ACV 1.1 News. RFP next month.

via USNI

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. – The Marine Corps plans to issue a request for proposal (RFP) for the early version of the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) in March, the head of Marine Corps Systems Command said.
The RFP will lead to the award of two engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contracts in November or December, said Brig. Gen. Joseph Shrader on Wednesday speaking at the WEST 2015 conference
“We’re going to award two EMD contracts – 16 systems each – for a total of 32 systems to take into testing,” he said.
The Marines plan to buy 200 of the ACV 1.1 eight-wheeled amphibious personnel carrier as an adjunct to the Marines decades old Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV-7A1).
“It’s not a replacement to the AAV right now. It’s going to enhance that capability,” he said.

I have one serious request for Systems Command.  Please get your talking points on the same page!

Did you read the second quotation I highlighted?  Its not a replacement for the AAV?  Its going to enhance that capability?  That sounds like we're back to the original role of the Marine Personnel Carrier!  Additionally we were told that the ACV 1.1 would prove superior to the AAV because of its superior ground mobility, equal seakeeping, superior IED protection etc.... 

Why is this important?  Because it gives us an idea of where they're going with the selection next month.

If we're looking at a AAV replacement then the two front runners will be the BAE SuperAV and the General Dynamics...whatever they're calling it.  Why?  Because from what I can tell they're designed to be superior swimmers while providing capable on land performance.

If we're looking at a "complimentary" vehicle then the SAIC Terrex 2 and the Lockheed Martin Patria AMV become the favorites because they provide superior land mobility, have been tested in combat (Patria AMV) and have tremendous network upgradeability (Terrex 2).

I still don't understand the need to do testing on 32 systems. After all these years a single source contract should be ready to be issued.

On a sidenote, I would bet body parts that the contending design teams are pounding walls and cursing the Marine Corps.  After all the starts and stops, they're now faced with this last minute rush.

SIDENOTE:  Make no mistake about this.  The downselect will happen next month but the production of this limited number of vehicles won't be done for another decade.  For all intents and purposes the AAV will serve until 2040.  This might end up being a regional vehicle and assigned to units headed to CENTCOM....everyone else will get by with AAVs....in other words we have a replacement for Marines in the Middle East.  So now they will ride ACV 1.1, MPCs or whatever you call it instead of MTVRs.

The story of two Austrian teenage girls...I can't be sympathetic...

via RT

Two Austrian teenage girls who ran away to Syria to join Islamic State fighters are beginning to regret their decision. Security service insiders told Austrian media that the girls have managed to contact families and one wants to go home.
The pair left home to join Islamic State (also known as ISIS, or ISIL) in April. Little information was immediately known, aside from that one had been 16 and one 14 at the time of their departure. Both reportedly married Chechen fighters after their arrival in Syria and became pregnant.

Samra Kesinovic and her friend, Sabina Selimovic, are children of Bosnian migrants, but grew up in Vienna. On their departure from Austria, they left a note, telling their parents: “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah – and we will die for him.”

Since their departure, pictures have emerged online of the pair brandishing Kalashnikov rifles and wearing the full niqab.

However, Austrian police have claimed that their social media accounts were overtaken and manipulated by IS.

“It is clear that whoever is operating their pages, it probably is not the girls, and that they are being used for propaganda,” a security expert told the Austrian Times.

There is a "teenage" mistake and then there is complete and utter lunacy.  This is craziness in a handbag and I can't muster up an ounce of sympathy.

Am I wrong?

India's 5th Gen locally produced fighter...via LiveFist

Read about it here.

Is anyone surprised?  Every power in the Pacific is embarking on some type of 5th gen project.  Domestic production seems to be the new "hot thing"...we can expect this to extend to every component of every airplane, armored vehicle and warship.  The days of the West being able to embargo spare parts or deny weapon systems seems to be coming to an end.

Coke's new Milk! Have you heard about this?

via Business Insider.

