Category: Military

In the Annals of the Unsurprising…

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The 10 month long Pentagon study shows that the overwhelming majority of those serving in the military have no problem with repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:

“We are convinced the U.S. military can make this change, even during this time of war,” the Defense Department report concludes, noting that 70% of the tens of thousands of military personnel and family members surveyed predicted there would be “positive, mixed or no effect” from allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly.

This won’t stop Republicans from blocking a repeal though, because pandering to a small, but vocal, minority of bigots is how they play.

About Damn Time!

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The Commercial, but the music is better than average

When I was working at BAE Systems on the FCS-RMV, one of the systems that we needed to place on our vehicle was the so-called “Active Protection System” (APS), Raytheon’s “Quick Kill, a hit-to-kill interceptor intended to neutralize RPGs, ATGWs, and long rod KE penetrators.

One of the problems with this system, at least as if fed down to us doing the design, was that it never worked properly, which was surprising, considering that the Israelis had a system, Trophy, which worked, and was far less expensive than the APS.

Of course, because of the need for generals to find lucrative consulting gigs in retirement, Trophy was fought tooth and nail by the army, with their refusing to test the system on Strykers in Iraq.

Well, what goes around comes around, and with Raytheon basically dead, the US army will finally try out the system on a Stryker:

Next month a Stryker combat vehicle will arrive in the US equipped for testing the Israeli’s Trophy active protection system. The Army has pursued active protection for years, most recently abandoning the Future Combat System’s active protection system developed by Raytheon. We understand at least one M-ATV will also get the radar– directed system. The M-ATV integration is more challenging, given the vehicle’s design.

Seriously, it’s been something like 6 years that the Pentagon has refused to test the system, instead holding out for a system that was never near ready because our defense procurement system is that broken.

Obama Can’t Win if He Does Not Fight

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There have been numerous reports that the White House will welsh on its promise to begin its withdrawal from Afghanistan in July 2011, and now it’s pushing back, claiming that it will begin a withdrawal on schedule.

I’m inclined to believe that what the Obama administration means by “withdrawal” from Afghanistan is rather like what it meant by “withdrawal” from Iraq, so-called “non-combat” troops and a sh%$ load of contractors, but still, the push-back from the administration from Pentagon leaks is impressively muscular:

The White House vehemently denies that there is any change in policy. “The president has been crystal clear that we will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011. There is absolutely no change to that policy,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.

(emphasis mine)

The spokesman is on the record and named, which, for any administration in this situation, is a strong statement.

That being said, we have a pretty good idea where these anonymous statements are coming from, because General, and Bush butt boy, David Petraeus is threatening Afghan President Hamid Karzai on his statements about withdrawal timing:

In what may be one of the most significant breaches between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Obama administration, Gen. David Petraeus personally warned Afghan officials over the weekend the U.S.-Afghan partnership could be “untenable” if Karzai wants U.S. troops out of Afghanistan prematurely.

A senior coalition military official confirmed details of what Petraeus said, but asked not to be identified so he could speak more candidly.

………

After reading the article, Petraeus felt the views expressed by Karzai “makes it untenable for us to have a partnership,” the official told CNN.

I’m not sure who the “senior official” quoted is, but you can be pretty sure it is someone who was authorized by Petraeus to make this statement.

You see, according to the Pentagon, and perhaps other elements of the US state security apparatus, we have to be at war forever.

There is a hell of a lot of insubordination from the military on this matter, and unfortunately, Barack Obama is absolutely the wrong sort of person to tell them to shut up and do their jobs, because it means that they would not like him.

Your Pentagon in Action

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The US Navy’s newest amphibious warship, the San Antonio Class, has been deemed, “not survivable in combat,” in results from Pentagon testing:

Northrop Grumman Corp.’s $1.68 billion amphibious warship, designed to transport Marines close to shore, wouldn’t be effective in combat and couldn’t operate reliably after being hit by enemy fire, according to the Department of Defense’s top testing official.

……………

The San Antonio-class vessel’s critical systems, such as electrical distribution, ship-wide fiber optics and voice- communications networks, aren’t reliable, according to Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation. The ship’s armaments can’t effectively defend against the most modern anti-ship weapons, Gilmore said.

……………

“Survivability” for the San Antonio means the degree to which the vessel “is able to avoid or withstand” an attack “without sustaining an impairment” of its ability to accomplish a combat mission, he said.

