Thread: The Four Decommissioned U.S. Aircraft Carriers Are

Harrier fleet sold to US military

Fighter planes controversially scrapped last year reported to have been bought by United States marine corps

Nick Hopkins The Guardian
Tuesday 15 November 2011


Harrier jump jets were scrapped under last year’s defence review. The United States military has bought the entire fleet. Photograph: Ministry Of Defence/PA

Britain's entire fleet of Harrier jump jets, the veteran plane scrapped in last year's defence review, has been saved - by the American military.

All 74 of the planes are to fly again for the US m arines in a deal that is expected to be closed within a week.

The Ministry of Defence said last night that negotiations were in their final stages. Reports in the US suggested the Marines were already preparing for their arrival.

The sale of the Harriers is bound to raise fresh questions about the wisdom of retiring the much-admired aircraft, which the Americans intend to use until 2025.

Speaking to the NavyTimes, Rear Admiral Mark Heinrich, chief of the US Navy's supply corps, said buying the Harriers made sense because many of the jets had been recently upgraded, and the US already had pilots who could fly them.

"We're taking advantage of all the money the Brits have spent on them," he said. "It's like we're buying a car with maybe 15,000 miles on it. These are very good platforms."

News of the sale comes as the government spending watchdog has found that the UK's biggest military projects are more than £6bn over budget, and are suffering from further delays despite attempts to bring them under stricter control.

The National Audit Office report also states that the UK faces a potential shortage of attack submarines because of cost-cutting decisions taken in last year's strategic defence and security review.

In a 70-page study, the NAO says the total cost of 15 equipment programmes has reached £59.6bn, and that - on average - they will be 30 months late into service. The watchdog says the MoD is still reeling from mistakes made more than a decade ago, but concedes that the department is slowly bringing things under control.

The NAO sets out continuing attempts by the MoD to bring down spiralling costs on projects that include the construction of seven Royal Navy Astute class submarines, the RAF's Typhoon fast jets, and updates designed to breathe new life into older equipment.

The MoD had forecast the total overall costs for these projects would be £53.5bn, but that has now been revised to £59.6bn.

The chaotic Astute submarine programme is singled out in the NAO report. Initially, eight of the attack submarines were due to be built, but that was cut to seven because of costs, and the programme has now been delayed so that the last of the boats will not be in service until 2024 - almost three years late.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said the MoD had been "hampered by a legacy of poor planning and performance on some past projects, and the resulting cuts and delays are not value for money". The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, said the MoD had made progress and was now "balancing its books". The MoD also disputes that the delay to the Astute programme will lead to a capability gap.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/no...ld-us-military

Stratfor Analysis- The China Naval Threat

Video at the link:

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/201111 ... z1dvX7qj6K

or

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/ ... val_threat

Nuclear Missile Silos 1980-2010

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/nuclear-sil ... -silos.htm

B-2 Bomber Gets Boeing's New 30,000-Pound Bunker-Buster Bomb

By Tony Capaccio - Nov 15, 2011 12:00 AM ET .

The U.S. Air Force has taken delivery of a new 30,000-pound bomb from Boeing Co. (BA) that’s capable of penetrating deeply buried enemy targets.

The huge bunker buster, dubbed the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, is built to fit the B-2 stealth bomber. The Air Force Global Strike Command started receiving the bombs in September, Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jack Miller said in a short statement to Bloomberg News.

The deliveries “will meet requirements for the current operational need,” he said.

The Air Force in 2009 said Boeing might build as many as 16 of the munitions. Miller yesterday had no details on how many the Air Force plans to buy. Boeing in August received a $32 million contract that included eight of the munitions.

Command head Lieutenant General James Kowalski told the annual Air Force Association conference in September the command“completed integration” of the bunker-buster bomb with the B-2, “giving the war-fighter increased capability against hardened and deeply buried targets.”

The bomb is the U.S. military’s largest conventional penetrator. It’s six times bigger than the 5,000-pound bunker buster that the Air Force now uses to attack deeply buried nuclear, biological or chemical sites.

Chicago-based Boeing is manufacturing the bomb, which was successfully demonstrated in March 2007.
Iranian Bunkers

The B-2, developed by Falls Church, Virginia-based Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC), has a shape and skin capable of evading radar. It’s the only U.S. bomber designed to penetrate air defenses such as those believed in use by North Korea and Iran. It’s also the only aircraft currently capable of carrying the new bomb.

