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interestingly CNO Richardson: Navy Shelving A2/AD Acronym
As Pentagon terms-of-the-moment go, Anti-Access-Area Denial has been on the forefront of strategic conversation across the services and military academia for more than 15 years. Now, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said his service will stop using the term for the sake of clarity.

In Tuesday remarks as part of a U.S. Naval Institute – CSIS Maritime Security Dialogue, Richardson made it clear that A2/AD as shorthand will be discouraged from Navy communication from now on.

“To ensure clarity in our thinking and precision… We’ll no longer use the term A2/AD as a stand-alone acronym that can mean all things to all people or anything to anyone – we have to be better than that,” he said.
“Since different theaters present unique challenges, ‘one size fits all’ term to describe the mission and the challenge creates confusion, not clarity. Instead, we will talk in specifics about our strategies and capabilities relative to those of our potential adversaries, within the specific context of geography, concepts, and technologies.”

Denying an enemy access to a particular piece of air, land or sea is a strategy as old as warfare but the term entered the popular military consciousness in the late 1990s and the early 2000s as a shorthand for the modern threat the U.S. faces as precision weapons proliferate to potential adversaries, Bryan Clark with the Center for Budgetary and Strategic Assessments told USNI News on Monday.

The A2/AD grew in popularity in the early 2000s as the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessments – headed then by Andrew Marshall – focused on China’s military capability.

“Over time China’s development of long-range precision strike capabilities would provide it with the means to begin shifting the military balance in the western Pacific progressively in its favor, increasing the risks that [Beijing] would one day be tempted to undertake coercive or aggressive acts against U.S. allies and partners in the region,” wrote Andrew F. Krepinevich and Barry D. Watts in their book on Andrew Marshall,
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.
Since then, “as a shorthand it’s probably outlived its usefulness,” Clark said.

Richardson said seeing potential conflict through just the proliferation of guided weapons or a fortress of “red arcs” around mainland China in which the U.S. could not operate was also less than helpful.

“It’s also true that these systems are proliferating, they’re spreading but the essential military problem that they represent is largely the same that we’ve appreciated and understood for sometime,” he said.
“It doesn’t mean that they don’t present a challenge but we fixate on A2/AD we’re going to miss the boat on the next challenge. We’ll fail to consider that thing right around the corner that will entail a fundamental shift and takes the contest and competition to the next level.”

As an example, Richardson asked, “What must be done to stay ahead of our adversaries when essentially any place in the world can be imaged in real time, on demand, with video? That world is right around the corner.”

Shedding troublesome terminology in an effort to recast a Pentagon effort is by no means a new phenomenon.

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, the Office of the Secretary of Defense changed the name of the controversial Air Sea Battle Office – the group tasked with countering the A2/AD threat on a larger Pentagon level – to the Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC pronounced: Jam, Gee-Cee) and folded it into the Pentagon’s joint staff.
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FORBIN

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For A2/AD main solutions stealth aircraft, submarines etc... but mainly mass after décades of decrease for only technology ! a wake up is happened in Western mainly European NATO countries.
 

FORBIN

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AUSA 2016: First 'upgunned' Stryker systems to be delivered in December

The US Army is to receive its first prototypes for an 'upgunned' Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) in December under an urgent lethality upgrade project, according to contractor General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS).

GDLS was awarded a USD329 million contract modification in May to provide a 30 mm weapon for the Stryker lethality upgrade.

The upgraded system is to be rolled out at the end of October and then testing is to run for several weeks before the army officially signs for delivery in December, Mike Peck, GDLS' head of business development, told IHS Jane's.

