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Washington, Riyadh agree to arms deals worth almost $110 billion

Previous reports said deals include advance missile defense system, software, and satellite capabilities
Washington has agreed arms deals with Saudi Arabia worth almost $110 billion, a White House official said Saturday, the first day of President Donald Trump's visit to the traditional US ally.

"This package of defense equipment and services support the long-term security of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region in the face of Iranian threats," the official said.

It will also bolster the kingdom's "ability to contribute to counter-terrorism operations across the region, reducing the burden on the US military to conduct those operations," the official added.

Trump said in his first remarks of the day: "That was a tremendous day. Tremendous investments in the United States.

"Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs," he said.

A preliminary deal worth $6 billion to assemble 150 Lockheed Martin Blackhawk helicopters in Saudi Arabia was separately announced at the Saudi-US CEO Forum held in Riyadh during Trump's visit.

The program to "support the final assembly and completion of an estimated 150 S-70 Black Hawk utility helicopters" will support around 450 jobs in the kingdom, said a forum statement.

US defense contractors are major suppliers of weapons to Saudi Arabia, which for more than two years has led a coalition conducting air strikes and other operations against rebels in Yemen.

The new deals come despite mounting pressure on Washington from rights groups to stop arms sales to Riyadh, which has come under repeated criticism over civilian casualties in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia on Thursday announced the creation of a new military industries firm as part of the kingdom's efforts to boost defense production.

The kingdom's Public Investment Fund said the new government-owned company, Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI), "aims to become one of the world's top 25 defense companies by 2030."

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in an April report that Saudi Arabia last year was the world's fourth-largest military spender, spending $63.7 billion.

A Reuters report earlier this month said the deals would include Americans arms and maintenance, ships, air missile defense, and maritime security, according to the report.

An earlier Reuters report cited sources saying the arms package (which includes both new contracts and some which were already in the pipeline) includes Lockheed Martin's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) advanced missile defense system and several batteries, as well as battle command, control and communications software and a package of satellite capabilities.

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my previous post on CANES ... Feb 22, 2017
some time ago
Jan 12, 2015

now SPAWAR Chief: CANES Installation Time Cut in Half
source:
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and
USS Blue Ridge gets CANES upgrade
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The flagship of the U.S. 7th Fleet, USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19), became the first ship of its class to obtain a large-scale upgrade to its network infrastructure in March with the installation of CANES.

The Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise Services (CANES) is a more integrated and flexible virtualized network that provides users with updated software and services, such as improved information assurance and intrusion detection.

The installation increases internal communication, ship security and an overall standardization for meeting the requirements of modern day operating systems.

According to Information Systems Technician 1st Class Chris Martinez, every ship platform has its own set version of CANES, but Blue Ridge, as a command and control flagship, is getting its own special installation with an emphasis on infrastructure.

In addition, Information Systems Technician Chief Petty Officer Travoria Young said “We are the first ship to upgrade to this version of CANES. This is the largest CANES installation in the Navy thus far with the latest updated version available to the fleet.”

This version is currently being installed on both Blue Ridge-class command ships, Blue Ridge and U.S. 6th Fleet flagship USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20). Young and Martinez said that the planning for the installation has been a long and demanding process.

The projected completion date for the ship’s CANES update is Sept. 2017. However, this doesn’t take into account the amount of training and preparation required to get the Information Services Department up to speed with the new network before deployment.

“We need to make sure that everybody is prepared before deployment, and has the right software needed for fulfilling mission accomplishment as well as day-to-day tasks,” said Martinez.
 
Ticos retiring 2019 - 2045
Navy's Aging Cruisers Have No Replacements in Sight
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Less than an hour after a recent dawn rolled west into the Pacific Ocean, Capt. Joe Cahill sat in his starboard chair, a lined face pointed toward a line of warships wheeling north around San Clemente Island.

In the lead, the
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Halsey and Higgins cut through the waves in a tight turn toward land, trailed by the looming
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Theodore Roosevelt and the destroyer Sampson.

And in the far rear, like a bear protecting her cubs, was the San Diego-based Bunker Hill, the 10,000-ton
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that orchestrates the air defense for Carrier Strike Group 15. It's on guard in case there's ever a need to blast to dots enemy jets, helicopters, drones and missiles arcing toward the flotilla.

