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Support NeededRead the whole thing here.
Moving forward, the Corps is reliant on the Navy and Congress to make this plan effective:
**The U.S. Navy should support with “connector” capabilities. The decision to go with a wheeled amphibious vehicle relies heavily on the development of a future ship-to-shore connector. Since the procurement and maintenance of these capabilities are all under the purview of the Navy, any change in requirement for the connector needs the Navy’s support.
**Congress should adequately fund defense. In making this decision, the Marine Corps was already cost conscious. However a return to sequestration levels would put the future of many investment programs in jeopardy. The initial phase of the Corps’s vehicle strategy has been crafted to fit within current budget request levels, but additional funding will be required for the new ship-to-shore connector(s).The Right Decision
**The proposed plan is the appropriate path forward for modernizing amphibious operations capabilities. By embracing a phased approach, the USMC can capitalize on current technology to quickly replace aging equipment while freeing funding to invest in a robust R&D effort, effectively creating a bridging strategy that maintains its current utility as a forward-deployed force while preparing it for the future.
Furthermore, the decision to purchase a MPC-type vehicle and leverage modern ship-to-shore connectors is an effective recognition of the evolving threat and operational environments.
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U.S. Marine Corps assault amphibious vehicles with Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), come ashore during an amphibious landing as part of a U.S.-French bilateral exercise. The exercise is designed to improve interoperability between nations, increase readiness and develop professional relationships. The 22nd MEU is deployed with the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group as a theater reserve and crisis response force throughout U.S. Central Command and the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility.  |
Putting aside reader opposition to or support for the Bundy claims, and ignoring allegations of Reid’s (and his son Rory’s) personal interests in the disposition of the land in question, what must be examined is what the senator must mean if he seriously believes his accusation.Quite honestly this surprises me and takes me to a place I hadn't considered.
“Domestic terrorism” is a legal term, defined by U.S. Code. It’s prosecutable. Assets can be seized, including assets of supporters. Provisions of the Patriot Act could kick in, with all that implies. And felony convictions would certainly result in those found guilty becoming “prohibited persons” under federal law from owning a gun.
Assuming PR considerations would preclude Obama from ordering drone strikes, is the foregoing really what Harry Reid has in mind? In spite of the efforts of Oath Keepers and others to ensure that a peaceful resolution is paramount, does “true champion of the Second Amendment” Harry Reid want everyone on the side of the Bundy family who has been on the ground near Bunkerville -- and those providing them with material support -- to be prosecuted as domestic terrorists?
Does he truly wish for those whom he politically disagrees with to forever lose federal recognition of their right to keep and bear arms?
Considering his longtime gravitation toward Michael Bloomberg, his support for federal oversight of private gun sales, and his embracing of Diane Feinstein’s renewed “assault weapon” ban, such an admission would hardly be surprising.
The F-35s went in and provided the capability to eliminate the ground missile threats and allowed a distributed company to be inserted to do their job. In other words, the Osprey carried the force; the F-35 surrogate providing the cover which could insert the force more effectively. Such an approach has NOTHING to do with the classic thinking of how a rotorcraft force would approach the challenge of ground force insertion into air enabled contested areas.What the fuck?
Anytime anyone moves airplanes to the right, the price goes up.”Anyone who thinks the death spiral hasn't started isn't paying attention.
The surest way to lower cost, he said, is to bring in more foreign buyers into the program. The SAR estimates, he noted, do not include a possible order of 40 F-35s by South Korea, or anticipated future purchases by Singapore and Israel.
“We are pretty sure that Israel is not going to stop at 19,” Bogdan said. Another potential customer is Japan, which has a fleet of about 200 F-15s, half of which have been modernized. “At some point they will have to make a choice,” he said. “I can't influence that decision, other than keep driving the price of the airplane down. Then these FMS [foreign military sales] customers will make choices.”
Today, about 30 percent of F-35 components are made outside the United States, which exposes U.S. aircraft buys to fluctuations in foreign currency rates.
Bogdan insisted that the impact of budget cuts by the United States and other F-35 buying nations on aircraft cost projections should not be underestimated. In the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal, the Navy delayed purchases of 33 aircraft and the Air Force postponed four. Turkey and Canada slipped their buys by one year, and the Netherlands slashed its order from 80 to 37. The cumulative effect of these changes, said Bogdan, is a cost increase of 2 to 4 percent to the price of each airplane. If sequester-level budgets are enforced by the Congress between 2016 and 2019, 17 fewer U.S. aircraft would be produced.
A key way to understand the difference between legacy approaches and evolving ones is to contrast a rotocraft enabled ground force with a tiltrotor and fast jet enabled force.Read the entire propaganda piece here.
A rotorcraft enabled ground force is operating within the operational box of the rotorcraft range as well as the operating bases to support the operationsof the helicopter. At sea this meant that the USN-USMC team operated within a 200 square mile operational area with a three ship task force.
With the tiltrotor and fast jet combination, the capability to disperse and aggregate force over a much larger area has become a reality.At sea, this has meant that the USN-USMC team can now operate with a disaggregated three ship task force covering more than 1000 miles in operational reach.
The addition of the F-35B will add “tron warfare” capabilities as well as new ISR capabilities to the USMC insertion force as well, and the Marines are preparing for the initial introduction of such capabilities next year.
During an April 16th 2014 appearance on NBC’s Today show, Bloomberg said:I wonder why Republicans and Gun Rights groups aren't setting the record straight about how the actual gun debate went down last year.
[Politicians] will vote for whatever they think is in their own self interest to get elected and re-elected. We’ve got to convince them that 80 percent of gun owners… [and] 90 percent of Americans… are in favor of just simple background checks… we’ve got to make them understand that that’s what the public wants and the public’s going to vote that way.
