US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

America sold nearly $42B in weapons to foreign countries in 2017
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OK
U.S. defense companies sold $41.93 billion worth of weapons to foreign partners and allies in fiscal 2017, an almost 20 percent increase over 2016 figures.

Of that total, $32.02 billion came through Foreign Military Sales, $6.04 billion was through Foreign Military Financing and $3.87 billion in cases funded through other Defense Department authorities, according to a Wednesday announcement from the State Department.

Regionally, sales made through FMS and FMF totaled roughly $22 billion for Central Asia/Near East; $7.96 billion to the Indo-Pacific; $7.3 billion to Europe; $641.6 million to the Western Hemisphere; and $248.6 million to Africa.

This number represents actual sales agreed to with customers, as opposed to notifications to Congress by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which also set a record in FY17. Those notifications are not final and only apply to potential sales that must be cleared by Congress.

“This positive sales trend isn’t surprising as the United States is the global provider of choice for Security Cooperation,” Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, DSCA director, said in a statement. “We deliver not only the most effective defense systems to our partners, but we also ensure a ‘Total Package’ approach that includes the provision of training, maintenance, and sustainment, to support full spectrum capability for our partners.”

Sales totals tend to be volatile year over year, depending on what partner nations seek to buy. In FY16, sales totaled $33.6 billion, while FY15 totaled just more than $47 billion and FY14 totaled $34.2 billion.

The sales total for FY18 may well eclipse the previous year’s total, thanks to a number of major sales still to be signed, including some tied to U.S. President Donald Trump’s proclaimed $110 billion arms package to Saudi Arabia.

However, the Trump administration has
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about $1 billion in foreign military financing, which could negatively impact future sales. Those dollars are supplied to foreign partners to bolster defense, but must be spent on U.S. products.
let's wait and see how the Saudi deals go on
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
political, so just the link here, but very interesting:
Will tax reform hurt Trump’s military buildup? GOP defense hawks are shrugging it off
38 minutes ago
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NO! cutting taxes always improves the economy and results in more business startups and tax revenues.... Democrats love to raise taxes in order to fund their "vote for me! welfare giveaways", they have a vested interest in punishing business and real taxpayers,,

The need the votes of the crowd they hand out money too,,, social programs rob from the middle class working family,,,,, I had a to PAY a huge fine for not being able to afford "OBAMACARE",,,"pisses me off to no end", Trump has halted the individual mandate, ending that scam as long as he's President, by executive order!

Sequestration and massive defense cuts under Obama were to fund welfare giveaways, like the good old "Obama-phone!" no kidding, they passed out cell phones to none working individuals, and guess who pays for that???
 

FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
2 others VFAs later with also VRC-30 Detcht the 3 MH-60R/S Sqns remains to Atsugi

F/A-18E Super Hornets with Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 115, EA-18G Growlers with Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 141, and F/A-18E Super Hornets with Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 195 arrived at MCAS Iwakuni as part of U.S. Navy Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5’s relocation from Naval Air Facility (NAF) Atsugi, Japan, Nov. 28, 2017. The relocation of CVW-5 from NAF Atsugi to MCAS Iwakuni fulfills the final Defense Policy Review Initiative objective. The relocation is in accordance with the United States’ strategic vision for the rebalance in the Indo-Asia Pacific Region and does much to further strengthen the U.S.-Japan security alliance.


ESSM
USA ESSM.jpg
 
I don't mean to dismiss what you said, just we should be careful not to go deep into Politics here LOL so I'll be brief:
NO! cutting taxes always improves the economy and results in more business startups and tax revenues....
you know I'm a Hawk (LOL) but the problem is the deficit would grow up first

(the article I posted Wednesday at 8:57 PM actually starts with "The White House-backed tax plan is projected to increase the deficit by $1.4 trillion over the next decade ...")

before it became apparent if the tax cut actually worked
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but yeah, I guess they'll have to increase the deficit anyway, but you tell me where's the bottom then? now it's twenty Sep 13, 2017
here's the news!
The US government just passed $20 trillion in debt for the first time ever
Sep. 11, 2017
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The Army helmet of the 2030s will have everything
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am wondering what's more stressful: kicking the door, or kicking the door in a helmet which provides unprecedented situational awareness
As soldiers fight in more urban environments, the Army expects they’ll need a stream of information. Consider soldiers who need to enter a building and get to a rooftop; the Army envisions soldiers could instantly receive a map of the building and a route to get to the top while at the same time use a device to see through doors providing indicators of danger.

