My boy does it again!

 

Way to go Loren....I'm sure a certain group of Australians are going nuts!

Rumor Of Marine F-35 Termination Talks Is Wrong

The Navy has made its latest run against the Marine Corps version of the F-35 joint strike fighter, and for something like the twentieth time, it has been rebuffed. The latest failed assault came after the United Kingdom decided to switch its buy of joint strike fighters from the Marine vertical-takeoff version to the Navy carrier-based version. The Navy trotted out the same tired arguments it has been using for a decade -- lack of range, lack of forward support, etc. -- and the Marine Corps responded with its equally aged rationale for why tactical aircraft need to be where the troops are. The Marine Corps prevailed, as usual.

These ritualized exchanges have been going on for a long, long time. I well remember running into my old friend Gordon England in the Pentagon's E-Ring shortly after he was made Navy secretary in 2001, and hearing his misgivings about the Marine variant. He said he wanted to commission studies of the subject, but the more operational doubts he cited, the more he started to sound like studies that OpNav had already conducted. It seemed that certain admirals were trying to maneuver the SecNav into believing he had discovered problems they had long since decided should doom the new jumpjet.
So now rumors that the Marine variant is in trouble have surfaced once again, and as is often the case, by the time word started getting around the issue had already been resolved. The plane is safe for the fiscal 2012 budget request, because there is no other option for replacing Harriers in the vital role of providing firepower and protection to forward-deployed Marines. The range issue doesn't matter much if the planes are located close to the troops, which is what having vertical agility makes possible. What matters is being there when the air cover is needed. And while it might be nice to have forward-deployed jamming aircraft too, the fact that F-35 is too stealthy to be seen by enemy radars greatly mitigates that concern.
The main reason this argument never goes away is that Marine programs are funded out of the Navy budget, and the Navy usually has some other purpose to which it wants to apply the money. That's why the argument over how many amphibious warfare vessels the Marines need also never dies. Each new amphibious assault vessel is a destroyer or submarine the Navy will never have. But let's be realistic about what it would mean to the Marine Corps to lose the vertical agility it is buying in F-35. It would mean tethering expeditionary warfare to a handful of aircraft carriers that can't be all the places the Marine Corps needs to be. Or it would mean sending Marines in harms way without the continuous air cover that the rest of the joint force counts on for its survival. Since the Navy doesn't seem to have a solution for these dilemmas other than sticking with the program of record, we already know how similar arguments are likely to turn out in the future.

Republicans are back in charge and Senators are being courted...

Sen. John McCain visits Marines

Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, along with Maj. Gen. Richard P. Mills, commander, regional command (southwest) and the commanding general, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), make their way off of the Forward Operating Base Jaker landing zone during a visit to Nawa, Afghanistan, Nov. 11, 2010. Graham, a senior senator from South Carolina, and McCain, a senior senator from Arizona, along with Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, a junior senator from New York, and Joseph I. Lieberman, a junior senator from Connecticut, visited Marines of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, where they toured Khalaj High School, the Nawa District bazaar and the Nawa District Governance Center as well as meeting with Nawa government officials. (Official Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Mark Fayloga)

 After seeing this, do you really think the V-22 will be canceled?  Do you think that a leading Republican Senator that championed killing the F-22 will suddenly switch and revive it?  Our friends from across the sea (includes ex-pats) have alot to learn about the current political environment.

The F-22 cabal...diverse with a single goal.

via Alert 5 and the Atlanta Journal Constitution...

“This isn’t just for the sake of home-cooking, but also for the sake of the country,” Gingrey said in a telephone interview.
But Gingrey conceded that concerns over spending and the federal deficit could make the funding battle a difficult one. The planes have a price tag of $120 million each. “We would have to look at it with a very, very sharp pencil,” he said. “It would take some negotiating.”
Suggestions from the debt commission, made public this week, may hold some possibilities A three-year freeze on federal pay and a 10 percent reduction of the federal workforce “are things that really get me excited,” the Marietta congressman said.
Production of the F-22 ended with its omission from the 2009 defense bill. Critics called the plane a Cold War relic poorly suited for anti-insurgent battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Secretary of State Robert Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration, recommended the end to F-22 production, and President Barack Obama threatened to veto the defense bill if more funding for the stealth fighter were continued.
Originally, 381 F-22s were to be built. Production ended nearly 200 short. Gingrey said he and many military analysts think the planes are necessary to meet a scenario in which the United States faces two hot wars at the same time.

Is the F-22 Dracula or what? 

What does it take to make this issue go away!

Deficit Commission Report. A poorly flown trial balloon.

Old Bill and his buddy Goon got all hot and excited about the Deficit Commission report that was leaked to the press.

A much closer look and a reading of the political tea leaves reveal something a bit more stark.

It was a poorly flown trial balloon and most of the cuts won't see the light of day.  That's not to say that the US will not follow the lead of Europe and choose the comfort of its citizens over their protection, its just to say that some of these cuts in general and the ones to the F-35 in particular are probably not going to happen.

It was fun, but its time for the anti- F-35 folks to crawl back into their caves and think of a new plan to kill the airplane...this one is a non-starter.

The draft, laid out in detail to commission members during two closed-door, hours-long sessions, spares virtually no "sacred cow" programs, proposing dramatic changes to Social Security, once called the "third rail" of politics, pushes for limits to Medicare, axes the popular mortgage interest deduction in favor of lower income tax rates for all, freezes Defense Department salaries and bonuses for three years and noncombat pay at 2011 levels for the same period, and the list goes on.
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-ND, a commission member, did not sound confident that 14 of the 18 members could agree on any proposal in order to move it to a vote in Congress. "We've had trouble getting 14 people to agree on what time of the day to meet," the Budget Committee Chairman said.