Coca-Cola has launched a new kind of milk nationwide that costs twice the price of regular milk.
The beverage, called Fairlife, doesn't contain lactose and it has 50% more protein, 30% more calcium, and 50% less sugar than regular milk.
Coca-Cola executives believe the new milk will "rain money" for the company.

Why did this pop up on my radar screen? Simple. Prepping. Supposedly it will last for 90 days versus only a couple of weeks for regular milk.

What has me curious is the fact that engineered food appears here to stay. The all natural, all the time food movement seems dead.  

But still after reading the label, its almost a protein shake per glass.  Add this milk to your powder and you're getting a mega dose.  This will sell well in the fitness community....the Coke people are right.  This will rain money for them.

Ukraine News. Fighting rages as forces consolidate gains.

via Yahoo News.

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine and Russian-backed rebel fought fiercely for control of a strategic railway junction on Friday despite a new peace deal brokered by Germany and France.
A ceasefire is due to come into effect from Sunday under the agreement, which also envisages a withdrawal of the heavy weaponry responsible for many of the more than 5,000 casualties in the conflict that broke out almost a year ago.
Both sides accused each other of killing civilians. Two people were killed and six wounded when a shell hit a packed cafe in the Kiev-controlled town of Shchastya near rebel-held Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, a local official said, adding that other shells had struck elsewhere in the town.
"The town's heating system is broken, power lines are damaged as well as the water supply ... So this is how a comprehensive ceasefire is prepared for," the head of the Kiev-controlled administration, Hennadiy Moskal, said online.
The rebels accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the separatist stronghold of Donetsk and the town of Horlivka, where they said on their website that three children had been killed.

I don't know if this cease fire will work but even if it does, Ukraine is broken.

Russia has carried the day.

The rebels have ground and they will not give it up.  Even if Ukraine is simply taking a strategic pause to rebuild its forces for more fighting later this year or next, I don't know if they will be able to dislodge the rebels from territory they've taken.

White House indecision delayed the rescue attempt...

via The Daily Beast.

The U.S. did not think British intelligence was good enough to act on and waited a month to launch a mission to rescue ISIS's hostages. By then it was too late.
The U.S. government obtained intelligence on the possible location of American captives held by ISIS in Syria last year, but Obama administration officials waited nearly a month to launch a rescue mission because of concerns that the intelligence wasn’t conclusive and some of it had come from a foreign service, U.S. and British officials told The Daily Beast.
British officials, as well as private security contractors, said they were frustrated by Washington’s hesitance to give the go-ahead for a rescue attempt, which eventually was carried out on July 4, 2014, by which time the hostages had been moved. The following month, ISIS began beheading its American and British prisoners in a series of grisly Internet videos.

Read it all here.

So my suspicions are confirmed.  It probably extends (I'm almost sure of it) to the clusterfuck that was our "embassy evacuation" all the way to every facet of our battle against ISIS.

Indecision is worse than making a bad decision.  If you act and you're wrong you can reorient and fix things.  If you vacillate then you're always a step behind.

Doesn't that sound like current US foreign policy?  Always a step behind? 

GruntWorks weighs in on the Yemen Embassy Evacuation.

AMEN BROTHER!!!! 

Oh and that "other" Battalion is called a Marine Expeditionary Unit!

Jungle Warfare Training Center

NOTE:  I thought the US Army started a Jungle Warfare School on Hawaii not too long ago.

Migrating to DISQUS!

Just a heads up.

Due to some trolls (Huron Serenity also known as Red Eagle and Butunacla), I've decided to migrate to Disqus.  They provide the type of flexibility that is not found in Blogger and will help me keep comments open without the need to moderate them.

That's good news for us all.  Debate can still flow without the trolling.  The bad though is that its going to be a bit clunky at first.  Pardon the mess and I expect this to be completed shortly.

MILF Terrorists assault on Filipino Elite Police Unit. EXTREMELY GRAPHIC! WARNING!