The B-2 has bombed targets in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Three in March flew round-trip, non-stop missions fromMissouri to Libya in the opening hours of U.S. air strikes, dropping 45 bombs.

Little authoritative information has been published about the capability of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. A December 2007 story by the Air Force News Service said it has a hardened-steel casing and can reach targets as far down as 200 feet underground before exploding.

The new, 20.5-foot-long bomb carries more than 5,300 pounds of explosives and is guided by Global Positioning System satellites, according to a description on the Web site of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

The Pentagon in July 2009 formally asked Congress to shift funds in order to accelerate by three years fielding the weapon.
‘Operational Need’

Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale, in his July 8, 2009, request, said there was “an urgent operational need for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high-threat environments,” and top commanders of U.S. forces in Asiaand the Middle East “recently identified the need to expedite”the bomb program.

The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency last week reported Iran was trying to develop an atomic bomb to fit on a missile capable of hitting Israel.

Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons facilities are dispersed over a broad area 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) and multiple countries to the east of Tel Aviv. Some are underground. Iran has repeatedly asserted that its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian goals, such as power generation.

Iran is following the lead of China and Russia in protecting its Natanz and Qom nuclear facilities by moving them underground, the Defense Intelligence Agency director, Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, told a Senate panel in February.
Hardened Facilities

“Buried, hardened facilities and improved air defenses are key elements of Iran’s extensive program to protect its nuclear infrastructure from destruction,” Burgess said.
“The spread of western tunneling technology and equipment is contributing to a rise in construction by countries and organizations that have not previously used modern techniques,”he said.

Authorities in Tehran announced recently that they’re moving some uranium enrichment from a more vulnerable site at Natanz to a location at Qom that is 90 meters (295 feet) under rock, said David Albright, who is founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-1...now-ready.html

NAVY FRIGATE SENT TO WAR - WITH JUST FOUR MISSILES


HMS Westminster, a type-23 frigate, is equipped to carry 32 of the Sea Wolf missiles

Tuesday November 22,2011
By John Ingham

Royal Navy officers said HMS Westminster was “dangerously under-defended” when it was called on to patrol close to the Libyan port city of Benghazi in March.The warship can carry 32 Seawolf and eight Harpoon missiles but it is understood that military cutbacks left the Westminster and its crew of 190 with only a fraction of that capability.


As Seawolf missiles — which are used to intercept incoming missiles — are fired in pairs, sources said the Westminster had just two rounds to defend against missile attacks from Col Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.


In another recent admission, the Royal Navy said it was unable to spare a warship to guard British waters for the whole of October after last year’s defence cuts.


Rear Admiral Chris Parry, a retired officer, said it was unbelievable that the Westminster had so few missiles on board and said ships in the Falklands and the Gulf wars were equipped to full capacity. He added: “This is yet another example of the incoherence of last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review. What if the Government’s bluff had been called? What would the Ministry of Defence be saying if the Westminster had been hit by something? They took a big risk.

“The Government needs to realise there’s only a limited amount you can cut the tail before the teeth fall out.”

Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative MP for Portsmouth North, who is a naval reservist, said: “I am absolutely convinced, and so are other warfare officers I’ve spoken to, that the Westminster would have been in danger.

“We’ve hollowed out the capability to a dangerous level.”

The Ministry of Defence accepted that the Westminster was short of missiles when it sailed to Libya and that it was not replenished at sea. But a spokesman would not confirm or deny claims that the ship had just four missiles in the war zone. Ursula Brennan, the Permanent Under Secretary at the MoD, said: “The assessment of the risk to HMS Westminster would have taken into account the other capabilities that we had in terms of submarines, aircraft and surveillance and so on. The questions will then have been asked, 'In those circumstances, do we think that is a risk worth taking?’ “That is a judgment our operations people take on a daily basis.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-missiles.html

NO WARSHIPS GUARDING BRITISH SHORES



Defence cuts mean there are no warships left to protect the UK, the MoD says

Tuesday November 1,2011

Cutbacks have left the UK without a single warship specifically tasked with protecting the country's shores for the past month, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.

The Royal Navy normally provides a minimum coverage of a frigate or destroyer fulfilling the role of Fleet Ready Escort (FRE).

This task is for the ship to be at high readiness for an emergency, including a terrorist attack, in UK waters or abroad.

However pressures on the navy caused by cuts to its fleet in last year's strategic defence and strategy review (SDSR) as well as its commitments to the Nato mission to Libya, has left it unable to fill the role.

In the SDSR, the Government cut the number of frigates or destroyers in the navy's surface fleet from 24 to 19.

The last ship to undertake the FRE role was the Type 23 frigate HMS Portland which left the position on October 3 to take part in the Joint Warrior Nato exercise off Scotland.

A Royal Navy spokesman said: "Due to the successful deployment of Royal Navy units to the Libya campaign, it has been necessary to reprofile the commitments of some ships.

"Should a FRE activation be required, a Royal Navy ship would be allocated."

The spokesman explained that although there had not been a ship specifically tasked as an FRE, one of the vessels taking part in the Joint Warrior exercise could have been allocated within 24 hours' notice.

He added that the FRE would not necessarily be on patrol during its tasking but could be alongside in port at high readiness to sail.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/281 ... sh-shores/

Mini-Nukes, Flying Terminators, and 8 More Air Weapons That Will Blow You Away

By David Axe Email Author December 1, 2011 | 6:30 am
Categories: Weapons and Ammo




Even the most high-tech warplane in the world is useless without its weapons. From the earliest days of aerial combat, fighter planes succeeded or failed depending on the accuracy, lethality and reliability of their machine guns, cannons, rockets and bombs. That's why the U.S. military is hard at work on a dizzying array of pricey new guided munitions to match its trillion-dollar investment in stealth fighters, bombers and killer drones. Some are super smart. Others, super fast. A few are designed to be tiny. All of them have one purpose: to blow away the target, and only the target.
Unblinking Radar Killer

Fifty years ago in the skies over Vietnam, Russian-made SA-2 surface-to-air missiles wreaked havoc on U.S. warplanes. The telephone-pole-size, radar-guided missile destroyed hundreds of fighter-bombers and no fewer than a dozen B-52 bombers. To counter the SA-2, a desperate Pentagon fitted air-launched missiles with sensors capable of following a radar wave to its source.
The resulting Anti-Radiation Missile helped staunch the aerial bloodletting. But with every advancement in radar technology and tactics, the Pentagon has to improve its radar-killing missiles. The latest model is the AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile built by ATK. With its super-smart sensors, including a radar homer and a highly precise millimeter-wave radar, the $1-million AGM-88E needs just a short burst of radar activity to know exactly where the enemy missile facility is located -- and streak down for the kill. A datalink beams back info on the target in the instant before the blast, helping planners know what exactly they hit.
That's the theory, at least. After a string of test failures last year, the Pentagon put the AGM-88E on hold. Testing restarted after a few months. Now the military expects the new-and-improved radar-killer to enter service on Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18s and EA-18G radar-jamming planes in February.




Laser-Guided Mini-Rocket
Next to machine guns and plain old gravity bombs, unguided rockets are the oldest aerial weapons in the world. U.S. military attack jets and helicopters fire them from pods carrying up to 19 2.75-inch-diameter rockets, each with the explosive power of a hand grenade. The diminutive rockets take the shotgun approach to aerial bombardment.
But what if your shotgun fired a super-accurate, laser-guided shot? It was that sort of thought that inspired the U.S. Army's Advanced Precision-Kill Weapon System program, aimed at fitting a tiny, smart seeker to each rocket.
The Army gave up on APKWS in 2008, but the Navy revived it. Marine gunship helicopters and Harrier jump jets could carry the smart rockets. So could the Air Force's A-10 tank-killers and the Navy's MQ-8 Fire Scout drone helicopters, among other aircraft. BAE Systems should start delivering the rockets in the next couple of months.
Photo: U.S. Army





Spoofing, Jamming, Exploding Aerial Drone

Most air-launched weapons are designed to destroy. The Miniature Air-Launched Decoy, built by Raytheon, is designed to confuse. The 300-pound, seven-foot-long device -- ADM-160 is its military designation -- shares the qualities of a cruise missile, an aerial drone and an electronic noisemaker. Its mission: to mimic the profile of U.S. warplanes, in order to spoof enemy air defenses.
The basic MALD, which entered service last year, works something like this: F-16s or B-52s launch the decoys ahead of the main strike force. The 300-pound, jet-powered 'bots cruise for up to 500 miles, more or less inviting enemy defenders to unload their guns and missiles at them. Meanwhile, Air Force and Navy planes carrying anti-radiation missiles sneak around to destroy the enemy air defenses as they're busily killing the MALDs.
Raytheon was quick to improve on the initial design. Today the company is adding a radar jammer to the MALD so it can screw with enemy defenses while also posing as a strike plane. The so-called MALD-J -- "J" for "jammer" -- should be ready sometime next year. Raytheon has also proposed adding a warhead, too, allowing the decoy to transform into a lethal cruise missile at the end of its mission.
As if that weren't enough, Raytheon recently tested a high-capacity rack that would enable Air Force cargo planes to "deliver hundreds of MALDs during a single combat sortie,” according to vice president Harry Schulte. Swarms of decoys -- some blaring electronic noise, others bearing high explosives -- would descend on enemy defenders like angry, buzzing bees.




