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Navy Thinking Beyond Littoral Combat Ship for Future Mine Warfare
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... Director of Expeditionary Warfare Maj. Gen. David Coffman ...
“When you start the program, you’ll say, I need 24 MCM mission packages, and they’re each going to have this, this, this, this and this,” he said.
“And then when you do your exercises and your experiments, you’ll overlay an environmental and they’re like, 7th Fleet will say, ‘why are you sending that over here? That stuff doesn’t work either in my threat environment or my environmental environment.’ So we’re going to have to move from the idea of nascent programs to the real world of operational employment.”

oh are you?
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
So? 
The ship has not even been launched let alone handed over and equipped.
What is XSSM anyways?
Building eight or more (like 20+) of the 30FF looks VERY good to me. Full displacement over 5,000 tons and heck, they will be close to what the US is now proposin in terms of overal armament for the FFG(X), though perhaps not quite as many weapons and sensoirs. But cwertainly what the LCS should have been.

The XSSM is clearly some acronym that IMHO was messed up in typing but clearly represents a potential ASM weaopn for the frigates. Maybe they are talking about a ship born version of Mistubishi's XASM-3 missile?
 

SamuraiBlue

Captain
Building eight or more (like 20+) of the 30FF looks VERY good to me. Full displacement over 5,000 tons and heck, they will be close to what the US is now proposin in terms of overal armament for the FFG(X), though perhaps not quite as many weapons and sensoirs. But cwertainly what the LCS should have been.

The XSSM is clearly some acronym that IMHO was messed up in typing but clearly represents a potential ASM weaopn for the frigates. Maybe they are talking about a ship born version of Mistubishi's XASM-3 missile?
It's not an officially commissioned missile since x stands for eXperimental.
The ASM-3 has already got the X off since it was officially commissioned this year and production of those missiles are in full swing.
Surface launched missiles are given the year when the missile were commissioned like the type 17SSM or the type 90SSM.
 
Today at 7:42 AM
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‘I didn’t say shoot’: Trump says migrants will be arrested, not shot, if they throw rocks

in the meantime the 'shoot' version made it on top of some major server here where I check my emails (noticed
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minutes ago)
anyway
Pentagon rejected request for troops it viewed as emergency law enforcement at border

Updated 11:35 PM ET, Fri November 2, 2018
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When the Trump administration first asked the Pentagon to send troops to the southern border, the administration wanted the troops to take on duties that Department of Defense officials viewed as law enforcement functions, CNN has learned.
The Pentagon said no.
According to two defense official familiar with the request, the Department of Homeland Security asked that the Pentagon provide a reserve force that could be called upon to provide "crowd and traffic control" and safeguard Customs and Border Protection personnel at the border to counter a group of Central American migrants walking to the US border to request asylum.
The Pentagon rejected the request on October 26, according to one of the officials, even as it signed off on providing DHS with air and logistics support, medical personnel and engineers.
The request was turned down because the Department of Defense felt that active duty troops do not have the authority to conduct that type of mission unless they are granted additional authorities by the President.
Defense officials have repeatedly emphasized the troops at the border are there to support civil authorities and that they are not expected to come into any contact with migrants.
Despite multiple defense officials characterizing those activities as relating to law enforcement actions, a DHS official disagreed that such functions constituted law enforcement.
"While DHS has discussed the need for potential assistance with force protection of CBP personnel, calling this line of support 'law enforcement activities' would be factually inaccurate," the DHS official said.
'Quickly and for a long time'
Active duty US troops are barred from domestic law enforcement unless there is an emergency, but President Donald Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect of having troops enforce the border as he
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on the dangers of immigration in the final days before the midterm elections.
At a White House speech on Thursday, the President suggested that troops should fire on migrants if they throw rocks, saying that rocks should be considered rifles and comparing the group of about 3,000 men, women and children to an "invasion."
On Friday, Trump tried to walk back those comments, telling reporters that "if our soldiers," or Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers "are going to be hit in the face with rocks, we're going to arrest those people. That doesn't mean shoot them. But we're going to arrest those people quickly and for a long time."
The defense officials described the force DHS requested as something that would only be used if CPB personnel were overwhelmed by the situation on the border.
Even so, the Pentagon rejected the request for the reserve "protection" force, while it simultaneously approved all of DHS' other requests for support with Secretary of Defense James Mattis' approval. It's not clear if Mattis weighed in on the decision to reject the request for troops to perform law enforcement functions.
The first defense official said that in its response to DHS, the Defense Department said that if Homeland Security officials still want the reserve force of US troops, they should ask the White House to formally grant the Pentagon the authorities to perform those additional functions.
Customs and Border Protection declined to comment.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, speaking to Fox News last week, said DHS had asked for air, engineering, logistics and planning support, as well as vehicle barriers and "ways in which we can protect my officers and agents, as well as the ports of entry themselves."
The Posse Comitatus law forbids the US military from enforcing domestic laws, unless there's no other choice. Military analysts say Trump can easily use the National Guard, US Marshals or personnel from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to back up border officers if need be.
Costs of the operation
More than 8,000 active duty troops could be deployed troops to the southwest border, more than he has serving in some of the world's most contentious combat zones, but they are there solely to support Homeland Security officials as they prepare for the migrants' arrival.
The troops will join over 2,000 National Guardsmen who are already at the border, meaning upwards of 10,000 American forces will be mobilized to stop Central American
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that are still some hundreds of miles away from the border and weeks away from arriving in the US
Senior military officers have defended the deployment on national security grounds, but the mission -- dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot -- has been met with
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from many former military officials.
Retired Gen. Martin Dempsey, who served as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2011 to 2015, tweeted Friday that "our men and women in uniform are better trained, better equipped, and better led so they meet any threat with confidence. A wasteful deployment of over-stretched soldiers and Marines would be made much worse if they use force disproportional to the threat they face. They won't."
The Pentagon has yet to determine the cost of the operation, nor has it identified the account where the funding would come from. But the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimates that the cost of placing active duty troops on the border could range from $42 million 110 million.
CSBA says that on the high end, the deployment would cost $143 per troop per day for operating and maintenance costs and $112 per troop per day on the low end. CSBA also estimates that the use of military aircraft in this deployment would cost about $136,645 per day.
With the mission currently set for November 5 through December 15, for a total of 41 days, the cost of deploying 8,000 troops and air support ranges from approximately $42 million to $55 million, according to the CSBA estimate.
Trump has said the total number of troops could climb
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, which CSBA calculates the price tag to be at approximately $90 million to $110 million.
On Thursday, Trump claimed the military is putting up thousands of tents to hold migrants, but officials said there are no plans as of now to build tents. The officials said that while there had been informal talks between the Department of Defense and DHS about having the military build tent facilities to house detained migrants, tents were never part of the formal request for assistance submitted by DHS and approved by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. One official says that DHS was informally discouraged from making the request by the defense department.
 
