F-35 expected to enter service in 2015 (my bet would be mid 2014)!

Via...Aviation Week????!!!!

USMC Expect First F-35B In Service Early 2015

Jun 19, 2011 
By Amy Butler abutler@aviationweek.com

The U.S. Marine Corps expects to get its version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter into service in late 2014 or early 2015, a two-to-three-year slip, says Lt. Gen. Terry Robling, the commandant for aviation.
He is confident the short-takeoff vertical-landing (Stovl) F-35B will be ready for use by then if the fixes in place for technical issues proceed as planned, he tells Aviation Week during a June 19 interview in advance of the Paris air show.
As a contingency plan, the general showed no interest in procurement of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, which are being bought by the Navy. “Plan B is to try harder” at JSF, he says.
In the meantime, Robling says that the current AV-8B Harriers and F-18 Hornets can continue to handle the attack mission. These can undergo service-life-extension programs only “to a degree,” he says. In the middle of the next decade, it is “not viable” to continue extending the lives of these aircraft.
“SLEPs are not easy and they are expensive,” Robling says. Taking the existing Marine Corps Hornets to about 10,000 hr. of service extends the life by two to four years depending on how the aircraft are used. He notes that a Stovl capability is needed for the Marine operational concept.
Recently, Harriers were used for strikes in Libya owing to the lack of availability of a refueling tanker for other aircraft suitable for the mission, he adds. The Harriers, though, aren’t without their problems. Extra water is needed for takeoff in Stovl mode for these missions, he said.

The two-to-three-year slip was brought on by outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ decision this year to put the Stovl JSF on

“probation.”

“That is a poor choice of words,” Robling says. “This is a time for us to get these fixes done.”

The general reports that the testing of the B continues faster than expected this year, after a lackluster showing last year. As a result, the Marines have opted to remove two Bs from the test schedule earlier than planned to undergo modification in preparation for shipboard testing on the Wasp amphibious assault ship this fall. Robling says this accelerated modification plan “takes out risk” from the program.

Boy talk about a buried story!

But I won't complain too much.  At least Amy reported the news.

The Marine Corps is planning on an initial operational capability by 2015.

In Marine land that means that it better be ready by mid 2014 or you'll see an adverse fitness report inserted into your SRB.

I wonder what the haters, spinners and bullshitters have to say now?

The Navy picked the wrong V/STOL UAV.

Yesterday I ran a post on the FireScout UAV that got downed in Libya.  In response to that post BB1984 made this statement to my question ... are rotary winged UAVs an evolutionary dead end?

To get back to your original questions:

Ref 1: Sure rotary wing UAVs are more vulnerable. The trade off is a lot of neat things come along with VTOL. Helicopters are more vulnerable than jets, it doesn't mean you replace all your helicopters with fast movers.

Ref 3: Given the choice of operating fixed wing vs. rotary wing for maritime patrol and ASW, everyone picks fixed wing. This line of thinking is why I think the Osprey is criminally under-used in future navy planning, but I digress . . On anything smaller than a through deck cruiser, fixed wing isn't really an option so VTOL vehicles have a place for everything smaller. Also VTOL drones (usually but not always rotary wing) allow aviation capability on even smaller ships than helicopters both because of physical size and because losing one is not as big a deal as it is with a manned helo. The reasons there is a future for maritime VTOL UAVs are the same as the reason there is a future for maritime helicopters.

Ref 4: It's not a one to one comparison. Firescout is about 1/7th the size of a Navy Helo by weight. Having several drones instead of one helo lets you cover more water and gives resilience against mechanical failure and combat losses. this combines with the unmanned nature of the beast to let commanders use drones much more aggressively. If you look at how much capability you can get out of a fixed amount of deck space, support crew, and fuel, smaller UABs will look better in many applications by weight of numbers, not individual platform capability.

The theory is moot however. The LCS is a disaster and the targeting capabilities that UAVs bring are only significant to a Navy that arms surface ships to kill other surface ships and attack shore targets, things the US Navy has no requirement for nor interest in

After reading that I reconsidered and arrived at this conclusion.

Rotary winged UAVs do have a place.

The Navy just picked the wrong one to develop.  They should have picked the Eagle Eye.  Specs from Wikipedia.

Specifications

General characteristics

• Crew: 0
• Length: 18 ft 3 in (5.56 m)
• Wingspan: 24 ft 2 in (7.37 m)
• Main rotor diameter: 2× 10 ft 0 in (3.05 m)
• Height: 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m)
• Main rotor area: 157 ft² (14.6 m²)
• Powerplant: 1 × Pratt & Whitney Canada PW207D turboshaft, 641 hp (478 kW) each

Performance

• Maximum speed: 225 mph (360 km/h)
• Endurance: 6 hours
• Service ceiling: 20,000 ft (6,096 m)

Armament

• 200 lb (91 kg) payload

.

First thing that stands out in my mind is the lack of weapons carriage and the relatively short endurance.

The revolution in munitions toward smaller more effective weapons makes weapons carriage moot and proper engineering can solve the endurance problem.  

