Posts Tagged ‘army’

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A Third Drone Defense System: Microwave EMP

Sunday, October 20th, 2024

About an hour after I posted yesterday’s piece on anti-drone defense systems, a video showing a third possibility dropped: The Epirus Leonidas High Powered Microwave system.

  • “Rather than being a point and shoot offensive weapon, Leonidas is meant to provide defensive area coverage, creating less a contiguous force field in the surrounding area and more an area of denial where no unfriendly drone system can operate.”
  • “The core of the Leonidas system is its use of high power microwave energy fired in beams that create an electromagnetic pulse or EMP.”
  • “EMPs are nothing new in modern warfare, and their effects are well known, primarily their ability to disable electronic systems.”
  • “But rather than, say, the natural EMPs that come from lightning strikes, or the uncontrolled EMPs that result from the detonation of nuclear weapons, the EMPs that come from the Leonidas system are able to be channeled precisely.”
  • “Cutting in a wide beam, they can fry anything in their path neutralizing say an oncoming drone swarm all at once, orthey can focus on precise individual targets, sniping drones out of the sky one by one as soon as they violate perimeters.”
  • “Using specialized transistors rather than traditional magnetrons to generate its microwave beam, Leonidas is considered more compact than would otherwise be expected for a weapon of this kind, and at a relatively low cost of energy expenditure.”
  • “It can focus a beam for a relatively long duration of time, or fire off shots in Rapid succession relying on a digitally beamformed antenna that beam is kept tight and highly precise, such that it’s unlikely that nearby friendly drones will be impacted when the beam is targeted against a single foe.”
  • “Leonidas can fire very rapidly without overheating, and its effect on a target is near instantaneous, rather than needing to train the beam on the target for any length of time. It doesn’t require reloading, and its voltage is low enough that humans nearby aren’t in danger from its emissions.” All of this sounds almost too good to be true.
  • “It’s efficient, it’s easily transported, and by all indications it’s highly effective against the consumer grade drone technology that the US military is so worried about. Any drone of that sort that comes into Leonidas’s protective bubble will be fried, regardless of the specific internal electronics.”
  • It too can fit on a Stryker. It can also fit in the back of a pickup truck “without too much trouble.”
  • “The system has been adapted into an aerial attachment pot, giving it the option to be fitted onto a heavy lift drone of its own and defend in midair.”
  • “It’s just as successful in stopping fully autonomous drones that don’t require active operator control in order to function.”
  • Can also take out sea drones.
  • Designed to be modular and upgradeable.
  • “The ground-based version is ready for testing. In January of 2023, the U.S. cut the Epirus corporation a check for $66 million after it beat out six different competitors, with the expectation that the check would be used to develop four prototypes as soon as possible. 14 months later, all four prototypes have been delivered and for about half a year now, they’ve been in the hands of the US government.” Some are reportedly being tested in the middle east.

    • There was also a Scientific American piece late last year that covered the system.

    Called Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2, the U.S. program will include a range of technologies—guided-missile interceptors, high-energy lasers and high-power microwave blasters—to shoot down multiple threats and provide a layered defense against weapons such as drone swarms. Each of these technologies is already in development and being readied for troops over the next two years.

    IFPC’s high-power microwave component should be ready for operational use as soon as next summer. In January the Army tapped a Los Angeles–based company called Epirus to build four prototype microwave systems as one layer of its planned IFPC. These prototypes are versions of Epirus’s Leonidas system. Each one sits on a wheeled trailer that can be detached for remote operation and has a square panel that rests on a gimbal so it can pivot 360 degrees. This panel is packed with software-controlled radio frequency amplifiers that tailor the energy and frequency of the microwave blast.

    “The Leonidas design incorporates a lot of lessons identified coming out of Ukraine and a lot of forecasting into what we think a fight in the Western Pacific might look like,” says Aaron Barruga, vice president of federal growth at Epirus.

    Leonidas’ HPM prototype passed muster with Army evaluators in early November, and testing is underway as the Army develops tactics, techniques and procedures for the system’s operational use. The goal is to put the four prototype high-power microwave weapons into the hands of operationally deployed units—possibly in the Middle East—next summer.

    All of this sounds a bit too good to be true. Designing microwave ICs means dealing with mixed signal and analog design, and analog is something of a dark art. RF engineers are in high demand and pricey when you find them. Various microwave weapons have been announced over the years, and none seem to have made it to volume production.

    We’ll see how the army tests go…

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    Posted in Military, video | 9 Comments »

    Why The Army Wants The M1A3 Abrams

    Sunday, September 15th, 2024

    Or, more specifically, why they decided to do the M1A3 rather than than M1A2SEP4. And the main reason is weight.