The ships' path last week was designed to mimic the world's most dangerous sea channels -- the bustling Strait of Malacca and the Singapore Strait, traveled by a third of the globe's commercial ships, plus the Strait of Hormuz, a flash point between U.S.
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vessels and the Iranian patrol boats and aircraft that pester them.

"Reps and sets. The geography of Southern California helps make these exercises more realistic," said Cahill, 46, who has performed this ballet on water dozens of times in his quarter-century career.

Cahill is widely considered as one of the most penetrating minds on Navy surface warfare, with years both at sea and on teams that designed futuristic warships and advanced tactics.

Until he took the helm of the guided-missile cruiser Bunker Hill last July 22, Cahill directed Vice Adm. Tom Rowden's Distributed Lethality Task Force, the cell that created a new doctrine of savagely prosecuting sea battles across vast distances, the warships widely spaced out so they can hit an enemy from multiple angles without warning.

And no Navy surface ship throws a harder punch than the Bunker Hill, a cruiser armed with a high-tech battery of missile tubes and advanced sensors that probe for faraway targets to destroy.

"They provide our civilian and uniformed military leaders with a persistent, maneuverable warfighting capability, where and when needed around the world," Rowden, the Naval Forces commander, wrote in an email to The San Diego Union-Tribune. "The complexity of integrated air and missile warfare is growing more challenging by the day. We need these cruisers, and the follow on to the cruiser, to be as flexible and capable as possible ...."

The Bunker Hill is slated to deploy this autumn with the Roosevelt as its lifespan wanes. The Navy plans to decommission the cruiser in 2019, mothballing it after 33 years of service.

It will be the first of the Vertical Launch System "Ticos" to exit the fleet. The brass wanted to swap these aging cruisers for a futuristic warship called the CG(X), but admirals balked at the estimated price tag of $3.5 billion to $6 billion each.

The last of the Tico litter, the Port Royal, is slated to retire in 2045. Until then, it and eight other cruisers will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in high-tech upgrades, including advanced radar and sonar, launchers and a much more potent missile interceptor.

"The bottom line is that the upgrades will add life to the cruisers and those upgrades are necessary. They will remain the most impressive integrated missile platforms afloat, but they're not the long-term solution," said Bryan McGrath, a retired destroyer commander who now directs the Maryland-based FerryBridge Group of consultants.

Escalating crew costs in an age of austerity -- at full staff, the Bunker Hill has about 360 sailors -- also doomed the Ticos. Paced by the
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are bigger than the Bunker Hill but boast a crew less than half its size, thanks to robots and software.

The Bunker Hill's crew is considered to be one of the best on the high seas. On May 10, it received the Navy's coveted Battle "E" award for superior combat effectiveness. Six weeks earlier, Lt. Ryan P. Kelly, the Bunker Hill's plans and tactics officer, was named the Surface Warfare Officer of the Year for 2016 by Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet.

During the past nine months, Kelly and the rest of the crew have been honed for new missions built around "distributed lethality." It's a debated topic within the Navy, but at its heart, distributed lethality is a bundle of tactics wrapped in a swagger that's designed to give a potential enemy pause before daring to challenge America at war.

Distributive lethality returns the Navy to its historical roots, when "rat catcher" captains and their crews hunted with ruthless precision their foes at sea.

With an offensive mindset, it prizes commanders who evade their foes before jabbing them like boxing champs. Distributive lethality requires nimble skippers who aggressively exploit an enemy's mistakes and drive home an attack until a foe's warship, aircraft or land target is obliterated.

To wage that type of smart, sneaky and relentless battle, the Bunker Hill's crew drinks daily what Cahill calls a "warfighting ethos." Distributive lethality is a way of "owning the problem" caused by potential foes worldwide who increasingly field potent, stealthy, long-ranged and super-fast missiles and planes capable of crippling an aircraft carrier, he said.

Cahill said the payoff is peace.

"There's a perspective about conventional deterrence," Cahill said. "So if an adversary is advantaged to move first, in any environment, and that adversary understands that if he chooses to move first he will not accomplish his aims, then he will not move first."

And that might be the last great act of the Bunker Hill and its sister cruisers. Once the feared warships of their age, they now must hang on long enough for the Pentagon to build their replacements while preventing rising powers such as China, Russia and Iran from shooting first.
 

