AH1Z Viper in action at Weapons & Tactics Instructors Course ....Photos by Lance Cpl. Eryn Rudolph

Bundy Ranch Standoff. Is this the first cleansing statement from the affair?

The above photo is one of the "famous" images of the Bundy Ranch standoff.  Notice the individual in the center of the photo with the USA cap wearing the multicam combat shirt?  Remember this image.

via Oafnation.com

While I was mingling with the protestors and starting to get comfortable, I was hearing that the day before, the BLM had taken up tactical positions with sharp-shooters and seemed to have provoked people to “get ready for anything” next. However, the mood was still somewhat relaxed and people felt just and in good spirits that we were doing the right thing. Mostly, I was running into Citizens who were tired of Government over-reach, being told that someone else knows what’s best for them and that public land was not “open to the public”! It’s hard to argue with any of this.
I had been boots-on-ground for about 15-20 minutes when two guys approached me. The first guy, Ryan, said I look like I have a background and know how to handle myself. I confirmed his observations. He let me know he and his buddy were militia and wanted to know if I was interested in helping out. I have to admit, I’ve been indoctrinated to be suspicious of militia (and there have been some historical instances to not ignore), so I was leery. I asked, “In what way?” Ryan broke it down that the guys he was with were providing security to the Bundy family and the protestors. I could support that since it’s fairly innocuous and I did want to make sure things were civil and justifiable because the Nation was waking up to what was happening there.

Read the entire article.

Its a pretty good first hand account of what happened at the Bundy Ranch from the perspective of the guy noted in the above photo.

But wait...there's more!

I don't know the guy from adam, but he goes by the nickname (codename?) Voodoo and he claims to be former military and a current Private Military Contractor.

He knows how shit works so I wonder....

Is this actually a cleansing statement to put his role in the entire affair before a VERY wide audience and to protect himself from future prosecution?

I don't know, but if it is then its pretty brilliant.

Side note:  I said cleansing statement, not cleansing warning.  I know the difference so save your firepower.

F-35 News. Italian plans to reduce by half the number of fighters looks more likely.

Eric Palmer blog has the full story you can read here....but a juicy tidbit....

Other areas he mentioned were reducing the number of municipal companies paid for by the state, fighting tax evasion and cutting 150 million euros of spending that had been earmarked for the F-35 fighter.
Renzi did not give details on the "review" of spending for the jets. Italy now has committed to ordering 90 of the planes for about 12 billion euros, but some in his party have said the order should be halved.

I made the call earlier but stick with it.  The death spiral is already here, they're just using fancy accounting gimmicks to keep it from being fully realized.

Additionally the pain for the program is just beginning.  They can't get costs down and soon or later tens of thousands of servicemen and millions of vets are going to wake up to the fact that people are being sacrificed on the altar of the F-35.

Without this one program our entire defense procurement agenda, for ALL THE SERVICES, would be totally different.

Must Read!!! American Mercenary on the professional officer corps!

Read it all here but a quick primer....

First off, Iraq wasn't a failure any more than the War of 1812 was a failure, or the Civil War was a failure. Iraq has been on its own for a while now, and yes the killing is on an uptick. Iran is a right bastard to have for a neighbor. Peace is that brief moment of time where everyone pauses to reload....
I wonder how the British Army felt after Yorktown? Were there calls for reforms? Was blame passed about? Or did someone realize, "You know, fighting an expensive foreign war a long distance from our lines of supply is never a recipe for success."

But in terms of what the US Military could do, and did, in Iraq, was definitely a "success" in terms of kicking ass and taking names in six weeks, then spending almost a decade trying to rebuild some semblance of representative government. It's like a carpenter with one tool, a sledgehammer. Great for knocking down walls, but just not the right tool for doing finish work on cabinetry. But when your only tool is a sledgehammer, that is what you use.
Afghanistan, same story as Vietnam. We win in every engagement, but we are supporting a corrupt government that everyone knows is corrupt.
In terms of actual fighting, we've kicked ass and always kicked ass. If you want us to do something other than fighting, like Somalia, Lebanon, the rebuilding of Iraq an Afghanistan, by the very definition of what Armies are, we kinda suck at that.

