US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jura said:

Sunday at 5:07 PM
here's the twist: CNO: New Stingray drone will be a tanker
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Naval Today said:

The U.S. Coast Guard received the 19th fast response cutter, Rollin Fritch, in Key West, Florida, on August 23.

The Coast Guard said USCGC Rollin Fritch would be based in Cape May, New Jersey as the first FRC stationed outside Florida or Puerto Rico.

The 19th FRC is named after Seaman First Class Rollin Fritch, who died Jan. 8, 1945, during a battle off the coast of Luzon in the Philippines. Fritch remained at his post as a member of a gun crew aboard the USS Callaway under heavy fire until an enemy plane collided with the vessel. He posthumously received the Silver Star.

The 154-foot (46.9 meter) FRCs patrol coastal regions and feature advanced command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment; improved habitability and seakeeping; and the ability to launch and recover standardized cutter boats from astern or via side davits.

Bollinger Shipyards is building the U.S. Coast Goard Sentinel-class fast response cutters based on the Damen Stan Patrol Boat 4708 design.

FRCs are replacing the 1980s-era 110-foot Island-class patrol boats and execute critical missions including defense readiness; law enforcement; search and rescue; and ports, waterways, and coastal security. The cutters have an endurance of five days and a top speed of more than 28 knots.

Of the 38 FRCs ordered, 17 are in service: six in Key West, six in Miami, and five in San Juan. The 18th FRC is scheduled for commissioning later this month. The FRC is complemented operationally by the national security cutter, which serves in the open ocean, and will later be joined by the offshore patrol cutter, which will bridge the capabilities of the FRC and NSC.

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Miragedriver said:

I don’t know if this is the place to post this. It may just be hyperbole, so if the moderator feels it is inappropriate please remove.


U.S. Army Fears Major War Likely Within Five Years -- But Lacks The Money To Prepare

Taken from Forbes magazine

Nothing focuses the mind like fear. What’s focusing the minds of U.S. Army leaders right now is the fear that they will be in a major war within five years. They know they’ll be fighting terrorists and insurgents for the foreseeable future, but what really preoccupies them is the likely return of large-scale conventional conflict — maybe with Russia in Eastern Europe, or Iran in the Middle East, or North Korea in Northeast Asia. Maybe in all three places.

Senior Army officials are circumspect about discussing the danger in open forums — they don’t want to advertise U.S. vulnerabilities — but it seems clear that the Obama administration’s “pivot to the Pacific” announced in 2012 has created a geopolitical vacuum stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Persian Gulf that Russia and Iran are trying to fill. Meanwhile, the unpredictable government of North Korea continues its bellicose behavior toward the South, which the U.S. is pledged to defend.

There isn’t much appetite for new wars in Washington but U.S. leaders would have little choice if these countries sought to impose their will by force in neighboring nations. Whether aggression took the form of subversion or outright invasion, the U.S. would have to respond, because success for the attackers would drastically alter the global landscape to America’s detriment. It doesn’t take much imagination to see what it would mean if Russian forces were back in the heart of Europe, or Iran controlled most Middle East oil, or North Korea overran the South.

What worries Army planners is that their service isn’t adequately prepared for any of these scenarios — much less a situation in which more than one unfolded simultaneously. Not only have U.S. ground forces been drawn down in Europe and Asia as Washington sought to rely more on air power and sea power for regional security, but investment in new technology for land combat is at a low ebb. The Army’s entire budget for developing and producing new equipment, from tanks to missiles to helicopters to howitzers, amounts to barely two days of federal spending annually.

The level of spending is almost unbelievably low. The Army spends less on procuring wheeled and tracked vehicles in a year than General Motors generates in sales each week. Its $3.6 billion budget request for helicopter procurement, about eight hours worth of federal spending at current rates, is focused mainly on upgrading Reagan-era rotorcraft because it can’t afford to buy new ones. Its ammunition budget ($1.5 billion) isn’t much more than what Americans spend on fireworks each year (around $1 billion).

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US Navy said:

ATLANTIC OCEAN (Aug. 23, 2016) An F-35C Lightning II carrier variant, assigned to the Salty Dogs of Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23, approaches the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73). VX-23 is conducting its third and final developmental test (DT-III) phase aboard George Washington in the Atlantic Ocean. The F-35C is expected to be Fleet operational in 2018.

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Jeff Head said:

Now THIS is what I am talking about. An F-35C landing with four pylons of ground pounding LGBs during DT III aboard the USS George Washington:

Let's zoom in on that baby:

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gCaptain said:

WASHINGTON, Aug 25 (Reuters) – A U.S. Navy ship fired warning shots toward an Iranian fast-attack craft that approached two U.S. ships, a Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday, in the most serious of a number of incidents in the Gulf area this week.

“They did feel compelled ultimately to fire three warning shots and the reason for that is… they had taken steps already to try and de-escalate this situation,” spokesman Peter Cook told reporters.

Tensions have increased in the Gulf in recent days despite an improvement in relations between Iran and the United States.

Years of mutual animosity eased when Washington lifted sanctions on Tehran in January after a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions but serious differences still remain over Iran’s ballistic missile program, Syria and Iraq.

A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the USS Squall patrol craft fired three warning shots from a .50 caliber gun in the northern Gulf on Wednesday after warning flares did not work.

The incident started with three Iranian vessels, but there was only one around by the time the warning shots were fired, the official said. He described the Iranian behavior as “unsafe, unprofessional, and not routine.”

At one point, the Iranian vessel came within 200 yards (193 meters) of a U.S. ship, the official said.

Another interaction took place between an Iranian and U.S. ship on Wednesday, the defense official said but gave few more details.

The Pentagon earlier this week

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near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

On Thursday, Iran’s defense minister said those Iranian vessels were just doing their job.

“If an American ship enters Iran’s maritime region, it will definitely get a warning. We will monitor them and, if they violate our waters, we will confront them,” Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said in a statement reported by the Iranian Students’ News Agency.

A State Department spokeswoman said it was not clear what the intentions of the Iranian ships were, but the behavior was unacceptable.

“We believe that these type of actions are of concern, they unnecessarily escalate tensions,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told a briefing.

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FORBIN said:

Video: Destroyer USS Nitze Harassed by Iranian Patrol Boats

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