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America’s Antique Planes Battling ISIS
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.
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Moving Targets
Via Breitbart-
The “Autonomous Robotic Human Type Targets” sport wigs and zip around at up to 8 miles per hour on two wheels. Rather than simply popping up and down or riding along a prescribed track, these targets attempt to be as unpredictable and erratic as their real-life counterparts. They’ll change speeds, swerve, and respond to one another when hit. The robots will even advance on Marines in an aggressive response.
The Marines at Pendleton will “be engaging these targets at different distances with different weapons systems, running through all the pre-programmed drills so we can competently assess how we can use these targets in our training,” according to Staff Sgt. Matthew Muro, the chief instructor with Division Schools’ Urban Leaders Course.
H/T to Esli for mailing this one in to me.
One of the toughest training challenges for troop units is actually designing realistic target arrays, particularly within the constraints of an installation's range fan. Having these mover targets adds a level of difficulty that I've never seen before.
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North Korea Fires Copy of Chinese 300mm Rocket from Wonsan
URR here.
The North Korean People's Army this past Friday fired a number of rockets from Wonsan onto an uninhabited island in the East Sea. None other than Kim Jong-un was in attendance. The rockets are long-range weapons, and appear to be copies of the Chinese SY-300. The rockets successfully impacted targets some 150km distant.
The launcher truck is almost certainly the same vehicle from the PLA PR-50 Sandstorm 122mm MRL. This is not the first instance of China openly flouting UNSCR 1718, which forbids the sale of heavy weapons to the DPRK. In 2012, Chinese-manufacture TELs were spotted hauling Kn-08 MRBMs, though the PRC claimed the vehicles had been sold for commercial use. In this case, however, the missile itself is all but identical to the SY-300 rocket, a weapon built by China for export.
What is the portent for NKPA capability? The new system, which the North Koreans call Rodong Sinum, is a GPS/INS guided, long range, nuclear-capable weapon. What does that mean for Seoul? Pohang? Widespread fielding of this capability would represent a daunting challenge, even with the introduction of THAAD.What does this portend for The People's Republic of China? Nothing new. I have said for many years that the DPRK is what it is, and does what it does, because the PRC allows and encourages it. Rhetoric that somehow China is angry at DPRK, or that the PRC has "turned a corner" regarding sanctions of the Hermit Kingdom, is so much theater for the consumption of the inept and gullible US Foreign Policy cabal, who eats such nonsense up with a spoon. The PRC understands well that this Administration is afraid of almost all confrontation, lacking the will and soon, the means to do so, and will employ fancifully wishful thinking in place of competent national strategy and effective diplomacy. It isn't difficult to fool those who all but beg to be hoodwinked. China also realizes that the badly-stretched US Navy would be all but powerless to halt Chinese maritime aggression if it were embroiled in a crisis on the Korean peninsula.
While the policy wonks who frequent the ranks of China analysis continue to parrot the message that the PRC can be a US ally in containing North Korea, it would be advisable to remember incidents like Friday's launch, and the reception SECSTATE got from China when showing evidence of DPRK culpability in the sinking of Cheonan, and the abject refusal to enforce UNSCR 1718 or 1874 or any that come after, and all the other transgressions by DPRK that went unchecked, irrespective of China's public statements of reassurance or votes in the UN.
Acta, non verba.
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Farewell, Dragline; Actor George Kennedy Dead at 91
Legendary character actor George Kennedy has died at the age of 91. The hulking six-foot four actor was in dozens of pictures, including Stanley Donen's brilliant Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, the Airport disaster movies, and The Flight of the Phoenix. Kennedy also had roles in several military movies, including The Dirty Dozen, and In Harm's Way. He did his share of television, too, and of course was a star of the Naked Gun comedies with friend Leslie Nielsen.
My favorite role George Kennedy ever played was that of Dragline in Cool Hand Luke, the simple but not so simple member of a southern chain gang who grows to admire and emulate the rebellious Paul Newman's Luke, while suffering the privations of the life of a convict enduring the Captain's (Strother Martin) unenlightened discipline. (It is a Dragline quote, rather than the more well known Strother Martin line about communication, that I find the most useful. "When it comes to makin' da rules, NUTHIN' is understood!)
