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Friday, July 24, 2020
Mi-8AMTSh-VN has begun flight tests
Hizir armoured vehicles to African customer
via DefenseWeb.co
Turkish armoured vehicle manufacturer Katmerciler is shipping Hizir armoured vehicles to an African customer, after receiving a $20 million order last year.
The order, announced in July 2019, is Katmerciler’s first export order for the Hizir armoured vehicle.
The company on 20 July said the vehicles have been loaded onto a ship headed for the undisclosed African country. Deliveries will be completed by the end of this year.
Katmerciler said it expects a high level of export income in 2020 and anticipates approximately $45 million in export revenue by the end of the year.
Making a statement after the first batch of Hizir vehicles were loaded for shipping, Katmerciler Deputy Chief Executive Furkan Katmerci said, “Hizir was our first armoured combat vehicle export. We want to repeat the export success we have achieved by civilian equipment for many years in the field of defence. We opened another door with Hizir. We will continue this success with our Hizir and other qualified vehicles that we have developed for different needs.”
“As Katmerciler, we have successfully implemented measures to keep the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic to a minimum. We continued our activities without interruption. Thanks to our precautions, we did not have any employment losses and we did not have to benefit from state supports such as short-term work allowance or minimum wage support.”
The Hizir vehicle recently entered service with Turkey’s military. It can carry nine personnel, including driver and commander. The vehicle has a gross weight of 16 tons and has a V-hull for landmine and improvised explosive device protection. It is powered by a Cummins six-cylinder diesel developing 400 hp, giving a top speed of 110 km/h and range of 700 kilometres.
The Hizir can be built in a number of configurations, including combat, command and control, CBRN, weapon carrier, ambulance, reconnaissance and border security. It can be fitted with an Aselsan SARP turret with machineguns or an automatic grenade launcher.
Katmerciler was established in 1985 and has developed 30 vehicles, ranging from fire trucks to armoured vehicles and riot control vehicles. Its defence and security portfolio includes the Khan 4×4 armoured personnel carrier with seating for eight, the Nefer 4×4 armoured command and patrol vehicle, Toma riot control vehicle, a 4×4 armoured ambulance built on a Ford F550 chassis, Ates armoured border security vehicle, and Kirac criminal investigation vehicle. It also offers an armoured backhoe loader, remote controlled armoured tracked excavator, armoured fuel tanker, armoured water tanker, armoured tipper, armoured trailer, armoured remote controlled bulldozer, remote controlled firefighter, armoured telescopic forklift and a riot control shield.
In June 2019 Katmerciler received an order for water cannon vehicles worth $2.2 million from an African customer.
I saw this vehicle in Turk service (I believe) and it was serving as a border patrol vehicle with a couple of huge masts at the rear of the vehicle...one with a E/O contraption on it.
Wonder how this undisclosed country will use it?
Prototype assault gun that seems to be based on a facelifted version of the ZBL-09.
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The facelift on this beast is real and its looking alot more polished...more modern now. Additionally that turret seems different from what I've seen in the past.
The Chinese are quite serious about modernizing their armor and appear to AT LEAST be approaching parity. That should be a concern. What happens if you no longer have a qualitative advantage and have lost numerical superiority across the board?
My prediction?
The Chinese will EASILY increase the number of anti-missile systems aboard their ships, rapidly improve their ISR capability and will locate, fix and destroy the Missile Marine Corps vehicle based anti-ship missiles.
Looking over the concept again the Missile Marine Corps is apparently looking for those systems to be expendable because they're supposedly moving to robotic vehicles in the form of some type of JLTV HIMAR thing but that will make little difference.
What few bits of airmobile infantry the Missile Marines decide to land will suffer the same fate as those robotic vehicles.
They will be found, fixed and easily destroyed.
Mommas don't let your babies grow up to be Missile Marines! LOL!
Thursday, July 23, 2020
RFI issued for F-15EX and F-15E enhancements to plug known but classified capability gaps.
