I despise Nazis but this ain't right.

via Heavy.com

Two photos shared by different people show a man in Seattle riding the RapidRide D Line wearing a Nazi armband. A later photo shows the man knocked out on a sidewalk from a punch.

Story here. 

Wow.  I fucking despise Nazis and the supporters that have popped up on this blog after the Charlottesville idiocy (blood and soil my ass).  I can see clocking a bastard stupid enough to be walking around with an armband.  I can see monitoring his ass to see if he does something provocative, and no wearing the arm band ain't enough.

But to actually catch him cold and sucker punch him?

That don't seem right.

I could see if the dude was goose stepping, yelling the N word and doing other stuff.  If that's the case then do him the way he needs to be done but to catch him cold?

Things are heating up.  I don't view Antifa the way that the Nazi supporters around the blogosphere do (I find it amazing that Anti-Fascists are suddenly the bad guys to so many...you might want to check yourself if you're cheering for Fascists/Nazis).  I see them as the rightful antidote to the Nazi/KKK/White Supremacists disease.

But there is one thing that disturbs me that no one has pointed to.

NOTE:  Everyone is ignoring this portion of my blog post!  Don't!  If you want to be concerned about ANTIFA then be my guest but do it because you have a reason to!  The similarities between the old Weatherman Movement and Antifa today are striking!  That should be a real reason for concern!!!!

No one remembers history but the modern day Antifa movement has all the hallmarks of the old Weatherman Underground Movement of the late 60's and early 70's.

The Nazis/KKK/White Supremacists can be put back in their cage with little effort.  It's been done before and it can be done again.  My concern is that the Antifa could morph in ways that many aren't quite seeing.  They're a reaction to the extreme right, but it could spiral unless restraints are put in place.

Another Hurricane about to hit the VI? Will the MEU have to sail away?

We are seeing what looks like a very ACTIVE hurricane season.  It's to be expected.  Things have been ABNORMALLY quiet for a few years so a rebound isn't a surprise.

Neither are the hits on the US Virgin Islands.

The difference?

This time we live in an age of 24 hour news and social media.

This time we have infrastructure on the islands to support tourists that will probably be damaged beyond repair.

This time the world will be watching.

Which leads to the question.

Will the MEU have to sail away?

I warned about the folly of being assigned the mission in the Virgin Islands. Much risk and little reward.  The Marine Corps jumped all over it despite my misgivings and they deployed an "Aviation Centric" force to deal with the problem.

Now?

Now with another hurricane approaching we face the nightmare scenario.  Not only for the inhabitants of those islands but also for the USMC.

Does the MEU stay in port and ride out the hurricane (stupid on a stick) or does it sail away to return later?  How will the media react if they do the prudent thing and leave to return after the next storm to resume relief efforts?

It won't be pretty.

Climate change zealots will crow about the USMC having to run away from a storm.  Environmentalists will crow too.

Why do guys with stars on their shoulders not see this stuff?

Anyway my recommendation is that the Public Affairs Office get going now.  They should be flooding the zone with MORE news about the Navy/Marine Corps team doing its work down there.  THEY SHOULD be emphasizing that the force is there for the people and that first responders have to ensure that they 're capable of providing assistance to the affected people.

Then they should bite the bullet and assign another infantry battalion, get another couple of engineer battalions (Army, Marine Corps, Sea Bees don't care) with heavy equipment on ship and to the islands as soon as the latest storm passes.

They should ACT NOW!  NORTHCOM's Commander has proven that she's in over her head and is incapable of decisive action.  So you work around her and MAKE SHIT HAPPEN!

Get on it Marines!

Open Comment Post. Sep 18, 2017

Blast from the Past. Marine Raiders of WW2 first combat action!

via National Interest.

On a stormy night, U.S. Marines set off secretly from submarines to assault a remote island base. They are led by a controversial commander with radical new ideas. And the son of the sitting U.S. president is one of his officers.

The Makin raid in 1942 might seem to have the implausible plot of an action movie—and in fact, one year later it would become one! But it was a deadly real for both the American and Japanese troops involved. What was arguably the first combat operation ever undertaken by a U.S. military special forces unit nearly ended in complete disaster.

At the outbreak of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt requested that the marines form an “unconventional warfare” unit to conduct raids behind enemy lines modeled after British commandos. U.S. Marine Corps brass disliked the idea, but reluctantly formed two battalions of “Raiders”—and appointed a black sheep of the USMC to lead one of them.

Lt. Col. Evans Carlson had been wounded in action as an army captain in World War I, decorated with the Navy Cross for defeating bandits in Nicaragua as a marine lieutenant, befriended FDR while commanding his guard detachment in Georgia, and then accompanied and observed Communist insurgents fighting the Japanese in China. There, Carlson met key leaders such as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping and developed an appreciation for the tactics, team spirit and zeal of the Communist guerilla units. Upon returning to the United States, Carlson resigned his commission to advocate against Japanese expansionism, before reenlisting shortly before the U.S. entry into World War II.

