Trump’s Indonesian Allies In Bed With ISIS-Backed Militia Seeking to Oust Elected President

Joko Widodo

Theintercept.com - Associates of Donald Trumpin Indonesia have joined army officers and a vigilante street movement linked to ISIS in a campaign that ultimately aims to oust the country’s president. According to Indonesian military and intelligence officials and senior figures involved in what they call “the coup,” the move against President Joko Widodo (known more commonly as Jokowi), a popular elected civilian, is being impelled from behind the scenes by active and retired generals.

Apache attack helicopters can finally see in color

Foxnews.com - Until now, Apache helicopter pilots were seeing in black and white.

New tech just revealed by the U.S. Army allows AH-64 Apache helicopter pilots to see targeting and surveillance data in full, high-resolution color -- helping ensure U.S. attack helicopters continue to dominate.

In Alabama at the Redstone Arsenal on Tuesday, the Army worked with Lockheed Martin to ran a test flight of the new tech, called M-DSA or Modernized Day Sensor Assembly. It’s the result of a four-year $60 million program focused on modernizing a sensor package that was first developed more than three decades ago.

The Army says it is the most advanced tech on any rotorcraft, and ensures that Apaches will be able to accommodate future weapons.

The world of color
M-DSA is the very latest advancement in the system that acts as the eyes of the Apache, called the Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor or Arrowhead.

This tech lets Apache attack helicopter pilots engage enemies precisely at long-range. It also gives them better capabilities in day, night and tough weather missions.

The enhanced image resolution from the forward infrared sensors is important so that pilots and aircrews can query targets. It is also critical for supporting ground troops by giving them situational awareness when they are outside detection ranges.

First fielded in 2005, the system is used not just by the U.S. Army but also 12 international customers. Arrowhead was used during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, for example.

But some elements were originally designed in the 1970s; clearly, it could use an upgrade. To that end, the Laser Rangefinder Designator, TV Sensor, and Laser Spot Tracker components have all been modernized with the new tech.


There are four key new features:

-The upgraded sensor means Apache pilots will now have high-resolution, high-definition near infrared and color imagery on cockpit displays.

-The tech also introduces additional fields of view that can blend the image with the M-TADS forward-looking infrared. With it, Apache pilots will be able to see local and military lighting more clearly on an individual display.

-For improved communication and coordination with ground troops, there is a new laser pointer.

-Particularly useful in urban environments and critical training exercises, there is an updated multi-mode laser with eye-safe lasing capability.

Color in the cockpit and an enhanced laser pointer marker mean even better rapid target identification and coordination for aircrews. These sorts of improvements also aid safety and system reliability.

How is this different?
The advances should reduce time spent on voice communication, freeing pilots up for other things – like making critical highly pressurized decisions.

What does that mean in practice? Say ground troops have identified a suspicious yellow vehicle. Previously, details like color often had to be communicated by verbal or text cues to the pilots. With color in the cockpit, the pilots can use those key details to better track the car.

Say ground troops identify a target wearing red entering a blue building … with this new tech, the pilots could more easily identify the target with the color clues.

Lockheed Martin says the new system was nearly three times more reliable and easier to maintain that the old one.

What’s next?
In the following few months, the Army Flight Test Directorate, the Apache Program Office and Lockheed Martin will continue testing the tech at Redstone Arsenal and Yuma Proving Grounds.

The Army plans to roll out the advances, but it may take several years to retrofit all 680 Apache E-models.

The Army Just Built a Whole Town for Super-Real Training

Medium.com - The U.S. Army has finished building a 300-acre training area that’s pretty much a miniature city meant to be shot up and blown up in the interest of combat readiness.

The Asymmetric Warfare Training Center at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia cost $96 million and is designed to “replicate complex operational environments,” according to the Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, which “owns” the training site.

In addition to the usual firing ranges and administrative facilities, the AWTC has a number of full-size structures, said to include a five-story embassy, bank, school, subway station, train station, helicopter landing zone, bridge and more.

Video footage from the January opening ceremony also shows a church, although it’s unclear whether this is one of the training structures. All of the buildings appear to be highly realistic, especially when compared to other urban training facilities that rely heavily on simple, generic structures—often made of plywood.

For example, the subway station features rail cars either purchased straight from Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Area Transit Authority—or modeled to look like them, right down to the logos. Real rail cars also feature in the above-ground train station.

The facility fits with the Asymmetric Warfare Group’s mission. AWG stood up in 2006 to help the Army counter Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and Afghanistan. The group’s responsibilities have broadened since then. It helps develop doctrine and training for counter-terrorism, the protection of critical infrastructure like power grids and dealing with Weapons of Mass Destruction.

AWG has also helped train foreign commandos. In 2012, for instance, the group worked with Lebanese Special Operations Forces.

At the January ceremony, Col. John P. Petkosek—AWG’s commander—highlighted this broad mission. “This is a place where we can be creative and you can come up with solutions to problems we don’t even know we have yet.”

Other units will no doubt make use of the unique facilities. Special Operations Forces in particular prefer to train in places that closely model real battlefields. In just the last few months, Fort A.P. Hill has hosted training events for Army Special Forces and the Marines.

It’s even possible that the Marines’ November exercise, which involved protecting a mock embassy, used a structure built for the AWTC before the center’s official completion.

Meet The Army’s Tricked-Out, Super-Fast Stealth Copters of 2030

Foreignpolicy.com - In the not-so-distant future, U.S. special operators, like those who used scuba gear and SUVs to go after terrorists this weekend, may be carried into combat by quiet, ultra-fast helicopters that bear only a passing resemblance to today's models.

The Army is trying to revolutionize a chopper fleet that hasn't changed all that much in the last 30 years. Four companies are trotting out designs to make it happen. One proposed aircraft looks like a minivan with rotors; another, like a V-22 Osprey tiltrotor on steroids. There's also sleek, stealthy-looking chopper. And the last resembles an awkward cross between a UH-60 Black Hawk and a V-22.

The Army last week signed "technology investment agreements" with the four firms -- a Bell-Lockheed Martin team, a Boeing-Sikorsky team, Karem Aircraft and AVX aviation -- to develop prototypes that will compete to be the basis for the ground service's light and medium-sized helicopters of the 21st Century.

For years, Army aviation leaders have been lamenting the fact that the service has not purchased a brand new helicopter design since the introduction of the AH-64 Apache in the 1980s. Besides the V-22 -- the aircraft that flies like an airplane but takes off and lands like a helicopter by pivoting its giant engines skyward -- almost all of the choppers used by the U.S. military today are based on designs from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Service officials will tell you that this has led to a sort of stagnation in the state of military helicopter technology, especially when compared to the giant leaps ahead in technology the Air Force and Navy have seen with the advent of revolutionary stealth jets and drones.

To remedy this, the service has kicked off a long-term project called Joint Multirole (JMR) aimed at developing a radically new crop of choppers all based on a similar design that do everything from hunt bad guys to haul troops and cargo. The new choppers must be able to fly at least 265 miles per hour -- double the top speed of your average helicopter. They also have to be able to hover at altitudes of up to 6,000-feet in 95 degree temperature; a difficult feat for many helicopters. The choppers must also be quieter than today's helicopters. All four companies have nine months to flesh out their designs, after which, the Army will select two to be built and flying by 2018. The Army wants the new aircraft in service by 2030 or so.

Here's a look at each of the designs.

Karem's proposal, the TR36TD Optimum Speed Tiltrotor (OSTR), strongly resembles a beefed up V-22. Karem claims the OSTR will be able to fly at speeds of up to 414 miles-per-hour and climb and hover higher and fly longer than other rotorcraft. (Karem was founded by Abe Karem, the man who designed the MQ-1 Predator drone.) For now, these are just claims since Karem doesn't have a single aircraft built.

Then there's the startup company AVX Aircraft. They are offering a helicopter (also shown at the top of the article) with a fuselage shaped like a minivan powered by a stack of two main rotors on top and two fan-like propellers in the back of the chopper designed to push it to speed the Army needs, all this for a "very attractive price." While the three year old company is staffed by a number of chopper industry veterans, AVX, like Karem, has yet to build an aircraft.

Next up is the Bell Helicopter-Lockheed Martin team's proposed V-280 Valor tiltrotor. While both of these companies have a ton of experience building aircraft -- Bell actually builds with wing and engines for the V-22 -- they don't have a prototype of the Valor. The "3rd Generation Tiltrotor" will apparently "deliver twice the speed and range, with enhanced safety margins and hover performance at altitude," according to Bell's marketing material for the awkward-looking craft.

Finally, there's the Sikorsky Boeing team that's competing with a design based on its experimental X-2, which is the world's fastest helicopter, flying at speeds up to 290 miles per hour. Sikorsky's concept calls for a sleek craft with two rotors sitting on top of the fuselage and one large propellor at the tail that will push the chopper along. It's unclear whether the aircraft will include technology found on the stealth versions of Sikorsky's MH-60 Black Hawks used by the U.S. Army.

It's important to note that Sikorsky is the only company that has a prototype flying. The rest of these crazy designs haven't left the engineers' computers. This may give the Connecticut-based company a leg up in the contest.

The Army has set out a pretty ambitious timeline for buying a revolutionary class of new choppers given the fact that it took nearly 30 years, 36 lives, and billions more dollars than expected to get the Pentagon's last brand new rotorcraft design, the V-22, into service. With budgets tightening, it may be incredibly difficult for the ground service to find the cash to justify building a brand new class of chopper, especially when it's been successfully using upgraded versions of old models for decades.