So, after I posted the last thread, I went over to a forum that's populated with no-joke special operations forces troops and looked at the discussion on the KBL/ Dalton Fury imbroglio. Man is it hot in there.
Apparently, Dalton Fury's real name is Maj. Thomas Greer. I was wrong in thinking he was Pete Blaber, though it does turn out from the discussion that Blaber has a book of his own coming out called "The Mission, The Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander" that's supposed to be available in December.
These operators at the forum are none too kind to a guy who's attempting to "profit" from revealing covert operations covered under top secret non disclosure agreements. They skewer him and smoke his body over a pit of coals. But none of them disputes who he is, what he's done or how the mission went down. There's little comment about the actual 60 Minutes broadcast, though it would have been helpful if the reporters had mentioned the controversy Fury has caused and held fast on calling him by his real name (I did a search and his name comes up as a faculty member of American Military University). Once it's out in the open, it looks a little ridiculous for a reputable news organization to stick to a pseudonym.
As a reporter who's covered the military for a decade, I get a little annoyed at the knuckle-dragger attitude that someone who says anything about their covert activity should be banished. Give me a break. That attitude perpetuates an elitist, Samurai mentality that says "you don't need to know. Just trust us, we know what we're doing..."
Sorry, but I -- and millions of other Americans -- pay your salary and we damned right want to know what you're doing. You work for us. So I'm glad, as long as it doesn't deliberately put lives in danger of death (like the politically-motivated CIA tell-alls did back in the '70s), that these stories come out. There's been seven years between then and now, surely Delta and CIA have new ways of doing things that aren't compromised by this book.
I saw this program last night on 60 Minutes and I thought I'd explore it with you all.
It's a segment on a former Delta officer who lead a team tasked with killing or capturing bin Laden in Afghanistan. Calling himself Dalton Fury, the former officer (a major at the time) has written a book on his experiences artfully titled "Kill bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man" (in case we couldn't understand the title itself)...
I know nothing about the book, though I have requested a review copy from the publisher and I'll peel it open for you when I get it. But the premise of the report is that Fury was frustrated by higher headquarters' management of the hunt, denying his plan to A.) attack bin Laden in Tora Bora from the rear -- aka from Pakistan...and B.) lay landmines in the approaches to bin Laden's Tora Bora lair so that one one went off, Delta could target the al Qaeda troops with Specters and Spookies.
After being denied on both, they decided on a frontal assault with Afghan allies of questionable loyalties and motivations, eventually allowing bin Laden to slip away -- though they did think they'd killed him in an air strike.
My thought is this: First of all, NO DUH they denied your plan to approach Tora Bora from Pakistan...the risks, both diplomatic and military were too much to contemplate. It's one thing to have planes flying out of remote bases; another to have an "invading" ground force try an Alpine assault from an area teeming with AQ and their sympathizers. Also...LAND MINES!? Come on, you HAD to have known that would never fly. As if Afghanistan doesn't have enough of them littering the landscape already. What are we, the Soviets? (their potential words, not mine)...
The 'Offshore' IT services market has grown extraordinarily fast in the global market in the past few years. Since the 1980's, offshore outsourcing has become a major facet of the business world. An increasing number of organizations have turned to offshore outsourcing of application development and maintenance as a means to reduce the cost of information technology.
Definition: Offshore IT outsourcing is the practice of sub-contracting to a third-party company the performance of certain application development, maintenance and support function to a country other than the one where the primary organization resides.
In a report issued by Datamonitor, the current market is estimated at more than $10 billion USD annually. Some industry analyst estimate worldwide spending on IT services delivered by offshore companies will exceed $75 billion USD within three to five years.
According to Gartner, the leading offshore outsourcing countries by region are listed below.
Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Uruguay
Asia/Pacific: Australia, China, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Vietnam
Europe, the Middle East and Africa: The Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Northern Ireland, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine
Large organizations see this as a huge opportunity for costs savings. Many experts view IT offshore outsourcing as a potential threat to the domestic job market in the technical world and have asked the government for protective measures or at least closer scrutiny of existing trade practices. There is another threat that IT offshore outsourcing poses, the threat of covert espionage, backdoors and remotely accessible exploits.
It was one of the more popular booths at the Modern Day Marine show this week.
A huge screen with little computerized Russians running around and a couple Marines plinking them off like a warm sunny day on the Fulda Gap. That's the Virtual Battlespace Trainer and it's about as close to real life as a video game can get.
Except it's much more than that. According to Dale Pruna, Range Systems Manager for Laser Shot, the simulator has a full ballistics calculation capability and can track and map where shooters shoot and how badly they miss. The scenarios are totally programmable, so if you have an HVT mission with specific intel on the house layout and where targets are, you can run through it with full diagnostics.
The system also has target shooting programs that work on marksmanship skills against running targets and there's a module for shoot-no-shoot scenarios using live video images rather than computerized footage.
Pruna also said the services are looking at the company's live fire version of the simulator which uses a reusable rubber screen that can absorb everything from 5.56 to 7.62 rounds.
I gave it a whirl and it was fun as heck. And darned realistic too. All I can tell you is I'm glad I'm a better shot than I am a pilot (on a simulator).
-- Christian
Osprey Fire Docs
Here is some supporting documentation from the JAGMAN I obtained. I have only scanned a few pages, including the Opinions and Recommendations, testimony of the command pilot, the airframe change notice and some pictures of the aircraft.
