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“Arming DoD personnel (i.e., administrative, assessment, or inspection, not regularly engaged in or directly supervising security or law enforcement activities) shall be limited to missions or threats and the immediate need to protect DoD assets or persons’ lives,” the directive continues. “DoD Components have the discretion to keep designated staff personnel qualified and available or on call to perform duties.”

That directive can be changed by the Pentagon or adapted to suit its current needs. It has similarities to the 1992 version issued during President George H.W. Bush’s administration, and an earlier one released in 1969, Henderson said. That would appear to give Carter leeway to arm more service members at military installations on federal property like Fort Hood. But it’s unclear what the military can do for recruiters. They commonly work out of commercially leased office space, and must adhere to state laws when it comes to carrying weapons in public.

via Why arming military recruiters after Chattanooga is so legally complicated – The Washington Post.

I do not see where state law impinges on the supremacy of federal law here, provided recruiters and other service personnel are carrying government issued weapons in the performance of their duties.

By Mr. Lamothe’s reasoning, the troops engaged in training in Jade Helm or its smaller cousin Robin Sage would be operating under the auspices of Texas, North Carolina, and various other state firearms laws. That simply isn’t the case.

Furthermore, while recruiting stations are typically commercially leased properties, they are considered as federal installations, just as any other federal government offices using leased property.

There are issues to work out. But state laws have nothing to do with it.

While the phamed CH-46 “Phrog” is gone from US Marine Corps service, it should be noted that the basic Boeing Vertol Model 107 design was also a successful export item. Among international operators were Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, several commercial operators, and of course, Sweden, who used the Sea Knight, known to them as the HKP 4, mostly in the Search and Rescue role. Here we see a Swedish Sea Knight put through its paces for an airshow.

via Raytheon: To Print a Missile – Raytheon research points to 3-D printing for tomorrow’s technology.

We post a lot of cruise videos from the Hornet crowd. But possibly the most beloved planes in the carrier air wing are the fat, ugly C-2A Greyhouds, because they bring the mail.

CIMSEC had a vision of the future. Unfortunately, it was a vision of how the OPM hack might be exploited. Cross reference names from OPM against the data breach at Adult Friend Finder, and now, Ashley Madison, and you start to generate some real penetration agent leads.

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Yeah, it’s a Dem group. OTOH, they’ve got a point. Lotta people flipping out what shouldn’t.

Retired general and former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark on Friday called for World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Americans.” In an interview with MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts in the wake of the mass shooting in Chatanooga, Tennessee, Clark said that during World War II, “if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.”

He called for a revival of internment camps to help combat Muslim extremism, saying, “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”

via Wesley Clark Calls for Internment Camps for “Radicalized” Americans.

There’s a sad strain of senior officers that forget that the constraints on liberty imposed by the military life  do not, and should not, translate into civil society.  GEN Clark has never seemed to grasp that. His call for camps for the radicalized flies in the face of the principles of the Republic. Of course, it also complies nicely with the totalitarian strain of the Democratic party, such as the draconian restrictions imposed on freedoms by Wilson during World War I and the Roosevelt internment camps of World War II. *

Do we have a problem with radicalized Muslims in America? Yes, yes we do. But as awful as the recent slaughter in Chattanooga was, and the related attacks and attempts in the years since 9/11 have been, we must also recognize that it is in fact, a fairly small problem.

That is not to say that we must ignore the threat of these Sudden Jihad Syndrome attacks. But dealing with the issue doesn’t call for the round up large swaths of the Muslim population, either.  Indeed, it would seem to us that such an attempt would likely serve as a catalyst to actually radicalize any number of young Muslim men.

The very best thing Clark could do to salvage his reputation is to fade into obscurity. And maybe read the Constitution for once.

*Granted, the GOP wasn’t without sin in those cases, but nor did they lead the charge.

The tri-mode seeker includes a semi-active laser, a millimeter-wave radar and an uncooled imaging infrared seeker. Some other “smart” bombs have dual-mode guidance, but Raytheon officials are not aware of a competing weapon with three guidance options. The predecessor SDB I offered only GPS guidance to fixed targets and did not contain the dual-band two-way datalink of the SDB II. The first version was also heavier, with a necessarily larger warhead that did not feature the multi-effects shaped-charge/blast-fragmentation warhead of the SDB II. The second version is also smart enough to sort, categorize and prioritize targets.

Despite the sophistication, the SDB II is “affordable,” according to Sweetman. U.S. Air Force assistant acquisition secretary Dr. William LaPlante said recently that the cost per round will be about $115,000, some $65,000 below the goal set when the SDB II entered development five years ago. Raytheon has managed its workforce well and controlled costs, he said.

via World’s Most Sophisticated Bomb Ready for Production | Defense News: Aviation International News.

The original Small Diameter Bomb, the GBU-39, in service for the last decade or so, was really rather revolutionary, among the first weapons built from the ground up to capitalize on GPS technology. It was a dandy little tool for Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses or SEAD.  Against a near peer threat, SEAD will be critical to seizing and maintaining air superiority. The problem is, many modern threat air defenses are highly mobile, and the SDB I can’t attack mobile targets.

SDB II addresses this at a surprisingly low cost. That $115,000 covers the tri-mode seeker (and it will still have a GPS capability as well), the sophisticated warhead, and the airframe. Even at double the price, it would be a fairly impressive exercise in cost control.

Another benefit is that the Air Force has shown a willingness to take a system that works in one program, and leverage it across multiple programs. For instance, the Imaging Infrared Seeker used in the AGM-65D Maverick missile went on to be used in quite a few other weapon systems. Almost surely we’ll see this option used with the tri-mode seeker adapted to other weapons. An immediate though it that a kit to adapt the Mk80 series bombs much as with LGBs and JDAMs will likely follow.