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| Interesting...so they're going to stow vehicles above deck in the European fashion...is this because the embarked air wing is so small? Still these ships should be able to easily handle all vehicles below deck...what is the thinking here....Are these ships about to become the new ride of the forward deployed Darwin based USMC? |
Right now is not a good time for troops at ANY level to be speaking out. The social media policy has changed, and higher is coming down hard on things that used to be encouraged.And then this...
Whatever the official policy, the unofficial policy is that troops speaking out is a great way to end a career. Given the draconian cuts in play (and more on that horrendous, idiotic, and flat-out foolish thing in other posts), it is not a good time for the troops and not a good time for honest and full discussions (IMO). I know I am going to be very careful about sharing some things, so as to make sure that those sharing can't be identified.Interesting. Very interesting.
The State Department official, Frederic Hof, told Congress on Wednesday that Assad's repression may allow him to hang on to power but only for a short time. And, he urged the Syrian opposition to prepare for the day when it takes control of the state in order to prevent chaos and sectarian conflict.More from the same article....
"Our view is that this regime is the equivalent of dead man walking," said Hof, the State Department's pointman on Syria, which he said was turning into "Pyongyang in the Levant," a reference to the North Korean capital. He said it was difficult to determine how much time Assad has left in power but stressed "I do not see this regime surviving."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met in Switzerland last week with members of the Syrian National Council, an umbrella group of Assad foes, in a clear signal that the U.S. is willing to work with them.But wait it gets better. Who were these members of the Syrian National Council? Don turned me onto a guy named Ghassan Hitto. This is via Wikipedia...
Ghassan Hitto (Arabic: غسان هيتو; born 1963) was the first Prime Minister of an interim government established by the Syrian opposition National Coalition.[1][2] Born in Damascus into a Kurdish family, he left Syria to the U.S. in 1980, became a naturalized American citizen and worked as an information technology executive and lived in Texas until recently. In late 2012, he relocated to Turkey.[3] He was elected prime minister on 18 March 2013 by a narrow margin over former Syrian Arab Republic agricultural minister Assad Mustafa.[4] Hitto resigned on 8 July 2013.[5]Ok. Bear with me, I'll show you my thinking in a minute. Now fast forward to today. We have the most powerful military in the world unable to crush an opposition force that was originally armed with rifles and Toyota pickup trucks?
Stop them damn pictures. I don’t care what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see the pictures.”What am I thinking? I think we're seeing a mess that was at least partially created by the US. I think to say that we have a failure in strategy is an understatement.
Change “can’t” to “don’t” or “rarely,” and the plaintive words of the corrupt William Magear “Boss” Tweed in reaction to the scathing cartoons of Thomas Nast in 1870s New York City might just as easily be placed on the lips of President Barack Obama, as images of dead Syrian children washing up on Turkish beaches awaken a dormant American public to a humanitarian abomination and policy catastrophe. For an administration relying on public indifference to sustain a policy rich in rhetoric and devoid of action, the pictures are a damnable inconvenience.
WASHINGTON -- The Marine Corps Force Integration Office released the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force research results here Sept. 10, 2015.The SecNav called us out....and now he's got his answer.
The Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force (GCEITF) was created as part of the Marine Corps’ Force Integration Plan to conduct integrated, gender-neutral training in the execution of both individual and collective training tasks within designated ground combat arms occupational specialties.
“The Marine Corps conducted an unprecedented research and assessment plan to fully understand the unique physical requirements and associated performance standards to serve in ground combat arms occupations and units,” said Col. Anne Weinberg, the deputy director of the Marine Corps Force Integration Office.
The GCEITF activated in July 2014 in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. It was comprised of roughly 100 female Marine volunteers, 300 male Marine volunteers and 200 direct assigned Marines, from both active and reserve units throughout the Marine Corps.
The GCEITF command structure was modeled after a Battalion Landing Team, meaning it consisted mostly of infantry Marines, reinforced with combat engineers, artillery, tanks, amphibious assault vehicles and light armored vehicles. A BLT is assigned as the ground combat element for a Marine Expeditionary Unit.
All Marine volunteers, both male and female, were first sent through military occupational specialty schools. Upon completion, the Marines joined the Task Force. For the next four months, the Task Force trained and prepared to perform the tasks required in the research.
“We decided to focus on tasks that are fundamental to all of the combat arms units such as movement under load, accuracy in a live-fire attack, combat vehicle maintenance, and employment of weapon systems and combat vehicles,” said Paul Johnson, the principal investigator of the Marine Corps Force Integration Office.
After those four months, they deployed to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California to perform a three-month assessment in a simulated field environment. From there, all infantry and engineer volunteers went to the Mountain Warfare Training Center, Bridgeport, California to perform further assessments in different austere conditions. Meanwhile, the AAV platoon moved to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California for an amphibious operations assessment.
“We took objective measurements, measurements that aren’t subject to human biases, of these Marines’ performance in these tasks to appropriately inform decision makers based on facts,” said Johnson.
