Open Comment Post. Oct 20, 2017

Navy to build Advanced Super Hornet equivalents?

via Defense News.

Boeing believes an upcoming service life extension of its Super Hornet fleet, set to begin next year, would be an optimum time for the Navy to build in new upgrades, add conformal fuel tanks and to make it more stealthy.

The Navy and Boeing are currently negotiating the first service life modification (SLM) contract — expected to be awarded early 2018 — which will lay out the structural modifications the company will conduct to extend the life of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet from 6,000 to 9,000 flight hours.

But for an additional cost, the company could also upgrade the Super Hornets to the more advanced Block III configuration during the modification period, said Mark Sears, Boeing’s director of SLM.

“What SLM allows is, while we have the aircraft open to do the life extension mod, we can go ahead and apply the provisionings for the conformal fuel tanks, the advanced cockpit station and also the advanced networking [system],” he said. The company could also apply low observable coating to the aircraft to help reduce the aircraft’s signature.

Sears couldn’t provide a specific price tag for inserting the Block 3 mods into SLM, but acknowledged that there would be an additional cost to develop retrofit kits as well as “a few million” dollars more per plane to make the relevant changes.

Story here. 

This is brilliant.  Life extensions of the currently identified aircraft would make them into what would be Advanced Super Hornets.

Even better?  By the time they finish with the upgrade to the aircraft they want life extended now, other newer aircraft will get the same treatment so that they're all built to the same standard.

The much delayed, hyper expensive F-35 will end up pushing the Navy to not only buy more Super Hornets but to also make them more capable.

Boeing will wind up winning in the end.

I consider this another piece of data to prove that the buy of F-35s will be much reduced.  Meanwhile I'm still waiting on the report comparing the Super Hornet to the F-35 for Navy use AND a report detailing how many Growlers the services need for electronic warfare.

Officers keep screwing up....Marine Colonel on Joint Staff Busted in Prostitution Sting

via Military.com

A large-scale prostitution and human trafficking sting in Florida's Polk County this week resulted in the arrest of a seasoned Marine colonel assigned to the Joint Staff.

Tampa Bay Times reported that Col. Kevin Scott was among 277 individuals arrested and charged in "Operation No Tricks, No Treats," a sting carried out by the Polk County Sheriff's Office.

Master Sgt. Ryan O'Hara, a spokesman for Marine Corps Forces Command, confirmed that Scott was assigned to Joint Staff Suffolk, Virginia.

Scott entered the Marine Corps in 1984 and is a logistics officer, O'Hara said.

"Everything's under investigation now," he said, adding that more actions may be taken by the service pending the results of the investigation.

..........

 When he was arrested, the paper reported, he claimed he was retired and no longer serving in the Marine Corps.

"We had to call the government and say, 'Hey would you like to come get your leased car 'cause your colonel is on the way to the county jail,' the paper quotes Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd as saying.

According to the Times, Scott was charged with a single misdemeanor count of soliciting a prostitute.

Story here. 

Wow.  How can I say what's really on my mind and not have the entire tribe thinking I've lost what little brain cells I have left?

Ah fuck it.

Question.  This dude was picking up sleazy ass street whores?  He got busted in a fucking low level, no brain power required, street level prostitution ring?

They need to test the dude for crack. That's so stupid it must be drug related!

The Officer Corps is broken.

I can see LCpl Schmucatelli doing some crap like this...even Gunny whoever...even Lt or Capt nobody...but a Colonel?  A freaking senior officer? Something is very wrong in the upper ranks.

Sidenote.  It's a misdemeanor crime but his career is over.  If he's lucky they'll give him a letter of warning and let him quietly move on with his life.

Sidenote 1.  Did you read the highlighted part of the story?  Sounds like the cops were almost gleeful.  Cops that chase whores are the weird part of any dept I've ever heard of.

Chief of Staff Kelly spoke and I now believe both sides got it screwed up...

First General Kelly is one hell of a public speaker.  He told the story of Dunford being his Casualty Assistance Officer and it was heartbreaking.  A reporter asked him about why we were in Niger and I still disagree with his rationale.

But back on task.

Kelly said that Dunford told him (paraphrasing) that his son was doing what he wanted to do, signed up for and was surrounded by the best 1% that this nation has to offer.

He stated that he told the President not to make the call but that Trump insisted that it needed to be done.  Additionally the story above is what he told Trump when asked how a phone call should be done.

He went on to say that Trump was not disrespectful but tried his best to relay comforting words to the family.

I paused hard when I heard that.

Trump tried to mimic the conversation that Kelly had with Dunford when he was being informed of his son's death.  That little diddy about Kelly's son doing what he wanted to do, signed up for and being surrounded by the best the nation has to offer probably came out in typically Trump fashion.

All wrong.

So what actually happened?

I think both sides got this screwed up.  Trump fumbled and bumbled his way thru a conversation with a family that was in the midst of despair and the family misunderstood Trump's attempt at comforting words because of how he presented them.

This whole thing is fucked up.

Time to let the family absorb this in private and hopefully one day be at peace.

I'm done with this whole affair.  Quite honestly I feel dirty.  This whole thing has been one massive clusterfuck that did nothing but tear the country up just a bit more.

You want to fight in MegaCities? Consider the fate of Marawi in the Philippines (pics)...

Pics via Newsr.com

Theory is good.  Reality is brutal.  What you see in Marawi is the aftermath of a five month fight.  Marawi is NOT a mega city.  It is not highly populated and lacks some of the infrastructure/buildings that we would see in a megacity.

Multiply what you see above by 1000 and then you MIGHT get close to the amount of devastation that we will see in a fight there.

You want to fight in megacities?

You need a drug test cause you're smoking crack!  Story here.

Whoa! The US meddled in Russian elections?

via Washington Times

In interview after interview with top U.S. intelligence officials and foreign diplomats about the downward spiral in U.S.-Russian relations, one date keeps resurfacing: January 2012.
That month Michael McFaul, President Obama’s newly appointed ambassador to Russia, arrived in snow-covered Moscow and almost immediately began meeting with opposition leaders and human rights activists critical of the Kremlin.
It was a provocative move at a sensitive moment when Vladimir Putin was already seething over perceived American backing of mass protests designed to smear him. The Russian president was also facing a wobbly economy as global oil prices plunged as he struggled to reclaim Russia’s influence on the world stage.
Mr. McFaul, an academic by training and a political appointee, had never served as an ambassador before. The sandy-haired Montana native was 49 at the time, and in the midst of his whirlwind first month in Moscow, he blogged that he’d started things off “with a bang.”

Story here. 

The Russians that visit this page have been saying that we meddled in their elections but I never read anything that corroborated that opinion in our media...until now.

There was alot going on in Europe and the Middle East with those Color Revolutions.

I can call this now.

Trump will be found to have NOT colluded with the Russians and except for some relatively minor sanctions (against Manifort and Flynn) this thing will be allowed to die.

Meanwhile I need to hit the Internet Wayback Machine.  Seems like I missed some important stuff back in 2012.

Sidenote.  One thing rings so true about this.  Obama loved that secret squirrel stuff.  He liked manipulating things in the background.  Can I prove that?  No.  But it is the impression I get.  His love of Special Ops is obvious and its also obvious that he loved the clandestine services too.

Afghan Army Unit Nearly Wiped Out

via NYTimes

 An Afghan Army unit in the south of the country was almost completely wiped out on Thursday, defense officials said, in an attack by the Taliban that used what is becoming one of the group’s deadliest tactics: packing vehicles captured from security forces with explosives and driving them into military and police compounds.

At least 43 soldiers were killed in the predawn attack, out of a unit of 60 based in Maywand District in Kandahar Province, the Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement. Only two soldiers were found unhurt. Nine were wounded, and six were missing.

Story here. 

Small unit actions.  Counterinsurgency.  Global war on terrorism.  Generational war.  We're doing it all wrong.

You want to know the genesis of the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq?  We're having a rerun of Vietnam.

My theory of things goes like this.  Remember Amos?  He participated in writing the "revised" counterinsurgency manual.  When did he cut his teeth in Marine Squadrons?  Near the end of the Vietnam war.  What does every person that fought in that conflict say?  That we were winning but pulled out too soon.

What was the Marine Corps' prized "development" in the fight in Vietnam against an insurgency?  The Combined Action Program.  What are we doing on a global basis today?  A modernized Combined Action Program.

Our strategy is bad.  Our concept is broken. 

In short.  We need to rethink this thing.  If it didn't work for the first almost 20 years of war then it won't work for the next 20 years.  We're doing the same thing and expecting different results.

But back on task.

The current govt in Afghanistan is the former "Northern Army".  When Special Forces and CIA Covert Action Teams rode in on horseback and toppled the Taliban, we inserted the Northern Army into the govt to replace them.

The problem?

The NA has always been the weak horse in Afghanistan.  The reality is stark but obvious.  We teamed with a weak partner.  They will NEVER be able to stand on their own.  They will never form an effective govt and they will never be able to have a self sustaining military.

As things currently stand, we can't win in Afghanistan.  At least not as long as we're chasing hearts and minds instead of putting steel on target.