His conclusion that the San Antonio is “not survivable” doesn’t mean, however, that the hull and structure can’t withstand a blow from an anti-ship missile due to inherent weaknesses, Gilmore said. In fact, the Northrop ship’s hull construction is “improved” in comparison with the four classes of ships it will replace, he said.

The inmates (Pentagon) are running the asylum.

Rotten to the Core

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Happy Veterans Day

Not only is the US military is pressuring our own soldiers to get them to sign documents admitting to a pre-existing “Personality Disorder” when they are injured in combat, so that they are not eligible for disability, now we have testimony that they tortured at least one soldier for the requisite signature.

This is a rather profoundly unsettling 9 minutes and 37 seconds.

Appeals Court Allows DADT Expulsions to Continue

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They have made their temporary injunction against the judge’s ruling permanent, so DADT, and separations from the military, continue until probably at least next June:

With one judge dissenting, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a stay of the injunction of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy issued by U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips, pending the outcome of the government’s appeal of Log Cabin Republicans v. United States.

The immediate impact of the ruling, which was not unexpected by legal observers, means that — absent congressional or executive action — DADT will remain in effect through at least Spring 2011. The practical timeline for the appeal, however, means it actually would remain law much longer.

Damn.

Holy Sh%$

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Last weekend, the US Military lost control of a missile squadron:

President Obama was briefed this morning on an engineering power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday.

The base is a main locus of the United States’ strategic nuclear forces. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They’re on full-time alert and are housed in a variety of bunkers across several states.

On Saturday morning, according to people briefed on what happened, a squadron of ICBMs suddenly dropped down into what’s known as “LF Down” status, meaning that the missileers in their bunkers could no longer communicate with the missiles themselves. LF Down status also means that various security protocols built into the missile delivery system, like intrusion alarms and warhead separation alarms, were offline. In LF Down status, the missiles are still technically launch-able, but they can only be controlled by an airborne command and control platform like the Boeing E-6 NAOC “Kneecap” aircraft, E-4B NAOC aircraft or perhaps the TACAMO fleet, which is primarily used to communicate with nuclear submarines. Had the country been placed on a higher state of nuclear alert, those platforms would be operating automatically because the frequencies used to transmit nuclear codes would be interfacing with separate systems, according to officials.

(strike-through original)

This is about 1⁄9 of our land based deterrent.

Great googly moogly.

Another Bit of Tech that I Worked With on FCS*

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I’ll wait for reports from the field

The army is looking to deploy the XM25 25mm grenade launcher to Afghanistan.

The ‘special sauce” for this system is that the fire control system on the round can set the round to detonate at a specific distance, so you can set it to detonate past the cover an opponent is using for protection.

The example here is to put a round through a window, where it is set to detonate 2m beyond the building facade, which will certainly spoil that guy’s day.

This was intended to be used on the FCS-RMV in the full auto and remote controlled XM307 Advanced Crew Served Weapon where it would take the place of a crew served machine gun.

Truth be told, it strikes me as a little complex to function well in the confusion and grit and grime of battle, we should be hearing reports in the next few months.

*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.

Unconventional Helicopter Developments

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250 kt record breaking flight, complete with Pr0n film* music soundtrack


The EADS X3


And their EADS/Eurocopter video


X2 Raider Mockup


The X-2 Raider, blissfully music free

Graham Warwick gives a survey of new technologies that might find their way into the Joint Multi Role (JMR) rotorcraft program, along with the video of the X-2’s record breaking flight (top)

Meanwhile, EADS is flight testing its X3 (I wonder where they got that name) compound helo, which uses dual wingtip props, and it provides anti-torque by varying the pitch of the thrusters.

It’s far less ambitious than that of the X-2, but their selling point is reduced life cycle cost, which is probably more a shot at the expensive tilt-rotors out there than the X-2 advancing blade concept, which really doesn’t seem particularly different in the amount of bits that move.

One interesting twist is that the X3 will slow its rotor at higher speed, reducing drag, though I could see this added to an advancing blade helicopter as well, particularly if the aircraft has a wing.

My quick look at the demonstrator indicates that it is not a particularly useful helicopter.

With two props about a yard from where the entrance to the passenger/cargo area is, both loading and unload, as well as the use of a winch for a rescue mission, would appear to me to be highly problematic.

Of course, the X3 is a demonstrator cobbled together with bits of various existing helicopters, so an operational version would likely address these shortcomings.

Sikorsky is also pitching a replacement for the OH-58D, theS-97 X2 Raider, which is rather similar to the MI-24 Hind or the Augusta/Westland Lynx concepts for an attack helicopter which retains transport capabilities or the ability to carry its own reloads.

*Not that I’d know what pr0n movies’ sound tracks actually sound like.†
†Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Damn!

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A 3 judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just stayed the injunction against the enforcement of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Thankfully, this is only a short term stay, basically it’s a stay until the panel has a hearing on the stay next week:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily stalled the landmark court decision allowing openly gay recruits to be accepted into the military.

In response to an emergency request from the government, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, issued a one-page order late in the day allowing the Pentagon to continue enforcing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, which bars openly gay, lesbian and bisexual service members.

The decision, which returns the law to the status quo before a Federal District Court judge in California declared it unconstitutional, will be in effect while the appeals court considers whether to issue a longer stay, until February, when the Ninth Circuit will hear the full appeal. A decision about the longer stay could occur as early as next week; the parties have been told to prepare briefs on the issues by Monday.

So the witch hunts continue.

This stance is both morally wrong, it’s bigotry, creates security problems, because people forced into in the closet are subject to blackmail, and politically stupid, because it demoralizes a large portion of the base less than 2 weeks before the election.

As I have said before, when you are doing something that is so transparently wrong and stupid on so many levels, it isn’t because you are interested in process, it’s because you really do oppose gay rights.

This is not the actions of someone who wants to, “repeal the law that denies gay and lesbian Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It’s the right thing to do.” This is the actions of someone who does not believes that gays should serve openly in the military.

Surprise, the Pentagon Lied Again

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This time, it was not that the wedding party that they bombed was a terrorist base camp. This time, we get the updated report, and it is determined that the DoD found no compromise of its intelligence capabilities from the Wikileaks documents dump:

The unauthorized release of tens of thousands of classified U.S. military records from the war in Afghanistan last July on the Wikileaks website did not result in the disclosure of sensitive intelligence sources, according to a mid-August assessment by the Department of Defense that has just been made public.

“The review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by this disclosure,” wrote Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates in an August 16 letter (pdf) to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin.

We get lied into a war. We get lied to during the war. We have a war on whistle blowers who reveal the lies.

Without accurate information, the public can never weigh in in the policies of its government, and this is a very bad thing.

Is the USAF F%$#ing Nuts?

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Lockheed’s Concept


Lockheed’s “Secret Sauce”, an ejector/blown flap lift augmentation system


Boeing’s concept uses the Coanda effect in upper surface blowing like its YC-14


A tailless design for a transport, what the f%$# are they smoking


How stealthy will anything be with debris regularly cutting grooves in the skin?

If they are serious about their proposal for a stealthy transport roughly the size of a C-130, the answer is yes.

It’s entirely possible to design a STOL aircraft of C-130 or A-400M size that can cruise at conventional jet transport speeds, i.e. more than Mach 0.7 and take off or land in less then 200 feet.

In fact, the A400M comes awfully close to meeting those requirements right now cruising at almost Mach 0.7 with a takeoff and landing distance of about 2500 feet.

That being said, the idea that you want to do all of this, and then triple (at least) the lifetime costs of the airframe by making it stealthy is simply deluded.

While reducing the vulnerability of cargo aircraft to shoulder launched MANPADS is a good idea, experience has shown that the threats are primarily that and small arms fire, the idea that you need to create a reduced radar cross section, as appears to be the case with all (the tailless design is a Northrop-Grumman concept) is really bizarre.

If the enemy has air-superiority in the region, you are simply f%$#ed, and if they are in a position to have radar guided SAMs near your bases, you are, again, simply f%$#ed.

I’m with what Bill Sweetman wrote in the comments:

Everyone, but everyone, writing future airlift requirements for the USAF and US Army is secretly working for Airbus Military. Other than the massive abuse of chemicals there is no alternative explanation for this malarkey.

Bad Ideas Revisited

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The Royal Navy has a problem, which is that with a typical weapons load in a tropical environment, the F-35B STOVL variant of the JSF cannot land without jettisoning some of its (very expensive) stores.

Their solution is the Shipboard Rolling Vertical Landing, for which the Royal Navy has just paid Lockheed $18 million for a viability study, in which the F-35 will land on a carrier deck in a combined wing borne and thrust borne mode, at about 60 kts airspeed without benefit of arrester gear.

So, you have an aircraft weighing something north of 35,000 pounds, which is going to hit the deck at 60+ kts, though the relative speed will likely be closer to 30 kts, and it will then be manually braked to a stop.

