XBradTC

The destroyer Lassen will sail near China’s man-made land masses in the Spratly Islands Monday night in a closely watched show of force, according to a defense official.The Lassen is expected to pass within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese-claimed reefs, including Subi Reef and Mischief Reef, where China is suspected of building runways that can accommodate military aircraft in moves that have sparked tensions in the region.Prior to the patrol, a vessel with China’s People’s Liberation Army-Navy shadowed the Lassen. The patrol is a freedom-of-navigation patrol, intended to challenge Chinese claims of sovereignty over the islands, which China is using to bolster its claims to control over nearly all of the South China Sea.

Source: U.S. Navy sends destroyer by man-made islands in challenge to China’s claims

The patrol went off without a hitch last night, though by our lights, it was a couple years late.

I’m given to understand that a US Carrier Strike Group had just pulled out of Singapore after a weekend port call. Which makes sense. Not a huge presence, but some over the horizon support just in case. The Chinese were highly unlikely to be overtly hostile, but good leaders always like to have options.

Twitter was saying last night that the Lassen was shadowed by a PLAN Type 052D Destroyer, which is interesting, as that ship is also a destroyer with a phased array radar and vertical launch missile system. It is, in effect, the Chinese equivalent of a Burke.

Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) successfully fired its new Excalibur N5 projectile during a recent live guided flight test at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz.A company-funded initiative, Excalibur N5 is a 5-inch/127 mm naval variant of the combat-proven Excalibur precision projectile used by the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marine Corps and several international armies. It is expected to more than triple the maximum effective range of conventional naval gun munitions and deliver the same pinpoint accuracy of the Excalibur Ib, which is in production today. “Excalibur N5’s range, precision and lethality will revolutionize naval gunfire and increase the offensive firepower of our Navy’s destroyers and cruisers,” said Duane Gooden, vice president of Raytheon’s Land Warfare Systems product line. “This demonstration showcases the N5’s maturity as a proven low-risk solution, and is ready for the Navy now.”Excalibur N5 can be used to support several critical mission areas including Naval Surface Fire Support, Anti-Surface Warfare (ASuW) and countering Fast Attack Craft (FAC).”With the significant amount of re-use from the Army’s Excalibur program, the N5 provides the Navy with an affordable, direct path to employ a critical capability,” said Gooden. “We continue to build on Excalibur’s unmatched reliability and performance by investing in a fire-and-forget, dual-mode seeker that will vastly improve the 5-inch gun’s current ASuW and counter-FAC capability.”

Source: Raytheon: Raytheon’s combat-proven Excalibur moves closer to sea-based application – Sep 30, 2015

Emphasis mine. Adding an Excalibur guided round capability to the existing 5″/62 Mk54Mod4 mount is important for providing fire support ashore, but I hope URR will forgive me for thinking a rapid response, mid range anti-ship capability is even more important in the long term. While the N5 round tested doesn’t have that capability yet, some of the architecture, and the techniques used to embed sophisticated electronics in a gun projectile, will prove very useful in adapting a terminal seeker.

Currently, the M54Mod4 can only fire conventional “dumb” rounds at surface ship targets. And while the Mk92 or SPQ-9 Gun Fire Control System is quite accurate, the time of flight out to the maximum effective range of about 13 miles is long enough that a ship can fairly easily dodge shells a while.

But consider a round that triples the range to around 40 miles, and with an terminal seeker (either infrared or millimeter wavelength radar, or both). First or second round hit probability goes up tremendously.

Currently, the a DDG-51 Flight IIA can only engage such a target beyond gun range with either its embarked helicopter (which puts it at risk of air defenses) or with a very expensive SM-2 missile out to the radar horizon.

Instead, with a guided round, the ship’s embarked helicopter can be used to generate situational awareness while the destroyer remains radar silent. But because the helicopter doesn’t have to close within attack range, the risk to it is greatly reduced.

Will a 5″ round sink a destroyer? Not hardly. But consider that the Chinese PLAN operates oodles of small fast missile armed corvettes.  The ability to engage them quickly in sequence will be quite valuable. And while one or two 5″ rounds won’t destroy them, it will likely cause enough damage to prevent them from accomplishing their mission.

