USA Armed Forces

News and discussion threads on defence in other parts of the world.
SW1
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Re: USA Armed Forces

Post by SW1 »

abc123 wrote:
Halidon wrote:
abc123 wrote:
J. Tattersall wrote:Interesting to consider whether this is now part of a pattern, moving away from large calibre naval guns such as 4.5" ,5" and towards medium calibre .
US Navy selects BAE Systems' 57mm Mk 110 for Constellation-class frigates
https://www.adsadvance.co.uk/us-navy-se ... gates.html
Only 57 mm? Hmm
A cost cutting or?
There's no NSFS/NGFS requirement on the Frigate, without that requirement to throw HE shells against land targets the 57mm is the most appealing of the existing options to the USN. While it's accurate to say "they left out NSFS for cost reasons," USN Frigates essentially haven't had such a requirement in the postwar era. The last USN Frigates to carry a 5" gun did so for anti-air, to back up their very limited SAM armament.
On the other hand, isn0t it better to risk a relativly cheaper frugate for that than 2-3 x more expensive destroyer?
It’s the people running the ship your risking regardless of the cost of the ship

Scimitar54
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Re: USA Armed Forces

Post by Scimitar54 »

On a bigger ship, there are likely to be more (or potentially many more) lives at risk ! :mrgreen:

abc123
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Re: USA Armed Forces

Post by abc123 »

SW1 wrote:
abc123 wrote:
Halidon wrote:
abc123 wrote:
J. Tattersall wrote:Interesting to consider whether this is now part of a pattern, moving away from large calibre naval guns such as 4.5" ,5" and towards medium calibre .
US Navy selects BAE Systems' 57mm Mk 110 for Constellation-class frigates
https://www.adsadvance.co.uk/us-navy-se ... gates.html
Only 57 mm? Hmm
A cost cutting or?
There's no NSFS/NGFS requirement on the Frigate, without that requirement to throw HE shells against land targets the 57mm is the most appealing of the existing options to the USN. While it's accurate to say "they left out NSFS for cost reasons," USN Frigates essentially haven't had such a requirement in the postwar era. The last USN Frigates to carry a 5" gun did so for anti-air, to back up their very limited SAM armament.
On the other hand, isn0t it better to risk a relativly cheaper frugate for that than 2-3 x more expensive destroyer?
It’s the people running the ship your risking regardless of the cost of the ship
Of course, but ships also cost money. You do know what certain Russian general ( is it Suvorov? )said about that? Just kidding of course. :lol:
Fortune favors brave sir, said Carrot cheerfully.
What's her position about heavily armed, well prepared and overmanned armies?
Oh, noone's ever heard of Fortune favoring them, sir.
According to General Tacticus, it's because they favor themselves…

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xav
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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All that for that...


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SKB
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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:clap: :lol: :thumbup: :mrgreen:

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xav
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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US Navy Awards Raytheon Contract For Maritime Strike Tomahawk Block Va
Raytheon Missiles & Defense, a Raytheon Technologies business, was awarded a $20 million contract for low-rate production of the Maritime Strike Tomahawk® cruise missile Block Va, which includes navigation and communication upgrades in addition to an advanced multi-mode seeker for engaging moving targets at sea.

The Tomahawk cruise missile is a precision weapon that launches from ships and submarines and can strike targets precisely from 1,000 miles away, even in heavily defended airspace. U.S. and allied militaries have flight-tested the GPS-enabled Tomahawk 550 times and used it in combat more than 2,300 times. Its most recent use came in 2018, when U.S. Navy warships and submarines launched 66 Tomahawk missiles at Syrian chemical weapon facilities.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/20 ... -block-va/

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

SW1
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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Reconnaissance and long range strike! Should of been the army’s play at sdsr.

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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But it was... though just kit that is already there got dumped into that BCT. The only one for which the Ajax 'silhouette' piccie featured... Ominously (the troubles with the trials only got wider circulation afterwards).
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

SW1
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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ArmChairCivvy wrote:But it was... though just kit that is already there got dumped into that BCT. The only one for which the Ajax 'silhouette' piccie featured... Ominously (the troubles with the trials only got wider circulation afterwards).
If it was you would of kept the strike brigades as was and instead of investing in challenger upgrade invested in say another mlrs regiment and surface to air regiment.

Yes indeed Ajax will cast a long shadow.

