The U.S. Air Force may solicit bids for 72 new Boeing F-15s, Lockheed Martin F-16s or even Boeing F/A-18E/Fs as budget issues put planned production rates for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter out of reach, according to senior service and industry officials at the Defense IQ International Fighter Conference ...Death spiral!!!!
Some of the suspects in the Paris attacks took advantage of Europe's migrant crisis to "slip in" unnoticed, the French premier said Thursday, warning the EU needed to "take responsibility" over border controlsThen this...
More than 800,000 migrants and refugees have arrived this year and Valls said some of the Paris attackers had turned the chaos to their advantage.Interesting.
"These individuals took advantage of the refugee crisis... of the chaos, perhaps, for some of them to slip in" to France, he said on the France 2 television station.
"Others were in Belgium already. And others, I must remind you, were in France."
Earlier, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Paris had received "no information" from other European countries about Abaaoud's arrival on the continent, despite the fact he was a known jihadist and the subject of an international arrest warrant.
Police sources said a tip-off from Moroccan intelligence had helped track 28-year-old Abaaoud to the building where he died on Wednesday along with a woman thought to be his cousin, who detonated an explosives vest.
Gunmen have taken 170 people hostage inside the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali's capital, Bamako.
The hotel chain said two armed men have locked in 140 guests and 30 employees.
Malian soldiers with help from U.N. troops have the hotel surrounded.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the incident.
"This week there was a big delegation for the peace process at the Radisson hotel in Bamako," said Olivier Saldago, a spokesman for MINUSMA. MINUSMA is the U.N. mission in the nation.
The United Nations sent peacekeepers to Mali in 2013 to guard against militant Islamists who threatened to move on Bamako.
The U.S. Embassy in Mali asked American citizens and its staffers to remain indoors. The embassy, in a tweet, called it an "ongoing active shooter operation."
Under Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Joint Special Operations Command developed a system that linked forceful action with immediate processing of intelligence and real time analysis. Special operators launched missions at dusk and continued all night; hitting one safe house after another, analyzing the information gained in one strike and launching subsequent raids based on what they found, in hours.More here.
How was this operational tempo achieved? First, the United States was working with the full support, consent and backing of the elected Iraqi government. The U.S. dominated the battle space, there was relatively sizable local support, and these teams enjoyed full air support, including medical evacuation, in the event an operation went poorly.
Mike Rogers is a former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a host of the Westwood One radio program "Something to Think About," and a CNN national security commentator.Make no mistake about it. Rogers is connected. He has the ear of not only SOCOM but also elements of Special Forces and the Navy SEALs. If he's writing this then someone is trying to downplay the effect that SOCOM will have in the fight on ISIS.
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| Look at the horizon not the ground! You want to get a dose of ground rush!! |
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| Relax your body .... get ready for that PLF! |
“It was not a test, it was a demonstration,” Dan Grazier, a former Marine and member of a government watchdog group said. “Pretty much they just wanted pictures of the F35 taking off an aircraft carrier.”But then we have this from Investors Business Daily...
The Project on Government Oversight, otherwise known as POGO secured the results from Operational Test One through a Freedom of Information request. The detailed report admits the exercise was not a test because it did not mimic real life scenarios. Furthermore the results from Operational Test One found the F35 was not effective and could not be used in any type of limited combat operations.
Mandy Smithberger with POGO says if these jets are taken into combat, our pilots could be in danger. “The Marine Corps declaring the F35 ready for combat was merely a PR exercise.” Smithberger says ideally when jets are taken into combat they need to be ready to go about 80-percent of the time, during this test they were having trouble getting them to work 50 percent of the time.
“And there have been even new tests that have come out that say there are problems with the ejection seat,” she added. “Pilot under a certain weight are at risk of death if they try and eject.”
For Grazier his concern is also the pilots. He maintains because the Lightning II cannot fly enough to be tested, our pilots are at a disadvantage and their training will suffer. “I spent 10 and a half years of my life in uniform, I get no satisfaction in criticizing the Marine Corps,” he said. “These pilots are not going to be trained, god forbid they have to go up against an opponent, they are not going to be as good.”
While the F-35 is ready to for combat, it doesn't mean it will be used for this mission.Hmmm. Someone is lying.
"The aircraft has the capability to deploy anywhere right now — including the Middle East," 1st Lt. Sarah Burns, a public affairs officer, wrote in an email to IBD. "With that said, the Marine Corps is maintaining a very deliberate timeline to ensure the F-35 introduction into the fleet is done safely and responsibly, thus unless absolutely necessary, the aircraft will not deploy until 2017."
The Marine Corps should purchase 94 Embraer A-29 Super Tucanos and 53 fewer F-35Bs to ensure it has a more lethal, expeditionary, economical, and scalable FW attack-aircraft community. The more diverse mix would better support EF21 ’s vision. Potential adversaries would most likely use guerrilla or hybrid strategies against U.S. forces, but an FW attack community that flies only F-35s would be optimized to only counter conventional ones. The A-29, winner of the U.S. Air Force’s light air-support (LAS) competition, is primed to counter guerrilla strategies. As the venerable adage about preparedness advises, “Two is one, one is none.” A complementary mix of F-35s and A-29s would increase the capabilities and versatility of the Marine FW attack aircraft community at a lower cost than the current plan to only purchase F-35s.Yeah. The tribe is beginning to take stock of what's happening budget wise and questioning the F-35.
