Rapid Fire 2011-11-24: 10kW Lasers

• Cost-effective procurement: How to break over 500 jihadis out of Kandahar prison, for $20,000. As told by the the operation’s planners to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s “Voice of Jihad.”

• DCNS’ Gowind Class offshore patrol vessel L’Adroit is headed for Toulon NB, to begin its 3-year promotional tour as a French Navy ship.

• Israel’s F-35i fleet will be based at Nevatim AB as of 2015, when they’re scheduled to arrive in Israel.

US-South Korea Rift? Of Tiger Eyes & Industrial Spies

ROKAF F-15K

In late November 2011, South Korea’s left-wing Hankyoreh newspaper reports that a combination of unauthorized examination of an F-15K’s Lockheed Martin “Tiger Eyes” IRST(InfraRed Search and Track) sensor, and concerns that a number of South Korean products contain copied technologies, have halted “strategic weapons exports” from the USA to South Korea. That reportedly includes the proposed RQ-4B Global Hawk deal.

The allegations are single-source, and written by Hankyoreh, but they are also quite detailed:

Rapid Fire 2011-11-23: Information Operations Doctrine

• Libyan lessons learned have made new Airbus A330 MRTT aerial tankers a bigger priority for France, alongside their aging C-135FRs. An interim contract for 5-7 A330 MRTT planes is now expected in 2013.

• Rheinmetall Defence and ADS GmbH successfully demonstrate their AMAP Active Defense Systems against an RPG-7 rocket, protecting a Fuchs wheeled vehicle. This technology is growing in importance on modern battlefields, because tandem-warhead missiles can beat armor defenses.

• Ghana’s 1st C295 light transport plane arrives.

• Distributed AWACS? Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have adopted the SABR AESA fighter radar into a Vigilance pod that can be carried on its future carriers’ AW101 Merlin Mk2 naval helicopters, and on RAF transport aircraft. Could more + cheaper + networked end up being better?

• Research nonprofit RAND investigates whether applying a rotational equipping strategy can help the US Army save money.

• The US Army War College updated its Information Operations (IO) primer [PDF], mostly to reflect the DoD’s latest strategic and organizational changes in the cyberspace realm. Recently US Army Lieutenant Colonel John A. Mowchan argued that maintaining ambiguity on the nature of the US military response in the digital domain would have benefits.

• US Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 1 (VMAQ-1) received the Phoenix Maintenance Award from DoD. The unit reduced the annual cost in ordered components almost by half while it supported 590 combat missions totaling 2,293 combat flight hours so far this year.

• US Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) compared the effects of the sequester [PDF] on spending by category. It is worth noting that DoD’s budget would still grow by 2% over the period between 2012 and 2021, but that’s in nominal terms and would mean a decline of more than 20% in real terms (i.e. with inflation factored in).

• Sappers of the 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion show a Bobcat dubbed “Minotaur” modified to detect IEDs in the video below:

Black Hawks for Brunei

S-70i

Thanks to its location on the oil-rich Island of Borneo, which it shares with Indonesia and Malaysia, the State of Brunei Darussalam is best known to most people as a frequent Guinness Book of World Records entry, with its Sultan as the world’s richest man. The former British protectorate also has a small but well trained and well equipped armed forces. As part of its ongoing modernization, the Royal Brunei Armed Forces Support Helicopter Project decided to replace the air force’s existing fleet of 10-11 Bell 212 twin-Hueys (1st squadron) and 4 Bo-105 helicopters (2nd squadron), with 12 of Sikorsky’s S-70i International medium utility helicopters. The RBAF already operates 4 earlier-model S-70 Black Hawks, and the S-70Is are expected to be delivered between 2013 – 2015. Once delivered, all RBAF assets are based at Brunei International Airport.

Brunei’s Defence White Paper Update 2007 included a requirement for a single wave tactical air lift, and the region’s history of typhoons, volcanoes, etc. makes helicopters very useful for regional humanitarian missions. A February 2011 Invitation to Tender opened the RBAF’s Support Helicopter Project competition to 4 vendors. In July 2011, Brunei’s MINDEF decided that Sikorsky and Eurocopter were the finalists…

Rapid Fire 2011-22-11: Supercommittee’s Kryptonite | Amphibious Warfare Ships

• It’s confirmed: the Super Committee might have come close, but ultimately failed to reach an agreement. SecDef Panetta declared that “Congress cannot simply turn off the sequester mechanism” but also hinted that the nation deserves better than the outcome of the sequester. Predictably, HASC Chairman McKeon (R-CA) announced he’ll soon introduce a bill to roll back the sequestration mechanism before it kicks in. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) plan to do the same in the upper chamber. President Obama preemptively threatened to veto any such legislation. The Administration will have to show its cards by February when it submits the FY13 President budget. Will it assume sequestration takes place or not? And since sequestration doesn’t kick in until 2013, this might have to wait until after the 2012 election, for the new Congress to expedite in December ’12. Expect to hear about it in tonight’s Republican primary debate, and as an ongoing campaign issue.

• The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report on the Navy’s amphibious warfare ships, reckons the Navy will fall short of its “unconstrained demand” as stated last year.

• The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission released its annual report to Congress [PDF] last week, reviewing among other topics China’s military developments and its “Area Control Strategy.” The report states: “In order to defeat a superior opponent, the Area Control Strategy emphasizes degrading an opponent’s technological advantages; striking first in a conflict; and establishing military control over China’s periphery, especially the maritime region off of China’s eastern coast.”

• US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) is pressuring the Obama administration on F-16 sales to Taiwan: his letter | Taipei Times.

• Military cooperation between the US and Australia may lead to the development of joint military facilities on Cocos Islands in the Indian ocean.

• The transfer of dock landing ship Foudre from France to Chile is confirmed [in French] and will happen next month, as well as training of Chilean personnel. Defense ministers Gerard Longuet (FR) and Andres Allamand (CL) discussed increasing their naval cooperation in the Pacific ocean.

• Poland’s defense spending looks set to increase more than in most other European countries in the next few years.

• In the UK a fleet of 38 Merlin helicopters has been grounded earlier this month because of problems with their computerized recording systems.

Indonesia Adding F-16 Falcon Fighters to Join Flankers

TNI-AU F-16A

Indonesia’s purchases of Russian SU-27SK and SU-30MKK Flanker-family fighters in 2003 and 2007 got a lot of attention. Now, the country is augmenting those 10 high-end fighters with more advanced models of an older aircraft within its fleet: 24 refurbished F-16s from the USAF.

The F-16 has a checkered history in Indonesia’s TNI-AU. The Indonesian military’s widespread murders and abuses in East Timor led to a 1999 US arms embargo, which created severe maintenance problems with its 12 remaining F-16A/B Block 15s, and its 16 remaining F-5E/F fighters. The US embargo lifted in November 2005, as lingering concerns about human rights accountability were trumped by the needs of a global campaign against Islamic terrorism. Which left Indonesia wondering what to do about its fighter fleet, as its economy picked up speed.

• Who Will Flank the Flankers?
  
• Contracts & Key Events
  
• Additional Readings
  

Rapid Fire 2011-11-21: F-35 Commitment | Australian, British Soldier Gear

• U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said during the Halifax International Security Forum last Friday: “I feel very confident that we’ll get funding for the F-35 program”. A day later Senator John McCain (R-AZ) answered: “We want the F-35 to succeed. We’re not opposed to the F-35. But we have obligations to our taxpayers.” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey tried to walk back his comment from last month and told reporters he “didn’t have a cross hair on the F-35.” Acting defense acquisition undersecretary Frank Kendall went to Lockheed Martin’s plant in Fort Worth, TX where final assembly takes place.

• This while the Super Committee looks dead on arrival: Politico | Roll Call. Next likely step for defense budget battles: attempts to unwind the Budget Control Act of 2011′s automatic sequester before it kicks in by 2013. This is probably the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.

• US federal agencies that don’t pass a clean audit this year: the Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security.

Abuelo Hercules: Latin American Programs

Argentine C-130s

Latin American air forces operate a wide variety of equipment, but American aircraft still play a prominent role. Some are new, but as one might expect in a region with constrained military budgets, many air forces are flying aging legacies of past purchases. They must be replaced at some point, and Brazil’s industry is making steady inroads on that basis, selling EMB-314 Super Tucanos to replace American OA-37 Dragonflys, and gearing up to replace American C-130 Hercules aircraft with Embraer’s KC-390.

Even with longer-term replacements afoot, however, the mathematics of force numbers and budget numbers continue to make upgrades, life extension programs, and second-hand transfers attractive. Recent announcements of C-130 projects in Argentina and Peru show that dynamic in action.

Rapid Fire 2011-11-18: Cyberer Than Thou | Full Motion Simulator

• US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, CT to defend the principle of a sustained industrial base. EB announced earlier this month that it will lay off 52 people next January.

• The FY12 defense authorization bill is still hung in the US Senate because of detainee policy. The White House threatened a veto if they don’t get language they like. The Senate approved a related bill introduced by Jack Reed (D-RI) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) reducing the Air Force’s strategic airlift aircraft inventory minimum from 316 to 301 aircraft.

• While the Pentagon updated is cyberspace policy report [PDF] to Congress a few days ago, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is trying to append cybercrime language to the aforementioned authorization bill, just in case it was not stalled enough already. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to debate more comprehensive cybersecurity legislation in early 2012. A couple such bills have been in the work for several years. Even the SEC has an opinion.

• It looks like the 3% contractor tax withholding law is going to stay dead after it was repealed unanimously in the US House of Representatives on Wednesday.

• Acquisition lingo clarification: though “program of record” is widely used to describe programs that passed milestone B and will get funded, it is not an actual official DFARS term.

• Raytheon and the UAE’s EAI are set to begin production of their TALON 70mm laser-guided rockets.

• Mexico takes delivery of its 1st CN-235 maritime patrol aircraft.

• Next time you have a Power Point presentation to give, try this. We’ve added it to our “Sharpen Yourself” article on the subject.

• Deakin University’s Centre for Intelligent Systems Research in Australia is showing their new motion simulator with an eye of flight simulation thanks to its ability to rotate continuously and simultaneously around 2 axes, as per the video below:

Derailed Denouement in Dubai: What’s Up With the UAE’s Fighter Deal?

Eurofighter over Dubai

With the 2011 Dubai Airshow in full swing, the biggest question on site is: what’s happening to the UAE’s planned fighter deal? The United Arab Emirates’ interest in up to 60 Dassault Rafale fighters has seen years of negotiations, and the 2011 show was expected to be the clincher.

Instead, it has opened the door to Eurofighter GmbH, even as Boeing admits to giving classified technical briefings centered on its F/A-18 Super Hornet and F-15 Strike Eagle families. Unlike Eurofighter, Boeing hasn’t received an RFP, but other reports suggest that the UAE may be about to reduce its planned new jet order and buy more of its unique Lockheed Martin F-16E/F Block 60s, regardless of what happens next. The bombshell hit at Dubai’s 2011 air show.