Open Comment Post. May 6, 2018

Blast from the past. Don't let the horror of war be washed away....

Ashkenazi woman chased by boys with clubs occupied Poland July 1941

Who are the "Ashkenazi"?  They're Jews by another name from what I gather. Why are we talking about this?  Because a Tumblr page that covered military matters and historical events was shut down supposedly because he posted pics like you see above and the owners of the site decided it "incited violence".

Utter bullshit on a cracker but there you have it.

Don't let them wash away the horror of war.  History is to be embraced.  It might not be lovely.  It might be disturbing in ways we don't want to think about but it must be faced.

What you see above is an example of that history.

Young boys in Poland chasing down a jewish woman and it was captured on film. 

Drink in the pic.

She's already been injured.

She's in full panic mode and obviously (justifiably) feels her very existence is threatened.

Now look at the boys.

Almost gleeful.  Determined to get the deed done.

Drink it in and never forget.

Add this to your personal photo collection.  One day it might be the only trace of this despicable part of human history.

It's Official: Top Marine Wants 12 in an Infantry Squad

Thanks to FormerDirtDart for the link!

via Military Times.

The Marine Corps is capping off 18 months of overhauling the way infantry units are trained and equipped by shaking up the structure of the rifle squad.

In an address to an audience of Marines at a Marine Corps Association awards dinner near Washington, D.C., on Thursday night, Commandant Gen. Robert Neller said future squads will have 12 Marines, down from the current 13.

But while the squads are losing a body, they will gain capability, with two new leadership positions, he said.

The new squad will have three fire teams of three Marines each, an adjustment from the standard four-Marine fire teams of today, Neller said.

"That 4th Marine that we're used to having is not going to be cut," he said. "We're not going to fill that billet, but it's not going to degrade your readiness. Because if this doesn't work, and you need to go somewhere where you need four Marines in a fire team, we'll bring that Marine back."

Story here. 

You do get the force of connection here.

Leadership is totally disconnected from what EVEN they see as the future battlefield much less what I predict.

They see fighting in mega cities.  I don't.  But what if they're right.

Ya know what?

City fighting is manpower intensive.  Weight of fire at the lowest level means something.

Additionally if I'm right and we're simultaneously involved in bug hunts around the world stomping on terrorist cockroaches while gearing up for a peer fight then we're still gonna need REINFORCED Infantry Squads.

Ya know why?

Because we're seeing terrorists operate like nation state forces.  They're heavier, have more armor and more mobility as well as MUCH greater firepower than ever before in our history.

Last but not least this idea is batshit crazy because they're pushing the Expeditionary Rifle Squad.

Yep.  Independent Squads acting far from support and probably at the edge of supporting fires.

So the answer is to reduce the size instead of reinforcing them?

I'm just not buying it.  This is batshit stupid.  It will cost lives.  We will see lost infantry squads in the future that will never been found for burial because the enemy will microfragment the entire group AND/OR we'll see them captured in mass only to be tortured on YouTube.

What should everyone research to understand my thinking?  Google the ambush of the Marine Sniper Squad in Iraq.  Good guys lost their lives and were overrun before they even made it to their hide site.

God save us all...especially the Marines that will be part of this new future.

May the Fourth be with you, Canadian Army style.

China behaving badly. Missiles on islands and dazzling our pilots in N. Africa...

via The Hill.

The United States has issued a formal warning to China after personnel at the Chinese military base in Djibouti used lasers to interfere with U.S. military aircraft, giving two pilots minor injuries, according to the Pentagon.

Top Defense Department spokeswoman Dana White told reporters Thursday that the U.S. is confident the Chinese are behind the “very serious incidents,” which have increased in the past few weeks. 

“There have been two minor injuries. This activity poses a true threat to our airmen. We have formally demarched the Chinese government. And we’ve requested that the Chinese investigate these incidents,” White said during a Pentagon briefing.

The U.S. government, meanwhile, has warned airmen to be cautious when flying in certain areas in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, due to the recent incidents.

