Light combat helicopter designed and developed by Hindustan Aeronautics moves forward.

India's light combat helicopter is one of those often ignored but great concepts that's being ignored but I believe hold great promise.

For some reason (probably because UAVs are doing the job in permissive environments) the observation light helicopter role has gone away in many forces.  The only people with active light attack programs (dedicated helicopters, not swing role platforms like the UH-1Y or British Wildcat) are the Japanese and the Indians.

It's a real pity.

I think there IS a role for these aircraft on the future battlefield.  Time will tell if I'm right or wrong.

Interesting and curious. Kurganets-25 to appear at ZAPAD 17???

pic via Lennutrajektoor Twitter Page!

I was scouring the web looking for information on ZAPAD 17.  The backdrop on that is Belarus and Russia are about to conduct a massive training exercise (funny thing...the US and the West have been conducting exercise after exercise but the Russians do it and it's a controversy...am I the only one asking why we keep seeing so many dang exercises by NATO and EU Battlegroups?).

But Lennutrajektoor Twitter Page takes it one step further.  He claims that the Russian 1st Joint Tank Army will be bringing the Kurganets-25 to the event.

Is this true? Will we finally be able to see this ghost in action?

Russian defense industry....I think I've got the reason behind the madness...

Above you see ANOTHER vehicle concept for the Russian military.  I've been amazed and confused by all the different designs that their industry is pumping out.

I've been bewildered by the slow production and how we see what was once called design bureaus coming out with seemingly world beating designs only to see them languish and not enter production.

In the West we'd see these companies and designers fired for lack of work. They would be on the street looking for a new job, but not in Russia.  Why?

I think I stumbled onto the answer.  They keeping these guys busy.  They're keeping their weapons designers employed and working on new ideas. They've recognized the other side of the coin.

Defense industries aren't suppose to be about profit.  They're suppose to be about the defense of the nation.

In short the Russians are preserving their defense base.

If we had done the same we'd have McDonnell Douglas, FMTV and other former greats still designing and building weapons.  We'd have a vibrant defense sector instead of just a few giants.  We'd be in a much better place than we are today.

You can blame Bush Jr and his jacked up economic beliefs that got translated into policy for the sad shape of our defense industry.

Russia and to an extent China don't have that problem.  Many other allies support their industries too.  We MUST rethink our defense industry.  We need to rethink how we deal with our defense corporations.

Harrier air to air galmour shots...pics by Lance Cpl. Christian Oliver Cachola

Open Comment Post. Aug 29, 2017

2nd Med Battalion conducts air exercise...while a real emergency is going on!...pic by Pfc. Nicholas Guevara

Corpsmen from 2nd Medical Battalion carry a simulated casualty onto an MV-22 Osprey during an en-route care training exercise at Camp Lejeune, N.C. on Aug 24, 2017. The training was conducted to prepare corpsmen to successfully aid casualties while transporting them via aircraft to a higher level of medical attention. The sailors are with 2nd Medical Battalion. 

Awesome.  Now do you get the force of connection?  2nd Med Bn is conducting an exercise while a real world emergency is happening in the 4th largest city in the US.

This is unsat and someone somewhere needs to address this and provide answers!

Why aren't they assisting the authorities in Texas?

Why aren't these Corpsmen backfilling the civilian medical personnel that's operating on their last legs by now?

Why aren't we seeing resources that are sitting on the shelf, simply doing exercises being flexed to aid their fellow Americans?

I know you're tired of me beating on this drum but this is infuriating!

Modest Proposal. The US military needs to be able to render the same aid at home that it does overseas!

I've been banging my head on my desk wondering why we're seeing Texas struggle with getting gear to Houston to assist in the rescue effort.  I've punched the wall about 10 times already wondering why the Marine Corps isn't leaning forward and pushing an AAV Company to the area to assist in high water rescues.

Then I read this note from JD Strike in response to a pic I posted showing elderly people being stranded in a nursing home, many of them in wheel chairs with water above their waists.

