US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

The U.S. has sent a guided missile destroyer off the coast of Yemen on a presence operation following a suicide boat attack on a Saudi frigate this week, a defense official confirmed to USNI News.

USS Cole (DDG-67) is now operating in the Gulf of Aden south of the Bab al-Mandeb strait that links the gulf to the Red Sea as of Friday, the official said.

U.S. 5th fleet officials did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

The destroyer was positioned in reaction to the Monday attack in which a Houthi explosive-laden suicide boat rammed into a Saudi Al Madinah-class frigate in the Red Sea killing two Royal Saudi Naval Forces sailors.

The move was

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on Friday.

The shift in Cole’s position is similar to the tasking of U.S. warships in October following the attack on the

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.

On Wednesday, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said as a result the attack on the frigate in the Red Sea — and the Sunday test launch of a ballistic missile outside of Tehran — was now, “on notice.”

“These are just the latest of a series of incidents in the past six months in which Houthi forces that Iran has trained and armed have struck Emirati and Saudi vessels, and threatened U.S. and allied vessels transiting the Red Sea,” read the statement.
“In these and other similar activities, Iran continues to threaten U.S. friends and allies in the region.”

On Friday afternoon,

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.

The Norfolk-based Cole left on an independent deployment in December to Europe and the Middle East.

Cole and its crew were the victim of a similar suicide boat attack when it was docked in Yemen in 2000. The attack killed 17 sailors and injured more than 30.

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Jura said:

interestingly Trump's Army secretary pick is a billionaire NHL owner, West Point grad

source:

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President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Army abruptly withdrew his name from consideration late Friday night, citing his inability to get around strict Defense Department rules concerning his family businesses.

Vincent Viola, founder of digital stock trading firm Virtu Financial and owner of the National Hockey League’s Florida Panthers, had been working through the confirmation process to become Army Secretary since mid-December.

In a statement, Viola said he was “deeply honored” to be nominated for the post, but concluded that he would not be able to successfully navigate the confirmation process.

“I appreciate the confidence President Trump showed in me,” he said. “I offer my continued support for President Trump and his administration, and look forward to redoubling my efforts to support the Army and its veterans as private citizens.”

Sources familiar said Viola had been looking for ways to divest from his businesses -- including ownership of the hockey team -- to take the top civilian Army post.

He had planned to transfer ownership to other family members but turn over operations responsibilities to the team’s vice chairman, but that arrangement did not meet Pentagon requirements, according to sources.

The surprise announcement leaves another hole in Trump’s Pentagon leadership team. While Defense Secretary James Mattis was confirmed by the Senate just hours after Trump was inaugurated, dozens of other key civilian military posts remain vacant or manned by temporary appointees.

Trump has nominated Heather Wilson to take over as Air Force Secretary and Philip Bilden to become Navy Secretary, but confirmation hearings have not been announced for either role.

Currently, Robert Speer is serving as acting Army secretary, a step up from his previous post as assistant secretary for financial management at the service.

The Army has only had a full-time secretary for a few months over the last two years. Army Secretary Eric Fanning was nominated to replace John McHugh in late 2015, but did not officially take over the job until May because of a lengthy confirmation fight with Congress. Deputy Army Secretary Patrick Murphy served in an acting role for more than four months.

Now it appears that Speer may serve a similar lengthy stint. Even if administration officials name a replace for Viola quickly, the confirmation process for many of Trump’s nominees has moved slowly through the Senate.

Viola is a 1977 West Point graduate who rose to the rank of major in the Army Reserve. The 60-year-old businessman is a former chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange and was serving in that role during the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

He helped found the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, a privately funded research wing of the school focused on “counterterrorism policy and strategy” and “ways to confront the dynamic threat environment” facing America today.

He has also been a donor to numerous Army charities and support networks, including the Army Cyber Institute, the Modern War Institute and Army athletic programs.

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Jura said:

very interesting article

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I'm going to read it again ...

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Improving readiness, addressing pressing shortfalls and building a more capable force are the near- and long-term objectives of the new defense secretary.

In a Jan. 31 memorandum to senior defense leaders and commanders released Feb. 1, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis outlined a three-phase approach to improving the defense posture of the United States, beginning with an amendment to the 2017 budget.

“To address immediate and serious readiness challenges, we will prepare a [fiscal year] 2017 budget amendment request,” Mattis said in the memorandum. “The amendment will address urgent warfighting readiness shortfalls across the joint force, and new requirements driven by acceleration of the campaign against ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria]. The amendment may increase force structure in critical areas where doing so would have an immediate readiness impact.”