“During one incident, there were two minor eye injuries of aircrew flying in a C-130 that resulted from exposure to military-grade laser beams, which were reported to have originated from the nearby Chinese base,” according to a notice reported by CNN.

Story here. 

Lasers blinding pilots..dazzling them...is serious shit.  If I recall correctly that is the basis for some anti-air systems.  To blind the optics systems of attack aircraft, even their missiles and definitely the pilots.  The Pentagon called them military grade too.  That's telling.  I'm not sure about the scope of the injuries either.  I wonder if those guys are still on flight duty or if they had to rotate over to a ground job.  Even worse for them I'm wondering if they're gonna see halo's or spots or whatever for the rest of their lives.

The main takeaway (and yeah we touched on this when the news broke yesterday) is this.  China needs to be curb stomped so that its baked into their national DNA that the USA will fuck them up when they push too hard.

Pick a spot and hit them now.  I'm not calling for full scale warfare but we need to give them an INTENSE pushback while we can before they really get froggy.

Next story.

via Asia Times.

Beijing has installed cruise missiles and surface-to-air missiles on man-made islands throughout the South China Sea, according to a report on Wednesday, a move one US security analyst described as “a clear offensive threat.”

CNBC first broke the story, citing sources with direct knowledge of US intelligence reports who said the missile platforms were deployed on the outposts within the past 30 days.

The news comes less than a month after The Wall Street Journal reported that “military jamming equipment” had been installed on the Spratly Islands, one of the locations also identified in the report this week.

“This should be seen as China crossing an important threshold. Missile platforms present a clear offensive threat,” Gregory Poling, a fellow at the Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies told CNBC. “[The missile deployment] is a pretty clear threat to the other claimants and furthers China’s goal of establishing complete control over the water and airspace of the South China Sea,” added Poling, who is director of CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

Story here. 

On this one we have to fight against regional desires to placate the Chinese.  Cross a threshold?  They crossed it by building the islands.  Those freedom of navigation events are seen for what they are.  Bluster without meaning.  Like two guys braying at each other instead of just getting to it.

Action is needed but the Japanese, S. Koreans, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam and others are too accommodating to assist.

Our defense officials are so focused on offensive warfare that they don't realize the reality.

There is no A2/AD to penetrate.

We're already in their backyard.

They're trying to PUSH US OUT!  But we're there and we can be a pain in the ass.

Want a credible show of force?

Assemble a multi-wing strike package to include Air Force, Navy, Allied forces that are willing, subs, carriers, and even attack helicopters rigged with anti-ship missiles and do a time on target flyby of an island.

Do a couple of flash alerts putting the entire region on "go status" for 24 hours.

Make them think we've lost our minds.

Once we do that a couple of times China will understand that we're more than willing to punch them in the mouth and make them bleed.

Until we do something China WILL CONTINUE to act badly.  They are an aggressive force and WILL NOT rise peacefully.

War is coming and we MUST get ready.

Open Comment Post. May 4, 2018

Moral Friday....Podcast #402: Why Honor Matters

via Art of Manliness.

In today's world, honor is typically thought of in terms of integrity — doing the right thing when no one is looking. But traditionally, honor meant having a reputation worthy of the respect of others. If people think about this type of honor at all these days, it’s usually in a negative way, associating it with pistol duels, honor killings, and toxic shame. But my guest today argues that for moral life to be robust and vital, a culture of honor is absolutely necessary. His name is Tamler Sommers. He’s a professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, co-host of the podcast Very Bad Wizzards, and the author of the new book Why Honor Matters. Today on the show, Tamler and I discuss honor— what it is, why it disappeared from our moral ethos and vocabulary, and why we should bring it back. Tamler makes the case that honor culture fosters community and encourages risk taking for the sake of excellence, while our modern dignity culture atomizes us and encourages us to play it small. He then makes a counterintuitive argument that the contained aggression and violence that honor promotes can have real benefits and shares one way honor is making a comeback in the form of the “restorative justice movement.” We end our conversation discussing why stories of honor are so appealing to humans and whether it’s really possible to revitalize honor in modern Western society. 

