Interesting articles

isn’t that the second one recently? Are they trying to highlight something?

The US DoD has nixed their M10 Booker light Tank programme. The under secretary of the Army has said.

“The Army will request to reallocate the remaining funds in fiscal 20205 to accelerate fielding of war-winning capabilities and anticipates additional significant savings to be fully realized within the next 18-24 months,”

The ongoing efforts to end or reduce procurement across the US services and redirect funds to "war-winning capabilities" should stand out to any interested parties. The ongoing economic issues between US & China notwithstanding, the pattern of Great Power competition, both military & economic throughout history, really is pointing towards serious risk of open war and soon in the Pacific.

My take on developments from about midway through Biden's term is that the USA was looking towards AUKUS buying them a level of deterrence against China. I don't think Trump will abandon AUKUS despite placing it under review but, I do think that AUKUS won't have hulls built before China takes action in Taiwan and within the South China Sea.

The "delay" of any transfer of Virginia class SSNs to Australia may well be considered given the US is struggling to reach it's 2 hull per year build targets. If AUKUS delivery is delayed beyond 2032? It plays directly into China's hands and the reported timelines of 2027 for any Taiwan invasion.

The Chinese effort to provide 40 J35s and K500 AWACs to Pakistan, is IMHO an effort to ensure India faces a serious threat on the Pak border to ensure that China will have a relatively free hand in their South and Western regions for the next 10yrs or so.

Unless India can buy F35? The Pak deployment of 5th Gen fighters guarantees them a degree of air superiority and operational freedom until India inducts either the AMCA or buys a foreign 5th gen.

The interplay of economics and military risk ongoing at the moment? Would probably end up being a fantastic narrative history if we didn't have to live through it 😉

I'm off to reread the "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000"

The entire procurement chain in the US at the moment really seems to be gearing up towards immediate supply rather than future capability.

Unless they can ramp production of their AIM-260, LREW & AIM-160 to ensure they can match Chinese magazine depth of their own PL-15, PL-17 & PL-20(XX) the US will face serious range impediments versus Chinese fighters.

The US has advantages in Stealth & Sensors but it has been outpaced in range and the Indo/Pak skirmish demonstrates that nations outside the US & NATO have perfected the networked Killchain. With weapons that outrange the US? That means the Chinese currently have a massive advantage in A2A and AD that they may well seek to exploit before US catches up.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with? I'm assuming my theory on likelihood of potential for imminent Pacific war? Apologies if I'm wrong on that.

As otherwise, I pretty much hold the same opinion of the cause of the lunacy in US procurement and agree with you on the impact.

In terms of ship building and the cuts in procurement. I fully agree, it's absolutely insane. China is already massively outbuilding the US in hull numbers and has the capacity to swamp them.

Similarly with aircraft production. The J20 is via some reports that approx 300 in service, with production at 100 - 120 per year. The J35 is in serial production and the capacity must be similar as reports are Pakistan will have 40 inducted by mid 2026 as well as it entering service with PLAN and PLAAF.

Couple that 5th gen output with the 100 J16s per year and the 40 J20s and China's production capacity Vis a Vis the US quickly becomes almost a mirror image of the US capacity in WW2. China can currently outbuild anyone but are reliant upon energy and food imports.

The US still holds comparative advantages in that it is food & energy independent and aside from some rare earth's is incredibly capable of self sufficiency. Or rather it would be were it not for it's reliance on globalised supply chains. It's actual military capacity and it's logistics ability are still the best in the world but, surely you agree that the rising risk of new technology introduced by China is approaching a tipping point where their numbers and tech at least match the US if not outmatch it?

The US military looks like it’s being hollowed out for “jam tomorrow” promises and to cover the insane budget plans of the current administration,

Agree, there is what appears to be a reliance upon potential wunderwaffe as the US sword & shield. Rather than the expert opinion, the preponderance of experience and risks of conflagration.

The current US admins approach to space located sensors, radar and whatever else it chooses to use? Incredibly risky IMO. Especially when the insertion of satellites into orbit are in a large part reliant on private enterprise, outside of military control.

So are they going to drop there Glengarys and start wearing them fine looking Setsons?

In an interesting aside and very much related to the recent US abandonment of the E7 AWACs fleet renewal.

General Atomics and SAAB have revealed details of their work on integration of ERIYE radar on board the MQ-9 drone.

From what I can glean from the press release and other articles, the premise is mount the radar on the drone, datalink it back to a ground based control centre and have the AEW&C function performed by ground based crews.

It affords a far more capable AWAC sensor platform than the proposed E2D Hawkeye. It provides a degree of protection for the crew and the highly trained controllers that just isn't possible in the era of 400km A2A missiles.

It also and very importantly means that smaller carriers such as the UKs QEII class, the CdeG, the Conte Di Cavour and other smaller flat tops like the Japanese helicopter carrier conversions, the US flat top Amphibious assault ships and perhaps even the SK & Turkish drone carriers will all be capable of fielding Wedgetail class radar on relatively (versus the 767 based variant) cheap and attritible airframes.

I honestly cannot get my head around how badly Boeing & RAF are screwing the pooch on that particular aspect.

Actually scratch that, it's Boeing and British procurement 😉 Imagine the contract wrangling with Boeing should the MQ-9 actually become properly viable?

An in service airframe, with RAAF TurAF & RoKAF,chosen because it had proven pedigree and service chops and yet Boeing can't get it into service 7yrs after original order? Shocking but honestly? Not all that surprising.

well it could have just been a response to the Shinners utter BS rant. But the reality is we are the outlier by such a margin that it’s in giant neon lights, and our glacial pace in doing anything is just making it worse.

@sparky42 Oh, it DEFINITELY was only the SF response that was reported. The fact that we were called out by the EU's most senior 'foreign affairs diplomat' and an EU VP, seems to have gone un-noticed. If we were called out about corporation tax, macro-economic policy or FDI, I believe that we would have seen much more coverage, and an official response from the minister….but..we don't have a Minister for Defence…not really…we have S Harris, who I understand is doing a reasonably good job, considering that he's 'triple-jobbing'…

Are we still the the only EU member state without a dedicated Minister for Defence? We may well be… (BTW Malta has a population of around 500k people, so direct comparisons are pretty irrelevant.)

Looks like the 119th could be coming home early.

https://www.thejournal.ie/10-weeks-to-save-peacekeeping-mission-in-lebanon-as-us-officials-arrive-ahead-of-crucial-un-vote-6737267-Jun2025/

If that were to happen, I wouldn't be too upset about it.

Yes, the DF have a fine tradition with UNIFIL and all the partner nations. But really, the scale of conflict in the Levant has grown to such a scale and involves such sophisticated long-range smart and remote controlled weapons, provided by regimes at state level and state-sponsored terrorists, that the localised presence of 10,000 ground troops with light armour and barely defensive weapons, straddling a conflict line that had relevance 40+ years ago, but none at all now, is almost farcical.

I honestly don't see why 500 Irish men and women or all the Poles, Indians, Bangladeshis etc, should remain there in harm's way any longer. In my opinion, the mission is redundant and they should all be brought home.

The service of our best troops would be better employed in Europe, inter-operating with the EUBGs, working with Ukrainian and other forces on non-lethal skills and operations and training with systems that are going to come into DF service in the next while.

We have truly jumped the shark.

Rather than buy two brand Hiluxes, or similar, at a cost of about €75k, these brainless morons intend to refit two 22 year old Land Rovers with electric motors at a cost of THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND ****ING EURO!

Its as if the entire civil service was asleep through the entire bike shed / security hut / WRC wall fiasco.

Indeed.

And of course there ARE plentiful spare parts for that particular model Land Rover, the L316, which only ended production in 2016!

Any half knowledgeable motor pool boss could be buying and stocking up on consumable parts to beat the band. I'd expect the type to get to the year 2050 without any serious limitation, with no need for tokenistic electrification.