A blog you should check out.

Hey gents.

Found a blog you should check out...Why the F-35....

Recommended reading for Bill Sweetman, Bob Cox, the entire Aviation Week Staff, Air Power Australia and all the other camp followers that they have.

The Kawasaki C-2...the real A400 Grizzly killer.

Looking like a scaled down C-17 or a slightly larger and more advanced YC-15, the C-2 is hitting the real sweet spot in future tactical airlift.

The A400 was designed to fill that niche but it's missed the mark due to advancements in armor technology and changing defense trends.  The 30 ton payload of the A400 just won't do.  Additionally its price point is going to make it difficult to export.

Now compare that to the C-2.  Its faster than the A400, has a bigger payload, and is zooming toward production and should be on the defense market anytime.  The Japanese just relaxed export restrictions and this airplane should be one of the first beneficiaries of that decision.

The Kawasaki C-2.  The real A400 Grizzly killer. 

British Anti-Air Missile Deployment for the Olympics.

Interesting.

Anti-air missiles...Typhoon Fighters....Amphibious Assault Ships in the harbor....

They're going all out and this is just the stuff we can see.  I'd bet body parts that if the public got wind of whats going on behind the scenes they'd be shitting bricks.

Soldier dies of dog bite.

This is crazy.  via Military.com.

A U.S. soldier died of rabies after being bitten by a dog in Afghanistan, U.S. health authorities said on Thursday.
The 24-year-old male first complained in mid-August 2011 of symptoms including shoulder and neck pain, odd sensations in his hands and fainting, shortly after arriving at Fort Drum, N.Y., for a new military assignment.
"He was lucid and described having received a dog bite on the right hand during January 2011 while deployed to Afghanistan," said the report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Tests confirmed that the patient had a type of canine rabies associated with dogs in Afghanistan, the CDC report said.
The soldier's condition swiftly deteriorated after he was hospitalized on Aug. 19.
He suffered a severe brain hemorrhage and after consulting with doctors who said recovery was unlikely, the family withdrew life support. The soldier, whose name was withheld by the CDC, died on Aug. 31.

This makes your heart break.  To survive mines, IED's and bullets and to die of a dog bite?

I'm not about to throw stones at Army medicine, but what happened here?  All the warnings about not befriending stray animals in that hell hole--to report bites and this went unnoticed?

I WASN'T THERE SO I DON'T KNOW.

But this sucks.  This really sucks.

Tank Instructor....

A sexy Israeli Tank Instructor! 

Mythical Fleet. Patrol Boat.

Thought I had forgotten my mythical fleet?

Not a chance.

Next on the list to actual take the fight to the enemy in the Pacific theater and even off the coast of Africa and in other confined waters around the world is a patrol boat.

Working in concert with LCS (properly named Off Shore Patrol Vessels)...LHD's with their embarked helicopters will be squadrons of Austal 30m Fast Patrol Vessels.

Of course we'd need to determine a type of weapons fit for them but that shouldn't be an issue.  The goal here is to act as screening forces for the larger ships and to fill the role of WW2 Torpedo Boats.

Its a hole in our capabilities that we can easily fill.  Visit and Boarding activities can more easily be carried out from these boats and when you consider the crowded water ways in which future combat might take place, an ink bloat strategy on waves might prove helpful.

Less expensive and more plentiful is the way to go.

Mike at New Wars along with the guy talking about buying Fords not Cadillacs have won the day with me.  Stats via Austal.

GENERAL VESSEL DESCRIPTION
Vessel type Fast Patrol Craft
Material Aluminium alloy
Hull form Monohull
Deadweight (max) 16 tonnes
PRINCIPAL DIMENSIONS
Length overall 30.0 metres
Length (waterline) 24.6 metres
Beam (moulded) 6.4 metres
Depth (moulded) 3.2 metres
Draft (approx.) 1.5 metres
PERSONNEL
Crew 11
PERFORMANCE
Range at 10 knots >1000nm
Speed 40 knots
PROPULSION
Main engines 2 x MTU 16V 2000 M92
2 x 1630kW @ 2450rpm
Propulsion 2 x Kamewa SIII waterjets
WEAPONS AND SENSORS
Standard 2 x 0.50 calibre general purpose machine gun mounts
1 x 20mm cannon

General's Club strikes at Navy lust for F/A-XX

via Flight Global.

Retired USMC Lt Gen Emerson Gardner, a former principal deputy director of the Pentagon's Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE), says that there are lots of reasons to be sceptical about the USN's ability to fund the F/A-XX.
"It's not going to happen," Gardner says. "There's not going to be any money there."
Gardner says that the USN will probably not have any money for the programme in the fiscal year 2014 budget. Nor is it likely that the USN will ever come up with the $20 billion to $30 billion in research and development dollars to fund an F/A-XX development programme.
Gardner estimates the total cost of a new F/A-XX programme to be more than $40 billion and yield a maximum of 150 aircraft. The unit cost, he estimates, could be as much as $125 million per jet.
The USN simply does not have the money to pay for F/A-XX. With the USN's ship-building budgets squeezed, Gardner says that naval aviation accounts will likely end up being raided to help pay for submarines and surface ships.
The only place the money can come from is from within the F-35 programme, Gardner says. "There is a community over there that says 'let's just skip the F-35C, let's just keep buying F/A-18s and we'll go and develop this other airplane,'" he says.
"That's very dangerous for the carrier because it makes the carrier irrelevant. They are not going to have first-day capability. I'm absolutely convinced that if you do not have stealth by the year 2022 to 2025 you will be irrelevant."
Lt Gen George Trautman, a former USMC deputy commandant for aviation, concurs.
"It sort of validates the naval aviators' overall lack of commitment to the F-35," he says. "It shows how much they're in bed with Boeing to include a whole host of retired navy aviators who work for Boeing. And it shows, frankly, their lack of commitment to unmanned systems."
Gardner concurs that the USN's relationship with Boeing is playing a role in the service's push towards a new tactical fighter programme.
"I think it's Boeing. There is a huge Boeing lobby in the navy," Gardner says. "That has a lot to do with it."

Trust me on this one gents.

The General's Club has made an estimation and decided that the "hand on the wheel that's driving the Marine Corps" needs to be fortified a bit.

Not one but two retired General's decided to make a statement on the Navy's F/A-XX project and the backing from that service on the F-35C.

You're starting to see the Club members speaking up on matters important to the Marine Corps...the first hint of this came with the Commandant's pronouncement to "stop embarassing the Corps" and now this.

I've stated before that Amos' time in the big chair will not be seen in the same light as General Gray's or Mundy's or Krulak's...this confirms it.