Podcast here...definitely worth a listen. Download here.

Full disclosure.  The issue of "honor" has popped up in a personal way lately. I've had a chance to observe people in various states over the past couple of months and I'm mortified.

Long short?

Everyone claims it.  No one actually does it.

You have jaded, foolish or even idiotic people claiming it, but even a casual glance at their behavior shows that they act in the most insane and questionable ways ever.

On a personal level I'm done with it.  If I come across some moron (and it happens regularly lately) that claims honor but demonstrates even once that they're devoid of honor and have a child like sensibility I'm done with them.

No fucking second chances.

I'll believe my lying eyes and cut bait.

No conversation.

No attempts at understanding or putting myself in their shoes.

I'm just done.

Consider it the mental equivalent of wiping dog shit off my shoes.

Concept art of the Russian EFV...

Thanks to Storm Shadow for the link!

Fuck me!

That looks like a slightly modded EFV!  Why are we fucking around with the ACV when we had this shit a decade ago just needed to finish the job????

Corporate censorship is getting out of hand...IS OUT OF HAND!

Corporate censorship is getting out of hand..CORRECTION IS OUT OF HAND!

WTF am I talking about?

Bmashina Tumblr Page is now terminated.

Why?

According to the guy its because they considered real WW2 pics (and from other conflicts that showed the violence of war) TO BE BE INCITING VIOLENCE!

I am particularly amazed that they would do this because you can find all kinds of porn on that site (not his page...never saw it once on his page, but on Tumblr...the freaks come out at night...it's all over the place!).

Additionally if you go into certain corners you can find all kinds of racists, homophobic (to the extreme), sexist (to the extreme) and other views that are concerned out of the norm for our society (speaking of the US, not other parts of the world).

I'm gonna have to chew on how I do things going into the future.  I highlighted many of his pics here and have to wonder if I contributed to his ban. If I take pics from Tumblr and that causes people to be banned then I don't need to highlight them to my audience...or at least not tell where I got them from.  Additionally I have to wonder why historic truth is suddenly considered unpolitically correct.

Regardless, the march toward that fictional "1984" is becoming truer everyday.

US Army bungling it's chance for modernization? EVERY SERVICE has already lost its chance....

via Forbes.

The U.S. Army's opportunity to carry out the first comprehensive modernization of its combat equipment since the Cold War ended may be slipping away. That opportunity was created by the election of President Donald J. Trump in 2016, but now the budget walls are beginning to close in, and the Army is taking too long to get its act together.

The latest evidence that the Army may be headed for yet another false start on modernization was provided by the Secretary of the Army himself, Mark Esper, in remarks Monday at the Atlantic Council. As reported by Byron Callan of Capital Alpha Partners, Secretary Esper stated that the service plans to prioritize readiness until 2022, and then turn to the procurement of a new generation of combat systems.

By that time the Trump defense buildup will be over, and money for new weapons will be far down the list of congressional priorities. We know this because Deputy Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan has already stated that defense spending will be "flatlined" after this year and recent tax cuts have saddled the nation with trillion-dollar annual deficits beginning in the fiscal year commencing October 1. With rising inflation likely to greatly increase the cost of carrying the federal debt, Army modernization will become a bill-payer for other priorities (editor's note...the ENTIRE DoD budget will be targeted for other priorities...the block buy of F-35's???  Ain't happening in the budget environment I see after 2020...they took too long to get it into service much less make it work!). 

Past experience indicates that military buildups seldom exceed five years in duration, and the Army's schedule for turning new ideas into fielded weapons requires much longer. So the current reorganization of Army buying commands aimed at revitalizing the nation's preeminent ground force looks unlikely to fare much better than past flourishes at modernization such as Force XXI, the Army After Next and the Objective Force.

