US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

now I was shaking my head while skimming through
Navy Research Chief: ‘We’re Living in an Age of Acceleration’

I mean talking 'acceleration' at the time of egregious delays, that's something
Technology’s rapid change is a challenge for fielding the weapons and sensors the Navy needs to counter peer competitors, the Navy’s research chief said.

“We are living in what has been termed an age of acceleration,” Rear Adm. David Hahn, chief of naval research, told a Feb. 14 gathering of the American Society of Naval Engineers, noting that technology is changing at an ever more rapid pace, but that “the entire world is moving at the same speed,” with other nations on their way to catching up with the United states in military capabilities.

“Our navy is technologically based,” Hahn said. “We have to create it, get it to our ships and into the hands of our Sailors and Marines.”

Hahn said “we don’t necessarily have an effective system today” of getting technology into the hands of the warfighter, compared with the performance of the defense industry in World War II.

Today the Office of Naval Research relies on a network of government laboratories, warfare centers, industry and academia, a collaboration that had its origins in World War II.

“Data has become a commodity,” Hahn said. “We’ve figured out how to take it to the individual.”
Hahn used the illustration of the digitalization of acoustic sensors as an example of an improvement, with putting digitalization as close as possible to the sensor made more room on a submarine for processing the data.

“if you are not digitalized, you are missing the boat,” he said.

Hahn also listed such technology as the shipboard laser weapon, the electromagnetic rail gun, swarming of small, unmanned vehicles, the Sea Hunter unmanned surface vehicle and the large diameter unmanned underwater vehicle as examples of technology that are progressing toward the fleet.

Hahn said the future fleet concept will include more integration, including more man-machine teaming; more distributed sensors and weapons; and more maneuver within the electromagnetic spectrum.
Hahn stressed the importance of affordability, advocating “learning once, applying it many times.”

He also warned against a decline in basic research, pointing to the benefits in new technology developed from that research.

“We do have the resources,” he said in response to a question about the defense budget. “We have the dollars. We have to settle on a commitment. Once we commit, we’ve got to go. If we don’t have a sense of urgency, we’re going to be in a tail chase. We cannot rob basic research accounts.”
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according to Military.com A Russian spy ship is prowling America’s East Coast, but the Pentagon isn't too worried
A Russian spy ship has been spotted off America’s East Coast, but the Pentagon wants you to know there’s nothing to worry about.

“This is not something where we have seen where they have entered territorial waters, and as such it is lawful and very similar to operations we do,” Pentagon spokesperson Capt. Jeff Davis said Friday.

The Viktor Leonov is one of several Russian surveillance ships dedicated to intelligence collection and is equipped with electronic surveillance gear and small arms for defenses, but is not carrying any heavy weapons capable of threatening the U.S. homeland, according to Davis.

This is not the first time the Viktor Leonov has conducted operations off the East Coast, Davis explained. The Russian spy vessel has been spotted collecting on a U.S. submarine base in New London, Connecticut, and other Navy bases in Florida and Virginia going, back to 1998, Davis said.

Before approaching the U.S. East Coast, the Viktor Leonov made a port call in Kingston, Jamaica, and the ship has been known to dock in Havana, Cuba, where it often participates in counter-narcotic operations with Central America.

The Russian spy ship is currently being tracked by a U.S. Coast Guard vessel. The Pentagon would not provide details of how the ship was being monitored or what particular vessels are involved in the operation.

“They routinely deploy intelligence vessels worldwide to monitor the activities and particularly naval activities of other nations, but then again conducted lawfully in international waters and not unlike operations we conduct ourselves,” Davis said.
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Equation

Lieutenant General
US M1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks Arrived in Romania

The American troops arrived in Romania with their military technic in endowment: M1 Abrams tanks, M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and 155mm self-propelled howitzer M109A6 Paladin type.

US troops began to disembark their armoured vehicles on Tuesday at the MK Base, Constanta, as part of the US commitment to secure and to reinforce the Eastern NATO flank. The deployment is part of Operation Atlantic Resolve.

500 troops of the 1st Battalion ‘Fighting Eagles’ will be using M1 Abrams tanks, some which had barrels were adorned with insignia including ‘call me maybe’ and ‘cash me outside’, M2 Bradley armoured vehicles, M109A6 Palladin self-propelled howitzers, as well as M88A2 recovery vehicles.

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Not trying to be picky or anything, but shouldn't they be repainting those M1 and M2 to match with Romania's landscape, instead of keeping with the desert paint scheme?
 
interestingly Mattis is 'alone' in plans to boost defense budget, says House Armed Services Committee chairman
House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry worries the young Trump administration’s slow pace getting Pentagon jobs filled — and Obama administration holdovers at DoD— may hurt plans to boost defense spending.

