US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
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Comparison between Zumwalt and Arleigh Burke class ships under SAR. Several magnitudes of decrease in signature. Apparently minimum RCS is around just 5M squared in optimal angle.
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Key difference is that China now has countermeasures to whatever the US is fielding/planning to field and weapons systems the US doesn't have equivalents for on top of the necessary volume manufacture to field en masse and upgrade as needed to boot.
As a case in point as to the state of affairs regarding US arms procurement, the M10 Booker was just got cancelled due to the usual circumstances:
It seems like the Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System II (APKWS II) is becoming the US Air Force and Navy go to solution for cheap downing of drones and slow moving cruise missiles. The F-15E Pictured above has 50 APKWS II rockets which gives a single aircraft an incredible intercept capability against swarms of drones and cruise missiles.
Since the base Hyrdra rocket is easy to manufacture this makes for a good platform for cheap drone interception. The only problem is that the current iteration of the APKWS II requires active laser illumination, but they do have a variant with an dual infra-red / active laser guidance package which would make for an excellent drone interceptor.
This is actually a very brilliant solution against swarm attacks by low-end drones and subsonic cruise missiles.
Even better would be instead of fighter jets, using UCAVs would be a more cost-effective solution.
Seems like this Twitter user managed to capture the Air Force testing the new B-61-7 nuclear bomb from the B-2. Cool to see how it uses some rockets to spin stabilize itself after it is deployed.
Honestly just amazing photos!
Honestly just amazing photos!
You can't get there from here by Michael Vlahos, who taught war and strategy at Johns Hopkins University and the Naval War College, provides a readable somewhat bitter historically-grounded analysis.
China's wandering province will return to the mainland's welcoming arms on their own terms and schedule.
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Hegseth's an idiot but his decisions to kill the Booker and the XM7 were probably good ideas. It really feels that the US military procurement is lost and have no idea how to start building gear for the modern battlefield. The Navy is especially badly off right now.
In a vacuum, Vlahos might be correct. The problem though is that the US military can feel their advantages slipping away. Every year the PLA is getting stronger and the US simply can't keep pace. Right now, it's already looking unlikely that the Americans can win a war in the West Pacific. The US Navy in particular has been trying to beat the war drums, but China hasn't been cooperating.
Pulling back for a couple of decades might allow the US Navy to rethink all of its processes and come out stronger. But by then, it will have retired nearly a hundred ships including multiple aircraft carrier. In contrast, China will have a bunch of new carriers, and new generations of frigates, destroyers, and submarines. By that time, it's quite likely that the USN will no longer be the world's strongest navy.
Vlahos is more optimistic than me. As Vlahos and I said in our different ways the USN has dug itself into a multi-factor hole from which it might (Vlahos) or cannot (me) escape. As I've said before in this forum the South China Sea and the East China Sea are China seas. As is pretty much everything to the First Island Chain ... and soon beyond to the North -- East -- South. Most folks focus on the USN-PLAN aspects. But China's doctrine integrates the PLAN with the CCG and the Maritime Militia (see Figure 1.2 in .pdf) enabling a broad range of actions across the kinetic ( law enforcement and flood-the-zone civilian domains. Vlahos also knows this but was hoping for silver lining "guidelines the Navy might follow to hold ruin at bay."
The US Navy lost two decades with the Zumwalt and LCS. I still think it is possible to convert the Zumwalt into a missile cruiser. But the LCS should just be scrapped.
The US is also behind China with the drone carrier ships. After spending a lot of time developing naval drones, they just froze the program. And now China is poised to surpass the US Navy in this area with the Type 076.
The US supercarriers are also vulnerable due to the lack of long range fleet aviation after the retirement of the F-14. So some sort of naval F-47 is required.
The US is also behind China with the drone carrier ships. After spending a lot of time developing naval drones, they just froze the program. And now China is poised to surpass the US Navy in this area with the Type 076.
The US supercarriers are also vulnerable due to the lack of long range fleet aviation after the retirement of the F-14. So some sort of naval F-47 is required.