Rocket-Boosted Bunker-Buster

As air-dropped bombs got more accurate, ground forces learned to dig in deeper. Today, "rogue" states such as Iran and North Korea are experts at burying their most important military facilities deep underground. The Pentagon's countermeasure was to build bombs that were accurate and gigantic, with the mass and explosive power to punch through thick layers of earth and concrete.
The problem is, there aren't many warplanes that can carry the biggest bunker-busting bombs. The GBU-28, at 5,000 pounds, barely fits on an F-15E fighter-bomber. The more powerful Massive Ordnance Penetrator, weighing a whopping 30,000 pounds, is compatible with only the Air Force's B-2 stealth bomber. To give more jets bunker-busting power, the Air Force needs a smaller earth-penetrating bomb.
This year the Air Force Research Laboratories announced they're working on a bunker-buster that trades mass for velocity. With a rocket booster propelling it to Mach-5 speed, a 2,000-pound bomb could do the same damage as an unboosted 5,000-pound weapon, according to AFRL. The High-Velocity Penetrating Weapon would also boast "intelligent fuzing and optimized explosive." In other words, it will be able to sense how far through a structure it has traveled, so it knows just when to blow up for maximum damage.
The Air Force claims the new bunker-buster could be ready by 2014.




Tiny Glide Bomb

A 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition can reportedly kill people standing 400 yards from the point of impact. In close urban fighting, that kind of explosive power can hurt a lot of innocent people. During the early days of the Iraq war, the Pentagon had nothing useful in its bomb arsenal lighter than 500 pounds -- still too big for many battlefields. For a quick fix, the Navy reportedly added concrete warheads to some Paveway laser-guided bombs; their kinetic energy was enough to flatten most targets. Still, a permanent solution was needed.
Enter the Small Diameter Bomb, a 300-pound, GPS-guided mini-munition built by Boeing that combines a lower explosive yield with a high degree accuracy to minimize the danger to innocent bystanders. Snap-out wings allow the tiny killer to glide 40 miles or more, if released at high speed and altitude.
The original SDB I entered service in 2006. This year, the military began testing a more accurate SDB II, built by Raytheon under a half-billion-dollar contract. V2.0 of the tiny bomb adds three additional guidance modes to the existing GPS, including laser, millimeter radar and infrared. If smoke, rain or cloud cover foils one sensor, the bomb switches to another one.
Besides a minimal blast, the Small Diameter Bomb has the advantage of being, well, small in diameter. The B-2 stealth bomber can to carry more than 80 SDBs at a time on special racks. In World War II, just half of the bombs dropped by Allied bombers struck within two miles of their targets, meaning it could take hundreds of warplanes to destroy, say, a factory. In 2018, when the SDB II is supposed to enter service, a single B-2 with two pilots could achieve what once required an entire air force with thousands of bombers and tens of thousands of crew.




Do-Everything 'Terminator'

Today you need a unique missile or bomb for each different kind of target. But in a decade or so, U.S. warplanes could carry a single missile for taking out all but the most heavily armored ground targets. The Triple-Target Terminator, in development by Darpa and missile-maker Raytheon since last fall, is meant as a "high-speed, long-range missile that can engage air, cruise-missile, and air-defense targets," according to the fringe-science agency.
Taking out air and ground targets with the same basic weapon requires some serious technological gymnastics -- a challenge Darpa acknowledges. "The enabling technologies are: propulsion, multi-mode seekers, data links, digital guidance and control and advanced warheads." In other words, Raytheon and Darpa are going to have to make huge advancements in pretty much every aspect of aerial weapon design.
But there are hints that the Terminator is technically feasible. The latest version of the short-range Sidewinder heat-seeking, air-to-air missile is capable of also striking certain ground targets -- a rudimentary preview of the Pentagon's future do-everything missile.




