CDR Salamander

The Israeli navy has dropped plans to purchase U.S. made warships and instead is exploring the possibility of a home-grown military shipbuilding industry, according to the website of Defense News.

The Ministry of Defense had originally planned on purchasing either the small Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) from Lockheed Martin or similar corvettes built by Northrop Grumman. However, costs for the LCS ships skyrocketed to $637 million, and costs for the corvettes were estimated at $450 million, both deemed prohibitive to the navy.

“As much as we sought commonality with the U.S. Navy, it became much, much more expensive than planned,” a naval source said. “At the end of the day, we had no choice but to face that fact that, for us, it was unaffordable."

Instead, the ministry is now considering building two ships based on the German Meko A-100 corvette at the Israel Shipyards in Haifa, where the project would give a much-needed shot in the arm to the economy.

Labels: Israel, LCS

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 14:21

The commanding officer of a P-3 Orion squadron who overshot a runway and crashed a specialized $93 million plane in Afghanistan last year was not current on his flight-hour requirements and was violating Navy rules prohibiting jet-lagged pilots from flying, investigators found.

(The CO) brought the plane in too fast, hit the brakes and skidded off the runway. The starboard landing gear was sheared off, two starboard side propellers broke off and the right wing caught fire as the plane came to a stop, an investigation found. One crew member suffered a twisted ankle and all five walked away from the aircraft.

(He) had failed to meet the pilot proficiency requirements — at least 10 flight hours per month — for five of the six months preceding the crash, according to the Judge Advocate General Manual report, or JAGMan.

(He) assigned himself as pilot of the plane after he had traveled across 9½ time zones during the previous 46 hours. Despite regulations requiring several days of rest after such a trip, he took the controls 14 hours after arriving at a forward operating base, ...

(he) was unable to sign for the aircraft because his name was not in the maintenance database. But, the report said, he told the crew: “No question here. I am the CO and this is my aircraft.”

A crew member told investigators that (he) “had to be coached on nearly all aspects of the combat arrival.”

When asked why he failed to maintain pilot proficiency, (he) “said that CO duties, his desire to spread flight time with junior pilots and aircraft availability” were factors.

Under Navy rules, pilots should allow an additional day for each hour exceeding a three-hour time change. When asked why he didn’t follow those guidelines, (he) told investigators, “That’s never been our culture.”

Just before the crash, (he) failed to run through the landing checklist at 500 feet. He told investigators that the checklist is “just a technique.”

Lewis tried to blame the crash in part on the cockpit arrangement, saying he “did not have airspeed in my scan as much as I would” in other versions of the P-3.

After the crash, when he climbed out of the burning plane, (he) laid down on the wing and put his hands over his head. He said he “stopped there for a second, when the enormity of the whole thing hit him.”

Two flight engineers grabbed his boot and yanked him off the wing as a crash crew responded to extinguish the flames.

Labels: Aircraft

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 10:26

A CHEEKY artist has been given a £20,000 National Lottery grant - to look at girls' bums.

Sue Williams was given the cash to "explore cultural attitudes towards female buttocks".

She will create plaster cast moulds of women's behinds to try to understand their place in contemporary culture.

Labels: Art

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:09

The Hurt Locker opened in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, and will go into wider release over this upcoming holiday weekend (I saw the film from a screener copy). This is a must-see film, not for any particular message but for anyone interested in an honest presentation of the kind of warfare fought in Iraq. On Thursday, I’ll interview Marc Boal on The Ed Morrissey Show in greater depth just as it opens on more screens.

Labels: Iraq, Movies

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 07:01

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday put troops on alert after a coup in Honduras and said he would respond militarily if his envoy to the Central American country was kidnapped or killed.

Chavez said Honduran soldiers took away the Cuban ambassador and left the Venezuelan ambassador on the side of a road after beating him during the army's coup against his leftist ally, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

The Honduran army ousted Zelaya and exiled him in Central America's first military coup since the Cold War, after he upset the army by trying to win re-election.

Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power.
...
It's not surprising that chavistas throughout the region are claiming that he was victim of a military coup. They want to hide the fact that the military was acting on a court order to defend the rule of law and the constitution, and that the Congress asserted itself for that purpose, too.

Mrs. Clinton has piled on as well. Yesterday she accused Honduras of violating "the precepts of the Interamerican Democratic Charter" and said it "should be condemned by all." Fidel Castro did just that. Mr. Chávez pledged to overthrow the new government.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court's order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out.

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. "We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development."

Besides opposition from the Congress, the Supreme Court, the electoral tribunal and the attorney general, the president had also become persona non grata with the Catholic Church and numerous evangelical church leaders. On Thursday evening his own party in Congress sponsored a resolution to investigate whether he is mentally unfit to remain in office.

"I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference," Obama said.

"We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law, to reaffirm their democratic vocation, and to commit themselves to resolve political disputes peacefully and through dialogue," Clinton said in a statement.

Labels: Latin America

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 22:30

Efforts by local congressmen to block moving a Norfolk-based aircraft carrier to Florida and to give more clout to opponents of the Navy's proposed outlying landing field won approval in the U.S. House in Washington on Thursday.

The measures were included in the House legislation that would authorize $680 billion for defense spending in 2010, including a 3.4 percent pay raise for all service members.

The House kept intact an amendment that would cancel spending $46.3 million to dredge the harbor at Mayport Naval Station near Jacksonville, Fla., in preparation for a new carrier. The amendment was written by U.S. Rep. Glenn Nye, D-2nd District, and co-sponsored by U.S. Reps. Randy Forbes, R-4th District, and Rob Wittman, R-1st District.

Nye said Thursday that the amendment was not a hard sell in the House.

"I think we had the power of logic on our side," he said.

The three legislators have said it doesn't make sense to authorize spending money for the dredging when the Navy has agreed to wait another year to make a decision on carrier homeports.

"The Department of Defense needs to first determine whether or not moving a carrier away from Norfolk is a good idea before they start spending money on the transfer," Wittman said in a written statement after the vote.

The money for the dredging would be redirected to construction and repairs at Navy and Marine Corps Reserve facilities.

The defense bill also includes an amendment by Forbes that would give communities more control over whether the Navy could construct an outlying landing field, or OLF, in their jurisdiction.

Forbes' amendment would allow a county being considered for an OLF to have a final say on whether to accept it. The Navy would be unable to build a landing field if the local government formally opposed it within 90 days of final site selection.

U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, also successfully included an amendment to the House bill that would prohibit building an outlying landing field at Sandbanks or Hale's Lake in the northeastern part of his state. The Navy has considered those locations and three others in Virginia's Southampton, Sussex and Surry counties.

Labels: Aircraft, Carrier

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 23:09

Waugh had applied to the War Office for leave to complete his late3st novel - Brideshead Revisited (Everyman's Library Classics) - but was told that he had been found employment with Major-General Thomas as an ADC. At a meeting arranged over lunch a the Aperitif Restaurant in London, Waugh tried to warn Thomas that he was not the ideal man to be an aide-de-camp, but nonetheless the general was rather taken with the thought of having a literary celebrity on his staff and accepted the novelist for a week's trail.

It was a disaster. Waugh arrived at the Divisional HQ on Tuesday, 29 February, and was gone by the Thursday of the same week. The reason for his short stay and his relations with the general, were recorded in Waugh's diary:

The primary lack of sympathy seemed to come from my being slightly drunk in his mess on the first evening. I told him I could not change the habits of a lifetime for a whim of his. The HQ was architecturally deplorable and the staff glum and drab.

One of the staff officers at the HQ, Lieutenant-Colonel Williams Thomas, remembers Waugh's short stay and a quite different reason for his departure:

Evelyn Waugh was always pretty well 'oiled' and got sacked shortly after his arrival when he came gangling down the stairs in 'A' Mess singing, "His father was a harpist, his father was a harpist." Waugh had been checking in Who's Who and discovered that Thomas's father had been a harpist to Queen Victoria. We all thought it was hilarious. I do not thing Waught was ever forgiven for letting the cat out of the bag!

Labels: Books, WWII

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:19

Lieutenant-Commander Max Shean, who has died aged 90, was one of the small band of young men who, in the face of extraordinary peril, carried the sea war into enemy harbours; in the process they won a total of 68 awards for bravery, including four VCs; for his own exploits, Shean received a DSO and Bar.

His first mission was Operation Source, the attack by a flotilla of X-craft on the German battleship Tirpitz in north Norway in September 1943. The X-craft were manned by passage crews and towed there by parent submarines, while attack crews, including Shean's, prepared themselves in the towing vessels.

