There’s been a lot of debate recently about the whole issue of small arms, particularly with the effectiveness of the Colt M4 carbine. The Army’s reliability study demonstrated that if well lubed, the M4 performs largely without fight-ending stoppage. But there’s continued argument over the knock-down power of the 5.56mm round, the reliability of the M4 if constant care isn’t possible and on the whole issue of whether or not there’s a better operating system out there.
The debate is just reaching a critical point, with the Army recently caving to pressure from Capitol Hill and agreeing to hold a “sandstorm test” between its M4 and a couple other carbines that fire on a different operating system many say is more reliable. With the end-strength increase in the Army and Marine Corps and the overall focus of budget attention on land forces, momentum may be building to issue a new infantry rifle as the Army and Marine Corps build new brigade combat teams and infantry battalions.
There’s no one in the DoD officially saying this yet, but a lot more people in high places are asking previously taboo questions on whether it’s time to throw the stoner design to the side.
We’ve already taken a look at three of the most popular competitors to the M4: the XM8, the H&K 416 and the FN SCAR - or Mk-17 and Mk-16. Well, a buddy passed along another interesting entrant into the “new carbine” world (that’s not to say there aren’t others out there, but this one’s the new kid on the block) which seems to meld all the best aspects of the previous three rifles into one.
Made by Longmont, Colorado-based Magpul Industries Corp., the Masada does have that “first person shooter” gamer nerd look to it. But look at the specs and it seems the Masada has some interesting aspects that would make operators give it a second look. One thing I noticed was the two interchangeable lowers – one for 5.56mm, the other for AK-47 7.62x39 ammo. So for shooters “going native” in the AO, this could be the ticket - of course, as long as you have a compatible barrel.
The rest of the specs look pretty standard, but it’d be interesting to get feedback from DT readers on some of the more deeply technical stuff. Take a look at the brochure and see what you think.
There are also a couple of cool videos of the weapon being test fired.
I dunno, has a new combat rifle entered the arena?
Two Chinese naval ships visited the Russian port city of St. Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland on August 27. This is believed to be the first time that a Chinese warship has visited the one-time Russian capital, which remains the country’s “second city” and a major port, naval center, and shipbuilding center of Russia.
The Peoples Liberation Army’s missile destroyer Guangzhou and the replenishment ship Weishanhu are on an 87-day cruise that is also taking them to ports in Britain, France, and Spain. The two ships are under the command of Vice Admiral Su Zhiqian, the deputy commander of the South Sea Fleet. (The PLA Navy is divided into three fleets -- the North, East, and South Sea Fleets.)
The two ships, expected to travel some 23,000 nautical miles on their cruise, are among China’s most modern naval units. The cruise apparently has a dual mission -- training for the officers and enlisted men, and demonstrating the increasing naval capabilities of China.
The Guangzhouwas built in China, being completed in 2004. She is a multi-purpose destroyer, with anti-air, anti-submarine, and anti-ship weapons. A helicopter is embarked in the ship, which has a full load displacement of 6,500 tons. It is significant that the Guangzhou is a Chinese-built ship and not one of the four Russian-built Sovremennyy-class missile destroyers delivered to China from 1999 to 2006.
The Weishanhu, a 22,000-ton replenishment ship completed in 2005, can transfer fuel, provisions, and munitions while underway to ships alongside or astern. She, too, has a helicopter capability.
I know it’s kind of random, and the sourcing is a bit strange coming from the American Conservative magazine, but a piece written by a UPI reporter in the magazine that posits how a potential conflict between China and the United States over Taiwan would go is worth a read.
This piece comes on a day that Chinese defense chief Cao Gangchuan told his Japanese counterparts China’s military is not a threat to security in the region and that his defense buildup and development are becoming more transparent.
But he did reiterate that the main justification for China’s accelerating defense spending and buildup is primarily due to tensions over the Taiwan issue.
Give the futuristic "The Chips are Down" piece a read and see what you think...food for thought at least.
...Beijing announced that if the newly elected government in Taiwan declared independence, China would intervene militarily. The United States responded by dispatching two carrier task forces attached to the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Ronald Reagan. Besides the usual high-tech armament, including ship-to-shore missiles, ship-to-air missiles, and ship-to-ship missiles, and 400-odd warplanes aboard the carriers, the combined task force also included two Battalion Landing Teams, some 4,000 Marines.
The Chinese had nowhere near as many warships, planes, or tanks, but they had 350,000 men aboard transport ships—and they had a secret weapon in orbit.
As the Chinese expeditionary force approached Taiwan, they crossed an imaginary red line drawn across a Pentagon map, breaching the point American generals estimated would be one from which the Chinese would not turn back.
From his command post aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, Adm. Anthony S. Samuelson picked up a secure telephone connecting him directly to the Pentagon and to the office of the secretary of defense. The secretary picked up on the first ring.
“Tell me it’s good news, admiral.”
“Wish I could, sir. They are now in firing range and are not about to turn around. It looks like this is it.”
The secretary of defense asked the admiral to stand by. He picked up a burgundy phone on his desk.
The president answered instantly. “Madame President,” said the secretary, “You must order the attack. If we are to proceed, it must be now.”
The president scanned the room, moving her eyes around the Oval Office where her national security advisers were gathered. Each in turn nodded his head, indicating a silent “yes.” The president of the United States put the phone to her ear and told her secretary of defense to proceed. With a heavy heart, Chelsea Clinton placed the receiver back in its cradle.
As the first Chinese soldier set foot on the beaches of Taiwan, the order was received from Adm. Samuelson’s headquarters to open fire.
Minutes before the order was given, some 300 miles up in space, a Chinese scientific satellite released a burst of electro-magnetic energy aimed at American and Taiwanese forces. Other similar satellites positioned strategically around the Earth released a number of similar bursts directed at strategic U.S. missile silos in the continental United States, Korea, and Australia.
Total confusion followed. Not one order issued electronically by U.S. command-and-control centers reached its target. Missiles fired from the ships of the Seventh Fleet went straight into space and exploded harmlessly above the earth. The Abrams M1A1 tanks started to turn around in circles like demented prehistoric dogs trying to bite their tails. The few planes that managed to take off from the carriers crashed into the South China Sea. Search-and-rescue helicopters were unable to even start their engines.
The Chinese were able to walk ashore and take Taiwan without firing a single shot.
(Gouge: NC)
-- Christian
Amazing MRAP Survival Photos
I’ve caught a lot of flak for my lack of enthusiasm with the MRAP vehicle. Some readers have maligned my intent, experience, reporting and general understanding of the issue without considering my argument carefully and reading closely to what I say.
I recognize that my stance on the MRAP debate is controversial and contrarian, but I see that as part of my job as DefenseTech editor – to seed the conversation.
One thing I have never argued is the protective capability of the MRAP. Its construction and design run circles around the Humvee if protecting the pax and crew is your sole priority. It’s an amazing vehicle that can really take a pounding.
DefenseTech ran across these pictures that attest to the MRAP’s survivability.
As you can see, the entire Marine convoy is comprised of MRAPs, and the Cougar which was hit by the IED gets truly banged up. But no one inside was killed and everyone escaped with only minor injuries. (Check out the engine blown 100 yards away)...
I don’t necessarily agree with the idea that all Humvees in Iraq should be replaced with MRAPs. But seeing these photos has me almost convinced.
Many a DT reader will remember the so-called “Active Denial System” – a giant millimeter-wave electromagnetic antenna mounted on a Humvee that could be directed at large, unruly crowds to disperse them without firing a shot in anger.
The ray heats the human skin to such an uncomfortable level that he has to retreat. It is the hallmark of the Pentagon’s non-lethal weapons development plan...and the most controversial.
Well, it looks like commanders in Iraq have been pleading for the device, which is pretty far along in its development. But fearing the post-Taser backlash from some groups, the Pentagon denied the technology in favor of more lethal methods.
It would be a familiar scene in Iraq's next few years: Crowds gather, insurgents mingle with civilians. Troops open fire, and innocents die.
All the while, according to internal military correspondence obtained by The Associated Press, U.S. commanders were telling Washington that many civilian casualties could be avoided by using a new non-lethal weapon developed over the past decade.
Military leaders repeatedly and urgently requested - and were denied - the device, which uses energy beams instead of bullets and lets soldiers break up unruly crowds without firing a shot.
It's a ray gun that neither kills nor maims, but the Pentagon has refused to deploy it out of concern that the weapon itself might be seen as a torture device.
Perched on a Humvee or a flatbed truck, the Active Denial System gives people hit by the invisible beam the sense that their skin is on fire. They move out of the way quickly and without injury.
On April 30, 2003, two days after the first Fallujah incident, Gene McCall, then the top scientist at Air Force Space Command in Colorado, typed out a two-sentence e-mail to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"I am convinced that the tragedy at Fallujah would not have occurred if an Active Denial System had been there," McCall told Myers, according to the e-mail obtained by AP. The system should become "an immediate priority," McCall said.
Myers referred McCall's message to his staff, according to the e-mail chain.
It seems this is the sort of catch-22 the military is in when it comes to non-lethals. The devices conjure up grim images of pain and discomfort when you look at what they do, so groups object to them often on human rights grounds and ethics.
But what’s the alternative? Getting U.S. troops and other personnel killed, or using deadly force. So it looks like we’ve got a little ways to go before we can collectively wrap our minds around the issue and get these tools out to where they’re needed.
Watch a video of the ADS at work HERE. (Best line: "I think we had a crowd of two for about two seconds...")
I was introduced to big bore anti-tank (anti-material) rifles back in the 80’s when I became an ardent follower of the board game Advanced Squad Leader (ASL was originally produced by the Avalon Hill Game Company, which was purchased by Hasbro, who discontinued production of the game. ASL is now published by MLB pitcher Curt Schilling and his Multi-Man Publishing company.) For those of you unfamiliar with the game, ASL was arguably the most accurate and detailed squad level tactical board game ever developed, with counters representing individual squads, leaders, tanks and support weapons.
Anyway, the one support weapon that caught my eye was the L-39 Lahti 20mm AT rifle. In game terms the Lahti was heavy (5 portage points) and it fired off of the AVF kill table under the “20L” column (the only squad portable weapon capable of doing so.) In real life terms the L-39 was heavy, (109 pounds, necessatating its transport by reindeer) and possessed such savage recoil (its cartridge, the 20 mm x 138 mm Solothurn Long, was the largest ever fired by a shoulder fired weapon in the war) that the Finns dubbed it the "Norsupyssy" ("Elephant Gun"), but it was also capable of reaching out 1,000m and penetrating 10mm of armor plate. Rendered obsolete by advanced Soviet tank designs by 1941, the incrediable accuracy of the L-39 enabled it to remain in service as a long range sniper rifle.
Seventy years later, the concept of the long range, big bore, anti-material rifle has come full circle. With .50 caliber (12.7mm) rifles a dime a dozen, my question now is, “who fields the new “Elephant Gun” of the 21st century?”
In terms of penetrating capability, the “Big Stick” designation would seem to go to the Austrian Styer IWS 2000. Firing a propriatary 15.2mm APFSDS (Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot) mini tank round, the armor piercing ‘dart” will penetrate 40mm of test armor at 1,000m. Unfortunatly, the 40-pound IWS 2000 has yet to enter service with any military (it’s unique ammunition is a logistical turn-off to most nations.)
As for absolute caliber, the “biggest” rifle out there is the Barret XM-109 25mm payload rifle. Firing a low-velosity, scaled down version of the 30mm M789 HEDP (High Explosive Dual Purpose) ammunition used by the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, the XM-109 is capable of penetrating just under 40mm of armor, and, when used with the Barrett Optical Ranging System (BORS) has an effective range of 2,500m. Yet, like the IWS 2000, the 33-pound XM-109 is still in a developmental status (currently the felt recoil of the XM-109 is outside maximum Army tolerances.)
But, if you’re looking for something you can take home tonight, the gun for you is the Croatian RT20 20mm rifle. Developed to shoot the thermal sights off of Serbian M-84 (T-72) tanks, the RT20 fires the 20x110mm Hispano-Suiza HS 404 cartridge which can trace its roots back to the 1930s. Marketed as a 20mm hand cannon, the RT20 fires the largest 20mm cartridge of any currently available anti-materiel rifle (most other 20mm rifles are chambered for the Russian 20x99mm R ShVAK round or the German 20x82mm WWII-era MG151 projectile.) To compensate for the round’s enormous kick, the 42-pound single-shot RT20 is equipped with a unique gas-operated recoil compensating blast tube. Operating along the same principles as a recoilless weapon system, this blast tube redirects propellant gasses to the rear of the firer, to reduce felt recoil. Unfortunately, this recoil method also presents a blast hazard for individuals behind the weapon, so care must be taken when firing the RT20 in enclosed spaces.
Of course, the hard part is going to be finding reindeer to pull it...
As many of you already know, Stratfor has been an important resource for deep analysis of many geostrategic problems facing the United States. While their analysis is typically dry and dispassionate, they tend to examine all angles without favor and do a pretty good job of distilling the issue for general consumption.
They have not been Iraq war cheerleaders, nor have they been obsessively morose in their characterization of the challenges there. So I thought it might be a thought-provoking exercise to include an excerpt here of their most recent analysis of the options in Iraq, which is posted in full on Military.com’s Warfighter’s Forum page.
While I understand none of you want this page to turn into an “Iraq War” site, we will be including a few more Iraq items than usual as the Sept. 15 interim report deadline approaches.
...Following the Republican defeat in Congress in November, U.S. President George W. Bush surprised Iran by increasing U.S. forces in Iraq rather than beginning withdrawals. This created a window of a few months during which Tehran, weighing the risks and rewards, was sufficiently uncertain that it might have opted for an agreement thrusting the Shiites behind a coalition government. That moment has passed. As the NIE points out, the probability of forming any viable government in Baghdad is extremely low. Iran no longer is facing its worst-case scenario. It has no motivation to bail the United States out.
What, then, is the United States to do? In general, three options are available. The first is to maintain the current strategy. This is the administration's point of view. The second is to start a phased withdrawal, beginning sometime in the next few months and concluding when circumstances allow. This is the consensus among most centrist Democrats and a growing number of Republicans. The third is a rapid withdrawal of forces, a position held by a fairly small group mostly but not exclusively on the left. All three conventional options, however, suffer from fatal defects.
Bush's plan to stay the course would appear to make relatively little sense. Having pursued a strategic goal with relatively fixed means for more than four years, it is unclear what would be achieved in years five or six. As the old saw goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different outcome. Unless Bush seriously disagrees with the NIE, it is difficult to make a case for continuing the current course.
