US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

LOL! as they say, Never Say Never:
"Mattis reportedly is open to having individuals who signed a summer letter pledging “Never Trump” to join his team, something Trump loyalists have refused to budge on."

the article is full of gossip so just the link:
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Sources: Mattis, Ricardel clashed over Pentagon appointees
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Well more details emerged I am still optimistic.
Army Wires Armored Vehicles With Weapons, Electronic Warfare
Kris Osborn
KRIS OSBORN
Sunday at 10:56 PM
The new “open architecture” on board the vehicles uses ethernet technology to connect C4ISR systems including targeting, weapons and electronic attack applications.

The Army is integrating sensors, weapons, computers, communications gear and display screens into its tactical and combat vehicles to lighten the load, streamline otherwise disconnected technologies and strengthen an ability to launch electronic attacks, service officials said.
The new “open architecture” on board the vehicles uses ethernet technology to connect C4ISR systems including targeting, weapons and electronic attack applications.
The VICTORY effort, called Vehicular Integration for C4ISR/EW Interoperability, is intended to lessen the need for multiple disparate GPS, sensor, display screen and communications “boxes” built into a single vehicle.
The C4ISR and electronic warfare integration, called the “VICTORY” initiative, is aimed at correcting problems created by a “bolt-on” approach to putting multiple pieces of equipment on combat vehicles.
The Army plans to have this new architecture implemented on a wide range of vehicles by next year. VICTORY will be engineered into Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, Strykers, Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, among others.
Aimed at improving what Army developers call “precision, navigation and timing (PNT),” VICTORY will also make combat vehicles more resistant to jamming and electronic attacks.
“Having a common architecture will let us share PNT with all the boxes on a platform so we only need to buy one or two receivers for that platform,” Maj. Gen. David Bassett, Program Executive Officer, Ground Combat Vehicles, said.
VICTORY provides a phased set of standard specifications covering the capabilities needed to integrate C4ISR/EW mission equipment and platform applications. It is a set of standards and specifications with common terminology, systems, components and interfaces,” Army officials stated.

In particular, the technology includes a new, centralized “data bus-centric” design, sharable hardware components and software upgrades implemented independently of hardware adjustments. VICTORY also integrates hardware and software to improve Information Assurance, Army information explains.
Last year, the Army demonstrated the “VICTORY” technology on a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, or MRAP.
This 2015 assessment included the integration of the on-board computer systems, CREW electronic warfare devices, SINCGARS radios, Common Remotely Operated Weapons Systems for crew members to attack enemies from within the vehicle under armor, Degraded Visual Environment sensors allowing operators to see through dust, clouds, sand and other obscurants and Warfighter Information Network – Tactical, or WIN-T, a mobile SatCom network.
“This effort gives Soldiers a more common set of tools and capabilities, allowing the Army to reduce Soldiers' operational burden and providing better insight into logistics and maintenance needs through the Army's Condition-Based Maintenance enterprise,” an Army statement said.
Condition-Based Maintenance, or CBM, is a technology wherein vehicle-integrated diagnostic devices asses a range of vehicle components such as engine health, sensor performance and digital display screen effectiveness. This better identifies instances where repairs may be needed on a vehicle, therefore better recognizing when maintenance is required. This extends the service life of a vehicle and also saves money for the Army, Army officials said.
This integration is coming at a time when the Army is also integrating a handful of new vehicle-mounted technologies on combat vehicles such as an emerging force-tracking system called Joint Battle Command Platform. This technology, among other things, gives combat crews an ability to see locations of friendly and enemy forces in near real-time using digital icons on a digital display.
Connecting sensors to force tracking applications and weapons systems, quite obviously, can massively increase the ability to locate, target and attack enemies much more quickly and efficiently.
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
any who THAAD!!! sounds like some early 80's pop song.
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US THAAD Deployment to Korea Rattles China

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MICHAEL FABEY
Yesterday at 11:13 PM


Beijing sees THAAD as an escalation against their own missile forces and have argued and fought against the system’s deployment since the idea was broached as North Korea began slinging its rockets farther.

