US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jura said:

May 25, 2019
Pecunia Non Olet, but
Senate Votes to Block Saudi Arms Sales as Trump Vows Veto

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Jura said:

May 15, 2019
looks I wasn't alone who asked (LOL) as inside
The Navy's $2.7 Billion Plan to Build Drone Ships Faces Hurdles in Congress

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:
"What we're leaning toward would be go figure out the [concept of operations] on the ships you already either bought or are about to buy, and then we can talk about going into serial production," the staffer said.

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• The
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  is currently programmed for a 2020 start. This is supposed to be a commercially available hull with Navy equipment strapped on to it.
• The medium unmanned surface vessel is designed to “provide distributed sensing and communications relays.” It’s slated to start this year, and will likely be an iteration of Sea Hunter.
• Mine Countermeasures USV is going to begin production this year, it will support the littoral combat ship mission and other vessels capable of hosting it."

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’s three-decade grip on the U.S. military’s long-range air-to-air missile inventory will soon end.

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won a secret competition in 2017 to develop and field an even longer-range air intercept missile by 2022. U.S. fighter pilots will, at last, have access to a weapon with equivalent range to China’s PL-15, Europe’s MBDA Meteor and Russia’s Vympel R-37M.

The existence of the AIM-260 Joint Air Tactical Missile (JATM) was made public during a June 20 media roundtable in Dayton, Ohio, with Brig. Gen. Anthony Genatempo, the Air Force’s program executive officer for weapons. When asked for an update on the Air Force’s long-fixed portfolio of air-dominance weapons, including the short-range Raytheon AIM-9X Sidewinder and long-range AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (Amraam), Genatempo dropped any pretense of secrecy about the latter’s planned replacement.

“What I have going on in air dominance is the AIM-260, or the JATM, which is to counter PL-15,” Genatempo said. “That’s an effort we have ongoing with Lockheed Martin that’s proceeding extremely fast.”

The AIM-260 is scheduled to begin flight-testing in 2021 and achieve initial operational capability in 2022, Genatempo said. It will debut first inside the main weapons bay of the Lockheed F-22 and the Navy’s

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F/A-18E/F, then migrate later to the Lockheed

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. It shares similar dimensions to the AIM-120 but provides “significantly greater” range, Genatempo said, declining to elaborate.

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Brumby said:

Lockheed Developing AIM-260 To Counter China’s PL-15

According to Steve Trimble in an interview podcast this week, the chart shown to him by USAF officials had the AIM-260 operating at double the range of the AIM-120D. This indicates the USAF is working on a missile that will have a range in excess of 300 kms. It is likely to be technically challenging as the plan is to retain the present form factor of the AMRAAM so that it can be housed inside the internal bay of the F-22. Given the missile's intended range and the AN/APG-77's capability to detect an AWAC beyond 400 kms, I would suspect the primary aim is to go after China's emerging AWACS fleet. I would also suspect the kill chain would be to use the AN/ALR-94 to passively pick up the azimuth/elevation of the intended target and then to cue the AN/APG-77 with a single LPI RF burst to establish range velocity. In this way, the AWAC would not even know it is being targeted.


Source : AWST article dated June 26, 2019 ,

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Jura said:

would be interested to know a P_k, which I won't

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With the Navy looking to keeps its surface combatants such as the

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destroyers

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, sailors and maintainers must do everything they can to keep corrosion under control, one of the Navy’s senior-most engineering duty officers said to a gathering of naval engineers June 20.

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, the head of Naval Sea Systems Command, said the fleet spends billions to keep corrosion under control and that all levels of maintenance needed to make it a priority.

“Corrosion is one of the big things if we want to keep the ships around for 40 to 45 years, we have to do what is necessary on the corrosion side of things,” Moore said. “I don’t have the exact numbers, but we are spending $10 billion on our ship depot maintenance. And I’m guessing that several billion of that is corrosion related so it’s a significant portion of the budget.

“We have to stay on top of it. We have to be willing to do the work necessary to limit corrosion on the ship. And it’s not just at the depot. It’s in intermediate maintenance and its with ship’s force. We have to recognize that this is a law-of-physics things and stay on top of it.”

Moore’s comments were in response to a question from an attendee who cited a number of pictures which have surfaced in recent years of surface combatants looking worse for wear with an abundance of running rust, something that the Navy has traditionally done its best to keep on top of. The images

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to question whether the Navy is allowing its ships to fall into disrepair just as it plans to keep them for longer than the hulls were designed for.

Explanations for the proliferation of running rust range from low manning on surface ships to over-tasking to environmental regulations that make it more difficult to remove paint. But, Moore said, it’s imperative that sailors stay on top of rust to prevent its spread.

“A lot of times the amount of corrosion on the ship there is a direct relationship between that and the … commanding officer’s ability, willingness to get after it on a regular basis,” Moore said. “I think its going to take a concerted effort at all levels – the ship’s force, the intermediate level and then at the depot level – for us to stay after it.”

Corrosion on the Arleigh Burke class destroyers has been an issue in the past, and likely remains one. A 2009 Secretary of the Navy brief on surface ship maintenance cited a 400 percent increase in corrosion control jobs for Burkes between 2003 and 2009. The average age of the Burkes in 2009 was 14 years old. The Burkes in particular will be vital to maintain because the Navy is counting on getting 40 to 45 years of hull life out of them in order to get to the required fleet size of 355 ships in the 2030s.

In a commentary

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a retired naval officer and pseudonymous Navy commentator CDR Salamander recently tied the surface fleet’s mission to show the flag overseas to physical appearance.

“To the citizens of its nation, the condition and performance of their navy does two things; first it shows that the navy is a good steward of taxpayers’ investment, and second it gives them piece of mind that if their navy sorties forward to defend the nation, odds are they are trained, manned, and equipped to do so,” Salamander wrote.

“Likewise, no coastal nation will be impressed with an ally or a competitor who huffs and puffs about the power of its navy, and then it shows up off the coast looking like a discarded ’58 Buick with a tree growing out of the wheel well.”

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Jura said:

I've been hearing about the rust for some time, tried to ignore OK so let's face it
A top US Navy engineer says the fleet needs to get out and bust the rust

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