What a bloody mess.

Here is Some Sanity in Defense Procurement

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The successor to the over-ambitious Future Combat Systems Manned Ground Vehicle (FCS-MGV)* the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) has now dropped many of the technologies intended for the FCS-MGV, because, even now, 2 years after the cancellation of the program, the programs are still insufficiently mature to be deployed on a combat system:

In an effort to make use of the billions of dollars it invested in the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, the U.S. Army may have required too many immature technologies in its first Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) Request for Proposals, according to the Army’s vice chief.

“We wanted to look and ensure that we made use of the investment in FCS and that we had the ability to use those technologies,” Gen. Peter Chiarelli told reporters at a Sept. 22 lunch in Washington.

However, if you want a vehicle in seven years, “you can’t be reaching deep for technologies right now,” he said.

………

According to Chiarelli, FCS was canceled in a way so that the Army could still make use of the research and development work done under the program.

“We wanted to ensure that those technologies that we worked so hard to develop could be integrated in to a new ground combat vehicle,” he said.

However, “there were a lot of those technologies that aren’t at a technology readiness level today where we could integrate them in seven years.”

(emphasis mine)

It boggles the mind that the technologies, “aren’t at a technology readiness level,” when the original intent was to begin fielding the FCS in 2008.

So the technologies in question won’t be ready 9 years after they were supposed to be fielded.

Our defense procurement system is seriously broken.

*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.

Judge Enjoins Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Obama Defends DOMA

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A month ago, Judge Virginia Phillips ruled Don’t Ask Don’t Tell unconstitutional, and today, she issued a permanent injunction against the policy, forbidding the military from conducting investigations or proceeding with separations:

A federal judge in California issued a permanent ban Tuesday on the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military, ordering the Defense Department to immediately halt any efforts to remove personnel because of their sexual orientation.

The government has 60 days to appeal the ruling, which gives the administration until after the midterm election next month to make a decision. But it also presents a problem for President Obama as he tries to rally his Democratic base.

As a presidential candidate, Obama said he would work to do away with the policy. But should the Justice Department appeal the ruling, it could anger many of the president’s liberal supporters, something Obama and congressional Democrats can ill afford.

In a separate case that posed a similar problem, the administration decided Tuesday to appeal two court rulings in Massachusetts that found unconstitutional the federal definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

The administration filed a notice of appeal to protect the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which bars gay marriages, although Obama opposes the law. A Justice Department spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the administration was obligated to defend federal laws when challenged in court.

So we know where this is going. On November 3, when there is no immediate electoral consequence, the DoJ will file an appeal, because, to paraphrase Kanye West, Barack Obama doesn’t care about gay people,

If Congress wants to change the law, there will be no support from the White House, and we know this because there has been no support from the White House, but rest assured he’ll probably sign a repeal if it hits his desk, because it’s the easy thing to do.

F-35 Full Monty

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Such a tease!

Stephen Trimble gives us a shot of the internal weapons bay of the F-35.

This is intended to be the standard loadout, with one AMRAAM and one 2000 lb JDAM in each bay.

IIRC, with the 250 lb SDB, it can carry 4 per bay.

And yes, this appears to be a pretty small weapons load for an aircraft that has a maximum takeoff weight of 70,000 pounds, nearly that of the F-15 E, which can carry about 5 times the ordinance.

MBDA Proposes Compressed Carriage Meteor for F-35

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If you squint, you can see the Bobbetized fins

MDBA is looking at clipping the fins of the Meteor, as was done with the AIM-120 AMRAAM, so that it can be properly accommodated in the internal weapons bay of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

It makes sense, since by any reasonable measure, foreign sales of the F-35 will dominate the international sales.

This is not surprising. Among the active radar guided missiles, is the 2nd smallest, after the French MICA, the AIM-120 has the what appears to be the shortest range and end game kinematics, which makes a ready market for an extended range missile, particularly when used in the F-35, which, unlike the F-22, is not expected to be launching the missile at 20,000 m and mach 1.3+, which significantly improves range.

The USAF is aware of this, and is looking to develop a longer ranged, “dual-role air dominance missile,” to replace both the AMRAAM and the HARM missile.

It would probably make more sense for the USAF to go with an existing system like the Meteor under license production, with some modification to the software and seeker to meet their needs, but that would eliminate some 6 figure consulting gigs for the generals once they retire, which mitigates against this sort of solution.