Proactively “From the Sea”; an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.
I know you have a few shekels in you pocket - THIS is worth a few of them.
... we’re announcing a donation opportunity for our members and supporters – and we need your help! A collection of rare books on 19th century Afghanistan, primarily written by British military officers, has recently become available on the antiquarian book market. The Navy Department Library is interested in acquiring these volumes, but lacks the funds to do so. The library will digitize the books in HTML (textual) format, prominently post them on the Naval History and Heritage Command’s website, and house the volumes in the Rare Book Room. The library has previously posted similar items from its collection, such as “A Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan, 1841-2” and “The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80,” and their content has been used in briefings to Navy leadership. The volumes ... cost $9,800, and two generous donors have offered $1500 in seed money to assist in the purchase of this collection. We ask that you consider a tax deductible gift to this worthy project through our online GiveDirect interface, which is linked below. Acknowledgement letters will be sent in time for your 2011 tax preparations!
"There were a lot of people who thought this was a marketing thing – we're going to give you a cellphone if you enlist," says Mr. McCarthy, director of operations for the Army's Brigade Modernization Command.
But that was the furthest thing from his mind. Instead, he was hoping to recast how the Army thinks about technology. It was a simple idea – allowing soldiers to use the smart phones they're familiar with to be more connected on the battlefield, whether to check maps or relay information. But it has profound implications for the military.
For the soldiers, the smart phones have already begun to unleash torrents of ingenuity, with some designing new soldier-friendly applications, such as links to the video feed of the base security camera.
I was one of the first people to show up at their command with a laptop in the very early '90s.
I was one of the first people to show up with a Palm PDA later that decade. I had a YN1 who wrote programs. I get technology.
I remember all the hype especially about the PDA and how it would revolutionize how we did work on board a ship. I remember commands buying all their officers and Chiefs PDA ... etc ... etc.
Tools. Just tools. On the margins they can help - but just tools. Don't get excited - forget the fundamentals and you won't program your ships navigation computers properly and will run aground while the Commodore hold awards quarters ... or you will drift your just out of the dry dock CG on to a reef on a calm, clear, Pacific day.
In every field of American life, there are Boomers who have made and are making important, selfless contributions: in hospitals, in classrooms, in government, in business, in the military. You name it and we are there. But at the level of public policy and moral leadership, as a generation we have largely failed. The Boomer Progressive Establishment in particular has been a huge disappointment to itself and to the country. The political class slumbered as the entitlement and pension crisis grew to ominous dimensions. Boomer financial leadership was selfish and shortsighted, by and large. Boomer CEOs accelerated the trend toward unlimited greed among corporate elites, and Boomer members of corporate boards sit by and let it happen. Boomer academics created a profoundly dysfunctional system that systemically shovels resources upward from students and adjuncts to overpaid administrators and professors who by and large have not, to say the least, done an outstanding job of transmitting the cultural heritage of the past to future generations. Boomer Hollywood execs created an amoral morass of sludge — and maybe I’m missing something, but nobody spends a lot of time talking about the towering cultural accomplishments of the world historical art geniuses of the Boomer years. Boomer greens enthusiastically bet their movement on the truly idiotic drive for a global carbon treaty; they are now grieving over their failure to make any measurable progress after decades spent and hundreds of millions of dollars thrown away. On the Boomer watch the American family and the American middle class entered major crises; by the time the Boomers have finished with it the health system will be an unaffordable and dysfunctional tangle — perhaps the most complicated, expensive and poorly designed such system in the history of the world.
All of this was done by a generation that never lost its confidence that it was smarter, better educated and more idealistic than its Depression-surviving, World War-winning, segregation-ending, prosperity-building parents. We didn’t need their stinking faith, their stinking morals, or their pathetically conformist codes of moral behavior. We were better than that; after all, we grokked Jefferson Airplane, achieved nirvana on LSD and had a spiritual wealth and sensitivity that our boorish bourgeois forbears could not grasp. They might be doers, builders and achievers — but we Boomers grooved, man, we had sex in the park, we grew our hair long, and we listened to sexy musical lyrics about drugs that those pathetic old losers could not even understand.
