Ares: A Defense Technology Blog

South American Arms Race?

Citing concerns about an emerging threat to his country, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday he will develop a missile defense capability, according to the Associated Press. However, as the AP points out, given the United States' struggles to develop an impenetrable missile defense despite billions of dollars in investment, Chavez' plans are not expected to include anything approaching an advanced missile shield.

Gun Show

Boeing has started flight testing the AC-130U Gunship with the new Bushmaster 30 mm cannons at Hurlburt Field, Fla. The 30 mm cannons will eventually replace 40 mm cannons and 25 mm gun on the U-model.

Boeing is upgrading four of the gunships for U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command.

Back when the installation of the 30 mm cannon was completed in February, Lt. Col. Mike Gottstine, AFSOC's chief of strike, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements, said in an Air Force press story that the Bushmaster fires 200 rounds a minute, faster than the 40 mm but slower than the 25 mm. But, Gottstine said the 30 mm doesn't scatter the "lead" quite as much as the 25 mm. "We're expecting increased lethality and increased accuracy with this weapon," he said. "Hits are what counts."

--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth

4/30 Frago

+ Apaches kicking tail in Afghanistan (with video) (via A5)

+ Mike: F-22s for Japan would be great. DSCA: They can't afford them. (via A5)

+ More on the F-22:

• 1st joint drill with Japan (via A5)
• Mi$$ion creep - justifying the high cost of 5th gen

+ DEW Line four-part series on the CSM [1] [2] [3] [4]

+ Never thought we'd see the day: USAF relying on Russian airlift

Warthogs' Secret Haunt

The Air Force’s A-10 Warthog squadrons attend a secret training exercise in rural Florida to prepare for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The exercise involves jets, pilots and maintainers deploying to an “austere” airfield and practicing round-the-clock bombing and strafing in difficult conditions. Predeployment training in this vein is nothing new: many units do it annually; but rarely is it shrouded in such secrecy.

Hawks Attack EADS

The Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank led by former Reagan-era Defense Department official Frank Gaffney, has churned out a heckuva list of anti-EADS talking points just in time for the Boeing-EADS debate in Washington over future U.S. Air Force tanker aircraft.

"Before EADS can become a U.S. defense partner, it and its owners must first prove themselves worthy of our trust," the center says in an 11-page statement titled "EADS is Welcome to Compete for U.S. Defense Contracts – But First It Must Clean Up Its Act."

V-22: Another View

David gets it right in pointing out that the V-22's speed will be an advantage in the mission that the Marines intend to fly in Iraq.  Criticisms of the tilt-rotor's vulnerability overlook the fact that the V-22 is not going to be descending into a hot landing zone, Apocalypse Now-style, with guns blazing. The en-route threat is more important in Iraq, and higher speed is a blessing. The Marines have developed tactics that take advantage of speed, rapid acceleration and deceleration and low noise to achieve surprise. (On the other hand, those will be harder to implement in operations that involve other helicopters as well as V-22s.)

However, I expect that reliability will still be a challenge. 

Spookle Earth

Aviation Week's Craig Covault reports in the latest issue that the National Reconnaissance Office is going commercial in its urgent search for a stopgap optical imaging system. The NRO, Covault reports, is starting a several-hundred-million-dollar procurement for camera-carrying satellites, and the leading contenders to meet the requirements are commercial providers GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. The two US companies already operate satellites that provide unclassified high-resolution images for commercial and government users, including the vivid images that make GoogleEarth so addictive.

Cleo Nominee: LCS

Bill sends in this nominee for the Cleopatra Award (seemingly snake-bitten projects):

As I linked yesterday, there was a fire on the LCS Freedom Wednesday morning.

Like having your sister ship canceled for massive cost-overruns wasn't enough...

--Sean Meade

Supplemental Gaps

House and Senate appropriators have crafted a compromise Fiscal 2007 defense budget supplemental that eliminates a number of aircraft requests – including the Joint Strike Fighter and Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter. And while some combat losses were replaced, industry analysts say they only paper over some systemic shortages.

For example, the sophisticated discipline of airborne electronic attack (AEA) received support in the form of adding another EA-18G Growler to the program approval for low rate initial production. In addition, the addition of the ICAP-III electronic attack system to the Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler was made a program of record. Also approved is appropriate software, Mids/Link-16 datalinks, communications jammer upgrades and the very important low band transmitters which are crucial for protecting stealth aircraft from detection.

However, it leaves dangerous gaps.

USMC Fixed Wings

Chris Meyers writes in with this question:

Why does the USMC need fixed wing attack aviation?  I understand the need for rotary wing aviation, the V-22, and cargo lift such as the C-130, but why F/A-18s and Harriers?  Aren't the Air Force and Navy currently serving the CAS role competently?  Couldn't we use American taxpayer dollars more wisely towards our National Security Strategy or just save the billions of dollars in order to balance our annual budget deficit (and therefore strengthen the value of the US dollar and improve our national security through that front)?

Our inimitable Bill Sweetman replies:

Or, as I have heard it expressed:  The United States has an Air Force, an Army and a Navy. The Navy and the Army have their own air forces. The Navy has its own army. But why does the Navy's army need its own air force?

The formal answer is that the Marines have a unique role as a mobile, integrated force that can move into a crisis area, wait offshore if necessary and then land and engage the enemy with no support from other forces. To do this, their forces are carried on ships. They are equipped with land fighting vehicles; transport helicopters, hovercraft and amphibious vehicles to get troops and machinery ashore;  and armed helicopters and fighters to provide close air support and air defense for the troops once they are on shore. Apart from the ships, all this hardware belongs to the Marines (is "organic", in Milspeak) because they fight and train together.