HG S2 (Intel Bot)

Americas Bell Boeing won a $23.4 million modification, which exercises options to provide continued flight test support for the V-22 aircraft in support of the Navy, Air Force, and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers. Work will be performed in Patuxent River, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Fort Worth, Texas; and Hurlburt Field, Florida, and is expected to […]View the full article

From 12–25 August 1920 there was one of the more important battles of modern history that is relatively unknown out of the country the battle took place in. It is a story of audacity in th eface of incredible odds by a nation only reborn less than two years earlier against an equally younger malignancy. The Battle of Warsaw; The Polish-born and much feared head of the Cheka (Bolshevik secret police), Feliks Dzierzinsky, was made head of a Polish Revolutionary Committee, which would follow the Red Army and form the new government. Lenin was absolutely confident of success. Initially all went well, and within six weeks the Red Army was at the gates of Warsaw. But as the Polish Communists had warned, all classes did indeed unite, and there was no rising in the city. Also the Polish commander, Józef Piłsudski, drew up a bold, if not foolhardy, plan of counterattack. The Polish army would stand on the defensive in front of the city, and when the Red Army was fully committed to the battle, Poland’s best units would launch a flanking attack from the south, cut the Bolshevik lines of communication, and encircle much of the Red Army. Some Polish generals were aghast at the risks involved, but in their desperation there seemed no alternative.As often happens in war, things did not run as per the plan. The enemy has a vote, and they were advancing too fast. The Poles had to move a day early. The Red Army fought its way to the village of Izabelin, only 8 miles (13 km) from the city, but the Polish attack succeeded beyond wildest expectations. Driving through a gap in Bolshevik lines, the Poles advanced rapidly against little opposition. In the Red Army, all was chaos; commanders lost control of their units, with some divisions continuing their advance on Warsaw, others fleeing. Three armies disintegrated, and thousands fled into East Prussia, where they were interned. In an encounter that saw Polish lancers charging and overwhelming Bolshevik cavalrymen, the First Cavalry Army, trapped in the "Zemość Ring," was all but annihilated. The Fourth Army meekly surrendered after being encircled. Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky desperately tried to pull his troops back to a defendable line, but the situation was beyond redemption. A few more engagements followed, but the war was effectively won. Lenin was forced to agree to peace terms that surrendered a large tract of territory whose population was in no way Polish—the Red Army returned to reclaim it in 1939. Losses: Soviet, possibly some 15,000–25,000 killed, 65,000 captured, and some 35,000 interned in Germany; Polish, up to 5,000 dead, 22,000 wounded, and 10,000 missing.The seeds of one victory often hold the next defeat. First posted AUG2018.View the full article

Americas The US Air Force has awarded machine learning-based health developer Sparta Science a small business innovation research deal to identify early signs of sub-concussive brain injury in airmen. Data gathered from the research will assist experts in developing a capability to recognize the impacts of repeated exposures to subconcussive blasts. According to Sparta, results […]View the full article

Unless you have kids of college age like I do, you may not be up to speed with just how far things have gone. Some of you were a little shocked with what we covered back in September about the goings on at the US Naval Academy. They're playing catch up, really. There is a lot worse going on at USNA that I am not at liberty to share (sources and methods, etc) - but trust me, it is getting worse as the faculty and leadership there chase the latest trends at other government and private universities. Shall we check in on what is going on in larger academia? Why, yes, we should. It is coming your way sooner more than later. Here's a little pull quote from an extensive report by John Sailer over at The Free Press, How DEI Is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities. Many American college students are now required to take DEI, anti-racism, or social justice courses. At Georgetown, all undergraduates must take two Engaging Diversity courses. At Davidson College, the requirement goes under the title of Justice, Equality, and Community, which students can fulfill by taking courses like Racial Capitalism & Reproduction and Queer(ing) Performance. Northern Arizona University recently updated its general education curriculum to require nine credit hours of “diversity perspectives” courses, including a unit on “intersectional identities.” DEI is also becoming a de facto academic discipline. In 2021, Bentley University in Massachusetts created a DEI major. Last year, the Wharton School announced its introduction of a DEI concentration for undergraduates and a DEI major for MBA students. Meantime, the open faculty position listings at universities across the country illustrate how a focus on race, gender, social justice, and critical theory can be crucial to landing a job. Last year, the University of Houston–Downtown sought an instructor in Early Modern British Literature, including Shakespeare, with a preferred specialization in “critical race studies.” At Wake Forest University, an applicant for assistant professor of Spanish should be someone “whose critical perspectives are linked to the experiences of groups historically underrepresented in higher education in ways that inform and influence their pedagogical approach.” Williams College recently sought an assistant professor of German who works “in the areas of migration, race and anti-racism, post- and decolonial approaches, disability, and/or memory studies.” These imperatives often come from the top. In May, the Board of Governors for California Community Colleges (CCC), the largest system of higher education in the country, decreed that every employee—faculty, staff, and administrators—must be evaluated for their “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” competencies. Each district in the system ultimately decides how to enforce the new rule, but the Chancellor’s Office released a list of recommended competencies. It suggested faculty create a curriculum that “promotes a race-conscious and intersectional lens” and advocate for “anti-racist goals and initiatives.” What can be done? Is there anyway to get this nightmare back in the bottle? Well, yes - but while simple, it isn't easy. For decades conservatives retreated from and were pushed out of the institutions. Conservative leaders did nothing. From your local university to the Boy Scouts to Annapolis, those who others who were relied on to hold the line surrendered every hill that they decided was not worth fighting for. Now their enemies hold all the high ground and they are surrounded. Lesson learned here; no longer support that kind of "leader." You know, the kind who accepts the slander against them and their allies in silence, and are more willing to deal with their enemies than they are in supporting their friends. Look for leaders who not only know what time it is, but don't care what names they are called and will take action. You know, like Governor Ron DeSantis of the Free State of Florida; ...DeSantis announced the appointment of six new board members at the small Sarasota college, many of whom were ultra-conservative political players and academics. Sharf, a trans woman, said that she returned to shore—and her phone—to find it had blown up with messages from people telling her the news. “I got really sad and then just, like, laid down,” she told The Daily Beast. Among the appointees on Friday were Charles R. Kesler, a professor and editor for a publication of the far-right Claremont Institute; Mark Bauerlein, a Trump-allied Emory University professor; and Matthew Spalding, a professor at conservative Christian University Hillsdale College in Michigan. “It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college… more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South,” DeSantis chief of staff James Uthmeier told the right-wing Daily Caller, laying out their plan. But what immediately caught Sharf’s eye were tweets by incoming board member Christopher Rufo, who only days before had declared that “Gov. DeSantis is going to lay siege to university ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ programs.” In addition to being perhaps the key figure behind the bogus right-wing backlash to mostly nonexistent use of “critical race theory” in schools, Rufo has also been an avid opponent of what he calls “radical gender theory” in education. And among other appeals that form part of his admittedly ruthless political playbook, he has issued callouts on Twitter for “documents, PDFs, audio-video, and training materials related to gender, grooming, and trans ideology in schools.” Yes, I pulled the quote from The Daily Beast, because their tears are precious to me. A better bio of the players can be found here. The Governor's spokesman; In a state full of large public universities, the New College of Florida stands out as an anomaly. With just under 700 students, the liberal arts college is by far the smallest of the 12 institutions that make up the State University System of Florida. Because of its size, NCF has been in the crosshairs of the state Legislature in recent years, with lawmakers arguing that it’s too expensive to operate. A failed 2020 bill would have stripped NCF of its independence and made the college part of Florida State University. DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said by email that New College of Florida “is a public institution with a statutorily stated mission of ‘provid[ing] a quality education.’ Unfortunately, like so many colleges and universities in America, this institution has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning. In particular, New College of Florida has reached a moment of critical mass, wherein low student enrollment and other financial stresses have emerged from its skewed focus and impractical course offerings.” We'll see what happens ... but imagine a Chief Executive actually pushing back against the illiberal left on campus and giving taxpayers and option in education. There is hope - you just need to vote for it. View the full article

