Cantankerous Canuck Submarines Nearing Sea Again

Posted on by Leave a comment

The 30-year-old Canadian Upholder-class submarine HMCS Victoria (SSK 876) passing the Fisgard Lighthouse, Esquimalt, BC, Sept 2020, on her way to sea trials after extensive refits. (RCN photo)

The Type 2400/Upholder/Victoria-class diesel submarines have been something of an albatross of naval history. The last snorkel boats built in the UK, they were to replace the hard-serving Oberon-class boats for surveillance and coastal special operations but the end of the Cold War found the Admiralty rapidly losing interest in the series. Of the eight planned ships, only four (Upholder, Unseen, Ursula, and Unicorn) reached the Royal Navy between 1990-93. Then these boats, just barely past their shakedowns, were all paid off in 1994.

After a deal fell through to sell them to Pakistan (!) London and Ottawa got to talking and Canada picked up the quartet for a song to replace their own Oberon-class boats in 1998. Then came an extensive refit/rework on these low-mileage boats that only saw them begin to enter Canadian service in 2003.

Canadian submarine HMCS Victoria, ex HMS Upholder

Since then, the four boats, (now the HMCS Chicoutimi, Victoria, Corner Brook, and Windsor) have had a mixed bag of incidents to include a fairly serious fire at sea (Chicoutimi), “catastrophic damage” to the electrical system of another boat (Victoria) and a sea-floor collision (Corner Brook, followed by a dry dock fire), as well as mechanical issues and hundreds of bad welds that have left them tied up for years at a time.

Nonetheless, they have had periods of good luck, including a 105-day training cruise in 2015 for Windsor followed by a 133-day Atlantic/Med patrol in 2018 (the first time a Canadian submarine was operational in the Mediterranean in more than four decades) and a 197-day West Pac deployment by Chicoutimi in 2018 (the first time a Canadian submarine has visited Japan since HMCS Grisle in May 1968). Now, pushing into their third decade of service, they are getting closer to being right with Victoria recently finishing sea trials and crew training following an extensive refit. Corner Brook, which had been laid up since 2014, is supposed to be repaired enough to return to service sometime late this year. Windsor is reportedly doing the same, recently completing a lengthy Transitional Docking Work Period (TDWP).

Tusker 333 (CC-130H) Hercules provides top cover for Tusker 912 (CH-149) while conducting hoist training with HMCS Windsor off the coast of Nova Scotia. Photo by SAR Technician Matthew Sebo, 413 Squadron

Three of the boats so far have ditched their old Type 2040 sonar for a new AN/BQQ-10 A-RCI sonar suite, similar to American submarines. They are also now armed with the Mark 48 MOD 7AT torpedo, an upgrade from the previous Mark 48 MOD 4M that required significant upgrades to the 1990s-vintage weapon handling, weapon discharge, and fire control systems.

Canadian submarine HMCS Victoria (876) on sea trails 2020 post refit escorted by the coast defense vessel/auxiliary minesweeper HMCS Saskatoon (MM 707) and the camouflaged Halifax-class frigate HMCS Regina (FFH 334)

The RCN recently released this sizzle reel, planning to keep the quartet around for another decade. 

A New Generation of (Bearded) Gurkha?

Posted on by One comment
A member of 10 Queen’s Own Gurkha Logistic Regiment challenges on Guard during the drill practice for the Ceremony of the Keys The Queen's Own Gurkha Logistic Regiment Kukri

A member of 10 Queen’s Own Gurkha Logistic Regiment challenges on Guard during the drill practice for the Ceremony of the Keys (MOD)

Lawmakers in Britain are looking to find a purpose for the diaspora of Afghan National Army commando and special forces currently studying at specialist schools in the UK, to include Sandhurst: form them into a unit of commandos in British uniform.

