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Archive for August, 2008

Harrier Crash Due to Pilot Error

Friday, August 29th, 2008

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I’m always reluc­tant to post these sto­ries and I always get a lot of flak from them, but I think it’s impor­tant for folks who might not have access to them that are involved in some way with avi­a­tion to see what hap­pened and get some “lessons learned” data that can maybe help them down the road. 

A Harrier crash on Feb. 13 near Cherry Point (the sec­ond in a series of four so far this fis­cal year) was ini­tially thought to have been caused by engine fail­ure. But accord­ing to the Judge Advocate General Manual inves­ti­ga­tion I got my hand on through FOIA the cause was a far sim­pler — and more cor­rectable one.

According to an offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion report released after a Freedom of Information Act Request from Military​.com, the pilot, Capt. Ian Stevens, failed to move the jet noz­zles of his Harrier to the posi­tion required for con­ven­tional flight dur­ing a Feb. 13 mis­sion to prac­tice aer­ial refu­el­ing and ground attack runs near Cherry Point Marine Air Station, caus­ing the plane to drop from the sky.

That’s from a story we’re post­ing today on Military​.com (there’ve been some tech­ni­cal snags so pub­lish­ing is delayed). Here’s a bit more:

“This mishap was caused by the mishap pilot not posi­tion­ing the noz­zles back to the aft posi­tion after posi­tion­ing them … to the hov­er­stop posi­tion in order to … sta­bi­lize in a proper for­ma­tion posi­tion with is lead,” the inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer stated in the report. “The thrust remained vec­tored below the air­craft until the air­craft impacted the ground.” …

Stevens exe­cuted sev­eral suc­cess­ful aer­ial refu­el­ing runs on a KC-​​10 Extender tanker, the report said, before peel­ing away with the other two Harriers to prac­tice using his tar­get­ing pod dur­ing mock ground attacks. As he was try­ing to slow down and join up with the lead pilot of the flight, whose name is redacted from the report, things started to go wrong.

“The engine sounded like it was spool­ing up … but the lead [pilot] con­tin­ued to pull away from me,” Stevens — whose name was removed from the report but released to local media at the time of the crash — told inves­ti­ga­tors in a state­ment. “I … increased power to ‘mil’ but did not feel a cor­re­spond­ing accel­er­a­tion. I decided that I had a problem.”

(more…)

Posted in Fast Movers | 16 Comments »

Signal Changes

Friday, August 29th, 2008

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The U.S. Navy’s lead­er­ship has shown unprece­dented inep­ti­tude in the han­dling of sur­face ship pro­grams. The pre­vi­ous (and ongo­ing) mass of prob­lems with the amphibi­ous ships of the LPD 17 class and the lit­toral com­bat ships (LCS) seem to pale in com­par­i­son to the han­dling of the DDG 1000 “destroyer” program. 

For eight years the Congress and pub­lic have heard the Navy’s lead­er­ship — civil­ian and uni­formed — declare that they wanted no more ships of the Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) class. Sixty-​​two of these destroy­ers are in ser­vice or under construction. 

Chiefs of Naval Operations Vern Clark (July 2000 — July 2005), Michael Mullen (July 2005 — September 2007), and Gary Roughead (since September 2007) had been adamant that the DDG 1000 was the sur­face com­bat­ant of the future. All three admi­rals are sur­face war­fare spe­cial­ists, giv­ing cred­i­bil­ity to their statements. 

Furthermore, the 30-​​year ship­build­ing plan, which the Navy Department pre­sented to Congress in February 2008 (cov­er­ing the period fis­cal years 2009–2038) still indi­cated a total of 32 DDG 1000s. 

The DDG 1000 pro­gram — assigned the class name Zumwalt — dates to the early 1990s and a Mission Needs Statement that evolved from the Navy’s post-​​Cold War strat­egy paper from the Sea (1992). The strat­egy pos­tu­lated that future Navy empha­sis should be ori­ented toward sup­port­ing joint/​coalition oper­a­tions against the shore. The “land-​​attack destroyer” and DD-​​21 con­cepts fol­lowed, evolv­ing into the DDG 1000. 

But this spring the Navy’s lead­er­ship essen­tially stopped sup­port­ing the DDG 1000 within weeks of con­tracts being awarded to con­struct the first two ships. At the same time, the Navy’s lead­ers began advo­cat­ing for eight or nine addi­tional Burke-​​class destroy­ers. Now, at con­gres­sional insti­ga­tion, the third DDG 1000, which is in the president’s fis­cal year 2009 bud­get, is also being sup­ported by the Navy leadership.

(more…)

Posted in Polmar's Perspective | 15 Comments »

First Flight of Sikorsky X2 Demonstrator

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

This arti­cle first appeared at AviationWeek​.com.

Sikorsky’s futur­is­tic X2 high-​​speed heli­copter tech­nol­ogy demon­stra­tor made its first flight today in Horseheads, N.Y., in the hands of chief test pilot Kevin L. Bredenbeck. 

The single-​​engined fly-​​by-​​wire air­craft fea­tures coax­ial rotors and a pusher pro­peller that Sikorsky believes will rev­o­lu­tion­ize the heli­copter world with cruise speeds of up to 250 kts, some 100 kts faster than cur­rent pro­duc­tion helicopters. 

“This isn’t an air­plane we are train­ing to hover. It’s a heli­copter that will go very, very fast,” said Sikorsky CEO Jeff Pino. “I think it will get to 260 kts.” (The heli­copter world speed record is held by a Westland Lynx at 216.45 kts). 

Today’s flight lasted 30 min­utes, dur­ing which Bredenbeck demon­strated hover, for­ward flight, and a hover turn. 

Current heli­copter speeds are lim­ited by rotor aero­dy­nam­ics. In con­trast the X2’s coax­ial rotor sys­tem is opti­mized for all regimes of flight by a fly-​​by-​​wire con­trol sys­tem that will slow the rotors at high for­ward speeds to pre­vent their tips going super­sonic, while max­i­miz­ing lift and min­i­miz­ing drag by adjust­ing the pitch of the rigid, carbon-​​fiber blades. The counter-​​rotating rotors pro­vide equal lift on each side of the air­craft and, unlike a tra­di­tional heli­copter, are relieved of hav­ing to pro­vide all the for­ward propul­sion by a large pusher pro­peller at the rear of the fuselage. 

The rigid­ity of the blades allows the rotors to be closely spaced only two feet apart, fur­ther reduc­ing drag. Sikorsky believes the gap can be reduced even more in the future. 

The X2 tech­nol­ogy demon­stra­tor is pow­ered by a 1,452 shp, FADEC-​​equipped T800 tur­boshaft engine that was pre­vi­ously installed in one of the Comanche heli­copter pro­to­types. It dri­ves both the rotor and the pusher pro­peller through two gearboxes.

(more…)

Posted in Av Week Extra | 26 Comments »

You Run, You Die

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

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It looks like the Air Force got a new arrow in its quiver recently with the first employ­ment in com­bat of the new Guided Bomb Unit 54 — a hybrid Joint Direct Attack Munition/​Laser Guided Bomb. 

Seems that the Air Force issued an urgent need state­ment for a 500 lb. muni­tion that could take out mov­ing tar­gets. Maybe the fighter jocks were get­ting jeal­ous of their missile-​​wielding robot friends who seem to be the go-​​to plat­forms for such mov­ing tar­get engagements. 

Officials in Iraq announced that on Aug. 12 (why could they not talk about this any sooner? Typical Air Force) F-​​16s had engaged a mov­ing vehi­cle with the so-​​called LJDAM:

The GBU-​​54 is the U.S. Air Forces newest 500-​​pound pre­ci­sion weapon, equipped with a spe­cial tar­get­ing sys­tem that uses a com­bi­na­tion of GPS and laser guid­ance to accu­rately engage and destroy mov­ing tar­gets.

On, Aug. 12, 2008, F-​​16s from the 77th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron deployed to Joint Base Balad, Iraq, suc­cess­fully exe­cuted this com­bat first when the weapon was employed against a mov­ing enemy vehi­cle in Diyala province, Iraq…

Identified as an urgent oper­a­tional need in early 2007, the Air Force com­pleted the GBU-​​54s devel­op­ment and test­ing cycle in less than 17 months, field­ing it aboard 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing air­craft in May.

We have con­sis­tently used precision-​​guided weapons to engage sta­tion­ary threats with superb com­bat effects, said Brig. Gen. Brian Bishop, 332nd AEW com­man­der. This weapon allows our com­bat pilots to engage a broad range of mov­ing tar­gets with dra­mat­i­cally increased capa­bil­i­ties and it increases our abil­ity to strike the enemy through­out a much, much broader engage­ment enve­lope…

“At end game, on Aug. 12, the team of the joint ter­mi­nal attack con­troller, along­side his ground unit com­man­der in this event, ensured all cri­te­ria were met for the first com­bat deliv­ery of the LJDAM. And finally, our F-​​16 pilot accu­rately and pre­cisely deliv­ered and guided the weapon to desired weapons effects, the dis­abling and destruc­tion of an enemy vehi­cle and per­son­nel, Gen.North said.