  • “This list of proposed capabilities for the new design that include:
    • An autoloader
    • New main gun new turret
    • Hypersonic gun launched missiles that maneuver in midair
    • The ability to pair with robots
    • Masking capabilities to reduce thermal and electromagnetic signatures
    • AI systems that detect incoming fire and prioritize return fire
    • Hybrid electric drivetrain
    • Reduction of crew from 4 to 3.
    • Reduction of weight from 75 tons down to sub 60 tons.
    • But the coolest thing is it’ll likely get a brand new sleek hull for the first time in 30 years.”
  • “US Army leadership [is] reversing course on decades of tank design philosophy to do a last minute complete overhaul from the ground up based on new lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.”
  • The gun-launched anti-tank guided missile is something the army has worked off and on for a long time. The Soviet’s had one, but mainly because their main guns were inaccurate at longer ranges. U.S. had a prototype ATGM that hit a T-72 at 8,600 meters. “But the Army never invested in it to go full rate production. Part of the reason for this might be because it’s also true that tank-launched ATGMs have a smaller warhead and they don’t perform as well against modern composite armor compared to the 1970s.”
  • So why does the army want it now? Line of sight studies in Latvia and Lithuania (i.e, the border with Russia) shows a whole lot of areas where it would be useful.
  • Tank optics are also a lot better now.
  • The new XM 360 cannon uses the same 120mm diameter, but save a full ton of weight by using composites, and delivers the same 17 megajoules of energy to the target as a conventional 140mm cannon, thanks to more efficient plasma ignition.
  • The Russo-Ukrainian War reveals a much more deadly threat environment for tanks. Drones are a huge threat.
  • “They’re going to link the new cannon to a remote-controlled, optionally manned turret by switching to an autoloader and making the turret interior smaller. That’s a lot less volume that has to be protected by heavy armor, which equates to a lot less tons of armor.” When we last checked with western tankers looking at the T-14s autoloader some six years ago, they were skeptical of both smaller crews (“all we do is maintain tanks, and they still break down”) and autoloaders (Abrams tank crews currently put shots on target faster than Russian crews with autoloaders). But since then, the Russo-Ukraine War happened and technology galloped furiously, and presumably higher crew survivability will make the tradeoff worthwhile.
  • M1A3 almost certainly wouldn’t have the cassette design that gives the T-72 its turret toss reputation. “Newly designed autoloading tanks can have all of their ammo secured behind a bulkhead blast shield and can work with blowout panels to prevent detonation from cooking the crew.”
  • “We’ve also seen from combat in Ukraine that the Abrams engine deck with it air intakes and radiators is a popular target point for drone swarms, so the army is looking at unique ways to keep the engine better protected from above without sacrificing cooling performance.”
  • “The new M1A3 Abrams tank would also upgrade from that puny 50 caliber machine gun to possibly the 30mm chain gun remote weapon station. The big advantage there is that it could fire specially made 30mikemikes that provide air burst capability for shooting down drones.” That sounds both awesome and the makings of an extremely complex turret with multiple automatic-feed weapon systems.
  • “We have to remember that systems enhancement packages was always supposed to be a stopgap temporary band-aid solution for the Abrams, because the service thought that they would do with that until a full replacement vehicle was chosen that’s how we ended up with like a dozen different variants of Abrams tanks with various levels of advanced features in the early 2000s.”
  • “The main difference between the M1A1 and A2 is its electronics. However, with this new M1A3, it’s now likely to have a whole brand new hull and turret. There’s conflicting reports on that, but I can’t see any other way that we get the kind of weight reductions that they’re looking for without a whole new hull.”
  • “The first version of the Abrams tank weighed 54 tons. The SEPV4 that was cancelled was on track to weigh over 75 tons. Add in a mine plow and it was going to break the scales at 83 tons.”
  • In May this year, an expert analysis board came to some sobering conclusions. “The M1A2SEP3 and 4 upgrades will improve effectiveness, but not restore dominance. Near transparency in all domains will significantly increase the lethality our forces will experience. We will continue to have to fight outnumbered, exacerbated by a low MBT operational readiness rate and aging fleet.”
  • “Lessons learned in Ukraine is that tanks are sometimes dead meat if they’re too heavy. They get stuck in the mud, they’re too slow not nimble enough to fire and then escape from drones that are searching for them.”
  • That same Latvian-Lithuanian study showed lots of no-go zones for Abrams due to their weight in muddy conditions. “From a tactical perspective a defending Force could easily mine trafficable routes, destroy bridges to complicate Abram’s combat operations during the wet season and funnel them into choke points.”
  • “The study recommends new band tracks to lower the ground pressure to help fix that problem along with the lighter weight.”
  • SEPV3’s heavier weight lowered operational range from 300 miles down to 264.
  • He references the role of tank in the army’s current FM3-0 Operations Guide, which you can read at the link.
  • Transcom says that SEPV3 is too heavy to transport for a lot of roles.
  • Meantime between failure for current tanks is 200 miles, which does seem worrisome.
  • “It will likely have the hybrid electric drivetrain that reduces fuel consumption by 50%.” He calls it the Prius of tanks, but it’s not ugly enough for that.
  • More stealth.
  • More active protection.
  • “The future of armored warfare, the way the army envisions it, is that they’ll be preparing for a major change to tank tactics unlike anything we’ve seen since the introduction of the Abrams in 1980 …they all seem to believe that the future will be a combination of manned and unmanned platforms that are integrated with aerial UAVs. The M1A3 is the first step in that direction.”

    • A major Abrams redesign was probably slightly overdue anyway, but the torrents of real-world information coming out of the Russo-Ukrainian War forced their hand to make more radical changes.

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    Posted in Military, video | 18 Comments »

    LinkSwarm For April 19, 2024

    Friday, April 19th, 2024

    Israel’s Iran strike is shrouded in mystery, California is shockingly “permissive” on sex trafficking children, Warhammer goes woke, and a new Doom speed-running record. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Early reports said that Israel struck at Iranian nuclear facilities at Isfahan, but current reports say that’s not the case.

    Senior US military sources:The target of the Israeli strike was an Iranian military base in Isfahan near Natanz, not the nuclear facilities themselves. “The Israelis hit what they intended to strike,” The targets within this strike included Iranian air defense systems at the air base including those used to protect their nearby nuclear facilities. It was a message to the Iranians, “We can reach out and touch you.” The Russian made air defense systems were shown to be ineffective. There was one target but multiple strikes within that target. The Israelis used missiles and unmanned aircraft – in other words no manned aircraft (F35’s or others) were used as part of this strike

    Both Israeli and Iranian sources are being cagey about what actually was hit. Right now it’s looking like it was a very limited strike, almost just a “See? We can hit them if we want to” strike to satisfy the Biden Administration’s endless calls for “restraint” while they continue to pound Hamas into a fine red paste. But it does offer a certain amount of support for the Kayfabe theory of Middle East politics…

  • Speaking of Gaza, that plan to send U.S. servicemen there to build a pier was an asinine one, but it was great to demonstrate just how badly screwed up naval logistics is for sudden overseas deployments. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Powerline has a pretty staggering chart on Biden inflation:

  • “Traffick a kid in California, spend the weekend in jail; try it in Florida and they execute you.”

    The penalty for the equivalent of child trafficking in “progressive,” “forward-thinking,” “compassionate” California is a maximum penalty of a year in jail, and a minimum of two days in jail, plus a $10,000 fine which may or may not be paid depending on sentencing details.

    Plenty has been said in recent years about soft-on-crime policies in states led by Democrats, and with good reason. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that political movements that believe the execution of preborn children is morally and legally permissible would also enforce such loose penalties for child endangerment and exploitation. But this seems, even for liberals, unconscionable.

    Thankfully, it’s not that way everywhere. Other states with right-leaning leadership handle child predation, shall we say, “differently.”

  • But California especially loves setting sex offenders free if they’re illegal aliens.
  • Speaking of idiot laws in California, their new “mansion” tax means that no one can afford to build apartment complexes any more.
  • “Landmark NHS England Report: Science Doesn’t Support Gender-Affirming Medicine.” Wait, you mean mutilating children to demonstrate your trendy wokeness is a bad idea? Who knew?
  • Despite that, the Biden Administration is going to shove transexualism down the throats of colleges by fiat by rewriting Title IX rules without congressional approval.
  • Uri Berliner exposes the radical wokeness at NPR and is fired by new ultra-woke Alpha Karen NPR head Katherine Maher.

