USAF cuts 5 F-35's from 2017 budget.

Thanks to Gruaak for the link!

via Defense News.

The US Air Force cut five F-35As from its fiscal year 2017 budget request while fully funding the Long Range Strike-Bomber and KC-46 tanker, sources said.
The Air Force reduced the F-35A buy in FY-17 from a planned 48 aircraft to just 43, according to one source. It is not clear if the Air Force will reduce the overall planned buy of 1,763 aircraft. These figures do not take into account the total F-35 buy across the US armed services or purchases by international partners.

Interesting isn't it.

The F-35 is die in the ditch important.  Ramping up to full production essential in order to drive the cost curve down.

But the USAF is cutting 5?

Reality is finally hitting our boys in blue.  The F-35 can't perform the penetration mission, it can't perform the fighter mission, and its an expensive ISR "hub".  The death spiral begins....or should I say death by a 1000 cuts?

Lack of armor, dependence on airpower makes Europe vulnerable to a Russian attack...

via Foreign Policy.

Tanks are few and far between now in NATO countries, the report said. Germany’s arsenal of about 2,200 main battle tanks in the Cold War has declined to roughly 250. Britain, meanwhile, is planning on pulling out its last brigade headquarters left on the continent.
With only light infantry units at the ready in the Baltics, U.S. and NATO planners are also worried about the continued Russian arms buildup in the exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast between Poland and Lithuania, and Moscow’s intention to build a new air force base in Belarus, just south of the Polish-Lithuanian border.
The war games run by Rand underscored how U.S. and NATO forces lack the vehicles and firepower to take on their Russian adversaries, which have maintained more mechanized and tank units. NATO ground troops also lacked anti-aircraft artillery to fend off Russian warplanes in the Baltic scenario.
“By and large, NATO’s infantry found themselves unable even to retreat successfully and were destroyed in place,” the report said.

I've pounded the table enough on this subject.  Replace NATO infantry with Company Landing Teams and Russian firepower with their Chinese counterparts and you have the same result.

The Special Ops/Small Wars/Transformationalist mafia have destroyed US ground power.  Our allies trying to "remain relevant" followed our lead and did the same.

The result?  Current military leadership designed the wrong force for future threats.  The Pentagon did the cool thing (especially the Marine Corps which is especially irritating) and now our enemies are licking their chops waiting to pounce.

Australian F-35's will be Sukhoi bait in the Pacific & other bad news for the program.

Gizmodo Australia...

In the submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade’s Joint Strike Fighter inquiry, Royal Australian Air Force Wing Commander Chris Mills AM, MSc, BSc (Retd) says that lessons from history and statistical modelling suggest that the F-35 is a poor choice for the future of warfare in the region, which centres around air superiority versus countries like Indonesia and China.
A simulation showing six F-35s versus six Sukhoi SU-35S, Indonesia’s intended future air superiority fighter choice for its air force, suggests that 2.36 Joint Strike Fighters would be lost for every SU-35S downed. The simulation was run on H3MilSim software developed by Mills’ RepSim, a company he and a colleague set up after retiring from the RAAF.
A simulation of the aerially superior F-22 Raptor, though, results in an almost precisely opposite outcome — with 2.14 Sukhoi jets destroyed per F-22 loss. While the F-35 is a newer jet, it is a multirole fighter capable of ground attack and reconnaissance, while the F-22 has the sole role of air superiority and supremacy in enemy airspace.

Read the entire article for yourself but one thing I just noticed and no one is talking about.  Every simulation I've seen for the F-22, F-35, F-18, Typhoon etc...shows that even under the best case circumstances we're going to suffer a TREMENDOUS loss rate (even if it's tilted in our favor)...something is wrong with our airpower theory if we're looking at a 2.14 Sukhoi to 1 F-22 loss rate...our best fighter is just a little better than even against what they currently fly!

I'll leave that to you to chew on.  But I direct you to these other news stories that point in the same direction...

Unready for War: America’s F-35 Gets a Bad Report Card

This is what regret looks like for the Pentagon

Watchdog report: Technology, capability issues still plague F-35

Pentagon’s White Elephant: F-35 to Miss Final Software Release Deadline

3/3 Urban Assault @ Combat Town 29 Palms...video by Sgt. Donald Holbert

Sweden’s Artillery Regiment recieves the Archer System.

Congrats to Sweden’s Artillery Regiment on receiving its first serial ARCHER system from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration during a recent delivery ceremony

BAE claims that the Archer is the most advanced artillery system on the planet.  Don't get me wrong, it looks like a nice piece of kit but I wonder what makes the Archer so special that its a world beater?

How big a role did social media monitoring play in the Oregon standoff?

Above you see a vid put out by Mark McConnell regarding the shooting of Lavoy Finicum.  McConnell was detained and later released while the rest of the group remains in custody.  This is a point of much debate within the militia community as you'll see in the video below.  But what really caught my attention is what he said about the role that social media played in determining who they would arrest.  He says that they asked him if he was a militia member, and that he got the impression that they were arresting people that put up inflammatory video on YouTube or FaceBook.



