Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV7A1 RAM/RS) **UPDATE***

Had a chance to watch the video again and it dawns on me that BAE is putting forward new capabilities and options. These aren't rebuilds, it appears that BAE might be getting ready to reopen the AAV manufacturing line or at the very least tool up to do massive upgrades.

What tells me that?

Scalable weapons? Not on the current model...not unless Textron is selling drop in turrets...modern communications suite in the command vehicle?? Not in the ones I know about. You're talking Yabba Dabba Do time (prehistoric). I'll send a note to them and see whats up.

Laid off Combat Vets. Could we be looking at Bonus Army 2?

Thanks for adding this log to the fire Paralus!

via Wikipedia.

The Bonus Army was the popular name of an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Its organizers called it the Bonus Expeditionary Force to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Force, while the media called it the Bonus March. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant.

Read the whole thing.  Its a fascinating view of an ignored period of our history.
Could we see another Bonus Army?  Maybe.  If we're lucky.  But thousands of pissed off, disaffected, unemployed combat veterans is not something that any society wants to have.

Like Paralus said in previous comments...

One of the most dangerous things in any society is a large amount of trained soldiers who are unemployed, bored and ticked off. There's a reason why the Romans offered each retired soldier a plot of land and citizenship. It provided a source of income for the former soldiers, it helped populate the frontier with veterans capable of defending their communities while it also expanded the boundaries of the empire.

In about a month, maybe two, you're going to have military members, military blogs, mainstream media and family members waking up to the reality modernization (and lets be honest here...the F-35...everything else has been canned to protect that airplane) has been chosen over personnel.

That's when this will be fun to watch.

Chinese BK1060 35mm Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Artillery (SPAAA) System via Chinese Military Review.

*Interesting.  I see these type systems as being designed specifically to deal with our surveillance/recon UAVs.   Why waste missiles when guns will do...and do it cheaply.  The cost benefit ratio of using UAVs is about to go down...way down...between pilot error, weather issues, landing issues and combat losses we might be approaching a time when UAVs are no longer the cheap throw away weapon they were intended to be.

China's new "Stealth" Main Battle Tank (concept art).

Images via Wwuxinghongqi blog.

AT-6 light attack aircraft

Beechcraft Corporation today announced the completion of the inaugural flight of its first production Beechcraft AT-6 light attack aircraft. The company commemorated the event at its headquarters in Wichita, Kan., with employees and dignitaries. With more than 1,600 hours already logged in AT-6 test aircraft, Beechcraft is offering the AT-6 to U.S. partner nations in need of light attack air support for the most demanding scenarios

For the US Army, shit just got real.

via the Lexington Institute Blog.

In a move which belies the often-heard canard that it is slow to make decisions, the U.S. Army is moving out decisively to reduce overhead spending and protect as much as it can of the fighting force. In an August 14 memorandum to every major command and agency, the Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John McHugh, and the Chief of Staff, General Raymond Odierno, informed their service that they were directing the 2013 Focus Area Review Group to identify areas for major reductions in personnel and expenditures. In what can only be described as a shot across the bow to the institutional Army, the memo states:
“Let there be no mistake, aggregate reductions WILL TAKE PLACE. The money is gone; our mission now is to determine how best to allocate these cuts while maintaining readiness. We expect Army leaders, military and civilian, to seize this opportunity to re-shape our Army. This effort will take PRIORITY OVER ALL other Headquarters, Department of the Army activities.” (emphasis in original)
The tasking provided to the Review Group is another indication of the seriousness with which this effort is viewed and the determination of the Secretary and Chief not to let entrenched interests sidetrack the effort. The Review Group has only a month in which to report back with comprehensive recommendations. The memo directs that except in extraordinary circumstances, recommendations to conduct further studies or assessments are not acceptable. Also, to meet the tight deadline, to the extent practicable, the Review Group will rely on existing data, studies and reviews. In recognition of past efforts at cost reduction that achieved major savings by double counting cuts, there will be an integration cell to aggregate all the reductions.
One goal explicitly called out is to reduce Army Headquarters (both institutional and operational, at the 2-star and above levels) in the aggregate by 25 percent. The impacted organizations were given two weeks - that’s right, just two weeks -- in which to present their plans to cut headquarters by the target amount in terms of both funding and manning.
This move has to rank up there with some of the boldest institutional reform efforts by great Army leaders of the past -- individuals such as Marshall, Taylor, Abrams, Marsh, Vuono and Sullivan. Secretary McHugh and General Odierno deserve recognition and support for this bold effort.
Daniel Goure, Ph.D.

