Drunk Marines recorded yelling "Fuck Niggers" on Snapchat...

via Splinter Blog.

New videos circulating on social media appear to show members of the U.S. Marine Corps drinking beer bongs, partying, and repeatedly yelling “fuck n****rs.” Because when we send our troops, we’re only sending our best, right?

The Snapchat videos were shared on Twitter Friday by teacher and activist Zellie Imani, who asked, “Is this commonplace @USMC?”

Story and vid here. 

Note to racists Marines.  I know you exist and don't care.  But have enough common sense to not broadcast your idiocy over the internet.

You're gonna get slammed and again.  I don't care.  But you're making the entire Corps look bad because you're a moronic fucking fool.

Keep that shit behind your barracks doors, maybe in the common areas if your battalion rolls like that, or in town with others of your kind. 

But stop doing stupid shit that brings disgrace to the entire organization.

Russian AWACS, A-100 takes flight..

Story here.

This is being reported all over the place so why am I putting it here?  Because it is relevant.  Notice that the US Navy went ahead with the E-2D a couple of years ago, but we only recently heard about breakthroughs in GaN technology.

Because the Russians went second they're able to incorporate (maybe...the article isn't at all clear) the latest tech into their airplane.

But there is something a bit more ominous about this.

If the AWACS is tied into the Russian Anti-Aircraft complex then we're looking at formidable radars that are both ground and air based.  If they're doing this right then they're gonna be able to extend the detection range against our stealth force.

The solution is simple but will require a new mindset.

Stealth isn't king.  We have to be prepared to roll back enemy defenses in the way that retired Admiral Greenert talked about and start emphasizing electronic warfare.

There is no easy way.  We need to buckle down and get ready to do the hard work required to win.

Open Comment Post. Nov 19, 2017

Your new computer wallpaper courtesy of Joe Copalman's Flickr Page

PAIR OF SPADES
A pair of AH-1Z Vipers from HMLA-267 'Stingers' return to NAF El Centro after a live-fire sortie on the nearby ranges.

Rare Armor. Armored personnel carriers Type 1 Ho-Ki via Bmashina Tumblr Page.

Armored personnel carriers Type 1 Ho-Ki, in China, in the summer of 1945.

One day an armor historian will do a better accounting of Japanese, Chinese and Australian armor during WW2.

We have a glut of info on the Russians and Germans.  We have quite a bit on the US.

But the pacific is where everyone has the misconception that armor wasn't used and that it was an all infantry affair.

Part of that lies with the Marine Corps.  Up until a few years ago, Infantry was all (now its aviation) so the valor of tanks/lvtp crews was lost in the sauce.

We need to do better...that includes properly cataloging Japanese efforts during the war.

Yes I know there is an Argentine sub missing...

via CNN

The Argentine navy is stepping up its search in the South Atlantic for a 44-crew submarine that has been out of radio contact for three days.
President Maurico Macri said all national and international resources were being deployed to help find the San Juan as quickly as possible.
A Nasa research plane has joined the search for the vessel.
Britain and countries in the region have offered help after it disappeared 430km (267 miles) off the coast.
"We have not been able to find, or have visual or radar communication with the submarine," navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told a news conference.

Story here. 

Since everyone is filling my inbox with this news I decided to speak on it.

Yes I know there is a missing Argentine sub.

No I haven't commented on it.

Why?

Because we already know the story.  When a sub goes missing and it has to be searched for then 99% of the time the story will end in tragedy.

If the news release was that rescue equipment, ships and planes were rushing to the site of an Argentine sub in distress then we would have something to talk about.

We could watch the rescue effort, determine what we see that's to be cheered and moaned about, lauded the international effort etc...

But we didn't get that.

All we can really do is wait for the investigation to tell us what went wrong and hopefully for them to at least locate it in those deep waters.

Let me add this.  The sub service has come a long way.  That's for all countries.  Subs going down even in peacetime was once a fairly common occurrence.  Subs going missing and investigators being left with only guesses as to the cause was common too.

All we can do is take that 1% chance of hope and wring it for all its worth and wait.  This is big news but there just isn't much for us to talk about.

Army discipline gone wrong in a funny/ironic kind of way!

🗣 @militaryboot

A post shared by military (@badassery) on Nov 17, 2017 at 9:35pm PST

This can't be true can it?

Battle of Tarawa anniversary....Video by Lance Cpl. Gloria Lepko

We don't worship the past.

We study it.  We learn from it.  We honor those that gave so much.  If mistakes were made we strive not to repeat them.  If gallantry was shown we seek to match it.

It's not worship.  It's respect.

Military Industrial Complex Games? Congress Critters push for Israel to choose CH-53K over CH-47?

via Rotor and Wing International.

In April, multiple U.S. senators and representatives targeted Israel to solicit a CH-53K deal. While cost was not explicitly named a motivator for the members of Congress, successful procurement could bring down the price. PMA-261 works with international partners through the Foreign Military Sales program to potentially meet the international partners’ heavy lift helicopter requirements, Navair said. The more helicopters the government sells to international buyers, the more unit cost is decreased for all users. Navair told R&WI in March that the cost per unit is some $87 million at production, not including other costs. The program has come under scrutiny for its high price tag.

