News on the F-35 that many won't want to hear!

via DoD Buzz by John Reed...

It looks like the first quarter of 2011 was a good one for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter test program, with the plane logging 57 more test flights than the planned 142, even in the face of a fleet-wide grounding last month, according to Lockheed officials.
Interestingly, it was the Air Force’s F-35A conventional variant and the Marine Corps’ F-35B short take-off and vertical landing variant that did much of the heavy lifting in achieving the 199 test flights last quarter.
The F-35As flew 82 times against a plan of 62 flights while the F-35Bs flew 101 flights against a plan of 62 sorties. Heck, the embattled Bravo performed 61 vertical landings last quarter. Compare that to the 10 vertical landings it performed in all of 2010!

Meanwhile, the Navy’s F-35C carrier variant racked up only 16 out of 18 planned flights for the quarter, according to Lockheed. No information was provided as to why the Cs missed their targets.
Two production model F-35As also took to the skies for a total of seven flights in 2011.
All told, the F-35 now has 753 flights under its belt since 2006, according to Lockheed.

Absolutely--Positively--Great News.

The critics are spinning and banging their heads.

APA is about to have a coronary.

I proudly say "I TOLD YA SO!"

Amazing.

Read the whole thing here.  This is ... inexplicable ... I don't get it.  But it does explain some of the operational decisions we've seen from the RAF.  Germany for all the hatred that I send their way seem to have the best grasp of things.  Either you fund a military that's able to fight or you don't.  If you don't then they stay on the sidelines.

How do you describe this Marine? Unbreakable!

via Marines Magazine.

Unbreakable

by Sgt. Mark Fayloga | Thursday, March 3, 2011 9:17 

SOUTHERN SHORSURAK, Afghanistan – Cpl. Matt Garst should be dead. Few people survive stepping on an improvised explosive device. Even fewer walk away the same day after directly absorbing the force of the blast, but Garst did just that. 
A squad leader with 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, Garst was leading his squad on a patrol in Southern Shorsurak, Afghanistan, June 23 to establish a vehicle checkpoint in support of Operation New Dawn.
The men were four miles from Company L’s newly established observation post when they approached an abandoned compound close to where they needed to set up their checkpoint. It would serve well as an operating base — a place for the squad to set up communications and rotate Marines in and out of. But first, it had to be secured.
As they swept the area with a metal detector, the IED registered no warning on the device. The bomb was buried too deep and its metallic signature too weak. Two men walked over it without detonating it.
At six feet, two inches tall and 260 pounds with all his gear on, Garst is easily the heaviest man in his squad by 30 or 40 pounds — just enough extra weight to trigger the IED buried deep in hard-packed soil.
Lance Cpl. Edgar Jones, a combat engineer with the squad, found a pressure plate inside the compound and hollered to Garst, asking what he should do with it. Garst turned around to answer the Marine and stepped on the bomb.
“I can just barely remember the boom,” Garst said. “I remember the start of a loud noise and then I blacked out.”
Since Garst’s improbable run-in with the IED, his tale has spread through the rest of the battalion, and as often happens in combat units, the story mutates, becoming more and more extraordinary: He held onto his rifle the whole time … He actually landed on his feet … He remained unmoved, absorbing the impact like he was muffling a fart in a crowded elevator …
What really happened even eludes Garst. All went black after the earth uppercut him. When he came to, he was standing on his feet holding his weapon, turning to see the remnants of the blast and wondering why his squad had a look on their faces as if they’d seen a ghost.
Marines in Company L think Garst is the luckiest guy in the battalion, and while that may seem a fair assessment, it was the enemy’s shoddy work that left Garst standing. The three-liters of homemade explosive only partially detonated.
Marines who witnessed the event from inside the compound caught glimpses of Garst’s feet flailing through the air just above the other side of the building’s eight-foot walls. The explosion knocked him at least fifteen feet away where he landed on his limp head and shoulders before immediately standing back up.
“My first thought was, ‘Oh [shoot], I just hit an IED,’” he said. “Then I thought, ‘Well I’m standing. That’s good.’”
Garst’s squad stared at him in disbelief. The square-jawed Marine has a tendency to be short-tempered, and the realization that the blast was meant to kill him spiked his adrenaline and anger.
“It pissed me off,” he said. He directed his men to establish a security perimeter while letting them know in his own way that he was OK.
“[What are you looking at?]” he said. “Get on the cordon!”
Garst quickly radioed back to base, calling an explosive ordnance disposal team and quick reaction force.
“I called them and said, ‘Hey, I just got blown up. Get ready,’” he said. “The guy thought I was joking at first. ‘You got blown up? You’re not calling me. Get out of here.’”
Once EOD cleared the area, Garst led his squad the four miles back to their observation post — just hours after being ragdolled by an IED blast.
“I wasn’t going to let anybody else take my squad back after they’d been there for me,” he said. “That’s my job.”
The next day Garst awoke with a pounding headache and was as sore as he’d ever been in his life. “Just getting up from trying to sleep was painful,” he said.
But he saw no reason being sore should slow him down. He popped some ibuprofen and after a day of rest, Garst was back out on patrol, showing his Marines and the enemy that just like his resolve — Cpl. Matt Garst is unbreakable.

Its time.

Time for a bit of unfortunate truth telling.  Europe is in decline and is no longer worthy of defense discussion as a whole.  Certain countries are maintaining robust capabilities, developing them etc...but as a pseudo-nation state, Europe is unworthy of discussion as a military power.

Roll Call.

England is no longer worthy of discussion.  They have destroyed their own forces in a way that no enemy could.

Germany is a non player in defense matters.  They maintain a strong industrial base solely for the opportunity to export weaponry.  A pacifist, isolationist strain exists to such an extent that they are the European version of what Japan once was.

Italy is worthy of discussion.  Besides maintaining strong naval forces, they have proven that they have the will and the means to exercise force.

Spain.  Ditto.

Romania is definitely worthy of discussion.  They are an example of "new" Europe and probably represent the saving grace of the continent.  Romania, along with the rest of the former Soviet Union satellite nations still possess a strong view when it comes to national security.  It is tinged with a big dose of practicality.  Once economic conditions improve expect these nations to shoulder the burden of the defense of Europe.

The Netherlands and the rest of the Nordic Nations.  Worthy.  They maintain strong forces that punch well above their weight.  Again, economic conditions will determine exactly how robust those forces will be in the future.  They do bear watching though.

NATO is dead.  This Libyan Conflict has shown that it is an institution that is out of balance and is not composed of equals.  Time to "hold it underwater till its feet stop moving".  The US gains no benefit from this alliance.

A favorite European past time is to discuss the demise of the United States.  Time they looked in the mirror.  It appears that not only has the US shouldered the burden of the defense of the West, but we also saved most of Europe's Banks during the economic meltdown.

A new way to view SNAFU!

Hey Everyone.

Blogger is upping the ante when it comes to its competition with Wordpress (I knew staying with these guys was the right way to go...even while others fled to the enemy)...

Anyway..long story short, if you want to see this blog in other dynamic formats all you have to do is this...

Copy and Paste which ever form fits your tastes into your browser and enjoy...

Flipcard: available at http://snafu-solomon.blogspot.com/view/flipcard

Mosaic: available at http://snafu-solomon.blogspot.com/view/mosaic

Sidebar: available at http://snafu-solomon.blogspot.com/view/sidebar

Snapshot: available at http://snafu-solomon.blogspot.com/view/snapshot

Timeslide: available at http://snafu-solomon.blogspot.com/view/timeslide

I'm personally thrilled by the 'usability' that this will add.  Blogger is doing its part to stay cutting edge.  I'll do mine to keep interesting, Marine Corps centric, Naval Service specific info coming your way (with a huge dose of "all things military").

Geez! I thought this crap was over with.

Meanwhile back in Japan...

I was looking for information on the 'making of a modern Japanese Marine Corps' which first took me to David Axe's site War is Boring which led me to the website Japanese Security Watch.  While still surfing for information on the 'new' Japanese Marine Corps, I ran up on the issue of the nuclear disaster and the ingenious Japanese using the NBC equipped Type 74 Main Battle Tank as part of the effort.  Read it all here, but this is the main part of the story.

According to the Daily Yomiuri, the GSDF is sending two Type 74 main battle tanks to the Fukushima Daiichi reactor to help clean up rubble and debris from the earthquake, tsunami, and explosions at the reactor site. The rubble and debris are hampering emergency efforts to repair the reactors. The GSDF is using tanks instead of bulldozers because the thick steel hull of the Type 74 is effective at blocking some radiation from the crew. The tanks also have NBC air filtration systems.

Swords into plows...or in this case adhoc nuclear disaster fighting vehicles.  Just out of curiosity I wonder why they're using these older vehicles instead of the more modern MBT's available?  Is there a difference in armor composition that makes them less robust around high levels of radiation?

Canadian Troops give instructions on making coffee.

Too Funny.  via EveryDayNoDaysOff....