Lots of F-35 news today.
Defense
- The F-35 has flown its first combat mission – Good job, Marines. Extra credit for flying off of a ship called Essex.
- Foxtrot Alpha on the F-35 crash – It was an F-35B, so the smart money is on some vertical landing problem.
- The British once again have a carrier capable of supporting modern aircraft – HMS Queen Elizabeth may be uncommonly ugly, even for an aircraft carrier, but welcome back to the carrier club, Royal Navy! The shipboard rolling vertical landing is an interesting technique, and although I don’t believe they’ve tested it yet, it should do wonders to increase the F-35’s bringback weight in British service.
- If you can’t deploy, you can’t be a sailor, Navy says – Seems… accurate? Uncontroversial?
- US Patriot systems to be removed from the Middle East – Israel: “Okay, we’ll just use ours.”
- US carrier deployments hit a 25-year low – Alternate title: sustainment and tempo are hard.
- The US tweaks China by overflying the South China Sea – If we really want to get on their nerves, we should change that body of water’s name to the West Philippine Sea.
- Boeing-Saab consortium wins the T-X contract – As a massive Saab fanboy…
- Infantry carry too much, October 2018 edition – Parvusimperator says they don’t get any credit for the reporting, because they don’t suggest any fixes.
- The USAF wants 386 squadrons; how do they get there? – My preferred method would be large sacks with $ printed on, but that seems unlikely.
- MiG-31 roles may include anti-satellite attacks – Well, it is super-fast and high-altitude-capable. That’s pretty much what you want to hit something in orbit.
- USNI Proceedings with a long piece on littoral submarine operations – My bread and butter.
- Weaponsman on paratroopers vs. tanks in the late Second World War
- The War Thunder crew measures the Abrams
- The Navy’s transition from C-2A to CMV-22B for COD continues – Still no word on how they’re going to move spare F-35 engines.
- India prepares to buy S-400s; US prepares to impose sanctions – Or, and I’m just spitballing here, we could let India buy S-400s, then ask nicely to see their new toys, then see their new toys, because the Indians are generally our friends and are often willing to bring fancy, modern Russian export gear to American exercises.
Guns (etc.)
- Geissele’s Nano-Composite Coatings have been released – After 450,000 simulated rounds, the hammer hadn’t even worn through its place on the bolt carrier. That’s really something.
Miscellaneous
- A particle discovery which upends the Standard Model? – Could be.
- Real-life Dr. Nick isn’t nearly as funny as Simpsons Dr. Nick – It’s mind-boggling that this went on for as long as it did.
Did you lads see the GAO aircraft sustainment report for September?
https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/694408.pdf
We did. I don’t recall if we put it in a What We’re Reading post, but if we didn’t, we’ll include it next week, too.
Flipping through it again, I do remember these lines:
being most annoying. Understandable, but annoying.
As always, thank you for the link.
I’m pretty sure infantry have been overloaded from the get go – what’s another study going to prove?
All leg issues aside, I always look at bio’s of articles – said author was a bat boy, so perhaps he rode around in strikers too much…
So when I was looking at the bio, I noticed he was tagged on the following article:
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/05/b-21-bomber-should-be-unmanned-day-1/128714/?oref=d-river
Manned / unmanned B-21 aside, I wonder if anyone has proposed a non-LO (ala no coatings) B-21 for more flying hours (or cheaper per hour)? Perhaps the lack of LO treatment would totally screw with aerodynamics… Plus if you did thing right, you could totally keep anyone that cared guessing (scrap tail specific markings) – make every tail visually identical.
What’s the point of the flying wing if you’re dropping the LO? If the environment is permissive enough that your subsonic B-21 doesn’t need to worry about radar air defense, just use a cheap B-52.