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Plane clips power line | GJSentinel.com
In a lucky twist of fate, no one was hurt Thursday afternoon after the pilot of a single- engine, jet fighter-style airplane clipped a cable spanning the Colorado River, lost a piece of a wing on Interstate 70 and sent the cable wire smashing into vehicles traveling the highway.
Witnesses reported the wire acted like a whip, taking out several windshields on vehicles and causing damages, including damages to a semitrailer.
The pilot, who had taken off in a Aero L39C from the Grand Junction Regional Airport, returned to make an emergency landing on the runway about 2 p.m., according to an official with the Federal Aviation Administration.
via Plane clips power line | GJSentinel.com.
Wire strikes usually end much worse than this.
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US Army Awards Contracts for FFV Designs
WASHINGTON — From the ashes of the US Army’s canceled 70-ton ground combat vehicle, the Future Fighting Vehicle (FFV) program has begun to sprout — at least concepts for it.
The Army has awarded two contracts of more than $28 million each to BAE Systems Land and Armaments and General Dynamics Land Systems to develop design concepts for the FFV. The work is due Nov. 28, 2016.
The effort is meant to inform whether the Army will produce an entirely new vehicle or a potential replacement for the BAE-manufactured Bradley fighting vehicle, or lead to a third round of improvements for the Bradley.
The companies are to conduct trade studies, requirements analysis, and modeling and simulation, and assess technology capability and maturity to support each of three design concepts, according to an announcement Tuesday from General Dynamics.
via US Army Awards Contracts for FFV Designs.
The Army has taken three or four pokes at designing a replacement for the Bradley, and all have been failures. The Bradley has pretty much reached the limit of its potential for improvement, and is lacking in margin for growth in weight and power. It’s still capable, but future needs call for a new vehicle.
The struggle the Army is facing right now is defining just what the next battlefield will look like, as that informs what type of vehicle it really needs.
When the Bradley was designed, it was focused on western Europe, and the need for Infantry battalions to counter the literally thousands of BMP and BTR armored vehicles they would face should the Soviet Union invade. That drove the design to emphasize anti-armor firepower at the expense of space for dismount infantry troops.
But what the Army has seen since then is that much combat will inevitably take place in built up areas, which calls for manpower more than mechanized firepower.
The Army seriously wants to increase the dismount squad size per vehicle from 6 or 7 to at least 9 troops. That’s relatively easy to do. The problem is, they also want to maintain at least the same level of firepower of the Bradley (or more likely, upgun from 25mm to 30mm or even 40mm). They also are seeking better armor protection against anti-armor weapons and IEDs and mines.
Those two forces very quickly drive up the size and weight of a vehicle. Pretty soon, the replacement for the 26 ton Bradley of 1982 looks to be about 70 tons and three or four times the cost. And even at 70 tons, it won’t have levels of protection that the 70 Abrams tank has.
Add to that the digital command and control and fire control systems that are required, and pretty soon you’ve priced yourself out of the market.
I’m increasingly thinking the next mechanized infantry platoon should consist of a 9-11 man vehicle with only a minimal weapons mount, such as the CROWS, say four vehicles to carry the dismount element, and two vehicles with little or no dismount capability, mounting a 30mm or 40mm gun and an anti-armor systems such as the TOW or perhaps even a Javelin missile.
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USCG Aviation
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Lockheed F-35s get first role in major military exercise – Yahoo News
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 fighter jet will drop weapons and take part in a major U.S. military exercise this week for the first time, another milestone for the Pentagon’s largest weapons program, Air Force officials said Monday.
The exercise, called “Green Flag West,” tests the U.S. military’s ability to engage in air-to-surface conflicts and helps get ground troops who pinpoint potential air strikes ready for combat.
Several F-35 A-model jets, along with a host of other warplanes and other weapons, will participate in the exercises.
via Lockheed F-35s get first role in major military exercise – Yahoo News.
Green Flag West is pretty much the big leagues of Air Force training evolutions. Of course, the Air Force isn’t looking really for the F-35s to win everything, everywhere. They’re really just starting to explore how to use the F-35 operationally, and especially in conjunction with other assets. Lord knows we’re critical of the program, but the Air Force’s A model is, we hope, likely to become a reasonable successor to the F-16 as the backbone of the light strike mission.
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Yet Another Guided Projectile Program
We’ve talked numerous times about the Guided MLRS, the Excalibur 155mm artillery round, guided mortar rounds and recently the HVP. Having cracked the code on how to design a guidance system for artillery ammunition, we’re going to see a growing range of projectiles with precision capability for an expanding set of guns.
Here’s BAE System’s self funded project, the Multi-Service Standard Guided Projectile, or MS SGP. It’s an adaptation of the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) designed for the 155mm Advanced Gun System (AGS) for the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers.
LRLAP
The MS SGP is being designed specifically for the US Navy’s current standard 5” gun, the Mk45 Mod 4. BAE systems, noting that 155mm is larger than 5” (127mm) has proposed using the MS SGP in a saboted configuration from Marine and Army 155mm guns.
To date, there’s been a successful guided shot, but no production contracts.
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Load HEAT- Candice Swanepoel.
South Africa has some simply amazingly beautiful women.
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Drydock
This is actually a rather small floating drydock. ASBD-1 build in World War II was large enough to float any ship in the Navy at the time.
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Bofors Demo 1992- Your Sunday Morning Splodey
I can’t remember if I’ve shown these before or not. Four videos showcasing pretty much all of Sweden’s massive Bofors Defense product line. Lots of good splodey.
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Titusville Warbird Museum
The really cool thing about this blog is that I can share my vacation photos, and no one seems to mind too much.
The official name of the museum is Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum, and the docent was kind and indulgent to the nerds in our little group. (Engineers can’t help it.)
We got to stick our heads in the bomb bay of this B-25.
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Marine Helos- Why so big?
TimActual had a comment on the Marine air assault on Hawaii:
I have never understood why the Marines like to use BIG targets to carry troops.
And that air assault looked pretty casual to me. We were always taught to get everything off the LZ ASAP, birds and men.As to why the Marines tend to choose somewhat larger helicopters than the Army, I alluded to that years ago in a post on the Chinook.
The Army, as it evolved its air assault doctrine, saw infantry troops (as part of a combined arms team with artillery and aerial fire support) delivered directly upon the objective. One key doctrinal issue that wanted to address was unit integrity. They wanted to ensure that the basic unit, the rifle squad, was delivered intact. That meant the optimal assault helicopter would carry an 11 man rifle squad, which, from the UH-1D on through to today’s UH-60M, is just what seating is provided, if not always the actual lifting capacity. Between three rifle squads, a weapons squad, and the platoon headquarters, four helicopters could lift a single assault platoon.
The Marines, while they might have liked to embrace the same philosophy, faced two challenges the Army did not. First, they were far more constrained in terms of manpower. Unlike the Army, with the majority of its aviators being warrant officers, the Marines aviators are all commissioned officers. Given that the total number of commissioned officers available to the Marines was set by Congress, they couldn’t afford as many helicopter pilots as the Army, especially considering the numbers needed to fly the Marines fixed wing aircraft.
The other, bigger issue was simply one of space. The Marines are a seagoing force. That means they have to be embarked on ships, and even the largest of ships for amphibious operations have severe constraints on the total numbers of aircraft they can operate.
The carrying capacity, both in weight and in volume, increase faster than the actual size of an aircraft. That is, an aircraft twice as large as another can reasonably be expected to carry not twice as much, but three times as much. It didn’t take long for the Marines to realize that two CH-46s, carrying 25 troops each –that is, a Marine rifle platoon- took up a lot less deck space than the 4 or 5 UH-1s it would take to lift a platoon. As an added bonus, it would take only half as many pilots, not to mention the numbers of enlisted aircrew, and maintenance personnel.
The Marines did understand the risk involved, namely that losing one aircraft had a much greater impact, particularly in terms of lives potentially lost, and also in terms of unit integrity. If a platoon loses a squad, it might theoretically still be able to function. But losing half a platoon most certainly renders it combat ineffective.
That same size issue, known as the spot factor, also influenced the size of the MV-22B, which accomodates 24 troops, in a spot factor little bigger than a CH-46. In that case, you’re trading an increase in size for an increase in performance, rather than capacity. It’s a tradeoff.
As to TimActual’s comment on using the CH-53E itself, that’s also somewhat influenced by the confines of amphibious shipping. The MV-22 is fine for landing the initial waves. But there are only so many available aboard a ship. And the embarked Marines simply must have a certain number of the larger CH-53s aboard to move things like artillery. But they aren’t always doing that, so they are occasionally available for the lift of troops.
As to expeditiously moving off the Landing Zone, it should be remembered that Marine doctrine (and really, Army as well) is to conduct the landings away from known enemy positions. The aerial movement is simply the first stage of maneuver, leading to the dismounted movement to either a defensive position, or the line of departure for the assault. One should not dally on the ground, or disembarking the helos, but neither is tripping off the back ramp a good idea because one was unduly rushing.
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