For years, the Long Range Strike Bomber project has been shrouded in secrecy, likely at Area 51, the Air Force’s top-secret proving ground deep in the Nevada desert. Service leaders say little beyond that they plan to buy 80 and 100 aircraft for about $550 million each, and will award a contract “soon” to either Northrop Grumman or a Boeing-Lockheed Martin team — perhaps at this week’s Air Force Association convention just outside Washington, D.C.SubscribeReceive daily email updates:Subscribe to Defense One Today.Be the first to receive updates. But it’s becoming clear that this bomber will do a lot more than drop bombs. More than just a first-strike weapon, it is expected to be a centerpiece of future U.S. warfare.

Source: Here Are A Few Things the New Air Force Bomber Will Do Besides Drop Bombs – Defense One

The rumor is the announcement will be made tomorrow.

Now, the ability to perform the secondary missions listed in the article is nice, but that’s the thing. They are all decidedly secondary missions. They pretty much all require transmitting. Which, if you’re attempting to penetrate heavily defended airspace is a good way to not be stealthy, and wind up dead.

Interestingly, the LRSB procurement has been run outside the normal Air Force procurement structure, and instead through the Rapid Capabilities Office (sometimes known as The Green Door). RCO does a lot of secret squirrel stuff, mostly related to developing niche capabilities for niche platforms, such as the RC-135 Rivet Joint spy planes. That’s not all they do, but trying to find anyone to talk about what they do is pretty tough beyond vague generalities.

The decision to have LRSB developed by RCO was a calculated risk. The hope is that RCO will stick to proven technologies, and avoid the bloat, and mission creep and growth that plagued other programs, such as the F-22 and F-35.

The downside is, if there  are issues, the RCO will be blamed, and regular procurement establishment (which is desperately in need of overhaul) will be inoculated from serious change, claiming they should have been in charge all along.

IOWA — Police are responding to reports of a gunamn at a Marine recruiting office in Iowa.The scene is in the 4500 block of Utica Ridge in Bettendorf.According to News10, A witness said that he heard shorts fired at the center. He says he heard screaming and then heard the gunman try to reload his gun. A Marine recruiter told everyone to run. As the witness was running, he said he heard more gunfire.

Source: Shots Fired at Marine Recruiting Office in Iowa – Breaking911

Prayers.

CIMSEC introduces its new podcast, “Real Time Strategy,” a discussion on the lessons and non-lessons of the simulations we use to both learn and entertain in the realm of military strategy, tactics, and history.In today’s pilot episode, we introduce a crew of podcast greenhorns to discuss EVE Online, Civilization, Call of Duty, and general nerdity.

Source: Real Time Strategy (RTS) – Pilot Episode

Click through and give ’em a listen.

This is from September. While a combined Japanese tank/US Stryker live fire is pretty interesting, what caught my eye is that both are firing actual service (HEAT) ammunition. That’s pretty unusual stateside, where mostly practice ammunition (with no explosives) is used.

How many of you, the readers, are alumni of Parris Island? Share a story or memory in the comments.

As I mentioned in years past, XBRAD has the coolest birthday, which was yesterday.  October 25th is an absolutely awesome birth date.  Yesterday was the 600th anniversary of Henry V’s victory at Agincourt.  It was also the 71st anniversary of the desperate battle of Samar, commemorated in Hornfischer’s Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.  It is also the 161st anniversary of the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, during the Crimean War.  That is tough to beat.  (I manage to have the Battle of New Market, which was 100 years to the day before yours truly graced this world, and Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division crossing the Meuse, in 1940.)  But 26 October carries its own significance.  Among which was the Battle of Santa Cruz, which demonstrates even in the autumn of 1942 the razor thin margins between the IJN and USN in the Pacific War.  So here is a re-post from last October.

In the far-flung Pacific Theater of the Second World War, there are some battles and events so momentous that it is immediately clear to the antagonists that their aftermath portends major shifts in the status quo; that conditions following will be forever different from what came before.  Midway is such an event.  With others, their true significance is often realized only in retrospect, as study of the results and decisions in the aftermath of those events is required to reveal how pivotal they truly were.  The Battle of Santa Cruz, which occurred seventy-two years ago today, is one of those largely hidden events.   A tactical and operational success for the Japanese, the battle was a pyrrhic victory for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Powerful Japanese naval forces under Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondo had been tasked with supporting the efforts of the Japanese 17^th Army in what was finally a major attempt to capture Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field and unhinge the position of the First Marine Division on that island.   The glacially slow and piecemeal reaction of General Hyukatake, commanding 17^th Army, had allowed the Americans to build a force of more than 20,000, replete with a fully operational airfield and complete complement of supporting arms, by the time of the October counteroffensive. Even in October, Hyukatake badly underestimated US ground strength and fighting qualities, believing only some 7,500 garrisoned Guadalcanal.  The Japanese ground effort, including a combined tank-infantry attack, was once again poorly coordinated, and it came to grief against the lines of the First Marines and under the howitzers of the Eleventh Marines along the Matanikau River before either fleet engaged each other at Santa Cruz.  (Inexplicably, the Japanese Army units reported erroneously that they had captured Henderson Field when in reality they had nowhere threatened breakthrough of the Marine lines.)

