China New 6X6 Infantry Fighting Vehicle Field Live Firing

This is a new vehicle?  Could have sworn I've seen this before....

The Australian Amphibious Force (AAF)

Thanks to T13 for the pic!

Weird shit is going on with the "social media" approach that the Aussies and USMC are taking with regard to getting the word out about their steps to field an amphibious force.

They're having USMC Combat Cameramen post pics of their forces instead of trumpeting it on their own pages.

Plain fucking weird.

But put that aside.  Check out the caption to the above pic....

The Australian Amphibious Force (AAF) is a scalable joint force comprising personnel and equipment from the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and Australian Army to form a task-organised landing force that can conduct specified exercises or operations. It is commanded by the Commander Amphibious Task Force (CATF) in close cooperation with the Commander Landing Force (CLF) to provide a range of amphibious response options to operational crises and disasters.

The amphibious capability is a vital component of Australia's Maritime Defence strategy and represents a significant investment in advancing the ADF's operational capability. HMAS Canberra (LHD) is one of the largest ships ever built for the (RAN), and provides the ADF with one of the most capable and sophisticated air-land-sea amphibious deployment systems in the world.

The SEA Series of exercises is where the ADF generates and certifies its joint amphibious forces. These activities occur annually and comprise personnel and equipment from across the ADF and Other Government Agencies. The SEA Series is vital to the continued generation of a high readiness amphibious capability.

The Amos disease and his minions still roam the halls of HQMC.

That little ditty is straight from the playbook they're selling.  This of course points to the much bigger problem.

The USMC and now the Aussies are building forces that are designed for COIN and small wars.  Anything bigger and they're gonna get rolled.  The problem with that?  Terrorists have evolved and are now looking like nation state armies.  Small unit raids and quasi Special Ops type footprints will not work.

I won't even touch on the drama that will ensue when we eventually have to cross swords with the Chinese.

Frustration is high.

I'm not impressed with what the Aussies are doing.  They're too slow, their procurement of gear for their forces appear to be disjointed and they're lined up supposedly for their air force to fight the big fight while building an Army and Navy lined up for small scale warfare only.

They won't survive and will be a liability, not asset in the coming fight.

Open Comment Post. 28 June 2018.

The German air force’s planes are in a sorry state, says the German Air Force Chief of Staff...

via Sputnik.

Germany is under mounting pressure to tackle equipment shortages in its military that fellow NATO nations fear is eroding the country’s combat capability, Reuters reported.

The German air force’s planes are in a sorry state and the country needs urgent funding to modernize them, the air force chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Ingo Gerhartz, told a meeting of industry executives, military officers and lawmakers in Berlin on Wednesday.

“The Luftwaffe is at a low point,” Reuters quoted Gerhartz as saying.

Gerhartz said this assessment was based on a series of inspections of the country’s air force sites and discussions with military personnel.

“Aircraft are grounded due to a lack of spare parts, or they aren’t even on site since they’re off for maintenance by the industry,” he noted, adding that an inspection of Eurofighter multirole combat jets had taken a whole 14 months, twice  as long as than originally planned, which he said was unacceptable.

Story here.

First things first.

For you fairies that will point to Sputnik and say that its false news I say get some common sense!  They're a news aggregator.  Why do you see them so often on this blog?  SIMPLE!  They cover a variety of defense news THAT IS NOT COVERED by other news outlets!

Second.

Drink in this news.

The once mighty German armed forces are in shit state.  Their own leadership is claiming that its falling apart before their eyes.

You think Russia is a threat?

Nope.

They can sit back and simply let nature takes its course.  The only smell coming from the German military is rot and decay.  Any predator or scavenger can smell it from a mile away.  Why attack it when its death is imminent without the waste of calories or the risk of personal injury.  You just wait till it falls over.....

ADF Flight Operations Aboard the HMAS Canberra

Russian Airborne Tanks participate in Brotherhood Slavic Exercise...

Story here.

Interesting isn't it.

We talk all the time about 35mm, 40mm, 57mm and even 60mm hyper velocity guns on armored vehicles but forget that the Russians already have the BMD-4M sporting a 100mm gun with a coaxial 30mm cannon.

Joint Air Ground Missile (JAGM) enters production...

via Popular Mechanics.

The U.S. military’s replacement for the Hellfire anti-tank missile has entered production, capping off years of development. The Joint Air Ground Missile (JAGM) will arm U.S. Army and Marine Corps attack helicopters, providing a weapon capable of destroying the heaviest tanks from miles away.

The JAGM replaces the AGM-114 Hellfire missile. First fielded in the early 1980s, Hellfire was designed as a heavy tank-killer to destroy Soviet tanks on the Western European battlefield. Just over five feet long, seven inches wide and weighing approximately 100 pounds, Hellfire could kill tanks at ranges of up to five miles. U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters carry up to sixteen of the missiles at a time. U.S. Marine Cobra attack helicopters also use the Hellfire to attack armored and ground targets, while U.S. Navy MH-60R “Romeo” helicopters carry the Hellfire to attack enemy ships.

The original Hellfire missile was guided to target by a laser designator, either on the helicopter or on the ground. A later version, AGM-114L, was sent to its target by a helicopter-mounted millimetric wave radar. Hellfire was used in both the 1991 Gulf War, 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan, often against non-armored targets such as groups of fighters with rifles or munitions bunkers. As a result the services developed new Hellfires with warheads better suited to destroying softer, but still dangerous targets.

JAGM combines both target designation systems into a single missile. An attack helicopter with JAGMs could launch a missile using its laser designator and then allow the missile’s millimetric wave sensor to guide itself to target the rest of the way, giving it a “fire and forget” capability. This increases the survivability of the helicopter, which might give itself away by firing and need to take evasive action.

Story here. 

Hmm.

Haven't been paying much attention to this program but riddle me this.  What does this bring that the Brimstone doesn't?

Could our Brit allies have been right?

Did we waste time and effort reinventing the wheel that they already have in service?

RAF100 Flyby Poster....

The Pentagon gravy train runs out in 2020...

via Defense News.

The U.S. government’s annual budget deficit is set to grow to $1 trillion in 2020 and record levels afterward, part of a gloomy economic outlook from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The report comes amid military spending increases to counter Russia and China, raising the question of how those increases are compatible with the 6-month-old GOP tax cuts and the huge deficits they’re expected to spawn.

The military will be “hurt,” the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith, said Tuesday, adding that the nation’s combination of tax cuts and spending increases leave the U.S. ill-equipped to economically compete with China and other major powers.

“President Trump and the Republicans’ extremely reckless tax cuts, combined with our ongoing unwillingness to make strategic choices about how we spend our defense dollars, will end up forcing unpleasant national security trade-offs at precisely the time we are expecting increased strategic competition,” said Smith, of Washington.

“We are constantly told that we need to do everything we can to prepare for these challenges. But instead Congress has put us in a massive hole, and those deficits will hurt the military at a time when it is most problematic,” he added.

Story here. 

2020 is the drop dead date.

The F-35 took too long.  The military slow walked other programs to get it across the finish line.

Now.

Now things are about to go from bad to worse.

We have forces deployed around the globe, we're involved in a never ending war in Afghanistan, we're supporting idiots in Yemen, we're involved in the continent of Africa, Syria is still boiling, we have a fake war in Europe against a fictional enemy and we're supposedly gearing up to fight China while modernizing our forces and building leap ahead technology.

But at the same time the budget issue is coming back.

They tried to plan but the plan didn't work.  I don't think they have a plan B.

Open Comment Post. 27 June 2018