Americas Northrop Grumman demonstrated a scaled-down electronic attack system prototype during the US Navy’s Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise last year. The company demonstrated key components of the future Ultra-Lite Electronic Attack (EA) Prototype System aboard a US Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Northrop developed the anti-ship missile defense system for smaller ships that cannot […]View the full article

As I mentioned on Sunday's Midrats, I've been thinking a lot recently about the implications mid-century of this graph; Along with the larger reasons that India and the United States should further grow their relationship for both security reasons and the simple fact we are both republics, reasonable people would think that American diplomatic and other parts of our government would be giving this relationship the attention is clearly needs. Well, you know my opinion of our State Department. Some related thoughts from our friend Cleo Paskal; The United States sends mixed messages to India.On the one hand, Washington highlighted the importance of India’s rise and leadership in its Indo-Pacific Strategy, designated India a Major Defense Partner, and renamed PACOM as INDOPACOM in recognition of India’s important role in the region. On the other hand, in spite of statements about the importance of people-to-people relations, it currently takes years for someone in Delhi to get an appointment for a US visa, India’s efforts to feed and provide power for its people are described as being against the greater good and, well, Pakistan. ... Unfortunately, when it comes to India, State seems to be one of the departments least interested in improving relations. As a result, the first step in improving relations with India would be to ensure that engagement strategy is truly a US strategy and not just a State strategy. That would mean reforming State’s relationship to the rest of the executive branch—having it become more consistently, reliably, even-handed and less selectively integrated in the decision-making disciplines of the executive branch and even in Congressional oversight. As with so many things, it seems that the US State Department is doing as much as it can to not do much to advance American interests abroad. Without civil service reform specifically aimed at State so the ossified blob can be excised and progress made - the nomenklatura will continue to see their job as ensuring they and others have a job ... not to look at where they need to invest their efforts towards advancing the interests of the United States ... often when opportunities are right there being offered to us as it is with India. All we have to do is have people and processes that will do it. We don't seem to quite have it. View the full article

Americas Riverview Construction won a $10.5 million deal to construct a C-130 flight simulator training facility. Bids were solicited via the internet with six received. Work will be performed in Scotia, New York, with an estimated completion date of February 14, 2024. According to Lockheed Martin, the C-130 Hercules primarily performs the tactical portion of […]View the full article

