The UCP is Dead - Long Live the UCP!

How bad was the UCP?  Despite knowing it was crap. the Army spent $5 billion to replace the old BDU, and is now spending billions more to roll out Multi-cam to replace it.

Less than a decade after the so-called Universal Camouflage Pattern, or UCP, was introduced the Army is back to the drawing board, set to announce a new camouflage pattern and standard uniform to be worn by the more than million members of the active duty and reserve forces.

Evidence of the UCPs inadequacy as a combat uniform is easy to find—just look at pictures of soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan, they’re not wearing the UCP, which was deemed unsuitable for operations there, but a different uniform known as the MultiCam. In 2009, Congress responded to soldiers’ “concerns about the current combat uniform which they indicated provides ineffective camouflage given the environment in Afghanistan,” by passing a bill in the appropriations act requiring that the DOD “take immediate action to provide combat uniforms to personnel deployed to Afghanistan with a camouflage pattern that is suited to the environment of Afghanistan.” The result was the MultiCam. But that uniform, while it is currently worn in Afghanistan, was not a replacement but an interim substitution for the UCP, which is still the Army’s official uniform and the one worn by all soldiers not overseas.

Only 5 years after it was introduced the UCP’s failures had already become glaring enough to compel congressional intervention but despite the moratorium on its use in Afghanistan, it will have taken another 5 years for the Army to field its replacement.

Eventually, after mounting criticism and reports of the uniforms problems, the Army started looking for something better. This time, instead of hoping for a universal, one-size-fits-all design, an Army source who wished to remain unnamed explained that the Army solicited designs from companies for patterns with three variations, one for the desert, another for woodlands and jungles and a third, traditional semi-wooded pattern similar to the one currently used by soldiers in Afghanistan. After several rounds of testing, four patterns with three variations for each, from companies in New York, Virginia and Alaska were submitted to the Army to choose a winner.

Critics say this has been a huge waste of money.

But hey, it was great in one particular urban setting

By: Brant

Secretary of the Navy Announces the Names of Multiple New Ships

The DoD is announcing the Navy's plans for the naming of a group of new ships.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced today the names of seven ships: three joint high speed vessels (JHSV), the USNS Trenton, the USNS Brunswick and the USNS Carson City; an amphibious transport dock ship (LPD), the USS Portland; two littoral combat ships (LCS), the USS Wichita and the USS Manchester; and an ocean-class auxiliary general oceanographic research (AGOR) ship, the R/V Sally Ride.

“As secretary of the Navy, I have the great privilege of naming ships that will represent America with distinction as part of the fleet for many decades to come,” Mabus said.  “These ships were all named to recognize the hard working people from cities all around our country who have contributed in so many ways to our Navy and Marine Corps team.”

Joint high speed vessels are named for small American cities and counties that embody American values.  The future USNS Trenton (JHSV 5), named in honor of New Jersey’s capital city, will be the fourth ship to bear this name.  Similarly, the USNS Carson City (JHSV 7) is the second naval vessel to be named in honor of Nevada’s capital city.  The USNS Brunswick (JHSV 6) is the fourth naval vessel named for the seaport city in Georgia and recognizes its longstanding relationship with the Navy. 

Military commanders will have the flexibility to use the JHSV in a variety of roles to include supporting overseas contingency operations, conducting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, supporting special operations forces and supporting emerging joint sea-basing concepts.

The 338 foot-long aluminum catamarans are being constructed at Austal USA in Mobile, Ala., and are designed to transport 600 short tons 1,200 nautical miles at an average speed of 35 knots.  These vessels can operate in shallow-draft ports and waterways, providing U.S. forces added mobility and flexibility.  JHSVs are equipped with an aviation flight deck to support day and night air vehicle launch and recovery operations.  JHSVs have berthing space for up to 104 personnel and airline-style seating for up to 312.

Amphibious transport dock ships are named for major American cities.  Mabus named the future USS Portland (LPD 27) in honor of Oregon’s most highly populated city.  LPD 27 will be the third ship to bear this name.

The principal mission of Portland will be to deploy combat and support elements of Marine expeditionary units and brigades.  With the capability of transporting and debarking air cushion (LCAC) or conventional landing craft and augmented by helicopters or vertical take-off and landing aircraft (MV-22), these ships support amphibious assault, special operations, and expeditionary warfare missions.  The USS Portland will provide improved warfighting capabilities including an advanced command-and-control suite, increased lift capability in vehicle and cargo-carrying capacity and advanced ship survivability features.