Nonlethal E-Missile

Picture air-defense systems parked atop downtown hotels, or enemy command posts hidden in refugee camps. Sometimes you need to take out an enemy's weapons and communications without actually blowing up anything. That's the thinking behind Boeing's Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project.
CHAMP is supposed to emit a burst of microwave energy capable of frying electronics without hurting nearby people. Think of it as an "e-missile." Before, the only way to generate a circuitry-destroying electromagnetic pulse was to detonate a nuclear weapon high in the atmosphere. Boeing's challenge with CHAMP is to harness the effects of a nuke without the, ahem, nasty side effects of a fission weapon.
Boeing tested CHAMP for the very first time in Utah sometime prior to September. The test "sets the stage for a new breed of nonlethal but highly effective weapon systems," the company crowed. The $38-million development effort wraps up in 2012.




During the Cold War, the Navy constantly drilled for open-ocean warfare with the Soviets -- and developed anti-ship missiles suitable for the task, including the now-classic Harpoon. But in the 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, the sailing branch allowed its ship-killing prowess to languish. When China began building up its fleet of frigates, destroyers and even an aircraft carrier, the Navy discovered it didn't have modern anti-ship missiles to meet the threat.
This summer, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Lockheed Martin a $10-million contract to develop a new Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile compatible with naval vessels and warplanes. The new ship-killer must be faster, smarter and more lethal than the Harpoon. Plus, it has to be ready for production in just a few years.
LRASM should be capable of some neat tricks. It'll be supersonic and long-legged, with a range up to 500 miles. “Once the missile flies that far, it has a requirement to be able to independently detect and validate the target that it was shot at,” program manager Rob McHenry said. Plus, the missile will be smart enough to detect and strike the most vulnerable part of a ship




Smaller, More Accurate Nuke

With around 1,000 in the inventory, the B61 is America's primary nuclear gravity bomb -- and has been since the 1960s. Current plans anticipate a smaller future inventory of just 400 B61s. In part to compensate for the reduced stockpile, the unguided B61 will get a new GPS guidance kit fitted to the bomb's tail. The upgrade is scheduled to be completed in 2018.
GPS will give the B61-12 the same pinpoint accuracy as the conventional Joint Direct Attack Munition. Better accuracy means the nuke doesn't have to be as powerful as before to achieve the same effect. "The upgrade would also improve the capability of U.S. strategic bombers to destroy targets with lower yield and less radioactive fallout," noted Hans Kristensen, from the Federation of American Scientists. The B61-12 will carry a 50-kiloton warhead, compared to the 340 kilotons for some older B61s.
But the upgrade is not without controversy. Better accuracy and a smaller warhead could make nuclear bombs seem "more useable," and that could "potentially lower the nuclear threshold in a conflict," Kristensen warned. The same fear scuttled Pentagon plans in the 1990s for less powerful nukes.




Mach-5 Cruise Missile

When it comes to air-launched missiles, supersonic is good. Hypersonic -- any speed over Mach 5 -- is even better. For decades the Pentagon has tried and failed to build a cruise missile that can travel that fast. But the military isn't giving up just yet.
The benefits of high speed are many. A super-fast missile leaves the enemy no time to shoot back or evade attack. Plus, speed equals energy. A missile traveling fast enough wouldn't even need an explosive warhead in order to obliterate its target -- the kinetic energy alone would do the job.
But mastering the propulsion, materials and guidance to pull off controlled, Mach-5 flight with a reasonably sized missile has proved challenging, to put it lightly. Just ask the Navy, which for years tinkered with a hypersonic missile called RATTLRS. Or the Air Force, which has experienced test failure after test failure with its Mach-20 Hypersonic Test Vehicle and the slimmer, slower X-51 Waverider, pictured.
The Boeing-built X-51 is perhaps the closest to producing a real-world weapon. Last year the X-51 flew at hypersonic speed for several minutes after launching from a B-52 bomber. The latest test of the 26-foot test missile, on June 13, ended prematurely when the its main engine failed to start. "Obviously we're disappointed and expected better results, but we are very pleased with the data collected on this flight," researcher Charlie Brink said. The X-51 is scheduled to fly again in coming months.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011...e-air-weapons/

I'm trying to restore this thread; it was damaged from the move to the new system

Originally Posted by HAPPY2BME

The more I look at this thread the more I realise when we outsourced our naational wealth to Communist China we in-sourced our own epitaph.

I think we have been lulled into a false sense of security