Over at Defense News, Megan Eckstein has your must read to start your week. I hope she does not mind, but I'm going to pull a lot from her article. Read it in full, but there is so much here that validates what we have spent the last two decades on the Front Porch and on Midrats discussing, we need to spend some time to take a deep dive. Back in 2009 we warned everyone that the Navy's decision to classify INSURV was nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the results of bad decisions on maintaining the readiness of our Navy from the taxpayers and allowed senior leadership to play other games as opposed to their core responsibilities. To say that almost two decades after the Cold War all of a sudden INSURV was classified was just, in a word, insulting. In 2009, the U.S. Navy faced a readiness crisis. The cruiser Chosin and destroyer Stout were both deemed unfit for combat operations by the service’s Board of Inspection and Survey, which at the time checked ships’ material conditions every five years. And they weren’t the only ones. From 2005 through 2009, nearly 14% of surface ships failed their inspections, up dramatically from 6.2% from 2000 to 2004 and 3.5% from 1995 to 1999. The crisis came after the Navy discontinued several of its Cold War-era organizations focused on maintenance and training in an effort to save money during a time without a significant threat to U.S. security. No, the "without a significant threat" line is simply BS, an excuse, and for many who knew better ... a lie. We all saw what the People's Republic of China was building. FFS, contemporarily we were a few years in to "The Long Game" series here and we were just riding the wave smarter people set in motion. "Without?" No, that dog just won't hunt. This excuse was designed only to cover people who were focused on little more than building personal clout in their present job, while shifting Navy problems in to someone else's PCS cycle to solve. Sure, there was myopia by an ill-informed or just wrong cohort, but for most it was simply, as we say in horse country, "shooting up the horse." There were some who tried at the time to fix it inside the system, but ultimately came up short. There were good guys, a lot of them - they just didn't get to 50.1%; Adm. John Harvey, who led U.S. Fleet Forces Command at the time, helped charter a fleet review panel to determine how the Navy ended up in this position. ... In 2010, the fleet review panel’s report, dubbed the Balisle Report after lead author retired Vice Adm. Phil Balisle, shocked the surface fleet with its data on the poor state of ship readiness and crew training. It painted a dire picture of a surface navy that needed to be fixed; otherwise, there was a risk someone could get hurt or killed. Let's freeze that for a moment. The summer of 2010. That is 12 and a half years ago. Here is what we wrote about this in June and July of 2010. What is that, between three and four WorldWars length of time? The review, released in 2010, was condemnatory. “The panel is in full agreement that surface force material readiness is in decline. [T]he message is clear: the trend is in the wrong direction.” Chief among the review’s recommendations was a call for the return of readiness squadrons, which oversaw surface ship maintenance and basic training. The review found that when these squadrons were eliminated in 1995, so too was the fleet’s focus on and accountability for making deployable ships and crews. So many of the problems we have today can be traced back to the post-Cold War arrogance of the 1990s, Perry's Last Supper, TQL, the triumph of the accountants, layered with the Transformationalist snake oil of the following decade. In 2010, Harvey pushed to reinstall the readiness squadrons, but he couldn’t rally enough support from the Navy’s manning, engineering and budgeting leaders, among others. The recommendation was never implemented. But in summer 2017, two separate collisions by Navy ships in the Western Pacific killed 17 sailors. The service once again had to dig out of a ship readiness hole, and a key leader again called for the return of the readiness squadrons. Again, the idea went nowhere. The lives of 17 Sailors and two WorldWars after 2010 later. "Nowhere" has one hell of a butcher's bill. “The Balisle Report gave us this tremendous look at a history, really since 2000 or so, of these various decisions that were made in various different parts of the Navy,” Harvey told Defense News. “The collective impact was very, very negative in terms of our ability to keep our ships properly manned, trained and equipped.” ... “Bringing back the readiness squadrons,” Harvey said, “if you talked to Adm. Balisle, it was his No. 1 recommendation to do. And I agreed with that.” Still, Harvey added, the urgency to make this major change was “overcome by other events at that time.” "Other events..." indeed; as we documented at the time linked to above. The U.S. Navy has not made significant progress toward growing its fleet size above 300 ships. The FY23 National Defense Authorization Act allows the service to shed 12 of the 24 ships it proposed retiring. Even with a slower retirement rate and marginally higher shipbuilding and construction funding from Congress, it will prove difficult for the Navy to grow the fleet toward 355 ships. That was the last publicly stated force structure objective, back in 2016; since then, the Navy has not officially stated a revised target. (Source: Doug Berenson/Oliver Wyman)It is a hard sell to beg for more ships when from a material condition to a maintenance support perspective we seem to have trouble taking care of what the taxpayers have already bought us by borrowing money in the name of children yet unborn. Kitchener said there are two key differences this time around: an advanced adversary in China that’s forcing the Navy to think about its near-term readiness to fight; and data analytics and modeling that prove the surface groups will be worth the investment.I'm sorry, but bullsh1t. The threat from the PRC was as well known in 2016 as it is now. I will add to this that no one has confidence on the "analytics and modeling" coming from the Navy. The Age of Transformationalism, gutting of maintenance, and the vaporware that was "optimal manning" have blown all credibility in the Navy's "muh metrics" claims. Kitchener's numbers may very well be perfect, but no one has any reason to believe any of them from Main St. to Congress. Sorry, but institutionally we blew that credibility over the last two decades and it will take a long time to get it back. We would make much better headway by simply saying, "For most of this century we blew it. We were wrong. We are trying to do better." Some, like Harvey, gave the Navy a window to save itself a dozen+ years ago and we didn't take advantage of it. We have years of work to do ... but Step-1 here is to admit our mistakes. Until we do that, everyone can very reasonably assume we will do it again. Data is central to Kitchener’s new effort. He told Defense News in an interview that various efforts have identified the ways to improve ship maintenance: building up a larger inventory of select spare parts, adding capacity in key shops and departments that are potential chokepoints, increasing training and growing expertise in certain technical areas, and more. Ahh...the "Just in Time - -TQL" hangover. What takes one year to destroy, takes five years to rebuild. All that Kitchener is saying is not new. It is, just like readiness squadrons, returning to the last baseline that worked. Are we in the process of a "baseline reset?" That would be a good thing. Take Destroyer Squadron 9, for example, located in Everett, Washington. Its ships are scattered geographically: one located in Everett, five in San Diego and two in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I'll let you do a distance and time zone review of that for yourself. Norfolk-Mayport was hard enough. There are reasons this exists, but none of them are satisfactory when an overall net cost is considered. Kitchener said he’s awaiting the final recommendations of his working group this summer, but expects each fleet concentration area to have a single surface group responsible for maintaining and training all surface ships, including cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and amphibious warships, based in those cities. These home ports include San Diego; Norfolk, Virginia; Mayport, Florida; Everett; Pearl Harbor; Yokosuka, Japan; Manama, Bahrain; and Rota, Spain. I am trying to hard not to just snark old-school...but really - we have reached the point that giving commanders a chance to "walk the pier" without getting on an aircraft is something "new." Instead of gratuitous snark, have a meme. I mean, this is how it should be ... and seems to be heading back in the correct direction. It should be applauded. Each surface group would devote itself entirely to readiness. ... in the case of a maintenance casualty, the surface group back home would work to find the quickest solution, allowing the destroyer or amphibious squadron staff to continue focusing on operations. “This is oversight and responsibility and accountability throughout the entire” readiness cycle, Kitchener said. “The idea is, this exists in the fleet concentration area, it’s got a cadre of people that are constantly on our ships assessing, understanding what the problems are; we’re pulling the trend analysis here at the headquarters, giving them focus areas. It’s a very active, not just some sort of bureaucratic, organization.”For those who were JOSs in the 90s, I guess a bureaucratic system focused on maintenance excellence is new and radical, but it has a track record. This is simply good stuff. We tried everything else and failed, why not try what worked? Also, can we also make progress in the "Syllabels Reduction Act of 2023?" Can we simply go back to calling things "bases" as opposed to "Fleet Concentration Areas?" 2 syllables and one word > 8 syllabels and three words. As there is a lot of ruin in a nation, there was a lot in institutional capital previous generations built up prior to the 1990s that could be drawn on to pay for bad decisions, but that account is pretty much drawn down to almost nothing. Talk to anyone on The Hill ... it's gone. The Navy has observed improvements in maintenance performance, but is also facing new setbacks as labor and supply chain challenges across the manufacturing sector continue to take a toll on the ship repair industry. Rear Adm. Bill Greene, the fleet maintenance officer for U.S. Fleet Forces Command, said in the fall that only 36% of surface ships are expected to complete maintenance availabilities on time in fiscal 2022, down from 44% in fiscal 2021. ... This duality is also reflected in the most recent Board of Inspection and Survey report, which noted surface ships are seeing higher overall readiness scores than the six-year average, but have more functional areas deemed “degraded” than the six-year average, using a scoring method of satisfactory, degraded or unsatisfactory. Time for a reminder ... we need to make INSURV publicly available again. Less accountability gave us less readiness, and as a result our nation and its Navy is less secure. What vexes the Navy, Kitchener said, is variance in maintenance performance: ... Kitchener outlined a three-step process to address this. The first step was already done under Performance to Plan ... P2P has highlighted the need to prioritize people or materials for a certain ship availability, and then coordinate activities across multiple shops at a shipyard to get a specific repair done on time. The second step is allowing surface groups to devote their full attention to implementing the actions identified through P2P in hopes of achieving better on-time maintenance rates. The third step, on which Kitchener said he’d offer more details soon, is creating a surface response plan that prioritizes certain ships’ readiness over others. If a contingency arose and a combatant commander needed three destroyers, the three ships at the top of the list would be called upon to deploy on short notice. Those ships higher up on the list would be expected to stay in a peak-readiness state, and the maintenance and supply communities would act accordingly. Ships lower on the list and less likely to be called upon for unexpected tasking may be in a lower readiness condition if the fleet is short on personnel or materials, for example. For those outside the Minotaur maze that is the US Navy's decision making, you are allowed to ask, "Why didn't we do this already?" I know. I know. So, what will this look like? Kitchener said the future SURFGRU Southeast, currently named Naval Surface Squadron 14, is the “most robust” organization and has served as a model for the working group, which determined how many supply specialists, logistics personnel, diesel engine (versus gas turbine) experts, and so on, were needed to keep ships properly ready. Kitchener said the Mayport group has 105 billets for a squadron that tends to about 10 destroyers — compared to just 10 personnel tending to nine destroyers and cruisers in Everett. The exact number of billets in each group would depend on the number of ships at a particular port, but Kitchener said the groups would more closely resemble the Mayport squadron than the Everett unit. Mayport ... the best Sea & Anchor Detail in the Navy. The Navy was skipping training and maintenance to achieve unsustainable levels of at-sea presence, and it was down about 12,000 sailors thanks to the individual augmentee program that sent personnel to support joint operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sequestration cuts to the federal budget in 2012 further diminished readiness, Harvey explained. No one said, "No." No one defended our Sailors or our Navy. We let the COCOMs abuse the running room they made for themselves as a result of Goldwater-Nichols and the whole accretions encumbered COCOM structure and Cult of the Joint that came with it. Yes, I am beating that horse and will continue to beat it until we get something fit for the 21st Century. No senior leader was willing to put their "career" - whatever that is after you have 4-stars - on the line to defend their Navy. We needed "Admiral No" and instead got "Admiral Hinge." It wasn't something that happened to our Navy. No, it was something we allowed to happen to our Navy. Heck, during some of the worst of it, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was a USN 4-star. “It was going to take more billets, more people. … And there just was not a clean, widespread agreement among everybody who had to agree that this was the right way to go,” Harvey said. “In the greater scheme of things and what was going on, it just never rose to the level where it had a critical mass of leadership who all said: ‘Yes.’ ” No, plenty of billets were found for other "priorities and distractions" - they were just more important than manning, training, maintaining, and equipping a fleet to fight and win. As I've offered for years, give me the top-cover and the manning documents ashore, and I'll find your billets. Just let me recode and reassign as needed. If I need more, I'll look at afloat and DC staff. They're there - you just have to be ready to upset a different group of people who don't add warfighting value anyway. In the end, this is the cost of distraction and ill-focus; Retired Vice Adm. Rich Brown, who investigated one of the two fatal ship collisions in 2017 and then took command of Naval Surface Forces in 2018, resurrected the push to bring back readiness squadrons. He said that, by 2017, virtually all Balisle’s recommendations were implemented — with the readiness squadrons being the major exception. Brown told Defense News a robust readiness squadron likely would have prevented the fatal collisions involving the destroyers Fitzgerald and John S. McCain. In summary, yep. The existing structure asks destroyer squadrons to oversee the maintenance and certification of ships and serve as the sea combat commander for a carrier strike group. If the squadron needs a ship to fulfill a warfighting requirement, it creates a conflict of interest that can put maintenance and training needs at risk. Brown said this construct “failed, and we recognized that it was failing, and so that’s why the Balisle Report said, and later I said, we’ve got to do this. And we just didn’t do it.” He called the 1980s readiness squadrons “a proven model” that restored the Navy from having a hollow fleet in the 1970s to having a robust surface force by the 1980s. There it is again; baseline reset. A future “high-end fight requires so much dedicated concentration and focus that we need these additional commands. They’re going to come at a cost — it’s going to come at a huge manpower cost, and the Navy’s got to buy that manpower because it’s the right thing to do for our carrier strike groups,” Brown said.Yes, buy manpower ... but also repurpose existing bloat ashore. Yes, recoding BA/NMP is a pain - but it can be done. Yes, rice bowls and rent seekers will be upset. All it needs to be is a senior leadership priority. And at the end of the day, shouldn't the ability to fight and win at sea be number 1? We cannot change the past, but we must acknowledge, name, and recognize past errors so that they won't be repeated. There is some good stuff going on as outlined in Megan's reporting, and we should see more in this direction, but no more happy talk. No more multi-syllabic bullsh1t bingo lingo. No more petty distractions. There are a lot of smart, good people in important positions who want to do great things. They just need the right higher direction and guidance to execute. View the full article

