XBradTC

Though military members of all stripes probably have an easy time sleeping in places other than a bed, infantrymen are especially adept at being able to sleep just about anywhere. We’ve ranked the best spots for grunts to catch some Z’s.

via The Top 7 Best Places For Infantrymen To Sleep.

Forget about adding a laser rangefinder and whatnot. The single biggest improvement the ODS variant introduced to the Bradley was switching to bench seating in the troop compartment, which, since we always kicked the dismounts out at night left a couple of very comfy benches for the BC and Gunner to sleep on.

NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER WEAPONS DIVISION, CHINA LAKE, Calif. – A synthetically guided Tomahawk cruise missile successfully hit its first moving maritime target Jan. 27 after being launched from USS Kidd (DDG 100) near San Nicolas Island in California.

The Tomahawk Block IV flight test demonstrated guidance capability when the missile in flight altered its course toward the moving target after receiving position updates from surveillance aircraft.

via Navy demonstrates synthetic guidance technology with Tomahawk missile | NAVAIR – U.S. Navy Naval Air Systems Command – Navy and Marine Corps Aviation Research, Development, Acquisition, Test and Evaluation.

Well now, this is pretty interesting.

Most anti-ship missiles use either active radar homing- that is, they have their own short ranged radar in their nose- or they use infrared seeking, homing in on the heat emitted by the target.

The Tomahawk, being designed as a land attack missile, has neither. It uses GPS coupled with an inertial navigation system to fly to a designated point.

But… here’s the thing. The latest Tomahawks, known as TACTOM or Block IV, has a datalink that can update the target location after launch.

That means what they’ve done here is launch a TACTOM from the USS Kidd, then, using the surveillance radar from a Maritime Patrol Plane, such as a P-3C, a P-8A, or potentially the Kidd’s own MH-60, continually updated the target point of a moving target right up until impact. Pretty nifty.

This has a couple of implications. First, traditionally the most effective defense against anti-ship missiles  has been jamming and chaff, targeted against the high frequency on board search radars of the missile. In this case, the search radar from the offboard platform is a somewhat longer frequency, and has greater power, and signal processing, lowering its susceptibility to jamming and chaff.

Even more impressive, aside from a radar altimeter, the inbound missile is passive, giving the target vessel little indication that it is under attack. Its own radars may well pick up the inbound threat, or they may not, or do so quite late in the engagement. The target will likely realize they are being painted with radar from the surveillance plane, but they won’t necessarily know that an attack is actually underway, nor will they realize the threat axis, as the sensor is not co-located with the shooter.

The demonstration of this technology, which one surmises can reasonably be replicated by other platforms and weapons, has some very interesting implications for future anti-surface warfare techniques.

A synthetically guided Tomahawk cruise missile successfully hits a moving maritime target Jan. 27 after being launched from USS Kidd (DDG 100) near San Nicolas Island in California. The missile altered its course toward the target after receiving position updates from surveillance aircraft. (U.S. Navy photo)

A Tomahawk cruise missile hits a moving maritime target Jan. 27 after being launched from USS Kidd (DDG 100) near San Nicolas Island in California. (U.S. Navy photo)

• I was going to save a puppy, but a Crusader killed it.
• Obama’s remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast were childish and insulting. Not to mention bereft of historical context. Ace nails it.
• The TransAsia ATR-72 crash keeps getting worse and worse. Looks like after an engine failure, they shut down the wrong engine. Cockpit Resource Management is supposed to prevent things like this. I think there’s a part of Asian culture that struggles with true CRM.
• Daesh claims an American woman held hostage was killed by coalition air strikes. Maybe. Dunno. Or maybe Daesh is trying to stop airstrikes because they hurt.
• Here’s a nice roundup of pics showing the proof of concept of the Navy’s Mobile Landing Platform, used to speed unloading of sealift ships (not amphibious assault shipping) 0ver the beach.
• Fullbore Friday at CDR Sal’s is always worth a read, even when it’s a repeat.
• When the process is the punishment.

