US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

guardian.co.uk said:

Harrier jump jets culled in Britain find sanctuary in US

US military buys entire fleet of vertical-takeoff-and-landing warplanes scrapped in UK strategic defence review
Nick Hopkins
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 November 2011 14.55 EST

Harrier jump jet
A Harrier is attended by ground crew at an airbase in southern Italy in 1999, when the planes were involved in Nato attacks in the former Yugoslavia, Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Archive/Press Association Images

The Royal Navy's entire fleet of Harrier jump jets, the British plane controversially scrapped in last year's defence review, has been saved – by the US military.

All 74 of the planes, which were permanently grounded by the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), are to fly again for the US marines, in a deal that is expected to be closed within a week.

The Ministry of Defence said negotiations were continuing but were in their final stages. And reports in the US suggested the marines were already confidently preparing for the Harriers' arrival.

The sale of the Harriers is bound to raise fresh questions about the wisdom of retiring the much-admired aircraft, which the Americans intend to use until 2025.

Speaking to the NavyTimes, Rear Admiral Mark Heinrich, chief of the US navy's supply corps, said buying the Harriers made sense because many of the jets had been recently upgraded, and the US already had pilots who could fly them.

"We're taking advantage of all the money the Brits have spent on them," he said. "It's like we're buying a car with maybe 15,000 miles on it. These are very good platforms. And we've already got trained pilots."

The US military already has its own fleet of Harriers, and converting the British planes to fire American missiles can be done relatively easily.

The price of the deal has not been disclosed, but Heinrich said the US was paying $50m (£32m) for spare parts alone.

The British Harriers have been kept in storage at RAF Cottesmore, in Rutland, where they have been maintained prior to sale.

Their retirement was criticised when the SDSR was published, last year, and again when British forces became involved in operations to defend Libyan civilians during the country's revolution.

The MoD has maintained, however, that it had no choice, because of cost-cutting forced upon a department where budgets were out of control.

Rear Admiral Chris Parry, a critic of SDSR, said: "The issue is not that the US marines are buying the Harriers: it's that the US still thinks that the Harriers are viable aircraft. They still think there is a need for them."

The MoD said it was negotiating the best deal it could, and that scrapping the Harrier would save hundreds of millions of pounds over the next decade.

Click to expand...

CO: Upgrades needed for toilets on carrier

By Joshua Stewart - Staff Writer
Posted : Tuesday Nov 15, 2011 19:36:10 EST

Six months into a deployment that included ongoing problems with the ship’s commodes, the commanding officer of the carrier George H.W. Bush said the toilet system needs to be upgraded to help prevent clogs.

The toilet system works perfectly when used properly, Capt. Brian “Lex” Luther, the skipper of the carrier since March, said in a telephone interview Tuesday evening. However, the system needs bigger pipes to prevent clogs, he said.

The problems, Luther said, occur when things that the system was never designed to handle end up in the pipes. Hull maintenance technicians dispatched for repairs have pulled out socks, underwear, shirts, hardboiled eggs, nuts, bolts, feminine hygiene products and, once, a mop head.

“When stuff goes down the system, and it’s not designed for that, it causes clogs,” he said.

Since the deployment began in May, waste and toilet paper did not create a single malfunction, he said.

Hull maintenance technicians have spent more than 10,000 hours working on the system since May, amassing volumes of data along the way. That allowed the ship’s company to completely re-engineer the vacuum system’s protocols. And based on that data, Luther recommends a series of upgrades to the Bush’s vacuum collection marine sanitation system when it returns to Norfolk.

The system was designed with unusually narrow pipes to help keep a high vacuum pressure. However, these narrow pipes make it more likely that the system will clog. They should be wider to let potential clogs move through, Luther said.

Additionally, the individual commodes need to be upgraded. Sometimes vacuum pressure is lost when someone presses the flush button with his boot instead of his hand, breaking a mechanism. Or a tube is knocked out of place during a regular cleaning, causing pressure to drop, Luther said.

The toilet problem has become unbearable, said sailors onboard the carrier, who spoke with Navy Times on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak with media. There have been occasions during the deployment when every toilet went offline. More frequently, every commode aft of midship will be out of order, they said. Or several heads in a single area will go down, and when they are repaired, a new problem will occur elsewhere, sailors said.

The problem has left sailors searching for a proper place to relieve themselves, a quest that can last an hour. Often, when they do find a working commode, they need to wait in line and the head is filthy from overuse. As a result, sailors are taking extra showers or using industrial sinks in their workspaces. Men are urinating into bottles and emptying the contents over the ship’s side. Some have cut down on their food and fluid intake, and some women are holding it for so long that they’re developing urinary tract infections.