Lethe

Captain
Last I heard that 2045 out-of-service date for the last Tico is only attainable if half of them are mothballed and gradually returned to service a decade later -- a plan pitched by the Navy and rejected by Congress.

In the absence of such an arrangement, if we take Bunker Hill's age at planned retirement in 2019 (33yrs) as the benchmark going forward, by 2030 USN will have retired all 22 remaining Ticos as well as the great majority of Flight I Burkes (18 of 21).
 
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Lethe

Captain
Ok, so after wading through the muck, USN still plans to extend the service life of the final 11 Ticos (CGs 63-73) via a rotational modernization program which is already underway with 4 Ticos currently laid-up (CG 63-66). The oldest two Ticos currently in service, CGs 52-53, will be decomissioned in 2020 with all eleven "non-modernised" Ticos exiting service by mid-2020s. At the current Congress-dictated schedule, the last Tico (CG-73) will retire by 2037-2039, at which point she will be 43-45yrs old.
 
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FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Trump Is in the process of ruining the Emirs haha :D
After 150 UH-60, now i see CH-47F and again that possible 4 for Saudi Navy, capable :cool:

Lockheed's Multi-Mission Combat Ship, the
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variant of
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expected to be confirmed as big prize in today's $110 bil deal with
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Lockheed's frigate for Saudi Arabia - gunned-up version of their LCS Littoral Combat Ship.jpg
 
Yesterday at 6:49 PM
Ticos retiring 2019 - 2045
Navy's Aging Cruisers Have No Replacements in Sight
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related part of
Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Set to Answer Lingering Navy Acquisition Questions
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:
Cruiser Modernization
The Navy and Congress have been at odds over how to approach the modernization and life extension of the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers. The Navy in 2013 suggested decommissioning half the fleet to deal with sequestration, arguing it didn’t have the money to man and operate them, let alone modernize the full class of ships. Congress in FY 2015 mandated that
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, which led to the 2/4/6 plan – in which two ships a year would be inducted into the modernization program, for no longer than four years each, with no more than six ships laid up at any given time. The Navy has continued to push back against that,
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and
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, arguing it could save billions of dollars if it laid up all the remaining cruisers and modernized them only as older cruisers begin to decommission. This week’s budget will show whether the Navy will this year go along with the 2/4/6 plan or push back again to save money on the remaining five or so cruisers yet to be inducted into the modernization program.
 
what's the connection between Reality and Intent
(LOL now I recalled the line about 'intent' from Dirty Harry)
?
Saudi Arabia Announces Intent to Buy Surface Combatants, P-8 Aircraft
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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has signed agreements or letters of intent with the Unites States and defense companies to purchase a wide range of military platforms and equipment, including surface combatant ships and P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.

The agreements were signed in ceremonies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during an official visit by President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Signing for Saudi Arabia were King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif Al Saud and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud.

Saudi Arabian officials announced their nation’s intent to purchase an unspecified number of Boeing-built P-8 aircraft, according to a May 21 Boeing announcement.

Boeing also will provide CH-47 helicopters, sustainment services, support for military and civilian helicopters, and up to 16 wide-body airliners. Boeing did not announce an estimated value of the planned purchases.

Lockheed Martin announced in a May 20 release that the agreements included “Letters of Offer and Acceptance and a Memorandum of Intent covering government-to-government sales of Lockheed Martin programs to include integrated air and missile defense systems, multi-mission surface combatant ships, radar systems, surveillance systems, tactical aircraft and rotary wing programs.

“Lockheed Martin and Taqnia [will] form a joint venture to support final assembly and completion of an estimated 150 S-70 Black Hawk utility helicopters for the Saudi government,” the company release said. “A Memorandum of Understanding between Lockheed Martin and Saudi Arabian Military Industries for the parties to work together to build defense capabilities in the KSA … and provide for localization efforts associated with Multi-mission Surface Combatants and Aerostats.”

Lockheed Martin builds the Freedom-class littoral combat ship (LCS) and is will be bidding on the U.S. Navy’s new frigate, submitting a design based on the Freedom or on a new design. The Saudi program likely will be based on the LCS or the new frigate. The sale could be the first international sale of the LCS or a derivative.

Saudi Arabia would become Boeing’s seventh customer for the P-8, joining air arms of the United States, Australia, India, the United Kingdom, Norway and New Zealand. The nation has never before operated specialized long-range maritime patrol aircraft.
 
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