Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Wow Lt. isn't that special! How about leading Marines instead of playing patty cake?


Will someone in Headquarters Marine Corps spare us the sight of an of Officer of Marines playing patty cake?

If she can't find something better to do with her time then its time for a serious reduction in force.  Guys in Afghanistan are fighting and dying and this officer is playing.

Amazing!


Army Operating Concept.

Well I definitely haven't been paying enough attention to the Army Guys lately. 

The decision about the GCV was telegraphed for months...the Army Chief of Staff himself was expressing doubt about the weight of the vehicle and I still don't believe that they'll get it across the finish line, but perhaps more interesting is this new Army Operating Concept.

Security Stabilization Operations?

Give me a break.  Its a new name for a Three Block War.  But the ball busting part of this whole thing is how they've settled on the 2016-2028 timeline.

Didn't I once see something like an Army 2020???? 

Regardless its here for you to read ...

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Monday, August 30, 2010

You guys rock!


You guys are the best.  Once again, readers here have clued us in to information before the rest of the web has picked up on it.

I could point to more than a couple of issues but the latest is the ongoing saga with the Kel-Tec PMR-30.

We've been looking at the slow delivery of this firearm to the market place for a while but now it seems that the dedicated firearms blogs are noticing...the "Firearm Blog"...is one of the best and they have finally keyed in on this.  Read it here.

Again, you guys rock.  Thanks.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Singapore's answer to the LPD as mini-LHD.

I posted yesterday that the idea of using LPD's as mini-LHD's has merit.  Well my friends Leesa and Marcase were a bit skeptical.

Fair enough.

But the main area of disagreement dealt with the limited space for aviation and in particular the limited areas for aviation maintenance.

My rebuttal comes in the form of what Singapore is doing with their LPD.  Below you'll see a sales brochure (yeah I know a Sales Brochure) but the point is this...there is plenty of space...on the San Antonio class the space is evident and on the older LSD's and LPD's the space has been made available with the use of removable hangars.

If we're going to do distributed operations.  If we're going to have mini-ARGs then this is something that must be done.

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SAAB Networked Enabled Capability.

Leopard 2A7+


KMW has been pretty busy lately.  Not to the level of BAE (which really might be from the fact that BAE is a collection of companies and not one single entity) but they've been busy none-the-less.

Still this latest offering is curious.

Over the years we've seen the super long barreled Leopard 2A6, and the Peace Support Operations Leopard.  With the 2A7+ we see them returning to the PSO variant, dropping the long barrel, adding machineguns and bolt on armor and the now common dozer blade.

I'm not sure if this is really qualifies for a new model designation or not.  It seems to be more inline with what the US Army did a couple of years ago with its TUSK upgrade. 


Leopard 2A7+ Specifications (From the KMW Website)
 Weight  67.5 t
 Length 
(gun at 12 o'clock)  10.97 m
 Width  4.00 m
 Height (turret roof)  2.64 m
 Engine power  1,100 kW (1,500 hp)
 Maximum speed  72 km/h
 Cruising range  450 km
 Armament


 
 120 mm / L55 smoothbore
 cannon and 12.7 mm MG
 oder 40 mm granade launcher
 7.62 mm coaxial MG

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Time to dust off Galrahn's list of Amphibious Ops.


Galrahn of Information Dissemination wrote a piece for USNI Blog that detailed the amphibious operations that the Marine Corps has conducted since the 90's.

With so many actually taking the SecDef's threat seriously its time to take a look at this again.  Read it here and here.

LSD's and LPD's as Mini- Carriers.

The above photo is another example of the tremendous amount of aviation that even an ancient LSD can carry.

Perhaps this is the best kept secret in the Navy.  LSD's and LPD's can (in a high density operation) almost rival the first Iwo Jima Class LHA's in the number of helicopters they can carry.


The mini-ARG concept can work but it will require a careful balancing of assets and the LPD-17 class should be the centerpiece of the effort.