Luther said that 8.8 percent of sailors onboard have received some sort of medical attention on this deployment. Figures later provided by the carrier show that 1.3 percent of the sailors onboard have been treated for urinary tract infections and 0.2 percent were treated for dehydration. Comparable figures for other deployments were not available Tuesday night.

The ship’s sanitation system is divided into forward and aft sections, which operate independently of each other. However, six times since the deployment began, both sections broke simultaneously, leaving each of the carrier’s 423 toilets inoperable. However, at the worst, both sections were concurrently down only for 15 minutes. No commode is immune, Luther said, and his own toilet has gone out of service.

“If you use vacuum, you lose vacuum. Whether you’re me, the admiral, or the most junior sailors. And even I’ve gotten a call from the admiral who said ‘Hey! What’s up with that?’ ” Luther said. “It’s egalitarian."

Click to expand...

Army times said:

Twice-delayed next-gen helmet gets new tests

By James K. Sanborn - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Nov 17, 2011 10:19:18 EST

The next-generation helmet is about to undergo renewed testing that will bring the lightweight, lifesaving helmet a step closer to the war zone.

But delivery of the helmets has been delayed again, and it may not be fielded until late next year.

The Enhanced Combat Helmet, under development through a joint Army-Marine Corps program, has been delayed a second time after failing to hold up well against projectiles during First Article Testing in April.

Initially, Marine officials blamed the test failure and fielding delay on the helmet’s manufacturer, but it turns out flawed Defense Department testing procedures were to blame.
Related reading

Production snag could delay fielding new helmet (March 27)

Bullet-stopping helmet, new boots to war zone (Feb. 27)

The latest delay could push delivery back nearly two years from the initial target date of fall 2010.

Officials who are gearing up for retesting in December said though it could be fielded in April, it could be as late as September.

The ECH, which has been in development since 2009, uses an ultrahigh-molecular-weight polyethylene — a type of plastic — that will give troops a lighter and stronger helmet that can stop 7.62mm rifle rounds. Current helmets are designed only to stop shrapnel and lower-velocity pistol rounds.

Once cleared for fielding, the Army is slated to get 200,000 helmets, the Marine Corps will purchase 38,500 and the Navy 6,700 for corpsmen, Seabees and other deployed sailors.

Shortly after the helmet failed its first round of testing, the Marine Corps faulted the helmet’s producer, Ceradyne Inc. During a March hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Brig. Gen. Frank Kelley, commander of Marine Corps Systems Command, attributed the failure to a “production anomaly.” After being cleared for low-rate production, the company had upped the temperature during the curing process to dry the paint faster, Lt. Col. Kevin Reilly, head of Infantry Combat Equipment at MARCORSYSCOM, told Marine Corps Times in March.

But it turns out the curing process did not have anything to do with the test failure, according to an emailed response from MARCORSYSCOM officials.

Why had the helmet done well during early developmental testing only to fail First Article Testing in April?

Marine officials conducted follow-on testing to identify the issue and found that ECH performed “as good or better” than the Army’s Advanced Combat Helmet when pitted against 9mm projectiles, according to MARCORSYSCOM. The ACH is the Army’s current streamlined helmet.

MARCORSYSCOM testing determined the curing wasn’t the problem but blamed newly instituted Defense Department helmet-testing procedures, which were introduced just prior to the start of the helmet’s First Article Testing.

“After extensive examination and range trials, the … changes were found to be inappropriate for determining performance,” according to written responses from the command.

Testing issues were numerous, according to MARCORSYSCOM.

Problems included a single-size clay head used to collect data, “unclear mounting procedures” and “test-induced variation.”

Test-induced variation, including mounting a helmet differently each time, can have such a significant effect that “a good helmet could fail if the test-induced variation was high enough to mask the actual helmet performance,” according to MARCORSYSCOM.

Reilly was unavailable for immediate comment to elaborate on these issues due to scheduling conflicts, a MARCORSYSCOM spokeswoman said.

Ceradyne representatives were also unable to comment, citing contractual obligations.

Testing procedures have since been revised and officials are confident they “can adequately test and evaluate this helmet and future helmets.”

