US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Lincoln Tests F-35C Lightning II at Sea
ATLANTIC OCEAN (NNS) -- The Nimitz-Class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) became one of the few ships in the fleet to trap and launch the F-35C Lightning II, Sept. 3.

The "Grim Reapers" of Strike Fighter Squadron 101 (VFA 101), from Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, are the training squadron for the F-35C.
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Aug 5, 2017

and
Boeing lands $600M contract to design new Air Force Ones

11 hours ago
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The Air frames exist they were undelivered 747-8I originally aimed for a defunct Russian Airline Transaero. tail numbers N894BA & N895BA. The company went under before delivery and the birds have been waiting for a buyer.
Boeing will likely be modifying them with EMP protection, advanced communications (This is one Area I think Boeing is going to be investing a lot of time in. I suspect these new birds will be massively upgraded in telecoms and computers. ), and Air defences. Word is one of the cost cutting measures is that unlike the VC25A these 747-8I will not be air to air refuelable. That practice though is exceedingly rare for the current Air Force one birds though but was considered a necessity for the Continuation of Government ( IE Doomsday scenario ) role.
there has been speculation of a more conventional HVAC as well. current VC25A are said to have NBC rated HVAC.
 
676575190/14
=
48,326,799

Contracts
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Press Operations

Release No: CR-178-17
Sept. 13, 2017

CONTRACTS


NAVY


The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Missouri, is being awarded $676,575,190 for modification P00004 to a previously awarded fixed-price-incentive contract (N00019-17-C-0003). This modification provides for the full-rate production and delivery of six Lot 41 F/A-18E and eight F/A-18F aircraft. Work will be performed in ...
... etc., skipping (check the above link if interested in the rest, I care about money hahaha)
 
in real world Lawmakers invoke Navy accidents in budget fight

2 hours ago
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Senior Republican leaders pinned the spate of recent fatal Navy accidents on military budget cuts during a series of Senate floor speeches on Thursday.


“Ten sailors just died aboard the USS John S. McCain,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz. “They died because that ship was not ready and not trained and not equipped and not capable of doing its job because they didn’t have enough funding. Let’s get our priorities straight.”

The comments came as senators debated the annual defense authorization bill, which outlines funding priorities and policies for the upcoming fiscal year. McCain was arguing in favor of cuts to medical research in the military budget when he invoked the dead sailors.

“What you’re doing is you’re taking away from the men and women serving in the military what they need to defend this nation,” he said. “We now have many more accidents due to the lack of readiness and training and maintenance that we do in combat.”

That message of funding cuts endangering military lives has been repeated throughout the defense bill debate this week, and has become a talking point on among House lawmakers in their appropriations battles.

Navy officials have not formally released the causes of two high-profile recent accidents: A June collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a commercial ship that killed seven sailors and an August collision the USS McCain and a commercial ship that killed 10 others.

A recent Government Accountability Office found widespread problems with ship training and certification programs, which may have contributed to the accidents. Naval officials testified before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this month that funding uncertainty has lead to training and planning complications.

Following McCain’s comments on Thursday, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican — Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas — echoed the same sentiments that smaller than expected defense budgets were producing harmful effects for the force.

“We need to remember how they spell out in the real world, how they affect our sailors, our pilots, and our troops on the ground,” he said.

“This summer the nation mourned 42 servicemembers who died in accidents related to readiness challenges … including the death of 17 sailors aboard the USS McCain and USS Fitzgerald alone, plus other separate actions claiming the lives of 19 Marines and six soldiers.”

Thus far the implication that better funding would result in fewer military deaths has had no significant effect on the Capitol Hill budget impasse. Republican leaders in the House and Senate are pushing sizable increases in military spending for fiscal 2018, but Democrats have objected to those rises without similar boosts in other non-defense programs.

Lawmakers did agree upon a three-month extension of the fiscal 2017 budget earlier this week, averting a government shutdown until December. But in a letter to lawmakers earlier this month, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that funding extension does not include extra funds needed to keep pace with critical training and readiness programs.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
interestingly, now Mattis Says US Must Keep All 3 Parts of Nuclear Force
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Good. And he is right.

Since we ridiculously took the Peace Keeper missiles out of service (probably the most accurate and best engineered ICBM the world have ever know), we rely only on the Minutemen...which are very good, but not MIRV and older.

The Trident D5s are now doing the job of the Peacekeepers, and they are VERY good too with MIRVs.

Our bomber force can also get the job done with B-2s and B-1Bs. With all three we still have a very credible deterrent...and that deterrent is still critical...just as it is for Russia and China.
 
it's DefenseNews:
US military assesses North Korea tested H-bomb as country conducts another launch
U.S. Strategic Command is assuming that North Korea successfully tested a hydrogen bomb Sept. 3, moving the country closer to the ability to destroy an entire American city, Air Force Gen. John Hyten said Thursday.

The acknowledgment from STRATCOM came on news that North Korea had conducted yet another missile test Thursday, despite repeat warnings from President Donald Trump to desist and repeat outreach and attempts to pursue a solution through diplomatic means.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis was at STRATCOM at the time of the latest North Korea launch, which U.S. Pacific Command assessed to be an intermediate range ballistic missile.

The missile “fired over Japan and put millions of Japanese in the duck and cover. It landed out in the Pacific,” Mattis said.

Mattis was meeting with troops and getting briefings on the command’s mission around the time of the launch. When the launch occurred, he and Hyten went about three stories underground to the Global Operations Center, a conference room of screens and terminals that communicate with all of the various elements of U.S. missile defense.

Hyten was speaking with reporters traveling with Mattis to STRATCOM Thursday afternoon when he was quickly pulled from the room, but officials at the time could not confirm the launch.