With this in mind it might make sense to re-class the LHD and especially the USS America Class LHA's as Amphibious Assault Carriers, limit our buy of them and fill them only with F-35s.

Imagine an amphibious fleet of 4 America Class Amphibious Assault Carriers with the balance of the ships being LPDs and LSDs.  You could have reinforced companies all over the place and a forward presence that the Navy has been clamoring for.

Protection could be an issue but a Burke Class destroy to accompany each Mini-ARG should be sufficient for operations other than war.

I think I've hit on something.

Lockheed Martin C-130 Demonstration Video!

Orange County Register Graphic on the EFV.

The Orange County Register has a great graphic on the EFV and the issues facing it...

EFV raw video. The info war is on.

So the SecDef wants to fire a shot across the Marine Corps bow by having a commission take a look at the Marines roles and missions?

Yeah right!

Who in the Congress has the balls to go head to head with the USMC?

Does the White House really want the battle?

The answer to the first is no one and to the second...are you crazy!

So having properly evaluated the enemies strength on this subject the power that be have ignored the sound of the blast and are moving forward with a head on assault on the SecDef's position.  Besides, he fired his rounds in haste...his tactics are confused (he did after all signal that he's going to retire within a year) and the only real obstacle is the bean counters in OMB.

Oh and there is one more danger.  Remember the LVTP-5?  That was the last amphibian that was optimized toward the water mission against evidence that most missions would be focused on land.  It was a failure in Vietnam...maybe we should just get BAE or General Dynamics or Lockheed Martin to modernize the AAV-7---radically modernize it.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Kel-Tec speaks up on the PMR-30.


Anonymous posted this on the PMR-30.  Its a statement from Kel-Tec regarding the PMR-30...
Kel-Tec Ok folks, since this question is being asked relentlessly I'll address it.

No, we are not at full production on PMR-30s. It has nothing to do with the product but more with the time line we set to release the PMR-30.

Back in January we ann...ounced that Q2 was the release date. It was based on estimated time to move from prototype to full production. What we had in January was a working model, but was not made on production CNC machines.

Our estimation proved to be quite off in terms of development. We noticed it before release but felt if we really pushed ourselves we could meet the Q2 release. The first batch of 80 or so, were done by that deadline, but had not been tested extensively (as we do with any first production run). After testing we found some inconsistencies in the CNC work and did some re-tweaking to fix it.

Since that first batch we've sent several other batches out, each with it's own new little fix. All of the fire arms that have been sent out work, but in the course of production we've found little adjustments here and there that are improvements.

In all honesty this is stuff that should have been going on before release.

What should have happened (because hindsight is 20/20) was that we push back that official release date until October at the earliest.

Basically we underestimated the time it would take us to get these badboys into full production.

So we had a choice: either stop production completely and just wait until a later date (angering those that were told July as a release date) or release smaller batches so the guns can at least see the light of day as production catches up (also angering customers as they see guns coming out but can't seem to get one). Obviously
we chose the latter (the right choice? this remains to be seen). The PMR-30s going out now are in working condition, but we've made that they may want to upgrade to, depending on serial number.

These parts will of course be free.

One thing we've discovered since shipping is that the PMR-30 does NOT like ammunition made in the Philippines (Armscor/Fiocci). The brass is weak and blows out.

So in conclusion: We are still making and shipping PMR-30s while production can get on track. They are still in small batches (30-70) and we are waiting on various redesigned parts to come back from heat treatment so we can start producing them in larger quantities.

Simply put we jumped the gun a bit on release (no pun intended), we acknowledge it, accept it, and are doing everything in our power to get things moving. In the meantime we are still sending out PMR-30s in small batches as we make them.

I hope this clarifies some things. My suggestion is to just pretend as if we set a release date for sometime in October and if you happen to come across a PMR-30 then it will be a pleasant surprise.

I will be happy to answer any additional questions that I can.