Looking at it differently, however, there are these arguments to be made for maintaining the current strategy: Whatever mistakes might have been made in the past, the current reality is that any withdrawal from Iraq would create a vacuum, which would rapidly be filled by Iran. Alternatively, Iraq could become a jihadist haven, focusing attention not only on Iraq but also on targets outside Iraq. After all, a jihadist safe-haven with abundant resources in the heart of the Arab world outweighs the strategic locale of Afghanistan. Therefore, continuing the U.S. presence in Iraq, at the cost of 1,000-2,000 American lives a year, prevents both outcomes, even if Washington no longer has any hope of achieving the original goal...
UPDATE: DefenseTech has learned that while Maj. Gen. Comer did work at AIC when the company was a subcontractor to Sikorsky during CSAR-X competition, he was acting only as a consultant to AIC at the time he wrote the note posted on DefenseTech last week - but not on the CSAR-X account.
Maj. Gen. Comer replies:
I wrote the letter because I think the H-47 is not the right helicopter for the need. I did work for AIC and AIC had a contract with Sikorsky. AIC got bought out and threw me over the side. They had no room for me after that, so I left and became a consultant. I have advised AIC a couple of times since, mostly on SOF and overseas business. I do not have an affiliation with Sikorsky, but I do have friends in that company--as I do in Boeing and Lockheed.
There will be plenty of Chinooks available for the high altitude missions which may come up. There will also be some V-22s, an aircaft I am on record for supporting in greater numbers. The AF rescue mission will need to deploy quickly, fit in lots of LZs and will benefit from not flying the largest, hottest, loudest, and most expensive helicopter. That's all I said. It's true.
We again want to thank alert readers, and Maj. Gen. Comer, for clearing the record...
-- Christian
Full Disclosure on CSAR-X
Our thanks goes out to an alert DT reader who brought to our attention a mitigating fact in the ongoing (fueled mostly by the protesting parties) debate over the CSAR-X program.
On August 21, DefenseTech posted a letter forwarded to us written by a former top general in the Air Force search and rescue community who had some pretty harsh words for the source selection officials and the ultimate decision to award Boeing with the CSAR-X contract.
He signed the letter with his name and former rank only. But what he left out is more revealing than what he put in his letter.
It turns out Maj. Gen. Richard Comer (ret.) is the executive vice president of Aerospace Integration Corporation based in Mary Esther, Fl. AICannounced with great glee in February of last year its selection as a partner with Sikorsky to do systems integration work for the company’s HH-92 CSAR-X bid. Both Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin are protesting Boeing’s win.
In Comer’s letter, he outlines his credentials in the opening paragraph, but declines to mention he’s employed by a Sikorsky subcontractor. He impugns the motives of the source selection officials in the Air Force, saying they were probably the victims of “group think” – though he caveated his remarks by saying the officers were conscientious and honest in their decision.
Our reader knows Comer and was stung by his crass assertion without ever revealing that he has a financial interest in Boeing’s demise, “selling his soul for 30 pieces of Sikorsky silver.”
And he raises a very valid point. The source selectors in the DoD are precluded by law from discussing any of their motivations beyond the stated specifications and how the selected aircraft met them. But that hasn’t stopped the protesters from pumping out info to folks like us here at DefenseTech undercutting Boeing’s win and fueling the fire of protest. The government folks can say nothing while the fur is flying.
Sober people can debate the strengths and weaknesses of the Boeing win. We’re agnostic on the issue other than to say that it seems the Air Force picked a heavy lift helicopter for a medium lift job. Hearing the Boeing folks talk about the superior range, speed and payload of the HH-47 was kind of like hearing Boeing say the C-17 is better than the Lockheed Martin C-130…of course, they’re different aircraft in separate classes.
But it’s starting to get to the point where the debate has devolved into the arcane world of defense contracting procedure and who dotted which “i” and crossed what “t” and when. At the same time, America has hundreds of thousands of troops worldwide in combat who will need this capability and it may start getting to the point where the bickering comes at the cost of our troops’ lives.
We want to extend our deep thanks to our readers for providing us important information that helps advance all the stories posted on DefenseTech. It’s difficult for us to read all the comments on each post, so if you have crucial information that can help expand on the posts, please send an email to the EDITOR.
The Japanese Navy -- officially the Maritime Self-Defense Force -- has launched an “aircraft carrier.” At least the Hyuga, launched at Yokohama on August 23, looks like an aircraft carrier -- she has a flush flight deck and a large, starboard-side island structure. But the Hyuga is a relatively small ship as carriers go, with a standard displacement of 13,500 (metric) tonnes and will displace 18,000 tonnes full load. That is about the size of the planned U.S. destroyers of the Zumwalt (DDG 1000) class.
The Hyuga is classified as a helicopter-carrying destroyer (DDH 181) by the Japanese. She will carry an Aegis-type air defense system, with the U.S.-developed AN/SPY-1 multi-function radar; her principal “weapons” armament will be 64 advanced ESSM-type Sparrow missiles. She will also be fitted with two 20-mm Phalanx “Gatling” guns for close-in defense against anti-ship missiles, and she will have six tubes for anti-submarine torpedoes.
(EDITOR: Thanks to DT reader "Camp" for links to Hyuga pics...)
More significant from an aviation viewpoint, the Hyuga will normally operate three SH-60J Blackhawk-type anti-submarine helicopters and one MH-53E Super Stallion multi-purpose helicopter. Reportedly, the ship’s hangar can accommodate 11 of the smaller aircraft.
Ironically, the U.S. Navy briefly, and mostly at congressional insistence, looked at similar aircraft-carrying destroyer designs in the 1970s. Based on the U.S. Spruance (DD 963) design, such ships could have operated Harrier VSTOL aircraft as well as helicopters on a modified destroyer hull. (Congress voted funding for two such ships, but instead the Navy simply built another conventional destroyer.)
The Hyuga, the largest warship constructed in Japan since World War II, is considered by some observers to be the first step toward the development of a large aircraft carrier. Japan’s constitution, imposed by the United States after World War II, permits Japanese to have only “self-defense” forces. Many Japanese, recalling the effectiveness of Japanese aircraft carriers in China in the 1930s and against U.S. forces in the Pacific in the early stages of World War II, consider carriers to be offensive weapons.
Japan was a leader in carrier development in the 1930s and early 1940 with their short-lived carrier Shinano, which was converted during construction from a battleship. It was the world’s largest carrier to be built prior to the USS Forrestal (CVA 59), completed in 1955.
The overwhelming dependence of Japan on oil from the Middle East, with tankers having to transit long ocean distances, and the increasing Japanese political-economic involvement in the Middle East and Africa, has led many Japanese leaders to look at the utility of naval forces in a new light.
In this context, the innovative design of the Hyuga raises the question: What’s next?
We at DefenseTech recognize that the conflict in Iraq is, to say the least, a controversial subject for our readers and we're not endorsing the following view other than to say that it comes from a very reliable source and is at least a small window into the current situation from someone other than a Pentagon appointed spokesman.
No matter how skeptical you are on America’s struggle in Iraq, it’s at least worth a read to see an under-reported aspect of the ongoing “surge” and its effect on the insurgency (no matter who’s doing the shooting)...
I must apologize for the tardiness of my update. As you may know I have been kept pretty busy since my return from R&R. I was one of the early birds so now most of the team is on R&R along with some who are away on TDY; so the few of us back here have to cover down on multiple areas.
Over the past month we have seen and experienced a lot. As military professionals we are seeing the benefits of the President's surge, our tactical and operational progress over the month has been really impressive. Between U.S. ground forces and the Iraqi Security Forces (Army and National Police) we have been uncovering hundreds of insurgent (Al Qaeda and Jaish al Mahdi -- aka JAM) caches and detecting far more IEDs before they explode. Caches so far this year are over 3,800. I think that is triple last year's.
Al Qaeda has totally lost the support of Iraq's Sunni Arabs. The fanatics over-played their hand when they started murdering popular sheiks, kidnapping tribal women for forced marriages, and even tried outlawing smoking. The locals in Al Anbar Province are taking their communities back and going after the terrorists themselves. Attacks on Coalition Forces out in what once used to be the Wild Wild West are down dramatically; we used to see 50 to 60 attacks a day but now they're down to less than one a day. To the point that the Marine commander out west has asked for permission to lighten his soldiers' and Marines' load by having them only wear the flack jacket/vest without the side plates and upper arm Kevlar.
Up in Diyala the provincial capital is completely different than it was over a month ago. The soldiers of the two Brigade Combat Teams (1st CAV and 2nd ID) have secured the city. The insurgents are now wandering around the countryside -- easier to pick up with infrared/heat sensors on our UAVs and air weapons teams (attack helos). They try to plant IEDs at night thinking they are safe and sound, then out of nowhere they are taken out by a Hellfire missile and it's all caught on tape too. It's our own reality TV show call "IED Planters;" its a great show when one has night duty; dial in the UAV lead, cook some popcorn, grab a soda, sit back, relax and watch the fun -- all live!
The insurgents are still out there, but they are finding it harder and harder to find support. We are no longer playing "whack-a-mole." Since we have a larger number of troops over here we are now able to clear out the insurgents and then hold on to our gains; then turn it over to the Iraqi Security Forces, Army, National Police and local Police.
That is what we did in Baqubah (an Al Qaeda and JAM infested town). Once it was cleared we put a tank, Bradley or Striker on just about every corner and told the people to stay inside after dark. If they were out and about at night -- where they shouldn't be -- they were 'lit up.' The people appreciated it because the insurgent rats' nest was cleared out.
As if that is not enough to demonstrate that we are making serious inroads and a turn for the better, winning the counterinsurgency (COIN) war, we are taking out the insurgents' leaders faster than they can replace them. All over Iraq our Special Forces and Iraqi Special Operation Forces are taking out insurgent cell leaders in surgical strikes and raids (most effective), as are the conventional American and Iraqi units - killing or capturing ringleaders. How are we doing it? We're doing it the old fashion way, through human intelligence (HUMINT). The Iraqi people are turning them in to us and not allowing them any sanctuary -- they are denying them the ability to "swim through the sea of the people." (Mao's old Communist saying). And because our soldiers are out there interacting with the local populace. The people are not afraid to come up to our troops and tell them what is going on in their neighborhood. It's still bad out there, but it is definitely improving.
The first few weeks of July we saw a heavy increase in rocket and mortar attacks. They were up to their same old tricks of firing off a few rounds then scooting -- running off. They also fire from built up housing areas, next to schools and mosques too, because they know that we will not shoot counter battery fire against them for the sake of injuring innocent civilians and causing undue collateral damage. All the while they could care less.
They have been lucky at times and we have suffered some casualties.
Fortunately the Iraqi people are getting tired of them and turning on them. We had an Iraqi man show up at one of our local neighborhood security outposts saying that he knew where some 'terrorists' were planning to launch some rockets at the 'CF and IZ' (Coalition Forces and the International Zone). He volunteered to show our troops where they were located. He took a platoon of infantry over to a school yard where six Katyusha rockets were rigged and ready for firing. By the way, the insurgents were still there guarding the site resulting in a pretty good snatch. We tried to give the man reward money for turning the insurgents in, but he refused to take anything. He told our troops "it is my responsibility, you come here to free us and protect us; it is the least thing I can do." Incidentally, most of the rockets and mortar rounds that are being shot at us, or that we are capturing, are made in the good ole Peoples Republic of China. Déjà vu, remind you of another foreign insurgent war in Southeast Asia a few years back? This begs the Question -- Are the Chinese really our friends? They claim they don't sell arms and equipment to any country that passes them on.
Unfortunately we know they are coming in from Iran and Iran is also training insurgents in their country to use the rockets and mortars. One more reason Joe Lieberman is right on Iran. By the way, old 'Mookie' (Muqtada al-Sadr) has fled back to Iran with his tail between his legs (again) trailed by his senior cronies. Things are just getting too hot for them over here.
The Iraqi forces are increasingly carrying the fight to the insurgent militias. A National Police unit down in An Nasiriyah came under attack by Jaish al Mahdi (JAM) Army elements who are accustomed to moving about freely and intimidating the police. However, the NP unit there supported by a small U.S. advisory team fought off the insurgents. Instead of a cakewalk, the goons hit a wall and were in turn hammered with some heavy air strikes -- Specter (C130 Gunship) laid them to waste. The Iraqi police counter-attacked along with a couple of Iraqi Army battalions and cleared the town of insurgents.
Up north in Mosul, Iraqi Army and National Police units have been sticking it to the enemy through a series of tough combat engagements, and netting som e massive arms caches seized from the insurgents. In Kirkuk a gruesome car bomb went off in town and the Iraqi police reacted quickly and stopped several other car bombs on the outskirts of town from reaching their intended targets.
These recent successes are beginning to show gains on the military aspect of this war. Unfortunately all the military successes are offset by the inaction of the Iraqi Parliament. This is what the press and members of congress who want us out (now) focus on. Creating a stable, functioning and democratic government takes time. Less we forget, it took us eleven years before we had agreed upon and signed the Constitution of the United States. And we had a head start on freedom.
July was a great month for the Iraqi National Soccer team. They played a spectacular game against South Korea in the Semi-finals and defeated them in a penalty kick shoot out. That evening many Iraqis went out and celebrated. Many of the restaurants and shops were open in the market areas. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda terrorists set off two big car bombs near an area where the people were celebrating their team's victory. Everyone knew that it had to be a non-Iraqi insurgent. No Iraqi would conduct such a heinous act in a time of National pride. Fortunately the players were determined to give there best in the final game against none other than Saudi Arabia -- where some of the foreign fighters come from. I watched the final Asian Cup game with the Iraqi officers in their Operations Center and with the interpreters. The Iraqis played their hearts out and dominated the second half, running circles around the Saudis. It was not only clear that they were the better team; they wanted it more than the Saudis. I think winning the Asian Cup gave all Iraqis hope that one day they will all be united and live in peace.
Earlier in the month we lost two more IGFC soldiers to assassinations. One was an intelligence officer, Staff Colonel Jawad, who was one of the original group of officers when the IGFC was established back in 2005. He was killed on his way to work. COL Jawad was very well liked by both the officers and the enlisted. Our nickname for him was Mr. Happy. He spoke pretty good English and always greeted you with a genuine friendly smile and was always in a good mood. The other soldier was a medic with the support battalion, whom I did not know. The reality of their passing was a reminder of the brutality of insurgent warfare and that we all are targets of the insurgents.
This press release issued August 22 may not look like much, but it announces a new project that -- and I'll word this carefully to avoid drifting into hyperbole -- could forever change the world as we know it.
I'll explain: Gallium Nitride is a semiconductor material that can transform that cell phone in your pocket into a high powered microwave transmitter. It could render the iPhone about as sophisticated as my first digital wristwatch.
The only reason it's not in the mass market today is because manufacturing the material is so expensive that it would cost you as much to buy a cell phone as a new car (although, with the iPhone, clearly that gap is already narrowing).
But this press release announces that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is seeking to seed the development of a low-cost manufacturing technique that will soon make Gallium Nitride far more affordable to produce. Assuming the method works, this will certainly benefit electronics consumers like you and me, but also, not least, the US military.