Soldiers also could instantaneously pass off targeting data to others in the area to allow them to provide cover.

Military leaders, including the Army chief of staff, recognize that urban environments pose significant military challenges. As a result, the Army is working to provide unprecedented situational awareness to soldiers from the time they’re pre-planning missions, en route to the target and on the ground.

To do this, the Army is relying on advanced communications gear, virtual reality training facilities and augmented reality heads up displays in soldiers’ helmets to make technologies more intuitive for soldiers.

These technologies are among the first to fall under the auspices of a new development strategy the Army is calling asymmetric vision/decide faster, or AVDF. This concept is focused on integrating technologies developed from Army research and development labs early to ensure they are interoperable when transitioned to various program executive offices. This would avoid a common problem that has plagued the Defense Department in the past: stovepiped systems that cannot communicate with each other.

Unpacking the new strategy

While one pillar of AVDF is the integration of the hardware systems and the computing systems, another is sorting through what’s critically important to those operators at the right moment. This allows them to rapidly make decisions in their surroundings, officials told C4ISRNET during a visit to the Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate at Fort Belvoir.

The disaggregated squad is the focus of the concept of operation, said Lt. Col. Ray Gary, military deputy at CERDEC Night Vision. This means giving soldiers what they need to make decisions, to plan and execute the mission at that level, he said.

The Army, in addition to the recognition that it will likely be fighting in urban environments, also understands that its units must fight in a more expeditionary, disaggregated fashion.

The technologies within AVDF’s portfolio, which number around 130 and span several program executive offices, will integrate a bevy of sensor data allowing dismounted soldiers at the tactical edge make decisions faster than adversaries. In recent wargames, this approach helped prevent red team commanders from using ISR assets to obtain targeting data, officials told C4ISRNET.

The New Technological Landscape

With the new approach, also comes the advent of new technologies. This includes a variety of communications gear, virtual reality training facilities and augmented reality displays in soldiers’ helmets.

Officials say virtual reality training will play a big role in future urban operations and in the process allow soldiers to be able to preview exact street corners before they’re actually there. This will allow for more precise rehearsals and eliminate the element of surprise.

“We need to provide information in heads up displays that will allow soldiers to move unimpeded,” Rich Nabors, associate director for strategic planning at CERDEC Night Vision told C4ISRNET.

“What happens when you get into a dense urban environment, for example, you pop out of a vehicle and you really have no idea where you are. You have to get your bearings,” he said. This can be especially difficult if one is subject to fire from multiple directions. “You have to be able to hit the ground running.”

With soldier visual interface technologies, the Army is working to incorporate a stream of information to soldier’s heads up displays. This includes
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, which allows a soldier to see through their display where their rifle sight is set.

Officials outlined what they described as a ring of situational awareness within the soldier’s HUD that includes different icons depicting different targets in the environment.

They can also include navigation data, which is not a rudimentary task for soldiers. Using waypoint technology in the soldier’s display, they no longer have to worry about land navigation and can use the terrain to their advantage eschewing common paths or thoroughfares. Additionally, if the preplanned path on a city street is blocked for some reason, soldiers can seamlessly reorient to a new course.

The rough goal is to have a full integrated demo of all AVDF technologies by 2026.
 
since I now read it, I post
14 Amphibs Tied Up In Maintenance, Exacerbating Shortfall in Available Ships for Marines’ At-Sea Training
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Nearly half the Navy’s amphibious ships are currently tied up in maintenance availabilities and the service would be several ships short of need if it had to scramble the fleet for a major contingency, in large part due to continuing resolutions and other budget challenges, top Navy and Marine Corps operations officials said today.

Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, deputy chief of naval operations for operations, plans and strategy (OPNAV N3/N5),
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that his number-one funding priority for the amphibious fleet is ship maintenance. The Navy and Marines are lacking available ships to conduct pre-deployment training, joint and international exercises, and concept development and experiments, and that ship availability issue stems from too many ships tied up in maintenance today, he said.

The Marine Corps’ years-old position is that “the Navy and Marine Corps Team require 38 amphibious warships, with an operational availability of 90 percent, to support two Marine Expeditionary Brigades, in order to provide the Nation a forcible entry capability,”
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. In that scenario, 34 amphibs could respond to a contingency if called upon, and four would remain behind in maintenance.

Today, the Navy is already short of that requirement with 31 commissioned amphibs in the fleet, and 14 of those are currently in maintenance, according to Lewis and Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps for Plans, Policies, and Operations Lt. Gen. Brian Beaudreault. The admiral made clear that the 90-percent operational availability standard didn’t apply to any given moment in time but rather the ability to scramble ships out of maintenance and gear up to respond to a contingency. Even based on that standard, though, he told USNI News that “If the number [of required amphibious ships] is 30, we’re probably five or so short.”

Lewis squarely put the blame on the ongoing continuing resolutions. Using USS Gunston Hall (LSD-44) as an example, he said the dock landing ship had its last maintenance availability deferred by three years due to continuing resolutions – each year, the Navy had to make decisions about how to slow spending, and when Gunston Hall had to miss its planned start date at a private shipyard, it kept losing its place in line and couldn’t be squeezed in any sooner due to funding and scheduling concerns. Ultimately, when the availability finally took place, the delay “increased the cost from $44 million to $111 million. The time in maintenance went from 207 days to 696 days,” he said, since skipping important maintenance tends to lead to more broken parts and a larger scope of work when the maintenance finally gets done.

In addition to years of continuing resolutions wreaking havoc on ship maintenance scheduling and execution, Lewis added that the amphibious assault ships are spending more time in maintenance than planned due to the F-35B LIghting II Joint Strike Fighter interoperability upgrades taking more time than anticipated. The upgrade is meant to boost the ships’ computers and communications to keep up with the sophisticated new fighter, and to strengthen the flight deck to withstand the extreme heat of the exhaust in the vertical-landing jet.

“Those planned availabilities are longer than we thought they were going to be. We’re getting through them, we’ve got three ships that are modified,” he told USNI News, but added that the first couple availabilities took twice as long as expected and planned for.
“We’ve recalculated that; the scope of the work wasn’t fully understood. … It’s all programmed now, but we’re digging out of a hole. [The planning for the LHD availabilities] has been refined and modified, but it ends up costing more money. We’re trying to fill those coffers up to do that modernization, which takes a little priority. We’ve got a limited amount of money to do maintenance on ships. The first thing we do is do the maintenance on the ships that are next to deploy, and then it’s modernization.”

Beaudreault explained during the hearing that the lack of available ships for Navy-Marine Corps training at sea means an inability to “train at higher echelons above the Marine Expeditionary Unit and Amphibious Ready Group. Our forcible entry capability, core competency, in the Marine Corps in ’18 here is at risk,” he said. “we can add elements through virtual systems, but at some point you have to put the ships to sea and go through mission rehearsal. The ability to generate the number of ships required to train at a Marine Expeditionary Brigade level just simply isn’t there. so we take it in bite-sized chunks, we try to train elements of the MEB as best we can, but it’s very very difficult lacking the capacity to put the entire [Marine Air-Ground Task Force]/Navy team together.”

The Navy’s amphibious ship fleet is expected to grow in the coming years, reaching the 38-ship requirement in Fiscal Year 2033, Beaudreault said, but it is unclear how long the maintenance backlog will continue to affect amphibious training opportunities.

