Aerial mining was used in Vietnam, and was one of the key factors that led to the Paris peace accords. Operation POCKET MONEY kicked off with a mere nine aircraft – and shut down North Vietnamese maritime traffic until the end of the war. Mine drops were conducted entirely at low altitude, which while not particularly accurate, were far more so than the mines delivered by B-29s against Japan. Mine delivery was risky in that it required low altitudes and relatively slow airspeeds, increasing the vulnerability of minelaying aircraft. In DESERT STORM, this vulnerability was highlighted when the first aerial mining mission from USS Ranger resulted in the loss of Jackal 404 and its crew, presumably to hostile fire. No combat aerial mining missions have been flown since.

The first enhanced Quickstrike mine was demonstrated in VALIANT SHIELD 14, when the Air Force B-52J and Marine F-18A+ employed the weapons for the first time. The enhanced Quickstrike comes in several variants, all of which are essentially assemblies of off-the-shelf equipment. The Quickstrike-J is a JDAM conversion of the Quickstrike and will come in 1000-lb. and 2000-lb. variants. The Quickstrike-ER is a conversion of a winged JDAM-ER, and will come in 500-lb. and 2000-lb. variants. Quickstrike-J has the same range as any other JDAM, while Quickstrike-ER is a glide weapon with a substantially extended range. Both variants are fully compatible with existing aircraft software and any aircraft that can employ the base JDAM can employ an enhanced Quickstrike. The benefits to the minelaying aircraft are substantial. Instead of making multiple slow passes at low altitude, aircraft can release all of their mines in a single pass from any altitude and need not directly overfly the minefield. Winged mines will greatly reduce the standoff, allowing minelaying sorties to remain outside the envelope of short range air defenses of the type that downed Jackal 404. No additional crew training is required, because there is no difference between hitting a set of surface coordinates on land or a set at sea.

Saudi Arabia has used cluster bombs many times before, but this is the first time that it is using it against its own population in a desprate move to stop the huge advances made by the Yemeni forces inside the kingdom in recent days.

The Yemeni army and popular forces have frequently crossed the border captured the Saudi military bases and outpost, ruined the military sites and returned home in the last few months and after the Riyadh-led coalition refrained from stopping its air raids on residential areas in Yemen's cities.

But, after months of coalition intensified air raids on civilian areas, the Yemeni forces changed strategy and warned that they would start ground assaults on Saudi territories to force Riyadh stop the massacre.

The new strategy was put into effect on Sunday, when Yemen's army and popular forces crossed the border and captured several key military bases in three provinces in Southern Saudi Arabia near the border.

The Yemeni forces seized Malhama, al-Radif and al-Mamoud military bases in Jizan, al-Rabou'a military base in Asir and Nahouqa military base in Najran provinces.

Then on Monday, the Yemeni forces took control of three more Saudi military bases in al-Shurfa region in Najran.

They also captured a military camp in Najran, and destroyed the military vehicles in there.

On Tuesday, the Saudi warplanes used banned cluster bombs against civilians in 5 airstrikes on residential areas in Yemen's Hajjah province. Tens of people were killed and wounded in the air raids.

Earlier today, the Yemeni army spokesman Sharaf Luqman said that the army and popular forces are advancing deep inside Saudi Arabia and capturing more military bases in the Southern parts of the kingdom.

"The Yemeni forces have managed to inflict heavy losses on the Saudi enemy inside Saudi Arabia," Luqman said.

He reiterated that the Yemeni army and the popular forces are having high morale to fight the enemy, and said, "The military operation to capture new military bases of Saudi Arabia is underway."

A well-known Saudi online activist says some 2,000 Saudi nationals have lost their lives and 4,850 others sustained injuries during nine months of Riyadh’s military campaign against neighboring Yemen.

The whistleblower, known on Twitter as @mujtahidd, once again took to the social networking service and released the figures as part of a report detailing damage suffered by Saudi Arabia in its military operation in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has spent more than 200 billion rials (USD 53 billion) in its ferocious campaign over the past nine months, according to @mujtahidd, adding the kingdom spends 750 million rials (almost USD 200 million) a day on its war. 

The activist further said 450 tanks and armored vehicles have been destroyed or disabled during the Saudi war on Yemen, adding that Riyadh’s military had lost four Apache jets and an F-15 aircraft.

