SNAFU!

Monday, September 19, 2011

Trimble's back to doing what he does best...

And that would be getting the good stuff before most other aviation writers. He has a great scoop on some advanced concepts that are being shown at the AFA meeting....check it out here....

A Royal Marine from 42 Commando Lima Company based at Checkpoint Zarawar in Helmand, Afghanistan is pictured crossing a waterfilled ditch while on patrol. A Military Working Dog can be seen jumping out of the other side.

42 Commando are currently conducting daily patrols which are helping to provide reassurance for the local Afghan population and weekly shuras which are proving to be an important listening post in the communities.
Photographer: LA(Phot) Dave Hillhouse

A Royal Marine from 42 Commando Lima Company based at Checkpoint Zarawar in Helmand, Afghanistan is pictured on watching for enemy activity while on patrol.

A Royal Marine from 42 Commando Lima Company walks back to his base at Checkpoint Zarawar in Helmand, Afghanistan follwoing an arduous day long patrol.

A Royal Marine from 42 Commando Lima Company based at Checkpoint Zarawar in Helmand, Afghanistan is pictured in a corn field while on patrol.

Textron's Humvee Recap Contender...the video!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Air Force birthday today????

The Air Force turns 64 today. Happy birthday!

But a note to all the air guys out there. Your service is older than 64...stop denying the Army Air Force of old! You're cutting out a tremendous part of your legacy by not acknowledging the contributions that they made and are placing those guys in a type of nether world of being US Army but not credited with giving birth to the USAF.

An example is that if you used those metrics the USAF would be slightly over 100 years old. That's more like it....but anyway....happy birthday little brother.

Code One Magazine.

Code One

Pic of the day...Air Force edition.

U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Angela Pollard (left), a medic attached to the Laghman Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) and 1st Lt. Scott Adamson, an engineer, secure a bridge in Mehtar Lam in the Laghman province of Afghanistan, Sept. 7, 2011. A civil engineer team from the PRT traveled to the Jugi bridge in Mehtar Lam to asses the structural integrity following its recent completion, ensuring it will withstand the Afghan weather for years to come. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane)

U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Sam Pastor, a vehicle maintainer attached to the Laghman Provincial Reconstruction Team, fires the Mk48 "super SAW" machine gun at the off-base firing range near Forward Operating Base Mehtar Lam on Sept. 10, 2011. Members from the PRT traveled to the range to practice with primary and secondary weapons along with M203 grenade launchers and fragmentation grenades.(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane)

U.S. Air Force Capt. Jon Polston, the lead engineer attached to the Laghman Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), leans over a ledge to inspect the underside of a bridge in Mehtar Lam in the Laghman province of Afghanistan, Sept. 7, 2011. The civil engineer team from the PRT traveled to the Jugi bridge in Mehtar Lam to asses the structural integrity following its recent completion, ensuring it will withstand the Afghan weather for years to come. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Ryan Crane)

IAR in the fleet.

via the FireArms Blog

Interesting that the IAR has been down range and no reports on its effectiveness has come out.

Even more interesting is the fact that forward deployed units or units that are soon to be forward deployed (11th MEU) are having discussions on how they will incorporate this weapon into the Infantry units. Before you ask if I'm speculating, I wrote the 11th MEU and this is the response I got...

There has been discussion about the new automatic rifle within my unit,
but it is my understanding that we will deploy with our current weapons
- M-4, M-4 grenade launcher variant and M249 squad automatic weapon.

We will maintain marksmanship skills with shoots on ship, as well as
train with different militaries throughout the Western Pacific and
Middle East regions.

Very respectfully,

Capt. Roger Hollenbeck
11th MEU public affairs officer

I understand that public affairs officer's have to be cagey in their responses but my take is that this weapon is still in the 'question' mark stage and no guidance has been issued from HQMC on even a recommended usage (of course another option is that HQMC did offer guidance and 11th MEU simply said fuck that and are going to make it work in the field).