Click to expand...

delft said:

However you are not allowed to throw such waste over board. You have to dispose of it in some port that is able to handle it.
I am an admirer of the vacuum toilet system as a good way to reduce the amount of water needed and the weight of waste to be carried. It is now pretty generally used in cruising ships and it is getting traction in passenger railways. It might be a good thing to use in towns and cities in dry areas, think of China. I once read that a Western household use 25 % of its water consumption for flushing toilets and that that can be reduced by a factor ten by using this system. Also the waste is more concentrated than in an ordinary sewage system and might be used for anaerobic digestion to produce methane that might well fuel the operation of the sewage system. The material remaining should be fit for use as fertilizer and not be dumped in a river to be carried to some sea ( thus also saving on the import of phosphorus fertilizer ).
In view of these advantages the trouble on board USS George H. W. Bush is disturbing. Bwt I wonder if GHWB is large enough to carry such a digester. This would further reduce the amount of waste to be carried and provide fuel for the steam generators of the cats.

Click to expand...

That was the bold message of Adm. James "Sandy" Winnefeld speaking here at the Strategic Command Cyber and Space conference. While there have been clear indicators that this is the direction in which America's military was moving. Winnefeld's speech is far and away the clearest statement of what he called this new strategy.

"We are not likely to have as our next fight a counterinsurgency," he said. While America has been teaching its troops Arabic and other regional languages, training them how to win friends and influence people at the village and provincial levels, "the world has changed," Winnefeld said. America's enemies and competitors are "coming up with new asymmetric advantages. They've been studying us closely...," he said. So, "we need to avoid the temptation to look in our rear view mirror."

Click to expand...

bladerunner said:

I never thought they would get around to doing it. There's been speculation for a while, with serious consideration and talks over the last year+or so. The United States is going to finally establish a Marine Base in Darwin.

Click to expand...

Caucus forms to save the F-35 from budget cuts

By T.W. Farnam, Thursday, November 24, 1:58 AM

Even before the congressional “supercommittee” failed to reach a deal averting drastic cuts to defense spending, one group of lawmakers began mobilizing to protect a favorite weapons program.

Reps. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) and Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) announced the formation of a Congressional Joint Strike Fighter Caucus with 49 members from both parties. Its purpose: to protect funding for the F-35 stealth fighter. The plane, as the most expensive weapons program in history, is one of the biggest potential targets in the defense budget.


The members of the caucus are also some of the top recipients of political money from the company that designs and builds the fighter, Lockheed Martin. The company’s political action committee and its employees have given the caucus members $1.3 million in political contributions over their careers, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Granger, whose west Fort Worth district includes the main Lockheed airplane-assembly plant, which employs 15,000, has received $210,000 from the company’s PAC and employees. That includes $33,500 so far this year.

The work of the Joint Strike Fighter Caucus has recently, in the wake of the supercommittee’s failure, become more pressured. Created by President Obama and congressional Republicans as part of a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling this summer, the supercommittee was charged with finding $1.2 trillion in budget cuts over the next decade. Since the 12 members failed to reach a compromise, the terms of the deal force an across-the-board cut of $1.2 trillion, with half coming from defense programs.

Spokesmen for Granger and Dicks did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

In a statement announcing the formation of the caucus, the lawmakers said their goal was to provide “accurate and timely information on the development, testing, and deployment of our next-generation fighter.”

Dicks, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, has received a total of $97,700 over his career from Lockheed’s PAC and employees.

Other top recipients of Lockheed money include Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), the former Appropriations chairman, who has received $144,250, and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who also represents Fort Worth and has received $129,950.

Lockheed spokesman Tom Casey said the company’s PAC supports lawmakers for a wide variety of reasons.

“Lockheed Martin supports a wide range of political leaders based on their level of interest and commitment in national security, homeland security, and other issues of importance to the corporation, including education and technology,” Casey said.

The supercommittee conceded defeat Monday, and cuts to the plane’s funding have already been floated as a possibility if Congress doesn’t amend its previous agreement. In a letter to lawmakers last week, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta raised the specter of terminating the program entirely.

A more likely scenario is reducing the number of planes purchased, or scrapping one of the three designs the government has commissioned. A Navy version of the plane is designed for aircraft carriers and a Marine version can take off and land vertically, adding to the cost.

Panetta can help control which programs get cut if he submits a smaller budget, but Congress has the final say. The automatic spending cuts must begin in 2013, making weapons systems a more likely target than other areas of spending, such as closing bases, which could take longer to result in significant savings.

“You go where the money is,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “For that reason alone, this program is likely to be a target.”

The F-35 program has been beset by cost overruns, raising the ire of some in Congress. Originally expected to cost $233 billion to design and build 2,866 planes, the program is now budgeted at $385 billion for a smaller fleet. Once maintenance and operating costs are included, estimates climb to $1 trilion.

“You could cover this up as long as the defense budget kept going up,” said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow with the liberal Center for American Progress. “People are going to say, ‘Whoa, can we really afford this plane that costs twice as much as we thought?’ ”

Click to expand...