US to abandon two-war strategy

July 18, 2009 · Posted in Blogroll, Uncategorized · Comment

Galrahn points out to a little-advertised but extremely influential piece of news: the US DoD is going to abandon the concept of fighting two major wars concurrently, a linchpin of US defense procurement and strategic planning since WW2:

“The military requirement right now is associated with the strategy that we are laying out in the QDR, and it is a departure from the two major theater war construct that we have adhered to in the past and in which this aircraft grew up. I mean it grew up in that construct of two major theater wars, and both of them being of a peer competitor quality,” Cartwright said.

“The strategy that we are moving towards is one that is acknowledging of the fact that we are not in that type of conflict, that the more likely conflicts are going to be the ones that we—similar to the ones that we are in in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that we do need to have a capability against a major peer competitor and that we believe that the sizing construct, one, demands that we have fifth generation fighters across all three services rather than just one [ed note: *cough*JSF*cough*] and that the number of those fighters probably does not need to be sufficient to take on two simultaneous peer competitors [ed note: no more F-22s], that we don’t see that as the likely. We see that as the extreme,” he told Chambliss.

Tags: strategy, US

APA: SA-11/17 briefing

July 15, 2009 · Posted in Blogroll, Uncategorized · Comment

Australian Air Power has a detailed briefing on the ubiquitous SA-11/17 system. As usual, good tech description and useful doctrinal/operational context.

Hat tip: ELP

Tags: Russia, SA-11, SA-17, SAM

ATV launches

July 13, 2009 · Posted in Blogroll, Uncategorized · Comment

India Today reports that India’s new SSBN will be launched from its dock on July 26:

The sub (a modified design of Russia’s Charlie class nuclear powered submarine which India leased and used as the INS Chakra for three years) will make India the sixth country in the world to operate an N-sub. The launch is only the first step in a two-year process where the submarine will undergo harbour trials of its nuclear reactor and systems before the vital sea trials. Two more hulls are ready for fabrication at the Shipbuilding Centre, a drydock in the Naval Dockyard.

Hat tip: Kobus

Tags: ATV, India, SSBN

APA: SA-3 & SA-5 update

July 9, 2009 · Posted in Blogroll, Uncategorized · Comment

Australian Air Power (Carlo Kopp’s two-man “think tank”) has updated briefings on two widely-employed SAM systems, the S-125 (SA-3) and S-200 (SA-5). Good tech stuff and useful doctrinal/operational context in there.