(more…)

Posted in Fast Movers | 25 Comments »

Afghanistan Sold Short — Allied Troops Die

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

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The sit­u­a­tion in Afghanistan has got­ten me pretty pissed off these days. I got off the phone a lit­tle while ago with the com­man­der of a bat­tal­ion of Marines — 2nd bat­tal­ion, 7th Marine Regiment — who’s try­ing to hold back the waters of “Taliban” vio­lence man­ning the ram­parts of a 28,000 square kilo­me­ter area of oper­a­tions … a swath the size of Vermont, he said. 

Because of this lack of forces, Lt. Col. Richard Hall, the bat­tal­ion CO, has lost by my count 13 Marines in the short time he’s been in Afghanistan. That’s get­ting close to the total num­ber of Marines killed in Iraq this year. Hall’s been extended once already — and he’s pray­ing for relief by November if Gates will free up some Marines from Anbar (Iraq) as the com­man­dant reit­er­ated his desire to do today at the Pentagon. 

My fun­da­men­tal ques­tion is how could we have let it get this bad? Hall said he’s got no coali­tion forces buffer­ing his provinces (Helmand and Farah) to the north, so the enemy slips back and forth with impunity. He says the “Taliban” that are killing his men aren’t reli­gious fanat­ics — they’re crim­i­nals who are pissed about the dis­rup­tion of their smug­gling routes. 

A cou­ple weeks ago, we talked to the deputy direc­tor for oper­a­tions at Centcom, Brig. Gen. Robert Holmes. He said the enemy in Afghanistan has got­ten “more orga­nized” and in some cases stronger. Stronger!?

“Well, we’ve seen, fight­ing sea­son after fight­ing sea­son, the Taliban have become more orga­nized. And their fight­ing, in terms of being in units, has become more orga­nized, and in some cases stronger.”

(more…)

Posted in Afghan Update | 36 Comments »

USAF not Ready to Retire the U-​​2

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

This arti­cle first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

The U.S. Air Force is con­sid­er­ing — once again — delay­ing the retire­ment date for its work­horse intel­li­gence col­lec­tor, the U-​​2 Dragon Lady, as devel­op­ers work out issues with inte­grat­ing a sig­nals intel­li­gence pay­load onto the Global Hawk unmanned aer­ial vehi­cle (UAV), accord­ing to ser­vice officials. 

The cur­rent plan calls for the com­ple­tion of U-​​2 retire­ment in the third quar­ter of fis­cal 2012. But the Pentagon is con­sid­er­ing delay­ing the retire­ment to fis­cal 2014 or pos­si­bly later, depend­ing on the matu­rity of the Global Hawk. And retir­ing a main­stay intel­li­gence col­lec­tor like the U-​​2 dur­ing wars that require mas­sive amounts of sen­sor data is also unlikely, accord­ing to one USAF official. 

The USAF has wran­gled for years with var­i­ous dates for U-​​2 retire­ment. Earlier plans called for the retire­ment to start as soon as FY ’07. But the date has con­tin­u­ally slipped. Regional com­man­ders such as in the Pacific realm rely heav­ily on the U-​​2. Key advan­tages of the air­craft over the Global Hawk include higher alti­tude (above 70,000 feet) and more avail­able onboard power to run a larger selec­tion of intelligence-​​gathering sensors. 

The U-​​2 can col­lect data from all seven of its avail­able bands (ver­sus the Global Hawk’s five) simul­ta­ne­ously. They include green, red, near infrared (vis­i­ble), two short­wave infrared bands and a mid­wave infrared (which can be tuned to day or night col­lec­tion). The sev­enth band is a redun­dant, mid­wave ther­mal infrared chan­nel. The short­wave bands col­lect images in the invis­i­ble reflected solar wave­lengths and are most use­ful in detect­ing objects in adverse con­di­tions such as haze, fog or smoke. 

The lat­est vari­ants of the decade-​​old U-​​2S (part of the U.S. fleet of 33 remain­ing Dragon Ladies) also carry the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System (ASARS) 2A designed by Raytheon (orig­i­nally for map­ping) that’s so sen­si­tive it can detect dis­turbed earth in areas where explo­sive devices and mines have been planted.

(more…)

Posted in Av Week Extra | 11 Comments »

NRO (not NSA) On the Chopping Block

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

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For decades its name could not be spo­ken out­side of a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or men­tioned to some­one with­out at least TS/​SCI clearance. 

It built won­drous satel­lites that did things like detect­ing mis­sile launches from space that no one had believed pos­si­ble until the National Reconnaissance Office did them. 

