Latest news with #JDAM
Saba Yemen
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
Russian forces reach western border of Donetsk People's Republic
Moscow - Saba: The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday that Russian forces are continuing to advance and improving their tactical position on several fronts in the area of the special military operation. The Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement: "Units of the Russian "Center" Group of Forces continued their advance deep into the enemy's defenses. Units of the 55th Mechanized Brigade reached the western border of the Donetsk People's Republic and, together with assault units of the 90th Tank Division, continued their offensive operations in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast." It added: "Units of the Russian "West" Group of Forces were able to seize more advanced lines and positions, inflicting human and material losses on the Ukrainian Armed Forces in several areas of the Donetsk People's Republic and in the Kharkiv Oblast. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost more than 220 servicemen, armored combat vehicles, and several field guns. An Octava-S electronic warfare station and three ammunition depots were destroyed." The statement added: "Russian operational-tactical aviation, attack drones, missile forces, and artillery inflicted damage on the infrastructure of military airfields, production plants, drone storage depots, and a Ukrainian Armed Forces fuel station, as well as enemy manpower and equipment concentrations in 147 locations." According to the statement, "Russian air defense systems shot down five JDAM guided aerial bombs, one HIMARS missile, and 120 Ukrainian drones." Whatsapp Telegram Email Print more of (International)
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Yahoo
Air Force tests new ship-killing bomb variant
The Air Force has tested a new variation of its ship-killing Quicksink guided bomb to expand its options for taking out enemy vessels in a future war. In a June 4 statement, the service said it dropped a 500-pound version of Quicksink, made from a GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, from a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber at Eglin Air Force Base's Gulf Test Range off the coast of Florida. Previous Quicksink tests were conducted with 2,000-pound bombs. Quicksink is the Air Force Research Laboratory's effort to strengthen its ability to take out enemy ships. This capability would be particularly important in the event of a conflict with China over Taiwan, which would likely involve grueling fighting in the Pacific Ocean and require U.S. forces to destroy Chinese ships. Previous tests used modified GBU-31 JDAMs to destroy target vessels. Those JDAMs are guided by GPS and use fins to steer towards the target as they fall. AFRL previously said that it redesigned the JDAM's nose plug to better suit it for maritime strikes. A stock JDAM nose might cause the bomb to carom off the surface of the water in unexpected directions instead of striking its target, AFRL said, but the Quicksink redesign is meant to keep it on target. Quicksink bombs do not travel under the water towards their target like traditional torpedoes. The Air Force says modifying existing guided bombs into Quicksink weapons would provide anti-ship capability at a lower cost than weapons like torpedoes. The Air Force said in its statement that the new Quicksink variant would expand the B-2's targeting reach by giving combatant commanders more options for striking enemy targets. AFRL declined to further detail how the 500-pound version provides more targeting options or when the latest test took place, citing security concerns. 'Quicksink offers an affordable, game-changing solution to rapidly and efficiently sink maritime targets,' Col. Dan Lehoski, commander of Eglin's 53rd Wing, said in a statement. 'AFRL's 500-pound Quicksink variant adds options for the warfighter and enhances operational flexibility.' AFRL said video of the latest test is classified and could not be released. But a previous video posted in 2022 shows a Quicksink bomb streaking towards an empty vessel before exploding, cleaving the ship in half and sending it underwater in a matter of seconds.
