US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

bd popeye said:

It is good news. USS John Paul Jones(DDG 53) is taking USS Lake Erie (CG 70) position in Hawaii as a missile test ship.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

The garbage scowl?... Blackstone, there is at the moment no plans for a USS Barack Hussein Obama.

Now the final call on a carrier name comes from the sec nav, and Congress can pass a order. But no sitting President ever gets his name on a ship. Its to Narcissist to be tolerated. The next administrations 2016-2020 and 2020-2024 will be the ones to name the next carriers. And the way things are shaking well its up in the air but I would feel pretty safe in saying not before ever member of this board is in Davy Jones Locker will there be a USS Barak Hussein Obama.

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TerraN_EmpirE said:

The Bush is a bit of a weird one. The name was chosen by his Son who was also President. But George HW Bush served in the USN as a naval aviator earning the distinguished flying cross in the second world war.
and by giving his father a carrier President Bush Jr. Basicly gave up anything for himself.

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Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James became “violently ill” during a ride with the storied Thunderbirds aerial acrobatic team this week.

Commanders at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., thought it would be good PR to invite the relatively new secretary for a flight with its most famous squadron. Amid tight defense spending, there is pressure to demonstrate the worth of the Thunderbirds, which is back in the air show business after having been grounded last year when sequestration took hold.

But Tuesday’s F-16 flight did not go as planned in the cockpit for Ms. James, a former House defense staffer, Pentagon official and defense industry executive.

“Someone got the bright idea to invite her on the airplane,” said a source familiar with the incident. “She got violently ill.”

Asked about her visit to Nellis and her flight, Ms. James told The Washington Times: “I was lucky enough to observe various aircrews over multiple days as they planned, flew, and debriefed weapons school training sorties to learn firsthand about the missions I’m responsible for at Nellis and Creech [Air Force bases].

This included flying with the HH-60 combat search and rescue and E-8 JSTARS battle management crews on scheduled mission training sorties. I was so impressed with the integrated, high-end training our new command and control, ground and air weapons officers receive at the U.S. Air Force Weapons School enabling them to be the best in the world at what they do.

“While at Nellis, I also was fortunate to fly along with ‘Thunderbird #4’ and actually participate in a scheduled practice with the entire USAF Air Demonstration Team. They are tremendous Ambassadors in Blue, performing in front of more than 100,000 in Oklahoma last weekend. I also learned to wait to eat lunch until after Thunderbird practice is complete!”

Ms. James, 55, a Clinton administration appointee at the Pentagon, became Air Force secretary in December.

A recent New York Times profile said that as a staffer for the House Committee on Armed Services, she was nicknamed “sledge” for the sledgehammer approach she took to the job.

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thunderchief said:

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Pennsylvania man's draft notice was 102 years late
Jul. 9, 2014 - 02:59PM |

The Associated Press
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KENNERDELL, PA. — A western Pennsylvania woman says her late father has received notice to register for the nation’s military draft, some 102 years too late.

Martha Weaver, now in her 80s, tells The (Oil City) Derrick that the Selective Service System notice arrived Saturday in Rockland Township, Venango County. That’s about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Her father’s name was Fred Minnick, though the notice misspelled the last name “Minick,” and warns that failure to register is “punishable by a fine and imprisonment.”

Trouble is, her father was born June 12, 1894, which means he would have been 18 and eligible for the draft in 1912.

Weaver suspects the confusion was spawned by the incorrect birth date on the form, which lists the birth year as 1994.

Minnick had died by then, on April 20, 1992.

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Army leaders defend flawed intelligence system
Jul. 9, 2014 - 06:27PM |

By Ken Dilanian
The Associated Press
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Campbell tapped to be next Afghanistan commander
WASHINGTON — Gen. John Campbell, the army's vice chief of staff and nominee to lead U.S. forces in Afghanistan, cited his son's experiences as a soldier there to answer a senator's tough questions last year about a troubled intelligence technology system.

But after an inquiry from The Associated Press, the Army acknowledged this week that Campbell misspoke. He also omitted key facts as he sought to defend a $4 billion system that critics say has not worked as promised. Campbell will likely face more questions about the intelligence network at his confirmation hearing on Thursday. Gathering and making sense of intelligence in Afghanistan will remain a priority even as U.S. troops draw down.

Army leaders, including Campbell and his boss, Army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno, have circled their wagons around the Distributed Common Ground System, known as DCGS-A, a network of crash-prone software, sensors and databases that was supposed to allow troops to process and integrate intelligence from a variety of sources, from electronic intercepts to overhead imagery to spy reports.

A series of independent government reports have pointed to significant weaknesses in DCGS-A.