Portland will be a San Antonio-class (LPD 17) amphibious transport dock ship, built by Huntington Ingalls Industries in Pascagoula, Miss.  The ship will be 684 feet in length, have an overall beam of 105 feet, a navigational draft of 23 feet, displace about 24,900 tons and capable of embarking a landing force of about 800 Marines.  LPD 27 will be capable of reaching sustained speeds in excess of 22 knots.

Littoral combat ships are named after great American communities. 

The littoral combat ships named for Wichita and Manchester recognize regionally beneficial cities that are also within the top five highly populated communities in their states.  The USS Wichita (LCS 13) is named in honor of Kansas’ largest city and will be the third ship to bear the name.  The USS Manchester (LCS 14) will be the second ship named for one of New Hampshire’s industrial centers.

Wichita and Manchester will be outfitted with reconfigurable payloads, called mission packages, which can be changed out quickly as combat needs demand.  These mission packages are supported by special detachments that will deploy manned and unmanned vehicles and sensors in support of mine, undersea and surface warfare missions.

These ships are designed to defeat growing littoral threats and provide access and dominance in the coastal waters.  A fast, agile surface combatant, the LCS provides the required war fighting capabilities and operational flexibility to execute focused missions close to the shore such as mine warfare, anti-submarine warfare and surface warfare.

Lockheed Martin with Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wis., will build the Freedom-variant, USS Wichita (LCS 13), which will be 388 feet in length, have a waterline beam of 58 feet, displace approximately 3,400 tons, and make speed in excess of 40 knots.  Austal USA in Mobile, Ala., will build the Independence-variant, USS Manchester (LCS 14), which will be 419 feet in length, have a waterline beam of 103 feet, displace approximately 3,100 tons, and make speed in excess of 40 knots.

Mabus named the future R/V Sally Ride (AGOR 28), which will be a Neil Armstrong-class AGOR ship, to honor the memory of Sally Ride, a professor, scientist and an innovator at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego.  Ride was the first woman and also the youngest person in space.  She later served as director of NASA's Office of Exploration.

Traditionally, AGORs are named for nationally recognized leaders in exploration and science.  The R/V Sally Ride is the first academic research ship to be named in honor of a woman.

“Sally Ride’s career was one of firsts and will inspire generations to come,” said Mabus.  “I named R/V Sally Ride to honor a great researcher, but also to encourage generations of students to continue exploring, discovering and reaching for the stars.”

The ship will be a well-equipped modern oceanographic research platform that includes acoustic equipment capable of mapping the deepest parts of the oceans, and modular onboard laboratories providing the flexibility to meet a wide variety of oceanographic research challenges.  These make them capable of supporting a wide range of oceanographic research activities conducted by academic institutions and national laboratories.  The research vessel will be outfitted with multi-drive low-voltage diesel electric propulsion systems.  This upgraded system will help maintain efficiency while lowering maintenance and fuel costs.

The Neil Armstrong-class AGOR ship will be 238 feet in length, have a beam length of 50 feet, and can operate at more than 12 knots.  AGOR 28 will be built by Dakota Creek Industries, Inc. in Anacortes, Wash. 

By: Brant

Fractures in Army's Training Sims Community

In what can only be described as shot across the bow to any Army agency not called "TCM-Gaming" the new new TRADOC command policy letter #21 pretty clearly lays a smack-down on any attempts to localize procurement to support training. The secondary effects, of course, are to (a) consolidate power in the hands of TCM-Gaming, an organization staffed by non-gamers with little/no interest in actually learning about wargaming or participating in the wargaming field in any sort of professional manner* and (b) ensure the continued flow of tax dollars to the 'big boys' of the wargaming/sims world - BAH, LockMart, Boeing, Northrup - who have the battalions of contractors needed to support the bloated legacy sims that are waaaaay to complex for their actual usage.
The interesting question will be how it impacts the training for the FA57 community, whose curriculum often includes non-standard COTS games with the intention of showing the FA57s what the state of the art is among civilian designers. No good idea should go un-stolen, so there's no reason not to teach the FA57s what's out there, unless you're an Army agency intentionally trying to stifle independent thought so as to maintain iron-fisted control over the acquisitions of toys you approved but don't actually fully understand.

click images to enlarge and read the entire memo

* Quick, name the TCM-Gaming attendees at Connections this year. Can't do it? Neither can they - there weren't any.