Story here. 

Ignore the fictional accounting that has the price of the CH-53K decreasing by almost 50% once it goes into production.  That kind of math defies everything taught in every business or economics course in the country.  How they can get away with that idiocy is beyond me but it proves two things.  People will believe anything and if you play with numbers without accountability you can make a million dollar widget appear to end up costing nothing.

My main focus is on the Congress Critters.

Not only are they forgoing their job to provide proper oversight to military projects (another issue is that the Marine Corps is programing 200 while the GAO says that they can only justify some 156 of them) but they're also acting as salespeople (in addition to what the US military does) for one US manufacturer over another.

That reeks.

The workers at Boeing could certainly use some of that cheese just like the Sikorsky (Lockheed Martin) worker can.

In short.  The Congress is picking winners (CH-53K) and losers (CH-47) and that equals corruption.

Discussion. Is Trump doing a good job?

Saw this on a page I follow and I want to see what the tribe here thinks. The question is simple.  Do you think Trump is doing a good job?  Put your thinking in the comments below, but do me a favor.  Base it on some facts!  Give examples of why you believe he's doing it right/wrong, defend your viewpoint against opposing views and tell us where you think things will go from here.

Keep it clean.  It's a discussion not a fight/flame war/pissing contest.  If we do this right then this should be good.  If we don't then I guess I'll have to take it down.

F-35 propaganda critique..."how they want it to perform, but not how it performs today.”

via The American Conservative.

They call Washington a bubble. A la-la land. Home of the “Deep State.” A long-forgotten 1980’s television series, ‘Tales of the Darkside,’ once described “a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit” as our own world. Sounds a bit like Capitol Hill.

Nowhere was that more evident than yesterday, as defense industry giant Lockheed Martin hosted an auspiciously-timed reception on the Hill to tout its multi-billion dollar F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which as anyone reading in this space would know has been more than 16 years in development, and plagued by everything from poor performance reviews and cost overruns, to grounding over a lack of spare parts and tussles over technical data and cybersecurity concerns.

Then there is the expense to the taxpayer, which as of June is projected to be more than $406 billion to complete, and another $1.4 trillion over the life of the program to be maintained. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said at the time there was a 60 percent increase in the cost estimates from 2001 to 2012 due to three major restructurings of the program. But the military kept building more planes—even delivering them to partner countries—throughout the development stage, even though operational testing has yet to begin, and won’t, until late-2018, at the soonest. That’s left the taxpayer with at least $1.7 billion in retrofitting costs as plans change and more technical bells and whistles are put onto the planes. Spare parts are in short supply, and the funds to retrofit all of the older prototypes aren’t readily available. Marine Corps Capt. Dan Grazier at the Project for Government Oversight (POGO) reported in October, that may leave some 108 planes behind as “concurrency orphans,” not fit for service, ever. At more than $100 million per plane (the military has so far built more than 250), that’s a lot of coin to be left idle in a hanger.

..........

 But what “we want” and what exists today are two different things. As Grazier pointed out to TAC, the planned event was an exercise in the former, a carefully designed artifice that emphasized the hoped-for outcomes of the most expensive program in U.S. military history, while downplaying the very real problems as momentary turbulence. Even the simulator, the flashy draw at the corner of the room, boasted capabilities that recent reviews have said the planes don’t have quite yet.

“It was a great sales pitch, it was interesting, it was neat sitting in the cockpit,” he said afterwards. “But it was a display of the brochure promises, not the finished design. It was how they want it to perform, but not how it performs today.”

Story here. 

Open Comment Post. Nov 18, 2017

Assault Amphibian School (Mini Documentary).... video by Sgt. Andrew Kuppers

New China TV - PLA Air Force Promo 2017

Yeah, these boys are starting to feel their oats.  The problem?  We're dealing with leadership of both parties that's more dysfunctional everyday, an economy that doesn't work for the average citizen, a society that is starting to wallow in depravity/no longer has the ability to differentiate between reality/fantasy and have allowed our citizenry to feel that the state owes them instead of them being well rounded productive people that contribute to the nation...not just demanding more and more (whether rights or benefits).

We have time but we must focus on the real threat and decide to immediately harden up in preparation for the big fight that is almost certainly coming.

Is this the "rationale" for Israel/Saudi action? US arming Hezbollah thru weapons donations to Lebanon?

via Free Beacon.

U.S. officials have become increasingly concerned that American military aid to the Lebanese army is arming the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah, which has been amassing a large cache of advanced arms on Israel's border, according to multiple current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

Following the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who fled the country and disclosed that Hezbollah controls the entirety of Lebanon, the U.S. government has continued its support for the Lebanese military, which multiple sources say has long been under the thumb of Hezbollah militants.

The ongoing policy is said to be fueling diplomatic tensions between the United States and Israel, which has found itself allied with Saudi Arabia as the American government advances a host of policies that have contributed to Iran's regional dominance, including in Iraq and Syria.

