comofordcomofordB-Roll showing flyby, approach and landing
comofordFrom Flickr
Close up of the partially resurfaced flight deck
Resurfacing USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6)
Take off
comofordThe fight between the Airbus C295 and Alenia C-27J in Australia to replace the RAAF’s Caribou.
Manufacturer warns orders are drying up
Airbus Military boss Domingo Urena Raso made a visit to Australia:
…
With a production rate of 18 C295s a year and only 10 aircraft on back order, Airbus Military’s production line for the plane has about six months of work.
Mr Raso said while an Australian order might not be large in terms of numbers, it would still be important to his company.
… while there was not much room to move on the price of the C-27, which would have to be bought under the terms of the US foreign military sales program, that was not true of the C295.
Given the potential spin-offs from securing an Australian contract, it might even make sense for Airbus Military to sell planes at cost or even at a loss.
comofordActually this is a bit of a myth. Australia splits its military purchases between Europe and the US pretty evenly (with some smaller stuff from Israel), with possibly more coming from the EU. Just off the top of my head here are a few large scale military purchases which have come from EU nations; Mirage 3, F-100, LHD, MRH 90, Tiger ARH, PZH-2000/K-9, F-88 ausstyer, RBS-70, ASRAAM, Carl Gustav, Collins Class & ANZAC class.
The ADF is pro-US compatible when it comes to combat systems (same applies to other friendly countries in the region)
Tiger helicopters – 70mm rockets and Hellfires
PZH-2000/K-9 – SPH program had to compatible with Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) by Raytheon, used by US forces
Collins class – Swedish design by US combat systems
Hobart class – Spanish design, US combat systems
ANZAC class – German origins, US systems
F-88 ausstyer; the Army wanted the M16A2 but they couldn’t get a local production licence. F88 has since been made to be compatible with US accessories eg M203
etc ….
comofordMaybe they are gold plated…:D
Can it lift a Ferrari from Doha to Abu Dhabi for F1 weekend?
comoford… A sixth C-17 would give the Government increased options to support a wider range of contingencies that might require heavy-lift aircraft. Advice from Defence is that a sixth aircraft would double the number of C-17A aircraft available for operations at any one time compared to four aircraft.
…
comofordStill, only the one machine gun
comofordit was cost and getting parts for them that our pigs were retired
They needed 180 man hours of maintenance towards the end. Should’ve pulled the plug during the 90s and replace with F-15Es – which is what the USAF did as well.
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/05/27/342496/australia-impressed-by-super-hornet-performance.html
… The RAAF, however, intends to operate the F/A-18F more like how the US Air Force flies the multi-role Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle, Roberton says.
comofordAustralian Navy to get 24 MH-60R Seahawks for US$3.2b to replace older SH-60s and to make up for the Sea Sprites axing.
NFH-90 lost out. (MH-60R was always preferred by the Navy)
Australia to buy 24 Romeo helicopters
Max Blenkin, AAP Defence Correspondent
June 16, 2011 – 1:49PMAustralia is to buy 24 advanced US-built Seahawk naval combat helicopters to replace ageing Seahawks and to do the job that would have been done by the now cancelled Seasprites.
The deal is worth $3 billion, with the new MH-60R (Romeo) aircraft produced by Sikorsky and Lockheed-Martin in the United States.
Romeo was chosen over the European-designed NH-90 after a protracted tender process.
NH-90 – a maritime version of MRH-90 helicopters now being produced as transport helicopters for the Australian army and navy – would have been assembled in Brisbane by the firm Australian Aerospace.
Romeos will not be built in Australia but the prime contractor Lockheed-Martin has promised to make a significant investment in support facilities here.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith said the Romeos, which would arrive in Australia between 2014 and 2020, had proven capability.
“It’s currently used by the US navy,” he said, adding it also was the updated or modern version of the Seahawk now in use.
“Because of its proven capability, it’s low risk and also we very strongly believe it’s value for money.”
Although a modern design, NH-90 was regarded as more expensive and not as well-developed as Romeo.
The new helicopters will be based at HMAS Albatross in Nowra, NSW and operate from Anzac frigates and the new air warfare destroyers.
Australian aircraft will be little different to the 100 Romeos operated by the US Navy, which have flown about 90,000 hours.
The “military off-the-shelf” acquisition has a lower risk of delay, cost blowout or capability shortfall.
They come equipped with an advanced sonar and radar and can carry Hellfire missiles and anti-submarine torpedoes.
Using an advanced datalink to other warships, Romeos can serve as the eyes and ears of a distant fleet.
“Their job is to hunt and kill submarines,” said Defence Materiel Minister Jason Clare.
They also will also play an important role in attacking small and fast-moving watercraft.