Carlson sought to instill in his Raiders the team spirit that he had observed in China, a quality he called gung ho, based on the Mandarin Chinese words gōng (work) and hé (and/together). Ironically, gung ho was not an actual Chinese idiom, but would soon become a term in English. The marine leader believed in giving more initiative to subordinates and breaking down the barriers between officers and enlisted men, which did little to endear him to his superiors.

The Pacific War began with six months of defeats for U.S. forces until the decisive turning point in the naval battle of Midway. In August 1942, the U.S. Navy and Marines were ready to go on the offensive with an amphibious landing on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. However, Pacific Commander-in-Chief Adm. Chester Nimitz also conceived of a commando raid to divert Japanese forces and gather intel. He ultimately dispatched A and B company of Carlson’s Raiders to launch a hit-and-run raid on a Japanese seaplane base on Makin Island, allotting them a month of preparatory training time.

Makin, now known as Butaritari, is a tiny triangular-shaped atoll at the northern tip of the Gilbert Islands, located just north of the equator between Hawaii and Papua New Guinea. Seventy-five Japanese personnel, including a platoon of around forty-seven Special Naval Landing Force marines, maintained a refueling base in the atoll’s lagoon, circumscribed by an eight-mile long road. The Allies had only sketchy photographic intelligence on the actual Japanese forces present, and estimated there could be as many as 300 troops on Makin and a shore battery overlooking the lagoon.

Story here. 

This is a nice read to clear the brain cells and get a bit of history at the same time.

It does make me wonder though.

Marine Raiders are cool again since Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command adopted the name.

But what about the other elite group that was formed during WW2?

When will USMC Parachute Battalions get their nod from MARSOC?

Huge war between Al-Qaeda and Turkish Army looms in Idlib

via AMN

A huge war between the Turkish Army and the Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda) is looming in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib.

Yesterday, a huge convoy of trucks belonging to Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham was caught on camera heading towards the Syrian border with Turkey.

Story and a couple of videos here. 

Actions by Israel (and I'm a big Israel supporter) and Turkey tell me one thing that I find disturbing.

This whole drama in Syria/Iraq hasn't been about ISIS.

Hold onto that chestnut for a second.

Have you been as stunned as I have that the combined might of the US, Russia, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the GCC, NATO etc...have had such a difficult time killing a force that numbered at it's height approx 100K fighters?

Have you been as stunned as I have that Pentagon planners talked about taking decades to kill a force this small?

Back to the episode.

This hasn't been about ISIS and the Israelis coming out in support of a Kurdish state is puzzling.  Why would they do such a thing?  The immediate comparison for laymen like myself is if you want the Kurds to have a state then you should yield on Palestinian statehood.  To do otherwise makes no sense!

Then we have this thing with the Turks.  They've been trying to double deal since the first.  I have limited visibility on this fight (quite honestly I've gotten migraines trying to track who is supporting who) but I do remember stories about Turkey in essence funding the ISIS war machine by buying stolen oil and even supplying the terrorists.

So when I see stories like the one above I doubt its truthfulness.

This isn't about massing for a big fight with ISIS in my opinion.  This is about the fight in Syria entering a new phase.  Turkey is about to do a land grab. Why?  I have no idea but the partitioning of Syria is about to begin.

The US has no influence and no cards to play in this situation.  Would we deploy troops to protect Syrian land?  Would we aid Iraq in repelling a NATO member?

I want the fight to be over in Syria/Iraq but no joy there.  This shit will last for a bit longer.  We're just entering a new phase.  The puppets are to about to exit stage left.  Now enter the nation states and this is when it gets real.

Warhammer News. Another show of force? Has the war in N. Korea already begun?

Another weekend, another show of force.

Simply amazing.

These things have been happening with such frequency that I have to wonder. Are they giving away the game plan?

Think about it.

I know for a fact I've become numb to these shows of force and I'm sure the N. Koreans have been jumping thru hoops every time they get placed on alert because they see a flight of B-1s escorted by Japanese and S. Korean fighters heading for their borders.

Considering the fact that they're probably a hair away from being on a full wartime footing to repel an assault on their leader and nuke facilities this has to be wearing on their forces.

From my chair that means two things...both disturbing.

1.  The Pentagon is already probing N. Korean defenses.  Every "show of force" gets the North to light up radars and drop their drawers.  They're mapping defenses installations and anti-air sites.  They're getting communication intel. They're doing their very best to map command and control facilities.  I'd bet my left nut that at every "show of force" we have ELINT up in the air gathering everything possible.