The Trump administration's State Department is coming under increased pressure from lawmakers and other foreign policy insiders to halt all military aid to Lebanon in light of Hariri's resignation and new evidence that Hezbollah is benefiting from the American arms and aid.

Story here. 

This whole thing is a freaking mess.

We supported moderate head choppers in Syria who were allied with ISIS against Hezbollah who was supporting Syria while at the same time we were arming the Lebanese govt that pushed those same weapons to  Hezbollah so that they could be used in the fight against moderate terrorists that we were supporting so that they could defeat Hezbollah that was supporting Syria???

Our foreign policy is batshit crazy.

Report to Congress on Chinese threat. "The United States cannot assume it will have an enduring advantage in developing next frontier military technology"

Chinese rail gun.  I didn't even know they were working on one!

via Free Beacon.

China is developing an array of advanced, high technology weapons designed to defeat the United States in a future conflict, according to a congressional commission report.

"China is pursuing a range of advanced weapons with disruptive military potential," says the annual report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

The report outlines six types of advanced arms programs that Beijing has made a priority development in seeking "dominance" in the high-tech weapons area. They include maneuverable missile warheads, hypersonic weapons, laser and beam weapons, electromagnetic railguns, counterspace weapons, and artificial intelligence-directed robots.

China revealed two anti-ship ballistic missiles with maneuverable reentry vehicles in 2010 and 2015 and also has set up the sensors and satellites needed for striking moving targets at sea—weapons designed for use against U.S. aircraft carriers and other warships.

Beijing's hypersonic missiles are in the developmental stage but are "progressing rapidly," with seven hypersonic glide vehicle tests since 2014 and one reported scramjet engine flight test in 2015.

Story here. 

Read it and cringe. 

Do you still think Russia is the country we should worry about?  If you do then you're officially a sheeple.

China is the nation that poses an existential threat to the United States!

IDF Chief of Staff: “Saudi Arabia and Israel have common interests against Iran”

via Jerusalem Online.

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot commented during a rare interview with the Saudi newspaper Elaph on the possibility of a future war against Iran and Syria. During the interview, which was released today (Thursday), Eizenkot also said that Israel and Saudi Arabia share a common understanding when it comes to the threat from Iran. According to him, Israel is even ready to share sensitive intelligence with Riyadh. “Saudi Arabia and Israel have common interests against Iran,” he explained.

Story here.

Wow.  It is beyond strange.  Syria was once considered one of the US' best friends in the region and called a moderate Arab country.  Assad allowed us to hold terrorists on his soil and conduct "enhanced interrogations" there too (the same applied to Libya's Gaddafi).

Now after only a few years Syria is the huge threat?  A magazine even called Assad's wife the rose of the Middle East and touted her forward thinking and how Syria was modernizing and moving toward being much closer with the west!

Fast forward to the here and now and Israel and Saudi Arabia are both plotting to engage in a fight in Lebanon?  They're doing this because they have common interests against Iran?

Sorry boys but I'm done. 

I'm a supporter of Israel but this is making me run cold.  Enough of the games in the Middle East.  I view it as a serious money drain with little return.  I'm good with helping Israel defend itself but at what point do we wash our hands of the situation if they put themselves into a war of national survival and they're the ones that started it?

Don't answer that.  Just drink in this article and tell me we're not looking at another 20 plus years of war in the Middle east.

Open Comment Post. Nov 17, 2018

Older guy destroys youngster spoiling for a fight...

 

https://tacticalsquad.tumblr.com/post/167574926775

 


Wow.  I bet most of you guys didn't see that coming did ya?  So let's review and see what we've learned.

1.  Size up your opponent.  Young idiot just saw grey hair.  What he failed to see is that grey hair wearing guy was in serviceable condition (from what we could see).  He wouldn't be breathing hard just because he had a sudden rush of adrenalin in prep for a fight.

2.  Dress properly.  I'm talking about the sagging stupidity that the aggressor wore.  Why wearing your pants where they just come up halfway up your ass is a thing is beyond me.  Ignoring the idiocy of that fashion choice if you decide you're gonna fight then its beyond comprehension why you would dress that.  He immediately suffered limited mobility (assuming he had at the very least shadow boxed at home) and in the "walk in" to the encounter he even had to pause to pull up his pants.

3.  Patty cake isn't your friend.  I don't know what young-dumb was thinking but from my chair it appeared that he wasn't really prepared mentally or physically.  That patty cake stuff at the beginning of the fight just set him up for the knockout blow.

In short, you need to properly size up your opponent, dress everyday as if you might end up needing to defend yourself and finally if a fight can't be avoided you need to be prepared to engage and end it as quickly as possible.

I have no doubt old guy sized up young-dumb properly and knew that he could successfully engage him, and in the end he showed mercy.  Young-dumb was out cold on the street.  If he decided to do a finishing move by throat stomping him there is little young-dumb could do to prevent that.

Street fights.  Avoid if possible but if you can't then fight hard and fast and finish it quickly.

H145M Special Forces Light Attack Helicopter