Disaster struck, however, when Shean's X-9, behind Syrtis, broke her tow and the passage crew was lost. The towrope became tangled round Syrtis's port propeller, and Shean, whose diving suit was in X-9, plunged over the side into the freezing waters. Wearing overalls weighted with steel bars in the pockets, Shean repeatedly duck-dived until he could free the tangled rope. Knowing that, if attacked from the air, Syrtis would dive and abandon him on the surface, Shean was more frightened than he had ever been; and when he was hauled on board, the submarine's commanding officer rewarded him with a brusque "Well done!"

One of the lessons of Operation Source was the potential for confusion during multiple attacks; so on Operation Guidance, in April 1944, Shean, now in command of X-24, was towed by Sceptre to Bergen, Norway, to make a solo attack on a large floating dock.

Shean successfully penetrated the fjords to reach the harbour, but faulty intelligence caused him to lay X-24's explosive charges under a 7,800-ton German merchant ship, Barenfels, instead of the floating dock. Otherwise it was a model attack, and 24 hours later, sick and suffering from headaches caused by the stale air in the boat, Shean and his crew rendezvoused at sea with Sceptre. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his great courage, skill and determination in a most hazardous enterprise.

Following D-Day, Shean's flotilla was deployed to the Far East in command of an improved craft, XE-4. When Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, and an experienced submariner, saw his first XE-craft he declared it was a "suicide craft" which had no place in the Allies' order of battle. But when orders came from Washington to cut two underwater telegraph cables off Japanese-occupied Saigon, he found that the British midget submarines were the only force capable of achieving this.

Labels: Britain, Submarine, WWII

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:41

Hannan: Yes, Europe has swung away from socialism. But it’s important for Americans to realize where Europe is starting from — it is quite normal on this side of the Atlantic for governments to take 45 or 50 percent of GDP in tax. So Europe’s swing to the Right and the U.S. swing to the Left still leave America less socialist than Europe.

None the less, the swing is significant for this reason. Voters are now way ahead of their politicians on the issue of tax and spend. While the political parties dance about trying not to use the word “cuts,” the electorate has clocked that reductions are urgent. The recession is forcing everyone to make economies: every business, every household. Do we really need two cars? Is there a cheaper mobile phone package? Can we get a better deal on insurance? They can see that it is possible — necessary indeed — to cut spending, but that such cuts need not have too deleterious an impact on our quality of life. And they simply can’t understand why the same logic doesn’t apply to the government. It is outrageous to exempt the public sector from the shrinkage of the economy — i.e., to tax the wealth creators even more in order to cushion the rest.

One of the reasons we Tories are leaving the EPP, and forming a new alliance of Euro-skeptic parties, is to make these arguments. We will put together a coalition of Atlanticist, free-market conservative parties that believe in national independence and parliamentary democracy. In doing so, we will break the monopoly in Brussels. Because, I stress this again, the “swing to the Right” was, in many cases, a swing to pantywaist Christian Democrat parties whose politicians, in the U.S., would be bang in the middle of the Democratic Party.

Advice for American conservatives? Only this. The Republican Party’s success depended on its becoming a popular party — that is, a party that was for the people against the governing elites. Half a century ago, it was a party of big business and old money, and it kept losing: it was in permanent opposition in both houses, and tended to win the presidency only when it fielded a non-partisan Ike-type candidate. Then it changed: it embraced localism, small government and states’ rights. It went from being a New England, preppy, country club party to being a Sun Belt, anti-Washington mass movement. And you know what? It started winning.

My worry is that, in recent years, the party has gone into reverse. It has become, as in pre-Goldwater days, the party of federal spending, budget deficits, external protectionism (the steel tariffs), overseas garrisons, the denial of states’ rights (the gay marriage amendment) and, latterly, bailouts and nationalizations.

I speak as someone who has a more uncomplicated loyalty to the GOP than to my own party, and I desperately want it to start winning again. But that means getting back to basics: to the basic idea that informed the U.S. Constitution, namely that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect.

Labels: Republicans

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 20:58

SPYING is a sophisticated and expensive business—and gathering military intelligence using unmanned aircraft can be prohibitively so. Predator and Global Hawk, two types of American drone frequently flown in Afghanistan and Iraq, cost around $5,000 and $26,500 an hour respectively to operate. The aircraft themselves cost between $4.5m and $35m each, and the remote-sensing equipment they carry can more than double the price. Which is why less elegant but far cheaper balloons are now being used instead.

Such blimps can keep surveillance and ordnance-guiding equipment aloft for a few hundred dollars an hour. They cost hundreds of thousands, not millions, of dollars. And they can stay in the air for more than a week, whereas most drones fly for no more than 30 hours at a time. They are also easy to deploy, because no airfield is needed. A blimp can be stored in the back of a jeep, driven to a suitable location, launched in a couple of hours and winched down again even faster.

At least 20 countries use blimps—both global military powers, such as America, Britain and France, and smaller regional ones, including Ireland, Pakistan, Poland and the United Arab Emirates. Many are employed in Iraq. In November 2008 Aerostar International of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, began filling a $1.8m order for 36 blimps to be deployed by the American armed forces in Iraq. But Afghanistan may prove a bigger market. That is because it is difficult to pick up satellite signals in the valleys of that mountainous country. As a result blimps, adjusted to hover at appropriate heights, are often used to relay data to and from satellites.

As politicians around the world seek to cut public spending, the attractions of blimps are growing. In January America’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, told the Senate’s armed-services committee that the Department of Defence would pursue greater quantities of “75% solutions” that could be realised in weeks or months instead of “99% exquisite systems” that take more than a decade to develop. Barry Watts, an analyst at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says America’s air force has been criticised for not providing enough aerial data to “insatiable” ground forces. Blimps, Mr Watts reckons, will help them sate that appetite.

Labels: Airships

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 07:18

Labels: Diversity

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:16

Labels: Afghanistan

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 23:47

"I will pursue greater quantities of systems that represent the 75 percent solution instead of smaller quantities of 99 percent, exquisite systems,"

Labels: SECDEF

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 09:10

Labels: Books

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:24

In a PETA campaign scheduled to launch in October, Che Guevara’s 24 year-old granddaughter, Lydia, poses half naked with the tag line ‘join the vegetarian revolution.’

Labels: Moonbats

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 23:22

A California congressman who served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan convinced the House Armed Services Committee to order a full review of the criteria used for giving awards for gallantry and valor after a senior defense official said technological advancements and new combat tactics might be the reason fewer of the highest medals are being issued.

At the urging of Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif., a Marine combat veteran elected to Congress in November, the armed services committee has asked for a review of trends in awarding the Medal of Honor to determine if the low number of awards in the current wars is the result of “inadvertent subjective bias amongst commanders.”

The committee also wants the Defense Department to survey officers and noncommissioned officers in leadership positions to look at attitudes about acts of valor. Hunter is looking for the reasons behind not just fewer nominations, but also a trend since the Vietnam War in which the only Medal of Honor awards have been for people who died during an act of valor.

In a June 2 letter to Hunter that was released Wednesday, Gail McGinn, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said defense officials see nothing amiss in the Peralta decision.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who made the final call, “was advised by five independent reviewers who all individually concluded that the evidence included in the [Medal of Honor] recommendation did not support the award,” McGinn wrote.

The reviewers included a former commanding general of Marine forces in Iraq, a neurosurgeon, two pathologists and a Medal of Honor recipient, McGinn said.

Her letter also responds to Hunter’s larger question about whether the criteria have changed over time. A 2008 review of guidance used in making the awards “found no evidence of a posthumous requirement, either written or unwritten,” she said.

What has changed, McGinn said, is warfare. U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq “are inherently different from previous major conflicts,” she said.

Labels: Heroes

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 09:10

US Marine Corps General James Mattis, head of US Joint Forces Command, cautioned against the military becoming too reliant on technology and command-and-control (C2) systems, which he believes could increase vulnerability.

During a 1 June speech in Washington, Gen Mattis, who also serves as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation, called for moderating "our idea that technology is going to solve this human problem called war".

"War, he said, is primarily "a human endeavor [and] a social problem", so the US military should be careful in assuming what solutions technology might provide because its enemies have a history of avoiding their foe's strengths and exploiting weaknesses.

