Dogfights of the Future. So much right, wrong and a lot of hope.

Do you remember this series?  If not then I HIGHLY recommend it.  The historic accounts of man and machine in aerial combat is without comparison but the one episode that I found absolutely compelling was the "Dogfight of the Future".

They got so much right, so much wrong and it was dashed with a lot of hope.  If you have a bit of time then give it a watch and tell me what your takeaways are.

11th MEU @ Exercise Alligator Dagger 2016....photo by Cpl. Devan K. Gowans

Another annual exercise that I've never heard of.  Are these new or do I need to become better informed?

Dec 7, 1941. Never forget the REAL Pearl Harbor.

I've been struggling to figure out how I would talk about the Battle of Pearl Harbor and its commemoration today.  I settled on the above pic with the thought that we SHOULD remember it...only the REAL Pearl Harbor and not the mythology that built up around it.

We were caught flat footed and the Japanese hit us hard.  The reality is that on the day in question, our military failed.  Good men died doing their duty aboard ship.  Civilians were gunned down in their vehicles and homes.  Why? Because leadership was sold on their ideology and didn't see it coming.

Ignore the mythology.  The Battle of Pearl Harbor is perhaps the greatest naval defeat the US has ever suffered.

Fitness Funny.

Marine F-18 crashes off Okinawa. Why does Davis still have a job?

via USNI News.

The Marine pilot of a F/A-18 Hornet is missing following a crash off the coast of Japan, III Marine Expeditionary Force said in a statement Wednesday morning.
The fighter – assigned to Okinawa-based 1st Marine Aircraft Wing — was operating about 120 miles southeast of Iwakuni, Japan when the pilot ejected about 6:40 p.m., the statement said.
“The aircraft was conducting regularly scheduled training at the time of the mishap. The cause of the incident is under investigation,” the statement said.
Unspecified search and rescue efforts to find the missing Marine are underway.

How many more pilots and aircraft does the USMC have to lose before someone decides that they've lost faith in this guys leadership?  He's fired Squadron Commanders like its the latest hot thing but fails to take responsibility for the condition of the Wing.

This is substandard leadership.  Mark my words.  This crash will be blamed on the pilot and Davis will only come out of his hole to tout how revolutionary the F-35 is.

Meanwhile Marine Air Crew and their passengers will be in more danger from jacked up procurement/maintenance than they will be from enemy activity.

Davis needs to be fired.

Philippines set to buy Frigate from Hyundai Heavy Industries is more formidable than LCS...cheaper too...

via ASEAN Blog.

The letter of credit (LOC) for the country's first two missile-firing frigates, whose contract was won by Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), is now being finalized, Philippine Navy (PN) flag-officer-in-command, Vice Adm. Roland Joseph Mercado has said.

"As far as I know, they are now finalizing the terms in the LOC, for the frigate project. That's the only update I could give for now," he said in an interview with the Philippine News Agency (PNA).

An LOC is a letter from a bank guaranteeing that a buyer's payment to a seller will be received on time and for the correct amount. In case the buyer is unable to make payment for the purchase, the bank will be required to cover the full or remaining amount of the purchase.

Mercado is the same officer who headed the technical working group that came up with the specifications of the country's first-ever missile-capable frigates.

On Oct. 24, National Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana formally inked the contract for the Frigate Acquisition Program, together with officials and delegates from South Korea's HHI. The signing ceremony took place at the PN's headquarters in Naval Station Andrada, Roxas Blvd., Manila.

The project involves the construction and delivery of two missile-firing frigates to the PN.

The signing of the contract signals the start of the construction and is the culmination of the long and tedious procurement process for the project.

As background, the Notice of Award was approved, issued and was duly conformed by HHI on Sept. 13 with the amount of USD336,912,000 or PHP15,744,571,584.

Ain't that a kick in the pants.  The Philippines will get a frigate that is cheaper and more heavily armed (and probably has better seakeeping/endurance) than the LCS we're slamming into service.

Typical.

Is Turkey is about to try and consolidate it gains in Syria?

Pics via Bmashina Tumblr Page.

The above pics show Leopard 2's staged at the Syria-Turk border.  We've all been wondering when they would commit their first line gear to the fight and this MIGHT be it.

If so then what's the plan?  Russians don't take a dump without a plan and while Turkish leadership is erratic I don't see them moving these tanks forward without a reason.

Are the Turks signalling the end of the war in Syria?  Are they about to try and consolidate their gains there so that the price is too high for Assad to try and stitch his country back together.  Is this an attempt at a  fait accompli?

I'm not sure.

Forget Mattis, the Warrior King General Kelly will have the most consequential job of the general officers under consideration.

Thanks to John for the link!

via CBS News.

Gen. John Kelly is virtually certain to be president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Homeland Security.
The final call and acceptance, sources told CBS News, has not occurred but is expected soon.
If Trump chooses Kelly, he will be third general tapped by the president-elect, joining Gen. James Mattis, Trump’s pick to become the next secretary of Defense, and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming national security advisor.
Like Mattis, Kelly is a Marine with a reputation for bluntness.
Kelly was the commander of U.S. Southern Command until earlier this year. In that posting, he oversaw American military operations in South America and Central America.
Before that, he commanded American forces numerous times in Iraq, and spent a year as the top Marine in that country. He then was an aide to defense secretaries Leon Panetta and Robert Gates.
Created after the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security now employs nearly 250,000 people. Trump pledged repeatedly to better secure America’s borders on the campaign trail, and it is likely that Kelly, should he take the position, will be central to that effort.

Story here.

Everyone is STILL talking up the pick of General Mattis for SecDef.  What's being ignored is that the search in the Trump inner circle is to find a bureaucrat that knows where the bodies are buried so that reform can be made at the dysfunctional swamp known as the Pentagon.

Drink that in.

They're looking for a number 2 to Mattis that is a pure bureaucrat.  Makes me wonder if Mattis is simply going to be the figurehead...someone has decided that the troops need someone to rally around...are things that bad?

But ignore all that.

Let's look at the roster of Generals under consideration.  Flynn?  National Security Adviser to a guy that wants to stop small wars, toppling regimes and engaging in other people's conflicts?  He might be heard but if his advice is more of the same then his advice won't be followed by Trump (and he has a long track record of being against the above).

We've talked about Mattis which leaves Petraeus.  He's a long shot for SecState and I don't believe he's seriously under consideration.  He's a Democrat Neo-Con and considering the overlooked fact that he "militarized" the CIA to new heights during his tenure as chief I just can't make a case for the guy (despite a stirling military record...he was born airborne and stayed airborne his entire career).

That leaves the Warrior King General Kelly.  It would take too long but if you don't know the guy then you need to get up to speed.  He should have been Commandant and with his retirement another Marine Corps great stepped away from the battlefield.  The story above focuses on border security but that's just a minor part of the illegal immigration problem.  The solution lies with Congress.  Make sanctions for hiring illegal actually have a bit of bite and suddenly the magnet for illegal immigration goes away.  Then the Border Patrol can concentrate on terrorists and drug runners.

But that's just a small part of Homeland Security.  Kelly will be responsible for coordinating our Law Enforcement/Security Forces against what I expect will be a renewed attempt to hit us at home.

General Kelly will have the tremendous weight of safeguarding the homeland, banging the heads together of a couple of bureaucracies and dealing with a morphing terrorist threat.

No one is talking about it but General Kelly will have the toughest job of any of the generals in the upcoming Trump administration.  Below is a blast from the past to give you a glimpse into the thinking of this guy.  Drink it in and marvel.  This is the guy that gives a school circle talk and you leave ready to chew nails, run thru brick walls and skull stomp enemies....

When I was the commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, on April 22, 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8, were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion was in the closing days of its deployment, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.Two Marines, Cpl. Jonathan Yale and Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines. The same ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, our allies in the fight against terrorists in Ramadi – known at the time as the most dangerous city on earth, and owned by al-Qaeda. Yale was a dirt-poor mixed-race kid from Virginia, with a wife, a mother and a sister, who all lived with him and he supported. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle-class white kid from Long Island. They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines, they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple Americas exist simultaneously, depending on one’s race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, education level, economic status, or where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible, and because of this bond they were brothers as close – or closer – than if they were born of the same woman.The mission orders they received from their sergeant squad leader, I’m sure, went something like this: “OK, take charge of this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass. You clear?” I’m also sure Yale and Haerter rolled their eyes and said, in unison, something like, “Yes, sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point, without saying the words, “No kidding, sweetheart. We know what we’re doing.” They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry-control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.A few minutes later, a large blue truck turned down the alleyway – perhaps 60 to 70 yards in length – and sped its way through the serpentine concrete Jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest 200 yards away, knocking down most of a house down before it stopped. Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was caused by 2,000 pounds of explosive. Because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers in arms.When I read the situation report a few hours after it happened, I called the regimental commander for details. Something about this struck me as different. We expect Marines, regardless of rank or MOS, to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different. The regimental commander had just returned from the site, and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event – just Iraqi police. If there was any chance of finding out what actually happened, and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it, because a combat award requires two eyewitnesses, and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police, all of whom told the same story. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police related that some of them also fired, and then, to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion. All survived. Many were injured, some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated, and with tears welling up, said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.”What he didn’t know until then, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion, he said, “Sir, in the name of God, no sane man would have stood there and done what they did. They saved us all.”What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned after I submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras recorded some of the attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated. You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives.I suppose it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. No time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “Let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time, the truck was halfway through the barriers and gaining speed. Here the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were, some running right past the Marines, who had three seconds left to live.For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines firing their weapons nonstop. The truck’s windshield explodes into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tear into the body of the son of a bitch trying to get past them to kill their brothers – American and Iraqi – bedded down in the barracks, totally unaware that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground.Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder-width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could. They had only one second left to live, and I think they knew.The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty.

British Army Combined Arms Manouvre Demonstration 2016 (Armor)

Note:  I don't understand what the Brits are thinking.  They have high speed, highly mobile (over broken ground) Chieftans and soon AJAX vehicles and they're gonna make lumbering, slow and roadbound MRAPS a part of that maneuver force?  I don't think this will work and fully expect them to place the majority of their MRAPS in storage for peacekeeping work just as the Marine Corps will do soon.

Pentagon buries evidence of 125 billion dollars in bureaucratic waste.

Thanks to John for the link!

via Washington Post.

The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.
Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.
The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.
The study was produced last year by the Defense Business Board, a federal advisory panel of corporate executives, and consultants from McKinsey and Company. Based on reams of personnel and cost data, their report revealed for the first time that the Pentagon was spending almost a quarter of its $580 billion budget on overhead and core business operations such as accounting, human resources, logistics and property management.

Story here. 

Everyone (myself included) has talked about rebuilding America's defense.  I've bitched about cuts in the combat power of the Army and Marine Corps...yet we see a Pentagon study that identified 125 billion dollars in waste?

And the answer is to give this bureaucracy more money?

Maybe the sequester needs to stay in place.  If they're going to hide this report from January two years ago then we're look at more than waste.  We're looking at fraud.

The Pentagon needs an enema.

BAE USA Chief wants the US to share its technological advantage with allies.

via Defense News.

Lastly, we must enable collective security through our strategic alliances. One of the consistent themes in our recent presidential election was encouraging allies and partners to do more. In order to equip them to do more, we must prioritize programs designed to allow the United States to share its technological advantages with key allies and partners around the world. 

A couple of things.  BAE when it entered the US marketplace was forced to form a standalone company that was entirely separate from its UK parent so that US tech could not be used by the firm when selling gear to other countries.

Next, I've been a big booster of BAE, Boeing and several other companies...but this article gives me pause.

I've watched the videos where the statement is that BAE is concerned with safeguarding the American people, especially the troops that use their gear. This article is a wakeup call.  BAE leadership is apparently no different than Lockheed.  This is a wish list to the Trump administration in order to fill their coffers and increase profit margin.

I've been so naive.

"Muflone ​​2016" Italian Army Special Ops Olympics..

via Italian Army Website (translated by Google).

In the period between November 27 and December 2 there was the final stage of "Muflone ​​2016", conducted by the exercise COMFOSE and its departments, it aims to consolidate its capacity to interoperability in the planning and conduct of special operations .
The activity involved the 9th Regiment "Col Moschin" , the 4th Parachute Regiment Alpine , the 185th Regiment acquisition targets , the 28th Regiment of Pavia and the 3rd Regiment Helicopters for Special Operations "Aldebaran" , with rates of 41 Regiment SORAO , of ' 11th Signal Regiment "Lioness" and the 183rd Parachute Regiment "Folgore" in addition to a rate of COFS staff - in the role HICON - has affected a wide area between Marche, Lazio and Tuscany, It saw the use of more than 500 men.
The departments have created a Special Operations Task Group Land who also worked with the support of the helicopters of the 3rd REOs that has spelled a Special Operation Air Task Group.
The exercise, conducted in opposing parties and characterized by a strong realism, confirmed the capacity of individual departments to conduct online transactions with its missions.