Indirect clown fire

Think the abilities a team needs to use a mortar or large field artillery piece for indirect fire.

Well, the ANA doesn't have those abilities, even though the have the equipment.

An allied Afghan platoon opened up with their .50-caliber machine gun, spraying bullets all over the valley, and their mortar team went into action. Within seconds, the team of three had run down to their position, yanked the cover off the mouth of the heaviest weapon on the post, unwrapped an 82-mm round and dropped it down the tube. There was a strong metallic clink, followed by a blast as the bomb went zooming out from the mortar. Seconds later a boom reverberated over the surrounding mountains, and the Afghan crew stood on tiptoe, trying to see where it had landed.

And that is the point. Over the course of 10 days in October 2011, the Afghan National Army (ANA) mortar crew never actually aimed their tube. They never took a bearing, never read out elevations, never set up their aiming sticks — though they did continuously clean and oil the weapon.

Gates ignorant assumptions about air power--verified

Gates, one of the contributors to the reduction of U.S. Air Power Dominance, got his portrait, unveiled in the Pentagon the other day.

I wish I could spit on it.

Meanwhile, all the Gates assumptions about the emerging threat picture have been verified as 100 percent rubbish.

Communists and Australia in the Asian Century

"Chinese top brass bags US influence in region", is a good article to read if you can get it online or read the print edition of today's The Australian.

The Chinese general in-question warns us about the U.S. but also Japan's past. He warns us about the dangers of a fascist Japan and how they bombed Darwin.

The general is right to warn us about totalitarianism in the Pacific Rim. However he doesn't mention the dangers of communism. A murderous Mao is not mentioned.

At all.

Something also not mentioned much in the lofty Neville Chamberlain -like goals in Australia's much hyped "Australia in the Asian century white paper".

Although to be fair to Mr. Chamberlain, I don't think he would have put his name to such a shoddy piece of unreality as Australia's new policy white paper.

The title for the above mentioned article in The Australian should be amended to read, "Communist Chinese top brass bags US influence in region".

Lots of cart-before-the-horse stuff in the blizzard of wishful thinking in the overly optimistic white paper.

I would suggest, (as I have in the past) that for Australia to be a leader in Pacific Rim policy, that it must champion free speech above all; without reservation.

Or, prepare to suffer a very bad fate in this century.

George Orwell and all that.

Cry for help: The Pentagon has no clue how to make the F-35 affordable and sustainable

(from a long time ago)




LOL--

Solicitation Number:
N00019-13-R-0012
Notice Type:
Combined Synopsis/Solicitation
Synopsis:
Added: Oct 19, 2012 11:45 am
The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Patuxent River, MD intends to negotiate on a non-competitive basis with A.T. Kearney Public Sector and Defense Services, LLC., 1300 Wilson Blvd, Ste.1050, Arlington, VA 22209 for Sustainment Business Case Analysis (BCA) and Affordability Program Support, Phase II for the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO). The period of performance for this contract is estimated to be nine (9) months from date of award.

** Note: This synopsis is an amendment to the previous (N00019-12-R-0084) that was issued on January 23, 2012.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program Office (JSFPO) has completed Phase I of the JSF Sustainment Business Case Analysis (BCA) and Affordability Program, and plans to complete Phase II in the next nine (9) months. Phase I included deep dives of four (4) functional areas, including Supply Chain Management (SCM), Sustaining Engineering, Field Support Operations, and Fleet Management. Phase II will address other high priority areas not included in Phase I and complete the F-35 Sustainment Strategy Analysis. It also includes deep dives of the following additional functional areas: Autonomic Logistics Information Systems (ALIS), Training, Support Equipment, Depot Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul & Upgrade (MRO&U) Planning, Software, and Eglin Contractor Logistics Support (CLS) Maintenance not addressed in Phase I. Provide support to the Phase I implementation in order to provide continuity between BCA recommended changes and development and execution of required changes in people, processes and systems to achieve a new sustainment strategy.

A.T. Kearney has completed the support services for this requirement. It is in the Government's best interest to issue a new contract to A.T. Kearney for a continuation of services.

Responses must be received within 15 days of publication of this notice. Any responses should reference the solicitation number N00019-13-R-0012. The point of contact is Ms. Lisa Ellis, email: lisa.ellis@jsf.mil, or Ms. Emily Bannan, email: Emily.Bannan@jsf.mil

Our most useless war

The Australian government is still happy to mislead the public with its claims of hope and success in Afghanistan.

All; with no credible proof.

There is much more evidence to show that coalition trained Afghan “friendly” troops have poor fighting quality, poor morale, poor sense of mission, little unit cohesion or can even show up for work than there is evidence that they will be capable of standing up to an enemy unsupervised. What our tax money has been wasted on is a slightly less able version of the South Vietnamese Army. For Sale: slightly used rifle, only dropped once.

Until the Australian military bureaucracy can advise our civilian leadership about these facts of life, what they are doing is nothing less than despicable. Blood of our lost and wounded soldiers is on the hands of Russell Office senior leadership. And, guilty as charged for not understanding 4th generation warfare.

Afghanistan, in any condition, is not a threat against Australia. And, it is hard to take this government seriously about national security when they are unwilling and/or unable to perform basic border protection at home.

The ADF may be at war in Afghanistan, but the rest of Australia is at the shopping mall. And with no real justification for the Afghanistan deployment, mall-goers are justified in their behaviour.

These guys make AIPAC look like amateurs

Rent-seeker update for the F-35C; It's all happy flowers:

An update on the effort to base the Navy’s F35C Joint Strike Fighter squadron at Naval Air Facility El Centro will be presented at a Board of Supervisors meeting Monday, following a recent trip to Washington where members of the Joint Strike Fighter Coalition met with government officials.

No question of the F-35C being a valid weapon (beyond platitude) is mentioned.

The coalition is hoping to assure decision-makers “how we are embracing this,” Gallinat said, referring to basing the squadron at NAF El Centro. It is important, she said, that decision-makers are engaged and they know the willingness and support the community has about locating the squadron in Imperial County.

And least we forget, the politicians. They need work too:

The report also lists the endorsement of Rep. Bob Filner, D-Chula Vista, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-El Cajon, and Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, as well as some 14 local cities and associations who back basing the squadron here.

The Cause...and all that:

Meanwhile, fundraising efforts for the coalition have “stalled just a little bit,” she said, adding the organization is still actively looking for funding.

Those interested in funding the Joint Strike Fighter Coalition effort can contact the El Centro Chamber of Commerce at 760-352-3681.

Maybe by 2014 we will find out if the C can trap on a carrier. Maybe by 2016-17 we will know if the new hardware (TR-2) can drive a watered-down Block 3 software definition.

Then from there, a few more years, we might see OPEVAL.

Or not.

Free money

LOL:

The United States was also spending some $600 million over the next five years to fund “clean energy development, child health and nutrition programs, and efforts to help make Indonesia’s government more transparent and open,” Clinton said.

BTW, the U.S. is over $16T in the red. But yeah, handing out cash that doesn't belong to you.

UK MOD makes up story on F-35 concerns

All the difficulty and yet the UK MOD entrenched bureaucracy doesn't get it.

An MoD spokesman said: “The UK has been at the heart of the Joint Strike Fighter programme for over 10 years, playing a key role in development and production with 15 per cent of the work carried out in the UK.

The programme remains on track and we have recently taken delivery of our first test fighter jet..”

Yeah, the UK took delivery of its first F-35. It is in no way, anywhere close to working with go-to-war systems.

Defence budget vs. GDP red herring

The red herring for Defence that means... really... nothing:

"This in turn will raise questions - not now but well down the track - whether we will be able to continue to meet our defence needs with just under 2 per cent of GDP.

With such irresponsible and incompetent management of Defence programs, more money just means more opportunities to throw it away on stupid decisions.

The moronic cart-before-the-horse thinking must stop. Or, expect no improvement with the moribund and dysfunctional entrenched Defence bureaucracy.

Amos happy to make it up as he goes along

Amos, the CEO of the United States Marketing Corps F-35 cheerleaders, says no to the ECM support mission for the F-35B.

This was hyped forever by various F-35 faith-based communities. Even if the aircraft's faulty design has paper-thin to no usable weight margins.

Pipe-dream.

Amos fibs:

Amos said the AN/APG-81 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar installed on the F-35 already sets the fifth generation fighter apart as an electronic warfare platform.

“The airplane itself … with the AESA radar and sensors and information sharing capability is a pretty significant EW platform right now,” said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos at a roundtable meeting with reporters in the Pentagon Aug. 23.

Good luck with that. Besides the fact that his F-35 as a "fifth-generation" meme still will not die, a forward arc-only, limited to in-band (X-band), limited power vs. thermal issues and limited over-all sustained power output AESA radar, Amos is out of his depth on this one.

For example, the Block II Super Hornets delivered to Australia show this as one thing hyped on the sales room floor that was only hope: that an on-board AESA fighter-radar could do realistic jamming (let alone the fantasy of being labeled credible electronic defense gear). AND, at least the Super Block II has a balanced and fused defensive suite; defensive jammer, towed decoy, etc. The F-35? When naked, it has some expendable decoys and (if the software works) enough situational awareness to see what will kill it.

Amos adds another fib at the end of this description of obsolete capability:

The Growler carries up to five ALQ-99 jamming pods as well as AIM-120 AMRAAM or AGM-88 HARM missiles to attack air defenses.

