"Aircrews found the airspace and timing were often too tight for APKWS employment in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf, so they have ended up relying on AIM-9s. But defensive counterair for base defense has featured APKWS." airandspaceforces.com/articl…

UPDATE 1: At 6:18 p.m. EDT on Sept. 28, a mishap involving an E/A-18G Growler, attached to VAQ-130, occurred during aircraft recovery operations aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) off the coast of Virginia. Full release: usff.navy.mil/Press-Room/Pre…

Tom Henderson asegura que Halo estaría entrando en una especie de reinicio bajo Activision. Según el periodista, por lo que entiende, la franquicia está siendo reiniciada tras el cambio de estructura, con un nuevo equipo tomando las riendas de la próxima gran entrega. Y también deja una idea bastante interesante: con el talento de Call of Duty involucrado, Halo podría tener un tercer modo inspirado en Zombies, pero utilizando al Flood.

F/A-XX is old-school defense acquisition. Whether it produces old-school results will depend entirely on what the Navy does next. There is no public evidence that Boeing and Northrop Grumman competed with flightworthy F/A-XX prototypes. There was no public (or private) flyoff demonstrating range, stealth, carrier suitability, maintainability or integration with uncrewed aircraft. Instead, the Navy reportedly selected the contractor with the most convincing classified engineering proposal: digital models, predicted performance, subsystem testing, cost and schedule estimates, manufacturing plans and past performance. That is considerably more substantial than PowerPoint - but it is still a competition between promises rather than demonstrated aircraft. The distinction matters: the Navy has not selected a tested fighter for production. It is selecting one company for Engineering and Manufacturing Development—the phase in which the winner will actually finish the design, build the aircraft and prove whether its projections were accurate. That is traditional Pentagon acquisition: choose one prime and one architecture, invest billions to turn its proposal into hardware, and discover the hardest problems after the competitive pressure has largely disappeared. We know how that can go. Requirements expand. Schedules slip. Costs rise. Production begins before testing is mature. Proprietary systems make upgrades expensive. Eventually the program becomes too strategically important - and the contractor too deeply embedded - to fail. F/A-XX does not have to repeat that history, but avoiding it will require more than calling the program “digital.” The Navy should: • Establish measurable range, payload, availability, maintainability and cost requirements—and resist adding exquisite capabilities during development. • Build and fly representative test aircraft early, then publish as much non-sensitive performance data as security permits. • Demonstrate carrier suitability, signature durability, mission-system reliability and maintainability under operational conditions - not just in models and laboratories. • Test crewed-uncrewed operations with real Collaborative Combat Aircraft, contested communications and representative electronic warfare. • Require government-controlled interfaces and sufficient data rights so new sensors, weapons, autonomy software and uncrewed aircraft can be integrated without asking the prime contractor’s permission. • Preserve competition below the aircraft-prime level by competing engines, mission systems, software modules, sensors and future upgrades wherever practical. • Fund low-rate production only after the design is stable and developmental testing has retired the major risks. Do not manufacture large numbers of aircraft that must later be rebuilt. • Establish enforceable cost, schedule and performance gates - with genuine authority to pause, restructure or recompete work when the contractor misses them. The Navy is beginning F/A-XX with an old-school acquisition model: billions awarded on the strength of a classified engineering case rather than a competitive flight demonstration. The test now is whether it also accepts the old-school outcome - or makes continued funding and production dependent on demonstrated performance. reuters.com/world/us-navys-n…

Costco haul culture transfers the cost of storing goods from the retailer to the household. In a city, you can live with a smaller kitchen, pantry, and refrigerator because the neighborhood itself functions as your pantry. Multiple grocers, bakeries, pharmacies, etc are storing things nearby until you need them. In the burbs, the stores are farther away, so households have to buy in bulk and store things at home. The big house, basement, garage … all needed to compensate for lack of neighborhood amenities. suburbs relocate the warehouse from the merchant to your house.

This image was sent to me from the field. These are messages US servicemen in the Persian Gulf have scribbled on the dust of an aircraft flap. "Be a good guy and do what Israel tells you to" "Operation Epstein Fury" "Peace deal #64 incoming... ALL THIS FOR THE HOLY LAND" I have no frame of reference, I can't compare it to the sentiments of US soldiers in previous conflicts. But I suspect these are new sentiments, or at least a new willingness to express them this openly and directly. But as one serviceman told me: "What people in the media don't understand when they compare past conflicts to this one, is this operation has no morale behind it. That makes a world of difference to service members deployed to undesirable locations indefinitely." Read that last part again: No morale. Deployed to undesirable locations INDEFINITELY. My own conclusion: When a war has no morale behind it, winning means that you simply end it. There is no other "winning" in such an unjust war.