Mid Range Munition

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Obama to lawmakers: 'If not now, when?'

WASHINGTON, July 11 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama will still pursue the boldest U.S. deficit-reduction package possible, despite GOP and Democratic resistance, the White House said.

"If not now, when?" Obama was quoted by The Washington Post as telling Republican leaders Sunday night during a bipartisan White House-congressional budget and debt-limit meeting.

The quotation from an ancient question from Jewish wisdom literature also asks, "If not you, who?"

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced Saturday his party would not support Obama's larger deficit-cutting plan to slice up $4 trillion from the deficit over 10 years because it included $1 trillion in tax increases. He earlier said he supported the idea.

Boehner said the leaders should instead aim for a midrange deal to save $2 trillion to $3 trillion over a decade, similar to cuts identified in talks led by Vice President Joe Biden that broke down last month.

Some lawmakers privately expressed regret at Boehner's decision, The New York Times reported. They saw the proposal as a rare opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to radically restructure the government's finances, rewrite the tax code and fix longstanding problems with Medicare and Medicaid, the Times said.

Boehner told the meeting Sunday he would consider new revenues only if they came from economic growth and tax reform, not tax increases, the Times said.

53 die, hundreds hurt in India derailments

NEW DELHI, July 11 (UPI) -- The death toll rose to 53 in a passenger train derailment in India and authorities investigated reports that another train may have been derailed by a bomb.

Hundreds of people were injured in the two crashes Sunday.

The passenger train, carrying more than 1,200 people from Kolkata in east India to New Delhi, apparently at high speed, jumped tracks near Malwa station in northern Uttar Pradesh state. Up to 15 coaches derailed, requiring a massive effort to extricate passengers and bodies trapped in the mangled wreckage.

The Press Trust of India said it was the worst train wreck in India this year.

"Fifty-three bodies, including that of a Swedish national, have been recovered so far. About 250 are undergoing treatment at a hospital … ," a police official said.

Railway officials were quoted as saying there were no faults with the tracks. Survivors and eyewitnesses said the engineer, who was critically injured, had applied the emergency brakes before the afternoon accident, a Times of India report said.

SoldierGeek.com - Soldier/Geek MilBlog - ATK awarded contract to ...

Alliant Tech Systems (ATK) has been awarded a $77M contract to develop and qualify the next generation of 120mm Abrams tank Armor Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot ammunition, the M829E4 Advanced Kinetic Energy (AKE) (which will become the M829A4 after acceptance), according to an article at Defense Tech.

APFSDS (not M829E4, however) in flightAPFSDS rounds, known as "SABOT" to tankers like myself, are used by tanks to defeat other tanks by punching through the heavy armor through the use of kinetic energy and special materials.

This new capability is good news for the Abrams community, since they'll be able to maintain their combat edge over other tanks (and other-non-tank means of armor defense) for that much longer. Though to be truthful, there isn't that much need today. US tank ammunition already holds such an edge in performance over the tank ammo of other countries -- even with other, larger calibers -- that Abrams holds a significant advantage in lethality, despite sharing its cannon with other designs like the German Leopard 2. There's plenty M829A3 on the shelf, so M829E4 isn't needed at the moment. But since you can't exactly whistle up super ammo at a moment's notice, you want it developed and ready to go before the threats that your current ammo can't defeat emerge.

Plus, the M829E4 helps keep the US ability to produce depleted uranium armor piercing ammunition healthy -- a capability which would have been at risk had the prior generation round been allowed to cease production without a replacement in the pipeline. Places that produce DU rounds must be cleaned up and environmentally remediated soon after ceasing production, like the GD-OTS ammo plant in Marion, Illinois which used to produce the 25mm M919 DU ammo for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

The only real downside to this development, in this tanker's opinion, is that the Army can't afford to develop more than one new round at a time, and of the three type of new rounds that could be in development, the AKE is actually the least valuable right now.

The other two options have been either canceled or delayed. The biggest game-changer -- the Mid-Range Munition (MRM) -- was canceled with the Future Combat Systems Program. MRM would have allowed the Abrams to fire at targets at entended range, behind cover or beyond-line-of-sight beyond hills, and guide in to detsroy the target. The MRM was being developed on Abrams, but for the FCS Mounted Combat System, and its requirement was rather unwisely linked only to FCS. So when FCS died, so did MRM.

Congressional Record, V. 148, Pt. 14, October 2, 2002 to October 9, 2002

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