Its been a long time since I've actually cheered when it comes to a post on the military and its been a positive story.

Much needed and spot on.

Sidenote:  I still believe we have Flag Rank bloat and perhaps too many officers overall but that won't be solved till we thin the herd at the top.

Partnership missions are pure insanity. Chinese troops to train in Australia.

Thanks for the link Kristoffer!

via SMH.com.au

Chinese troops could end up exercising alongside the diggers in Australia’s north, perhaps even in conjunction with US Marines.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised the possibility in the final press conference of his north Asia trade trip in Beijing, declaring these issues had been ‘‘well and truly discussed’’.
He said Australia’s already strong defence ties with Japan and South Korea had now strengthened further.
‘‘Here in China, as a result of this trip, I am now quite confident that we won’t just have high level meetings between our respective militaries,’’ he said.
‘‘We will have exchanges and exercises between our respective militaries and also multilateral exercises.’’
"That's got to be good for peace and understanding in our region and the wider world," he said.
Mr Abbott said he would not speculate on who else could be involved in exercises involving Chinese forces.
‘‘Thanks to the rotating elements of US Marines in Darwin, there’s potential for multilateral exercises in Australia involving the US,’’ he said.
When Australia and the US announced the program of training US troops in northern Australia in 2011, China expressed strong concerns.
Mr Abbott said that was then, not now, and the issue was not the troop rotation but that it had come as a surprise at the time.
‘‘Once people were fully aware of what was happening, the concerns fairly quickly dissipated,’’ he said.
Starting from a low base, Australian defence ties with China have expanded steadily in recent years.
Australian and Chinese defence leaders hold annual talks and Australian and Chinese warships have staged reciprocal port visits.
Australia already cooperates with New Zealand and China on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief drills, and the prime minister said that would be the foundation on which he hoped to build on, perhaps even involving United States marines based in Northern Australia.
“Thanks to the rotating elements of the US marines in Darwin, there’s potential for multilateral exercises in Australia involving the United States,” he said

Wow.  So much to say about this.

I consider this to be a sad remnant from the War on Terror.  Both the Obama administration and the previous one, both used the military in a diplomatic role instead of the State Dept.  In seeking to gain allies in the War on Terror, military to military exchanges and training took place.

It made sense then.  Global Terrorism looked like the disease that would gobble up the world, but since then things have changed.

We played this game before with both the Russians and the Chinese.

What did we get from the experience?  In my opinion nothing but more professional forces that would menace our real allies.  Russian and Chinese units that started looking more and more like Western forces and became more and more effective.

The latest example is what we're seeing in the Ukraine.  The Russians have always been efficient in war but now they're acting with almost US Army Special Forces professionalism.  Not surprising considering the training that they've received...and now Ukraine is paying the price.

BMT Tank Landing Ship.

The party at the Bundy Ranch.

They're throwing a party at the Bundy Ranch and liberal news media is in a tizzy this week over the incident and the fact that conservative, survival, prepping, oath keepers and militia sites are cheering the win.

But the party.

I don't get it.  Are they not thinking?  You can bet that the FBI, ATF, BLM and probably but I hope not, US Marshals are all scouring the internet, going over communication recordings, going over vehicle license plates and gathering info on every person that was at the confrontation...and now at this party.

I'm not a secret squirrel type person but they're making it too easy for their organizations to be penetrated and compromised.  Additionally you can bet that they won't risk an agent to do it either.  They're going to stack charges on some trusted member of each group, and then make him a deal he can't refuse.  Sorta like 75 years in prison, your family impoverished (from all your property being seized) or you turn government informant.

Geez.  This is too easy for the feds.  The way this is going down it won't even be a contest.  I've wondered why no one has been arrested and now its obvious.  They're gathering intel.

F-35 Selected Acquisition Report...

What are the experts saying after reading this report???

Engine costs are, as predicted, rising.
Once the F-16C/D costs as listed are adjusted for single seat only, the F-35 O&S costs per flying hour are hovering around 1.4 times those for the F-16C with costs under the heading of "Maintenance" double those for the F-16.
Then there are the real costs for engine O&S.
And the list goes on......

