ISIS is still fighting hard in the Philippines.

via Almasdarnews

Six troops were shot dead and four more wounded as militants loyal to Abu Sayyaf (local ISIS franchise group) attacked a Philippine Army convoy on the island of Basilan on Wednesday.

According to Colonel Juvymax Uy, Task Force Basilan Commander, the jihadist insurgents opened fire as government forces approached the Basilan Circumferential Road near the town of Sumisip, leading to a firefight that lasted three hours.

Story here. 

Why are these computer gamers dying so young?

via Kotaku.

Team Liquid confirmed last night that League of Legends head coach and former Overwatch coach Dennis “INTERNETHULK” Hawelka died yesterday, at age 30.

Outstream Video

The family of Hawelka have not yet released details as per the cause or time of death.

Hawelka was a longtime veteran of the esports scene, competing in everything from StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft to League and Overwatch.

Story here. 

This is weird and not many people are talking about it.  For some unknown reason I'm seeing a bunch of computer gamers dying young.  I mean its a freaking mystery.

And its happening every couple of months that a high profile guy bites the dust.

Is it drug related?  I don't think so.  We would have heard that screamed to the rooftops I would think.  Energy drinks?  The same.

Lack of sleep isn't the issue either..at least I don't think it is.  I had a BN commander that thought that it was fun to go all out on exercises with no sleep for anybody for 48 hours...just to see how we would do.  We did that probably once every 6 months too.  So sleep deprivation in the form of these 24 hour broadcasts showing these guys playing games isn't the reason either.

So what could it be?

F-35A first USAF deployment...first emergency landing!

Thanks to Noble for the link!

via Japanese Times

 A U.S. Air Force F-35A fighter jet made what appeared to be an emergency landing at a base in Okinawa on Wednesday, only about a week after the U.S. military made its first-ever deployment of the stealth aircraft in the Asia-Pacific region at the base.

The U.S. Air Force said the jet made a “precautionary landing” at the U.S. Kadena Air Base. But the Kadena Municipal Government said it was an “emergency landing,” citing an observation by one of its officials who saw two fire trucks on standby on either side of the runway when the landing was made.

Story here. 

Nothing to see here.  Probably just a bird strike...I mean it worked for the Israelis when one of their F-35's suddenly went off line and is no longer flyable so why won't it work for the USAF?

7 aircraft carriers (and ships of their strike groups) are at sea at the same time? WTF is going on???

via Business Insider.

For the first time in years, seven of the US Navy's 11 nuclear aircraft carriers are at sea simultaneously, according to US Naval Institute News.

The USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), USS Nimitz (CVN 68), and USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) are in the Western Pacific on operational deployments. They have full air wings and carrier escorts.

The USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) and USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) are in the Eastern Pacific, while the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and the brand-new USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) are in the Atlantic. Those four carriers are on training missions or doing workups before deployments.

All the carriers — including the ones converging on the Western Pacific — are on planned operations amid President Donald Trump's 12-day trip to Asia.

Story here. 

Someone better be able to write a big ass check to the US Navy for this "situation"!

What do I mean.

Maintenance.  Every single ship is gonna need after deployment work done it. Seven carrier strike groups out at the same time?  That's alot of maintenance work!

Personnel.  Those sailors on deployment are gonna all rate at least a few days off when they get back.  They also should rate some dwell time.  But unfortunately the Navy is just like every other institution.  You have people that are homesteading...they never go to sea.  So that means that someone is gonna have to write a check to all those guys that are gonna be asked to go back on float just as soon as they got back.  I thought cross decking was a thing of the past.  I guess I was wrong.

If this is just a result of a couple of combatant commanders smelling their oats and deciding that they rated an aircraft carrier, or if this is part of the runup to war...I just don't know.

What I do know is that seeing more than half our carrier strength and escorts at sea at the same time is peculiar as hell!