Overly relying on technical C2 systems and centralized decision making woudl cause the US military to become the "single most vulnerable military in the world", Gen. Mattis warned. Data and communications networks represent a 'single point of failure' that could be attacked, resulting in disabled command structures.

Labels: Antitransformationalism, Heroes

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:19

Labels: Humor, USNA

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:44

IF MEMORY SERVES, my first "Bird Hunter's Diary" column appeared in 2002. That would mean I've written almost 50 of these for a total of somewhere around 70,000 words. Looking back now, every word has been worth the writing and some of them perhaps have been worth reading. With mixed feelings, I now tum the last leaf in a book that has gone tattered, because it has gone exposed into many a thorny place.

You have been good to me, so I feel that you are owed an explanation for my departure. That may seem like a funny thing to say, since we have not even been formally introduced. But more than a few of you have, over the years, contacted me by phone or letter to express compliments and gratitude. Some of you have invited me to hunt with you, and your invitations I still keep in a special drawer in my desk, even if I have not been able (yet) to take you up on the offers.

A few more have been less charitable, but at least they were honest. Anyway, I suspect that we may in fact have met without knowing it. If you've ever arrived to hunt on public land in Iowa or Minnesota, and got there just in time to see a skinny fellow walking away from a dented old Dodge Neon-parked in your favorite spot-with a little black dog in front of him, well, that was me. Sorry I got there first. If it's any consolation, I never took too mauy.

For several years I have made a little bit less than a living as an outdoor writer. Little bits can accumulate over time, however, eventually amounting to quite a bit. So there is a bare, pragmatic, financial reason for my departure, but that is not finally the deciding factor. (You don't need to worry about me, by the way; I recently landed a "real job.")

John Lennon said, ~~Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." That's one of the few things he said that I agree with, and somewhere in those words is the reason I cannot write any more stories about hunting, at least for a while. About the time you read this, I'll wake up one morning and turn 40-not old, by any means, but older than I've ever been. A week before that, my oldest daughters will become teenagers; the week after, Rascal will turn 77 in dog years. Nobody is quite sure what happened to 'the years between these momentous milestones and the time Rascal and I went dawn-to-dusk in steep, slippery, snowy country on six young legs. Some time has gone missing, and stealthily so.

Other changes too have come upon me unaware, riding as stowaways on the years. At age 12, I bought my first outdoor magazine at the IGA Foods store in Greenville, Kentucky, and read it cover to cover. From then on, an outdoor writer was all I ever wanted to be. It still seems almost incredulous to me that I actually pulled it off, that there have been so many people willing to pay me to hunt, fish, and tell stories about hunting and fishing. Men who were my idols are now just a few pages away, to my left and to my right. They love what they do and I still admire them, but now I am surprised by a burning desire within myself to simply hunt, and not to hunt for a living. I want to walk the fields like you, without having to produce a tale or a picture.

One of my favorite writers is an Oregonian named Ted Leeson. In his wonderful book of fly fishing essays, Jerusalem Creek, Leeson observes that he tends to re-evaluate life every 10 years or so, shaking things up and rearranging. So I was probably overdue last summer when I walked into an antique shop in Des Moines,just tagging along with my parents, and found my grandfather's hunting coat hanging on a peg. Just like the one he had worn, it was made of stiff brown canvas with a soft flannel back liner and a corduroy collar. It had no tags and no logo, a relic from a less brand-conscious era when hunters were not walking billboards. Held shut by only three plastic buttons, it offered proof that there once was a time when hunters did not expect to be as comfortable outdoors as they arc indoors. It was pristine, and a perfect fit. Even for an outdoor writer, it was an easy decision at only $15.

My grandfather never got paid to go hunting, but he did have a few hunting magazines around in his later years. He mined coal for almost 35 years. He hunted on his days off, or whenever he was laid off. He hunted rabbits, squirrels and quail, and he ate them. Generally he fried them. If he was feeling fancy, he made gravy to go with them. As long as I. knew him, he shot everything with the same gun, a Remington Model 1100 Light 20. After an aneurysm had taken my grandmother, he remarried to a widowed schoolteacher w~o had done well saving her money. She bought him the 1100 on their first anniversary. She died in 1993 and he followed several months later.

Late last fall, I sold all my shotguns except his. At some point he had carved his initials (L.M.) into the plastic butt plate with his pocketknife. My father bought a new stock for the gun two years ago, because Granddad beat hell out of the old one, taking it exposed through many a thorny place. But we kept the butt plate. Granddad's initials remain visible, and seem to us like the signature on a cheap card that comes with an expensive gift, but for some reason never gets thrown away.

All of that is to say that the old canvas coat has provoked some re-evaluation of life, and some rearranging. This year I'll be hunting less, and enjoying it more.

My belief in the importance of this column has made it hard to quit even when I knew that I should. Besides practical information on bird hunting and the dogs that make it worth doing, this column offers at least occasional opportunities for celebration, questioning, lament, laughter and protest. I've attempted to explore all of the above at one time or another, while trying to avoid self-righteousness. If I have failed, the fault is entirely mine. If I have succeeded, I cannot accept all the credit; I had good role models.

Hopefully the editor can find someone to take up this concept and continue writing about the things that occur to people when they are out hunting. As for me, I'll probably still jot a few things down and save them up.

Thank you, and good night.

Labels: Books

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:05

On 15 August 1961 he found himself, aged 19, guarding the Berlin Wall, then in its third day of construction, at the corner of Ruppinerstraße and Bernauerstraße. At that stage of construction, the Berlin Wall was only a low barbed wire fence. As the people on the Western side shouted Komm rüber! ("come over"), Schumann jumped the barbed wire and was driven away at high speeds by a waiting West Berlin police car. Photographer Peter Leibing captured a photograph of his escape on film and it became a well-known image of the Cold War.

Schumann was later permitted to travel from West Berlin to the main territory of West Germany, where he settled in Bavaria. He met his wife Kunigunde in the town of Günzburg.[1]

After the fall of the Berlin Wall he said, "Only since 9 November 1989 [the date of the fall] have I felt truly free". Even so, he continued to feel more at home in Bavaria than in his birthplace, citing old frictions with his former colleagues, and he even hesitated about visiting his parents and brothers and sisters in Saxony. On 20 June 1998, suffering from depression, he hanged himself in his orchard near the town of Kipfenberg in Oberbayern.

Labels: Cold War, Fullbore, Germany

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:38

... a salamander resembling E.T. and dubbed the ugly salamander. salamanders of this particular genus are rare, nocturnal forest dwellers that, in Ecuador arent generally found in forests above 3200 feet.

Labels: Me

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 11:58

I am blessed; my children are voracious readers of books. They just devour them. Personally, I should open an American Girl library, I have them all. My preteen already reads at a college level and my youngest wants to catch up yesterday.

A Publisher's Weekly Best Children's Book of the Year.
A Smithsonian Magazine Notable Book for Children.

"Come and lie down beside me," he said, taking the cup out of her hands and putting it on the flor next to the bed. "I'm sad. I haven't been as sad as this since my father died, when I was a small boy. Lord Hector - he spoke to me last night. Comfort me, Marpessa. Hold me, so that I can weep with no one to see me."

Marpessa looked at him and a dizziness came over her, so that she almost swooned. Without a word, she lay down beside him and put her arms around him. his head was on her breast. She stared over his shoulder at the wall. Oh, Lady Aphrodite, she said to herself, help me. What is happening to me? She was trembling all over.

"Look at me, " Alastor said, lifting his head level with her face. "And open your mouth."

Marpessa did what he said, and her heart...something...everything...melted like a honeycomb held near the fire, and she felt her whole body grow limp and heavy, and her mouth was filled with sweetness. She closed her eyes, and a wave of darkness washed over her as she fell back against the pillows with Alastor's weight and heat upon her. - (page 128)

That's Alastor's bastard, people would say ... unthinkable. A torture. And of her, a part that she didn't want ot listen to but that insisted on being heard, said in the wicked whisper of a snake, It will be a dind of punishment for him ... for the way he as treated you. Kill his child. It's what he deserves. Kill it. Soon. Rid your womb of every particle of his being. Cleanse yourself

"...I want to kill my child"

"How old? You don't look more than a child yourself."

"Here," Marpessa held her hand to her stomach. "It's not yet born.."

Mother poison made a sucking noise through her teeth.

"It's much easier to kill the ones that are already here. There are many ways of doing that. Are you quite sure you wouldn't prefer to wait, and hold a pillow over the infant's mouth? That's simplest." - (page 264)

TO THE TEACHER

Troy and Ithaka are companion novels appropriate for readers in grades nine through twelve, or students ages fourteen to eighteen.