Military electronics already operate in the highest bands of the spectrum, but are usually powered by very large travelling wave tubes to generate the necessary voltage. Cheaper Gallium Nitride chips are the military's ticket to the next wave of advances in radar, electronic warfare, communications and surveillance technology. It's also fair to wonder if perhaps Gallium Nitride is the key to finally making directed energy weapons as operationally feasible as bullets, bombs and missiles.
Those with long memories may recall this has all happened once before. In the mid-1980s, DARPA seeded the development of a new manufacturing technique to lower the cost of producing Gallium Arsenide semiconductors to replace silicon. The arrival of this material made it possible to pack a transmitter powerful enough to make cellular phones possible in the first place.
We have a story over at Military.com this morning about the much-touted (by its own government, though) Iranian “smart bomb” the mullahs vow to “use against our enemies when the time comes...”
Iran vowed Sunday to use a new 2,000-pound "smart" bomb against its enemies and unveiled mass production of the new weapon, state television reported.
The government first announced development of the long-range guided bomb Thursday, saying it could be deployed by the country's aging U.S.-made F-4 and F-5 fighter jets.
"We will use these (bombs) against our enemies when the time comes," Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said on state television Sunday.
Iran often announces new weapons for its arsenal, but the United States maintains that while the Islamic Republic has made some strides, many of these statements are exaggerations.
The broadcast included a brief clip of a fighter jet apparently dropping one of the bombs, which destroyed a target on the ground.
The defense minister continued his threats as state television showed him unveiling a mass production line for the weapon in Tehran.
"We will use this weapon where we want to ... hit enemy's strategic and defense targets," Najjar said. "This will be used against our enemies, against those who violate our land and air space..."
Ooooo...scare me. For some reason I don’t think the Pentagon is losing a lot of sleep over the specter of Iranian F-5 Tiger and F-4 Phantom fighters lumbering their way across the mountainous border into Iraq with these “smart bombs.”
My question is: why make this ridiculous claim? Probably for the consumption of the Gulf states which recently received tens of billions in Defense equipment from the U.S. But in the end, the PR blitz could backfire on Tehran, reminding critics why U.S. support is so important in the Gulf region.
Catherine writes, "When the Department of Homeland Security was formed from the merger of 22 government agencies in March 2003, many in Washington at the time, including me, worried it would become more of a bloated, slow-moving government blob than a fast-moving, finely-sharped terrorism-fighting machine. A 24-year old student at the California Institute of Technology has provided some startling evidence that DHS employees may be very bored at work.
"According to Virgil Griffith's Wikiscanner software, DHS is among the top 5 government agencies whose computers have been used to anonymously edit Wikipedia entries. Perhaps most disturbing though is that DHS employees are spending most of their Wiki time editing pages about television shows, movies and books (Is this why we still don't have the ability to scan shoes at the airport so people don't have to go barefoot?)
"Griffith says he wrote the software after reading that members of Congress have been editing their Wikipedia entries. DHS had 4,018 Wiki edits, placing the agency fourth among .gov addresses and behind NASA (6,846), the Department of Veteran's Affairs (4,210), and California state government (4,148).
"As much time as DHS employees are spending editing Wikipedia entries, their work is nothing compared to the folks at the Department of Defense, whose .mil account holders have been very busy on Wikipedia. The defense agency with the most edits originating from its .mil address is Army's Network Information Center, with 43,823 edits. The U.S. Air Forces comes in second with 21,478 edits, while the Naval Surface Warfare Center has 18, 591. The numbers drop dramatically from there with fourth and fifth place going to the Pentagon overall and the Office of the Secretary of Defense at 3,355 and 2,685 edits, respectively."
Of course, employees with private industry NEVER fart around on their computers at work. And it's also good to see the folks at DHS and DoD are concerned about inaccuracy wherever they find it. You can't pay for that kind of ethos.
The U.S. Special Operations Command was created in the wake of the the failed hostage rescue attempt in Iran in 1980, commonly known as "Desert One." Analysis after the fact revealed that the services were unable to effectively interact to fight low intesity conflicts.
Here's how Paulette Risher describes SOCOM in the 1st Quarter 2006 issue of JFQ:
"Established by Congress in 1987, USSOCOM was envisioned as a unified command with service-like responsibilities to oversee all Special Operations Forces. Designated responsibilities outlined in Title 10 of the United States Code included resource allocation and budget management, ostensibly to bolster special operations capabilities in such areas as joint doctrine and training, personnel management, and mission planning. The law also mandated that, should the President or Secretary of Defense direct, the commander of USSOCOM would exercise command of a selected special operations mission. Thus, although most of the command’s effort would support the other combatant commands, under certain circumstances it could become a supported command."
The GWOT has given SOCOM myriad opportunities to be the supported command. Special operators traditionally complained that regular forces were too "heavy handed" when dealing with the locals in a counter insurgency environment, but in the supported command role over the years has the distinction between special operations and the regular forces eroded? And further, has what made each service's special ops capability unique gone away in the face of counter insurgency warfare? Is mission tasking simply plug and play with little concern regarding the difference between, say, SEALs and Green Berets? Is there a difference? Does it matter anymore?
(Note: The DT staff is flying back from San Francisco, so we'll be post light for the balance of today. We'll hit it hard once we get through security and find an overhead bin for our carry-ons and finish fighting rush hour on the Beltway, etc., etc.)
-- Ward
MiG Combat Drone Revealed
MiG revealed a full-scale engineering mock-up of its unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) design August 23, nicknamed Skat (Skate). Work on the low-observable design began over two years ago, and MiG will produce a flight worthy prototype within 24-months.
The MiG program is one of two competing designs that will be presented to the Russian Defense Ministry as a strike UCAV. Sukhoi is also understood to be working on a UCAV.
MiG unveiled the program during the Moscow air show, though only a few journalists were taken off the show site to a MiG facility at the Gromov flight test research institute.
Skat has two internal weapons bays, capable of carrying air-to-surface missiles as large as the Kh-31 (AS-17 Krytpon). Possible roles include the suppression and attack of enemy air defenses.
MiG is working with a number of Russian companies and state institutes -- including the 2nd Central Scientific Research Institute -- on Skat. The institute is known to be closely involved in low-observable research and development...
The Navy has recently awarded a $6.8 million contract to Northrop Grumman to upgrade another three EA-6B Prowler electronic attack aircraft, with a $2 million option for a fourth. The firm has already upgraded 12 Prowlers with the Improved Capability III kits that provide a new crew workstation display and new radar threat detection receiver, among other hardware and software improvements.
These modifications are expected to extend the aircrafts’ usefulness to 2018. By that time the Navy will be flying the Prowler’s replacement, the Boeing/McDonnell Douglas EA-18G Growler, developed from the F/A-18F Super Hornet strike fighter. Significantly, the Marine Corps will continue to fly the EA-6B in the electronic attack role after the Navy has shifted completely to the EA-18G. Rather, the Marines appear to be waiting for an electronic attack variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), recently named the Lightning II.
Today the EA-6B is the only electronic attack aircraft flown by the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. Navy and Marine Prowler squadrons provide Electronic Warfare(EW) support for the Air Force, with Air Force crewmen flying in those aircraft alongside naval aviators.
(The Air Force is believed to be resurrecting a proposed standoff jammer/EW program centered on the venerable B-52 Stratofortress. The last specialized, electronic attack/countermeasures aircraft flown by the Air Force was the EF-111A Raven, which was phased out of service in May 1998. While their EW threat and countermeasures capabilities were similar, the EA-6B was a slower aircraft, but carried three systems operators compared to one in the EF-111A, and could launch anti-radar missiles, which the EF-111A could not.)
The EA-6B Prowler was derived from the Grumman A-6 Intruder all-weather attack aircraft, flown by the Navy and Marine Corps from 1963 to 1996. The specialized, enlarged EA-6B entered Navy-Marine Corps service in 1971. Although the attack and tanker (KA-6D) variants of the Intruder have long been retired, the services continue to operate, support, and upgrade the EA-6B variant, which is flown from all 11 Navy aircraft carriers as well as from land bases. (Marine EA-6Bs have periodically flown from carriers.)
While there could be an electric attack variant of the F-35 JSF, some military officers as well as aviation industry specialists predict that the next-generation electronic countermeasures/attack aircraft will be unmanned -- an EUAV unmanned aerial vehicle that could penetrate and attack enemy air defenses.
Fifty miles south of the Chinese border lies the rural town of Chongju. Like many North Korean towns, it is a small, impoverished place where people scratch a bare existence from government-controlled farms. What photographs exist of Chongju reveal a brown landscape of depleted-looking fields and shanty-style houses. It is hard to believe anything of value grows here.
But, according to intelligence reports, something precious to the North Korean regime may be under cultivation in Chongju. Beyond the shacks stands an installation suspected of being a component in North Korea's bioweapons (BW) research and development program. The effort is steeped in a level of secrecy possible only in a totalitarian state, but it is thought to encompass at least 20 facilities throughout the country. Another 12 plants churn out chemical weapons.
In late November, delegates of the signatory countries to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) met at the United Nations office in Geneva for the sixth review of the treaty since its inception in 1972. The meeting took place just weeks after North Korea publicly added the third prong to its capacity for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by testing a nuclear device.
(Note: You may have noticed we're posting more and more stuff from Popular Mechanics these days, which is because that magazine's great staff has agreed to let us feature their best defense-related content. Look for it here and at Military.com.)
Our friend Harold Hutchison posted another update to his F-35 coverage over at Strategy Page blog...We've cross posted here.
While the F-35 compares favorably to some of the latest European fighters, the natural question emerges: How does it fare against some of Russia's best, particularly the Su-27/30/33/35 and later versions of the MiG-29?
The Su-27 is roughly equivalent to the F-15. Like the F-15, it started out as an air-superiority fighter. However, as the years went on, it also proved to be very capable at ground attack. There have been very few combat tests of the Su-27 family to date. The only one known of is the Ethiopia/Eritrea conflict in 1999-2000, in which it scored at least five kills. The Su-27 family usually has ten weapons pylons, a 30-millimeter cannon, and a combat radius of 1,500 kilometers. The Su-30 is comparable to the F-15E, and has 12 weapons pylons. The Su-30 has been exported to a number of countries, including Venezuela, India, China, and Malaysia. It is arguably the best fighter that the Russians have been exporting, and one of the best in the world. Algeria is acquiring 28 of these planes.
The MiG-29 is a shorter-range fighter, with six weapons pylons, a 30-millimeter cannon, and a combat radius of 700 kilometers. Like the Su-27 family, it started as an air-superiority fighter/interceptor, but it also proved capable of carrying a lot of air-to-ground ordnance. The MiG-29 is flown by a number of countries, including Poland, Russia, India, North Korea, Cuba, and Iran.
What makes both of these planes interesting is their use of an infra-red tracking system. This is often used with the R-73/AA-11 air-to-air missile. The Archer has a range of 20-40 kilometers, depending on the version, and a 16-pound warhead. Another feature of the missile is the ability to work with a helmet-mounted sight (the missile goes for whatever the pilot is looking at). These are impressive systems, enabling a MiG-29 or Su-27 to get in a shot without having to use radar. Still, will they be enough to get a better chance against the F-35 in a fight?
The F-35 has one big advantage over these fighter families from Russia. Its visability, particularly with regards to its vulnerability to being picked up on radar, is very low. While the infra-red systems are an advantage, these fighters still need to be cued in via an airborne radar plane or a ground station, and they will still have trouble picking up the F-35.
The MiG-29 and Su-27, on the other hand, are much more visible on radar. In essence, the F-35 still retains the advantage it holds over the Eurofighter, Rafale, and Gripen: It will see its targets long before its targets see it. And that will enable it to get in the first shots. With missiles like the AMRAAM and AIM-9X, the F-35 will be very likely to kill its targets before they even know an F-35 is in the area. In essence, the F-35 will have the best Russian planes outperformed, and it gets worse when one realizes that the United States Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will combine for more F-35s than there are Flankers and Fulcrums in service.
From Defense Tech friend Bob Cox over at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Sky Talk blog...
(Photo: Sikorsky)
Vought Aircraft said it has delivered the first cabin for the Army's new generation UH-60M Blackhawk helicopter to Sikorsky Aircraft. The M-model, featuring souped up cockpit avionics, new engines and rotor blade design will be the Army's workhorse troop transport, utility and medical evacuation helicopter for the next 20 or 30 years.
The Army expects to buy some 1,200 of the M-model Blackhawk as it phases out its older A and L models. Sikorsky began Blackhawk production in 1978 with more than 3,000 of the aircraft in use worldwide.
Vought won a contract from Sikorsky and began production of Blackhawk cabins at its Dallas plant in 2005. To date the company has built 55 cabins, 39 Army L-models and 16 Navy S-models. More than 300 people work on the Blackhawk program at the west Dallas plant.
Vought would like to have the Blackhawk cabin work on a long term basis, but Sikorsky will re-bid the program later this year before going to a multi-year production contracts. Chief Executive Elmer Doty, seeking to improve Vought's financial performance, has been trying to negotiate more attractive contracts with its customers.
-- Bob Cox
Take a Look at the Army's New Sniper Rifle
By now it is well known that the U.S. Army established a need to standardize a sniper rifle in 7.62x51mm NATO caliber. This was necessary in order to field one such rifle for precision sniping and to replace the literal myriad of sniper rifles currently in the system. For the record, these sniper rifles include the venerable M14 semi-automatic rifle and the M24 Remington bolt action rifle, the Mk 11 and others, which have been purchased by individual SOCOM units.
In the wake of 9/11 and America's entry into the Global War On Terrorism (G-WOT), most of the remaining 40,000 M14 rifles in the U.S. military's inventory (mostly the U.S. Navy) have been taken out of storage in order to be re-built as precision semi-automatic rifles for sniping use. Many of these rifles that weren't destroyed during the Clinton Era were given to "friendly" countries and there has also begun a move to "buy" some of them back.
The M14's popularity as a sniper rifle dates back to its development as a National Match competition rifle during the 1960's, its evolution into the M21 Sniper Rifle used in the Vietnam War, and its evolution into the XM25 Sniper Rifle by the U.S. Army and Navy in the years that followed. Properly fitted, the M14 is capable of extremely good accuracy and is highly reliable, but it has had less than optimum results from being used with a sound suppressor. Still, the M14 has made the transition into a 21st Century Sniper Rifle as the DMR (Designated Marksman Rifle) by the United States Marine Corps and its more recent transformation by the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).
Being a highly modified Model 700 Remington bolt-action repeating rifle, the M24 is capable of great precision accuracy. However, lessons were relearned in Somalia and in target-rich environments encountered in the G-WOT that a self-loading rifle can be fired in succession 4 to 5 times faster than a bolt action rifle. Thus, the Army was determined to standardize a semi-automatic sniper rifle.
