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Archive for February, 2008

KC-X…And the Winner Is!

Friday, February 29th, 2008

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BREAKING NEWS:Northrop Grumman/EADS…the KC-​​45/​A330.

Huge win for US/​EU team. 

– Christian

MORE:

Pentagon picks EADS/​Northrop for tanker con­tract: report (AFP) 

The Pentagon has cho­sen Europe’s EADS, par­ent of Airbus, and US part­ner Northrop Grumman for a mas­sive refu­el­ing tanker air­craft con­tract, the Wall Street Journal said Friday. 

The news­pa­per, cit­ing a per­son famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion, said the part­ner­ship won a heated con­test against US-​​based aero­space giant Boeing for the con­tract of some 40 bil­lion dollars. 

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BAE/​Navistar JLTV Prototype Unveiled

Friday, February 29th, 2008

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Be sure to check out first impres­sions from the annual Association of the U.S. Army Winter Symposium on the unveil­ing of BAE Systems/Navistar’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle prototype.

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More B-​​2 Crash Speculation

Friday, February 29th, 2008

You can look this one up. See FY 09 bud­get request, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion mate­ri­als, US Air Force, Aircraft procurement-​​Vol. 2, page 71.

You’ll find on that page a detailed descrip­tion for not one, but two poten­tial mechan­i­cal prob­lems that could cause a B-​​2A to crash.

Here’s a sam­pling (read high­lighted text):

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The prob­lem is caused by the B-2A’s dis­torted engine inlets. 

The dis­tor­tion causes exces­sive wear on the stage 1 fan blades for the F118-​​GE-​​100 engines. Take that and an unplanned “for­eign object dam­age event”, and, voila, your $1.1 bil­lion bomber may expe­ri­ence a “cat­a­strophic in-​​flight emergency”. 

But there’s another prob­lem. A loose fan blade also can spark an “uncon­tained tita­nium fire”. According to the same doc­u­ment, the tita­nium fire — what­ever that is — may cause a “Class A event”, or what nor­mal peo­ple call a “crash”.

The prob­lem is listed in the bud­get jus­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments because the USAF is buy­ing repair blades this year to fix the prob­lem. I’m sure it will be inter­est­ing for the inves­ti­ga­tors to find out whether the “Spirit of Kansas” had received the repairs before the crash, among other items of inter­est, of course.

Steve Trimble

Mughniyeh Done in by Hezbollah

Friday, February 29th, 2008

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Killing off your [erst­while] allies…? 

Our friend Aharon Etingoff sends me this from the JP:

‘Arabs helped Mossad kill Mughniyeh’

Syrian sources claim that sev­eral Arab nations con­spired with Mossad to assas­si­nate Hizbullah chief of oper­a­tions Imad Mughniyeh ear­lier this month, the London-​​based Al-​​Quds Al-​​Arabi daily stated on Wednesday. 

According to the report, which could not be con­firmed by any offi­cial source, Syria was mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress in the inves­ti­ga­tion of Mughniyeh’s death, and would pub­lish the results of its inquiry fol­low­ing the Arab league sum­mit in Damascus in March. 

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Marines Don’t Want Their MTV

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

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Something told me this would happen. 

Saw a great report last night from Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin who’s been trav­el­ing with Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway in Iraq. 

She knew news when she saw it and reports that Marines are com­plain­ing might­ily about their new body armor vest, the Modular Tactical Vest or MTV.

The Pentagon and Marine Corps autho­rized the pur­chase of 84,000 bul­let­proof vests in 2006 that not only are too heavy but are so imprac­ti­cal that some U.S. Marines are ask­ing for their old vests back so they can remain agile enough to fight. 

Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway wants to know who autho­rized the costly pur­chase of the nearly 30-​​pound flak jack­ets and has ordered the Marine pro­cure­ment offi­cers at the Quantico base in Virginia to halt the rest of an unfilled order, FOX News has learned. 

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Big Changes for the Defense Budget

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

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My for­mer col­league at Marine Corps Times, Gordon Lubold, has a great story that ran a cou­ple days ago in his new paper, the Christian Science Monitor.

He’s taken a look at an ini­tia­tive dreamed up on Capitol Hill to redis­trib­ute the nearly half-​​trillion (if you don’t count wartime sup­ple­men­tals) DoD bud­get away from roughly equal shares and dole out more funds to the ser­vice that deserves them most. 

Lubold writes:

A bipar­ti­san House panel is nudg­ing the Pentagon to begin a con­ver­sa­tion on how to reform itself in many ways. But at the Pentagon, talk of change usu­ally has a bud­getary impact. 

And, despite the past sev­eral years of “nation-​​building” and coun­terin­sur­gency oper­a­tions in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been vir­tu­ally no change in the way the defense bud­get is carved up in at least 40 years, says Rep. Jim Cooper (D) of Tennessee, who chairs the panel. 

