The Chinese have built a Joint Rapid Deployment Force & What is a Chinese "Super Heavy" Mech Infantry Division?

via China Defense Blog.

Soon, the CMC will have two corps of light infantry (The Marine with six infantry and a SpOP brigades and the Airborne of the same), two Army Air Assault Brigades (the 121st and the 161th) and  a super heavy Mech Infantry Division (the 112th) under its direct strategic command.  It does not take much of an imagination to picture a Joint Rapid Reaction Force in the making.  The JRRF (kuaisu fanyin budui) concept was first proposed by the British Army in the 1990s consists of combat and support elements from land, sea and air to a trouble spot rapidly and at a short notice.  More importantly than just showing the flag, a JRRF is capable of fighting a high intensity small/medium scale engagement.

Story here. 

I love this guys blog.  He gives us a real order of battle with regard to Chinese forces.  I'd even bet that Navy, Marine Corps and even DoD intel monitors his blog for the latest and greatest.

Having said that a few things come to mind.

You wonder why I scream at the moon when it comes to the Company Landing Team concepts and literally fear the idea of the Expeditionary Rifle Squad?

This is why.  The Chinese are getting ready to push forward combined arms teams at the Battalion level and higher.  I just don't see the formations that are being contemplated surviving against such forces.

Fighting and winning against larger units might sound good in the classroom or even at the war colleges but in reality its gonna be a meat grinder for the guys we send into it.

Next is that the Chinese are doing what we aren't.  We're replacing the ability to surge battalions, brigades or divisions to where they're needed with the idea that penny packets of soldiers or Marines will act as a deterrent to enemy activity.

I don't believe that for one minute.

If this idea had real merit it would have been tried before.  Wait.  It has.  Before WW2 with the idea of Coastal Defense Battalions.  We saw what happened to them and it will happen to our forces in the modern era.

Unfortunately I don't even see it being that successful.  What we're doing today is more akin to small outposts used during the Vietnam war.  How many were isolated, cutoff and destroyed by the enemy during that war?

Last but not least.

WTF is a Super Heavy Mech Infantry Division?

Desert Riders....

SAAB Historic Aircraft - Insights to some of our milestone productions

2018 is when the USMC selects the winner of the ACV contest...

via Marine Corps Times

Next summer the ­Marines will select a new combat Assault ­Amphibious Vehicle to replace the current fleet, which has been in use for more than 40 years.

The new Amphibious Combat Vehicle will be a wheeled, V-shaped hull armored personnel carrier designed to bring Marines from ship to shore and keep pace with an M1A1 Abrams tank rolling inland.

The final version will be selected from prototypes by SAIC and BAE Systems. Production is expected to begin next fall.

For now, however, the Corps will ­continue to upgrade the existing AAV fleet while the ACVs come into the inventory.

The Corps plans to purchase 204 ACV 1.1 versions and then move to acquire 490 ACV 1.2 versions after an initial production run.

The ACV must carry a crew of three along with 10 fully loaded Marine ­infantrymen and a remotely operated .50-caliber gun. It’s expected to later carry a dual .50-caliber machine gun and either a 40mm or 30mm cannon.

The SAIC version can carry the ­three-person crew and 11 infantrymen while the BAE Systems version can carry the crew plus 13 infantrymen.

Marines have 964 AAVs housed in three Assault Amphibious Battalions, two active and one reserve.

Still seems like they're slow walking us (especially if you compare the pace of this program with the CH-53K) but ok. 

We'll see what we'll see this summer.

U.S. and French forces conduct an simualted amphibious raid during Alligator Dagger....Pics by Sgt. Jessica Lucio

US Marine Corps Systems Command - M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle ....SHUT UP!!! This is great news!

SHUT UP!

This is great news!

Never much sold on the move to the M4, wondered why we didn't move forward on the M16A5...but this is the best of both worlds....

Screw you!  I like it!

Cold in the South...small whine...

