US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
I believe and have proposed for some time that the US use an improved version of the Korean KDX-III design as the bridge between the Ticos and the future. Such a design can be built, the Koreans already have three of them, and would be the most powerful warships on the planet, particularly with the modifications I propose:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

IMHO, the US should buid 12-18 of these...and then use the next 15 years to design and build the true CGX future warship incorportating all of the new techs from the Zumwalt and Ford classes, including the coming directed energy CIWS weapons.

The vessel would have a mixture of 194 missiles from RAM (42), to ESSM (32), to Vertical ASROC (8), to SM6 and SM3 (88), to TLAM (24) or any other mixture thereof. Would have the firepower of the new 155mm AGM, and would have close in protection of 4 25mm chain guns that can be auto fired or manually, as well as 8 .50 cal machine guns. it would have two SH-60 ASW helos, and be able to carry VTOL UAVs, plus the 12 torpedo tubes. All powered by the latest AEGIS adn Sonars available to the US Navy.
 
Last edited:

navyreco

Senior Member
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

[video=youtube;w9IVrfyC5KA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9IVrfyC5KA[/video]
Mines can wreak havoc on naval vessels and bring maritime commerce to a full stop. To keep the sea lanes open, the U.S. Navy is developing a Remote Minehunting System (RMS) for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) centered on Lockheed Martin’s Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle (RMMV). The RMS recently achieved a major milestone, completing the first phase of reliability testing that included 500 hours of mission testing during 33 missions over a five-month period.
 

navyreco

Senior Member
From a Washington Post article:
The news agency, which has ties to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, asserted that the carrier USS John C. Stennis, which steamed out of the Persian Gulf last week, had escaped while being “chased by Iranian warships.”
Gotta be kidding
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will unveil a "more realistic" vision for the military on Thursday, with plans to cut tens of thousands of ground troops and invest more in air and sea power at a time of fiscal restraint, officials familiar with the plans said on Wednesday.

The strategic review of U.S. security interests will also emphasize an American presence in Asia, with less attention overall to Europe, Africa and Latin America alongside slower growth in the Pentagon's budget, the officials said.

Though specific budget cut and troop reduction figures are not set to be announced on Thursday, officials confirmed to Reuters they would amount to a 10-15 percent decline in Army and Marine Corps numbers over the next decade, translating to tens of thousands of troops.

The most profound shift in the strategic review is an acceptance that the United States, even with the world's largest military budget, cannot afford to maintain the ground troops to fight more than one major war at once. That is a move away from the "win-win" strategy that has dominated Pentagon funding decisions for decades.

The move to a "win-spoil" plan, allowing U.S. forces to fight one campaign and stop or block another conflict, includes a recognition that the White House would need to ramp up public support for further engagement and draw more heavily on reserve and national guard troops when required.

"As Libya showed, you don't necessarily have to have boots on the ground all the time," an official said, explaining the White House view.

"We are refining our strategy to something that is more realistic," the official added.

President Barack Obama will help launch the U.S. review at the Pentagon on Thursday, and is expected to emphasize that the size of the U.S. military budget has been growing and will continue to grow, but at a slower pace.

Obama has moved to curtail U.S. ground commitments overseas, ending the war in Iraq, drawing down troops in Afghanistan and ruling out anything but air power and intelligence support for rebels who overthrew Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.

The number of U.S. military personnel formally assigned to bases in Europe - including many now deployed in Afghanistan - is also set to decline sharply, administration sources said, while stressing that the final numbers have not been set.

'BASICALLY DISAPPEAR'

"When some army brigades start coming out of Afghanistan, they will basically disappear," one official said.

Many of the key U.S. military partners in the NATO alliance are also facing tough defense budget cuts as a result of fiscal strains gripping the European Union.

The president may face criticism from defense hawks in Congress, many of them opposition Republicans, who question his commitment to U.S. military strength.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, are set to hold a news conference to flesh out the contents of the review after Obama's remarks, which are also expected to stress the need to rein in spending at a time when U.S. budgets are tight.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that the defense cuts stemming from an August debt ceiling deal - worth about $489 billion over 10 years - need to be enacted carefully.