The U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) deployed to South Korea earlier this month and while the missile-muting shield is meant to keep North Korean nuclear ambitions in check it is also driving the Chinese to distraction.

Beijing sees THAAD as an escalation against their own missile forces and have argued and fought against the system’s deployment since the idea was broached as North Korea began slinging its rockets farther.

American analysts and other experts says the Chinese may have a point.

U.S. Pacific Command (Pacom) deployed the first THAAD elements to South Korea this month, implementing the U.S.-South Korean alliance’s July decision to bring the defensive capability to the Korean Peninsula.

“North Korea’s accelerating program of nuclear weapons tests and ballistic missile launches constitute a threat to international peace and security and violate multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, Pacom officials said in statement, adding that the THAAD deployment contributes to a layered missile defense system and enhances the alliance’s defense against North Korean missile threats.

Provocative North Korean Actions.

"Continued provocative actions by North Korea, to include (the recent launch of a) launch of multiple missiles, only confirm the prudence of our alliance decision last year to deploy THAAD to South Korea," Navy Adm. Harry Harris, Pacom commander, said in a statement. "We will resolutely honor our alliance commitments to South Korea and stand ready to defend ourselves, the American homeland and our allies."

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The THAAD system is a strictly defensive capability, and it poses no threat to other countries in the region, Pacom officials said. It is designed to intercept and destroy short- and medium-range ballistic missiles inside or outside the atmosphere during their final phase of flight.

“THAAD interceptors do not necessarily add much capacity to counter the North Korean missile threat to South Korea,” Bryan Clark a military analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment (CSBA) tells Scout Warrior. “They are designed to intercept faster, longer-range ballistic missiles as they start their terminal phase after they reenter the atmosphere. The short-range ballistic missiles North Korea would use against South Korea can be defeated by Patriot PAC-3 and PAC-3 MSE, which are less expensive and carried in larger numbers by U.S. forces. Note that THAAD interceptors cost about $11 million each and Patriot interceptors cost between $2 and 4 million each. Although they use different launchers, 4 PAC-3 interceptors can fit into the same launcher space as one THAAD, increasing the defensive capacity of U.S. forces.”

What THAAD brings, however, Clark notes in an email, is the AN-TPY-2 radar and command and control systems. “The sensor and C2 system is what USFK really needs to find and target incoming missiles and apportion missile defenses appropriately. For example, with a good radar, operators can tell what kind of missile they are facing and can decide whether to use a high-end PAC-3 MSE interceptor (price about $4 million), a PAC-3 interceptor (price about $3.5 million) a PAC-2 interceptor (price about $2 million), or (if needed), THAAD.

He also says, “THAAD also provides a longer-range BMD capability that may force an attacker to create more complex salvos to defeat U.S. missile defenses. If the only BMD U.S. forces have is shorter-range PAC-3, an adversary may send in less sophisticated and cheaper ballistic missiles. With a longer-range BMD capability, U.S. forces could intercept some number of ballistic missiles faster away, compelling attackers to use more decoys, penetration aids, ad maneuvering missiles, making salvos more expensive.”

THAAD also will be useful against longer range ballistic missiles that North Korea or China may use against Japan or other targets in the Pacific such as Hawaii or Alaska, he points out. “This may be part of China's concern about the THAAD deployment. It may represent a forward missile defense capability for U.S. forces against China, similar to how Aegis Ashore in Europe represents a forward missile defense capability against Russia.”

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Robert Haddick, a former U.S. Marine Corps officer with service in East Asia and Africa who more recently has been a research contractor for U.S. Special Operations Command, and wrote the book, “Fire on the Water: China, America and the Future of the Pacific,” also sees why a THAAD deployment would upset Chinese officials.

“As for China's response to THAAD, it seems a little over the top at first,” he says in an email. “But there are two explanations for that. First, Chinese policymakers want to show themselves (and everyone else) that they are making progress on creating dominating leverage over other countries in the region, and also success at reducing U.S. influence and allied dependency on the U.S. South Korea's decision to approve THAAD and wave it in after the latest North Korean missile shots shows just the opposite. Namely, that China is not succeeding at driving the U.S. out or economically coercing U.S. allies like South Korea (or Japan).”

