Category: Military

Well, That Trashed a Paint Job

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What you see below is a video of the USAF’s Advanced Tactical Laser doing its thing on a pick up truck.

I really don’t see a whole bunch of utility here. It’s a chemical laser, which means an extensive, expensive, and environmentally hazardous logistical tail, and things like sheet metal on trucks are much easier to heat that people, which have a lot of water in them, so it, “as a way to target individual insurgents,” seems to me to be somewhat dubious.

The advances in electrically powered lasers, particularly against things like mortars and Kyatusha rocketsIn any case, here is bonus Bond video, with the best Bond line ever™, from Mr. Goldfinger, not Sean Connery, “No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”

Potential Successor to NLOS Cannon Shown

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Click for ginormous picture

Looks like the Son of MLRS

Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) is showing its Donar 155 mm howitzer at the AUSA convention.

Based on a cursory read of Bill Sweetman’s blog post, and my knowledge of MLRS, I spent some time crawling over the vehicles when I was at Lockheed-Martin Missiles & Fire Control* in Grand Prairie, TX, it looks to me an awful lot like they modified the platform and chassis of the M270 MLRS, replacing the turret for the rockets with a (one would assume significantly beefed up to handle recoil) howitzer turret.

Of note, since the automated turret and loading systems are completely removed from the crewed area, there appears to be a significant reduction in weight, since the turret does not need the same level of armor if it is not in crewed space.

Additionally, there should be some cost savings involved in using an existing platform.

On the downside, as compared to the now defunct NLOS-C, this is never going to fit in a C-130, though it KMW is claiming that it will fit in an EADS A-400.

*Yeah, I worked there too. I didn’t work on MLRS, but on a British derivative, the LIMAWS-R, which required me to look at the vehicles regularly.

People’s Republic of China 60th Anniversary Parade Pix

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Click image for full size


The first question is, “What is with those white sidewall tires?”


These cruise missiles launchers look similar in size and configuration to the Ground Launched Tomahawks


Drones

Something in the Flanker class

Air refueling demo


Shore based anti-ship missiles


These look like S300s (SA-10 Grumble)


Chinese version of the EFV/AAAV, the ZBD2000. It has that whole, “separated at birth” thing going with the EFV

There are dozens of photographs at Xinhuanet.com, but these are the ones that caught my eyes.

I don’t see any major revelations in Chinese weapons, but I’m not an analyst.

Could someone explain to me though, how that neon blue camoflage works?

Went to the Burial at Arlington National Cemetery

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For my neighbor, MSgt Wade. (Note first name, not last, I’m not blogging that out of respect for his privacy)

As with any institution, it is end of life where the where the ritual becomes its most elaborate and intricate, and I think that the sense that it gives the loved ones of their place in the continuum of society and culture is a good thing.

The rigidly at attention honor guard, the flags and their folding, the firing of a salute, and the bugler playing taps all serve to show the loved ones of the deceased that they are a part of something bigger.

That being said, when the honor guard fired their weapons (bolt action Springfields, I think, they were manually working an action), my son, who hates loud noises, he’s an Aspie, and this is symptomatic of being on the spectrum, jumped and covered his ears.

Potential Good News on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

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The Joint Forces Quarterly, an official military publication reviewed prior to publication by the office of the JCS, has published an article calling for the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell anti-Gay policy:

The article, which appears in Joint Force Quarterly and was reviewed before publication by the office of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that “after a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly.”

Although the article, by an Air Force colonel, Om Prakash, carries no weight as a matter of policy, it may well signal a shift in the official winds. It won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay competition.

(emphasis mine)

Someone is sending a clear message, and I am not sure whether this is non-bigoted members of the military sending a message to the Obama administration to get the policy repealed, or it’s a message to the minority of officers in the military who use DADT as an excuse to engage in bigoted witch hunts to stop from either the JCS or the SecDef, or it’s a message to Congress to fix this.

In any case, this is a welcome development.

Rule Number One of Writing About Things Military

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For Some Reason, I Imagine Her Singing Wagner Opera

Always include the picture of the blond Swedish hottie in uniform whenever you can.

In this case, it appears that the Swedish Conscription Council (Värnplikstrådet) is complaining that the brassieres offered to women conscripts are not up to the rigors of combat (also here):

The poor quality of the standard-issue sports bras prompted a group by female soldiers at the LV 6 military base in Halmstad to voice their displeasure to representatives from the Council recently.