When Rep. Duncan Hunter, a member of House Armed Services Committee, visited troops in eastern Afghanistan last year, "DSGS was shut down in the corner, piled with books and papers," he said.

The Army has continued to pour money into the system despite its record of blown deadlines and unmet promises. Even more troubling to critics is how the army has made it difficult for commanders to use an off-the-shelf commercial product that soldiers say is more workable and user-friendly than DCGS-A, even though the commercial system has been embraced by the Marines, special operations forces, the CIA and other government agencies.

"DCGS folks promised a solution three years ago, and they have yet to deliver," said Col. Peter Newell, who retired last year after heading the Army's Rapid Equipping force.

Army officials acknowledge problems with DCGS-A. In a statement, spokesman Matthew Bourke said the Army is working to improve the system in its next generation, which is being put out for bids next year.

DCGS-A was first developed a decade ago, but the spotlight on its shortcomings grew brighter in 2010, when Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then the top military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, said in a memo that "intelligence analysts in theater currently do not have the tools required to fully analyze the tremendous amounts of information currently available."

Flynn made an urgent request for a "theater-wide, Web-based analytical platform" that sounded a lot like a product offered by a Silicon Valley startup called Palantir, which grew out of antifraud technology developed by PayPal and was valued in December at $9 billion.

Yet over the last four years, records show, Army leaders have made it difficult for some commanders to purchase Palantir.

Army units that have managed to obtain Palantir report that it has saved lives in Afghanistan by helping to map insurgent activity and bomb networks in ways the Army system could not. It is also far cheaper: A 2013 Government Acountability Office report estimated that the Pentagon had spent about $35 million in recent years to equip the Marines and some army units with Palantir, compared to $4 billion for DCGS-A.

Palantir can merge disparate data sets — cellphone calls, fingerprint and DNA records, photos, bomb incident reports — and array them on a map in seconds. DCGS-A's work stations employ a mapping program that is much more difficult to master, in a system that does not allow seamless data fusion. When soldiers update a file in Palantir, that file becomes visible to every Army Palantir user, which often is not the case across the DCGS-A network.

Last April, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., confronted Campbell with DCGS-A's litany of troubles, including that the Army's testing lab in 2012 found the system "not operationally effective, not operationally suitable and not survivable."

Campbell said Palantir does only a small portion of what DCGS-A is supposed to do, though he acknowledged that it is easier to work with. The Army's system, he said, "saves lives" and has access to more intelligence than Palantir's software does.

He added, "My son is a soldier in the 82nd. He's a specialist. He deployed to Afghanistan." Cambell said his son was in "one of the units that asked for DCGS — or his brigade did, not himself."

Emails obtained by the AP show, however, that the younger Campbell's unit — the 82nd Airborne Division's First Brigade Combat Team — found the Army system inadequate and requested Palantir after six men died in two roadside bombs in April and May of 2012.

On May 12, 2012, Col. Mark Stock, the brigade commander, signed an "urgent needs" request for Palantir, citing "major capability gaps in the division's existing intelligence software architecture."

The political climate was not good. Two weeks later, in an email responding to a different unit's request for Palantir, Newell wrote, "While I don't disagree with your need, I cannot buy Palantir anymore without involving the senior leadership of the Army, and they are very resistant."

In an interview, Newell said Army leaders did not prevent him from equipping units with Palantir, but they made it difficult. "I still don't know what the big threat of Palantir was. It was baffling to me to see the lengths they were willing to go."

In a statement, the Army said Campbell "misspoke," and meant to say that his son's unit had requested Palantir, not DCGS-A.

The unit did not get Palantir before it departed in September. The Army blamed logistical hurdles. Newell said the request came too late.

In January, Campbell's son's brigade — though he was no longer in it by then — deployed on a training exercise at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and again experienced difficulties with the Army's intelligence system.

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Hagel: Navy nuclear reviews are done, reviewing recommendations
Jul. 9, 2014 - 07:03PM |


By Marcus Weisgerber
Staff writer
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Congress & DOD
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Hagel says nuclear operation has drifted
NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE KINGS BAY, GA. — The Pentagon is finishing up a major review of its nuclear forces and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will soon issue his recommendations.

Defense Department officials are comparing the recommendations made from internal Pentagon reviews and an external review conducted by retired flag and general officers. The secretary said the recommendations will strengthen the health of the Defense Department’s nuclear enterprise.

“I’m in the process now, working with our leaders, to decide which recommendations we are going to go forward with,” Hagel said.

Hagel ordered internal and external reviews of Pentagon’s nuclear establishment following the revelation that Air Force and Navy officers cheated on their respective proficiency and qualification exams.

Hagel met last month with retired Adm. John Harvey and retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch, who conducted the external review. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work is overseeing the internal and external reviews.

DoD will likely announce its findings in a few weeks, Hagel said.

The secretary visited the Navy base here and toured the USS Tennessee, one of six ballistic missile submarines based at Kings Bay.

Defense officials say Hagel’s visit to Kings Bay is part of his continued emphasis and oversight of the nuclear force. As secretary, Hagel has visited FE Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, which oversees the service’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, home to B-2 stealth bombers, which could carry nuclear bombs.

Budget cuts threaten Ohio replacement
The Navy plans to continue to pursue a replacement program for the current Ohio-class SSBN submarines, but existing federal spending caps threaten the timing of when a new ship might be fielded, Hagel said.

“We have every commitment to the projections to bring on that new class of submarines,” he said of the so-called SSBN(X) program.

“It is clear ... that we need a new generation of Ohio-class submarines and we’re going to prioritize that,” Hagel said.

The Navy has 14 Ohio-class SSBN submarines that could launch Trident long-range nuclear missiles.

Complying with New START
The Navy will begin removing the first of four Trident tubes on its ballistic missile submarines, according to Capt. William Houston, commodore of the Submarine Squadron 20.

It has not been determined just how the Navy will offset the weight of the 120,000-pound trident missiles.

As part of the New START treaty, the US will remove four of the 24 tubes on its ballistic missile submarines.

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Testimony begins Jesse Ventura's defamation case against deceased SEAL's estate
Jul. 9, 2014 - 05:23PM |
By Steve Karnowski
The Associated Press
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ST. PAUL, MINN. — Jesse Ventura brought his defamation lawsuit before home-state jurors Tuesday in a bid to punish the estate of late “American Sniper” author Chris Kyle, who bragged in an autobiography that he decked the former Minnesota governor during a barroom scrap almost a decade ago.

In opening statements in federal court, Ventura attorney David Bradley Olsen said the punch never happened and that Ventura never made disparaging comments about servicemen, as Kyle claimed.

“Jesse Ventura will testify there was no incident, there was no altercation and that Kyle made the whole story up,” Olsen said.

Kyle estate attorney John Borger countered that the jury would get the real story from Kyle via testimony videotaped before his death.

“You will hear Chris Kyle testify he was absolutely sure that what he wrote about Jesse Ventura’s behavior was true,” Borger said. Both sides said they would produce witnesses to back their version of events.

Ventura, a former Navy SEAL and wrestler who was Minnesota governor from 1999-2003, alleges Kyle defamed him in his best-selling book. Ventura pursued the claim even after Kyle was killed last year at a Texas gun range, saying it was important to clear his name.

In a three-page subchapter of his book, Kyle — also a former SEAL and regarded as the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history — describes a 2006 bar fight in Coronado, California, in which he said he punched a man knocking him to the ground. Kyle identified the man in the autobiography only as “Scruff Face” but whom he later said was Ventura. Kyle claimed Ventura was speaking loudly against President George W. Bush, the Iraq War and Navy SEAL tactics. Kyle claimed Ventura said the SEALS “deserve to lose a few.”

Kyle has said he took offense because he was at the bar for the wake of a fallen SEAL. Ventura was there with friends because he planned to attend a SEAL graduation ceremony the next day. Olson told the jury they’ll hear testimony that Ventura wasn’t drunk because he doesn’t drink alcohol, but that many people in Kyle’s group were drinking very heavily, raising questions about the reliability of their testimony.

The first witness was Kyle’s widow, Taya Kyle, who testified that he left Ventura’s name out of his book because the point wasn’t to call anyone out. She acknowledged she’d heard some concerns as he was writing the book that naming Ventura would risk a libel lawsuit, but she said she didn’t recall who raised them.

Olson used her testimony mostly as an opportunity to play radio and TV interviews that Chris Kyle gave shortly after the book’s release in 2012 in which he disclosed that “Scruff Face” was Ventura, as well as a recorded conversation with one of his co-authors as they wrote the book.

“I hate him with a passion,” Kyle told co-author Jim DeFelice about Ventura.

Some interviewers who accepted Kyle’s version of events slammed Ventura in blistering terms. Glenn Beck called Ventura “a dirtbag” in an Internet interview on The Blaze.

Ventura, who has hosted several cable TV shows since his single term as Minnesota’s governor ended in 2002, has said his job offers dried up after the book was published and he was worried about being seen as a traitor to the military.

Ventura, who often had a contentious relationship with the Minnesota media, declined to speak to reporters about the case. He watched Tuesday’s proceedings with a serious look on his face most of the time, occasionally cracking a smile while speaking with his attorneys.

Legal experts have said Ventura has to prove that Kyle made up the story and profited from it, or at least acted with reckless disregard for the truth, and that Ventura’s reputation was hurt as a result.

Significant money is at stake. Kyle’s book has made more than $3 million in royalties and the judge in the case has ruled that profits from an upcoming movie could be subject to damages, too.

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Investigation blames birds for deadly Pave Hawk crash
Jul. 9, 2014 - 03:44PM |
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Master Sgt. David King, 607th Air Support Operations Group flight superintendent, and his son Maverick, pay a final tribute to Maverick's mother, Staff Sgt. Afton Ponce, 56th Rescue Squadron special mission aviator, during a memorial service Jan. 17. Ponce, Capt. Sean Ruane, Capt. Christopher Stover and Tech. Sgt. Dale Mathews were killed during an HH-60G Pave Hawk crash Jan. 7
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View Thumbs1 of 10Airman 1st Class Dana J. Butler/Air Force
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The Associated Press
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Service honors 4 Lakenheath airmen killed in Pave Hawk crash
Bodies of Pave Hawk crew recovered from crash site
Air Force identifies 4 airmen killed in Pave Hawk crash
LONDON — Geese penetrated the windscreen of an HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter during evening training mission in January, disabling the pilot and co-pilot and leading to the crash that killed four Air Force crewmembers, a military investigation revealed Wednesday.

The helicopter crashed on the eastern coast of England while practicing nighttime rescue mission scenario for a downed F1-6 pilot. The Pave Hawk was flying over grass-covered marshland near Cley next the Sea when geese, likely startled by the noise rose in flight and hit the helicopter flying at about 110 feet above ground level.

Investigators concluded that at least three geese hit the windscreen, disabling the pilot, co-pilot and the aerial gunner. All three were rendered unconscious. One goose also hit the nose of the aircraft, disabling the trim and flight path stabilization systems.

With both pilots unconscious, and stabilization systems disabled, the helicopter banked left to the point it had no vertical lift. It crashed about three seconds after being struck by the geese, investigators said.

The Air Force identified the victims as Capt. Christopher S. Stover and Capt. Sean M. Ruane, who were piloting the plane; Tech. Sgt. Dale E. Mathews, and Staff Sgt. Afton M. Ponce.

The Pave Hawk was assigned to the 48th Fighter Wing and based at the Royal Air Force station in Lakenheath.

A modified version of the better-known Black Hawks, the Pave Hawk is mostly used for combat search-and-rescue missions, such as recovering downed air crew members in hostile situations. They practice flying low, and have been deployed in military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

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Lockheed 'confident' F-35 can still make UK show debut
By: CRAIG HOYLE Source: Flightglobal.com 9 hours ago
The US Department of Defense has yet to lift its grounding order on the F-35, but Lockheed Martin remains optimistic that the type will be able to make its UK air show debut before next week is over.

Speaking at a media event at the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) site at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire on 9 July, Lockheed's general manager for the F-35 programme Lorraine Martin said investigation work continues following an "issue with the engine" on an F-35A training aircraft late last month.

The US Department of Defense has yet to release details of the aircraft fire at Eglin AFB in Florida, but Martin says "all the right, bright minds are working it, and getting us to a point where we will be able to return to flight. As soon as we have returned to flight, those aircraft are poised and ready to come here to the air show."


Following a scheduled debut appearance at RIAT, the short take-off and vertical landing F-35B should also take part in the air display at the Farnborough air show.

Martin declines to speculate on when a return to flight order could come, but says: "I have full confidence that at one of these shows we will have an F-35." Three US Marine Corps aircraft are due to make their first transatlantic crossing, and she says "we are locked and loaded to receive those aircraft." Spare parts required to support the deployment are already in place at RAF Fairford, she adds.

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New-look Scorpion touches down in UK
By: CRAIG HOYLELONDON Source: 13:14 8 Jul 2014
Textron AirLand’s prototype Scorpion light attack aircraft has completed its first transatlantic crossing, ahead of participating at the Royal International Air Tattoo and Farnborough International Airshow in the UK.

Now sporting a new, two-tone grey colour scheme, the twin-engined aircraft was flown from Wichita in Kansas, with stops made in locations including Mirabel and Iqaluit, both in Canada, and Edinburgh, Scotland. It was accompanied on its journey by a Cessna Sovereign+ business jet.


Following its arrival, the prototype has been involved in flight testing conducted from the Ministry of Defence/Qinetiq airfield at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. It is due to be on static display at RIAT on 12 and 13 July, before being flown on to Farnborough.

The Honeywell TFE731-powered Scorpion was flown for the first time in December 2013, at the start of an expected 12-month flight test programme. Prior to the aircraft’s departure for the UK, Textron AirLand said the aircraft has been flown to its maximum speed of 455kt (840km/h) in the USA.

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