The U.S. Antional Security Strategy, Part 1

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Feb 26

“The business of America is business” is a saying attributed to President Calvin Coolidge. American businessman and President of the United States Donald J. Trump understands a deeper truth than Coolidge meant: that American military, diplomatic, and cultural power in the world depends upon its economic power. Hence, the success of the American economy and American business is the central concern of Trump’s National Security Strategy. The focus on “America First” or a foreign policy that puts America’s national interest first, places Trump as a disciple of Hans J. Morgenthau, and of Henry Kissinger’s “A New Foreign Policy for the United States”. Published in 1965; Kissinger proposed self-interest as the first principle of American Foreign Policy, and cautioned against deeper American involvement in Vietnam.

The Strategy makes clear that the Trump Administration sees China as America’s chief rival and adversary in the world. ‘Enemy’ is too strong a term to describe Trump’s perception of China, for the Strategy sees continued trade between the two countries, and Trump himself is too clever a negotiator to make clear so stark a relationship between America and Communist China, and between himself and China’s president, Xi Jinping.

The goal of the Strategy is straightforward, “To ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come”. The purpose of the document is to provide coherence and focus to how the United States will interact with the world, by explaining “the essential connection between ends and means: it begins from an accurate assessment of what is desired and what tools are available, or can realistically be created, to achieve the desired outcomes.” The strategy is almost military in its antiseptic analysis.

The Strategy criticizes American strategic goals since the end of the Reagan Administration and the rise of so-called neo-cons in foreign policy, “American strategies since the end of the Cold War have fallen short—they have been laundry lists of wishes or desired end states; have not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes; and have often misjudged what we should want.”

The Strategy criticizes the thinking of the “elites” as follows: “Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare regulatory- administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex. They placed hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called “free trade” that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend.” The echoes of Vietnam, of the inflationary pressures of the late 1960s through the 1970s, and everything from Bush 41 onwards reverberate through these passages. That “hollowing out” began with the 1992 NAFTA agreement, and accelerated rapidly in 2002 after China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (Bush 43).

Trump is plainly determined that America will learn from its past mistakes that he observed in his earlier life. “They allowed allies and partners to offload the cost of their defense onto the American people, and sometimes to suck us into conflicts and to suck us into controversies central to their interests but peripheral or irrelevant to our own.” (Saudi Arabia & Kuwait v. Iraq, 1990. NATO.).

The cardinal error made by the “elites” of the past, was, “they undermined … the character of our nation upon which its power, wealth, and decency were built.”

Here Trump observes that beneath America’s economic power is the character of the American people that make that economy actual. The worm of hatred, self-loathing, and contempt for American success began with the Vietnam War, and persists to this day in academia. Trump was a young man in the 1950s and 1960s, and his view of America was shaped in this period of undoubted American greatness, dominance, prosperity, success, and essential goodness.

Next: Ends

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Why the EX?

Vincent J. Curtis

26 Dec 25

This space has consistently argued against the purchase of the Lockheed-Martin F-35 for the RCAF, and instead urged that the Boeing F-15EX be the fighter jet that Canada buy.  The USAF sees some wisdom in this, as it is acquiring about 100 of these thoroughly modernized fighters from Boeing.  The combination of factors for this purchase by the USAF include: delays in delivery of the F-35, the wearing out of the F-15C/D inventory, and the favorable economics of operating a mixed fleet of both F-35 and F-15EX.

The proponents of acquiring the F-15EX emphasize that it is a powerful complement to the F-35, with special emphasis on the “deep magazine” of the F-15EX as compared to the F-35.  In stealth mode, the F-35 can only carry four missiles; whereas the loadout on the F-15EX is 12 missiles.  Hence, if the enemy air defenses are suppressed, an F-15EX sortie can deliver as much firepower as three sorties of F-35s.

Another feature offered as reason for an F-15EX acquisition is lower operating cost.  The fly-away cost of an F-35 is said to be US$82 million; that of an F-15EX is US$90 million, but the mission availability rate of the F-35 is only 67 percent, while that of the F-15EX is 83 percent. In addition, the maintenance costs of the F-35 are very high, and special hangers are required to maintain the radar absorbing coating which preserves its stealthiness. The F-15EX requires no special surface treatments or hanger conditions.

Finally, there is a radical difference in performance. The top speed of an F-35 is Mach 1.6, and it has a service ceiling of 50,000 ft; the top speed of the F-15EX fully loaded is Mach 2.5, with a service ceiling of 60,000 ft., while stripped down (to deal with those pesky Chinese balloons) the F-15EX can reach 65,000 ft, and is rumoured to have a top speed of Mach 2.9.  These, combined with a 9 g turning capability, make the F-15EX very hard to shoot down with a missile; and the new electronic suite in the F-15EX will give the pilot plenty of warning about incoming trouble. The F-15EX outranges the F-35 by several hundred miles, and has a 20,000 hr service life.

So, why should Canada purchase the F-15EX? The primary mission of the RCAF, now and always, is the air defence of North America.  A vital secondary role is the demonstration of Canadian sovereignty over the High Arctic by flights of Canadian combat aircraft in Canadian air space in the far north. For the latter purpose, stealth is not a requirement, and in some ways, i.e. the demonstration of sovereignty, stealth is a detriment: you want to be seen demonstrating sovereignty.  A fighter jet with long-range, high speed, and a deep magazine is the aircraft to deal with a flight of incoming Russian bombers. Being visible might well act as a deterrence, for there’s nothing on an adventurous Russian bomber that hurt an F-15EX.

Now, let’s talk acquisition.  There are serious production delays that retard the acquisition of a fleet of 88 F-35s.  The Boeing production line for F-15EXs is fully up and running and is filling orders at a rate of two aircraft per month. There’s plenty of room for increase to fill an urgent need from Canada. Boeing has previously indicated that money spent by Canada to acquire Super Hornets would be offset by Boeing running more business through its manufacturing facility in Winnipeg, so the industrial offsets are potentially there.

Thus, this proposal boils down to the acquisition of a smaller number of F-35s, and a larger number of F-15EXs, giving the RCAF the potential for SEAD that opens the way for the big puncher.

What about the Gripen E?  Nothing wrong with it.  I’ve likened it to Volvo’s take on the F-16, and we’ll see what it can do against Russia this spring in Ukraine. But how does the Gripen E fit in with the operational concepts elucidated above?

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REPOST: Is COVID a Bioweapon? A conspiracy theory.

Vincent J. Curtis

 9 June 21

After Tucker Carlson’s remarkable opening monologue last night on Fox News, I no longer feel restrained about releasing this explosive piece written nearly two years ago.  I submitted to a couple of places for publication but it was considered too hot at the time. Vincent J. Curtis 28 Feb 23.

What follows is sheer speculation.  But it is speculation based on facts.

The proposition to be discussed here is that the COVID virus was an early development bioweapon in a program to address India’s growing demographic advantage over China.

It is often complained about by Canadian social justice warriors that the poor, women, and the racialized are suffering the worst from COVID.  The implication is that racism, sexism, and good old white supremacism are at work in healthcare in Canada, particularly in Ontario.

It is true that a surprising proportion of the patients hospitalized in Ontario with COVID are people of East Indian or South Asian ancestry.  India, as of this writing, is having a very tough time dealing with COVID.  So let’s take it as read that people of South Asian ancestry have a peculiar susceptibility to COVID.

The Chinese Communist Party is scared to death of India’s demographics.  China’s old “One Child” policy is coming home to roost.  Though China has now adopted a three child policy, the demographic damage of decades of the one child policy will be felt over the next thirty to fifty years.  China’s population is beginning to age, and China may see an actual decline in population by 2070.

On the other hand, India’s population is young and growing.  India is expected to surpass China in population in the coming decades.  China has been the most populous region on earth for millennia, and that point of pride will be eclipsed soon by India as a consequence of the policy of the Chinese Communist Party.

Chinese policy going back to the days of Sun Tzu is to take the long view, to win without a battle, and that the Chinese race will eventually absorb any conqueror on account of its vast numbers.  That last point is now at risk.