.@usairforce to map future @BoeingDefense Eagle capability upgrades, with RFI issued for F-15EX and F-15E enhancements to plug known but classified capability gaps. Effort will follow current F-15C/D and F-15E roadmap which is funded to 2025. My @JanesINTEL story to come... pic.twitter.com/UgJaF7Vo4y— Gareth Jennings (@GarethJennings3) July 22, 2020
Geez. How close to us are the Chinese? Known but classified capability gaps? Enhancements for the F-15EX and F-15E?
Just how bad is the F-35, how many more F-22s do we need and what has the USAF so spooked that they need to plan enhancements to an airframe that that was supposed to be just a missile truck?
Are Expeditionary Transfer Dock without a mission with the New Missile Marine Corps?
Question. What is the mission of these ships with the New Missile Marine Corps? Do you remember when the Marine Corps was all about seabasing? Demands were made to the Navy that we needed these ships so that we could launch from 200 miles from shore. Now? Now the new guys are demanding smaller amphibs that can "operate within contested areas" (as if slow moving amphibs won't be easily targeted and destroyed before they can land their cargo).
But I digress.
What happens to these ships now?
Conservative grassroots activist takes aim at the CH-53K
via PJMedia
This “preparing to fight the last war” is not just inefficient, it is prohibitively expensive. “Each CH-53K will now cost $138.5 million, up from $131.2 million one year ago,” Popular Mechanics writes. That is roughly $30 billion for 200 helicopters.Here.
The trend line on cost is supposed to come down as weapons systems come into place; the tenth platform should cost less than the first, and the twentieth less than the tenth, and so on. With the King Stallion, that trend line is going in the wrong direction. From 2016 to 2017, the total cost of the system increased by 6.9 percent. That is a huge chunk of money in one year.
We simply cannot afford to sit around and hope that things get better. Lawmakers should say enough is enough and call for an end to spending on this expensive program.
Doing so would not harm the military. After all, experts in the Pentagon are already exploring options to use existing helicopters instead of going exclusively with the new model. The Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation says it will provide “an assessment of alternatives for other platforms that might meet the mission.”
This is sensible because the Marines already know there are “multiple design deficiencies discovered during early testing,” according to a Pentagon report on the King Stallion. “These include: airspeed indication anomalies, low reliability of main rotor gearbox, hot gas impingement on aircraft structures, tail boom and tail rotor structural problems, overheating of main rotor dampers, fuel system anomalies, high temperatures in the #2 engine bay, and hot gas ingestion by the #2 engine, which could reduce available power.”
Lawmakers need to make sure the military has the tools to fight the next war. As the budget deficit soars because of Covid-19 that will require thriftiness. The King Stallion is a throwback we can simply no longer afford.
The Commandant opened the door and the activist, think tanks and others will happily walk thru it.
Of course this fits with my thinking on the subject. The USMC's air wing is about to be eviscerated along with the Ground Combat Element.
Has anyone considered the ramifications of this new concept? If you shed tanks and state that they are no longer viable then what of the LAV? You simply can't justify its existence. Same with the AAV/ACV. Marines will move by air or sea. Protected transport will solely lie with the JLTV.
It just makes sense if we take this concept to its logical conclusion.
Additionally the idea of forward basing F-35s at FARPS is a non-starter. The fuel consumption alone will cause such a large footprint that it just can't be done within the framework of what I've read.
The reality is that the Missile Marine Corps will have only JLTVs as ground combat vehicles. It will need FAR FEWER CH-53Ks. Same with F-35s.
But that won't be enough to get enough missiles to be a credible threat. That means that in addition to cutting LAV, AAV/ACV, most of our cannons, the CH53K, retiring AH-1Zs (to be replaced by some fanciful tilt rotor UAV) and probably a bunch of MTVRs we're gonna be looking at troop reductions too.
I keep saying it but no one is listening. Amos told us we could go down to 150K and I'm believing that Berger is willing to take it down to 125K.
The CH-53K is a relic of the past? No problem. Apparently a war winning Marine Corps is too.
Before Berger's tenure is over there will be so much chaos and confusion in Marine-Land that it will make the halls of Congress look like a place of calm reason and polite discussion.
Amos once held the title of being the worst Commandant in the modern era. Berger will replace him and what he leaves behind will take a couple of decades to rebuild....assuming the Marine Corps survives.
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