The army has said the 'undefinitised contract action' covers "production of 83" lethality-upgraded Stryker ICVs as well as "contractor technical support to [US government] testing, and associated logistics products".
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81 Strycker with a 30 mm gun for the 2th Cavalry Rgt based in Germany.
 
interestingly CNO Richardson: Navy Shelving A2/AD Acronym

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CNO Bans 'A2AD' As Jargon
“We’ll get back to you on that.” The phrase is often heard in Washington when reporters ask subject-matter experts for the meaning of an acronym or buzz word. The inside-the-beltway crowd can use short-hand alpha-numeric-speak so often they forget the actual name of a thing, and the letters of a program or weapon or concept can become far more recognizable than the real name.

But now, saying that a term can mean different things to different people -- often in the same discussion -- the chief of naval operations (CNO) is banning one of the Pentagon’s favorite acronyms.

“We’re going to scale down the mention of A2AD,” Adm. John Richardson said Monday, referring to the acronym for anti-access area denial, a warfighting approach with, he said, a variety of definitions.

“It’s a term bandied about pretty freely and lacks the precise definition it probably would benefit from, and that ambiguity sends a variety of signals,” Richardson said. “Specifics matter.”

Speaking to a Washington audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies – more widely known as CSIS -- Richardson said the Navy would “to refrain from using the term A2AD as a stand-alone acronym. We owe it to ourselves to be better than that.”

Richardson, a nuclear-trained officer known for precise thinking – he once led Naval Nuclear Reactors, more widely known simply as NR -- ticked off several reasons why A2AD is an inadequate term.

“The concept is not anything new – the history of warfare is all about adversaries seeking to one-up each other,” he said. Use of the word “denial,” he added, “is too often taken as a fait accompli when I fact it really describes an aspiration. The reality is far more complex.”

The CNO, as he’s often referred to, complained that A2AD “is far too inherently oriented to the defense,” when in reality it describes both offense and defense.

Richardson also complained that “the A2AD threat is already pretty well understood, but to my mind the more vexing challenges are right around the corner.” He cited more powerful enemy missiles and improved intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

“These systems are spreading, but the essential military problem they represent is largely the same,” Richardson said. “It doesn’t mean they don’t present a challenge, but if we fixate on [the term] we could miss the boat that’s just around the corner.”

The term A2AD grew in popularity in the early 2000s as a way to describe the problem of attacking an enemy determined to fight back. A seemingly endless number of pamphlets, books, doctoral papers, speeches and power point presentations have followed offering a variety of explanations. Those descriptions in turn are often open to interpretation, with many viewed as targeting the growing military power of China and Russia.

But CNO did not offer a handy A2AD alternative.

“So what do we say instead? I’m sorry, I’m not going to propose substituting one acronym for another,” Richardson said. “But a one-size-fits-all description creates confusion, not clarity. Instead we’ll talk in specifics about our strategies and capabilities.”

Ironically, some in the audience observed, the move comes only days after Richardson announced the elimination of the centuries-old naval tradition of referring to enlisted sailors by their ratings, or job titles. The specificity of referring to sailors as “operations specialists” or “gas turbine system technicians - electrical” is being replaced by more generic terms such as sailor or petty officer.
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US dispatches warships after UAE vessel is hit by missiles off Yemen’s coast

The U.S. Navy has sent three warships off the coast of Yemen after a UAE Navy-operated vessel was hit by missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi fighters in the Bab al-Mandab strait on Saturday.
According to a report by Fox News, guided-missile destroyers USS Mason and USS Nitze were dispatched together with the forward-deployed Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Ponce.
Iran-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen assumed responsibility for an
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HSV 2, a vessel formerly operated by the U.S. Navy.

A video which purportedly showed the attack started circulating on the internet shortly thereafter.
Initial reports said the missile used was a Chinese C-802 anti-ship missile. Other reports indicate that multiple anti-tank missiles might have been used in the incident.

U.S. Navy officials said the Houthis were supplied with shoulder-fired rockets that nearly destroyed the UAE Navy ship, according to the Fox News report.

The UAE military on Saturday confirmed that one of its vessels was involved in an ‘incident’ and added that none of the crew had been hurt while omitting information on whether the vessel sank or not.