kinda armchair-generalling Panelists Argue Current Pentagon Spending Conflicts with Likely Future Needs
Posted: November 2, 2018
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The Pentagon has a serious problem in that providing what it needs for the forces to be ready for current and likely near-term conflicts can clash with what it requires to prepare for the return of great power competition, a panel of former civilian defense officials and current military officers said.

In a Nov. 2 forum on military readiness at the Brookings Institution, the debate was framed by the questions of “ready for what?” and “ready for when?” These raised the conflict between increasing current readiness for the low-level fights against extremists and modernizing for great power competition with Russia and China.

The two former senior defense officials agreed that what the military is buying with the recent significantly higher budgets is not what it will need to confront Russia and China.

Mara Karlin, whose decades of Pentagon service ended as deputy assistant defense secretary for strategy and force development, criticized the Navy’s drive for a multipurpose 355-ship fleet when it should be focusing on increased undersea capabilities that would give it a competitive advantage against the emerging peer adversaries.

Karlin also questioned how much the Marine Corps is spending on aviation, which is focused on reversing a currently low readiness condition, and called the Air Force’s spending portfolio “totally messed up.” She did like the thrust of the Army’s newly created Futures Command, which appears aimed primarily at acquiring the capabilities it would need to counter peer competitors.

“There are all kinds of ways we’re not spending on what we need,” Karlin said.

Alan Estevez, whose 36 years in the Pentagon ended as principal deputy undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said the current enlarged budget “is buying what was in the pipeline, which probably are not the right things.”

There is not enough in research and development for things like lasers and hypersonics, he said, and “we have to be prepared to fight with 1s and 0s, cyber. We do not have the tools, the modernization, required for great power conflict.”

Karlin and Estevez agreed that the new National Defense Strategy presented by Defense Secretary James Mattis was “spot on” in its declaration that the top mission of the military was preparing for the return of great power competition, naming Russia and China.

Two federal executive fellows at Brookings, Marine Col. Amy Ebitz and Navy Cmdr. Brendan Stickles, focused on their service experiences, particularly noting the negative impacts of the years of constrained budgets under the threat of sequestration and the inefficiencies imposed by the years of continuing resolutions instead of on-time appropriations.

Stickles, an electronic warfare pilot who recently commanded an EF-18G Growler squadron, cited the report several years ago that only one-third of the Navy’s FA-18 Super Hornets were combat ready. Although “we’ve made progress” with just over now ready, “that’s not a good statistic.”

He also pointed out that early this year there was no aircraft carrier at sea, which required a B-2 bomber to fly from Missouri to drop a bomb in Afghanistan, “a job that should have been performed by a carrier.”

Ebitz, whose career has been in law enforcement and force protection, said that compared to the current enemy, the Marines “absolutely are ready. They’re out there every day doing what is required.” But, she said, the high operational demands and the past budget constraints have hurt the Corps’ ability to prepare for the future.

“It goes to the ‘ready for what?’” she said. “We haven’t always been accurate on that. We not only have to be ready for today, the anti-terrorist fight, but for the future,” she said.

Ebitz said the Marine Corps’ priorities are “increasing our own lethality, building partnerships and ensuring the flow of equipment.” But most important, she said, “was our personnel,” giving them more time between deployments to spend with their families and train for the future fight.
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
kinda armchair-generalling

Arm chair is right. If the Joint Chiefs of staff would attend these forums..they might amount to more than a hill of beans. Good points made by those in attendance. But do their comments fall on anyone's ears? ..I hope so.
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
Today at 7:42 AM
anyway
Pentagon rejected request for troops it viewed as emergency law enforcement at border

Updated 11:35 PM ET, Fri November 2, 2018
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I thought the US Army could not be used for missions like these on US soil. This sounds more like a matter for the National Guard to me.

This episode reminded me of this movie:

Escape from L.A.
 
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