Daily Archives: January 25, 2020

]]> Royal Tank Regiment upgraded Challenger 2s. Credits: Elbit Systems UK. Sign-up to the Army Technology newsletter

The upgrade, which delivers an urbanised Challenger 2 variant, was developed by the Royal Tank Regiment to meet soldiers needs and identifies and fills the capability gap between the British Armys forces and adversaries in urban combat.

Supported by Army HQ, project Streetfighter II is aimed at adding modifications to the existing Challenger II Main Battle Tank (MBT) to improve lethality, situational awareness and infantry-tank cooperation of ground forces.

The vehicle was recently trialled at the UKs urban operations facility at Copehill Down Village on Salisbury Plain, where the Streetfighter was put through its paces in an urban combat environment testing a range of upgrades from industry partners.

This year Streetfighter demo built on earlier experience of the project that began in 2018 and saw the upgrades showcased to a range of senior military figures and officials from the Defence Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl).

The Streetfighter II MBT demonstrated by the British Army featured a range of lethality upgrades including heavier, more lethal machine gun systems to provide dismounted infantry better support fire.

The most notable upgrade was one of the two urbanised Challengers being equipped with a Brimstone anti-tank guided missile system designed to neutralise the threat of heavily armoured, highly survivable land platforms at long-range.

The Brimstone, made by MBDA, is designed to destroy fast-moving vehicles alongside tanks and other lighter-armoured vehicles as well as fixed positions like bunkers and can be fired from a range of platforms.

On the situational awareness front, the Streetfighter concept greatly improves the ability of mounted and dismounted personnel to communicate and understand their environment, with communications improved to let personnel on the ground directly communicate with those inside the tank.

The upgraded Challenger features a host of cameras to provide a 360-degree view of the area outside the tank; the original Challenger 2 has a limited field of view and the upgrades mean the commander and gunner can now see everything around them.

The Streetfighter II variant also features a barrel-mounted camera to enable the tank commander and crew to see around corners before they approach them, alerting them and the following personnel in advance of any previously hidden threats.

A major situational awareness upgrade comes in the form of Elbit Systems UKs IronVision platform which uses a heads-up-display (HUD) to provide tank crews with full 360 situational awareness.

The zero-latency system allows the crew to have a full picture of their operating environment despite being under armour by feeding in a picture from outside the tank into the HUD.

Elbit Systems UK CEO Martin Fausset said: It is great to see Elbit Systems UK supporting the UK Armed Forces as they enhance their battlefield protection systems for urban environments. We relish the opportunity to protect our servicemen and women in the field and are pleased to see the IronVision system delivering in this capacity.

IronVision pulls together the feeds from the various cameras outside the MBT and then converts them into a single picture where the tank operator only needs to turn their head to see a different view of outside the vehicle, rather than cycle through cameras on a screen.

Elbits IronVision system. Credits Elbit Systems UK.

On the slightly more low-tech front, the MBT also supports infantry by physically lightening the load on personnel by carrying extra gear from medical equipment to ammunition, and the addition of a storage rack to carry an urban assault kit.

The improved Challenger 2 is also fitted with steps built into the side of the vehicle allowing personnel to mount and dismount the platform more easily. One of the tanks is also fitted with a plough to clear obstructions from the urban environment allowing personnel to continue moving forward and acting as a makeshift stretcher to transport injured personnel out of the combat environment.

It is unclear whether the upgrades made by the Royal Tank Regiment will be employed across the wider fleet of Challenger 2 vehicles. However, in the British Armys wider plans for tanks, the life-extension programme continues to be a priority, in order to continue the service life of the vehicle and maintain the ability of the UK to deploy MBTs into battle.

Current plans for the Challenger 2 life extension programme are slowly drawing to a close after first being tabled in 2013. Any decision on the future of the Challenger 3 will now likely become wrapped up in the planned UK Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) which will look at the needs of the Armed Forces and help guide their future shape.

At Defence IQs International Armoured Vehicles 2020, British Army director capability, Major General Jez Bennett reaffirmed the commitment to the vehicle and outlined the scope of the current life extension programme.

Bennet said: The Challenger 2 programme aims to deliver an enhanced main battle tank, with greater lethality and survivability that will provide precision direct fire and intimate support to the infantry until well into the next decade.

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Streetfighter and the future of the Challenger 2 - Army Technology

Diverse Marine has signed a contract with Turner Iceni for the modification and upcycling of the Iceni Courage crew transfer vessel.

The UK-based refit and repair provider has won the contract following a competitive tender procedure.

The 2009-built 15m Iceni Courage will embark on an life extension project to catch up with the fast-progressing offshore wind sector and to avoid sale or repurposing.

The vessel will go through stretching of the hull, deck and superstructure by 3.6m. It will also be repowered to Volvo Penta IPS900.

