June 27, 2024 | International, Land
Too much bureaucracy at NDHQ, top general says, but no changes offered to status quo
Too much bureaucracy at NDHQ, Gen. Wayne Eyre says. But he offers no solution to the problem.
December 31, 2018 | International, Aerospace
The Corps’ HIMARS are going airborne as Marines bring them to targets via KC-130s
By: Shawn Snow
The same innovative rocket artillery unit that fired HIMARS from a ship is once again mixing things up, but this time they're doing it with aircraft.
The tactic is called HI-RAIN, which is short for HIMARS Rapid Infiltration, where the Corps takes its precision-guided rocket artillery system, stuffs it in a KC-130 and flies it to a location to destroy a target.
Once on the ground, the HIMARS crew offloads the system and strikes a target and then rapidly exfils from the target site.
The Corps says HI-RAIN is the progression of an aerial artillery raid capability they already have, which can be done with sling loaded M777 howitzers hauled by the Corps' heavy lift helicopters like the CH-53. The MV-22 Osprey is also capable of lifting the M777.
Aerial artillery raids provide battlefield commanders flexibility by inserting a long-range fire capability beyond a captured beachhead or behind enemy lines to quickly destroy a target.
But the HIMARS will greatly extend the Corps' range of that existing raid capability, which should prove useful should the Corps find itself stretched thinly across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean in a fight with a sophisticated adversary like China.
A Marine HIMARS unit known as 5th Battalion, 11th Marines, recently executed a HI-RAIN mission on Dec. 7 as part of an annual exercise with the 1st Marine Division dubbed Steel Knight.
For the exercise, Marines with 5/11 loaded two HIMARS systems onto two KC-130 aircraft at Marine Corps Air Station, Camp Pendleton, California, and flew to Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah.
Once on the ground, the a HIMARS unit fired one M31A1 GMLRS – Unitary precision rocket, striking a target approximately 15 km away. The GMLRS round is short for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System.
HIMARS are capable of striking targets several hundred kilometers out, the short range was due to range limitations, Marine officials said.
The Corps says 5/11 began aerial embarkation testing with KC-130s in 2014, and since then have carried out many HI-RAIN missions across the U.S. from Alaska to Arizona, all during training exercises.
Other Marine HIMARS units are honing the same skill.
The Corps is also capable of carrying out artillery raids inserting howitzers via helicopter.
In August, 3rd Battalion, 11th Marines, carried out the first lift in an austere environment in Australia of an M777 howitzer using an MV-22 Osprey.
The Marines of 5/11 are known for their innovative experimentation firing HIMARS from the deck of the amphibious transport dock Anchorage in fall 2017.
On the same subject
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August 14, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR
NATO's East Is Rearming, But It's Because of Putin, Not Trump
Ott Ummelas Donald Trump has taken credit for a rise in military spending by NATO states, but in the alliance's eastern reaches, it's his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who's driving the rearming effort. Last month, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg thanked the U.S. President for “clearly having an impact” on defense spending by allies while Trump said his demands had added $41 billion to European and Canadian defense outlays. But the jump in acquisitions behind the former Iron Curtain of aircraft, ships and armored vehicles began when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, well before Trump's 2016 election victory, according to analysts including Tomas Valasek, director of Carnegie Europe in Brussels. While the median defense expenditure of NATO members is 1.36 percent of gross domestic product, below the alliance's requirement of 2 percent, eastern members comprise seven of the 13 members that are paying above that level. “Countries on NATO's eastern border do not need Donald Trump to boost defense spending,” Valasek said. “They decided this long before he came to power. The spending boost was because of a president, but it was Vladimir Putin, not the U.S. President.” Constant overflights by Russian aircraft into NATO airspace, cyberattacks on government and military installations, wargames on the borders of the Baltic states and accusations that Russia was behind a failed coup in newest member Montenegro have put NATO's eastern quadrant on alert for what it says is an increasingly expansionist Russia. Of the 15 members exceeding the bloc's guideline that 20 percent of total defense spending should go to equipment, six are from eastern Europe. At the time of the NATO summit in Brussels, Romania said it would buy five more F-16s from Portugal, raising its squadron to 12, after it signed a $400-million deal to acquire a Patriot missile air-defense system with Raython in May. The country of 20 million people bordering Ukraine, Moldova and the Black Sea plans to buy 36 more F-16s, four corvettes, at least 3,000 transport vehicles and coastal gun batteries over the next five years. Slovakia also announced the purchase of F-16 fighter jets at the summit to replace its aging Russian Mig-29s in a deal that was years in negotiating. And last month, Bulgaria asked for bids for at least eight new or used fighter jets by October at a total cost of 1.8 billion lev ($1 billion). By end-2018, the government in Sofia plans to buy 1.5 billion lev worth of armored vehicles and two warships for 1 billion lev. Neighboring Hungary said in June that it had agreed to buy 20 Airbus H145M multi-purpose helicopters, the country's largest military purchase since 2001. NATO's European members are expected to spend around $60 billion on equipment this year, with the 13 eastern members accounting for about 10 percent, said Tony Lawrence, a research fellow with the International Center for Security and Defense in Tallinn. The newer members will together spend about $2 billion more on equipment this year than last, he said. According to NATO, seven of its 10 biggest spending increases will be in the east. “Since these nations' membership in NATO, there has been a clear inclination to foster and strengthen their link with the U.S.,” said Martin Lundmark, a researcher with Swedish Defense University in Stockholm. “By procuring strategic defense systems, they willingly become interdependent and inter-operable with the U.S.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-13/nato-s-east-is-rearming-but-it-s-because-of-putin-not-trump
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July 25, 2024 | International, Land
Pentagon warns of potential Russian action in the Arctic — including jamming GPS satellites | CBC News
The Pentagon has released an updated Arctic strategy that warns of low-level Russian 'destabilizing' activities in the Far North aimed at the United States, Canada and its allies.