The third rifle mentioned is the Mk 11, a refined version of the SR- 25 (Stoner Rifle-25) rifle, which is made by Knight's Armament Company, of Titusville, Florida. Like the others, the Mk 11 is chambered for the 7.6x51mm NATO cartridge, but it contains modifications dictated by the U.S. Navy SEALS, which is a member of the SOCOM. However, using the Mk 11 identified issues that the Army found desirable in an AR10-style sniper rifle...
The CSAR-X debate is heating back up again, with two powerful Senators on the Armed Services Committee telling Pentagon chief Gates they would withhold funds from the new rescue helicopter program until the DoD’s investigation into the procurement process for the controversial aircraft is concluded.
Here’s an excerpt...
“...Complaints by Lockheed Martin Corporation and Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, validated in part by the Government Accountability Office, call into question whether the Air Force has used a capabilities-based approach for this acquisition that is traceable, repeatable and feasible.”
“...We intend to offer an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit expenditure of any funds for the CSAR-X program during fiscal year 2008 until the later of the 60 legislative days after DoD approves the Air Force decision or the DoD provides the congressional defense committees with written notice in accordance with established procedures.”
Read the entire letter obtained by Defense Tech HERE.
Additionally, the Project on Government Oversight’s top investigator on this case – Nick Schwellenbach - posted an interesting analysis on their site the other day...
This March, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told Lt. General John L. "Jack" Hudson in an email that "I would like to stay with our selection" of Boeing's HH-47 Chinook helicopter for the combat search and rescue helicopter replacement (CSAR-X), according to a protest filing by rival defense contractor Sikorsky.
Lt. General Hudson is in charge of selecting the company that receives the contract for the CSAR-X. Wynne's statement came after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained procurement protests by rivals Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin, and Congress began to scrutinize the CSAR-X program's selection of the Chinook last
November.
In February, the GAO ruled that the Air Force's evaluation of each proposal's costs was not made according to the evaluation criteria made in the contract solicitation. GAO recommended that the Air Force clarify its basis for evaluations and request revised proposals from the competing contractors. The Air Force released an amendment to its CSAR-X request for proposals in May, but has been met with additional protests by Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky for not
addressing the problems found by GAO. The March 3, 2007, email appears to affirm the view of some insiders that the Air Force's response to the GAO is simply a face-saving measure.
Sikorsky quoted Secretary Wynne's email in its July 2, 2007, protest of the Air Force's amended solicitation, which the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has obtained. Sikorsky obtained the email and other documents from the Air Force, which was responding to Sikorsky's legal actions, according to the protest filing. POGO does not have a copy of the email itself, so it is possible that necessary context has been left out. On its face, however, the partial quote does raise questions about the Air Force's commitment to a fair
and transparent evaluation.
Wynne's email seems consistent with his answers to reporters after his February 28, 2007, congressional testimony before the House Armed Services Committee that he would "like to stay with what we got [referring to the Boeing HH-47] and get this product going as soon as possible." He also stated that the Air Force is considering whether it can take corrective action "more narrowly" than what GAO had recommended, according to a Reuters article (Andrea Shalal-Esa, "US Air Force wants no long delay on new helicopter," February 28, 2007).
"Either the Air Force is serious about fairly and transparently re-evaluating a bungled competition, or they're wasting everyone's time," said POGO Defense Investigator Nick Schwellenbach, who had been investigating the CSAR-X program. "When coupled with the evaluation inconsistencies pointed out by Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin, this email seems to indicate the latter."
And pro-Lockheed/Sikorsky DT fans sent along a copy of a letter addressed to House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee chair John Murtha from former AFSOC bubba, Maj. Gen. Richard Comer, who says:
“I know a couple of the guys who were on the selection board for the CSAR-X and I have talked with them about their thought process. I believe they did their jobs honestly and with a great deal of conscientiousness. I also believe they talked themselves into what they think is the right decision. Still, I disagree, and I believe they got into a ‘group think’ situation and reached the wrong conclusion on what helicopter the Air Force should require…”
Read his post below, but stick around for some perspective from a Defense Tech reader who goes by “Ruger” and follows this issue closely. Ruger sent us his analysis of the exercise a few days before Norman’s post, and we thought it appropriate to include it now for conversation’s sake.
Norman first…
A historic military exercise with China and Russia as well as four other nations participating has come to an end. Known as “Peace Mission 2007,” the exercise was sponsored by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which consists of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
“Peace Mission 2007” began on August 9, and was conducted in Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and subsequently in Chelyabinsk. The emphasis of the maneuvers was to defeat an international terrorist organization that was attempting to overturn a friendly government. Some 4,000 troops and 80 aircraft from the participating nations took part in the exercise.
The historic exercise, which involved forces from all six SCO nations, was considered an important step in exchanges between those nations as well as enhancing the capabilities of their armed forces to counter terrorists and to promote regional security and stability.
The exercise was particularly significant for China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with the Chinese troops being transported to the operational area by rail and by air. It was the first time that PLA forces carried out a large-scale and long-distance movement. The rail distance, through Chinese and Russian territory, was some 6,400 miles wile the air distances was 1,700 miles.
China had 1,600 PLA troops participating in the exercise with fighter and bomber aviation units, airborne units, transport units, special purpose units, armored units, and Army aviation units taking part. The rail transportation effort for the PLA included more than 120 vehicles and 500 tons of munitions and equipment for the exercise.
Now Ruger’s follow…
Dubbed as Peace Mission 2007 and is developing into a counter-balance to the US, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has been responding to the geopolitical situation in Europe, Asia and the rest of the world. Former Soviet republic made repeated attempts to streamline integration by setting up different associations, but they were not destined to live for many reasons. Experts are unanimous that the SCO is a success. source: Moscow, Russia (RIA Novosti) Aug 16, 2007...
The Peace Mission 2007 is taking place in western Russia and is aimed at four key operations, according to PLA Senior Col. Lu Chuangang, chief of the command group of the Chinese exercise directorate.
These areas include long-distance mobility of forces by rail and aircraft, joint operations with six nations; precision engagement using high-technology attack capabilities; and long-distance integrated military support operations.
“This is the first time that the PLA conducts a large scale and long-distance transnational force delivery involving different branches of the armed forces in a systematic way,” Lu told Xinhua. “The one-way distance of railway transportation is 10,300 kilometers and air flight distance is about 2,700 kilometers.” source: Peoples Daily online July 31, 2007
So, success is measured by how long a train ride one takes (do the math)? It was reported that Azerbijan wouldn't allow the China troops to traverse its country.
The Chinese, Russians and the anti-US crowd are touting the SCO Peace Mission 2007 as a success. If you look at the measurement of success from the Chinese General (Col), it sounds (to me) like he is trying to polish a turd. They did not purposely try to exercise long distance logistics (Chinese troops were not permitted to travel through neighboring country, so they had to go around).
Secondly, the PLA Air force flew a third of the distance the PLA had to move its troops. Success in long distance logistics by western standards (which is really their standard now) would have been realized by moving the 5000+ PLA troops by air. Hence the phrase: “putting lipstick on pig.”
Alright folks, I honestly don’t follow this that closely, so what do you think – big deal, or no big deal?
-- Christian
The F-35 is Worth the Cash
Defense Tech friend and Strategy Page contributor Harold Hutchison sent this quick piece over to us on the Joint Strike Fighter. I’ll post it here as food for thought, and we look forward to Harold’s next post on aviation and other defense-related subjects.
My two cents on the issue is that I tend to agree with his thesis that the JSF is a good buy given its performance and stealth. What he does not address, however, is the likelihood the cost will climb even further if the program’s buy is reduced. Then the cost/performance ratio won’t be as compelling as Harold’s analysis today.
There's rumbling in both Congress and the Pentagon that the STOVL version may get dumped, the Navy won't buy in the numbers they'd previously thought, the Brits may bail...all these events are possible and could throw the value argument out the window. We'll see. But on the face of it, Harold's got a pretty good point. Read on...
Is the F-35 overhyped? That is one question that is being asked in light of both American refusal to release the source code for software, as well as the climbing price (up to $63 million per-plane). The real answer depends on what competing aircraft have to offer.
How does the F-35 compare in the air-to-air mission against likely competitors like the French Rafale, the Swedish Gripen, and the multi-national Eurofighter? All of European planes boast some of the best electronics suites that have ever provided for a combat aircraft. All are capable of high speed (over 2,000 kilometers an hour). All three aircraft carry excellent beyond-visual-range missiles (like the Mica, AMRAAM, and Meteor). All are highly maneuverable. But will they be better than the F-35 in a fight?
The answer, surprisingly, is probably not. The F-35 has one big advantage over these three fighters from Europe. Its radar signature, its vulnerability to being picked up on radar, is very low – as is the case with the F-117 and F-22. Given that its speed is pretty comparable to the European jets, and its AESA radar is at least as good as the European systems, this is a decisive advantage. The best weapons in the world are useless if they cannot see their targets.
The F-35 will be able to see the Rafale, Gripen, and Eurofighter long before it can be seen itself. The first rule of air combat may be "speed is life", but the second rule is "lose the sight, lose the fight". In the 21st century, sight includes radar. It is very likely that the only warning the F-35 may give of its presence will be when its radar has locked on to one of the European fighters. By that point, the F-35 is already close to launching its AMRAAMs.
The cost differential is not as big as one might think, either. The F-35 runs at $63 million (for the most expensive variant), but the Gripen is $50 million per plane, the Rafale runs about $65 million each, and the Typhoon is $58 million. That is not much difference in terms of cost.
In essence, the F-35's small additional cost gains a huge edge in a fight.
Ultimately, the F-35 does cost a little more than most of its European competition. That said, in a fight, an F-35 is probably a little better than the competition, largely due to its stealth technology. Even then, there will be far more F-35s than the combined total of the planned production runs of the Rafale, Typhoon, and Gripen. In essence, the F-35 is going to have a qualitative edge, and the quantitative edge.
-- Christian
The Sunday Paper (On-demand Radio Edition)
I met Bill Readdy back in 1990 when I was a Navy lieutenant on shore duty working as the editor of Approach, the Naval Safety Center's aviation safety magazine. I was working on a story about how NASA's culture had changed around matters of safety in the wake of the Challenger mishap.
Years later, it was "Reads" who first briefed the nation about another NASA tragedy, the Columbia mishap.
Now Endeavor's in the news because of damage to tiles on the bottom of the craft. At this writing NASA engineers have elected to "do no harm" and leave the tiles as is, and there's no reason to believe the shuttle is less than 100 percent ready to fly a safe profile back to earth.
But the coverage has NASA in the news and folks, like the staff at DT, are asking questions about the health of the shuttles and the space program at large.
I can think of no better guy to explain what's going on at NASA than Bill Readdy. And I can think of no better way to spend a Sunday than listening to the "Editor's Desk" interview with him here.
Getting weapons on target, at least getting a conventional weapon on target, has usually involved a delivery platform that includes an aircraft or a missile/rocket engine that is limited in speed, range, time of flight and/or payload and usually involves a somewhat lengthy planning process to execute the mission.
The Air Force (and the Navy in an unrelated program) are looking at speeding up that weapon delivery process by looking at a scramjet powered weapon that can achieve speeds up to Mach 6.5 or more than 4,000 miles per hour.
This sort of future capability could result in a significant change in the "time-critical strike" realm where a target of importance is identified and needs to be taken out in the shortest possible time. "Targets of opportunity" that intelligence assets find are becoming more and more prevalent in this 21st century battlespace, especially the ephemeral front that makes up the current war on terrorism
Having a capability to execute either a long range strike in minutes or to have this capability in theater rather than take the many hours it would take in the traditional strike-planning arena would be a change for the good. Further, having to maintain airborne strike platforms that many times include myriad support elements (tanking, airborne early warning, threats of enemy air defenses, etc) can be minimized with this ability to reach out and touch someone from afar in a relatively short time and adds a significant strike option to the Joint Force Commander's tool kit.
"Faster is always better in air power," says Brig. Gen. Jim Poss, the Air Force's director of intelligence for its Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va. "What we've found from combat experience is that people realize very quickly you have to move to survive on the modern battlefield. And the best way to counter that is to get there with the appropriate weapon in the appropriate size very quickly."
Somehow this doesn't surprise me, but for all the gnashing of teeth by the Army over the potential security threat of milblogs it turns out the real threat is official Army websites.
Defense Tech founder Noah Shachtman, who now runs the tres gouge Danger Room blog for Wired, is on the case as he has been since the beginning:
"For years, members of the military brass have been warning that soldiers' blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post far more potentially-harmful than blogs do.
"The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period."
On a recent trip to AM General's main research plant in Livonia, Mich., I found out that the manufacturer of the military's primary utility vehicle has begun research on an armor kit intended to protect troops against the most deadly roadside bomb threat in Iraq.
AM General, which makes the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle - more popularly known as the "Humvee" - is helping the Army develop a new "Frag Kit 6" armor package for some of its Iraq-bound vehicles to defeat specialized explosively formed projectile munitions that can pierce current Humvee armor.
The Frag Kit 6 is stronger than the recently-fielded Frag Kit 5, which was primarily designed to protect Humvee crews from roadside bombs that detonate under the vehicle or ones with force enough to split an armored troop carrier in two.
The move comes as the Army and Marine Corps work feverishly to field Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, manufacturers say are designed to withstand EFP bombs. The curved hulls, massive wheels and thick armor of MRAPs help deflect the molten metal projectile of an EFP that current Humvees can't withstand.
The Frag Kit 6 armor uses various metal combinations and spacing to absorb the ballistic impact of an EFP without penetrating the crew cabin. It will be placed over the armor plating of an M1151 Humvee, the most protective Humvee design fielded in combat.
But company officials admit the Army Research Lab-designed package isn't a perfect solution.
"It's a significant weight increase on the truck - about 1,000 pounds - and it adds about 12 inches each side of the truck of the entire width," said Larry Day, program executive with AM General Defense.
The doors are so heavy, troops may need a mechanical assist device to open and close them and drivers will likely require built-in visual references so they'll know if they can fit the vehicle in narrow spaces.
Though Day said there is no current order for a Frag Kit 6-configured Humvee, his company is hedging its bets in case the call comes for the newer armor.
"We have not been given the go-ahead to put them into production or even finalize the design," Day said. "But it's our responsibility integrate them onto our doors, so it would be better for us to do it."
AM General is planning to outfit about 3,000 M1151 Humvees with the Frag Kit 6 doors if the Army decides that's the way to go.
Despite continued armor upgrades to the venerable Humvee - which traces its developmental lineage to the early 1980s - company officials are scrambling to meet the evolving improvised explosive device threat in Iraq that always seems to be one step ahead of Humvee designs.