Like the Seahawk helicopters that operate off our frigates now in the Middle East and off the coast of Africa, they will play a crucial role when it comes to anti-piracy and counter-terrorist activities, Mr Clare said.
Mr Clare said Defence would not always buy military off-the-shelf equipment but if it did want to acquire a capability still being developed, it now had to make a detailed business case.
The Seasprite project was cancelled in 2008 when it became apparent these helicopters were unlikely to deliver the promised capability and could not be operated safely.
The government is still seeking to unload 11 unwanted Seasprites.
“They haven’t been onsold as of yet,” Mr Clare said.
comofordLibyan air ops – Mission planning, how it all works
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/world/africa/25nato.html
May 24, 2011
Daunting Task for NATO in Libya as Strikes Intensify
By ERIC SCHMITTOVER THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA — Just after midnight on Sunday, an allied Mirage 2000 fighter jet prowling the Libyan coastline attacked a Libyan missile patrol boat that military officials said threatened NATO and humanitarian aid vessels in nearby waters.
The strike on the Libyan warship in the harbor at Sirt came at the end of a convoluted chain that started with political orders from Brussels, passed through two military command centers in Italy and concluded with controllers aboard this Awacs command-and-control plane 50 miles off the Libyan coast authorizing the Mirage to bomb the boat.
Two months into the Libya air campaign, allied officers insist they have worked out the kinks in an operation initially plagued by NATO’s inexperience in waging a complex air war against moving targets and botched communications with the ragtag rebel army. The confusion resulted in at least two accidental bombings that killed more than a dozen rebel fighters.
As Tuesday’s heavy airstrikes in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, underscored, NATO is escalating the pace and intensity of attacks on Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, trying to break an apparent stalemate in the conflict, now three months old. Yet the alliance is still short on reconnaissance planes to identify hostile targets and refueling planes to allow fighter-bombers to conduct longer missions, a senior NATO diplomat said.
French officials said Monday that they were dispatching 12 attack helicopters to allow for more precise ground attacks, particularly around Misurata, where loyalist forces continue to fire mortars and artillery despite rebel gains and heavy air attacks.
With no troops on the ground, NATO planners and pilots acknowledge that they often cannot pinpoint the shifting battle lines in cities like Misurata. “The front lines are more scattered,” said Col. L. S. Kjoeller, who commands four Danish F-16s flying eight daily strike missions from Sigonella air base in Sicily.
Information on Libyan forces filters up from Central Intelligence Agency officers and allied special operations troops working with the rebels on the ground, as well as from the rebels themselves. But NATO planners say they have no direct contact with anyone on the ground to help coordinate the roughly 50 allied attack missions every night.
Instead, they rely on an array of imagery and electronic intercepts collected by drones, spy planes and satellites, as well as news media reports and other whispers of intelligence. These are used to build a round-the-clock campaign that allied officers say is preventing Colonel Qaddafi from making sustained attacks on rebel fighters and driving him deeper into hiding.
“We’re grinding down the regime,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Schmidt, an American officer who commands two dozen NATO and British Awacs planes.
The daily strikes include targets assessed in advance, from mobile missile launchers to command-and-control sites in the capital, which NATO officials said were attacked with 28 bunker-busting satellite-guided bombs on Tuesday night. But there are also fleeting targets of opportunity, like the Libyan warship on Sunday, as well as tanks, artillery or pickup trucks outfitted with heavy guns that are spotted in hiding places, vetted swiftly and hunted down, often in minutes.
The targeting process started in Brussels in March, when NATO ambassadors approved the broad objectives of the campaign, which was authorized by the United Nations Security Council to protect civilians from attack by Qaddafi forces.
Translating those political objectives into military priorities to achieve specific results on the ground falls to NATO’s southern headquarters in Naples, led by Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard of Canada, the allied operational commander, and his British deputy, Rear Adm. Russell Harding.
“It takes time to go through and target properly,” Admiral Harding said in an interview. “We decide we want to go after command-and-control or resupply routes, or we ask, where is the ammunition coming from? Where is it, what is it and what do we need to do?”
Operating from a converted ballroom once used by Mussolini, a special cell of intelligence analysts, targeting experts and other planners pull together information on possible targets.
From Naples, the authorized target list is sent to an air operations center near Bologna. There, a United States Air Force officer, Lt. Gen. Ralph J. Jodice II, oversees the delicate process of matching specific allied aircraft, armed with specific weapons, to specific targets to achieve the best effects on the ground with the least risk to civilians.
The targeting experts decide, for example, which bomb can penetrate a reinforced concrete underground bunker, at what time of day an attack poses the least risk to civilians, and whether delaying a bomb’s impact a few seconds until it burrows into the ground will reduce deadly shrapnel but still destroy an ammunition depot.