By: Brant

Palantir and the Acquisitions System

Did 3MECH try to sneak their way around the system?

The issue that alarmed Shyu was that the unit said it couldn’t pay for the system, and the company offered its technology on a cost-free basis, as opposed to normal contracting methods. Shyu wrote that “these circumstances warrant immediate corrective action by the Army to ensure that we comply with fundamental rules relating to how the government obtains goods and services from industry.”
The memos, addressed to the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office and the Technical Support Working Group; and to intelligence contractor Praescient Analytics and Palantir, asked for a “temporary training/reach-back server” from Palantir before the 3rd ID’s deployment to Afghanistan to assume command of Regional Command-South. The unit deployed in August.
The 3rd ID’s memo said that the unit’s budget “will not support the purchase of Palantir. Operational Needs Statement (ONS) was considered, but standard length of timeline for ONS cannot be tolerated. This requirement needs to be filled immediately.” The memos obtained by Defense News show that the 3rd ID considered the 82nd Airborne’s use of Palantir in Afghanistan in 2012 critical in helping to fill “major capability gaps” in the division’s existing intelligence software, and that Palantir is “the only platform capable of filling their advanced analytic requirements.” Because the unit planned on using the software on its upcoming deployment, the memo states that “3rd ID needs a rapid fielding of this system to quickly fill critical capability/training gap prior to our pending deployment.”

One has to wonder whether or not all this bullshit would have happened if CIDNE hadn't fucked CENTCOM, and the Army as a whole, with all their political machinations surrounding the shutdown of FusionNET. There's nothing that we've heard that Palantir can do that FusionNET couldn't do 7 years ago, and it was already in the Army inventory, bought and paid for by the government.
CIDNE ramped up their political whining machine instead of improving their software, and got FusionNET shut down. As far as CIDNE was concerned, their problem was solved.
But the ground forces' problems were not, and thus Palantir was born to try to help unfuck the gaps in capability that CIDNE continued to have. The difference this time is that Palantir has better political cover than FusionNET did.
However, we're now paying for another system to do what CIDNE claimed they could do all along, when we'd already paid for one back in '04-'07. The US taxpayer is sucking up the cost of CIDNE's political dick-dancing by being forced to pay for the same capabilities all over again.

By: Brant

US Navy to Christen Second Joint High Speed Vessel

The US Navy is going to launch the USS Choctaw County.

The Navy will christen the Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) Choctaw County, named for three U.S. counties, located in Mississippi, Alabama and Oklahoma, which share the county’s name, during a ceremony in Mobile, Ala., Sept. 15, at 10 a.m. CDT.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus will deliver the ceremony’s principal address. Women from Ackerman High School’s class of 1966, 29 in all, will serve as the ship’s sponsors, with Theresa Pitts designated as the lead sponsor for the classmates. Ackerman High School is located in Choctaw County’s town of Ackerman, Miss.

“I chose to name this joint high speed vessel after Choctaw County where core American values of hard work, putting family first, and giving back to your community are on constant display,” said Mabus. “I could think of no better representatives of these values than the women of Ackerman High School’s class of 1966. Each represents the best of the American spirit and our enduring American values. I am honored they accepted the invitation to serve as sponsors for this fine ship.”

The 338 foot-long aluminum catamaran is being constructed by Austal USA in Mobile, Ala. Choctaw County and the eight other JHSVs under contract enable fast, intra-theater transportation of troops, military vehicles, supplies and equipment. Military commanders will have the flexibility to use the JHSV in a variety of roles, including supporting overseas contingency operations, conducting humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, supporting special operations forces and supporting emerging joint sea-basing concepts.

They can transport 600 short tons 1,200 nautical miles at an average speed of 35 knots and can operate in shallow-draft ports and waterways, providing U.S. forces added mobility and flexibility. The JHSVs also have an aviation flight deck to support day and night air vehicle launch and recovery operations. JHSVs have berthing space for up to 146 personnel and airline-style seating for up to 312.

Upon delivery to the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC), Choctaw County will be designated as a U.S. Naval Ship and will have a core crew of 21 civilian mariners who will operate and navigate the ship. The first four JHSVs, including Choctaw County, will be crewed by federally employed civil service mariners. The remaining six will be crewed by civilian contract mariners working for private shipping companies under contract to MSC. Military mission personnel will embark, as required, by the mission sponsors.

By: Brant

What Comes After VBS-2?

The Army sure would like to know.

The U.S. Army is in the market for a next-generation first-person-shooter (FPS) training game that will incorporate the latest video game technology. The game will replace Virtual Battlespace 2, the Army’s official tactical training game since 2008.

With a July 12 close date for questions and comments, officials are likely now digesting responses to a June draft Request for Proposal. Published by the Army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, it essentially calls for an updated version of VBS2 rather than a revolutionary change in gaming. VBS2, from Bohemia Interactive Simulations, has become the mothership of tactical simulations for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, as well as other nations such as Britain and Australia.

There are a plethora of add-ons and modifications, from IED training to foreign language instruction, plus versions for Special Operations Command and spinoffs such as VBS2 Fires for indirect fire training. The Army wants the next-generation sim to continue to work with these add-ons, thus eliminating the need to reinvent the virtual wheel. It also wants the sim to operate on PC, Web-based and mobile platforms, and integrate into a live-virtual-constructive environment. The plan is to have industry offer solutions to these requirements, including how to adapt the latest gaming technology.

By: Brant

Army Defense of Pricey Acquisitions At the Expense of Performance

Army acquisitions trying to defend their own investments?

The Army ordered the destruction of a report that praised the performance of an off-the-shelf software program that finds buried explosives in Afghanistan and replaced it with a revised, less-favorable assessment, according to internal Pentagon documents.
The unusual action came amid a battle inside the Army. It pits those who want the service to send more of the software platform, called Palantir, to the Afghanistan War against those who favor the Army’s own developed intelligence network, the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS).
Internal emails reveal an intelligence officer in Afghanistan who was frustrated by Army bureaucrats who blocked his request to buy Palantir in the winter.
“We are trying to solve some very hard problems that pose life or death issues for the soldiers,” the officer emailed to the Pentagon.
The documents obtained by The Washington Times show that Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, Army chief of staff, in February ordered the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) to judge the performance of Palantir.
ATEC published internally its official report in April, but the report was rescinded and ordered destroyed. The less-favorable assessment of Palantir was issued in its place in May.
The Times first reported last week that commanders in Afghanistan asked higher-ups for permission to buy Palantir, as they raved about its ability to pinpoint a major killer of American troops — buried homemade bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
The Times reported how officers had to go over bureaucratic hurdles to acquire Palantir, which is not in the annual Army budget and would have to be purchased with special funds.

The key wrap-up on DCGS is this, from an intel guy in the 82nd:

“Bottom line from our perspective is that [DCGS] has continuously overpromised and failed to deliver on capability that will meet the needs of the warfighter.
“All the bullet points they can list on a slide sitting back in the Pentagon don’t change the reality on the ground that their system doesn’t do what they say it does, and is more of a frustration to deal with than a capability to leverage.
“We aren’t going to sit here and struggle with an ineffective intel system while we’re in the middle of a heavy fight taking casualties. Palantir actually works. When DCGS actually works, we’ll be ready to use it.”
He added: “If the crew of people I work with their combined IQ, ingenuity, and years of experience, can’t figure out how to make DCGS work in this fight, they need to fix their system.”

I've worked with DCGS on the back end - data models, data schemas, system compatibility, etc - and one of the biggest problems with DCGS (just like CIDNE) is the insistence that it become the one-database-to-rule-them-all instead of acknowledging that there are other data sources out there that are relevant and useful and meaningful and they can and should be used without having to be sucked into the MCP.
The Army (in particular) and the DoD (in general) has a hard time with the idea of data sharing. In the wake of Bradley Manning, it's not an unreasonable fear. But it's too often used as a justification to defend rice bowls.

h/t Doctrine Man

By: Brant

Empty Promises on Canadian Defense Investments?

The Economist has a bleak outlook on plans vs reality in Canadian defense spending.

One of the main ways Stephen Harper, Canada’s Conservative prime minister, has sought to distinguish himself from his Liberal predecessors is by building a modern army ready to fight, rather than merely for peacekeeping. In the 2011 election campaign he promised to fulfil a C$15 billion ($15 billion) contract for 65 F-35 fighter aircraft despite a tough economy. In October he announced Canada’s biggest-ever arms order, for naval and coastguard ships costing C$35 billion. The structure of the procurement was widely praised for avoiding political interference.

But the glow has not lasted. In April Canada’s auditor-general found that the government had misled Parliament, deliberately underestimating the price of the F-35s by almost C$10 billion, by excluding replacement aircraft, upgrades and training and maintenance costs. On July 4th Mr Harper named a new junior minister at the defence department as the deal’s spokesman. But procurement remains awkwardly split between the defence and public-works ministries. One result was that last year the military forfeited C$600m allocated for equipment but not spent.

Last month Walter Natynczyk, the outgoing chief of the defence staff, criticised a delay in signing detailed contracts for the shipbuilding scheme. The navy fears it will fall victim to a C$3.5 billion cut in defence spending over the next seven years. On July 11th the armed forces were given new cause to worry, when the army scrapped bidding on a C$800m lorry contract for lack of funds, minutes before the deadline.

By: Brant

GD Up To Their Roadwheels in Deep Doo-Doo

There's an IG report on General Dynamics "wasting" a metric assload of money on the Stryker program, and apparently never tried not to...

The Army is weighing changes in General Dynamics Corp.’s contract to maintain Stryker armored combat vehicles after the Pentagon’s inspector general found the terms led to excess spending of as much as $336 million, or 23 percent.

The no-bid contract resulted in “little, if any, cost risk for the contractor or incentive to control costs,” the inspector general said in an audit. The Army responded by starting a “business case analysis” of potential changes, according to Ashley Givens, spokeswoman for the service’s Ground Combat Systems.

Under contracts that began in 2002 and were awarded without competition, General Dynamics is paid to perform maintenance and to buy, store and issue spare parts for the Army’s 2,576 Stryker vehicles, which were built by the company.

The 19-ton, eight-wheeled vehicles have driven an estimated 40 million miles (64 million kilometers) during the Iraq and Afghan wars. Seventy-seven Strykers have been destroyed in battle since 2002, and 435 were damaged.

Since the first contract in May 2002, Army officials “have made no progress in converting the high-risk cost-reimbursable contract or portions to a preferred lower risk, firm-fixed contract,” the audit, dated June 18, found. “As a result, the Stryker contract was at a higher risk of misuse, waste and inadequate accountability.”

By: Brant

DoD Shifting Dollars Around - What're They For?

Every year, starting FYQ4 the DoD asks Congress to shift money around in their accounts. This year's "big shift" is to cover the costs of moving supplies to Afghanistan around Pakistan, who closed the border crossing. However, there are some other very interesting budget requests in the this year's document, as reported by DefenseNews.

The Army’s $1.7 billion in additional funding requests reflect operations in Africa, logistics in Afghanistan, and the highly touted Capability Set 13, which is being deployed to three brigade combat teams (BCTs) in October. Until now, there were no dollar figures available associated with the capability sets, which are part of the Army’s No. 1 priority to develop and field its new Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) battlefield network.

The document also included:

• $18.2 million for USSOCOM logistical support in its mission “to disarm the Lord’s Resistance Army” in Central Africa.

• $140 million to field Capability Set 13 to three BCTs.

• $59.4 million to install structural upgrades to Humvees to integrate Capability Set 13 to the first three brigade combat teams scheduled for fielding in fiscal 2013. The Army had repeatedly said that Humvees would not be part of the networking plan.

• $28.7 million “to procure command and control components within the Tactical Operations Centers” for Capability Set 13.

• $51.3 million for Capability Set 13 integration onto five variants of MRAPs, Humvees and Strykers.

Conversely, the backbone of Capability Set 13, the WIN-T communications network, is losing $334.6 million due to efficiencies gained by including it in the Army’s Network Integration Evaluation program. The Army says that the reduction in funding will not affect its planned fielding of eight BCTs in fiscal 2013, and six more in 2014.

By: Brant

"Low Overhead" Sims for Army Training?

It's nice that FOGN Michael Peck thinks that the Army is migrating toward lower-cost alternatives, but the truth is that it'll never happen. The Army will insist on ever-more-complex tools, which require more back-end contractors to run them. However, when the expense gets out of hand, rather than find lower-cost options to run the same number of exercises, they'll instead run fewer at the same highly-inflated cost. They did this for years w/ NTC, choosing to cancel rotations rather than scale back what happened on them.

ALOTT is designed to be used by non-geeks. But computer experts will still be needed to run the large-scale simulations at the regional simulation centers, and there will still be a need for “pucksters” to control computer-generated forces because the simulation’s artificial intelligence isn’t smart enough to send a column of tanks across a bridge without a traffic jam.

“No sim provider wants to stand in front of a commanding general and say, ‘Sir, your attack failed because automated unit X decided to turn left rather than right,’’’ Black said.

This statement from Black really pisses me off. The truth is that shit-fits-the-fan like that ALL. THE. TIME. Hmmmm... anyone heard of the 507th Maintenance Company? A scenario like that never happens in a JANUS exercise, but it happens every single time we go to war. We know it's going to happen in theater, so why not prepare for it at home-station training?

You know why: No commander wants to admit that his unit is the one dumb enough to do it.

By: Brant

COA Analysis: Budgets Spiraling Out Of Control

As fiscal crises deepen - just because an economy recovers doesn't mean future budgetary commitments evaporate - what do you expect to see come of the budgets?
Here are 4 potential courses of action to discuss...

What do you think might happen?


By: Brant

DoD is (sing it, Daltrey!) "Going Mo-BILE!"

The DoD has released their new mobile device "strategy".

The Department of Defense announced today the release of a mobile device strategy that identifies information technology goals and objectives to capitalize on the full potential of mobile devices. The strategy focuses on improving three areas critical to mobility: wireless infrastructure, mobile devices, and mobile applications, and works to ensure these areas remain reliable, secure and flexible enough to keep up with fast-changing technology.

“The Department of Defense is taking a leadership role in leveraging mobile device technology to improve information sharing, collaboration and efficiencies,” said Teri Takai, Department of Defense chief information officer. “As today’s DoD personnel become increasingly mobile, a wide variety of devices offers unprecedented opportunities to advance the operational effectiveness of the DoD workforce. This strategy will allow mobile activities across the department to converge towards a common vision and approach.”

The scope of the DoD mobile device user base is significant, with more than 250,000 commercial mobile devices and several thousand Apple and Android operating systems, including pilots. The Mobile Device Strategy is intended to align the progress of these various mobile devices, pilots and initiatives across DoD under common objectives to ensure the warfighter benefits from these activities and aligns with efforts in the Joint Information Environment.

“The DoD Mobile Device Strategy takes advantage of existing technology, the ability to use or build custom apps, and a workforce increasingly comfortable with mobile devices,” said Takai. “This strategy is not simply about embracing the newest technology -- it is about keeping the DoD workforce relevant in an era when information and cyberspace play a critical role in mission success.”

For further information about this strategy, please access http://www.defense.gov/news/dodmobilitystrategy.pdf

By: Brant

Drones To Keep Watch Over Canadian Arctic?

This might be one way for Ottawa to justify purchasing a reduced number of F-35 stealth fighters.

The federal government [of Canada] is considering a proposal to buy at least three high-altitude, unmanned aerial vehicles in what could be an attempt to salvage its Arctic sovereignty ambitions.

The pitch was made by U.S. defence contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. and involves modifying its existing Global Hawk drone, which can operate at 20,000 metres, to meet the rigours of flying in the Far North.

Many of the Conservative government’s plans to establish a presence in the rapidly thawing region, including the construction of military icebreakers and the establishment of a deepwater port, are behind schedule.
The U.S. Air Force is considering selling some of its Global Hawks, which are still under construction, as part of military budget cuts.

“It’s a capability that matches a need here in Canada,” Dane Marolt, Northrop Grumman’s director of international business development. “The Arctic is an issue for Canada. It’s also an issue for the United States. Unless you know what’s going on there, you can’t take any action.”

He says any potential purchase would have to go through the Pentagon, but adds the proposal given to the Canadian government includes aircraft, ground stations, spares and in-service support.

By: Shelldrake

Navy Secretary to Commission Submarine Mississippi Today

The Secretary of the Navy will commission the submarine USS Mississippi.

The Navy’s newest Virginia-class attack submarine Mississippi will be commissioned Saturday, June 2, 2012, during a 10 a.m. CDT ceremony at the Port of Pascagoula in Pascagoula, Miss.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus will deliver the ceremony’s principal address. Allison Stiller, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for ship programs, will serve as the ship’s sponsor. In the time-honored Navy tradition she will give the first order to "man our ship and bring her to life!"

The selection of Mississippi as the name for the submarine is dedicated to the state’s long-standing tradition of shipbuilding in support of our nation’s defense. It also honors the indomitable spirit of the people of Mississippi, who have made great strides in recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. This fighting spirit will be an inspiration to all sailors who embark aboard Mississippi.

There have been four previous ships named Mississippi. The first Mississippi, a side wheeler, served as Commodore Matthew Perry’s flagship for his historic voyage to Japan and fought with Admiral Farragut’s forces on the Mississippi River during the Civil War. The second and third were battleships, a BB-23 in World War I and a BB-41 in World War II. The fourth Mississippi, a Virginia-class nuclear guided missile cruiser, was decommissioned in 1997.

Designated SSN 782, the ninth ship of the Virginia class, Mississippi is built to excel in antisubmarine warfare; antiship warfare; strike warfare; special operations; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; irregular warfare; and mine warfare missions. Adept at operating in both the world’s shallow littoral regions and deep waters, Mississippi will directly enable five of the six Navy maritime strategy core capabilities -- sea control, power projection, forward presence, maritime security, and deterrence.

Capt. John McGrath, a native of Neptune, N.J., and a 1990 graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy, will be the ship’s commanding officer, leading a crew of approximately 134 officers and enlisted personnel.

The 7,800-ton Mississippi was built under a teaming arrangement between General Dynamics-Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industry-Newport News Shipbuilding and was delivered to the Navy one year ahead of contract schedule and under cost. Mississippi took just over 62 months to build, which set the record for the Virginia Class Submarine program's fastest delivery.

The boat is 377 feet long, has a 34-foot beam, and will be able to dive to depths of greater than 800 feet and operate at speeds in excess of 25 knots submerged. Mississippi is designed with a nuclear reactor plant that will not require refueling during the planned life of the ship -- reducing lifecycle costs while increasing underway time.

The commissioning will be aired live on the U.S. Navy’s Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/usnavy and Livestream channel http://www.livestream.com/usnavy beginning at 10 a.m. CDT (11 a.m. EDT). Join the conversation on Twitter #NewMiss .

By: Brant

Army's New Ground Combat Vehicle Contract. Yes, Again.

Some excellent background on how we got where we are today.

The GCV Infantry Fighting Vehicle is not a simple competition among existing vehicle types, though the global armored vehicle industry could easily have offered that. Instead, it was decided to run GCV as a clean sheet design for a new armored vehicle that would incorporate all of the lessons learned in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

“All” can be a dangerous goal for a military that needs on-time, on-budget, reasonably priced solutions. The initial GCV RFP resulted in design submissions that were reportedly in the 60-70 ton range. That’s almost double the weight of a 33 ton Bradley family vehicle, or of new designs like Korea’s K-21 KNIFV; and 50% higher than even heavy IFVs like Germany’s Puma and Britain’s FRES-SV. Indeed, it’s equivalent to a heavy main battle tank like the M1 Abrams.

The August 2010 GCV RFP cancellation resulted in a new RFP that emphasized use of “mature” technologies, but didn’t change some of the key requirements driving issues like weight, size and cost. Nor did it change the Army’s insistence on big performance increases in a number of areas.

Under the terms of its revised RFP, the GCV Program is driven to achieve a set of primary imperatives called the “Big Four”. These “Big Four” imperatives are defined as follows:

- Force Protection: Including protection against IED land mines. This is not a traditional strength of tracked vehicles lighter than main battle tanks, due to their flat bottoms.
- Capacity: vehicle crew and a fully-equipped 9 soldier Infantry squad. That’s relatively large. The Bradley carries just 6, and survivability needs and “space under armor” are the 2 requirement sets that do the most to determine vehicle size and weight. Which in turn affect costs.
- Full Spectrum: “A versatile platform able to adapt and/or enhance capabilities through configuration changes of armor and network while providing for growth over time in terms of size, weight, power and cooling.” This has been a steady trend in current IFVs over time, including the Bradley.
- Timing: A design that can have the 1st production vehicle delivered and accepted within 7 years of the TD phase contract award.
Under the revised September 2010 RFP, some requirements were “Tier 1”: specifically defined, and must be met. Tier 2 and Tier 3 requirements must be addressed, but the vendors are responsible for making tradeoffs among them. Vendors that DID talked to believe this left the Army with better solutions than they would otherwise have received.

Much more at the link. Go read.

By: Brant

COTS Networking Gets Military Workout

The Economist takes a quick trip to Ft Bliss to look into the current NIE.

It has been three weeks since the Ellisian army invaded next-door Attica. The United States, Attica’s ally, quickly deployed troops to help re-establish the international border, and had advanced more than 50 miles by May 16th.