With the current popularity of the MRAP - which supporters claim boasts a record of no U.S. troops killed inside its heavily-armored cabin - AM General is holding to the idea that the Humvee will still play a major role in a post-Iraq U.S. military force.
The company is cranking out standard-armored Humvees in its South Bend, Ind., plant at a rate of about 80 per day, but has the capacity to ramp up that number significantly.
And AM General engineers are fine tuning a new Humvee design to bridge the gap between the current vehicle and any future Humvee replacement, such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.
The so-called "Evolutionary Concept Vehicle II" looks similar to the Humvee, but features a hydraulic suspension that can raise and lower the truck, pulling it further away from an IED blast and allowing the 83-inch high vehicle to fit in the same spaces as the 76-inch tall Humvee.
The ECV II's increased height helps provide a roomier crew cabin - without making the vehicle any wider - and it will sport a more powerful engine and configurable armor for specific missions.
"We've got a truck that subjectively, when you've got it loaded, feels faster than the current Humvee loaded, but it's 33 percent heavier," said John Smreker, AM General's executive director for engineering.
"This was sort of the result of a whole bunch of different little programs we had over the last five or six years and we kind of [brought] together all the things that we learned," he added.
AM General plans to deliver ECV II test vehicles to the Army in November, with a target date for a full-scale production contract in 2009.
It’s dangerous work searching vehicles at a TCP, or traffic control point, in Iraq. Any one of those pickups, taxi cabs or dump trucks passing through could hide thousands of pounds of explosives and a sweat-soaked suicide bomber itching for a run at some heavenly virgins.
Forcing the occupants to exit the vehicle, searching under every seat and in every nook and cranny can be extremely hazardous to your health, to say the least. But one tool the troops are using in the sandbox is helping keep the danger at bay in busy checkpoints.
Backscatter x-ray machines have proven vital in the battle against VBIDs. But the panel truck-sized vehicles are large, conspicuous, meaty targets for insurgent RPGs. So American Science and Engineering, Inc. passed along a release to Defense Tech that could offer a much more elegant solution to the backscatter capability needed in austere environments abroad.
AS&E writes:
American Science and Engineering's ZBV Military Trailer(TM) is a rugged X-ray screening system built onto a standard military trailer. With one-sided, Backscatter imaging, security officials can use ZBV Mil Trailer for screening vehicles, containers, and other cargo for terrorist threats and contraband — simply by towing the trailer past the subjects, or by remaining stationary while vehicles drive past the trailer. The ZBV Mil Trailer employs AS&E's patented Z® Backscatter(TM) technology, which produces photo-like images of the contents of a container or vehicle, highlighting organic materials such as explosives. Development of the ZBV Military Trailer was supported by a November 2006 R&D contract for $2.2 Million to deliver a ruggedized ZBV for the U.S. Government. The ZBV Mil Trailer is ideal for screening vehicles for car and truck bombs.
ZBV Mil Trailer also includes Forwardscatter technology to complement Z Backscatter imaging. Forwardscatter presents a second scatter perspective that displays dense objects in cargo, such as the shielding found around nuclear WMD. With ZBV Mil Trailer in stationary scan mode, Forwardscatter detectors are positioned opposite the X-ray source in the trailer. The Forwardscatter image is displayed simultaneously with the Z Backscatter image, providing the operator with more information on the contents of a scanned vehicle.
I know from my experience in Ramadi that these trucks are a lifesaver. But they’re expensive, obtrusive and only optimized for high flow areas...there was only one of them for the entire capital city of al Anbar. With this sleeker solution, troops might be able to position this capability at many more checkpoints, leaving insurgent bombers few avenues to deliver their vehicle borne devastation.
Got a great morning post item for DT fans sent to us by an alert reader yesterday. Unfortunately, other items nudged themselves in front of this one, but we thought we’d better get it out sooner rather than later.
I know there are a lot of Iraq war skeptics reading this, but if ever there was more solid proof that those who criticize Iraq war coverage by the world’s mainstream press just might have a point, I don’t know how better to distill it than with this picture...
It’s an Agence France Press photo taken by Wissam al-Okaili whose caption reads:
An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.
Uh, huh...these bullets “hit her house” during the raid. Our readers can certainly understand how that couldn’t have been possible.
So why didn’t an editor catch this obvious error? We’ll let DT readers reach their own conclusions on that one. Obviously some of the reporters, photogs and their editors either need to go to “war coverage school” or have their own ideas on how to portray conflict to the rest of us.
(Gouge to DT reader JH)
UPDATE: From DT reader "Wembly"...
PS The Getty site now shows:
CORRECTS BULLETS TO UNSPENT An elderly Iraqi woman holds up two unspent bullets at her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, 14 August 2007. US and Iraqi troops carried out massive assaults against Shiite militants, killing four in Baghdad's volatile slum of Sadr City, and arresting several more across Iraq, the military said today. AFP PHOTO / WISSAM AL-OKAILI (Photo credit should read WISSAM AL-OKAILI/AFP/Getty Images)
Editor: Thanks for the new gouge, Wembley...
-- Christian
Chinese Missiles Could Target U.S. Sats
At 5:28 PM EST on Jan. 11, 2007, a satellite arced over southern China. It was small -- just 6 ft. long -- a tiny object in the heavens, steadily bleeping its location to ground stations below, just as it had every day for the past seven years. And then it was gone, transformed into a cloud of debris hurtling at nearly 16,000 mph along the main thoroughfare used by orbiting spacecraft.
It was not the start of the world's first war in space, but it could have been. It was just a test: The satellite was a defunct Chinese weather spacecraft. And the country that destroyed it was China. According to reports, a mobile launcher at the Songlin test facility near Xichang, in Sichuan province, lofted a multistage solid-fuel missile topped with a kinetic kill vehicle. Traveling nearly 18,000 mph, the kill vehicle intercepted the sat and -- boom -- obliterated it. "It was almost just a dead-reckoning flight with little control over the intercept path," says Phillip S. Clark, an independent British authority who has written widely on the Chinese and Russian space programs.
For China, a nation that has already sent humans into space and developed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the technology involved in the test was hardly remarkable. But as a demonstration of a rising military posture, it was a surprisingly aggressive act, especially since China has long pushed for an international treaty banning space weapons.
Read the full story from Popular Mechanics posted HERE on Military.com...
Another excellent dispatch from DT friend, Bob Cox, who's a top contributor to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's new Sky Talk blog and a veteran aerospace reporter for them...
Pentagon weapons testers are not overly impressed with the Army's new light utility helicopter, the UH-72A Lakota, which is very similar to the Eurocopter EC-145.
In a recently issued report, the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation said that while the new helicopters can probably serve fine as the equivalent of a small pickup truck they're not well suited to tougher tasks, such as carrying two critically injured patients - one of the Army's requirements.
The UH-72A is intended primarily for use by the National Guard and stateside Army units as a utility aircraft, meaning carrying four or five people from point A to Point B. It's purpose is to allow the Army to keep its larger, more powerful Blackhawks for use by combat units. The report does indicate the Lakota is an improvement over the aging UH-1H Hueys and OH-58A/C Kiowa models the guard now has.
But the helicopter failed to meet key mission requirements specified by the Army, including having enough room to carry two critically ill patients with an attending medic. It also cannot lift the required weights, internally or externally, at high altitudes and hot weather. And the cabin air conditioning, which is different than that of the commercial EC-145, cannot keep temperatures low enough. The aircraft manual specifies a condition where the avionics may shut down after just 30-minutes if operated at too high a temperature.
Produced by Eurocopter/EADS, the UH-72A was selected by the Army a year ago after a competition involving four aircraft that also included entries from MD Helicopters, Bell Helicopter and AgustaWestland. American Eurocopter, the U.S. arm of the French-German consortium, is gearing up to build more than 300 of the new aircraft at a plant in Mississippi.
A World War II mine was discovered and destroyed in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol as the U.S. destroyer Forest Sherman was entering the Ukrainian port. The incident occurred on August 9 as the Sherman -- an Aegis missile destroyer -- called at Sevastopol to conduct drills with the Ukrainian Navy.
The destroyer was about 500 yards from the floating mine when it was discovered. The mine was secured to prevent it from drifting into a ship and subsequently was detonated without causing any damage. The mine was estimated to weigh about 1,100 pounds and to contain up to 110 pounds of high explosives.
A half-century ago a similar (albeit larger) weapon sank a Soviet battleship in the worst disaster to befall the Red Navy. The dreadnought was the former Italian Conte di Cavour, which had been transferred to the Soviet Navy in 1949 as part of the division of Axis warships after World War II. Renamed Novorossysk, the battleship -- flagship of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet -- was anchored at Sevastopol. Early on October 29, 1955, the ship was wracked by a massive explosion, apparently caused by a World War II-era German mine.
Although moored only 1,000 feet from the shore, and with numerous other naval units nearby, the ship began to slowly sink to the shallow bottom. But the ship began to rotate and rolled over completely. The capsizing caused the death of 608 officers and enlisted men.
Subsequently 19 German-type mines were found in the general area where the ship had sunk although the area had been swept earlier. But some Soviet officials believed that the explosion was caused by Italian frogmen, who sank the ship to avenge her transfer to the Soviet Union. Others believed it was an internal explosion -- an act of sabotage.
The large loss of life was blamed on the incompetence of the ship’s commanding officer, the fleet commander, and others for their failure to take appropriate action to beach the ship. And, the loss of the Novorossysk caused the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy, Admiral Nikolai G. Kuznetsov to be fired in November 1955. His first deputy, Admiral Serge G. Gorshkov, was appointed to succeed him. Gorshkov would serve as head of the Soviet Navy for 29 years.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials state that the destroyer Sherman was never in danger from the mine.
Once again NASA is dealing with shuttle damage caused by a chunk of foam. And, as a result, once again we're pondering the state of America's space program.
The cool website How Things Work reminds us what was done in the wake of the Columbia disaster a few years ago:
One hundred and seven cameras (Infrared, High Speed Digital Video, HDTV, 35 mm, 16 mm) have been placed on and around the launch pad to film the shuttle during liftoff.
Ten sites within 40 miles of the launch pad have been equipped with cameras to film the shuttle during ascent.
On days of heavier cloud cover when ground cameras will be obscured, two WB-57 aircraft will film the shuttle from high altitude as it ascends.
Three radar tracking facilities (one with C-band and two with Doppler radar) will monitor the shuttle to detect debris.
New digital video cameras have been installed on the ET to monitor the underside of the orbiter and relay the data to the ground through antennae installed in the ET.
Cameras have been installed on the SRB noses to monitor the ET.
The shuttle crew has new handheld digital cameras to photograph the ET after separation. The images will be downloaded to laptops on the orbiter and then transmitted to the ground.
A digital spacewalk camera will be used for astronauts to inspect the orbiter while in orbit.
Finally, engineers and technicians have installed 66 tiny accelerometers and 22 temperature sensors in the leading edge of both wings on the orbiter. The devices will detect the impact of any debris hitting the orbiter's wings.
So, as proved during each of the missions subsequent to Columbia, engineers are going to see what falls off during ascent. What then? According to "How Stuff Works," options include applying pre-ceramic polymers to small cracks or using small mechanical plugs made of carbon-silicone carbides to repair damage up to 6 inches in diameter.
In this case, according to AP, views reveal that "the first foam fragment came off at 24 seconds after liftoff and appeared to hit the tip of the body flap. The second was 58 seconds after liftoff with a resulting spray or discoloration on the right wing. The third came almost three minutes after liftoff, too late to cause any damage to the right wing."
As an aviator its hard for me to imagine flying a craft I knew had a high likelihood of shedding parts after every launch, but I guess that's why astronauts are still considered a breed apart (diaper jokes notwithstanding). I have faith in folks like my friend and former squadronmate "Grace" Kelly (the pilot on the current mission) but at the same time I wonder if it isn't time to move past this 26-year-old platform.
More details surrounding the current situation at Military.com.
-- Ward
Sniping Security Cameras
A C-H-A-O-S.com entry with the following disclaimer caught our eye (and not necessarily because of the grammar):
If you keep reading you'll be agreeing not to use the knowledge you may gain to any unlawfull (sic) behavior but for educational usage only.
The project tries to solve the conundrums surrounding "how to remotely disable security cameras nondestructively from quite a distance."
The author frames his motivation thusly:
"A lot of my inspiration comes from movies and for quite some time I have become more and more annoyed by Hollywoods sometimes rather silly solutions for an agent to shut down security cameras in order to remain undetected: E.g. blowing up the nearby power-plant or rigging up gadgets in sewers, where they can be detected by renovation workers and the sorts. If you blow something up or otherwise break it, your counterpart will immediately know it is sabotage and rule out a simple technical malfunction.
"Another thing that got me to write this article is the abundant usage of surveillance cameras everywhere which makes me want to burst the bubble about security of surveillance cameras by exposing their weakness."
And here's a summary of how he'd use a scope, a laser, and a cellphone to blind surveillance cameras:
"I had some serious thoughts about how to trigger the laser on and off. First, I thought I’d use an old wrist watch as a timer, but ended up discarding that idea . . . It just didn’t feel right and if the 'agent' had to shut down several security cameras, he would not only have to synchronize all the watches and set them up to turn the lasers on at the exact right time at once, but also turn them off after the job. My second idea was to remotely trigger the laser by radio or walkie-talkie. This would give the “agent” the possibility of e.g. pressing the call button on the walkie which would send out a beep to activate the lasers needed.
"The problem with this solution is that by using a standard walkie, everybody else could activate the lasers accidently if they where using the same channel (keep in mind that almost all baby-alarms use the standard walkie-talkie frequency). So unless I were to use pro walkie with encryption, I’d have to modify my plans a bit.
In the search for a transmitter/receiver solution that both had range and some sort of signal coding, it hit me: cellphones. But how well will this actually work?
"Well, after I build this, I had to try it out on an old security camera . . . Then I had some friends sending it a test-SMS and finally I had someone I knew across the Atlantic do it as well . . . No problem there, either. It worked like a charm."
So if you use this "knowledge" and it doesn't work? All part of his plan:
"In case you’ve missed the huge warning sign I’ve put up or choose to disregard it and are thinking about using the knowledge you’ve just gained to be messing with something you shouldn’t . . . Think about this: Maybe I left some minor, but crucial details out so assholes won’t be messing with something they shouldn’t be messing with . . . without getting their asses busted. So don’t!!!"
The diesel-electric hybrid hype has met its match: the U.S. Army. After focusing on hydrogen fuel cells in its original version of “The Aggressor,” a high-performance, off-road Alternative Mobility Vehicle (AMV) for military ground exploration and scouting missions, the Pentagon is now going the way of Detroit -- with batteries.
The new, second-generation prototype will still utilize the same basic chassis and exterior design for light-duty capacity. But the Army’s auto research arm -- part of the Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) -- has developed a battery-dominant, hybrid-electric drivetrain with a diesel engine-generator. That could make the new Aggressor the first hybrid to hit the streets of Baghdad en masse.
