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Destroyer hits target in missile defense test By Kris Osborn - Staff writer Posted : Wednesday Jun 27, 2007 15:20:18 EDT For the first time, an Aegis radar-equipped Navy destroyer test-fired an interceptor missile, hitting a target 250 miles off the coast of Hawaii on June 22, Missile Defense Agency officials said. The Standard Missile (SM-3) fired from the destroyer Decatur rammed its target during the midcourse phase of its flight, roughly 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean, according to MDA and Lockheed Martin officials. Previous Aegis BMD tests have been aboard cruisers. During the test, the Aegis combat system used data radioed from a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system set up on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. This was the first Aegis BMD test that used information from a land-based X-band radar. “The THAAD radar tracked them first. This particular case was to prove that THAAD can cue the Aegis system,” said Joe Rappisi, Lockheed Martin director for Aegis ballistic missile defense. The mock warhead separated from its booster rocket to test the system’s ability to track a smaller target, MDA spokesman Rick Lehner said. “It deployed a warhead like a medium-range missile would do,” Lehner said. The interceptor missile rammed the target, destroying it without explosives, said Lehner. In another twist, the Spanish frigate Mendez Nunez helped perform long-range surveillance, the first time a Spanish ship had participated in an Aegis BMD test. Aegis BMD technology is being installed on 18 U.S. ships, including cruisers and destroyers. Non-U.S. militaries, including Australia and Japan, are also interested in using the Aegis BMD system, said MDA and Lockheed officials. Next December, a Japanese Kongo-class destroyer equipped with Aegis BMD will attempt to shoot down a target over the Pacific Ocean. “We have a team in Japan doing the hardware and computer program upgrades to the Kongo. The training is continuing as we speak,” said Nick Bucci, chief engineer for ballistic missile defense, Lockheed Martin. The Japanese already have a land-based X-band radar. Since 2002, there have been eight successful Aegis intercepts out of 10 test-firings. Unlike standard radar beams which often go in a circle, a phased fixed array has smaller beams going in different directions from fixed panels. “You can steer the radar and put it toward where there is more threat. The reaction time is dramatically reduced so that operators can have a clear picture sooner so they can make quicker, more accurate decisions,” said Lockheed Martin spokesman Kenneth Roth. Navy Times

F-35 Navy Version Undergoes Successful Design Review, Readies for Production FORT WORTH, Texas --- The U.S. Navy's F-35C Lightning II carrier variant has completed its Air System Critical Design Review (CDR), a significant development milestone that verifies the design maturity of the aircraft and its associated systems. The review was conducted June 18-22 at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, and involved officials from Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), the Joint Strike Fighter Program Office, the F-35 international-participant nations and the F-35 contractor team. Completion of the CDR is a prerequisite for the F-35C to move into Low Rate Initial Production. "We're pleased with the CDR results, which reinforce our confidence in the F-35C's design," said Dan Crowley, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and F-35 program manager. "The review highlighted the program's development progress and the 5th generation capabilities that the carrier variant will bring to the Navy." "Completion of this design review is a very significant milestone -- the die is now fully cast for the unique, three-variant Joint Strike Fighter program envisioned when the planning began in the late 1990s," said JSF Program Executive Officer Brig. Gen. C.R. Davis. "This is a momentous day never seen in another acquisition program in history. The entire team should be proud of the work that got us here today." Terry Harrell, Lockheed Martin director of F-35 carrier variant development, added, "We met our objectives for detailed design and performance while removing more than 200 pounds from the aircraft in the past seven months -- a major accomplishment. Getting the design ready for this important milestone required tremendous teamwork among NAVAIR, the Joint Strike Fighter Program Office, Air Force Materiel Command's Aeronautical Systems Center and the entire JSF contractor team." The F-35C will be the Navy's first stealth aircraft. It is designed to replace the F/A-18 Hornet and complement the newer F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. While it shares its fundamental design with the F-35A (conventional takeoff and landing) and F-35B (short takeoff/vertical landing), the F-35C is specialized for the catapult launches and arrested recoveries of large aircraft carriers. It features 30 percent more wing area than the other two variants, larger tails and control surfaces, and wingtip ailerons -- all contributing to the precise slow-speed handling characteristics required for carrier approaches. The F-35C's internal structure is strengthened to withstand the punishment of repeated catapult launches and arrested recoveries on the carrier deck. Funding for the first two production-model Lightning IIs -- both conventional takeoff and landing versions -- is approved and fabrication for those aircraft has begun. The pair of F-35A aircraft are the first of 1,763 scheduled for delivery to the U.S. Air Force, beginning in 2010. The U.S. Marine Corps and Navy together are planning to operate 680 F-35Bs and F-35Cs, and the United Kingdom plans to place 138 F-35Bs into service with the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. The remaining F-35 participant countries plan to acquire more than 700 aircraft. The F-35 is a supersonic, multi-role, 5th generation stealth fighter designed to replace a wide range of existing aircraft, including AV-8B Harriers, A-10s, F-16s, F/A-18 Hornets and United Kingdom Harrier GR.7s and Sea Harriers. Lockheed Martin is developing the F-35 Lightning II with its principal industrial partners, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems. Two separate, interchangeable F-35 engines are under development: the Pratt & Whitney F135 and the GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team F136. Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin employs about 140,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The corporation reported 2006 sales of $39.6 billion. Defense aerospace