Second, he says, “China hates THAAD for the same reason that the USSR hated SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative). Both have/had missile-centric doctrines, investments, and force structures. The centralized control that comes with ballistic missile forces fits the culture of those regimes. Now THAAD (and earlier, SDI) threatens that major, major cultural, doctrinal, and financial investment. PLARF (People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force) planners want to be able to calculate with high confidence how many missiles it will take to reduce certain target sets. Highly effective missile defense systems like THAAD upset all that work and investment. Even if THAAD isn't "air tight," it certainly adds great uncertainty to PLARF calculations and basically messes everything up for them. And that makes those officers, and their political bosses, upset.”
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
US Wants New Personal Weapon for Special Ops

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WE ARE THE MIGHTY
12:15 PM


U.S. Special Operations Command is asking industry for options to outfit spec ops troops with a new personal defense weapon.

It’s the caliber that’s beloved by the commando crowd for its close-in ballistics and smooth shooting through a short-barreled, suppressed rifle. And what was once a weapon for the secret squirrel types has now gone high-profile with a new solicitation from U.S. Special Operations Command asking industry for options to outfit spec ops troops with a new personal defense weapon.

In a formal Request for Information, SOCOM is asking for options to equip its commandos with an M4A1-compatible
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and configures the weapon into a short-barreled rifle no longer than 26 inches with the stock fully extended.

The whole PDW with the upper can’t weigh any more than 5.5 pounds and has to have a collapsed or folded length of a tick over 17 inches.

Those dimensions will be tough to meet,
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, and combined with the requirement that the weapon be able to fire with the stock collapsed or folded narrows the current options significantly.

And, oh, the upper has to convert from a .300 BLK barrel to a 5.56 one in less than three minutes.

(Could a
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be the only real option out there? Ah, the sweet irony!)

Aside from the dimensions, weight and conversion time, the selection of the .300 BLK cartridge for the new kit is one of the first public acknowledgements of special operators’ preference for the caliber in its close-quarters combat arsenal.

Developed about five years ago by the now Remington-owned
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for SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force types who wanted a replacement of the MP-5 submachine gun, the .300 BLK is essentially a 7.62 bullet in a cut down 5.56 case. That gives it good short-range ballistics and allows operators to use the same magazines, lower receivers and bolts of standard-issue rifles but with a different barrel.

Because of the shortened case, the .300 BLK
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(under 9 inches) and when shooting with a suppressor, ammo experts say, which aligns with special operations troops’ preference for suppressed rifles in close-in shootouts.

The SOCOM request states that companies have until April 10 to respond with their options.
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Not covered but related... kinda is that SOCOM has reopened the Suppressed upper Receiver group request, which is for a M4A1 upper that is optimized to work with a suppressor and heat mitigation technologies. Right now SF teams in Nato have over suits that can mask human body heat add in a SURG M4A1 and even with IR and Thermal imaging a SF team are Ghosts...

U.S. Army testing ‘Third Arm’ to hold your weapon, boost lethality
By:
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March 15, 2017 (Photo Credit: Tony Lombardo)

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Soldiers in the field are asked to carry so much. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a third arm to help carry some of it?

Brains at the Army Research Laboratory have created just that – a device designed to hold your weapon, and displace the weight from a soldier’s arms to his torso.

Third Arm, an ultralight exoskeleton for soldier weapons is intended to “increase soldier lethality, while reducing soldier burden,” explained Zac Wingard, a mechanical engineer with the Army Research Lab’s Weapons and Materials Research Directorate.

third-arm-side-view.jpg

The Third Arm transfers the weight of a weapon from a soldier's arms to his torso.(Tony Lombardo/Staff)

Wingard modeled the 4-pound, carbon-fiber exoskeleton during a presentation at the Association of the U.S. Army Global Force Symposium. It attaches to a soldier’s back, via the tactical vest, and connects to the gun’s Picatinny rail. It is ambidextrous and can mount on either side of the body.