Three warships have also been annihilated, while two other vessels have been damaged severely, said the activist who reportedly has more than 1.8 million online followers.

The whistleblower, whose account was created in July 2011, uses his platform to leak documents about corruption inside the Saudi royal family amid the kingdom’s harsh crackdown on political activists.

The amount of oil smuggled into Turkey from areas of Syria controlled by the Islamic State group is economically insignificant, the United States said on Friday, after Moscow accused Ankara of profiting from the trade.

US officials said coalition air operations have seriously degraded IS's oil infrastructure, but that in any case most of the crude pumped from its wells was absorbed inside Syria's war zone economy.

Russia and Turkey have in recent days traded allegations that they are involved in the illegal trade, further ratcheting up tensions after Turkish jets downed a Russian bomber on the Syrian border.

"The amount of oil being smuggled is extremely low and has decreased over time and is of no significance from a volume perspective - both volume of oil and volume of revenue," said Amos Hochstein, US special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs.

 

"In case you don't know what's happening in the middle east.

President Assad ( who is bad ) is a nasty guy who got so nasty his people rebelled and the Rebels ( who are good ) started winning ( Hurrah!).
But then some of the rebels turned a bit nasty and are now called Islamic State ( who are definitely bad!) and some continued to support democracy ( who are still good.)

So the Americans ( who are questionably good ) started bombing Islamic State ( who are bad ) and giving arms to the Syrian Rebels ( who are good ) so they could fight Assad ( who is still bad ) which was good.
By the way, there is a breakaway state in the north run by the Kurds who want to fight IS ( which is a good thing ) but the Turkish authorities think they are bad, so we have to say they are bad whilst secretly thinking they're good and giving them guns to fight IS (which is good) but that is another matter.

Getting back to Syria.
So President Putin ( who is bad, cos he invaded Crimea and the Ukraine and killed lots of folks including that nice Russian man in London with polonium poisoned sushi ) has decided to back Assad ( who is still bad ) by attacking IS ( who are also bad ) which is sort of a good thing?

But Putin ( still bad ) thinks the Syrian Rebels ( who are good ) are also bad, and so he bombs them too, much to the annoyance of the Americans ( who are good ) who are busy backing and arming the rebels ( who are also good).

Now Iran ( who used to be bad, but now they have agreed not to build any nuclear weapons and bomb Israel are now good ) are going to provide ground troops to support Assad ( still bad ) as are the Russians ( bad ) who now have ground troops and aircraft in Syria.

So a Coalition of Assad ( still bad ) Putin ( extra bad ) and the Iranians ( good, but in a bad sort of way ) are going to attack IS ( who are bad ) which is a good thing, but also the Syrian Rebels ( who are good ) which is bad.

Now the British ( obviously good, except that nice Mr Corbyn in the corduroy jacket, who is probably bad ) and the Americans ( also good ) cannot attack Assad ( still bad ) for fear of upsetting Putin ( bad ) and Iran ( good / bad) and now they have to accept that Assad might not be that bad after all compared to IS ( who are super bad).

So Assad ( bad ) is now probably good, being better than IS ( but let’s face it, drinking your own wee is better than IS so no real choice there ) and since Putin and Iran are also fighting IS that may now make them Good. America ( still Good ) will find it hard to arm a group of rebels being attacked by the Russians for fear of upsetting Mr Putin ( now good ) and that nice mad Ayatollah in Iran ( also Good ) and so they may be forced to say that the Rebels are now Bad, or at the very least abandon them to their fate. This will lead most of them to flee to Turkey and on to Europe or join IS ( still the only constantly bad group).

To Sunni Muslims, an attack by Shia Muslims ( Assad and Iran ) backed by Russians will be seen as something of a Holy War, and the ranks of IS will now be seen by the Sunnis as the only Jihadis fighting in the Holy War and hence many Muslims will now see IS as Good ( Doh!.)

Sunni Muslims will also see the lack of action by Britain and America in support of their Sunni rebel brothers as something of a betrayal ( mmm.might have a point.) and hence we will be seen as Bad.

So now we have America ( now bad ) and Britain ( also bad ) providing limited support to Sunni Rebels ( bad ) many of whom are looking to IS ( Good / bad ) for support against Assad ( now good ) who, along with Iran ( also Good) and Putin ( also, now, unbelievably, Good ) are attempting to retake the country Assad used to run before all this started?

