At a time when budget constraints are driving the US Air Force to divest fighter and attack aircraft faster than they can be replaced with the Lockheed Martin F-35, outgoing chief of staff Gen Mark Welsh says it would not be a “wild idea” to resume production of an improved version of the F-22 Raptor air superiority jet.Why is it always at the end of service do we start getting whiffs of the truth from the General Officer Corps?
The Pentagon’s latest aviation inventory and funding plan says the flying branch has “insufficient resources” to maintain the 1,900 warplane level mandated by Congress beyond the current five-year budget blueprint that extends to fiscal year 2021.
The number of combat-coded fighter jets and their associated squadrons “will substantially drop” between 2022 and 2026 before hitting its lowest level in 2031 as the Fairchild Republic A-10 "Warthog" and other long-serving fighters are retired to the boneyard.
Asked about solutions to reverse this trend at an Air Force Association forum in Washington DC on 26 May, the outgoing chief of staff says money is the main issue. America, he says, needs to decide if it wants to continue to be a globally deployed superpower in the next 20, 30 or 50 years and then fund its military accordingly.
Hezbollah forces attacked an al-Nusra Front convoy in Jaroud Faleeta, killing dozens of Takfiri terrorists and destroying their armored vehicles, a Lebanese source said on Thursday.Awesome.
According to the source, Hezbollah pounded al-Nusra Front's convoy at Tulat al-Dhalil al-Aswad region which is located near the Jaroud Faleeta border-crossing into the Lebanese city of Arsal.
The attack left tens of dead and wounded among the terrorists and destroyed their vehicles and weapons.
Earlier this month, the Lebanese Army in military operations in the Jaroud Arsal region hit several targets of the ISIL terrorist group near the Syrian border, a security source said.
During the operation, the Lebanese Armed Forces fired hundreds of rockets and artillery shells at ISIL positions in Jaroud Arsal, killing and wounding a large number of militants, a security source in Beirut said.
The ISIL terrorists have been present along the Syria-Lebanon border, specially in Jaroud region, since a few months ago.
Elsewhere, the Lebanese Army's combat choppers and artillery units opened fire at strongholds of al-Nusra Front in Northeastern Lebanon.
Al-Nusra's depot of arms and ammunition was also targeted and destroyed in the attacks.
800 - Eliminate LAR Headquarters and Integrate LAVsThis is one of those articles that many have told me about but one that I failed to actually take the hint and read. Well I expressed interest in it the other day but told you guys that I forgot the site name and luckily Bryan stepped up and steered me in the right direction.
LAVs provide valuable support to Marine Corps units, but there is no need to organize them into battalions. There may be times in long-range, big war operations where a battalion of 100 LAVs moving as a unit is useful. But since Corps normally employs LAVs as part of smaller MAGTFs, LAVs should operate at the platoon level supporting other units as "Light Armor Reconnaissance." In big wars, integrating them into tank battalions is more effective anyway.
The Corps should permanently add a platoon of LAV-25s to the weapons company in each infantry battalion, as is standard in MEUs. An LAV-25 platoon should also be added to each tank company to provide needed reconnaissance and organic infantry support. This would retain the same number of LAVs in the Corps while eliminating some 600 Marines from LAR headquarters overhead. An LAV mortar platoon can provide each tank battalion with needed organic indirect fire support, while the LAV-AT versions replace their HMMWV-TOW. Eliminating those from the tank battalions and their scout platoons (by adding an LAV scout platoon to each tank company) results in another 200 positions eliminated.
The CDC researchers found that rates of obesity were higher among blacks than Hispanic and white adults. Forty-five percent of black women reported that they were obese, compared with 32.6% of Hispanic women and 27.2% of white women. Similarly, 35.1% of black men said they were obese, compared with 32% and 30.2% of Hispanic and white men, respectively.Time to put the nonsense away. America, you're a disgusting, fat, nasty blob! Fix yourself!
Adults between the ages of 40 and 59 bore the highest burden of obesity. In this age group, 34.6% of people said they were obese, compared with 26.5% of adults 20 to 39 years old and 30.1% of adults 60 and older.
"[The 40 to 59 age group] is really where you see a lot of the effects of obesity on diabetes-related morbidity and mortality, and you see premature deaths related to heart disease and are starting to see some of the cancers related to obesity," Long said.
The other discouraging finding from the report is that the number of Americans who said they had been diagnosed with diabetes continued to rise. Among people 18 and older, 9.5% said they had diabetes in 2015, compared with 9.1% in 2014. The increase between years was not huge, but as with obesity rates, it suggests a continuing upward trend. In 1997, only 5.1% of Americans had diabetes.
At least five officers of the Pakistan Navy received death sentences in a secret military trial for allegedly trying to hijack a Pakistan Navy vessel to attack a U.S. Navy refueling ship, Daily Pakistan reports.Read the entire article!
The officers were convicted of planning and orchestrating the September 6, 2014, attack on the Karachi Naval Dockyard located at Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast. The attack was thwarted by Pakistani military personnel with purportedly two attackers killed and four arrested alive (some sources cite 10 killed, including four rogue naval officers).
The attackers allegedly attempted to hijack the F-22P Zulfiquar-class frigate Zulfiqar, the lead ship of its class, with the intention of using the ship’s missiles to attack a U.S. Navy refuel vessel in the Arabian Sea (other sources claim that the target was a U.S. aircraft carrier).
According to the father of one convict, retired Major Saeed Ahmed, his son, Sub-Lieutenant Hammad Ahmed, along with four other officers—Irfanullah, Muhammad Hammad, Arsalan Nazeer, and Hashim Naseerhas—has been convicted of the attack on the dockyard on April 12 by a Navy Tribunal, Dawn newspaper reports.
“My son told me that a naval court had awarded death penalty to him and four other officers after a secret trial,” Ahmed said. “The convicted officers informed me that the naval court concluded the trial on April 12 and promulgated the sentence on April 14.”
Furthermore, Ahmed said that the five were charged with mutiny, conspiracy, carrying weapons in the dockyard, and also with having links to the terror group Islamic State. (Previous reports spoke of links to Al-Qaeda.) He also said that authorities denied his son a fair trial and that the navy did not provide him with the court proceedings.
The military’s top weapons tester has been warning for months that the F-35 will not be ready for its final major test phase until 2018 at the earliest. On Tuesday, the Pentagon officially acknowledged the schedule slip.Late becomes later.
“We reviewed the status of operational test planning, and there is consensus that that is likely to occur in calendar year 2018 given the realities of the schedule at this time,” said Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, during a Tuesday conference call. “The target was the middle of 2017, but it’s clear we’re not going to make that.”
This slip reflects a six-month delay for initial operational test and evaluation, or IOT&E, the last major period of testing before full-rate production.
The joint program office’s objective to begin IOT&E was August or September 2017, said JPO chief Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, speaking to reporters along with Kendall after the F-35 chief executive officer roundtable in Phoenix. But that start date has slipped to January or February, he said.
