Pic of the day. Israeli low level...

IDF fighter jets fly low and fast inside Ramon Crater in the Negev Desert.

Awesome pic and the camo works...the Iraeli's have been releasing quite a few pics of low level F-16 flights lately...almost as if they're telegraphing something.

Please tell me this is just poorly written.

This one  has me scratching my head.  Is this just poorly written?

via The Weekly Standard...

The White House announced today that First Lady Michelle Obama will sponsor the USS Illinois, the first all female submarine force. The newest submarine "is expected to join the fleet in late 2015," according to the White House.

If this is as it reads then when is the first all Gay, Straight, Hispanic, Caucasian, Asian, Black, Jewish, Catholic etc...submarine force coming?

The worst thing we can do as a nation in general and as a military in particular is to subdivide itself.

Its happening and its not good.

This will end badly.

UPDATE:
The spineless bastard changed it up and didn't even note the correction.  Amazing.  If it was Huffington Post I could see that but I do expect better from the Weekly Standard.

The M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle. We chose the wrong round!

Hitting the usual war movies while barbecuing and I keep seeing the Browning Automatic Rifle in all these films and it got me to wondering.

Is the M27 IAR a good idea but wrapped in the wrong rifle round?

The M240 is a beast of a weapon on patrol and is often left behind because of it.  But imagine if you were able to lay down precision automatic rifle fire at the ranges that a 7.62mm round is capable of.

A new built Browning Automatic Rifle type weapon, married with modified C-Mags or Surefire 60 round mags all wrapped with the 7.62mm round could actually be a game changer.  Why this was never considered is beyond me...and if it was but got rejected makes me wonder why.

Modern materials should make it rather easy to get this weapon below the 15 pound mark (empty) and if it was also fired open bolt and had a heavy barrel we should get similar performance but with much greater hitting power than we are with the M27.

The Marine Corps should at least study the concept.

A must read about courageous JCS members.

SLD has a must read.

If you don't read anything else today, take a few minutes to go to their site and read the article on Lyndon Johnson and his Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Oh and while you're doing it compare the courage shown by those men with the members that have served since Bush Jr.'s first term all the way up to today.

Its downright chilling to see the similarities...or rather the lack of them.

Harpoon for LCS. The campaign continues.

The biggest complaint against the LCS is that it isn't a proper warship.  Its fast, but underarmed, under crewed and unable to take the fight to the enemy.

The more I look at the Harpoon missile system the more I'm convinced that it needs to be included in the weapons suite of the LCS.

In its standard form and its Stand off Land Attack Missile variant it would prove to be a game changer for the program.  Additionally with its light weight launch system it could easily fit on board the ship without compromising it in the slightest.

Read more about the Harpoon missile here, here and here.

NOTE:
If this missile system can be truck mounted then surely we can fit it aboard a 3000 ton warship!

UPDATE:
Tom informed me of a unique Australian solution to getting the Harpoon missile system aboard their Oliver Perry class frigates.  Even though the forward vertical launch cells are shallow, they simply allow the enclosure to protrude above deck.  Outstanding.  Now we can save development money for a missile for LCS and simply fill them with either Harpoon or SLAM-ER for use against warships or land targets.

This problem is solved.  Now if the Navy would get its head out of its rear end and implement it, we can move on to more pressing issues.  My bill is in the mail.

 

Chris Hayes...chump of the week.

Interesting and sad. 

Interesting because you could literally see him fishing for support while making this outrageous statement.  Interesting because he tried to moderate his words at the end when he found that support wasn't coming.  Sad because he has support but they were smart enough to avoid doing it on camera.

Chris Hayes...chump of the week

First trouble between the UK & Argentina, now UK & Spain. Rough times for the empire.

This vis BFBS.

Rising tensions between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar will be discussed tomorrow when the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, hosts talks in London with his Spanish counterpart.
It comes after weeks of stand-offs at sea involving Royal Navy and Defence Police vessels.
They have been scrambled regularly to prevent Spanish trawlers casting their nets inside the Rock's territorial waters.
Gibraltar's Chief Minister has described the incursions as a "carefully premeditated challenge to our indisputable sovereignty".
The Spanish police are demanding their government sends in its own warships to protect them against the Royal Navy.

Sidenote 1:
This is shaping up to be quite a challenging year for the Royal Navy in particular and the British version of our State Dept in general.  First the trouble between the UK and Argentina and now between the UK and Spain?  I would think that some type of alliance between Spain and Argentina would be unthinkable but stranger things have happened.  Additionally these disputes all revolve around natural resources...in this case fishing rights or potential oil leases.

