US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

The test did occurred but there was no confirm "failed" and I doubt the military will ever tell either.o_O


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I think if they confirm it's failed, they'll probably blame something or somebody, as in

Sailor error led to failed US Navy ballistic missile intercept test
July 24, 2017
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and I'll willingly suspend my disbelief and read their story
 
Monday at 9:39 PM
now noticed inside
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"White House wants $716 billion budget for Pentagon in 2019,
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the Washington Post, quoting unnamed U.S. officials. That figure would seem to include the base budget, the OCO fund formerly known as the “emergency supplemental,” and Department of Energy spending on nuclear weapons, as the Post writes that it “would cover the Pentagon’s annual budget as well as spending on ongoing wars and the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal,” and calculates that it would represent a 7 percent bump over the 2018 budget request.
Caveat #1: Congress has (famously)
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.
Caveat #2:
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, the (reported) 2019 figure is many billions of dollars over the legal caps installed in 2011.
The actual budget request is expected to go to Congress next month. In the meantime, here’s from the Post: “Pentagon officials said the 2019 budget would focus on modernizing the military’s aging weapons systems and preparing it for a potential conflict with major world powers after a long emphasis on counterterrorism and insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Defense Secretary James] Mattis faced some resistance from White House officials, such as [Office of Management and the Budget leader Mike] Mulvaney, who worried that the deficit would explode with a large increase in military spending, combined with Republican tax cuts.” Read on,
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."

let's wait and see
and now Selva: Pentagon ‘Gambling’ on Fiscal Year 2019 Budget
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The nation’s second-highest military officer sees considerable irony in the Pentagon preparing to send a Fiscal Year 2019 defense budget to Congress “when we don’t know what we’re actually going to get in (FY) ‘18.”

“This is called gambling,” Air Force Gen. Paul Selva said on Tuesday.

Because the military is about to go into the fifth month of the fiscal year under a continuing resolution that prevents new program starts and limits spending to the previous year’s levels, “we don’t actually know the impact the CR will have on FY ’19 until an ’18 budget is actually passed,” Selva told reporters on Tuesday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast.

There also is an assumption in the CR “that when you actually pass a budget you will not have lost any opportunity for investments, which is ludicrous,” the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Although defense contractors are poised and ready to execute new programs, “there is a point in the future where they will not be able to do that,” he said. And there is a question whether some of them will not be able to act at all, because any investment they might make now “is risky.”

“There is a real readiness impact to this because if you get too far into the year you cannot recover. Our experience tells us four to six months is that point at which you’re past the point of no return,” he said

Last spring, when the Pentagon did not receive its FY 2017 budget until May, then-acting Pentagon comptroller John Roth told reporters that
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when a defense spending plan is approved by Congress so late in the year because O&M funding expires at the end of that fiscal year. Procurement and research dollars can be used into future fiscal years, but spending for training, routine maintenance, depot availabilities and more is either rushed in the back half of the fiscal year or results in the lost opportunities to which Selva referred.

Selva would not provide any details on what would be in the 2019 budget request, but said it would focus on responding to the “great power competition” the United States faces with Russia and China. The budget also would deal with requirements set out in the nuclear posture review, which is expected to be released Feb. 2, and the ballistic missile defense review, which should come several weeks later, he said.

Selva said the recently released
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and
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strategies highlighted that competition, which he said should have been acknowledged 10 years ago.

The last 10 years have shown that “China is ascendant, and Russia is accumulating wealth and influence across the Asian and European continent. And the United States is engaged with both.” There are “friction points” between the three powers as they compete on economic, political and national security stages, he said.

“That doesn’t presume that we’ll have a global war. Doesn’t assume that the competition will end in violence,” Selva said. But if you recognize that strength really matters in competitions, “that causes you to invest your intellectual energy and your fiscal resources.”

Despite some claims that the nuclear review sets dangerous new reasons for possible use of nuclear weapons, Selva said it is “very consistent” with previous nuclear doctrine. He denied that the review advocates a nuclear response to a serious cyber attack, as some reports have claimed. He said the review added one sentence that “clarified” that severe damage to the national command and control system could be a factor in a decision to go nuclear.