A catastrophic fire that nearly engulfed a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey late last year was sparked by a leaking hydraulic line in the left-side engine nacelle, investigators found.
The fire broke out about half way through a nearly five-hour training mission, when fluid from a key hydraulic system that powers landing gear, opens the rear door and helps filter the air inlets to the Osprey's engines poured out of the lines after spikes in pressure fractured the thin-walled tubes.
The fluid drained onto the infrared suppressor section of the nacelle -- where hot exhaust from the engine is cooled to cut down on the plane's heat signature -- sparking the mid-air fire which caused more than $16 million in damage to the aircraft, according to the Judge Advocate General Manual Investigation report obtained by Military.com.
Both pilots and three crew members who were aboard the MV-22 for the Nov. 6 night vision goggle training flight survived the incident after landing the aircraft in Landing Zone Phoenix at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The aircraft has not been repaired and returned to flight status, the Corps said.
The fire occurred about seven months after the service admitted another blaze in the same part of the aircraft had ignited just before takeoff. The Corps called the earlier incident a "minor nacelle fire" in a news release at the time, and told Military.com in an email response to questions regarding the November fire that the service "was in the process of implementing appropriate aircraft modifications when this incident occurred."
"All Ospreys in flight operation have the modifications, including those that are deployed," wrote Maj. Eric Dent, a spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters in Washington. "The modifications have also been fully incorporated into the V-22 production line so that new aircraft will not require further modification after leaving the factory.
The investigation report, which was released to Military.com after a Freedom of Information Act request, also cites the maintenance control division of the New River, N.C.-based Marine Medium Tiltrotor Training Squadron 204 for allowing the MV-22 to fly a nearly five-hour training mission before undergoing an inspection of the engine air particle separator -- the area where the hydraulic lines failed.
[Sorry for the delay, folks. Had an interview with Obama's top defense advisor, former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig this AM...More to follow on that later.]
At the Modern Day Marine Expo, Adamiak explained that the crew chief will use an X-Box-like controller to move and shoot the gun. The GAU-17 (GAU-2 for the SOCOM version) Gatling gun is slaved to a sensor that rolls down out of the Osprey belly when the gun deploys -- housing a CCD camera, IR camera and laser range finder.
The gun can track 360 degress, but there is a software-driven safety zone that makes sure rounds don't blow the rotors off. If the Osprey has to maneuver away from the target and the crew chief can't hold the gun on the bad guys manually, the system slaves the gun to the point of the last shot, slewing it as the plane moves. The fire control computer compensates for range and angle as well.
There is no capability for the pilot to control the gun, but there's an auto feature than swings the gun to the barrel forward position, 10 degrees down so the pilot can steer the Osprey onto target. But he can't fire the weapon, that'll still be up to the crew chief in the back.
-- Christian
The Osprey Gun
Went to the 2008 Modern Day Marine expo today down at Quantico and got a ton of good material I'll be shooting your way over the next couple days.
First, I attended a breakfast meeting with the folks from BAE Systems. There was an interesting brief on the Remote Guardian System, that underbelly Gatling gun the company is developing for the MV and CV-22.
I've posted a video of Biz Dev director Dave Adamiak explaining the components and I'll post another soon after that shows the system in use on a simulator. I did press Dave on the issue of the Corps' reluctance to use powered defensive weapons on their rotorcraft for fear that a loss of power would leave the aircraft vulnerable. That's why for years the Corps had rejected rotary cannon on their helos in favor of the trusted, Marine-proof "Ma Deuce."
Dave, rightly I think, admitted the Corps was leery but explained that there is no better solution based on the Osprey's design. The tail gun will probably stay, he said, since the Guardian has to be retracted when the V-22 lands.
He said BAE has flown the Guardian on an AFSOC CV-22 and all is going well there. Clearly the Osprey needs a defensive weapon, but will this complex system prove itself Marine-proof enough to be cost-effective in the long run?
-- Christian
Gripen Delivers Fighters To South Africa
This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.
The South Africa Air Force (SAAF) has taken delivery of the first four of 26 Gripen NG advanced fighter aircraft ordered at the biennial Africa Aerospace and Defense show in Cape Town, South Africa.
[Av Week Online Editor Sean Meade corrects: South Africa has accepted the first four fighters under an order for 26 Gripen C/Ds. An Aerospace Daily & Defense Report article Sept. 30 incorrectly identified the type of those four Gripens. (thanks DT reader Logan Hartke for the catch!)]
Nine of the fighters are two-seaters and 17 single-seaters. Deliveries are scheduled through 2012.
Armaments
Currently the fighters are said to be armed with only a 27mm Mauser cannon. The short-range IRIS-T air-to-air missile is on order from Diehl BGT and additional weapons are under development. The first class of six instructors are now in training at Makhado.
Denel SAAB Aerostructures (DSA) has delivered 220 pylons for Gripen aircraft, with 80 more contracted. The South African company is set to receive another follow-on contract to make 80 more pylons through a modified design, bringing the total to 380.
Modification kits for the earlier pylons will also be produced under a separate contract. SAAB predicts there will be further requirements for pylons until 2013, implying further work for DSA, according to a trade magazine.
In addition to the pylon contracts, DSA has longstanding contracts for the manufacture of the Gripen main landing gear and the rear fuselage sections, for both the Swedish air force and all export customers. These contracts form part of SAAB’s Defense Industrial Participation Program for South Africa.
This article first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.