Three Carrier Strike Groups in the Sea of Japan at the same time? That's a huge amount of firepower for a bluff!

via USNI News

Three U.S. carrier strike groups will drill together – in the first tri-carrier operations in a decade of the Korean peninsula in the Sea of Japan, several sources confirmed to USNI News on Wednesday.

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), along with their escorts and air wings, are set to meet off the coast of Korea for four days of exercises later this week.

“These three carriers are not there specifically targeting North Korea. … This is a routine demonstration of our commitment to the region,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford said last week.

Story here. 

Everyone is missing the real story here.  People are getting locked in on 3 carriers operating together.  That's the wrong way to look at it.  This is one of those times when you MUST be clear and specific. 

We have 3 Carrier Strike Groups operating together.

Check out the pic below that shows the composition of an "average" carrier strike group.

This is the standard.  We don't know if these groups have been enhanced/reinforced or augmented.

Do you get the force of connection here?

The US Navy has been complaining about maintenance and getting its rotation back in order and with this one move they're throwing that out the window for at least a year if not longer.

I don't know what's going on but I definitely don't buy that this is a simple training move.  They're messing up too many people, are potentially taking too many ships off the line (in the future...for maintenance) for this to be just training.

The Combatant Commander requested this and I imagine we'll all find out why so enough.

Oh and my prediction stands.  A limited strike on N. Korea with no boots on the ground (except for maybe a suicidal Special Ops raid to decapitate the little fat boy....SOCOM needs to learn to say no!) will occur sometime this winter.  I'm figuring late Nov all the way to early March.

Open Comment Post. Nov 9, 2017

1/6 @ the Combat Center...pics by Lance Cpl. Angel D. Travis

Latest F-35 talking points don't even mention stealth...

The F-35A Conventional Takeoff and Landing variant is an agile, versatile, high- performance 9g multirole fighter that provides unmatched capability and unprecedented situational awareness to the U.S. Air Force and its allies around the world. Lockheed Martin photo by Liz Lutz. f35.com

Hmm.  First make sure you read the caption on the pic above.

Next, notice that there is a photo dump of the F-35 after news is breaking out in the UK and Denmark doubting the capabilities and cost of the plane.

Finally check out that caption again.  Agile, versatile, high performance multi role fighter?  I disagree with that but let's just roll with it for now.

What happened to affordable and stealth?

You do get the force of connection don't you?  The talking point has changed once again.  If I'm right I think this is the fourth time.  First stealth was the big bad that couldn't be copied.  But we heard from Raytheon about their GaN tech with the Russians, Chinese, SAAB and others saying that they could detect stealth too, so the stealth talking point vanished.

Then they hit on the sensor fusion.  But everyone FINALLY asked what did they mean by fusion and that talking point took a hit.  It all came back to the AESA array and even the most batshit crazy fanboy had to admit that legacy planes could carry more powerful arrays and that the EOTS on the F-35 was being outperformed by the latest offerings already on the market.

Looking for a way out of this trap they switched to affordability.  They put out several press alerts about how the cost of the F-35 was rapidly going down.  But under close examination by others, that was quickly left in the ditch bleeding from a thousand cuts with the program office once again looking like a bunch of liars.

So now they're back to what we see above.

If I wasn't so convinced that the F-35 is a failure of epic proportions it would be funny.

US Army Air Defense Artillery @ Exercise Artemis Strike....(Pics)

US Army Air Defense Artillery @ Exercise Artemis Strike in Crete, Greece...Vid

Russia has the world's largest armor fleet.

via Pravda.

"During the five-year period, from 2012 to 2017, the Russian army has received more than 25,000 units of new armored and motor vehicles and 4,000 state-of-the-art models of rocket and artillery weapons, which allowed the Russian Federation take the first place in the world in terms of the number of tanks, infantry combat vehicles and MLRS systems," Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Army General Dmitry Bulgakov told the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper.

Story here.

Even if you cut those numbers in half, the Russians still outpace the West by a large number.

The armor race is on and US Army/Marine Corps leadership doesn't seem to notice or care.

US Army Special Ops Soldiers (Ooh Rah Vid)