So, now that you fully understand everything, all your questions are answered." - author unknown.

Thx to Michael Rubin, author apparently is:
Daniel Gordis https://www.facebook.com/daniel.gordis.1/po...849297245187002

Raytheon’s system involves several calmly named “kill vehicles,” which are rocket-launched missile hunters. As designed, they are fired into space to stop ballistic missiles. Once there, the kill vehicle is designed to track the weapon and then destroy it by physical collision. This is done chiefly by Raytheon’s Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle. It works together with the Standard Missile-3, and Raytheon boasts that together the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle and the Standard Missile-3 have a “combined record of 35 successful intercepts in space.”

In addition to these two vehicles, Raytheon is working on a “Redesigned Kill Vehicle”, which is in function and purpose supposed to be a cheaper and better kill vehicle than its first one. With a contract awarded in August of this year, Raytheon is also working on a weapon called the “Multi-Object Kill Vehicle”, which is built to destroy several missiles in space.

The Office of Naval Research commissioned this project in the hope of creating a new vehicle capable of rapid deployment for a multitude of missions. For example, a combination quadcopter-sub could inspect bridge foundations, investigate undersea pollution, or perform search-and-rescue operations.

While these would make great commercial applications, the military is most likely interested in the technology to rapidly detect and map underwater mines. As Javier Diez, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, says, "Mines are probably the biggest problem for the Navy."

This first prototype is merely a proof of concept that has a few development hurdles to overcome. Those include scaling up to a size that can support relevant payloads like cameras and sensors. Underwater dynamics must also be improved to allow increased maneuverability and depth. Because radio transmission through water is difficult, the craft must be tethered at this time to provide continuous communications. Even so, it's easy to watch this demo and imagine an unmanned autonomous drone that can be programmed to accomplish a mission that requires it to swim and fly.

An additional 50 aircraft are to be deployed there, plus a spetsnaz brigade and support personel. There already are Russian military personnel at Shairat, as well as helicopters and base preparation troops. At the moment the base is being used by Syrian Air Force which bases MiG-23, -25, and Su-22 aircraft there. Moreover, Moscow is about to send a large number of TOS-1 rocket self-propelled armored flamethrowers to Syria.

A Russian defense source told lenta.ru that Shairat is necessary in order to prosecute operations in southern and eastern Syria.

The standard scenario is one regiment, one airbase. Our small group in Latakia was the first step. Our permanent presence in Syria demands further infrastructure development and increasing the size of the air group.

It is now necessary to expand Russian presence in Syria in order to increase the number of airstrikes,  to deploy additional fighter aircraft in order to provide protection for the strike aircraft, and to base electronic intelligence gathering aircraft to locate targets for aircraft and cruise missiles. I would not rule out the deployment not only of the Il-20M but also the A-50 airborne early warning aircraft. The Military Transport Aviation component will also be increased to ship munitions and other cargoes.

SP: There are reports that our transport aircraft are active at Shairat. However, Homs province is the site of heavy fighting between government forces and militants. How are we going to ensure the security of take-off and landing of our airlifters?

–It’s clear the militants have nearly no SAMs. They mainly use ZU-23 cannon for air defense with a maximum ceiling of up to 2km, which means they cannot harm landing and taking off aircraft.

Under the agreement, negotiations between the opposition and Assad’s government will begin on January 1, 2016, followed closely by a cease-fire involving all parties except ISIS, Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, and other groups designated “extremists” by Jordan.

Ultimately, Hassan notes, this plan serves Russia well: If rebel groups want to be included in the ceasefire, then they can’t interfere with members of the opposition who choose to work with Assad toward a transition.

This all but forces opposition groups to either accept a role for Assad, or become more extreme — and thus risk being targeted by Russian and regime airstrikes.

As such, the plan is bound to sow division among moderate Syrian rebels broadly affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA). This is exactly what Russia wants — indeed, Moscow has been trying to discredit the moderate opposition since well before the latest round of peace talks.

The FSA — which has traditionally refused to devote its resources to the ISIS fight for fear that it would take away from the rebels’ battle against the regime and help Assad maintain his hold on power — was quick to deny the reports.