However, there are now claims that dozens of people on board were killed, including members of the Emirati royal family. Any of the reports are still to be confirmed.

According to Press TV, the Yemeni Navy warned Saudi Arabia and all members of the Arab military coalition not to deploy ships to Yemeni territorial waters as they would be targeted by missile fire.

The attacked HSW 2 Swift was built by Australian shipbuilder Incat Crowther and leased to the U.S Navy. It was operated by Military Sealift Command from 2003 to 2013 and later transferred to UAE.

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Jeff Head

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I am still looking for a credible day-light pic of the ship after the hit.

The video they show, if it is the HSV-2 being hit, looks like it took very serious damage and I doubt such damage was from a few anti-tank rockets. My money, if that film is indeed the hit, is on something larger like the C-802.

7CSXH0W2.jpg

Chinese C-704 anti ship missiles used to sink UAE Navy HSV-2 Swift 2.jpg

If that is the hit...then the next time we see it in day light it will be VERY apparent that it took a major strike.

...and that makes trasnit of those straits a whole new ball game.

The US, the Saudis, the Israelis...whomever passes through there, better have their systems turned on!
 
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I guess it's not clear how useful it is to listen to this one month before the elections :) anyway
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Money is the sincerest form of flattery. When Deputy Secretary of Defense
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visited the
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here today, he not only delivered a ringing endorsement of the Army’s new
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concept: He also offered to help fund it.

Army leaders lament their modernization budget is
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the Navy’s and the Air Force’s, so Work’s help would be especially welcome. But the deputy was not explicit about how much money might come or when. As architect of the Pentagon’s
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for modernization, Work wants the Army to firm up the nascent concept first, and it’s unclear they can do that in time for the
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proposal now grinding through the Pentagon bureaucracy. There’s plenty of time for 2019, but that budget will be built by the next administration, when Work may well be gone — and if
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wins, absolutely every bet is off.

“Multi-domain battle is where we really need to go,” Work enthused this morning at AUSA. Beside him sat Air Force Chief of Staff David Goldfein, Marine Corps Commandant Robert Neller, Navy undersecretary Janine Davidson, and Pacific Command chief Adm. Harry Harris. All these non-Army luminaries had gathered to discuss the concept, which calls for the services to step outside their traditional jurisdictions — by the Army fielding
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and
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, for instance — and work together against advanced adversaries like
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and
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.

“I could not agree more with the chief: The character of war is changing,” Work said, quoting Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley. In particular, Work said,
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have shown a multi-domain capability of their own. Ground-based anti-aircraft missiles clear the sky of Ukrainian government planes. Electronic warfare systems detect and jam Ukrainian communications.
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scout out the source of Ukrainian transmissions and target them for devastating artillery barrages.

In the late Cold War, Work said, the military maxim was, if you could see it, you could hit it, and if you could hit it, you could kill it. Today, “the new adage is: ‘if you emit,
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.’”

“I’m proud to say the Army has really been getting after it,” Work said. In the 2017 budget process, as he told me in
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, he asked the Army to do for the new era of warfare what the Army-Air Force doctrine of AirLand Battle did for Soviet-style massed armor in the 1980s and the 1991 Gulf War. As Work put it today, “I challenged the Army at that time, would you please start thinking about AirLand Battle 2.0?”

“Thankfully,
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and
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didn’t listen to me,” Work said, referring to the commander and deputy of the Training & Doctrine Command (TRADOC). They looked beyond AirLand Battle to envision war in what Gen. Perkins called Multi-Domain Battle.”

Multi-Domain Battle seeks to counter
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and
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-style layered defenses of long-range missiles backed by ships, submarines, and aircraft, known as Anti-Access, Area Denial (A2/AD). Past concepts have called for laboriously “rolling back” am A2/AD network “so we can get the rest of the joint force in,” Work said.