NOTE:  Before you press play on this video, be advised.  You will see men die, you will see their bodies torn and you will see them in the last moments of life.  If you are easily upset I would recommend you NOT play this vid.

Meanwhile despite the Ukrainian Cease Fire, we get news of massive resupply...

via Censornet.

Russia continues to supply huge numbers of military equipment to the terrorists in the Donbas.
This was announced today at a briefing of the ATO spokesman Andrii Lysenko, Censor.NET reports.
"Despite statements by high-ranking officials of the Russian Federation on the absence of Russian military equipment and troops in the territory of Ukraine, on the night of Feb. 12 there was another redeployment of 50 tanks, 40 MLRS (Grad, Uragan, and Smerch) and the same number of armored vehicles through the Russian-Ukrainian border near Izvaryne," he said.
Earlier, the National Security Council stated that the hottest spot in the East of Ukraine is the area of the Debaltseve town, where the enemy is attempting offensive operations.

Has anyone considered that even if this ceasefire is successful, we're looking at Ukraine being chopped up into three different countries (so far)?

Even if peace is achieved the results are a setback for the West and the Ukrainian govt. 

Source:http://en.censor.net.ua/n324373Source:http://en.censor.net.ua/n324373

Cease fire in Ukraine?

Watching the BBC this morning and they're saying an agreement has been reached!

Wow.

More details soon.

Has the State Dept and new USMC formations made embassy evacs more chaotic? UPDATED!!!

UPDATE!  There is a quiet fury going on with many Marines because as you can read in this story, officials keep giving more details of this "incident"...via Marine Corps Times...

Marine embassy security guards smashed personal weapons with sledgehammers and scattered them before departing Yemen as the U.S. Embassy was being evacuated this week, officials with Marine Corps Headquarters said.
The officials offered new details of the Marines' departure in the wake of differing reports about what had become of personal weapons the troops had to leave behind before departing the country via the airport at Sanaa. A Pentagon spokesman told reporters Wednesday that Marines had handed over the weapons to Yemeni officials before boarding commercial aircraft for departure, while staff with the Sanaa airport told the Associated Press that Houthi rebels had seized U.S. Embassy vehicles, some with weapons inside.
A Marine official with knowledge of the movement told Marine Corps Times Wednesday that all personal and crew-served weapons had been rendered inoperable, but could not address how they had been made so or how they were disposed of before the Marines departed.

No matter how you dress this up, this looks bad.  


(Original Post)

Something strange is going on when it comes to the USMC core capability of embassy evacuation.

If you've been following the news lately the current controversy (for the portion of the American public that pays attention...probably around 3%) is that Marine Security Guards had there weapons seized by rebels in Yemen.  Quite honestly I was gonna run with it and even posted about it under the title "WTF!"...but took it down.  I needed more info before I went high and to the right.  Now we have this from Marine Corps Times....

Officials with the Sanaa airport told the Associated Press earlier today that Houthi rebels seized more than 25 official U.S. vehicles in the wake of the hasty departure of embassy staff, some with personal weapons left inside.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters that the embassy's Marine security guard detachment destroyed larger weapons, including machine guns, and added that he believed they had turned over personal weapons to Yemeni officials because they could not take them on commercial flights.
But the Marine official, who asked that he not be identified because he was unauthorized to discuss the situation, said no working Marine weapons, whether crew-served or personal rifles and sidearms, were seized or handed over as the troops departed.
"No Marines handed over a functional weapon to anybody," the official said.

Read the entire story here, but I've got to ask the question.

Why are embassy evacuation suddenly becoming more chaotic?  Is this a State Dept problem?  Are they so enamored with "appearance" that they prevent the orderly evacuation of personnel from threatened areas?  Is this a USMC issue?  Is the desire to validate the SPMAGTF-CR so great that instead of utilizing capabilities that are already built into the force we're jumping through hoops to use them in missions they aren't suited for?