Whats being left unsaid is what happens to the people that suddenly don't have work at these Headquarters Units?

Do they leave the Army?  Get reassigned?

I don't know any soldiers but if I did I'd tell them to take a serious look at their MOS, their SRB and their personal finances.  This is all lining up to that massive downsizing in the force I've been screaming about.

Note:  Please refrain from sending me messages about how this has always been planned.  Yes, reductions in the force were always planned but the downsizing was planned to be gradual and primarily based on attrition.  We're heading into full scale firings.  What will be interesting is how they handle it.  Will CO's be calling in soldiers telling them that their services are no longer needed?  Battalion Commanders?  I don't know but he better have some armed guards around.  Assaults against leadership will probably spike soon...especially when some hard-charger sees his spot taken by a lady that didn't even meet the same standards that he had to.

2S25 Sprut Airborne Tank Destroyer

via Reality Mod.

The Russians have a light tank destroyer based on the BMP-3 that can literally shred any allied APC.  Additionally it should serve well in the fire support role for their airborne forces.

This vehicle is another disturbing example of how lightly equipped our own airborne forces are.

The Russians have the capability to fly, drop by parachute and then storm off a drop zone with mechanized firepower.  Would it have the same throw weight of a Stryker formation?  No.  Would it heel stomp the capabilities found in the 82nd?  Definitely.

Blast from the past. Perry Class Frigates...old skool powerhouse.

People choose to forget what capability was lost with the retirement of the Perry Class Frigates.

*  4200 tons.
*  Single arm launcher for anti-aircraft missiles (SM-1) and Harpoons (total of 41 carried).
*  Torpedo tubes (2) capable of launching Mk 46 and Mk 50 torpedoes.
*  Carriage of two SH-60 helicopters.
*  One 76mm gun (unusual position but doable I guess)
*  One CIWS (20mm phalanx)

And we're replacing this old warhorse with a ship that has a 57mm gun.  Two 30mm cannons.  Maybe two helicopters....and that's it so far.  Hopefully more to come but that's all we see right now.

What is the main difference between the Perry Class and the LCS?

Operating concepts.

When the Perry Class was put into service we expected to sail into harms way alone...without support of any allied Navy.... we expected to fight....and we expected to win.

The LCS is designed with partnership missions in mind.  Cooperation and joint exercises are its reason for being.  Think about that.  Navy leadership has emphasized partnership missions over war fighting.

The LCS is as flawed as the leadership that came up with the concept.

Mechanized Artillery. via Chinese Military Review.

Blohm+Voss MEKO® 600 Class Escort Frigate

Thanks for the links Nicky!

Based on the proven design of the Blohm+Voss Class 124 frigate, the Blohm+Voss MEKO^® 600 escort frigate incorporates all of the redundancy, survivability, stealth, sea-keeping and helicopter operability of the German Navy ships, but upgraded to incorporate enhanced state-of-the-art electronics and more powerful weapons. The Blohm+Voss MEKO^® 600 has been designed to fulfil ASW, AAW, ASuW, sea control, power projection, escort and task force protection and commander task force missions. This vessel is particularly suited for blue water escort of high value assets and the defence of national offshore key points.

And then this light frigate thats another LCS killer....

Superiority by Flexibility

The Combat Ship for the Littorals (CSL) is a highly innovative design incorporating an ingenious fusion of technologies including MEKO^® Mission Modularity, extreme high speeds, a combination of steel hull and composite superstructure, an integrated mast, total stealth characteristics, a 360° bridge concept completed by all advanced MEKO^® features and thus presents the most advanced MEKO^® design in the product range of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.