(Note: You may have noticed we're posting more and more stuff from Popular Mechanics these days, which is because that magazine's great staff has agreed to let us feature their best defense-related content. Look for it here and at Military.com.)
-- Ward
A Day in the Life of the X-47
Northrop Grumman – builder of the X-47B Navy unmanned combat air system demonstrator – delivered an interesting brief in Washington, D.C., last week on what a typical mission would look like for one of its flying-wing design robot airplanes.
Company officials working on the project are realistic about naval aviators' enthusiasm when they consider sharing their carrier decks with an unmanned drone. That’s why the Navy’s putting money toward the UCAS-D program. They want to make sure the system can integrate seamlessly into the current naval flight environment with no major changes to naval operations with manned aircraft.
No one doubts this is a tall order. But over the years many of the most difficult aspects of carrier aviation have been tested with unmanned systems, including carrier landings and take-offs and integrating drones into the pattern for approaches and traps. In fact, Northrop Grumman engineers tested a business jet equipped with a drone brain out of Patuxent River Naval Air Station in December where they simulated a carrier approach and integrated into a virtual pattern of other landing aircraft.
Here is how an X-47B mission would go:
A deck handler (also known as a "yellow shirt" in carrier parlance) will use a wrist-mounted display and a hand-held joy stick to maneuver the drone from the hangar bay elevator into position on the flight deck. The plane’s jet engine, of course, powers it on the deck, but the deck handler’s controller adjusts throttle position and braking.
When it's time to gas up, fuel will be pumped into the drone through an inlet hidden within the landing gear housing and up to six small diameter bombs can be loaded into each recessed bomb bay using the same winching system featured on the F-35 Lightening II.
The yellow shirt's job is over once the drone is maneuvered into the catapult shuttle. Hook up to the catapult and shuttle is the same as any other aircraft. All hand signals stay the same as well.
“One of the goals we had is we couldn’t change any of the procedures on the flight deck. Our plane had to look like every other plane on the flight deck and act the same way,” said Northrop Grumman UCAV program official, retired Rear Adm. Tim Beard.
The catapult shot is like that of any other manned aircraft. Company officials noted that F/A-18s fire off the ship autonomously anyway (pilots keep there hands off the stick during cat shots), so the initial launch isn’t a huge technological or cultural stretch. Once airborne the drone will fly a pre-loaded profile, but the profile can be updated as the mission progresses.
The X-47B will complete its mission and be directed by its operator to take its place in the stack of returning manned – and unmanned – aircraft approaching the carrier. This is perhaps the most difficult part of the developmental test regimen for engineers and Navy officials. But Northrop Grumman program managers are confident there won’t be any huge surprises.
At about 200 nautical miles from the ship, the drone communicates its position and is relayed automatic routing information by the control station aboard the carrier. Similar data can be transmitted to the manned aircraft so each plane can take its place in the landing order.
“In effect, each pilot is getting signals of airspeed, heading and altitude to bring him or her [or it] down to the ship,” Beard explained. “Theoretically, with all-digital cockpits and the architecture we’ve got in the airplanes, everyone can couple up and be fully automated from 50 nautical miles in.”
At three quarters of a mile, the LSO near the fantail and the Air Boss in the tower have to decide whether the drone will be allowed to come aboard - just as they make that decision with manned jets. The LSO will have a switch at his station that will send a signal to the flight control computer below decks, then out to the UAV that says to the plane “you’re allowed to come aboard.”
“At the same time, if the Air Boss sees something go wrong on the flight deck he’s got a button that he can hit and the airplane will take a wave off,” Beard said. The LSO has a similar switch as well.
“It’s exactly the same thing we do with manned airplanes at sea,” Beard said.
At about 50 feet from the ship, a precision GPS system that triangulates data down to a couple of inches from the landing wire figures position data between a GPS receiver on the drone, one on the ship and the inertial navigation system.
The UCAS-D will be tested to Case I, III and III landing standards. But even in the worst weather imaginable, the X-47B drone won’t give humans heartburn, Beard said.
As soon as the wheels of the drone hit the deck, the plane powers up for a touch-and-go in case of a miss, just like manned aircraft. At a programmed deceleration of the trap wire, the drone initiates “trap logic” that pulls the power to idle, returns control of the aircraft from the mission operator below to the yellow shirt who uses his controller to taxi the robot plane to a parked position.
No matter how smooth the process looks on paper, and no matter how many times this scenario has been tested on computer simulators or other aircraft, Northrop Grumman officials acknowledge they have a big job ahead of them and a lot of minds to change in the process.
“We’re talking about a real leap in confidence,” Beard admitted. “But it’s a process of education.”
You'd think we would've heard about this before now . . .
(Love that little gasp at the beginning.)
(Gouge: CM)
-- Ward
MV-22 Will Cruise, Not Fly, to War
Our friend Bob Cox sent us his latest jibe at the MV-22 Osprey.
Editor's note: From my standpoint I think Bob's criticism is unfair. I understand that the Marine Corps sold the Osprey as "self-deployable."
But keep in mind the plane is intended to replace the CH-46 Sea Knight - which cannot self-deploy at all. The Corps doesn't fly its much more powerful CH-53E Super Stallions to the war zone either, even though technically they are self-deployable due to their in-flight refueling capability. So why is it such a big deal that the Osprey isn't?
Also, there's nothing untoward in the Corps' desire to deploy the Osprey aboard an amphib for its first stint in the operational forces. If I were a maintainer, air boss or deck handler, I'd sure want to take all that at-sea time to work out the kinks that are bound to crop up with a flight deck - and hangar deck - filled with aircraft.
But Bob's been covering this program for a long time as well, so we at DT think it's important to present all sides in this important debate. One thing I think we can all agree on, however, is that we wish the VMM-263 Thunder Chickens the best of luck and a safe deployment next month.
One of the key selling points of the V-22 Osprey, one that is repeated over and over by the Marines and the Bell Helicopter-Boeing contractor team, is that the aircraft can self deploy to combat. In other words, fly high and long distances to get from one base to a combat zone - say from the U.S. to Iraq - where it can there be put into tactical use on the battlefields.
Well, for their first combat deployment with the V-22 to Iraq next month the Marines will be going by ship, Navy Times is reporting.
“It’ll save wear and tear on the airplane,” Lt. Col. Curtis Hill said. “This will also allow time to do shipboard integration operations. That will help us down the road as we look to integrate them with the [Marine expeditionary units].”
All along the Marines have viewed the V-22 as a dual role aircraft, able to operate from ships or land. But the self deployment capability is highlighted over and over and as a true revolutionary breakthrough, at least when compared to slower moving, lower flying helicopters.
Of course, the reliability record of the V-22 is such that the Marines probably don't want to take a chance on seeing several of the aircraft have to divert to landing spots along the way for repairs. The V-22s much ballyhooed trip to England last year for the Farnborough Air Show got even more attention when one plane diverted to Iceland due to engine troubles, later described as minor, and the return trip to the U.S. was delayed for other repairs.
-- Christian
FOR SALE: Russian Cargo Jets
The Russian Air Force is preparing to sell off its entire fleet of giant An-124 heavy cargo aircraft. Given the NATO-U.S. code name “Condor,” the Antonov An-124 aircraft is slightly larger than the U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy transports. There are 21 of the An-124s available for commercial sale.
The An-124-100M-150 model is capable of transporting single or multiple items of cargo weighing up to 150 metric tons (330,000 pounds) including such outsize items as construction vehicles and missiles. The An-124, for example, is the only aircraft that can carry the Boeing 777's new GE90 engines.
The civil An-124-100 was certified in 1992, and meets all civil standards including ICAO Stage/Chapter III noise limits and modern navigational equipment requirements. From a commercial viewpoint, the efficiency of the An-124 can be seen by its ability to carry roughly twice the cargo of a U.S. C-17 Globemaster at a significantly lower operating cost per aircraft. The An-124 has more than 14 years experience of intensive, global commercial operations.
The major problem with Russian commercial aircraft in the past has been the poor after-sales support in comparison with Western manufacturers. The Antonov organization is developing a support capability similar to those of Western aviation firms and an Antonov support facility was recently opened in Leipzig, Germany.
Aviation industry sources indicate that Russian Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov has offered four An-124s for sale in the near-term, with the remainder to follow before the end of 2007.
The Russian Air Force ceased flying its 21 An-124s in December 2005 and the aircraft have been grounded since that time. Currently, NATO leases six other Russian and Ukrainian An-124-100 cargo aircraft under an arrangement known as the Strategic Airlift Interim Solution (SALIS).
In the future NATO will use C-17 cargo aircraft to help relieve its severe airlift shortage.
All the ten-pound brains have made their way to Anaheim, Calif., for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency technical symposium this week to sling the latest in gadgetry and gizmos – both fanciful and practical.
While DT has concentrated this week on the here and now (or at least the almost here and now), there’s a band of diligent journos pouring over the latest wares that would make even Buck Rogers grin.
Daniel Engber of Slate writes -- If some devices seem impossibly advanced, others come off as weirdly passé. The RPGNets system is designed to protect light tactical vehicles from rocket-powered grenades. Hanging from the ceiling is a giant net with a grenade tangled in the weave like a sockeye salmon. According to the display, this advanced research program aims to "leverage net technology" against enemy weapons by manipulating the size of the mesh and the diameter of the lines. Do we really need DARPA to invest in high-tech nets?...
…Meanwhile, research seems to have progressed on the brain-controlled prostheses that were introduced (in concept, at least) two years ago. At one display area, a pair of armless volunteers and a young veteran missing his right hand demonstrate some fancy new models. We don't yet have bionic arms that hook up directly to the cortex, but one machine uses electrical signals from the muscle tissue remaining in a patient's stump to drive a mechanical hand: After extended training, the veteran could open and close his metal grip by imagining the movements. Another makes use of a foot-operated control mechanism hidden in a normal-looking shoe…
And Popular Mechanics chimes in… One of the first announcements at this year's three-day DARPATech conference is going to be hard to top: the first portable, self-contained surgical robot will be deployed in the next two years. Brett Giroir, director of the research agency's Defense Sciences Office also announced that the system, called Trauma Pod, has successfully "treated" a mannequin during a test, with no complications.
A single human will operate the robot remotely during surgery, but Trauma Pod will be able to perform a number of functions, such as fluid administration and surgical assistance, autonomously. The goal is to stabilize injured soldiers as quickly as possible, and previous Trauma Pod designs have included related systems that evacuate the patient. Giroir said that a prototype will be delivered to troops within two years. The exhibit hall opens in another few hours, so check back for more Trauma Pod details and updated images.
-- Christian
The $265 Million Misunderstanding
DT friend Bob Cox of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's new Sky Talk blog sent this little item in to us today.
All we can say is "ugh"...
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. says it discovered that it has overcharged the U.S. government by $265 million for work on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and will promptly refund the money with interest.
In a statement released this morning the Fort Worth-based company said it had recently discovered "an inadvertent billing error." Actually, it appears to be the same error over and over. The company had erroneously billed the government in each of the 11 billing periods since the F-35 program launched in late 2001.
Lockheed said the error came in the way it processed invoices from the two major subcontractors, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems, but that the error was not the fault of those two companies.
Lockheed said it is in discussions with the U.S. government to determine the appropriate amount of interest that should be paid and will repay the entire amount within a few days. The company said the matter should not have a material impact on Lockheed Martin Corp. financial condition or its performance.
When most bombs go off, they release a spray of deadly shards of steel. Now, imagine that those shards were themselves explosive, detonating in a massive chain reaction. It's for real: Defense contractors are harnessing the strange alchemy of reactive materials (RMs) — in which two or more inert materials are mixed to create an explosion — to develop smaller, more lethal warheads, as well as new ways to protect troops against mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades.
RMs generally consist of powdered metals, such as aluminum or titanium, combined with an oxidizing agent. Whether that agent is another powdered metal or a nonmetallic compound, such as Teflon, contact alone isn't enough to trigger an explosion. A powerful impact, however, will chemically mix the materials, igniting them and leading to a massive shock wave.
"A big challenge is making [RMs] strong enough to survive launch, but fragile enough to react on impact," says Judah Goldwasser, program manager at the Office of Naval Research, which is developing RMs for potential use in antimissile systems...
Click HERE to read the full article from Popular Mechanics now available on Military.com.
A New Look at FCS
Our friends over at the Center for Defense Information have provided DT with an interesting primer on the Army’s Future Combat Systems program.
Contributor Winslow Wheeler explains:
The Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is central to the U.S. Army’s vision of its “transformation” in response to perceived challenges in the post-Cold War world.
Since beginning in 2000, the program has encountered large cost increases, schedule delays and difficulties in developing the systems’ new and complex technologies. Some have challenged the fundamental concept of the FCS as an example of the failed, so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs.”
CDI Research Associate Ana Marte and Research Assistant Elise Szabo provide an overview of the FCS program and links to many additional sources.
(Photo from Boeing)
-- Christian
Army Eyes Helo-Drone
The Army is considering sending a revolutionary new kind of unmanned aerial vehicle to Iraq that can hover at 20,000 feet over the battlefield for more than eight hours, transmitting infrared and optical imagery to commanders on the ground.
The MQ-8B Fire Scout tactical unmanned aerial vehicle system - which only a few years ago seemed all but dead - is one system Army Vice-Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody requested this summer as a possible answer to an urgent battlefield need for unmanned surveillance in Iraq.
Officials with Fire Scout manufacturer Northrop Grumman told Military.com the Army could make a decision on whether to field the vertical take-off and landing drone by the end of August.
If all goes according to plan, the company could field as many as eight MQ-8Bs to units in Iraq by mid-2008.
"We want to get the Army to fly the Fire Scout as early as possible," said Rick Ludwig, Northrop Grumman's director of business development for UAV systems.
The Army is interested in technology like the Fire Scout - which is based on the manned Schweizer 333 helicopter - for its Future Combat Systems Class IV UAV, one of the few drone systems to survive major Army budget cuts in next year's Defense appropriations request.
While the Navy is forging ahead on a ship-board version of the Fire Scout, the Army has yet to decide on some of the critical hardware and software configurations for the FCS version, Ludwig said.
The Fire Scout was originally intended to replace the Marine Corps RQ-2A Pioneer surveillance drone but was shelved in 2002 in favor of the RQ-7B Shadow.
The Navy breathed new life into the Fire Scout program in 2004 to augment its fleet of SH-60 Sea Hawks on future surface ships. The Army began looking at the MQ-8 in 2003 for its FCS drone fleet.
According to Joe Emerson, Northrop Grumman's FCS drone program manager, the Army wants its FCS-capable Fire Scout to have aerial mine detection capability and tactical signals intelligence hardware.