The women complained that the bras’ fasteners have a tendency to come undone when the women performed rigorous exercise, forcing the female soldiers to take off all of their equipment in order to refasten the brassieres.

In addition, the bras aren’t flame resistant and, once lit, can melt onto conscripts’ skin, the Göteborgs-Posten (GP) newspaper reports.

I would think that this is something where little research would be necessary, since it must have been addressed in armies with high numbers of women serving (the number is only about 5% in Sweden).

Just email the Israelis, and you will have an answer in about an hour.

Coup Conspirators in Honduras Up Pressure

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In addition to the police shooting a man dead, state security forces have surrounded the embassy where Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has taken refuge after slipping back into the country.

While Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been out front in all this, all we’ve heard from Obama is crickets.

With one simple step, a freeze on money transfers back to Honduras from expats, we’d have Zelaya back in office for the 2½ months remaining in his term.

US inaction has the effect of legitimizing coups against leaders who are unfriendly to Wall Street, and I’m wondering if that is a feature, rather than a bug.

Galrahn Observes

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That, “US Navy has 46% of our sub force on deployment,” not just at sea, but on deployment, and it is a high number.

Could be one of those year end things where they are trying to meet deployment rates, or maybe, as Galhran wonders, something is about to happen.

If it is prepositioning for some sort of action, the two most likely reasons to have subs out there loaded for bear would be to make some surprise cruise missile strikes, or SEAL insertions to go after some some nasty on a personal level.

In either case, it’s odd, even if it’s just a statistical glitch.

Marine Generals Call Cheney a Fearful Bitch

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Retired Marine Corps Generals Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar have penned an OP/ED titled, “Fear was no excuse to condone torture

In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to “take off the gloves.” As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster.

But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas — and his scare tactics.

….

Let’s be clear here. These are retired Generals, criticizing not only a former Vice President of the United States, but the entire administration he was in, and they have chosen their words carefully.

When they choose to describe the decisions made by Bush and His Evil Minions™as having been made out of fear, they are saying that these are evil acts made by cowards who are out of their mind with fear.

Time for a Blogger Ethics Panel

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There are two questions raised by the kidnapping, and rescue of, New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell in Afghanistan.

The first, and the one I don’t know enough about to come to a decision is whether it was worth the lives lost to rescue him, particularly since it appears to have been a series of spectacularly ill-advised decisions by Mr. Farrell precipitated this.

However, I am disgusted at the people who say something to the effect of, “It’s the New York Times, and they hurt the military, and so should be given no security consideration whatsoever.”

Here’s a thing, if you sound like Ann Coulter, it means that you are an asshole.

By the same token, if people routinely do amazingly stupid things, and expect to be rescued because they work for the New York Times, making it clear that neither the public purse, nor the blood of our military will be spent in such an endeavor makes sense.

The second question, is one that I do feel qualified to discuss, is whether news of kidnappings of journalists should be suppressed.

Bill Roggio reported the kidnapping on the Threat Matrix blog, and has been widely criticized by many in the media (here, and a few of the comments in response to his story) for reporting on this despite the request by the New York Times that he sit on the story.

I think that Mr. Roggio nailed the issue in a response in the comments on this post:

I speak as someone who has reported from both Iraq and Afghanistan since 2005. To me, this is simple. Either a kidnapping is news, or it isn’t. When soldiers, contractors, etc. are kidnapped, it is news. When a reporter is kidnapped, it is also news.

(emphasis mine)

Bill Ardolino, also of Threat Matrix, adds a useful data point:

A partial list of reports by the The New York Times on kidnappings:

November 15, 2002: NYT: Red Cross workers kidnapped in Chechnya

September 17, 2004, NYT: Insurgents kidnap American and British civilians in Iraq

January 18, 2005: NYT: Catholic Archbishop of Mosul kidnapped in Iraq

May 17, 2005: NYT: CARE worker kidnapped in Kabul

December 29, 2005: NYT: German Family Kidnapped by Yemeni Tribe

January 27, 2008: NYT: NGO worker kidnapped in Afghanistan

August 29, 2009, Reuters in the NYT: Foreign Aid Workers kidnapped in Darfur

20 hours ago: NYT: Greek national kidnapped in Pakistan

It is clear that the demands for news suppression are self serving and dishonest.

Zim Update

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Well, it’s been about a month, so it’s time for another update on what is happening in Zimbabwe.

The two biggest pieces of news are Robert Mugabe’s health, he is 85 years old, and there are officially denied rumors that he has gone to Qatar for prostate cancer treatment, and he has missed some significant meetings.

Additionally, we are beginning to see senior ZANU-PF members vying for position, with, for example, someone having put up the party youth group (I assume that this mean young adults) to call for the removal of John Nkomo and Joyce Mujuru from the party presidium.

We are also seeing the situation with the Chiadzwa diamond fields get out of hand,with a threat by the world Diamond Council to suspend Zimbabwe from the Kimberly Process certification, which would label one of their few sources of hard currency “blood diamonds,” though threat comes with a statement which immediately backtracks from the threat, though they are making noise about revisiting the issue in November.

The Parliament has also opened an investigation into the accusations of brutality, corruption, and slave labor, and the World Federation of Diamond Bourses has made a call for the prompt release of the Kimberly report.

The reason that this is significant is because it is a sign of loss of control by Mugabe. It’s fairly clear that he feels that he cannot give the order for the Zimbabwean military to stand down in Chiadzwa because it would eliminate one of the few remaining means that he has to bribe reward loyalists, and it is unclear if the army would obey if he were to give the order.

This is an indication that Mugabe is losing power within ZANU-PF as people look to his exit.

On a more prosaic level, it looks like Mugabe is trying to kill Tsvangerai again: He has had to sack somemembers of his security team for “misplacing” transport for a significant portion of his security detail, which left him ill-protected…..Then again, maybe I’m just a cynic.

Meanwhile, the Mutambara faction of the MDC appears to be in the process of self destructing, with conflicting claims as to who leads the MDC-M, reports that the party has split in 3 parts, 3 MDC-M MPs moving to join the MDC-T, and Mutambara being unable to convince an MP from his own party to step down and take an ambassadorship in order to allow deputy president Gibson Sibanda to keep his position on cabinet as Minister of State for National Healing and Reconciliation. (The constitution prohibits a cabinet post being held by someone not an MP for more than 3 months)

We had Zuma taking over for the completely useless and biased Mbeki as mediator, and while we got some strong language, such as Zuma calling Mugabe’s behavior in negotiations deviant, but the results, despite Tsvangerai’s pleas for action, have not gone beyond a SADC call for an extraordinary summit.

Most notably, you have the issues of Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General, Johannes Tomana, both tremendously corrupt and incompetent ZANU-PF loyalists, which means that the power of the purse and state violence (though both the police and military) remain firmly in the hands of Mugabe.

With the elimination of the $Z as a currency, this has reduced Gono’s power to pay off people, but he is once again attempting to reintroduce the local currency, though Finance Minister Tendai Biti is fighting him tooth and nail on this.

The harassment of MDC members of parliament continues, with police making trumped up arrests of opposition MPs.

It’s clearly an attempt to reduce the MDC majority in parliament, since once convicted, they can no longer serve, and so there would have to be by-elections.

The problem for the ZANU-PF with this strategy is that they are polling in the single digits, (also here).

ZANU-PF has proposed 5-year extension on the current 1-year freeze on elections, but the MDC has made it clear that it has no interest in such a proposal.

The 2nd of ZANU-PF is to make elections impossible, either by pleading poverty, or by refusing to staff the election board created by the unity government agreement.

Meanwhile, the IMF has issued $400 million in foreign currency reserves, which would be good news, except for the fact that Gideon Gono (remember him?) is insisting that he is in charge of disbursing all these funds.

I’d sooner have Bernie Madoff managing that money.

Afghanistan Data Point

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There are now more Americans fighting in Afghanistan than the Soviets ever had in country.

There are now 120K soldiers and contractors there, as opposed to 115K by the Soviets at the peak of their war.

While you may not want to count all the contractors as “Americans fighting,” you also want to count the soldiers from the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, Australia, Romania, Poland, Estonia, Norway, Czech Republic, Latvia, Hungary, Portugal, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey, Belgium, Finland, and Lithuania.

This is a damn mess.

Russia Looks to Buy French Amphibious Assault Ship

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The Russians are looking at buying a Mistral Class amphibious assault ship.