Sol, when we had the Hurricane come through Georgia last year, my wife worked EMS at the time for a private company. One of the issues she noticed was how the movement of elderly, nursing homes and hospitals had a problem with was finding bed space for all the people to evacuate them. She was heartbroken having to do runs up to the area of Atlanta to random places with a patient. Talking 1 ambulance to move one person 3-4 hours away each way. all in about three days prior to landfall. It is a total shame what we do to our most vulnerable. Add to most of patients are poor and tied to Medicare or health insurance which has to approve/ pay for the movement, its so criminal to leave these vulnerable people to the elements. You would think our military assets for field hospit als could be put up and centralize in an out of the impact area where all these people could be moved to temporarily. Our nursing homes are underfunded and overcrowd as they are. Just sickening.

Don't remember the pic?  Check it out below.

Sadness doesn't describe it.  Anger doesn't either.  Mix those emotions up and add a bit of rage at seeing people...the elderly being in those conditions and it's wall punching time.

Many readers informed me that it's a Title 10 issue.  I personally thought that once the President declared a state of emergency those issues went away. I know for a fact that the President has expanded powers due to the terrorist threat to act outside the law to ensure public safety.

My modest proposal is simple.

We should provide the same aid and the same response that we do for foreign nations here at home.  Our military should be forward leaning and ready to act.

If that means that laws need to be rewritten then so be it.

But the power of the US military must be used to help the American people when necessary.  What do I mean?  During Katrina the 82nd and elements of the 2nd Marine Division deployed to New Orleans to help out.  We should do the same here.  God knows enough time has passed that its a no brainer.

The units that could assist are numerous and many of them are available NOW!  The 101st could provide helicopter support.  The Marines could provide AAVs.  The Army and Navy could provide medical personnel.  The National Guard and Reserve could provide security at refugee centers.

The list goes on but its frustrating to see emergency after emergency on a large geographic area and the govt respond slowly to the event.  We must do better!

S-97 RAIDER

Hmm. Lockheed just posted the photo today so I guess they got it back up and flying pretty quick.  Heard it crashed a couple of weeks ago.

Early lessons learned from Hurricane Harvey's assault on Houston.

It's not too early to do a "lessons learned" about Hurricane Harvey's assault on Houston.

1.  Don't trust authorities to determine your course of action.  Make the assessment yourself!

This one will rub many readers the wrong way but listen before you slam me. The local govt called for people in essence to "shelter in place".  This was based on past experience of trying to evacuate the city.  Long traffic jams, people running out of gas etc.  Well look at the situation today.  High water rescues and cars abandoned in the streets.  The expense of just clearing cars off the street will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  That's before you actually add water damage to buildings etc..Decide when you and your family should leave and act on that instinct!

2.  Prepping counts.

Some will say that prepping couldn't have helped in this mega storm.  They're wrong!  If a decision is made to leave and its done at the last minute you can grab your essentials and be out the door.  If its done in a timely manner then you can save many of the irreplaceables in your home.  Family heirlooms and such. Being prepared for emergencies means that when they strike you're better prepared to deal with them.

3.  Emergency funds count!

The news media is already descending on evacuation centers in Dallas.  The tales of woe are being told and the stories are similar.  We're looking at people without a dollar to their name being evacuated and now being herded like cattle in a mass refugee center.  Better to have a fund set aside to spare your family that drama and then contact your insurance company so that you can recover what was lost in a timely manner.  A hotel stay, stay with relatives etc is better than a center any day of the week.

Conclusion.

Prepping works.  Independent thinking works.  Emergency funds works!  Plan for emergency and you will deal with it much more successfully than will a person that has a normalcy bias and believes that since it hasn't happened it never will!

Note.  What I can't figure is how do you care for the sick and elderly in these type situations.  Once again we've seen people in a nursing home left to their own devices.  This is a wall punching constant and we've got to do better.

My first thought is WHERE ARE THEIR RELATIVES!  My second thought is why would authorities respond so slowly?  This should be a priority rescue.  I need to chew on this one before I can come up with a reasonable solution...what I do know is that it's not being handled properly today.

Could the US Navy circa 1987 defeat the US Navy of today?

Consider this your mind fuck of the day.

The above picture brought the title to mind but it applies to all of our services (most especially our ground forces...the weight of fire they brought seems on paper to dwarf what we can do today)....could the US military of the 1980's defeat the US military we have today?

