Pic of the Day. July 13, 2010.

Another Joe Stemph Flickr Page Production!

Fifty-Three Delta

CH-53D Sea Stallion (BuNo 157736) of HMH-363 "Lucky Red Lions" arriving at West Wetlands park in Yuma, Arizona during a noncombatant evacuation drill supported by MAWTS-1 as part of Weapons and Tactics Instructor course 2-10.

Blast from the past. Expeditionary Tank.

If you've been reading my little blog here, you might have noticed that I've become fascinated with projects from the past that were left behind or not pursued.

Well, I found another promising project called the Expeditionary Tank.  Want a surprising tidbit of information?  It would have worked perfectly...as a matter of fact its main gun is being used on the Stryker!

Read more at Military-Today.

NH-90 suffers its first loss in Australia.

Don't know how I missed it but this is huge news.

The NH-90's problems have finally caught up with it and the lack of actual performance in the field is affecting sales.

How?

In Australia.  The Australians had a wonderful plan  to basically neck down to the NH-90 as a common utility type helicopter for their services...the Tactical version for the Army and the Maritime version for its Navy.

But because of the NH-90's below par service so far, the Australians reversed course and are instead procuring MH-60R's instead.

Glorious.  Read more at Defense Update.

Thompson on EADS Tanker bid.

Wow.  Thompson broke it down nicely when he penned his article covering EADS' bid in the latest tanker contest.

After reading his story it makes one wonder how in the hell our Congress is letting the Europeans bid their airplane at all.  Read more here.

However, the operational need for new tankers has been eclipsed by controversy surrounding how the tanker competition is being run. The World Trade Organization recently ruled that the Airbus unit of EADS has received illegal subsidies throughout its history that have enabled it to compete unfairly with U.S. producers of commercial transports. The biggest recipient of these illegal subsidies was the Airbus A330 transport -- the same plane EADS now proposes to use as its platform for a future Air Force tanker. Having seen both of its domestic rivals forced out of the commercial-transport business and its own global market share cut in half by competition from Airbus, Boeing and its backers are incensed that EADS is being allowed to bid. The Air Force says it needs EADS in the bidding to get the benefits of competition, and it is refusing to factor Airbus subsidies into its evaluation -- even though the past predatory behavior of Airbus is a key reason why it must go abroad to find a second competitor.
Congress is not so detached from the economic consequences of letting EADS bid. In fact, it probably will refuse to fund a tanker built by EADS, given what the World Trade Organization has said about the European company's unfair trading practices. EADS has elected to bid anyway, but its only hope of prevailing is to tap the same subsidies that the trade organization condemned since its plane typically sells for $50 million more than the competing Boeing 767 and burns over a ton more fuel per flight hour.

I read aviation blogs everyday and never heard this before.  Wow.  Time to find new blogs....EADS is acting like the Chinese nation...they're attempting to prey on our industry.

Bob Cox says the F-35 program ahead of schedule.

When Bob Cox, probably the biggest untainted critic of the F-35 program says that its ahead of schedule and appears to be gaining momentum, then everyone should pay attention.  Follow this link to read the whole story.

Lockheed flew the ninth of the initial 13 flight-testing jets recently, counting the original prototype, which has already been retired.
By week's end, the test program had completed 146 flights this year compared with the 128 planned, a pace that, if, sustained, would enable the full-year goal of 394 flights to be met or exceeded.
Another measure of progress is the number of specific tests (test points) achieved: 1,438 completed compared with 1,255 planned.
All of which means that if F-35 testing continues at the current pace through the rest of this year, it will be just about where it was supposed to be at the end of 2009

Which means that 2009 won't be a lost year and that by the middle of 2011 the program should be right back on its pre-breach schedule!

TORC Autonomous Vehicle System

Blast from the past. USSR thought on fighting Landing Forces.

The CIA has released formerly classified documents (Top Secret at the time) that give an indication of how the Soviet Union would respond to different scenarios on the battlefield.  The documents range from the use of Border Guards during the initial stages of war to how they would fight Landing Forces.  Its a fascinating read and these and other documents can be found here.
1978-11-16

Blast from the past. Sikorsky S-72.

