Quotulatiousness

September 30, 2011

British defence minister tries to justify decommission of HMS Ark Royal and the Harrier

Filed under: Britain, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:19

In an update on the EMALS electro-magnetic catapult (things appear to be going well, which is good news for both the USN and the RN), Lewis Page finds the British defence minister still in full denial mode over the decision to scrap the navy’s last carrier and take the Harrier out of service:

The Royal Navy has been doing its best to overcome its current lack of carriers and Harriers in the Libyan campaign, instead inviting a group of the Army’s Apache attack choppers aboard the assault ship HMS Ocean. The Apaches have been doing useful work in the skies above Libya, which they can reach just minutes after taking off (as opposed to the hours it takes for land-based RAF jets to fly in from Italy or — as they are still routinely doing — all the way from the UK). Long haul operations by the RAF are putting its air-to-air tanker fleet under serious strain, and it will not have escaped carrier fans that the just commencing PFI tanker deal is set to cost much more than the Prince of Wales and sister ship Queen Elizabeth combined.

Defence minister Liam Fox made a bizarre statement on the question to reporters yesterday, claiming:

“Harrier could not have carried the weapons we have used to such great effect. They are too heavy. Harriers would have been no help to us at all. The critics have been silenced.”

The weapons used by the RAF so far have mainly been Paveway smartbombs and lightweight Brimstone anti-armour missiles, with a few dubious Storm Shadow air-launched cruise jobs mixed in (these latter missions are normally flown all the way from the UK).

The Harrier was the first British aircraft to be cleared for the latest Paveway IVs — the main weapon now in use by British planes over Libya — ahead of the Tornado and the Typhoon, as the RAF will tell you. It could also carry Brimstone. The Harrier GR9 could also carry Storm Shadow, supposing you actually wanted to.

September 21, 2011

F-22 flies again

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:21

The months-long grounding is over:

On September 21st, the U.S. Air Force will allow its F-22 fighters to fly again. The aircraft had been grounded for 140 days because of problems with the pilot’s oxygen system. The air force is not giving out many details on exactly what the problems is, although they say a report on the F-22 oxygen system will be out by the end of the year. Each F-22 will undergo a detailed inspection before it is cleared to fly. This may have something to do with earlier remarks about toxins somehow getting into the pilot’s air supply. The problem was always about something bad in the air supply. This has kept all 168 F-22s grounded since May. The only exception was a squadron based on the Virginia coast, that was given permission to fly out of the way of hurricane Karina. Those F-22s encountered no problems with their air supply.

[. . .]

During the grounding, pilots and ground crews used simulators and (for the ground crews) maintenance exercises on the grounded aircraft to keep their skills sharp. In addition, everyone helped checking out a growing list of aircraft components in support of the search for the breathing problem). The air force was also under time pressure to fix the problem. That’s because after 210 days on the ground, aircrew have to undergo extensive retraining to regain combat flying status. This added a little more urgency to fixing the problem quickly. The grounding also left a dozen F-22s stranded at a training base, where they were for live weapons exercises. At least six new F-22s could not be delivered because of the grounding.

September 19, 2011

How spendy will those whizzy F-35 aircraft end up being?

Filed under: Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

Strategy Page has a state-of-play report on the escalating cost of the F-35:

The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force are trying to agree on what the new F-35 fighter will cost. The air force insists that it is $65 million each, while the Department of Defense says when all costs are included; it will be more like $111 million each. Another number being debated is how many F-35s will actually be produced. The air force assumes 3,162, but the Department of Defense is not so sure that many will eventually be built. Total development cost is now put at $65 billion, which comes to over $20 million per aircraft if 3,162 are built. Development costs for the new U.S. F-35 fighter-bomber has grown by more than a third over the last few years. The additional development costs are accompanied by additional delays. Current estimates are that the F-35 will enter service in another 6-7 years. The Department of Defense believes production and development costs will continue to rise, and that the number to be built will decline. Both trends increase the average aircraft cost. Based on past experience, the higher Department of Defense estimates are more likely to be accurate.

And then there are operating costs. Earlier this year, after months of contentious disagreement, the U.S. Air Force came around to agreeing with U.S. Navy claims that the F-35 will cost much more to maintain, rather than (as the F-35 promoters assert) less. It was over a year ago that the U.S. Navy, after nervously watching as the manufacturing costs of the new F-35C and F-35B carrier aircraft increase, concluded that these aircraft would also be a lot more expensive to maintain. It comes down to this. Currently, it costs the navy, on average, $19,000 an hour to operate its AV-8 vertical takeoff or F-18C fighter aircraft. The navy calculated that it would cost 63 percent more to operate the F-35C (which will replace the F-18C) and the F-35B (which will replace the AV-8). These costs include buying the aircraft, training and maintaining the pilots, the aircraft and purchasing expendable items (fuel, spare parts, munitions.) The navy concluded that maintenance alone would be about a third more.

In a vicious circle, the higher the cost per plane, the fewer planes will be built, which increases the cost of the planes that do get built. At some point, the costs will get so high that foreign buyers (who are expected to buy more than half of the planned production) will reduce their orders or even back out altogether. The F-35 was supposed to be cheaper to operate than the aircraft it will be replacing, but that appears to be a badly mistaken estimate. That will also tend to ratchet down the foreign interest in purchasing the aircraft.

September 18, 2011

The Pentagon’s current big fear: the sequester

Filed under: Economics, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:17

George F. Will explains why Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense, is very worried about the outcome of the “supercommittee” deliberations:

This would take from military budgets nearly $500 billion, in addition to a minimum of $350 billion cuts already scheduled. An almost trillion-dollar trimming, Panetta says flatly, “cannot take place.” Actually, he knows it can: “The gun to the head could really go off.” Even without a sequester, the military “is going to be a smaller force.” And with a sequester? The 1.5 million active-duty members of the armed services and 700,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department depend on an industrial base of more than 3.8 million persons. According to the Pentagon, a sequester would substantially shrink those three numbers, perhaps adding a point to the nation’s unemployment rate. The cuts would leave the smallest Army and Marine Corps in more than a decade and the smallest tactical Air Force since this service became independent of the Army in 1947. The Navy has already shrunk almost to its smallest fleet size since World War I.

Time was, when Democrats looked at the defense budget with a skeptical squint, Republicans rallied ’round it. No more. Few tea partyers remember Washington’s hawk-versus-dove dramas. They live to slow spending, period. They are constitutionalists but insufficiently attentive to the fact that defense is something the federal government does that it actually should do. And when they are told that particular military expenditures are crucial to force projection, they say: As in Libya? Been there, don’t want to do that.

Much of the defense budget is consumed by pay and health care for uniformed personnel, who have been abused enough by repeated deployments. The priciest new weapon, the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (at least $90 million per plane), is vital for the continued salience of aircraft carriers, which are the basis of the U.S. strategic presence in the Western Pacific. Inferring China’s geopolitical intentions from its military purchases is difficult, but Panetta says guardedly that in five years China’s force projection will be “much better.” The Marines, with their smaller carriers, need a short-takeoff model F-35. Cut the number of planes built, the cost per plane rises, and the ability to recoup costs through sales to allies declines.

September 15, 2011

Is the end of the manned fighter plane at hand?

Filed under: Military, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:08

Yes, I know we’ve gone through this discussion before (and the comment thread on that first entry is still a good summary of the counter-arguments). Air-to-air combat has become only a small part of what the air forces of the world are expected to do: ground support, while generally disdained by air force brass hats, is the most common combat task now. Here’s the state of play, according to Strategy Page, as far as the future of air combat is concerned:

The last decade has revolutionized air warfare, and air forces. This revolution was brought about by two technologies (smart bombs and UAVs) that have been around for decades but, over a decade ago, became reliable and capable enough to have a decisive effect on warfare. Now UAVs armed with smart bombs are poised to replace manned aircraft. Moreover, the proliferation of GPS guided weapons and short range guided missiles have greatly reduced the need for ground strikes by manned or unmanned aircraft. Since World War II, air forces have demanded, and obtained, a disproportionate share of military budgets. No more.

[. . .]

Underlying all of this is the appearance of so many cheaper, reliable, precision weapons in the last decade. This has changed tactics on the ground. While the air force doesn’t like to dwell on this, it’s the war on the ground that is decisive, not what’s going on in the air. This proliferation of precision has also changed the way smart bombs were designed. With the ability to put a weapon within a meter of the aiming point (using laser guidance) or 5-10 meters (using GPS), smaller is now better, at least in urban areas where there are a lot of civilians about, troops have changed the way they fight. There is more movement in urban warfare because of all this precision firepower, and fewer friendly fire casualties from bombs and artillery. But it’s not just the air force and their smart bombs that have brought this on. The army had precision missiles on the ground long before JDAM came along. Now the army has more of them. Thus, over the last five years, there has been a competition between the army and air force to develop smaller, cheaper and more precise, missiles and bombs.

[. . .]