"The president made clear to his team that we need to take a hard look at all of our defense spending to ensure that spending cuts are surgical and that our top priorities are met," Carney told reporters this week.

The military could be forced to cut another $600 billion in defense spending over 10 years unless Congress takes action to stop a second round of cuts mandated in the August accord.

Panetta spent much of Wednesday afternoon briefing key congressional leaders about the strategic review. Representative Adam Smith, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, said after speaking to Panetta that the review was an attempt to evaluate U.S. strategic priorities for the future rather than identify specific budget reductions.

Maintaining a significant presence in the Middle East and Asia, especially to counter Iran and North Korea, was a leading priority in the review, Smith said. So was making sure that military personnel are sufficiently cared for to guarantee the effectiveness of the all-volunteer force. Reductions in the size of U.S. forces in Europe and elsewhere are a real possibility, he said.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain John Kirby said with the military winding down a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is appropriate to re-evaluate the role of U.S. forces abroad.

"From an operational perspective it's ... an opportune time to take a look at what the U.S. military is doing and what it should be doing or should be preparing itself to do over the next 10 to 15 years," he said on Wednesday.

"So, yes, the budget cuts are certainly a driver here, but so quite frankly are current events," Kirby said.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan; Editing by Will Dunham)
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
More on the upcoming US military budget cuts.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama put his personal stamp Thursday on a rejiggered Pentagon strategy for absorbing hundreds of billions of dollars in defense budget cuts, marking a turning point in U.S. security policy after a decade of war.

In a rare appearance in the Pentagon press briefing room, the president announced that the military will be reshaped over time with an emphasis on countering terrorism, maintaining a nuclear deterrent, protecting the U.S. homeland, and "deterring and defeating aggression by any potential adversary."

Those are not new military missions, and Obama announced no new capabilities or defense initiatives. He described a U.S. force that will retain much of its recent focus, with the exception of fighting a large-scale, prolonged conflict like the newly ended Iraq mission or the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

"As we end today's wars and reshape our armed forces, we will ensure that our military is agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies," he wrote in a preamble to the new strategy, which is titled, "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense."

The strategy hints at a reduced U.S. military presence in Europe and says Asia will be a bigger priority. It also emphasizes improving U.S. capabilities in the areas of cyberwarfare and missile defense.

Obama's decision to announce the strategy himself underscores the political dimension of Washington's debate over defense savings. The administration says smaller Pentagon budgets are a must but will not come at the cost of sapping the strength of a military in transition, even as it gets smaller.

In a presidential election year, the strategy gives Obama a rhetorical tool to defend his Pentagon budget-cutting choices. Republican contenders for the White House already have criticized Obama on a wide range of national security issues, including missile defense, Iran and planned reductions in ground forces.

Obama also wants the new strategy to represent a pivot point in his stewardship of defense policy, which has been burdened throughout his presidency by the wars he inherited and their drag on resources.

The new strategy moves the U.S. further from its longstanding goal of being able to successfully fight two major regional wars — like the 1991 Gulf War to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait or a prospective ground war in Korea — at the same time.

The strategy document announced by Obama contained no specifics on the size of expected troop reductions; the Army and Marine Corps already are set to shrink beginning in 2015. The document said the Pentagon will have to find savings in pay and health care benefits for members of the military, but it offered no specifics.

It made clear that while some current missions of the military will be curtailed, none will be scrapped entirely.

"Wholesale divestment of the capability to conduct any mission would be unwise, based on historical and projected uses of U.S. military forces and our inability to predict the future," the document said.

The administration and Congress already are trimming defense spending to reflect the closeout of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan. The massive $662 billion defense budget planned for next year is $27 billion less than Obama wanted and $43 billion less than Congress gave the Pentagon this year.

Appearing with Obama to answer reporters' questions about the strategy document were Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey. Panetta in recent months had previewed the main themes of the strategy by emphasizing a need to continue pressuring al-Qaida and paying more attention to Asian security challenges, including China and North Korea.

Factors guiding the Obama administration's approach to reducing the defense budget are not limited to war-fighting strategy. They also include judgments about how to contain the growing cost of military health care, pay and retirement benefits. The administration is expected to form a commission to study the issue of retirement benefits, possibly led by a prominent retired military officer.

The administration is in the final stages of deciding specific cuts in the 2013 budget, which Obama will submit to Congress next month. The strategy to be announced by Panetta and Dempsey is meant to accommodate about $489 billion in defense cuts over the coming 10 years, as called for in a budget deal with Congress last summer. An additional $500 billion in cuts may be required starting in January 2013.

A prominent theme of the Pentagon's new strategy is what Panetta has called a renewed commitment to security in the Asia-Pacific region.

The administration is not anticipating military conflict in Asia, but Panetta believes the U.S. got so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 that it missed chances to improve its position in other regions.

China is a particular worry because of its economic dynamism and rapid defense buildup. A more immediate concern is Iran, not only for its threats to disrupt the flow of international oil but also for its nuclear ambitions.

Robert Burns can be reached on Twitter at
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
 

Kurt

Junior Member
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Here's a link about the future of the US military by analyst Michael Hancock of the Brookings Institute. This section should be enough to arouse the interest of our Chinese readers, because it expresses what many think, there'll be a clash of interests that can go pretty violent.
Most worrisome is the default plan. As part of the August deficit and debt deal, the new Fiscal “Super committee” is due to present a plan before Thanksgiving for an up-or-down vote by Congress before Christmas. If such a plan is not approved, defense and national security will automatically suffer another $500 billion or so in ten-year cuts, making for a grand total of about $900 billion. Such draconian cuts would jeopardize irreducible requirements in American defense policy—winding down current wars responsibly, deterring Iran, hedging against a rising China, protecting global sea lanes vital for commerce, attacking terrorists and checking state sponsors of terror, and ensuring a strong all-volunteer military as well as a world-class defense scientific and industrial base.

Behind these specific recommendations is a broader premise. Not only the United States, but the world in general, benefits from the current international order in which America is the strongest power and helps lead a broader alliance system involving most of the world’s other major powers. World peace would not be served by U.S. disarmament or even a trend towards the emergence of multiple, comparable power centers. I do not mean Americans should want to dominate others. Nor should the United States do other countries’ fighting for them. But if the United States were to stop playing a global leadership role, competition and conflict would be the likely result. In such a “multipolar” world, countries would often be less confident of their own security, and sometimes inclined to take matters into their own hands by engaging in arms races, building nuclear weapons, or even attacking their neighbors.
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
^^Thanks for posting navyreco.. I just skimmed through that document. I found nothing that states the actual cut. the document just describes the future US military goals and subscribed mission.
 

zoom

Junior Member
"We'll wipe Israel off the map" is pretty defensive all right

Can you please provide the source of this threat. If it's the one i'm thinking of then - and i'll add here that i don't speak or understand farsi but from people i know who do told me- the actual meaning of the words said were " Iran would like to see the world rid of Zionism. " I also believe that the western media in general know this and some like the BBC continue to broadcast the same line as you. Maybe you can shed some light on the reasons for that.Or maybe i missed the threat you refer to.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Here's a link about the future of the US military by analyst Michael Hancock of the Brookings Institute. This section should be enough to arouse the interest of our Chinese readers, because it expresses what many think, there'll be a clash of interests that can go pretty violent.


I thought a multipolar world is a good thing! Didn't you guys brag about how sufficient a system of checks and balances is the foundation of a democracy? Why can't China and the US navies teamed up to secure SLoC and fight pirates instead of hegemonic power policies? This Michael Hancock of the Brookings Institute guy is just making an excuses for the US to sustain the current status quo at all cost regardless of what other power player thinks. Sorry, but history doesn't play by that kind of rules. There will always be a new power to replace the old (i.e. rise of the US over the UK as naval powers).
 
Top