Americas Northrop Grumman won a $15.5 million delivery order for overhaul of power amplifier modules in support of the E-2D aircraft. All work will be completed by September 2025 with no option periods. Work will be performed in Woodland Hills, California; and Liverpool, New York. Annual working capital funds (Navy) in the full amount will […]View the full article

Americas Sauer Construction won a $37.6 million task order to provide construction of two additions to the Trident Training Facility, a Strategic Systems Program missile control center team trainer, and Naval Sea Systems Command weapons handling system team trainer at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia. The contract also contains two unexercised options which, if […]View the full article

When we started Midrats, President Obama hadn't even been President for a year, I only left active duty 4-months ago, Russia was mostly forgotten about except for Secretary of State Clinton famous "Reset/Overload," anyone worried about China was considered an alarmist, and no one really knew what a "podcast" was except for a very small group of to-online weirdos. One day our friend Claude Berube convinced the two of us and the late Raymond Pritchett that people might be interested in hearing us chat about those things that we find interesting. That was 13-years ago - and Midrats is still going strong. Come join us for the full hour Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern as we take a quick review of the status on the conversation in the national security arena, the big lessons of 2022, and what we plan on keeping an eye on in 2023. 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 button at the main showpage - or you can just click here. You can find us on almost all your most popular podcast aggregators as well. View the full article

Can two men who on one day are doing their best to kill each other also hold each other not just with respect, but to become friends? Most American students of WWII know the name Luftwaffe General-Lieutenant Adolph Galland. Though most Brits know him - for Americans, Royal Air Force Group Captain Douglas Bader may not sound all that familiar. What a remarkable story about the unexpected friendship between two remarkable men. Though you should really watch the whole thing, he was brought on to "This is Your Life" and at the 27-min mark, they brought in his friend Adolph ... which is remarkable when you consider who was brought in before him ... all getting along grandly now. Because we live in an age of miracles and wonders - via YouTube you can watch the entire 1954 movie of Bader; View the full article

Americas The US Air Force disclosed that the F-15EX fired air-to-air missiles from the new weapon stations 1 and 9 for the first time on November 29. An AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile was fired from Station 1 and an AIM-9X from Station 9 over the Eglin Test and Training Complex’s water range by pilots […]View the full article

As a general rule, a right and natural thing is simple. Even a radical change, when that change is the correct and productive thing, it is simple to understand, execute, and explain to other people. Just a few words, just a few moments of instruction. Follow on questions are easy. Words are clear and direct. When you find something is such an ill fit to objective reality and the best course of action that you have to redefine the language, shut off debate, and threaten any mild concern with destruction of reputation and livelihood to any who may have those questions and concerns ... then you need to think real hard if what you are doing is really correct. This week's DivThu is brought to you by Aaron Sibarium over at The Washington Free Beacon. He really did all the hard work for me, so I'll keep the commentary to a minimum. It is a broad article about what the taxpayer funded diversity nomenklatura are doing to operationalize one of President Biden's first Executive Orders. Not law. No, the American people through their elected representatives will have no say in this. No, not a law but it is treated as such - especially in the most compliant branch of the government, the military and military adjacent bits. Once you get something like this set via an EO, no law can easily untangle; Of course, in Year-Zero, all words get new meaning. All concepts are reborn. So, let's see what the Army is doing. Markers. Gender is fluid, you see. There is no such thing as male and female. That is now military policy. All the details are in the link. Ignore the science; embrace the politics. Have you tired of the pronoun wars? Oh, you sweet, sweet summer child; they have only just begun; Ranks are now pronouns, I guess. Whole hog. The military is now fully onboard with all the language and socio-political theory. Sex no longer exists. You are not - regardless of what you eyes or religion may tell you - male or female. Don't disagree or you are a bigot worthy only of NJP; What was once a Monty Python skit is now a ... well ... Once you leave the Army ... it doesn't stop there. Behold the Veterans Administration 175 slide diversity PPT slide-deck from hell!! Oops. This is ... something... I am not sure how anyone in the Army or the VA will be able to do anything but try to comply with what appears to be an attempt to drive people insane, or to the civilian sector. Finally, I guess bullsh1t bingo simply isn't fun anymore. I do encourage you to read it all and keep this in mind; this is not a conversation. This is not a discussion. This is not an education - this is a guide to tell you how you must speak, act, comply, and enforce a very specific socio-political way. As the training outlines - do not comply as the commissars direct, and you are subject to punishment. You are directed to "relax about bathrooms" if a 6'3" 220# 40-yr old man as of yesterday comes in to shower with the ladies today. Then you, an 18-yr old 5'1" 110# female, are not supposed to object either if that biological man then becomes your roommate. No, bigot. And if you are a leader in that organization, be careful that you ... well .. you know what you need to do. Read the slides. Read the room. View the full article

Americas The US Army has awarded Oshkosh Defense a $102-million contract to produce Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV) for its international allies. The tactical vehicles will be handed over to the armed forces of Romania, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Brazil, and Montenegro to bolster their ground mobility. According to the American defense firm, the contract reflects […]View the full article