But rumors of a budding Russia-FSA alliance soon reached the mainstream media and succeeded in creating even more confusion within the international community over who these moderate rebels are and what they actually stand for — signaling a key win for Moscow in the all-important information war.

For years, officials in the US, Europe, Turkey, and the Arab World have been promoting ‘the moderate FSA’ or even ‘the secular FSA’ as Syria’s great hope for the future, without ever arriving at a better explanation of what that means [other] than ‘any damned armed group in Syria that we can work with.’”

This ambiguity, Lund noted, has ultimately helped Russia pick and choose which rebels it wants to work with — and those it wants to eliminate.

“By rebranding their own allies and all kinds of random exiles as ‘FSA representatives,’  they [the Russians] are trying to wring a very useful fiction out of the hands of their enemies or, failing that, to destroy it by adding to the confusion,” Lund wrote.

“Some might call this diplomacy. I call it elite-level trolling.”

What you're seeing above is the TOW 2B Aero system, also known as the TOW 2B BGM-71F, being tested against a Russian T-72 tank. The results, as you can see, are devastating to the third-generation piece of heavy armor.

Unlike a RPG-7 (a rocket-propelled grenade), a TOW system is a lot heavier and little bit more complicated to use. With an RPG, you essentially point the tube at a target, pull the trigger, and hope that you've aimed correctly. Think of it as essentially a very large, very destructive bullet—no smarter, and even more difficult to aim (RPGs have trouble with crosswinds, making long-distance shots difficult—anything further than 300 meters is usually a crapshoot, even on a large target like heavy armor).

The TOW 2B Aero, commissioned by the U.S. Army in 2004, is particularly devastating. Not only it is effective out to 4,500 meters (compared to the, at the very, very outside, 500 meters for an RPG-7), the TOW 2B Aero uses "​fly-over, shoot-down" warheads.

In the video above, when watched in slow motion, you can see the missile actually passes a few feet over the tank before detonating, sending two warheads down onto the target. This explains why the explosion is so large (and why the turret gains enough upward velocity to flip completely off the tank).The TOW 2B saw some limited use by U.S. forces during the ground campaign in Iraq, but most recently it's been seen being used by opposition forces in Syria, as you can see this video (which, as a warning, does show actual combat footage). Regardless of where it's used, any piece of heavy armor in its vicinity is not safe.

The problem is that the tool Jamieson is referring to, called automated target detection or ATD, doesn’t really exist in any sort of ready-to-deploy form for individual soldiers. So, in partnership with Defense Research and Development Canada, Jamieson and the other researchers at CEL are tackling the research backwards — instead of testing new tech to see how soldiers respond, they’re testing soldiers to understand what they need out of new tech.

Basically, ATD relies on computer vision to process information about the scene surrounding a soldier and provide live feedback about targets in the area. But while many approaches to this task have been proposed over the years including laser radar, deep learning and infrared imaging, the work has been met with limited success. Getting a computer to parse a busy scene with noisy data is hard, especially when you need enough accuracy to justify pulling the trigger, and in the blink of an eye.

Difficult-to-identify targets fly across the screen as the soldier looks down a modified rifle, with a heads-up-display projected inside the sight. The soldier sees yellow boxes around some of the objects in the scene — but not all — to indicate that the hypothetical ATD system has identified a target. The researchers “bias” the system to detect friendlies more readily than enemies, thus helping the soldier make a decision about whether a friend or foe has been targeted.

The Globemaster's destination was a storage facility in San Antonio, where it will be delivered to the Qatar air force. Breaking down the numbers, Boeing said it has delivered 223 C-17s to to the U.S. Air Force and 48 to international customers Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, India and NATO.

‎Total delivered so far: 271. Four are still in storage and expected to be delivered to Qatar in 2016.

"This is truly the end of an era," said Nan Bouchard, Boeing's top C-17 executive, in a statement. "It's a sad day, but one that all of the Boeing employees and suppliers who have worked over the years building this great aircraft can be proud of."

The end of production comes as Boeing plans to shut its Long Beach factory, which employed 2,200 workers. Not all will be losing their jobs. Many are retiring or transferring to other facilities. It's just the latest blow to California's aviation industry, which has been losing jobs for decades.

US experts are reconstructing and equipping a desolate airport special to carrying agricultural products in the region controlled by the Kurdish forces in Hasaka region, Northeastern Syria, to turn it into a military base.