With exceptional grace and enormous energy, Geras recreates the saga of the Trojan War from a feminist perspective, ...
- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Great. Doing for the Trojan war what Dan Brown has done for Catholicism.

Labels: Books, Education

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:53

Subject: NROTC Scholarship Option/Information
Date: [REDACTED]
From: [REDACTED]
To: [REDACTED]

Good morning,

My name is [REDACTED], and I am a [REDACTED] with the Selection and Placement Division of the NROTC Scholarship Program in Pensacola, Florida. I am contacting you because of the outstanding application you submitted for the NROTC Program. Although our Four-Year National Scholarship application process for the fall of 2009 has closed, many scholarship opportunities are still available for you to begin college this fall.

One of the numerous scholarship opportunities that I want to make sure that you know about is our Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Scholarship. HBCU scholarships are available at sixteen colleges and universities and provide the same benefits as our regular Four-Year National Scholarship. The only difference is that the HBCU scholarship may only be used at one of our participating HBCU colleges and universities. You will find all but three listed at the following link:

https://www.nrotc.navy.mil/hist_black.asp. The three that aren't listed are: Allen University, Columbia SC / Texas Southern University, Houston TX / and Tuskegee University, Tuskegee AL.

This e-mail does not indicate that you have, or have not been awarded the 4YR National scholarship that you previously applied for, so continue to check the NROTC Web-Site for those results. This is simply another great scholarship opportunity that you may want to consider if you are not awarded the other one.

If you are interested, and would like to possibly participate in the HBCU scholarship program, all you need to do is reply to me using the contact information provided below. I will be glad to verify your eligibility and guide you through the process. I look forward to helping you begin your college career.

Very respectfully,

[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
Naval Service Training Command/[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED], FL [REDACTED]
COMM:(850) 452-[REDACTED]
DSN: 922-[REDACTED]
FAX: (850) 452-[REDACTED]
WEB: www.nrotc.navy.mil

Labels: Diversity

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:19

Labels: Moonbats, Senate

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:12

Labels: USNA

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 17:10

... the word "Japanese" or "Imperial
Japanese Navy" were never uttered at the Midway Commemoration last Thursday at the Navy Memorial.

...the strength of their character and firmness of their resolve- is why this battle is so significant in our history and why we commemorate it today.

... these pages tell the continuing story of extraordinary men and women whose honor, courage, and commitment created a true and proven hybrid force ready to meet any challenge to our nation’s security.

"To me the biggest challenge is to make the young people of our country aware of the opportunities and the excitement that exists in the United States Navy. The term that I use is that we have to make it possible for young people, diverse young people, to find the Navy. Because once you find the Navy, the future explodes."

Labels: CNO, WWII

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:55

One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements.

One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes be victorious, sometimes meet with defear. One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeeated in every engagement.

If I know out troops can attack, but do not know the enemy cannot be attacked, it is only halfway to victory. If I know the enemy can be attacked, but do not realize our troops cannot attack, it is only halfway to victory.

Knowing that the enemy can be attacked, and knowing that our army can effect the attack, but not knowing the terrain is not suitable for combat, is only halfway to victory. Thus one who truly knows the army will never be deluded when he moves, never be impoverished when initiating an action.

Thus it is said if you know them and know yourself, your victory will not be imperiled. If you know them and know yourself, your victory will not be imperiled. If you know Heaven and you know Earth, your victory can be complete.

If you know them and know yourself, your victory will not be imperiled. If you know Heaven and you know Earth, your victory can be complete.

• Do we know our deep strike capabilities? Review the lack of organic real tanking ability and lack of deep strike aircraft on our CVN. Don't even mention USAF quasi-peace time permissive tanking support. If you are going in harm's way from a ASW and AAW perspective, how many MK41 cells do you have left available for TLAM when you risk manage your ASW and AAW problem? SSGNs do look like a nice tool to have ... but for both surface and sub-surface units, how are our WESTPAC reload ability looking for sustained combat?
• Do we know our ASW capability? ASW readiness for fixed and rotary wing - up to speed for both personnel and equipment? Just relying on SSN? How about your aircraft and ship light weight torpedoes - realistic warshot validation in the appropriate water and bottom profiles where we will fight? Numbers of warshots available allow for sustained combat with the expected number of attacks on false contacts?
• Do we know our ship's capabilities? Enough LCS mission modules and ability to swap out forward deployed to match the changing MIW-ASW-ASUW-AAW threat as it appears? Oh, never mind ... none are and none are expected for a long time. OK then, DD ... FF (not-so-G)? Oops. Enough DDG-51's ready for ASW? Errr...P-3s?
  
• Do we know our ability to escort CVN and Amphibs....
• Do we know our AAW and ABM capabilities.....

Labels: China

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:54

Labels: Iran

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 15:51

Stage 1 is hubris born of success. The company's people become arrogant, regarding success as virtually an entitlement.

Stage 2 is the undisciplined pursuit of more — more scale, more growth, more acclaim. Companies stray from the disciplined creativity that led them to greatness in the first place, making undisciplined leaps into areas where they cannot be great or growing faster than they can achieve with excellence, or both.

Stage 3 is denial of risk and peril. Leaders of the company discount negative data, amplify positive data and put a positive spin on ambiguous data. Those in power start to blame external factors for setbacks rather than accept responsibility.

Stage 4 is grasping for salvation. Common "saviors" include a charismatic visionary leader, a bold but untested strategy, a radical transformation, a "game changing" acquisition or any number of other silver-bullet solutions.

Stage 5 is capitulation to irrelevance or death. Accumulative setbacks and expensive false starts erode financial strength and individual spirits to such an extent that leaders abandon all hope of building a great future. In some cases their leaders just sell out. In other cases the institution atrophies to utter insignificance.

"The signature of mediocrity," Collins concludes, "is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

Labels: Antitransformationalism, Navy

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:23

Commander, Naval Surface Forces, is overseeing the development of a revolutionary training process for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) called Train to Qualify (T2Q) that will enable LCS’s hybrid Sailors to be fully trained before reporting to the ship.
...
Once a Sailor has been chosen to fill the LCS billet, their individual training track will then be made up for them and train them on the skills they are lacking. This will be completed by a combination of online, classroom and simulator training since they will be required to step aboard LCS ready to stand watch.

Every qualification will be performance-based, with set standards for timeliness, accuracy and quality applied to every critical task.

“The standard has to be very high for Sailors coming off of shore duty, so the ships have confidence that what they get is really a person that has received a qualification level of that fully supports taking the watch upon reporting aboard,” said Renshaw.

The Navy’s heavy reliance on computer-based training is producing sailors who aren’t ready for their jobs at ships and squadrons, don’t grasp basic Navy concepts and could endanger the long-term health of the service, according to an internal report obtained by Navy Times.

Labels: LCS

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:08

Four years from now, Mitt Romney will be president of the United States.

My reasoning is as follows. Point One: The Obama team, while still basking in honeymoon-level approval ratings today, has pointed itself in a direction that will result in disappointed hopes for the American people. They have drastically overpromised, and their policies—even if they are not outright disastrous—will end up inciting more passionate discontent than passionate support. Point Two: The Republicans always nominate for president the candidate who’s next in line, even if that person is deeply unpopular (e.g., the GOP base’s hatred for John McCain did not prevent him from being nominated; he was the guy who lost to Bush in 2000, ergo…). In 2008, the runner-up was Romney. Add to that frontrunner status the fact that Romney has credibility on economics and budgeting, and he’s the prohibitive favorite. Add Point One to Point Two, and the result is a Romney presidency.

A preemptive rejoinder, lest anyone dismiss this prediction as Romney propaganda: I supported McCain over Romney in 2008, and am nowhere near deciding whom to support in 2012.

Labels: Economics, Politics, Republicans, Romney

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:03

A "diverse" class does not mean the Naval Academy recruits violinists, or older students (they can't be 23 on Induction Day), or gay people (who are thrown out) or foreign students (other than the dozen or so sent by client governments).

It means applicants checked a box on their application that says they are Hispanic, African American, Native American, and now, since my time on the Admissions Board of the Academy, where I've taught for 22 years, Asians.

Midshipmen are admitted by two tracks. White applicants out of high school who are not also athletic recruits typically need grades of A and B and minimum SAT scores of 600 on each part for the Board to vote them "qualified." Athletics and leadership also count.