What the Boomers as a generation missed (there were, of course and thankfully, many honorable individual exceptions) was the core set of values that every generation must discover to make a successful transition to real adulthood: maturity.
As long as they don't export more of these things - I'm not worried all that much. I just wish they would deploy a lot to, ahem, help with our ASW readiness.
The Russian government is turning its attention to revitalizing Russia’s fleet of cruise-missile and multi-purpose attack submarines.
They are able to do so with the apparent completion of Russia’s fourth-generation Project Mk 955 Borey-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine and its new RSM-56 Bulava (NATO code name SS-NX-30) Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM).
But the production of cruise-missile and multi-purpose attack submarines has fared even worse than Russia’s strategic nuclear submarines, leaving the Russian Navy with 8 attack submarines designed to engage other ships and 19 submarines designed to attack land-based targets with cruise missiles. Though still functional, they will soon reach the end of their designated lifespan since they were constructed during the 1980s and 1990s.
Without urgent corrective measures, Russia’s submarine fleet could decline to fewer than 20 operational ships in a few years. ... The focus of the Russian submarine replacement effort is now on the new Project 885 Yasen (NATO code name Graney) class nuclear-powered multipurpose attack submarine.
Being a multipurpose ship, it fulfills two roles– that of traditional attack submarines and that of Russia’s cruise missile submarines.
As an attack submarine it would replace the Akula attack submarines, and as a cruise missile vessel it would replace the Oscar II class ships. Although work started on the first Severodvinsk in 1993, with a planned launch for 1998, financial considerations halted work for most of the 1990s. Construction resumed in 2000 but delays in production continued due to financial problems as well as technical updates and modifications. The submarine was then scheduled to launch on May 7, 2010 to mark Victory Day over Nazi Germany. However, technical problems delayed the date again to June 15, when President Medvedev attended the launching ceremony.
The Severodvinsk is named after the city in which it was built. Designed by the Malakhit Design Bureau and built by Sevmash Shipyard in the northern Russia city of Severodvinsk , the boat has a double hall and a single shaft. It is 120 meters long with ten compartments. The Severodvinsk displaces 9,700 tons on the surface and 13,700 tons when submerged. It has a maximum speed of 31 knots when submerged. The submarine is equipped with mines, torpedoes, 24 long-range cruise missiles for attacking distant targets, and short-range anti-ship missiles. The torpedoes are launched through eight 533 mm and 650 mm torpedo tubes, while the cruise missiles are launched via eight vertical launch tubes. The cruise missiles include the 3M51 Alfa SLCM, the SS-NX-26 Oniks SLCM and the SS-N-21 Granat/Sampson SLCM cruise missiles, and the SS-N-16 Stallion anti-ship missile. They can be armed with conventional or nuclear warheads and have ranges up to 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles). It has a 85 member crew, suggesting a high degree of automation. ... The Russian Navy still has several types of multi-purpose submarines inherited from the Soviet period. These include eight Oscar II class cruise missile submarines. They are armed with P-700 Granit cruise missiles designed to attack U.S. Navy carrier task forces. They may be armed with newer cruise missiles that could allow them to attack land-based targets. The Navy also has four Victor III and three Sierra attack submarines.
The eight Akula submarines are mainly assigned to Russia’s Northern Fleet. Although the Soviet government began working on the more advanced Akula II type ship in the early 1990s, the post-Soviet collapse meant it was not until 2007 that the Russian government found sufficient funds to resume development work, starting in October 2008, to begin sea trials of the vessel.
The Russian Navy only began receiving delivery of the first of its eight planned new Lada class diesel submarines in 2010, whose construction began over a decade ago. Developed by the Rubin Design Bureau, this new type Project 677 diesel submarine reportedly operates more quietly than the venerable Russian Kilo-class diesel-eclectic submarine, which it will replace.
