via DoD Buzz.
The Navy has reached a $6.5 billion deal with a joint venture of Textron Inc.‘s Bell Helicopter unit and Boeing Co. for 99 V-22 Ospreys that likely cements the long-term future of the tilt-rotor aircraft as part of the military’s air inventory.First you can practically kill the Joint Medium Replacement program for the blackhawk helicopter.
The five-year contract through 2017, with an option for 22 more Ospreys, was expected to be announced Wednesday, according to James O’Donnell, a spokesman for the V-22 Joint Program Office at Naval Air Systems Command, which negotiates contracts with the manufacturers.
O’Donnell said the order will include 92 MV-22 Ospreys for the Marine Corps and seven CV-22 versions for the Air Force, with advanced radars and extra fuel tanks for Special Forces operations. The five-year bulk order was expected to save $1 billion over buying the Ospreys individually, O’Donnell said.
It will limp along but for all intents its dead.
Second. This cements the info I got. The Marine Corps is prioritizing aviation over the ground side and will continue to do so into the immediate future.
I take back what I said earlier.
This is a plan but a pitiful, sad, disastrous plan. Earlier I stated that at least we had a direction. We do. The wrong direction.
Last. This also cements the fact that MEUs are now air centric, lack the stated capability of 15 days unsupported combat and are now simply a show of force.
Amos has thrown away over 100 years of designing a war winning organization and is another of those "change agents" that doesn't have a fucking clue.
I said earlier I hate the bastard. I was wrong. I utterly despise the son of a bitch.
Note: Loren Thompson, a person whose views I once respected, is touting the talking points from HQMC. Want to read the insanity? Click here but a small taste....
That’s one reason why the Corps gave up on a pricey replacement for its 1970s-era amphibious assault vehicle, and wants to start over with a more affordable solution. It desperately needs a faster, more survivable way of getting from ship to shore, but when the time came to make a choice several years back, Marine leaders decided it was more sensible to invest fiscal and political resources in the agility provided by the MV-22 tilt-rotor and the F-35B successor to the Harrier jumpjet. Now they are gearing up to make the case for a new and improved amphibious “tractor.”Let me give you a quick fact check on this mother fucker.
If you canceled the V-22 buy you could afford the Marine Personnel Carrier and have enough money left over to probably fund half the buy of Amphibious Combat Vehicles.
92 fucking V-22's but they want to be stingy with money for the ACV and MPC? At the price of the V-22 if we canceled it we could afford the EFV!
99 times $22 million (CH-47F) equals $2.18 billion, or about $4.3 billion less.
ReplyDeleteJust sayin..
fuck that. just buy the damn armor and delay the V-22 buys.
DeleteI have despised Loren Thompson for years, he is one of the worst paid shills who doesn't give a shit about USA, he just wants LMT or BA money and sell this country away.
ReplyDeleteHey Man, get with the program. The future of conflict is going to be just like Libya. That's where we need to be. Over the Horizon, rapid deployment into the far flung, dark, foreign sh**holes of the world where we can stomp the crap out of head-scarf wearing' Talibs and Tangos, and we can be free of concern about Anti-aircraft cannon or manpads.
ReplyDeleteWhoever saw any army deploy AA guns in the last twenty years, you know, besides all of those Tangos driving Technicals that all have......AA cannon and HMG in the back.
Or those thousands of MANPADs that went missing in Libya.
YAY for the future when we no longer have to worry about anti-aircraft weapons....except for RPG ambushes, Heavy MG and MANPADS.
Fuck, it's like the dicks haven't seen Blackhawk Down or read any story about SEALs getting greased in Chinooks. In fact, isn't that the leading cause of death for SEALS? Death by RPG'ed Chinook?
