Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) Pinpoint Protection for Afghanistan

March 15, 2010 by Jeffrey Bradford · Comment
Filed under: Syndicated Industry News, afghanistan 
Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) Pinpoint Protection for Afghanistan
March 15, 2010

- KMW hands over JFST FENNEK

- A first step towards a Net-Centric Capability

Munich, March 15, 2010 – Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) handed over the first series-production vehicle of the Joint Fire Support Team (JFST) FENNEK to the German Federal Office of Defence Technology and Procurement (BWB) and the Armed Forces at the artillery school in Idar-Oberstein on Thursday, March 11, 2010. The vehicles feature special equipment for Joint Fire Support (JFS) tasks and will see deployment to Afghanistan as early as in April 2010. More than one hundred guests attended the ceremony at which KMW Member of the Board Jürgen Weber handed over the new JFST FENNEK to BWB’s vice president Reinhard Schütte as well as to the Commander of the Artillery School, Brig. Gen. Heribert Hupka.

Based on the highly mobile FENNEK all-terrain vehicle, the JFST coordinates indirect fire of land assets as well as airborne and shipboard weapons systems, thus increasing their effectiveness. Two different vehicle configurations work together to provide this vital support: The “ground-ground” configuration as an Artillery Observer and the “air-ground” configuration as a Forward Air Controller. The JFST provides the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) with significantly improved capabilities for the reconnaissance, detection, identification and evaluation of enemy targets. Furthermore, the vehicles are characterized by their additional communication links to other Army, Air Force and Navy platforms.

“This highly sophisticated system provides the Bundeswehr with a new, urgently required capability,” said Jürgen Weber. “Opponents can be reconnoitered, identified and geographically positioned up to a range of several kilometers during day and night time. The information gathered by the JFST is vital to the forces of the Army, Air Force and Navy.” A laser pointer and illuminator, integrated onto the system, will improve the capability to use laser-guided munitions with a future extended function.

So far, a total of 20 vehicles have been ordered which will be delivered through 2011. The overall requirement of the Bundeswehr amounts to 40 vehicles.

The FENNEK Artillery Observer configuration has already been deployed with the ISAF troops since 2004. The new “double act” system features an extraordinarily powerful observation and reconnaissance equipment. The vehicles further provide a high level of protection against mines and ballistic threats as well as against NBC contamination. With a range of 850 kilometers the three-man-crew can operated independently for several days. Being air-transportable, the FENNEK can be rapidly and easily deployed to distant and remote areas of operation.

Krauss-Maffei Wegmann GmbH & Co. KG leads the European market for armoured wheeled and tracked vehicles. At locations in Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Singapore and the USA, some 3400 employees manufacture and support a product portfolio ranging from air-transportable, heavily armoured wheeled vehicles (MUNGO, DINGO, GFF4 and BOXER*) through reconnaissance, anti-aircraft and artillery systems (FENNEK, GEPARD, LeFLaSys*, Armoured Howitzer 2000, AGM and DONAR) to heavy battle tanks (LEOPARD 1 and 2), armoured personnel carriers (PUMA*) and bridge-laying systems (LEGUAN and PSB2). In addition, KMW has wide-ranging system competence in the area of civil and military simulation, as well as in command and information systems and remote-controlled gun-carriages with reconnaissance and observation equipment for day and night missions. The armed forces of more than 30 nations worldwide rely on the operational systems by KMW.

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2nd MEB Commander to Brief Live From Afghanistan

March 3, 2010 by Jeffrey Bradford · Comment
Filed under: Syndicated Industry News, afghanistan 
2nd MEB Commander to Brief Live From Afghanistan
March 3, 2010

Marine Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, will brief live from Afghanistan at 11 a.m. EST, March 4, in the DoD Briefing Studio, Pentagon 2E973, to provide an update on Operation Moshtarak.

Journalists without a Pentagon building pass will be picked up at the River Entrance only. Plan to arrive no later than 45 minutes prior to the event; have proof of affiliation and two forms of photo identification. Please call 703-697-5131 for escort into the building.

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New York Times December 1 David Brooks column “Clear, Hold & Duct Tape”

December 2, 2009 by Jeffrey Bradford · Comment
Filed under: Editorial, Syndicated Industry News, afghanistan 
David Brooks Op-ed in the December 1, 2009 edition of the New York Times, "Clear, Hold and Duck Tape" was published this morning in Hawaii under its first edition title of "A New War Strategy". The latter title belies the misconception with the age and lineage of the COIN doctrine.

I sought to make a comment on-line however room for comments was closed within a few hours of publication and efforts to contact the journalist and editor fell on deaf ears with no effort by the NY Times to respond - clearly I am still not "fluent in their section" to echo the NYT advertising campaign.

I believe there are important points to make regarding this piece of writing. First Counter-Insurgency has formally existed as a doctrine since the mid-1960s in the US Military and is not a new discovery. To be more precise as to its lineage the US military doctrine community drew on the British experience in Malaya from the 1950s relying extensively on the advice of "Two Gun" Thompson - a frequent visitor to the LBJ White House.