If this was any other program, this report (and several before) would have doomed the plane to the scrap heap of history.  As it stands, extreme cost will accomplish what military planners lack the courage to do....say enough is enough and start looking for alternatives.

  218876001-F-35-2013-SAR

Delivery of a mechanized raid force to a launch point. We're reinventing the wheel!!!

This post is prompted by an interview by SeaPower Magazine of General Gleuck.  Read the entire article for yourself but this part has me punching walls...

It was planned to travel in the water at 25-plus knots. That was all predicated
on launching from 25 miles, having the sea base at 25 miles and understanding that the EFV would leave the water and maneuver deep inland. Under some conditions, we may start operations from further out to sea, changing our previous EFV assumption and increasing the importance of speed and range.
Given current technology, we could not achieve the ability to maneuver through the sea from beyond 25 nautical miles and seamlessly maneuver inland with protection and firepower. More significantly, in the time of reduced budgets, the EFV became unaffordable. Maneuvering in the littoral sea-land environment means maneuvering in tough, complex terrain. Most of that mission occurs on the land — about 90 percent.  We relooked at that 90 percent on the land mission and the EFV fell short given today’s technology.
Similar problems with current technology and high cost forced a halt in the EFV replacement program, the original Amphibious Combat Vehicle [ACV].

What has me pissed off and shouting at the moon is that several exercises were done that looked at the anti-access threat.  Even if the threat has us moving back to 100 miles off shore that does not mean that the EFV was not viable.  It does not mean that amphibious assault vehicles are not viable.  It just means that you transport them to a launch point.  But the bigger problem is that the Marine Corps seems to rapidly be forgetting its history.

Everyone forgets the name of one of the Marine Corps greatest minds. General Paul K. Van Ripper.

General Van Ripper made the term asymmetric warfare popular in the Pentagon and his work (read that to mean brilliant strategic thinking) in Millennium Challenge 2002 war game is estimated to have cost the Navy a sunk Carrier Battle Group, a sunk Amphibious Ready Group AND 20,000 servicemen dead.

But now you're asking me, what does this have to do with "delivery of a mechanized raid force to a launch point"?  Its simple.  We've been dealing or rather learning to deal with anti-access threats in the Marine Corps for quite a while now.

We've been planning on moving amphibs further offshore for quite a while now.  I talked about this in 2012 but consider this a refresher.  This page is from MCRP 3-31.1A  Employment of Landing Craft Air Cushion.

We have the tools, we had the doctrine, the only thing we're lacking is the understanding of leadership that air power alone will not win the next war.

China boast: U.S. Marines would be like ‘marching band’ in all out fight

Thanks for the link Jonathan!!

via Washington Times

What apparently incensed the Chinese was what Gen. Wissler said next: “You wouldn’t maybe even necessarily have to put somebody on that island until you had eliminated the threat, so to speak.”The Chinese military is supremely confident of its invincibility in the Pacific and is taking Gen. Wissler’s remark as a great insult.
The first return salvos were fired by the Communist Party-owned and operated newspaper Global Times.
“These U.S. warships roaming around here [in the East China Sea] are slowly being considered by us Chinese as our moving targets right in front of our eyes, and the [U.S.] bases in Okinawa as a whole are also no longer a big deal [to us],” said the newspaper in an April 15 editorial.
“When facing China, these U.S. soldiers are really not worth anything,” the Global Times said. “If China and the U.S. were to start an all-out fight, these American Marines would be more like a marching band, charging with others, but with their musical instruments in hands.”

Uh wow.  Read the entire article but wow.

This isn't typical Chinese behavior.  Usually they're much more reserved but this is basically tossing down the gauntlet and letting the entire region know that they  don't fear US Marines.

Good.

That'll make it sweeter when we jump down their throats and feast on their hearts.

But did you notice something in General Wissler's statement?  He is fully advocating the approach of Air Sea Battle....not EF21....in describing how we'll take back those islands.

Just a heads up for all you sycophants that worship at the feet of the Commandant and the much weakened Ellis group.

101st Airborne Brigade Air Assault...

ARES SCR Sport Configurable Rifle

Wow.

I am constantly impressed by the ability of gun owners/makers to make lemonade out of the lemons that law makers toss our way.  Additionally this might make a better truck gun than a normal AR.

Nicely done!  Read about it here.

Quote of the day.

“If the Navy’s unable to get closer in because of the threat, we just can’t sit there and wait,” Brig. Gen. William Mullen said at Sea-Air-Space. The challenge is getting Marines through the threat zone alive.

The Marine Corps is caught in a trap.

While recognizing the threat to amphibious ships by anti-ship missiles they still hold onto the belief that anti-air missiles will pose no problems for MV-22's bringing a Company Landing Team ashore!

The fact that people are overlooking this amazes me!  The idea that the MV-22 suddenly solves the anti-access problem for the USMC astonishes me!

NOTE:  Navy SEALs and Air Force Special Operations had their CV-22's shot up while on approach to a landing zone in Africa, by a primitive force with small arms only...no RPGs, and no MANPADs..the results?  Several SEALs wounded and the aircraft having to abort the landing and limp to a nearby friendly base.  Oh and this was simply a mission (according to the DoD) to help in the evacuation of US personnel.

Expeditionary Force 21 seeks to fully establish "mini-MEU's" in the form of the SPMAGTF-CR as a permanent formation in the Marine Corps, instead of an adhoc, mission specific, temporary unit as it was designed to be.

EF21 is half baked, seeks to justify the enormous expense of Marine Air in an age of austerity and hopes to give a failed Commandant a legacy that will justify the dysfunction he brought to the Marine Corps.

AM takes on Harry Reid..

American Mercenary takes the Senate Majority leader to task for his recent statements about Bundy supporters.

Reid is now calling those that showed up to the Bundy Ranch domestic terrorists.  I said that many wanted a fight (on both sides).  The next incident will be that fight.  The Feds won't be able to back off a second time so blood will be shed.

Time to stock up on firearms and supplies while you can.

Republicans will abandon support for the 2nd Amendment when they witness citizens resisting law enforcement with fire arms and a bit of organization.  Quite honestly I wonder if the next incident will be this years Oct surprise.

Chinese Soldiers from the Nanjing Military Area Command (MAC) practice amphibious landing...

The picture shows a scene of the armored vehicles in loading and sailing training. A troop unit under the Nanjing Military Area Command (MAC) of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) organized armored vehicles to conduct loading and sailing training in strange waters on April 13, 2014 in a bid to improve troops' comprehensive combat capability. (Chinamil.com.cn/ Xu Xiaojun)

Yeah.

Those 100 Marines in the Company Landing Team are going to create havoc when facing this type of opposition.  Sarcasm off.  I find it interesting that the USMC is throwing away concepts that it has perfected while the rest of the world seeks to gain those capabilities.

When everyone is thinking the same (as in EF21) then no one in that group is thinking.

EF21 is a sad joke that must not be allowed to develop into a flawed doctrine.

Bastion Attack Blamed On 'Complacency'

Check out the discussion over at Think Defence on this subject.  Warning. Some of it is infuriating, annoying, and passes the buck.

One thing that a reader at Think Defence pointed out that is worthy of praise is the loosy-goosy, we're in the rear and its party time atmosphere that appears to have taken hold at this base.

Have you forgotten all the little "dance" videos Marines put out?  Marines lip syncing to songs was flashed all over the pages of Marine Times like it was cool.  I bitched and griped but was told that I didn't understand.

It took a Marine Harrier Squadron getting knocked out for some to clue into the idea that the Marine Corps was at war and to act accordingly.  Now the Brits say that the base is secure.  Awesome.  The facts remain though.  The enemy only has to get it right once...and they win a propaganda victory.

Japanese Advanced Stealth Fighters

The Japanese will fly an advanced stealth fighter prototype by the end of this year.

Expeditionary Force 21 is close to ending amphibious assault.

via Breaking Defense.

With current technology, “a few good men” can get ashore from more than 65 miles out. That’s enough Marines to rescue some US citizens, reinforce an embassy, or hit a key target and get out, but not enough to seize and hold ground. It would be less an amphibious assault and “more of a raid,” King told me.
Putting this first small force ashore doesn’t necessarily require blowing holes in the enemy’s layered defenses, just disrupting it at key times and places through stealth airstrikes or cyber attack. “[E.g.] for this eight-hour window, I can fly this route — I don’t need to keep it open all day, I need to create a window of opportunity to put that company ashore,” King said. “Once they’re ashore, they’ll wreak havoc.”
The force would probably a single company of a hundred-plus Marines slipping ashore from a boat or flying in on a V-22 aircraft. But while the Marines are developing “internally transportable vehicles” that can fit inside a V-22, most of the Marines in such a company-sized force would still have to walk, which limits both their maneuvers and their ability to carry heavy weapons.
“65 to 100 miles out….there’s no way we do an entire amphibious landing from that type of distance,” Brig. Gen. Mullen told the Sea-Air-Space conference when I raised the question. “It’s not possible, it’s not feasible, we can’t go do a build-up at an operationally relevant pace.”

I've tried to be diplomatic but that's not working so a little wall to wall counseling is in order.

What the fuck is HQMC and the little group of pussy generals thinking????

They keep talking about the anti-access threat.  They continuously talk about ships being vulnerable to anti-ship missiles and act as if the MV-22 is bullet proof.

Its not.

Its vulnerable to small arms fire, RPGs, and Man Pads.  If the enemy has the architecture to keep our ships at bay then it will also have the resources necessary to make MV-22 scrap metal.

THEY AREN'T THINKING ANYMORE.  THEY'RE SIMPLY PUSHING BULLSHIT CONCEPTS.

We need new leadership to save the Marine Corps.  Not from the enemy but from substandard leaders. 

Mosquito family of Light Tracked Vehicles

Thanks for the article Jonathan!

via Shepard Media.

Belarus company Monitor-Service has used the Defence Services Asia (DSA) exhibition in Kuala Lumpur to introduce its Mosquito family of Light Tracked Vehicles (LTVs) to ASEAN defence forces.
Speaking to Shephard at the show, Velery Grebenschikov, director of Monitor-Services, said the Mosquito LTV platform, completed three months prior to DSA, was designed to challenge the ex-Soviet MTLB light tracked vehicle.
‘We are trying to contact customers from Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and other countries in this region. The Mosquito is completely new and being displayed for the first time at DSA,’ said Grebenschikov.

He explained the company had been negotiating with representatives from the Malaysian Armour Department during the course of DSA, although no contracts have been signed as yet.
The Belarus Special Forces had previously purchased 18 Mosquito 768s, the smallest of the family of vehicles.
The Mosquito LTV comes in three hull sizes including small (8.9-tons), medium (9.8-tons) and large (11.6-tons), in six-road wheel ‘open-top’, six-road wheel ‘enclosed’, and seven-road wheel ‘enclosed’ configurations.
All Mosquito LTVs are powered by a six-cylinder, four-stroke diesel engine that puts out 220kW at 2600 RPM. The vehicles are bulletproof and can be uparmoured upon request.
The small, open top LTVs can be armed with air defence systems and deployed for tactical reconnaissance, patrolling and force protection duties. Enclosed versions have reinforced weapon systems.

Medium-class Mosquitos are intended as support and recovery vehicles, as opposed to weapons platforms, as well as carrying out load transport duties, air defence and combat search and rescue.

Meh. 

Naval Aviation Vision 2014-2025

  Naval Aviation Vision

Expect this to change.

The USMC cannot afford an air arm that is unique inside the Department of Defense, consumes so much of its budget and delivers so little.

I consider this "vision" and EF21 to actually be dead on arrival.  The current Commandant has 6 months left on his watch (I'm counting down and will be popping corks when he leaves) and its standard procedure to roll out plans of this type no later than halfway thru your term so that the concept can be implemented or if not completed, well on its way.

This aviation vision and EF21 are actually hedges against cuts in aviation and legacy building.  Both efforts will fail.