This pretty much means the USMC will be a light weight force incapable of going anywhere near any hostile territory defended by SAMs, AA, etc. unless it is highly worked over by aviators in their fast flying machines. And that depends upon the airspace not being defended by an adversary with credible Gen. 4+/Gen. 5 aircraft flown by their counterpart aviators.
its worse than that. i'm by no means a strategist but this mud Marine would (if faced with an invasion by the kind of force the Corps is setting up) would just lay back and maybe put out a few old SAMs polished to make them look new and send out teams after team after team of MANPAD equipped soldiers to every possible landing zone i could think of. if i killed just two MV-22's it would kill a MEU. if i could kill 4 then they would have to call the whole thing off.
Deleteadditionally if i couldn't get them during the invasion then i can get another chance during resupply missions. thats if i was a poor force. if i had a high tech force, i'd buy every S-500 available. every S-400 and S-300 and i'd tag V-22's coming off the deck of the amphibs.
this is a stupid idea.
Hey you are right on the money. You know the same dudes who did Benghazi are smacking their chops over how they can get those new USMC units in Sicily lured into a juicy ambush.
Deletethe VC made shooting down helicopters their favorite hobby and setup crude 'Shoot-a-Huey' schools up in the jungle, teaching everyone they could teach how to shoot down helos.
the results speak for themselves:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_losses_of_the_Vietnam_War
Thousands of helos.....thousands.
The ONLY reason we haven't suffered the same in Iraq and Stan is because they were not supplied by another nation like Vietnam was or the Talibs were (by us) in the Stan during Glorious Soviet Times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_aircraft_losses_in_the_Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan
And since we're such pussies when it comes to casualties, we'll hit the panic button and pull out faster than a Catholic boy on Prom Night.
Imagine the sight of watching Ospreys taken out in an ambush and the survivors being gunned down on video being posted on the internet.
By then, the Commandant will be retired and playing golf in Florida as he watches Marine bodies get dragged thru the dusty streets of Dirkadirkastan on CNN.
We're freaking out over Syria getting S-300s which are 20+year old. If Russia really wanted to freak out the world, they'd sell Iran, Venezuela, China and NK S-400/S-500s and sell them SU-35's. We couldn't do anything but scratch our nuts and frown while Iran, NK built nukes and Taiwanese f-16's got painted as soon as they were taking off.
you just gave me my next blog post!
DeleteExcept modern armor vehicles are at a greater risk to RPGs, mines, and ATGMs than modern air including the V-22 is to RPGs and manpads.
DeleteAsk yourself why the various versions of the GCV weigh more than the M1 Abrams...
you're so wrong it hurts. a properly conducted anti-helo ambush can riddle aircraft. one rpg hit on a helicopter will kill it.
Deletethe enemy in Afghanistan has been getting kills on our helos with RPGs and they're a disorganized, poorly led mob. what happens when you go up against real terrorist with real weapons. Hezbollah would take at least a half dozen helos to the grave without breaking a sweat. they have the gear to do it too.
how well do you think a helo will do against ripple fired manpads?
The current administrations supporters hate the military and will persist in arranging smashing defeats, mass deaths and injuries to the military out of hate and spite.
ReplyDeleteThese people want to destroy the US military as a war winning force because these people see the US as the biggest threat to wold peace.
These people are working very diligently to turn the citizens against the military with sex charges and shouts of how our military is full of rapist of women who only desire to be Combat infantry women. The democrats are destroying the Nation for revenge against Bush, Iraq, the Indian wars, the Mexico wars etc.
The idea is to field a force that is helpless to defend it self so these people can shout out in glee as our troops die by the thousands for America's sins past, present and future.
The Obama idea is to destroy and break up the United States the way the Soviet Union died.
Once you see and accept this then every action taken makes perfect sense.
The administration wants it's soldiers and sailors dead.
I am at a loss as to how this kills the JMR? Even at its current rate the oldest V-22's will be 23 years old when the first JMR's are supposed to enter service. The Army is in know hurry to replace the H-60's.
ReplyDeletei contend that the Army will be brought onto the V-22 program as they were suppose be anyway, and we'll see a buy of V-22s by them.
Deletethis purchase will keep the V-22 in production long enough to ensure that it will be a competitor in that program and because it will have zero development costs, superior performance and a down slopping cost curve, it will win by default.