    It turns out that Katherine Maher is no ordinary ascendant progressive media executive. No, this woman’s social-media history reveals her to be the Kwisatz Haderach of white wokeness, presumably bred through generations of careful genetic selection to be the supernaturally perfect embodiment of Affluent White Female Liberalism. (As many have noted, she not only acts but looks like Titania McGrath.) It’s vaguely unreal: If there was a trendy progressive take floating around on Twitter and popular within media circles, then you can reliably bet she was there to voice it in the most preeningly insulting way possible.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, who also offers lots of choice Chris Rufo commentary on tweets from Maher.)

  • “Texas Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne (R-TX-24) has taken out a full-page advertisement in the New York Post in an effort to recruit law enforcement from New York City, encouraging them to ‘escape New York and move to Texas. Sadly, the corrupt and crumbling Empire State is so purposefully anti-law and order, that you should no longer put your careers and lives in the hands of politicians who couldn’t care less about you or your families,’ the advertisement states.”
  • I’ll take “Headlines You Don’t Want To Read At Breakfast” for $400: “New York Suffers Record Rise in Potentially Deadly Disease Caused by Rat Urine. New York City has seen a record jump in the number of human leptospirosis, a disease caused by rat urine that can cause kidney damage, liver failure, and even death.”
  • The University of Texas at Dallas closes its DEI office and eliminates 20 jobs. Progress!
  • “A far-left extremist that firebombed a pro-life office in Wisconsin in 2022 has been sentenced to 7.5 years in federal prison, along with three years of supervised release and a $32,000 fine.”
  • The return of the Turtle Tank.
  • A mass cancellation attack is trying to get Reporting from Ukraine’s YouTube channel deleted.
  • Republicans aim to use ballot initiatives to overturn unpopular Democratic Party policies. “Republicans in Washington are moving to get three major ballot initiatives passed. These measures will repeal Democrat-passed policies that are becoming unpopular among locals. The three changes would repeal the state’s sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, end an attempt to ban natural gas, and a change to the laws to strip squatters of their rights.”
  • You’ll need to click Show More for this one:

  • Venezuelan illegal alien attempts to rob a bank using a translator app.
  • Fleshlight + AI = Brave new frontiers of sad perversion.
  • Has Warhammer gone woke? “I can’t help thinking that you finally started to bow to pressure from ‘Modern Audiences,’ and you were almost certainly encouraged to do this by a sudden infusion of investment money from BlackRock.”

    The moment you make any concession, no matter how tiny, you’ve already given the game away. You’ve made it known that you’re prepared to bow down to their demands if they put enough pressure on you. And so, inevitably, their demands are never going to end. They’ll literally never be happy because there’s always going to be some other thing, some other piece of problematic lore, some other rule or exclusionary detail that has to be altered to comply with their constantly evolving demands, and all in the name of inclusion and diversity.

    Because these people don’t care about your hobby, they don’t care about integrating into a community of like-minded individuals. All they care about is that the community bends and reshapes itself to suit them, until eventually they bend it so much that it breaks. People like that are complete and utter poison for any hobby, any fandom, any franchise. All they ever manage to do is stir up conflict, resentment and division, driving people away and turning fans against the very company that tries to pander to them, because their very reason for existing is to undermine and destroy the thing they claim that they’re trying to save.

    And if you’ve got any common sense whatsoever or any love for the fandom that you’re so passionate about, you’ll think very carefully before bending the knee to them.

  • Madam Web finally crawls just past the $100 million mark before going to streaming to die.
  • And by the way, Disney still isn’t in the black on it’s purchase of Star Wars and Lucasfilms.
  • My review of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
  • After 6 months and 100,000 attempts, Doom speedrunner beats 26 year old record…by one second.
  • “White House Calls In Elmo To Help Explain Latest Global Conflict To President.”
  • “Biden Unveils Official Campaign Slogan ‘Death To America.'”

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Veterans Day: Living Celebrities Who Served In World War II

    Saturday, November 11th, 2023

    To observe Veterans Day, here’s a Mark Felton piece on World War II veterans who not only became celebrities, but are still alive:

    They are:

  • American actor William Daniels, most famous for St. Elsewhere and the voice of KITT in Knight Rider, but the roles I enjoyed him most for were in 1776 (playing John Adams) and The President’s Analyst, plus an appearance in Kolchak: The Night Stalker as that week’s Police Lieutenant Who Is Fed Up With Kolchak’s Crazy Questions. “Born in 1927, Daniels enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1945 and was stationed in Italy just after the war working as a DJ in an army radio station. William Daniels is currently 96 years.”
  • American low budget movie king Roger Corman. Most famous for cheap science fiction films and pretty good Edgar Allen Poe adaptations in the 1960s (I just watched The Raven this Halloween season, and it has Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Jack Nicholson). But my favorite Corman film is The Intruder, which features William Shatner as a racist rabble-rouser in the South during desegregation, and which was filmed in the South during desegregation. The low budget is evident, but Shatner just burns off the screen. “Born in 1926, he enlisted in the V12 Navy College training program and served in the US Navy between 1944 and 1946. Roger Corman is currently 97 years old.”
  • Stanley Baxter, a British actor and comedian I am unfamiliar with.

    He was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and began as a child actor on BBC radio’s Children’s Hour initially recruited as a Bevin Boy, that is a conscripted mine worker, towards the end of the war he was recruited into the Seaforth Highlanders, and with this unit went to India and then to the war in Burma. Being promoted to Corporal and acting as a headquarters company typist, he then wrangled a transfer to the British Army’s Combined Services Entertainment Unit, serving alongside other future British stars such as Kenneth Williams, actor Peter Vaughan, and director John Slesinger. For his war services, Baxter received the 1939 to 45 star, the Burma star, and the usual War medals. He is currently 97 years old.

  • American comedy legend Mel Brooks, justifiably famous for Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, but also co-creator of Get Smart.

    Born Melvin Kinsky in 1926, the son of Jewish immigrants to New York City, he started out as a drummer and comedy act with Sid Caesar before the war. In 1944, while in college, Brooks was sent to the US Army specialist training program at the Virginia Military Institute, and later inducted into the US Army. He received basic training as a radio operator and was sent to Europe in February 1945. He served in the campaigns following the Battle of the Bulge as a combat engineer with the 1104 Combat Engineer Battalion, and was part of teams clearing German booby traps and abandoned ordinance in towns in Western Germany, his specialism being the location of landmines. His unit also placed the first Bailey bridge over the Ruhr river, and would go on to build several bridges across the Rhine, serving through to May 1945 when they reached the Harz mountains following the end of World War II. Brooks joined special services as a comic, being promoted to Corporal, and ran the US Army’s entertainments in Wiesbaden in Germany. Brooks was himself honorably discharged in June 1946 as a Corporal. Mel Brooks is currently 97 years old.

