The KC46A is the replacement for the renowned KC135 refueling bird which had the last production aircraft rolled out in 1965. The KC46A is plagued with problems to include the bone-headed notion to put the refueling crew in the cockpit instead of the rear of the aircraft at the boom and, wait for it, fuel leakage. Just another Boeing aerospace project plagued by quality issues fore and aft. The aircraft has been in development since Feb. 24, 2011, and its initial flight occurred in Dec. 2014. The current contract, with options, provides Air Mobility Command an inventory of 179 KC-46A tankers...

That New Zealand naval ship that ran aground, foundered, caught fire and capsized with the DEI Captain commanding was an ocean survey and mapping ship. HMNZS Manawanui was a dive and hydrographic vessel of the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN). It was one of five vessels active in the Royal New Zealand Navy. A dive and hydro-graphic ship. An ocean floor survey vessel. A dive and hydro-graphic ship. An ocean floor survey vessel. A dive and hydro-graphic ship. An ocean floor survey vessel! It ran aground. Aground. Then it caught fire but no one is responsible, it just happened. They had one job......

*** I have returned from a long sojourn with my wife to Croatia and will be writing more regularly and trying to address issues arising more contemporaneously than the previous month. We were delayed in returning by Hurricane Milton but finally managed to get home: home is intact but gardening and fencing wrecked, recovery in process. *** In 2005, the US Navy slow sank a carrier in an exercise to determine vulnerabilities. Since that time, the munitions technology and delivery systems have evolved significantly. Much of the data remains classified but one has to remember that not sinking the...

Fire all uniformed flag officers in the chain. Releive all SES and naval civilians leaders in the chain. Immediately. And this is peacetime. And keep this in mind, find this many faulty welds and ALL welds on the ship have to be inspected and certified. That is very time consuming and expensive. Will the USN do the right thing? I doubt it. The fraud cavalcade never ends in the US Navy. And they are lying when they say this did not affect ship safety. Welding is an important component of keeping metal objects intact. In a letter to House and Senate armed services committee members Thursday,...

The US Navy and Marines have not conducted an amphibious assault on contested beach since Inchon in Korea (10-19 September 1950 although arguably the last major contested amphibious campaign in May of 1945 of Okinawa) and have practically abandoned surface maritime connectors from ship to shore in favor of helicopter lift and vertical envelopment. The recent debacle in Gaza with the shabby portable pier that lasted 20 days after delivering 8,800 tons of aid at a cost of 320 million dollars, now lost is a demonstration project that the US Navy has essentially lost its ship to shore...

It's not just the Army and all the services practice this level of institutional cravenness and dishonesty. Deceit and covering up errors is a long time practice in the US uniformed armed forces. The article is older but more true over time. The gravest peril of the tacit acceptance of dishonesty, however, is the facilitation of hypocrisy in Army leaders. The Army as a profession speaks of values, integrity, and honor. The Army as an organization practices zero defects, pencil-whipping, and checking the box. Army leaders are situated between the two identities—parroting the talking points of...

Arguably one of the best manned tanks ever made, the refurbished M1 Abrams is not faring well in the Ukraine and it is estimated the UKR forces have lost 20 of the 31 tanks supplied to them. This is not only a result of inadequate training, immature doctrine and sloppy logistics but the happenstance of the hard knocks schoolroom in a 21st century near-peer fight in which the manned tank is simply not of any martial utility anymore when a salvo competition of cheaper munitions makes it a munitions sponge. The article below insists that a lack of air cover doomed the tanks but I would suggest...