I have my opinion but suffice it to say that "hidden" strengths like sensor fusion, data links, networked firepower or even "enhanced" diversity can make up for pure firepower and the ability to put steel on target.

We might be more precise today but we can't throat stomp people like would could almost 30 years ago.

I can't be the first person to have had this thought.  Does anyone know of a paper that makes the actual comparison?

YF-23 vs. F-22...more than 20 years later and many still think the USAF chose wrong...

via National Interest.

Even in 1991, in terms of raw performance, the General Electric-powered YF-23 was acknowledged to have been the best performer even compared to its Pratt & Whitney YF119-powered twin. The YF-23 had much better supersonic cruise performance, stealth and was only slightly less maneuverable at extremely low airspeeds.

“Interestingly the YF-22 and YF-23 had exactly the same trimmed AoA of 60°. The YF-23 could do it without thrust vectoring. Those V-tails were very powerful especially when coupled to an unstable airframe,” said one source who is intimately familiar with both the YF-23 and the Raptor. “The YF-22 probably had an advantage at very, very low airspeeds but neither company had enough time to investigate dynamic low speed, high AOA maneuvering. This was a good example of how a competition needs to consider the PR value of flight test events. Lockheed understood this and did high AOA and shot missiles and pulled 9Gs. All single point, benign condition events but they left an impression.”

The source added that in some ways, it might have cost Northrop the Advanced Tactical Fighter competition—barring the other factors involved in the selection.

“ACC [Air Combat Command] pilots were enamored with dogfighting and Lockheed gave a good visual demonstration of high AOA—albeit a very limited and benign test,” the source said. “Northrop chose not to do high AOA during DemVal and that was a mistake. Both airplanes could do the same exact maneuver—trimmed, high AOA. As it was, the YF-22 ‘appeared better’ because they did something visually exciting and Northrop couldn't—or so it was inferred.”

Story here. 

My view?  The USAF did make a mistake by choosing the F-22 and they fell prey to marketing.  In essence they bought into image over substance.

It's funny.

The old skool Pentagon warriors would never have been swayed by such simplistic, unrealistic propaganda campaigns but the new breed were easily fooled.

Imagine this.

If the USAF had selected the YF-23 then we would not be wringing our hands over range.  The whole course of air supremacy would be different.

In essence we would have maintained air supremacy instead of facing the mind bending reality that it's up for grabs if we ever meet a peer opponent.

The YF23 vs. F-22.  The first hint that our acquisition programs were broken.

Note:  This breaks the old chestnut that the USAF picked the F-22 because it was a better dogfighter.  That was all PR nonsense.  The definitive history on this selection process still waits to be written.  Only after a few more people die will the truth finally come out.

The Pentagon has been lying about troop levels in Iraq!

via Politico.

Caps on troop levels in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria mandated by the Obama administration have led to an elaborate Pentagon accounting system that conceals thousands of troops from the public — one that is quickly unraveling as the Trump administration prepares to send more troops to the region.

With new plans to ramp up the war in Afghanistan, the military is finding it exceedingly difficult to maintain a practice that purposely doesn't count certain troops in the battle zone that military officials insist was not designed to be misleading but many critics now assert is at best an officially sanctioned charade.

The U.S. already has as many as 12,000 troops in Afghanistan, significantly higher than its 8,400-person cap. If President Donald Trump sends nearly 4,000 additional troops, as officials predict, the total will be nearly double the current public number. In Iraq, where the Baghdad government faces political resistance to a large American troop presence, the 5,200 troop figure the Pentagon uses in public serves as a useful fiction. In fact, more than 7,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, according to recent reports.

Story here. 

Wow.

This is .... bad.  How can you trust an institution that lies about something this simple?  This basic?

Even worse?  The Obama admin has truly infected the Pentagon.  This was obviously sanctioned because if it wasn't heads would have rolled.  Quite honestly heads should roll now!  This is a breach of public trust.

The sheeple are sleep but if they were awake then they'd be enraged.  These wars weren't winding down.  They've gone underground.

Think about it.  We had what amounted to an additional Battalion of troops in Afghanistan and in Iraq another 2 plus!

The Pentagon is simply another govt bureaucracy...and bureaucracies develop to serve themselves, not the people.