George Kennedy was born on February 18th, 1925. He was a combat veteran of the European Theater in World War II, serving under George Patton. He attributed his severe hearing loss to his time in combat. His film credits are legion, and his face was one of the most recognizable in film for many decades. He was a great character actor, and he will be missed.
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The Mysterious Death of Comrade Stalin
It was at 2150 local time, in his "near dacha" on 5 March 1953 that Joseph Stalin, the man who was perhaps the most brutal butcher in modern history, died. Like much of Stalin's life, his death is couched in secrecy and mystery.
In November of 2011 Surgical Neurology International published a fascinating and revealing article on the event and the circumstances surrounding it.
Nevertheless, we do know that the guests had become a captive audience that evening and could not leave the Blizhnyaya, his nearer dacha in Kuntsevo, without Stalin's permission. They simply had to wait until Stalin dismissed them. But Stalin was not finished. He was still complaining that the leadership, which included many of his guests that night, were basking on past glories — but "they were mistaken." The implied threat to his inner circle was ominous. When Stalin finally got up and left, his shaken guests seized their opportunity and left the dacha. Georgy Malenkov and Lavrenti Beria, two of Stalin’s henchmen whom he allowed to commingle socially, left together in the same volga. The others left separately.
Stalin did not leave his chamber that morning and by noon his staff became worried. To make matters even more difficult, no one was authorized to enter his private chambers unless they were summoned. All through the afternoon the domestic staff and his personal guards worried and waited for Stalin to come out. They were finally reassured when an outside sentry reported that a light from his dining room had come on about 6:30 p.m. Volkogonov writes: "Everyone sighed with relief and waited for the bell to ring. Stalin had not eaten, or looked at the mail or papers. It was most irregular." As late evening came, the domestic staff and guards began to worry anew. They debated what to do until sheer panic forced them to act. It was now 11:00 p.m., the evening of March 1, 1953.
I had only a vague idea that Stalin had fallen ill likely as early as 1 March, and had been essentially left without any medical care for extended periods, out of sheer terror and also because of the machinations of KGB Director Lavrenti Beria, who feared his boss was readying another purge of his inner circle, a purge that might well have included Beria himself.
"Well, I opened the door, walked loudly down the corridor. The room where we put documents was right next to the small dining room. I went into that room and looked through the open door into the small dining room and saw the Boss lying on the floor, his right hand out-stretched…like this [here Lozgachev stretched out his half-bent arm]. I froze. My arms and legs refused to obey me. He had not yet lost consciousness, but he couldn't speak. He had good hearing, he'd obviously heard my footsteps and seemed to be trying to summon me to help him. I hurried to him and asked: 'Comrade Stalin, what's wrong?' He'd wet himself and he wanted to pull something up with his left hand. I said to him: 'Should I call a doctor?' He made some incoherent noise — like 'Dz…Dz…'
"I picked up the receiver of the house phone. I was trembling and sweat beading on my forehead, and phoned Starostin: 'Come to the house, quick.' Starostin came in, and stood dumbstruck. The Boss had lost consciousness. I said: 'Let's lay him on the sofa, he's not comfortable on the floor.' Tukov and Motia Butusova came in behind Starostin. Together, we put him on the sofa. I said to Starostin: 'Go and phone everybody, and I mean everybody.' He went off to phone, but I did not leave the Master. He lay motionless, except for snoring. Starostin phoned Ignatiev at the KGB, but he panicked and told Starostin to try Beria and Malenkov. While he was phoning, we got an idea — to move him to the big sofa in the large dining room. There was more air there. Together, we lifted him and laid him down on the sofa, then covered him with a blanket — he was shivering from the cold. Butusova unrolled his sleeves.
"At that point Starostin got through to Malenkov. About half an hour had gone by when Malenkov phoned us back and said: 'I can't find Beria.' Another half hour passed, Beria phoned: 'Don't tell anybody about Comrade Stalin's illness'. At 3 o'clock in the morning, I heard a car approaching."