General Dynamics' Work On Marine Corps Vehicle Under Fire In Congress General Dynamics Corp. demonstrated poor performance the last 12 years in developing a new U.S. Marine Corps amphibious warfare vehicle that's now almost five years behind schedule, a top lawmaker said Tuesday. The transport has repeatedly failed tests designed to show it can perform without breakdowns. The cost per vehicle has risen to $13.3 million from $5.31 million, calculated in mid-1990s dollars. In 2007 dollars, the cost is estimated at $21 million apiece. Still, the Marine Corps has paid Falls Church, Virginia-based General Dynamics its fixed fee of $43 million, almost 80 percent of its eligible bonus -- $82 million, and plans to award the company another contract to build seven more prototype vehicles, said Representative Gene Taylor, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee panel that controls Navy and Marine Corps funding. ``An observer might reasonably ask why a contractor should get $82 million in award fee for a program that did not perform as promised and then get a contract extension that will be worth millions more,'' Taylor said at a hearing on the vehicle Tuesday. ``Going into combat in an armed vehicle that floats is dangerous enough, but if the same vehicle gets ashore -- far from maintenance support -- and breaks down, the Marines on that vehicle could be extremely vulnerable,'' said Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat. General Dynamics spokesman Kendell Pease said: ``The company is working very closely with the Marine Corps and Navy leadership on a way ahead to enhance the reliability of the vehicle. We have taken great steps to identify the issues and are in the process of implementing improvements.'' The vehicle, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, is the Marine Corps' top weapons program and is estimated to absorb as much as 39 percent of the service's weapons budget through 2013. The transports are designed to deploy from vessels almost 30 miles (46 kilometers) off shore and carry 17 Marines to land three times faster than the current, 35-year-old vehicles now used in Iraq. The transport is supposed to go 43.5 hours without breaking down. In testing last year, hydraulic leaks, engine overheating, weapons jams and other glitches occurred every 4.5 hours on average, according to the Pentagon's test office. The transports would be built in Lima, Ohio. General Dynamics has built 10 pre-production models to date. -- Bloomberg

I am but a Leutnant, but certain that the pack as currently constituted will continue to make the fatherland proud. Simple rest easy in the knowledge that reinforcements are coming.