But a string of fail­ures, goofs and bud­get busters, com­bined with the increas­ing impor­tance of intel­li­gence gath­ered by air breath­ing assets such as Predator and Global Hawk drones, has led a pres­ti­gious com­mis­sion of space experts to rec­om­mend that the NRO be merged with Space and Missile Systems Command to cre­ate some­thing called the National Security Space Organization. 

The rec­om­men­da­tion is made by some­thing called the Allard Commission, which was cre­ated by Congress last year. It is led by the national secu­rity space guru Tom Young, a for­mer Lockheed Martine exec­u­tive and the man who always seems to get the call to fig­ure out how to fix space when things go wrong. Young has kept his pan­els rec­om­men­da­tions under wraps but word began leak­ing out last week. 

The plan would also lead to strip­ping the Air Force of its exec­u­tive agent for space the per­son who serves the Office of Secretary of Defense as the lead on unclas­si­fied space acqui­si­tions and trans­fer­ring it to the new author­ity. This office will also have bud­get author­ity for all space programs. 

This would include a com­bi­na­tion of the NRO and SMC and other ele­ments of Air Force Space Command to cre­ate a sin­gle National Security Space Command.

(more…)

Posted in Catch the "Buzz" | 19 Comments »

It’s Poll Time

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Posted in Defense Tech Poll | 11 Comments »

Why Not?

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Saa

Jason posted this com­ment a while back on my What is a Combat Handgun? entry.

When I got out I worked per­sonal secu­rity for indi­vid­u­als.  I had to take 3 lev­els of firearms qual­i­fi­ca­tion classes.  Even with my expe­ri­ence sev­eral of my instruc­tors asked me to try the revolver (yes I am going there)

I was skep­ti­cal.  But in their opin­ions (all were sim­i­lar), if I got the **** scared out of me I would be more accu­rate with a revolver.  I went to a gun shop after doing some research and picked up a S&W Model 66.  Stainless steel, .357 Magnum, and adjustable sights.  Night sights too.

I started prac­tic­ing with it every night for about an hour dur­ing my courses and would shoot both types of firearms.  No ques­tion I could get two in the chest and a head shot (had to unlearn that per my instruc­tors, though…) even when worked up (we did push ups, sit ups and ran in place and then went into shoot­ing sce­nar­ios and drills at the sound of a whistle).

In my very few engage­ments I felt 100% bet­ter with the revolver.  Stainless steel doesn’t rust and con­ceals nicely when not in use.  Speed load­ers are excep­tion­ally fast to load when taught the right tech­nique.  And a .357+P hol­low point round will mess the BG up.

(more…)

Posted in In the Weeds with Eric | 28 Comments »

Blackwater 2.0: ‘Operator Disneyland’

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

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MOYOCK, N.C. — It’s a name that’s become syn­ony­mous with the murky world of coun­terin­sur­gency in Iraq and Afghanistan — where the sub­tle tones of the enemy’s col­ors blend in with innocents. 

In a war like this, no one is secure and the mil­i­tary has its hands full, so the American gov­ern­ment has turned increas­ingly to civil­ian con­trac­tors who pick up the slack where mil­i­tary and fed­eral secu­rity per­son­nel left off. 

One of the most rec­og­niz­able play­ers in the pri­vate secu­rity indus­try is Blackwater Worldwide, the com­pany founded by for­mer SEAL Erik Prince in the mid-​​1990s. Though the com­pany is best known for its bur­ley, highly-​​trained secu­rity guards who are often pic­tured flank­ing State Department offi­cials and ambas­sadors in Iraq or Afghanistan, there’s more to this sprawl­ing, 7,000 acre com­pound here in the swampy coastal plains of North Carolina’s north­east than meets the eye. 

“It’s a Disneyland for oper­a­tors,” said Blackwater found­ing mem­ber and cur­rent pres­i­dent Gary Jackson dur­ing an August 22 tour of the company’s grounds. “They come here and they just can’t believe it.“ 

With an array of fir­ing ranges, shoot houses, an avi­a­tion sup­port fleet and a ros­ter of train­ers capa­ble of deliv­er­ing instruc­tion on any kind of mar­tial skill known to man, Blackwater has become a jug­ger­naut in the world of pri­vate mil­i­tary companies. 

Originally founded as a train­ing and tar­get man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany, Blackwater has launched a media offen­sive to shake off its rep­u­ta­tion among crit­ics as a “shoot-​​first-​​ask-​​questions-​​later” band of bearded mer­ce­nar­ies. Two high-​​profile inci­dents in Iraq pro­pelled the nor­mally secre­tive com­pany onto America’s front pages, and the news wasn’t good.

(more…)

Posted in Door Kickers | 20 Comments »

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