I hate the cold.  Always have.  First introduction?  Fucking boot camp on that little bullshit field op and since I went to the land of men, not sandfleas we were up on the side of a big ass hill, a storm front bringing freezing temperatures and high winds rolled in....suffice it to say it was the first of many unpleasant meetings with Mr. Jack Frost.

Why do I call him Mr. Jack Frost and not simply Jack Frost?

Because when something can kick your ass that hard without you being able to do a thing about it then you refer to that something with respect.

Oh and I know you New York bubbas and Canadian Lumberjack bastards are gonna chime in but we're talking about cold in the deep south of the United fucking States of a Gawd Damn America.

This cold is wet.

It gets into your bones.

It can crawl thru your layers and tag you no matter how warmly you think you've dressed.

The answer?

There is only one.

You stay inside and wait for the misery to pass.  Then you pray for normal weather.  Ya know.  98 degrees with 100 percent humidity!  That's more like it.

Cold.  Cold will test your manhood.  The jungle?  Yeah, everything crawls at night, you swear bushes are moving, glowing eyes are beside you--above you--behind you...and no one is wearing NVGs... and the insects are terrible.  Even that's tolerable.  The desert?  120 during the day with zero humidity?  Yawn.  Pass the water, find some shade and life goes on.

But cold?  Cold changes the course of nations.

Open Comment Post. Dec 29, 2017

Holy Shit! Ruger is bringing back its PC Carbine!!!!

I don't know the exact history of the original rifle but I think that some gunsmith worked out a way for it to run Glock mags which made them not only rare, sought after and collectors items, but they supposedly also ran well.

I despise the look of this thing.  Why must a carbine have the "Tacticool" look?  Just give me a classic streamlined beauty that's easily handled and wonderfully pointable and I'm good.

Regardless I can't wait to see how one of those things shoot.

Only in America. The Pentagon creates bureaucracy to solve bureaucracy....

via Defense News.

The first two months of 2018 will see two major shifts on the business side of the Pentagon, with the creation of three new offices that will report directly to the secretary of defense.

The goal, deputy secretary of defense Patrick Shanahan told reporters on Dec. 21, is to make the changes as irreversible as possible in a system notoriously impervious to substantive changes.

“We want to make sure that with the stroke of a pen or a few clicks of the keyboard, we can’t undo progress,” Shanahan said. “When you think about enduring change, you have to wire or alter the work so that you don’t regress. That’s the hard part about big bureaucracy — is making enduring change.”

The deputy acknowledged that the changes will lead to plenty of complaints from people whose offices are being moved around —“you’ll probably hear screaming and yelling because ‘change is bad,’ ” he predicted for reporters — but he said that “if you’re going to have a more performance-driven operation, you have to unwind the bureaucracy and reorganize.”

Story here. 

Amazing.

So they create three new offices to reform the Pentagon.

The dude that's probably gonna ramrod the effort says that people will scream NOT BECAUSE THEIR JOB IS BEING ELIMINATED but because they're being reorganized.

Only in America.

How much money could be saved if someone actually had the balls to go thru the Pentagon with a fine tooth comb and start slicing positions that make no bloody sense?

How much waste, fraud and abuse is actually going on in that building?

I think we're all afraid to find out.

IDF expands use of Namers across their entire force...

via Jerusalem Post.

The IDF is strengthening infantry units by expanding the use of its advanced Armored Personnel Carrier, dubbed Namer, or “leopard,” and supplying the purple barets Givati Brigade in addition to Golani units already using the vehicle.

“After extensive trials, by the end of 2020 the entire brigade will be operating the Namer,” said a statement by the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit, adding that the development was a part  of a process of integrating use of the Namer into the IDF as whole.

Story here. 

Namers for everyone huh?  Sure looks like it.  So who's gonna get that new wheeled APC?  Is it just for reserves?  By my count and by reading the article it seems like every active unit in the IDF that rates APCs will be equipped with Namers.

So when the IDF next goes to war, and they sure look like they're gearing up for it just like everyone else, they're gonna be using 2 infantry carriers instead of the huge number we see today.

Namers, and Eitans.