Is it a combination?

Regardless think back to the in many ways failed Bush and Clinton administrations.  You would never have heard a story about Marines leaving weapons behind while evacuating an embassy.

Sidenote.  Unless they used thermite or white phosphorus there is no such thing as making weapons inoperable by simply removing components.  We're getting fed some feel good bullshit on this one.  

Sidenote 1.  Spiking barrels, smashing receivers etc...do not render a weapon unusable.  I stand by the statement that melting them down in place is the only real way to ensure that the enemy can't use the weapons against you in the future (and that's ignoring the fact that the scrap metal will probably be used in some form of explosive device even if you are successful).  Come on people this isn't hard to figure out....I mean hell, show me an AR sitting in the trash with a busted receiver and if I'm bored enough I can bring it back to life with a simple, unregulated parts kit!

Donetsk People's Republic tallies up Ukrainian combat losses..

via Panorama.

More than 2,300 servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have died in the war-torn southeastern regions of the country over the past 25 days, Eduard Basurin, a deputy commander of the corps in the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic told a news briefing on Wednesday, TASS reported.
"Over the past 25 days that have elapsed since the resumption of hostilities, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost a helicopter, 179 tanks, 149 armored personnel carriers and/or infantry combat vehicles, 135 artillery guns, and more than 2,300 servicemen in killed," he said.
The number of casualties since Tuesday afternoon is 82 servicemen. Also, the pro-Kiev forces have lost five tanks, two armored personnel carriers and infantry combat vehicles, seven artillery systems, and two general-purpose cars, the Donetsk News Agency quoted Basurin.
Populated localities in the DPR underwent artillery shelling on the part of pro-Kiev troops on more than thirty occasions on Wednesday. In part, gunfire was targeted at Donetsk and its suburbs, as well as the townships of Peski, Vesyoloye and Spartak.
The shelling left six civilians dead and another twelve civilians, wounded,
"All in all, some 172 people have been wounded over the past seven days and 114 of them are at hospitals," Basurian said, adding that all these people were civilians.

You take those numbers and divide them in half and they're still devastating.  What is also interesting is this so called "Donetsk People's Republic"...the idea that we can see Ukraine fragmenting the way that it appears to be fragmenting should be worrying.

This flies in the face of the "united" Europe concept and will drag the continent back to the pre-Soviet Union days.

Heavy combat losses.

The declaration of a republic inside a country that has already lost a significant amount of territory?

This is bad.  Real bad.

Has SOCOM lost its combat edge?

I've been monitoring the news this afternoon and the President is talking tough (or rather his version of talking tough) about going after ISIS and asking Congress for broad authority to get the job done.

The talking heads are slobbering all over the idea of sending in Special Operations to kill, or capture the enemy and rescue hostages.

But has anyone paid attention to the number of failed hostage rescue attempts over the past year?

* United States commandos stormed a village in southernYemen early Saturday in an effort to free an American photojournalist held hostage by Al Qaeda, but the raid ended in tragedy, with the kidnappers killing the American and a South African held with him, United States officials said.
* Elite US military forces secretly invaded Syria recently in a risky and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to free US journalist James Foley before he was killed by Islamic State (Isis) militants, the Pentagon announced on Wednesday.
* Two attempted rescue missions to save hostages held by Islamic State (Isis) in Syria ended in failure last night, according to reports.  The failed operations took place in the self-proclaimed IS capital city of Raqqa on 1 January. The target was to retrieve a number of hostages including Muadh al-Kasasbeh, the Jordanian pilot who was captured by Islamic State after his plane was downed over IS territory.

Has ISIS and their associates read our Special Operations playbook?  Or is it finally happening just like that old skool Snake Eating General said it would.  SOCOM stayed in the news and the enemy is now waiting for them when they get off the choppers.

Check out the film at the 3:33 mark...



"One of these days... you're gonna fly in and he's gonna shoot down every one of your helicopters and kill your SEALs...mark my words" is what the old skool snake eater warned....

The media laughed but are we seeing that today?

Bell 407GT (pic)

A400M continues to fail.

Thanks to William for the link!

via LATribune.fr

Every day that passes, we learn a little more about the trials of the A400M , the aircraft developed military transport and manufactured by Airbus Group. For the Delegate General for Armaments, Laurent Collet-Billon, we must now forget the refueling mission in the helicopter flight yet planned A400M in the specifications. Too dangerous for helicopters, which are by definition unstable devices he said, because of the cyclical propeller turbulence of the A400M, a copy of which will be on display next week at the Aero India show in Bangalore India.
Another disappointment for this device, which is, however, "well born" and offers excellent transport capacity, said Monday the head of the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) during the presentation of the 2014 assessment of his house. An asset that remains valuable in view of deploying French troops in Africa. Provided he also mentioned another difficulty for this device: the mission of parachute through the side doors is still not satisfactory, he said.According to "Der Spiegel" , the German army has identified "875 breaches" , including missing insulation jackets on some electric cables. In fact, it would be 1,300 breaches.

The airplane won't be able to refuel helicopters in flight?

And its being touted as a replacement for the KC-130?

This airplane is almost as big a disappointment as the F-35.

ISIS News. The raw numbers make you wonder why this fight is so hard.

via AP.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Foreign fighters are streaming into Syria and Iraq in unprecedented numbers to join the Islamic State or other extremist groups, including at least 3,400 from Western nations among 20,000 from around the world, U.S. intelligence officials say in an updated estimate of a top terrorism concern.
Intelligence agencies now believe that as many as 150 Americans have tried and some have succeeded in reaching in the Syrian war zone, officials told the House Homeland Security Committee in testimony prepared for delivery on Wednesday. Some of those Americans were arrested en route, some died in the area and a small number are still fighting with extremists.
The testimony and other data were obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
Nick Rasmussen, chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, said the rate of foreign fighter travel to Syria is without precedent, far exceeding the rate of foreigners who went to wage jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any other point in the past 20 years.
U.S. officials fear that some of the foreign fighters will return undetected to their homes in Europe or the U.S. to mount terrorist attacks. At least one of the men responsible for the attack on a satirical magazine in Paris had spent time with Islamic extremists in Yemen.
Meanwhile, the White House circulated a proposal Tuesday that would have Congress authorize the U.S. military to fight Islamic State terrorists over the next three years. A formal request for legislation is expected on Wednesday.

Read the entire story but focus on the numbers. Depending on the source I've heard it estimated that ISIS numbers between 30K and 60K fighters.  TOTAL!

Think about that for a minute.  The US and its allies have organized a coalition of the most modern forces on this planet to fight at most two or three reinforced divisions worth of troops....poorly trained troops (for the most part) at that.  The biggest part of ISIS (from my arm chair) is made up of highly motivated criminals.

Yet the US Central Command, NATO, and our Middle Eastern allies are all being fought to a basic standstill by these animals?

Something is very wrong with the way that we wage war.  This would be a simple tactical problem to a WW2 General and his staff.  Why is it so hard for us today?

APFSDS Impact Effect via For The Record Blog

According to the video description from FTR Blog...

Thanks to whoever sent me this (sorry, at this point I have huge mess in e-mails, practically impossible to find the original one).
Uglegorsk, Ukraine.
So this is what happens, when an APFSDS shell from a tank hits a metal column. You can clearly see the impact hole the fins of the projectile made (no, this was not a RPG, that would just explode upon impact, this was a subcaliber core with fins) and the massive exit hole. Note how the path of the projectile deformed within the column, so the projectile didn’t exit directly on the opposite side.

Modern munitions are amazing.  Do you see how clean the entry hole is?  I've got to again point out how the fins are clearly visible here.  Just wow.

JGSDF Shizuoka Prefecture receives its first AAVs.