Raw Intel

Today's guest is Robert C. Rubel, Dean, Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College. Is China the real Mahanian maritime power of the 21st century? Alfred Thayer Mahan’s book The Influence of Sea Power on History, 1660-1783 was published in 1890 and became a global best seller. The book itself had an influence on history, being read and acted on by Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm, among others. Of late, the Chinese seem to have developed an attachment to it also. Whether it will exert similar influence on their naval policy remains to be seen, but the question posed by Information Dissemination reveals the continuing reverence that is paid to Ma…

An MH-60S Knight Hawk helicopter passes the USS Chafee while delivering supplies to the USS Carl Vinson during a vertical replenishment mission with the USNS Bridge in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 2, 2012. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class James R. Evans View the full article

General Dynamics Electric Boat receives $1.2 billion to begin construction of the 14th Virginia-class submarine, SSN-787, part of Block III with a revised bow design. Russia lays out its vision of European missile defense. Saab sees potential Gripen jet fighter orders in Brazil, Romania, Croatia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Pentagon looks to place military payloads on commercial satellites in order to reduce costs. Wyle gets $14 million contract to provide IT services to support DARPA’s relocation in Arlington, VA. Atlas Air to begin providing passenger service for US military personn…

I was very surprised a couple of days ago when a friend of my sent me this NY Times Article and asked me if I contributed to it. Varyag has certainly come a long way from the day when it got dragged to Macau to be a floating casino. I've posted many photos of Varyag in the past, but its progress has finally even attracted the attention of major Western newspaper. Of course, there are also plenty of activities around other Chinese shipyards. First of all, we see some new photos showing three different 052Cs under different stage of construction at JN shipyard. To be frank, the first photo (third 052C) has not seemed to have made too much progress, but JN shipyard c…

In this superpower, now on the wane. I guess "lady parts", class warfare, welfare, racial identity, and incompetent foreign policy are compelling to the "undecided" and the "moderates", and to far too many sheeple. . The fate of our Nation was determined by the state that gives us the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals. To quote a friend of mine from my Twitter feed: FreedomOfChoice lost. Rugged Individualism lost. What used to be "what made America great" lost. Isn't it funny...NOW is the time to find common ground? The last four years were about being told "common ground" was succumbing to Progressivism. /Rant Time to kit up, ruck up, and get back …

Anytime I read about anti-ship missiles for the US Navy, I get interested. Lets face it, nobody should be surprised when a new idea for the 25 year old Harpoon gets canceled, the Boeing missile is a great weapon against a previous generation of ships defense systems, but it is not the way ahead in the future. Bill Sweetman is reporting Raytheon is going to introduce another previous generation anti-ship missile upgrade and sell it as the future. Hmm... At the U.S. Navy League exhibition in Washington this month, Raytheon Missile Systems will unveil an upgrade to the BGM/UGM-109E Tomahawk Block IV land-attack cruise missile that will make it a multirole weapon cap…

British participation in the Libya operation makes comments like this even more on point: It’s not just the Harriers and HMS Ark Royal. The loss of the Nimrod R1 patrol aircraft and the cancellation of the Nimrod MRA4 maritime patrol aircraft will make British participation in operations like the Libya NFZ much more difficult. That wouldn’t be such a problem were it not clear that the UK was very interested in participating in such operations. View the full article

Shashank Joshi has a good rundown of the strategic implications of the Taliban attack on PNS Mehran. The only part I'm uncertain about is this: Thirdly, the attack's terrible human toll was accompanied by the highly visible, and militarily significant, destruction of at least one, perhaps two, P-3C Orion anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft (one has been destroyed; two others appear damaged). These $35m US-supplied aircraft - advanced variants of the older P-3 aircraft - were inducted last summer, with the expectation that six more would follow by 2012. Their loss compounds an already lopsided naval balance with respect to India, which now possess…

The latest lament of the lames in the Lamestream Media is that somehow, upon further inspection, Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan doesn't have enough Private Sector experience for the job of Vice President. For one thing, Ryan has no significant private-sector experience. Besides summer jobs working at McDonald’s or at his family’s construction company, or waiting tables as a young Washington staffer, Ryan has none of the business-world experience Romney frequently touts as essential for governing. The New Yorker, and specifically, Ryan Lizza, might want to take a moment to let the irony of saying something as galactically ridiculous as that sink in. I …