  • Canadian Director Normal Jewison, most famous for In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof and Moonstruck, but my favorite film of his is the original Rollerball.

    Born in 1926 in Toronto of British immigrant parents, Jewison served in the Royal Canadian Navy between 1944 and 45. He was a signaler aboard a Canadian corvette escorting merchant ships up the East Coast from Maine to Newfoundland, from where the freighters and tankers would gathered to cross the Atlantic to Britain. Though German U-boats remained a serious threat until war’s end, he never saw any action, his only contact with the enemy being escorting German uboatman who had surrendered in May 1945. For his war service, Jewison received the 1939 to 45 star, the defense medal, the Canadian volunteer service medal and the war medal. Norman Jewison is currently 97 years old.

  • American acting and comedy legend Dick Van Dyke, famous for The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Poppins, etc.

    Born in 1925 in West Plains, Missouri, he left school in his senior year to enlist in the United States Army Air Force, hoping to train as a pilot. But being underweight, Van Dyke instead became an army radio announcer, then transferred, like Mel Brooks, to the special services as a troop entertainer. Van Dyke did not serve overseas, and was discharged with the rank of Staff Sergeant in 1946, receiving the army Good Conduct Medal. Dick Van Dyke is currently 97 years old.

  • American actor Mike Nussbaum, with roles in Men in Black (the alien that owns the cat), Fatal Attraction, Field of Dreams, and House of Games. “Born to a Jewish family in Chicago in 1923 he served in the US Army in Europe in World War II. Assigned to General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s message center, which he headed and famously dispatched the official notification of Germany’s surrender in May 1945. Mike Nussbaum is 99 years old.
  • American TV producer and director Norman Lear, of All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons etc. fame, and was also a producer on The Princess Bride. (And speaking of Dick Van Dyke, Lear also produced and directed a movie he was in called Cold Turkey that I remember thinking was hilarious at the time, but I was pretty young…)

    Born in New Haven Connecticut to Russian and Ukrainian Jewish parents, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Force in September 1942. He served in the Fifteenth Air Force in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator and air gunner aboard Boeing B-17 flying Fortresses, completing 52 combat missions and reaching the rank of Technical Sergeant. His service earned, him amongst other honors, the Air Medal with Four Oakleaf Clusters, and he was discharged in 1945. Norman Lear is currently 101 years old.

    Lear’s liberal politics are not to my taste, but we thank him, and all the other gentlemen on this list, for their service.

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    Posted in Military, video | 8 Comments »

    Tank News Roundup For October 18, 2023

    Wednesday, October 18th, 2023

    A fair amount of tank news has built up in the hopper over the last month or so (some, but not all, related to the Russo-Ukraine War), so let’s do a roundup.

    The U.S. Army has announced that it’s not doing an M1A2SEPv4, and instead will produced the M1E3.

    The U.S. Army is scrapping its current upgrade plans for the Abrams main battle tank and pursuing a more significant modernization effort to increase its mobility and survivability on the battlefield, the service announced in a statement Wednesday.

    The Army will end its M1A2 System Enhancement Package version 4 program, and instead develop the M1E3 Abrams focused on challenges the tank is likely to face on the battlefield of 2040 and beyond, the service said. The service was supposed to receive the M1A2 SEPv4 version this past spring.

    The SEPv4 will not go into production as planned, Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo told Defense News in a Sept. 6 interview at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “We’re essentially going to invest those resources into the [research and] development on this new upgraded Abrams,” he said. “[I]t’s really threat-based, it’s everything that we’re seeing right now, even recently in Ukraine in terms of a native active protection system, lighter weight, more survivability, and of course reduced logistical burdens as well for the Army.”

    The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in the statement. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protections for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”

    Ukraine’s military will have the chance to put the M1 Abrams to the test when it receives the tanks later this month. The country is fighting off a Russian invasion that began nearly two years ago.

    The M1E3 Abrams will “include the best features” of the M1A2 SEPv4 and will be compliant with modular open-systems architecture standards, according to the statement, which will allow for faster and more efficient technology upgrades. “This will enable the Army and its commercial partners to design a more survivable, lighter tank that will be more effective on the battlefield at initial fielding and more easy to upgrade in the future.”

    “We appreciate that future battlefields pose new challenges to the tank as we study recent and ongoing conflicts,” said Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. “We must optimize the Abrams’ mobility and survivability to allow the tank to continue to close with and destroy the enemy as the apex predator on future battlefields.”

    Norman, who took over the team last fall, spent seven months prior to his current job in Poland with the 1st Infantry Division. He told Defense News last year that the division worked with Poles, Lithuanians and other European partners on the eastern flank to observe happenings in Ukraine.

    Weight is a major inhibitor of mobility, Norman said last fall. “We are consistently looking at ways to drive down the main battle tank’s weight to increase our operational mobility and ensure we can present multiple dilemmas to the adversary by being unpredictable in where we can go and how we can get there.”

    General Dynamic Land Systems, which manufactures the Abrams tank, brought what it called AbramsX to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October 2022. AbramsX is a technology demonstrator with reduced weight and the same range as the current tank with 50% less fuel consumption, the American firm told Defense News ahead of the show.

    The AbramsX has a hybrid power pack that enables a silent watch capability and “some silent mobility,” which means it can run certain systems on the vehicle without running loud engines.

    The tank also has an embedded artificial intelligence capability that enables “lethality, survivability, mobility and manned/unmanned teaming,” GDLS said.

    The Army did not detail what the new version might include, but GDLS is using AbramsX to define what is possible in terms of weight reduction, improved survivability and a more efficient logistics tail.

    The Army awarded GDLS a contract in August 2017 to develop the SEPv4 version of the tank with a plan then to make a production decision in fiscal 2023, followed by fielding to the first brigade in fiscal 2025.

    The keystone technology of the SEPv4 version consisted of a third-generation forward-looking infrared camera and a full-sight upgrade including improved target discrimination.

    “I think the investment in subsystem technologies in the v4 will actually carry over into the upgraded ECP [Engineering Change Proposal] program for Abrams,” Camarillo said. “However, the plan is to have robust competition at the subsystem level for a lot of what the new ECP will call for, so we’re going to look for best-of-breed tech in a lot of different areas,” such as active protection systems and lighter weight materials.

    For instance, the Army has kitted out the tank with Trophy active protection systems as an interim solution to increase survivability. The Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems develops the Trophy. But since the system is not integrated into the design of the vehicle, it adds significant weight, sacrificing mobility.

    The Army plans to produce the M1A2 SEPv3 at a reduced rate until it can transition the M1E3 into production.

    Which looks to be 2030.

    Nicholas Moran looks at what this might or might not mean in practical terms, with an emphasis on what it doesn’t say:

  • “We have about 10 years that the SEPv3 is the latest and greatest.”
  • “They are actually going to backfill some of the v4 modernizations to the v3.”
  • “‘The Abrams tank can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight and we need to reduce its logistical footprint.’…There’s two parts to that one sentence that have a lot of digging into.”
  • “The Abrams started at 55 tons…now the v3 is 72 1/2 tons. If you add the Trophy APS, that’s an additional two and a half tons on its own. Then you put the reactive armor tiles on the side. Oh! Let’s put a mine plow on the front. Now your M1 is breaking 83 tons.”
  • One way to shed weight is with a smaller turret, like the Abrams X.
  • “What it doesn’t say in here, and what they’re not saying, is just how much weight are they trying to shed. Because if you’re trying to shed five to ten tons, that’s one thing. If you’re trying to shed 20 to 30 tons, then that’s something else entirely.”
  • The Abrams is essentially an analog tank which has had digital systems bolted onto it. “the upgrades that we have paid for our tanks have not been integrated upgrades from basically the ground up.” We’ve bolted on integrations modules, each of which adds weight.
  • “You can probably shave a few tons without touching the form factor of the M1A2 one bit.”
  • “Rip out the guts. Rip out all the electrics, all the electronics, and replace it from something that is designed and programmed from the ground up to be completely integrated.”
  • Replace the M256 cannon with the XM360, “which, as far as I know, does work. You install that you’ve shaved a ton off already.”
  • Replace the turret hydraulics with electrics.
  • Swap out copper wiring for fiber optics.
  • “So getting it from this current 73 tons down to, oh, let’s say 65 tons, probably isn’t all that hard.”
  • “If you want to take off more weight, you’re gonna have to look at a more radical redesign.” Like an unmanned turret.
  • Reduced logistics could go a lot of ways, some outside the tank. 80 ton tanks require beefy bridges, like the Joint Assault Bridge. (I include this because of my readers’ passionate opinions on proper battlefield bridging techniques.)
  • If you mean fuel efficiency, you can pull out the current gas turbine engine and replace it, either a more efficient turbine or something else.
  • “The Army has spent a lot of money paying Cummins to develop the Advanced Combat Engine. This is an opposed module, opposed piston modular engine, and it can be configured for 750 horsepower. I believe it’s just a six cylinder version to the 12 cylinder or piston version, which is a 1500 horsepower, the same as a turbine the same as modern MTU. It would make some sense that the Army is going to look very hard at this.” The AEC is a bit funky, with two pistons per cylinder working together to compress the gas. They claim it offers about 25% fuel economy and a similar reduction in waste heat.
  • They might also look at a hybrid power train.
  • You can also save logistical weight in spare parts. “If you were to rip the guts out of the tank and start from scratch, you can probably come up with a maintenance and logistics system for maintenance which is much more refined and efficient.”
  • “‘The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protection from soldiers built from within instead of adding on.'”
  • “This has apparently been in the works for the better part of three years now. In 2020, the director of operational test and evaluation put out his annual report, and when it gets to the M1A2v3 section, it basically says ‘Guys, this is getting a little bit out of hand. The tank is a tad heavy.'”
  • “The Army understands that they’re pretty much at the limit.”
  • All this is being done now because Ukraine finally made them pay attention to things that had already been identified as problems but not addressed. “Something like the Ukraine conflict is a little bit of a kick in the pants, and it’s probably going to attract somebody’s attention and say ‘OK, yeah, this is what we need to do it.”
  • Trophy adds so much weight because you need to balance the turret. Redesigning the turret from the ground up solves that issue.
  • Modular open systems architecture standards: “The backbone, the central nervous system of these things, is a new version that’s compatible across vehicles.”

    • Chris Copson of The Tank Museum offers up an assessment of the use of tanks in Ukraine’s summer offensive (posted September 29).

