Monday, November 12, 2018
Saab successfully completed a test flight by a Gripen E aircraft with the Meteor Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile (BVRAAM) for the first time.
via Saab Press Release.
In October, Saab successfully completed a test flight by a Gripen E aircraft with the Meteor Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile (BVRAAM) for the first time.Hmmm.
The flight included two Meteor missiles and the Gripen E aircraft (designated 39-8) was
operated from Saab’s airfield at Linköping, Sweden.
“The aircraft continues to perform as smoothly as we have seen throughout the whole flight test phase flying with external stores. I’m really looking forward to the upcoming steps in the flight test programme, taking us closer and closer to completing weapon integration. Meteor makes Gripen E extremely capable in the air dominance role”, says Robin Nordlander, Gripen experimental test pilot, Saab.
This test with Meteor is a part of the weapon integration progress in the Gripen E test programme and marks an important milestone in the agreement with the Swedish customer. The next step is to continue to fly with different configurations and gradually expand the flight envelope.
Meteor is an active radar guided BVRAAM, superior to other missiles of its type, and capable of engaging air targets autonomously, day or night, in all weathers and in harsh electronic warfare environments. The missile’s ramjet propulsion system gives Meteor its high-speed performance and the energy to defeat fast, moving targets at very long range. Gripen C/D with the Swedish Air Force in 2016 was the world’s first fighter aircraft to be operational with the Meteor missile.
The Meteor programme is one of Europe’s most successful defence collaborations and sees the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden joining together to create a game-changer for air combat. Saab is a partner in the Meteor programme in conjunction with Prime Contractor MBDA UK.
If I was building a cost effective self defense force that could flex into NATO operations...say like Canada...I would be taking a serious look at this plane.
Combine it with their affordable AWACS option and you have a far north solution that would be welcome in any overseas contingency operation.
Additionally with the support that Saab will provide, not only will it be extremely competitive going into the future (my opinion) but it will be affordable enough for my pilots to get enough air time to be EXTREMELY skilled aviators.
Oh and did I mention that because its affordable I could buy enough to fully staff my air arm?
Canada would be beyond stupid not to have the Gripen at the top of their list.
Tyler Rogoway at the Drive lays out why Trump didn't go to the WW1 ceremony...but the media reaction says it all...
Tyler Rogoway over at The Drive lays out why Trump didn't attend the WW 1 Ceremony, but the media reaction says it all.
It's about memes and visuals rather than facts.
Check out Tyler's story here.
The reality? Only a fool would put the President of the United States in a motorcade, IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY, to go 55 miles overland to a ceremony!
Only a stark raving lunatic!
The White House is mum on the issue and that's a shame. The public needs to hear the reality on this one but I'm sure operational considerations are taking precedent.
What's worse?
The White House pool reporters know the real deal too but they're ALL SILENT on this issue. Maybe that's due to security concerns but I'm sure all the talking heads are fully briefed on the issue but still push memes.
Now do you understand why I hate the news media?
Trump is far from a saint to me. The guys irks me in ways that you fail to understand. His constant Twitter activity makes me want to punch walls...
But I know an orchestrated campaign when I see one and we're seeing many different levers being pulled against him.
Chinese Lynx CS/VP-16B ATV with 40mm assault gun
Thanks to Paul Hope Twitter Page for the GIF & Caesar Twitter Page for the pics!
Chinese Lynx vehicle (an equivalent to British ATMP) firing 40mm CT. pic.twitter.com/2w6U32jxBo— Paul Hope (@PaulhopePaul) November 11, 2018
Jesus. I keep hearing how the Chinese aren't building an expeditionary force and that my concerns are nonsense but how do you explain this?
This is a weird vehicle...but it carries a big gun on a tiny chassis...definitely missile worthy (as in worth using a missile to destroy it).
Blast from the past. Was the 82nd rendered combat ineffective before they even touched ground during the Normandy landings????
via Real Clear History.
By today’s standards, the 82nd Airborne’s sacrifice in Normandy seems almost fantastical. When the elite division vaulted Nazi Germany’s Atlantikwall to launch the invasion of occupied Europe, Allied leaders fully expected few of its members would return. It was a suicidal mission, and 82nd Airborne was calculatedly sacrificed inland in hopes of ensuring indispensable amphibious landings along the coast.Story here.
Among Allied planners, casualty predictions for 82nd Airborne ranged as high as 75 percent. The most optimistic planners forecast 50 percent casualties, and by casualties, those planners meant deaths, not the generally accepted and all-inclusive definition of the word. But those losses were deemed acceptable in piercing Adolf Hitler’s Festung Europa, and Allied High Command agreed with near unanimity to sacrifice 82nd Airborne to that end.
READ THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE!!!!
Maybe I have too vivid an imagination but just past the start of this article (the part you see above), the author goes on to give the hard numbers. Admittedly some are speculative because no one will ever know but it's chilling to the bone.
While we celebrate the 82nd's drop into Normandy, I don't think anyone has properly accounted for the sacrifice that was asked of those men.
Looking at the article from my chair, the 82nd was rendered combat ineffective if not in the air then shortly after they hit the deck.
But they fought on anyway.
Saying this is simply amazing is to bastardize the heroics we witnessed that day.