An Iraq deployment in the near term, however, would include infrared sensors and electro-optical cameras to give commanders a birds-eye view of the battlefield. The main sticking point for the Army version remains which flight control system the service wants to use for the drone, Ludwig added.
"They still have to decide what they want in it," he said.
The Navy is on track to field the Fire Scout in the anti-mine, anti-sub and intelligence gathering configurations in 2009 aboard Littoral Combat Ships, Ludwig said. Northrop Grumman is also working on ways to arm the drone with anti-ship munitions, including a variation of the brilliant anti-armor munition, which can orbit autonomously in search of a target after launch.
-- Christian
Helping Pilots Avoid the Ground
Aviators have a saying: "You can only tie the record for low flight."
Well, the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command is installing a system in its jets that is designed to keep future pilots from tying the record. Press Zoom reports that the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System is a software-based technology that has demonstrated a 98 percent effectiveness rate at eliminating aircraft crashes into the ground. The system is ready for operational integration on F-16 Fighting Flacons, F-22 Raptors and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.
Auto-GCAS differs from other crash-avoidance systems in that it doesn’t create nuisance warnings and activates only at the last instant to take control and recover the aircraft when it determines collision is imminent. The determination is made when the aircraft is within 1.5 seconds of the "point of no return" and no action has been taken by the pilot.
“Manual or warning-only systems don't prevent many of our ( controlled flight into terrain ) mishaps," said Col. “Tex” Wilkins, senior Air Force readiness analyst with the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. "That's because situations like pilot spatial disorientation, target fixation, loss of situation awareness, or G-induced loss of consciousness may render a pilot unable to process the warning and/or perform the necessary maneuvers to prevent a collision with the ground. Current programs rely on a pilot’s ability to manually respond to its warnings. Auto-GCAS, however, is specifically designed to prevent a collision in situations where a pilot cannot.”
Defense Department experts estimate that without Auto-GCAS more than 130 fighter aircraft will inadvertantly fly into the ground over the next 25 years. Wilkins said the Auto G-CAS program could virtually eliminate “controlled flight into terrain” as a mishap category.
“That preserves a lot of combat capability and will obviously make a huge difference in the department,” Wilkins said. “We’re pleased the technology to curb this trend and save pilot lives is ready to go.”
The British government has signed contracts for the construction of two large aircraft carriers -- the largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy. Given the designation CVF (for aircraft carrier-future) during their development, the new carriers will displace some 65,000 (metric) tons full load compared to approximately 100,000 (long) tons for the Nimitz class nuclear powered carriers.
The aircraft carriers will enable the Royal Navy to remain a major political-military force despite the recent reductions in the Navy’s ships, aircraft, and submarines.
The two British ships, to be named Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, are scheduled for completion in 2014 and 2016, respectively. The ships will operate conventional aircraft, which will make arrested landings and will launch with a ski-ramp (rather than catapults, as in U.S. carriers).
The carriers will replace three small, “Harrier carriers” of the Invincible class, ships displacing 19,500 tons full load that were completed in the early 1980s. Those ships could only operate Harrier-type Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing (VSTOL) aircraft and helicopters. Despite her small size and being able to only operate VSTOL aircraft, the Invincible and the slightly larger VSTOL carrier Hermes were key players in the British victory against Argentina in the Falklands in 1982. (The Hermes has since been transferred to the Indian Navy.)
The British carriers are expected to operate the U.S.-developed F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) as well as helicopters. The CVF design is unusual in having a “split” starboard-side island structure with two starboard, deck-edge elevators connecting the hangar and flight decks. The design provides for supporting 500 aircraft sorties over five days, consuming perhaps 800 metric tons of ordnance.
The ships will have gas turbine engines with electric motors providing a maximum speed of 25 knots (compared to 30+ knots for U.S. nuclear carriers). The manning goal for the carriers is some 600 plus up to 800 in embarked squadrons and command staff, i.e., a total of about 1,400 men and women.
The French Navy is planning to build a variant of CVF. That ship has a scheduled completion goal of 2015 when the one existing French carrier, the nuclear-propelled Charles de Gaulle, is scheduled for a refueling and major overhaul. It is unlikely that the French can meet that completion date.
Standing before the ominous-looking scale mockup of Northrop Grumman’s X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System, the Navy’s top science and technology official proclaimed the service’s commitment to unmanned air vehicles and their application for future naval combat.
Sort of.
Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Dolores Etter was decidedly cool in her support the UCAS, describing in a very legalistic way as a “demonstration” and “prototype” program and an “important” one ... among many, that is.
Northrop Grumman beat out the competition from Boeing last week to build a UCAS demonstrator that will help the Navy figure out how such a combat drone could integrate itself into the carrier air wing.
“There are lots of questions we have to answer as to how this system is going to be able to do the carrier operations,” Etter said.
This has got to be a blow to hard-core UCAV advocates who make a compelling argument that Navy UCAVs need to be integrated onto the CAG yesterday. The Navy’s UCAS program manager, Rear Adm. Tim Heely, outlined the profiles the X-47B is scheduled to fly, including “approaching a carrier, landing on a carrier, taking off on the carrier, multiple approaches – I think it’s around 40 or 30 – approaches and integrating in the air above the carrier and on the carrier. Very critical parts of naval aviation.”
Heely did say aerial refueling will be nixed from the test program, however. But Northrop officials argue that part of testing won’t be tough to surmount.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments argued last month the Navy is dragging its feet on UCAS for cultural reasons – human aviators don’t want to share the decks with their robot counterparts. And perhaps Etter’s leukwarm embrace of the drone standing behind her was an indication of that.
CSBA argued X-47B-like drones would give the Navy nearly unlimited persistence over a target and would allow carrier to launch strikes so far from their target that a ship could send a sortie of drones to North Korea, for example, as it is leaving port in Pearl Harbor.
But the Navy’s top UAV official argued in a private interview with Defense Tech that drones such as the X-47B and the MQ-8B Fire Scout could overcome the cultural impediments by take boring jobs such as communications relay and aerial ship inspection missions away from human pilots so that flesh-an-bone aviators can concentrate on more important ones like strike and anti-ship missions.
Clearly, however, yesterday’s address at the AUVSI flight demo with three white-uniform clad Naval officers and their civilian boss standing before this robotic giant demonstrated the beginnings of a major shift in warfare … and in naval aviation culture.
Just a historical reminder: The atomic bomb named "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, at 8:15 in the morning of August 6, 1945 - 62 years ago yesterday.
We're working on our UAV entries, folks, but I wanted to pass this along to those who follow the body armor debate like I do.
An alert DT reader passed along this release from the Department of Justice stating categorically that Murray Neal over sold his Dragon Skin SOV 2000 Level III armor as NIJ certified.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ANNOUNCES FINDINGS ON DRAGON SKIN BODY ARMOR
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP) announced today that it has determined that the Pinnacle Armor, Inc. bulletproof vest model SOV 2000.1/MIL3AF01, is not in compliance with the requirements of OJP's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) voluntary compliance testing program for bullet-resistant body armor. Effective immediately, this body armor model will be removed from the NIJ list of bullet-resistant body armor models that satisfy its requirements. Pinnacle Armor, Inc. is the maker of "dragon skin" body armor.
NIJ, OJP's research, development, and evaluation component, has reviewed evidence provided by the body armor manufacturer and has determined that the evidence is insufficient to demonstrate that the body armor model will maintain its ballistic performance over its six-year declared warranty period.
During a conversation with Defense Tech at NAVAIR's Drone-a-palooza today, Capt. Paul Morgan, the program manager for Navy and Marine Corps Unmanned Aerial Systems at NAVAIR, outlined some of the lessons learned from the Iraq war that are affecting how the UAV world is moving forward.
Morgan was obviously concerned about classification issues when the discussion turned toward special operations use of UAVs but he did allow that, for the most part, the snake eaters are happy with what they can do with a UAV at their disposal. Imagine, as a SEAL, knowing where all a hostile ship's gun emplacements are and how many men are on deck as you haul ass across Gulf waters in a RHIB. Or imagine, as a Green Beret, knowing exactly where every insurgent is around the next blind corner as you attempt to work your way through urban areas in a surgical fashion.
The warfighters have been pounding out a steady drumbeat for increasingly capable UAVs in Iraq, and Morgan claims the acquisition machine has responded. "For instance, Shadow went from 'go' decision to fielding in just seven months," he said.
And while everybody likes new and improved stuff, Morgan pointed out the first key to success has been for emerging UAV systems to integrate using as few components as possible. "Less equipment is better," he said. "Nobody's interested in carrying a lot of extra gear around Iraq."
Morgan used the Raven system as an example. Not only did improved batteries provide greater endurance, making the platform more viable in theater, a common infrastructure between the Army and Marine Corps simplified the supply chain once they got there, making life a lot easier for those charged with keeping the drones airworthy.
Talking to the principals on both the goverment and industry sides of the UAV world, one just might get the sense that the Navy's drone program is no longer the grab bag of disjointed efforts without a central vision that it was a few years ago.
"We do have a plan," said Radm. Tim Heely, PEO(W). And referring to the myriad systems that industry has offered up in recent years he added, "We just had to round up the critters and get them in the barn first."
Coming up from Drone-a-palooza: UCAS-D around the carrier and breaking news about a possible Fire Scout deployment in the not-too-distant future.
We’ll post all the latest in unmanned aerial vehicles and associated technologies as soon as we can. Please check in periodically for updates. In the meantime excuse our tardiness on posts – there’s certain to be a lot for us to share with DT readers.
Don't touch that dial . . .
-- Christian and Ward
The Sunday Paper (Editorial Page)
The last few days the MSM has made a big deal of the Yearly Kos convention in Chicago. In case you missed it, the Yearly Kos is a get-together of liberal bloggers who are fans of the Daily Kos, an influencial liberal blog. And this year's convention has been highlighted by the appearance of the Democratic presidential candidates and a rift between Candidate Clinton and Candidate Obama. (He said she should stop taking lobbyists' money and she said she wasn't going to (stop taking lobbyists' money). Clinton also did some deft pandering telling the audience that she does read blogs. Oh, yeah? We're calling your bluff. Prove you're really a blog reader by leaving a comment on this post, Hillary . . . er, Senator, m'am.)
But never mind that. What really cracks me up is the way the MSM, always in search of a hook that'll make sense to an audience they assume is brain dead, has decided that conservatives own the talk show message (TV and radio) and liberals own the online message.
As a political moderate I ask, "Who said so?" Further I would suggest the evidence points to a balance of views, especially in the blogosphere . . . especially in the milblogosphere. Of course, the MSM gives most if not all of the love to liberal outlets like the Daily Kos and Huffington Post, so if all you did was watch TV you'd think the liberals did, in fact, own the web . . . but they don't. And I don't write that because I'm a big Fox News watcher or Dittohead (I'm neither); I write that because it's true. (I reference the absence of a Hillary Clinton comment beneath this post as evidence of this truth.)
Which is a lovely segue into a question of who owns the notion of truth in media. I just watched the movie "Shattered Glass," which is about the career of the fabulist Stephen Glass at The New Republic, an organization that has always made a big deal out of their fact checking process. Well, as anyone who's ever worked in government knows, a process doesn't guarantee an outcome, and The New Republic proved that again recently with their by-in-large bogus features by fabulist Scott Thomas Beauchamp, private - one each.
Any MSM dismissal of blogs because of their inherent absence of editorial oversight misses the point. Well-read blogs do have an oversight process: the "comments" feature. We prove it daily here at Defense Tech. The staff has learned (the good ol' fashioned "hard way") that even the most casual sub-truth or pseudo-falsehood will be savaged by our readership. As the dialectic goes high order, the truth emerges . . . every time.
And that's really what freaks the MSM out. Blogs are not an "I talk, you listen" proposition. They're a discussion . . . one where readers opinions matter as much as writers to the degree that the roles are often indistinguishable.
Is this a problem? We at DT think not. Flame on, dear friends; flame on.
And here's hoping that bloggers DO influence the 2008 presidential elections.
The Sunday Paper (Front Page Above the Fold Edition)
House Approves $460B Pentagon Budget
(AP) WASHINGTON - The House approved modest changes to President Bush's record Pentagon budget proposal early Sunday, but Democrats signaled plans to resume a more contentious debate over the Iraq war after the August recess.
The House's $459.6 billion version of the defense budget, approved on a 395-13 vote, would add money for equipment for the National Guard and Reserve, provide for 12,000 additional Soldiers and Marines, and increase spending for defense health care and military housing.
The adjourned until after Labor Day minutes after the vote a little over an hour past midnight.
The White House criticized Democrats for cutting Bush's request and effectively transfering $3.5 billion of the money to domestic spending programs. It is likely the cuts will be restored this fall when Congress passes another wartime supplemental spending bill.
The administration has not threatened to veto the measure.
The measure does not include Bush's 2008 funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats say they want to consider that money in separate legislation in September. This approach would set the stage for a major clash over the war; Democrats are likely to try to impose conditions on the money.
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a point man on military matters for Democrats, told reporters this past week that he backs only short-term extensions of war spending.
The massive military measure represents a nearly $40 billion increase over current levels. The Pentagon would get another several-billion-dollar budget increase through a companion measure covering military base construction and a recent round of base closures.
The defense legislation largely endorses Bush's plans for major weapons systems such as the next generation Joint Strike Fighter and the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, which has been beset by cost overruns.
The Democratic military budget would provide $8.5 billion for missile defense, about 4 percent less than requested by Bush but $1 billion more than current spending.
The Army's Future Combat System, a computerized system designed to transform the service's warfighting abilities, would absorb an 11 percent cut from Bush's request. It, too, has been plagued by cost overruns.
Those huge procurement costs are driving the Pentagon budget ever upward. Once war costs are added in, the total defense budget will be significantly higher than during the typical Cold War year, even after adjusting for inflation.
The measure would eliminate the $468 million requested to procure the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter, whose per-unit cost has more than doubled. The helicopter recently crashed during test flights.
The bill would provide $2.2 billion to cover a 3.5 percent pay raise for service members. The administration objects and says its recommended 3 percent pay increase is sufficient.
The bill would boost substantially the money spent to oversee military contractors, including $24 million for the inspector general.
The measure provides money to build five ships - with a total cost of $3.7 billion - in addition to the seven requested by the Pentagon.
Murtha had prepared amendments to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and require troops be fully trained and equipped before going to fight in Iraq. But facing the prospects of losing votes and inflaming partisan tensions, he withdrew them.
The bill contains a provision barring the establishment of permanent bases in Iraq.
The Soldiers slip around the edge of the wall, stacking up against a rusty metal door blocking access to the compound. With a heavy punch of a boot, the entry is ripped from its hinges and the Soldiers pour into the hard-packed dirt yard in a flow of lethal green.
After a look around, the insurgent they were sent to nab isn't there.
Time to look in another house.
