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Marine Corps Takes Delivery of 50th KC-130J Super Hercules

The U.S. Marine Corps has taken delivery of its 50th KC-130J Super Hercules transport/refueler aircraft from manufacturer Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., the company announced in an Aug. 25 release.

The aircraft was delivered to Marine Aerial Refueler/Transport Squadron 352 (VMGR-352) based at Marine Corps Air Station, Calif. Each active-duty Marine Aircraft Wing is equipped with one KC-130 squadron, and the single Reserve Marine Aircraft Wing fields two KC-130 squadrons, one of which still operates the older KC-130T model.

The Marine Corps has a requirement for a total of 79 KC-130Js, enough for all five VMGR squadrons to field a full complement of KC-130Js, with enough spare aircraft for the maintenance pipeline and test establishments.

The KC-130J has assumed added missions in recent years with the addition of the Harvest Hawk close-air-support weapon suite, used in combat in Afghanistan. The replacement of the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter with the aerial-refuelable MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor transport has generated increased demand for aerial refueling services by Marine expeditionary units and special Marine air-ground task forces, a demand met by the growing KC-130J fleet.

The Marine Corps has operated versions of the KC-130 since 1962.

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FORBIN said:

Video: Destroyer USS Nitze Harassed by Iranian Patrol Boats

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Jura said:

Yesterday at 9:01 AM

Jura said:

USAF Air Combat Command chief skeptical over new aircraft for permissive environments

source:

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now
Air Force To Make A-10 Replacement Recommendations as Early As Fall
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The U.S. Air Force didn’t think through its recent plan to send the A-10 ground attack plane to the boneyard, according to government auditors.

A

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from the Government Accountability Office concluded, “The Department of Defense (DOD) and Air Force do not have quality information on the full implications of A-10 divestment, including gaps that could be created by A-10 divestment and mitigation options.”

To recap, the service — driven in part by spending caps known as sequestration — proposed retiring its fleet of 283 Thunderbolt IIs (more popularly known as Warthogs) as part of its fiscal 2015 and 2016 budget submissions. (Never mind, for a moment, that its 2014 spending plan proposed keeping the Cold War-era plane in the inventory through 2035.)

Led by lawmakers from Arizona and other states with high numbers of the aircraft, Congress nixed the idea and the Air Force in its most recent budget request partially acquiesced by proposing to delay the A-10 divestiture until at least 2022.

Now, government bean counters are detailing just how ill-advised they think the Air Force plan really is.

For one, they say, the service hasn’t property accounted for how other aircraft like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter made by Lockheed Martin Corp. will be ready to assume and carry out the missions currently flown by the A-10.

“The Air Force plans to replace A-10 squadrons one-for-one with F-35 squadrons in order to mitigate the drop in fighter capacity projected under the original A-10 divestment proposal,” the report states. “However, Air Force documentation reveals that the loss of A-10 squadrons will outpace the F-35 squadron gain, with eight A-10 squadrons divested by the end of the 5-year budget plan but only six F-35 squadrons stood up.”

This issue is particularly acute in South Korea, where the Air Force had planned to divest an A-10 squadron in fiscal 2019 without replacement — creating a gap in the ability to defeat the threat from North Korean armor, according to GAO.

What’s more, combatant commanders note the A-10 “brings useful and unique capabilities to the battlefield” and even Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has said the airplane has “devastated” targets affiliated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, according to GAO.

And with its ability to carry a diverse array of weapons — bombs, Maverick missiles, rockets and its iconic 30mm cannon — the aircraft can attack moving targets on the ground and at sea, auditors say.

While the Warthog is “a single seat fixed-wing platform specifically designed for close air support and defeating enemy armor,” it actually has three primary missions, including close air support, forward air controller and combat search and rescue; and two secondary missions, including air interdiction and counter fast attack craft/fast inshore attack craft (CFF), the report states.

The latter refers to the mission to counter groups of small boats using swarming tactics to attack maritime assets — and the Air Force’s own analysis from 2014 concluded, “the A-10 is the best single Air Force platform for the CFF mission,” the report states.