Multi-domain battle and
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in other services don’t wait for rollback. Instead, they seek to push ahead through weak points in the A2/AD zone — exploiting every avenue in the air, on the sea, on the land, and in cyberspace. Like water undermining a cliff, the idea is to pour combat power through every gap you can find and force them wider until the entire network shatters.

With Anti-Access/Area Denial, “adversaries think they can keep us out. I’m here to tell you they’re absolutely wrong,” said Work. “We will quite frankly pound the snot out of them —
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and in
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.”
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interestingly Army will not pursue AH-64F model Apache
As Boeing prepares for a possible F model Apache as a bridge between the legacy helicopter and the Future Vertical Lift aircraft, the US Army says it will not pursue the development of the AH-64F.

Boeing’s plan includes securing a second multi-year buy for the Apaches, which would be followed by the second iteration of the E model or an F model, Kim Smith, Boeing’s vice president for attack helicopter programs told reporters at the AUSA Annual meeting in Washington DC. The customer would choose the designation for the helicopter, she says.

“With the current assumptions and projections, it’s felt very strongly that there will be another turn on the Apache prior to FVL, as a bridge to FVL,” Smith says.

But the Army is not pursuing development of an AH-64F, a spokesman for the service’s deputy chief of staff for program development told FlightGlobal. This echoes comments from Gen. John (Mike) Murray himself on FVL earlier this month. He said the army will not be able to afford funding the Apache and FVL concurrently.

The army will continue buying the Apache through the 2020s and Boeing’s production line will end in 2026. FVL is slated to come online in 2030.

“We’re investing in FVL through aggressive science and technology [funding],” he says. “We do have to manage aircraft over time, we’ll continue to buy the AH-64E while we phase in the FVL variant. So you’re going an overlap at some point.”

While the service does not have a current requirement for an F model, it would open dialogue with industry if a requirement emerges, the spokesman says.

Boeing is examining its plan past 2026 and keeping an eye on the FVL timeline to see whether the fielding date remains the same. The upgraded E or new F model would also take into account the Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Programme, which would replace the GE T700 engine that powers both the AH-64 and Lockheed Martin/Sikorsky UH-60.

“If you put ITEP in, how do you take advantage of that?” says Mark Ballew, Boeing’s director of helicopters global sales and marketing. “What do you need to do to different components of the aircraft to reduce drag, to be able to produce additional lift? So all those things that the team is looking at.”

When asked how Boeing would reconcile its SB-1 Defiant pitch for the FVL programme at the same time as a push for a new Apache, Smith countered the two programmes were mutually beneficial. The company would leverage investment on the Apache to help lower risk on FVL, Smith says.

“So it’s really complementary rather than competing,” she says.
source is FlightGlobal
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FORBIN

Lieutenant General
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Very long article !

Navy's Next-Generation Jammer is Designed to Counter Modern Chinese & Russian Air Défenses

The Navy's Next-Generation Jammer, to be ready by 2021, is designed to jam multiple radars at the same time and defeat future high-tech enemy air défenses.

...

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Navy's Next-Gen Jammer, ready by 2021, designed to jam multiple hi-tech radars at same time.jpeg
 
fancy idea of "V-280’s PDAS imagery is to be sent to six special helmets, four for the Valor’s two pilots and two crew chiefs and two for commanders or others riding in the back cabin" inside
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ncludes a full-scale mockup of the V-280 Valor, the new tiltrotor the company is building. From the outside, it sure looks like a close cousin of the V-22 Osprey.

Under the skin, the V-280 seems a lot more like a prop-driven F-35. The first sign is six relatively small, round holes in the V-280’s composite skin. Those holes – two in the V-280’s nose, two near its V-shaped tail and one each on the top and bottom of the fuselage – are where Bell plans to install small video cameras, creating
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similar to one used by the F-35. As in the F-35, the imagery collected by those cameras will be quilted together by a computer program to create a live 360-degree view displayed on the visor of the pilot’s helmet, allowing him to see what’s under, above, in front of or behind the aircraft.

As Bell’s V-280 build manager, Scott Allen, told me when I visited Amarillo last month to see the actual V-280 work in progress, this Lockheed-supplied Pilotage Distributed Aperture System (abbreviated PDAS and pronounced “PEE-dass”), “turns the whole aircraft into Wonder Woman’s invisible jet, basically” — an analogy Lockheed reps also often use. But unlike the F-35, which carries just its pilot, the V-280’s PDAS imagery is to be sent to six special helmets, four for the Valor’s two pilots and two crew chiefs and two for commanders or others riding in the back cabin, which would hold 12 troops. The imagery could also be transmitted to screens in or far from the aircraft, just as the F-35 shares data with legacy aircraft like the F-16 and F-18, a stealth fighter like the F-22, Navy ships and other platforms. Why equip a relatively slow aircraft with high-tech sensors like this?

Vince Tobin, Bell vice president for advanced tiltrotor systems, said the PDAS can help V-280 pilots land safely in dust, sand, snow or other “degraded visual environments.” PDAS imagery could also be used by troop commanders in the back to spot enemy positions or terrain features that might interfere with an assault, letting them come up with better options as they approach their objective, which is why gunners and others behind the cockpit would get access to the data.

The PDAS also puts sensors such as those carried in turrets or externally by helicopters into the skin of the V-280, eliminating drag and weight.

Rita Flaherty, vice president for strategy at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said Northrop Grumman makes the F-35’s DAS but “we’ve got a lot of capabilities that lend themselves to Lockheed Martin developing a distributed aperture system for rotary wing.” Lockheed Missiles and Fire Control has made pilotage and targeting sensors for years for the Army’s AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, made by Boeing, and the Marine Corps AH-1Z Cobra, made by Bell, she said.

“It was only natural that, as the next generation of vertical lift is being developed, we would package some of the capabilities that we have into a new sensor system for those new rotary wing platforms,” she said.

Lockheed subsidiary Sikorsky is teamed with Boeing to build the
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but Flaherty said her group has no contact with that project.

Alex Shepherd, a Missiles and Fire Control program manager, was quick to point out that Bell and Lockheed plan to install the PDAS in the V-280 only after the aircraft has completed its required flight testing under the Joint Multi-role Technology Demonstration (JMR TD) program. The JMR TD falls under the Army-led Future Vertical Lift initiative, which is focused on developing faster, more agile rotorcraft of all sizes for all the military services.

“For Bell’s initial flights, the Army requirement is just airspeed and agility tests,” Shepherd said. “This effort to demonstrate PDAS is a Bell- and Lockheed-funded effort and will be done after the Army tests.”

Shepherd added that the six PDAS-capable helmets envisioned for the V-280 will cost “nowhere close to” the F-35’s $400,000 helmet. The Army, he noted, “can’t afford F-35 helmets.” He also said that the service has a Common Helmet Mounted Display program in the works to develop new aircraft helmet displays.

PDAS isn’t the only capability Bell has in mind for the V-280 that could make it a prop-driven cousin of the F-35. The company is also designing mission packages that would arm the Valor with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles such as those carried by the Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone and with Lockheed’s new Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM), which has been test fired from the Army’s Gray Eagle and Apache and the Marine Corps’s Cobra attack helicopter. That could turn the V-280 into an attack aircraft. The F-35 can carry highly accurate and powerful cannon and, of course, a variety of missiles.

Once the JMR TD flights are done, said Chris Gehler, Bell’s V-280 program manager, “we’ll bring in many of the sensors of the F-35 type.” Discussions with the armed services have to come first, he said, “but we see a fused solution, so that a pilot can use a night vision goggle type or an IR or a heat-sensing type of approach through that PDAS system as well.”

If this sensor approach comes to fruition, the obvious question is, will the V-280 boast something like the F-35’s Fusion Center, which takes data from all the plane’s sensors, analyzes it and then advises the pilot about likely threats, including those from Electronic Warfare, surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles and cyber.

What will they think of next?
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