U.S. Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, receives a mountaintop brief from U.S. and Afghan special forces on Camp Morehead, Afghanistan, April 23, 2012. DOD photo by D. Myles Cullen View the full article

It will take some time getting used to seeing that ship at sea. It will look particularly interesting when they are in pairs, and with other ships. Click images for very high resolution. That flight deck is gigantic. View the full article

Amazing sniper shots recorded in Afghanistan: A BRITISH Army sniper has set a new sharpshooting distance record by killing two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan from more than 1 miles away. Craig Harrison, a member of the Household Cavalry, killed the insurgents with consecutive shots — even though they were 3,000ft beyond the most effective range of his rifle. “The first round hit a machinegunner in the stomach and killed him outright,†said Harrison, a Corporal of Horse. “He went straight down and didn’t move. “The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too. They we…

Paul made this observation in an email; If this is for real, it makes the Tomcat look petite He's got a good point. Look at the size of the people relative to the aircraft. More importantly; check out that weapons bay. Unlike other internal weapons bays for internal air-to-air missiles - the J-20s is massive. Give it a look. Looks deep. That almost seems less a weapons bay than an old school bomb bay with plenty of room for all sorts of toys. How far back does it go behind that huge access door that is down? Perhaps, because it is a single, vice a folding door like the F-22, it just seems big. But ... the J-20 is a big bird. Ar…

One of the few fiction books on nuclear war I recommend is "Alas Babylon." Well worth a read even today, and an excellent addition to a survival library. It came to mind when catching up on news today. The war in that book began with an incident involving a military plane at Latakia. Some of the comments from the Turkish government could be quotes from the book... LW View the full article

ID contributor Robert Farley has posted his thoughts on the BMD decision over at the Guardian. Rob mentions something in his article that I've been thinking about for awhile regarding the Eastern European missile shield floated by the Bush administration. The reaction in Poland and the Czech Republic clearly illustrates that the purpose of the ballistic missiles in those countries was to influence Russia, yet the Bush administration always sold the concept domestically from the political position that the shield protects the US from Iranian ballistic missiles, an obvious disingenuous position. To me, that indicated Bush was sending a signal to Russia that the ballisti…

One of the core reasons more people have not joined the LCS bandwagon has been the ongoing contradictions and contrary sales points by its strongest advocates.Earlier this week we bounced the CNO's "not in harms way" off The Under's "LCS will be like Taffy 3" strange rally cry.Well - there is more to chew on that will help explain why LCS just cannot get traction. "If we needed a frigate, we would build a frigate." --- Undersecretary of the Navy Bob Work at the CATO forum: The Future of the U.S. Navy Surface Fleet. P 50 Section 2 of U.S. Navy Program Guide 2012 "Decommissioning of the remaining 26 FFGs is scheduled to occur prior to FY 2019. The LCS will repl…

VAQ-129 aboard Reagan over the Veteran's Day weekend. Hat tip DW. View the full article

To: Major General T. Wilkerson, USMC(Ret) Chief Executive Officer U.S. Naval Institute Please forward to the members of the Board Gentlemen, In early February of this year I sent an e-mail to friends and colleagues advising them of the Board's decision to change the mission and role of the U.S. Naval Institute--without prior discussion or advice to the membership. I have since received almost 200 e-mails in reply plus a few telephone calls. Every response has indicated opposition to the proposed changes to the USNI mission and role. This view is also reflected on the USNI blog, and the blogs of "Commander Salamander" and others. This view w…

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Jerry Hendrix and Noel Williams are friends of mine. Both are accomplished thinkers and analysts, and I tend to agree with them more often than not on mostly everything. The two have penned an article in the latest Proceedings, and Tom Barnett's picked it up and run with it through the blogosphere. In it, they become the latest advocates in a long line of honorable thinkers who believe the "supercarrier" has reached the end of its useful life, driven to its demise by its cost and its vulnerability. There is a lot of really good thinking in their work, but in the end, I am unpersuaded. I don't disagree, I'm just not willing to walk away from the "supercarrier". Yet. …