  • “One commentator has been dubbing it ‘Schrodinger’s summer offensive.’ Is it or isn’t it, and it appears to be currently tentative at best.”
  • “We’re also seeing the tank struggling to assert influence in what has increasingly become a slog dominated by artillery.”
  • “Putin’s special military operation saw the Russian army fought to a standstill, and they’d suffered huge losses in men and material. But they’re still in possession a swathe of Ukrainian territory running through the Eastern Donbas right the way down to the coast of the Black Sea.”
  • “Russian forces have fallen back into a defensive posture behind layered defenses minefields, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire.”
  • “Ukrainian response has been probing attacks in greater or lesser strength, and they’re starting to use some of their Western supplied military equipment to attempt to break through before the Autumn rains, and the rasputitsa, the roadless time, puts an end to the campaigning season.”
  • “Zelensky fought for supplies of modern Western military material, and, after quite a bit of hesitancy, it’s begun to arrive.”
  • “So far there’s been enough, we think, to equip up to 15 Ukrainian brigades, and each of those is going to be around about 3,000 personnel and about 200 vehicles of all types.”
  • He covers the trickle of Challenger 2s, Leopard 2s, Abrams, etc., and the capabilities of each, which we’ve already covered here.
  • “In the early stages of the invasion, February and March 2022, Russian tank losses have been estimated at anything from between 460 and 680 from a total inventory around about 2,700 in BTs. Both of those figures are estimates from Western or Ukrainian sources and they’re now putting the figure well over a thousand.”
  • “An awful lot of these losses seem to be in tanks and AFVs either stuck bellied out through poor driving, or run out of fuel. That’s just poor logistics.”
  • Russian tank units lack enough infantry support to protect their armored columns from Ukrainian anti-tank units.
  • “We’re starting to see images of Ukrainian Leopard 2s and Bradleys knocked out by mines or artillery in attempts to breach Russian layered defenses.”
  • Ukraine’s western tanks have much higher repairability than T-72s. “Western MBTs [are] designed so that an ammunition or propellant explosion actually vents to the outside, and this tends to maintain damaged vehicle’s integrity and make it repairable, as well as increasing the likelihood of crew survival.”
  • Damaged Leopard 2s are already being repaired.
  • “Because Russian industry is under the cosh, a shortage of chips and high-tech components, and that is because of the western embargo. The solution their general staff has come up with is to pull tanks out of storage, and this includes some very elderly models indeed. Some of the estimated 2,800 T-55s which comes into service.” Cold War designs.
  • “Commissioning tanks after decades in store is a huge undertaking. It’s not just a question of charge in the batteries, it’s more like a total rebuild.”
  • “They’re not likely to be in peak condition,” but might be OK in static defensive roles.
  • “There is evidence that at least one has been used as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.”
  • “Against tanks like Challenger, Leopard or Abrams in an open country tank engagement, it’s fairly obvious they wouldn’t make the grade.”
  • Keeping all the different western tanks supplied and running is going to be a huge challenge to Ukraine. “A range of different and very unfamiliar, in some cases artillery pieces, trucks, logistic vehicles. Now the range is huge. Finding trained mechanics and procuring a huge range of spares. It’s going to be a colossal headache.”
  • “Artillery is really of central importance to the Russian, and before that the Soviet, way of war. And it’s the primary lethality in deep and close battles. Now perhaps 70% percent of Ukrainian casualties so far are being caused by Russian artillery.”
  • “At present a [Russian] brigade grouping is assigned a brigade artillery group, BRAG, and that’s two battalions of self-propelled howitzers and a battalion of multi-barreled rocket launchers. Use is made of forward observers, unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery location radars to identify targets.”
  • “At its most effective this uses the Strelets reconnaissance fire system to pair tactical intelligence and reconnaissance assets with precision strike artillery, and that gives you real-time targeting [Reckify?] uses the 2K25 Krasnapol 152mm laser guided round, which is able to inflict accurate strikes.” But it doesn’t work so well with cloud cover.
  • “We’ve also heard quite a lot about the Lancet range of loitering munitions for precision targeting. The Lancet-3 drone has a 40 minute flight time and it counts a 3kg warhead.” Oryx credits over 100 kills to Lancets. “These mostly have been self-propelled artillery, but also tanks.”
  • “With the constant presence of surveillance drones and satellite intel, it is getting just about impossible to hide anything on the modern battlefield.”
  • “The main take-home from the current conflict, and this might be stating the blindingly obvious, is that the battlefield is a very open place these days, and tank tactics have to evolve to take this into account.”
  • One thing we haven’t seen much of recently: Russian air power.
  • “There seems to be some progress around Robotyne, and the Challenger 2, Maurder and Stryker IFVs of the 82nd Air Landing brigade have been deployed to bolster 47th Brigade. And there seems to be some penetration of the Russian air defenses. Ukrainian offensive has broken through the first of three defensive lines, but the progress is really slow, because you’ve got minefields, dragon’s teeth and anti-tank ditches, and the Russian forces are very well dug in.”

    • Finally, we have a report that Russia is resuming the long-halted production of T-80s.

    The Uralvagonzavod factory in Omsk, in Siberia, hasn’t manufactured a new T-80 hull since 1991. And work on the T-80’s GTD-1250 turbine, at the Kaluga plant, likewise has idled in the decades since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

    No, for nearly 30 years the Russian army has replenished its T-80 fleet with old, refurbished hulls and engines. Those hulls and engines obviously are beginning to run out as Russian tank losses in Ukraine exceed 2,000. For context, there were only around 3,000 active tanks in the entire Russian armed forces when Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022.

    Uralvagonzavod produces just a few dozen new T-72B3s and T-90Ms every month: far too few to make good monthly tank losses averaging a hundred or more. That’s why, in the summer of 2022, the Kremlin began pulling out of storage hundreds of 1960s-vintage T-62s and ‘50s-vintage T-54s and T-55s.

    But the T-62s and T-54/55s, as well as only slightly less ancient war-reserve T-72 Urals and T-80Bs, are a stopgap. Some get fresh optics and add-on armor; many don’t. To sustain the war effort into year three, year four or year five, the Russian armed forces need new tanks. Lots of them.

    Thus it was unsurprising when, two weeks ago, Alexander Potapov, CEO of Uralvagonzavod, announced his firm would resume producing 46-ton, three-person T-80s “from scratch.”

    It’s a huge undertaking. While the Omsk factory still has the main T-80 tooling lying around somewhere, it must also reactive hundreds of suppliers in order to produce the tens of thousands of components it takes to assemble a T-80. That includes the gas-turbine engine.

    During the T-80’s initial production run between 1975 and 2001, Kaluga built thousands of 1,000-horsepower GTD-1000 and 1,250-horsepower GTD-1250s for the type. A thousand or more horses is a lot of power for a 46-ton tank: a Ukrainian-made T-64BV weighs 42 tons but has a comparatively anemic 850-horsepower diesel engine.

    The T-80’s excess power explains its high speed—44 miles per hour—and commensurately high fuel consumption, which limits its range to no more than 300 miles. Why then would Kaluga bother with a new 1,500-horsepower turbine?

    As long as certain Russian forces—airborne and marine regiments, for example—value speed over fuel-efficiency, it makes sense they’d want even more power for their new-build T-80s. A 1,500-horsepower engine also would give a next-generation T-80 lots of growth potential. Uralvagonzavod could pile on tons of additional armor without weighing down the tank.

    A few quick thoughts:

  • This hardly expresses confidence in the future of the T-14 Armata, does it now? (Speaking of which, they withdraw it from service in Ukraine, evidently without engaging any enemy tanks in anything but an indirect fire role (assuming they weren’t lying about that as well.))
  • If they’re struggling to produce just a few new T-72B3s and T-90Ms, why would producing T80s be any easier?
  • Russia announces a whole lot of things that never come to pass. In many ways its their default mode when announcing MilTech Wunderaffen.
  • Restarting a production line that’s been idle 30 years isn’t just difficult, it’s damn near impossible. At lot of the people who had the knowledge of how to actually build the things have probably died, and Soviet-era schematics are not an adequate substitute.
  • I’m pretty sure they have the capabilities to build the heavy equipment parts. The modern electronics? Not so much.
  • Like a lot of Russian announcements since the beginning of Vlad’s Big Adventure, this is probably a bluff to overall the gullible. I’m sure the Russians intend to restart production of T-80s, but I wouldn’t count on doing it very soon, or producing terribly many.

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    Posted in Military, video | 11 Comments »

    “Does The US Military’s New Combat Rifle Kinda Suck?”

    Sunday, May 21st, 2023

    Remember the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon, AKA the XM-5, AKA the XM-7, AKA 6.8 x 51mm? Brandon Herrera has managed to get Sig Saur to send him the prototype of the new weapon (the Sig Spear) to test, and…he has some reservations.