2.  This is a guess but I bet that one sleepy weekend this winter this show of force becomes kinetic.  No ground assault, no fancy missile bombardment.  A simple looking show of force that drops a few bombs on a few key sites then its Katy bar the door.  Everything and every plane will suddenly pop into the air for maybe 72 hours of max effort and then its over.

That's my guess but if I'm right then they're already "shaping the battlefield". The war in N. Korea has already begun...

Qatar to buy 24 Typhoon Fighters

via Sputnik

 Qatari State Defense Minister Khalid bin Mohammed al-Attiyah and UK's Secretary of State of Defense Michael Fallon have signed a preliminary agreement that marks Doha's intention to buy 24 Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets from London, UK Defense Ministry said in a statement.

"After a number of years of negotiations between our two countries. I am delighted to have been able to sign today with Qatar’s Defence Minister, this Statement of Intent on the purchase of 24 Typhoon aircraft by Qatar," Fallon said, as quoted in the statement.

Story here. 

What is interesting is that we're looking at market share and maybe a flawed strategy by the F-35 fan club.

How do you sell airplanes to the buy hungry Arab nations if its deemed so sensitive that you can't risk it?

You MUST modernize your current planes or else you lose those sales to foreign competitors.

Can the US afford to lose sales to the Middle East, Africa and Asia?  Can we in essence give those countries/regions to the Russians, Chinese, and Europeans?

That is the threat with the F-35.

We have almost guaranteed two things with the current strategy.

1.  Advanced anti-air systems that can counter stealth will blossom all over the globe.  The idea that the Russians and/or Chinese along with our European allies would allow a system to exist that they couldn't effectively counter is foolish thinking.  That means that those advanced systems will find their way to more and more countries...including third world nations.  By forcing enemies, frenemies and even friendly nations that don't participate in the F-35 to develop counters to stealth we are making our other air power even MORE vulnerable.

2.  All the talk of market domination by the F-35 is pure fantasy.  The time frame for that to be a possibility has long passed (I estimate that if they had delivered the plane by 2014-15 they could have achieved the dream).  The reality is that planes like the Super Hornet, Gripen, Typhoon, SU-27 Variants etc will be around for a long time.  They will be updated, their AESA systems refined and new air to air missiles developed so that they can engage stealth at distance.

Long short.

The dream of global domination is dead for the F-35.  It's competition is still around and countries aren't waiting another five years to buy a wonder plane. They need planes THAT WORK on the ramp now!

Canadian Think Tanks slam potential Super Hornet sale...the F-35 mafia continues to make false claims!

via Globe and Mail.

On Sept. 12, the U.S. government responded to Canada's inquiry on the pricing for 18 Super Hornets. The price tag came back at $6.4-billion. If the sale goes through, it may end up being one of the most wasteful fiascos ever undertaken by a Canadian government. It strips away the Liberals' election claim about managing the defence file better than the Conservatives, while illustrating extreme mismanagement.

So, what do we actually get for $6.4-billion? In addition to the 18 aircraft, the offer includes the ancillary equipment required to operate the aircraft and support from the manufacturers.

The total cost is surprisingly high, especially given the projected cost of replacing the existing CF-18 fleet with 65 F-35s. According to the Department of National Defence's 2014 figures, which remain roughly accurate today, acquiring 65 F-35s with ancillary equipment and support comes to roughly $9-billion. To lend further credibility to these numbers, the Danish government's 2016 assessment showed that acquiring 27 F-35s would cost approximately $3.7-billion.

What accounts for this massive disparity? The first is production scale. Boeing can produce a maximum 36 Super Hornets a year, while Lockheed Martin will produce 90 F-35s next year, and more than 150 in the year after that. This difference results in greater economies of scale, and a lower cost. The F/A-18s also require additional sensors and pods and adapters that come standard with the F-35.

Moreover, the United States charges Canada for the development of the Super Hornet and administering the contract. Those fees are waived for the F-35, as Canada has already invested approximately $455-million to be part of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. Finally, the Super Hornet would require modifications to make them suitable for Canadian use. Far from being an easy transition, this will only further drive up the cost. With the F-35, Canada had many of those modifications incorporated into the design as a member of the JSF program.

All of these issues, which resulted in the Conservative government's decision in 2010 to bypass the Super Hornet and instead select the F-35, are well-known to senior defence officials. However, this reality did not suit the incoming Liberal government, which made an election promise to exclude the F-35 from any future competition. Of course, that course of action would be illegal. Their decision to then pursue a fleet of interim Super Hornets was based on the dubious claim that they required an aircraft "not in development."

