US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

The Associated Press
© March 29, 2013

NEWPORT NEWS

The Navy has awarded a $2.6 billion contract to Newport News Shipbuilding to conduct a mid-life refueling and overhaul of the Abraham Lincoln.

The contract for work on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was awarded on Friday. The contract had previously been delayed for about six weeks because Congress had failed to pass an appropriations bill in time to begin the work.

Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers undergo a refueling and complex overhaul once in their 50-year lifespan. The work includes refueling the reactors, repairing and upgrading the ship infrastructure and modernizing the ship's combat and communication systems. Newport News Shipbuilding is the only company that builds and overhauls U.S. aircraft carriers.

The overhaul is scheduled to be completed in November 2016.

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bd popeye said:

We don't need no stinkin' sequestration..

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EVERETT, Wash. (March 30, 2013) The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) passes by Mt. Baker as it departs for a scheduled deployment from its homeport, Naval Station Everett. Nimitz will complete its sustainment exercise off the coast of Southern California before continuing on its Western Pacific Deployment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Nathan Lockwood/Released)

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PEARL HARBOR (March 22, 2013) The Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) transits the waters of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. The SBX, headed to sea for systems checks, is a combination of the world's largest phased-array X-band radar carried aboard a mobile, ocean-going semi-submersible oil platform. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Daniel Barker/Released)

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Washington (CNN) -- The U.S. Navy is moving a warship and a sea-based radar platform closer to the North Korean coast in order to monitor that country's military moves, including possible new missile launches, a Defense Department official said Monday.

The decision to move at least one ship and the oil rig-like SBX-1 are the first of what may be other naval deployments, CNN has learned.

The action follows weeks of belligerent rhetoric from North Korea since a February nuclear bomb test, including the renunciation of the 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War and threats to use nuclear weapons.

The United States and South Korea have gone ahead with joint military exercises despite the threats, and South Korea warned Monday that any provocative moves from North Korea would trigger a strong response "without any political considerations."

The United States has bolstered the exercises with shows of force that included overflights by nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers, massive Cold War-era B-52s and F-22 Raptor stealth fighters.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Man it would suck if those carrier stories were april fools pranks like the army cat program or moving the pentagon or dropping camoflage and going back to olive drab.

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CBO To Army: Scrap Ground Combat Vehicle, Buy German
Puma (BREAKING) AOL defence