A vote of "qualified" for a white applicant doesn't mean s/he's coming, only that he or she can compete to win the "slate" of up to 10 nominations that (most typically) a Congress(wo)man draws up. That means that nine "qualified" white applicants are rejected. SAT scores below 600 or C grades almost always produce a vote of "not qualified" for white applicants.

Not so for an applicant who self-identifies as one of the minorities who are our "number one priority." For them, another set of rules apply. Their cases are briefed separately to the board, and SAT scores to the mid-500s with quite a few Cs in classes (and no visible athletics or leadership) typically produce a vote of "qualified" for them, with direct admission to Annapolis. They're in, and are given a pro forma nomination to make it legit.

Minority applicants with scores and grades down to the 300s with Cs and Ds (and no particular leadership or athletics) also come, though after a remedial year at our taxpayer-supported remedial school, the Naval Academy Preparatory School.

...
All this is probably unconstitutional. That's what the Supreme Court said about the University of Michigan's two-track admissions in 2003.

Once at Annapolis, "diverse" midshipmen are over-represented in our pre-college classes, in lower-track courses, in mandatory tutoring programs and less challenging majors. Many struggle to master basic concepts. (I teach some of these courses.)

Of course, some minority students are stellar, but they're the exception. Despite being dragged toward the finish line, minorities graduate at about a 10 percent lower rate than the whole class, which of course includes them (so the real split is greater).

Don't want to believe me? Have a lawyer sit in on a year's worth of Admissions Board deliberations. Or better still, pray that one of the stellar white students rejected to give a seat to a "diverse" candidate sues us. That's the only way taxpayers will ever fully understand the price to them of "putting diversity first."

Labels: Diversity, USNA

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:12

Labels: Leadership

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:00

Labels: Humor

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:12

In what a U.S. military official calls an "inadvertent encounter," a Chinese submarine hit an underwater sonar array being towed by the destroyer USS John McCain on Thursday.

The array was damaged, but the sub and the ship did not collide, the official said. A sonar array is a device towed behind a ship that listens and locates underwater sounds.

The incident occurred near Subic Bay off the coast of the Philippines.

The official, who declined to be named because the incident had not been made public, would not say whether the U.S. ship knew the submarine was that close to it.

However, the Navy does not believe this was a deliberate incident of Chinese harassment, as it would have been extremely dangerous had the array gotten caught in the submarine's propellers.

The Navy has complained in the past that Chinese vessels, including fishing boats, have deliberately tried to disrupt U.S. naval activities in international waters near China. In one widely publicized incident in March, five Chinese vessels maneuvered close enough to the USNS Impeccable to warrant the use of a fire hose by the unarmed American vessel to avoid a collision. The Navy later released video of that incident.

Labels: China, Long Game

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 17:50

...INSURV results have to be not only unclassified but public; only embarrassment will fix some problems. Classification, especially the insidious “unclassified but special” categories we invented after 9/11, can invite overcontrol of information, improper use and worse. Special places to go look at stuff invite special tweaking. Every boat I knew at one point took the exercise equipment out of the engine room for the inspection, then put it right back in afterward…and everyone knew it, and so did the inspectors. This example is silly, not dangerous; however, there are dangerous ones out there. What are they and how do we correct them?

Labels: Navy

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 11:58

Navy officials in the Pentagon and Fleet Forces Command are studying the possibility that the Navy’s first littoral combat ship, Freedom, could make a short deployment earlier than planned, on the orders of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, the Navy confirmed Friday.

Roughead ordered the studies after Freedom finished the second half of its acceptance trials May 22, Navy spokesman Lt. Clay Doss said.

“The CNO is interested in employing the unique capabilities of this new class of warship as soon as practical, taking into consideration the milestones associated with a first-of-class warship,” Doss told Navy Times.

Under its initial schedule, the ship was not to deploy until 2012. First it must complete batteries of tests at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., then experiment with its multi-use mission modules at Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City, Fla., and then sail to its homeport at Naval Base San Diego.

But the Navy needs LCS now, Doss said.

“As we have said before, LCS is needed now to close urgent war-fighting gaps that our Navy faces today.”

Labels: LCS

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 18:10

The revelation that Democratic appropriations kingpins may face a House ethics investigation of their campaign receipts from lobbyists for recipients of government grants and contracts moves Republicans closer to gaining a corruption issue in 2010.

Republicans know well how lapses in ethical standards can sink a political party. They lost control of the House in the 2006 midterm election, succumbing in part to accusations from Democrats that the GOP had produced a "culture of corruption" in which lobbyists showered gifts on lawmakers in exchange for government contracts and other legislative favors.

The Democratic chairman and senior Republican on the House ethics committee dropped their political bomb Thursday night, announcing that the panel is reviewing the practice of lawmakers steering money and contracts to favored companies, and then receiving campaign contributions in return for the "earmarks."

The announcement came months after the Justice Department began a criminal investigation of the matter and a repetition of House votes on Republican motions — all of them defeated — calling for an ethics probe of lawmakers who engage in what is often called a "pay-to-play" system for funneling federal dollars to select companies and projects.

The review could turn into a full-blown ethics investigation later, with the potential for scathing reports that could become campaign fodder.

Democratic Reps. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, Pete Visclosky of Indiana and Jim Moran of Virginia, all members of the money-dispensing House Appropriations Committee, received significant campaign donations from lobbyists from a defunct firm, PMA, and its clients — companies that got money for pet projects.

The wife of former North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley has been fired from her $170,000-a-year position at N.C. State University.

UNC system president Erskine Bowles announced Mary Easley's termination Monday, hours after the school's chancellor resigned over the controversy.

Meanwhile, e-mails released by N.C. State indicate the former governor was involved in the school's hiring of his wife, who had refused to step down despite calls from top university officials.

Mary Easley ran a speakers series and an academic center dealing with law enforcement training. She began at the university as a teacher.

The e-mails were released as Chancellor James Oblinger became the third school official to leave a post in the flap over Mary Easley's job.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A top North Carolina education official has resigned amid questions about his role in the controversial hiring of a former first lady for a university post.

North Carolina State University Chancellor James Oblinger said in a statement released Monday by the university that he is stepping down because the scrutiny of a job given to former first lady Mary Easley is a distraction for the school. Easley was hired when her husband, Mike Easley, was governor.

Oblinger had asked Easley to resign her position, but she hasn't.

N.C. State has been under fire because of a severance package Oblinger gave to the official who hired Easley and because of the salary Easley received. The official, former provost Larry Nielsen, resigned last month.

Labels: Democrats, Murtha

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 08:08

This is as fullbore as tales my granddad told about facing Me-109s in an outdated fixed-landing gear gull wing PZL P-11 capable of barely 360 kph...

Labels: Fighter, Fullbore, Poland, WWII

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:56

Here we stand more than a year into a grave economic crisis with a projected budget deficit of 13% of GDP. That's more than twice the size of the next largest deficit since World War II. And this projected deficit is the culmination of a year when the federal government, at taxpayers' expense, acquired enormous stakes in the banking, auto, mortgage, health-care and insurance industries.

With the crisis, the ill-conceived government reactions, and the ensuing economic downturn, the unfunded liabilities of federal programs -- such as Social Security, civil-service and military pensions, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, Medicare and Medicaid -- are over the $100 trillion mark. With U.S. GDP and federal tax receipts at about $14 trillion and $2.4 trillion respectively, such a debt all but guarantees higher interest rates, massive tax increases, and partial default on government promises.

But as bad as the fiscal picture is, panic-driven monetary policies portend to have even more dire consequences. We can expect rapidly rising prices and much, much higher interest rates over the next four or five years, and a concomitant deleterious impact on output and employment not unlike the late 1970s.
...
The percentage increase in the monetary base is the largest increase in the past 50 years by a factor of 10 (see chart nearby). It is so far outside the realm of our prior experiential base that historical comparisons are rendered difficult if not meaningless. The currency-in-circulation component of the monetary base -- which prior to the expansion had comprised 95% of the monetary base -- has risen by a little less than 10%, while bank reserves have increased almost 20-fold. Now the currency-in-circulation component of the monetary base is a smidgen less than 50% of the monetary base. Yikes!
...
It's difficult to estimate the magnitude of the inflationary and interest-rate consequences of the Fed's actions because, frankly, we haven't ever seen anything like this in the U.S. To date what's happened is potentially far more inflationary than were the monetary policies of the 1970s, when the prime interest rate peaked at 21.5% and inflation peaked in the low double digits. Gold prices went from $35 per ounce to $850 per ounce, and the dollar collapsed on the foreign exchanges. It wasn't a pretty picture.