Ashton Carter has decried the current state of the US helicopter industry. 

He's wrong.  A quick look at past experiments, test beds and flying prototypes reveal that even old US ideas would be relevant even today.  A great example of that is the Sikorsky S-72.  Imagine the flexibility one of these aircraft would have in the attack role!  Stats from Aviastar.

Technical data for Sikorsky S-72 RSRA Crew: 2-3, engine: 2 x General Electric T-58-GE-5 turboshaft, rated at 1045kW and 2 x General Electric TF-34-GE-400A turbofans, 4180kg of thrust each, main rotor diameter: 18.90m, wingspan: 13.74m, fuselage length: 21.50m, height: 4.42m, take-off weight without auxiliary jets: 8300kg, empty weight without auxiliary jets: 6535kg, take-off weight with auxiliary jets: 11815kg, empty weight with auxiliary jets: 9480kg, max speed without auxiliary jets: 296km/h, cruising speed with auxiliary jets: 258km/h, max speed without auxiliary jets: 581km/h, cruising speed with auxiliary jets: 370km/h, ceiling: 3050m

Australian Marines????

Cpl. Blake Kirkham, assigned to 2nd Royal Australian Regiment, 5th platoon, secures the beach head for an amphibious assault vehicle during a mechanized raid rehearsal on Pyramid Rock Beach at Marine Corps Base Hawaii during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2010 exercises. RIMPAC is a biennial, multinational exercise designed to strengthen regional partnerships and improve multinational interoperability. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Jody Lee Smith/Released)


Strategypage has the above photo listed as "Australian Marines invading Hawaii"...Is the 2nd Royal Australian Regiment now listed as a Marine unit?  Are there plans to re-designate an Australian Regiment as Marines?  It would make sense from the equipment sets that Australia is soon to field...Google searches turned up nothing so if anyone knows please send the info this way.

Joe Stremph and a historical perspective on VMFA-122.

The photo and narrative are from Joe Stremph's Flickr Page.

Mine eyes have seen the glory...

For those not familiar with the story of VMFA-122, they're a Marine Corps F/A-18 squadron that was known for decades as the "Crusaders." A few years back, they deployed to Iraq, and it was felt that, given the sensitivity of our Muslim hosts in that country, it might not be good to conjure up images of knights of Christendom if we're serious about all that hearts-and-minds stuff that is so essential to nation-building and counterinsurgency. So they changed the name to the "Werewolves," which was actually what -122 was called during WWII, so there a legacy there worth preserving. While I'm not as upset about the name change as many others, it is kind of a bummer, as I loved the old shield/cross emblem they used to wear on their tails. While I've photographed several Werewolves' F/A-18s since the change, I never noticed until today that the eyes of the Werewolf on the tail have crosses for pupils, discretely keeping the Crusader legacy alive.

Bravo Zulu, Semper Fi, etc. etc.

Oh, and for the Brits and the Dutch, this was BuNo 164268/DC-14 @ Phoenix-Mesa Gateway.

Silence when it comes to the next Commandant.

Have you noticed the complete silence from our next Commandant?

We've heard nothing.

No agenda.

No plans for the future of the Marine Corps.

No comment on the recently released Marine Operating Concepts.

No guidance to or expectations of the lower ranks.

No articles in the Gazette.

No interviews with the news media.

Complete and utter silence.

This is not good.  General Conway came in with a vision and a plan.  General Gray had an road map and warrior spirit.  General Krulak saw the future.

This guy has nothing.  I hope I'm wrong, but this feels so wrong...and at a time when strong leadership is needed from the man who sits in that chair, it appears that we're about to get a 'coalition builder' instead of a warrior.

Think I'm wrong?  Compare the fanfare that arrived with appointment of General Mattis to CENTCOM with that of this guy to be the next Commandant.

Long story short...I think we're screwed.

Why enemy pilots don't sleep well!