The Lada also has a longer operational range than the Kilos, which were constructed in the 1980s, and more advanced anti-ship weaponry. The Russian Navy wants to have eight Lada submarines by 2020, and more later, but problems with the propulsions systems used by the first vessel of this class, the St. Petersburg, have delayed completion of the other two ships whose construction has already begun.
As an interim measure, the Navy is building six new improved Kilos based on a vessel that was previously only sold to other countries (such as China). They are supposed to join the Black Sea Fleet in a few years. The Black Sea Fleet, based in Sevastopol, currently has a single Project 877 Alrosa submarine.
So, what is the new Russian Submarine - a Type IX, X? I've lost count since I was Transformationalized in the late '90s.
MTH & AW1, Norman is busy - help me out here. While we are at it - let's do a Type review.
Type 1: Hotel, Echo, November. That is easy. Type 2: Charlie, Victor, Yankee? Type 3: Oscar and Delta? Type 4: ...... you take it from here, I don't want to look too dumb. I think I got my Type 3s right. Mike, Papa, Typhoon, Akula, Sierra all flow in there somewhere. I need a Cold War OS/AW/IS right now.
Marines are close to buying 70 of Britain’s freshly retired Gr7/9 Harrier jump jets to keep the USMC Harrier fleet flying into the 2020s. This comes a few months after it was revealed that the Corps is slated to purchase about 80 F-35C carrier variant Joint Strike Fighters. This is clearly a hedge against delays with the F-35 program. The Marines have been all in on the JSF for years, saying that it was the future of Marine Corps tacair and that there is no plan B.
Smart because it gives them some breathing room for F-35B delays. Risky because it can give some short-term thinking money cruncher an excuse to say, "You don't need the F-35B - you have Harriers aplenty.
Since T-Paw left, I have not endorsed anyone else. I still haven't - and though earlier I poo-poo'd Gingrich, I now will grant you he needs to be looked at as a serious contender. Heck - if you are in the top-3 you have to be.
I still am not convinced that he won't be torn to shreds in a general election, but I will grant you this; he is a formidable statesman when he is on his game.
I will tip my hat to him for this reason if nothing else; I love when some MSM type gets their smug sneer wiped off.
Hey Pelley - the chubby guy from Georgia has your jock if you're looking for it.
The Department of Defense announced today the creation of a new office to integrate air and naval combat capabilities in support of emerging national security requirements.
In the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates directed the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to develop a comprehensive concept to counter emerging anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) challenges. The services collaborated to develop the Air-Sea Battle (ASB) concept. On Aug. 12, 2011, Navy Adm. Jonathan Greenert, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, and Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove established the Air-Sea Battle Office (ASBO), creating a framework to implement the ASB concept.
The ASB concept will guide the services as they work together to maintain a continued U.S. advantage against the global proliferation of advanced military technologies and A2/AD capabilities. Air-Sea Battle will leverage military and technological capabilities that reflect unprecedented Navy, Marine and Air Force collaboration, cooperation, integration, and resource investments.
The ASBO will oversee the concept implementation by facilitating coordination among the services, influencing service wargames, fostering development and integration of air and naval capabilities, and collaborating with the joint forces. The Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will each dedicate a minimum of two field grade officers or civil service equivalents to the ASBO.
Implementation of the ASB concept by the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will foster positive change in the institutional relationships among the services, the integration of acquisition strategies, and the conceptual approach to warfare. The ASB concept is a natural and deliberate evolution of U.S. warfighting to counter emerging A2/AD threats that include conventional ballistic missiles, long-range precision cruise missiles, advanced integrated air and missile defense systems, electronic and cyber warfare capabilities, submarines, surface combatants, and modern combat aircraft. Air-Sea Battle will enable the projection of force in defense of U.S. interests and those of our allies and by sustaining stability and freedom of access throughout the global commons.
One request: more thought and less Join Onanism, please.