    The caveat here is that this is not an actual 6.8 x 51mm XM-7, it’s chambered in 308 Winchester/7.62 x 51mm (two calibers that are extremely close but not exactly the same), so the ballistics and operation are likely to be slightly different. (To make matters worse, the civilian version of the round is being marketed as 277 Fury. As far as I can tell from looking at Gunbroker, 277 Fury ammunition is available now, but models of the Sig Sauer MCX Spear chambered for the round aren’t yet on the civilian market.)

    Pros:

  • Short stroke piston doesn’t need a buffer tube, meaning that the gun can have a folding stock. “Actually pretty cool.”
  • Decent trigger.
  • “This little right side bolt release here. Kind of a fan. Feels a little flimsy, but I like the placement.”
  • Left side fold-out charging handle is good.
  • “Hand guard here offers a lot of space to mount whatever shit you want.”
  • Two gas settings.
  • Silencer works (even if not hearing-safe quality).
  • Likes the flat dark earth (FDE) finish. “In my opinion, it’s a pretty sweet looking gun.”
  • “Gun recoil impulse not bad.”
  • “Running it suppressed it’s not that gassy.”
  • Very reliable, at least over the initial 200 rounds.

    • The cons:

  • “It’s fucking heavy, dude!…Unloaded it comes in at 8.9 pounds. For reference that is one full pound, or 13% heavier, than a full-size SCAR 17, which is also a semi-automatic 308 with a 20 round magazine.”
  • Folding aside, the stock isn’t great and wants to slip.
  • “This charging handle in the back is borderline fucking unusable. It feels, really flimsy, like I feel like I’m gonna fucking break it. And it’s stiff. It is so
    fucking stiff! ‘How stiff is it, Brandon?’ Joe Biden in a room full of school kids.”

  • Potentially the biggest combat problem: Overinsertion of the magazine. “If you put too much force on the magazine when you’re inserting it, you will actually run up past the magazine release and get the weapon jammed.” Yeah, that sounds like a huge problem, and Sig needs to get that fixed ASAP.
  • The spring is a bit hard to get back in.
  • Super expensive right now.

    • From the comments on the video: “The fact that he’s actually able to unironically hold up a Scar 17 as a lighter, more affordable option is just batshit insane.”

    Yeah, looks like Sig needs some more work here before it’s ready to field…

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    Posted in Global Warming, unions, video | 45 Comments »

    Russian Atrocities Earn Ukraine New Kit

    Thursday, December 22nd, 2022

    Since Russia has opted to commit war crimes by repeatedly bombing civilian infrastructure with the goal of inflicting mass civilian causalities, the western world has responded by opting to give Ukraine even more advanced military kit.

    The U.S., as usual, is leading the way, supplying a Patriot Missile Defense battery and JDAMs.

    SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL: All right, well, thanks very much for joining us. Today’s background briefers will include (inaudible) and me, (inaudible). For attribution, please refer to (inaudible) as “a senior defense official” and to me as “a senior military official.”

    And with that, I will turn it over to our senior defense official for some opening remarks, and then we’ll be happy to take your questions.

    SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Good afternoon, everyone. I’d like to start by just recognizing where we are in this war. We’re in over 300 days after Russia launched this war to try to stamp out Ukraine’s existence as a free nation. And at this moment, we are welcoming President Zelenskyy to Washington, D.C., a sign of Ukraine’s determination, its spirit, its resolve, and an opportunity for us to be able to reinforce our support for Ukraine during President Zelenskyy’s visit.

    So you will hear more from the White House later this afternoon about President Zelenskyy’s visit. In the meantime, what I wanted to do is give you some important details about our new security assistance commitments that President Biden announced today, totaling $1.85 billion.

    Now, these — these commitments come in two parts, and we’re announcing both of these together. First, we have a presidential drawdown package that’s valued at $1 billion. This is the 28th such drawdown of equipment from DOD inventories for Ukraine since August of 2021. And then the second is an additional $850 million in commitments under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

    So first, let me talk about the presidential drawdown package, and this package includes for the first time a Patriot air defense battery and munitions. This is another signal of our long-term commitment to Ukraine’s security. As you know, Patriot is one of the world’s most advanced air defense systems, and it will give Ukraine a critical long-range capability to defend its airspace. It is capable of intercepting cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and aircraft.

    It’s important to put the Patriot battery in context. For air defense, there is no “silver bullet.” Our goal is to help Ukraine strengthen a layered, integrated approach to air defense. That will include Ukraine’s own legacy capabilities, as well as NATO-standard systems. Patriot will complement a range of medium- and short-range air defense capabilities that we’ve provided and that allies have provided in prior donation packages, and for us, that includes NASAMS and Avenger systems. Patriot does require training, and we expect it will take several months to ensure Ukrainian forces have the training they need to employ it successfully.

    Now, in addition to Patriot, this drawdown package includes several other highlights. First, it includes an additional 500 precision-guided 155-millimeter artillery rounds, and it includes several different mortar systems and rounds for those systems. Second, it includes precision aerial munitions, and then third, it includes additional MRAP vehicles and Humvees, and I think important to note, this is 38 MRAP vehicles, but we’ve provided 440 to date, and it’s 120 Humvees, but this comes on top of 1,200 Humvees that we’ve provided to date.

    Now for the second part of today’s announcement, the $850 million under USAI, I just want to remind that this is an authority under which we procure capabilities from industry, rather than drawing them down from U.S. stocks. So USAI capabilities typically take longer to deliver. Now under USA — AI, we are committing to provide a range of different non — what we call nonstandard ammunitions. This is what we formerly called Soviet-type ammunition. It includes 152-millimeter artillery rounds, 122-millimeter artillery rounds, and these will be able to help the Ukrainians bring more of its legacy systems, its legacy howitzers back into the fight in greater numbers. We also plan to — to provide 122-millimeter Grad rockets, and this is to support Ukraine’s Grad rocket artillery capability, as well as tank ammunition to help Ukraine sustain operations with its existing tanks. Another capability we’re providing via USAI are satellite communication terminals and services. This will add resilience to Ukraine’s communications infrastructure. And then as always, we have funding from (sic) training, for maintenance and for sustainment in support of the equipment we and our partners have provided.

    Here’s a more detailed breakdown in convenient Tweet form:

    Europe is supplying other weapons, but is unable to keep up with the furious rate of munition use.

    Ukraine’s military fortunes also depend on European countries, such as Germany, that let their defense industry atrophy in peacetime and are struggling to catch up as they focus on securing energy supplies.