While the demo included an M4 carbine, the arm is capable of supporting bigger firepower, up to around 20 pounds, said Dan Baechle, the mechanical engineer leading the project. He specifically mentioned the squad automatic weapon as another option. It could also be used to carry a breaching saw or a shield, Baechle said. Important: The arm is not going to fire the weapon for you, you need your own arms to stabilize and aim, but it's going to reduce the weight you carry.
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Soldiers are now testing the Third Arm. The plan for the next year is to ruggedize the device and continue testing. (Tony Lombardo/staff)

The prototype is brand new, and took about a year to develop, Baechle said. Researchers have already launched a pilot test with six active-duty soldiers assigned to the lab. Testing includes live-fire exercises to measure marksmanship and muscle activity. Future tests of the device will address: moving targets, shooting on the move, unconventional firing positions and recoil mitigation, Baechle said.

The Army has many hurdles to clear before the device could see real action. Even so, the engineer team is moving fast. They expect to test a ruggedized Third Arm within a year.

Soldiers are going to be diving into the dirt, Baechle said, and this device must do the same.
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Best use for this would be the Machine guns M249 and M240 IMO the Ausies have a system that does this called Reaper.
 

Blackstone

Brigadier
Another Robert Blackwill blog begging for hard containment of China. No where in his missive is there any thought on whether it's even possible to contain China these days, never mind the costs versus benefits analysis. Got to love neocons, these people run circles in place while the world passes them by. Good thing polls show millennials and younger generations of Americans are more rational.

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For the United States, the headline concerning China should not be “engage and hedge” as it has been for decades. Given China’s systematic destabilizing external behavior, the time is past for hedging. Rather, for the foreseeable future, U.S. policy should be “engage and contain.”

With President Trump’s first meeting with President
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of China scheduled for next month in Palm Beach, Florida, President Obama’s ambassador to China, Max Baucus, a longtime Montana Democrat senator,
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that the United States needs to stop getting pushed around by China and work out a long-term strategy to deal with that country’s rise. Baucus expressed frustration with the Obama administration’s lack of strategic vision and its weakness when it came to China. China, Baucus said, has a long-term objective to build up its economic might and global influence at the expense of the United States. The United States, by contrast, often appears distracted by problems in the Middle East.

“The Washington foreign-policy establishment tends to put China on another shelf, to deal with it later,”
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. “We’re much too ad hoc. We don’t seem to have a long-term strategy, and that’s very much to our disadvantage.”

China, therefore, does not see its interests served by becoming just another “trading state,” no matter how constructive an outcome that might be for resolving the larger tensions between its economic and geopolitical strategies. Instead, China will continue along the path to becoming a conventional great power with the full panoply of political, geoeconomic and military capabilities, all oriented toward realizing the goal of recovering from the United States the primacy it once enjoyed in Asia as a prelude to exerting global influence in the future.

Because the American effort to “integrate” China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to the United States’ vital national interests in Asia—and could eventually result in a consequential challenge to American power globally—Washington, DC needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on containing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy. It must involve crucial changes to the current policy in order to limit the dangers that China’s disruptive diplomacy, geoeconomic coercion and military expansion pose to U.S. national interests in Asia and globally.

These changes, which constitute the heart of an alternative containment strategy, must derive from the clear recognition that preserving U.S. power and influence in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the twenty-first century. Sustaining this status in the face of rising Chinese power requires, among other things, revitalizing the U.S. economy to nurture those disruptive innovations that bestow on the United States asymmetric economic advantages over others; substantially increasing the defense budget and consequently shifting U.S. defense resources to Asia; creating new preferential trading arrangements among U.S. allies and friends to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China; recreating a technology-control regime involving U.S. allies that prevents China from acquiring military and strategic capabilities enabling it to inflict “high-leverage strategic harm” on the United States and its partners; concertedly building up the power-political capacities of U.S. allies and friends on China’s periphery; and improving the capability of U.S. military forces and allies to effectively project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition—all while continuing to work with China in the diverse ways that befit its importance to U.S. national interests.

