Airborne Combat Engineer

Germany gets new Puma IFV

Next year, the German army will receive the first 30 of its new Puma infantry fighting vehicles (IFV). Some 1,100 Pumas will eventually replace the 2,000 Cold War era (1970s) Marder vehicles.

Puma contains lots of innovations. The basic model has a remote (from inside the vehicle) control turret equipped with a new 30mm automatic cannon. This type of system has worked well in Iraq. The Puma armor protection comes in three levels. The basic level results in a 29.4 ton vehicle that protects against artillery, heavy machine guns (up to 14.5mm) and RPG rounds. There’s a 31.5 ton and 43 ton version. The Germans have settled on the 31.5 ton version as the standard.

This one gives all round protection from 14.5mm machine-guns, and some protection from 30mm rounds. The 30mm cannon can fire computer controlled shells, that will detonate inside of buildings or over troops taking cover behind a wall or in a trench. The 30mm cannon can fire up to 700 rounds a minute, and has a range of 3,000 meters. The gun also has an armor piercing round that is also effective against personnel (FAPIDS-T, or Frangible Armour Piercing Incendiary Discarding Sabot - Tracer).

The Puma has a crew of three (commander, gunner and driver) and carries up to eight infantrymen (or cargo) in the rear troop compartment. The Puma will also be “digital.” Noting the success the U.S. Army has had with equipping their armored vehicles with “battlefield Internet” communications equipment, the Germans will do the same with Puma. Production of Puma will continue through the end of the decade.

1145Z FRI 31DEC04. Strategy Page.

Orders for F/A-22 Raptor to be drastically cut

The Pentagon has told the White House and Congress that it plans sharp cuts in the Air Force's program for the F/A-22, the most expensive fighter jet in history, in an effort that budget analysts said was intended to offset mounting deficits and the growing costs of the war in Iraq, The New York Times reported in its Wednesday editions.

Thursday's paper edition of the AJC said the AF would cut orders from 277 to 160 planes, which is produced at the Lockheed plant just north of Atlanta in Marietta. The orignal number, before several previous cuts, was in the high 300s.

This is the right thing to do.

1135Z FRI 31DEC04. Atlanta J-C.

SCAR Heavy

Gab (a regular reader and contributor) found an image of the Heavy SCAR.

Gab's verbatim note:

Hey Ace, Gab here, got a pic of the SCAR-H and SCAR-L from Lightfighter.net forums, looks like the heavy is in CQB format with 7.62 FAL mags.

(sorry for stealing the bandwidth, but I don't have time to do otherwise at the moment)

UPDATE: David Crane @ Defense review has received a spec sheet and summarizes it in this post.

Quicktime animation of tsunami

This NOAA quicktime animation shows how the tsunami propagated through the Indian Ocean.

From a graphic, I'd roughly estimate it's 1.5-2K miles from the epicenter to Sri Lanka, so even if the wave traveled at 500mph, there would still be 3-4 hrs warning time, had a warning system been in place.

Today, the news services are saying 60K+ dead. incredible!

1208Z WED 29DEC04

U.S. Military support to Tsunami relief efforts

U.S. Pacific Command is sending a forward command element (FCE) to Utapao, Thailand, to establish the command, control and communication structure for Joint Task Force 536 (JTF 536).

The focus of the mission will be to prevent further loss of life and human suffering by expeditiously applying resources to the overall relief effort.

0046 WED 29DEC04. DoD

Name that weapon 28DEC04

A member of Special Operation Force's working with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade 25th Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT), scans for enemy activity down a street in Mosul, Iraq. 1-24INF, Iraqi commandos, and the Iraqi National Guard are participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson)

Naming the specific weapon is easy, but can you name everything attached to it?

The more specific you are (manufacturer, model number), the more knowledgeable you appear.

1347Z TUE 28DEC04. CentCom. Full image.

An alliance of devils

An audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden suggests the al-Qaida chief has accepted Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's offer to unite the world's most famous terror group and the bloodiest insurgency inside Iraq, national security experts say.

1315 TUE 28DEC04. AP.

US commanders aware of base infiltrators

American commanders are fully aware that Iraq's insurgents exploit their policy of employing locals on U.S. military bases but insist the practice will not stop, though some security measures may be tightened.

While Iraqis who work on bases are vetted, Americans acknowledge that they don't do security checks on Iraqi forces on base, instead leaving that task to their Iraqi counterparts.

American troops on the bases express widespread distrust about the Iraqis that work there, and have remarked that they all believe contractors are relaying intelligence back to insurgents on the outside.

Lt. Col. Dan Wilson, deputy for current operations for the 1st Marine Division, said security procedures would be reviewed, and tightened where possible, but the policy would not change, according to Marine spokesman Lt. Lyle Gilbert, who noted:

"Contracting locals helps the economy. That's something we want to do. We want the Iraqi economy to flourish. We want them to have jobs, to have money, to get back on heir feet."

1239Z TUE 28DEC04. AP.

Modern military runs on batteries

... a lot more than it used to.

A little battery company named Ultralife Batteries is profiting by specializing in the batteries the military wants, non-rechargeable lithium-manganese dioxide batteries.

Ultralife has been awarded a 5-year contract which may worth as much as $286M.

1242Z MON 27DEC04. Motley Fool.

Iraq's top Sunni party withdraws from election

Iraq's top Sunni Muslim party is withdrawing from Jan. 30 elections, saying persistent violence would keep people from voting in the Sunni north and west.

"We are not calling for a boycott but we said we would take part only if certain conditions had been met and they have not."

1217Z MON 27DEC04. Reuters.