Selva also dismissed the published worries about the mention of low-yield nuclear weapons, noting that lower-yield warheads have been in the nuclear arsenal for decades. The mention of lower-yield weapons was meant to “raise the threshold” for a nuclear response by warning an adversary they could not expect to escape a nuclear response to use of a small nuclear weapon.

“Russia and China, in the past decade, have been building new (nuclear) delivery systems. We have not. Russia and China have been getting better, we’ve been staying the same,” he said.

The Nuclear Posture Review confirms the need for the nuclear deterrence triad and lays out plans for its modernization, including a new bomber, new intercontinental missiles and the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, Selva said.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
now I read it and I wouldn't have thought a country with like one billion pieces, and Military experienced with firearms since the times of Brown Bess, might select (= to pay for) something like this
The Army is working to fix problems with its new handgun after critical DoD report
By:
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  12 hours ago



The Army’s new handgun meets “all safety and operational requirements,” officials said Wednesday, after a recently published report revealed several issues with the Sig Sauer-made weapon.

Early evaluations of the Army’s new handgun, the M17, last year showed
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failures when the pistol was fired with the standard ball ammunition, stoppages, and double ejections.

Those findings were revealed in a recently published report by the Defense Department’s Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation. The office reviews major programs across the Defense Department.

The problems noted by the office had not been previously disclosed by the Army or other entities involved in the
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’s development. Though the report was compiled from April through September of last year, it was not sent to Congress nor publicly released until January.

The Army selected the Sig Sauer handgun as its first new service-wide sidearm since the mid-1980s, replacing the Beretta M9. The report notes that the Army intends to purchase 238,000 pistols, while the other three services may buy as many as 224,000 pistols under the same contract.

The contract is for 10 years and is worth 580 million.

The
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was the first unit to field the weapon. Army Times visited the unit in December and observed soldiers at a pistol range qualification.

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A soldier from the 101st Airborne Division, under the watchful eye of instructor Staff Sgt. Anthony Cirincione, learns how to fire the Army’s new Modular Handgun System, or M17. The 101st Airborne, at Fort Campbell, Ky., was the first unit in the Army to receive the new handgun. (Daniel Woolfolk/Staff)


The Pentagon report noted the following problems:

  • Double ejections of an unspent ball ammunition round along with a spent round during firing.
  • A higher number of stoppages experienced by shooters with both the XM17 and XM18 handguns when fired with ball ammunition as compared to the special purpose ammunition.
  • Both weapons failed to meet the Mean Rounds Between Stoppage reliability requirement with ball ammunition.
  • Two trigger-splintering incidents that officials believe were related to an engineering change made by Sig Sauer to correct a drop test deficiency in which testers saw the weapon fire when dropped.
  • More than half of the stoppages reported were likely caused by use of the Army Marksmanship Unit’s “high pistol grip” method, which can result in the shooter engaging the slide catch lever and cause the slide not to lock in the rear position.
Officials at the Army’s Program Executive Office-Soldier responded to detailed questions from Army Times and stated that the problems identified in the report have been investigated by a specially assigned team.

PEO-Soldier spokeswoman Debra Dawson emphasized in an email response that the currently fielded MHS pistols “meet all safety and operational requirements.”

Because the weapon met or exceeded requirements in testing with special purpose ammunition, it was able to be fielded to troops for training and combat operations, she said. Once the ball ammunition issue is resolved, soldiers will have that ammo at their disposal as well.

PEO-Soldier also said the weapon is still safe to operate with ball ammunition.

“It is simply not meeting its reliability requirements with the ball ammunition and has experienced stoppages and issues with double ejections,” Dawson said in a statement.

Officials also said the two trigger-splintering incidents were “not the result of a design flaw or ongoing manufacturing problem.”

Those were the only two pistols out of an estimated 10,000 purchased that have exhibited that issue.

In its report, the DOT&E recommended either redesigning the slide catch lever on the pistol or changing operator training to avoid the stoppage. More than half of the stoppages caused by shooters engaging the slide catch lever happened among eight of 132 shooters who were using the “high pistol grip.”

PEO-Soldier officials said that the Army will correct the “anomaly” by modifying marksmanship training.