The data was gathered using equipment such as the weapons-player pack, which is designed to record and attribute shots to shooters in a more realistic environment and targets that included a -/+ location of miss and hit and registered where rounds impacted on and near targets to help determine how effective Marines were.
“The overwhelming result was that all-male units outperformed the integrated units,” said Johnson. “That’s not to say that there weren’t some examples where integrated units outperformed male units.”
The Marine Corps is the first armed service of any nation’s military to conduct a research effort such as this. After spending approximately $36 million on this study, the Force Integration Office will utilize this information to inform the Commandant of the Marine Corps on the topic of gender integration. The research results have also helped improve the service standards for how the Marine Corps trains and prepares for combat.
“The standards that we reviewed and validated are all operationally relevant, occupation specific, and gender neutral. They will be applied against every male and female Marine serving in all MOSs throughout our Corps,” said Weinberg. “We are extremely grateful and proud of [the Marines’] service and definitely thankful to their contribution to this historic event.”
The Task Force deactivated in July 2015 in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The full results of the research will be published later this month.
Germany has put 4,000 troops on standby to help with incoming refugees. Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said the soldiers would help in emergency cases and that more could be called upon in future.Hmm.
Von der Leyen said on Friday that the troops would be ready to help out with the unprecedented influx of refugees, if necessary.
"For this weekend alone we have put 4,000 soldiers on standby," von der Leyen told the German weekly news magazine "Der Spiegel." She added that the soldiers should be able "to help out in an emergency."
"We still have room to scale this up," she said, adding that the country could count on the support of the Bundeswehr.
German towns and cities are struggling to deal with a record influx of refugees, most of whom arrived by train via Austria. Thousands of people arriving on a daily basis, with the migrants being housed in old schools, office blocks and army barracks. The army said on Thursday it was now housing 14,500 refugees in 41 locations.
Israeli security sources claim Quds Force sending hundreds of elite troops in unprecedented cooperation with Russia to save embattled Syrian regime.DAMN IT! When word of the Quds Force Commander heading to meet with Russian officials came out months ago I didn't even consider the possibility of them doing a joint action in Syria.
Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, has sent hundreds of ground soldiers into Syria in the past few days apparently in cooperation with Russia's President Vladimir Putin, said a senior Israeli security official Thursday.
Russia has also recently deployed military assets into Syria and according to the Israeli source, has teamed up with Iran in an unprecedented attempt to protect the embattled regime of Bashar Assad from falling to rebel groups including the Islamic State.
The Israeli source said that Iran's increased military involvement in Syria was "due to Assad's crisis and under Russian-Iranian cooperation as a result of a meeting between Soleimani with Russian President Vladimir Putin," said the Israeli source.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus criticized Friday the findings of a new Marine report that all-male combat units perform better on a number of tactical tasks than mixed-gender units.Fuck you Mabus you slimy ass political hack.
Mr. Mabus, the civilian secretary who leads the Navy Department — including the Marine Corps — has called for the Navy to open combat jobs to women, and said the latest report may have been tainted by negative attitudes from the beginning.
“They started out with a fairly largely component of the men thinking this is not a good idea, and women will not be able to do this,” he said in an interview with NPR.
The report, released Thursday, was conducted over a 9-month period at two separate training camps and is part of a Marine Corps experiment to study integrating women into the infantry in order to meet a 2012 order by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to open all military jobs, including combat roles, to women.
Saudi Arabia has offered a solution to assist the wave of Syrian refugees coming to Germany. The Kingdom has offered to build 200 mosques to accommodate the refugees fleeing their country's civil war.So lets see. European birthrates are down. A HUGE influx of Middle East/North African immigrants are moving in.
The offer, that is pending approval from German authorities, comes after wealthy Gulf nations have been criticized for doing little to offer refuge to Syrians and Iraqis displaced by the civil war. Despite being a part of the US-led coalition to fight the Islamic State (Isis) militants in Syria and Iraq, wealthy Gulf nations have not been at the forefront as the migrant crisis looms over Europe.
“Are we keeping up with threats?…Absolutely not,” said U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Brett Heimbigner Thursday. “The demands for intelligence… to accurately deal with some of these crises is clearly insufficient.”Should he be saying this in the clear? I mean geez! Really? Seriously? It almost seems as if bloggers got the info at about the same time as he did! I have another point to make but check this out first...
Heimbigner’s latest frustration: “From an alliance perspective, what Russia is doing and the ability of Russia to surprise us on a very consistent basis.”
“We were able to get some warning, but did not see from a strategic perspective that one, necessarily, coming until just a couple days ago,” he said
“In fact, we are now in a situation where, as an alliance, we can’t even come up with a coordinated threat assessment overall”Uh wow. But lets circle back to the highlighted section in the first paragraph....
“We were able to get some warning, but did not see from a strategic perspective that one..."What has the US been pounding the table on with regard to winning the next war?