In a press conference Thursday, Thornberry said new Defense Secretary James Mattis is “doing a great job, but so far he doesn’t have anybody else in a Senate-confirmed position.” Thornberry fears holdover DoD staff who resisted his alarms over military readiness problems won’t change their stripes.

“The problem is it’s Secretary Mattis alone right now,” said Thornberry, R-Texas. “So you have a number of people, political appointees and others from the Obama administration, and they have been the ones trying to deny there’s a problem. They’re well intentioned people, patriotic Americans, but it’s hard for any of us to turn 180 degrees in the other direction.”

Three weeks into the Trump administration, roughly 75 percent of political appointee jobs inside the Defense Department were vacant, and there were 16 holdovers from the Obama administration, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work and the three acting secretaries of the military departments.

In a statement responding to Thornberry's remarks, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a DoD spokesman, said Work "plays an important role in working with the services to develop our budget inputs, and he does so in accordance with the guidance and direction of Secretary Mattis." Mattis has given Work his "full trust and confidence," Davis said.

"The budget submissions that DoD makes to the President will come from Secretary Mattis," Davis said in a statement. "They will reflect his thinking, and his priorities, which are to rebuild combat readiness of America's military, while being faithful stewards of every taxpayer dollar we spend on defense."

Since taking office just weeks ago, Mattis has had a full plate, traveling to Europe and Asia, working to bolster foreign alliances and facing fallout from a controversial counterterrorist raid in Yemen. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has met Senate Democrats’ delay tactics on Cabinet appointees. The administration itself has been slow to vet and name mid-tier appointees, which leaves as Mattis the lone Senate-confirmed Trump appointee to the Pentagon.

“What I’m concerned about is this whole process,” Thornberry said. “Because it’s been slow to get people in place, it’s going to be harder for the president to fulfill his promises.”

Trump last month ordered the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget to develop — within 90 days — an emergency budget amendment to boost military spending this year, and for Mattis to update and revise existing budget plans for fiscal 2018. Mattis, in a memo afterward, said he plans to send a supplemental request to OMB by March 1.

Concerned a continuing resolution to fund the federal government that expires on April 28 will leave little time to tackle both 2017 and 2018 spending, lawmakers have since encouraged DoD to deliver the supplemental directly to Congress, Thornberry said.

A key campaign promise for Trump has been rebuilding the U.S. military. On Thursday, Trump renewed that pledge, saying “our country will never have had a military like the military we’re about to build and rebuild.”

“We have the greatest people on Earth in our military, but they don’t have the right equipment and their equipment is old,” Trump said. “I used it. I talked about it at every stop. Depleted, it’s depleted. It won’t be depleted for long. And I think one of the reason I’m standing here instead of other people is that, frankly, I talked about we have to have a strong military.”

Trump’s comments dovetail with Thornberry’s calls to improve military readiness and come after the U.S. military’s uniformed No. 2s
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that their personnel and aging equipment are stretched thin amid years of war, statutory budget caps and temporary workarounds.

“If you remember there was a real concerted effort to deny there was a readiness problem. You heard statistics and the testimony about how it has gotten worse,” Thornberry said Thursday.

The HASC chairman also signaled he has not forgotten a 2016 leaked memo prepared for Work showing Pentagon leaders aimed to derail the Republican-led House’s defense spending plans last year. The memo strategized against “Thornberry’s readiness crisis narrative.”

One of the memo’s authors was Stephen Hedger, then assistant defense secretary for legislative affairs and now deputy chief of staff to the defense secretary. The other author, then-Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord, was let go by the incoming Trump administration.

“Secretary Mattis cannot do it by himself, and meanwhile we have folks in the [Pentagon] who have been there through the whole time, fighting against us,” Thornberry said. “And they’re the ones coming up with the defense budget. So I’m concerned about where that’s headed.”
source is DefenseNews
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298701_Adv_FA18_Front-3-23-16-small-1.jpg

The F/A-18XT is the designation for the Advanced Super Hornet, which is the Block III fighter jet concept for the Navy.
only now I noticed the designation (while at least two my Friday posts contain it :)
Trump Eyes ‘Big Order’ of New F/A-18XT Super Hornets
President Donald Trump on Friday announced he’s considering a “big order” of advanced Super Hornet fighter jets designated F/A-18XT and made by Boeing Co.

“We are looking seriously at a big order,” he told the audience at Boeing’s South Carolina facility during the unveiling of the company’s 787 Dreamliner. “Do you care if we use the F-18 Super Hornets?”