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with finding sufficient ships to train on but adding that three major changes could be made to improve amphibious warfare training.

According to the report, “we found that each deploying Navy ARG completed training for the amphibious operations mission in accordance with training standards. Similarly, we found that each MEU completed all of its mission-essential tasks that are required during the pre-deployment training program. These mission-essential tasks cover areas such as amphibious raid, amphibious assault, and noncombatant evacuation operations, among other operations. However … Marine Corps units were unable to fully accomplish training for other amphibious operations priorities. These shortfalls include home-station unit training to support contingency requirements, service-level exercises, and experimentation and concept development for amphibious operations. For example, Marine Corps officials cited shortfalls in their ability to conduct service-level exercises that train individuals and units on amphibious operations-related skills, as well as provide opportunities to conduct experimentation and concept development for amphibious operations.”

Cary Russell, director of the GAO’s Defense Capabilities and Management Team, said at the hearing that the Marines rely on an ad hoc process to pick which units get to go to amphibious ships for training when the ships become available, rather than having a deliberate and prioritized process for assigning unit-level training, service-level exercises and experimentation events to available ships.

“the assignment of Navy ships to Marine Corps units was done more ad hoc based on the availability of units, Marine Corps units … rather than having a system of prioritization for those Marine Corps units that were most likely to need training earlier. So, for example, some of those units that might be tagged to go as part of the [Special Purpose MAGTF- Crisis Response], for example, or other things that might have priority. That distinction was not made in the process, rather it was more matching availability.”

GAO recommended that the Navy and Marine Corps create this type of prioritized list, and the Defense Department concurred and noted the “Secretary of the Navy would develop an amphibious operations training construct capitalizing on the application of primary and alternative training resources,” according to the report.

Second, the GAO report points out that “the Navy and Marine Corps do not systematically evaluate a full range of training resource alternatives to achieve amphibious operations priorities. Given the limited availability of amphibious ships for training, the Navy and Marine Corps have not systematically incorporated selected training resource alternatives into home-station training plans. During our review, we identified a number of alternatives that could help mitigate the risk to the services’ amphibious capability due to limited training opportunities. These alternatives could include utilizing additional training opportunities during an amphibious ship’s basic phase of training; using alternative platforms for training, such as [Maritime] Prepositioning Force ships; utilizing smaller Navy craft or pier-side ships to meet training requirements; and leveraging developmental and operational test events.”
size limit reached; the article goes on right below:
 
The GAO “recommended that the Marine Corps develop guidance for the development and use of virtual training devices to address these gaps. DoD concurred with the recommendation and stated it would work with the Commandant of the Marine Corps in its development and implementation actions associated with the use of virtual training devices.”

During the hearing, Beaudreault said there was a system of systems of simulators and trainers that were relevant to amphibious operations around the edges, but there is not today a good simulator for amphibious operations as a whole that could replicate the on-ship experience his Marines need.

Third, the report notes the two services have worked on improving naval integration for training and operations but added that there was room for improvement. Suggestions for the services include writing “joint strategy that defines and articulates common outcomes to achieve naval integration,” establishing compatible policies and procedures to avoid inefficiencies during amphibious training events, and developing “mechanisms to monitor, evaluate, and report on results in improving naval integration.”
source:
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Nov 17, 2017
What’s inside the $700 billion defense budget plan headed to Trump's desk?
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"... Whether the military will have that much money to spend is still up for debate. The authorization bill sets policy priorities and spending parameters for military funding for fiscal 2018, but appropriators still must allot the money to the Defense Department before they can move ahead.

That process is expected to take several more weeks. ..."

... and I'm going to quote this post
updating ("With the current continuing resolution set to expire soon, military leaders are intensifying warnings of the consequences for military readiness if lawmakers cannot agree on a new budget." etc.) with Smith: Continuing Resolution Use is the Worst Thing Congress Does for National Security
11/30/2017
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(expletives inside, so just the link here)
 
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