…

It may have taken over 1/3 of his first – and perhaps only – Administration for President Biden to publish his National Security Strategy, but it finally hit earlier this month – so let’s look at it. What I’d like to do is not dig into the details, as to be blunt – it isn’t the details that matter. Though it sounds cynical perhaps, it really isn’t. The primary purpose to have a National Security Strategy is to say you have one. It isn’t meaningless, but this political document (and it is political, heck its title is officially “National Security Strategy” but on the Whitehouse website the file is stored under, “Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.20…

Zeebrugge. If you have been there or to its inner city Brugges you know what a beautiful and peaceful place it is - as most all of Belgium is today. In 1918 though, Belgium was a nightmarish slaughterhouse where the bodies of millions were blended into the beaten earth - where like Okinawa and Iwo Jima over a quarter century later - the living earth would move with a blanketed mass of maggots. In one of history's subtle hints she will give you early if you wish to listen, Britain found herself on the edge of starvation due to a threat few understood or even knew of at the beginning of the war - the submarine. Something new, unexpected and decisive needed to be done.…

Hanwha Aerospace has secured a new long-term production contract for South Korea’s next-generation Long-range Surface-to-Air Missile system. According to a press release from Hanwha Aerospace, the company signed a KRW 705.4 billion (approximately $482 million) agreement with the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) to begin mass production of L-SAM launchers and anti-ballistic missiles through 2030. […]View the full article