Zitat:Marine Corps stores huge amounts of armor and weaponry in Norwegian caves

Norway shares a 120-mile land border with Russia. And at the same time a heavily-armed Russian convey draws ever closer to eastern Ukraine — raising the possibility of another escalation in the Ukraine’s already-restive east — the U.S. Marine Corps is re-supplying a vital pre-positioning site in central Norway.

Quintus Fabius schrieb:In den USA beginnt zur Zeit ein zunehmendes Umdenken zurück zum konventionellen Krieg, insbesondere zurück zum konventionellen Bodenkrieg: Weg von Air-Only und COIN:...

Zitat:Navy Seal Awarded Medal Of Honor For Daring 2012 Hostage Rescue Operation

Today President Obama awarded Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward C. Byers Jr. with the United States’ highest military award, the Medal Of Honor, at a White House ceremony.

Byers’ actions during a December 2012 hostage rescue operation in Afghanistan are how he ended up standing on stage with Obama affixing the cherished blue and gold medal around his neck.

It was just the sixth time the award was bestowed upon a Navy SEAL.

Zitat:US Luftwaffe hat 19 Piloten im Kampf gegen IS verloren

Die vollständige Pressekonferenz ist (Stand 09. März, youtube löscht rigoros Videos auf US-Anweisung) kann hier eingesehen werden. Ab ca. 5:45 beginnt die Passage, um die es hier geht. James ist noch präziser, als Sputnik News sie zitiert. Die 19 erwähnten Piloten sind im letzten halben Jahr gefallen.
Diese kleine Information lässt ziemlich große Rückschlüsse über die US-Luftwaffe zu.

Acht Piloten hat der IS im letzten Halbjahr vom Himmel geholt. Mit primitiven Mitteln. Mit den gleichen primitiven Mitteln konnte bis jetzt noch kein einziges russisches Kampfflugzeug in Syrien vom Himmel geholt werden (in 5,3 Monaten).
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Zitat:Pentagon ‘Arsenal Plane’ May Take the Form of a Modified B-52

Zitat:The Pentagon’s emerging “Arsenal Plane” or “flying bomb-truck” is likely to be a modified, high-tech adaptation of the iconic B-52 bomber designed to fire air-to-air weapons, release swarms of mini-drones and provide additional fire-power to fifth-generation stealth fighters such as the F-35 and F-22, Pentagon officials and analysts said.

Using a B-52, which is already being modernized with new radios and an expanded internal weapons bay, would provide an existing “militarized” platform already engineered with electronic warfare ability and countermeasures designed to thwart enemy air defenses.

“You are using a jet that already has a military capability. The B-52 is a military asset, whereas all the alternatives would have to be created. It has already been weaponized and has less of a radar cross-section compared to a large Air Force cargo plane. It is not a penetrating bomber, but it does have some kind of jamming and countermeasures meant to cope with enemy air defenses. It is wired for a combat mission,” said Richard Aboulafia, Vice President of analysis at the Teal Group, a Virginia-based consultancy.

Flying as a large, non-stealthy bomber airplane, a B-52 would still present a large target to potential adversaries; however, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said part of the rationale for the “Arsenal Plane” would be to work closely with stealthy fighter jets such as an F-22 and F-35, with increased networking technology designed to increase their firepower and weapons load.

Zitat:2: die Kosten für Nicht-Stealth-Plattformen wieder sehr viel geringer sind, so dass die Kostenersparnis welche man durch diese Einheiten erzielt die Mehrkosten der größeren Vielfalt kompensieren.

Zitat:Solche Drohnen klären "voraus" autonom auf und der Bomber liefert eine immense Feuerkraft "hinterher".

Zitat:Man hat die grosse Zahl an F-35 und später der B-21, es ist überhaupt nicht notwendig solche altbackenen Konstrukte mit sauteuren Abstandswaffen im Dienst zu halten.

Zitat: die Preisentwicklung der F-35 wurde erst kürzlich veröffentlicht, schon in 2 Jahren wird der Preis auf Growler-Niveau sein / weit unterhalb eines Systempreises eines Eurofighters.

Zitat:The Army is too small and could be outgunned in future conflicts, service officials said March 15.