The various heavy APCs based on Centurion and T-55 MBTs are gone.  M-113s are gonna be gone too.  The IDF doesn't seem to be too in love with ANY MRAP vehicle to a large degree and the ones they do operate seem relegated to the police forces they have....

This is extremely interesting.

The rest of the world is massing on the idea of wheeled APCs and the Israelis are going all in on a heavy tracked APC instead.

I would so love to get my hands on combat simulations they've run to see what they came up with when it comes to survivability of the various models around the world.

Netherland Army receives its first Vector Special Forces Vehicle

The pic is via The Royal Netherlands Army Instagram page but the translation is via Google.  But it does look right!

Open Comment Post. Dec 28, 2017

Forged By The Sea campaign is not impressing...Small Rant Included...

When the fuck did it happen?

When the fuck did the US Motherfucking Army crack the code on doing effective ad campaigns and the rest of the Gawd Damn Services (to include the blessed and beloved Marine Corps) go batshit stupid?

Yeah the fucking Army was smart enough to include this SF bubba jumping out of a plane in an commercial...even crusty, cynical bastards like me were saying "ok...that's sorta badass"...

Forged By The Sea?  With some dude wearing a scuba mask coming at ya?

Is that suppose to be hard core?

Is that suppose to fucking inspire?

Jesus H. Christ!  Fire all the ad companies (except the bubbas working for the Army) and toss me the fucking contract.  I could do 10 times better than the bullshit I'm seeing pumped out!

Rant over.

British Army...Multi-national battlegroup receives orders while on Operation Cabrit in Poland.

Multi-national battlegroup receives orders while on Operation Cabrit in Poland. 
The British Army are currently deployed on operations supporting NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) and currently have forces located in Estonia and Poland

George Washington's betrayal of Thomas Paine...a misunderstanding or a sad but unknown part of US history?

via HistoryNet

George Washington refused to come to the rescue when the pamphleteer who put him on his high horse faced the guillotine.

On December 28, 1793, at the height of the Reign of Terror in France, Paris police rousted Thomas Paine in the cold hours before dawn, arrested him as a “foreign conspirator” and locked him in a wet, 10-by-8-foot cellar in Luxembourg Prison. The only light came from cracks in a boarded-up window. Paine was sure the guillotine awaited him.

Citizen Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense helped ignite the American Revolution, was an enthusiastic early supporter of the French Revolution. He received a hero’s welcome when he arrived in Paris in 1792 and was even granted honorary French citizenship and a seat in the National Convention, the body charged with writing a constitution for the new republic. But Paine angered Maximilien Robespierre and other Jacobin extremists when he urged the Convention to spare the life of the deposed French king, Louis XVI. Instead, Jacobins brandished the king’s severed head in front of a cheering crowd. Then they proceeded to round up thousands of suspected counterrevolutionaries who, Paine observed, fell “as fast as the guillotine could cut their heads off.” Now they’d come for him, too.

Story here. 

Early release is a sad joke...compassion framed as reform is already killing people...

via Heavy.com

John Dalton Jr., of Omaha, Nebraska, was convicted in 1999 of manslaughter in the death of his 22-year-old wife, Shannon Dalton, and was released from prison in 2010. Omaha Police say Dalton, 46, is now a person of interest in the December 26 shooting deaths of his parents, John Dalton Sr., 70, and Jean Dalton, 65, and his niece, Leonna Dalton-Phillip, 18. They were found dead Tuesday night in their Omaha home.

Murder charges have been filed against Dalton.

Police are still at the scene investigating and are also searching for Dalton, who also goes by the names JJ Dalton and Jay Dalton.

Story here. 

We haven't touched on this issue but early release/parole of offenders is a joke.  Its an attempt to be compassionate wrapped in reform but it's already killing people.

But what has me spinning is that this guy had all the warning signs of ending up where he is.  The only question was who would his victims be.

History is a tricky thing.

It must be remembered, honored and cherished .... both the good and the bad.  But the evils of the past should not guide today's behavior.

An international example of this is the drama between S. Korea and Japan. An example closer to home is the issues with our criminal justice system.

There was a time when people were wrongfully convicted.  It still might be happening today.

But a murderer is granted a weak prison sentence?  He killed his wife and did less than 25 years in prison?

That alone is racists....it's like the justice system considered her to be only 2/3rds a person!  

This piece of shit killed his wife and gets to plead to a lesser charge?  He's on probation and gets additional charges to include drug dealing?  And now he's killed again?

Spare me your morality.  If I was the judge or on the jury I would accept nothing less than the death penalty.

I don't want to hear about his upbringing, hard times, socio-economic conditions etc...the only thing we should push for is the right thing....or a cop that has the commonsense to end the rampage via a little street justice.

Open Comment Post. Dec 27, 2017

Japan & S. Korea considering F-35B's for their Amphibious Assault Ships? Where did this come from!

via Military.com

South Korea currently has one amphibious assault ship, the 14,300-ton, 653-foot Dokdo, which is the largest ship in the South Korean navy. A second Dokdo-class amphib is planned for 2020.

"I understand that the military top brass have recently discussed whether they can introduce a small number of F-35B fighters and operate them aboard the new ship that has already been deployed and one to be additionally built," a military source told Yonhap.

Japan is also considering buying F-35Bs to operate from its helicopter carrier, the Japan Times reported.

The problem for South Korea and Japan will be in redesigning the decks of the amphibs to take the heat and stress of the F-35B vertical landings. The Dokdo class ships now are configured to support 10 helicopters.

"Considerations will continue about whether we can run F-35Bs by redesigning the decks of the Dokdo and the new ship that is being constructed," a second military source told Yonhap.

Story here. 

Interesting.  When I was in the F-35 camp I stated that we would see this happen.  Considering the expense of the F-35, coupled with the deck issues along with the size of these ships I just don't see it happening.

They just couldn't carry enough F-35's to be useful.

But ignore all that.

Japan and S. Korea are mortal enemies.  Now we have them releasing almost SIMULTANEOUS stories of them thinking about placing F-35's on their LHDs?

This just smells.

I'm not ready to call it propaganda but there is much more to this story than we know.

At Least 10,000 Killed During the Tiananmen Square Massacre

via TheEpochTimes

At least 10,000 people were killed during the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989 a secret British diplomatic cable has alleged, citing a source within the Chinese communist regime.

An unnamed high level source from the Chinese State Council provided the death count, via an intermediary, to Alan Donald, Britain’s ambassador to China at the time.

Donald sent the information to London a day after the massacre occurred. The previously secret cable was declassified in October and then obtained by news website HK01.

The death toll of 10,000 is much higher than what is usually associated with the massacre committed by the People’s Liberation Army. Figures have ranged between several hundred to a couple of thousand.

The Chinese regime said at the end of June 1989 that 200 civilians and several dozen security personnel had died in Beijing as security forces dealt with “counter-revolutionary riots,” according to the BBC.

However, the 10,000 number does closely match those of U.S. documents declassified in 2014. Those files estimated that 10,454 people were killed and some 40,000 people were injured. The U.S. information was provided by sources within the Chinese military, reported HKFP.

Story here.

Everyone forgets.  Correction.  No one wants to remember.

That beacon of free markets that our corporations want to enter so badly is the land of mass murder of its citizens that disagree with it's policies, that jails journalists on a daily basis, that sells the organs of its criminals to those wealthy enough to afford them....and they seek the destruction of the US.

A dirty millionaire in Moscow that is jailed gets pages of ink in newspapers and hours of coverage on TV news shows.  10K Chinese citizens killed in the open hardly gets a whisper.

Chinese Americans bask in the glory of a rising China, bad mouth other Americans that warn of the danger and make excuses for bad behavior of their motherland.

Meanwhile Russia is seen as the big bad, while the dragon with a knife ready to slice our throat is courted like the home coming queen and memes carry the day instead of reality.

Let's hope the 10K that were killed in Tiananmen can forgive us.