The Lebanese al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Saturday that a number of US experts have entered the region since 50 days ago to develop and prepare the runways with 2,500m length and 250m width to be used by fighter jets.

Abu Hajar airport which has not been used since 2010 is located in Tal al-Hajar region in the Eastern countryside of Hasaka which is controlled by the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG).

The UK used the so-called mixed pairs, consisting of a Panavia Tornado and a Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft, during the 2011 aerial campaign in Libya.

​The Typhoon, a twin-engine, canard-delta wing, multirole fighter, is a more advanced aircraft but it has limited ground attack capabilities, while the Tornado twin-engine, variable-sweep wing combat aircraft is outfitted with main attack missiles in the UK's arsenal. The Typhoons are also more agile and better suited for air defense.

From now on the RAF Tornados and Typhoons, based at the British military base RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, will "fly within sight of each other," Gilligan wrote for the Telegraph, although the UK's Ministry of Defense did not explicitly confirm this in its latest press release.

​"The RAF Tornado and Reaper aircraft that have been conducting air strikes against Daesh have now been reinforced by a detachment of Typhoon fighters. … The deployment of the Typhoons plus an extra two Tornados offers a significant increase in strike capacity to both the RAF component and the wider coalition air campaign," the UK defense agency said.

A crack team from the SAS tracked down IS executioner Jihadi John and called in the air strike that killed him in Syria, it can be revealed today.

Until now the top-secret operation to eliminate the masked British extremist – who beheaded UK hostages Alan Henning and David Haines – was thought to have been conducted entirely from the air without any Western troops.

But The Mail on Sunday has learned that the perilous plan depended on a team of eight men from the Special Forces regiment risking their lives to penetrate deep inside the IS stronghold of Raqqa.

Eight SAS soldiers sneaked to within five miles of ISIS's de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria and from there, they flew four 'nano helicopters' fitted with cameras that spied on Jihadi John.

And the secret weapon used to identify Jihadi John was a 1lb helicopter drone launched by the soldiers.

The daring mission began in darkness on November 11 when two US Chinook helicopters skimmed low across the Syrian desert to land at an isolated spot.

Avoiding all roads, the team of soldiers drove in desert buggies 35 miles south towards Raqqa. At about 3am, they 'dug in' five miles outside the city, where they remained undetected.

The following evening, while the rest of the team were on lookout, one man assembled four 3ft nano-helicopters with infrared and night-vision cameras in the nose. They were pre-programmed to fly to Jihadi John's hideout – a six-storey building in Raqqa.

The first drone set off towards its target, then entered 'hover and stare' mode, recording the movements of IS suspects at a building near the Sharksa mosque.

It beamed footage by satellite back to SAS HQ in Hereford and the US Central Command in Doha, Qatar.

The data obtained from monitoring the F-22 flying combat missions could be used to "[improve] tracking algorithms, air defense capabilities, and [enhance] the understanding of coalition weapons that are engaging in close air support and precision air strikes," Matisek asserted.

The US, according to the US pilot, should reconsider using advanced weapons in its campaign to eliminate Daesh. Keeping F-22 characteristics a secret should take priority over other considerations.

It's not only about the stealth air superiority fighter, the US should refrain from using any advanced avionics. Otherwise, he maintains, Moscow will not miss a chance to observe, collect and adjust its own weapons and strategies accordingly.

The bomber groups were traveling within China’s extensive Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, which Beijing declared in December of 2013. Aircraft are required to submit flight plans and reply to Chinese identification inquiries within the ADIZ, which does not represent a claim of sovereign airspace. Still, the ADIZ was controversial because of its proximity to disputed islands and natural gas fields, as well as the totally unilateral nature of the ADIZ’s creation.

The eight bombers split into two groups of four bombers each west of the Japanese island of Okinawa, which is home to a large US Marine base. One group of bombers then flew over the Miyako Strait, a body of water near the Japanese island of Miyakojima, before proceeding some some 620 miles (1000 KM) into the Western Pacific.

The flight path put the aircraft within Japan’s own ADIZ, after which the four bombers flew into the general area of what’s known in Chinese strategic parlance as the “Second Island Chain:” the string of Pacific islands, including the US territories of the Mariana Islands and Guam, lying beyond the so-called “First Island Chain,” which consists of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and Japan: