US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Super Hornet Shot Down By Cruiser in Friendly Fire Incident​

Ward Carrol is a retired F-14 Tomcat RIO.Radar Intercept Officer.

Meanwhile,

“We’ve developed a pod that will enable the F-35 to control even today the CCAs,” CEO Jim Taiclet told analysts during a third quarter earnings call. “And we have a flight control system and a communication system in development that will enable that as well. And that could be converted, I think, to F-22 as well.”

Click to expand...

“We’ve developed a pod that will enable the F-35 to control even today the CCAs,”

Click to expand...

a pod

Click to expand...

TK3600 said:

There are rumors F-18 was actually Yemeni shot down. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

No the Yemeni didn't and Yes the Yemeni did.

No the Yemeni did not launch the missiles that successfully intercepted one USN F-18 and almost intercepted its tanker.

Yes the Yemeni successfully tempted the USN to send a CVN and a CG, both of which it tried to remove from service a few years ago, into the dangerously constrained Red Sea because as I said above

Throughout the USN (and other services) the military leadership continually seizes opportunities to gain combat medals no matter how inappropriate their particular weapon is to the combat situation or the readiness of their weapon and its crews for performing the combat mission.

Click to expand...

The USN DDGs weren't putting the Yemeni in their place so Biden and his military leadership decided to send in the F-18s with their direct action bombs and missiles.

Except the Aegis AAW command ship was just recently modernized, albeit less than fully successfully as the crew dealt with continuous HME failures of various types. And as we know modernization, especially for a ship older than most of its crew, is another word for rework.

Rework sucks because, as in real life, the previous guys did a half-ass job and didn't much bother documenting it. So you have to tear out the crummy old stuff, prepare the spaces for the new stuff, and then install the new stuff. Except it isn't all new stuff. There's lots of left-behind old stuff you have to interface with. Meanwhile the cool guys are building the new software version for the DDGs and they're not much interested in your legacy interfaces nor giving you much time in LBTS to test your variant of that new version.

No test time; hardware isn't ready on the ship for software installation; no crew training time because hardware and software are late; and then it's off to the hot battlespace in the Red Sea.

VADM Aucoin (ret) wrote a USNI essay on the USN's tendency to deploy in the face of unreadiness.

It was often the case that operational missions (more often than not of the “short-notice” variety) came down from USPaCom and ComPacFlt with warning orders or that “requests for forces” were met with a “not recommended” response from C7F. Such responses always were required to be accompanied with a by-name identified ship to be used if we were “forced to source” the mission, as well as an estimated impact statement of what cost and risks would be incurred if we were to task that ship with the mission. The impact statements routinely highlighted to higher headquarters that sourcing these missions would come at the cost of training and readiness. More often than not, we would be directed to fill and execute the mission through a follow-on task order or voice order directing the by-name identified ship to execute the mission. In a few cases, we were able to argue for changes that allowed ships to complete training or maintenance. In many other cases, our arguments and recommendations were either overruled or ignored.

Click to expand...

People interpret China's PLAN/CCG/MM activities in the ECS/SCS as intimidation, political messaging and even deterrence. Certainly there is a large portion of that but the major part of those activities is training. And I'm sure the engineers responsible for their design and construction are aboard the participating ships for lessons-learned to incorporate into the next ship in the yard; the next weapon systems upgrade; the shore-based training facilities; and the training curricula.

The USN hasn't enjoyed that luxury for two decades.

Concept art from 2018 showing NGAD obliterating CHAD with laser cannon.

The navalists at Cdr Salamander and at DefenseOne expand upon my analysis. Cdr Salamander once again aims in the wrong direction:

Fixing the people problem is fast, faster if we had civil service reform.

Click to expand...

The Navy's people program is the military in the headquarters organization, not the civilians. Under the constant pressure of FITREPs and outside the scope of their military training, when tossed into the treacherous swamp that is Washington DC the military officers lose their way and their ability to exercise effective command. And this disease also infects the military at the lower echelons in the non-operational field organizations (eg, RMCs, warfare centers, etc).

