US special operators are notoriously low-profile “silent professionals.” But lately the Internet’s been abuzz over Special Operations Command’s effort to build a high-tech suit of bulletproof armor – TALOS, the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit – that the normally understated chief of SOCOM, Adm. William McRaven, actually compared to the metal-clad superhero Iron Man.
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UPDATED: Latest Theory Is The Helo Is From Chinese Museum. No Proof.
A photo of a helicopter that looks quite a bit like an American Apache AH-64 attack helicopter on a truck has surfaced in China. The experts agree on one thing: they aren’t sure what the aircraft is or what it portends.
What do we know? The Chinese have been trying to develop attack helicopters like the Apache for more than a decade. One is a variant based on the Z-9, but it reportedly has limited manueverablity and a pretty light weapons load. The WZ-10 flew at a Chinese air show last year, with its designer claiming it’s already one of the three best attack helicopters in the world.
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Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.
WASHINGTON: Because China believes it is much weaker than the United States, they are more likely to launch a massive preemptive strike in a crisis. Here’s the other bad news: The current US concept for high-tech warfare, known as Air-Sea Battle, might escalate the conflict even further towards a “limited” nuclear war, says one of the top American experts on the Chinese military.
[This is one in an occasional series on the crucial strategic relationship and the military capabilities of the US, its allies and China.]
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In a culture where even soccer moms now sport tattoos and soccer-themed “tramp stamps” (click the links for some examples), the Army’s recent decision to ban all visible tattoos has prompted a “WTF?” heard round the world.
Just watch the video above.
But there’s method to the Army’s madness. This is just one small step in the service’s campaign to raise standards and discipline after it opened the floodgates to felons, high school dropouts, and other dubious recruits when it boosted its ranks at the height of the Iraq war.
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It’s difficult enough for one ship to find and sink another ship. It may not be quite as hard for planes flying from an aircraft carrier to find enemy ships and sink them, but it’s not easy. The hardest task for a plane — especially a land-based plane — may be to find a small boat and sink it while it’s moving.
But that’s just what one of America’s B-1B bombers accomplished earlier this month.
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Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld, Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, speaking to the Association of the US Army Thursday night.
ARLINGTON: A candid Vice-Chairman of the Joint Staff delivered some tough messages to the Army yesterday and got in a few swipes at Congress and “the political leadership” in general.
Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld’s raised the most hackles among the serving and retired officers gathered at the headquarters of the powerful Association of the US Army Thursday night when Winnefeld said the nation would probably not need an Army sized to do any large-scale, long-duration ground operations. The admiral did not only downplay the possibility of prolonged counterinsurgencies like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam, although he certainly emphasized the decline of COIN: He raised doubt about long wars of any kind.
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COMDEF: After decades without a significant new rotocraft technology, the head of Pentagon buying says he’s going to try and fund a new initiative to move helicopters and their brethren like the V-22 ahead.
It won’t be easy. “Anything is going to be very hard to squeeze into the budget,” Kendall told reporters during a Q and A session here. The US has not had any “cutting edge design for some time,” he said after a morning speech at the ComDef international defense conference.
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USS WASP: The Marines and Navy have spent most of the last three weeks putting the new F-35B through its paces here, executing more than 90 short takeoffs and vertical landings, including 19 at night.\
More than 1,200 Marine test pilots, engineers, experts from the Joint Program Office running the program and Navy and industry civilians are collecting enormous amounts of data from the two aircraft, BF-1 and BF-5, and the ship itself to ensure the planes are performing as they should. The Marine version of the Joint Strike Fighter is designed to take off from smaller aircraft carriers, some other Navy ships, roads and land bases. It can land vertically and usually does a short take off.
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WASHINGTON: Imagine: tiny sensors built into military combat gear to detect chemical or biological weapons; unseen sensors peppered throughout a submarine to detect radiation leaks or chemical contamination of the crew’s precious air; a cellphone — think Star Trek tricorder, flip it open, open the app and bingo! — able to detect the gas of explosives down to parts per trillion that helps to speed passengers through crowded airports. Or you could embed sensors in your refrigerator and it could tell you exactly what was spoiling and whether it was still safe to eat.
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AUVSI: Imagine a featherweight aircraft built of composites boasting an enormous 160 foot wing, swathed in solar cells that can take off at 20 mph and remain aloft for five years.
Yes, five years. The plane would fly at 65,000 feet, above most air traffic aside from the odd U-2 zooming past. It would, without a doubt, be the loneliest plane in history.
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