The air force is not happy about the army having a large force of armed UAVs. Many air force generals believe the army should not have the MQ-1C, or at least not use them with weapons. That has already caused some spats in the Pentagon over the issue, but so far the army has prevailed.

The army argument is that these larger UAVs work better for them if they are under the direct control of combat brigades. The air force sees that as inefficient, and would prefer to have one large pool of larger UAVs, that could be deployed as needed. This difference of opinion reflects basic differences in how the army and air force deploy and use their combat forces. The army has found that a critical factor in battlefield success is teamwork among members of a unit, and subordinate units in a brigade. While the air force accepts this as a critical performance issue for their aircraft squadrons, they deem it irrelevant for army use of UAVs. Seeing army MQ-1Cs doing visual and electronic reconnaissance and firing missiles at ground targets, the air force sees itself losing control of missions it has dominated since its founding in 1948.

[. . .]

Meanwhile, the navy has taken the lead in developing larger, jet propelled UAVs like the 15 ton, X-47B. This UAV uses a F100-PW-220 engine, which is currently used in the F-16 and F-15. The X-47B can carry two tons of bombs or missiles and maneuver like a jet fighter. The X-47B is fast and agile enough to carry out air-to-air missions. With the right software, it can do this autonomously (without human intervention). This is being worked on, and the navy already has perfected the software that enables a UAV to land on aircraft carriers.

The coming decade will see more and more UAVs replacing manned aircraft. Thus after only a century in action, manned combat aircraft are on their way out.

September 6, 2011

Turkey approaching combat situation with Israel?

Filed under: Media, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

Strategy Page has a summary of the situation:

Turkey’s Islamic government has backed itself into a corner by demanding Israel apologize for defending itself when halting the 2010 blockade-breaking ships. The Turks demand an apology, compensation and an end to the blockade. This, despite the fact that Hamas (and many other groups in Gaza) are recognized as international terrorists and that Turkish activists on the ships were videoed attacking the Israeli boarding party. The Turks will not back down, and now threaten to send warships to escort yet another group of blockade breakers. This is pretty extreme, as the Israeli Navy has a lot more combat experience, and the Turks would be in waters long patrolled by the Israelis. This could easily escalate into an air war, another area where the Israelis have a lot more experience. The Arabs and Palestinians are all for this, as the Israelis have consistently defeated Arab forces, but the Turks are seen as much more capable. But are they capable enough?

Here are links to earlier reports on the flotilla incident, Turkey’s conspiracy theorists, and the very weird world of Turkish media.

Update, 8 September: Turkey escalates the threat level for combat with Israel:

Turkish warships will escort any Turkish aid vessels to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, has announced.

He also said Turkey had taken steps to stop Israel unilaterally exploiting natural resources from the eastern Mediterranean, according to al-Jazeera’s Arabic translation of excerpts of an interview conducted in Turkish.

His comments came after Turkey’s ruling party said the country’s ties to Israel could be normalised if the Jewish state apologised for the killing of nine pro-Palestinian activists last year and accepted it should pay compensation to their families.

I am not a lawyer, but I’d imagine that an attempt to use naval vessels to break a legal blockade would be tantamount to a declaration of war. I have a hard time believing that Turkey is that eager to test Israel’s resolve (and military might).

August 28, 2011

Britain’s next military target?

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:29

James Delingpole tries to draw up a list of the next most likely place for David Cameron’s military adventure:

China

Pros: on the verge of taking over the world and enslaving us all; mines evil rare earth minerals in environmentally unfriendly fashion which Sam Cam, like, totally, like hates, even though it’s OK really because they go towards the wind farms which make Daddy nearly £1000 a day on his estates; a big, juicy target that would impress David Cameron’s Notting Hill friends way more than poxy Libya.

Cons: We’d lose

[. . .]

France

Pros: Would be hugely popular with the home crowd and guarantee re-election in 2015

Cons: Victory would depend, crucially, on whose turn it is to use the aircraft carrier.

[. . .]

The USA

Pros: Would send a clear signal to Guardianistas that Britain is not going to be “America’s poodle”; might well result in a sexy-sexy congratulatory tete a tete with Christine Lagarde; would make the Lib Dem element of the Coalition feel more at home than ever.

Cons: Our record of beating America in wars is not good. Then again, with a President as lame-duck as Obama in charge this could yet be our best hope.

August 17, 2011

RCAF finds that equipment is easier to obtain than trained crews

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

From Strategy Page:

Canada is finding it’s easier to buy new helicopters, than find the people it needs to operate and maintain them. Such is the case with a new CH-47 transport helicopter squadron, which will require 482 pilots, maintainers and support staff. Pilots are in training, as are some of the maintainers.

