Raw Intel

More evidence that we need a new "elite" and our defense and diplomacy nomenklatura is worm-ridden with people better suited for anything else. Few thing are more cost effective and strategically additive than our military attaché cadre. If anything, it should be expanded and being one made a top-shelf career enhancer than its status today. When done and funded correctly, attachés can be instrumental in helping build partnerships and relationships throughout the world that can pay orders of magnitude greater returns down the road. We have a huge military and as a former manpower guy, I see this for exactly what it is - screwed up priorities and myopic leadership. Th…

USAF Gets Upgraded 105mm For The AC-130 Gunship | Arrow-3 Successfully Flight Tested | Saab To Deliver New Camouflage System To French DGA Americas Rockwell Collins won a $32.4 million deal for the manufacture of ballistic signal transmission devices and canopy severance assemblies in support of the egress system of the V22 aircraft. The V-22 Osprey is a joint-service, medium-lift, multimission tilt-rotor aircraft. The aircraft operates as a helicopter when taking off and landing vertically. The nacelles rotate 90° forward once airborne, converting the aircraft into a turboprop aircraft. Work will take place in Iowa. Fiscal 2022 procurement of aircraft (Navy) funds; FMS …

The only logical question for us is, "What are we going to do about it?" On Sunday, H.I. Sutton and Sam LaGrone over at USNINews brought a few visuals that should grab your attention; The Chinese military has built targets in the shape of an American aircraft carrier and other U.S. warships in the Taklamakan desert as part of a new target range complex, according to photos provided to USNI News by satellite imagery company Maxar. The full-scale outline of a U.S. carrier and at least two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are part of the target range that has been built in the Ruoqiang region in central China. The site is near a former target range China used to test early v…

Americas During a ceremony held on October 6 at the Pennsylvania National Guard’s Eastern Army National Guard Aviation Training Site, the US Army unveiled the newest variant of the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, the UH-60V. As part of their preparation for beginning instruction, EAATS instructor pilots have been training on six UH-60Vs they received from the Utility Helicopter Program Office in July. General Dynamics won a $482.1 million contract modification for lead yard support and development studies and design efforts related to Virginia Class submarines. The Virginia Class new attack submarine is an advanced stealth multimission nuclear-powered submarine for deep oce…

To start your week off right you should give our friend James Holmes's latest over at Real Clear Defense a read, How to Overcome Weaknesses in the Western Way of Sea War. He starts by setting up two distinguishing characteristics of how we prefer to start a war; Chinese anti-access strategy envisions pummeling U.S. forces forward-deployed along the East Asian rimland while preventing the larger U.S. Pacific Fleet from reaching the battleground from its home ports in Hawaii or on the west coast in time to affect a war’s outcome. ... The second aspect is this: Western maritime services fight in “systems” that depend heavily on the electromagnetic spectrum to pass in…

In war, it often is not what you were designed to do. It is not what in theory what you were primarily trained, manned, and equipped to do. No. More often than not it is what you must do. What you are needed to do. What you may be the only unit in place to do. There is also, like we saw in the below - what must be done now with what is at hand. With the right leadership, a lot is possible. The dogmatic, rigid, and blinkered - things that are often rewarded in peace - are not what gets the job done in war. One hopes that in peace we accept the above truth and only have our minds dogmatic, rigid, and blinkered. Hopefully we have enough intellectual and material flexibility …

Americas Raytheon and Pratt and Whitney Military Engines won a $642 million deal, which provides for the procurement of performance-based logistics activities including maintenance of support equipment, common program activities, unique and common base recurring sustainment, repair of repairables, field service representatives, common replenishment spares, conventional take-off and landing/carrier variant F135 unique maintenance services and short take-off and landing F135 unique services in support of the F-35 Lightning II F135 propulsion system for the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, non-Department of Defense participants and Foreign Military Sales customers. Pratt &…

Americas The US Navy announced a successful live-fire exercise of its Rolling Airframe Missile from the littoral combat ship USS Charleston on Monday. The launching of the SeaRAM missiles from the San Diego-based vessel was a part of exercises involving all of the ship’s weaponry, and occurred on Thursday, the Navy said. SeaRAM missiles, also known as RIM-116 RAM missiles, are lightweight, quick-reaction missiles designed to defeat cruise missiles and asymmetric air and surface threats. Equipped with Phalanx search-and-track radar and Electro Optic sensor, 11-missile pods are carried within launchers aboard the ship. The US Marine Corps (USMC) will acquire a pair of Gene…

An export-configured Su-34M fighter-bomber, painted in a distinctive camouflage pattern, has been spotted at Zhukovsky Airport outside Moscow, fueling speculation that Russia is preparing its first Su-34M deliveries to Algeria. The sighting, which surfaced earlier this week, points to potential progress on long-pending defense export contracts between Russia and Algeria. Back in December 2019, Algerian […] The post Russia may begin Su-34 deliveries to Algeria first appeared on Defence Blog.View the full article

I joke now and then about “Make Auxiliary Cruisers Great Again” – but I am only partially joking. What were Auxiliary Cruisers? On the surface, they were somewhere between pirates and commerce raiders, but they were also a way to get more armed ships with your flag on them in the mind of your enemy's planners, disrupting their Sea Lines of Communication (SLOC) (aka supply chains), and complicating their attempts to secure their seas. Turning merchant ships in to warships is an imperfect act, but until your enemy achieves complete sea control, they have a good to acceptable track record of bringing more capability to the fight from the South Pacific to the Indian Ocean and…

