Air Tattoo is coming up!

Only two air shows that I lust to see.  Dayton and the Air Tattoo.  For you lucky freaks that can get it done, the Air Tattoo is coming up.  If you make it, then share your pics!

Blast from the past. British Army Thur Throwback ... Warrior IFV in Afghanistan (2013)

Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicles of 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland in Afghanistan in 2013

Open Comment Post. July 12, 2018

What is this madness! Israel says Assad is safe from them but Iran must quit Syria!

via Reuters.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russia on Wednesday that Israel would not seek to topple its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but Moscow should encourage Iranian forces to quit Syria, a senior Israeli official said.

Story here. 

I've been monitoring a few stories that I haven't posted on the blog regarding certain conflicts we're involved in (you'd be surprised in all the fighting we're taking part in globally) and I am now convinced that Trump is about to complete a campaign pledge and bring troops home from some of these fights.

Read the article but the idea that Israel is now saying Assad is safe is an early indication of a DRASTIC shift in US policy in Syria.

Canadian Demo CF-18 thru the Mach Loop by Peter Steehouwer!

Pics are from Peter Steehouwer's webpage!  Check it out here...guy's an awesome photographer!

Thanks to Dustin for the link!

Russians are knocking down allied communications, disabling AC-130's, etc in Syria....

via Military Times.

The Corps is looking to install antennas in its F/A-18 C/D Hornets to help the aircraft defeat GPS jammers.

In a request for information posted in early June by Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, the Corps wants to install the anti-jam antennas known as the Air Navigation Warfare Program, or NAVWAR, in 120 of the legacy Hornets.

The anti-jamming antenna “provides Global Positioning System (GPS) protection for Naval Air platforms by allowing for continued access to GPS through the use of Anti-Jam (AJ) Antenna Systems designed to counter GPS Electronic Warfare threats from intentional and unintentional interference,” Michael Land, a spokesman for NAVAIR, told Marine Corps Times in an emailed statement Tuesday.

The development comes as U.S. aircraft have faced mounting electronic warfare attacks against aircraft in Syria.

Army Gen. Tony Thomas, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, told audience members at a conference in April that adversaries were trying to bring down AC-130 gunships in Syria using electronic warfare, or EW.

“Right now in Syria, we’re in the most aggressive EW environment on the planet, from our adversaries,” Thomas said. “They’re testing us every day, knocking our communications down, disabling our AC-130s, et cetera.”

The Corps is amid an overhaul of its forces and equipment to prepare for a potential fight with near-peer adversaries like Russia and China.

Both countries boast an impressive array of electronic warfare capabilities. Russia has been using the Syrian battlefield to hone its EW skills.

The top Marine has oft repeated the threats posed to GPS systems from rising adversaries and says the Corps needs to be prepared to fight in GPS denied environments.

Story here. 

Electronic warfare, not cyber is the future of the modern battlefield.  One is sexy the other practical and be honed by our adversaries to a razor's edge.

We must prepare for the probable, not the hoped for.

UH-1Y Venom "Huey" | The Ultimate Tactical Utility Helicopter

Open Comment Post. July 11, 2018

Why have bayonets gotten shorter?

I think this article from the "Load Out Room" was mostly click bait but I bit anyway.  This part of the article (before the vid that actually explains why) got me a bit jaded though...

As late as 1900 the bayonet was thought to be fully one-half of the infantryman’s tactical armament. But of course, that was mistaken: the bolt-action, magazine rifle,  the Maxim machine gun, and the barbed-wire entanglement, were soon to demonstrate that cold steel and élan were no match for 20th-Century defensive arms in prepared positions. This was clear in the siege of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war, although some particularly blockheaded European officers couldn’t learn from foreign experience, and would have to have their own, to the detriment of a generation.

But the bayonet wasn’t obsolete, because of, as we’ve said, what the bayonet is. And what it is, is a psychological weapon. The Argentine draftees around Port Stanley in 1982 faced the horrors of modern war with fatalism, if not exactly equanimity. But two things put them to flight, or surrender: thoughts of Gurkha’s kukris, and thoughts of cold steel bayonets. Likewise, that 2004 British unit in Iraq did not so much increase their combat power when they fixed bayonets, as they increased their psychological dominance of the battlefield. The psychological effect of the bayonet is two-sided: it strikes fear into the enemy at point end, and stirs confidence in the soldier behind the bayonet. Such de minimis subtleties are the foundation stones of many a victory.

Story here. 

I'm gonna nitpick a bit.

They start off by saying that the bayonet has been supplanted in its role because of modern weaponry and defenses but go on to say that as a psychological weapon its still has a role to play.

Does it?

Against trained opponents?

Against opponents with automatic rifles?  Grenade launchers?  RPGs?

I'm just not sold that it was thoughts of Gurkha's swinging their fighting knives (machetes) that made the Argentinians quit.  Not sure that the Brit unit won decisively because they fixed bayonets.

Bayonet charges means an assault thru a fire swept landscape before you can close with the enemy.  If its house to house then that means maneuvering a longer weapon in a confined space.

Perhaps its time to drop the term bayonet and calls these weapons what they've actually become....attachable fighting knives.

NATO has a good story to tell????

via Breaking Defense.

The individual members of the alliance are spending tens of billions more on their defense than was the case just two years ago, and the meeting will reaffirm the creation of two new commands: an Atlantic Command based in Norfolk to support the reborn U.S. Second Fleet, and a Support Command based in Ulm, Germany, which will coordinate forward deployment of forces inside Europe.

The commands, alliance members say, prove Europe is embracing reform to outpace Russian military modernization, to hold the line in the North Atlantic against increasing Russian submarine activity, and prepare for the arrival of Chinese shipping in the Arctic as ice floes melt.

But from the U.S. perspective, the focus will be on spending: specifically, getting allies to spend two percent of their GDP on defense, with 20 percent of that going directly into modernization programs.

“It’s about making sure our partners are living up to what they agreed to at the Wales summit in 2014,” one administration official told me. “No one is expecting allies to go immediately to go to two percent, but what we really want to see now is what is the credible plan to get there? You’ve gotta have a plan.”

As it stands now, not every country has a credible plan to reach the two percent goal by 2024, something that has frustrated American policymakers.

The issue of the 20 percent often gets lost in the larger debate over spending, but its one that U.S. officials, during conversations in the run up to the summit, repeatedly emphasized.

Story here.

The highlighted portion in red is what irks me the most about NATO.  The US creates a new fleet to meet the defense needs of Europe, they create a "support" command and then they claim that because WE have dedicated more forces to protect them that they're committed to the alliance!!

Simply amazing.

Some say (and I can't disagree) that its past time the Europeans start spending money on their own defense.  Credible money.  Additionally the EU countries have a higher population base but if you look at their combined forces we have committed many more forces to their actual defense....most of their troops are in garrison!

The most perplexing part of this is that we've heard these same complaints that Trump is spouting from Bush Jr thru the Obama administration and even from Mattis.

What has the Europeans frightened is that Trump is pounding the table.

That means that the status quo of the US complaining while the Europeans make empty promises is over.

Between Trump's rumblings with regard to NATO and with the SecState making an unannounced visit to Afghanistan I think we're gonna see a couple more campaign promises delivered on.

I really believe that Trump is determined to bring the troops home from the frontier.  The military will howl but this tough medicine is just what the doctor ordered.  For some unknown reason the military leadership has fallen in love with forward deployment.

Penny packets of US troops just begs a modern day Guadalcanal or Wake Island.

Trump might be saving the US and his generals from globalists and a fraudulent strategy.