At this point, Radzinsky notes that it had now been four hours since the first phone call and many more hours since Stalin had been struck down by the sudden illness, and he had been lying there without medical assistance all that time. Malenkov and Beria finally arrived without Khrushchev.
Beria, of course, is suspected in either furthering along the death of Stalin or outright engineering it. He had said afterward, according to Vyacheslav Molotov, the Foreign Minister, “I did him in, I saved all of you!"
Anyway, worth the read in its entirety. Including the presumptive clinical diagnosis of what, in the end, killed the man who had killed millions.
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Air Force Thunderbirds prioritize diversity in cockpit amid puzzling decline in applicants – Washington Times
The Air Force’s vaunted Thunderbirds jet fighter aerobatics team is not diverse enough inside the cockpit.
Brig. Gen. Christopher M. Short, commander of the 57th Wing at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, said in an email last month that of 15 pilot applicants for three openings, 14 are white.
(function(d, a) {if (a && a.isMobile) {d.getElementById('adblade-unit-559403b7221c7').setAttribute('data-cid', '12615-3651053877'); } else if (a && a.isTablet) { d.getElementById('adblade-unit-559403b7221c7').setAttribute('data-cid', '12619-4229376787'); } })(document, window.adbladeExports);He asked fighter wing commanders to stir up more candidates who “don’t necessarily look like each of you.” He bemoaned the fact that, not only is there a lack of diversity, but the number of applicants to make the world-famous team has taken a puzzling drop in the past two years.
“I am asking for your help in finding the right pilots for next year’s Thunderbirds team,” is how Gen. Short begins his email.
We'll know the T-birds are truly committed to diversity when they start accepting Navigators and Missile Officers.
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Keanu Reeves doesn’t only shoot well in the movies.
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Trump: The Military Would Not Refuse My Orders Even If They Consider Them Illegal | Mediaite
Specifically troubling for Hayden was Trump saying he would want to do “worse” than torture and would want soldiers to kill terrorists’ families.
Baier told Trump the latter is explicitly illegal, but Trump insisted, “They won’t refuse. They’re not gonna refuse me. Believe me.”
Baier said, “But they’re illegal.” Trump brushed it off.
via www.mediaite.com
That a major candidate for President would openly advocate for US troops to commit a bright line violation of the laws of war is astonishing.
Look, I get why about a third of the GOP is in open rebellion against the party. But abandoning the conservative principles that we stand for is not the way to reform the party. It's just a childish temper tantrum, the worst kind of raging that we see from the fringes of the left.
No, Mr. Trump, the troops will not commit war crimes on your behalf.
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Not To Be Outdone By Tennessee’s .50 Caliber Barrett Rifle, Alabama Announces That Their State Firearm Is… The Stinger Missile » Article 107 News
It’s confirmed: Tennessee’s official state firearm is the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle.
Not to be outdone by its two-bit, landlocked, carpetbagging, worthless-college-football-team-having neighbor to the north, the Great State of Alabama has once again one-upped Tennessee by unanimously approving the FIM-92 Improved Stinger Missile as its official state firearm.
Fresh off of his rather surprising endorsement of Donald Trump’s presidential bid, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions broke the great news about the Stinger to a fired up crowd gathered at the Space and Rocket Center in downtown Huntsville.
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CNO Orders 60-Day LCS Review
With the size of the small combatant force rapidly expanding, US Navy chief of naval operations Adm. John Richardson is ordering a major 60-day review of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program.
“The idea,” said a Navy official, “is that with two deployments complete or nearly complete, and with new ships coming almost every six months, it’s time to see where things stand and get a feel for what’s been working, what’s not been working, and what we might need to change.”
In a memorandum signed out on Feb. 29, Richardson directs the acting head of the Warfare Systems N9 directorate, the commander of naval surface forces, and the principal military adviser to the acquisition directorate to “lead a review of the LCS program to include crewing, operations, training and maintenance of the ship class.”
Of course, CDR Salamander wrote about this yesterday.
Between this and a couple other recent developments, methinks the days of the LCS boondoggle might just be coming to an end.
http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2016/03/lcs-wwnrd.html#disqus_thread
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