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Brumby

Major
since 01:10 in the footage inside
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Admiral to Congress: Think about the 280-plus ships that didn’t have collisions
Let me frame it this way at a strategic level as to why the response is so bad and unfortunately Congress gave them a free pass. Imagine having an enquiry with the commander of a SSBN after the accidental launch of a nuclear missile and the defence of the commander is "well it is not so bad - think of the remaining 23 that did not go off". Do you think that will be acceptable? In that business when accidents happen people die.
 
Jan 20, 2019
..-. wall
...
so
Which construction projects would be affected if Trump uses military money to build a wall?
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President Donald Trump signaled on Thursday he will declare
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in coming days to get around congressional opposition to his controversial border wall project, possibly shifting billions in military funds to pay for the construction.

The announcement from the White House came as Trump announced he will sign a budget deal designed to avoid
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this weekend, even though the deal falls more than $4 billion short of the funding he requested for the wall project.

“President Trump will sign the government funding bill, and as he has stated before, he will also take other executive action — including a national emergency — to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

“The president is once again delivering on his promise to build the wall, protect the border, and secure our great country.”

White House officials said they will announce more details on the emergency declaration in coming days. Senate lawmakers passed the new budget bill on Thursday afternoon, and House lawmakers were expected to follow suit Thursday evening.

Lawmakers have implored Trump in recent days to sign the deal to avoid
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, but also panned the idea of using military funds for the wall. On Tuesday, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., said he supports the border security effort, but “I don’t want anything to degrade military construction.”

Congressional aides said it’s unclear what military funds Trump would tap to pay for the wall, but the emergency declaration gives him a wide range of executive powers to shift around the money.

About $21 billion in unobligated military construction funds from the last five years would be available. The money is connected to a host of planned housing, medical and logistics projects — both in the United States and overseas — but has not yet been spent.

The end result could mean multi-year delays for a host of construction projects military officials have deemed critical to force readiness.

Among the potential targets: a new vehicle maintenance shop at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, drydock repairs at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, F-35 hangar improvements at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, ongoing hospital construction at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, and new family housing builds in South Korea, Italy and Wisconsin.

Congressional officials said White House officials have given them no indication which projects may have their funding taken. Service officials would have to lobby for new money from lawmakers in the next budget cycle to recover those losses.

Democrats promised a legal challenge if Trump takes that step.

“Declaring a national emergency would be a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and
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, D-Calif., said in a statement Thursday.

“It is yet another demonstration of President Trump’s naked contempt for the rule of law. This is not an emergency, and the president’s fearmongering doesn’t make it one.”

Outside experts also questioned the move. Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said making the declaration “will forever destroy precedent for what constitutes an 'emergency' under executive authority.” She predicted an immediate and lengthy court challenge.

Trump could take the funds from other accounts, including the Army Corps of Engineers and special counter narcotics programs. But the military construction accounts represent the likely largest and easiest ones to use.

“Funds taken from (those) projects will halt all work on whatever else was supposed to be done, likely degrading military readiness,” Eaglen said. “Not to mention, the funds will have to be replaced at some point anyway, thereby adding to the cost of the ‘emergency.’”

Sanders said White House officials see no basis for a legal challenge because “the president is doing his job, Congress should do theirs."

The two sides have been caught in a stalemate since last fall over funding for the southern border wall project. Democrats have repeatedly accused Trump of
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by deploying more than
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last fall — in addition to several thousand National Guard members — to support Department of Homeland Security operations there.

But the White House and military have defended the action as critical to national security, saying that migrant caravans in South and Central America pose a serious danger to U.S. sovereignty.
 
May 19, 2017
LOL parts inside It’s ‘getting real’: Special Ops Iron Man suit takes shape
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and
SOCOM's Iron Man Suit Is Officially Dead
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Long before Tony Stark took a load of shrapnel to the chest in a distant war zone, science fiction legend Robert Heinlein gave America the most visceral description of powered armor for the warfighter of the future. Forget the spines of extra-lethal weaponry, the heads-up display, and even the augmented strength of an Iron Man suit -- the real genius, Heinlein wrote in Starship Troopers, "is that you don't have to control the suit; you just wear it, like your clothes, like skin."

"Any sort of ship you have to learn to pilot; it takes a long time, a new full set of reflexes, a different and artificial way of thinking," explains Johnny Rico. "Spaceships are for acrobats who are also mathematicians. But a suit, you just wear."

First introduced in 2013, U.S. Special Operations Command's Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) purported to offer this capability as America's first stab at militarized powered armor. And while SOCOM initially promised a veritable Iron Man-style tactical armor by 2018, a
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spokesman told Task & Purpose the much-hyped exoskeleton will likely never get off the launch pad.

"The prototype itself is not currently suitable for operation in a close combat environment," SOCOM spokesman Navy Lt. Phillip Chitty told Task & Purpose, adding that JATF-TALOS has no plans for an external demonstration this year. "There is still no intent to field the TALOS Mk 5 combat suit prototype."

It's that suit-wide interconnectivity that Heinlein described that's the fundamental capability missing from the TALOS. SOCOM's Joint Acquisition Task Force - TALOS missed the the initial deadline for a working Mk 5 prototype due to "complex subsystem interdependencies," Chitty told Task & Purpose.

Although those individual subsystems -- the exoskeleton, base layer, visual augmentation system, helmet assembly, armor, power and communications -- continue to be "refined" in support of independent applications elsewhere, they won't come together to form a seamlessly high-tech prosthesis.

"It's not the Iron Man. I'll be the first person to tell you that," SOCOM acquisition officer James Smith told attendees at an NDIA SO/LIC forum in early February, Defense One first reported, adding that TALOS was "not ready for primetime in a close-combat environment."

Chitty confirmed that SOCOM was, as Defense One characterized it, "chopping up its Iron Man Suit for parts."

"As the TALOS project draws to a close, the JATF is being refocused to iteratively prototype new technical solutions that enhance the SOF mission and support the Hyper-Enabled Operator concept," Chitty told Task & Purpose. "Progressions of select TALOS technologies will be further developed to support the JATF's new direction."

Those technologies are nothing to sneeze at. According to Chitty, the five-year slog towards an operator-ready combat suit ended up yielding a significant number of mature direct technology spin-outs, including new lightweight polyethylene armor, a "thermal management suit," an enhanced operational stress monitoring capability, and a small arms stabilization system."

Other technologies show great promise, but "need more development to attain maturity," said Chitty, including "a 3D audio system, a biomedical monitoring suit, a garment that detects ballistic penetration, and pneumatic ankles and knees that decrease metabolic cost."

"The full-body exoskeleton prototype to offload
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load weight is currently not mature enough for SOF needs," Chitty said. "However, the knowledge gained informs the Services' interest in exoskeleton technology for mobility and logistic applications."

The five years and at least $80 million spent on the TALOS has yielded a tremendous volume of technical knowledge that may bolster other exoskeleton projects throughout the U.S.
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and defense industrial base, Chitty said, from the
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's "third arm" weapons harness to Lockheed Martin's ONYX exoskeleton.

But even the applications beyond JATF TALOS are limited due to its focus on a SOF mission set. While the lightweight armor and small arms systems may be useful for conventional close combat, JATF's main effort "is shifting to the cognitive domain and provisioning the warfighter with information dominance at the edge," Chitty said.

"Today's technology is capable of providing exceptional amounts of data and information that must be processed and delivered to the right person, at the right time, in a useful way, to be operationally relevant," he said. "We must develop the architectures necessary to sense, monitor, transport, process, and analyze data to aggregate the right information that will inform tactical decisions at the edge."

As SOCOM scales back its powered armor aspirations, other adversaries are expanding their horizons. In August 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defense flaunted its third-generation Ratnik-3 combat suit purportedly replete with a powered exoskeleton and active camouflage capabilities. The appearance of the Ratnik-3 smack in the middle of a critical year for the TALOS appeared to signal a what Defense One called a "military exoskeleton arms race."

When asked about where the Pentagon's powered exoskeleton capability stood compared to America's great power competitors, Chitty declined to comment.
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Iron man was always way over hyped.
I mean his get up is star trek level tech.
These programs usually hit a point where they break up into smaller tech groups.
Some of the tech will continue to be worked on and refined the story even said so.
But this one really started getting ambitious turning into a super suit.
Rather than KISS and working on just the Exoskeleton and body armor it became a catch all program.
polyethylene armor, a "thermal management suit," an enhanced operational stress monitoring capability, and a small arms stabilization system.
elements of these are nearly ready to go.
Upgraded armor, Micro climate vests, fit bit, systems like tracking point.
a 3D audio system, a biomedical monitoring suit, a garment that detects ballistic penetration,
These demand more time and are in the catch all group.
and pneumatic ankles and knees that decrease metabolic cost
with these continuing to be worked on for exoskelitons.

Note no flight capacity mentioned... or wasn't but I am sure @Jura would love it if one was so... This ones one's for you. Enjoy.
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Jan 14, 2019
Worse than you thought: inside the secret Fitzgerald probe the Navy doesn’t want you to read
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I've now read and it indeed is worse than I thought, I mean the piss in CIC common
now
CNO defends hiding scathing internal report on Fitzgerald collision from public
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The Navy’s top officer Friday defended the decision to keep from the public eye a damning internal report on the 2017 warship
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collision that killed seven sailors.