Of course, these ALQ-99s are three decades old and the Navy continues to build its Next Generation Jammer that will fool enemy radars with false returns. Amos said he didn’t see any reason the F-35 couldn’t carry these pods too.

Again, current Growler gear is obsolete against emerging threats, so it is interesting that one would bother putting on such gear to, again, the F-35 which has paper-thin to no usable weight margins in the design.

Also, the dumb idea of the F-35 being an EWO platform; limited aircrew. When they went from the EA-6 to Super-G, they went from 4 to 2 aircrew. This was mentioned as a problem in various reports. This causes workload problems. Maybe Amos can explain how one crew-person can manage all that workload, assuming the lash-up even works.

As time marches on, Amos, with his weak air power theory and his deceptive statements to elected officials, does more harm to the reputation of Marine Air than good.

He finishes though with the cost issue in a rare display of common sense. Like a lot of fantasy "notional" Block 4,5 and 6 efforts for the F-35, what is needed now is to stick to the knitting of making a warfighter-capable F-35 Block 3 exist.

This is far from guaranteed.

*UPDATE* - Defence rips off the taxpayer for another $1.5B

One thing you can count on with today's entrenched defence bureaucracy is that they will continue to do dumb things; in a very expensive and wasteful manner.

Minister for Defence Stephen Smith and Minister for Defence Materiel Jason Clare today announced that the Government had decided to acquire the Growler electronic warfare system for the Super Hornet, at a cost of around $1.5 billion.

Unfortunately, the facts of a tepid Growler "capability" don't allow for much of a future.

---UPDATE---

Industry sources hawking obsolete product say Growler is obsolete. Competition for available cash and all that. LOL. The bad decision by Defence to waste $1.5B on the Growler takes money away from the ultimate bad decision; the Joint Strike Failure.

Giving to those that do not need charity

The current, gullible, Australian leadership gave Indonesia some C-130s for free. Part of the justification was that they could help with border security.

This is an effort by the current Australian leadership to give the impression that they are doing something about the illegal boat arrivals, even if they aren't doing anything (worth-while) about the problem.

Indonesia already has C-130s and most likely intends not to use the ones gifted by the Australian taxpayer for the use imagined by a nutty Australian leadership that has helped balloon national debt to $158B and counting.

In other news; while we are giving stuff to Indonesia that they can easily buy for themselves, they are purchasing used main-battle tanks, new submarines, fighter aircraft and a recent spend on these:

Don't hate the player.

Hate the game.

Growler's roosting chickens have been home awhile

In Australia, when reporting defence issues, occasionally the local news people figure out the plot.

Today's Canberra Times points out what some of us have known for years. That is, that the idea from Defence senior leadership to field a jammer-capable Super Hornet is bad.

The "Growler" upgrade for 12 of Australia's 24 Super Hornets is a bad idea because the gear to be put on it is obsolete.

The U.S. Navy, has known this.

For at least 10 years.

$1.7B (if not more) will be thrown away on dud jamming gear.

Par for the course with Defence senior leadership's faulty air power thinking.

(Slides from U.S. Navy briefing via www.dtic.mil dated 2002-3)

*UPDATE* Enemy within

In their continuous war against the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard, USAF boss General Schwartz and Secretary of the USAF Donley have scored another victory.

Currently there are only a handful of C-130s that can be configured for fire-fighting duties. Efforts to improve the situation look bleak as USAF continues to waste billions each year on the failed F-35.

Using excuses like Operation: USELESS DIRT 1 and 2 or the coming budget sequestration fear-mongering as a cause and future cause are invalid.

Keeping a variety of AF Reserve and Air National Guard special use, convertible C-130's operational is not hard to justify or fund.

*UPDATE* And we just lost one of the configurable USAF C-130s doing fire-fighting ops. Status on crew not certain. Word is three picked up by helicopter.

H/T-War News Updates

Happy flower ADF

Nice little alternate world to live in if one only wants the ADF to hand out toilet paper, aid packages, tents, water bottles and provide stoop labor and minor security.

I suspect though that if that is all we wanted the ADF for we could get those services done for a lot less than $27B per year. Could even change the ADF logo to a white flag.

The author also ignores Defence failings.

$5B Target

Hard to take the U.S. DOD very seriously on providing bang for the buck with this kind of waste.

But at more than $3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet.

That, and an ever more obsolete-to-the-threat carrier air wing; well, one distinct possibility is this.

Faith-based cheerleaders and air power dead weights

The F-35B won't be able to meet USAF sortie rate expectations.

The US Air Force has concluded that the short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) Lockheed Martin F-35B- model aircraft cannot generate enough sorties to meet its needs; therefore the service will not consider replacing the Fairchild Republic A-10 Warthog close air support jet with that variant.