Warhammer News. Americans fear a major war with N. Korea...

via Newsweek

The majority of Americans fear the country will get involved in a major war during Donald Trump’s first term as president, with most people viewing North Korea as an enemy and the biggest threat to the U.S.
In an online poll conducted by NBC News/SurveyMonkey between October 13-17, 72 percent of surveyed Americans said they are worried the U.S. might be embroiled in a key conflict over the next four years, compared to just 26 percent who expressed no concern about the topic.

Story here. 

The psyops is complete.  The American people are properly acclimated to idea of war on the Korean peninsula. 

We can expect a nuanced patriotic theme next.  Not the ham fisted effort by the President to portray a kneeling down when the anthem plays because you're protesting bad shoots by police but a coordinated information campaign aimed at bolstering the US armed forces and supporting the troops (which in turn will actually mean supporting govt decisions).

The wildcard will be China.

I don't know if our guys are into game theory but we have to anticipate what their moves will be to ours.  We have to anticipate that even if they "cooperate" it will be with an eye toward weakening our position in the Pacific.

In light of this news I think that the Chinese President's recent speech was to prep HIS NATION for action in N. Korea.

My thinking is that they will launch an operation seemingly in cooperation with the US to enter  N. Korea and annex a portion of the country to provide a buffer against the possibility of the regime falling if we're actually able to decapitate the North's leader.

My prediction remains the same.

We will see some type of military action this winter...late this year early next.

Malaysian Army bets on Miniguns for its "Anti-Invasion" Force!

via Senang Diri

The "anti invasion" capability of the Malaysian Army is correspondingly increased because the weight of fire and accuracy of Malaysian infantry is substantially enhanced, thanks to the miniguns. When augmented by 40mm automatic grenade launchers and RPGs fielded as anti-infantry weapons, such firepower is devastating noteworthy.

Whether in an ambush, meeting engagement, deliberate attack or block force operations, the amount of firepower Malaysian infantry can deliver in a shootout could potentially rattle soldiers coming under fire for the first time.

It is important not to overlook the psychological effect of a first clash that provokes a fierce reaction against an intruder's soldiers. The minigun is thus a misnomer as there is certainly nothing "mini" about the deluge of aimed, sustained, automatic fire minigun operators can bring to bear against their target.

Malaysian defence planners probably reasoned that when its infantry is sent into operations against an intruder who controls the skies, and one with an advantage in armoured platforms and guided munitions, Malaysian infantry must have what it takes to deliver the heaviest possible firepower when targets are in sight and within range.

Story here. 

Interesting.  I've wondered why miniguns haven't showed up more and it seems like Malaysia is taking the lead.  This seems like a no brainer for ground combat but for some reason we haven't seen them used on armored vehicles in the anti-personnel role until now.

SOCOM got sloppy/arrogant in Niger and put Special Forces Soldiers on a limb with no support!

via NBC News.

The U.S. military is still searching for answers on what happened in Niger two weeks ago when four U.S. soldiers were killed during an ambush, apparently by a branch of ISIS.

Now the Pentagon's Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent a team to the African nation to conduct a "review of the facts," according to two U.S. defense officials. The officials are careful not to call the inquiry an investigation, but admit they simply don't know what happened on Oct. 4.

"We need to collect some very basic raw facts," one defense official said.

In addition to the Pentagon, a top Senate Republican wants answers. Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain of Arizona told reporters this week that the Trump administration was not being forthcoming about what happened in Niger.

"I want the information that the Senate Armed Services Committee deserves and needs," he said.

Some of the facts the AFRICOM team needs to collect, said one defense official, are: Where were U.S. forces when the attack occurred? Did they have adequate personal protective equipment and were they prepared for the attack? Was there adequate intelligence in advance of the mission and adequate response to the attack?

Story here. 

They need basic raw facts?

Bullshit!

We all know what happened.  SOCOM and the Pentagon is so enamored of small unit actions, training/assistance, and its conduct of the war on terror that they've become arrogant and sloppy.

They know that they had terrible intel, inadequate personal protective equipment and did not have proper support.

You don't need to send a team to "find that out".  I can tell you that from my chair!

How do you prevent future tragedies?  It's quite simple.  You put the Combatant Commanders in a cage.  You monitor the force and make sure that they're not strung out from one side of the globe to the other performing too many missions in too many countries without adequate support.  You setup a desk in the SecDef Office to monitor all this and before ANY exercise or mission is approved they must get his ok.

You properly supervise them.  You end these mini-kingdoms.  You rationalize this thing.  We can't keep going like we are or we'll see more of these incidents in the future.