The amendment would be an increase over the topline of the 2017 budget request, and would be delivered to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) no later than March. 1.

The 2018 budget request is being reviewed with a “focus on balancing the program, addressing pressing programmatic shortfalls, while continuing building readiness,” Mattis said.

The 2018 budget proposal will be delivered to OMB no later than May 1.

A new National Defense Strategy (NDS) will be developed to complement a new National Security Strategy. The new NDS “will include a new force-sizing construct, which will inform our targets for force structure growth,” Mattis said. “It will also determine an approach to enhancing lethality of the joint force against high-end competitors and the effectiveness of our military against a broad spectrum of potential threats.”

The memorandum said that the 2019-2023 defense program “will also contain an ambitious reform agenda, which will include horizontal integration across [the Defense Department] components to improve efficiency and take advantage of economies of scale.”

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Businessman Philip Bilden is on deck to become the next Navy secretary after eight years of declining readiness inside the world’s most advanced fleet and profound cultural shifts inside the traditionally hide-bound Navy.

Under former Secretary Ray Mabus, the Navy made a policy of directing money away from operations and maintenance in order to keep funding shipbuilding, an effort to arrest the precipitous decline of the fleet’s size, which has dropped from more than 500 ships at the end of the Cold War to today’s 274.

At the same time Mabus pushed hard for major cultural shifts inside the fleet, including the inclusion of women in combat roles in the Navy and Marine Corps, unisex uniforms, gender-neutral ratings titles and opening the services to transgender service members.

Mabus's initiatives require long-term institutional commitments and its unclear how they will evolve under Bilden, who has spent most of his career as a Hong Kong-based venture capitalist with HarbourVest Partners, a global private-equity investment firm.

Donald Trump’s preliminary marching orders are to build the fleet from 274 ships to 350. But Navy leaders have already indicated that their first priority is to fix training and readiness which have taken hits while the service has endured budget cuts and crushing demands for its forces overseas.

The Navy’s leadership is lining up behind a unified message: fix our fleet, focus on war fighting, then grow the Navy.

Navy leaders have been banging the drum on declining readiness for years since across-the-board budget cuts in 2013 began eating into the money the Navy had to train its sailors and maintain its complex and hard-used equipment. In May, Navy Times sister publication Defense News reported that in 2016 the Navy shorted its operations and maintenance budget nearly a billion dollars, pushing off needed maintenance for ships.

In a recent speech, the vice chief of naval operations bemoaned the toll robbing maintenance funds had taken on the fleet.

“This long war we’re in and emerging or re-emerging threats have raised the stakes and kept us on the field longer than our bullpen is able to stay healthy,” Adm. Bill Moran, vice chief of naval operations said. “Deferred maintenance is insidiously taking its toll on the long-term readiness of our fleet.”

On the cultural side, Bilden comes to the Navy after years of internal change that began with the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell in 2011 moved more recently to the integration of women into combat jobs. To many Navy leaders, the conversations around complex social issues were becoming a distraction from the Navy’s core mission, especially while ships and aircraft were beginning to show troubling signs of decay.

“In eight years we went from ‘let’s not talk about gay people’ to complex conversations of gender identity and bathrooms,” said retired cruiser skipper Capt. Rick Hoffman. “We leap-frogged 10 years of social growth in the Navy and people from leadership all the way down to the deck plates did not know what to make of it.”

The future of much of the social changes inside the Navy remains murky. The Trump administration has signaled it plans to maintain the Obama administration’s commitment to inclusive policies towards gay, lesbian and transgender people, but influential voices in and around the Navy are pushing for a return to focus on fighting and defeating adversaries.

“I think I represent a lot of active, retired and former sailors when I say we welcome a balanced approach to running the Navy,” said retired four-star Adm. Robert Natter, who was the Navy’s fleet boss from 2000-2003.

Natter said he supported leadership’s push to plus up the maintenance and training budget, a position supported by another former fleet boss retired Adm. John Harvey, who led Fleet Forces Command from 2009-2012.

Harvey said the heavy demand from big DoD for the Navy’s capabilities has been stressing the Navy’s declining resources, especially since they have not had sufficient time and resources to reset.

“My mantra at Fleet Forces Command was always the wholeness for the fleet for the long term,” Harvey said. “That always runs into the insatiable demand for everything that Navy brings to the combatant commanders. It has to be clear that to make these wonderful ships, aircraft and submarines available for the long term you have to pay attention to maintenance. And for our people to perform correctly you have to pay attention to training.”