Furthermore, Diverse Marine will relocate and replace Iceni Courages generator, relocate the fresh water and grey water tanks with all new plumbing, cut in a forward side door to the saloon, cut in an additional third crew position on the bridge and fully refit the interior.

The refit will include the Iceni Gen 3 upgrades with new, lighter and more accommodating linings, all new heads compartment, all new galley with modern appliances and all new windows and doors. In addition, the vessel is to be repainted from top to bottom, according to Diverse Marine.

In 2019, upcycling and life extension refits were carried out on the Iceni Warrior (former MCS Maestro ) and on Iceni Revenge (former MPI Don Quixote).

Following the success of the two Iceni life extension projects last year we are very pleased to have won this competitive tender and to further our experience in this important sector, said Ben Colman, Director of Diverse Marine.

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Iceni Courage to Be Revamped - Offshore WIND

In another sign that the nuclear arms race is heating up, the U.S. is ramping up production of nuclear bomb cores.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has announced that it plans to increase theproduction of plutonium pits to 80 per year. The grapefruit-sized pits contain the fissile material that give nuclear weapons such tremendous power.

Production will center on the Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at Savannah River site in North Carolina, which would be modified to manufacture at least 50 pits per year, and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which would generate at least 30, by 2030.

Americas nuclear weapons cores are aging, with some pits dating back to the 1970s, leading to concerns about the reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

The U.S. lost its ability to produce pits in large numbers in 1989, when the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado, was shut down after the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Environmental Protection Agency investigated environmental violations at the site, noted Physics Today magazine in 2018. Up to 1,200 pits per year had been manufactured there.

Since then, only 30 pits for weapons have been fabricatedall at LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory], the sole U.S. facility with production capability. Weapons-quality pit production ceased in 2012, when LANL began modernizing its 40-year-old facilities, although several practice pits have since been fabricated. The oldest pits in the stockpilewhich now numbers 3,882, according to DOEs National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)date to 1978.

In its 2018 Nuclear Policy Review, the Trump administration called for 80 new plutonium pits per year. Congress has also allocated large sums, with $4.7 billion alone allocated in FY 2019 for maintenance and life extension of the nuclear stockpile. The NNSA says it is legally mandated to ensure a capacity of at least 80 pits per year.

Though the production of nuclear cores has been an issue for years, a looming U.S.-Russia arms race makes the situation even more sensitive. Russia is fielding a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons, including a hypersonic nuclear-armed glider and an air-launched ballistic missile. The Trump administration has withdrawn from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia, alleging Russian violations, leading to fears that a new competition will beget the return of nuclear-armed, medium-range ballistic and cruise missiles.

Anti-nuclear groups are furious. Expanded pit production will cost at least $43 billion over the next 30 years, argues the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups. Yet the Defense Department and NNSA have never explained why expanded plutonium pit production is necessary. More than 15,000 plutonium pits are stored at NNSAs Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas. Independent experts have concluded that plutonium pits have reliable lifetimes of at least 100 years (the average pit age is less than 40 years). Crucially, there is no pit production scheduled to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, proposed future pit production is for speculative new-design nuclear weapons, but those designs have been canceled.

Introducing a new generation of nuclear weapons could adversely impact national security because newly produced plutonium pits cannot be full-scale tested without violating the global nuclear weapons testing moratorium.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

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The U.S. is Boosting Production of Nuclear Bomb Cores (For More Nuclear Weapons) - The National Interest Online

Key point:America's F-16 has lasted a long time and has been given many upgrades. However, the F-16 might not be as good against the very best that Beijing and Moscow can throw at it.

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The F-16 fighter was originally conceived as a lightweight fighter for the United States and her NATO allies. In the U.S. Air Force, the Fighting Falcon would comprise the low end of a high-low mix of super-capable F-15s and cheaper, less capable F-16s. Among NATO allies, it would be a frontline fighter to replace aging planes like the F-104 and F-15.

Inevitably, the capable little single-engine fighter was pushed towards a more diverse array of missions. Originally conceived as just carrying short-ranged AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, it gained the ability to launch the beyond visual range AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-120 AMRAAM. Over time it gradually evolved into a versatile air-to-ground platform with the ability to accomplish close air support, battlefield air interdiction and air defense suppression missions with a variety of precision-guided missiles, including the AGM-65 Maverick missile, AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missile and Joint Directed Attack Munition precision-guided bomb.

A confluence of eventsincluding a series of budget-draining wars in the Middle East for which the F-16 has been good enough and delays in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programhave conspired to keep the F-16 flying much longer than originally intended. Why the F-16 is still in service is fodder for another article, but the bottom line is that it is serving today and is seriously outmatched by a new generation of Russian and Chinese fighters.

First, lets look at one of the most recent and popular versions of the F-16, the Block 50 variant. Block 50 features a AN/APG-68 V(5) radar, F100-PW-229 afterburning turbofan engine, and the AN/ALE-47 threat adaptive countermeasure system. The Block 50 has a maximum sustained speed of Mach 1.89, a range of 360 miles on internal fuel, and a ceiling described as above 50,000 feet. It can carry up to six AIM-9 Sidewinder short-range infrared homing missiles or six AIM-120 AMRAAM beyond-visual-range missiles, or some combination of either.

Despite the F-16s longevity, obsolescence was inevitable. The F-16 will not fare well against a powerful new generation of Russian and Chinese fighters. The Moscows Su-35 Flanker and PAK-FA fighter and the Beijings J-20 stealth fighter, all previously described here, have rendered the Fighting Falcon obsolete.

Although based on an contemporary of the F-16, the original Su-27 Flanker, the Su-35 has been more thoroughly updated than the spunky American fighter. The Su-35 may not be stealthy, but it can detect and engage the F-16 before the F-16 can detect it, and this puts the American plane at a big disadvantage. In a one-on-one fight, the F-16 will probably not even be able to get the Su-35 into dogfighting range, where the smaller fighters legendary maneuverability would come into play.

The new Russian PAK-FA and Chinese J-20 fighters will have similar advantages, except their stealthy design will ultimately mean F-16s wont even detect their adversaries before they realize they are being targeted by beyond-visual-range guided missiles, launched by aircraft that only visible on radar for the brief moment their internal weapons bay doors are open.

What could be done to give the F-16 better odds? The latest variant of the Fighting Falcon, the F-16V, will have the APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) radar, the first AESA radar retrofitted into the platform. SABR has been described as fifth-generation fighter technology, and indeed promises earlier detection, tracking and identification of targets sooner than older radars. The Republic of China Air Forces F-16s will be the first to be brought up to -V standard. The U.S. Air Force is pondering a service life extension program (SLEP) for select aircraft in the F-16C fleet, and the SABR radar is an obvious candidate for inclusion.

Yet improving the F-16s detection ability is only half the problem. While stealth has its disadvantages and countermeasures are inevitable, its also true that, like radar and electronic countermeasures, stealth is now permanently part of the essential feature set of modern combat aircraft. While China and Russia tout new anti-stealth measures, they are also making certain their own new aircraft are as stealthy as possible. That both countries, struggling to catch up with the United States, are still willing spend on stealth is a ringing endorsement of its value.

While SABR will likely improve the F-16s ability to detect fifth-generation fighters such as PAK-FA and the J-20, it will still be easy for enemy aircraft to detect. The F-16s lack of stealth is not something that can be addressed with upgrades to the airframe or an electronics package. The only solution is a new aircraft.

The F-16 still has a great deal of value against smaller, less technologically advanced air forces and air defenses, as well as low- to mid-intensity conflicts such as Libya and Syria. Its also useful as a bomb truck, carrying long-range munitions such as the JASSM cruise missile behind a protective wall of F-22 and F-35 fighters. But thanks to PAK-FA and the J-20, its days as a day-one frontline fighter are over. As the F-35 enters service with the United States and with its NATO and Asian allies, the F-16 begins its long, well-earned flight into the sunset.

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Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami. This first appeared in September 2016.

Image: Reuters.

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How Does the Air Force's F-16 Stack up Against the Best Chinese and Russian Fighters? - The National Interest Online

Rangers baseball broadcasts will remain on 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM) after the club signed a multi-year extension with the stations parent company, Entercom. The deal was announced Friday morning.

The Rangers have been on 105.3 The Fan for the past five seasons and 22 of the past 26 seasons. The length of the deal was not disclosed.

The Rangers are very pleased to extend our agreement with Entercom and 105.3 The Fan, said John Blake, the teams executive vice president for communications. We have enjoyed a great relationship with 105.3 The Fan over the last five years. As we move to Globe Life Field in 2020, we are looking forward to working with Entercom and 105.3 The Fan to provide the best in baseball coverage to all Rangers fans. We really appreciate this partnership.

Eric Nadel and Matt Hicks will remain in the broadcast booth, and Jared Sandler will retain duties hosting the pregame and postgame shows.

Were ecstatic to continue our rich history with the Texas Rangers and Hall of Fame broadcaster Eric Nadel on 105.3 The Fan, said Brian Purdy, the regional president and market manager of Entercom Dallas. This year is extra special for Entercom Dallas-Fort Worth and North Texas fans with the opening of the New Globe Life Field. As the unrivaled leader in local sports coverage, we are looking forward to continuing to provide fans with robust coverage of the team on and off the field.

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Rangers broadcasts to remain on 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM) after club signs multi-year extension - The Dallas Morning News