The U.S. Army has decided to award the Purple Heart to victims of the Fort Hood massacre, sources tell Fox News.

Three sources confirmed that the Army will announce the decision by next week. Victims of the 2009 shooting and their families have been pressing the military to award the Purple Heart, and the benefits that come with it, for years.

via Army to Award Purple Heart to Fort Hood Victims.

Good. About damn time.

I’ll say this in the Army’s (and to some extent, the administration’s ) defense. One reason they may have declined to award the Purple hHeart to the victims was that doing so would require a finding that Nidal Hassan was acting as an enemy combatant, to wit, conducting terrorism. That would have had an impact on his defense at court martial. At a minimum, any competent defense counsel would have raised the issue of undue command influence. Counsel could also have gotten really creative and questioned the authority of a court martial to even bring the charges it did, which had nothing to do with terrorism, but rather were simple crimes such as murder and attempted murder.

With Hassan safely convicted, and presumably the bulk of the appeals process behind him, now it is reasonably safe for the Army to award the Purple Heart, an award that is deserved, most assuredly.

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Sgt. Maj. Bradley Kasal became the top enlisted leader of I Marine Expeditionary Force Wednesday, taking over from Sgt. Maj. Ronald Green, who will become the next

sergeant

major of the Marine Corps. It marked a transfer of leadership between two of the service’s best-known enlisted Marines in some

of the most influential positions in the Corps.

Their posts puts the two men in prime positions to influence young enlisted Marines as well as senior officers, said Lt. Gen. David Berger, I MEF’s commanding general.

via Kasal replaces Green as I MEF’s top enlisted leader.

Congratulations to SGM Kasal.

What that? You don’t recall Navy Cross recipient Bradley Kasal?

There was a lot of hope that he would be selected as Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps. And that’s still a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood, after SGM Green’s tenure is complete.

At any event, SGM Kasal has had a career and a legacy that no man, nor any Marine, could gainsay.

BZ.

Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn was leading a Special Forces team in Afghanistan in 2010 when an 80-man mission he assembled to hunt insurgent snipers went awry. One of the unit’s five vehicles sank in mud, a gunshot incapacitated an Afghan soldier fighting alongside the Americans, and insurgents maneuvered on them to rake the soggy fields with machine-gun fire.

Golsteyn, already a decorated Green Beret officer, responded with calm resolve and braved enemy fire repeatedly that day, according to an Army summary of his actions. He received the Silver Star for valor for his actions during a 2011 ceremony at Fort Bragg, N.C. Top Army officials later approved him for an upgrade to the prestigious Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor in recognizing combat heroism by U.S. soldiers.

In a rare reversal, however, Golsteyn, now a major, no longer has either award. The Special Forces officer and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., was later investigated for an undisclosed violation of the military’s rules of engagement in combat for killing a known enemy fighter and bomb maker, according to officials familiar with the case. The investigation closed last year without Golsteyn’s being charged with a crime, but Army Secretary John M. McHugh decided not only to deny Golsteyn the Distinguished Service Cross, but also to revoke his Silver Star.

via Army revokes Silver Star award for Green Beret officer, citing investigation – The Washington Post.

Well, something about this stinks. CPT Golsteyn performed well enough that he was awarded the Silver Star with an upgrade to the DSC recommended, and yet here he comes out with that award revoked.

For the record, I have no real issue with awards being revoked under certain circumstances.

The problem here is, the Secretary of the Army isn’t being clear what those circumstances are. CPT Golsteyn was investigated, and if not cleared, at least not prosecuted. Given the low bar for certain measures, such as a letter of reprimand, one is inclined to believe he was, in fact, cleared.

But we simply don’t know.

Another possibility is that SecArmy McHugh, in a case of fear of any possibility of negative publicity, has decided that merely being investigated means the Army must crush now MAJ Golsteyn’s career.

Joke shamelessly stolen from Cyn at the H2.