Back in the November 2007 issue of The Atlantic, Robert D. Kaplan published an essay that still comes to mind on a regular basis a decade and a half after its publication; America's Elegant Decline. I first mentioned it ten months after its publication while I was in Afghanistan, and then only briefly. At 15, I think it is time to see how it holds up. 15 years is a long time - but it also passes quickly. 15 years from now would be January of 2038. You know all that talk about "2040" in the last year, well you're one POM cycle away ... and while some things we think about the future to come will be roughly correct, some will be quite off. That is normal and should be expected. With that benchmark in place, Elegant Decline holds up pretty well. Before we dive in, let's remember the time and place of 2007. Obama was still the junior Senator from Illinois. The surge in Iraq was almost at its peak and at the time success was iffy. Though we knew at CENTCOM in mid-Summer of 2007 that NATO culminated in Afghanistan and the USA would have to step in soon as we could, in general Afghanistan - the good war - was seen as in good hands with NATO. Though the cheap seats were warning otherwise, the Navy let everyone know of the glories of Transformation embodied by LCS, DDG-1000 and CG(X) were going to bring if everyone would just shut up and color ... a period that would end 18-months after Elegant Decline with the truncating to 3-ships of the Zumwalt class ... and you know the rest as we rolled in to the Age of Salamander to prepare everyone for The Terrible 20s. So, in to that moment Kaplan dedicates the first third of his article reminding everyone of some truths are were as correct in 2007 as they are in 2023; Beware pendulum swings. Before 9/11, not enough U.S. generals believed that the future of war was unconventional and tied to global anarchy. ... Now the Pentagon is consumed by a focus on urban warfare and counterinsurgency; ... But have we pushed it too far? We may finally master the art of counterinsurgency just in time for it to recede in importance. ...Though counterinsurgency will remain a core part of our military doctrine, the Pentagon does not have the luxury of planning for one military future; it must plan for several. "Regular wars" between major states could be as frequent in the 21st century as they were in the 20th. ... these future wars will not require any "manifestation of insanity by political leaders," nor even an "aberration from normal statecraft, " but may come about merely because of what Thucydides recognized as "fear, honour, and interest." .. The current catchphrase is boots on the ground; in the future it could be hulls in the water. ... A "peaceful, gain-loving nation" like the United States "is not far-sighted, and far-sightedness is needed for adequate military preparation, especially in these days," warned Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890.. This is when he transitions to what he, rightfully, sees as a primary indicator of America's decline - its Navy - something that dominates the other 2/3 of the article. ...too few strategists at the time were thinking seriously about sea power. Today we are similarly obsessed with dirty land wars, and our 300-ship Navy is roughly half the size it was in the mid-1980s. A great navy is like oxygen: You notice it only when it is gone. But the strength of a nation's sea presence, more than any other indicator, has throughout history often been the best barometer of that nation's power and prospects. I just wanted to take a note to nod at the hard work led by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) in the changes to Section 8062(a) of USC Title 10, 15-years after Elegant Decline, to put this in to law. Our friend Bryan McGrath has a superb summary of the changes and their importance here. Back to Elegant Decline - where Kaplan does a great job outlining more nuggets of unalloyed truths; Our sea power allows us to lose a limited war...Army units can't forward-deploy anywhere in significant numbers without a national debate. Not so the Navy. ... Great navies help preserve international stability. ... In an age where 90 percent of global commerce travels by sea, and 95 percent of our imports and exports from outside North American do the same (even as that trade volume is set to double by 2020), and when 75 percent of the world's population is clustered within 200 miles of the sea, the relative decline of our Navy is a big, dangerous fact to which our elites appear blind. Well, it didn't double, but it did go up by 30%. A lot of you will remember this well; ...in a 1954 article in Proceedings ... a young Harvard academic named Samuel P. Huntington told the Navy not to feel sorry for itself: The resources which a service is able to obtain in a democratic society are a function of the public support of that service. The service has the responsibility to develop this necessary support, and it can only do this if it posses a strategic concept which clearly formulates its relationship to the national security. Emphasis added by me. Good googly moogly yes. Has our "service" been doing this sales job well? No, no it has not. Why? They have tied themselves to the mast of the archaic, accretion covered Cold War era Goldwater-Nichols and the Cult of the Joint that comes with it. That is why. They have convinced themselves that they have to accept this state of affairs in silence when they don't - it is senior leadership's choice to interpret it as such. Our Navy and the nation it serves suffers as a result. ...by 1997, post Cold War budget cuts had reduced the Navy to 365 ships. (In the Quadrennial Defense Review of that year, the Pentagon established a 'red line' of 300 ships, below which the Navy would not go.) LOLOLOLOLOL. Of course the 300-ship Navy could still, in the words of Robert O. Work, ... BOB! ..."pound the snot" out of primitive challengers like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, Don't worry, they didn't forget about China completely; Robert Work told me that he believes the eventual incorporation of Taiwan into China will have the effect that the Battle of Wounded Knee had on the United States: it will psychologically close an era of national consolidation for the Chinese, thereby dramatically redirecting their military energies outward, beyond their coastal waters. Tellingly, whereas the U. S. Navy pays homage to Mahan by naming buildings after him, the Chinese avidly read him; the Chinese are the Mahanians now.The next bit is something we called at the time wrong-headed and unhelpful and Kaplan is suspicious of at the time as well; then CNO Admiral Mike Mullen, USN (Ret.); He (Mike Mullen) went on: "I'm after that proverbial 1,000-ship Navy - a fleet in being, if you will, comprised of all freedom-loving nations, standing watch over the seas, standing watch over each other." Subtract the platitudes, and it's clear that Admiral Mullen is squaring a number of circles to contend with the difficult reality he's up against. I continue to hold that this throw away line that became a talking point that was then made flesh was one of the greatest strategic errors this century so far. It gave top cover to those who were looking for reasons not to build the Navy our nation needed. The evils of the Age of Transformationalism only made it worse ... another of Mullen's follies; This is what the optimists saw right before the rot was unavoidable anymore; The new DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer, envisioned in one form or another for 12 years and beset with delays could end up costing $3 billion a ship - if any get built. The new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers could cost a whopping $8 billion each - not including $6 billion of research-and-development costs. History can be cruel to such a geologic pace; this slowness is a recipe for vulnerability and nasty strategic surprise. We have a capital-intensive Navy consisting of vessels that cost tens of billions of dollars, and that must therefore each deploy for decades if they are to return the investment. Yet all future peer competitor like China need do to greatly devalue our fleet is to improve its ballistic-missile technology to the point where we're forced to move our carriers, say, 100 miles east of their present positions off the Asian mainland, to keep them out of missile range. We should be so lucky. Time has found Kagan an optimist here. ...the new Ford-class carriers will be built with laser guns to kill incoming missiles, anti-torpedo torpedoes to deal with supercavitation technology, and electric catapults for launching UAV's in case fight jets, with their human pilots, give way to enhanced remote-controlled Predators that can be refueled in air. Well, in 2022 lasers are still the weapon of tomorrow like they always seem to be, anti-torpedoes are a strong maybe to no, and unmanned systems are still a few generations away if ever from there ... so ... technology and future risk can suffer from excessive optimism bias ... as always. Watch 2001: A Space Odyssey for a hint in that regard. Meanwhile, as costs drive us towards that 150-ship Navy... Not yet...we're doing better than that so far. Kaplan was a bit too much of a pessimist on this point. At my darkest in pondering The Terrible 20s I warned of 240 back in 2010. According to Navy Lieutenant Commander Claude Berube, who teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy, in an emergency we might even issue letters of marque, the way we did during the Revolutionary War, giving privateers the legal authority to act in our defense. Allowing privateers to help with, say, the drug-interdiction effort in the Caribbean would enable uniformed sailors to concentrate on the Pacific and Indian oceans. Claude! Today, the United States devotes 4.38 percent of its annual gross domestic product to defense. Before the Iraq War, it was 3.5 percent. In 2022 it was back to ~3.5%. Admiral Morgan, the deputy chief of naval operations for information, plans, and strategy, told me that to maintain our naval primacy, we may need to devote close to 5 percent of GDP (assuming a growing economy) to defense. Yet it's unclear whether the American public will abide that.Spoiler alert; they didn't. So, there we go; the Elegant Decline at 15. Much spot on, some a bit too optimistic, some too pessimistic. On balance though, it aged fairly well in a decade and a half. It should keep us all humble and it would do everyone well to understand that, on balance, 2023 is not all that different than 2007 ... and 2037 will most likely not be all that different than 2023. Plan accordingly. View the full article