China has a border conflict with India going back sixty years.  Minor skirmishes instigated by China erupted recently along the so-called Line of Actual Control in the Himalayas.  Indian soldiers worsted the Chinese in these episodes, and Indian media attributes their success to the Chinese soldiers, being the one child of their family, are “precious little princesses” who aren’t willing to risk their lives or even their comfort combatting the rugged Indians.

How would a communist deal with a rising demographic advantage of a rival?  A regime that killed 70 million of its own people would have no qualms about killing several hundred million of the enemy’s population.  The question would be how to do it with minimal accountability.

Although big tech and major media in the U.S. have, for their own reasons, tried to discredit the story that the COVID virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it is now accepted that it did.  It is also becoming known that, incredibly, U.S. tax dollars might have funded “gain of function” research in the Wuhan lab.  “Gain of function” in this case means taking a virus found on a horseshoe bat, and modifying its genetics to make it infectious to humans.

But what if the level of know-how was such that the virus could be made especially deadly to humans of a particular genetic make-up?  It has been popular for several years to have one’s DNA tested in a lab, and you get a report on your racial ancestry.  The lab work is done in China or is owned by the Chinese; and while individual test results may be private, a picture of genetic characteristics of a region can slowly be built up after enough individual cases are evaluated.

As a bioweapon, COVID is badly designed.  It attacks the very old and the sick.  If you wanted to kill healthy, military age males, the Spanish flu virus is the bug for you.  For this reason, COVID virus may be simply an early development in the project, a project to develop race-selective fatal diseases.  It’s release may have been accidental, or not.

All this is wild speculation; the stuff of the fever-swamps of conspiracy theorists.  However, somewhere there is an intelligence analyst thinking along these lines.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a retired Canadian research scientist, and occasional free-lance writer.

Planning for mobilization in 2002

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Nov 2025.

 In May, 2002, I submitted an article to the Army Doctrine and Training Bulletin entitled “From Here to There: Phase IV mobilization and the New Army Strategy.”  I don’t know if it was ever published, but this 6050 word opus covered the problems of mobilization through its four phases in light of the-then recently released “New Army Strategy” and before our major Afghanistan deployment. (of course, the NAS and full mobilization were completely incompatible.) It looks like the Army is once again reviewing plans to raise armed forces through at least a phase III mobilization.  To save time, and to provide old insights, below are the first few paragraphs of that 2002 paper.

The army exists to destroy Canada’s enemies.  In natural order of priority, the army is expected to defend from external threat the national territory of Canada, then North America, then the territory of its treaty allies such as NATO.  The army may be called upon by the Canadian government to make war upon a foreign country not contemplated under the previous three heads, as we are now doing in Afghanistan.  The army may also be called upon to contribute forces in support of United Nations operations, or undertake a range of customary domestic operations.  These latter uses of the army are decidedly of a second tier priority to that of the defense of Canada and of her interests against a direct external threat.  An army, in the first instance, is an instrument for war fighting, and all the other subsidiary capabilities of an army stem from that.

 Phase IV mobilization refers to the level of mobilization at which the entire country is roused for war.  A War Emergency is declared, the militia is called out, freedoms are restricted, and Canadian industry is turned over to war production.  It represents the maximum level of effort the country can exert in self-defense.  Twice in our history, in World Wars I and II, Canada stood on this footing.

The role of the Regular army in peacetime is not to fight a war.  The Regular army provides for the immediate defense requirements of Canada and the day-to-day deterrence against attack of Canada’s interests.  It makes the plans, conducts the training, and develops the doctrine of the army for its primary and secondary missions.  It serves as the basis for an operational commitment, but the capability of the Regular army and the scope of its overseas missions are strictly limited by the defense budget. The Regular army, as presently constituted, would never be called upon to fight in a major war, for it is too small to fight and its soldiers too well trained to waste in battle.  At best it could engage in strictly limited conflicts with a low risk of casualties.