“That right there is a sta­tis­ti­cal indict­ment of the process,” Representative Cooper says. “There had to be a year in which there were greater needs in one area or another, and the sys­tem was unable to accom­mo­date it.“ 

The fis­cal 2009 bud­get request released this month, for exam­ple, shows the Army request­ing a 27 per­cent share, the Air Force ask­ing for a 28 per­cent share, and the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, want­ing a 29 per­cent share of the pro­posed $515 bil­lion budget. 

Cooper’s seven-​​member panel is expected to release a study this week on each of the branches’ “roles and mis­sions” that may threaten ser­vices that are seen to per­form more con­ven­tional war­fare. With the focus on the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that makes some in the Navy and Air Force worry. 

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MALD Paves Way for Swarm Ops

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

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A DT tip­per, who prefers to remain anony­mous (and who has prof­fered some pretty good stuff in the past), sent me this lit­tle tid­bit with his analysis:

The Miniature Air Launched Decoy, a Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) state-​​of-​​the-​​art, low-​​cost, mod­u­lar air– launched pro­gram­ma­ble flight vehi­cle, suc­cess­fully com­pleted gov­ern­ment and Raytheon seam­less ver­i­fi­ca­tion team flight test­ing Jan. 11. This sets the stage for the MALD to enter low-​​rate ini­tial pro­duc­tion (LRIP) later this year.

The test­ing, which began in June 2007, put the MALD through a series of flight pro­files includ­ing jet­ti­son and pow­ered flight tests from both F-​​16 and B-​​52 air­craft. The MALD, which weighs less than 300 pounds and has a range of approx­i­mately 500 nau­ti­cal miles, suc­ceeded in 33 of 35 tests…

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KC-​​X Decision!…Not

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

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Friday’s the big day, it seems. An insider tells me the deci­sion has been made, but that the mem­o­ran­dum is mak­ing its way around the Pentagon to get all the sig­na­tures it needs. 

Our boy Steve Trimble reports that Northrop Grumman shares went up slightly today while Boeing shares went down (NorGrum is part­nered with EADS/​Airbus against Boeing). A stock trader buddy of mine (who has no inside knowl­edge on this con­tract award at all but it’s still a good point nonethe­less) says “why do you think the entire mil­i­tary dri­ves Chevy and Ford trucks?” That is to say, there ain’t no way a European com­pany will win the bid.

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Intel Community Recognizes Cyber Threat

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

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In the 2008 Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the Senate Armed Services Committee for the first time the threat of cyber attacks were addressed (well, the first time in the report avail­able to the pub­lic). [EDITOR: The threat assess­ment was deliv­ered by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Defense Intelligence Agency chief, Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, in tes­ti­mony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Feb. 27] 

The intel­li­gence com­mu­nity listed “the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of the US infor­ma­tion infra­struc­ture to increas­ing cyber attacks by for­eign gov­ern­ments, non-​​state actors and crim­i­nal ele­ments” as the fourth major bul­let of the fourth page in the open­ing of the forty-​​five page tes­ti­mony deliv­ered to the Senate by DNI McConnell. The tes­ti­mony goes on to state that due to the sig­nif­i­cance of com­put­ers and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions to our country’s secu­rity, defense and econ­omy, threats to our IT infra­struc­ture are an impor­tant focus of the Intelligence Community.

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New Army Field Manual Preview

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

In a con­fer­ence call with blog­gers this morn­ing, the Army out­lined the newest ver­sion of its Field Manual (FM 3–0 Army Operations), the first revi­sion of Army doc­trine since 2001. According to LTG William Caldwell IV, Commander of the Combined Arms Center, the man­ual has finally taken the step of ele­vat­ing sta­bi­liza­tion oper­a­tions to the level of offen­sive and defen­sive ops. 

An Executive Summary was passed out before­hand that out­lines the chap­ters of the man­ual, which goes like this: 

– Chapter 1 estab­lishes the con­text of land oper­a­tions in terms of a global envi­ron­ment of per­sis­tent con­flict, the oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment, and uni­fied action. It dis­cusses the Army’s expe­di­tionary and cam­paign capa­bil­i­ties while empha­siz­ing that it is sol­diers who accom­plish missions. 

– Chapter 2 describes a spec­trum of con­flict extend­ing from sta­ble peace to gen­eral war. From that spec­trum, it estab­lishes five oper­a­tional themes into which var­i­ous joint oper­a­tions fit. Borrowing heav­ily from emerg­ing NATO doc­trine, this chap­ter helps Army lead­ers to under­stand where diverse oper­a­tions such as peace­keep­ing and coun­terin­sur­gency fit and shape sup­port­ing doctrine.

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