The Navy played it safe when it came to equipping its surface ships with UAVs.  Because it did, it missed the opportunity to team with the US Coast Guard on the development of this revolutionary machine.  Instead of being bold, they entered the field of UAVs in a half hearted way and we're seeing half hearted results.

Its not too late.

Fly Eagle Eye!

Pilots Discuss the F-35

I.D. and the lost Navy FireScout.

ID wrote an article early (and I mean it posted early...like around 1 or 2 am) about the US Navy losing the narrative battle to the USAF in regards to the Air-Sea Battle.  Read it here but a few snippets.

Two problems occurred. First, unmanned aircraft development for the Navy in particular got sidetracked when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began wearing down F-18s faster than the Navy expected, and due to political pressure from Congress, not to mention practical problems with rapidly aging airframes, the Navy ended up having to spend a great deal of the aviation budget on replacing F-18 Hornets instead of innovating new unmanned aircraft. Second, the Littoral Combat Ship mission modules that focused on unmanned vehicles ran into serious development problems that have led to a complete restructuring of the mission module programs. Many of those technologies could not meet requirements, and as a result Navy leadership spends a great deal of time in public speeches emphasizing the necessity for mission power capacity to support new technologies like unmanned underwater vehicles.

The Navy doesn't have a Hornet replacement of any type ready to field today, and while a lot of investment in both the Joint Strike Fighter and the UCAS offers possibilities; these systems lack a narrative that overrides the uncertainty surrounding the programs. What will be the capabilities and limitations of both platforms, and will they compliment each other effectively has hoped? What does future ISR look like when surface combatants and submarines field unmanned systems, and what does the Littoral Combat Ship bring to the total battle network? Will these complicated emerging networks of systems be both reliable and credible, or will the network requirements be too vulnerable to stress and disruption in the future warfare environment to make many of these technologies useful?

I don't know if the G man had word of the shoot down before I did, but one thing is certain.

He nailed it.  The article is a little wordy and he goes into issues that focus on the Big Navy, but as far as UAV's and the Surface Navy is concerned, he nailed it.

This first combat deployment of rotary winged UAVs (I'm assuming US Navy warships) is a disappointment.  At least in my eyes.

It also brings up a couple of interesting questions.

1.  Are rotary winged UAVs more vulnerable than fixed winged UAVs?
2.  Was the flight profile adequate?  Did its mission profile place it in danger of being lost or is it more fundamental? 
3.  Is the idea of armed rotary winged UAVs an evolutionary dead end?
4.  For naval warfare --- do manned helicopters just make more sense?  MH-60's can be had for a song...should we dump the fashion of UAVs and concentrate on what we know works?

I don't know but the loss of this FireScout...for whatever reason...does not bode well for the future of these vehicles.

Gettin' ready to kick some Police/Firefighter ass! All in good fun of course!

Marine gives pep talk before fight

Lt. Col. Shane Tomko, Special Purpose Marine Ground Air-Ground Task Force commander with 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment gives words of encouragement to one of his Marines, Lance Cpl. Chris Williams, 22, a radio operator with the reserve battalion, before his fight at the "First to Fight" amateur boxing tournament. At this tournament, Marines and St. Louis police and firefighters go toe-to-toe at the Scottstrade Center in St. louis, June 20 with all proceeds benefitting Backstoppers, Semper Fi Foundation and Toys for Tots. Marine Week provides an opportunity to increase public awareness of the Marine Corps' value to our nation's defense and to preserve and mature the Corps' relationship with the American people. Photo by Sgt. Jimmy D. Shea

Paris Airshow 2011: C-130 Flight Demo

The PM is pissed!

via Defense Management.

PM rebukes forces chiefs over Libya

21 June 2011

Prime Minister David Cameron has hit back at forces chiefs' warnings about the strain being placed on Britain's armed forces.

In recent weeks the heads of the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy have warned that Britain would struggle to maintain operations in Libya beyond September due to the difficulty in refreshing personnel and equipment in both Afghanistan and Libya.

When the First Sea Lord repeated his warning recently he was said to have been called to Downing Street for a 'dressing down' by the Prime Minister.

Today it emerged that Air Chief Marshal Simon Bryant warned MPs that allowance cuts had affected morale and that the RAF was 'running hot' in terms of the demand on its personnel and airframes.

Confronted with today's news, Cameron told a press conference: "There are moments when I wake up and read the newspapers and think 'you do the fighting, I'll do the talking'."

"…Time is on our side, not Gaddafi's. We are allied to some of the richest and most militarily capable countries in the world. We have the Libyan people on our side and we'll keep going.

"The pressure is turning up all the time: you can see that in the desertions from his regime, the pressure on the west of the country, the pockets of resistance that people had assumed would be snuffed out are growing in strength.

"Britain's military are performing magnificently."

Wow.

The truth always gets out.

The truth is just as the Sea Lord stated.  NATO is struggling.  NATO is overstretched and its future is in doubt.

Remember a bridge too far?  This is a war too strenuous for an out of shape military alliance with delusions of grandeur.