Sidenote 2:
The Brits list the Archer class patrol boat as the smallest warship in the British Navy.  Spain also considers it a warship and wants to respond in kind.  The reason why this is interesting is because the Coastal Riverine Force is getting the Mark VI which is considered too small to get the job done or too compromised to do it well.  Compared to the Archer its a beast of a ship.  Perhaps more importantly the Mark VI compares favorably with the River Class OPV and is more heavily armed.  Interesting and Outstanding.

Finish the letter...Memorial Day 2012.

On this memorial day lets finish the letter.

By that I don't mean to imply that the different Memorial Day celebrations come up short.  I'm not saying that we've lost our way and totally commercialized a day that should be a commemoration of the sacrifice made by some.

Naw, what I'm saying is this.  When the summer season is in full effect and everyone is back to their daily grind, we should finish the letter.  Volunteer.  Donate.  Contribute in some way.

Some gave too much for one day to be enough.

The day NASA died.

NASA is the poster child for an agency whose best times appear to be in the past.

The decision made by some in the 70's to pursue a space shuttle instead of deep space exploration vehicle signalled an inward looking NASA and a NASA that failed to capture the imagination.  Now we have the wierdness that is upon us now.  We have a Democrat president that believes in big government for everything except the military and space travel, basically handing space travel over to private business.

Somehow, I really believe that he thought they would fail.

Big business wouldn't have that and won the day.

So now we won't have the embarrassing spectacle of US astronauts riding on Russian spacecraft.  But the future isn't any brighter...soon we'll have US astronauts riding on Google, IBM or Ford sponsored spacecraft.  This would be so funny if I wasn't seeing it with my own two eyes.

May 27, 2012.  The day that NASA died.

Read about Space X here.

31st MEU Marines navigate the Okinawa jungle

Meet the CRF

NECC_CRF_FactSheet2012

CRF is comprised of units manned, trained, and equipped
to conduct, port and harbor security, high-value unit security
and escort, surveillance and reconnaissance, insertion and
extraction of small units, and command and control for
supporting and assigned units. CRF is capable of conducting
24 hour operations in all weather conditions and climates.
CRF is comprised of both the Active and Reserve
Components trained to operate in ambiguous anti-terrorism
and force protection threat environments.

Wow.

CRF is talking riverine but in essence is all security.  Think about them as a waterborne FAST company.   The Riverine guys are still talking up the old mission sets but this document put out by the Navy says it all.

"...trained to operate in ambiguous anti-terrorism and force protection threat environments."

The USMC might be forced to establish a small boat company to make up for the obvious shortfall in capabilites.

Riverine is once again dead in the conventional Navy.

UPDATE:
The document that the Navy put out shows how they've drifted into an almost pure force protection mindset for these Coastal Riverine's.

 Company
The Coastal Riverine Company (CRC) is the standard unit of action for the CRF. Companies are deployable self-sustaining units that may operate independently or in coordination with other forces. Each company has two platoons with personnel assigned for boat operations, a security team capable of conducting VBSS missions, and an Intelligence Surveillance Recon (ISR) team capable of operating unmanned vehicles and squadron-level communications equipment. Each company is equipped with four green-water capable patrol boats and four riverine/harbor security boats.
Platoon
Each platoon provides one boat crew per boat assigned, a 12-person security team trained and equipped to conduct Level I and Level II boardings, and an ISR team to act as an integrated tactical operations center. Platoons may be divided into smaller units such as embarked security teams to support military sealift transits, aircraft security missions, or other missions as directed.Expeditionary Security Detachments
In order to provide fleet commanders with a persistent presence of embarked security teams (EST), the CRF forward deploys two expeditionary security detachments. The detachments are assigned under the CORIVGRU

No where is the standard riverine mission talked about.

Maritime Expeditionary Security Force along with SOCOM with a big dash of help from the Riverine's themselves has helped killed the force.

IT IS ALL SECURITY ALL THE TIME.

Coastal Riverine Force. Defense will trump offense.

Hmmm.

This new boat is stirring up the Naval Blogging Community.

People are fired up over the "mixing" of Riverine and Maritime Security Communities.

Everyone thinks this is a good idea.

STOP.

THINK.

LOOK AT IT OBJECTIVELY.

The Riverine mission as the "old" Riverine Force conducted it is now dead.  The Maritime Expeditionary Security mission will become paramount.

Just take a look at this high profile acquisition in the form of the Mark VI Patrol Boat.  That is designed for Harbor Security.  Escort of vehicles out at sea and to bring them back in.  Maybe it can also be used to visit and board ships.

It ain't designed to go down rivers.  It isn't setup in the classic riverine fashion.

With the CRF, the riverine mission is dead.  Force protection is the way of the future.

I find it interesting that Special Boat's claims a riverine mission set as its own and now the Navy has pushed the one conventional unit that was doing it out of the way and moved them to force protection.  I personally have no opinion one way or the other about it.

But I do know that this unit WILL NOT have an offensive capability.