Of note, the all-volunteer and highly trained ANA Commando Corps – only about 20,000 soldiers out of an army of 160,000 — had a good reputation and served as the primary unit fighting the Taliban, raced from place to place like a fire brigade while the rest of the Afghan troops largely formed garrison units. Cut off from their air support and lift due to the rapid exfil of western contractors that kept the turbines turning, the Taliban was able to roll through the country in days while the Commandos assisted in the extraction from HKIA– many leaving on planes to points west from there during the endgame. 

An Afghan National Army soldier assigned to the Mobile Strike Force Kandak fires an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher during a live-fire exercise

Now, left countryless in much the same way as the White Russians were in the 1920s, they have a “particular set of skills,” honed over a lifetime of use, as it would seem. 

Members of Parliament from Britain’s Conservative Party have now proposed “the creation of a new regiment of Afghans, similar to the brigade of Gurkhas, which comprises more than 4,000 Nepalese soldiers and was first recruited by the British 200 years ago,” according to the Daily Telegraph. It makes a certain sense as the MoD is short-staffed in just about every unit, even as it extensively relies on new enlistees recruited from impoverished Third World Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean and Africa to help flesh out the ranks. 

As further noted in Forbes:

But can Britain really turn Afghans into New Gurkhas? That’s a tricky question. Craig Lawrence, a former British Army general and Gurkha commander who has written several histories and novels about the Gurkhas, sees the optimum approach as having smaller Afghan-only units serve as part of larger British formations. “This might be as complete units of 400 to 600 personnel, or as sub-units of 80 to 120 personnel within other composite units,” he said. “This would enable them to fight together, as they have done for years, and would seem to be the best way of maximizing their lethality against the Taliban. Dispersing them across British infantry units at this early stage would dilute their capability, and would probably create integration issues.”

Besides the homeless commandos, there are some 465 skilled Western-trained military Afghan pilots and ground crews who escaped to Uzbekistan and are now exiled, with which the Brits could field a curious little airwing used to operating Hips, Hinds, and small fixed-wing COIN aircraft under primitive conditions. Could be a useful skill in places like West Africa or elsewhere in the Middle East. 

Will it happen? Well, if anyone would do it, it would be the British.

There would have to be a waiver for beards, of course. 

ROK Pattons still rocking

Posted on by Leave a comment

The Republic of the Korean army recently posted a series of photos of some of their much-updated M48 Pattons on the range, which look great considering their hulls are pushing 60 years of age.

Note the M48 compared to a Korean K2, a much more modern design

Ironically developed from the M47 Patton using lessons learned in the Korean War facing Chinese T-34-85s, the M48 was the standard main battle tank for the U.S. and NATO as well as adjacent Western Allies from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s when the M60 supplemented and then later replaced the model by the 1980s.

The South Koreans received some 1,061 M48s of all models and updated the best of these examples, former U.S. Army Forces Korea M48A5s received after 1990 along with some M48A5K1s upgraded from M48A2Cs, with the 105mm KM68A1 (South-Korean made M68, the main gun used by the M60), then added a digital fire control system, laser rangefinder, and improved armor including side skirts, making them still capable of tackling anything shy of a T-72. They also use a diesel plant rather than the old gasoline powerpack and carry M60 7.62 NATO machine guns rather than M1919 30.06 guns as the original. 

As the Norks have some 2,200 Type 59/T-54/55s and some 1,400 Chonma/T-62s as the backbone of their armor branch, these updated M48s are good-to-go against the DPRK, on a one-on-one basis, anyway.

The ROK still has some 400 or so M48A5K2/KW models in service, mainly in reserve tank battalions or assigned to the ROK Marine Corps. At least seven other countries still operate large quantities of M48s including Greece, Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turkey, although the Korean variants are perhaps the most advanced.

Happy Labor Day, Almost Inverted Jenny edition

Posted on by Leave a comment

Sept. 1918, via the Ledger Art Service: “Airplane coming down at a difficult angle after a flight over Philadelphia’ Labor Day Parade.” From the looks of it, it seems to be an Army Curtiss JN-4 Jenny trainer, of the same type as the famous stamp.

Signal Corps photo 111-SC-45453 via the National Archives. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/86697115

Enjoy your day. See you tomorrow.

Just 5 Days Left to Get Brace Comments In

Posted on by 2 comments

Ironically, the rule would allow you to keep this pistol, just get rid of the base, because, somehow, “the brace is what makes it dangerous”

The public comment period on a plan by the White House and federal gun regulators to crack down on the legal use of stabilizing pistol braces is closing in the coming days. 

The proposed rulemaking by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives largely bans the use of popular stabilizing braces on pistols by proffering a complicated multi-part test to determine if large-format handguns equipped with such braces could stray into being illegal short-barreled rifles.

The comment period is open until Sept. 8 and, as of Thursday morning, only had 149,960 comments listed. By comparison, almost twice as many comments were logged on the ATF’s proposed rule change on firearm frames and receivers, which ended last month.

Keep in mind that there are as many as 40 million braces in circulation right now, meaning only like 0.37 % of brace owners have taken five minutes to weigh in on the issue. My bet is that most don’t know what is coming, which could be bad for them. Like 10 years in prison kinda bad.

Submit your comments in these easy steps:

  1. Visit regulations.gov using this hyperlink
  2. Click the “Comment” button on the “Proposed Rule”
  3. Explain how it would affect you in a reasoned, polite comment that specifically says that you are opposed, or somehow in support of, the rule. 
  1. Enter your e-mail address (scroll down)
  2. Fill out the “Tell us about yourself” section
  3. Hit submit

Now the Taliban faces an insurgency of its own

Posted on by Leave a comment

Although America’s longest war is over, the Taliban isn’t fully victorious in its now-liberated country. There are several groups still holding out against the resurgent regime. After all, it is a civil war there. 

Ahmad Massoud, 32, the well-spoken leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, is the son of the famed Soviet Afgha War-era mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was assassinated in 2001 while heading of the Northern Alliance. A graduate of Kings College and the University of London, the younger Massoud last week published an op-ed in the WaPo pleading for help.

I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban. We have stores of ammunition and arms that we have patiently collected since my father’s time, because we knew this day might come.

Of course, although he is asking for arms and support from the West, the likelihood of it coming overtly is slim to none.

However, it should be noted that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is is funded almost exclusively by the American government, is running short reports highlighting his struggle. 

 

At the same time, Amrullah Saleh, one of the old republic’s vice presidents and former Intelligence chief, is still in the country and, along with former Defense Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi (one of the elder Massoud’s better commanders in the Northern Alliance against the Soviets and a former Chief of Staff of the Afghan National Army), are in the Panjshir with Massoud The Younger, where they are trying to form a larger resistance movement in line with a government in exile concept.
 
At least some are coming to the call. 
 
Massoud is being joined by “Hundreds of Tajiks from the southern town of Kulob” who  “say they’re prepared to join anti-Taliban militias in Afghanistan. The Afghan fighters are based in the Panjshir Valley, a predominantly ethnic-Tajik region that has repelled Taliban incursions in the past.”
 
 
Other reports are not quite as glossy as the Taliban move in to put down the unruly valley, just 100 miles from Kabul. 
 
 
Still, if Massoud and the gang can make it to the end of the fighting season, 2022 could be a big year for them. 
 
Meanwhile, there is an Uzbek angle.
 
Another vice president and warlord-figure, the aging Abdul Rashid Dostum (who was marshal of the Afghan National Army and a senior officer of the Communist-era ANA) along with Atta Muhammad Nur, a well-known Tajik who served as a mujahideen resistance commander for the Jamiat-e Islami militia against the Soviets before joining the Northern Alliance back in the day, fled from their stronghold in Mazar-e-Sharif to Uzbekistan a couple of weeks ago, where they no doubt still have a myriad of contacts across the border. Whether or not they make inroads back into the country remains to be seen but, as they say, you can run the warlord out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the warlord.
 
The more things change…
 
 

Western Approaches Scheme Sails Again

Posted on by Leave a comment

The early flight River-class offshore patrol vessel HMS Severn (P282) was decommissioned in 2017 after a planned 15-year career with the Fishery Protection Squadron in the UK’s home waters, but the Admiralty recently decided to return her to service post-Brexit and she was recommissioned into the Royal Navy on 28 August 2021 (although she was working with still listed “In Reserve” for the past 14 months) to perform her old role as a fish cop/EEZ sovereignty patrol with the fisheries squadron (now termed the Overseas Patrol Squadron) as well as provide a school ship for navigation training. 

Importantly, it is the first time that a British ship has been reactivated for the RN from mothballs since the Falklands. 

She is at least the ninth warship in the Royal Navy to carry the name, with the eighth being a Thames-class submarine (N57) who earned battle honors for Norway (1940), the Atlantic (1940–41), Sicily (1943), and the Aegean (1943). In an ode to the RN’s surface fleet in the Battle of the Atlantic, today’s Severn was recommissioned complete with a “Western Approaches” livery – as applied to U-boat killers through much of World War II.

HMS Severn departing Falmouth, 19th August 2021, on her way to London for recommissioning in her Western Approaches livery (RN photo)

Compare her modern new/old look to a vintage predecessor: 

Canadian destroyer HMCS Restigouche (H00), circa 1944-1945, in Western Approaches scheme. Canadian Navy Heritage photo CT-284

The combination of blue-grey and green-grey on a background of white and light grey was first applied to destroyer HMS Broke in 1940 and was subsequently ‘worn’ by ships operating in the namesake approaches – extending about 1,000 miles from the UK into the Atlantic – to make it difficult for German U-boat commanders to spot them, especially in heavy seas.

HMS Severn is the first vessel to receive the paint job since World War 2 and while radar makes the use of maritime camouflage largely irrelevant, it is a tribute to sailors of the Battle of the Atlantic who operated in the same waters Severn regularly ploughs.

She sailed into the Thames for her ceremony, tied up next to the old cruiser HMS Belfast, a D-Day veteran with a similar paint job. 

HMS Severn alongside HMS Belfast for her recommissioning ceremony

Of note, the scheme was applied in Falmouth Docks by the same team who gave later generation sisterships HMS Tamar and Spey their new/old North Atlantic “Dazzle” camo look in time for their deployment to the Indo-Pacific region later this month.

Marines to get upto 904 new CRRCs, which is way more than they ‘should’ need

Posted on by One comment

From DOD: 

Wing Inflatables Inc., Arcata, California, is awarded a $31,921,100 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the purchase of up to a maximum 904 Enhanced – Combat Rubber Reconnaissance Craft. Work will be performed in Arcata, California, and is expected to be complete by August 2026. Fiscal 2019 and 2022 procurement (Marine Corps) contract funds in the amount of $3,126,894 will be obligated on the first delivery order immediately following contract award and funds will expire the end of the fiscal 2022 and 2023, respectively. This contract was competitively procured via the System for Award Management website, with three proposals received. The Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Virginia, is the contracting activity (M67854-21-D-1801).

Wing’s five-chamber P4.7 series inflatable runs 15′ 5″-feet long, has a 6′ 5″-foot beam, offers 38.32ft² of usable deck space on a 12×3-foot deck. Empty weight is 180-pounds not counting the 274-pound rollup hard deck insert and can accommodate a 65hp outboard and 10 passengers/2,768-pounds of payload. The whole thing folds up into a 27″x29″x56″ package, or roughly the size of a curbside garbage can.

Each of the 7 Marine Expeditionary Units (a battalion landing team with a bunch of stuff bolted onto it and a harrier/helicopter airwing for support) has a bunch of different ways to get to the beach. These include of course the choppers, navy landing craft (LCU, LCAC, etc), and the Marines own amtrac swimming APCs. However, each one of these MAUs also has 18 of these little rubber zodiac-style boats, designated Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC, or “Crick”).

PACIFIC OCEAN (Aug. 30, 2013) Marines from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (13th MEU) depart from the stern gate of the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4) in a combat rubber raiding craft (CRRC). Boxer is underway as part of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, comprised of Boxer, the amphibious transport dock ship USS New Orleans (LPD 18), the amphibious dock landing ship USS Harpers Ferry (LSD 49), and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Brian P. Biller/Released)

A little larger than a sectional couch and powered by an outboard (or two) these can motor out from a task force still some 20 miles out at sea and approach an enemy-held beach, port, or vessel with very little footprint. They are hard to spot by eyeball, radar, or other means, especially in a light chop state. It’s a wet ride for the Marines aboard and anyone who has ever ridden one through the surf doesn’t look forward to doing it a second time– especially on a contested beach.

For landings, a company of the battalion landing team is designated the “Boat Company” and they spend a couple weeks figuring these boats out. This includes sending as many as 36 of its force before deployment through a four-week coxswains school where they learn basic sea-nav, and what not to do with these temperamental crafts. Meanwhile, other members of the Boat Coy head off to scout swimmer school where they learn the finer points of exiting a rubber raft on fins and doing lite frogman shit.

In the end, Cricks allow a 144-man company to be landed on a strip of beach or empty pier in three, six-boat waves. The former was done under OOTW conditions by Marines in Somalia in 1992.

Air transportable, Cricks can be slid out the rear ramp of MV-22s or parachuted from cargo planes such as the C-130 (and Navy C-2 CODs), can be launched from surface vessels such ranging from Amphibious assault ships (shown) or smaller craft like patrol boats, LCS and frigates. They can also be (and are) carried up from submerged submarines by divers for inflation on the surface.

The thing is, if you do the basic math on 7 MEU boat companies x 18 E-CRRCs, you get just 126 boats. Even if you double that amount to cover training and attrition, then add some for SEAL ops from submarines and for the use of Force Recon/Raider units, you still have like ~500 extra small boats.

That’s an interesting thing to ponder. 

I’d like to mention that a few months back, I theorized that the Marines might use Cricks to displace human assets from anti-ship missile batteries after they have fired their missiles from isolated atolls before the Chinese show up in force. Fire off their NSSMs, drop some WP grenades on their trucks, hop in the inflatables, and meet with a passing SSN or EPF just past the 15-fathom curve. May be easier to accomplish and have less of a footprint than an MV-22 pickup. 

FN Goes…22?

Posted on by Leave a comment

As I have mentioned a few times before, I really like FN’s 509 and 503 series pistols and have spent some extensive periods running them on T&Es over the past couple of years as part of my “day job.” I even got to go behind the scenes at FN’s factory in Columbia, SC back in 2019 to see how they are born.

I knew about the FN 502 back in December, when I saw the PTO trademark for the name filed. However, what I did not fully know this week, is that it is a hammer-fired .22LR!

A “tactical” gun built on the lessons learned and profile of the 509 (it uses the same holsters), the 502 includes an optics-ready slide and a threaded barrel, as well as a 15-round magazine option.

Yes, I have one inbound for testing! You know this…

More on the FN 502 in my column at Guns.com.

Lost Market Garden All American Identified

Posted on by One comment

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced on Sept. 1 that U.S. Army Pvt. Stephen C. Mason, 21, of Jersey City, New Jersey, killed during World War II, has been recently identified.

Mason, assigned to Headquarters Co., 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd (“All American”) Airborne Division, was reported missing in action during the famed “Bridge too far” that was Operation Market Garden after his patrol failed to return from a mission “into a heavily-fortified enemy position and by aggressive action gained specific information of the enemy disposition and strength” near Beek, Netherlands on 3 November 1944. His body was unable to be recovered. Mason posthumously received the Silver Star for his actions.

Declared “non-recoverable” in January 1951, PVT Mason was later memorialized on the “Walls of the Missing” at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten.

Fast forward to 2017, and DPAA set to analyze a set of remains known as “X-3323 Neuville,” which had been recovered near Beek in 1946 and interred in the UK. This July, after extensive efforts, it was determined that X-3323 Neuville was Mason.

He will be buried in North Arlington, New Jersey, and a rosette placed next to his name at Margraten.

Welcome home, PVT Mason.

« Older Entries Recent Entries »