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The Army will start training women for combat arms jobs later this year, but the first group of female infantry, armor or special operations soldiers are not expected to arrive at their units until 2017 at the earliest.

The service will start bringing in female leaders from West Point, ROTC and Officer Candidate School this summer as the class of 2016 graduates, according to the Army’s implementation plan released Thursday. The first enlisted recruits are expected to start training in the fall.

via www.armytimes.com

Starting with officers is the smart thing to do.

And the OPAT testing to show an initial level of physicality suitable to the MOS makes sense as well.

Unfortunately, what you'll see in units that do gain female troops is a vastly increased number of sports type injuries over the course of time, and the women will tend to wind up in jobs outside the rifle squads and tank crews, and instead be the CO's driver or get stashed in the S-3 shop.

In December, in a downpour, Rittenberg charged onto the field waving the American flag at Arrowhead Stadium as part of the Kansas City Chiefs' “Salute to Service” game against the San Diego Chargers. He played his part in a ceremony involving all branches of service, one that included honors for hometown service members, recognized area units and leaders – a wounded warrior even left with a car.

Rittenberg’s role with the Chiefs went far beyond flag-waving – he was in the middle of a yearlong assignment as the team’s Army liaison, a position made possible by the service’s Training with Industry program. He’s one of four information operations officers now on assignment with leading businesses – others are at divisions of Coca-Cola, German engineering company Siemens and global public relations company Hill+Knowlton.

via www.armytimes.com

Army officers partnering with industry isn't really anything new, though the focus has shifted somewhat over the years.

During the 1920s, and especially the 1930s, many Army officers worked with industry to develop what became known as the Army Industrial Plan.

The Army, remembering the struggles to mobilize industry for war production during World War I, worked to catalog the capability of virtually every manufacturer in the nation, with a particular eye on how those industries might be converted to wartime production.

Today, only a handful of officers are detailed to work with private industry. And they are expected to be able to use what they learn when they return to the Army. Perhaps just as importantly, the officers serve as ambassadors to the private sector, and help the civilian world see just a little bit what soldiers are really like.

In recent months, we've seen the Navy make multiple moves in this direction, first encouraging Boeing to double the range of its ubiquitous Harpoon anti-ship missile last summer, then approving the use of Raytheon's Standard Missile 6 — originally designed for anti-air missions — to target warships as well. But what the Navy really wants is for the DARPA-sponsored effort to build a new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) to get off the ground, and out to the warfighters.

And it looks like they're going to get it — eventually.

via www.fool.com

A new weapon program that is only a couple years old, and is looking to field to the forces in 2018 and 2019 is actually pretty damn fast.

Development of the Harpoon started in the late 1960s, and didn't enter service until 1977, and wasn't really fully fielded until the 1980s.

A former federal employee union president is wracked with regret because veterans likely died at a time when she knew about gross misconduct within her Department of Veterans Affairs facility but didn’t tell congressional leaders because they were Republicans.

via dailycaller.com

This is both a damning indictment of the VA itself, and the cancer that is public employee unions.

The U.S. is reportedly in talks with Australia about housing long-range bombers that would be within striking distance of the South China Sea, a move that would increase the tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force, told Reuters Wednesday the deployments could include B-1 bombers and an expansion of B-52 bomber missions. However, Pickart noted that talks between the two countries were preliminary.

"These bomber rotations provide opportunities for our airmen to advance and strengthen our regional alliances and provide (Pacific Air Forces) and U.S. Pacific Command leaders with a credible global strike and deterrence capability to help maintain peace and security in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region," Pickart told Reuters.

via www.foxnews.com

Forward deploying the B-1 to Australia would certainly give the Bones an ability to cover the South China Sea and the Western Pacific.

On the other hand, China is a huge trading partner for Australia, and they are often reluctant to upset them.

A reader sent this along. Apparently Australian company Marathon Robotics have been using Segway like robotic targets for quite some time. This video is from six years ago, and shows a fairly large group of the mobile targets:

There are plenty of things I’ll miss when I eventually leave the Army: the camaraderie, the sense of duty, and the feeling of being part of something bigger than myself. But there is one thing—other than the reflective belt—that I won’t miss when that day comes, and that is mandatory training.

It can be sheer agony to sit through one mandatory training class after another, be it the Cyber Awareness Challenge or the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure approach to countering human trafficking, no matter how hard the developers try to make it interesting.

via www.armymagazine.org

Mandatory training is a bane of leadership.

First, there's often little evidence that the training in fact influences the behavior of soldiers. Instead, by conducting the training, the Army has an excuse- hey, we told Johnny not to rape!

Second, the vast number of training events outstrips the actual time available for training, and encourages leaders to compromise their integrity. In the competition to get promoted, who wants to be the company commander that admits he wasn't able to schedule all the required training events?

And finally, as MAJ Burke notes, by stripping the ability of junior leaders to craft their own Mission Essential Task List (METL), we effectively strip them of the ability to design and conduct training that actually improves unit combat readiness.

The former frigate USS Reuben James (FFG-57) was sunk in January during a test of the Navy’s new anti-surface warfare (ASuW) variant of the Raytheon Standard Missile 6 (SM-6), company officials told USNI News on Monday.

The adaptation of the SM-6 was fired from guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53) and hit James during the Jan. 18 test at the U.S. Pacific Missile Range Facility off the coast of Hawaii, a Raytheon spokeswoman told USNI News.

via news.usni.org

I'd be highly surprised to learn that a single SM-6 actually sank the Reuben James.

And given the great expense of the SM-6 per round, compared to the SM-2 currently in use fleet wide, commanders are going to be very reluctant to shoot at anything but high priority targets.

Still, it is of a piece with the surface navy refocusing on adding lethality to the fleet- an offensive punch, something that hasn't been a focus of the cruiser/destroyer fleet since the Aegis air defense platform first fielded in the early 1980s.

Between SM-6, improvements to the Tomahawk giving it an ASuW capability, and hopefully a VLS capable version of the new LRASM, our Navy will no longer have to rely upon submarines and aircraft for virtually all its anti-shipping capability.

One of the reasons the Marines finally retired the OV-10D in the early 1990s was that it simply wasn't survivable in any but the most benign air defense environments. Even simple MANPADS such as the SA-7 Strella posed a real threat to the Bronco.

But for the last decade and a half have seen US forces fighting over Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Syria in a generally benign air defense environment. And so, the Bronco would have utility and survivability.

Had the US fielded significant numbers of refurbished Broncos (or similar light attack aircraft such as the AT-6C or A-29B Super Tucano), we could have greatly reduced our reliance on far more expensive platforms such as the F-16, F-15E, and the F/A-18 Hornet. Just as important, reducing the use of the legacy fighter fleet in these theaters would extend their service lives, saving considerable hours of use and money now needed to refurbish them.

But here we are a decade and a half later, and what should have been a quick and easy acquisition decision is now simply a missed opportunity.