Hyten did however discuss the significance of North Korea’s hydrogen test.

“The size of the weapon [in the Sept. 3 test] shows that there clearly was a secondary explosion,” Hyten said to reporters visiting the command with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “To me that is the definition [of a hydrogen bomb.]”


“I saw the event, I saw the indications that came from that event. I saw the size, I saw the reports and therefore, to me, I am assuming it was a hydrogen bomb,” Hyten said.

North Korea has also already shown that they have improved their missile range to give them the ability to reach a U.S. city, even if the missile tests have not been consistently successful yet.

That did not give Hyten comfort.

“You still haven’t seen everything put together,” Hyten said. “But it’s just a matter of when, not if.”

Mattis said on Wednesday that the yield of North Korea’s latest explosion was more than 100 kilotons. Hyten, who commands all U.S. nuclear assets and is responsible for generating an attack in the event the president ordered a nuclear strike, said that the development is a game changer.

“The change from the original atomic bomb to the hydrogen bomb [in 1952] for the United States changed our entire deterrent relationship with the Soviet Union,” Hyten said. “It changes the entire relationship because [of] the sheer destruction and damage you can use, you can create with a weapon that size.”

If the North Koreans continue to improve their ballistic missile range, “then that has the capability to destroy a city.”

To date, neither threats by President Donald Trump, nor gestures of continued diplomacy have kept North Korea from completing its nuclear weapons program. Hyten would not say whether the U.S. can at this point deter North Korea from developing the technology to launch a nuclear ballistic missile - but said that the United States could deter the country from an actual launch through the response it would bring.

“The response will be the destruction of their entire nation and I think that does provide a very powerful deterrent,” Hyten said.
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Rheinmetall wants in on US Army fleet protection effort
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  3 days ago
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Rheinmetall has an active protection system solution extensively demonstrated in Europe on a variety of combat vehicles, including vehicles similar to the U.S. Army's Stryker combat vehicle. (Courtesy of Rheinmetall)

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Army prepares to make key decisions in the near future on interim active protection system solutions for its fleet, Rheinmetall wants in.

The German company’s Active Defense System, or ADS, which has a solution extensively demonstrated in Europe on a variety of combat vehicles, incorporates distributed, low-powered microwave radar sensors that detect ballistic threats such as rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank guided missiles. Interceptors can then defeat the incoming threats as close as roughly 1 meter from the hull of the vehicle by disabling its main charge and minimizing an explosion, Stefan Hasse, Rheinmetall’s director of protection systems, told Defense News.

The Army has been working on interim active protection system, or APS, solutions for its Abrams tanks, Stryker combat vehicles and Bradley fighting vehicles for more than a year. The service has been looking at three different systems:

  • Trophy, a Rafael Advanced Defense Systems combined hostile-fire detection and APS system, is expected to be chosen for the Abrams.
  • Iron Fist, a system developed by IMI Systems and General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, is poised to be chosen as the solution for the Bradley.
  • Iron Curtain, a U.S.-based offering from Artis Corporation, is being evaluated for the Stryker.
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Maj. Gen. David Bassett, the program executive officer for Army combat vehicles, told a group of reporters at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, on Aug. 15, that the Army was very close to making a decision on whether to move forward with the integration of Trophy onto a brigade’s worth of Abrams.

However, Bassett said the Army was several months further behind with Stryker and Bradley, adding that the Stryker solution had just begun testing, and Bradley testing had yet to begin. For both vehicles, it’s believed to be more challenging to incorporate an APS system, and the solutions being evaluated are not yet fielded.

The question for Rheinmetall, which sees its solution as the best match for the Stryker, is whether funding and timing will allow it to even be considered.

The other three companies had been involved in discussions with the Army longer than Rheinmetall. Key decision-makers on the program didn’t get to see ADS in action through European-based demonstrations until negotiations were well underway to qualify other solutions.

And by the time the Army became aware of Rheinmetall’s progress with ADS, there was not enough funding to qualify a fourth solution.

Col. Glenn Dean, the project manager for the Army’s Stryker Brigade Combat Team, has said the service would like to look at other APS systems, such as Rheinmetall’s ADS, should funding become available.

The company is working to integrate ADS onto an eight-wheel drive vehicle similar to the Stryker, Haase said. The company in the summer of 2016 demonstrated the capability for Army representatives, including Dean.

“We see our system as one that could be more easily integrated maybe on the Stryker platform and already has demonstrated that its got the capability to defeat things like [anti-tank guided missiles],” Haase said. “It has got some capabilities that are maybe more proven than what they have seen from some of the other sources, so there is still potential there.”

Yet, he added, “I think definitely it’s a little more of a challenge when you don’t have that amount of funding going in. I guess it will just depend on how the other systems perform and whether they are able to find more funding for other integration work.”

Meanwhile, ADS continues to be put to the test for potential European customers. Rheinmetall conducted a live-fire demonstration on June 30 and July 1 in Sweden. The system went six-for-six against anti-tank guided missile threats, according to McCallum. “We had six full intercepts with zero residual penetration, very clean intercepts,” he said.

One major reason Rheinmetall believes the Army should work to include it in the nondevelopmental integration efforts is because its system is proof that a distributed APS solution works and offers a lower radius of danger, as opposed to launcher-based APS systems. Other systems will hit targets farther out but with less precision, so the result is a bigger blast and more shrapnel.

“I think the Army would definitely deserve to have another system on Stryker, which can then successfully demonstrate that,” Haase said.

McCallum added: “We are just hoping they are keeping an open mind and they are not too far down this path that they are limiting themselves.”
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Iron Curtain has been demonstrated on humvee's to meaning that if it is procured it could be fitted on MRAPS and JLTV.
 
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