It was calculated that it had to be done, but I don't think we all know how close this thing was to failure.
Those little groups of paratroops formed up and fought thru the night and kept fighting till they linked up with heavy forces.
Our most lightly armed formation was thrown against elite German mechanized units and despite all odds still did their jobs.
I'm in awe.
If you made it this far then do yourself a favor. Take a few minutes out of your day. Pour yourself a stiff one...sip it slowly and take this article in.
We're not worthy, but thank God there were guys that did the hard thing despite that fact.
Think Defence nailed it with regard to Macron's statements....
Dear EU Member States,— Think Defence (@thinkdefence) November 12, 2018
We have a defence industry but would like some help with funding.
We can have nationalism as long as it isn't that horrible American nationalism and is European nationalism, or French nationalism, anything as long as you buy French
Ta very much
Emmanuel https://t.co/Lqp7Iy0Qgd
Well said TD! Extremely well said!
People keep saying it and I keep ignoring it but it ALWAYS comes back to money!
Sunday, November 11, 2018
J-20...that's alot of missiles...
I wonder.
How many of those ultra-long range missiles the J-20 can carry externally...additionally one has to actually begin to question its real purpose. That internal missile load can best be described from my seat as an air superiority loadout with a couple of self defense missiles for good measure.
I've heard this thing called an AWACS killer, an F-22 competitor, even a long range striker with secondary fighter mission.
What if it's just a long range interceptor to defend Chinese installations at distance? What if we're looking at a modern day F-106 for the Chinese?
Why The U.S. Military Is Woefully Unprepared For A Major Conventional Conflict
Thanks to Noble for the link!
via ZeroHedge.
In the Department of Defense authored summary of the National Defense Strategy of the United States for 2018, Secretary James Mattis quite succinctly sets out the challenges and goals of the U.S. military in the immediate future. Importantly, he acknowledges that the U.S. had become far too focused on counter-insurgency over the past two decades, but he seems to miss the causation of this mission in the first place. U.S. foreign policy, and its reliance on military intervention to solve all perceived problems, regime change and imperialist adventurism, resulted in the need to occupy nations, or destroy them. This leads to the growth of insurgencies, and the strengthening of long simmering religious radicalism and anti-western sentiment in the Middle East and Central Asia. The U.S. military willfully threw itself headlong into a self-fulfilling prophecy.Story here.
The United States engaged in unnecessary wars, and when these wars were easily won on the immediate battlefield, the unplanned for occupations lead to guerilla insurgencies that were not so easy for a conventional military to confront. The U.S. Army was not prepared for guerilla warfare in urban areas, nor for the brutal and immoral tactics that their new enemies were willing to engage in. They obviously had not reflected upon the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, nor the nature of their new enemies. As casualties mounted due to roadside IEDs, snipers, and suicide bombers hidden amongst civilians, the U.S. military and the defense industry were forced to find ways to protect soldiers and make vehicle less vulnerable to these types of attacks. This resulted in vehicles of every description being armored and new IED resistant vehicles being designed and fielded in large numbers. This in turn, equated to a vast amount of time, effort and money. It also focused both the U.S. military services and the defense industry away from fighting conventional wars against peer adversaries.
After a decade of fighting an insurgency in Afghanistan and almost as long in Iraq, the U.S. leadership decided to destroy the sovereign nation of Libya, and foment a war in Syria immediately afterward. There is no doubt with the knowledge of historic events today, that the CIA and State Department facilitated a foreign invasion of Syria of Islamist radicals. They funded and armed these groups, provided clandestine training, and facilitated the logistical movement of fighters and weapons into a sovereign nation to cause its disintegration. In these two examples they decided not to occupy these countries, but to destroy all semblance of ordered society and replace it with brutally violent chaos. The U.S. political and military leadership seems to have learned that their past adventurism resulted in costly occupations, yet instead of refraining from using the military option as a tool to alter geopolitical realities they did not like, they merely opted to abandon the responsibility of occupation and reconstruction all together.
I don't know what to make of this article AND the video (check them both out).
I DO KNOW that whole swaths of this article are just bald face lies that don't fit with the facts.
I DO KNOW that there are nuggets of truth scattered thu out the thing too.
Again, read it for yourself, but my takeaway is this...
1. Our Middle East strategy was more wishful thinking than cold calculation.
2. The idea that we could decapitate the enemy to "win" by killing leadership is a strange mixture of conventional "old skool" warfare (ie, kill the King and the Army will dissipate) with Special Ops mania.
3. Adding to number 2 is the fact that Raid, Raid and more Raids isn't doing a thing except for straining our Special Ops.
4. Continuing operations IS NOT a recipe for success.
5. Nation building is not only a joke but a waste of national resources.
6. Oversight is a popular word inside the Beltway but in these wars we've seen NO ACTUAL oversight of the fights.
7. We've struggled mightily but the reality is that conditions on the ground are NOT conducive to lasting peace and certainly not to old style Victory.
As far as being unprepared for a major conventional conflict? No one is. We have a bit of time to get our ducks in a row. China needs more time,so does Russia and everyone else on this planet. If we're smart we can make it happen....we can be ready to meet the challenge presented by the Red Dragon.
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