The New Army Strategy is a plan of change that moves the Regular Force in the direction opposite to full mobilization.  Armour and artillery are going to be reduced in readiness.  Certain combat capabilities such as pioneers and mortar platoon are going to be stripped out of a doctrinal battalion.  The capabilities of the brigade group are going to be modularized into company-sized bodies so that a deployed unit or sub-unit can be more easily task tailored. The organizational structure of a task tailored unit may not resemble that of a conventional battalion at all; and losing pioneer and mortar platoons, the battalion is less of a combined arms team than it was.

The aim of the New Army Strategy is to create, in the Regular Force, a model army that is “more agile and lethal, tactically decisive and medium weight”.  None of these properties are absolute, they are relative, and depend upon the enemy and terrain.  For that reason, the Regular Force is expected to become “capable of continuous adaptation and task tailoring across the spectrum of conflict.”  This flexibility will be achieved by the Regular Force becoming “knowledge-based and command-centric.” 

The reason for these changes boils down to money: too much deployment, too little budget, and an urgent need to modernize. Part of the purpose of the New Army Strategy is to maximize deployable manpower for operations other than war.  Another part is to prepare the Regular Force, within our limited budget, to accept niche roles within a larger allied structure for combat like operations, and to maximize our combat power through the use of the new technologies.

The New Army Strategy is founded on the belief that until the government radically changes its policy on defense funding, the days of full, mechanized brigade operations by Canada are over.  Indeed, supporters of the New Army Strategy have argued that those days are over for everyone.  The United States Army and Air Force are now so technologically superior that they have made the army of every potential enemy of ours obsolete.  Nobody can stand in the field against an American armoured division supported by American air power.  Our potential enemies, it is argued, will not in the foreseeable future attempt to employ mechanized forces to impose their will against Canadian interests but will instead employ the techniques of asymmetric warfare, cyberwarfare, and terrorism to forward their aims.  Our enemies of the future may not even be governments.  Mechanized brigade groups are not able to shield us from these kinds of threats and these kinds of enemies.  In any event, Canada is quite unlikely to go it alone against an external threat; and with our spare defense budget and at a Phase II mobilization level, the New Army Strategy will enable the Regular Force at least to participate somewhere in a U.S. or U.N. led force.

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On the science of attribution and Thomism

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Apr 2026

Ross McKittrick is a professor of Economics at the University of Guelph, and he has become famous for his interventions in climate science. This is possible because the mathematical methods often used in climate science, regression analysis, are the bread-and-butter of economic analysis; and someone well-versed in statistical analysis is well-positioned to spot errors in the application of economic analytical methods to climate data analysis. McKittrick is an expert in a field of poorly trained amateurs applying mathematical methods they clearly don’t understand.

Dr. McKittrick presented a paper at the October, 2021 ICCC conference that had been published in the August edition of Climate Dynamics, in which he, and his co-author Richard Tol, proved invalid a method of analysis used in climate science since 1999, and begun in a paper referred to as ‘AT99.’

The science of attribution begins with the propositions that; (a) we can observe patterns and changes in climate data; (b) it can be hard to tell if there’s been a statistically significant change in the climate; and (c) it’s hard to prove that those changes were caused by GHG emissions.  The attribution methodology works by comparing observed patterns to patterns from climate models. This requires that we assume that climate models provide a true and complete representation of the climate, and that involves a statistical methodology known as regression analysis.

The beginnings of a logical fallacy are already evident. A model is a representation of reality, and if the model fails to accurately forecast the behavior of reality, it is assumed here that there’s something wrong with reality. This is a form of begging the question. A second problem arises from the data used to construct the model: is it truly representative, or is there a sampling problem unrecognized by the modellers? Sampling could be a problem if not a long enough period of time was sampled for data; in addition, there’s an implicit assumption of stasis in the climate and model.  ‘Alteration/ is not a change deemed within the principle of the climate.  Attribution tries to get around these logic problems by adjusting the parameters of the model to fit observed reality, and if more GHG is required by the model to fit the new data, that is grounds for attributing GHG as the cause of the deviation of reality from the expectations of the model. There is a fallacy in this also, but it goes unobserved by the Attributors.