For command bunkers in Tripoli, which require long periods of surveillance before striking, NATO increasingly relies on American Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles. The drones can fly high overhead for hundreds of hours, chronicling the “pattern of life” below until allied commanders feel confident the site is a legitimate target.
Commanders begin reviewing targets 96 hours ahead and prepare a final list 24 hours before missions take off. Bombs are then loaded on planes and scores of aircraft take to the skies from bases around the Mediterranean.
Then it becomes the job of the Awacs crews to manage the scores of allied fighters, interceptors, refueling tankers and surveillance planes operating in the airspace in and around Libya.
On its overnight mission on Sunday, the Awacs plane cruised at 36,000 feet, higher than usual to avoid thunderstorms below that canceled a few missions. The rotating Frisbee-shaped radar on top of the aircraft counted 50 planes just past midnight.
In the Awacs, a windowless military version of a Boeing 707 jet, the war in Libya unfolds on the 20-inch computer screens of controllers in dark green flight suits who keep aircraft safely separated, guide them to tankers when they need fuel and keep an eye out for potential threats.
On the screens, the outlines of the Mediterranean and the Libyan coast emerge. Fighters, refuelers, jammers, reconnaissance planes and remotely piloted drones as well as commercial airliners each have different symbols: tiny white circles, yellow rectangles, check marks, dashes, dots of different colors. A mouse click on a symbol reveals the plane’s altitude, speed and other information. On a separate console, a controller can follow hundreds of ships and even trucks driving along the Libyan coast.
Just before midnight, the air operations center sends a message through an encrypted chat room, asking the Awacs to direct a Mirage 2000 jet to check out suspicious vehicles near the airport in Misurata. Under the mission’s ground rules, the aircraft’s nationality cannot be reported.
“There are three big trucks,” the pilot reports.
“Are they stationary or moving? Do you see any weapons?” asks a Canadian weapons controller.
“I am unable to identify them as military vehicles,” the pilot responds, saying that rain clouds are obscuring his view.
The command center decides against an attack.
Nearly two hours later, however, a different Mirage is summoned to investigate the suspicious boat in Sirt harbor. Cleared to attack, the jet drops two bombs, the first narrowly missing, the second a direct hit.
With missions like this, NATO officials express greater confidence than ever that Colonel Qaddafi is unable to direct his forces, possibly resorting to couriers in some cases to relay strategic and operational guidance.
Even with their combat effectiveness eroding, Libyan forces try to carry out sporadic attacks on civilians and allied forces.
Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III, the overall commander of NATO forces in the Mediterranean, said from his office in Naples that the allied mission has largely achieved its goal of protecting civilians, especially in eastern Libya, and has seriously damaged the Libyan military.
“Qaddafi will never be able to turn a large army on his people again, because it’s gone,” said Admiral Locklear, noting that the air campaign has wiped out more than half of Libya’s ammunition stockpiles and cut off most supply lines to forces in the field.
But the admiral acknowledged Colonel Qaddafi’s resiliency, and said that without sustained political and economic pressure as well, “the military piece will take a very long time.”
comofordBoth Japan and New Zealand have inquired about the A400M to handle humanitarian crises.
Japan has Kawasaki C-2s coming online. Maybe C-17s (Australia pretty much sent their entire fleet there) but A400M seems unlikely.
NZ are looking to share C-17s with Australia
…
Neighbouring Far Eastern governments are understood to have started looking at the possibility of teaming up in partnerships of two to three to afford the aircraft.
:confused:
what countries???
comofordBefore Attack, Pakistan’s Navy Boasted of Role in Fight Against Taliban
…
As Abdullah Saad, a Pakistani blogger and journalist, pointed out on Monday, Adm. Noman Bashir, the Pakistan navy chief, boasted during an interview on Pakistani television in March that his service had “provided our surveillance aircraft and a contingent of [Pakistan Navy commandos] to operate hand in glove with the Pakistan Army during” a recent offensive against the militants in the tribal areas.
“So Pakistan’s navy,” a smiling admiral told television viewers just two months ago, “was even seen in the mountains, in the north, during these very vital and very important operations. And we are very happy to say that out contribution was quite significant.”
comofordIs it true Obama new of the compound in march?
They knew since at least August 2010. They’ve been practicing the raid (built replica compound etc) since at least April 2011.
comofordIt appears to be a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that crashed in the US military raid that killed Osama bin Laden early on 2 May.
Failed flared landing?
An Australian special forces UH-60 got into troubles (bounced off the flight deck of a ship) practicing the maneuver on exercise a few years back. Cuase was too fast and too aggressive on approach.
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