A paper by the Center for Defense Information, “The Other Meltdown: Little to Show for Huge Defense Budgets.”
Money quote:
Perhaps you need a short review. America’s defense budget is now larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any point since the end of World War II. However, our Army has fewer combat divisions than at any point in that period, our Navy has fewer combat ships and the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft.
Go read.
Well, it now looks like there was Syrian foreknowledge and support of the raid, only they were told that it would be a snatch and grab, and it turned into a John Wayne shootout:
In the time-honoured tradition of covert US operations in the Middle East, this one seems to have gone spectacularly wrong. The Syrians, who had agreed to turn a blind eye to a supposedly quiet “snatch and grab” raid, could not keep the lid on a firefight in which so many people had died.
So it appears that they Syrians were expecting a quiet op, and they got a bunch of citizens killed in the process.
I’m sure that this will make them much more likely to support such an operation in the future.
David Axe notes a potential problem with the NLOS-C (Non Line of Sight-Cannon), the Howitzer variant of the the Future Combat System Manned Ground Vehicles (FCS-MGV) which the Army intends to have replace nearly all existing US armored vehicles.
Specifically, by virtue of the high level of sophistication and automation, the NLOS-C has a crew of only two, as compared to 4 for the current howitzer, the Paladin.
If the future NLOS-C units reduce their manning requirements to fill the minimum number of people needed to operate the systems without considering the need to maintain continuous operations and endure battle losses, the expensive high-speed cannon might be silent when needed because an adequate number of Soldiers are not available to operate it.
A commenter on his blog notes that for for a 6 tube battery, you have 42 men, 4 per paladin, and 3 on each of the 6 ammunition carriers, for a total of 42 men.
For NLOS-C, with automated firing and loading, this is likely down to 24 men, possibly fewer depending on how the army allocates loading vehicles, and the loss of one man on any of these vehicles will likely take that out of action.
With the current setup, the Paladin and its loading vehicles can operate at reduced capacity with short crews. The same is not realistic with a lone crewman operating a vehicle.
Additionally, in a situation like Iraq and Afghanistan, which is still the most likely conflict scenario, it is likely that these troops would not just be assigned to artillery duty, but also to, “non-standard missions, which require the Soldiers to anything from patrols to base security”, which, “demand at least the current number of Soldiers, if not more, to complete such missions.”
It appears that one of the institutional myths present in Pentagon doctrine is that the individual soldier is ruinously expensive, and replacing him/her with technology or private contractors will create a more effective, and more cost effective war fighting force.
The performance of systems and reduced crews, in addition to the performance of mercenaries private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, has proven this assumption to be disastrously wrong.
The Germans have developed a gel-fuel rocket motor, and are getting ready to flight test (paid subscription required).
I’ve not worked with the technology, but I did work with someone who did work with liquid propellant artillery, and I imagine that the tech is rather similar.
Basically, it allows for a monopropellant rocket, much like solid fuel rockets, with the ability to easily throttle the motor by varying the flow of the propellant into the combustion chamber.
Additionally, since it’s the consistency of toothpaste, or at least it was in the LP gun, it means that if the tank is punctured, you do not get leakage.
The Bayern–Chemie demonstrator uses a single gas generator designed to support a range of missions. It is used to drive a piston that forces the gelled propellant and, in a bi-propellant mode, oxidizer, into the combustion chamber. The gel passes through a valve to regulate its flow, and then through injectors that effectively turn it into a liquid as it enters the combustion chamber to optimize the burn. The motor will use a pyrotechnic ignition system.
An entirely non-explosive configuration has also been conceived. It would replace the solid propellant gas generator with an air pressure reservoir and the ignition would be triggered through a gas burner.
It’s more complex and bulkier than solid fuel motors, but should have interesting applications where a complex thrust profile is required.
I’m not sure how I found it, but there is a blog out there, 傻冒儿 Stupid Hat aka ShaMao’er that I check out regularly.
He has some very good insights into China, being of Chinese ancestry, having gone to PRC in the in the 1990s, and now working on issues of US/Chinese trade.
Truth be told, that there is a lot that Chinese and Americans don’t understand about each other, and his posts, roughly biweekly or so, tend to provide a lot of insight through the little things that reflect on culture.
Case in point: a few days ago, he was mused in a post titled Demographic defeat on the capabilities of the Chinese army to manage a protracted struggle.
He wondered whether the long standing one child per family policy may be making the PLA a hollow force:
Basically, my friend’s argument boils down to the fact that in Chinese culture, both traditional and modern, the family name is sacrosanct. It is intolerable for a family to be left without sons to carry on the name and lineage. While there is some semblance of this sentiment in the West as well, I came to appreciate that it is a far more important matter to Chinese than it is to Westerners. That is why people know the story of Marshall Peng. [The possibly apocryphal tale of Chinese army in Korea during the war being mobilized to “Save Private Ryan”] That is why people know some poems that deal with this subject. It is apparently a recurrent tragic theme in Chinese art and culture and is simply intolerable.