The necessity for such a containment strategy that deliberately incorporates elements that limit China’s capacity to misuse its growing power, even as the United States and its allies continue to interact with China diplomatically and economically, is driven by the likelihood that a long-term strategic rivalry between Beijing and Washington is high. Of all nations—and in most conceivable scenarios—China represents, and will remain, the most significant competitor to the United States for decades to come. China’s rise thus far has already bred geopolitical, military, geoeconomic and ideological challenges to U.S. power, U.S. allies and the U.S.-dominated international order. Its continued, even if uneven, success in the future would further undermine the vital national interests of the United States. Washington’s current approach toward Beijing, one that values China’s economic and political integration in the liberal international order at the expense of the United States’ global preeminence and long-term strategic interests, hardly amounts to a “grand” strategy, much less an effective one. As such, the need for a more coherent U.S. response to increasing Chinese power is long overdue.

This is an urgent requirement because there is no real prospect of building fundamental trust, a peaceful coexistence and mutual understanding, a strategic partnership or a new type of major country relations between the United States and China. Rather, the most that can be hoped for is caution and restrained predictability by the two sides as intense U.S.-China strategic competition becomes the new normal, and even that will be no easy task to achieve in the period ahead. The purpose of U.S. diplomacy in these dangerous circumstances is to mitigate and manage the severe inherent tensions between these two conflicting strategic paradigms, but it cannot hope to eliminate them.

With this in mind, the U.S.-China discourse should be more candid, high level and private than current practice—no rows of officials principally trading sermons across the table in Washington or Beijing. Bureaucracies wish to do today what they did yesterday, and wish to do tomorrow what they did today. It is, therefore, inevitable that representatives from Washington and Beijing routinely mount bills of indictment regarding the other side. All are familiar with these calcified and endlessly repeated talking points. As the Chinese proverb puts it, “to talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a tree to catch a fish.”

For such an intensified high-level bilateral dialogue between Washington and Beijing to be fruitful, it should avoid concentrating primarily on the alleged perfidious behavior of the other side. For instance, no amount of American condemnation of China’s human-rights practices—private or by megaphone—will consequentially affect Beijing’s policies, including toward Hong Kong; and no degree of Chinese complaints will lead the United States to weaken its alliance systems that are indispensable to the protection of its vital national interests. Nor is it likely that either side will admit to its actual grand strategy toward the other. In any case, endemic contention will over time contribute to a systemic worsening of U.S.-China bilateral relations.

The profound test that the rise of Chinese power represents for the United States is likely to last for decades. And it is unrealistic to imagine that China’s grand strategy toward the United States will evolve in a way—at least in the next ten years—that accepts American power and influence as linchpins of Asian peace and security, rather than seeking to systematically diminish them. Thus, the central question concerning the future of Asia is whether the United States will have the political will; the geoeconomic, military and diplomatic capabilities; the indispensably close ties with treaty allies; and, crucially, the right grand strategy to deal with China to protect vital U.S. national interests.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration has gotten off to a counterproductive start in this regard. Putting aside the President’s earlier unfortunate dismissal of U.S. alliances in Asia and Europe, his telephone call with the Taiwan president and his questioning of the “One China” policy, the administration’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a serious blow to American power projection in Asia and a gift to China’s hegemonic designs in the region. One can only hope that Pence, Mattis, Tillerson, Kelly, Pompeo and McMaster, all distinguished and all of whom hold conservative realist views of the world, will persuade the president to adopt a long-term containment strategy toward China before his April meeting with Xi Jinping. But that is by no means assured. As Puck observes in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
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What does it matter? Seriously It's an oped! And Neocon?What are you Stuck in 1969?
Seriously Robert Blackwell's Blog? He's retired not actively in the Admin or any real place of importance might as well post the blog of an Area 51 fanatic.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Textron sets its sights on US Air Force's light aircraft experiment
By:
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March 14, 2017 (Photo Credit: Courtesy of Textron)
WASHINGTON — Textron is chomping at the bit for the U.S. Air Force’s planned light attack aircraft demonstration, where it plans to show off the capabilities of the Textron AirLand Scorpion jet and Beechcraft AT-6.