Now the Fed can, and I believe should, do what it must to mitigate the inevitable consequences of its unwarranted increase in the monetary base. It should contract the monetary base back to where it otherwise would have been, plus a slight increase geared toward economic expansion. Absent this major contraction in the monetary base, the Fed should increase reserve requirements on member banks to absorb the excess reserves. Given that banks are now paid interest on their reserves and short-term rates are very low, raising reserve requirements should not exact too much of a penalty on the banking system, and the long-term gains of the lessened inflation would many times over warrant whatever short-term costs there might be.

Alas, I doubt very much that the Fed will do what is necessary to guard against future inflation and higher interest rates. If the Fed were to reduce the monetary base by $1 trillion, it would need to sell a net $1 trillion in bonds. This would put the Fed in direct competition with Treasury's planned issuance of about $2 trillion worth of bonds over the coming 12 months. Failed auctions would become the norm and bond prices would tumble, reflecting a massive oversupply of government bonds.

In addition, a rapid contraction of the monetary base as I propose would cause a contraction in bank lending, or at best limited expansion. This is exactly what happened in 2000 and 2001 when the Fed contracted the monetary base the last time. The economy quickly dipped into recession. While the short-term pain of a deepened recession is quite sharp, the long-term consequences of double-digit inflation are devastating. For Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke it's a Hobson's choice. For me the issue is how to protect assets for my grandchildren.

Labels: Economics

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:49

Labels: Diversity, Education

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:16

Labels: Blogg'n

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:08

On April 15th, over 3,000 people showed up on the lawn of the Rhode Island statehouse to participate in the local Tax Day Tea Party. As a follow up to that protest, local organizers are planning another event today, June 10th. This is the day, in 1772, Rhode Island colonists burned the Royal Navy schooner Gaspee to take a stand for their economic freedom. The goal of today's gaspee Tea Party is to encourage local politicians to reduce the state's deficit without raising the sales tax or property taxes. We want to invite everyone in the area to show up on the lawn of the Rhode Island statehouse between 4pm and 6pm. There is a lot of work to do, and this is just a beginning, but when your state motto is "Hope," change can't be far behind. More on the Gaspee can be found at www.gaspee.org.

Labels: Economics, Tall Ships

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 10:44

Labels: LCS

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:40

If I were Donald Rumsfeld’s son, I’d give him “Horse Soldiers” for Father’s Day. During his tenure as George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Rumsfeld championed a mode of warfare that relied on limited numbers of soldiers armed with high-tech equipment and backed by precise, devastating air power. The Rumsfeld doctrine clashed with the Powell doctrine, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s theory that wars are best won with overwhelming ground forces, specific political goals and a clear exit strategy. Rumsfeld carried the day, and has left us in a hell of a fix in Afghanistan and Iraq.
...
Doug Stanton tells the story of that brief shining moment in “Horse Soldiers,” a rousing, uplifting, Toby Keith-singing piece of work. This isn’t Afghanistan for those who enjoy (I use the word loosely) Iraq through the analytical lens of a book like “The Assassins’ Gate,” by George Packer. It’s for those who like their military history told through the eyes of heroic grunts, sergeants and captains. Think of Stephen E. Ambrose’s “Band of Brothers” or Stanton’s own best seller, “In Harm’s Way,” the story of the survivors of the cruiser Indianapolis, which sank in shark-infested waters during World War II.

Labels: Afghanistan, Books, Media

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:36

People are altruistic because they are militaristic, and cultured because they are common. At least that is the message of a couple of new studies

WO of the oddest things about people are morality and culture. Neither is unique to humans, but Homo sapiens has both in an abundance missing from other species. Indeed, that abundance—of concern for the well-being of others, (even unrelated others), and of finely crafted material objects both useful and ornamental—is seen by many as the mark of man, as what distinguishes humanity from mere beasts.

How these human traits evolved is controversial. But two papers in this week’s Science may throw light on the process. In one, Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico fleshes out his paradoxical theory that much of human virtue was forged in the crucible of war. Comrades in arms, he believes, become comrades in other things, too.
...
Dr Bowles’s argument starts in an obscure cranny of evolutionary theory called group selection. This suggests that groups of collaborative individuals will often do better than groups of selfish ones, and thus prosper at their expense. It is therefore no surprise, according to group-selectionists, that individuals might be genetically predisposed to act in self-sacrificial ways.

This good-of-the-group argument was widely believed until the 1960s, when it was subject to rigorous scrutiny and found wanting. The new theory does not pitch groups against groups, or even individuals against individuals, but genes against genes. It does not disallow altruistic behaviour, but requires that this evolve in a way that promotes the interest of a particular gene—for example by helping close relatives who might also harbour the gene in question. The “selfish gene” analysis, so called after a book by Richard Dawkins, makes good-of-the-group outcomes almost impossible to achieve.
...
Dr Bowles has focused the argument on war, since it is both highly collaborative and often genetically terminal for the losers. In his latest paper he puts some numbers on the idea. He looks at the data, plugs them into a mathematical model of his devising and finds a pleasing outcome.

To gather his data, Dr Bowles trawled through ethnographic and archaeological evidence about warfare between groups of hunter-gatherers. This is rarely war in the modern sense of planned campaigns. It is more a matter of raids, ambushes and fights between groups who have met accidentally. It is, nevertheless, quite lethal. Dr Bowles identified eight ethnographic and 15 archaeological studies that met his criteria of reliability and abundance of data. They suggest that 12-16% of mortality is the result of such low-level warfare. This is a figure much higher than, for example, the mortality caused in Europe by two world wars, and is certainly enough to drive evolution. But the question remained of whether it could drive group selection.

It was to test that idea that Dr Bowles devised his model. Although it pitches group against group, it is strictly based on the idea of selfish genes. It looks at the benefit to a notional gene that promotes self-sacrifice. The question is, does such a gene do well if individuals having it belong to a group that takes over the territory and resources of a similar, neighbouring group, but at the risk of some of those individuals losing their life in the process? What is the maximum self-sacrificial cost that can evolve in these circumstances?

In the absence of war, a gene imposing a self-sacrificial cost of as little as 3% in forgone reproduction would drop from 90% to 10% of the population in 150 generations. Dr Bowles’s model, however, predicts that much higher levels of self-sacrifice—up to 13% in one case—could be sustained if warfare were brought into the equation.

Labels: Demographics

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:33

Labels: Diversity

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:02

As NRO’s longterm pseudonymous writer, I’ve taken great interest in the Ed Whelan vs. Publius dustup. The thought occurs that in unmasking Publius, his apology notwithstanding, Mr. Whelan has inadvertently hung a target on my back, inviting anyone on the left so inclined to seek to expose me in an act of digital revenge. I pray this doesn’t come to pass, as it would in all likelihood effectively end my career with the Los Angeles Police Department.

I’m grateful to my editorial masters at NRO for allowing my use of the pseudonym and for maintaining the secret all these years. When I wrote my first piece for them on a lark back in the summer of 2000 I had little idea I would still be at it nine years later. In that time I’ve managed to vex two mayors, two police chiefs, and any number of their respective underlings, any or all of whom would no doubt be gratified to see me unmasked and silenced once and for all.

To those who claim my use of a pseudonym is cowardly, I can only say I wouldn’t have lasted as long as I have in my “day job” if I hadn’t overcome any cowardly inclinations I may have once had. I keep the details of my assignment vague in my writing so as to safeguard my identity, but readers can be reassured I’ve spent little time behind a desk, and I hope to keep it that way until such time as I choose to retire.

I hope that over these nine years I’ve provided NRO readers with insights into the world of law enforcement, but the only way I can continue to provide those insights while remaining a police officer is to do so from the security afforded by my pseudonym. I’ve been warned by people in positions to know such things that my career would be in jeopardy should my identity become known.

Labels: Blogg'n

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 14:58

A top counter-insurgency expert says Pakistan is not a "lost cause" but without wholesale change the country risks spiralling into lawlessness.

Australian David Kilcullen was the senior adviser to US General David Petraeus and helped engineer the surge strategy that resulted in a record drop in violence in Iraq.

"I don't think it's [Pakistan] lost. We still have enormous support in some ways in Pakistan ... the population is very much opposed to militancy in the main," he told ABC Radio's PM program.