So, according to this theory, given the one-child policy that has been in place since the mid-1970’s, a good portion of the Red Army’s rank and file are currently single children. Given the exemptions for some rural people and for ethnic minorities and others some maybe in 2 child families but in any case the fact remains that a very large portion of the Army will be the single male child. In the event of a serious military conflict, this fact would render China unable to wage a protracted and costly struggle. The tearing of the social fabric that the loss of so many male family heirs would entail would break Chinese society and public outrage would end the conflict. Although Nationalism is a very potent force in China that would propel conflict, the decimation of family lines would easily trump it.
Obviously the death of a child in wartime is always a personal tragedy, but he makes an interesting point, which I would like to discuss with my neighbor, who works with Army Intel with a specialization in China and the Chinese language.
I always thought that this was a promising project, particularly in an COINS application, as the SADF had that as its primary duty before the end of Apartheid.
It appears that I was wrong and the Rooivalk program is a mess (paid subscription required).
Only 12 production helos were delivered, there are no prospects for foreign sales, and they have dissimilar avionics fits across the fleet, and they are now talking about, “revised functionality within the existing allocated financial resources,” which means downgraded capabilities.
Well, it looks like the DoD is ready for their next war, this one against the American tax payer:
As President George W. Bush prepares to leave office in three months, his budget writers at the Pentagon are planning to dump a giant budget increase on the team that replaces them.
Bradley Berkson, the Pentagon’s director of program analysis and evaluation, confirmed that defense budget officials are preparing spending plans for the next six years that add about $60 billion a year to the “base” military budget.
That would push the planned 2010 “base” defense budget to $587 billion, up from the previously proposed $527 billion. It would add $360 billion to Pentagon spending over six years.
In addition to the base budget for 2010, the Defense Department will need “supplemental” funding to keep fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Berkson said during an interview on the television show “This Week in Defense News.” The interview is slated to air on Oct. 22
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I guess that this is because with the US responsible for over hall of the world’s defense spending, they need more money.
Here is the money quote:
By adding $60 billion a year to the long-range defense spending plan, the outgoing administration could put pressure on the new administration to boost military spending that was scheduled to level off after a decade of substantial increases. Any defense spending proposal that is lower than Bush’s 11th-hour bulked-up budget could be assailed as a defense spending cut.
This at a time when we are spending more on defense as a percentage of GDP than at any time since the end of WWII. More than Korea, more than Viet Nam, and more than during the invasion of Grenada.
Luckily, the tax payers have Dem. Barney Frank on thier side, and he’s proposing a 25% cut in military spending, which would be a good start.
We need boots on the ground, and M4/M16s. We don’t need the JSF, DDG-1000, EFV, FCS, etc.
I would also add that there are currently 5 enlisted men per 1 officer….For most of the existence of the military, it has been 10:1. It is a good place to save money, though some of that should go back into retaining the senior NCO corps who are leaving in droves.
Not just lasers, but also things like electronics frying high power microwaves, etc.
This appears to be driven by cost and obsolescence issues(paid subscription required):
….
“Cross-domain synergies [result] when a [cyber or electronic] nonkinetic and [an explosive] kinetic weapon of any kind can be used in concert,” says Maj. Gen. William Lord, chief of Cyber Command (Provisional). “This can potentially be a weapon of mass disruption [that unlike a bomb, you can] ratchet back. It’s about changing enemy behavior [without] total destruction. What cyber– [and electronic attack] weapons bring is something between a letter and a 2,000-lb. bomb.”
“We’re trying to bring [cyber– and electronic weapons] all together as a total investment for the benefit of the warfighter,” says Jay Kistler, technology adviser for the Pentagon’s Office of Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L). “We’re working with all the players who are trying to get their arms around what we mean by cyber-operations and how we control them. And there is the recognition that electronic warfare overlaps cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”
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“It can’t take 10-15 years to develop [a cyber– or electronic weapon],” says Lord. “We need things that get created and then [thrown] away in months, weeks or days. There also is a group looking at how to do more rapid acquisition.
So in addition to the inevitable draw down on Pentagon budgets (more on that later), the fact that they are dealing with civilian, and civilian derived, devices that have a total life cycle of less than 5 years from beginning of development to withdrawal from the market, mean that they don’t know how to make all their whiz bang work.
Of course the fact that they are using the term, “synergies,” strongly implies that the people in this field are bullsh#% artists too.
We have reports the US launched a commando raid into Syria, and U.S. officials have confirmed the matter.
It appears that somewhere around 8 people were killed. It appears that the target was, Abu Ghadiya who was described as, “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s “most prominent” smuggler of foreign operatives,” by US sources.
Needless to say, Syria and Iran have condemned the attack.
The analysis here seems to be that the Bush administration is doing this for two reasons, to coerce more action by the local governments against such people, and to establish a precedent for the next president to follow.
What I would worry about is someone like Cuba deciding that this precedent applying to the, and bullets flying in Miami as a result.
There is a pretty good post over at Ares about developments in Submarines around the world.
The big news, to me anyway, was the announcement of a joint Russo-Italian diesel boat of around 1000 tons.
The China Air and Naval Power has some photos of the Chinese J-10 multirole canard fighter.
It has interesting lines….The tail clearly resembles the Lavi/F-16, but the intake and canard are closer to the Eurofighter Typhoon, particularly the Canard, which is not close coupled like the Lavi/Rafale/Gripen, but is further forward as in the Typhoon.
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Col. H.R. McMaster, a, “is a highly influential soldier-scholar who is currently putting together a brain trust for Gen. David Petraeus to review U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan,” just released a blistering paper condemning the direction of the US military.
He believes that the folks who support the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which espouses high tech communications, surveillance, and precision weapons at the expense of boots on the ground is are profoundly wrong, and unclear on what is actually going on the ground right now.
He also cuts the flyboyz in the USAF a new one while he’s at it.
Good read, check it out.
*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).
The system is called Tanin (Alligator) and it mounts a .50 cal Barrett sniper rifle.
This system is undoubtedly not cheap, but the risk of losing a rifle and mount is less than that of losing a sniper, who are highly trained and rare commodities.
I wonder if we will see this in use in the near future.
My hunch is that it will be used often…it’s the middle east.
Or at least, they are generating PowerPoint slides with weapons loadouts:
One of the things in big demand in Iraq were Mine Resistant Ambushed Protected vehicles (MRAP) to deal with road side bombs.
Well it appears that the experience with these vehicles in Afghanistan has been far less positive than in Iraq:
During my recent embed with Marines in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, the number one gear complaint was the MRAP: it was too wide for most roads, and the top-heavy vehicles were prone to rollover.
Iraq is, after all, a fairly flat country with an excellent road system, and Afghanistan is probably the opposite of this.
Given the high wheel loads and the top heavy nature of these vehicles this is to be expected.
MRAPs are not just a counterinsurgency specific system, they are a “counterinsurgency with good roads specific” system.
They are deploying to deal with issues related to the Darfur genocide.
This is the first operational deployment of the Gripen to a conflict area.
With its emphasis on austere basing from the initial design, Swedish doctrine calls for the use of stretches of highway as airbases in the case of invasion, the Gripen is probably well suited to this deployment.
The Rand corporation, which a few weeks ago said that the 4th generation fighters would club the F-35 Lightning II like a baby seal, is now saying that the USAF’s reliance on extremely high tech cutting edge aircraft is unlikely to work in a real war, and are failing now:
The Rand and CSIS reports both deliver sharply critical outlooks for the future of US airpower. The first suggests that the superior technology of next-generation US fighters are no match for superior numbers and geographic advantage. The second, entitled America’s Self-Destroying Airpower, concludes failures of strategy and planning have made the US military-industrial complex its own worst enemy.
The reports go on to describe, “widespread breakdowns across the US military’s acquisition system for developing and fielding modern combat aircraft.”
Speaking from my personal experience working on the Army’s Future Combat System, it ain’t limited to aircraft.
At its core is the problem that systems are too damn expensive.
Neither aircraft offers a meaningful increase in performance in current deployments, just added costs.
The US Marines have just put in orders for 7 more Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles (EFV).
It’s a very ambitious ambitious amphibious vehicle, when I worked on it it was called the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV), and it is a very ambitious program, a 35 ton vehicle capable of 40 kts in the water by planing like a speed boat.
In any case, it has hit the trifecta in military contracting, over budget, behind schedule, and having technical shortcomings, and the new protypes are supposed to address.
They are not looking at full rate production starting at 2025.
*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.
Boeing is looking at licensing Piasecki Aircraft’s compount helicopter technology for an improved Apache.
It strikes me that this might be a very good marriage of technology.
I’m not sure that it will make much difference on the actual battlefield, the mode would still be pop-up and shoot, but I can see a serious increase in range for deployment or by reducing response time from a base to the station.
Irt appears that the new pact calls fortroops to leave Iraqi cities by June with a complete widhdrawal by the end of 2011.
Basically, the Obama plan.
Also, it’s clear that the Iraqis knew that they had the US over a barrel, because immunity for US soldiers is severely curtailed:
U.S. negotiators demanded exclusive jurisdiction over all soldiers and contractors. But Iraq insisted on a role to convince the public that Iraqis – and not Americans – were in charge of their own country.
Under the compromise, the United States would have the primary right to try troops and Pentagon contractors for alleged offenses committed on American bases or during military operations, the officials said.
Such language would presumably shield troops from prosecution for accidentally killing civilians caught in crossfire during authorized combat operations.
But Iraq would have the first option to try U.S. military personnel and contractors for serious, premeditated crimes alleged to have been committed outside American bases and when they were not on an authorized mission, the officials said.
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American troops would no longer be allowed to detain suspects or search homes without Iraqi legal authorization except in cases of active combat, the officials said. Anyone detained by the Americans must be handed over to the Iraqis within 24 hours
I would note that our status of forces agreements with our NATO allies and Japan give the local authorities far less access to soldiers accused of wrongdoing.
It appears that some members of Congress are having a cow over the potential exposure of US troops to Iraqi justice.
Unfortunately, the Iraqis know that if there is no deal by the election, it will be even worse for the ‘Phants, and applied the old adage, “If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”