🔷 Strafe

Strafe

Thank the French for funny-sounding words like aileron (small wing), fuselage (body), nacelle (engine pod), empennage (tail assembly), hangar (storage building), and bombardier (cannon operator).

But not every aviation term comes from France.

One of the most brutal maneuvers—strafe—has a very different origin.

Strafen

During World War I, German propaganda was filled with the slogan Gott strafe England: “May God punish England.”

It appeared everywhere, from graffiti to pamphlets—even on stamps.

Then the British military and their brand of humor got hold of it.

By 1915, English speakers were jokingly shouting riffs like gott strafe chocolate!

As aviation took center stage in warfare, British pilots adopted strafe to describe a punishing low-level machine gun attack against enemy forces. These pilots were sometimes referred to as strafers, or pilots who went strafen.

The dark humor of the situation was not lost on anyone: the English named the attack on German forces after a German word derived from their anti-English propaganda.

In that bloody context, the word stuck.

The English originally pronounced strafe the German way, which rhymed with laugh (“straugh”), but by the end of the war it settled into English with today’s long “a” pronunciation.

Strafe.

German for to punish.

A name for violence that feels personal—close-range punishment delivered from the sky.

And it started as a light-hearted mockery.

In That Number

4

In the last 3 years, the USS Harry S. Truman lost 4 F/A-18 Super Hornets.

This includes 3 on its current deployment, and 2 in the last 2 weeks.

We’re teeing up something next week on this…

TRIVIA

On this day in 1942, the Air Medal was established to recognize meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight. It was the first US military medal with metrics for award criteria (e.g., 25 combat sorties). Why?

A) to raise morale during the brutal air war

B) to ensure officers received more awards than enlisted airmen

C) to limit the number of medals issued due to shortages

On the Radar

CCA ‘Half RAAM.’ The Air Force dropped a missile RFI this week, looking for 2 things: 1) an affordable missile the size of the venerable AIM-120, and 2) a half-sized missile to supplement the AIM-120. The latter idea is to increase magazine depth airborne without adding more aircraft to the mix. Such ‘Half RAAM’ concepts have been around a while, and virtually all the primes have teased them over the years: recall Lockheed’s Cuda, Raytheon’s Peregrine, and Boeing’s separable 2-stage LRAAM. The Air Force has previously looked into this and even awarded contracts to support these concepts ($9.8M to Boeing and $21M to Raytheon, both in 2022).

• The Merge’s Take: A few things make this RFI worth noting: First is the explicit call for leveraging existing high-TRL and a path to producing 1,000 missiles per year within 2 years of contract award at a price point under $250k per missile. The second is the intended platform: the RFI mentioned that these are intended for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). This doesn’t look like an AFRL science project, so keep an eye on dark horse contenders like Castelion, Ravyn, and Anduril.

Space Force Top 3. The service outlined its top 3 funding priorities to Congress: 1) Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), the plan to rapidly deploy a large constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit; 2) counter-space capabilities (offensive and defensive); and 3) improved testing and training infrastructure.

• The Merge’s Take: The honeymoon phase of the Space Force as a service is over, and it’s now facing all the same challenges the Air Force has lived the past 30+ years: more mission than money problems, compounded by growing mission demands with flat and even reduced budgets. Tough choices lie ahead—whether it’s from Congress or the Pentagon.

OA-1K Pacific relevance. The first Armed Overwatch OA-1K was just delivered to Air Force Special Operations (AFSOC), and there is already posturing to protect the program by advocating its relevancy in a Pacific fight. This week, an unnamed high-ranking Air Force official floated new talking points: sensors and stand-off weapons would permit the crop-duster-derived airframe to operate from austere fields and remain at a safe distance while contributing to the fight.

• The Merge’s Take: As the Pentagon reviews its programs for ruthless prioritization, this program could get the axe. A big signal is the ‘mission creep by necessity’ posturing for Pacific-relevant jobs. Remember the requirement for 75 armed overwatch aircraft was “to fight extremist groups or other low-tech adversaries,” and the service has not been able to explain that baseline starting point sufficiently. The $3B 75-aircraft program was already facing scrutiny by Congress, which influenced a curtailed buy from 75 to 62.

• The Merge’s Spicy Take: Stand-off weapons, open mission systems, and austere operations might sound familiar…because that is literally the same advocate talk track for keeping the A-10 Warthog from being retired. Air Force leaders spent 15 years insisting the A-10 isn’t relevant in the Pacific, and now are arguing the OA-1K is? Who has the bar napkin math of killing the OA-1K and using that $3B to maintain a fleet of 75 souped-up A-10s? Transfer those upgraded A-10s to AFSOC, and it solves the ‘big Air Force’ A-10 divestment narrative. Win-win, and we can all say BRRRT past 2030.

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They Said It

“Shockingly enough, if we look at it now, that may not be the answer.”

— Gen. Thomas Bussiere, Air Force Global Strike commander, responding to the service’s assumption 10 years ago that it could reuse the silos for the new Sentinel ICBM.

The Air Force revealed it must dig 400 new silos for its Sentinel ICBM program instead of reusing Minuteman III silos as initially planned.

Knowledge Bombs

• L3Harris’ Red Wolf was revealed to be the Marine Corps’ new AH-1Z stand-off weapon

• The Navy fired a solid fuel rocket ramjet from a target drone

• DIU launched ‘Replicator 2,’ which focuses on low-collateral defeat counter-drone solutions

• Italian Air Force Typhoons now have operational Meteor missiles

• Japan received its first 3 TR-3 configured F-35s

• Northrop Grumman’s CRJ700 flying testbed was spotted with a missile nose cone (potentially AIM-260 seeker testing)

• AeroVironment (rebranding to AV) revealed a new long-range autonomous one-way attack drone called Red Dragon

• The Army killed its ITEP helo engine program and its FTUAS Group 3 ISR drone program

• Kratos revealed its developing two new drones for the European market

• Raytheon began test flights of its compact PhantomStrike AESA radar

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ANSWER
A) The Air Medal was created to boost morale during the brutal air war over Europe. Leadership wanted to give more awards, but did not want to cheapen the Distinguished Flying Cross. So, they created another medal and assigned flight metrics associated with receiving it so aircrew could track their progress, hoping the process would raise morale. OBTW, the Bronze Star was created in direct response to the Air Medal and for similar reasons—to boost morale for soldiers.