Category Archives: War On Terror
Shoot like an Air Marshal
With all this talk of missing airliners in the news, I thought it may be worthwhile to take a look at our country’s own Federal Air Marshal Service from who they are to what they do to what they carry and how they use it.
The US Federal Aviation Administration began its “Sky Marshal” program during the Kennedy administration in 1962, which were a lonely group of just 18 FAA Inspectors who were plainclothes and armed with small frame .38 caliber revolvers. These men, trained by the Border Patrol, were the first undercover agents salted away aboard civilian aircraft. Posing as ordinary passengers as their cover, they divided their time between watching for hijackers and reading the paper. These old Sky Marshals made a brief appearance in the 1983 film, Twilight Zone: the movie, where a young John Lithgow grabs the sleeping agent’s S&W Model 60 snub.
By 1985, with international terrorism replacing DB Cooper as the major cause of heartburn to airlines, the Sky Marshals were expanded to a whopping 50-ish agents and they were given more training and better arms…
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com
A photo of a young girl and her bike…
Female member of the Ahbab Al-Mustafa Battalion stands on a pick-up truck mounted with an anti-aircraft weapon as she undergoes military training in Aleppo’s Salaheddine district, on June 24, 2013. And yes, that IS a 23mm ZSU cannon mounted on a DIY mount complete with firing solenoid controls rigged up from an old motorcycle handlebars– thanks for asking!
Iranian Navy builds its own super carrier
Well it looks like the mighty Iranian Navy is building its first super-carrier. Instead of a small 15,000-20,000 ton ship that many small navies go for in their first effort, the Persians are building a 1:1.25 scale mock up of a Nimitz class super carrier, even giving it the hull number “68” like the Nimitz herself.
Of course, it has no propulsion system, is more of a barge than a carrier, Iran has no access to catapult technology or carrier training (unless the Russians or Chinese want to pitch in) and the ship, overall, seems like more likely than not a target barge or publicity stunt.
The real Nimitz:
060211-N-0413R-075
Pacific Ocean (Feb 11, 2006) – USS Nimitz (CVN 68) steams through the Pacific Ocean after a Vertical Replenishment (VERTREP) with USS Stennis (CVN 74). Nimitz is currently preparing for a major propulsion plant examination off the coast of southern California U.S. Navy . U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Shannon E. Renfroe.
The mock-up is of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Digitalglobe :
The Beautiful Molotov Cocktails of the Ukraine
Vice has a piece over there on the ersatz field firebombs recently seen in the late unpleasantness in the Ukraine.
Note the offset wick..
The dark sediment would lead you to believe this one incorporated melted polystyrene to give the bomb a better napalming effect
Another offset wick
They are strangely beautiful
Camo Frog Frogs
(click to embiggen)
Commando Hubert diver submerged with skrim camouflage and an EOTECH outfitted SIG 550 series rifle. Commando Hubert is a combat swimmer unit assigned to the French Navy’s COFUSCO. Of the five Naval Commando units of the French Navy, Hubert is the dedicated frogman group. The unit is tasked with conducting maritime special operations in support of the French Navy and intelligence services, primarily the DGSE (the French foreign intelligence directorate).
Currently Commando Hubert is composed of 80 men divided into two companies. The first company consists of 50 men and is subdivided into four sections designated A, B, C, and D.
A section is the command and support section. It contains the unit HQ, and the units Hurricane RIBs.
B section is the maritime counter terrorism (CT) section. The unit specializes in conducting underwater approaches to terrorist targets. They conduct joint operations with the Navy’s GCMC and GIGN’s diver section. In the event an assault was ordered on a target at sea, B section divers would act as guides for the GIGN team.
C section is the SDV section. The divers of this section receive additional training in the use of SDV’s and their maintenance.
D section contains the units snipers and heavy weapons experts. The section is responsible for performing beach reconnaissance, shipping attacks,underwater demolition operations, providing heavy fire support, and testing new equipment for use by the unit. All members of D section are both HAHO and HALO qualified.
Although there have always been lots of jokes about the French military (hey, they were the first army we ever beat, back in the French and Indian War), Hubert divers are as hard as coffin nails. They are constantly out there, unseen in the worst places, and have been in near-constant warfare since 1941.
Thats one heavy Raffy
A combat loaded Dassault Rafael with 6x AASM Hammer, 4x Mica A2A short to medium range, 2x METEOR A2A long-range, 3x 2000 liter fuel tanks. In this configuration Rafael has a 750nm combat radius. Of course this can be greatly extended by in-flight refueling.
Mali mission…..
Last year four Rafaels escorted by three C135FR tankers (from which they made five refuelings) took off from Saint-Dizer France flew to Mali and dropped it like it was hot on the heads of pro-ALQ forces then landed in N’Djamena, Chad. This flight covered some 4,200+ air miles. The Rafales each carried three fuel tanks, and either six GBU-49 500-lb Enhanced Paveway II GPS/INS-equipped GBU-12/B Laser Guided Bomb variants) or six AASM (Armement Air-Sol Modulaire – Air-to-Ground Modular Weapon) along with the Thales Damocles targeting pod.
