They burned the Jordanian Pilot alive.

Thanks to William for the horrible news.  via Peiter Nanniga Twitter Feed.

Go here to see his feed.

There are no words to express my hatred for these people.

Council on Foreign Relations Blog questions arming Ukraine.

via CFR Blog...

But will the death of a few more separatists and destruction of Russian equipment achieve the political objective—changing the calculus of Putin’s thinking in order to compel him to endorse a genuine settlement. This is improbable, and there are two more troubling and foreseeable pathways that could unfold: it demonstrates that Ukraine is actually not that important to the transatlantic alliance, and this limited capability is the maximum of what the United States and NATO will do (this seems most likely); or, it triggers Putin to double-down on his support for separatist forces and non-uniformed Russian security forces in Ukraine to firmly establish facts on the ground before those capabilities are fully integrated into Ukrainian security forces, which could take nine to twelve months (this escalation concern seems less likely).

Read it all here.

On this one...I JUST DON'T KNOW.  This is one of those issues where the general public just doesn't have enough information to make an informed decision.

KC390 flies! via aereo.jor.br

Thanks to Bruno for the link!

Read it here.

Retired Navy Capt. James E. Fanell, the modern day Capt. Ellis M. Zacharias of WW2 fame.

Capt. Ellis M. Zacharias (Papers of Ellis M. Zacharias)

via achives.gov

Ellis Zacharias sipped on his dry martini as he matched poker skills with a group that included a young naval attaché with the Japanese embassy.
Zacharias, a naval intelligence officer posted in Washington in the 1920s, was not only playing poker but also trying to get the espionage-minded Japanese officer to let slip some information about his country's plans in the Pacific. He restricted himself to just the one martini in order to maintain his edge. This probing for information was a mutual exercise, usually involving shrewd questioning by both men as they played each hand.
Revealing only enough information to keep the conversation going, Zacharias could absorb what he heard over time while maintaining his friendship with the young Japanese officer, who had a reputation as a gambler.
Some years later, Zacharias would use information gathered this way to warn his superiors that Japan, by then on the march across the Pacific Rim, would launch a surprise attack on the United States in the Pacific—on a Sunday morning.
The Navy ignored his warnings. But early on December 7, 1941—a Sunday morning—Japan suddenly attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was an operation planned by Zacharias's old poker-playing partner, Isoroku Yamamoto, by then commander in chief of the Japanese fleet.
Zacharias's prediction of the Pearl Harbor attack was a product of his interest in intelligence, primarily in Japanese affairs, an area that was not held in the highest regard at the time. His 25 years in intelligence (out of 38 in the Navy) made him a colorful and controversial figure and were punctuated by clashes with superiors, unwelcome assignments, and failure to gain recognition that his record merited.

Read the whole thing here (short but worth a deeper dig by anyone interested in military history). 

Fast forward to 2015 and what do we have?

Another Naval Officer that is warning of a rising, aggressive power, and he's being pushed to the side...not given the recognition that his work deserves...he suffered the pain of stating the unvarnished truth and being removed from his position....and I suspect forced into retirement when men such as he need to rise in rank.

Check this out from The Free Beacon...

“The challenge, as I have seen it, is for intelligence professionals to make the case, to tell the truth, and to convince national decision and policy makers to realize that China’s rise, if left unchecked or undeterred, will necessarily disrupt the peace and stability of our friends, partners, and allies,” he said.
“We should not have to wait for an actual shooting war to start before we acknowledge there is a problem and before we start taking serious action,” Fanell said.
The Communist Party of China has plans that “stand in direct contrast to espoused U.S. national security objectives of freedom of navigation and free access to markets for all of Asia,” he added.
In particular, the Chinese navy, Fanell said, is taking steps to achieve strategic objectives that include the restoration of what Beijing says is “sovereign maritime territory,” specifically thousands of square miles of water inside the so-called first island chain—a string of western Pacific islands near China’s coasts stretching from Northeast Asia through the South China Sea.

Yeah.

Decades later.  A different nation.  The same ambition.

And the US Govt in general, and the Naval Services in particular are again not paying attention.  Lets hope it doesn't take a shooting war for people to wake up to the threat.

173rd Airborne conduct drop in Pordenone, Italy

What is the verdict on the T-11 so far?  I know they moved to it because paratrooper loads were increasing to the point where the T-10B was no longer effective but in its short career I've already heard of at least two paratroopers being killed because of malfunctioning equipment and you saw the pic of the guy with a tangled(?) chute in an earlier post.

E-10 Hertzer via The Tank Maker.Blogspot

If the Germans in WW2 had a better leader or even the same leader and just a couple more years then things would be totally different today.  They were on the verge of standardizing war production across all manufacturers and the results would have been impressive...even with round the clock bombing.

Kurdish Special Forces punishes ISIS...watch for the acrobatics!

FNSS Design Competition Winners!

This Is Awesome!

FNSS ran a design competition for professionals and students and below are a few of the designs that placed.  You can check out the video and gallery here. Its well worth your time.

China's Z-10 Attack & Anti-Air Helicopter. via Alert 5.

Fast forward to the 2:50 mark.  The Z-10 is shown taking out an aerial target.  The Russians and USMC have played with the concept.  It remains to be seen how far the Chinese go.  

Engagement/Partnership Missions? The new "cool"..

via American Mercenary...

One of the lessons taken away from my recent two week trip to train is that the "Engagement" war fighting function is currently being trained as a euphemism for "stability operations."
The Army doesn't have a doctrinal reference for "engagement" at this time, just a TRADOC pamphlet describing in very broad terms the things that make up engagement. Foreign Internal Defence, Foreign Security Assistance, Civil Military Assistance, joint military training, etc.
If it sounds a lot like all the crap we've done before, well that is because it is. Just now we are doing it as part of the "Elements of Combat Power" if you follow the doctrine.
The problem with "stability" is that it is always going to be the bastard stepchild of "offence" and "defence" in the trinity of "unified land operations." The forces that are tailored to conduct stability operations such as Civil Affairs, Military Information Support Operations, Public Affairs, Foreign Area Officers, and the like are in short supply in the formations actually conducting "unified land operations."

Yeah.

They rebranded Counter Insurgency, put it in a sparkling new package and its the same old brew....SOCOM, element of the US Army & Marine Corps...in other words the COIN Mafia has won.  Considering the news in Ukraine and the thoughts about arming their forces we can expect "Engagement" to be a word tossed around to justify increased involvement.

Nation building forever (we should call it what it is...not small wars but nation building).

Read AM's take here. 

Sidenote:  Another word should grab everyone's attention now that I think about it.  "Shaping".  I don't know when psychology rose to prominence in the halls of the Pentagon but influencing behavior and thoughts seem to be more important to some than winning on the battlefield.  Its a fools errand though.  You can't make perpetual war popular unless you can show that its in a nations interests.  That is the problem with the US way of war lately.  We're fighting for others...not for ourselves.

Chinese Marine Amphibious Assault Ship Concept Art.

Thanks to Duke for the link.

Just concept art people!  Don't get it twisted....although we do know that the Chinese are working on a 50,000 ton LHD...and it appears they are working on some type of VTOL airplane to fly from it.

Question.  Has anyone heard anything about the Chinese V-22 they're suppose to be working on?

Republic of Korea Army, 11th Mechanized Infantry Division on maneuver (pics)

US considering arming Ukraine.

via Houston Chronicle

Fueling the broader debate over policy is an independent report to be issued Monday by eight former senior U.S. officials, who are to urge the United States to send $3 billion in defensive arms and equipment to Ukraine, including anti-armor missiles, reconnaissance drones, armored Humvees and radars that can determine the location of enemy rocket and artillery fire.

Why does this seem so much like the buildup to the war in Vietnam?

Still think this won't spiral?  Still think that the power that be actually have a plan to deal with this?

The world is burning and leadership doesn't have a clue.

Sidenote:  What will be the Russian counter?  How will they respond?  I still get the impression that we're behind them in the decision making loop.

Winslow Wheeler is retiring. Things are about to get a bit boring.

via Politico...

And in the middle of it all was a man whose last day at work at the Project on Government Oversight, a non-profit determined to root out government waste, coincided with news that the Pentagon would ask for an increase of 19 F-35s in next year’s budget at $100 million or more apiece.
But Winslow Wheeler was not in a despairing mood. Emotional, yes, but still feisty.
Spinney and Sprey, he said, “have gotten me into lots of trouble — but no trouble I didn’t enjoy.” And he took several parting shots at the F-35 program.
“It keeps embarrassing itself,” he said. “At some point, the weight and momentum of all those problems and all those costs are going to pass a threshold in our political system.”

Love him or hate him, Wheeler made it fun and sparked debate.  And for that alone he should be missed by all.

Read the entire article here.

Slip bro! & This is gonna hurt! via Round Canopy Rigging Facebook Page.

That dude is in a world of hurt.

Chinese Marines conducting winter training.

Thanks to info-infanterie for the link...

I don't know the terrain, but does China have high altitude "plains"?  Of interest to me is how far afield the Chinese Marines are using their armor.  If this is near the Chinese-India Border then in the future we might get to see high altitude tank/IFV battles.  That would be something.

China developing J-18 Stealth VTOL Fighter.

Thanks to Pietro_nurra for the link

via Janes (read the entire article!).

The aircraft in the photo is China's J-18 VTOL stealth fighter jet.
Japanese and US media have lots of speculation about China’s third fourth-generation stealth fighter jet J-18 in addition to the J-20 and J-31 already widely known,
Japan’s Asahi Shimbun was the first to publish a report on the successful test flight of J-18 at the beginning of 2013. It said that China began to develop its own catapult for the aircraft carrier it planed to build but lacked key technology to make such catapult; therefore, China scrapped its original plan for a carrier for horizontal taking off of aircrafts and began instead to develop VTOL aircrafts.
Soon afterwards, US Defense News weekly published an article that believed that China was developing short-distance vertical taking-off and landing stealth fighter jet, i.e. J-18 Red Eagle VTOL fighter jet, with superb stealth function and installed with laser active phased array radar, internal weapon bays and two vector engines with great thrust.
The Japanese and American reports, though sensational in nature and supplemented by later reports, are but speculation. There had been no evidence on the existence of J-18 whatever until now when Britain’s Jane’s Defense Review published a report on the fighter containing a recent photo copied from a post at a Chinese military forum on the Internet.
Judging by the photo given by Jane’s, J-18 looks almost the same as J-31 except its canard structure. This gives people the impression that it is a VTOL version of J-31. It sounds reasonable as developing a VTOL version saves money than the development of an aircraft from nothing. This is also the case with US F-35 stealth fighter jet. It has three versions including a VTOL version.
However, J-31 is developed by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation who has no experience in developing canard aircrafts. It is suspected that the aircraft is a national project participated by Shenyang and other aircraft manufacturers.

One thing is becoming increasingly clear.  China has its sights set on challenging the US militarily...and on equal footing.

NOTE:  Yes the article is from last year but I've only heard it speculated, never confirmed that China is building a VTOL fighter.  The fact that the Pentagon hasn't referred to this airplane is telling.

China's L-15 Jet Trainer. via 人民解放軍 画像bot