Open Comment Post. 24 Feb 2019

The Fleet Air Arm is as weird as US military aviation...

When the Commando Merlin drops in to give the Cold Weather Survival Course some morale!#FlyNavy pic.twitter.com/yKsvESGSPW

— Commander Bob Bond RN (@CdrBobBond) February 23, 2019

In case you missed it the caption said that a Commando Merlin "drops in" to give the Winter Survival Course participants some MOTIVATION!

Too freaking funny.

They're flying by in their nice comfortable helicopter and those guys are rucking through the freaking snow and they think they're motivating people by zooming by?

Are you shitting me!

The only motivation those bubbas are feeling at that moment is the thought of wrapping their fingers around their recruiters neck!

Side note.  The last guy in that formation told the story.  Did you see the knee flex and that wiggle of the shoulders to get that pack to TRY and sit right on his back.  There is pain in that there back.....pure pain!

Joint Light Tactical Vehicle is 'not operationally suitable'

via Military Times.

The military’s newest ground vehicle has problems with its maintenance, reliability and crew situational awareness and its most heavily armed version has been deemed “not operationally effective” in a Pentagon report.

The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle has been touted as the rugged, protected and highly mobile vehicle to replace some of the more vulnerable Humvees on a contested battlefield.

The vehicle has ballistic protection equal to the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, but is one-third lighter and 70 percent faster off road than the MRAP, officials said.

The first JLTVs were fielded to the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia in mid-January.

But a number of deficiencies were noted in a recent annual report published by the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation for the Defense Department. It provides an overview of Army, Navy and Air Force programs. The Army section contains two dozen systems with reviews and recommendations.

The vehicle comes in two- and four-seat versions with four basic configurations — general purpose, utility vehicle, heavy guns carrier and close combat weapons carrier.

The program plans to procure approximately 49,099 vehicles for the Army, 9,091 vehicles for the Marines, and 80 vehicles for the Air Force. That fielding will happen over the course of the next two decades for the Army and the next decade for the Marines.

All variants were deemed “not operationally suitable because of deficiencies in reliability, maintainability, training, manuals, crew situational awareness, and safety,” according to the report.

And the close combat weapons carrier was further deemed “not operationally effective for use in combat and tactical missions.”

That was because the close combat version “provides less capability to engage threats with the (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) missiles” over the Humvee.

“The missile reload process is slow and difficult for crews,” according to the report and the close combat version has “less storage space than other JLTV variants and accessing mission-essential equipment from the cargo area is a challenge,” according to the report.

Also, the crew has “poor visibility due to blind spots around the vehicle.”

The term “operationally effective” is used by testers to determine if the system can accomplish the mission it is intended to in as realistic an environment that can be tested.

“Operationally suitable” means whether the system can be placed in field use and be reliable and sustained within the unit and support available.

Crews had problems getting out of the JLTV and saw “numerous reliability failures of doors not opening impeded the ability of the soldiers and marines to safely ingress and egress the JLTV.”

And maintaining the vehicle is proving to be a challenge early in the fielding.

“Units cannot maintain the JLTV without support from the contractor field service representatives due to vehicle complexity, ineffective training, poor manuals, and challenges with troubleshooting the vehicle,” according to the report.

The reliability-specific problems included engine wiring problems, flat and damaged tires and brake system faults.

Overall, the JLTV will require more maintenance than the Humvee.

Also, none of the variants are operationally effective when using a towing trailer.

“The trailer has less mobility than the JLTV, which slowed the operational tempo of the test units. The Army has made no decision to procure the JLTV companion trailer,” according to the report.

Report authors recommended that the JLTV program develop a plan to address the report recommendations and further items mentioned in a classified annex.

This is stunning.  Of all the modernization projects out there I thought this was the one that would cross the finish line with no problems.  That's not the case though.

So what do we do?

If I was Marine Corps leadership I'd get to the back of the line.  For the next half/full decade I'd soldier on with the HUMVEE or if necessary due to local conditions pull High Mobility MRAPs out of the motor pool.  Add a decent suspension to the legacy vehicle and wait for the Army to sort the JLTV out.

It does explain one thing though.

The Brits have been screaming about the cost of the JLTV and the reliability...there is a serious movement to buy homegrown instead.

I see why now.

Regardless, this ain't a good look.

 

The US military sent F-22's to bomb poppy fields....

via Time.