But I'm wandering a bit. Steve at the Fire Arms Blog stated that he thought that this was a back door move by the Marine Corps to get a replacement for the M-16A4 yet be a better performer than the M4.

I shot the idea down at the time but now I wonder if that isn't the way to go. The stats on the M4 and the M-27 (IAR) are from wikipedia.

Service history
Type	Infantry automatic weapon
Place of origin	Germany
In service	2010-present
Used by	United States Marine Corps
Production history
Designer	Heckler & Koch
Designed	2008
Manufacturer	Heckler & Koch
Produced	2010 testing
Number built	450 test weapons
Specifications
Weight	7.9 lb (3.6 kg) empty
Length	36.9 to 33 in (94 to 84 cm) w/ adjustable stock
Barrel length	16.5 in (42 cm)
Width	3.1 in (7.9 cm)
Height	9.4 in (24 cm)

Cartridge	5.56x45mm NATO
Action	Gas-operated, rotating bolt
Rate of fire	560 to 640 rpm
Feed system	20-round or 30-round STANAG magazine or 100-round Beta C-Mag
Sights	flip-up Rear rotary diopter sight and front post, Picatinny rail

and now the M4.

Service history
Type	Carbine
Place of origin	United States
In service	1994–present
Used by	See Users
Wars	War in Afghanistan (2001–present) War in Iraq (2003-2010) Colombian Armed Conflict
Production history
Manufacturer	Colt Defense
Produced	1994–present
Variants	M4A1, CQBR (Mk. 18 Mod 0)
Specifications
Weight	6.36 lb (2.88 kg) empty 6.9 lb (3.1 kg) with 30 rounds
Length	33 in (840 mm) (stock extended) 29.75 in (756 mm) (stock retracted)
Barrel length	14.5 in (370 mm)

Cartridge	5.56x45mm NATO
Action	Gas-operated, rotating bolt
Rate of fire	700-950 round/min cyclic^[1]
Muzzle velocity	3,080 ft/s or 939 m/s^[1]
Effective range	500 m for a point target and 600 m for an area target^[2]
Feed system	30 round box magazine or other STANAG Magazines.
Sights	Iron or various optics

Its almost painfully obvious that the M-27 will give the Marines something that we don't currently have. If the M-27 is adopted as the new Rifle for the Marine Corps then we can standardize on a weapon that isn't as long as the M-16A4, has better range than the M-4 and on top of it all we'll be regaining automatic rifle fire for infantrymen when they're in the assault.

If we're going to stick with the 5.56mm round then it makes sense to issue this weapon to an entire rifle squad..keep the grenade launchers but maybe we could then lose a SAW or two.

Its worth considering especially in light of all the urban fighting thats taken place over the years. Add to it the optics that are hitting the market and this is a capability thats too good to leave in the hands a single Marine.

Spend the money and spread the wealth.

Bad week for the F-35? Its all smoke and mirrors!

Last week by all appearances was a bad week for the F-35.

You had reports from the Australian press...

You had reports from the Canadian press...

All singing the same tune. No one knows the actual costs for an F-35. Again. From outside appearances it seemed like a bad week.

It was manufactured and contrived bull shit. But Loren Thompson says it best (read the whole thing but some of the good bits are below).