Inside the Navy and the Defense Department, a debate has been ongoing between those who argue the Navy needs enough ships, including less capable ones such as the troubled Littoral Combat Ship, to provide presence globally. Others argue that having fewer, more capable ships, such as Virginia-class attack submarines and high-end destroyers, are necessary to fight and defeat complex enemies.

The promised influx of money from the incoming Trump administration was a unique opportunity to set the Navy up with both the capacity it needs to put ships all over the globe providing presence and the capability to go toe-to-toe and defeat complex enemies such as Russia and China, Harvey said.

“A 350-ship fleet sound about right to me,” Harvey said. “This is our chance to get it all right, to get the right capabilities and the right capacity.”

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US Navy Uses Spike Miniature Missiles to Shoot Down UAVs
By

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-
Feb 2, 2017

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A forward-firing miniature munition - Spike, is launched at an Outlaw, a class-two representative unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), during a recent and successful counter-UAV demonstration on the land range at Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division China Lake. (U.S. Navy photo)

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A forward-firing miniature munition, known as

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, is loaded on a rail launcher for a recent counter-unmanned aerial vehicle demonstration on the land range at Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division

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. (U.S. Navy photo)
Weapons specialists at the US Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (

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) at

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, CA. have recently tested the capability of guided missile to defeat an unmanned aerial vehicle in flight. The

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miniature, lightweight precision guided missile was used for the test performed in December 2016 at China Lake. Two of the small missiles demonstrated the capability of the Navy designed weapon to shoot down an Outlaw UAV with a single shot. In one engagement, the Spike performed with proximity fuse while the second verified contact activation with a direct hit.

To prepare for the demonstration the Spike launcher was mounted to a radar-queued gimbal, which maintained the target in the missile’s field of view while the Spike operator acquired, tracked and engaged the target.

Preparing for a counter-UAV live fire exercise in 2013 the Spike project team collaborated with the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center. Following that 2013 demonstration, ARDEC requested the Spike team’s participation in a transport convoy protection line of defense using a similar gimbal system. The Army provided a proximity fuse for integration into the missile and the incorporation of that fuse enabled the Spike missile to explode on contact or near the target. In December, the Spike team demonstrated the effectiveness of both activation modes, destroying two Outlaw UAVs.

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Jonathon Pooley, a technician at

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, displays a 25-inch, 5.5-pound forward-firing miniature munition known as Spike. (U.S. Navy photo)
Project engineers continue to make improvements to their fire control suite, processes for safer assembly as well as algorithm updates for better endgame performance and replacement verification tests that are cheaper, faster and equally as effective as the previous ones.
Known as the forward-firing miniature munition, Spike is under development by a small team of engineers at China Lake, seeking to provide a cost-effective weapon that could counter emerging threats with capabilities that other weapons cannot. One such area is the increasing threat of small boat swarms often referred to as the fast attack craft (FAC) and fast inshore attack craft (

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) threat. One strategy the enemy employs is to use multiple FACs/

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s to go after a target. The Spike could be a good gap-filler in a layered defense against this tactic. Spike has recorded direct hits against moving

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threats in separate test events on the NAWCWD Point Mugu sea range.

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Footage taken aboard Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake shows the impact of a Spike missile on an Outlaw unmanned aerial vehicle during a Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division demonstration in December 2016. (U.S. Navy photo)

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Jura said:

Dec 16, 2016

LOL it's 2017 now so:
"In the coming months, the Navy is also planning to test the SM-3 Missile Block IIA, the service’s exo-atmospheric intercepting ballistic missile, Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall, director of Surface Warfare Division, N96, OPNAV, told an audience Tuesday at the Surface Navy Association’s 29th National Symposium."
inside US Navy Wants Multi-Use Missiles for Surface Warfare

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The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), the Japan Ministry of Defense (MoD), and U.S. Navy sailors aboard USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53) successfully conducted a flight test Feb. 3 (Hawaii Standard Time), resulting in the first intercept of a ballistic missile target using the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA off the west coast of Hawaii.

The SM-3 Block IIA is being developed cooperatively by the United States and Japan to defeat medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The SM-3 Block IIA interceptor operates as part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system and can be launched from Aegis-equipped ships or Aegis Ashore sites.

At approximately 10:30 p.m., Hawaii Standard Time, Feb. 3 (3:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Feb. 4) a medium-range ballistic missile target was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii. John Paul Jones detected and tracked the target missile with its onboard AN/SPY-1D(V) radar using the Aegis Baseline 9.C2 weapon system. Upon acquiring and tracking the target, the ship launched an SM-3 Block IIA guided missile which intercepted the target.

