Slitherine

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Lawmakers within the House Armed Services Committee have introduced legislation that would require the U.S. Air Force to establish a "Space Corps" as a distinct branch of the military by January 1, 2019, according to Space News. The proposed legislation would create a Space Corps to serve "as a separate military service within the Department of the Air Force and under the civilian leadership of the Secretary of the Air Force."

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ORIGINAL: HalfLifeExpert

If this new "Space Corps" were to be created and a subsidiary of the Air Force, wouldn't it make sense to just rename the whole branch "United States Aerospace Force".

And what would be the initial operations, units and responsibilities of this "Space Corps"?

off the top of my head:

-Taking over all US military satellite operations

-Operations of any ASAT weapons except those that might be on US Navy ships, so if something like the ASM-135 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT ) were to be put into active service, the Space Corps would have it's own squadrons of launch aircraft.

-Possible responsibility for Ballistic Missile Defense? (like ASAT, except the defense systems on USN ships)

-Operations of whatever the hell the X-37 is, and any successor craft.

-Eventual Space Combat Units, when warfare is brought beyond Earth's atmosphere at some point in the future.

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ORIGINAL: Cik

one wonders what the objective of preventing civilians from taking a picture of a ship is considering everyone relevant already knows what it looks like and probably has a pretty good guess of what's under the hood anyway.

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ORIGINAL: kevinkin

Is this

http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/China-Russia-hold-joint-navy-drill?utm_source=paid.outbrain.com&utm_campaign=BA%20HC&utm_medium=referral

related to Russia's/China increasing interest in the arctic? What interest does China have in the Baltic at this point?

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ORIGINAL: Gunner98

Kingpin!

Now I have 'big screen envy'

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Its pilot engaged the ‘Fitter’ and initially fired an AIM-9X Sidewinder close-range heat-seeking missile from a range of about half a mile, which was defeated by flares launched by the Su-22 pilot. The Super Hornet then re-engaged and fired an AIM-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile), which hit the ‘Fitter’ despite being fired from relatively close range.

The pilot was able to eject and was later recovered safely, according to local sources.

It marked the first shootdown of a manned fighter by a US aircraft since May 4, 1999, when Lt Col Michael ‘Dog’ Geczy, US Air Force, downed a Serbian MiG-29 with an AIM-120 fired from his F-16CJ during Operation ‘Allied Force’.



However, the engagement poses some interesting questions, not least; how was a 1980s-era ‘Fitter’ able to defeat a cutting-edge US air-to-air heat-seeking missile?

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One particular exerpt makes fascinating reading:

“We had 210 maintainers,” Manclark recalled. “They were dedicated, just unbelievable, tech sergeants and master sergeants. The CIA gave us a flare dispenser from a Frogfoot [Su-25] that had been shot down in Afghanistan. We gave it to maintenance – it was just a thing with wires coming out of it. Four hours later they had it operational on a MiG-21.”

That proved to be a very important test. “In 1987 we had the AIM-9P, which was designed to reject flares, and when we used US flares against it would ignore them and go straight for the target. We had the Soviet flares – they were dirty, and none of them looked the same – and the AIM-9P said ‘I love that flare’.

“Why’d that happen? We had designed it to reject American flares. The Soviet flares had different burn time, intensity and separation. The same way, every time we tried to build a SAM simulator, when we got the real thing it wasn’t the same.

“I use the AIM-9P because it is out of the system and I can talk about it. The same thing happened to a lot of things that are still in the system and that I can’t talk about.”

The Syrian ‘Fitter’ in the latest incident appears to have had success with flares against the AIM-9X. There are also reports that the SyAAF ‘Fitters’ had received upgraded flare packs.

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ORIGINAL: kevinkin

http://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/this-is-what-happens-when-the-army-puts-a-laser-on-an-apache-attack-helicopter

FYI ... might be interesting to use these off a USN platform is a hypothetical role within a Command scenario. Does the USN have a few Apaches?

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Navy new destroyer first ship launching ceremony this morning in Shanghai Jiangnan Shipbuilding (Group) Co., Ltd. held. Member of the Central Military Commission, military equipment development minister Zhang Youxia attended the launching ceremony and delivered a speech.

9 o'clock in the morning, the ceremony began, with the ritual scene all the staff singing in full swing the national anthem, bright five-star red flag slowly rising. Cut the ribbon after the "throw bottle ceremony", a bottle of champagne in the ship bow broken, brilliant ribbon from the side of the jet out, the new destroyer sounding the whistle, the audience sounded warm applause.

Subsequently, the destroyer in the tow traction slowly moved to the floating box after the water. The ship is a completely independent development of China's new 10,000-ton destroyer, has broken through the large-scale ships overall design, information integration, assembly construction and a series of key technologies, equipped with new air defense, anti-missile, anti-ship, anti- Strong information perception, air defense and anti-missile and sea combat capability,

(TL note: They probably mean new long range SAM, BMD-missile, AShMs, enhanced sensors for AAW and BMD, as well as ASuW)

The Navy to achieve strategic transformation and development of the iconic warships. The ship launched the water to mark the development of our destroyers to a new level, for the improvement of the naval equipment system,