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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Drilling into the above topic, from a breaking-defence interview with Gnrl E. Wesley (H of one of Army Futures Command’s three major subunits, the internal thinktank now known as the Futures & Concepts Center) by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr

"Q: What kinds of higher-echelon capabilities from the Cold War era are being recreated, like corps level artillery formations?

A: Building out the ability to integrate fires at echelon is really important to being able to fight at scale.

When we went to modularity, with the BCT being the coin of the realm, we moved the artillery fires battalion [out of the division-level artillery brigade] into the BCT. Now what you’re going to see is the need to return to some aspects of centralization of fires, with the ability to decentralize [as needed], which makes the problem even harder.

[ so we are taking these steps combined, as opposed to what the US have done over several decades]

So, how have we done that? Well, for example, you saw a couple of years ago that we went back into the [division-level] fires brigade. That might be further reinforced as we go forward.

Then the theater fires command, as an example, that is a direct output of AimPoint [new Army structure]. In the last TAA [Total Army Analysis] cycle, we started to [set aside] a wedge of structure that we can design against. So that does not exist [yet].

Q: What are you able to do in the near term? You already have one experimental Multi-Domain Task Force in the Pacific and another being stood up in Europe.
[ from here on answers do not flow is a strict order]
We need an enhanced posture forward in both INDOPACOM and in Europe – nothing like the 1980s, but larger than what we have now. That’s obviously going to be informed by resource decisions, but already the Army [is reactivating] an additional corps headquarters with an operational command post forward [in Europe].
[so that a potted history of reversing the COIN emphasis can fit in:]
By 2008, three artillery colonels co-wrote a paper that called their arm of service a “dead branch walking.”

Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese howitzers, rocket launchers and surface-to-surface missiles came to not only outnumber but also outperform their aging US counterparts. That led Lt. Gen. Wesley’s predecessor as the Army’s chief futurist, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, to tell Congress in 2016 that “we are outranged and outgunned.” The next year, in October 2017, the Army officially made Long-Range Precision Fires its No. 1 modernization priority.
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

SW1
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/11 ... major-war/

The report, “Resilient Aerial Refueling: Safeguarding the U.S. Military’s Global Reach,” sounds several alarm bells about the military’s tanker fleet and its possibly waning ability to help U.S. forces project power around the globe.

Since the end of the Cold War three decades ago, the report said, tankers have continued to fly to support both peaceful deployments and wartime operations around the world. As the military settled into an “expeditionary posture” in which forces were more frequently deployed, the Air Force’s tanker inventory shrunk from 701 aircraft to roughly 473, further increasing stress on the fleet. As this high pace of operations became a new normal for the tankers, the Hudson Institute said, the fleet was left with hardly any headroom to take on new missions — including responding to China or Russia, short of war.

Another concerning factor is the advancing age of the military’s tankers — the average tanker is 52 years old — and the declining readiness that could result from an increasingly “geriatric” fleet. Delays in bringing the new KC-46 Pegasus tanker into operation could worsen the situation, as older KC-10 Extender and KC-135 Stratotanker airframes are retired before their successor aircraft and their crews are ready.

Lord Jim
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Re: USA Armed Forces

Post by Lord Jim »

Well they did shoot themselves in the foot on that one, being determined to have a US Manufacturer build the first of the new tankers. Airbus seems to have a pretty reliable alternative to the KC-46, being in service with a number of nations and have both boom and drogue capabilities. I wonder how many KC-47 would be flying now if they had stuck with their original selection?

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ArmChairCivvy
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Re: USA Armed Forces

Post by ArmChairCivvy »

Lord Jim wrote: I wonder how many KC-47 would be flying now if they had stuck with their original selection?
My thoughts, too, but being a proponent of a liberal, rules-based world order... didn't want to :D bring up a case of nasty protectionism.
Ever-lasting truths: Multi-year budgets/ planning by necessity have to address the painful questions; more often than not the Either-Or prevails over Both-And.
If everyone is thinking the same, then someone is not thinking (attributed to Patton)

SW1
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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https://www.dvidshub.net/news/409446/ra ... st-vehicle

EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFRL) – The Air Force Rapid Dragon Program, a fast-paced experimentation campaign led by the Air Force Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation (SDPE) office, completed another successful flight demonstration November 3.

The test, conducted at White Sands Missile Range, demonstrated the deployment of a production long range cruise missile separation test vehicle, or STV – a cruise missile without an engine and warhead – from the palletized weapons system.

While the aircraft was enroute to the White Sands Missile Range drop zone, the crew used a beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) command and control node to receive new targeting data for the onboard Battle Management System (BMS). The BMS then uploaded the targeting data to the palletized weapon. The aircraft agnostic BMS’s inflight receipt and upload of the new targeting data into the STV was a first-time achievement; all previous BLOS retargeting demonstrations used a cruise missile emulator.

At White Sands Missile Range, the MC-130J airdropped a four-cell Rapid Dragon deployment system containing the STV and three mass simulants, which sequentially released from the palletized system. Seconds after release, the STV deployed its wings and tail, achieved aerodynamic control, and began a pull-up maneuver as it glided toward its new target.

In addition to showcasing the utility of delivering stand-off munitions en masse via mobility aircraft, this palletized munition demonstration repeated and validated several milestone events from previous Rapid Dragon tests using a production long range cruise missile, including:

• Successful high-altitude airdrop using a modular Rapid Dragon deployment system
• Successful jettison of multiple weapons from the Rapid Dragon deployment system
• Weapon de-confliction through the clean separation of the STV and multiple cruise missile simulants

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Re: USA Armed Forces

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J. Tattersall wrote: 30 Oct 2021, 07:34 Interesting to consider whether this is now part of a pattern, moving away from large calibre naval guns such as 4.5" ,5" and towards medium calibre .
US Navy selects BAE Systems' 57mm Mk 110 for Constellation-class frigates
https://www.adsadvance.co.uk/us-navy-se ... gates.html
Well the US has already introduced the 57mm Mk 110 on it's Littoral Combat Ships. So in between the Freedom and Independance Class they have 21 ships in service with another 11 building, possibly 6 more to order and 4 more being to be decomissioned from active service (in addition to the 2 already decomiisioned), they could well end up with 32 LCS, 16 apiece in Atlantic and Pacific Fleets.

So unlike the RN when it introduces the T31 into active service, the USN Constellation Class Frigates will have an already active stores and maintenaince programme for all of its main weapons systems. Like the LCS, the Constellation Class will also likely have the Kongsberg Naval Strke Missile Canisters for over-the-horizon anti-ship, and Mk41 VLS missiles (like may ships including Arleigh Burke's) for AAW and ASW.

Maybe the USN plans on allocating one of their many Arleigh Burke's to act as shore bombardment , but maybe also that is intended to happen less often in the future with USMC also moving away from traditional opposed amphibious landings?

topman
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59409447

Article about the possible action against US troops that aren't vaccinated.

Lord Jim
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Re: USA Armed Forces

Post by Lord Jim »

Have you seen the latest project form SOCOM, fitting floats to a C-130J! :D

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Re: USA Armed Forces

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The latest info on the US Army's NGSW programme including a focus on the Raptor, which is now the nickname for Sig's entry. The info that Textron might either have dropped out or been eliminated from the competition is interesting as it was they who were proposing a Cased Telescopic round. The remaining two both have conventional looking ammo but are actually highly developed advanced munitions allowing for far greater muzzle velocity in order to meet the US Army's range and lethality requirements.

The reason the is of great interest to me is that the winner of this competition could well become the next standard NATO round replacing the existing 5.56mm as well as 7.62mm. The US Army has stated it is going to announce the winner of the competition at the end of January 2022, but that might be a bit ambitious. How ever the new weapons and ammunition will be mature by 2030, which is the timeframe the British Army is looking to replace the L85A3. However with the new Rifle and Automatic Rifle the British Army could not only replace the L85A3 but also;

L129A1 Designated Marksman Rifle.
L119A1/A2 (Canadian C7/C8).
M6A2 Ultra Compact Individual Weapon, used by SF and Dog Handlers.
Sig Sauer MCX, used by SF.
L2A1 Battle Rifle. used by RMP.
L101A2 5.56mm used by RMP and SF.
L7A2 General Purpose Machine Gun.
L110A3 7.62mm Minimi Light Machine Gun.

This is possible by the compactness and lightweight, easily interchangeable barrels in the case of the Sig entry, that can be done in the field and with lengths from 8" to 21 " as well as its collapsible stock or bullpup configuration, and many accessories including bespoke Suppressors. Both are effective out to 800m and capable of penetrating the latest Russian Body Armour at that distance.

The L85s was supposed to have been replaced in 2025 but that has been pushed back but 2030 now seem the likely date uless no finding is available. IT will be a while until other nations adopt the new calibre as quite a few hove only recently adopted new 5.56 weapons, but the leap in effectiveness could mean SF units adopt the new calibre much sooner and their experiences with the new weapons and ammo will greatly inform the regular services.

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SKB
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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SW1
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4 ... eaks-cover

General Atomics has offered the first official details about a new unmanned aircraft it has been developing internally called the Mojave. Derived from the MQ-1C Gray Eagle that the company developed for the U.S. Army, it is optimized for short takeoffs and landings from semi-improved surfaces with an emphasis on supporting various kinds of expeditionary and distributed operations. Its new wing gives it a look that is reminiscent in some ways of the OV-10 Bronco. The company says that its improved short-field performance would also make it suitable for carrier-based operations without any need for a catapult to launch it or arresting gear during recovery.

Lord Jim
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Re: USA Armed Forces

Post by Lord Jim »

Oh well if we wanted to replace our Watchkeeper.....

SW1
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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https://www.afrl.af.mil/News/Article/28 ... es%7Cother

During the December test, an MC-130J flown by an Air Force Special Operations Command operational flight crew, received new targeting data while in flight which was then routed to the cruise missile flight test vehicle (FTV). The aircraft agnostic Battle Management System’s inflight receipt and upload of the new targeting data into the FTV was a first-time achievement with a live cruise missile.

Once inside the drop zone over the Gulf of Mexico, the MC-130J aircrew airdropped a four-cell Rapid Dragon deployment system containing the FTV and three mass simulants, which were sequentially released from the palletized deployment box while under parachute. Safe separation from the deployment box and weapon deconfliction was demonstrated using an unconventional deployment method (nose-down vertical orientation). Immediately after the vertical release, the FTV deployed its wings and tail, achieved aerodynamic control, ignited its engine, performed a powered pull-up maneuver, and proceeded toward its newly assigned target. The cruise missile successfully destroyed its target upon impact.

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Re: USA Armed Forces

Post by Little J »

Lord Jim wrote: 09 Dec 2021, 01:45 The reason the is of great interest to me is that the winner of this competition could well become the next standard NATO round replacing the existing 5.56mm as well as 7.62mm. The US Army has stated it is going to announce the winner of the competition at the end of January 2022, but that might be a bit ambitious. How ever the new weapons and ammunition will be mature by 2030, which is the timeframe the British Army is looking to replace the L85A3. However with the new Rifle and Automatic Rifle the British Army could not only replace the L85A3 but also;

L129A1 Designated Marksman Rifle.
L119A1/A2 (Canadian C7/C8).
M6A2 Ultra Compact Individual Weapon, used by SF and Dog Handlers.
Sig Sauer MCX, used by SF.
L2A1 Battle Rifle. used by RMP.
L101A2 5.56mm used by RMP and SF.
L7A2 General Purpose Machine Gun.
L110A3 7.62mm Minimi Light Machine Gun.

This is possible by the compactness and lightweight, easily interchangeable barrels in the case of the Sig entry, that can be done in the field and with lengths from 8" to 21 " as well as its collapsible stock or bullpup configuration, and many accessories including bespoke Suppressors. Both are effective out to 800m and capable of penetrating the latest Russian Body Armour at that distance.

The L85s was supposed to have been replaced in 2025 but that has been pushed back but 2030 now seem the likely date uless no finding is available. IT will be a while until other nations adopt the new calibre as quite a few hove only recently adopted new 5.56 weapons, but the leap in effectiveness could mean SF units adopt the new calibre much sooner and their experiences with the new weapons and ammo will greatly inform the regular services.
I found this interesting, testing the new round in sniper rifles, gpmg's crew served weapons... I know they would keep away from rebarrelling an assault rifle, but still interesting to see it on 762 weapons... Almost like they might need to shrink the new round down to properly replace 556 :shh: ... Sa80a4? :thumbup: :lol:

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xav
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Re: USA Armed Forces

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“This agreement marks a very significant step forward and the culmination of a common desire to strengthen cooperation between the two navies, despite the rough seas that the two countries have recently crossed.”

Great and welcomed initiative post AUKUS 🇫🇷🤝🇺🇸 Bravo Zulu

US Navy, French Navy Ink Strategic Interoperability Framework
The U.S. Navy and the French Navy (Marine Nationale) inked a Strategic Interoperability Framework (SIF) on 17 December 2021. The agreement paves the way for increased cooperation between the two navies for the next twenty years, especially their ability to "plug and fight" side by side.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/20 ... framework/

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