F-35B formation flight...

Lt. Col. Fred Schenk is at the controls of F-35B BF-1  and Lt. Col. Matt Taylor of BF-3 for the first formation flight of two F-35Bs. The formation was flown on the seventy-seventh flight of BF-1 and the sixty-fourth flight of BF-3 on 10 November 2010 from NAS Patuxent River, Maryland.

Thompson scores another touchdown.

I admit the Lexington Institute is aligned more closely with my political views than other "think tanks" that I can name but Thompson cuts through the BS found in most of the talking head pieces and gets to the truth of the matter...his article in its entirety follows...

Deficit Proposals Are Right About Need For Defense Cuts, But Full Of Errors On Weapons

Author:

Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.

Date:

Friday, November 12, 2010

 

The chairmen of the bipartisan deficit-reduction commission have done the political system a big favor by illustrating the kinds of budget cuts that will be needed to bring federal expenses into closer alignment with fiscal resources. They have also removed any illusions that defense spending will be "off the table" when the new Congress turns to dealing with the deficit next year. With roughly 40 percent of federal spending currently being borrowed, items like Medicare and Medicaid would have to be cut in half to balance the budget if defense were left out of the equation. As I said in a Bloomberg Business News story yesterday, that is arithmetically and politically untenable.

The $100 billion in illustrative defense cuts the chairmen propose for fiscal 2015 all make sense, although it will be much easier to implement cuts in procurement than adjustments to military healthcare. Thus, the pattern seen in past defense downturns of weapons programs being cut first and cut furthest is likely to repeat itself again in the years ahead. (Secretary Gates already cut $330 billion in planned weapons spending last year, killing the Air Force's F-22 fighter, the Navy's next-generation destroyer, and the Army's proposed family of networked combat vehicles.)
Where the deficit commission chairmen went wrong on defense, though, was in trying to identify specific weapons programs that are suitable candidates for termination. Their lack of expertise on that subject is readily apparent in the proposals they make. They incorrectly state the number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that the Air Force is buying. They understate the cost of alternatives. They mis-identify the under secretary of the Navy and the name of the department's future radio system. They contradict themselves, saying in one paragraph that production of the V-22 rotorcraft should be ended early and then in the very next paragraph that an amphibious vehicle is less important to future warfighting than the capabilities provided by the V-22.
Little mistakes like these bespeak a broader ignorance of military plans and technology that leads the chairmen to exaggerate the savings their proposals would generate. For example, if the Joint Tactical Radio System were terminated as they propose, over dozen different legacy radios -- some of which cannot communicate with each other -- would need to be maintained indefinitely in the joint force. The cost of sustaining these aged devices and working around their numerous inadequacies would eventually come to match if not surpass the cost of fielding the new joint radio. The situation is similar with regard to their proposal for buying fewer F-35s and using more existing planes in the mix. Not only do those existing planes cost more than the commission seems to realize, but all sorts of additional outlays would be required to make them survivable in the environment for which the stealthy F-35 was conceived.
No one should be surprised to see the Marine Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle or the Army's Joint Light Tactical Vehicle on the chairmen's hit list. The projected unit costs of those systems have made them easy targets for budgeteers. But what the chairmen of the deficit commission don't seem to fully grasp is that when a program meeting a validated warfighting requirement is eliminated, something else has to take its place. In the case of the Marine Corps, there basically isn't any alternative to the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle -- the slow-moving legacy amphibs are deathtraps. In the case of the Army's proposed light tactical vehicle, the alternative is to keep Cold War humvees in service, even though they too have turned out to be deathtraps since insurgents in Iraq discovered improvised explosive devices.
Bottom line: yes, weapons purchases will have to be cut. But the commission should set broad targets and leave the specifics to Pentagon policymakers. Otherwise, it will say foolish things that undercut the credibility of its broader recommendations.

P-38 advertisement...

Colorful Harrier.

Another great shot from Joe Stremph.  How does he get these shots????

Latest F-35 pic...

Enjoy these pics of the Ark Royal...they will soon be historic.

Via Brian Aitkenhead at Warships...

Seems as if Turkey didn't get the message on European arms cuts...

Via AviationNews.EU

AgustaWestland  that it has been awarded a contract for nine T129 combat helicopters. The contract is valued at €150 million also including a spare parts package. The nine T129 helicopters will be assembled by Turkish Aerospace Industries, Inc. (TAI) and delivered by mid 2012 in a basic configuration, one year earlier of the 51 T129s already on order. This contract increases the total ordered by the Turkish Land Forces Command to 60. TAI is the Prime Contractor for the overall ATAK Programme, with ASELSAN as the supplier of avionics and mission equipments while AgustaWestland is acting as subcontractor to TAI. As the Prime Contractor of the ATAK Program, TAI is responsible for ensuring the T129 ATAK helicopter meets all the operational requirements of the Turkish Land Forces Command.

Ironic that while the rest of Europe disarms, Turkey is going full speed ahead.  They have an original order for 100 F-35's and increased it by another 20.  They have a huge ship building program going on (definitely under the radar but real) and the armed forces in general are sharpening their teeth on insurgents in Northern Iraq.

Turkey might be the real future military power on the European continent...not the traditional powers. 

Between Turkey's rise, former Soviet Block Countries like Romania innovating to get better....what is the UK's answer to the challenge????

Cut its Army....Trim its Navy....and depend on a 4th Generation F-15 sized fighter with no performance benefits that the latest model (F-15SG) bring to the table.

We do live in interesting times.

F-35 to PaxRiver vid.