...and take a moment not just to think about all the Sailors at sea, but every single person on the Mess Decks who work hard to make it happen. I love those guys. Few ratings are as great a combat multiplier than those who can make the magic happen during the holidays at sea. From the dedicated Culinary Specialists to those just mess cranking for a spell. BZ. 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=iAbzYYKRaqY:yK7LvUw5kb0:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=iAbzYYKRaqY:yK7LvUw5kb0:-BTjWOF_DHI http://feeds…

Americas The US Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) has down selected L3Harris Technologies and Martin UAV for the phase two demonstration of the MI2 technology demonstration. The program’s objective is to identify unmanned air vehicles capable of operating in austere deployed environments without ancillary support systems. Such drones must not require dedicated launch or recovery equipment. Phase 2 demonstrations will take place at Yuma Proving Ground from November 30 to December 18. BAE Systems won a $197.5 million deal for the execution of the USS Wasp (LHD 1) fiscal 2021 Chief of Naval Operations scheduled docking selected restricted availability. Thi…

Americas Boeing won a $21.6 million contract modification, which exercises an option to procure 104 proprotor hub spring and drive link kits for the V-22 Osprey aircraft, to include 60 for the MV-22 aircraft; 10 for the CV-22 aircraft; 29 spare kits for the MV-22 aircraft; and five spare kits for the CV-22 in support of proprotor hub spring and drive link improvement efforts to improve safety, reliability, and maintainability of MV and CV V-22 Osprey aircraft. The V-22 Osprey is a joint-service, medium-lift, multimission tilt-rotor aircraft. Boeing is responsible for the fuselage, landing gear, avionics, electrical and hydraulic systems, performance and flying qualities. …

Over at DVIDS, a nice series of pictures that represents one part of our Navy that doesn't get to see the light of day often enough. Those who have served know it, probably been part of it, and nothing is more memorable that being right in the crunch of it all. When you are well trained and well led with the right climate - things, in this case it really did, can come out of the blue that you haven't EXACTLY trained for, but ... you've done some things kind of like it. You look at your Sailors, and you say, "Yes sir, we can do that." One of the best communities for such responses are the Navy's EOD pros. Nice to see a little love heading their way, as much of what they do…

Right now throughout Afghanistan and the different ways out of that nation, Americans, Brits, and others are doing all they can to fill in the gaping scar of dishonor that is our defeat-of-choice and retreat from Afghanistan. There are individuals, ad-hoc groups of like minded veterans, family members, and others who are doing all they can to help Americans, family members, and those who trusted and fought with us from almost certain death. From American school kids, to helicopter pilots - people are trusted in our government to not leave them behind are trapped. There are good people on the other end who are doing extraordinary things to make up for the disgraceful offic…

Americas The Air Force, along with with partners Lockheed Martin and Boeing, completed work on the last of 247 planes in the F-22 Structural Repair Program, officials at Hill Air Force Base in Utah announced on Wednesday. Structural modifications, made by the 574th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron of the Ogden Air Logistics Complex, to the F-22 Raptor added flying serviceability of the fighter plane by an estimated 8,000 hours, according to the Air Force. Lockheed Martin won a $11.4 million deal, which provides engineering and logistics services in support of the Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft program to monitor and manage fatigue and obsolescence issues and op…

Americas The US Navy awarded Lockheed Martin a $17.5 million contract modification to exercise options to provide design agent engineering services for the MK 41 Vertical Launching System (VLS) electronic systems and computer programs. The modification is for software design, systems engineering, ship/missile integration services, and depot operations services for the MK 41 VLS module electronics and launch control system. According to the DoD, these services include new missile integration into MK 41 VLS including launcher design, launcher integration into new ship classes and the new AEGIS shore based component, Life Cycle Support Facility depot operations, system produ…

Tired of hearing "DELTA" related to COVID, when in a good and just world when you heard that word it would be used to talk about old Russian Soviet Era SSBN or 2-seater all weather F-18s? Well, we're not sure we'll cover either of those topics on today's episode or that we'll totally ignore COVID's impact in the natsec arena, but it's a melee - so you never know what will come up in the maritime national security conversation. We do have a few topics to get the conversation started; giving Deming a second look, the CNO admits what everyone knew about FORD for over a decade, China rattles the nuclear saber at Japan, and our friends return to the Pacific. Remember, with …

As we have covered here through the years, the USCG used to be the most equal opportunity and race neutral of the uniformed services. Then a decade ago, Congress removed the requirement at the USCG Academy that it could not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin – and once that firewall was gone, we were off to the identity politics Olympics. I would like to point your attention to two ALCOAST messages; 452/20 and 195/20. Both went out December 15th, 452/20 about five hours before 195/20. You can read the full messages at the hypertext links above. Before you do that, let’s establish a few assumptions. 1. The diversity commissariat used to …

Americas L3 Technologies won a $29.2 million deal for the manned/unmanned teaming hardware, as well as technical and engineering support, for the Apache helicopter. The Apache attack helicopter was developed by Boeing for the US armed forces. It entered service with the US Army in 1984. is an American twin-turboshaft attack helicopter with a tailwheel-type landing gear arrangement and a tandem cockpit for a crew of two. It features a nose-mounted sensor suite for target acquisition and night vision systems. Work will take place in Salt Lake City, Utah. Estimated completion date is June 30, 2023. Lockheed Martin won a $9.3 million contract modification for the US and Unit…