For its part, the Air Force disagreed, or non-concurred, with the GAO’s recommendations and argued that it was well aware that divesting the A-10 would create capability gaps but that the plan “the most acceptable strategy to remain within the Air Force budget authority while controlling risk across all Air Force mission sets.”

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The Air Force doesn’t know enough about the missions that A-10 pilots fly or how it would

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, a congressional watchdog says, putting yet another nail into the service’s attempts to save money and retire the much-loved Warthog.

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, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has worked closely with

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of New Hampshire to stop the Air Force from retiring the plane, issued this statement:

“The nonpartisan GAO has concluded what we’ve been arguing for years: there is no justification for the Air Force to prematurely retire the A-10 fleet, and doing so could leave the military with a serious capability gap our military needs to confront complex security challenges around the world.”


The Air Force has argued that in these days of declining budgets and the demands of enormous theaters such as the Pacific they must buy multi-role aircraft like the F-35 and the new Long Range Strike system instead of single-mission aircraft such as the A-10, no matter how well suited the old systems are to their mission. The Air Force has estimated it would save $4.2 billion over five years should it retire the A-10, although the GAO didn’t think much of the service’s methodology for developing the estimate in a late June report.

The service “has not established clear requirements for the missions the A-10 performs, and in the absence of these requirements, has not fully identified the capacity or capability gaps that could result from the A-10 divestment. Without a clear understanding of the capability or capacity gaps and risks that could result from A-10 divestment, it is also unclear how effective or necessary the Air Force’s and the department’s mitigation strategies will be,” the Government Accountability Office says in a new report. “For example, although the Air Force has several efforts underway to generally mitigate the loss of capabilities that would result from A-10 divestment, it has not identified how or if it will replace the A-10’s role in combat search and rescue missions.”

UPDATE BEGINS Sen. Ayotte said, in effect, I told you so: “Today’s GAO report confirms what I’ve said for years: the Air Force’s rush to divest the A-10 before a fully operational replacement is available puts our ground troops and our nation’s close air support capabilities at risk,” Ayotte said in a statement. “This report is right to recognize that retiring the A-10 would lead to serious capability gaps and additional costs for our military. When our ground troops are under fire and they call for help, we have an obligation to send them the best possible close air support, and that is why I will continue to fight to protect the A-10. ”UPDATE ENDS

But the Air Force isn’t the only one getting a spanking here. GAO also says the Office of Secretary of Defense “should develop and promulgate department-wide guidance that establishes specific informational requirements to be met before proposing divestment of major weapon systems that have not reached the end of their expected service lives.”

While the GAO carefully says that this should be done for major weapons that at the end of their service lives, that’s actually not that careful. Why? Because the services can always extend those service lives, as the Air Force has famously done with B-52s. But the Pentagon will have a number of major decisions to make about retiring major weapons. The Air Force will need to decide which of its existing bombers it plans

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. The Navy is already grappling with difficult decisions about which ships to retire and how to replace them. The Army, which has bought virtually nothing new in ages (aside from MRAPs it and the Marines are getting rid of) will replace Blackhawk helicopters and

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someday soonish. So creating a standardized process for evaluating the relative costs and capabilities of retirements seems to make sense.

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Jura said:

very attractive (in the middle of Europe like "Robinson Crusoe" story:

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LOL a screenshot from my search for Fanadik Island:

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Two stranded mariners were located on an uninhabited island in the Federated States of Micronesia after a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft joined a Coast Guard rescue mission.

The U.S. Navy shared photos on August 25 of a man and a woman standing on the island beach where they had earlier written “SOS” in the sand.

The P-8A crew flew in support of U.S. Coast Guard Sector Guam after oil tanker British Mariner reported light signals from an uninhabited island in the state of Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).

According to the U.S. Navy, FSS Palikir a patrol boat from Federated States of Micronesia has been sent to conduct rescue operations.

U.S. Navy’s P-8A Patrol Squadron VP-8 is based in Jacksonville, Florida and is currently on a routine deployment to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.

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An attack submarine sponsored by first lady Michelle Obama, to be named for her home state, has been delivered to the U.S.

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.

Submarine builder General Dynamics Electric Boat, based in Groton, Conn., delivered the submarine that will become the USS Illinois to the Navy on Aug. 27, after nearly five and a half years of construction.

The submarine will become the USS Illinois (SSN 786) and begin its active service at a commissioning ceremony in Groton on Oct. 29.

It took thousands of shipyard employees in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Virginia and submarine supply businesses nationwide to build the $2.7 billion submarine, the 13th member of the

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.

There were no major issues during construction, and the submarine performed "superbly" during recent tests at sea, said an Electric Boat vice president, Kenneth Blomstedt.

Capt. Michael Stevens, the Navy's Virginia-class program manager, said these attack submarines are needed to replace those that were built during the Cold War and are retiring.

"Every submarine counts," he said. "Every submarine is needed out there."

Electric Boat, which has been designing and building submarines since 1900, had until Aug. 31 to transfer ownership of the future USS Illinois to the Navy, per the contract. It's the ninth submarine in a row to be delivered to the Navy early and on budget, Stevens said.

The submarine has a redesigned bow with two large tubes to launch

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, instead of 12 smaller tubes. The larger tubes were designed so the Navy would have the flexibility to also launch future weapons and unmanned vehicles, Blomstedt said.

Cmdr. Jess Porter, the submarine's commanding officer, described the Illinois as a "stealthy weapon" that can influence adversaries in a way that makes the U.S. more secure. The crew of about 130 men will take the submarine to sea for additional testing to prove its capabilities, Porter said.

Construction began in March 2011. Modules were built in Rhode Island, at Electric Boat's manufacturing facility, and in Virginia, at Newport News Shipbuilding. The two shipyards build Virginia-class attack submarines under a teaming agreement and alternate the deliveries. The final assembly and testing took place at Electric Boat's headquarters in Groton.

Obama, who has made it a priority to support military families, broke a bottle of champagne across the submarine's hull to christen it last year. She has been invited to give the order to "bring the ship to life" at the commissioning ceremony in October.

The Navy has ordered 15 more Virginia-class submarines, and 10 of those are under construction. The last of the 15 is scheduled to be delivered in 2023 as the 28th member of the class.

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Naval Today said:

Two stranded mariners were located on an uninhabited island in the Federated States of Micronesia after a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft joined a Coast Guard rescue mission.

The U.S. Navy shared photos on August 25 of a man and a woman standing on the island beach where they had earlier written “SOS” in the sand.

The P-8A crew flew in support of U.S. Coast Guard Sector Guam after oil tanker British Marinerreported light signals from an uninhabited island in the state of Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).

According to the U.S. Navy, FSS Palikir a patrol boat from Federated States of Micronesia has been sent to conduct rescue operations.

U.S. Navy’s P-8A Patrol Squadron VP-8 is based in Jacksonville, Florida and is currently on a routine deployment to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.

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Pacific Sentinel said:

PEARL HARBOR - Littoral combat ship USS Coronado (LCS 4) departed Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Aug. 26 to continue its independent deployment to the Western Pacific. The ship's departure follows participation in exercise Rim of the Pacific 2016.

Coronado and its crew of about 70 Sailors assigned to LCS Squadron 1 began their deployment June 22 after departing their homeport of Naval Base San Diego.

Cmdr. Scott Larson, commanding officer of Coronado and LCS Crew 204, said he is motivated to demonstrate to the fleet and coalition maritime partners the unique capabilities the Independence-variant LCS provides.

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Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) announced today that its Ingalls Shipbuilding division has been awarded a $13.7 million contract (with incremental funding) to perform contract design effort for the U.S. Navy’s amphibious warfare ship replacement, known as LX(R).

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The U.S. Navy accepted delivery of PCU Illinois (SSN 786), the 13th submarine of the Virginia-class, on Aug. 27, early to its contract delivery date. Illinois is the ninth consecutive Virginia-class submarine to deliver early to the U.S. Navy. Illinois is the third Block III submarine of the series, featuring a revised bow with a Large Aperture Bow (LAB) sonar array, as well as technology from Ohio-class SSGNs (the Virginia Payload Module: 2 VLS tubes each containing 6 missiles)

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navyreco said:

Huntington Ingalls Industries Awarded Design Work For LX(R) Class Of Amphibious Ships

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