UK's Military is half the size it was in '82!

pic via Paul Lewis Twitter page.

Looking at the above graph can it credibly be said that the UK is a first tier military?

Looking at the above graph can it credibly be said that the UK is a reliable partner to the US in anything but limited warfare?

Are they even capable of engaging in a peer vs peer conflict involving the US and China as our allies?

You tell me.

Aviation Porn. F/A-18F in flight....

Open Comment Post. 30 June 2018

Latest flight footage of the S-97

Here's the latest footage from Sikorsky and @lockheedmartin of the S-97 Raider in flight. Sikorsky pilots Bill Fell and John Groth flew the S-97 Raider for 90 minutes at the Sikorsky Development Flight Center in West Palm Beach, Florida on June 28. Sikorsky also participated in the U.S. Army’s industry day on its draft solicitation for a new attack reconnaissance aircraft (see link in our profile for more details). According to Tim Malia, Sikorsky director of Future Vertical Lift, "We believe that the X2 aircraft family offers the military a scalable solution that will meet the evolving demands of a multi-domain battlespace. We are energized by the speed in which the Army is proceeding and our team is excited for the opportunity to provide a tremendous capability to our warfighter." #helicopter #sikorsky #lockheedmartin #s97 #usarmy #futureverticallift

A post shared by Vertical Magazine (@verticalmag) on Jun 29, 2018 at 10:42am PDT

Aviation Porn. British Army Wildcat helicopter of 661 Squadron, 1 Regiment

A Wildcat helicopter of 661 Squadron, 1 Regiment, Army Air Corps during Strike Coordination and Reconnaissance with US F-16 jets over the skies of Estonia

Australia's Hunter Class Frigates...

via The Great Guys at Defense Aerospace!

The Turnbull Government will deliver one of the world’s most advanced anti-submarine warfare frigates, create 4,000 Australian jobs and secure a local naval shipbuilding industry for decades to come.

The frigates, to be designed by BAE Systems and built by ASC Shipbuilding, are central to our plan to secure our nation, our naval shipbuilding sovereignty and create Australian jobs.

BAE’s Global Combat Ship – Australia will provide our nation with one of the most advanced anti-submarine warships in the world - a maritime combat capability that will underpin our security for decades to come.

The Future Frigates, named the Hunter class, will be built in Australia, by Australians, using Australian steel.

This $35 billion program will create 4,000 Australian jobs right around the country and create unprecedented local and global opportunities for businesses large and small.

The Hunter class will begin entering service in the late 2020s replacing the eight Anzac Frigates, which have been in service since 1996.

The Turnbull Government is committed to give our military the potent naval capability it needs.

Story here. 

I didn't follow the program.  Is this the best of breed in the competition or is it a case of pure politics, jobs and favoritism carrying the day?

Baltic Operations 2018

Armor Porn. BLT 2/5 conducts mechanized assault from the sea....Pics by Gunnery Sgt. T. T. Parish

Note.  Small suggestion to Combat Camera bubbas.  If you guys could (it might be beyond difficult), would it be possible to include pics of squad movements?  Individual pics of vehicles is one thing, but I think it misses the bigger picture when we see individual pics of Marine Riflemen doing work. Just a suggestion so don't rage.

I think this is one thing that will be missed with the ACV (or maybe not I don't know if it has these hatches).  Being able to get the lay of the land with your own two eyes gives you a perspective on what's happening and where you're going better than any view/led screen...

The Air Force Needs Army's Help to Best Russia's S-400 Missile

via Military.com

The U.S. Air Force needs the help of the Army to outsmart Russia's enhanced S-400 anti-air defense system, a top general said Thursday.

"Part of the emphasis with our multi-domain operations that we're doing with the Army is trying to find ways that we can defeat these systems together, so that we can get in there faster and be more effective sooner," Gen. Mike "Mobile" Holmes, commander Air Combat Command, told reporters during a breakfast in Washington, D.C.

While Holmes said the S-400's capability in comparison to its S-300 long-range predecessor is an incremental upgrade at best, his concerns stem from the upgraded range of the S-400, a new mobile missile battery called an "F-35 killer" by Moscow.

"Constantly evolving defensive systems, constantly evolving offensive systems, the big things that we see are increasing range and increasing sensitivity of the sensors that are deployed with the evolving surface-to-air defenses," Holmes said.

Story here. 

The shield of the Army, the vaunted USAF is now looking to the Army so that it can do it's job.

Now do you see why I say the promise of the F-35 isn't realized?

Do you get why I believe that air supremacy has been lost with the debacle that is the F-35?

This joker tried to shift the blame to 4th gen fighters but we're supposedly getting long range missile to take out these systems.  We're buying a shit load of F-35's that are suppose to get within spitting distance and not be detected.

But now they're having to leverage Army long range fires to assist them?

Simply amazing...and depressing...

Stryker Air Defense Variant is what the Army got...what they need is the SLAMRAAM on FMTV or JLTV!

The image you see above is what the US Army is proposing for its anti-air system to keep up with its Stryker Brigades (and probably some version for the Bradley too...).

The more I think about it the more I think they came up short.

What they need is the SLAMRAAM.  Mount it on the FMTV truck, the JLTV or use the HUMVEE to tote the thing. 

They're platform centric when they need to be thinking about payloads!  Everything can be a shooter.  We really need to dump the idea of "pure" brigades.  Everything in a Stryker Brigade DOES NOT need to be based on the Stryker if it comes at a price in performance.

The Stryker Air Defense Variant gives up too much in performance to meet threats against even insurgents...we won't even discuss what a peer air force could do to our ground forces.

A dude named "Goon" once told me during the days when I was a full fledged supporter of the F-35 to do two things.  The first was to get out of my normalcy bias.  It was a challenge and I took him up on it. I didn't like what I saw when I did.  The next thing was to follow the money and determine what the real challenges were --- not by press release but where money suddenly was getting tossed to.

We really don't have to do any of that with regard to this subject.  We know that the ground forces of the United States are planning for a fight where the US does NOT have air superiority.  We have heard it stated plainly from many officials.  We see the Army and Marine Corps attempting to slow walk air defense back into their formations.

That's the good.  The bad?  They're doing it too slow. They're wedded to platforms instead of weapon systems that can give us a standoff advantage...a very much needed part of ADA...you have to kill the archer before he releases his quiver of arrows.

SLAMRAAM IS HERE NOW.  The Army and Marines should act poste haste to buy it and get it into service....hell even trial seeing if the Meteor can be ground launched but we need something better than the Stinger or Sidwinder when most air to ground missiles seriously outrange them!