Wednesday, December 20, 2017
USMC dumps 120mm Mortars!
Thanks to FormerDirtDart for the link!
via Military.com
In a push to build its modernization budget and invest in new technologies, the Marine Corps has hauled at least one program of record to the curb -- and is looking for more to cut.Story here.
The Corps has already divested of the 120mm Expeditionary Fire Support System to make way for other capabilities, Lt. Gen. Robert Walsh, commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command, told Military.com in an interview.
The EFSS, fielded in the early 2000s, was designed to be extremely portable, small enough to be towed by an all-terrain vehicle that fits easily inside an MV-22 Osprey.
Made by General Dynamics, the full system weighs roughly 18 pounds and can fire high-explosive, smoke and illumination rounds. The system was fired in combat for the first time in 2011.
The news that the Marine Corps is cutting ties with the program is something of a surprise, considering the service was in the process of acquiring a new round: the Raytheon-made GPS-guided precision extended range munition, or PERM, expected to increase the accuracy of the system and extend its range from roughly five miles to 10.
JESUS! Make up my mind HQMC! Which is it?
I have shouted to the rooftops that the Company Landing Team is a bad idea and that the battlefield has changed. I've pounded walls stating that we have seen terrorists morph into nation state type forces (damn near combined arms teams) and that the CLT would not survive against that threat and would be less than a speed bump against peer/near peer forces.
The response amounted to this. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, so sit down and shut up, you snotty nosed bitch!
And then we have this.
I don't get it.
What happened to the air enabled MEU? So in one fell swoop they dump 120mm mortars? What is going to support the CLT 24-7?
Simply amazing.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Is the Israeli Army doing a "preemptive" roundup to stop a new Intifada?
via imemc.org
Ahed al-Tamimi, a 16-year old girl from Nabi Saleh who has filmed the brutality of Israeli soldiers in her village since she was ten, was abducted from her home Tuesday morning by Israeli soldiers during a pre-dawn raid. Later Tuesday morning, when her mother Nariman went to Benjamin police station, to ask about her daughters, the Israeli army’s response was to abduct the mother as well. The family still does not know anything about the evolution of the situation.Story here.
The soldiers, according to local sources, invaded the town with armored vehicles at 3 am and drove up to the al-Tamimi family home. They broke into the home, wrested the sleeping family from their beds, and ransacked the house, stealing all the family’s cell phones and computers. They then abducted the teen girl and took her to an interrogation center.
My blogging has been spotty but I've seen a real uptick of stories with regard to the IDF conducting raids/ops in Palestinian areas.
Up till now they've been what I would call arrests of the usual suspects. Accused bomb makers, tunnel diggers, and foot soldiers of Hezbollah.
But why would this girl be on their arrest list?
My only guess is that they're prepping for a new Intifada and this girl showed up on their radar because she's got a bit of notoriety and is considered a person that influences thought?
I really can't think of anything else it could be because of my limited visibility on the issue.
So yeah. This is all speculation.
But a new Intifada? That would be unfortunate for everyone involved. It would be nasty. I hope both sides will let cooler heads prevail.
UK's Ministry of Defence refuses to disclose how much the F-35 costs!
via The Telegraph
he Government’s failure to disclose how much Britain’s new stealth jets will cost is unacceptable and risks undermining public confidence in the programme, MPs are warning.Story here.
The multi-billion pound scheme to buy F-35 Lightning II jump jets is the UK’s second largest weapons programme, but the MOD has refused to tell Parliament how much they will cost.
A Commons defence select committee report has said the MOD’s response is “wholly unacceptable” and demanded six monthly updates on the programme to buy the Lockheed Martin jets.
Julian Lewis MP, chairman of the committee said: “There has been an unacceptable lack of transparency from the MoD and Lockheed Martin which risks undermining public confidence in the programme.
“F-35 is a major investment for the UK and we want it to succeed for the good of this country’s security.
"However, it is precisely because this project is so important that it must be subjected to the closest possible scrutiny.”
MOD officials repeatedly failed to give the committee the full cost of each aircraft, including spares, upgrades and retrofits.
Read it and weep F-35 fanboys.
While the US Dept of Defense can play games with the costs of the F-35 with budget tricks and tout jobs in the UK its a bit more complicated.
They have a robust defense media.
Instead of lawyers debating various legalism to get the plane across the finish line, in the UK they have accountants that are ready to pour over every line in the budget.
In short?
Wave the flag, trot out a few pilots and generals (to impress the ladies and the idiots that are dazzled by stars and images of Tom Cruise in Top Gun), and play with the numbers a bit (along with a huge dose of paid off Congress Critters) and you could sell bricks as a hypersonic airplane and many would still believe.
In the UK?
Not so fucking much. Add the foul mood (that I didn't see coming) because of Brexit and the belt tightening that is resulting from that move and it is entirely possible that the F-35 buy that the UK had programmed will indeed be cut from 138 down to 48.
F 18 Fighters Encounter With UFO....
I absolutely love the conversation they're having in this vid. I'd be uttering MANY more expletives but the gist of it would be the same. What the fuck are we looking at!!!!!
They'll figure out what this is and they'll either tell us or they won't. UFOs making a comeback? Who could have figured that?
China just pulled off the most successful foreign policy act in Africa in decades...and no one is noticing...
via The New York Times.
As the line of Chinese-made armored vehicles rumbled into Harare last month, Zimbabwe’s 93-year-old dictator, Robert Mugabe, must have wondered what happened to the “all-weather friendship” Beijing always said they shared. For nearly four decades, Mugabe had been one of China’s staunchest allies. His “Look East” policy signaled Africa’s economic shift away from the West toward the rising superpower. Yet as the bloodless coup against him unfolded, Beijing offered no words of support or sympathy. Instead, there was silence — until afterward, when President Xi Jinping of China rushed to congratulate Mugabe’s successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa.Story here.
The circumstances surrounding the end of Mugabe’s 37-year reign are the stuff of spy novels: a high-level meeting in Beijing four days earlier, the armed showdown at Harare airport, the old dictator’s last-ditch attempt to assert his authority. But the episode also tells a tale of China’s evolving relationship with the world it is shaping through loans, trade and investments. In an era when the United States seems to be on the retreat — notice the absence of Americans from this story — it can be easy to shrug off China’s advance as another instance of its rapid, ineluctable expansion. But the fall of Mugabe, a charismatic despot who drove his economy to ruin, shows how Beijing is learning to navigate, very carefully, through turbulent transitions in places where it has deep economic ties, sometimes decades old, and how countries bend to the arc of China’s gravity.
This is the most ominous development for the US in more than a decade. As horrific as 9/11 was...as tragic as all the deaths and wasted treasure in the middle east is...as worrying as N. Korea's and Iran's push for nuclear weapons are....
China solving the "soft power" problem is what will threaten US supremacy into the future (along with their massive military buildup).
It's down played in the story but China just accomplished an internal coup.
Think about it like this. Let's say country X has both Chinese and US military bases on its shores (not hard to imagine...but let's play the game). China uses its soft power in ways we can't right now (because they haven't wasted money in the middle east for over 20 years, don't have to worry about rebuilding infrastructure at home because they've always done it and don't have citizens crying for more because the Chinese have a cultural belief that they owe the state as much as the state owes them) by buidling roads, bridges etc in that country.
China sees the US attempting to prop up country X's current ruler with increased arms sales.
China sees all this, meets with a junior officer or two on their base, a coup is started and the leader that we had been backing is removed. One year later the lease is called on our base and we're ejected while China falls in on the stuff that we built...to include the McDonald's that they reflag into the Chinese version and operate as normal.
China has solved the puzzle and we better get harder faster or we're gonna be roadkill.
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