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First Lt. Jon Yerby and Pvt. 1st Class Tia Alexander, of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, inspect and inventory an M17 Nov. 27. (Sgt. Samantha Stoffregen/Army)
David Bahde, a retired SWAT lieutenant and firearms subject matter expert who has testified in federal court proceedings on firearms issues, provided some context on the scale of the reported problems.

“To my knowledge, no small arm fielded by the military has passed from the testing to the issuing phase without issues,” Bahde said.

Bahde, who reviewed the four-page DOT&E report, also qualified his responses by saying that to best understand the issues listed, he would have to view the tests in person or through video recordings.

Military testing standards far exceed civilian wear and tear and are costly, he said. For that reason, there are not a lot of industry testing comparisons.

The double ejection issue is often a magazine issue, Bahde said. Higher stoppages with the ball ammunition might simply require a change in the recoil spring rate for the slide to fully operate, he added.

The team’s analysis identified “a number of modifications expected to enhance” the handgun’s performance, Dawson wrote.

The currently fielded pistols meet all requirements for overseas operations, she said.

But once the changes are approved through the Army’s testing process, they will be added to the production of new pistols, and the Army will retrofit any fielded pistols later.

Dawson said that one modification to resolve the double ejection issue might include “minor adjustments to the magazine and hammer ramp to consistently feed the ball ammunition into the weapon and consistently eject each spent cartridge as it is used.”

Tom Taylor, a spokesman for Sig Sauer, said most of the items highlighted in the report were from early testing periods for the handgun.

He said the company stands by the several thousand handguns shipped to date, and the many more to be ordered by the Army and other services.

During the Army Times visit to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, soldiers overwhelmingly preferred the weapon over its three-decades-old predecessor, the Beretta M9.

At least one item in the report, the
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, had already been addressed publicly by the Army and Sig Sauer.

Dawson wrote that the MHS does not have a drop test deficiency, noting that Sig Sauer had corrected the issue prior to the start of testing, and the weapon passed the Army’s drop test.
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Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
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Two of the issues have to do with operator error, specifically dropping your handgun is an error, now we don't want to have AD's for any reason, (accidental discharges), but failure to maintain control of your weapon is a serious concern, as the handgun must be securely and positively employed in order to prevent accidents.. (these muzzle down AD's rarely result in any injury to anyone, just terminal embarrassment to the "operator", as the bullet hits the ground as it exits the muzzle!)

*the AD's likely resulted from "intentionally dropping the weapon onto its muzzle", which results in the trigger overriding the sear and allowing the weapon to discharge....

The high hand hold of the "marksmanship unit" is an institutional issue,,, I see lots of poor weapon positioning even in civilian life, just take a trip to the range, it can be very scary, when fellow shooters fail to follow good practices?? (the most dangerous of which is pointing your weapon at nearby individuals.. but the Army's high grip, does apply pressure to the bottom of the "slide stop", occasionally pushing the slide stop up into the lower slide stop detent on the bottom of the slide. (If you look on BD's thread about women in the PLA, several of the pictures picture those female soldiers with the left forefinger well past the front of the trigger guard, a "no, no!" this is a result of "poor technique")

Failure to feed ball ammunition is a result of that "ball ammunition" not having sufficient energy to push the slide fully to the rear of its designed travel, this is called "short stroking".. the solution is simple, a lighter recoil spring and the symptom immediately is resolved.. the heavier spring is to protect the bearing surfaces of the pistol from being "peened" by repeatedly slamming into the rear slide stop with the "hotter" hollow point ammunition...

the double ejections are a magazine issue, springs, weak recoil spring, or bent or misaligned magazine feed lips are the likely cause. Magazines are very likely made by an "outside contractor", almost certainly not by Sig,,, that's what happens when the "bean counter's" force you to use the cheapest parts? rather than the best,,, and you can quote me on all the above, Brat.
 
,,, and you can quote me on all the above, Brat.
related to your "... AD's for any reason, (accidental discharges) ..." just a comment:
if I'm not mistaken, here a cop may legally use a pistol grip (butt) to hit with it somebody who's fighting while being arrested

you know where I'm heading, no
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with a gun which might "AD"
(LOL)
 
Defense Firms Tell Wall Street They’re Gearing Up for More Contracts
"Companies are not going to spend a lot of money improving their facilities if those investments will take too long to pay off, if the military buys fewer goods or gives companies smaller profits in their contracts."
I guess
Large military contractors are indicating they’re now ready to invest in their facilities and manufacturing capacity despite so much uncertainty around the Pentagon’s spending levels this current year and into Fiscal Year 2019.

Executives from some of the largest defense contractors, in earnings calls and conversations this week with Wall Street analysts, detailed their plans to increase their planned capital expenditures this year and in the next few years.

“We will spend $1.7 billion in CapEx (capital expenditures) at Electric Boat over the next several years in anticipation of increased production on the Block V Virginia submarine and the new Columbia ballistic-missile submarine,” General Dynamics chief executive officer Phebe Novakovic told analysts last week, according to a transcript of the call provided by Seeking Alpha.

“This is very much driven by an expectation of increased business,” defense industrial base analyst Andrew Hunter told USNI News.

Hunter, the director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said defense spending typically runs in cycles that last about a decade from spending peak to spending peak.

Military spending was down until about 2015, he said. Industry responded by not reinvesting in their facilities or increasing manufacturing capacity. Since then, Hunter said the Pentagon has steadily increased its number of contracts.

According to his
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released in March, Hunter found Missile Defense Agency (MDA), Air Force, and the Navy all saw significant increases in contract obligations in 2016, driven primarily by increased obligations for large procurement programs like the C-130J transport aircraft, the KC-45A tanker aircraft, and the Trident II missile program. Hunter is working on an updated version of the report, due out in the Spring.

For the upcoming Fiscal Year 2019, Hunter said the Department of Defense has made it known spending will increase, possibly by as much as 7 percent, according to some estimates. The result, Hunter said, is that contractors are telling analysts and the Pentagon that they’re ramping up production capabilities to handle multi-year contracts now being funded. Hunter mentioned Northrop Grumman’s B-21 program and General Dynamics submarine projects as examples. Raytheon, he added, is successful at spending money on building new products the company hopes to sell to the military.

“To me, industry is responding to a department signal, ‘we are ready to buy,'” Hunter said.

Starting in 2018, and for the next few years, General Dynamics plans to increase the company’s total capital expenditures to about 2 percent of revenues. The company came in shy of that percentage in recent years, said Jason Aiken, chief financial officer at General Dynamics, during the conference call with analysts.

In 2017, General Dynamics spent $428 million on capital expenditures, whereas 2 percent of its 2017 revenues of $31 billion would have totaled $620 million, according to data from the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

In 2016, General Dynamics spent $392 million on capital expenditures, but had the company spent 2 percent of revenues on capital expenditures the figure would have been closer to $630 million.

The General Dynamics target of dedicating two percent of revenue for capital improvements would have meant spending roughly $629 million in 2015 and $617 million in 2014. Yet, according to the company’s financial reports, capital expenditures for those years were $569 million and $521 million, respectively.

General Dynamics is hardly alone, though, when it comes to having scaled back capital expenditures earlier in the decade, Hunter said. Companies are not going to spend a lot of money improving their facilities if those investments will take too long to pay off, if the military buys fewer goods or gives companies smaller profits in their contracts. Everyone scales back capital expenditures when military spending drops, he said.

Northrop Grumman spent about $900 million on capital expenditures in 2017, according to company’s financial reports. This year, the company plans to increase such spending to about $1 billion.

Lockheed Martin officials told analysts during an earnings call they plan increase their capital expenditures to about $1.3 billion both 2018 and 2019, from close to $1.1 billion last year.

When Textron CEO Scott Donnelly spoke with analysts on Wednesday, he explained the company was increasing capital spending to about $225 million to help secure more contracts, according to a transcript provided by Seeking Alpha. Textron has been positioning itself to support the Navy and Air Force adversary air programs ever since it purchased Airborne Tactical Advantage Co. in 2016. Donnelly said the Navy is preparing their proposals for projects and the Air Force is conducting industry days. Textron also hopes to expand its V-22 Osprey program its Scorpion and AT-6 jets.

“So, the only tough part of this for us is you got to get out in front of it and spend the capital to have the assets and get everything prepared in terms of maintenance facilities and demos, Donnelly said. “So, there’s a little bit of a drag, frankly, in there to support that, but it’s a huge growth opportunity and one that seems to be materializing.”
it's USNI News
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Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
related to your "... AD's for any reason, (accidental discharges) ..." just a comment:
if I'm not mistaken, here a cop may legally use a pistol grip (butt) to hit with it somebody who's fighting while being arrested

you know where I'm heading, no
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
with a gun which might "AD"
(LOL)

no one in America may be legally pistol whipped, unless you were under attack and attempting to defend yourself, are you saying that is permitted where you live???

however, if you believe your life is in danger, you may use any means available to defend yourself... I would NOT advise grabbing the barrel and using the pistol butt, as you well may end up on the receiving end????
 
no one in America may be legally pistol whipped, unless you were under attack and attempting to defend yourself, are you saying that is permitted where you live???

however, if you believe your life is in danger, you may use any means available to defend yourself... I would NOT advise grabbing the barrel and using the pistol butt, as you well may end up on the receiving end????
I should've worded better Today at 5:01 PM
related to your "... AD's for any reason, (accidental discharges) ..." just a comment:
if I'm not mistaken, here a cop may legally use a pistol grip (butt) to hit with it somebody who's fighting while being arrested

you know where I'm heading, no
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
with a gun which might "AD"
(LOL)
: a cop here might hit with a grip instead of shooting (but not to beat up somebody or nothing)

I don't know if it's clear now
 
Jan 18, 2018
US Nuclear Review Calls for Development of Low-Yield Nukes
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oh really?
and now (dated 1/31/2018)
Leaked NPR Draft Misinterpreted on Nuclear Response to Cyber, Selva Says
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A leaked, “pre-decisional” draft of the Nuclear Posture Review was misinterpreted by writers who deduced from it that the US will respond to any cyber attacks with nuclear weapons, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters Tuesday. He also waved off the interpretation that the NPR calls for new, small-yield weapons that some writers worry could lower the threshold for nuclear war.

Rather, Gen. Paul Selva said, the US may respond with nuclear weapons to a cyber attack of grand proportions that results in many deaths or the destruction of US infrastructure, or “interferes” with nuclear command and control or warning. But the interpretation that the US would answer any cyber attack with nuclear weapons is not true, he said. He also said the NPR doesn’t call for new low-yield nuclear weapons in order to have a more usable nuclear capability to retaliate for cyber attacks, as some have written,
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.

The actual document, which is expected to be released this week, “is largely consistent with our thinking about nuclear deterrence, going back 70 years,” and the interpretation that a cyber attack would be met by a US nuclear strike “is not supported” by it, Selva said.

He paraphrased the NPR, noting that it says the US reserves the right “to use nuclear weapons when our national interests—our population, our infrastructure—are attacked with significant consequence.”

However, Selva said, “there was a view that that was too ambiguous, and so what we went on to say was, this will include—but is not limited to—non-nuclear strikes on our population, our infrastructure, that of our allies and partners, or the command and control indications of warning that are important to our detectionion of an attack. We never said ‘cyber.’” He added that a search of the document turned up fewer than 10 uses of the word “cyber,” and not in the context some writers have suggested.

“Context matters,” Selva said. A cyber attack could have “strategic consequences,” if it kills a lot of people, destroys critical infrastructure, or disrupts the nuclear deterrent enterprise or missile warning, he explained. “We were suitably ambiguous in that space before, so what we tried to do was say, ‘if you do this … and it has these kinds of widespread consequences, we reserve the right to respond.” The same idea appeared in the 2010 NPR, “we just didn’t say what we meant.”

He added that the US has had low-yield nuclear weapons in the inventory “for decades,” and this fact does not “in and of itself, lower the threshold for use of nuclear weapons.”

In fact, he argued, the availability of lower-yield weapons “deters our … adversaries from actually believing that they could engage in a limited nuclear strike,” if they thought the US would not launch big weapons in response to the use of a small one.

“So, the declaratory language and the inclusion of a new low-yield option are actually designed to raise the threshold of a potential nuclear attack,” Selva argued. He said it’s “important to think that through carefully, from the perspective of” a potential enemy.
 
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