Attribution was begun in 1999 with a paper entitled, “Checking for model consistency in in optimal fingerprinting” by Myles Allen and Simon Tett, published in the journal Climate Dynamics (AT99). The authors claimed to have provided an unbiased and ‘optimal’ (precise) measurement of the size of effects of GHGs on climate patterns (the ‘Fingerprint’), which allowed researchers to check that the statistical models are properly specified (the RC or residual consistency test). Theirs was a regression method. The IPCC grew to love the method, and claims it gives results that show unequivocally that “human activities” or “anthropogenic emissions” were responsible for the “observed warming over the last fifty years.”

Another logical error lies hidden in these words. By “human activities” and “anthropogenic emissions” they mean carbon dioxide, and hence “warming”, “climate change”, and alleged increases in incidents of bad weather were caused by carbon dioxide. There is no effort to correlate in detail rising concentration with rising temperature, extreme weather events, or other effects, as one would expect in a linear regression analysis; blaming carbon dioxide is the broad assumption.

McKittrick and Tol examined the certainty in the IPCC-approved fingerprinting method. AT99 specifically invoked the Gauss-Markov theorem to prove that their method of regression estimation was unbiased and efficient, or as precise as possible. (BLUE: best linear unbiased estimator)

McKittrick observed that AT99 made a number of errors with respect to the Gauss-Markov theorem: the authors didn’t state it correctly, and failed to noticer that it did not apply to their estimator! Hence, there is no basis for confidence in the estimator that others thought there was. AT99 results are biased, completely misleading, and largely meaningless. McKittrick found that it was unclear what the RC test actually tested, the test wasn’t derived in the usual way, no mathematical derivation of the test was presented, the RC test doesn’t relate to the Gauss-Markov theorem, and it doesn’t actually test what the authors said it tested.  The RC test is a completely meaningless statistic, said McKittrick.

The errors in the use of the Gauss-Markov theorem jump off the page to those experienced in using it and statistical analysis in general; and so the question arises, why didn’t anyone in the field notice this before McKittrick? He speculates that people with a lot of experience in statistical analysis haven’t been looking at this literature, and hence the theoretical inaccuracies have gone hitherto undetected.

McKittrick sums up the situation with a pair of quotes from his co-author, Richard Tol, who tweeted on Aug 21, 2021, “Allen & Tett introduced an FGLS estimator that is completely wrong and a test to show that they’re right, when they’re not.” And another on Aug 20, 2021, “Another literature that is entirely wrong…”  There is, in short, no reason to believe that AT99 fingerprinting method produces valid results; and a lot of the literature attributing changes in atmospheric moisture, snow cover, forest fires, etc. are based on a method that gives wrong and meaningless results.

Thus, the basis for claims of certainty of around climate attribution is mathematically flawed and invalid.

Those of a philosophical bend will find interesting a back-door introduction of Thomism into the “science of attribution”. To say that one’s model is a true and accurate representation of a climate is to say that the model is a true understanding the form, or essence, of the climate. Following upon that are efficient and final causality, or end-directedness, of the climate; the form directing the climate towards a normative range of ends, which may be weather events. If ends other than these normative weather events occur, these anomalies or perturbations may be caused by “human activities” and “anthropogenic emissions”, which are nothing but efficient causes of change to the end-directedness, to the essence, of the climate being perturbed. The climate is expected to behave in accordance with the essence or form understood in the model. “Alteration” is not a change deemed within the principle of the climate, and hence, when reality doesn’t follow the model, the cause of that anomalous behavior, or alteration, is deemed due to external forcing, possibly by man’s emissions of carbon dioxide into the air, being the efficient causes of that alteration.  The element of morality follows upon putting the efficient causality of ‘climate change’ on the activities of man, even as the proximate agent of change is carbon dioxide. Following upon that, the attributors attribute efficient causality to carbon dioxide - for bad weather events!

Since Newton, physical sciences have attempted to eliminate efficient and final causality, forms and essences, from the picture, and places all the causal eggs in the matter and in mechanisms. The science of attribution offers no mechanisms by which small increments in carbon dioxide cause changes in large atmospheric processes, or “weather events” (a possible violation of the principle of proportionate causality).  Climate science, in attribution, adopts a Thomist view of the physical world, including that of immorality in its efficient causes.