Americas The US Air Force has received a new E-11A aircraft with a battlefield airborne communications node (BACN) payload at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia. The plane will be integrated into the air force’s 430th Expeditionary Electronic Communications Squadron, the “Black Wolves,” which supports combat communications. The BACN’s “WiFi in the sky” capability allows the E-11A to function similarly to a low-Earth satellite, maintaining aerial command and control capabilities for airborne and ground units. Colombia has selected the French defense firm Nexter’s Caesar 6×6 self-propelled howitzer for its military, according to Spanish defense news website Infodefensa. The South American nation has reportedly earmarked $101.7 million to purchase an undisclosed number of the artillery platforms, which have become increasingly popular in recent years. The US Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin have finalized a $30 billion deal to deliver up to 398 F-35 Lightning II aircraft. The agreement includes 145 Lot 15s, 127 Lot 16s, and 126 Lot 17s for Finland, Belgium and Poland. “The F-35 delivers unsurpassed capability to our warfighters and operational commanders,” F-35 Joint Program Executive Officer USAF Lt. Gen. Mike Schmidt stated. Middle East & Africa Abu Dhabi Ship Building (ADSB) has announced the start of construction of the United Arab Emirates Navy’s first Falaj 3-class fast patrol vessel (FPV). A steel-cutting ceremony was held recently at an ADSB facility, confirming the completion of the research and design phase for the new vessels. According to the company, the Falaj 3-class FPVs are complex, high-speed warships with state-of-the-art sensors and combat systems. Europe The British Ministry of Defence has donated counter-explosive ordnance equipment to war-torn Ukraine. Last week, the UK delivered more than 1,000 metal detectors to help Ukrainian troops clear land mines and clear civilian infrastructure of explosives. The Polish government has inked a five-year deal with France to purchase two Airbus military observation satellites. With an accuracy of 30 centimeters (nearly 1 foot), the new satellites are expected to bolster the Polish Armed Forces’ reconnaissance capabilities to detect potential military and civilian threats. Asia-Pacific Taiwan is planning to purchase 100 units of the Switchblade, a small, attack-type unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by the American company AeroVironment, and give it to the Army’s special forces. The purchase is expected to take place in 2024 via foreign military sales channel. According to Up Media, Taiwan is taking a close look at such type of suicide drone after noticing its successful in the Ukrainian battlefield. An invitation to bid by the Navy suggest the service is seeking to acquire similar drones. Today’s Video WATCH: 430th EECS receives new E-11A BACN View the full article

Americas Boeing won a $38.7 million modification for B-1 and B-52 bomber engineering services. This modification is for recurring and non-recurring engineering services to B-1 and B-52 aircraft. Work will be performed at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma; Edwards AFB, California; Barksdale AFB, Louisiana; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and is expected to be completed December 31, 2023. Sikorsky has filed a protest with the US government regarding the US Army’s decision to award a contract for its next-generation helicopter to Textron’s Bell. The Lockheed Martin subsiadary seeks a review of the $1.3 billion deal awarded in early December, in which Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor was selected over Sikorsky and Boeing’s Defiant X coaxial rotor for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) program. Middle East & Africa Iran’s army held major military drills in the Gulf on Friday, state media reported. The exercises, which included naval, air and ground forces, were held at the Strait of Hormuz — a key waterway through which 25% of the world’s oil passes and about a third of global liquified natural gas. Europe The European Defence Agency (EDA) is launching a new research project to improve the efficiency and success rate of air-to-air refuelling (AAR) missions that uses the hose and drogue method by developing an automated system. The project, which has a budget of $4.26 million, will be led by Spain in collaboration with Germany and involve an industry consortium including Airbus Defence and Space, GMV, the German Aerospace Center, and AES Technology. Asia-Pacific The Japanese and Indian Air Forces will conduct their first bilateral fighter jet training in January, bolstering ties amid continued tensions with China. Their first-ever joint air combat training will commence on January 16 to 26 at Hyakuri Air Base in Ibaraki Prefecture, 95 kilometers (59 miles) northeast of Tokyo. The Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) said the 10-day air drills would “promote mutual understanding and strengthen defense cooperation between the air forces.” South Korea’s Defense Project Promotion Committee has approved two major projects to enhance the country’s military capabilities. The first project is a $2.73 billion effort to upgrade the combat capabilities of its F-15K fighters. The project, which will run from 2024 to 2034 and aims to strengthen the mission capabilities and survivability of the F-15K jets. The upgrade will include replacing the current F-15Ks’ old radar system with an advanced Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar and installing integrated electronic warfare equipment and an up-to-date mission computer. It is not known if the upgrade of F-15Ks will be similar to Japan’s “Japanese Super Interceptor” (JSI) configuration. The JSI uses the APG-82(v)1 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars, Advanced Display Core Processor II Mission System Computers and AN/ALQ-250 Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS). Today’s Video WATCH: AMA’s Actively Stabilized Drogue Refueling System (ASDRS). View the full article

There is one area where there is no Civ-Mil Divide™ - that is where smart people with silver tongues, clever ideas, and an instinct for other people's weaknesses see a way to make money and fame quick and easy. Hard things are hard, and usually expensive - there is a desire to be a hero/visionary, and we are pre-wired to have faith and hope in intangibles, and to look for the quick and easy gain. That is why we love sweets so much; a lot a calories very quick for little effort. This is a seductive stew that works on our brain stem instincts which in turn seduces our higher conscious to find some more lofty justifications for our enthusiasm to sate our base needs. Cheap food, easy money, fast fame ... all the same part of our Upper Paleolithic Brain. Throw in power and the access to sex that comes with it ... and boy howdy - watch out. How does the military find itself to DDG-1000, LCS, and the latest Transformational™, war changing™, Eleventy Offset you may read about tomorrow related to defense spending? You can start there. The same mindset is in the civilian world even more so and looking for this pattern should be at the front of your thoughts when someone wants to sell you something. It has a pedigree going back thousands of years through tulip bulbs and alchemy...and if you get caught up in them, it never ends well. High tech is opaque and exciting ... and can be very lucrative. Making money the hard way is ... hard. Getting rich quick is ... exciting - just like a sugar high or a hushed whisper to you rear from a stranger after midnight. A review of the civilian version of "Transformation" and "Offsets" over at Spiked is good reading, even if you don't follow much in the civilian business world. Building a military that can fight and win wars is hard ... and expensive, and frankly - unsexy. It is progressing miles one step at a time ... and on occasion, a quick march, forced march, or stolen march to get a bit ahead ... but mostly a slog. Making an honest living in the civilian sector is equally hard. The grifters, fools, and arrogantly optimistic are always there to save you; ...the real problem in tech today isn’t so much fraud, but misdirection. ... Subsidies and grants for green tech have created a culture of perpetual demos and prototypes. A manufacturer or consortium wins a government grant, creates a proof of concept – an electric-powered plane or a carbon-capture plant, for example – but it never reaches the market. Green tech is awash with such Potemkin innovation. Even in the private sector, failure continues to be rewarded. ‘Adam [Neumann] is a visionary leader who revolutionised the second largest asset class in the world – commercial real estate – by bringing community and brand to an industry in which neither existed before’, wrote venture capitalist Marc Andreessen earlier this year, as he bunged the WeWork founder another $350million dollars. Forgive and forget. But forget first. None of the tech messiahs can be accused of thinking small. But they are all thinking narrowly. Most eschew the deep and difficult challenges of creating really useful synthetic hydrocarbons, for example, or better nuclear fusion and fission. Ideas that might genuinely revolutionise society tend to get left on the shelf. Now the cheap money has dried up, the next would-be tech geniuses are starting to resemble a cargo cult, adorning a field with sticks and bunting, chasing the forlorn hope that the giant metal birds might come to visit the island once again. Watch for this. Listen for this ... it will always be with us. How do you avoid this? Ask hard questions. Demand hard data. Walk away from personalities whose credentials are their personality. If you find yourself surrounded by people who don't answer the hard questions, have weak or no data, and are surrounded by fanbois ... get away with your hand on your wallet and in the end, your reputation intact. View the full article

Americas Lockheed Martin won a $31.8 million modification to incrementally increase the annual award of Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target Advanced Capability-3 missiles. Work will be performed in Huntsville, Alabama; Rocket Center, West Virginia; Camden, Arkansas; Chelmsford, Massachusetts; and Grand Prairie, Texas, with an estimated completion date of December 31, 2024. Lockheed Martin has made significant progress in the development of its Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM). The company conducted a successful flight test of the JAGM Medium Range (JAGM-MR) on November 16 at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California. The missile flew for 16 kilometers, twice the range of the JAGM. This longer range is seen as a major advantage for military operations, as it allows for greater standoff from enemy locations. The ability to operate out of range of enemy weapons systems is critical for the military’s efforts to protect its personnel and assets. In addition to the increased range, the JAGM-MR also features a tri-mode seeker that combines a low-cost imaging sensor with semi-active laser and millimeter wave sensors. This technology was originally required by the U.S. Army, but the requirement was later changed to a dual-mode seeker due to cost concerns. However, the price of tri-mode seeker technology has since become more affordable, and the Army is now looking to address its aviation strategy with a JAGM Increment 3 requirement that would increase the range of the missile and add the tri-mode seeker. Middle East & Africa Turkey’s top defense official announced on December 30 that the country’s indigenous long-range air defense missile, Siper, had been successfully test-fired and hit its target at a range of over 100 kilometers. The head of Turkey’s Defense Industries Presidency, Ismail Demir, referred to the test as a “New Year’s gift to our nation as we enter the Turkish Century from our defense industry” on Twitter. The Siper project is being led by Turkish defense giants Aselsan and Roketsan, as well as the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK). Roketsan is in charge of developing the missile, while Aselsan focuses on creating the sensors and electronics. The missile is expected to be a rival to Russia’s S-400 system. Europe President Vladimir Putin on Thursday oversaw the commissioning of several new warships and a nuclear-powered submarine as he vowed to further strengthen Russia’s navy. Putin, who has largely avoided public engagements since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, gave the green light for Russian flags to be hoisted on the new vessels via video link. Among the newly-commissioned vessels were a corvette, a minesweeper, and the Generalissimus Suvorov nuclear-powered submarine that is capable of launching ballistic missiles. Asia-Pacific The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has teamed up with Saunders International and US-Australian venture Nova Nacap to develop a bulk fuel infrastructure in the country’s Northern Territory. The program is an extension of the decade-long alliance between the US and Australian armed forces in promoting regional stability across the Indo-Pacific. The US State Department approved on Wednesday the $180 million sale of vehicle-launched anti-tank systems to Taiwan, the Pentagon said, the latest weapons deal between the self-governed island and its main ally. Taiwan would receive Volcano anti-tank munition-laying systems, cargo trucks, ammunition, logistics support packages, and a myriad of other related services under the deal, according to a Pentagon statement. Today’s Video WATCH: the jagm missile, US military Testing Its the Deadliest New Missile. View the full article

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-P1MJGwRXp8Y/UYMZ3abL7nI/AAAAAAAAGxA/5YM9bb8rkoI/s320/image.jpgThe below was posted nine years ago when the Vietnamese government helped us bring a few Shipmates home. I thought of this over Christmas when I was still stewing about Big Navy's final success in killing what little remained of the Navy's trained CSAR capability with the death of HSC-85. One of the big and enduring lessons of the Vietnam War was the absolute requirement to maintain a cadre of specially trained navy rotary wing aircrew and equipment for special operations and combat search and rescue. We learned that lesson because of what happened when we had non-trained personnel do the mission because we had no choice. They are specialized requirements that really can't be shoehorned in to "multi-mission" - regardless of what the accountants tell you. Especially in areas of sustained operations at sea and near shore, Navy Special Warfare will need RW assets they control and have worked closely with for extended periods. With the likelihood of another conflict in the Pacific greater than it has been in decades, there are two constants that have not changed. First is geography. For the USA, operations in the Pacific will be dominated by maritime and near shore power projection. The second is that aircraft will be shot down. Aircraft will break down or run out of fuel well away from "the Joint force." Pilots will need to be rescued. "This requirement will be sourced via the Joint Force" is a peace time answer by a bureaucrat, not someone preparing for war. With the last rump of this capability gone, that does not mean the requirement will go away? No. Navy, Marine Corp., and yes, even USAF aircraft will go down at sea and near shore. The nearest and probably only asset available in real time will be the US Navy. The mission will be done - regardless if we have a crew trained in that mission, or an aircraft designed for that mission. Combat Search and Rescue will be done. When minutes matter, days or weeks to get on the schedule is not an answer. The message will come in. Aircrew will get engines started. Attempts will be made. To not try is to break an unwritten bond we have to not leave anyone behind if possible. There will be successes, but when you ask people and aircraft to do something they are not trained or designed to do, there will be more death, more failure, more losses. More remains that will take decades to come home. In July 1967, a pilot was down over 20 miles inland - not a normal "get me out of the drink" search and rescue - and a straight-stick SH-3A (not the HH-3E "Jolly Green Giant") and her crew took off from the USS Hornet (CV-12) to go get him. We keep promises to each other. We try. We will have to keep these promises again. Are we training and equipping our people to be ready for the call when the call comes? Say hello to Lieutenant Dennis Patterson, USN and his daughter before his last deployment. I have a picture almost exactly like this, but in Summer Whites, with one of my daughters when she was almost the exact age and I was a couple of years older than Dennis. He was 29 years old when he led his crew west. Sometimes Fullbore is just all in a days work ... and a few decades to make it back home. The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced April 30 that a Navy pilot, missing from the Vietnam War, has been accounted for and will be buried with full military honors along with his crew. Navy Lt. Dennis W. Peterson of Huntington Park, Calif., was the pilot of a SH-3A helicopter that crashed in Ha Nam Province, North Vietnam. Peterson was accounted for on March 30, 2012. Also, aboard the aircraft was Ensign Donald P. Frye of Los Angeles, Calif.; Aviation Antisubmarine Warfare Technicians William B. Jackson of Stockdale, Texas; and Donald P. McGrane of Waverly, Iowa. The crew will be buried, as a group, on May 2 at Arlington National Cemetery. On July 19, 1967, the four servicemen took off from the USS Hornet aboard an SH-3A Sea King helicopter, on a search and rescue mission looking for a downed pilot in Ha Nam Province, North Vietnam. During the mission, an enemy concealed 37mm gun position targeted the helicopter as it flew in. The helicopter was hit by the anti-aircraft gunfire, causing the aircraft to lose control, catch fire and crash, killing all four servicemen. In October 1982, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (S.R.V.) repatriated five boxes of remains to U.S. officials. In 2009, the remains within the boxes were identified as Frye, Jackson, and McGrane. In 1993, a joint U.S./S.R.V. team, investigated a loss in Ha Nam Province. The team interviewed local villagers who identified possible burial sites linked to the loss. One local claimed to have buried two of the crewmen near the wreckage, but indicated that both graves had subsequently been exhumed. Between 1994 and 2000, three joint U.S./S.R.V. teams excavated the previous site and recovered human remains and aircraft wreckage that correlated to the crew's SH-3A helicopter. In 2000, U.S. personnel excavated the crash site recovering additional remains. Analysis from the Joint POW/MIA Command Central Identification Laboratory subsequently designated these additional remains as the co-mingled remains of all four crewmen, including Peterson.Giving your all to make sure that every effort is made to make sure we leave no one behind. Welcome home Shipmates.View the full article

Americas Lockheed Martin won a $527.7 million contract action, which will be awarded for a sole-source, hybrid (cost-plus-incentive-fee and cost-plus-fixed-fee) modification (P00054) under contract HQ085121C0002. This UCA expands performance of the Aegis Weapon System to implement Integrated Air and Missile Defense capabilities into an Aegis Guam System. An initial obligation of $11,394,512 using fiscal 2023 research, development, test and evaluation funds will occur at the time of award. The work will be performed in Moorestown, New Jersey, with period of performance from time of award through December 31, 2027. Insitu won a $19 million modification, which adds scope for the production and delivery of 10 RQ-21A air vehicles, two RQ-21A turrets, support equipment, spares, tools, and training in support of RQ-21A Blackjack and ScanEagle unmanned aircraft platforms for the Navy, Marine Corps, and international partners. Work will be performed in Bingen, Washington; and various locations outside the continental US, and is expected to be completed in June 2026. Middle East & Africa The Israeli Ministry of Defense has contracted Oshkosh Defense to produce hundreds of “Eitan” armored personnel carrier (APC) hulls for the Israel Defense Forces. The more than $100 million US-funded contract will reportedly see 500 hulls delivered to Israel within 18 months. The hulls will be fitted with unmanned turrets and other systems and sent for operational use. More hulls are expected in the future. Europe The Russian Navy’s latest Admiral Gorshkov-class multi-role frigate has begun its second phase of sea trials. The testing follows a demonstration of the ship’s maneuverability, navigation capabilities, and propulsion at Severnaya Verf shipyard, Saint Petersburg in early December. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the second phase will validate the frigate’s control systems, artillery, anti-aircraft missile systems, communication, and electronic warfare equipment. All tests will be monitored by the service command control center. Results will be delivered to Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Nikolai Evmenov. Asia-Pacific Aerospace firm L3Harris and Israeli defense manufacturer Elta Systems will deliver advanced threat detection and response systems to the Australian military. The newly-inked teaming contract would transform Australian fighting vehicles, enabling each to immediately detect incoming live fire and launch self-defense responses, including electronic warfare measures and kinetic effects. South Korea has awarded Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) a $235 million contract to deliver 10 Light Armed Helicopters for the army. KAI will begin delivery of the aircraft by 2024, including training, maintenance, and spares, The Korean Herald reported. The award comes after the Defense Acquisition and Program Administration approved a $4.5 billion plan to mass produce the helicopters through 2031. Today’s Video WATCH: Boeing Insitu ScanEagle UAV | Long-Endurance, Low-Altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicle View the full article

Remember my oft used phrase "otherwise unemployable people?" Remember how we've discussed here many Thursdays over the last two decades how the worst of academia was being invited in to our service academies and war colleges - and it would manifest itself throughout the fleet? Remember how - still to this day - the Diversity Industry's nomenklatura grows and shapes all to serve itself and its interests? We tried to warn folks back to when it started getting real bad in the Bush43 Presidency. We were - and still are - called all sorts of nasty names by people who cannot defend their secular religion. A solid confessional by Professor Russell Jacoby who, while the fetid waters rose around us all, told us not to worry. Well, he admits he was wrong, and does a solid job describing how we got here. Read it all. By the late 1990s the rapid expansion of the universities came to a halt, especially in the humanities. Faculty openings slowed or stopped in many fields. Graduate enrollment cratered. In my own department in 10 years we went from accepting over a hundred students for graduate study to under 20 for a simple reason. We could not place our students. The hordes who took courses in critical pedagogy, insurgent sociology, gender studies, radical anthropology, Marxist cinema theory, and postmodernism could no longer hope for university careers. What became of them? No single answer is possible. They joined the work force. Some became baristas, tech supporters, Amazon staffers and real estate agents. Others with intellectual ambitions found positions with the remaining newspapers and online periodicals, but most often they landed jobs as writers or researchers with liberal government agencies, foundations, or NGOs. In all these capacities they brought along the sensibilities and jargon they learned on campus. It is the exodus from the universities that explains what is happening in the larger culture. The leftists who would have vanished as assistant professors in conferences on narratology and gender fluidity or disappeared as law professors with unreadable essays on misogynist hegemony and intersectionality have been pushed out into the larger culture. They staff the ballooning diversity and inclusion commissariats that assault us with vapid statements and inane programs couched in the language they learned in school. We are witnessing the invasion of the public square by the campus, an intrusion of academic terms and sensibilities that has leaped the ivy-covered walls aided by social media. The buzz words of the campus—diversity, inclusion, microaggression, power differential, white privilege, group safety—have become the buzz words in public life. Already confusing on campus, they become noxious off campus. “The slovenliness of our language,” declared Orwell in his classic 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” makes it “easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” The invasion of the military is already well in to Phase-3. As we've reported here, Milley & Gilday proved this fact the last couple of years in case there are still holdouts not seeing the depth of the incursion. View the full article

Americas Raytheon won a $30 million deal for the procurement of Patriot post deployment build hardware updates and Multifunctional Distribution System Block Upgrade 2. Patriot is a combat-proven air defense system operated by the US and a number of its allies. The Patriot missile is equipped with a track-via-missile (TVM) guidance system. Midcourse correction commands are transmitted to the guidance system from the mobile engagement control centre. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work will take place in Massachusetts. Estimated completion date is March 31. The US Navy demonstrated unmanned cargo delivery to a moving ship for the first time recently. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division demonstration saw multiple unmanned aerial systems (UAS) delivering cargo weighing less than 50 pounds (22.68 kilograms), accounting for 90 percent of navy logistics deliveries. Middle East & Africa Turkey recently completed another round of tests on its “Alka” directed energy counter-drone weapon system. The Roketsan-developed system is one of many directed energy weapons Turkish defense firms have been developing, such as the LSS laser defense system by Aselsan. The Alka uses an electromagnetic jamming system and a 50-watt laser to disable and destroy short-range threats like drones. The system can also defuse bomb traps and improvised explosive devices, the manufacturer states. Europe Italian defense firm Leonardo has finished the initial phase of flight testing for its latest Falco Xplorer remotely piloted aircraft system. The Italian drone performed complex functional tests to validate platform maturity and performance. Leonardo received air traffic, fire prevention, and flight safety assistance from the Air Force’s 37°Stormo wing during the activity at Trapani Birgi military airport in Sicily, 260 miles (420 kilometers) south of the capital Rome. Asia-Pacific Japan on Friday approved a $839 billion budget for the year ahead, including record defense spending after a major security strategy overhaul announced this month. The fiscal 2023 budget approved by the cabinet includes $51 billion for the defense ministry, up approximately 30 percent from last year. The Japanese Defense Ministry has included the cost of acquiring 180,000 square meters of land necessary for deploying an air defense missile unit to the Yonaguni base of the Ground Self-Defense Force in the budget plan for fiscal 2023. While there is currently a coastal surveillance unit deployed on the island of Yonaguni, this will be the first time that a combat unit will be deployed there. In fiscal 2023, an electronic warfare unit will be newly established, and the number of personnel stationed at the Yonaguni base will increase from around 170 at the end of this fiscal year to around 210. Today’s Video WATCH: Turkey’s Domestic Laser Weapon”ROKETSAN ALKA” in inventory ! View the full article

The United States' Secretary of State, Tony Blinken - again the Secretary of State - is so out of his lane right here it is hard to tell if he even knows what his lane is as our chief diplomat. This opinion of his - which in this venue is now American policy because he said it - is so firmly in the Secretary of Defense's lane that it almost defines it. Once again, where is Secretary of Defense Austin? His ongoing silence and supine posture as the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor continue to steal his lunch money and girlfriends out in the open is not just professionally embarrassing - it endangers the nation and our allies. Give it a listen. In essence he states the United States wouldn’t be able to support Ukraine if we were still in Afghanistan and that we cannot support two allies at once. Either Blinken is speaking with authority on something he knows nothing about, he is simply lying in order to cover yet another policy disaster, or the American public has been fooled in to supporting a military industrial complex that exists for fun and profit - and ready for not much more than imperial policing. I'll let you decide. Our footprint in AFG, before our negotiated surrender on par with the Confederate surrender of Vicksburg to the Union Army, was incredibly small. We did not need to expend Javelin nor Stinger nor Harpoon missiles nor tens of thousands of 105mm and 155mm artillery rounds a month in Afghanistan. Nope. We have the largest defense budget in the world. AFG was an economy of force operation at the extreme and almost none of what UKR needs - besides a few helicopters - was needed by the ANSF to keep the Taliban at bay. We have global alliances where we have obliged our nation to go to war to defend dozens of nations. So, we finally admit to imperial overreach? We are admitting that our defense budget is laden with waste, fraud, and bloated workforce not ready to do the absolute minimum? Is that what he is admitting? If we are unable to support two allies in small to medium wars, then how in the hell will we be prepared to fight against the People's Republic of China in the Western Pacific? View the full article