The warnings came at a time when the ground force is shrinking and potential adversaries are improving their military technologies.

“Future Army forces may be not only outnumbered … but we also may face enemies who have overmatch capability over us in some key areas,” Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, said at an Association of the United States Army conference in Huntsville, Alabama.

“We see obviously in Europe in particular that we may have Army forces that are also to some degree out of position to deter conflict or then to respond to and resolve conflict,” he added.

Adversary technologies that pose an increasing threat to U.S. forces include: sophisticated air defenses; highly capable anti-tank weapons; unmanned aerial systems and associated swarm capabilities; long-range rockets and artillery; cyber weapons; electronic warfare; anti-satellite capabilities; and advanced combat vehicles.

Meanwhile, the Army’s ability to modernize as well as field and sustain critical capabilities “is being sorely tested on all fronts,” said Katrina McFarland, acting assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, technology and logistics.

The United States has not kept pace with potential adversaries' advanced combat vehicles, McMaster said, noting that other countries are developing better protective systems for their vehicles. The service also falls short on armor, he added.

“Our Army has become too light,” he said. “Some people made some strange assumptions about the nature of future war that really have not panned out right that you just really need to be lean and nimble” to prevail.

Zitat: High-tech gear won’t compensate for having too small a force, officials said. The Army would have a limited surge and force regeneration capacity in the event of conflict, they noted.

“We know we have capacity challenges right now,” said Maj. Gen. William Hix, director of strategy, plans and policy in the office of the deputy chief of staff. “Technology is unlikely to solve this problem in the short or medium term.”

Zitat:PENTAGON: “We don’t have enough money to do everything we want to do,” Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told me in an exclusive 85-minute interview in his E-Ring Pentagon office.

Zitat:The imperative to counter China and Russia is not launching any major modernization programs, but rather upgrading and upgunning existing systems.

Zitat:That’s why Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s Strategic Capabilities Office focuses on relatively small investments that get more use out of existing assets, like repurposing the 54-year-old B-52 as an “arsenal plane” and modifying traditional cannon to fire guided Hyper Velocity Projectiles.

Zitat:Paratroopers-are-obsolete-without-armored-vehicles

We need a different kind of airborne brigade, one that the Rand study has already recommended. It should be equipped with armored vehicles, which are configured to act as mortar carriers, assault guns and infantry fighting vehicles.

This would allow it to more effectively face mechanized opponents, survive in the face of heavy artillery, and maneuver rapidly to the objective should air defense systems force aircraft to drop at a more distant location from their objectives.

Zitat:Iraq and Afghanistan have shown U.S. forces why it’s important to have ground forces in properly armored vehicles to protect against small arms fire and improvised explosive devices, while allowing them to bring superior firepower to ground engagements.

Zitat:Lockheed Martin just dropped its suit against the government for awarding the giant Joint Light Tactical Vehicle contract to truck-maker Oshkosh. Why now?

“After careful deliberation, Lockheed Martin has withdrawn its protest of the JLTV contract award decision in the Court of Federal Claims” was all the company would say. But it turns out neither the legal nor the technological aspects of the case were going well for the world’s largest defense contractor.

Six days ago, the judge refused to issue a stop-work order to Oshkosh, allowing them to keep working on JLTV while the case proceeded — a sign he didn’t consider Lockheed’s case compelling. Not quite two weeks before that, buried in a 472-page annual report, the Pentagon’s independent Director of Operational Test & Evaluation released a scathing assessment of the Lockheed JLTV prototypes’ reliability: Oshkosh’s winning entry lasted almost six times as long between breakdowns.

Zitat:The skills to build small numbers of high-cost stealth fighters and satellites don’t translate well to the lower-tech world of truck-building, where Oshkosh had the homefield advantage.

Zitat:The reliability requirement for JLTV was to average 2,400 miles between significant failures. (Mean Miles Between Operational Mission Failure, MMBOMF, is the technical term). The current uparmored Humvee beats that, reaching 2,968 miles. Oshkosh’s entry hit it out of the park with 7,051 miles. Lockheed’s fell well short, at just 1,271 miles.

Zitat:Picatinny Arsenal engineers have been working to create a longer, newly modified M777A2 howitzer that has the potential to double the system's current artillery range.

The modification adds six feet to the cannon and less than 1,000 pounds to the overall system. A mobility demonstration is the first step to determine if the howitzer can be modified for extended range, or if a new system is required.

"Their [user] concern is that when the self-propelled program is done they will be left with a towed cannon variant that they can't tow around, which is its number one mode of transportation," said David Bound, M777ER Lead, Artillery Concepts and Design Branch, which is part of the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, or ARDEC.

The Extended Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, project is funded by ARDEC's science and technology office and charged with developing technology to extend the range of all 155mm artillery.

The ERCA program develops not only the XM907 cannon but also products, such as the XM1113 rocket assisted projectile, the XM654 supercharge, an autoloader, and new fire control system.

Program Manager Towed Artillery Systems, or PM-TAS, which leads the M777ER program, is taking the ERCA cannon design and adapting it to the M777 to determine if it can be a cross-platform solution.

This PM-TAS effort is a dual-funded program by the Army and the Marines.

PM-TAS is part of the Program Executive Office for Ammunition at Picatinny Arsenal.

To begin efforts to test mobility, PM-TAS demonstrated a modified M777A2 Howitzer with an integration kit for the mass mock-up of the modified XM907 ERCA cannon at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. Follow-on mobility testing will be conducted at Aberdeen Proving Grround, Maryland, to document the changes in mobility from a standard M777A2, if any.

"The ERCA program is developing the cannon to give it more range. PM-TAS is doing the demonstration to the Marines to show how it would look, feel and move when integrated into the M777A2 carriage," said Bound.

The demonstration will not include firing the weapon, but will show how the gun responds when it travels and how it feels when the crew interacts with the controls.

With nearly 1,000 pounds added to the system's overall weight and an additional six feet of cannon tube, the demonstration is taking place to give the Soldiers and Marines more confidence that the gun will still meet all of its mobility requirements.

"The visual prejudice we are up against is that it looks like it may tip over with all that extra cannon. We are trying to increase confidence that the M777 is an acceptable candidate for an extended range upgrade" said Bound.

In efforts to ensure that the gun will meet all of its requirements, a mobility cannon tube was created.

The mobility tube consists of an old 52-caliber tube that was modified to fit into an M777A2 at the weight of the XM907. Additionally, grooves were added to the exterior of the tube to allow Picatinny engineers to hang weights at different positions, enabling them to move the center of gravity of the weapon forward or rear.

This cannon will allow the Army and the Marines to assess the impacts to the M777 and how it's operated as the ERCA program optimizes the cannon design.

"The weights allow the Center of Gravity to move and get to the point where we can start towing this around as the configuration of the tube changes as the ERCA figures out what they want to do because it's in flux right now," said Bound.

"We are able to replicate how that tube reacts in the system using the different weight configurations. Then, we can hook this up to a truck so we can see what the users can expect from a human-factors point of view of how much harder it is to elevate, traverse back and forth, and what the trucks are going to see as they tow the system around," said Bound.

Benet Labs designed the tube and Picatinny designed all of the carriage modifications.

INCREASED RANGE

"Right now (the M777) can shoot about 30 kilometers, but once all of the upgrades are complete it will be able to shoot about 70 kilometers," said Bound.

"So, it will be able to reach out and hit targets well in excess before the targets can reach them. It will also give a lot of operational over match so the warfighter won't have to worry about coming into a situation where they are under fire before they can return fire," said Bound.

After the ERCA program, the M777ER program is engaged in making sure that ERCA's system is suitable for the M777 system.

Zitat:Test of the Indirect Fire Protection Capability, Increment 2 – Intercept (IFPC Inc 2-I) at White Sands Missile Range. This test saw the launch of an AIM-9X sidewinder missile against a unmanned aerial system (UAS) representative target using the Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System. The IFPC Inc 2-I project is a ground-based weapon system that will acquire, track, engage, and defeat UAS, cruise missiles, and rockets, artillery and mortars.

Zitat:Video of the launch of a Longbow Hellfire Missile from the Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 – Intercept (IFPC Inc 2-I) Multi Mission Launcher (MML). The MML is a truck mounted launch system currently in development and is designed to be capable of loading various interceptors, allowing soldier to select different interceptors for use against different threats.