Not the actual costs, that is -- those haven't risen much over the last decade. But the Pentagon's estimates have gone through the ceiling, mainly because it keeps expanding the range of items included in calculations. No kidding: 70-80 percent of all the increases in the cost to keep the F-35 flying are a consequence of changes in the way the Pentagon tracks and manages the program. This is one program where the customer has become the biggest threat to success. Let's take a look at how it has undercut support for the fighter.
First of all, estimators decided to increase many of the quantitative parameters on future operations. Instead of the 33 bases where the original 2002 sustainment estimate said the planes would operate, officials decided 49 was the right number. Instead of a 30-year lifespan, they decided it should be 50 years (without any increase in flight hours, making the whole program intrinsically less efficient). Instead of 253 major items of support equipment, they decided 525 would be needed. They also doubled the number of squadron logistics kits and quadrupled the number of initial training sites. Amazingly enough, estimated sustainment costs went up.
Another thing they decided to do was express long-term sustainment costs in "then-year" dollars, meaning dollars that include inflation. The only problem with that is no one has the foggiest idea what inflation rates are likely to be between now and 2065, the span of time covered by the estimates. So they made them up. Rather than reporting the cost of sustainment in today's dollars -- which would be about $500 billion over 50 years -- they quoted an utterly unprovable price-tag of $1.069 trillion. Needless to say, the latter number increased congressional concerns about affordability.
But the bean-counters didn't stop there. They neglected to mention to Congress in reporting F-35 sustainment costs that the existing fleet of tactical aircraft already costs about 20 percent more to sustain each year than they estimate the F-35 will ($12 billion versus $10.6 billion annually). They also failed to mention how the cost of sustaining the current tactical fleet will escalate using the same counting rules applied to F-35 as cold-war planes grow increasingly decrepit. If that information had been reported, it would have been apparent that the yearly cost of keeping all those ancient fighters flying will be nearly twice the estimated cost of F-35 sustainment by 2020. Follow that same trend-line out 50 years, and the legacy fleet costs four trillion dollars to keep flying, versus barely a quarter of that for F-35.

So just like all the other false debates that we've had, we have a false cost debate. I'd be amazed if I hadn't seen all this before.

Now its just sad.

When the postmortem is done on the F-35 debate I predict that military reporters will be taken to task. Not because they falsified data. I don't believe that anyone would knowingly print lies. But I would bet body parts that I highly value that many of their sources would!

Budget stress is here. Time to remember the Navy and Marines need each other.

I spent some time this weekend reading other military blogs. Blogs that are NOT Marine or Navy centric.

Trust me when I say that the push to position a particular service to avoid major budget cuts has begun. If not actually in the halls of Congress then certainly in the blogging community.

All of this reminded me of an article written by Bryan McGrath for ID. Here's the juicy bits...

Promote Land Power….From The Sea.  While I and others have been advocating for a significant cut in budget share to the Army, it is naïve to think that the country does not and will not have a continuing need for “boots on the ground.”  Increasingly though, America should come to see those boots as belonging to Marines (America’s “911” force) deployed from ships for a variety of reasons and likely to return to those ships in an expeditious manner.  Put another way, Seapower enabling Land Power.
Promote Defense, Development, and Diplomacy.  For a large portion of this nation’s history, its foreign policy was carried out by the Department of State, closely assisted by the Department of the Navy.  An active foreign policy that seeks to assure friends and allies even as it deters adversaries can be greatly enabled and renewed by a new era of targeted, and metered engagement facilitated by the mobility of Naval forces.
Promote Naval Solutions to Naval Challenges.  Two emerging operational problems appear amiable to solutions that demand closer cooperation between the Navy and the Marine Corps: swarming surface craft (simultaneous or near-simultaneous attack) and piracy.

Read the whole thing here, but this is going to get nasty. Instead of wishing the fight away...instead of hoping for inter-service cooperation...I hope our leadership (Navy and Marine Corps) is getting ready for this fight.

With attention turning to China, its essential that the Navy and Marine Corps avoid drastic budget cuts. Its essential that we win this upcoming budget war.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Alternate firing position.

Army Spc. Yuroslav Prikhodko fires his M4 assault rifle from an alternative firing position during a marksmanship course on Fort Bragg, N.C., Sept. 14, 2011. Prikhodko is a truck driver assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division’s Company G, 1st Brigade Combat Team, which provides logistics and sustainment for 3rd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod

If you thought "planking" was idiotic..check out "cone-ing"

This stupidity is suppose to be the new planking! Geez! And this douche bag has 6 million hits on YouTube! Amazing.

*Spare me the drama about me spreading word of this new "craze"...I thought some might find it interesting, even if its insane.

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