The comments came less than a month after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis
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of the
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, a fourth-generation fighter, as a potential lower-cost alternative to the
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, the carrier version of a fifth-generation fighter made by Lockheed Martin Corp.

The remarks also came a day after Robert Harward, a retired vice admiral and former
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who went on to become an executive at Lockheed,
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to succeed Michael Flynn as national security adviser.

According to White House pool reports from the Trump event, Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, was spotted holding a brochure for the “F/A-18 XT.” The XT is the Advanced Super Hornet, or the Block III fighter jet concept for the
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, a Boeing spokesman confirmed to Military.com.

“While Boeing demonstrated advanced Super Hornet capabilities in flight in 2013, the package of upgrades has evolved to best complement F-35, EA-18G and E-2D as they will be operating together in the air wing well into the 2040s,” Boeing said in a description of the XT/Block III aircraft.

Boeing developed the Block III jet concept to “address the strike fighter shortfall as well as to ensure the air wing has the capabilities needed to win in the 2020s and beyond,” the description said.

The new variant will feature an enhanced network capability to allow large amounts of data on and off the airplane, which would increase the ability to receive targeting information from aircraft like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter,
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and the E-2D Hawkeye, according to Boeing.

The twin-engine plane is also designed to come equipped with longer-range, low-drag, stealthy conformal fuel tanks; long-range sensors that can detect and target threats without having to depend on radar; a new advanced cockpit system to enhance situational awareness, providing the pilot with the capability to see, track and target multiple long range targets; and improved low-observable next-generation radar cross section for increased survivability, according to the company.

Weeks before being sworn in as president, Trump was vocal about an alternative to the Joint Strike Fighter, saying the “F-35 program and cost is out of control.”

“Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!”
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.

The F-35 is the Pentagon’s biggest acquisition program estimated at nearly $400 billion for almost 2,500 aircraft.

After the speech Friday, Trump told reporters, “If the price doesn’t come down, we would” buy some F/A-18XTs to replace some F-35 orders. “The F-18’s a great plane and now put a stealth component onto it,” he said, according to a pool report from TIME’s White House correspondent Zeke Miller.

The military’s top brass have pointed out that older fighter jets such as the F-16 and F/A-18 will never match the F-35,
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.

Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus, a former
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pilot who directs the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program’s integration office for the
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, said even upgraded versions of the fourth-generation fighters simply can’t compete against the newer aircraft’s stealth superiority.

“The airplane is the shape of the airplane, the size is the size of the airplane,” Pleus said.

“The radar cross-section of an F-18 is the radar cross-section of an F-18 — you can’t change that,” he added. “Low observable technology, the ability to evade radar if you will, is something that has to be designed into the airplane from the very beginning.”
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FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
AGM-154C-1 new variant able anti-ships also only USN have order for Super Hornet and F-35C, same range, warhead as Harpoon 130 km, 225 kg but not sea skimming and a glider bomb so less efficient but can be interesting for completed especialy vs ships less well defended.

AGM-154 fit in F-35A/C internal weapons bay in service with next Block 3F right now not planned but also Harpoon fit with in the B variant in more.

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JSOWC1.jpg
F-35C AGM-154.jpg
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Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
interestingly Mattis is 'alone' in plans to boost defense budget, says House Armed Services Committee chairman

source is DefenseNews
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and that gents is the problem, Obama "plebs" guarding the "hen house" while his associates robbed every dime for that KRAPPY OBAMACARE and other BS that little O wanted, open borders, soup lines on every corner, yep, he damned near destroyed America!
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
AGM-154C-1 new variant able anti-ships also only USN have order for Super Hornet and F-35C, same range, warhead as Harpoon 130 km, 225 kg but not sea skimming and a glider bomb so less efficient but can be interesting for completed especialy vs ships less well defended.

AGM-154 fit in F-35A/C internal weapons bay in service with next Block 3F right now not planned but also Harpoon fit with in the B variant in more.

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View attachment 36461
View attachment 36463
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There ya go, at 70 nautical the F-18 Super Hornet XT is still a "billboard", and is well within range of the advanced long range AAM of the bad boys?? The F-35 is in "Ninja Mode!", quiet and stealthy and can take those very same threats out with very little real life vulnerability to those targeted systems. '

I know what I'd rather be flying,,,, sadly lots of folks believe that "stealthy Hornet" bull shoot, and it is a bunch of bull... "sprinkle some fairy dust on it" kinda thinking, look at Jura's post and what General Scott Plueth thinks about that krap?

The PRES needs to put one foot on each butt cheek and pull his head out of his AZZ on this deal??? come on Mr. Trump, you can do it, PUSH HARD!
 
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