Hagel plans to drop military to pre-WWII levels
Its been widely reported this morning that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001.
The Army would drop to under 440,000 active, which isn’t really an issue if we aren’t mired down in Afghanistan and Iraq. You can bet that the SF boys and RDF ‘leg’ style units (82nd, 101st, Rangers, 173rd, 10th Mountain) will be saved at current levels while the heavies will be gutted and amalgamated, with more being pushed to the reserves. The Army has long wanted to cut tank numbers anyway since the Fulda Gap went away. Speaking of reserves, the Apaches are going to the active army in exchange (they say) for Blackhawks. Hold your breath. No mention of the Kiowas but those have been rode hard and put up wet in the GWOT so they could be quietly phased out as part of this plan.
The USAF would lose the A-10 (which personally I think is the only other aircraft in the current inventory that could be a 100-year aircraft like the B-52 series, plus the boys in blue have hated close air support for years unless it could be done from 30,000 feet). Which would leave the Army with a better case to keep (and maybe expand) their ‘Green Predator’ the MQ-1C Gray Eagle. Also USAF is giving up the ghost on the U-2 spyplane, to be replaced by something better (Global Hawk). Yeah, we’ve heard that before– they’ve been trying to do that since 1960, so don’t hold your breath. They do get to keep blowing money on the F-35 however. After all, you can only batch upgrade the F-16 and F-15 for so long right?
The Navy will come out smelling like roses on this. We guess someone is still freaked out by China. Hagel is asking for two SSNs (Virginia class) and two more DDGs per year (Burke Flight III) for the next few years and keeping carrier numbers at 11 (which is still better than 1941, and still more than the rest of the entire globe put together). However the USN will be forced to mothball 11 early Tico class CGs– which are pushing 30 years old anyway.
The Navy currently has 75 Burkes at sea or in the works, and it looks like there will be another half-dozen at least. Unlike the Flight IIA USS Spruance (DDG-111) seen here, they will likely be the newer Flight III mod. Plus it gives me an excuse to put up a gnarly ship pic.
So you can expect lots of media pundits ranting about how disastrous this is.
But in reality, it’s just a draw-down from the end of WWII that was put off by a 45-year cold war (that included hot parts in Korea and Vietnam), followed by 25-years in the desert fighting first Saddam and then the Tally and Iranian proxies. So by coincidence, Pre-WWII troop levels seem almost like right– and the Joint Chiefs are cool with it.
So long as we can stay out of the desert in the future and that nutcase in the DPRK sticks to whacking his family and courting basketball players, we should be fine. Oh yeah, and China. But hey they already own our ass anyway.
Somali Pirates video (VICE)
The guys over at Vice put this up about skinny pirates in the HOA. Entitled Fishing Without Nets, it follows the touching coming of age story of a young Somali fisherman in his struggle to find peace, love and an AK that doesn’t jam.
But seriously guys, its not a bad way to spend 17 minutes at work.
The Dutch like to watch…through a periscope.
Odds are, if you are a sneaky non-nation party rogue state operator and NATO wants to keep ears on you, that cigarette
burning in the corner just offshore may be that of a Dutch submarine skipper.
Commissioned 25 April 1990, the Zeeleeuw (Dutch for Seal) is over twenty years old but is a master of littoral combat. The Dutch have used their quartet of 222-foot long Walrus-class subs, capable of floating in as little as 20-feet of water and submerging in as little as 60, to lie just offshore the bad-guy’s coastline listening for intel while on NATO missions.
These boats have done yeoman’s service off the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, followed by Iraq, then off Libya a couple years ago, and, as shown in the video, off Somalia and the Horn of Africa. Its rumored that when Hugo Chavez started talking smack about invading the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean, a Walrus-class sub wandered around the Venezuelan coastline making notes and taking names.
They are well suited for hanging out in shallow waters and soaking up radio intercepts while their radar and sonar get a fix on just what is moving around and where it is going to and from. They have a specialized L-3 KEO mast that is optimized to capture HD footage both day and night– so that beautiful bean footage can be shown round the world if needed.
The Zeeleeuw (center) was fitted with an extended mounting on her sail to diffuse her signature and diesel exhaust while near
surface/snorting. All the better to be on the low low with.
Specs
Displacement: 2,350 t surfaced,
2,650 t submerged,
1,900 t standard
Length: 67.73 m
Beam: 8.4 m
Draft: 6.6 m
Propulsion: 3 diesels, diesel-electric, 5,430 shp (4 MW), 1 shaft, 5 blades
Speed: 13 knots (24 km/h) surfaced,
20 knots (37 km/h) submerged
Range: 18,500 km at 9 knot
Test depth: >300 m
Complement: 50 to 55
Sensors and processing systems: • Surface Search Radar: Signaal/Racal ZW 07
• Sonar Systems: Thomson Sintra TSM 2272 Eledone Octopus, GEC Avionics Type 2026 towed array, Thomson Sintra DUUX 5 passive ranging and intercept
Armament: 4 × 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes (20 × Honeywell Mk 48 or Honeywell NT 37 torpedoes, mines,
SubHarpoon SSM)