Secretary Esper referenced these and other missed modernization opportunities in his confirmation hearings before the Senate last year, but he doesn't seem to have learned the obvious lesson they provide: buy new weapons fast, because the window of opportunity only remains open for a brief time.

Because Army leaders seem unable to assimilate this lesson, not one of the Pentagon's top-ten weapons programs today is an Army effort. The Air Force is simultaneously buying a new fighter, a new bomber, a new tanker, a new trainer and a new intercontinental ballistic missile. The Army is mainly buying upgrades of combat systems that first saw service several decades ago, while it debates what genuinely new weapons it should be developing. Its plans may not gel before the money runs out.

It's not that the Army lacks a clear idea of where the gaps are in its current capabilities. It needs artillery and missiles with more range; rotorcraft with greater speed and reach; a more resilient battlefield network; better air defenses; and a next-generation combat vehicle that can deliver superior firepower, mobility and protection. These are the areas where other "great powers," meaning Russia and China, are catching up. But the Army's schedule for buying new weapons is much too leisurely to stay ahead of the threat.

And as I said, the budget walls are already beginning to close in. Every one-percent increase in inflation translates into over $200 billion in additional costs each year to carry the debt the government has accumulated. With annual deficits and inflation rates rising, it is obvious that the federal budget will go haywire just about the time the Army is ready to bend metal. Factor in the likely return of Democrats to power, and you have a prescription for yet another lost modernization opportunity.

There's only one way out of this conundrum, and that's to accelerate the purchase of new combat systems that are already in the pipeline, evolving those systems in response to changing threats and technology as they are fielded. The Army has little to lose by switching from revolutionary to evolutionary modernization, because its past efforts to make great leaps forward have tended to be failures, and its fundamental approach to warfighting isn't really changing all that much.

Story here. 

Thompson gets it...well sorta, but he misses the bigger point.

The blind support for the F-35 has allowed that ONE WEAPONS SYSTEM to gobble up the Pentagon.

The Army is in a catch 22.

They know they need to get shit done and with a quickness,  but they're hamstrung by the go-along get-along, kumbaya bullshit that the services have been singing lately.

Only recently have we heard REAL talk about the future threat.

For too long the conventional ground side of the house bought the nonsense that we would be involved in anti-terror efforts for another 100 years and that nation state warfare was a thing of the past.

Under those circumstances the idea of standing pat with the Abrams for another 50 years made sense, but reality is an evil bitch...and so are the Russians and Chinese. 

They've watched the stagnation in the West and instead of following suit have pressed forward.  So we've seen the exact opposite of what we're doing.

Dramatic improvements in the field of armor and artillery, along with steady and consistent improvements in their air arms.

Where are we at now with the grand plan to buy F-35's at the expense of everything else?

A strike fighter that can't do air superiority, ground forces that will be menaced by enemy air and/or artillery...and still no common sense on what the future fight will really entail.

Remember the talk years ago about resource wars?

Instead of formulating ideas on how to fight in those locations that feed and sustain populations we've seen the Pentagon pivot to the SOCOM chestnut of fighting in urban/built up areas.

SIMPLY AMAZING!

But back on task.

There was never gonna be a sustained build up in the defense budget.

The American people are tired of war and the insane/stupid/unjustifiable ops tempo that the Pentagon started to justify increased funding changed no minds.

The sad reality is that these two years of plus ups should have been used to put houses in order.

The ground should have been laid for incremental buys of weapon systems over a number of years with improvements to those in service kept pace with changes coming off the production line (yeah I'm pointing to the mess that the MV-22 revealed).

Additionally the day of reckoning has come with the bloat that is the Pentagon. Scalpels should be pulled out of the drawer and fat cut where found.  By every unit everywhere.

In other words they shouldn't ask for another dime till they demonstrate fiscal discipline.

Long story short?  I want a strong military but as things stand I can't feel sorry for the Army or any other service.  They put themselves in this box and only real work will see them climb out of it.