The irony is that in order to make the Super Hornet work for Canada, it requires significant additional development: more so than the F-35 (which concludes its development program this year). Nevertheless, the advice of senior defence officials has clearly been ignored. This was the entire point of a gag order, which sought to muzzle the officials so they could not speak out about the looming boondoggle.

The interim buy comes with added issues, such as extending the life of the current CF-18 fleet until its replacement comes online, sometime in the late 2020s. The last such upgrade undertaken in the 2000s came to around $3-billion, which provides a rough benchmark. This brings the total cost of this misadventure to over $9-billion – or more than the projected cost of replacing the CF-18s outright with 65 F-35s.

Story here. 

I need to make a few points.

1.  They laud the price point of the F-35 but that price they're so fired up about is sometime in the future...if ever!  If Canada were to contract to buy the planes today then the cost would be astronomically higher than the Super Hornet.  These Think Tank Bubbas know that but they intentionally muddy the waters.

2.  They gloss over the fact that Canadian planes need to be life extended NOW!  Even if the F-35 were bought today not only would the planes themselves cost more but the life extensions that they whine about would still need to occur before the F-35 hit the ramps.

3.  The ancillary equipment that they say the F-35 doesn't need is a lie.  Various "built in" sensors are in NEED OF UPDATE NOW!  That lauded EOTS? NAVAL AIR has already said that many current gen pilots will feel like they're stepping backwards when they get in the cockpit of the F-35.  Pods are interchangeable.  Built in sensors are not.  That means that you will need to conduct EXPENSIVE UPGRADES to keep up with the latest SNIPER and LANTRIN systems that are already in the fleet and the newest upgrades that are being developed as we speak.

4.  Didn't they buy a shitload of missiles and other gear?  Why is that being ignored?

Long short?

The F-35 fan club uses deceit and at times outright lies to push this monstrosity forward.

When did I become convinced that the entire enterprise was corrupt and that it even reached the highest levels of the Marine Corps (don't care about the USAF or foreign militaries)?  When the USMC Deputy Commandant for Aviation made his road trips selling the F-35 and then tried to pitch the idea that his all singing, great dancing, pilot pleasuring airplane would need a Combat UAV to do MV-22 escort, Close Air Support, and ISR duties.

But that's a capabilities argument.

The real crime is the pricing BS they push.  The biggest issue is how they price these aircraft.  It is far from clear and they like it like that.

The biggest reform that Mattis could implement when it comes to defense projects is clarity.  No more accounting gimmicks.  No more accounting games. Simple methods that everyone can understand.

Having said that I've tarried too long.  This is the battlefield that they've now chosen to fight on?  So be it.  It's time to learn the ugly sausage of Pentagon contracting.  I don't want to be an expert but I must be able to refute the bullshit artists like these Think Tank Bubbas pushing a false narrative.

T-72B3 gets first work out at Zapad 17

via Sputnik.

The Zapad-2017 Russia-Belarus strategic joint military exercises provided the first large-scale test for crews of the newest T-72B3 tanks, which entered service with the Western Military District, the Russian Defense Ministry's press service said.
In its press release on Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that the ongoing Russia-Belarus military drills had provided the first large-scale test for the crews of the T-72B3, the latest version of the T-72 Soviet main battle tank.

Story here. 

Does anyone know of a website that keeps track of all the different types of Russian and Chinese armor?

I like to think I'm pretty well informed...at least better informed than the average person and this confuses the daylights out of me!  How many different types do they have in frontline service.

Open Comment Post. Sep 17, 2017

AAV hit a gas line?

Thanks to John for the link!

via Marine Corps Times

An amphibious vehicle hit a gas line sparking a fire that injured 14 Marines and a sailor during a training exercise at a California base earlier this week, a US military official said Friday.

The vehicle got stuck and as it tried to get free, it hit the gas line, said the official who was not authorized to discuss the incident publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Marines from the 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment and 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion and a Navy corpsman were conducting a combat readiness evaluation as part of their battalion training at about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, when the amphibious vehicle ignited in an inland area of Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego, said Marine 1st Lt. Paul Gainey.

The troops were sent to area hospitals, including eight who were rushed to a burn center. On Wednesday, five were listed in critical condition. The Marine Corps has declined to release information on their conditions since then, citing privacy concerns.

The command is investigating the cause of the incident. Gainey said he had no further information to release.

Story here. 

God bless those boys and I hope the Marine Corps is johnny on the spot to ensure that happens.

As far as the incident is concerned the explanation just doesn't sound right. I'm not saying that they're lying.  Not at all.  I'm just saying that it sounds inconceivable to me.  If this is true then our training areas and the trails leading to them need to be totally revamped....or better maintained.

I look forward to a more detailed explanation in the future, but again, the focus is on the Marines that were injured.

Only the brave..True Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots