Rolling Thunder 1-19: force-on-force operations....Video by Cpl. Timothy Lutz

Small Form Factor Satellite Communication (SATCOM) on the move (SOTM) device attached to a Utility Task Vehicle (UTV)...pics by Lance Cpl. Nathaniel Q. Hamilton

Note:  The Marine Corps is all in on dispersed units so now they're closing the circle by working the Command & Control part of the equation.  It's essential that this be solved.  It's essential that they're able to make it jam proof.  If they don't you'll see these units isolated and destroyed. I hope it works. For better or worse the decisions being made today on weapon systems (like the F-35) and concepts (like dispersed units and the Sea Base) will decide future battles.

ACV with Kongsberg Turret firing trials....

Thanks to Dragon for the link!

Note:  If you don't want to watch the whole vid, you'll find the ACV at the 1:27 mark!


First look: 50mm Chain gun firing at Bushmaster trials Arizona from Shephard Media on Vimeo.

Political News. Michael Avenatti, the 2nd biggest fall from grace I've ever seen...

Yeah.  I'm hitting politics this morning.  Sorry bout that.

But tell me this.  This Michael Avenatti drama is a made for TV tragedy/shit sandwich supreme.  I've lived long enough to see a few things but this has to rank as the 2nd biggest fall from grace I've ever seen.  The biggest?  It's below....



The Swaggart affair marked a turning point in the revival of religion in America (I think) but this is a totally different arena.

Avenatti was on the verge of making a run at the presidency.  He was a media darling.  He was the shit!

Now?

No one will go near the guy.  He's facing 36 (or more) charges from the Feds and state prosecutors from California to Illinois are all after him with the long knives.

If he wasn't such an obviously arrogant ass I might almost feel sorry for the guy.

Giant Deep Sea Pill Bugs devour dead alligator...

We called these rolly-pollys when I was growing up and they were much much much smaller...

Now I find out that these little bugs that I once terrorized as a child have cousins in the deep sea that are the size of footballs!

Just wow.

I'm glad we're reaching for the stars but there is so much here on planet Earth that we just don't know about!

Weird craving tonight....Batter Fried Bananas!

Hulk vs. Saitama Animation (Full Version) -Taming The Beast

I really enjoyed this fan animation. Hope you guys do too! Have a great weekend...back to normal posting Sat mid-morning!

Armor Porn...Griffon 6x6 fitted with wire cage armor

Story here.

F-35 News. Japanese F-35 that crashed had two inflight emergencies....what aren't we being told about this program?

via NHK World.

Japan's Defense Ministry says an F35A fighter jet that crashed into the sea off northern Japan on Tuesday had made two emergency landings in the last two years.

State Minister of Defense Kenji Harada was speaking at a Lower House committee meeting on Thursday.

The minister referred to a test flight by US manufacturer Lockheed Martin in June, 2017, before Japan deployed the aircraft. He said the flight was aborted after a cooling system alert.

The minister said the manufacturer found faults in the system and replaced the defective parts before delivering the jet to the defense ministry.

A ministry official also said at the committee meeting that while the same aircraft was flying in bad weather last August, there was a malfunction in the position indicator.

The Defense Ministry says the defective parts were replaced.

The Air Self-Defense Force began deploying F35A jets at its Misawa base in Aomori Prefecture, northern Japan, in January last year.

The ministry official told NHK that it's not known whether the two incidents were linked to Tuesday's crash.

This is stunning news.

Not the fact that the F-35 crashed.  Military aviation is inherently dangerous. Losses are to be expected.  Lives will be lost.  That's unfortunately a terrible part of the profession that's understood by all that choose to participate.

No, the stunning part is that a program of this size and scope is able to conceal the fact that two times before this crash an F-35 suffered inflight emergencies.

The lack of candor is astonishing.  The lack of information to the public on a program of this cost is troubling.

How can we be expected to believe the "good news" when its obvious they're not telling us the bad?

USMC General talks about a NEW GENERATION of ship to shore connectors!

via Military.com

The conventional Marine Corps ship-to-shore landing craft of past decades may not be rugged or versatile enough to support the service's invasion force in a future fight, the general nominated to be the next commandant said this week.

Lt. Gen. David Berger told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on seapower Wednesday that the days of building combat power in secure areas of a theater are over.
Military Discount Active duty Military members could save more with GEICO. Get a quote today!

"The past 18 years of operating out of forward operating bases where you could pile as much sustainment as you want, protect and operate from there -- that fit the operating environment of the Middle East," Berger said. "It does not fit the operating environment that's our primary theater now."

Berger's comments came after Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, asked Berger for a status update on the Marine Corps ship-to-shore connector capabilities during a hearing to discuss ground modernization programs in the proposed fiscal 2020 budget and the Future Years Defense Program.

Current ship-to-shore connectors in use by the Marine Corps include the landing craft-air cushion hovercraft, or LCAC, and the landing craft utility vessel, or LCU. Neither are designed to provide protection in contested environments.

"We are going to need more connectors -- a family of connectors going forward," Berger said. "Connectors to us, before today, was a way to move from ship to shore. But connectors now are ship-to-shore, shore-to-ship, shore-to-shore. We need the vertical. We need the surface ... we need it all."

The Marine Corps, like the rest of the U.S. military, is preparing to fight against a near-peer competitor such as Russia or China in a contested, operational environment that will likely force units to operate on their own for longer periods of time without traditional lines of support, military officials said.

"If we are going disperse and be able to operate in a distributed manner and sustain that force, our view of what connectors are is going to have to broaden," Berger said.

King asked if the Corps is designing these new connectors to be able to cope with the challenges of this new, battlefield environment.

"It seems to me that we are also going to have to think of a contested environment -- GPS disruption, communications disruptions. Is that part of your thinking in terms of designing these systems?" King asked.

Berger said that command-and-control in a contested environment is the Marine Corps' top priority.

"We have to write it into our requirements for all of our systems," Berger said. "If there is a system that we have that can't function under ... an adversary's pressure, then it's not going to last very long. It's going to go quiet."

Such an environment will require Marine units to fight their way into a fight, said Sen. David Perdue, R-Georgia, who asked Berger to describe how the Corps would protect its sealift capabilities as they move into a contested environment.

Traditional maritime prepositioned stocks of equipment and supplies are not suited to support the future battlefield, Berger said.

"We are going to have to re-look that going forward, because that was built on a premise that you would have secure, benign ports that you could drive up next to in your 38-foot draft vessel and unload as we did in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, and just keep cycling them in," Berger said.

"We need to be able to do those kinds of things at sea to a connector and then maybe onto another connector. Some will be prepositioned forward, either afloat or ashore, and then the rest that is brought in -- the distribution of that sustainment is varsity-level stuff."

Interesting.

What I find to be most juicy is that MAYBE the USMC is shaking the tyranny of air transport.  By that I mean designing a force that is air centric inevitably leads it toward being biased toward the light end of the spectrum which makes them vulnerable to enemy mechanized formations.

In short vertical lift or aviation connectors are pretty much covered.  The issue is that no matter how fabulous our vertical lift is, we're gonna need surface lift to get the mass of supplies, arms, vehicles etc ashore.

That means we're gonna have to move beyond the LCAC and LCU. 

A couple of promising (in my opinion) designs are shown at the top of the page.  That's a real good start.

How about we actually do a bit of experimentation and toss a few bucks their way and get full scale vehicles built so we can determine where we should go in the future?

Open Comment Post. 12 April 2019

Piranha 5 and Elbit UT-30 MK2 turret for Romania - test firings in Norway

Thanks to Johnny for the link!

F-15EX Pic Gallery via Boeing Defense...

First public firing of #USArmy new XM913 50mm cannon

First public firing of #USArmy new XM913 50mm cannon today at Bushmaster User Conf. Look for expanded coverage on @ShephardNews #NGCV pic.twitter.com/PukxmCshAS

— Scott Gourley (@ScottGourley1) April 11, 2019

Well that's that.  The US Army is gonna go with the 50mm cannon and the USMC should follow suit.

Our allies?

Not yet but they'll come dragging and screaming to the new standard.  I didn't see this part coming but the armored vehicle revolution is already coming up with some pretty startling solutions.  Things will be more dynamic than I imagined.

Taliban claim to have shot down a B-52. Why haven't the Pentagon denied the report?

via AMN

“Mujaheddin (a militia fighter) of the Islamic Emirate targeted a US B-52 bomber with heavy weapons today early morning in Lar area in the Washir district of Helmand Province,” a spokesman for the Taliban was quoted as saying.

The B-52 is said to have crashed after the strike, killing all of its crew. Both Afghan and US authorities are yet to comment on the matter.

On 8 April, three US service members were killed in a car bomb attack on a convoy near the Bagram Air Force Base in north-eastern Afghanistan. The terror group claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Story here. 

This story hit my news feed and I considered it pure lunacy.  People sent me messages about it.  A few comments appeared on the blog about it.

I still considered it batshit insane.

But.

The Pentagon hasn't denied this story.

That gives me pause.

Why the delay?  Counting tail numbers can't be that hard.  CENTCOM surely has a handle on this so why not come out and state it straight away that they didn't do the deed?

But.

What if they did?

The Pentagon needs to get its info operation spooled up and kicked in the ass.  As things now stand the only thing I can figure is that they're notifying loved ones....and that just can't be ... can it?

Kinda puts in perspective that passage from "Force Recon Diary, 1969"

You ask most Marine Corps recruits what book they read (from a certain era) that seized their imagination and stoked the fire to join the Corps and Force Recon Diary, 1969 will probably be on that list.

I still have a dog eared copy and I'll never forget a passage from it.  Norton describes a unit on patrol that was unknowingly being stalked by a tiger.  I don't know why but I imagined a tiger being the size of a big dog.  He talks about one of the team members turning a killing the beast with one shot.

Didn't think much of it till I saw this gif....

Tiger stalks, attempts to attack woman at zoo pic.twitter.com/G7n700MM9s

— Nature is Scary (@NatureisScary) September 10, 2016

Tigers are freaking huge!

In the jungle we are part of the food chain.  We can get many of the predators and many of the predators can get us!

China Military Power – Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win (pdf)...A MUST READ!

Read the PDF for yourself here.

A few passages from a VERY insightful National Interest story...

Officially, the Chinese use maritime law enforcement ships, with the PLAN serving in a protective position, in an attempt not to give the overt impression the SCS seizures are military in design, yet the Chinese have fielded military aircraft, air defense systems and radar on the occupied islets. The same tactic is used with the Senkaku Islands with Chinese Coast Guard and fishing vessels conducting incursions into the contiguous zone around the island, while the PLAN stays within intimidation range.


The PLAN has chosen to base the Marine Corps not across from Taiwan in the Eastern Theater Command, but instead in the Southern Theater Command and Northern Theater Command to deal with island disputes in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. They are “tasked with seizing and consolidating beachheads.” The seven brigades consist of 28,000-35,000 Marines evenly divided among the brigades. The PLANMC does not yet have an organic air assault element and still must rely on the PLAN and PLAA for helicopter transport and close air support. Combat vehicles are the ZBD-05 Amphibious Infantry Fighting Vehicle and the ZLT-05 Amphibious Assault Vehicles.

-----------------------------------------------

 In 2017 the PLAAF did lose operational control over the 15th Airborne Corps when it was renamed the PLA Airborne Corps. Though the report does not refer to Taiwan, many inside the military in Taiwan expect this force to be used early in a campaign to take the island’s critical targets. According to the report, the new Airborne Corps consists of six brigades, a special operations brigade, aviation brigade, and support brigade. The report quotes PLA doctrinal writings: “cut across ground defense lines and topographical obstacles to unfold attacks directly inside the enemy disposition.” The report further states that these operations are designed to support main-force operational efforts, seize and hold key targets and areas in the enemy’s depth, such as airfields and bridges, block an enemy’s retreat, block reinforcement by enemy reserve forces, and conduct raids on key targets in the enemy’s depth.

Story here. 

I keep yelling for military leadership to get serious about the China threat and apparently certain sections of it are wide awake.  Why they're not more pubic with their concern is anyone's guess (I imagine political...China owns a number of our politicians), but the DIA report spells it out.

China is a threat.

What concerns is that the timetable laid out seems rather leisurely.  They expect to be world dominating by mid century?  I don't think we have that long unless we act now.

I am encouraged by one development though.  Dunford is going to meet with those Quislings at Google and question them on their work to help the Chinese achieve an AI breakthrough while at the same time they're essentially telling our own Govt to pound sand.

I use NUMEROUS Google products but I expect some type of sanction against that organization soon.  Monetary at first and more substantial later.

They're working the issue at last.  That makes me cheer.

Open Comment Post. 11 April 2019

32nd Raiding Squadron and 2nd LE BN Conduct Dutch Bilateral Training....pics by Lance Cpl. Nello Miele

Note.  Have you noticed who the Dutch Marines have partnered with in training lately?  Riverines and now MPs.  They're obviously concerned about operations other than war.  My guess.  Riverines to workout small boat ops (although I'm still wondering why they wouldn't partner with Special Boat Units) and MPs for the "enhanced" law enforcement mission...more than a beat cop but still exercising arrest power when directed (side-note on this one...can they dump LE and go back to Military Police?).

A U.S. Marine Corps CH-53 Super Stallion prepares to land during Dutch bilateral training at Camp Lejeune, N.C., April 2, 2019. Bilateral training between the U.S. Marine Corps and the Royal Dutch Marines strengthens existing interoperability between the two nations and improves counternarcotic and anti-terrorism capabilities. 

Blast from the past. USS Thresher is lost with all hands...

Note.  First two pics are via General Dynamics Electric Boat Instagram Page.

gdelectricboat

On the morning of April 10, 1963 at approximately 9:18 am, following three distress transmissions, the USS Thresher was lost with all 129 crew and civilian riders. The ship designers and builders of Electric Boat are the first line of defense for our sailors. Every day we must use a questioning attitude, challenge complacency, and ensure arrogance does not compromise our ability to provide maximum reasonable assurance. No metric is more important than this one: the number of submergences must equal the number surfaces at the end of a submarine's life. Much like an equal number of airplane takeoffs and landings, this metric ensures over 120 sailors per ship return home safely to their families and loved ones. The USS Thresher serves as our symbol, our tragic reminder of this great responsibility. Today, we are all challenged with the duty to keep this event alive as a never fading reminder of the importance of the quality and rigor we apply to our jobs, and to be aware of "why we do what we do" at Electric Boat.

Note.  The follow pic is from the Naval Undersea Museum Twitter Page (they also have profiles of some of the crew).