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[updated] WASHINGTON: The Army's proposed Ground Combat Vehicle would offer less combat power, at a
higher cost, than buying the German-made Puma already in production or even just upgrading the Army's existing
M2 Bradley, according to the Congressional Budget Office. CBO issued a report today assessing different
alternatives to upgrade Army heavy brigades' infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), tank-like war machines with tracks
and turrets designed to carry troops into combat.
[Click here for the GCV contractors BAE and General Dynamics critiquing the CBO report]
The non-partisan CBO, Capitol Hill's in-house thinktank, has slammed the Ground Combat Vehicle program
before, but never this hard. The office's analysts took the Army's own criteria and created a grading system that
scored different combat vehicles for effectiveness. Using a scoring scheme that prioritized protection above all,
followed by firepower, mobility, and passenger capacity, in that order, the CBO rated the Puma highest, followed by
a notional upgrade to the Bradley, followed in distant third place by the GCV. (The Israeli-built Namer came in
fourth). Even under an alternative grading scheme that weighted all four criteria equally -- putting much more
emphasis on the capacity to carry troops -- the 6-passenger Puma still edged out the 9-passenger GCV, largely
because of its superior firepower.
Add in the cost and risk of developing a new vehicle, and the analysis swings even farther in favor of the Puma.
Since the Germans already have the Puma in production -- the vehicle entered Bundeswehr service in 2011 -- there's
no untested technology to cause problems. And even after buying 25 percent more Pumas to make up for its smaller
carrying capacity, the Army would spend half as much as to develop, test, and build the GCV, according to CBO's
estimate: $14.5 billion for 2,048 Pumas as opposed to $28.8 billion for 1,748 GCVs.
[Updated: But, as one alert reader pointed out, CBO isn't counting the cost to add three more
vehicle crewmen to every mechanized infantry platoon to drive the extra Pumas -- at least 900
personnel Army-wide -- nor the extra maintenance personnel to support five vehicles per platoon
instead of four, nor the ripple effects of rejiggering facilities built to accommodate four vehicles to
take five instead.]
There is room to argue with CBO's scoring system. To start with, since the GCV does not yet exist, CBO grades the
vehicle based on the Army's 2010 "Design Concept After Trades"; the actual GCV might be better or worse. For
example, CBO assumes the GCV will have only a 25 millimeter cannon, rather than the Puma's 30 mm, but Army
officials I spoke to were still hoping for the larger caliber.
Indeed, in the CBO's scoring overall, the Puma's big advantage over the other candidates is its firepower. (CBO
scored Puma as slightly better protected than GCV but slightly less mobile). In particular, Puma scored high for its
ability to kill tanks and other armored vehicles.
But the Army deliberately chose not to install an anti-tank missile launcher on the GCV: The US military already
has far more ways to destroy enemy tanks -- from the M1 Abrams's 120 millimeter gun to the A-10's 30 mm
Gatling, from the shoulder-launched Javelin missile to the air-launched Hellfire -- than there are enemy tanks left
to destroy. In the post-Cold War world, the nightmare scenario isn't a long-range battle with hordes of Soviet tanks
on the plains of Germany, it's a close-quarters slugfest with irregular fighters hiding in crowded cities, where antitank missiles are largely irrelevant. So the Army decided it could better spend its money on other things -- although
the GCV is being designed to be upgraded with a missile launcher if the Army changes its mind.
The Puma also mounts its massive firepower in an unmanned turret, remotely controlled from inside the vehicle.
The Army considered such a design for GCV but ultimately decided it needed the gunner and vehicle commander
riding inside the turret, as they do in the current Bradley and M1, able to look through the gunsights directly and
clear jammed weapons if the automatic systems break down. A manned turret weighs and costs more than an
unmanned one.
The Army has also insisted, over and over, that it needs the capability to carry nine foot soldiers in addition to the
crew: Bradley can manage four to six -- seven if they squeeze -- and Puma can take six. But more passengers means
a bigger vehicle, which means more cost, especially if you have to armor the whole thing to a high standard against
everything from anti-tank rockets hitting the top to roadside bombs hitting from below. The Army still thinks it's
worth the price to deliver a full nine-man squad to the same place at the same time, instead of scattering teams over
multiple vehicles; but at the prices CBO is quoting, just buying a larger number of Pumas to carry the same number
of troops looks awfully attractive.
One major omission: CBO did not assign a numerical score to one of the Army's most important considerations, the
alternative vehicles' ability to power new digital radios, command-and-control computers, and other military
network hardware. The report does say "the Puma's communications and networking capability would be less than
that of the GCV or the upgraded Bradley IFV."
On the other hand, there is at least one other factor CBO didn't include in its scoring that actually would have hurt
GCV more to include. The Ground Combat Vehicle, fully armored, would weigh 65 tons, says CBO. (CBO earlier
estimated 64 to 70 tons). The Puma, with all its add-on armor, would weigh 47. Strategically, that lower weight, and
the reduced gas consumption that comes with it, would make Puma much easier to deploy abroad and then keep
supplied with fuel -- crucial considerations as the Army pulls out of Afghanistan and tries to revive its capability to
deploy rapidly to distant crises

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GCV Contractors To CBO: You Graded The Wrong Vehicle
AE Systems and General Dynamics, the companies developing the Army's new Ground Combat
Vehicle, struck back at the Congressional Budget Office over a CBO report arguing the GCV would
be inferior to the German Puma troop carrier. The contractors' essential argument: CBO based its
scoring on an out-of-date concept for what GCV would be, and the prototypes now in development are a
lot better.
"CBO stated they are using 'GCV Concept after Trades' from the original Army AoA (Analysis of
Alternatives) delivered in March, 2011. This might account for the poor qualities given the GCV in the
study," General Dynamics Land Systems spokesman Pete Keating told AOL Defense this morning. "The
GCV requirements today and the two contractor offers are significantly different vehicles from the Army
conceptual vehicles in the 2011 AoA."
Most strikingly, CBO rates the Puma higher than GCV for firepower -- the most important single factor in
its assessment -- in part because the German vehicle has a 30-millimeter caliber cannon while the GCV
would only have a 25 mm gun. But the current designs from both General Dynamics and BAE feature a
30 mm gun, same as the Puma.
In short, BAE's general manager for ground vehicles, Mark Signorelli argued in an email to AOL Defense,
"the characteristics of the notional GCV used in the Congressional Budget Office study do not reflect the
capabilities of the BAE Systems GCV design, which is significantly more lethal, survivable, and mobile
than any of the alternatives discussed."
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
April 3, 2013

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

Wow first I start Agreeing with PLA Wolf Now the Congretional Budget office... What's next

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?

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And the Rebuke

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