The MEKO^® CSL is designed as a mono-hull with the hull constructed of higher tensile steel and the superstructure of FRP sandwich material. This choice was taken due to some advantages of this material combination, such as lower structural weight, which results in higher weight allowance for the Multi Mission payload, lower RCS due to similar electrical conductivity of both materials but higher flatness of the composite panels for the superstructure as well as a lower infra-red signature due to better thermal conductivity.

It really should be obvious to everyone by now.

The LCS is the wrong ship, at too great a cost, that delivers too little.

I'm not holding my breath but it would be refreshing to hear the Chief Of Naval Operations have the guts to say that we were wrong and we need to start over.

F-35 at sea.

Note:  Don't get it twisted.  The Marine Corps can't afford this beast.
Note 1:  The pentagon and LM are in a full court press with this.  The Navy releases a video and minutes later LM releases photos?  They're going to fight tooth and nail to drag this across the finish line.

Two F-35B Lightning II Jets Begin Developmental Testing II Aboard USS Wasp

2nd Infantry Division gets the Assault Breacher Vehicle.

The 1st Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, received six assault breacher vehicles during the last five months. The ABV will help to reduce the breaching time and increase soldiers’ survivability. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Kyle J. Richardson, 1st ABCT PAO)

 

I can't help but have mixed feelings about this vehicle.

On the one hand, the Marine Corps deserves serious applause for taking lemons and making lemon aide when it comes to developing a vehicle that Congress denied them.

On the other hand, the US Army had a perfectly fine, purpose designed Combat Engineer Vehicle ready to go but the Congress refused to fund it.

With that being said this is a good stop gap but work needs to continue to field a real CEV.  Follow this example and base it off the hull of an M1...maybe even design a drop in module with a excavator in addition to the line charges, dozer blade and some type of demolition gun.

Combat Engineers for both the Army  and Marine Corps have swung so far to the Sapper side of the fence that mechanized missions will be a challenge.  Even now it might be a lost art.

The Israeli Tamuz missile.

Hmmm.  Don't quite know what to make of this one.  Its been in use since the 1980's but they're just now declassifying it now?  Its based on the Spike missile?  What they aren't saying is that this missile is based off the TOW missile and is just an ultra long range version of it.  I guess the real question has to be if all those vaunted Israeli UAV strikes were actually carried out by UAVs or if they simply had infiltrated personnel into contested areas and had them make precision calls for fire.

Read more about this missile at the Jewish Press by clicking here.

Monday.

Well we now know that LM's sales team works Sundays!

Thanks David for the link.

via Reuters.

Aug 18 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp said on Sunday it would continue to work with the U.S. government on South Korea's huge fighter jet competition, despite reports that the firm's F-35 had been eliminated due to its high cost leaving only Boeing Co's F-15 in the running.
"Lockheed Martin has not received an official notification from the Republic of Korea regarding the results of the price bidding for the F-X Program," the company said in a statement.
"The F-X source selection process has multiple phases and we will continue to work closely with the U.S. government as they offer the F-35 to Korea," it said.

Read the whole thing.

Geez.

Know when its closing time boys. Get up from the bar, stumble to your ride home and sleep off the rejection.

The British Army dies in Oct. via UK Armed Forces Commentary.

via UKAFC.

If it is true, the British Army is dead

The Telegraph says that in October all the 31 remaining battalions of the army under Army 2020 will be cut back further, to 520-man establishments.

This is a completely new thing. The Army has been planning to reach the 82.000 regulars figure having only Light Role infantry battalions cut back to comparable levels, and even those actually higher: 561 men. Considering that this means removing one rifle platoon from each Company, hoping in a top-up coming from paired reserve battalion before deployment, i can't even begin to imagine what a battalion of 520 men would look like. It would probably be utterly useless.


The reduction to Light Role Infantry battalions and Gurkhas already can't be described as smart because the Reserves recruitment is, so far at least, going horribly, and there are three such downsized infantry battalions which do not have at all a paired reserve battalion from which to draw manpower: 1 SCOTS battalion and the two Gurkha battalions are left unpaired in the announced Army 2020 plan, because there are not enough reserve infantry battalions.

Read the whole thing here.

Add another kill to the belt of the F-35.  You either buy the F-35 and nothing else or you have a military.   Seems like the Brits have decided to have the F-35 instead of a military. 

NOTE:  Don't ignore this development.  The Brits are the canary in the coal mine.  