And by design, no F-35 variant can achieve high-sortie rates. With things like an integrated power pack (IPP) which is having up-time problems, there is no way the F-35 will meet its high mission capability (MC) rates in the plus-90 percent region which are a key performance perimeter (KPP).

But then the leader of the absence of air power knowledge has this to say:

"The F-35B is well-suited to support of the Marine Air Ground Taskforce (MAGTF) in very austere locations," says USAF chief of staff Gen Norton Schwartz, speaking at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "But the reality is, is that scenario is not a high sortie generation scenario."

I'm glad this guy is leaving. He contributes nothing on this topic. The whole idea of USMC STOVL ops is high-sortie rate and being close to the battlefield. On other point, the F-35B is not "well-suited" for this mission because it is unreliable, expensive, faulty, and is yet to prove it can operate in such an environment. Faith-based PowerPoint is not real.

A retired member of the United States Marketing Corps chimes in:

Retired Lt Gen George Trautman, a former US Marine Corps (USMC) deputy commandant for aviation, disputes Schwartz's assertion that the F-35B cannot generate as many sorties as the A or C model aircraft.

"The F35B has highest sortie generation rate among the three JSF [Joint Strike Fighter] variants," Trautman says. "There may be other reasons the air force doesn't want the B, but sortie rate isn't a factor."

No it is not the "highest sortie generation rate among the three JSF variants", (or any variant) because there is no proof to back up the faith.

The key performance parameters (KPP) for the F-35 require higher sortie rates for the B-model at four sorties per day. The A and C models are only required to generate three sorties per day.

Good luck with that. And 7-tons of gas for every sortie out of an "austere" base.

Combat leader's dereliction of duty

Out of uniform (no helmet in a combat-zone) and thus also unsafe, a silly scarf (also out of uniform) to appease idiots. So what happens if an IED hits or a mortar round or whatever, and this person gets injured or killed in a situation where wearing a helmet would have helped?

Also, someone who is injured because they were not wearing a helmet is unsafe to their squad-mates as they are unable to help others in combat and or now take two or three other people to recover their dumb-ass.

I have nothing but contempt for senior leadership that allows something like this to happen.

Caption for linked photo: "U.S. Army Pfc. Kristina Batty dons a headscarf to meet with female Afghan villagers in Afghanistan's southern Ghazni province, May 5, 2012. Batty, a medic for a female engagement team, is assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod"

May Day

The next budget is coming out.

The bloated defence budget--going on toward $27B per year--does need a haircut.

Not because of the moronic spend-thrift nature of the labor government since they took power but because of the moronic spend-thrift nature of the entrenched defence bureaucracy (EDB).

The EDB except maybe for the Army, has gotten just about everything wrong.

-Giving away air-refueling tankers before an operational replacement exists. That is not only dumb but dangerous behaviour.

-Wishing that Australia can have new and high-risk Collins-class sub replacements at tens-of-billions of dollars, even though the idea is barking-mad.

-Giving away long-range strike of the F-111 on a lie.

-Buying the Super-Hornet on a lie.

-Spending money to upgrade half of the Super Hornets with obsolete jamming gear.

-The endless propaganda about needing the defective and overly expensive F-35.

-Not being able to do basic corrosion control on existing ships.

-Doing impulse buys of military hardware near the end of a budget year because that money can't be spent on existing faulty and delayed programs on the project-of-concern list.

-Having a gold-plated, and ineffective helicopter force-structure roadmap.

-Wanting to buy Air Warfare Destroyers and large amphibious flat-tops that are expensive, hard to find crew for and can't be protected because of a faulty air power and submarine roadmap.

-Fat on flag-ranks, senior executives, and civilian personnel. That is a lot of office furniture (executive style and otherwise).

-Being hostile to home industry.

-Black-listing contractors. This costs the nation in loss of valuable strategic and technical consultation.

-And a few other things.

Yes...poor Defence.

And Mr. Babbage implies that now the 2009 White Paper has "failed". But it was "failed" as soon as it was released.

'The Navy is out of control'

Aircraft carrier on navy's secret $4bn wish list

THE Royal Australian Navy has produced a secret $4 billion "wish list" that includes an aircraft carrier, an extra air warfare destroyer and long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles for its submarine fleet.

The RAN wants a third 26,000 tonne amphibious ship equipped with vertical take-off jet fighters, a fourth $2 billion air warfare destroyer and cruise missiles that could strike targets thousands of kilometres away.

LOL. What non-existent operational aircraft are they going to fly off of the dream carrier?

$2B for an extra Air Warfare Destroyer? Right now they are tracking at $3B each.

Besides the idea that well, there is no money, who would crew these ghost ships?

A dying man can dream.