SNAFU!

Warning! Not Safe For Work! Is this what "Women in the Infantry" crowd want for America's daughters?

I've called them animals.

I will never publicly speak my true feelings about the "radical" Muslims that are rampaging thru the Middle East.

What I will continue to harp on...is this simple fact. War is barbaric. Do we really want to subject America's daughters to this? Are we really ready as a society to accept the possibility of this happening to one of our own?

Women in the Infantry is an awesome campaign slogan. It excites feminists, makes lesbians wet themselves and the liberal elite can claim that they're fighting for equality.

The reality is much more harsh. Busted knees, a bad back, sore shoulders, aches when it rains---and even sometimes when you wake, are all by products of the life style...and that's if you don't go to war.

If there is one issue where cold facts and not wishful thinking MUST take precedence then its this one. Women are NOT physically designed to participate in infantry action as its currently conducted. In the future? Maybe. But not now.

Bold Alligator 2014.

Read the article here

Note: My first reaction to this exercise was to slam it. Crisis Response? For a multinational exercise to focus on small unit activities? I'll hold my fire and wait to see how this plays out.

More evidence of F-35 death spiral? UPDATED!

Eric over at ELP Blog has a couple of short posts up about the F-35 that made me pause. Read them here and here.

The stark reality?

The F-35 isn't seeing the massive production ramp up that the Program Manager/Lockheed Martin insisted was needing to get the "cost curve" down.

Production has been flat for the past four years. Orders from Israel, and Italy have almost been cut in half. Japan isn't buying as many as fast as hoped and S. Korea appears to already be suffering some type of buyers remorse.

But the real kick in the pants should be this realization. The plane is still eating up an inordinate part of the budget, other more needed programs have been cut to protect it and we can't buy enough to force the price down.

This is just more evidence that the death spiral is already here.

UPDATE: Its worse than I initially thought. I was reading the comments over at ELP's Blog and ran across this...

Don Bacon • 33 minutes ago
This just in -- The UK shoe has finally dropped, and it's a size four not a fourteen.
BBCNews, Feb 10
UK to spend £2.5bn on [14] F-35 fighters
The UK is about to commit to the F-35 fighter project, a US-led effort to produce 3,000 aircraft which is set to cost more than £600bn globally. The initial UK order for 14 F-35Bs will, with support costs added, cost about £2.5bn, Newsnight has learned.//
UK has been "about to commit" for eight months and now--
DailyMail, Oct 28
Britain says agrees to order four F-35 stealth fighter jets
(Reuters) - Britain has reached an agreement in principle to order four more of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jets, the Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday.
The contract, part of a plan to purchase 14 of the stealth fighters over the next five years, will be placed within the coming weeks, the ministry said. The aircraft are due to be delivered from mid-2016.

The above information is verifiable. Additionally I remember the much ballyhoo-ed announcement and then nothing of the British Defense Minister signing a contract for the F-35's earlier this year and now...in the fourth quarter we get the news that the Brit order has been cut from 14 to 4. Aviation and Defense journalist should be all over this!

Is it time to use the Stryker ICV as an Interim Marine Personnel Carrier?

What happens when you're a cheerleader but things are going wrong with your team? You can do the "fan" thing and keep saying all is well even though they're obviously not (F-35 supporters)...or...you can bite the bullet and say shit is fucked up and its time to fish or cut bait.

Never in a million years would I have predicted that we would be where we're at with the AAV replacement. When the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle was canceled, I was reassured by statements from HQMC that we would turn to and get another vehicle to the fleet quickly.

Hindsight is 20/20 and its now obvious we were fed a heaping dose of bullshit. So where does that leave us? Right now we're looking at upgrades to the AAV to begin sometime in the near future (or so we're told) and eventually a selection between four companies for a new, less capable ACV 1.1.

American Mercenary has a different idea...

The AAV is a good solution for getting lots of Marines to shore. It is not an optimal patrolling solution. The Stryker is a great patrolling solution (decent arms and armor, moves fast, very maneuverable). Add in very precise 120mm Mortar Fire and things get very interesting for maneuver commanders.
From my perspective this seems like a win/win for the USMC. The hulls are available, the capabilities of the LAV III family are well known inside the USMC, and there is massive interoperability with the US Army built into the supply chain.
Now, the cons of this solution, it will cost money in an era of diminishing budgets. It won't provide a "leap forward" level of capability for the USMC compared to some of the other (more expensive) options on the table. It may seem to some Marines that they are getting "the Army's scraps" instead of the latest and greatest (although those flat bottomed hulls are still newer than most HMMWVs the USMC has in the inventory).

Read the whole thing here.

Quite honestly, where before I might have automatically poo poo'ed the idea, now I'm not so sure. It will get us vehicles that we need now. Give us back the capability to transport 2 Marine Expeditionary Brigades in protected transport and not in MTVRs...and we could fall on the Army's supply chain.

As far as making them amphibious. Yeah. Sticking point. I would argue against doing that so we could get the vehicle we want in the future and not be stuck with interim becoming permanent.

All I know for sure is that less than 500 "modernized" AAVs will not cut it. The world is burning and we need vehicles now not later. Army Strykers might be the best we can hope for....at least for the moment.

Mistral-Class Building Projection & Command (BPC) Carrier vid...

Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicles. What's the hold up?

How many of you remember the "Crusher" UGCV? How about the "Black Knight"? Check out the vids below and I'll get back to you on the other side...

I talked to a buddy about this and we both came back to one thing. The war on terror knocked these programs off track.

The point of this post?

We have the lead. The Europeans, Chinese, Russians and others are basically playing follow the leader when it comes to moves in armor development. For example. Wheeled IFVs. The US Army bought the Stryker and everyone is following that lead. Forget the fact that the Army is tailoring its force to be expeditionary...everyone else is copying it.

We have the lead here. We're doing it and others aren't. If nothing else this is DARPA hard, and something that they should keep pressing the gas on.