The Air Force has yet to greenlight a program of record, but the service intends to invite industry to participate in flight experiments this summer at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. If the exercise goes well and companies are able to prove a business case, the service could embark on an light attack aircraft acquisition, or OA-X.

In an exclusive interview with Defense News, Textron officials said they see sales opportunities for at least two of its existing planes if the Air Force moves ahead with OA-X.

“We think this will be a complimentary capability to the Air Force’s CAS [close-air support] assets, and we agree with the Air Force that there is certainly a need,” said Jim Grant, Textron Aviation's senior vice president of military programs. “We believe we have at least two aircraft that are great candidates for OA-X, and so we’re actually very excited to see what the actual requirements are.”

Top Air Force brass have acknowledged that the fight against militant groups in the Middle East isn’t likely to subside for at least another decade, but ongoing operations are taxing the service’s limited number of aircraft. The idea behind OA-X is that if the Air Force was to invest in several hundred low-cost attack planes, it could use its more expensive, sophisticated aircraft for training against high-end threats, contributing to overall readiness.

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Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein signed a memo on March 8 formally authorizing the flight demonstration, service spokeswoman Ann Stefanek confirmed in an email to Defense News. The memo explains that the Air Force plans to conduct a variety of experiments meant to help the service make future force structure and modernization decisions, with the light attack aircraft demo as the first campaign.

A formal invite to industry is expected within weeks or perhaps even days. The Air Force’s strategic development planning and experimentation office, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, will lead the effort.

The service has not reached consensus on potential OA-X requirements, only that entries must be low-cost and ready for production. Therefore, Textron is proposing multiple options with different layers of capability.

If the service opts for an inexpensive turboprop type of aircraft, Beechcraft’s AT-6 could be a good fit, said Grant. The aircraft is based on the T-6A used by the Air Force for basic pilot training and modified for the light attack mission. The AT-6 features seven hard points for general-purpose, laser-guided and inertially aided weapons. It also boasts low operating costs and can be flown for less than $1,000 per hour.

“When it comes to a turboprop, we believe that it is a very viable candidate,” Grant said.

In that category, the AT-6 could come up against Embraer’s A-29 Super Tucano, which the U.S. government has purchased for the Afghan air force. But while commonality with allies could be a selling point for the A-29, the idea of buying a Brazilian plane could rankle the “America First” Trump administration.

If the service is willing to pay more for added capability, the Scorpion jet offers greater performance and more flexibility than a turboprop plane, said Bill Harris, Textron AirLand’s vice president of Scorpion sales.

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Textron designed the Scorpion with modularity in mind, allowing it to quickly adapt different sensors and weapons in its internal payload bay or the six hard points located on the wings, which can collectively carry 6,200 pounds of ordnance.

The jet’s ability to fire precision-guided munitions while maintaining low levels of noise could make it a better choice for urban close-air support than loud, less advanced turboprop planes, Harris said.

“These confusing, urban-type battlefield engagements where the target has very short dwell time and it’s hard to dig out where the target might be [located], so you’re working with ground forces as well as other aircraft," he said. "I think the Scorpion has some capabilities with the sensors that it can carry to tackle that kind of a mission that may be a little more difficult for an AT-6."

The Scorpion hasn’t found a launch customer, and Textron AirLand is currently in the throes of manufacturing the third production-conforming jet. Depending on the size of the order and the modifications, Harris estimated unit prices could clock in at $20 million to $30 million a copy, with an operating cost of about $3,000 per flight hour.
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Blackstone

Brigadier
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What does it matter? Seriously It's an oped! And Neocon?What are you Stuck in 1969?
Seriously Robert Blackwell's Blog? He's retired not actively in the Admin or any real place of importance might as well post the blog of an Area 51 fanatic.
Your reply tells me you're just not current on foreign policy, so go and educate yourself a bit on the subject and then come back for some adult conversation.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
This is not Foreign affairs this is military affairs. This is the US Military news,Reports, Data and ecta Thread. Our topic is US Military news, systems and reports not foreign policy blogs, not opeds, and not
Not US Sino relations from the perspective of retired Officials cast down by Blackstone because he is always right and every one who differs is a neocon thread.
 
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