The Star
10-06-2025
- Business
- The Star
The US has plenty of rare earths but not for long
HYPOCRISY, it's said, is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. The US government's meltdown about rare earths similarly shows how an administration determined to halt the energy transition knows it's already lost the argument. Rare earth magnets are the super-strong pellets that help stick a charging cable to your laptop, smartwatch or headphones. They're also an essential component in a swath of high-tech applications. About 90% are produced in China. That gives powerful leverage. Export curbs imposed by Beijing in April have been a key sticking point in discussions over unwinding tit-for-tat tariffs between the United States and China. A call between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping to get talks back on track was 'having to do mostly with rare earth magnets and some other things,' according to Trump. Automakers have warned of factory shutdowns in a matter of weeks if the restrictions aren't lifted. To hear the administration talk, this is all about national security. Rare earths and other critical minerals are 'key building blocks of our defence industrial base,' the White House said in April. The magnets are used in plenty of advanced weaponry, thanks to their ability to power ultra-efficient, lightweight motors. The F-35 Lightning aircraft contains 408kg of rare earths, while a Virginia class submarine has 10 times that amount. Smaller amounts crop up in Tomahawk cruise missiles, Predator drones, and JDAM smart bombs. The US military doesn't account for a very significant slice of demand, however. The exact amount is a secret, but it's unlikely to be much more (and may well be much less) than 3,000 tonnes a year – fewer than 1% of global consumption. The vast majority goes instead to clean power, where the magnets help run electric vehicles (EVs) which use them in their motors and wind farms which need them for their gearboxes. If the Pentagon wants an onshore supply chain to meet its rare earths needs, it's going to have to piggy-back off the far larger civilian market being fueled by the energy transition. For all it has been derided since the 2024 election, former President Joe Biden's signature climate law recognised this. The Inflation Reduction Act or IRA, contained billions of funding to establish factories producing everything from EVs, to batteries, to critical components and raw materials usable in both commercial and military settings. At this very moment, US$439mil of loans and grants to rare earths projects from the Department of Defence since the start of 2020 are starting to bear fruit. The Mountain Pass rare earths mine southwest of Las Vegas, owned by MP Materials Corp, now refines about half of the 45,000 tonnes it produces each year on-site, rather than in China. An MP-owned facility due to open in Fort Worth within months will use these compounds to produce 1,000 tonnes per year of rare earth magnets – the first such mine-to-magnets supply chain ever built entirely in the United States. In Sumter, North Carolina, e-VAC, owned by Houston-based private equity fund Ara Partners, is building a separate plant to make another 1,600 tonnes a year of non-China magnets, with production due to start in the fall. On their own, these two factories could probably supply the US military's needs. More are under way elsewhere. The trading arm of South Korean steelmaker Posco Holdings Inc struck a deal in March to provide rare earths mined in Utah to a planned US factory making as much as 5,000 tonnes from as soon as 2026. In Estonia and Germany, European companies are looking to build another 9,000 tonnes. Most of this activity depends on manufacturers switching to clean energy, who are in turn counting on low-cost finance provided by the United States and other governments. Main customer General Motors Co is the main customer of both MP Materials and e-VAC. Arafura Rare Earths Ltd, which is developing a mine in the Australian outback, has signed agreements with wind turbine manufacturers Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA and GE Vernova Inc. Support for this was once a bipartisan matter. The initial spark was a law signed by Trump himself in 2018, ordering the military to remove all Chinese-sourced magnets from its supply chains by 2027. The United States should now be on the brink of hitting that target. There's just one snag. While Trump is pleading with Xi to give the United States access to more rare earths, his allies in Congress are doing their best to eviscerate the IRA, cancelling billions of funding for clean energy to support his tax cut plans. The outcome of that may push much of this nascent supply chain into bankruptcy, once again leaving GE and Detroit dependent on the whims of a trade official in Beijing. Myopic mismanagement It's a blatant act of economic and geopolitical self-harm to match Washington's myopic mismanagement of the country's solar sector a decade ago. By pretending a clean energy revolution isn't underway and scouring the globe for the materials it needs, Trump is ensuring that critical minerals supply chains become even more concentrated in the secure investment environment offered by China. The IRA's attempt to bring production of clean tech onshore was an insurance policy against a more chaotic and contested geopolitical environment. In smothering that industry in the cradle, Trump is ensuring that in future trade disputes with Beijing, America will find itself in the role not of equal, but supplicant. — Bloomberg David Fickling is Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and energy. The views expressed here are the writer's own.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Smaller Version Of Quicksink Ship-Killing Smart Bomb Tested By USAF
The U.S. Air Force says it has tested a modified 500-pound-class GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, optimized for use as an anti-ship munition as part of its Quicksink program. The service has already demonstrated a 2,000-pound-class Quicksink bomb, and the new version could offer a valuable lower-cost anti-ship weapon that bombers and tactical jets could also carry more of on a single sortie. At the same time, there are questions about the exact scope of maritime targets that a Quicksink GBU-38 might be effective against. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) announced the test of the GBU-38-based Quicksink munition today, but did not say when exactly it had occurred. A B-2 Spirit stealth bomber dropped the weapon over the Gulf Test Range, which the 96th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida manages. The Air Force first unveiled the Quicksink program in 2021 after a test of the 2,000-pound-class type, which is a modified GBU-31/B JDAM. 'This new 500-pound [Quicksink] variant expands the B-2's targeting capabilities, providing combatant commanders with an expanded complement of innovative warfighting solutions,' a press release from AFRL states. 'A collaborative effort between Air Force Materiel Command's Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Air Force Test Center (AFTC), and Air Combat Command's 53rd Wing enabled execution of the Quicksink live-fire tests.' How much the 500-pound-class Quicksink munition may differ from the 2,000-pound-class type is not immediately clear. Typical JDAMs consist of a low-drag bomb body combined with a new tail section that contains a GPS-assisted inertial navigation system (INS) guidance package, as well as clamp-on aerodynamic strakes. JDAM kits exist for 1,000-pound-class bombs, as well as 500 and 2,000-pound-class types. JDAMs, which can only hit static targets, can be built around various types of unguided bombs, including general-purpose high explosive and bunker-buster types. At least when it comes to the 2,000-pound-class version, the Quicksink bomb combines the JDAM kit with a new imaging infrared seeker fitted to the nose. The Air Force has said in the past that the resulting munition, which is capable of engaging moving targets, navigates to a designated area first via GPS-assisted INS before switching over to the seeker. The weapon then finds and categorizes the target by checking its length against a detailed internal reference database. The seeker then provides additional course correction data to put the bomb on a path where it is intended to detonate right next to the target ship's hull, just below the waterline. Initial cueing to the target, which the launch platform or offboard sources could provide, is required. The computer-generated video below depicts a full engagement cycle. The GBU-31-based Quicksink munition already presented a notably lower-cost option for engaging enemy ships, especially compared to traditional air-launched anti-ship cruise missiles. JDAM kits cost around $85,000, with the unguided bombs that they are paired with adding a minimal increase to the overall price tag. AFRL has said in the past that each Quicksink seeker unit costs around $200,000, and that the goal was to drive that price point down to some $50,000 as production ramped up. For comparison, the unit cost for the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), the U.S. military's premier air-launched anti-ship cruise missile, is around $3 million. Past U.S. military cost data has also pegged the price point of current generation AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles at around $1.4 million. A GBU-38-based Quicksink munition also offers important magazine depth benefits for both bombers and tactical jets. A B-2 like the one used in the latest Quicksink test can carry up to a whopping 80 500-pound-class JDAMs on a single sortie. Loadouts for F-15E Strike Eagles, which have also been used extensively in past Quicksink testing, can often include up to nine GBU-38s. Strike Eagles have also been test loaded with as many as 15 500-pound-class JDAMs, but not necessarily with the intention to drop them all during a single mission, as you can read more about here. As a comparison, F-15Es have also been tested loaded with five AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) cruise missiles, from which the LRASM is derived. Smaller jets like the F-16 Viper, which have more limited payload capacity overall, could also benefit greatly from access to a 500-pound-class anti-ship weapon. For instance, a typical anti-ship loadout for the