Brazil´s Embraer Defense & Security has signed contracts with three African states for the acquisition of A-29 Super Tucano light attack and advanced training aircraft.The Burkina Faso Air Force has already received three aircraft that are used on border patrol missions. The Angola Air Force will receive the first three of six aircraft in 2012 while Mauritania´s Air Force will receive undisclosed quantities.The total value of the contracts including an extensive logistical, training, and replacement parts package are worth more than US$ 180 million
Hmmm.Three Latin American nations have expressed interest in purchasing former US Marine Corps (USMC) CH-46 Sea Knights, it has been revealed.The aircraft, which are being retired to the boneyard by the marines in favour of the V-22 Osprey, have been subjected to a series of upgrades prior to retirement because of the Osprey's late introduction. The upgrades have given the Sea Knights increased airframe life making them ideal candidates for refurbishment and new roles overseas.
'Although it hasn't got the capability of the CH-47 Chinook, the CH-46 is still a very capable helicopter for troop transport and search and rescue, particularly with its tandem-rotor stability,' said Earl Godby, head of business development for maintenance, modifications and upgrades at Boeing Defense.
'The marines spent $1.2 billion upgrading the fleet and there is still plenty of life left in them, most of them have around 10,000 hours on them but they have a 17,000 hour airframe life.'
Godby said that despite the type's age, the aircraft are still achieving serviceability levels of in excess of 80%.
Several Sea Knights have already been refurbished and modified by the US Navy's Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) for use by the US State Department Air Wing, although Boeing has not been involved in this project. Boeing would however be involved if a request was made through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) scheme for the type.
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Veteran Hawker Hunter jets have returned to RNAS Yeovilton to help train warships fend off air attack.
Three of the one-time fighters – which were based at the Somerset air station for nearly a quarter of a century – are flying from there in a trial run, working with Hawk jets to test the Fleet undergoing training off Plymouth. |
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The most powerful weapon in the Navy’s arsenal, ballistic missile
submarine HMS Vigilant, sailed for the first time in more than three
years today.
The nuclear submarine departed Devonport to begin trials after a £300m revamp which means she is effectively a new boat inside. |
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| The U.S. Air Force accepted F-22 tail number 4192 at Lockheed Martin’s Marietta, Ga., site on March 23, 2012. This F-22 Raptor was then flown to Joint Base Langley-Eustis (Va.) where it will be based. |
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| Landing Craft from HMS Bulwark prepare to disembark Royal Marines
during the amphibious Exercise Cold Response in Norway. Photographer: LA(PHOT) Martin Carney |
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| Landing Craft from HMS Bulwark are lined after disembarking Royal
Marines during the amphibious Exercise Cold Response in Norway. Photographer: LA(PHOT) Martin Carney |
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| Royal Marines are pictured during the amphibious Exercise Cold
Response in Norway. Photographer: LA(PHOT) Martin Carney |
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| HMS Illustrious (foreground) and HMS Bulwark are pictured near Harstad, Norway during Exercise Cold Response.Photographer: LA(PHOT) Martin Carney |
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| HMS Illustrious and HMS Bulwark (foreground) are pictured near Harstad, Norway during Exercise Cold Response.Photographer: LA(PHOT) Martin Carney |
At the beginning of the school year, gay pride events at a military academy with titles like "condom Olympics" and "queer prom" would have been unthinkable. This week, they're a reality.No comment.
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| RAF Sqdn. Ldr. Jim Schofiield was the pilot of F-35B BF-4 for Flight 100, which involved open weapon bay door environmental testing with an AIM-120 on 22 March 2012. |
“Hey Lance Corporal So-and-So, how’s your day?” “Oh, sir, you know, I haven’t seen my friends or family in 200 days, my old man just lost his job, my boots melted to the asphalt yesterday and I’m about to go on a four hour patrol in 120 degree heat on the most heavily mined city in the world – and that’s just the way I like it!!”I called the author on it because it bugged me so badly.
“You don’t say! Well, have a good patrol.”
And then, not being able to do anything about the weather or his father’s job, my platoon sergeant and I could go and put in the paperwork for some new boots.
The Marines now had a vehicle that they could use to voice honest concerns, worries and complaints and get some of that darkness off of their chest, and I not only had the benefit of hearing those complaints as their platoon commander (and thus could be a better steward to them) but also had the advantage of not having to hear their complaints as complaints – they were now, somehow, an aggressively positive affirmation of what Marines believe anyway. That IS just they way we like it.
And so, in a world full of feel-goody false wisdoms and soft band-aid approaches to real problems, I recommend the actual “that’s just the way I like it”-wisdom of two pretty fascinating adventurers. It worked for us in combat. And it works for me today.
And in this way the philosophy of the Marine Corps, the traveling adventurers and Nietzsche are uniquely analogous…they did not promise us a rose a garden. We didn’t get one. And that’s just the way we like it.
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.My big problem is this.
Colin Powell
Marine Gen. John Allen told reporters at the Pentagon that he and other top leaders were doing their best to prevent so-called “green on blue” killings, but that the nature of counterinsurgency means fratricide could remain constant or even increase.That my friends is utter bullshit.
“The enemy is going to do all that they can to disrupt our operations and to disrupt the integrity of the government forces,” Allen said. “We should expect this.” He cited examples in Iraq, Vietnam and “historically” throughout counter-insurgency wars.
But he said the threat of attacks from allies would not derail what Allen believes is the steady progress in the war, and he praised the overall capabilities of today’s Afghan National Security Forces.
“They really are better than we thought they would be at this point,” he said. “More important, they are better than they thought they would be.”
Allen tried to stress the closeness of U.S. forces with their Afghan counterparts despite this season’s setbacks – he said many of the advisers that had been pulled from the Afghan ministries had returned, and talked about the closeness between American and local ground troops.
The tortured path of the Pentagon’s biggest weapon program is beginning to look like a case study in poor management. The problem isn’t the F-35 fighter, which is making steady progress towards becoming the best tactical aircraft ever built. The problem is a federal acquisition culture that has grown so risk-averse it no longer cares about long-term consequences.That bureaucratic myopia will be in abundant display next month, when the Department of Defense releases updated cost estimates for the fighter program. The estimates will reveal a modest increase in the cost of each plane, and Pentagon policymakers will repeat for the umpteenth time all of the heroic steps they have taken to rein in a wayward contractor. But don’t expect them to take any responsibility for the cost increases because, after all, they’re the good guys.If you follow the F-35 program closely, which almost nobody outside the Pentagon does, a different narrative emerges. It is the story of what happens to major technology programs in a balkanized, distracted political system when there is no urgent danger to push them forward. Bureaucratic and personal agendas fill the vacuum once occupied by the threat, and so programs seldom stay on track — leaving the nation unprepared when the next big threat appears.Maybe you’re incredulous that the real reason the F-35 program has become so controversial is government behavior. After all, I advise many of the companies involved in the program so I’m not objective, right? Fair enough. I’ll abandon generalities and provide concrete examples of what the Pentagon has done wrong (the examples aren’t hard to find). Here are six ways that the military acquisition system makes a bargain seem unafforbable.
The US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) is evaluating a proposal from Sikorsky to build four production-representative CH-53K Super Stallion heavy-lift helicopters, says the US Marine Corps' programme manager.A few points...
"We're looking at the proposal now," says Col Robert Pridgen.
NAVAIR received the proposal at the beginning of March, he says. A contract award is expected some time after this has been evaluated, although Pridgen says: "I don't want to nail down a date."
The four pre-production aircraft will be "fleet-representative" and be used for operational evaluations, as well to finish developmental testing.
The CH-53K is now scheduled to become operational in 2019 - one year later than previously slated - and the Marines hope to buy about 200 of the three-engined type.
When the programme first started, the service only wanted to buy 156 aircraft, Pridgen says. Initial operational capability was then set for late 2015, but the USMC upped the order and stretched the programme out by three years in August 2007. Production numbers were to have reached as many as 227, before they were trimmed back to 200.