American Mercenary (when he was blogging) stated that Human Terrain Theory is the future when it comes to counterinsurgency work.  He was wrong (unless you count counter govt groups in the US to insurgents).  Human Terrain Theory is the future when it comes to law enforcement.  More stunning is what we all know but apparently don't take serious enough (especially me)...active monitoring of certain groups IS taking place.  All it takes is one incident to highlight you/associates and you're toast.

ISR, psychology and group dynamics.  That's where law enforcement is headed.

Pentagon working on Arsenal Plane via Alert 5...The F-35 is even worse than I imagined!

via Alert

In a preview of the 2017 defense budget during a breakfast event at the Economic Club in Washington, D.C., U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter revealed that the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office is working on developing an arsenal plane that an older generation flying platform into a flying launch pad for a range of conventional payloads.

Jesus!  If this report is true then the F-35 is even worse than I imagined!  Consider the fact that we've seen all kinds of so called fixes to solve its lack of payload, its lack of speed and its lack of range.....

We've seen talk about lasers, using AESA to attack enemy anti-air missiles, and even Cuda like mini anti-air missiles.  But with all that they're still going to bring in an arsenal plane?

It baked into the cake.  They might limp and pencil whip a few F-35s into service (the death spiral is here...they're simply leaving it to the next administration to finally kill this bastard of an airplane) but they know better than to rely on them for our nation's defense.  So now we see the mad scramble to put the house in order...with just months left in office!

If this was happening to any other country but my own, I'd be laughing my ass off.

Every single swinging dick and ovary wearing stars or having a SES designator will be damned by history.  They fiddled while our nation's defense was weakened beyond recognition.

1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division conducts gunnery

Just stop. The tragedy of the CH-53's is bad enough without this stupidity!

To bring everyone up to speed, the USMC lost two CH-53's in the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't cover it because "I heard some things" and didn't want to wade into those waters...especially after Marines lost their lives.

Lo and behold, a certain meme popped up.  I've ignored it and sent every e-mail I got on it into the proper file...TRASH.  Yet even now it continues.  Check this garbage out...

Russia have expressed their horror at the downing of two US Marine helicopters by Turkey last week, which killed all 12 soldiers on board.

A Turkish Air Force fighter jet fired a two American CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters being flown by the US Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) over Kurdish held territory in Syria.
US forces had been dispatched from Ayn al-Asas Airbase in Iraq for a routine re-supply mission of US and British troops embedded within the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG), who were fighting ISIS militants near the Turkish border.
Whatdoesitmean.com reports:
Immediately upon Federation Aerospace Forces detecting this Turkish “unprovoked” attack upon these two MARSOC helicopters, this report continues, Russian commanders notified the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar advising the American’s of their willingness to assist in search and rescues missions, but which the US commanders stated they did not need as their own TRAP forces (tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel) had already been alerted.
Most outlandishly, this report notes, is that within 5 hours of Turkey shooting down these two MARSOC helicopters in Syria, Aerospace Forces satellites monitoring the Pacific Ocean region detected what they believed at the time to be an unannounced test of a US Navy RIM-8 Talos missile (editor's note; this missile is LONG retired) in the waters surrounding the Hawaii Islands—but which within two hours of its firing and exploding the US Navy announced two of its CH-53 helicopters had “crashed”, and just yesterday announced they had ceased attempting to find either these aircraft or its crew members.
As to why the Obama regime would deliberately conceal from the American people this “deliberate war crime”, this report explains, is due to their fears of what the reactions of their citizens would be upon learning that these 12 brave US Marines were killed by their own NATO ally Turkey—who at the exact same time the US is fighting with and assisting the Kurdish peoples in fighting Islamic State terrorists, Turkey is doing everything it can to destroy them.

This is plain wrong.  Marines died and some choose to play the geopolitics game.  Just fucking stop. 

Videos from the Oregon standoff...not as innocent as they want everyone to believe.

This story continues to fascinate.  You've all read how the militia/sovereign citizen members have of late said that they were peaceful?  Check out a vid that they posted.



There were a few hairy moments that the general public doesn't know about.  How about the militia going to the FBI staging area FULLY ARMED, causing the agents to quickly gear up for possible combat!



This was a near thing...and it ain't over yet.  It could have gone sideways many times but by some miracle it didn't....or rather hasn't...so far.

Trump made a rookie, lazy mistake in Iowa. So how did Obama beat the Hillary machine?

I'm convinced that the reason why Trump lost Iowa was because he made the rookie mistake of believing the press, being lazy, being cheap and not developing a get out the vote machine.

Repeating myself but most American are sheep waiting to be led.  That includes almost handholding many to ensure that they get to ballot box.

Having said that it does beg the question.  If monied Trump with well paid advisors made these basic mistakes then how could a one time Senator, a rookie on the national stage, run a machine that was not only effective but formidable enough to knock off Hillary?

Obama's win against Hillary made no sense.  

Additionally the games that were played against Sanders this year, added to the way that the Iowa Caucuses are built tells all.  Our politics are rigged beyond recognition.

This is the BEST gun control video I've ever seen...and I'm totally against it

This is why we can't have cool things.  I'm a gun rights proponent and I cringed at this and wonder if maybe background checks would keep this guy (and others like him) from owning guns.  But then I snap out of my haze and realize that the guy broke at least 2 laws and that his gun rights would be revoked anyway and I feel a LITTLE better.

Be smart gun guys!