Corps to delete low-altitude air defense MOS By John Hoellwarth - Staff writer Posted : Wednesday Jun 27, 2007 15:20:12 EDT After the Corps’ last stinger missile battalion closes shop at the end of this fiscal year, every Marine with a low-altitude air defense military occupational specialty must pick a new job, according to a June 22 Corps-wide message. When 1st Stinger Battery, headquartered at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, deactivates Sept. 30, what’s left of the MOS’s structure “will be deleted” and “every effort” will be made to train its Marines in another specialty if they stay on active duty, according to MarAdmin 381/07. First-term Marines in the MOS slated to end their active service at any point through Sept. 30, 2008, can submit for a lateral move in conjunction with re-enlistment. This could net them up to $61,000 for choosing an MOS such as intelligence, cryptology or aviation communication systems, according to MarAdmin 349/07, which announced the Corps’ newest re-enlistment bonuses June 7. If a first-term Marine does not intend to re-enlist, he will sign a statement saying so and retain his low-altitude air defense specialty until he exits the Corps, according to MarAdmin 381/07. Junior Marines with the nearly obsolete MOS who don’t end their first contract before fiscal 2009 “will be encouraged to submit for lat-move,” the message said. Career Marines “are encouraged, but not required” to request a lateral move as well, the message states. “It is crucial that [low-altitude air defense] Marines begin a dialogue with their career retention specialists to ensure the greatest opportunity for transition and retraining,” according to the message. Marine Corps Times I admit that I am way behind on this subject, but unless the capability is going purple - it seems extremely short sighted even with the current state of affairs. Hey for those looking to lat move I certain there are open boat spaces for 0300.

Installed and took SH3 out for a spin last night by conducting the Navigation portion of the "tutorial". I accomplished all tasks, and then was ordered to the surface where I tooled around waiting, waiting , and waiting. I finally escaped out and it appears that either I lost everything or that I must essentially do it again in the "exam" mode. Either way liked it. Got real familiar with the "free-eye view" flying and swimming all around my boat while waiting for the word...hurry up and wait - hey I'm good at that.

Yeah, but CINCHOUSE was home with the little one while the little one was between school and camp last week. They repeatedly went to the library, bringing home all sort of children computer programs/games (READ: VIRUS POTENTIAL by me - house IT guy, one of the many hats we wear) and now she's hooked. My only hope is that "camp" wears her out significantly enough that she goes to bed within a time frame that gives me at least an hour before I must sign off. Then maybe it can be, in the immortal words of SpongBob SquarePants: "The best day ever"

Long gone by now aren't they - thought that was 2003?

LCS fire an accident, investigators conclude By Christopher P. Cavas - Staff writer Posted : Tuesday Jun 26, 2007 6:01:32 EDT Investigators have largely wrapped up their efforts to determine the cause and effects of a fire in April on board the Navy’s first Littoral Combat Ship and have concluded the cause was accidental. Based on forensic evidence, arson is not likely, the investigators concluded. Damage to the ship is estimated to cost about $3.5 million and the fire caused a two-week schedule delay, the Navy said June 21. The fire broke out early on the morning of April 25 on board the USS Freedom (LCS 1), under construction at Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wis. According to the Navy and Lockheed Martin, which is overseeing construction of the ship, a subcontractor to Marinette Marine was welding pipe hangers to the ceiling — the “overhead” in ship parlance — of an interior compartment when the heat generated by the welding caused materials on the deck above to ignite. Fire was discovered in the compartments above about 5:20 a.m. and local firefighters were summoned. The flames were confined largely to berthing spaces for chief petty officers on the starboard side of the ship on the First Platform deck between frames 45 and 54. Also in the area were enlisted berthing spaces, a medical treatment room and a passageway. The fire was extinguished around 6 a.m., Lockheed Martin said, and two shipyard workers who first responded to the fire were treated for smoke inhalation at a local hospital before being released. No major system areas on the ship were damaged, according to the Navy. Most of the areas affected by the fire had yet to be painted or fitted with equipment. Smoke, flame and firewater damage affected nearby areas. Four toilet/shower modules were damaged beyond repair and three other modules needed replacement, Lockheed said. Insulation and electrical cable also were replaced and other areas cleaned. Lockheed noted that fire insulation on the Freedom “performed extremely well and prevented the fire from spreading to other areas on the ship. In fact, when the team investigated the areas, they found that the paint under the insulation had not been discolored or damaged in any way.” Among the Navy, Federal, State and industry teams investigating the fire were representatives from Lockheed Martin and Marinette Marine; the Navy Criminal Investigative Service; Naval Sea Systems Command; the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation arson inspector; the FBI and the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms fire investigator. The Navy’s Gulf Coast supervisor of shipbuilding — whose territory includes Wisconsin — also is conducting a required Manual of the Judge Advocate General report. In May, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Marinette Marine and subcontractor Jamar for three safety violations stemming from the April 25 fire, fining Marinette $7,500 and Jamar $6,750. The Freedom was about 80 percent complete at the time of the fire. Although construction work on the ship resumed May 4, the Freedom remains behind schedule. In December 2004, when the construction contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin, the Navy hoped to have the ship delivered in May 2007. The ship was launched in September 2006, but completion has been delayed by a series of production problems and design changes, even as costs have grown from about $220 million to as much as $400 million. Delivery of the Freedom now is expected no sooner than early 2008 and perhaps later. Excessive price growth on the Freedom was revealed early in January, when the Navy halted work on a second ship to have been built to Lockheed’s LCS design. The Navy canceled that yet-to-be-named ship on April 12 after it was unable to reach agreement with Lockheed on a cost adjustment. Cost growth also has struck LCS competitor General Dynamics, which is building two ships in Mobile, Ala. As of June 21, the Navy has yet to determine total construction costs for either the Lockheed or General Dynamics ships and continues to characterize the cost growth as “between 50 percent and 75 percent depending on the basis of comparison,” although unofficial estimates are higher for both designs. Find article here.

The Power Of The Navy By H.D.S. Greenway NEWPORT, R.I. -- 100 years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt made an extraordinary gesture to illustrate American global reach and power. He had 16 battleships painted white and sent them on a round-the-world voyage. "The Great White Fleet," as it came to be known, was painted white to show America's peaceful intentions, but the message was clear. America was a force to be reckoned with. The ships sailed for 14 months and visited 20 ports on six continents. Enthusiastic crowds greeted the ships everywhere. The battle fleet was mostly obsolete and no match for British and German "dreadnoughts " then coming off the ways. America had already demonstrated its ability to project sea power by its 1898 naval actions against Spain in Cuba and the Philippines. But the gesture was as David McCullough described Roosevelt himself: "picturesque, noisy, and colorful." I heard the secretary of the Navy, Donald Winter, speak of the Great White Fleet at the Naval War College in Newport earlier this month. He particularly singled out the dispatching of part of the fleet to help devastated Messina in Sicily, which had just undergone an earthquake. He spoke of how, in this century, the navy had performed similar relief missions after the Indian Ocean tsunami, and how that had gathered badly needed good will for the United States. Winter admitted that, except for its Marines, the Navy is not in the headlines these days as America fights two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the Navy remains an essential element of US power with the added advantage that other services seldom have. A Navy can be "non intrusive and modulated as conditions require," Winter said. Armies and air forces require bases abroad. The Navy, however, can float offshore with its planes, helicopters, and Marines ready to deploy, but over-the-horizon, and not in the faces of foreign countries. "Sustained presence, minimal footprint," is the way Winter put it. You can make a case, as the Council on Foreign Relations' Walter Russell Mead did at the war college, that there is a continuum in America's grand global strategy from what we learned from the British, and what they, in turn, learned from the 17th-century Dutch who invented the system we now enjoy. Globalization began with Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe in the 16th century -- a voyage that he personally never completed, having been killed by Filipino natives when he took sides in a local dispute. Previously there had been many unconnected maritime networks that had been developed over the centuries. Mediterranean trade had been thoroughly explored by the ancient Greeks. The Chinese had sailed all the way to the coast of Africa before they pulled back into the Great Within. Arabs traded all over the Indian Ocean, and Polynesians navigated the vast swaths of the Pacific. But it wasn't until Magellan's voyage that all these networks were connected. The system pioneered by the 17th-century Dutch depended first on maintaining "open and dynamic society at home," according to Mead, then "taking the show on the road" to other parts of the world, and maintaining a global power structure that favored this openness and dynamism. What the United States is trying to do, and what the British and the Dutch did before, is to build an ordered system of world trade, driven by exchanges of ideas, goods, and technologies -- the heart of what we now call globalization -- and then make the system attractive to the rest of the world. The concept, based on command of the seas, was grasped by Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, president of the war college in Newport in the late 19th century. His book, "The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783," became the bible of naval strategists around the world. In the 17th century, globalization was a product of ships and the sea. Today ideas and exchanges of technology travel almost at the speed of light. But the sea still carries the vast majority of the world's commerce. In time another power will supercede America in technology, wealth and power. At the moment China is building a high-seas fleet that one day may challenge America's ability to influence events in the Far East. The trick will be to manage competition, and bring China ever closer into our accepted system of international norms rather than indulging in counterproductive hostility. The Navy is an indispensable guarantor of peaceful, strategic order, and because it doesn't require a physical presence ashore it can, in Theodore Roosevelt's words, "speak softly" but still "carry a big stick." H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.

OK, a quick scenario thumbnail sketch. At first a Burke/Perry combo is conducting maritime inspections (by way of RIB's) of freighter traffic (looking for theater ballistic missile components) headed towards Venezuelan port of Puerto Cabello (10 27N, 68 01W). A review of satellite imagery has determined that a previously present Amur Class SS has left port. Since "Flight IIA ships do not normally deploy with the RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile or towed array sonar." (source), the Perry will deploy its towed array, and we'll see what happens. More platforms may be added in this or subsequent run throughs.

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You were all over it.

Or from one of my favorite "war" movies (While they had accents, they were not Aussie's however), I'll let you all guess which. Character A: "That's far enough, we can hear you from there" Character B: "My General says there is no point in continuing this fighting...he is willing to discuss a surrender" Character C: "Tell him to go to hell" Character A: "We haven't the proper facilities to take you all prisoner...("pregnant pause") Sorry." Character B: "What?????" Character A: "We'd like to but we can't accept your surrender."

Aussie sailors repelled Iran attack, BBC says By Philip Ewing - Staff writer Posted : Friday Jun 22, 2007 12:11:06 EDT Iranian naval forces tried to capture an Australian boarding team in the Persian Gulf — even before they seized and held 15 British sailors and Marines — but where the British sailors were taken captive, the Australian sailors repelled their attackers, BBC News reported Thursday. The Australian and British incidents were very similar, according to what British military sources told the BBC: An Royal Australian Navy team had been searching a cargo ship in the northern Persian Gulf when Iranian operatives approached in small boats. But the Aussies “were having none of it,” the BBC reported They reboarded the ship they had just searched and trained their weapons on the Iranians, warning them “in colorful language” to back off. The Iranians withdrew. The Australian sailors were later extracted by helicopter, according to the story. Reuters reported that the boarding team was from the frigate Adelaide. It also reported that two Australian sailors were awarded medals after the incident. More than the incident itself, the BBC reported, what concerns Royal Navy officials is that commanders apparently didn’t apply any lessons from the earlier Iranian-Australian encounter to prevent their own boarding team from being captured Iran’s Revolutionary Guard surprised 15 British sailors and Marines from the frigate Cornwall on March 23 after they had searched a cargo ship. According to what commanders said in a press conference much later, there was a brief standoff in which the British team realized it was outgunned, then stood down. The sailors and Marines were imprisoned in Iran, where they became the focal point of an international media propaganda campaign, until they were finally released in what Iran called a goodwill gesture. Find article here.

Painting A Rosy Picture Of A Costly Fighter Jet By Leslie Wayne LE BOURGET, France, June 21 — With jets screaming overhead, macho often mixes with Mach 1 here at the Paris air show. But the Lockheed Martin Corporation chose a softer approach to show the might of its next-generation radar-evading, supersonic fighter jet. It commissioned nine international artists to portray the multibillion-dollar combat plane in a variety of imaginary scenes — sailing over the Canadian Northwest, hovering over a British naval carrier and gliding above Sydney Harbor in Australia. The unveiling of the paintings here was a case of making virtue out of necessity. Lockheed’s Joint Strike Fighter program — the largest program in Pentagon aviation with an eventual price tag exceeding $600 billion — is only now moving off the drawing board and into first flight. Only one Joint Strike Fighter, also called the F-35 Lightning II, has been produced so far, to be used in testing, with 13 more planes scheduled for next year. Lockheed continues to push ahead amid concerns over the program’s costs, its ambitious development schedule and an international political drama as Lockheed and the eight other partner nations in the project continue to bump elbows, and sometimes heads. The Joint Strike Fighter program is unique in military aviation. With this program, the Pentagon rewrote the rules on how fighter jets are made. It put together an international coalition to design, finance and build the jet jointly rather than having a single country, typically the United States, build the jet and sell it to others. This required the countries to share sensitive technologies, invest large sums of money and act in the best interest of the group, not their own nation. The sums of money involved are staggering, and growing. The Pentagon has estimated the program’s development and procurement costs at $276 billion, with an additional $347 billion needed to operate and support the planes in the field. Already, the program is $31.6 billion over budget, slightly behind schedule and facing daunting technical challenges. Yet Brig. Gen. Charles R. Davis of the Air Force, the program’s executive director, was optimistic about the program’s recent accomplishments — not the least of which was keeping all nine nations on board. “We’re well on our way,” General Davis said at a Lockheed news conference. “And we will grow.” Others say there is reason for optimism. Alexandra Ashbourne of Ashbourne Strategic Consulting in London, which specializes in military contractors, said, “The program is looking rosier than it has been in a while. “It had been running late,” Ms. Ashbourne said. “And there were a number of other issues involving technology transfers. But these concerns seem to have been allayed in the last few months. A lot of people are beginning to feel that this is a most amazing craft.” From a pilot’s perspective, the F-35 Lightning is a dream machine. It is intended to replace the F-16 and other fighter jets of that generation, which total around 4,000 worldwide. The F-35’s stealth technology makes it invisible to radar. It flies faster than the speed of sound and is filled with the latest aviation electronics. At the air show, a life-size mock-up of the plane attracted a crowd of military aviators, who climbed into the single-seat, single-engine airplane as though it were real. Jon Beesley, chief test pilot for the F-35, stood by in his blue flight suit, eagerly explaining the plane’s technical details to this knowledgeable crowd. Yet for all its sizzle, the F-35 is designed to be affordable — a sort of Chevrolet of the skies — so that the nations in the partnership, and ones that are not, can add it to their fleets. The terms of the international partnership mean that Lockheed must look around the world for the best technologies and the most efficient production processes for the craft. But the program’s ambitious schedule and technological challenges are raising concerns, especially at the Government Accountability Office, which oversees the program. The G.A.O. called the decision by Lockheed and the Air Force to begin to produce the craft in low numbers before all the testing has been done a “high-risk strategy.” Overlapping the testing with early production could easily backfire and result in delays and cost overruns should modifications in the design or the manufacturing of the plane be required, the G.A.O. said in a report issued last March entitled “Joint Strike Fighter: Progress Made and Challenges Remain.” As a result, the G.A.O. recommended slowing the program until the design was further refined. Tom Burbage, Lockheed’s F-35 program manager, could not disagree more. He argues that technological advances allow the company to telescope the development and manufacturing processes and that this approach will reduce risk of delays and cost overruns. “I do not agree it adds extra risk,” Mr. Burbage said of Lockheed’s approach, speaking at the news conference. “We are doing it the right way, and what the G.A.O. says will do just the opposite.” Adding to the complication is that the international consortium plans to produce three variations of the plane — one that will land at regular air fields, one to land on carriers and a third, championed by the Marines and the British, that will have a vertical takeoff and landing. The Pentagon has said it wants to buy 2,458 F-35s, which will be divided among the services, with the Air Force taking the bulk, 1,763. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2010. The other international partners have indicated they will buy 600 to 700. And as they are built, planes will be made available for sale to nations not in the program. The jets will cost around $75 million each for the basic version and up to $90 million for more advanced designs. But a quarrel has broken out between the Navy and Marines over the vertical version. Internal Navy memos that were obtained by DefenseNews, a trade publication, indicate that the Navy, which oversees the Marine budget, would like to see the Marine version dropped from the program. It is the most expensive F-35, and the most technically complicated. “The Marines want a fighter that can land anywhere,” said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a research group based in Arlington, Va. “But the admirals don’t like what the Marines are asking for.” The Marines, though, have a powerful ally in Britain, which wants to buy 138 vertical-lift F-35s as a replacement for the Harrier, which can also take off and land vertically. And analysts say that it would be hard to drop the version of the plane that is so important to Britain. The international partners — Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, Canada, Australia and Denmark — have invested around $4 billion in the F-35. In return, they are given part of the design and the production, based on their skills and cost structure. Final assembly will be done in the United States, although negotiations are under way for a possible second assembly site in northern Italy. The G.A.O. has also warned that the enormity of the program coupled with a large budget deficit in the United States may lead to cutbacks. But General Davis, the Pentagon official overseeing the program day to day, has more immediate worries. “My biggest challenge,” he said, “is just to keep it on schedule.”

Russian Planes Sold To Syria JERUSALEM — Israel is concerned about reported Russian deliveries of advanced MiG-31 fighter planes to its enemy Syria as part of an armaments drive, the topselling Hebrew daily reported yesterday. The MiG-31, considered one of the best fighters in the world, can carry guided missiles with a range of more than 125 miles and is capable of striking 24 targets simultaneously, Yediot Aharonot said. A Russian newspaper reported yesterday that Russia has begun delivering five MiG-31E interceptors to Syria and that Moscow also plans to sell Damascus its MiG-29M/M2 dual-role fighters.

Japan changes Iwo Jima name By Hans Greimel - The Associated Press Posted : Wednesday Jun 20, 2007 13:27:08 EDT TOKYO — Japan has changed the name of Iwo Jima, the volcanic island immortalized in one of World War II’s most brutal battles, to reflect the original name given by its inhabitants, the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute said. The new name is Iwo To, which will retain the same written characters and meaning — “Sulfur Island” — but is different when spoken. The name change was approved Monday by a joint geographical naming committee meeting between the survey institute and Japan’s coast guard, a statement from the institute said. An official map with the new name will be released Sept. 1. Iwo To, about 700 miles southeast of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean, was inhabited by civilians until 1944, when they were evacuated as U.S. forces advanced across the Pacific, said the survey institute’s Mitsugu Aizawa. The residents were not allowed to return after the war, when the island was put to exclusive military use by both the U.S. and Japan. “These people are now scattered nationwide and are not able to go back to Iwo To,” Aizawa said. “These people have said that the place is originally called Iwo To and their claim led to this revision.” Today the island’s only inhabitants are about 400 Japanese soldiers. The 1945 battle for Iwo Jima, made iconic by the famous photo of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on the islet’s Mount Suribachi, pitted some 100,000 U.S. troops against 22,000 Japanese deeply dug into a labyrinth of tunnels and trenches. Nearly 7,000 Americans were killed capturing the island, and fewer than 1,000 of the Japanese would survive. The Americans occupied the island after the war, and returned it to Japanese jurisdiction in 1968. The U.S. Navy still uses an Iwo To airstrip to train pilots who operate from aircraft carriers. Find article here.

How about this shot...

After discussion last night, I did not want to lose the product to time or my rapidly failing memory This platform is intended to be used as a launch from the USN platforms to conduct maritime inspections in scenarios such as the Venezuelan sub scenario discussed in another thread here. RIB (RHIB) 8 pax capacity/3200lbs payload 30kts Range 200nm 1 DP

And for those of you brave enough , , the next topic to tackle is Convergence Zones

How are the 3rd and 4th Gen ratings utilized? I'm assuming 3rd Gen ESM would be while on the surface - a la a surface ship? I'm drawing a blank on the "AIR" rating. I was under the impression that the internet alleviated the need for most puntuation, including question marks. (the preceding is a gratuitous period)

hehe, as I responded to Dave, I cannot fathom how I could never relate the "AIR" rating to the relevant Acoustic Intercept Receiver rules. As soon as he pointed it out, like in so many of my other harpoon experiences, the light bulb just started glowing like nothing else!

Aside from the Amur and Kilo subs, I know that they had F-16's. Any other surface combatants I'm sure can be found in my Combat Fleets of the World. I'm confident that it would a short, sharp engagement, vice a knock down drag out battle, or even a Panama type invasion, although I will initially be focusing on the sub(s) vs Burke and/or Perry.

Per the H4 data that I received, the Mi-17MTV-5 can carry 6x UB-32-57. That means 3 pods per winglet, and 32 57mm S-5 rockets in each pod. There is also a drop tank(s) available which may take up one or more other hardpoints. MTF. Finished most of the HIND E data form as well. I'd assume that the Mi35V-5's twin 23mm would fire in the frontal arc, replacing the 12.7mm currently found in the general HIND E.