F-15 for the win?

Thanks to everyone that passed along this news...inbox was full when I checked it!

So it seems that the F-15 is the last man standing in the S. Korean fighter competition.  I wonder what the implications are.

F-35B. Do other countries really want to operate them off big decks?

Japan just launched a big deck LHD.

Everyone is assuming that means that they want to operate F-35B's from its deck....but why?  The Japanese aren't about to become expeditionary.  Every change in the constitution regarding defense is just to make there posture an active, not passive one.

Look at Singapore.  Yes, they assisted the US in Afghanistan (or should I say NATO) but again, their entire force is built around repelling an attack, not in being an expeditionary force.

Additionally many of the countries in the Pacific can cover areas of interest from their land bases.

So I have to ask.  Is the F-35B a slam dunk for use on the new LHDs everyone seems to be building/buying or is that simply us imposing our own world view on other nations?

The way the French but most especially how the Russians plan on using the Mistral Class should be instructive.  Even better would be to examine how the USMC operated its early LHAs when the Harrier wasn't around.  Just because you have an LHD doesn't mean you MUST mirror Marine Corps/US Navy operational philosophy (a more recent example would be how the Brits operated off the coast of Libya without Harriers at their disposal...that could be what others are actually seeing as the future).

F-35. Is this how the death spiral begins?

via http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr

By Kim Eun-jung
SEOUL, Aug. 16 (Yonhap) -- In a last-ditch effort to win South Korea's fighter jet project, two of the three bidders -- Boeing and EADS -- offered proposals below the state budget of 8.3 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) during the final bidding on Friday, government officials and industry sources said.
The third company, Lockheed Martin, selling its F-35 stealth jets through the foreign military sales (FMS) program, offered a price higher than Seoul's budget, according to sources, effectively being eliminated from the race to win the country's largest arms procurement deal.
As the bidding process ended, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) will conduct a comprehensive assessment of the jets and officially announce the winner next month.
"As there were companies that offered price within the program budget, we will proceed to the next step," DAPA spokesman Baek Yoon-hyung said in a press briefing, without elaborating the names citing the ongoing procedure.
"Although all jets will be evaluated, aircraft exceeding the budget will not be qualified for the contract," Baek said.
This week's final rounds of biddings were held following a six-week suspension due to all previous sessions ending in a failure when all three aerospace giants offered prices above the 8.3 trillion won budget approved by parliament.
The bidding war illustrated the heightened competition among the world's biggest defense groups as they seek to overcome drastic cutbacks in military spending in the U.S. and Europe.
The cheaper proposals by the two companies came after the DAPA announced that another failure in the bidding may lead to restarting the project from the beginning.
It had said that all options will be considered, such as reducing the number of jets to be bought, buying the jets in installments and increasing the state budget, which could be more beneficial to F-35s, whose biggest hindrance is their high cost.
Initially, Lockheed Martin's F-35s, which are in development for the U.S. military, were seen as a favorite given South Korean Air Force's long pursuit of stealth fighter jets that can pass through North Korea's complex web of radars and given the close relations between the two allies.
However, there was less room for price negotiations as F-35s are sold through the foreign military sales (FMS) program by the U.S. government.

A few things...

*  Price is turning into a beast of a problem for the F-35.  It rears its ugly head as my primary opposition to the airplane.  For the Marine Corps it rings all the bells as a replacement for the AV-8B (for the USAF and USN, I'm not so sure...not sure at all).  The price is a killer though.  Seems like the S. Koreans are the first to acknowledge that fact.

*  Projections appear to be a major part of how they're arriving at the cost of this airplane.  I hope they didn't count sales to S. Korea as a done deal.

*  Is this how the death spiral begins?  When one country pulls out and does it without hesitation will that give others that are waivering the courage to follow?

Now for the good news for the F-35 in this article.

*  All aircraft will be evaluated.  That's what supporters will hang their hats on.  The airplane being magnitudes better than the competition which should explain its "slightly" (according to them) higher price.

*  FMS is the real villain, and if Lockheed was free to sell the plane, it would come in at a lower price point.

This is going to be good.  I just wish I could be a fly on the wall of the sales dept at LM.