What I believe Mr. Brooks failed to capture in his piece is that political control of the military has led to COIN doctrine being either implemented in extremis vis the forced movement of people into communities where they could be monitored more closely or else not wishing to push hard enough leading to the indigenous government becoming increasingly corrupt and reliant on the foreign forces present. Both extremes lead to failure and the current administration would do better to learn from their predecessors and put 'ground-truth' at the center of military-strategic campaign decisions.

The subsequent presentation of a COIN policy for Afghanistan by the Administration within the 24 hours following the article's publication already sets a date for withdrawal - which plays somewhat into the hands of the 'sit-it-out' faction amongst the Taliban.

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Buying Some Meals Ready To Eat For The Troops

October 29, 2009 by Matthew Potter · Comment
Filed under: AmericaQual Group LLC, Business Line, Companies, Contract Awards, DLA, Department of Defense, Events, Services, afghanistan, logistics, production program 

MREThe U.S. Department of Defense placed an order worth over $170 million with AmericaQual Group LLC for the standardized, packaged Meals Ready to Eat (MRE). These are used by all parts of the U.S. military and also include humanitarian ration versions. The MRE has been produced for the U.S. military for over thirty years and is considered a vast improvement over more traditional rations used by soldiers through the ages. This was an option on a contract previously awarded and is good for the next year.

The MRE is a self contained kit with an entree and other food and drinks. It includes self heating food as well. One MRE is supposed to fee one person and they come packaged in cases of twenty-four normally. With the large numbers of U.S. troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over the last eight years the demand for MRE has been high. Especially with many of the soldiers deployed in smaller units at bases scattered across the two countries there normally cannot be fixed housekeeping services like kitchens, canteens or restaurants as there are on bigger U.S. bases.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamd/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

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Contractors Good For Something — Being A Force Mulitplier In Afghanistan

September 2, 2009 by Matthew Potter · Comment
Filed under: Business Line, Companies, Department of Defense, Events, IT, KBR, SETA, Services, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, afghanistan, logistics, medicine 

For the last eight years one of the biggest complaints from the American left was that George Bush was in the sway of big government contractors. They did too much of the housekeeping services in Iraq and Afghanistan. Companies like KBR lined their pockets at the expense of the troops and taxpayers. They were doing jobs that green suiters or civil servants should be doing.

Unfortunately due to the small size of the military they had to use contractors for those jobs. This has been a trend going back thirty years. Use contractors to wash clothes, cook food and clean latrines. Then there would be more soldiers freed up to do the fighting. Despite a consistent philosophy on the use of support contractors Bush received holy hell about it. True the scale in Iraq was much larger then it ever had been before and the contracts were in some case let quickly and didn’t have enough oversight but people were trying to get things done.

Now the word is that Obama wants to increase the number of foot soldiers in Afghanistan but without increasing the number of U.S. troops deployed to that country. One way to do this is to reduce the number of soldiers assigned to logistic support units, command headquarters, maintenance and so one and do a one-for-one swap with “trigger pullers”. How do you do this and still provide the enormous tail that U.S. forces need? Use contractors.

It might be possible to assign U.S. civil servants to do this but there have been many issues in the past with getting them to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is too dangerous or not career enhancing. Certainly there is a number of people assigned or who volunteer for these positions but to get the kind of capability that is needed it will have to be contractors. Contractors like KBR or other such companies experienced in logistics and maintenance.

This will not be an easy or quick switch. The ground troops will have to be designated from either those in Iraq or in the U.S. recovering from a recent deployment. Then they will have to be trained and equipped up. A plan will be figured out how to deploy a 1000 support troops and replace them with a battalion of infantry. The support infrastructure will probably have to switch first. Contractors taking over for the rear echelon folks.

Another challenge will be writing and awarding the contracts for this. Unless they plan on expanding existing contracts there will be a several month period of writing the RFP, putting it out and evaluating the proposals. Awards may be protested which could add to the delays. Once awarded the contractors will have to hire their people and get them into place. Expect the almost constant sniping from Congress and the Media about this. See the LOGCAP contract from Iraq for example.

The Obama administration really cannot do anything else. They have reached the fish-or-cut-bait point. Either abandon Afghanistan or pour resources in. At the same time he does not want to “surge” troops there as that will make him and many Democrats look like idiots for opposing the same in Iraq. So he does the next best thing: surge contractors to maximize his troop availability. Good luck to them and the soldiers.

Cross posted at Inane Taskers

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Army buys ammo for Afghanistan

July 12, 2008 by Matthew Potter · Comment
Filed under: Allied Defense Group, Congress, Contract Awards, FMS, U.S. Army, afghanistan, logistics 

Fresh off all of the problems with the contract let to AEY, the US has moved to a more traditional source for ammo for Afghanistan’s military and police. See the press release here. Allied Defense Group has been awarded a FMS contract to provide ammo. Allied has grown significantly over the last 7 years as the demand by the US for ammunition of all types, but especially small arms, has increased.

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Navistar wins contract to build trucks for US Allies

May 5, 2008 by Matthew Potter · Comment
Filed under: Contract Awards, Iraq, Navistar, U.S. Army, afghanistan, logistics 

The US Army awarded Navistar a contract for 7,000 odd trucks for the Afghan and Iraqi governments. The value of the contract is over $1B. See the press release here. This is on top of a previous award for vehicles and support for the US Army. Navistar is also bidding as part of one of the teams for the JLTV.

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