Gen. John W. Nicholson, former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, was eager to choke off the flow of revenue when he rolled out the new counter-narcotics air campaign on Nov. 20, 2017. He said it a represented an element of President Donald Trump’s more aggressive strategy in Afghanistan, which included loosened American forces’ rules of engagement. He played aerial video footage that showed F-22 stealth fighters and B-52 strategic bombers dropping multiple 250 and 500-pound bombs on non-descript buildings.

“These are a demonstration of our new authorities,” Nicholson told reporters at the Pentagon. “They’re also a demonstration of our will to take the fight to the enemy in all of its dimensions. And specifically, in striking northern Helmand and the drug enterprises there, we’re hitting the Taliban where it hurts, which is their finances.”

The idea for the campaign was borrowed from the battle against ISIS, in which daily airstrikes eviscerated the militants’ black market oil smuggling operation. But the results in Afghanistan never got close to repeating such success.

Taliban “drug labs,” after all, are often nothing more than a stove, barrels and precursor chemicals in a hut. They are cheap and take three days to rebuild, and represent a small component of the sprawling drug trade.

Story here. 

Just plain wow!  Are you shitting me!  A low density, high value platform like the F-22 with a finite number of hours on the airframe are being WASTED on bombing mud huts in Afghanistan?

If that's not bad enough, our vaunted air power barely slowed the drug trade! Is it wrong to ask if western culture can ever win a war in that country? Another question that must be asked is this.  Will air power deliver the type of decisive victory that has been promised since WW2?  I don't see any indication that it can but we seem to be placing an awful lot of eggs into that basket.

Back on task.

Precision bombing didn't work. What do we try next?

Blast from the past. An image from the Sino-Vietnamese War...

Two Vietnamese women soldiers wearing pith helmets displaying a Chinese man whose hands they tied together behind his back after they captured and took him prisoner in a battle against the Chinese PLA in the Sino-Vietnamese War, February-March 1979

Take a look at these F-15X images and tell me what you see...

I ran across these images of the F-15X and it became painfully obvious that most have been denying what their lying eyes have been telling them.

That's not a continental US air defense fighter.  You don't need to load up with 20 long range missiles for that job.  This thing is about something else entirely.

We all know it.  No one wants to admit it.

This should alarm F-35 fans.  There is no way that plane will be able to carry the same number AMRAAMs for at least another decade. 

IF the F-35 is the quarterback of the sky then the F-15X will be it's wide receiver.  Going deep with volleys of missiles.

The truth is staring you in the face.  Just look at the pics!

Slovakia is backtracking on its Boxer IFV buy...

Story here.

Long short?  It comes back to economics and meeting the defense needs of their nation.  The worrying thing that I hadn't considered?  They're operating under a mandate from NATO to build battlegroups.

What if they simply can't afford?

This is why NATO needs a rationalized defense architecture.  If Slovenia can provide a couple of crack infantry battalions, or airborne troops or motorized recon then we need to plug that into the warfighting scheme for the organization.

One size does NOT fit all and duplication of effort across the alliance is wasteful.  Even worse in my opinion?  Forcing these smaller nations to buy expensive, high tech gear so that they look similar to their bigger neighbors is counterproductive.

We've got to find a better way.  Economic strength leads to military strength and military strength leads to economic strength with it all ending up at prosperity...IF DONE RIGHT! Breaking the bank to have the latest gee whiz weapon isn't national defense if it wrecks your economy.

Open Comment Post. 23 Feb 2019...

Turkey is moving ahead with their "Heavyweight" Attack Helicopter...

The heavy class attack helicopter project has been signed with TAI. The helicopter to be developed will have approximately two times take-off weight of ATAK helicopter as one of the world's top class attack helicopters. pic.twitter.com/u1bCuyJFFK

— SSB (@SSB_Eng) February 22, 2019

Russian Embassy in the US is talking MASSIVE shit to the USAF Chief Of Staff...

'If a Russia... ever was to see an F-35 inside its airspace', we would love to send Chief of Staff of the @usairforce Gen. David L. Goldfein 'message with two words' — ‘remember Vietnam'
'An F-35 will never be alone'↘️ pic.twitter.com/hcgg7aJzG1

— Russia in USA 🇷🇺 (@RusEmbUSA) February 22, 2019

Just plain wow!  This is serious stuff cause the implications are deadly (from both sides).  But at the same time I can't help but find this a bit funny and juvenile.

Have you ever seen a couple of teens or young adult males barking at each other...acting like they want to fight and you're watching the whole thing?

It get's to a point where you yell out "do some fucking work or shut the fuck up"?

It's like that.

Neither side wants that fight but now they're barking at each other.  The sad thing?

From my chair (I'd love to be corrected) we started it.