It’s roughly equivalent to the Tarawa class of LHA, it’s a through-deck helicopter carrier with a well deck, and the possibility of carrying some STOVL aircraft, and can carry, and act as a command center for, amphibious assaults.

This is a capability that was never really the focus of the Russian navy, nor of the Soviet navy before it, which would explain why they want to purchase this capability from a 3rd country.

I’m not entirely sure why they feel that they need this capability though. The only 2 applications that I see are in multinational peace-keeping operations, and for invading Georgia, though issues with both the Turks and the Ukrainians would make the latter application difficult.

Whoever Did This Should Be Fired

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While it is completely appropriate for the Pentagon to lay out rules regarding the press and tactically sensitive information, what should not be done, but has been done anyway, is to have their work screened by a public relations firm in order to determine if they are sufficiently “friendly” to the military, as the has been done.

What’s more, it’s not just any whore house public relations firm, it’s the Rendon Group, who manufactured the Iraqi National Congress and provided part of the excuse for the invasion of Iraq, as well as being a CIA front for ginning up the invasion of Panama.

It should noted that similar “rating” of journalists resulted in a Stars and Stripes reporter being denied an embed:

U.S. Army officials in Iraq engaged in a similar vetting practice two months ago, when they barred a Stars and Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division because the reporter “refused to highlight” good news that military commanders wanted to emphasize.

The contract has now been canceled, but anyone associated with this program should be fired, and to the degree that this violates the law, or military regulations, they should be prosecuted.

Yes, This Photo Needs to be Published

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On the right is a photo of Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, 21, of New Portland, Maine, in happier times.

Below is a photo of him dying, after being struck by an RPG in Afghanistan.

Secretary of Defense of Robert Gates tried to strong arm the Associated press into not distributing the photograph.

It is Secretary Gates behavior, and not that of the Associated Press which is repulsive.

In Bob Gates world, or for that matter, in George W. Bush’s world, there must be no reporting of the realities of war.

Robert Capa War Photos

Following the Vietnam War, the defense establishment concluded that the only way to deal with bad press is to muzzle the press, hence the press restrictions in Grenada, the Gulf War, the invasions of Afghanistan, and Iraq.

In there world, there is no Bob Capa, documenting, and honoring soldiers at (top to bottom) Omaha Beach, or the Spanish civil War, of the invasion of France in 1940 (I think).

Far from being decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency,” as secretary Gates suggests, these pictures reveal the sacrifices of our fighting men, and honor them.

People like Bob Gates want to bury this sacrifice, because in showing it for all to see, it will sometimes raise questions about whether that sacrifice is truly justified, and that is not acceptable in the minds of the old men who send the young men to die.

In addition to being a craven way to think, as it implies an unwillingness to support one’s own ideas, it is a slap in the face of the idea that it is civilians who decide when and where we fight, and when it is no longer worth it for us to fight.

This is about REMFs covering their own flabby, generally lily-white, asses.

Lance Corporal Bernard Doing Honor to Himself and the Corps

Industry, MDA Buoyed By New Thaad Flight-Test Data

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THAAD Launch


Image of Target (l) and Debris Intercepts

It appears that the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is beginning to get a handle on the problems that have plagued the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program, (paid subscription required) with the latest test having two interceptors fired in salvo.

The 1st missile hit the target, and the 2nd missile struck the largest piece of debris remaining.

A lot of the problem has been the hand off between the radar and the missile’s own IIR seeker:

“Things look different to an X-band sensor than they do to an IR sensor. Something that really has a lot of sharp edges . . . will look big and bright to an RF [sensor], but it might be real, real cold,” says McGrath. “So, it doesn’t look that way to an IR [sensor]. I like to think of this as our two-color approach to life.”

Additionally, it looks like they are working at integrating the system with the Navy’s Aegis fire control system, which implies that the the reports that the MDA is looking at a larger 21, up from 14½ in diameter booster, (paid subscription required) the size of the standard Navy torpedo, cruise missile, and Standard missile, are about possibly mounting the missile on board a ship, as well as improving the missile kinematics.

Still, I am dubious of reports that
the MDA is looking at moving to deployment on any of its systems. (paid subscription required)

Simply put, the record, even if improved lately is just not there, and the technology remains ruinously expensive.