"But I do think we do need to see a fairly wholesale change of heart coming from the Pakistani military before we're likely to see much difference on the ground."

Lieutenant Colonel Kilcullen, a former theorist of asymmetrical warfare in the Australian Army, says while the international focus has shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan is central to security concerns within in the region.

"I think it's not an exaggeration to say that Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world today," he said.

"In certainly in terms of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency problems, it is the problem that most worries me and I think that should most worry Western policy makers."

'Losing control'
He says the size of the country and its nuclear capabilities create a unique set of problems for Western countries.

"Pakistan is a very developed country, there's a Pakistani Diaspora across most other countries in Europe and North and South America and it has more than 100 nuclear weapons," he said.

"The government is progressively losing control of its own population and territory. And you've got Al Qaeda sitting right in the middle of the country so it's a very, very significant problem."

The counter-insurgency expert says the problems in Pakistan are compounded by a lack of direct access and diverging priorities within the Pakistani security agencies.

"We don't have a lot of ability to influence the situation in Pakistan and frankly there are elements in the Pakistani military and intelligence services who are on the other side," he said.

Labels: Afghanistan, Long War, Pakistan

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:43

The Navy’s EA-18G Growler has a new name — at least on the radio.

The new electronic attack aircraft that joined the fleet last year will be known as a “Grizzly” on carrier decks worldwide.

The nickname “Growler” sounds too much like the EA-6B “Prowler,” its electronic attack predecessor, and the Navy wanted to avoid any confusion on flight decks.

“The names ‘Growler’ and ‘Prowler’ were too close to be safe,” said Kim Martin, a Navy spokeswoman at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash.

“ ‘Grizzly’ is a name that doesn’t sound like any other name,” she said.

The Boeing-made aircraft will continue on with Growler as its primary nickname. It will be known as a Grizzly only in operational situations.

The usage will be similar to the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets’ operational moniker, the “Rhino.”

Labels: Aircraft

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:14

Labels: Music

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:01

Labels: Humor

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 05:29

Now no one should be surprised that a service that suffered 40 years of nearly nonstop decline has arrived in its present condition. The signs were apparent for years even to the casual observer. Journalists, analysts, consultants, and, yes, even insiders with the temerity to buck the system pointed out that the Navy's shipbuilding program was flawed and that the service was playing itself to an inevitable endgame. It had too many Admirals demanding new design and specification changes, buzz-phrase laden trendy ideas-of-the-day, and executive attention to changing an image scarred by past problems with candor. It couldn't sell the handiwork of its outsize network of defense contractors and consultants. Unrealistic and unsustainable contracts made an affordable fleet all but impossible.

Why couldn't The Pentagon, Congress, and the CNO's Staff see what was coming? Blame a combination of hubris, myopia, and short-term thinking. During my 10 years of covering the Navy, I heard plenty of explanations from Navy insiders of why its business model couldn't be dismantled: It's too expensive to fight congress and industry lobbyists, so we shouldn't even try.

What was frustratingly absent was the will among management and labor leaders to see what was coming and embrace real change before it was too late.

When former Chrysler star Lutz emerged from retirement in September 2001 to join the company as vice-chairman, it was common industry wisdom that GM's cars and trucks suffered from the corners that were cut on GM's product decisions by bean counters and manufacturing gurus.
...
Blame Wagoner if you want. But he inherited many of these problems and was making some of the right moves before he was fired. He couldn't get the company and those who depended on it to make enough sacrifices to get the job done. However, even an outsider like Bob Nardelli, a lauded cost-cutter who came to Chrysler after turns at General Electric and Home Depot, found few options in Detroit.

Labels: CNO, NAVSEA, Navy

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:45

Labels: Blogg'n

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:14

Labels: Cartoon, Obama

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:37

The situation regarding which of NAVSEA's two SUPSHIP offices oversees the LCS is somewhat confusing. The Lockheed Martin team is building its ships at Marinette Marine, in Marinette, Wis., while the General Dynamics ships are built at Mobile, Ala. But the territorial demarcation lines are drawn on a rough north-south axis: the SUPSHIP office in Bath oversees the Mobile operations, while the SUPSHIP operation based in Pascagoula - about 40 miles from Mobile - is responsible for the Marinette operations.

Levin had just finished remarking about the LCS program's cost growth. Although he did not mention that one of the first two ships had passed the $700 million mark, he questioned if the service can meet the $460 million cost cap imposed by Congress on the ships the Navy is asking for in 2010.

"Is there a realistic prospect that you'll be able to do it?" Levin asked.

"I think there's a realistic prospect we can strive toward that goal," replied Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who cited the lack of a cost escalation provision in the congressional spending limit on LCS, despite rising labor costs and inflation, which "have frankly made that less realistic."

Labels: LCS, NAVSEA, SECNAV

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 11:50

The country is moving into new terrain with General Motors. This is a high risk experiment, and no one knows whether it will work. If GM was too big to fail before, the downside is even worse now.

The danger is that GM will be politicized and become part of the pulling, hauling and horse trading that happens among all of the issues facing the country. The federal government now has a conflict of interest. As a dominant shareholder, there is a huge stake in a quick turnaround. But there are also compelling and competing stakes in other issues, like labor contracts, environmental concerns and international trade relations.

If the administration really means what it says, it will put the best possible people in key roles, protect GM from the pressures inside the Beltway to micromanage its operations and expose it to the pressures of the consumer marketplace and Wall Street.

Obama will have a tough time keeping his "hands-off" commitment when good business decisions come crashing into favorite policy positions. He's already succumbed to some of those pressures: naming an insider as CEO, giving the unions a big ownership role and decreeing what kind of cars GM must build, commercially viable or not.

Labels: Economics

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 09:34

Labels: Media, WWII

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 04:56

Danish group Shipcraft said putting armed guards on its vessels travelling through the Gulf of Aden was a deterrent and also a means of protecting its crews despite the risks involved.

"They (pirates) do not like to be there when the guards are there," said Shipcraft's chief executive Per Nykjaer Jensen.

"As long as the politicians don't make up their minds, then we have to act ourselves," he told Reuters.

The debate over whether to allow armed guards on vessels has gathered momentum and the U.N.'s shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), has taken it up.

Peter Hinchliffe, marine director with industry association the International Chamber of Shipping, told an IMO meeting on piracy last week there were concerns over the "proliferating private armies of security guards", who were also unregulated.

"These relate to issues of legality and liability for the use of lethal force, collateral damage and shipboard safety," he said.

"There is a danger that the carriage of armed guards in merchant ships may lead to an arms race with criminal pirate gangs who may be able to obtain ever more potent fire power."

Labels: Pirates

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 07:40

LCDR Leo Cook and his wingman LTJG Wiley were the lead section of Skyraiders working to locate and hopefully rescue a downed US pilot in North Vietnam. While maneuvering at low altitude between ridges and cloud layers, they were jumped by what turned out to be two sections of MiG 17s. Calling out the attack on their common radio frequency, Cook and Wiley fought for their lives. LT Pete Russell and LTJG Tom Patton soon arrived in the area and immediately gained a position of advantage on the MiGs. The details of this encounter were taped by the intelligence officer on board the Intrepid after the incident.

Labels: Fullbore, Vietnam War

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:23

On May 21, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California dismissed a complaint filed by a woman who said she had purchased "Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries" because she believed "crunchberries" were real fruit. The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said "berries" were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls, and that although the product did contain some strawberry fruit concentrate, it was not otherwise redeemed by fruit. She sued, on behalf of herself and all similarly situated consumers who also apparently believed that there are fields somewhere in our land thronged by crunchberry bushes.

According to the complaint, Sugawara and other consumers were misled not only by the use of the word "berries" in the name, but also by the front of the box, which features the product's namesake, Cap'n Crunch, aggressively "thrusting a spoonful of 'Crunchberries' at the prospective buyer."

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 17:32

Labels: Music

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 07:07

I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

Labels: DADT

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:10

Labels: Diversity

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:08

Labels: Britain, Iran

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 15:15

The estimated cost of the first of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships rose a modest $6 million over the past year, but the price tag to complete the second LCS jumped $68 million, putting the ship over the $700 million mark, Pentagon budget documents show.

The price to build, outfit and deliver the Freedom (LCS 1) now is $637 million, up from last year’s estimate of $631 million. The ship was delivered to the Navy last September and commissioned in November, but the service and shipbuilder Lockheed Martin will continue to complete the warship well into 2009, as intended.
The price tag for the Independence (LCS 2), however, is pegged by the Navy at $704 million, up from last year’s mark of $636 million. The ship is still under construction at Austal USA in Mobile, Ala., under subcontract from General Dynamics. Initial sea trials are expected to take place this summer, with delivery scheduled for later this year.

Started at $220 Million

The price tag for each LCS has been a key element of the program since 2004, when the Navy said each of the ships was to cost $220 million —
...
The Navy revealed in early 2007 that cost had ballooned on each of the competing ship designs. Prior to accounting for those cost growths, the service at that time reckoned the cost for LCS 1 at $293 million and for LCS 2 at $297 million — figures that more than doubled a year later.

“The Navy is not planning on downselecting,” Sean Stackley, the Navy’s top weapon buyer, told reporters May 15. “We’ve got a competition going on right now for three ships in 2010. We’re using all the tools we have in our tool kit to figure out how far we can bring these costs down.”

But Stackley refused to say what the Navy’s cost goals are on LCS, other than to cite a congressionally mandated cost cap of $460 million per ship.

Labels: LCS

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:08

Labels: Books

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:06

Labels: Destroyer

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 05:03

The SNP and Plaid Cymru are tabling a Commons motion to dissolve Parliament and cause an immediate general election next week.

The Liberal Democrats have signalled that they intend to back it and now William Hague has said that the Conservatives too would troop through the lobbies in favour of such a motion as well:

"If that was debated in Parliament… certainly we’d be in favour of the dissolution of Parliament."

It was only a few weeks ago that the Government suffered that shock defeat on a minority party motion in the Commons, when the Lib Dems tabled the motion on settlement rights for the Gurkhas.

So in order to avoid a general election, the Labour whips will have to ensure a full turnout from Labour MPs when the vote takes place on this motion next Wednesday. Given that the Labour Party has a Commons majority still in the high fifities (after recent suspensions from the PLP), it seems unthinkable that the Government could lose such a vote.

But would any Labour MPs abstain or even rebel to help put this administration out of its misery?

Labels: Britain

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 16:19

It has been a concern of mine for awhile that Hollywierd has not made any effort to tell the story of this Global War. From early on there have been many opportunities, heck the cavalry charge in the start of the Afghanistan operation would make a great movie.

Hollywierd continues to demonstrate its hate of America as we are almost 4 yrs post-9/11 and there have been NO major efforts to make a film of any substance about the war from a major movie house. The mounted cavalry charge with B-52s early on in OEF, I though would be a no-brainer. I was there for the planning. I have inside (very funny) UNCLAS info for them direct from C5F briefings about saddles, horses, etc. Email me. Make a movie. Funny, inspiring, motivation, patriotic. Did I mention it had a cavalry charge by US Soldiers? Rumors from 2002 ... then ... nothing. Sigh. Sometimes.....

Doug Stanton's upcoming book Horse Soldiers is coming to the big screen at the hands of uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney, which just recently acquired the screen rights. The story revolves around a band of elite Special Forces and CIA operatives who secretly invaded Afghanistan post-9/11 on horseback and helped Afghan fighters capture the city of Mazar-i-Sharif and topple the Taliban. In Horse Soldiers, the operatives helped orchestrate the invasion by bribing local warlords and using high-tech communications to coordinate the assault and equip the Afghan soldiers. They also held off an ambush during the surrender of hundreds of Taliban troops. Scribner will publish the book in May. Stanton previously wrote In Harm's Way, the story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during WWII. Warner Bros. was at one point developing a big screen adaptation. Bruckheimer has G-Force and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on the horizon

Labels: Afghanistan, Books, Hollywierd, Movies

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 15:24

Labels: Cold War, Russia

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 07:16

World population will hit 7 billion by 2012, according to a recent United Nations report. Given that we just hit the 6 billion mark in October 1999, it is easy to conclude that there are just too many people in the world. How are we ever going to overcome global warming, feed the masses, get that beachfront property, let alone find parking, if the population keeps jumping by nearly one billion per decade?

The good news is that's not going to happen again. If you need another megatrend to worry about, fixate instead on the growing prospects for world depopulation and what it means for you and your children (assuming you have any).

Yes, human population is still growing in some places dramatically so. But at the same time, a strange new phenomenon is spreading around the globe, one whose very existence contradicts the deepest foundations of our modern mind-set.

Darwinism presupposes, and modern biology teaches, that all organisms breed to the limit of their available resources. Yet starting in the world's richest, best-fed nations during the 1970s,and now spreading throughout the developing world, we find birthrates falling below the levels needed to avoid long-term, and in many instances, short-term, population loss. The phenomenon has spread beyond Europe and Asia to Latin America.

Labels: Demographics

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:40

And 28 Weeks Later? Then

A highly infectious strain of mutant rabies is spreading among animals across the state of Arizona, says National Geographic News. The new strain probably first appeared in bats before it spread to skunks and foxes in the area. The frightening thing about this mutant virus is the way it is communicated, say officials at the Centers for Disease Control. Unlike most rabies strains, it’s not carried from animal to animal through bites. Instead, it is spread through close social contact, like the common cold or flu. At this point, the transfer of mutant rabies from animals to humans “should be a major concern,” says molecular virologist Hinh Ly. Fearful that infection could get to humans by contact between pets and such wide-ranging wild animals as the fox, officials in the city of Flagstaff have issued a 90-day pet quarantine.

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:07

Mullen said additional forces and new tactics can help the United States turn a discouraging tide in Afghanistan. He said he was hopeful that "in the next 12- to 24 months, that we can stem the trends which have been going very badly in Afghanistan the last three years."

Unidentified Pentagon officials and fellow officers were quoted today saying McKiernan was too conventional in his thinking, that he had tried (and failed) to force out the allegedly corrupt Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and that as Nato commander he was too chummy with the mostly flaky European allies. In this latter respect, this week's developments mark another stage in the "re-Americanisation" of the Afghan war.

The problem is, the charges against McKiernan don't stick. In a media briefing last autumn, shortly after taking command, McKiernan set out a clear, thought-through, and politically subtle strategy. More troops were needed, especially in the south, after years of neglect due to Iraq. But reinforcements alone were not the answer.

"We can win all the tactical battles but that doesn't mean we win. To win, we have to win the battle of ideas," he said. "We must define winning in Afghan terms: meaning improved security, reduced civilian casualties, trustworthy government, economic and social progress."

Labels: Afghanistan, Take a Powder

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 08:11

A teenager decided to give his parents a nice surprise by painting a 60ft-long penis on the new roof of their £1million house.

Inspired by watching a documentary on Google Earth, 18-year-old Rory McInnes decided to give aerial observers an eyeful, with the aid of a tin of white paint.

The new flat roof of Andy and Clare McInnes' house in Hungerford, Berkshire, had recently been completed by builders. Painting the enormous member took Rory only half an hour.

There it lurked for around twelve months, until a passing helicopter pilot spotted it, and let his passengers take photos. Fortunately for Rory, he was safely on the other side of the world when his parents found out, on a gap-year in Brazil.

Labels: Humor

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:28

Several hundred blondes marched through the Latvian capital Riga Sunday in a bid cheer up the crisis-hit Baltic nation, suffering the worst recession in the 27-member EU.

Led by an orchestra, the first-ever blond parade featured women dressed in pink and white, some accompanied by lapdogs, in a charity fund-raising event that organisers hope will become an annual event.

"I'm not stupid. I'm beautiful and I'll prove it," blonde participant high school student Ilona Zigure told AFP.

Organisers said they were determined to bring positive energy to their country, expected to see its economy contract by 16 percent this year.

The parade is part of the what they are calling Blonde Weekend, which will also features a blonde golf tournament, a little lady fashion show, an evening ball, and a children's drawing competition.

"It's a great time to spend in the parade and contribute to a charity," said Ieva, one blonde spectator.

"Finally something different, something positive because I'm tired of hearing about the crisis," said another, 70-year old Ausma.

The event attracted many locals and puzzled tourists.

Following the parade, blondes climbed into open-topped cars and drove to the local shopping centre to go shopping.

The money collected during the event will be donated to support children's safety and playgrounds for disabled children in Riga and across Latvia.

The organisers want to make May 31 official Blondes' Day in Latvia.

Latvia, a small Baltic nation with the population of 2.3 million people has been going through the deepest recession in the European Union, which it joined in 2004.

Labels: Europe

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 05:52