Money and medals have corrupted today's US Navy. PLAN/CCG/MM sailors are safe in their ships wherever they voyage.

Don't know the authenticity of it，but it's an interesting story. According to this video，Iran have discovered a loophole in CIA communication system operating in Iran，then they taped into this communication network. After that，Iran arrest and killed CIA agents operating in Iran，then they shared this intelligence with China. Then China find out that the CIA uses a similar communication system in China，then China use this information arrested many CIA agents operating in China

I missed this news, but it looks like Stratolaunch managed a successful flight and recovery of their Talon TA-2 hypersonic drone. I believe this test was meant to by hypersonic in nature, but we will have to wait for further confirmation from Stratolaunch themselves. Unfortunately the Aviation Week article reporting on it is behind a paywall.

tonyget said:

Don't know the authenticity of it，but it's an interesting story. According to this video，Iran have discovered a loophole in CIA communication system operating in Iran，then they taped into this communication network. After that，Iran arrest and killed CIA agents operating in Iran，then they shared this intelligence with China. Then China find out that the CIA uses a similar communication system in China，then China use this information arrested many CIA agents operating in China

Click to expand...

That was a terrible podcast. The incident they are referring to is the CIA use of ordinary looking civilian websites with secret login pages that gave agents abroad a way to contact the CIA. One of them was called iranianfootball.com or something. The Iranians noticed a number of their targets were visiting the site. They pulled up the guy and got him to explain that a part of the website had a log in and could be used to communicate with the CIA. They then analysed the site and found the specific (html?) code. Putting that into google found them a list of similarly innocent looking with the same secret CIA back channel, and by checking ISP records were able to identify a number of foreign spies, nobody but the people the CIA told were going on these sites.

The code was apparently laughably amateurish and required nothing more than a google search to identify. No hacking required.

I assume the google searches found a number of similar Chinese websites that were being used for a similar purpose with Chinese CIA agents.

Here's a reuters article that does a better job reporting it:

(Paywalled Aviationweek article)
The U.S. Military’s New Multi-Orbit Approach To Missile Warning
Vivienne Machi December 02, 2024

The Space Force wants to field missile tracking satellites in medium Earth orbit starting in 2026.

It is attempting a novel approach to space-based missile warning and tracking to counter adversarial weapon systems that are dimmer, faster and more maneuverable than ballistic missiles.

Russia attacked a Ukrainian rocket factory Nov. 21 with a new conventionally armed, medium-range ballistic missile that President Vladimir Putin identified as a Mach-10-capable weapon named Oreshnik, calling the firing a response to strikes on Russian soil by Western-made missiles.

Space Force and MDA are in “lockstep” over no-fail mission.
Missile tracking is to be handled by MEO and LEO layers.

China continues to expand its strategic missile forces, developing a range of air-to-air missiles, conventionally armed ICBMs and increased numbers of nuclear warheads. North Korea is also accelerating ICBM production.

As the Space Force approaches its fifth birthday, one of the U.S. military’s longest-running and most critical on-orbit mission areas is undergoing a facelift costing billions of dollars over the next half-decade.

The nation has enjoyed an uninterrupted space-based early warning capability from geostationary orbit (GEO) since the Missile Defense Alarm System spacecraft launched in the 1960s to detect Soviet ICBMs.

The current architecture includes Lockheed Martin-built GEO-based Space-Based Infrared System satellites and payloads in highly elliptical orbit (HEO), legacy Northrop Grumman Defense Support Program satellites and associated ground systems. Those spacecraft were built to monitor bright, predictable and easily tracked missile-based threats. But the landscape has changed as adversaries develop more sophisticated weapons to use against the U.S.

Click to expand...

The US is moving towards low and medium earth constellations for missile detecting and tracking as older systems like the DSP and SBIRS have limited capability against newer generation of weapons. BMD radars requires cueing from IR satellites that track missiles at launch by analyzing its unique rocket plume (every missile has a specific profile) as well as heat signature of warheads against the cold backdrop of space.