Catamaran 2018: Large Scale French-British Amphibious Exercise

NATO's spending problem and the US complaint in one graph...

graphy via AOL Breaking Defense...their article is of course favorable to our allies but this graph is damning!

Want to know why allied spending in NATO has been an ongoing problem for over 40 years?  Want to know why only liberals that hate or globalist that insist on being in any and EVERY ridiculous unfair treaty or organization despise Trump for pointing this out yet the majority of Americans are either in favor of his rants or are ambivalent?

Just look at the above graph.

Added together the other nations don't spend EVEN HALF of the bill that's racked up by NATO!

Yet its indispensable?  Necessary for US defense?

Sorry I just don't buy it.

NATO is a money pit with few returns.  We can achieve everything we need to do without NATO.

That's just a fact.

KC-390 arriving at Air Tattoo via @centreofaviationphotography

French Army VBCI's ready to roll out (pics)...

Interesting.  Starting to see more of the APC model with the 50 cal RWS instead of the full on IFV with the 30 (?)mm.

Open Comment Post. July 13, 2018

AV-8B's of the Spanish Navy on exercise (pics)...

Bundesheer Infantry on exercise (pics)...

Blast from the past. A-4C Skyhawk hit by an SA-2 almost brings his pilot back to the ship...

Thanks to USS Edsall Tumblr Page for the pic!

April 25, 1967, Eagle Six is Ltjg Alan R. Crebo in an A-4C Skyhawk, Navy BUNO 151102. 

“ We all stare at his Skyhawk in awe and wonder as we all join on him. Crebo’s A4 is a sight to behold. He has no rudder. Fully half of the vertical stabilizer is gone. Football and basketball sized holes allow us to see right through the tail pipe in several places. Someone points out that viewed from dead astern, the horizontal stabilizer is twisted about three degrees out of alignment with the trailing edge of the wing. 
Every access panel in the fuselage has been popped open from the force of the concussion. He is flying with the hydraulic boost package disconnected and has very limited maneuverability, so we all fly on him. Someone in the flight has a hand held 35mm camera and takes multiple shots of the incredible battle damage.
Al Crebo was tail end Charlie in the bomb stack. 

He reached the top of the pop up and hung at about two hundred twenty knots waiting for sufficient separation from Eagle Five before rolling in. He never saw the SA-2 which delivered a direct hit on his airplane. The force of the hit and explosion rolled Al on his back. He recovered with the nose pointed at the target, so he completed his run.

As he began his pull out, the badly wounded Skyhawk made an uncommanded roll inverted over the target. It was at this point when he made the “Eagle Six hit and losing control” call over the radio. Al reached under the glare shield and yanked the flight control boost disconnect handle, and flew the little A4 upright on manual flight controls. Now, NATOPS states that before disconnecting the hydraulic flight controls, one should be dirty, below two hundred knots, and lined up with the landing runway. The A4-C even had an extendable stick to give the pilot more leverage when flying on cables and pulleys with no power steering. Al was doing about 450 knots when he disconnected and rolled upright. He said he didn’t remember the airplane being hard to fly at all! 

Approaching the “Bonnie Dick”, Al decided to see if he could control the airplane well enough to attempt a landing. He extended the landing gear and the nose gear and tail hook came down, but the main mounts remained jammed in the wing due to buckled wing plates. He tried for ten thousand feet to eject, but along side the plane guard D.D. at sixty five hundred feet, the gallant Skyhawk flamed out and gave up the ghost. Al ejected safely and was promptly picked up by the plane guard helo. CDR. The little Skyhawks had got their drivers home.”

I am in awe...both the man and the machine were well made and performed heroically!

The F-35 vs. A-10 Warthog Face-off Is a Total Sham. Here's Why. --- via The National Interest Blog....

via National Interest...

They want their largest and highest-priority weapons buy, the  troubled, $400-billion F-35  multi-mission fighter, to quickly replace the A-10 they’ve been  trying to get rid of  for over two decades. The now-former Pentagon weapons testing director, J. Michael Gilmore,  said in 2016  that a fly-off would be the only way to determine how well the F-35 could perform the close-air-support role compared to the A-10—or whether the F-35 could perform that role at all.

The testing office and the various service testing agencies had already meticulously planned comparative tests to pit the F-35 against the A-10, F-16, and the F-18, because the F-35 program is contractually required to show better mission effectiveness than each of the legacy aircraft it is to replace.

In other words, the test was designed by someone with a vested financial interest in the F-35 program, rather than by people whose primary interest is its performance in combat.

Many Air Force leaders  strenuously objected to the fly-off , claiming that the F-35 would perform the mission differently so it wouldn’t be fair to compare its performance to the A-10. These tests are only happening now—albeit in an inadequate form—because Congress mandated them  nearly three years ago .

The Senate  established strict criteria  and specific scenarios for the tests. These include demonstrating the F-35’s ability to visually identify friendly forces and the enemy target in both day and night scenarios, to loiter over the target for an extended time, and to destroy targets without a joint terminal attack controller directing the strike.
The Congressionally-approved plan includes a schedule for tests and funding for elaborate tactical test ranges with combat-realistic, hard-to-find targets defended by carefully simulated missile and gun defenses, and appropriate ground-control teams for the close-support portion of the test scenarios. Testing to date has revealed the  F-35 is incapable  of performing most of the functions required for an acceptable close-support aircraft, and it seems unlikely the criteria outlined by Congress and testing officials would have produced the results Air Force leaders wanted.

Designed to mislead

Air Force leaders came up with a simple solution to this dilemma. They are staging an unpublicized, quickie test on existing training ranges, creating unrealistic scenarios that presuppose an ignorant and inert enemy force, writing ground rules for the tests that make the F-35 look good—and they got the new testing director, the retired Air Force general Robert Behler, to approve all of it.

Story here. 

This program, its supporters, the military brass and Lockheed Martin are all fraudulent, liars and will get people killed.

From my chair this is damning and discouraging.

I don't care about Marine Air wanting to go play fleet defense with the Navy.  I don't care about Marine Air wanting to go play air superiority and deep strike with the Air Force.  I don't care about any of that.

I do care about the plane's ability to support the Ground Combat Element of the US Marine Corps and if needed provide assistance to Army units caught in a fight and even our allies.

But the people supporting this travesty don't.

The fact that the plane is substandard means nothing to them.

There is a special place in hell for this type of dishonesty.  I hope they enjoy their new spot while future Marines are suffering for their hubris.

Amphibious by Nature...pics by Sgt. Zachary Orr

Caption to the pics below:

U.S. Marines stage AAV-P7/A1 assault amphibious vehicles for splash training at Pyramid Rock Beach as part of Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise on Marine Corps Base Hawaii July 8, 2018. RIMPAC provides high-value training for task-organized, highly capable Marine-Air Ground Task Force and enhances the critical crisis response capability of U.S. Marines in the Pacific.