Viper today includes just two Harpoons. Any increased magazine depth translates to more engagement opportunities per sortie for an individual aircraft. It also means more munitions are available during a mission to employ against a single target, which could help overwhelm enemy point defenses. For years now, there has been great interest within the Air Force and elsewhere across the U.S. military in new, lower-cost precision bombs and missiles, in general, particularly amid planning for a potential future high-end fight across the Pacific against China. Acquiring cheaper precision munitions as complements to more exquisite types is seen as essential for ensuring stockpiles are sufficiently full before such a conflict breaks out, and also to help replenish them in the event of protracted fighting. Lessons learned from recent U.S. operations in and around the Middle East, as well as observations from the ongoing war in Ukraine, have only validated this viewpoint and provided new impetus for programs like Quicksink. The prospect of a large-scale conflict in the Pacific has also driven a broad push across America's armed forces to expand anti-ship capabilities and capacity across the board, again with capabilities like Quicksink. It's also interesting to note here that Quicksink seeker technology is already known to have migrated to the Air Force's separate Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) effort. ERAM has been centered on the development of a low-cost cruise missile, primarily for Ukraine's armed forces. At the same time, though far lower cost than something like the AGM-158C, modified JDAMs do not offer anywhere near the same standoff range capability to help keep the launch platform away from threats. A low-observable (stealth) platform like a B-2 or an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) would have added the ability to bring Quicksink munitions closer to their intended targets with lower risk (but not no risk) in the face of limited defenses. Non-stealthy aircraft could use Quicksink munitions to help finish off damaged small surface combatants with already degraded defenses, or employ them against targets that are less-well-defended, or even essentially defenseless, to begin with. These could include vital sealift assets and civilian cargo vessels pressed into military service. Hitting ships at anchor in port or other littoral areas, especially if they are densely congregations, could be another application for Quicksink. Wing kits that can extend the range of JDAMs from around 15 miles up to 45 miles, depending on the weapon's exact configuration and release envelope, also exist. The JDAM-Extended Range (JDAM-ER) is now a combat-proven capability as a result of their employment by Ukraine's Air Force in recent years. However, this is something the U.S. military has curiously not invested significantly in for its own use. Quickstrike-ER air-launched naval mines, which leverage the JDAM-ER kit, are the only example of this capability known to be in American service today. JDAM prime contractor Boeing has also been developing a cruise missile derivative, or Powered JDAM (PJDAM), which you can learn more about here. The 2,000-pound-class Quicksink bomb has at least demonstrated its ability to sink a civilian-type cargo ship, but the smaller size of the new version might present limitations in terms of effectiveness. At the same time, it is worth noting that 500-pound-class Quickstrike mines are in service now, and are expected to detonate further away from a target's hull. The magazine depth benefits of the GBU-38-based Quicksink munition also means that a single aircraft could more readily release a salvo of the bombs at a ship for increased effect. There are smaller maritime assets, including landing craft and other types of ship-to-shore connectors, that Quicksink bombs based on the GBU-38 could be used against, as well. Overall, Quicksink bombs offer a way to help free up weapons like LRASM for use against targets that demand higher-end capabilities to tackle. The Air Force is clearly interested in the potential cost and other benefits that a 500-pound-class version of the Quicksink anti-ship munition could offer, and more details about its capabilities may now begin to emerge. Contact the author: joe@
Saba Yemen
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
Russian Defense Announces Recapture of Towns in Donetsk & Sumy
Moscow - (Saba): The Russian Defense Ministry announced that its forces had retaken towns in Donetsk and Sumy, in addition to killing approximately 850 Ukrainian soldiers as a result of military operations on various fronts. The Russian Defense Ministry stated in a statement on Saturday that units from the Russian Northern Group were able to retake the village of Luknya in Sumy Oblast. The statement added that units from the Southern and Eastern Groups were able to retake the town of Wstopochki and the village of Otradnoye in Donetsk People's Republic. It indicated that Russian air defenses shot down a Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 fighter jet, three JDAM bombs, and seven HIMARS missiles, in addition to shooting down 174 Ukrainian drones. Whatsapp Telegram Email Print