Speaking to reporters after his appearance at the U.S. Naval Institute’s
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conference here, Chief of Naval Operations
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said much of the report overlapped with what the service publicly released.

But much of the probe overseen by Rear Adm. Brian Fort portrayed a far grimmer picture of what the crew of the guided-missile destroyer faced. It also prompted hard questions about the actions taken by the Fitz’s squadron and Navy officials back in the United States.

First revealed by Navy Times, the Fort report chronicled details that Richardson, other Navy leaders and their public reports never mentioned, such as specifics about the destroyer’s
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,
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,
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and sailors who didn’t know how to operate them.

The investigators also portrayed the warship’s chiefs mess as ineffective and their sailors plagued by low morale in the months leading up to the June 17, 2017, collision.

Reporting by
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this month offered further insight into the Fitzgerald tragedy, renewing debate about the decisions made in the highest ranks of the Navy, including those by Richardson both before and after the collision.

Richardson stood by his decision to keep details from the public, insisting that the Fort report’s status as a dual-purpose investigation meant it was “locked up in other litigation.”

“I think what you’ll find is that if you take a look at what we did release, that there was a tremendous overlap and there’s not a lot of difference in terms of actionable information between what we released and what you released,” Richardson told Navy Times.

Richardson said the Navy released the entirety of its comprehensive review and strategic readiness review, calling it “the appropriate amount of information" and later adding that it provided “a sufficient level of actionable details.”

Richardson declined to answer a question about comments made at a U.S. Senate hearing this week by fellow four-star Phil Davidson, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

When pressed by Maine Sen. Angus King about readiness in the surface fleet, Adm. Davidson said that while the Fitzgerald and its fellow destroyer John S. McCain suffered fatal collisions in 2017, “280-odd other ships weren’t having collisions.”

“I think that any high performing organization needs to be focused on really fixing every possible defect. These are the characteristics of high-performing organizations,” Richardson said in response to a question about Davidson’s comment.

“The United States Navy is a high performing organization and so we’re going to continue to be focused on eliminating problems wherever we find them.”

A reporter noted that Richardson did not answer the question about Davidson’s statement.

“That’s the answer you get,” Richardson told the reporter.

“High performing organizations focus on fixing problems,” he repeated. “We’re going to remain focused on fixing the problems.”

The Navy has addressed 80 of 111 reform recommendations laid out in the comprehensive and strategic readiness reviews and “the rest are on track” but some will take longer, Richardson said.

“The idea of changing the culture, particularly in the surface force to be one of standards and assessments and those sorts of things,” Richardson said. “You can start to see that culture change … moving the team more towards a culture of rigor and standards for material training, certifications, enhancing the career path to do more training, get more experience, more assessments, again, so I think that you’re starting to see all those things moving in the right direction.”

Sen. King told Davidson at this week’s hearing that he wasn’t getting enough hard data charting how the surface fleet reforms were progressing.

“I would like to see specific data on where we stand with issues like certification of sailors and personnel on the ships, maintenance status of the ships, training rules, staffing levels, and I want real numbers,”
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. “I don’t want general ‘We’re working on staffing’ or ‘We’re working on more training.’”

Richardson told reporters that he will make sure King gets whatever information he wants.

Asked about the status of the Navy’s probe of hundreds of officers suspected of infractions in the so-called
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scandal, Richardson declined to set a deadline for when the sea service wraps up its reviews.

“Every time I make a prediction, I end up being inaccurate, so I’m hesitant to make any kind of an end date prediction,” Richardson said.

He added Navy leaders need to properly propagate lessons learned along the way.

The U.S. Justice Department is prosecuting the most severe allegations in the West Pacific public corruption cases involving scores of Navy officers, including members of the admiralty, but it passed hundreds of lower-level cases to the Navy for final adjudication.
 

Brumby

Major
Thursday at 8:22 AMrelated:
The Air Force’s JSTARS alternative has a new architect. Wait, what’s an architect?
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it'll be interesting to watch how that Pentagon's "architect" manages that "system of systems", with JSTARS legacy fleet around etc.

The near-term version of the concept revolved around sustaining the current E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System planes and upgrading existing platforms like the MQ-9 Reaper and E-3 AWACS early warning aircraft with tech that would increase its interoperability. Later increments of the effort, which have been briefed to Congress, could involve classified or still-emerging technologies, but the Air Force has not fully defined the final system.

Roper thinks ABMS will involve space-based tech; traditional air-based sensors like those on the legacy JSTARS, AWACS and Reaper; attritable systems — low cost, disposable drones could fit this description — and communications links between those systems.

There had been a separate subject on my mind but the JSTAR program appears to be converging into a central theme that I had been trying to put my thoughts around without much progress until now where I can see some clarity. Essentially the major challenge for the JSTAR recap is that even if the USAF did proceed with it, the end point is still unsatisfactory because the JSTAR planes cannot operate safely inside a contested or denied airspace. Separately I was debating in my mind how the USAF was planning to address a key weakness with the F-35 as an ISR asset in attempting to link its real time data stream back to the supporting assets like the JSTAR/C2. The upshot is that unless the valuable real time information that the F-35 sensor fusion were collecting is able to get back to C2, there is no common operating picture across the whole battlespace for purposes of centrally directing, vectoring and tasking resources. MADL is a low power directional high frequency waveform which delivers the LPI/LPD properties but for the same reason has limited distance and clearly is line of sight (LOS) only. How limited is the distance is classified but speculation is between 25 nm to 100 nm. I am confident of the former minimum range because I have seen corroborated evidence that a multi F-35 sensor formation trains as a team with the former order of magnitude distance apart. Nevertheless the practical capacity to transmit long distance using MADL is highly questionable even if operating by chain delivery. What is needed is a more viable communications relay node that is able to operate in denied environment. The question then is if the JSTAR cannot fulfill that role what purpose will it serve (even after recap) and what assets can fulfil that role. I believe these are some of the problems for the "architect" to solve in developing a communication wide area network with the appropriate system of system assets to address these issues.

I have some thoughts on the candidates for the communication relay node. First up is using the B-2 which apparently is MADL capable. I am speculating here that the MADL distance can be boosted using some kind of booster but because of weight or size is best housed inside a B-2 rather than a F-35. The next candidate is in using the RQ-180 whose existence has never been confirmed. The third candidate is the B-21 and the speculation is that the USAF will build it as a high attitude bomber that can operate up to 60,000 feet and therefore the LOS issue is diminished at that height. The final candidate is in using the U-2S and there is a story out there that a WAN has been tested to-date using an "Einstein Box".
 
Friday at 7:58 AM
Jan 20, 2019
so
Which construction projects would be affected if Trump uses military money to build a wall?
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now
Acting US defense secretary will review programs to cut for wall funding
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Acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said, beginning Sunday, he will start studying which projects military money may come from to shift funds toward a border wall following President Donald Trump's
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Trump on Friday declared a national emergency to secure federal funds to build a wall on the southern border, bypassing Congress after lawmakers refused to meet his multi-billion dollar request for border wall funds.
The administration has said $2.5 billion of military narcotics funding and $3.6 billion in military construction money will be diverted to the wall. But Shanahan will have final say on how much will be taken from which programs.
A military official said Shanahan is likely to approve the $3.6 billion figure.
"I think I have a lot of discretion," Shanahan told reporters on a flight from Munich to the US Saturday. "You can trust the numbers in terms of the potential. Then you gotta marry it up with where the money would be spent."
One area that will not be touched is military housing, Shanahan said.
Under Trump's emergency declaration, Shanahan also has to determine whether border barriers are necessary to support the use of the armed forces.
"There've been no determinations by me, so that's what I'll be doing tomorrow," Shanahan said. "But I just want to make a point of this: we are following the law, using the rules, and we're not bending the rules."
Shanahan will receive a full briefing from the service secretaries in the next few days about the potential programs from which the money may be taken, as well as other details after some initial planning, a defense official told reporters.
"The joint staff is determining which barriers should be prioritized along the southwest border from a military perspective analysis," the defense official who spoke on background said.
"I'll go in and review that analysis now that the emergency has been declared," Shanahan said. "Based on that, we can do an assessment of what would be appropriate."
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Thursday at 8:22 AMrelated:
The Air Force’s JSTARS alternative has a new architect. Wait, what’s an architect?
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

it'll be interesting to watch how that Pentagon's "architect" manages that "system of systems", with JSTARS legacy fleet around etc.
There had been a separate subject on my mind but the JSTAR program appears to be converging into a central theme that I had been trying to put my thoughts around without much progress until now where I can see some clarity. Essentially the major challenge for the JSTAR recap is that even if the USAF did proceed with it, the end point is still unsatisfactory because the JSTAR planes cannot operate safely inside a contested or denied airspace
Ironically one of the forerunner programs to JSTARS, the Tacit Blue aka the Whale aka the Alien School bus was built with that logic in mind circa the late 1970s early to mid 1980s. 640px-Northrop_Tacit_Blue_Whale.jpg
But simply rolling this out of the Museum and starting production would not solve the issues at heart of the matter. JSTARS isn't the only platform this is happening to either, The AWACS and tanker fleet similarly is an Achilles heel here.
They support modern air to air operations yet knocking them out is comparatively easy. JSTARS, AEW and Tanker fleets are built on transport hulls to save money, and take advantage of the range and space aboard whether a Boeing Airliner or a Big military high wing airlifter. These are huge radar returns even before adding the mission equipment.
Naval versions would be smaller but lack the legs of there Air force brethren but still fall in the same trouble spot.
As long as an E2 is operating over the carrier well it's okay after all there is a bigger target that is far more critical below, But if you try to forward direct it. It's a dead duck.
Additionally part of the issues for AEW and JSTARS is that really they were operating not just in an flying kick me sign but they operated based on the model of being the flying command post. Information made them not just the relay but the brains of the operations.
Need an air strike call the AEW need to know where a tank regiment is call the JSTARS. Might as well have moved the generals office aboard.

Which is part of the worry here that with the current birds we might as well paint bull's eyes on the hull.
Because if you want to be the Opfor to a modern air force and win. Down the AEW, JSTARS and Tankers.
Separately I was debating in my mind how the USAF was planning to address a key weakness with the F-35 as an ISR asset in attempting to link its real time data stream back to the supporting assets like the JSTAR/C2.
F22 And F35 have been called mini Awacs, and there is a reason for that. They have to be. As they were intended to be operating deep behind enemy airspace they couldn't rely on a E3. F35 with it's strike role farther needed to be a mini JSTARS. Able to not just identity it's targets but pass that back up the chain however then comes that issue of how to do that in a heavily contested airspace.
However MADL and F35 are not the only asset here.
You need a "whole picture"
I suspect that what the architect will produce is not a network but two. One LO for behind the lines the other for in secure space.
Part of that will mean moving sensors more and more across the air fleets. F35 is in the three fast mover forces of the US the USAF, USN and USMC.
The three arms likely to be operating in destroying enemy airspace denial. Yet it shouldn't be limited to this alone. Even back as the USAF had Tacit Blue the same radar system Pave Mover was being flown on US Army Blackhawk prototypes. YEH-60B SOTAS Stand-Off Target Acquisition System was a modified Blackhawk helicopter with a Pave Mover radar under the fuselage and a larger retractable radar. That program obviously folded but choppers like the OH58D had some arms of the same idea as did the AH64D Longbow. The cancelled yet just as ambitious RAH66 Comanche had a sensor suit, more primitive that F35 But with similar concepts. Distributed optics and sensors over the hull a radar system and the ability to hand off up the channel.
Even after the termination of Tacit Blue and Comanche elements of there concepts have progressed. FVL makers have talked about adding "F35 technology" to there rotary wing platforms. The Rq170 is said to have started out as an evolution of Dark Star which was an attempt to take the idea of the Tacit Blue program and move it to the unmanned.the Tier 3- was a LO Black counterpart to the Global Hawk unit it was canceled. Then came Polecat and then the Rq170 was outed.
download.jpeg
I have some thoughts on the candidates for the communication relay node. First up is using the B-2 which apparently is MADL capable. I am speculating here that the MADL distance can be boosted using some kind of booster but because of weight or size is best housed inside a B-2 rather than a F-35. The next candidate is in using the RQ-180 whose existence has never been confirmed. The third candidate is the B-21 and the speculation is that the USAF will build it as a high attitude bomber that can operate up to 60,000 feet and therefore the LOS issue is diminished at that height. The final candidate is in using the U-2S and there is a story out there that a WAN has been tested to-date using an "Einstein Box".
U2 can't penitrate air denial airspace most of what it does today is lower risk ISR, the Global Hawk originally meant to replace the Dragon lady doesn't penitrate either. In missions where that is needed reports are of RQ170 And RQ180 perhaps some other black drone.
At the heart of The concept that built the Tacit Blue was the data link. The Battlefield Surveillance Aircraft-Experimental (BSAX) demonstrator never had the room for the kind of operators and work stations of a E8 or even E2. The data was to be "beamed" back to a command post. By line of sight data links and ground forces. Much like F35's MALD.
This would be "tethered" to a ground station like a Navy ship or ground station or perhaps an aircraft that would take that and beam it to a satellite to be beamed to a mission command.
RQ180 could be that or it could be the successor of RQ170 or a "black" Global Hawk.
It's estimated to be large. 40 meters wing span roughly the same as a Global hawk the Tacit Blue was only 15 meters.
 
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