From its early days, the climate “crisis” has been a means of casting moral opprobrium upon the United States and Europe for their cultural and economic successes, and was used as a means of undermining a foundation of those economic successes, namely cheap and abundant energy. Newtonian science, with its materialism and mechanisms, does not readily lend itself to casting moral aspersions; but a Thomist view of the world, with its recognition of formal, efficient, and final causes, as well as material causes, enables the casting of moral blame upon its efficient causes, namely “anthropogenic emissions” and “human activities”, or, in short, America and Europe. Hence, the peculiar adoption of a Thomist analysis in what should be a Newtonian science

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Vampires

Vampire Drones

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Nov 25

When you hear the word ‘vampire’, you think of bats, Count Dracula; and I’ve even heard of a ‘vampire facial’! But that’s not what we’re talking about here. This about another kind of vampire: the Vampire drone.

The Vampire drone is a product of L3 Harris (NYSE: LHX); production began in 2022 for Ukraine, and procurement was funded by the first aid package of $3 Billion from the United States. The Vampire system is essentially a re-purposed laser-guided rocket. These rockets cost only about $35,000 per (cheap!), making them economical to use against their intended target, Shahed drones, which cost about $50,000 each; Vampires are much less expensive than the Coyote Block 2s, which. run a little over $125,000 per. The economics of the Vampire drone tilts in favor of the defender over the attacker. (For comparison, a Stinger missile runs $400k, and an SM2 about $2.2M).

A cool name like VAMPIRE has to stand for something: it’s an acronym for:  

Vehicle Agnostic, Modular Palletized, ISR Rocket Equipment. (The marketing guys at L3 Harris got a little creative, and there’s more to come.)  As advertised, it is a low-cost, mobile, counter-UAV “solution.” (Does any military supplier offer something other than a “solution”?). In January, 2022, L3 Harris got $40 million to build 14 of them, and by August, they were ready for shipment to Ukraine.

To keep costs low, the system uses off-the-shelf components already in production for other projects. The rockets themselves are taken from Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System (APKWS), which, in turn, uses “dumb” Hydra 70 rockets and makes them “smart”.  These laser-guided rockets are currently used by the U.S. Army, USN, USMC, and USAF for air-to-ground strikes, and volume production keeps unit cost down.

Vampire rockets are fired from a land LRG4 launcher made by Arnold Defense.  Weighing only 60 lbs, the launcher holds 4 rockets, and will fit on a Toyota Hilux, or, if you’re into old classics, an M-113.

The Westcam (once a Canadian company, bought by L3) MX10D RSTA pods are carried on the MQ9 Reaper, OA1K Skyraider 2, and is the detector and designator for the Vampire system. The Westcam optical system relies on line of sight: from a height of 6’, it can see 3 miles to the horizon; at a height of 35’, it can see 7 miles, close to the range of the rocket of 9 miles.

Fire is controlled by a tablet, mountable in the cab of the truck, using a program called “Widow software”, which integrates with the forward area air-defense C&C network (FAD C2).

In Ukraine, the Vampire is used to defend sensitive rear-area and logistics points; it is not autonomous, not all-weather, and not designed to handle mass drone attacks alone. Vampires would comprise a close-in kinetic kill layer in a layered anti-drone defense, which would also include jammers, spoofers, and guns. The system works well when target is visible, line of sight can be maintained, and crews are trained; it struggles when targets are flying erratically, diving fast behind cover, and visibility is poor. Smoke, dust, complex terrain, fog, electronic dazzlers and reflective surfaces all contribute to poor visibility because they interfere with laser designation, but Vampires are less susceptible to jamming, as radar or GPS guided systems are. The Vampires can fill in where radar and electronic warfare might struggle.

