Quote of the week...

The media and the think tank community is made up of chicken shit cowards who refuse to ask why the US Navy sails circles around the Gulf of Aden while piracy gets worse, and under no circumstances will anyone criticize the Obama administration for an aimless, endless perpetual violence policy in the Indian Ocean. What is the point of continuous military operations without objectives? 

Galrahn at Information Dissemination on an "after action" report on the latest atrocity committed by Somali pirates.

UAE to convert its BlackHawks to BattleHawks.

via DefenseNews.

ABU DHABI - The United Arab Emirates is set to turn a number of its Sikorsky Black Hawks into gunships in a deal with the U.S. helicopter maker worth nearly 1 billion Arab Emirate dirhams ($272 million).

The announcement of a plan to buy weaponization kits for 23 of its Black Hawk UH-60M helicopters was the pick of a 4 billion Arab Emirate dirham order bonanza unveiled by the UAE armed forces at the IDEX show Feb. 21 in Abu Dhabi.

 An attack copter that does double duty as a transport?  It took several years but it seems that the US has finally achieved what the Russians did many years ago.  We have our own Mi-24...Columbia has been using a version of this for quite some time too...the only remaining question is whether the US Navy or Army will acquire a few kits.  It would seem a natural for the Navy.  With the focus on littoral combat, these would seem an ideal addition to the fleet.


S70-054_ABH_BR_hi

The British people will go ape if the RN buys P-8's.

via the News.

Navy to buy new aircraft

Published on Tue Feb 22 13:07:21 GMT 2011

THE Royal Navy is looking to buy a fleet of maritime patrol aircraft for up to £1 billion just weeks after the Ministry of Defence scrapped the new Nimrod aircraft at a cost of £3.6 billion.
The MoD confirmed last week that the navy wanted to buy its own maritime patrol aircraft to track enemy submarines to replace the Nimrods, which are being broken up for scrap.
The new RAF Nimrod MRA4s had not even come into service when the prime minister announced last October that as part of the strategic defence review he was scrapping Nimrod.
The navy, which was furious that RAF bosses had agreed to get rid of Nimrod at a time of increased submarine activity, has already set up a team to buy a replacement and ensure that it is flown by the Fleet Air Arm. The programme is being run by Commodore Simon Kings with a team made up of naval officers.

If this is true and the plan is actually carried out then the British public will go ape!  This will be the ultimate boondoggle.

Another blast from the past...the XP-87.

via the National Museum of the Air Force...

The XF-87 was the last aircraft built by Curtiss Aircraft. The specification originally called for a twin-engine, single-place fighter, which evolved into an attack aircraft (XA-43) and finally to a quad-jet, twin-place, all-weather, high-altitude fighter. Two prototype XF-87s were built (S/N 45-59600 and 46-522), the second of which was modified to the sole XF-87A.

The XF-87 was designed for an innovative nose turret capable of swiveling in a wide arc around the axis of flight; however, the turret was never actually installed on the XF-87.

The very large fighter was severely underpowered by four J34 turbojets and was redesigned for two J47 turbojets (XF-87A). A production order for 58 XF-87As and 30 RF-87s was canceled before any aircraft were constructed.

Type	Number built/ converted	Remarks
XF-87	2	Last Curtiss aircraft
XF-87A	1 (cv)	Modified XF-87
F-87A	0	58 canceled
RF-87A	0	30 canceled

TECHNICAL NOTES:
Engines: Four Westinghouse J34-WE-7 turbojets of 3,000 lbs. thrust each
Armament: Four 20mm cannon and two .50-cal. machine guns
Maximum speed: 520 mph
Cruising speed: 450 mph
Range: 1,000 miles
Service ceiling: 41,000 ft.
Span: 60 ft. 0 in.
Length: 62 ft. 0 in.
Height: 20 ft. 4 in.
Weight: 37,350 lbs. loaded
Crew: Two

Sadly, this beautiful airplane lost out to the F-89... 

I hope we have security devices...

Watching the Middle East descend into chaos reminds me of one terrible fact.  We've sold some very hi-tech toys to many of the nations in the region...and if we haven't then the Europeans have.

I hope kill switches, security devices...something to keep them from being used against our forces has been installed.  Playing with dictatorships, monarchies ... whatever can be very dangerous business.

AAV Replacement RFI is coming.

Defense News has info on the upcoming RFI on the AAV Replacement.  Pretty heady stuff.  Follow the link to read the whole thing but here are the basics.

* The ability to autonomously deliver a Marine infantry squad from an amphibious ship to shore a minimum distance of 12 nautical miles, at "a speed to enable the element of surprise in the buildup ashore." The notice acknowledges that a high rate of speed "may prove to be unaffordable."
* Protection against direct and indirect fire, mines and improvised explosive devices. The protection can be modular, "applied incrementally as the situation dictates."
* Employ open architecture principles to rapidly integrate new technologies, and be reconfigurable to carry out alternative roles, including operation of heavy mortars or rockets, and logistic or medical evacuation missions.
* Be powerful enough to engage and destroy similar vehicles, provide direct fire support to dismounted infantry and maneuver with M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks.

If General Dynamics were smart, they'd just redo the EFV without hydraulics and moving treads and just toss the de-teched version at the Marines.

As a matter of fact I wonder why they are even opening this up to bid---single source it and get the simplified vehicle into the fleet.

Wow, what a reversal...

Talk about being taken to the woodshed and coming out with their mind right!

Well in the words of a famous movie...

ELP had a failure to communicate---I wonder if he spent a night in the box!

First the author of ELP Defens(c)e Blog wrote this...

ELP Defens(c)e Blog is in favor of the F-35?????

Now that the latest USAF gathering in Orlando–which in recent years doesn’t
produce much of anything–is over, we can have the week of wild alternatives
for the USAF fighter roadmap. How to fix a force structure in the coming
years of shrinking budgets? Well, we need ideas. And these will be thrown
around mostly for entertainment purposes. And when I state “shrinking
budgets”, I mean real bad stuff. All plans will assume the stupids in D.C.
let F-22 production close.

Plan one.

The F-35 program will be composed of 20 Fighter Groups. Each group will have
one squadron of 24 F-35B STOVL aircraft. They will be procured at 48 per
year for 10 years. This does not count extras for test, training and
development. This will support 10 AEFs and allow for home air defense of the
most basic kind.

A-10s stays as-is. Refurb as much and as many times as needed.

Well in the short span of one day he's come out with these posts!


http://ericpalmer.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/more-unsupportable-rubbish/

http://ericpalmer.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/the-ponzi-scheme-that-has-to-deliver-for-australian-industry-or-else-auspol/

I'm not going to say group think or accuse the writer of falling victim to peer pressure but I will say that the turn around is remarkable.