India vs. China...the fight no one talks about.

I am so glad that the Wall Street Journal is finally covering this issue.  No one is talking about it and even my readers in India down play the dangers...but make no mistake about it.

When China and India finally come to blows it will be a sight to behold and will shake the world.

The thing that people are missing is that both sides are girding for war.  India has formed a Mountain Brigade Corps (a reader informs me that my info is outdated...they will have a couple of divisions facing the Chinese) that might soon swell to a division.  China is doing the same.  Both sides are developing infrastructure to rush forces to the region and weapons are being bought with an eye to fighting on the border.

We might not see full scale warfare but skirmishes will happen and I would bet that the soldiers involved will swear they fought WW3....the fighting will be that intense.

Blast from the past. Corregidor. Temp-plate for future Airborne/Amphibious Assault Ops?

How many of you know about the Battle for Corregidor?

Not that many huh?  Not surprising.  For some reason the US Army emphasizes its exploits in Europe during WW2 but is silent about what it did in the Pacific. The fight for Corregidor should be required reading for both Marine and Army leadership.

If we are going to fight in the Pacific in the future, I believe that the fight will look somewhat like Corregidor...except we won't have as much naval gunfire...we won't have as much close air support...and we'll still lack armored firepower to take the fight to the enemy.

What caught my attention about this fight wasn't the amphibious assault portion of it. No, what made me pause is how the airborne assault was carried out.  Check this out from HyperWar.

In formulating final plans for the drop, planners had to correlate factors of wind direction and velocity, the speed and flight direction of the C-47 aircraft from which the 503d RCT would jump, the optimum height for the planes during the drop, the time the paratroopers would take to reach the ground, the 'troopers' drift during their descent, and the best flight formation for the C-47's. Planners expected an easterly wind of fifteen to twenty-five miles per hour with gusts of higher velocity. The direction corresponded roughly to the long axes of the drop zones, but even so, each C-47 could not be over the dropping grounds for more than six seconds. With each man taking a half second to get out of the plane and another twenty-five seconds to reach the ground from the planned drop altitude of 400 feet, the wind would cause each paratrooper to drift about 250 feet westward during his descent. This amount of drift would leave no more than 100 yards of ground distance at each drop zone to allow for human error or sharp changes in the wind's speed or direction.
The 503d RCT and the 317th Troop Carrier Group--whose C-47's were to transport and drop the paratroopers--decided to employ a flight pattern providing for two columns of C-47's, one column over each drop zone. The direction of flight would have to be from southwest to northeast because the best line of approach--west to east--would not leave sufficient room between the two plane columns and would bring the aircraft more quickly over Manila Bay, increasing the chances that men would drop into the water or over cliffs. Since each plane could be over the drop zone only six seconds, each would have to make two or three passes, dropping a "stick" of six to eight 'troopers each time. It would be an hour or more before the 1,000 or so troops of the first airlift would be on the ground. Then, the C-47's would have to return to Mindoro, reload, and bring a second lift forward. This second group would not be on the ground until some five hours after the men of the first lift had started jumping.

Think about that.

You're conducting a parachute drop and you're basically circling the drop zone dropping six to eight paratroops on each pass?

This is the poster boy operation for a confined battle zone.  I don't know if today's planner are actually considering the type of land that they're going to be sending our forces to fight over but its going to be extremely compact and that will bring difficulties that are not being properly anticipated.

Study Corregidor.  Its the future of the fight in the Pacific....at least for ground pounders.

F-35 News. Can the plane take carrier punishment?

via Breaking Defense.

After several months of uncertainty whether CF-3 and CF-5 would both be ready to fly — complete with new tail hook assemblies and huge amounts of test instrumentation — Bogdan told us yesterday they would both fly to the ship. As Breaking D readers know, thetail hook on the F-35Cs had to be redesigned. The initial design did not reliably engage the cable and wasn’t strong enough. The Arresting Hook System got better damping, changed the shape of the hook and made it and where it connects with the airframe, much stronger. During tests over the last five months, F-35C test pilots had to deliberately land their aircraft on the nose gear to mimic what can happen when pitching seas may drive a carrier deck right up into a plane as it lands. A Navy pilot I spoke with said the physical punishment of such a landing is “pretty impressive” — not to mention the stresses it can place on the plane. I’ll be in San Diego and on the Nimitz all next week covering the tests for you.

If we weren't talking about the future defense of the fleet---and a crazy amount of money....This would be funny.

Do you notice it?  Can you sense the same attempt to generate headlines like they did when the push was on to fly the F-35 to Europe? But what really has me curious and I have yet to hear anyone talk about is the lead that Breaking Defense buried...

A Navy pilot I spoke with said the physical punishment of such a landing is “pretty impressive” — not to mention the stresses it can place on the plane.

Can a stealth airplane take the punishment of carrier landings?

Can the F-35 handle the stress after its been subjected to weight reduction and had so much of it structure "shaved" down?

I just don't know.

What I do know is that this program is setting up an artificial make-or break moment and I don't know why.

Something is going on with this program.  I just can't piece it together.

Frein captured? He's lucky the Feds got him before the State Troopers.

Interesting.

So they finally captured Frein.  I don't know his motivation but after a 48 day manhunt either he thought he could evade capture...or he changed his mind and didn't want to die.

Did you notice who actually laid hands on him?  Yeah.  One of the two Federal Law Enforcement Agencies that would give me serious pause if I were ever to go over the deep end and start attacking.

One is the FBI Hostage Rescue Team.  They're badass and train with the best around the world.  The other guys (the people that grabbed Frein) is the US Marshals Special Operations Group.  I don't even know if you would classify them as "law enforcement".  They're something else entirely.  They're really like a bunch of badge wearing SOCOM dudes (you can call me a fan boy but they actually ran missions in Iraq..supposedly they were active in Afghanistan but I don't know).

Everyone else I'd feel confident in taking my chances with.  Those two..especially US Marshals SOG?  Not a chance.  Still.  Frein is lucky that the Feds got him first.  If the State Troopers got him, I'd bet body parts that he would be DRT..Dead Right There.

Sidenote:  I don't understand why Frein would stay in the area of his initial assault.  Why didn't he stay in the woods and attempt to get out of the area?  I'm sure we'll find out more but I find that confusing.

Anyone ever heard of Exercise Blue Chromite?

Marines maneuver an assault amphibious vehicle onto the USS Germantown (LSD 42) Oct. 30 in preparation of exercise Blue Chromite 2014. Blue Chromite demonstrates the Navy and Marine Corps’ amphibious and expeditionary capabilities from the sea. The Marines are with Combat Assault Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Thor J. Larson

Anyone ever hear of Exercise Blue Chromite?  Where does it take place, who participates and is this an annual thing?

Super Hornets forever?

via STLtoday.

Boeing’s defense chief remains optimistic about the F/A-18 fighter assembly line in north St. Louis County, saying there's a good chance the line could stay open beyond 2017, according to Bloomberg News.
Current orders will keep the assembly line open until 2016. If approved, a Congressional proposal to buy 12 EA-18G Growlers, an electronic warfare version of the Super Hornet carrier-based fighter, would allow Boeing to keep the line up running end of 2017.
However, the aircraft maker has more than a “50-50 chance” of receiving enough Navy and foreign orders to keep the Super Hornet line open beyond that date, Chris Chadwick, president of St. Louis County-based Boeing Defense, Space and Security, told Bloomberg News today.

Something is going on behind the scenes.  Can I prove it?  Nope, not at all.  Can I sense it?  Yeah...absolutely.

All the announcements about the program being in trouble.  All the talk about the manufacturers making new initiatives to lower cost.  The extremely long development with continued engineering changes...

And finally the biggest booster of the program, the United States Marine Corps, has a new leader that hasn't said squat about the plane since he took office.

Add in the fact that we're looking at the probablility of Republican Senate with a serious mix of "small war" hawks, fiscal hawks, and Democrats that want to slash spending and you have one unmistakable conclusion.

Sequestration will continue and the days of killing programs and cutting personnel to wall off the F-35 from cuts are over.  The F-35 is gonna take a haircut, the Navy will still need to fill those carriers and the F-18 will by default be the only thing that is affordable.

The craziest thing?  We might see it in USAF colors.  There is no way they're gonna get the F-35 in the numbers requested, the next gen bomber and the new aerial tanker in this budget environment.  That means a new hi-lo-lo mix that will be the F-22, F-35 and new build F-18's or F-16's...with the idea of saving money and simplifying the Pentagons procurement, I can see the F-18 getting USAF colors.

Israel's V-22 cancellation. What's the real deal?

via Times of Israel.

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced the deal during a visit to Israel in April 2013. “The introduction of the V-22 into the Israeli Air Force will give the Israeli air force long range, high-speed maritime search and rescue capabilities to deal with a number of threats and contingencies,” he said during a joint press conference with Ya’alon.

The deal was to include, Hagel said at the time, anti-radiation missiles, advanced radars for Israel’s F-15s, KC-135 refueling aircraft and, “most significantly,” the V-22.
Ya’alon, according to Yoav Limor’s account in Israel Hayom, decided to cancel the acquisition, against the advice of the IDF chief of General Staff and the Israel Air Force’s commander, on account of budgetary constraints and lessons learned in the wake of the 50-day battle in Gaza this summer, during which a need for improved armored vehicles, for instance, rose to the surface.
The reported decision to cancel the deal came three days after Israeli officials said the army would buy a second squadron of US-made F-35 fighter jets.
That news came amid strained ties between Israel and the US. A Tuesday story in The Atlantic magazine reported that senior administration officials had called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a chickenshit” and alleged the relationship between the countries was in crisis.

My theory?  The extra F-35's are a token of good faith to the Pentagon.  A gift that negates the need to buy the V-22 that they really don't have a need for...but it does clear the decks for them to get the helicopter they really want.

The CH-53K.

The cancellation of the V-22 might be consequential.  No one is buying it and Japan won't save it with their buy.  I see that line coming to a close in the near future.

Despite the furious propaganda for the airplane, the V-22 appears to be viewed as a boutique airplane that doesn't justify its enormous cost.