New Marine Corps Cuts Will Slash All Tanks, Many Heavy Weapons

Gestart door Sparkplug, 24/03/2020 | 10:18 uur

Ace1

U.S. Marines Can Beat The Chinese Navy—But Only If The Marines Stay Hidden

You're a U.S. Marine Corps colonel commanding a battalion hiding out on an austere island outpost in the South China Sea, a few hundred miles northwest of the Philippines.

Tension is increasing between the United States and China as Beijing claims more and more disputed territory in the western Pacific. War is imminent. Your battalion is set to play a key role in the U.S.-led campaign.

But only if you can stay hidden.

You've got long-range anti-ship missiles, radars, surveillance drones, some air-defenses to protect the missiles and sensors plus a few companies of infantry to guard against Chinese landing forces.

Your battalion's job is to detect Chinese warships, report their location to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command then harass the vessels with missiles, all while coordinating with other American outposts and preparing, on short notice, to hop to another island.

It's a dangerous plan, but it just might work—provided you can avoid detection. China has more ships, planes and troops in the area than the United States does. If they spot you, you're in big trouble.

Just how you avoid detection while also staying in touch with other units and your headquarters is of utmost importance to the U.S. campaign. Rarely has so much depended on the ability of a few young Marines to use a radio.

That's the subject of a fascinating essay by Brian Kerg, a Marine Corps officer currently serving as the fleet amphibious communications officer for U.S. Fleet Forces Command. "The high risk assumed by inside forces makes signature-management a paramount requirement for success," Kerg wrote for The Center for International Maritime Security in Washington, D.C.

Marine forces possess an array of radio systems, but just one type meets the needs of a secretive island outpost. "The high-frequency band is the premier option," according to Kerg. "Communications systems using frequency bands higher than HF remain easily detectable; in concert with their low footprint, rapid set-up and network flexibility, HF radios are the most viable candidate for successful signature management."

But there's a problem. "Even HF in normal operating modes is likely to be detected if the location and direction of propagation are being scanned by current [direction-finding] systems at the time of transmission."

Kerg recommends Marine units brush up on a tried-and-true method of using HF radios with stealth. "HF-Low Probability of Intercept is a tactic that rapidly varies the power output and frequency of HF channels used to transmit, greatly reducing the likelihood of detection. With appropriately trained personnel, certain maritime communications systems are currently capable of employing HF-LPI."

The problem, Kerg explained, is that "no training standard currently exists by which to prepare naval communicators to use this technique. Whether HF-LPI is employed or not, and how well it might be executed, is completely at the discretion of individual ship and unit commanders."

That has to change, according to Kerg. It's the first step in making the Pentagon's new strategy for the western Pacific work. But it's not enough. After mastering HF-LPI, U.S. military forces need to bolster island outposts' stealth with additional measures.

"Eventually, inside forces will have to increase their signature when they employ their fires systems for the purposes of achieving deterrence, and when this time comes, signal integrity will trump the need for signature concealment," Kerg wrote. In other words, your battalion needs to light up the electromagnetic spectrum in order to target a passing Chinese destroyer with an anti-ship missile. There's no way around it.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Agency is working on new communications systems that are more jam- and interception-proof than current radios.

The Protected Forward Communications program, for one, "would protect not only external communications from an [outpost] to higher headquarters—for example, the order to fire from an [outpost] at an enemy ship—but also internal communications and signals, such as the signal for a system to fire from an operator within the EAB, and signals from a sensor that would guide ordnance onto target."

The stakes couldn't be higher for American maritime forces. The Pentagon has a strategy for countering Chinese expansion into the China Seas. But that strategy depends on widely-spread, stealthy forces being able to communicate—secretly—with each other, their missiles and their headquarters.

"The critical vulnerability," Kerg stressed, "is signature management."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/08/10/us-marines-can-beat-the-chinese-navy-but-only-if-the-marines-can-stay-hidden/#27e5db5950ff

Ace1

How Does The U.S. Army Expect To Hide A Giant Warehouse Full Of Weapons From China?

As the Chinese military grows more powerful, the U.S. military—the Army in particular—needs a new strategy for deterring China.

The new strategy should include secret stores of weaponry, according to RAND, a California think-tank.

"Because China probably will be able to contest all domains of conflict across the broad swath of the region by the mid-2030s, the U.S. Army, as part of the joint force, will need to be able to respond immediately to crises or contingencies at various points of contention," RAND explained in an August report.

"To be 'inside the wire' at the outset of a crisis or conflict will require a combination of forward-based forces, light and mobile expeditionary forces and interoperable allied forces."


For decades, the Army's expeditionary forces—that is, U.S.-based troops who travel quickly and on short notice to distant battlefields—have relied in part on the service's so-called "Army prepositioned stocks," or APS, to kit up for the fighting.

The Army has five major sets of prepositioned equipment. APS-1 is in the United States. APS-2 is at Camp Darby in Italy. APS-3 is stashed inside transport ships in Charleston, South Carolina, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Camp Carroll in South Korea along with Camp Sagami and Yokohama in Japan host APS-4. The fifth and final APS is at Camp Arifjan and a naval base in Kuwait plus Camp As Saliyah in Qatar.

Together, the five APS sets hold around a million pieces of equipment.

Realistically, only the afloat APS-3 and the Japan portions of APS-4 are useful in a war with China—and those only barely so, as the six Large-Medium Speed Roll-On Roll-Off ships storing APS-3 would need to travel thousands of miles to reach the western Pacific.

Worse, APS-3 is a set of weapons, vehicles, ammunition and supplies to support a heavy armored brigade with hundreds of M-1 tanks, M-2 fighting vehicles, artillery and trucks. It's hard to imagine how a brigade like that might be useful in an island-hopping maritime conflict.

The Army knows it needs to reconfigure its prepositioned stocks if they're going to play any meaningful role in a war with China. The service is "working on ways to expand APS out in the Pacific," Gen. Gus Perna, the head of Army Materiel Command, told reporters in February.

To prepare for war in the Pacific, RAND recommended the Army focus on air-defense, anti-ship strikes with mobile rocket-launchers and electronic warfare—all capabilities that could allow the Army to support the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines and U.S. Air Force in defending against, and rolling back, Chinese eastward across the Pacific.

To that end, the Army could swap out tanks for rocket-launchers and radio-jamming gear in an existing, or new, APS set—and position that set within easy reach of China's maritime frontier.

But there's a problem, RAND warned. People's Liberation Army planners know all about the U.S. Army's prepositioned equipment. And they're prepared to blow up warehouses and sink ships to prevent the Army from matching troops with stored equipment.

"To disrupt U.S. basing and supply chains, the PLA could employ ... long-range missile systems ... to cut runways or attack ships, as well as destroy base defenses," RAND noted. "Unmanned aerial vehicles and other systems could support these operations by conducting [surveillance] missions as well as strikes and battle damage assessment."

The Army could thwart attacks by investing in "expeditionary logistics, to include clandestine prepositioning in theater." In other words, it could set up secret warehouses and quietly position ships full of equipment.

The question is ... how? APS sets are just about the least subtle aspects of Army expeditionary planning. Roll-on, roll-off ships are huge at a thousand feet long and 100 feet wide. The warehouses you'd need to store an APS set on land also are huge.

The new warehouse that holds most of the APS-4 gear is 350,000 square feet in area, making it the biggest warehouse the Army owns. Building and maintaining the facility took years of planning and negotiations with the South Korean government. How could the Army establish a similar facility, but secretly, in—say—Australia, The Philippines or Singapore?

The RAND analysts hinted at one possible approach. The Army should deploy "smaller, more-lethal units" in order to dodge Chinese missile attacks during wartime. If the units are smaller, their prepositioned stocks could be smaller, too.

Tiny, unassuming cargo ships. Modest warehouses. Scattered all over the Pacific region. Those could be harder for China to spot.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/08/07/how-in-the-world-does-the-us-army-expect-to-hide-a-350000-square-foot-warehouse-from-the-chinese/#67417ba0667c

Sparkplug

USMC moving ahead with ground vehicle divestiture

03 AUGUST 2020

by Ashley Roque

The US Marine Corps (USMC) has retired 200 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, M88 armoured recovery vehicles, and armoured vehicle launched bridges, and is planning to transfer them over to the army.

Over the past few weeks, the USMC has been standing down various ground vehicles as part of Commandant General David Berger's Force Design 2030 plan. On 6 July, for example, the service announced that the last tank assigned to 1st Tank Battalion had departed the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California.

The service is now consolidating the vehicles at a logistics base in Barstow, California, and recently announced that its Railhead Operations Group staff is now verifying that everything is in order before sending the vehicles on to army depots in Herlong, California, and Aniston, Alabama.

"We have Marines from several units here to assist with the offload, on load, and securement of the equipment," Chad Hildebrandt, the railway operations supervisor for the logistics base, said in a 30 July announcement. The loaded cars will be stored on base until we have all tanks loaded and secured, then they will all ship out to the army at the same time".

Earlier this year, Gen Berger unveiled his vision for how his service should be manned and operating by 2030 to compete with China and Russia. One of his ultimate goals is to design a smaller force that is more nimble to support naval expeditionary warfare operations, and to achieve this the service is funnelling dollars away from legacy systems and towards modernised ones.

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https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/usmc-moving-ahead-with-ground-vehicle-divestiture
A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

A.J.

Citaat van: Stoonbrace op 01/08/2020 | 09:40 uur
M.i. is het net een heel erg verdedigbare keuze. De VS heeft al een landmacht.

Dit dus. Schoenmaker hou je bij je leest.

Huzaar1

Citaat van: Stoonbrace op 01/08/2020 | 09:40 uur
M.i. is het net een heel erg verdedigbare keuze. De VS heeft al een landmacht.

exact en precies dit.
USMC was een totaal uit de klauwen gegroeide club geworden, een afspiegeling van praktisch de gehele Amerikaanse krijgsmacht. Slaat nergens op, het hele voordeel juist is dat je een capaciteit bezit die wat toevoegt.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion" US secmindef - Jed Babbin"

Stoonbrace

Citaat van: Oorlogsvis op 31/07/2020 | 13:02 uur
wat fout is aan deze filosefie is dat je meteen het hele Korps gereed gaat maken op een oorlog in de Pacific ...die er momenteel
niet eens is en misschien ook nooit gaat komen. Dan heb je wel je hele Korps hierop gefocused. Beter was een deel an het korps hierop voorbereiden
en niet alles.

M.i. is het net een heel erg verdedigbare keuze. De VS heeft al een landmacht.

Oorlogsvis

Citaat van: Sparkplug op 31/07/2020 | 08:47 uur
Panel: New Focus on China Fight Could Rob Marine Corps of Versatility

By: Mallory Shelbourne
July 30, 2020 5:14 PM

As the Marines reshape their force to take on the Chinese in the Western Pacific, some experts worry the new emphasis could leave the Marines fewer tools to operate in other parts of the world and fight different types of adversaries.

.../...

https://news.usni.org/2020/07/30/panel-new-focus-on-china-fight-could-rob-marine-corps-of-versatility
wat fout is aan deze filosefie is dat je meteen het hele Korps gereed gaat maken op een oorlog in de Pacific ...die er momenteel
niet eens is en misschien ook nooit gaat komen. Dan heb je wel je hele Korps hierop gefocused. Beter was een deel an het korps hierop voorbereiden
en niet alles.

Sparkplug

Panel: New Focus on China Fight Could Rob Marine Corps of Versatility

By: Mallory Shelbourne
July 30, 2020 5:14 PM

As the Marines reshape their force to take on the Chinese in the Western Pacific, some experts worry the new emphasis could leave the Marines fewer tools to operate in other parts of the world and fight different types of adversaries.

.../...

https://news.usni.org/2020/07/30/panel-new-focus-on-china-fight-could-rob-marine-corps-of-versatility
A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

Sparkplug

A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

Sparkplug

A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

Sparkplug

A fighter without a gun . . . is like an airplane without a wing.

-- Brigadier General Robin Olds, USAF.

Harald

Top Marine 'signaling' to industry that F-35 cuts are on the table

The top officer in the U.S. Marine Corps is sticking to the planned procurement of the F-35 joint strike fighter — but indicated a willingness to cut planes in the future if analysis says it makes sense.

Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger told reporters Wednesday that he is a firm believer in the capabilities the F-35 is bringing, in particular the jump-jet B model favored by the service. However, Berger made it clear he's not wedded to long-term procurement plans, at a time the corps is shedding legacy missions as it pivots to focus to a primarily naval-focused service.

"Right now, the program of record plows ahead as it is," he said. "But I'm signaling to the industry, we have to be prepared to adjust as the operating environment adjusts. Right now, the program of record stays the same, but we will — we must — adapt to the adversary and we must adapt to the operating environment that we're challenged with being in."

Berger noted that an upcoming independent review of his force posture plans, expected to be completed in the next few months, could be a forcing function for more changes. Already, his planning guidance to the corps changed how many planes are featured in each F-35 squad, from 16 to 10.

Longstanding plans call for the Marines to procure 353 of the F-35B and 67 of the F-35C carrier variants.

.../....

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/04/01/top-marine-signaling-to-industry-that-f-35-cuts-are-on-the-table/

Huzaar1

De NH90 moet daar goed tegen bestand zijn, inmiddels.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion" US secmindef - Jed Babbin"

Oorlogsvis

Citaat van: Harald op 30/03/2020 | 08:35 uur
:hrmph: :confused: :silent: ... not again..
Chinook -> is niet maritiem inzetbaar !

idd dan eerder voor een mooi prijsje 2de hands V-22, die zijn martiem volledig inzetbaar vanaf schepen. Dan denk ik wel dat een V-22 aanschaf een brug te ver is voor NL.

Maar dat er een martieme helicopter moet komen straks als bij de vervanging van de Cougars, lijkt me helder... Hopelijk komt hier duidelijkheid over. Nu is dat zo stil rondom de Cougars en SF inzet.   
ik ken iemand die is monteur van die Cougars ..en hij zegt dat die dingen ook niet tegen zeelucht kunnen. Welke helikopter kan daar wel goed tegen de NH-90 ?

Huzaar1

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion" US secmindef - Jed Babbin"