The problems is that the Royal Canadian Air Force has only 14,500 personnel and it’s difficult to round up 482 specialists for a new squadron. The new unit does not reach full strength until 2014, and three years is believed sufficient to recruit or transfer the people needed for the new unit. But maybe not, because it’s always a problem with smaller armed forces in this age of ever evolving technology. The U.S. Air Force has 330,000 personnel, and has been downsizing for the last two decades. All those people give you a lot more flexibility, and fewer problems in forming new units.

Canada has been leasing and trying to buy CH-47s for the past four years. That’s because the CH-47 is the best helicopter for use in Afghanistan, having proved able to deal with the dust and high altitude operations better than other transport choppers. The CH-47 has been engineered, over the years, to deal with the dust, and always had the engine power to handle high altitude operations. For these reasons, Canada is buying fifteen more CH-47Fs and forming another air force squadron to operate them.

August 16, 2011

Renaming isn’t enough

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:51

The National Post editorial board insists that mere renaming for the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force isn’t enough:

Should the unified Forces be replaced by the three original branches, as is expected from Tuesday’s announcement, many members of the military, past and present, will be delighted and indebted to the Conservatives for restoring the honour and pride of their beloved Navy, Army and Air Force. And if the move is limited to new flags and a nod to history, it is indeed something that Canadians should applaud.

But there is danger in allowing symbolic gestures to supplant firm, material support. It is ironic that the government seems set to make a symbolic move to please serving and retired naval personnel when the naval branch of the Canadian Forces is struggling to sustain itself for want of money and manpower, and operates a fleet of vessels in desperate need of modernization. The navy’s list of woes include losing more than 1,100 full-time members since 2004, despite the continued high demand for its services, a submarine fleet that is essentially undeployable and incapable of firing Canada’s stockpiled torpedoes, 40-year-old supply ships and helicopters that are overdue for replacement, and obsolete, elderly air-defence destroyers.

The government intends to begin a major shipbuilding program to replace dozens of navy and coast guard vessels within the next several years, but warships take a long time to build. It will be years before new vessels enter service or receive needed upgrades. The air force is also in need of major equipment purchases (the controversial F-35 purchase being the best known example) and even the army, despite investments made during the war in Afghanistan, needs more troops and equipment.

August 15, 2011

Navy and Air Force to be “Royal” again?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:12

Andrew Coyne linked to this article at the Huffington Post:

Canada’s navy and air force will get a royal name change Tuesday, The Huffington Post Canada has learned.

The Conservative government plans to announce that Maritime Command and Air Command, the official names of the two Canadian Forces’ units, will be returned to Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force, monikers last used in 1968. Simultaneous announcements on the name change are planned for Tuesday in Halifax, Kingston, Valcartier, Que., Cold Lake, Alta., and Esquimalt, B.C.

The Canadian army, which is officially called Land Command, will also be renamed simply Canadian Army.

The change is mostly symbolic and won’t affect how the Canadian Forces are run.

It may be “mostly symbolic”, but symbols matter.

Up yours, Mr. Hellyer.

July 28, 2011

F-22 fleet still grounded due to pilot oxygen supply problems

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

Earlier this month, I linked to an article about the F-22 oxygen problems. According to Strategy Page, the problem still has not been resolved:

The U.S. Air Force is making some progress in finding out what is wrong with their F-22s. It appears that some toxins are somehow getting into the pilot’s air supply. This has kept all 168 F-22s grounded for three months, so far. Despite the new findings, the air force still has not nailed down the exact cause of the problem, much less fixed it. The U.S. Navy had a similar problem with its F-18s (there were 64 incidents between 2002-9, resulting in two dead pilots). The navy found that the problem was carbon monoxide getting sucked into the aircraft air system (which the navy modified, eliminating the problem). The air force is looking into the navy experience with these similar problems, to see if there is anything similar going on with the F-22s.

July 4, 2011

More on the British MoD shake-up

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:26

Lewis Page has more on the British government’s major re-organization of the Ministry of Defence:

In outline, the three single services — and their chiefs — will lose massively in power and influence: and there will be an attempt to create a Joint Forces Command which will be the first step towards a future in which the services actually expect to work together as routine, rather than only when forced to or when there’s a war on.

The Levene report says that the First Sea Lord, the Chief of the General Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff — heads of the navy, army and air force respectively — should be booted out of MoD Main Building on Whitehall and made to go and sit in their service headquarters outside London. They will be allowed to leave behind only a small number of staff types to fight their Service’s corner in the corridors of power, and these rump contingents will be headed by mere two-star officers: a rear-admiral, a major-general and an air vice-marshal. If they commanded combat formations, such officers would be important indeed — the entire British Army can put into the field only one or two formations worthy of being commanded by a major-general — but among the mandarins of Whitehall, many of whom are equivalent to three-, four- and even five-star military officers, they will be insignificant small fry.

[. . .]

Or in other words, the Service heads may retain their headquarters, maps etc but in fact they will almost never be in charge of what their people are doing: another blow to their prestige, and another boost for that of the Joint Force Command.

If all this happens, it will be a fairly seismic shift at the MoD: the Joint way of doing business might actually gain ascendance, as any smart officer would have his sights set on an interesting career at PJHQ and the Joint command in Whitehall, actually involved with operations and action, rather than boring routine work in his Service HQ out of town sorting out training and recruitment and leave rosters etc.

It’s probably a good thing, as anyone who knows the MoD would admit that foolish interservice squabbling is one of the main factors paralysing it. That said, any such knowledgeable person would enter the caveat that Joint could be a disaster if it turned out merely to mean one Service achieving dominance over the other two (which would be the most disastrous varies with the commentator).

Britain’s overdue defence reforms

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

Britain has, proportional to American forces, four times the number of general officers. This is a visible sign of an unbalanced force. The current government has announced some changes that may begin to correct this problem:

George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, reportedly observed that the defence budget was “the most chaotic, the most disorganised, the most overcommitted.” In addition to the 8% cut in its funding (over four years) demanded as part of the government’s fiscal-austerity plan, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has somehow to close an unfunded liability of £38 billion ($61 billion) up to 2020. This week, just before announcing a major shake-up of the way his department and the armed forces are run, Dr Fox said: “The future defence programme was worse than a delusion — it was a deliberate lie.”

The problem with correcting long-term issues like those in the MoD is that you have to maintain the active forces at a minimum level of effectiveness while addressing issues that may have been developing for a generation. I’ve mentioned in earlier posts how the most effective arm of the British forces in the last ten years has clearly been the Royal Air Force — not so much for their performance of their military duties, but for the skill with which they outmatched the army and the Royal Navy in bureaucratic infighting. The RN has been gutted, losing their force projection capabilities (the aircraft carriers), the army has been left over-extended and lacking airlift capabilities, while the RAF has kept their core anti-Soviet flying white elephants almost completely untouched by budget cuts.

At the heart of Lord Levene’s plan is a new slimmed-down Defence Board, the MoD’s senior decision-making body, which will be chaired by the secretary of state and will no longer include the three service chiefs. There will be a fresh emphasis on integrating the armed forces through the establishment of a Joint Forces Command led by a four-star officer. That will bring together capabilities such as logistics, planning, intelligence, cyber and some equipment purchases. Dr Fox sees the Joint Forces Command as both an important organisation in its own right and a symbol of the ethos of co-operation and flexibility he wants to cultivate.

One consequence is that the role of the three service chiefs in influencing departmental strategy and resource allocations will be sharply reduced. They will be kept busy by being given greater responsibility for managing their own budgets. Lord Levene also wants to see a halt to the merry-go-round of staff changes that undermines accountability by insisting that senior military and civilian staff should stay in their posts for at least four years.

June 24, 2011

Cato Institute: The President doesn’t take an oath to the UN charter

Filed under: Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:08

June 18, 2011

When even the Guardian says it’s unconstitutional…

Filed under: Africa, Government, Law, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:20

…it’s very likely that it is unconstitutional:

On Wednesday, the White House provided Congress with a report on US operations in Libya. This report claims that the US military’s ongoing involvement in Libya does not amount to “hostilities” and, as such, does not require the approval of Congress. In this assertion, the Obama administration is engaging in legal spin of the worst kind.

While the president is the commander-in-chief of the US military, since the passage of the War Powers Resolution in 1973, Congress has required that the president seek congressional approval for combat operations continuing after a period of 60 days. This resolution expanded the implied authority of Congress that stems from the constitutional power of Congress to declare war. While the US supreme court has not visited the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution, the resolution’s precedence has motivated all presidents since Nixon to seek approval (if sometimes indirectly) for relevant US military deployments abroad. This included President George W Bush with regard to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the case of Iraq, while a senator, Obama was inclined to a highly assertive consideration of the reach of congressional war authority. In this context, that the Obama administration is now arguing US military involvement in Libya does not require authorisation from Congress is patently absurd. In terms of both material support and strategy, the US is unquestionably engaged in hostilities against the Libyan regime.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress