Naval and Defense News

[Dysta]

ORIGINAL: Cik

one wonders what the objective of preventing civilians from taking a picture of a ship is considering everyone relevant already knows what it looks like and probably has a pretty good guess of what's under the hood anyway.

Simple: the ambiguous meaning of "Military Espionage against China" is defined by their rule book. Technically, it is a word game to ensure that posting military 'leaks' has serious consequences, while at the same time permissively allow them uploading photos whenever the government's 'mood' and 'timing' of leakage is acceptable. It's settled at late-2016 ever since.

The leaked pictures has drastically reduced, but Chinese military fans has numerous ways to circumvent the rule without getting caught; on the other hand, PLA is begin to taking their own openness to unveil advanced weapons, but derivate by rumors and negative impressions will not be tolerated.

TL;DR, it's very monarchal, unwritten yet obvious.

[kevinkins]

Is this

http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy ... m=referral

related to Russia's/China increasing interest in the arctic? What interest does China have in the Baltic at this point?

[Dysta]

ORIGINAL: kevinkin

Is this

http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy ... m=referral

related to Russia's/China increasing interest in the arctic? What interest does China have in the Baltic at this point?

Russia invite China to see what Baltic sea is about, militarily. Russia also wants China to express their own message of national sovereignty against the recent trend of Freedom of Navigations raised by US, in a way to put their warships at Mediterranean Sea.

But it's just a naval interaction, if no drama involved.

[Broncepulido]

HMS Queen Elizabeth sailing at last, for six weeks of test. Weapons now listed as 2x20mm Phalanx and 4x30mm guns:
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-ca ... 1796420008

[Broncepulido]

Apparently no weapons installed yet, great drone footage: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/watch-d ... ign=social

[Dysta]

As a rebuke, Qatar will tie with Iran closer than ever since, even 13 demands from Saudi-led countries were issued.

http://alwaght.com/en/News/101939/Irani ... with-Qatar

[LoBlo]

Looks like the ACTUV is live testing now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6XeNy4yCs0

Looks like a screen for HVT and critical waterways IMHO.

[Hongjian]

Latest pictures of the Type 055 that were allowed to be shared on the web.

Still censored, but we can at least see a few interesting clues:
1. The Type 366/Mineral-ME OTH targeting radar that has been a staple for all other Chinese warships is no more - it is presumed that a new OTH radar has taken over its job, integrated in the mast.
2. The main Type 346-series AESA indeed looks slightly different from the A-variant of the 052D, featuring an additional array above it, as well as being slightly larger. Could actually be the B-variant.
3. The 2nd Type 055 of the Shanghai JNCX shipyard also takes shaped. At this pace, its rumored launch being by the end of 2017 might come to pass.

[kevinkins]

http://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/ ... helicopter

FYI ... might be interesting to use these off a USN platform is a hypothetical role within a Command scenario. Does the USN have a few Apaches?

[kevinkins]

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017 ... ro.twitter

Bit of detail on the Syrian shoot down. Mentions the "battle-management command and control center known as "The Kingpin" which is what I imagine Command to simulate.

[Gunner98]

Kingpin!

Now I have 'big screen envy' [:D]

[Gneckes]

ORIGINAL: Gunner98

Kingpin!

Now I have 'big screen envy' [:D]

Do want!
But seriously, I'd love to have a CMANO session with some friends using the video projector.

hmmmm, time to kidnap myself some friends!

[mikeCK]

For those curious about the tactics of the US shoot down of the Syrian jet. Looks like an Aim-9 was decoyed (happens a lot) so the pilot switched to an Aim-120 which hit.

"Last week, a U.S. Navy F-18 Super Hornet launched from USS George H.W. Bush shot down a Syrian warplane -- the first time the U.S. military shot down a jet in air-to-air combat in 18 years. The U.S. jet first fired a short-range sidewinder missile, but missed when the Syrian jet launched flares and took evasive action. But the American pilot did not miss a second time, firing a medium-range air-to-air missile called an Aim-120 Amraam, U.S. officials said."

[Hongjian]

Yeah... Looks like not all Flares are equal:

http://www.combataircraft.net/2017/06/2 ... rn-aim-9x/

Its pilot engaged the ‘Fitter’ and initially fired an AIM-9X Sidewinder close-range heat-seeking missile from a range of about half a mile, which was defeated by flares launched by the Su-22 pilot. The Super Hornet then re-engaged and fired an AIM-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile), which hit the ‘Fitter’ despite being fired from relatively close range.

The pilot was able to eject and was later recovered safely, according to local sources.

It marked the first shootdown of a manned fighter by a US aircraft since May 4, 1999, when Lt Col Michael ‘Dog’ Geczy, US Air Force, downed a Serbian MiG-29 with an AIM-120 fired from his F-16CJ during Operation ‘Allied Force’.



However, the engagement poses some interesting questions, not least; how was a 1980s-era ‘Fitter’ able to defeat a cutting-edge US air-to-air heat-seeking missile?

One particular exerpt makes fascinating reading:

“We had 210 maintainers,” Manclark recalled. “They were dedicated, just unbelievable, tech sergeants and master sergeants. The CIA gave us a flare dispenser from a Frogfoot [Su-25] that had been shot down in Afghanistan. We gave it to maintenance – it was just a thing with wires coming out of it. Four hours later they had it operational on a MiG-21.”

That proved to be a very important test. “In 1987 we had the AIM-9P, which was designed to reject flares, and when we used US flares against it would ignore them and go straight for the target. We had the Soviet flares – they were dirty, and none of them looked the same – and the AIM-9P said ‘I love that flare’.

“Why’d that happen? We had designed it to reject American flares. The Soviet flares had different burn time, intensity and separation. The same way, every time we tried to build a SAM simulator, when we got the real thing it wasn’t the same.

“I use the AIM-9P because it is out of the system and I can talk about it. The same thing happened to a lot of things that are still in the system and that I can’t talk about.”

The Syrian ‘Fitter’ in the latest incident appears to have had success with flares against the AIM-9X. There are also reports that the SyAAF ‘Fitters’ had received upgraded flare packs.

Looks like Flares shouldnt be made too "perfect".

Flares need to be dirty, random, arbitrary and basically doing whatever they want to work best.

I wonder if this has relevance to CMANO...

[mikeCK]

Well flares from aircraft such as Mig 25 gave the Air Force fits in Desert Storm. In one engagement three different sidewinders were fired at one mig in one engagement and all were decoyed before the plane was down with a close range sparrow shot. To me this is the reason why the Air Force is perfectly happy having the F 35 carry only sparrows and was in no rush to introduce the Aim-9x hookup

I'm convinced that since the 1970s the Soviets knew how to decoy the sidewinder specifically and the US has never bothered to address the issue. Regardless if the aim-9 was ever the best air to air missile it certainly hasn't been since the mid-80s. The Aim-120 is far superior.

It amazed me that an aim-9L fired at the glowing hot GIANT afterburning engines of a mig-25 could be decoyed by a flare. God knows how old the flares were.

[Hongjian]

Impressive display of a salvo of 10 ballistic missile launch excercise. Probably from last November. Speculated to be DF-11s, whose shelf-live is running out anyway.

https://twitter.com/xinfengcao/status/8 ... 4665703424

[Broncepulido]

F-35 to receive inmediantly capability to attack moving targets, with the fast integration of GBU-49:
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/ray ... ng-targets

[Broncepulido]

Great explanations in this comment on the same article by Spudman WP: "The original requirement for Block 3F was to hit a 40mph target. This applies to a vast majority of the military targets on the battlefield. The F-35 has already demonstrated the ability to hit these “normal” moving targets.

Plans were already in place for an upgraded EOTS at Block 4.2 that would handle higher speed targets using normal munitions (ie not Hellfire or specialized LGBs like the Raytheon bomb in the article). However, with the increasing use of higher-speed targets (read: "Technicals") on the battlefield, there was a growing need to hit targets up to 70mph sooner rather than later. Raytheon and others have proposed a low-cost adaptation of an existing bomb that would be close to 3F compliant and allow a 3F F-35 to hit “high-speed” targets.

The reason that Raytheon even has this bomb in the pipeline is that most LTPs cannot hit high-speed targets using normal Paveways & LJDAMs on their own, just like the F-35."

Incidentally, for Wikipedia:
GBU-49 Enhanced Paveway II – BLU-133 500 lb (227 kg) bomb. Raytheon's Enhanced dual-mode GPS and Laser guided version of the laser-only GBU-12.
In my personal notes GBU-49/B is EGBU-12 Enhanced Paveway II.

[Tailhook]

ORIGINAL: kevinkin

http://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/ ... helicopter

FYI ... might be interesting to use these off a USN platform is a hypothetical role within a Command scenario. Does the USN have a few Apaches?

No, the Army is the only US service with AH-64 variants. The Navy looked into it in the late 80s/early 90s (Google "Sea Apache").

[Hongjian]

Finally clear pictures of its launch ceremony - Official Press, this time.

Seems like the internet police was clamping down on it because it didnt want to ruin the propaganda effect of this event.







The official PLA media gives us some clues of what this ship will be equipped with - it looks like it will have BMD missiles (Sino HQ-26/SM-3s?):

http://www.81.cn/jmywyl/2017-06/28/content_7655453.htm

google translate:

Navy new destroyer first ship launching ceremony this morning in Shanghai Jiangnan Shipbuilding (Group) Co., Ltd. held. Member of the Central Military Commission, military equipment development minister Zhang Youxia attended the launching ceremony and delivered a speech.

9 o'clock in the morning, the ceremony began, with the ritual scene all the staff singing in full swing the national anthem, bright five-star red flag slowly rising. Cut the ribbon after the "throw bottle ceremony", a bottle of champagne in the ship bow broken, brilliant ribbon from the side of the jet out, the new destroyer sounding the whistle, the audience sounded warm applause.

Subsequently, the destroyer in the tow traction slowly moved to the floating box after the water. The ship is a completely independent development of China's new 10,000-ton destroyer, has broken through the large-scale ships overall design, information integration, assembly construction and a series of key technologies, equipped with new air defense, anti-missile, anti-ship, anti- Strong information perception, air defense and anti-missile and sea combat capability,

(TL note: They probably mean new long range SAM, BMD-missile, AShMs, enhanced sensors for AAW and BMD, as well as ASuW)

The Navy to achieve strategic transformation and development of the iconic warships. The ship launched the water to mark the development of our destroyers to a new level, for the improvement of the naval equipment system,