In the past, resetting the squad, briefing them on the next target, moving in an orderly and safe fashion to the new house and conducting another search would have taken precious minutes a wary enemy could use to slip away for good. But with new technology doled out to a specialized Army unit deployed to Iraq since April, the Soldiers cut that nearly in half.
A program that many see as struggling on life support, Land Warrior has for the first time proven its worth in combat. Though Soldiers still criticize the system's clunky components and groan at the added weight of batteries and other electronics, the Land Warrior suite fielded in Iraq is nevertheless helping Soldiers on the ground execute their mission more effectively.
"First I thought that's a lot of equipment, that's a lot of weight," said Sgt. 1st Class Ruben Romero, a Land Warrior program official who deployed to Iraq previously without the system and is now helping Soldiers use it in combat.
"But as I got introduced to Land Warrior and started using it, I thought: 'Man, I could have used this my first time.' "
Funding for Land Warrior was zeroed out by the Army in its fiscal 2008 budget submission this year, but money for the Iraq deployment comes from funds allocated in 2007.
Program officials are quick to point out the fielding of the current components of Land Warrior in Iraq is not an "experiment," they are continuously adding capability to the system based on advice from Soldiers in the field and technological advancements.
Army officials delivered over 200 Land Warrior systems to Soldiers of the Fort Lewis, Wash.-based 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division's 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team back in 2006 to train with the system in preparation for their deployment to the hotly-contested provinces north of Baghdad. The components are divided into two basic categories, one for mounted Stryker Soldiers and one for dismounted infantrymen.
The dismounted system consists of a small, helmet-mounted display that can be flipped down in front of the Soldier's eye or removed from view like a night vision optic. Attached to the display is a lightweight computer housed in a pouch worn on the Soldier's back that can store map data, GPS location information and position details on the rest of the team and their targets.
All of that information can be displayed on the helmet-mounted screen, and Soldiers can toggle through different features using a mouse-like device attached to the front of their body armor vest.
"When these guys go outside the wire ... you'd be hard pressed to find a paper map anywhere," said Lt. Col. Brian Cummings, Land Warrior product manager who's overseeing its employment in Iraq. "Their leaders can tactically know where they are in relation to the mission and where the Soldiers are at any given time."
There's also an encrypted radio that can transmit voice and a limited amount of data, such as email and text messages, to other members of the unit or to commanders back at the forward operating base.
Unlike previous versions of the Land Warrior system that envisioned a hard-shelled "turtle back" containing all the electronics and mission computers, the system fielded to Iraq units can be tailored for each mission. If a Soldier will be riding in a Stryker, for example, he can plug into the vehicle's onboard systems and leave his computer back in the hooch.
The dismounted system also includes a video optical weapons sight that can display target information on the helmet-mounted screen, allowing Soldiers to lift their weapons above a compound's wall and see what's behind without exposing themselves.
"Yes it's another piece of equipment added to your weapon system that makes it heavier," Romero explained. "But being able to use it to peek around corners rather than poking my head around the corner ... I feel more comfortable now."
Program officials have recently added the capability to display video taken by battlefield robots searching for improvised explosive devices on the helmet-mounted display and are working on the potential to transmit video obtained from the weapon sight back to base for instant evaluation.
Though the future of Land Warrior is still in fiscal limbo, the system has so far turned doubtful Joes into unwavering proponents.
"This is something that we should build more of and make improvements on and get it to every Stryker unit in the Army," Cummings said.
This month's National Defense magazine reports that the Army has quietly introduced a rifle-toting robot into the Iraq war. So far three of the Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System (SWORDS) have been deployed. (Wouldn't that acronym actually be SWORRDAS? And how long did some major at the systems command spend working that one up?)
The SWORDS is armed with a M249 rifle and is remotely controlled by a soldier through a terminal. There are no reports of the SWORDS being used in actual combat yet, however.
The 80 robots approved under an urgent materiel release are being held up "due to limited funding in fiscal years 2006-2007," said Lt. Col. William Wiggins, a spokesman for the office of the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology.
“While SWORDS is currently not a program of record, the Army has initiated a memorandum of agreement between ARDEC and Robotic System-Joint Project Office to expedite establishing a funded program to meet Army needs," Wiggins said in a written statement.
The lead story at Military.com this morning adds a bit of clarity to why the Pentagon ordered mothballed Tomcats to be crushed into little bits: They were covering their asses.
A GAO report issued yesterday states that roughly 1,400 parts that could be used to fix F-14s were sold in February. These sales happened after the Pentagon announced it had suspended sales of all parts that could be used on the Tomcat while it reviewed the security situation.
According to the article "the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service, the Pentagon's surplus sales division, told investigators the parts were sold because it failed to update an automated control list and remove the aircraft parts before they were listed on its Internet sales site.
"A Democratic senator said the investigation shows why legislation he proposed that would ban the sale of all F-14 parts is needed.
"'The Pentagon's system is still riddled with holes,' Sen. Ron Wyden said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. 'These are the very parts that they said they wouldn't be selling, and they still are, and so you've got to make sure the changes are going to actually have teeth and work.'"
Sen. Wyden also added that his legislation recognizes "that the Pentagon has bumbled to the point where they can't make the distinction" between sensitive and innocuous surplus.
So, again, the crushing of Tomcats was in essence a grand closing of the barn door after the livestock had escaped. As the GAO report circulated around the Pentagon (weeks before you and I knew it was coming out) the powers that be knew they had to do some damage control to keep other pesky lawmakers like Wyden from making a big deal of their fumble. Okay . . . now it makes sense.
Of course, as members of the savvy DT audience have pointed out before and as anyone who's every worked around Tomcats knows firsthand, it'll take more than a few Black Market items to keep the ridiculously old Iranian Tomcat fleet airborne. Remember these are first-gen airplanes . . . like 158XXX bureau numbers. Can you imagine their maintenance man hour per flight hour stat? Good friggin' luck keeping those puppies FMC.
I say we slip 'em just enough parts to keep the maintainers pulling their hair out while the aviators twiddle their thumbs in the ready room.
Government investigators say roughly 1400 parts that could be used on F-14 'Tomcat' fighter jets were sold to the public in February, a move that could jeopardize national security because Iran is seeking such components. (August 1)
There are reports of a pending sale of large numbers of advanced Russian fighters and tanker aircraft to Iran. The arms deal between the Rosoboronexport arms group and the Iranian government is said to provide for the sale of 250 Su-30MKM Flanker multi-role “fighters” and 20 Il-78MKI Midas aerial tankers. If these numbers are correct, this would be the largest Russian arms deal in about three decades, amounting to several tens of billions of dollars.
The Su-30 is now flown by the air forces of China, India, Malaysia, Russia, and Vietnam. In February 2004, U.S. Air Force pilots flying the F-15C Eagle fought against Indian pilots in an exercise with several types of fighter aircraft participating, including the Su-30. The U.S. pilots lost the exercise, named "Cope India." However, the U.S. pilots did fight against odds of 3:1 and the F-15s did not use their AN/APG-63(V)2 electronically scanned array radars nor did they simulate using the AIM-120 AMRAAM missile. Still, the effectiveness of the Indian Su-30s did surprise many American observers.
As Western military officers plot the potential strike ranges for Su-30s based in Iran, they note that the aircraft could reach targets throughout the Middle East, including Israel. In-flight refueling, of course, would permit heavier weapons loads as well as greater ranges.
The web site MilitaryPeriscope.com shows that the Iranian Air Force currently flies about 285 fighter and attack aircraft:
The Su-30 acquisition would probably lead to the United States selling more advanced fighter-type aircraft as well as air defense systems to its allies in the region, especially Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.
UPDATE: A DT reader responds to the assertion that the SU-30s beat the F-15...
I [DELETED] hunted this winter with an air force guy attending the Naval War College and they considered it more like a "sponge exercise". They purposely handicaped the F-15 guys from Alaska. They picked up all sorts of information about that plane (Su-30), particulary, the radar. The 1, in the 3:1, occurred in the later half of the exercise in which the F-15 guys modified their tactics using older technology to defeat the Su-30. So while, they like winning all the time [They did come out the real winners: Tactics, capablities, and new buddies "the IAF"], they really only lost in press release. In fact, they were just as impressed with the Mig-21 upgrades and the application of that aircraft in combat scenarios. ... or so they told them.
(Editor)
Our homies (that's right, we're street-wise) at NAVAIR just forwarded us this press release:
NAVAIR Patuxent River, MD -- The Department of Navy announced today that Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., Integrated Systems – Western Region, San Diego, Calif., has been selected to provide the Navy Unmanned Combat Air Systems Technical Demonstration.
This $635.8 Million Cost Plus Incentive Fee contract will launch a technical effort to demonstrate the aircraft carrier suitability of an autonomous low-observable unmanned air vehicle, as well as demonstrate critical aircraft carrier suitability technologies in a relevant environment.
“Today’s announcement is a significant milestone towards understanding and mastering autonomous and low-observable flight in the maritime environment,” said Dr. Delores Etter, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. “The determined effort, long hours and hard work by both the Government team and our industry partner will build on the knowledge gained in previous joint unmanned combat system efforts and help us launch follow-on developmental efforts in the future.”
Specifically, the effort, which is scheduled to conclude in 2013, will involve shipboard operation, including catapult takeoffs, arrested landings and flight in the immediate vicinity of an aircraft carrier. The air vehicle will not carry weapons.
“This specific contract is for technology development and demonstration and will not be an operational system” explained Navy Capt. Rich Brasel, program manager for NAVAIR’s technology demonstration effort here. “But through it, we will develop knowledge, skills and technologies specific to operating an autonomous low-observable unmanned air vehicle in an aircraft carrier environment. This is a critical step in efforts to develop future Naval Aviation combat capabilities.”
Specific products of the effort, referred to as “UCAS-D,” are expected to include flight test data, test reports, trade studies, simulation, and detailed engineering analyses to enable future developmental efforts, according to Brasel.
The contractor-provided system will be comprised of two unmanned, low-observable air vehicles, two mission control segments, and a support segment. The system will be capable of autonomous launch, recovery and operations in the Carrier Control Area.
Flight testing is scheduled to begin in late 2009 and culminate with carrier flight operations in 2013.
This morning DoD attempted some damage control on the Saudi arms deal by releasing an Armed Forces Press Service article that suggests the most recent agreement is nothing more than regional business as usual.
Here's an excerpt from the article: "Saudi Arabia, the biggest buyer in this recent arms package, has been a close ally of the United States for decades, a senior defense official said on background. (Ward note: I love it when officials speak "on background" when talking to government scribes.) 'They have been in important partner in the war on terror. They have been especially effective in going after al Qaeda,' he said.
"That's not to say, he emphasized, that the Saudis or anyone else in the region is 'doing all the things we would like them to do' and can't contribute more toward regional stability.
"'But they are doing some things that are very important to us,' he said. 'And I think that, plus the long-term relationship and the key role Saudi Arabia plays in all these other issues ... are a manifestation of why the kind of long-term relationship represented by the arms deal is important.'"
Of course, the justification of "regional stability" is the ethical high ground of foreign military sales. On a more utilitarian level are the elements of commerce . . . commerce that affects the leviathan that is the American defense industry.
Across the Potomac from the official halls of power is Rosslyn, a grouping of high-rises perched above the Capitol like hawks in a tree bordering a farmer's field. On these high-rises are names like "Boeing" and "Northrup Grumman." And inside the buildings are the offices of those whose employment hinges on whether or not they are able to seal the deal for their employer. Often the deal involves FMS.
The efforts of the defense industry are muted if not stymied by the "do-gooders" at the Department of Defense who care about things like "technology transfer" to nations less friendly than, say, Saudi Arabia. Nations like . . . Japan.
That's right. We recently told Japan that we won't sell them F-22s . . . at least not right now. Why? Because, as Aviation Week reported recently, "Japanese leaks several months ago of secret data about the Aegis naval anti-aircraft and anti-missile system. A Japanese naval officer married to a Chinese woman was found in March with a computer disk containing the data about Aegis, another extremely sensitive system."
And is Lockheed-Martin, the company that manufactures the F-22, happy about the decision? No. Why? Because they are trying like hell to get the unit cost of the Raptor down below $200-plus million and to do that they need to make a lot more of them.
So what is Japan's response to this dissing: They are going to produce their own "stealth technology demonstrator." (Now we've gone and done it. Remember what they did when we refused to sell them tube radios and Ford Torinos?)
Then there's the Joint Strike Fighter, an airplane with it's future firmly staked in FMS. Eight foreign countries have placed orders for the next-gen aircraft, which makes it a tough proposition for Congress to mess with when the budget comes around (although they have messed with it in the past).
And while everything seems koom-buy-yaa between the partner nations at places like the Paris Air Show, there exists a tension below the surface: Foreign buyers ask themselves, "How does my JSF differ from the American JSF?" It is well known that FMS versions of the F-4, F-14 (Iran), F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 were never as advanced as their U.S. counterparts.
But foreign nations have never been as involved in the development of an aircraft as they are with JSF - a fact that at once relieves and heightens the tension between parties. Foreign countries fear that their visibility into the program is at some level an illusion. They know there's no way the Pentagon is going to allow American companies to give away the farm.
Meanwhile the Black Market poises itself for action . . . but we'll save that for another post.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments issued an updated analysis recently of the classified projects budget for fiscal 2008.
Comprising about 18 percent of the DoD’s acquisition budget, the $31.9 billion will continue programs with names like “Link Plumeria” and “Black Light” – and others which have no name.
Aviation Week reports the programs include...
...a growing ability to invade sensors, create false targets, take over networks, plant misleading information and mine computer data, even from manned or unmanned aircraft flying close to the emitter of interest. A new generation of stealth—that will be invulnerable to low- as well as high-frequency radar—is being developed.
A lot of money has gone into technologies to find, disarm, jam or preempt the construction, planting and detonation of improvised explosive devices. High-power microwave devices are being designed to disable electronics, erase or scramble computer memories, or shut down electrical activity in road vehicles, aircraft in flight or satellites in orbit.
CSBA said the budget line for classified programs has more than doubled since 1995, increasing by 112 percent while unclassified acquisition in the Pentagon fiscal year budget has increased 77 percent.
The record for classified acquisition programs has been mixed. Some successful and effective weapon systems were developed and even produced as black programs. These include the F-117 stealth fighter and the B-2 stealth bomber.
On the other hand, some classified programs have had troubled histories. Restrictions placed on access to classified funding have meant that DoD and Congress typically exercise less oversight over classified programs than unclassified ones. This lower level of scrutiny, coupled with the compartmentalization of information generally associated with classified efforts has contributed to performance problems and cost growth in a number of programs, such as the Navy’s ill-fated A-12 attack aircraft program.
Still, a UAV that plants a virus in an enemy computer? I’m all for it.
The Air Force (and the Navy in an unrelated program) are looking at speeding up that weapon delivery process by looking at a 