“Today's test demonstrates a critical milestone in the cooperative development of the SM-3 Block IIA missile,” said MDA Director Vice Adm. Jim Syring. “The missile, developed jointly by a Japanese and U.S. government and industry team, is vitally important to both our nations and will ultimately improve our ability to defend against increasing ballistic missile threats around the world."

Based on preliminary data the test met its primary objective. Program officials will continue to evaluate system performance based upon telemetry and other data obtained during the test.

The flight test, designated SM-3 Block IIA Cooperative Development (SCD) Project Flight Test, Standard Missile (SFTM)-01, was the third flight test of the SM-3 Block IIA guided missile, and the first intercept test. This test also marks the first time an SM-3IIA was launched from an Aegis ship and the first intercept engagement using the Aegis Baseline 9.C2 (BMD 5.1) weapon system.

...

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Jura said:

Jan 11, 2017

and I was waiting
U.S., Japan Successfully Conduct First SM-3 Block IIA Intercept Test

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17-NEWS-0002
Feb. 03, 2017

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$18 Billion Wishlist

In the nearer term, Thornberry desperately wants to pass the defense spending bills for 2017; the ’17 fiscal year is already one-third over. “There is no reason in the world we need to wait till April,” when the current

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expires, he said.

Thornberry is also looking forward expectantly to the Trump Administration’s promised request for

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, expected to come around March 1st. He’s already got an $18 billion wishlist.

“The place where I have suggested that the administration start is look at the items that were in the House-passed NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) last year but that ultimately did not make into the final conference report that was signed into law,” Thornberry said. “My view is they should be at the top of the list.” The

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focused on readiness and personnel plus-ups but demurred on the many modernization initiatives, like buying extra fighter aircraft, that make up most of the omitted

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.

“One of the only ways we’re going to fix some of the

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we have is modernization,” Thornberry said. “if you’ve got an F-18 that was built in 1980, you’re going to have

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until you replace it with an F-35.” (Donald Trump has famously

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and in pre-inauguration meetings with contractor Lockheed Martin).

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Jura said:

now I read

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but pull just
the rest is politics, gossip etc.; anyway the source is

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House Armed Services Chair Mac Thornberry, R-Tex., is seizing the initiative for his Pentagon reform agenda for 2018, even as the Trump administration's Defense Department team takes shape.

At a reporters’ roundtable Monday, Thornberry said he plans to press ahead with incremental acquisitions and organizational reforms this year, beyond last year’s split of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics job.

“I’m proud of what we have done so far and I’m fully aware that there is much, much more that needs to be done in a careful, thoughtful, determined way,” Thornberry said. “There will be more acquisition reform this year, and we still have some organizational issues to deal with.”

As in past years, the chairman will introduce a stand-alone reform bill that will morph into language for the annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act.

Reform language in last year’s final NDAA created an undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, and a new undersecretary for research and engineering, which is essentially a chief technology officer. The change is mandated for 2018, but Defense Secretary Jim Mattis can begin implementation sooner if he chooses.

In a memo released Feb. 1, Mattis said his 2019 to 2023 defense program will “contain an ambitious reform agenda, which will include horizontal integration across DoD components to improve efficiency and take advantage of economies of scale.”

“I really look forward to working with Secretary Mattis and the new team there to talk about what makes the most sense to push innovation, to make sure all these defense agencies have the proper leadership, and we implement the acquisition reform that Congress has enacted the last two years,” Thornberry said.

The Trump administration has not publicly disclosed nominees for senior positions within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Still in place is Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, an Obama administration holdover and the quarterback for DoD's innovation initiative, the so-called Third Offset Strategy.

Thornberry’s push last year was to speed weapons development and streamline DoD’s acquisitions bureaucracy so the military can work with non-traditional firms to put cutting-edge technology in the hands of troops. On Monday he signaled more work along these lines, saying: "Technology is evolving too fast for us to be complacent and say what worked in Cold War times is adequate for today.”

The comments came as the vice chiefs of the armed services are set to appear before the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday and the Senate Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee on Wednesday.

Thornberry said Monday he wants Congress to pass months-overdue 2017 appropriations, and he lauded the administration’s plan to send a supplemental spending request that includes defense by early March. That supplemental ought to include $18 billion in jets, ships and manpower left out of 2017 defense appropriations, he said.

For the 2018 budget, Thornberry is forwarding analysis to the Trump administration urging a $640 billion base budget. The top-line at least echoes a proposal from Thornberry's Senate counterpart, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

“Hopefully it gives them a head start because they’re just getting going with the ’17 supplemental and ’18 [budget request] all on their plate,” Thornberry said of the Trump administration.

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