The mission, however, was not an easy one. As well as facing rugged terrain and extreme weather, the American soldiers and Attican security forces had to contend with the radical Islamic Congress of Attica, the transnational Islamic Brotherhood for Jihad, the malicious hackers of the Wolf Brigade and the petty criminals of the area. Thank heaven it was, in fact, a staged exercise, running from Fort Bliss, in west Texas, through to the White Sands missile range, an army base in New Mexico. Some 3,800 soldiers and several thousand military and civilian personnel were taking part in this spring’s Network Integration Evaluation (NIE), the third round of a new twice-yearly series of exercises. Their point is to test how well fancy new mapping and messaging systems would stand up to the stresses of conflict in harsh conditions.

By: Brant

Navy to Christen USNS Cesar Chavez

We won't editorials on Cesar Chavez, and instead just point out that the US Navy will christen the USNS Cesar Chavez on Saturday evening.

The Navy will christen and launch the dry cargo/ammunition ship the USNS Cesar Chavez, Saturday, May 5, 2012, during a 7:30 p.m. PDT ceremony at the General Dynamics NASSCO shipyard in San Diego. The ship is named to honor prominent civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, who served in the Navy during World War II.

Juan M. Garcia III, assistant secretary of the Navy for manpower and reserve affairs, will deliver the ceremony’s principal address. Serving as the ship’s sponsor is Helen Fabela Chavez, widow of the ship’s namesake. The ceremony will include the Navy’s time-honored tradition of the sponsor breaking a bottle of champagne across the bow to formally christen the ship.

Continuing the Lewis and Clark class T-AKE tradition of honoring legendary pioneers and explorers, the Navy’s newest underway replenishment ship recognizes Mexican-American civil rights activist Cesar Chavez (1927-1993), who served in the Navy during World War II. Chavez later went on to become a leader in the American Labor Movement and co-found the National Farm Workers Association, which became the United Farm Workers.

Designated T-AKE 14, Cesar Chavez is the final of the Lewis and Clark dry cargo/ammunition ships, all of which will be operated by the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command. To help the Navy maintain a worldwide forward presence by delivering ammunition, food, fuel, and other supplies to U.S. and allied ships at sea, T-AKEs are serving as combat logistics force (CLF) ships. In support of the enhanced maritime prepositioning ship squadron concept of operations, two T-AKEs are being allocated to the maritime prepositioning squadrons to provide sea-based logistics support to Marine Corps units afloat and ashore.

As part of MSC, T-AKE 14 is designated as a united states naval ship and will be crewed by civil service mariners. This is the first Navy ship named after Chavez. For CLF missions, the T-AKEs’ crews include a small department of sailors.

Like the other dry cargo/ammunition ships, T-AKE 14 is designed to operate independently for extended periods at sea and can carry two helicopters and their crews. The ship is 689 feet in length, has an overall beam of 106 feet, has a navigational draft of 30 feet, displaces approximately 42,000 tons and is capable of reaching a speed of 20 knots using a single-shaft, diesel-electric propulsion system

By: Brant

Sound Off! Specialized Platforms or One-Size-Fits-All

Do you build your vehicle fleet on...

... distinct platforms for each system (AFV, tank, arty, etc)?
... a common platform that does many things "well" and nothing "excellent"?

Sound off below!

By: Brant

Congress Authorizing Continued M1 Abrams Purchases, Despite Army Needs

The Army says they don't need them. Congress doesn't care, and is continuing to fund purchases of M1 Abrams tanks beyond what the Army needs.

Despite the U.S. Army’s insistence that its tank fleet is in good shape, congressional support for additional funding for the M1 Abrams tank is growing, with 173 members of the House of Representatives asking Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to sustain tank production in the 2013 budget.

In an April 20 letter, lawmakers from both political parties say the new strategic guidance, which the Pentagon released in January, ignores the combat vehicle industrial base, which “is a unique asset that consists of hundreds of public and private facilities across the United States.”

For the M1 Abrams tank, the most important facility is the General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) production line in Lima, Ohio.

Every House member from the Ohio delegation, with the exception of Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, signed the letter.

The Army has told Congress that it would like to finish its Abrams buy in 2014 and then not begin upgrading its current fleet until 2017. Senior Army officials testified this spring that the decision was made to stop buying tanks it doesn’t need and instead to invest in higher priorities, such as aviation and providing a battlefield network.

So our force it too heavy, and it costs too much to train, and tanks have proven less-than-practical in current conflicts. But we're going to keep buying more. Yay, government budget (non)cuts!

By: Brant