    Ukraine’s battle against the Russian invasion is consuming ammunition at rates unseen since World War II. Kyiv’s forces have been firing around 6,000 artillery shells a day and are now running out of antiaircraft missiles amid a relentless aerial onslaught by Russia, according to experts and intelligence officials. At the height of the fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas area, Russia was using more ammunition in two days than the entire stock of the British military, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

    No country in NATO other than the U.S. has either a sufficient stock of weapons to fight a major artillery war or the industrial capacity to create such reserves, said Nico Lange, a former top official at the German Defense Ministry. This means that NATO wouldn’t be able to defend its territory against major adversaries if it were to be attacked now, he said.

    “Governments have been slashing contracts for decades, so companies shed production lines and employees,” said Mr. Lange, a senior fellow with the Munich Security Conference, a global security forum.

    The current shortage of shells and missiles is largely due to a shift in the military doctrines of NATO allies in recent decades: Instead of planning for World War II-style ground battles, they focused on targeted, asymmetric warfare against unsophisticated opponents, said Morten Brandtzæg, chief executive of Nammo AS, one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers.

    “We need orders of magnitude more industrial capacity,” said Mr. Brandtzæg, whose company is co-owned by the governments of Norway and Finland.

    Ukraine uses up to 40,000 artillery shells of the NATO caliber 155mm each month, while the entire annual production of such projectiles in Europe is around 300,000, according to Michal Strnad, owner of Czechoslovak Group AS, a Czech company that produces around 30% of Europe’s output of such munitions.

    “European production capacity is grossly inadequate,” Mr. Strnad said. Even if the war were to stop overnight, Europe would need up to 15 years to resupply its stocks at current production rates, he said.

    As always, there are rumors that Russia has had to buy artillery shells from north Korea and, as always, these rumors should be treated with several grains of salt. Russia used up huge amounts of its smart munitions early, but early predictions that Russia would quickly run out its own dumb artillery shells have thus far proven to be premature.

    The Patriot system may prove to be more symbolic than really useful, if only because Russias has already used up sop much of its medium range missile stocks. JDAMs, on the other hand, could prove to be very effective at targeting Russian military assets.

    In any case, it’s now clear that a war Russia thought would be “three days to take Kiev” will now drag on as a war of attrition for a year or more, and a goodly portion of the western world has signed up to supply Ukraine with munitions for as long as it takes.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military | 8 Comments »

    Tilt-Rotor, Take Two

    Wednesday, December 14th, 2022

    The U.S. Army has announced that it’s next helicopter isn’t a helicopter.

    The US Army awarded Textron Inc’s Bell unit with the contract to build the next-generation helicopter, ending years of fierce competition between Lockheed Martin Corp.-Boeing Co. to replace the aging fleet of Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks by 2030.

    The Army’s “Future Vertical Lift” award went to Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft, similar to the V-22 Osprey. The new aircraft can take off and land vertically like a helicopter but rotate massive props to fly like a fixed-wing aircraft at impressive speeds.

    Indeed, the specs are pretty impressive:

    General characteristics

  • Crew: 4
  • Capacity: 14 troops
  • Length: 50.5 ft (15.4 m)
  • Width: 81.79 ft (24.93 m)
  • Height: 23 ft 0 in (7 m)
  • Empty weight: 18,078 lb (8,200 kg)
  • Max takeoff weight: 30,865 lb (14,000 kg)
  • Powerplant: 2 × Rolls-Royce AE 1107F[54] turboshaft
  • Propellers: 35 ft 0 in (10.7 m) diameter

    • Performance

  • Cruise speed: 320 mph (520 km/h, 280 kn)
  • Combat range: 580–920 mi (930–1,480 km, 500–800 nmi)
  • Ferry range: 2,400 mi (3,900 km, 2,100 nmi)
  • Service ceiling: 6,000 ft (1,800 m) ; in hover out of ground effect at 95 °F (35 °C)
  • Disk loading: 16[55] lb/sq ft (78 kg/m2)

    • The cruise speed is almost twice the 175 mph of the Black Hawk it’s replacing, and significantly faster than the competing Defiant X design (265 MPH). It also has higher troop carrying capacity than the Black Hawk (14 vs. 12). “Firstest with the mostest” is still hugely important in combat. And though the V-280 carries considerably less than the V-22, it has a much longer combat range.

    Here’s a video showing the V-280 in flight, and covering some of the reasons it was selected over Defiant X:

    One of the biggest reasons is simply logging more flight time, hundreds of hours since 2017. Defiant X first flew in 2019.

    Any drawbacks? Well, tilt rotors share features of both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, so they can suffer the problems of both. The Osprey had fourteen crash or hull loss incidents (nine of them fatal), plus an additional eight non-loss incidents (with one additional fatality) for some 400 aircraft built.

    By contrast, the UH-60 Black Hawk it’s replacing has been involved in its own share of deadly accidents, but with a much larger number being built (4,000, though how many of those were in U.S. as opposed to foreign service during the period covered is unclear). All V-22 Ospreys (save 2-5 used by Japan) are used by the U.S. military.

    So expect some teething pains for the V-280…

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    Posted in Military, video | 20 Comments »

    Update: 6.8 x 51mm Yes, TVCM No

    Saturday, May 7th, 2022

    In a previous post, I made the assumption that the army’s decision to go with 6.8 x 51mm for its Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) program meant they had selected the True Velocity 6.8 x 51mm TVCM round.

    That appears not to be the case:

    About 3:40 in, he says the army choose not to go with the bullpup and it’s polymer ammo, so presumably TVCM is out of the picture for now. Instead the new round will use bimetallic steel-brass hybrid ammunition manufactured Remington. On the other hand, he says the “Lake City Ammo Plant” is in Utah, when it’s actually in Independence, Missouri, so some grains of salt are in order.

    If you have any additional information, leave it in the comments below.

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    Posted in Guns, Military, video | 4 Comments »

    Memorial Day: Remembering John Henry Pruitt

    Monday, May 31st, 2021

    This Memorial Day we honor Marine Corporal John Henry Pruitt, who not only won the Medal of Honor, he won two Medals of Honor (the Army and Navy versions) for the same action:

    For extraordinary gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 78th Company, 6th Regiment, 2d Division, in action with the enemy at Blanc Mont Ridge, France, 3 October 1918. Cpl. Pruitt, singlehandedly attacked two machine guns, capturing them and killing two of the enemy. He then captured 40 prisoners in a dugout nearby. This gallant soldier was killed soon afterward by shellfire while he was sniping at the enemy.

    Here’s a short video on Pruitt, primarily voiceover narration over stock footage, but it does give additional information:

    “He died from his wounds on October 4, 1918. It was his twenty second birthday.”

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    Posted in Military, video | 1 Comment »

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