At sea, Admiral Kondo’s force greatly outnumbered the Americans under Thomas Kinkaid. For the IJN, two large and two small carriers, six battleships, and ten heavy and light cruisers, with almost 250 aircraft significantly outweighed the two American fleet carriers (Enterprise and Hornet), the lone battleship (South Dakota), a half dozen cruisers, and around 170 aircraft.

Each fleet’s scout aircraft found the other almost simultaneously, and launched strikes simultaneously. In fact, the strike forces passed each other on their respective headings, with fighters from each side briefly and inconclusively engaging the enemy’s formations.   The Japanese air strikes exacted a heavy toll from the US ships.  Enterprise was struck with at least two bombs, jamming a flight deck elevator and causing extensive splinter and blast damage in the hangar decks, while near-misses stoved in her side plates.  Enterprise was seriously hurt, but somehow maintained flight operations.  Hornet was struck by three bombs and at least two torpedoes, wrecking her engine rooms and bringing the carrier to a halt.

Despite the heroic efforts to save Hornet, a well-placed torpedo from a Japanese submarine put paid to the effort.  The incident was eerily similar to the fate of Yorktown at Midway 4 1/2 months earlier.  Like her sister, Hornet stayed stubbornly afloat despite shells and torpedoes expended to scuttle her.   Eventually, the Japanese sank Hornet with two Long Lance torpedoes.  Battleship South Dakota was credited with shooting down 26 Japanese aircraft, but was struck on B Turret with a 550-pound bomb.  Additionally, two US destroyers were damaged.

In turn, the US Navy strikes crippled the light carrier Zuiho, wrecked the flight deck of Shokaku, and inflicted heavy damage with a bomb strike on heavy cruiser Chikuma.  The most consequential losses for the Japanese had been among the superbly trained veteran aircrews that had been the scourge of Allied pilots and surface vessels since Pearl Harbor.   Despite the fact that Kondo’s task force had inflicted considerably more damage to the American ships than Kinkaid’s flyers had managed, and despite the relatively even losses of aircraft (each side lost roughly the same percentage of aircraft to all causes), the loss of pilots and trained air crewmen was disproportionately heavy for the IJN.  US losses amounted to fewer than thirty aircrew, while the Japanese lost almost one hundred and fifty pilots and aircrew.   This represents a significantly greater loss than that suffered at Midway.   With a training pipeline that could not begin to replace such losses, the most fearsome weapon of the Kido Butai, its deadly naval air power, was blunted permanently.  Japanese carrier aviation was all but eliminated from the rest of the fight for the Solomons, and began a steady decline into oblivion that would culminate in the frightful massacre at the Philippine Sea twenty months later.

For Admiral Halsey at SOPAC, Santa Cruz could not have appeared to have been anything except another costly reverse.  In the preceding six months, the US Navy had lost Lexington at Coral Sea, Yorktown at Midway, Wasp off Guadalcanal in September, and now Hornet at Santa Cruz.  Not only that, but Saratoga had taken a torpedo in August and was stateside for repairs, and Enterprise was more heavily damaged in this battle than could be repaired at forward bases.   The IJN still outnumbered the US Navy in the Pacific in numbers of carriers and aircraft, and in surface combatants.  Additionally, after Santa Cruz, Kinkaid had retired with Nagumo on his heels.

Yet, despite the Japanese tactical victory, Santa Cruz represented the beginning of the end of the fearsome striking power which had wrecked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and had run amok for the six months that Yamamoto had predicted before December of 1941.  If the Americans did not realize it, at least Nagumo did.  He informed Naval Headquarters that without decisive victories, the industrial might of the United States would render the Japanese defeat in the Pacific inevitable.