In October, 2025, L3 Harris announced expansion of the Vampire system, with more marketing creativity.  The ‘Stalker’ XR is the Vampire system intended for land deployment on a truck and that uses the Arnold Hydra system MLHS, with a 23 rocket capacity.  The Vampire ‘Killcode:’ is a pair of antennas that shoot radio “bullets.”  The Vampire ‘BAT’: (Base Anti-Drone Turret) is an automatic weapon that uses non-kinetic effects to minimize collateral damage.  Finally, the Vampire ‘CASKET’ (Containerized Anti-drone System with Kinetic Effects Turret is a self-contained Vampire in a box that is ready for rapid deployment in remote locations.

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Drone On

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Oct 2025

When you say the word “drone”, a Highlander will think of the wooden tubes that protrude from bagpipes.  A beekeeper will think of a male bee whose sole function in life is to service the queen.  A dedicated YouTube watcher might think of someone droning on about the latest inanities in Ottawa or Washington.

But that’s not what we’re talking about.  Drones are in the news because of their use in the Russo-Ukraine war, and because of the announcement of a $5 billion purchase of Coyote drones for the U.S. Army.  The Coyote is a small, expendable, unmanned “aircraft system” simple enough that it could be reverse-engineered by an Iranian manufacturer; but in fact will be purchased from that gargantuan U.S. military contractor, Raytheon.

The Coyote comes in two arrangements and three Blocks.  The first arrangement is pusher-propellor driven, and comprise Block 1; the second arrangement is jet-turbine and rocket powered and comprises Block 2 and 3.  The unit cost of a Block 1 is $15,000, while those of Blocks 2 and 3 run around $100,000 per.

The Block 1 is about 3’ long and weighs 13 lbs., its electric motor is battery powered. Its wingspan is 59’’, and the wings pop out immediately after launch, which can be pneumatically from a tube, or air dropped from altitude as high as 30,000’.  It is ISR capable, and carries a 4 lb explosive warhead with a proximity fuse.  A Block 1 can be used to intercept small incoming drones, and in that role is guided partly by a Ku band proprietary radar system as well as on-board sensors.  The flying, or loiter, time of a Block 1 can up to two hours, with a cruising speed of 60 mph and a dash speed of up to 80 mph.

The jet-powered Block 2s, are launched from a missile launch tube at an exit velocity of near Mach 0.9, though its cruising speed is closer to 370 mph.  This version is a little over 4’ long, and weighs about 15 lbs. It has an effective intercept range of about 10 miles. It too is guided by a combination of Ku band radar and on-board sensors.  At an estimated price tag of $125.000 per, the Coyote Block 2s offer a far cheaper alternative to drone interception than an AIM-9 air-to-air missile, or an SM-2, which run a couple million per. The Block 2s are capable of re-engagement if it misses on the first pass. It kills either kinetically, by smashing into the incoming drone, or by exploding a warhead that produces a shroud of shrapnel that can destroy a swarm of incoming drones. It can engage targets as far as 9 miles away.

The drone warfare in Ukraine prompted the U.S. Army to look for a counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS), which led to the Block 3s in a configuration called LE SR, for Low-cost Expandable Small Range. This configuration can be launched from a TOW missile launcher, and is capable of air-intercept, ISR, EW, signal relay and precision ground-strike.  In an early test, using a non-kinetic, directed energy warhead. i.e. microwaves, (making it recoverable) a Block 3 defeated a swarm of 10 drones.  The Block 3s can operate as autonomous swarms.

The U.S. Army purchase is for their M-LIDs and FS-LIDS systems, (for Mobile- and Fixed Site Low, Slow, Unmanned Aircraft Integrated Defeat System). The Block 3 is to provide a “hard-kill’ layer after incoming drones get past jammers and spoofers which also comprise the LID.  The big purchase was for 6,000 Block 2c’s and 700 Block 3s, which will carry an electronic warfare or directed energy weapon, enabling them to be reused.  The Blocks 2 and 3 are intended to defend against the Iranian Shahed drones, which are used by Russian against Ukraine.

Raytheon is exporting its radars and Coyote systems, and the CAF can get with the program with little up-front capital cost: for the radars, launchers, and generators, and US$125,000 per recoverable missile.

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