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The US Army is looking to renew production of the Boeing MH-47G Chinook special mission helicopter in an upgraded Block 2 configuration, it disclosed on 3 August.

With production of the final eight Block 1 MH-47Gs set to be complete by the end of the year, the US Army Aviation Integration Directorate is proposing the resumption of production after this date to deliver an undisclosed number of additional MH-47G helicopters in a Block 2 configuration, according to a solicitation posted on the Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) website.

The US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) currently fields 61 remanufactured Block 1 MH-47Gs (62 were delivered – 35 CH-47Ds, nine MH-47Ds and 18 MH-47Es – although one was lost on operations in Afghanistan). The USASOC is to receive the additional eight new-build MH-47Gs by the end of 2015 to offset the fleet’s high operational tempo.

via US Army to acquire enhanced MH-47G Block 2 Chinooks – IHS Jane’s 360.

Two items of interest here. First, the new build G models. The Chinook fleet overall is in very good shape, with new F models replacing the D fleet. The F models (and the G models) are rebuilds of D models. Which, most of the D models were rebuilt from earlier models. I would be curious to know which Chinook out there is the oldest, when it actually rolled off the production line the first time.  Over the years, however, attrition has reduced the total inventory enough that some new builds are required.

Second, at the bottom of the linked article, there’s talk about a new Advanced Chinook Helicopter blade, which promises to use somewhat different geometry. How that will work, I don’t know. The new blades offer in increase in payload of a whopping six tons or so!

The Boston Globe has a nice post about the now 69 year old, 36 foot, wooden hull, motor surfboat Bernie Webber and his pick-up crew used to rescue 32 crew members trapped on the stern of an oil tanker, SS Pendleton, that had broken in half in a storm, and the people who restored and care for it.

The story of this rescue was told in a book and is being made into a movie.

via CG 36500, Bernie Webber’s Boat, Lives On | Chuck Hill’s CG Blog.

You have to go out, but they didn’t say you have to come back.

On August 5 and 6, a whole mess of senior Pentagon leadership and military brass will convene in California’s Mojave Desert to witness something both spectacular and confusing. In the middle of the night, under a bright desert moon, US soldiers bristling with high-tech weaponry and other assorted killamajigs will gently parachute from the sky, then capture and secure an objective. Sort of.

It will be the grand finale of Operation Dragon Spear, an exercise from which the bigwigs are supposed to draw useful conclusions about how the US military will fight in years to come. The army, like the rest of the military, is still working through the implications of President Barack Obama’s shift from the George W. Bush-era focus on fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. This involves planning for threats other than insurgents and suicide bombers, which means thinking about the kind of big, proper armies capable of fielding lots of heavy weapons like tanks, ground attack aircraft, artillery, and helicopters. That, in turn, will drive changes in US equipment and training.

via Can the US Army Still Fight as a Heavyweight? | VICE News.

One of the biggest budgetary challenges the Army faces today is that it lacks the money to fund unit training above the platoon level. It takes money to pay for the fuel and spare parts and ammunition to take a company, battalion, or BCT someplace and let them run around and do their thing.  Major training rotations at NTC, Hohenfels and other training centers are still happening, but the normal round of crawl, walk, run training that takes place before these capstone exercises has been badly truncated.

And as Vice mentions, there’s a big difference between training and experience gained fighting in Afghanistan, and the combined arms skills needed to defeat a near peer power. The vast majority of people in the Army today have little or no experience in that combined arms high intensity maneuver.  One suspects this exercise is going to have some serious setbacks for the good guys.

On the other hand, we do have solid doctrine and equipment tailored for this role, and if the basic small unit skills are reasonably well trained, the ability to relearn the large collective tasks will remain, and the learning curve, while steep, will not be impossible.

Spill pointed me to this nifty little clip of F-15C Eagle fighters doing some low level training at the Mach Loop in Wales.  As he  noted, burning around down in the weeds isn’t really the Eagle’s normal tactic, but it is still pretty awesome.

The US government may currently have no plans to carry nuclear weapons on the F-35C, the carrier-based variant of Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter, but some in Washington are keen to revive the concept.

They see as attractive the concept of carrier-based nuclear deterrence operations, particularly with an eye towards a 2017 review of the country’s nuclear posture and planned initial operational capability of the naval fighter jet in 2018.

Thomas Karako of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies says it might not be the current policy to deploy nuclear weapons on aircraft carriers, but there needs to be some debate, particularly while the F-35C is still in development.

via Concept of a nuclear-armed F-35C divides opinion – 8/4/2015 – Flight Global.

I’ll admit that I didn’t even know the Air Force had  begun the process of integration for the F-35A.

Aside from the B-52  and  the B-2, the F-15E is the Air Force’s only nuclear capable aircraft. The B-1B had that mission capability removed as part of strategic weapons treaties with Russia.

And where during the Cold War, a fighter bomber wing tasked with the nuclear strike mission might fly 60% of its sorties training for that, and 40% for the conventional mission, it’s hard to find any fighter bomber training for the nuclear mission today.

As the article notes, the Navy isn’t pushing hard to regain the tactical nuclear mission it gave up in 1992.

On the other hand, some baseline technical capability to rebuild the mission should probably be considered. Of course, it requires more than simply modifying the aircraft. Magazines aboard ship, storage ashore, and training for ship and squadron ordnance personnel and aircrews would have to be revisited.

Outside the administration, some lawmakers, policy experts and scholars charge that a bloated NSC staff, filled with what they describe as acolytes who distrust the rest of the government and see protecting the president as their primary job, has helped make Obama’s foreign policy ineffective and risk-averse.

“There are problems that call for a real ‘whole of government’ solution,” said David Rothkopf, who has written extensively on the history and structure of the National Security Council and served in the Clinton administration. “I’ve never seen an administration that says it more and does it less.”

via How the Obama White House runs foreign policy – The Washington Post.

It’s hardly surprising that an administration that views Obama personally as the fount of all power in government would conduct its foreign policy in this manner.

Obama and his closest minions are fundamentally unserious people.