CDR Salamander

Are those tandem-4s on that Victor III?

2012-01-31T01:20:00.000-05:00

Raise your hand if you might have tracked either of these .....

The Transshelf semi-submersible open dock vessel has delivered two decommissioned Victor III class nuclear submarines from a Russian Pacific Fleet base in Kamchatka to the Zvezda shipyard in the town of Bolshoi Kamen in Russia’s Far East for scrapping.

You did check the bridge clearance, right?

2012-01-30T23:08:00.005-05:00

Rocket parts: check.
Fishing plans: check.
DVR programmed: check.
Hmmmm .... what else ...

Full story here.

Before everyone laughs about tricky rivers ... all those who remember Naval Base Charleston raise your hand!

Thoughts Shared Only in Private

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

Time for a guest post on a topic that can set people on edge ... but this is the blogosphere; so there you go.

As the front porch will know once our guest's post starts - his opinoin is almost the opposite of mine in many aspects. That's OK, the MIDN below holds an opinion that many do - many good men do.

I don't agree with a lot of what he says - but I think his opinion should be put out there if for no other reason than this; leaders need to know that a lot of men in the military think this way. This doesn't make them bad, evil, or not worthy to serve. It just is - and the time to think about how to work with people like this isn't when you find it in the Fleet. Ponder now so you can lead them tomorrow.

My recommendation to this young man and others like him is to allocate more time for PT. Naval Special Warfare is one of the few places he will be able to serve in the near future without women. That and USMC infantry.

For those who think this man should suck it up or go home - I say you are wrong. We need men who think like the below - we just to make sure we find the right specialty to meet their personality type.

Midshipman, the floor is yours.

I don’t like following women. There – I said it.

The thing is, yeah, I joined the military to serve my country, and I know that she did, too. But really, I joined the military because I had to, to, you know, to prove that I’m a man. To become a man, really. I saw the pictures of the Marines in their dress blues, with their broad shoulders and severe faces. I saw them running over obstacles, firing guns, sweating, bleeding, faces contorted with effort and sweet agony. Proving themselves. And I wanted to be them. Not to serve my country, but to be a freaking badass.

How can she teach me that? She doesn’t know the first thing about being a man. I run faster than her; I do more pull-ups. True, she’s very professional (that seems to be the buzz-word these days, as if we operated in some sort of business), but she isn’t a man. I know she can do everything the same: she’s just as smart as a man, she loves her country just as much as a man, and we all know that running speed and physical strength aren’t really limiting factors for most jobs. But it’s still there. That thing that women can’t understand about being a man. Part of being a man is that wolf-pack mentality. I don’t want someone who’s merely smart and capable. I want that alpha-wolf who leads the pack through sheer physicality and masculinity. Of course ideally he would be smart, patient, just, kind, and so forth. But any leader, male or female, needs to be better than their subordinates. It’s why they’re called superiors. But if a woman is better than me, I can’t be a man. I can follow her, but I feel like my nuts have been chopped off. I feel like a cowed dog; like one of those little chihuahuas that upscale girls carry in their purse. What we forget is that those little pipsqueaks are the descendants of wolves. They were once vicious hunters that struck fear into the hearts of their prey, now reduced to dickless, domesticated freaks.

The military says I have to follow my leader, no matter what gender they are. And I will, and I’ll do my job, either way. Of course I will; I’ll keep my word to my country. But why is it so wrong for me to want someone who I can look up to? Why can’t I just follow a man, and feel like a wolf instead of a Chihuahua? Is this really just “my problem”?

An EMP Echo .... on Midrats

2012-01-29T12:57:00.002-05:00

In the last year, our listenership has roughly doubled. As a result, many have missed some of our more interesting shows.

This week, as your hosts take care of some things in the other part of our lives, let's revisit Halloween of 2010.

When you mention the possibility of an Electro Magnetic Pulse attack (EMP) - people have a reaction of, "What?" - either that or they get all fidgety or roll their eyes. Is the EMP threat trick or treat?

We will discuss the issue from 5-6pm today, Sunday 29 JAN with our guests Jason Sigger, defense policy analyst, opinion writer and blogg'r for the first half of the hour. For the second half of the hour, James Carafano, Ph.D., Deputy Director, The Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies and Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Join us live if you can - even though its a best of, I'll open the chat room where you can contribute your thoughts and observations. If you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - but the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Listen to Midrats

Sunday Funnies

2012-01-29T09:38:00.003-05:00

More Broadside here.

Saturday Music Stop

2012-01-28T06:41:00.001-05:00

Chap - what do you think; The Pains of Being Pure of Heart is simply The Jesus & Mary Chain meets The Psychedelic Furs?

Well, we got there eventually....

2012-01-28T01:04:00.002-05:00

Based on this - good googly moogly guv'munt moves slow.

The Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah once contained 44 percent of the nation's supply of chemical agents. The depot didn't just hold obsolete U.S. weapons. A supply of nerve agent seized from Nazi Germany at the end of World War II was destroyed only months ago.

Yes, Nazi nerve gas only NOW destroyed.

Hat tip Hans de Vreij.

The Potemkin LCS Deployment ... again

2012-01-27T16:54:00.003-05:00

The "early deployment" of LCS-1 when it went through the Caribbean on the way to San Diego was bad enough - but as Lee pointed out to me in a part of the article I missed in the first scan - if you fool them once; why not again?

The first LCS, Freedom — one of only two LCSs in commission — will make a cruise later this year to Singapore, but will be fitted only with a demonstration mission module, not one of the mine-warfare or anti-submarine warfare modules the Navy urgently needs the ships to carry out.

Gundecking like a boss.

Speaking of boss .... looks like LCS has some continuity problems in the new year as well.

The gift that keeps on giving.

Economic Facts - Can't Spin These

2012-01-27T09:05:00.004-05:00

I do this just enough to irritate some of you - but it is my blog and I can tap in to my academic background now and then if I want - so there.

Drudge has this at the lead this AM, but there is more than the 1.5% that you need to focus on.

Facts and numbers are important, they are critical to cut through all the smoke, dazzle, and white noise of a political season.

Here is the executive summary you need to let soak in. Via the governments Bureau of Economic Analysis:

2011 GDP

Real GDP increased 1.7 percent in 2011 (that is, from the 2010 annual level to the 2011 annual level), compared with an increase of 3.0 percent in 2010.

The increase in real GDP in 2011 primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by negative contributions from state and local government spending, private inventory investment, and federal government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

The deceleration in real GDP in 2011 primarily reflected downturns in private inventory investment and in federal government spending and a deceleration in exports that were partly offset by a deceleration in imports and an acceleration in nonresidential fixed investment.

The price index for gross domestic purchases increased 2.5 percent in 2011, compared with an increase of 1.5 percent in 2010.

Current-dollar GDP increased 3.9 percent, or $561.2 billion, in 2011, compared with an increase of 4.2 percent, or $587.5 billion, in 2010.

During 2011 (that is, measured from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2011), real GDP increased 1.6 percent. Real GDP increased 3.1 percent during 2010. The price index for gross domestic purchases increased 2.5 percent during 2011, compared with an increase of 1.4 percent during 2010.

Real GDP growth is contracting. Cost of goods is increasing. Imports are increasing greater than exports. People are spending more, but out of savings.

Frankly, I expected better. In macro - we need to watch 2012 close. To let politics sneak in - this plays in to Romney's strengths. This is a gift if he is willing and able to use it.

Fullbore Friday

2012-01-27T01:33:00.000-05:00

Yep'r. Today's FbF is a ponder'n one. A "how it should be done" FbF about Fullbore leaders who did it right - and a reminder of what is doing it wrong.

Via Ian Jack;

Chivalry at sea became an essential British ideal, and proof of the superiority of Anglo-Saxons (a category that included North Americans and most northern Europeans) over more panicky peoples from the south and east. The annals of old shipwrecks are filled with implications of their alleged poor behaviour. "I saw a lot of Latin people all along the ship's rails," recalled the Titanic's fifth officer, Harold Lowe. "They were glaring more or less like wild beasts, ready to spring." No Birkenhead drill for him: Lowe was sitting in a lifeboat at the time, being lowered past the still-crowded upper decks, but the awkwardness of his position as an officer leaving his passengers behind to drown seems never to have occurred to him. "Latins" weren't to be trusted in an emergency, and therefore didn't count.

The spectre now haunting Italy is that this label has stuck. "We've gone straight into the Titanic nightmare [and] Italy is once again the laughing stock of foreign newspapers," wrote a blogger, Caterina Soffici, this week. In Il Giornale, the columnist Cristiano Gatti wrote that the rest of the world would be delighted to rediscover "the same old rascally Italians: those unreliable cowards who turn and run in war and flee like rabbits from the ship, even if they are in command". But are either of these statements really true? People who know about ships and seafaring in Britain take pity on Schettino, rather than laugh at him. They puzzle over the course he took that led to the collision with the reef, they wonder how many people were on the bridge with him at the time, and why nobody raised a warning. Perhaps they snigger a little at his account of tripping and falling into a lifeboat ("How odd that his first officer seems to have done the same thing"), but on the whole they understand the torrent of guilt and self-recrimination that must threaten to overwhelm him, first for losing a ship and so many lives and, second, for his subsequent behaviour. None, at least of those I talked to, went as far as Professor Craig Allen of the US Coastguard Academy and accused him of "abject cowardice".

But his transgression is enormous. The rule that a captain must be the last man (or woman) to leave a ship in difficulties is never written down, but everywhere understood. In the words of a former P&O captain: "At sea, you have a great sense of responsibility for the people who are beneath you – it's moral as well as legal. You need to stay as long as anyone else remains."

In this altruistic sense, the mystique of captaincy has survived into its third century. Sentiment, if not always practicality, will ensure it continues. For who can resist the gallantry of David Hart Dyke staying aboard the tilting hull of HMS Coventry, or Noel Coward and what remains of his crew clinging to their life-raft in In Which We Serve, and Coward commanding, as his destroyer finally goes down: "Three cheers for the ship!"

The lessons of 3.5 yrs ago - and still apply today; as do those decades before.

Freedom's Proxy

2012-01-26T09:27:00.004-05:00

The Press Freedom Index is out. Not a perfect proxy for freedom and the ideals of The Enlightenment, but close.

It is a very good snapshot of the condition of most of the people on our little planet. They do not even come close to the freedom we enjoy here - freedom to create your "creative friction" as you wish.

The sad part is that if you had a "Freedom of Speech Index," the areas of green would be even smaller - as our friends in Canada, where you can go on trail for speaking the "wrong thoughts" ISYN - and much of Europe would move from green to yellow - and quite a few yellow to red elsewhere.

Read the report here if you have the time, and appreciate that even with all our challenges - in the USA we do have something of great value in abundance that few in the world do - freedom.

What - no riot?

2012-01-26T06:45:00.000-05:00

I think we always knew that the cartoon riots were about a lot more than silly pictures. They were part of a general anti-West cultural Mau-Mau'ing.

Case in point - look at cartoon on the 4th part of CNN's bit on Pandaman's creator Remon Wang.

No one seems to be attacking the Chinese embassy, eh? I'll let you figure it out on your own.

Hat tip Dan.

Diversity Thursday

2012-01-26T01:36:00.000-05:00

I had some more entertaining DivThu loaded for today - but I'll shift it to the right for next week.

This week I want to quote the Command in Chief from the State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.

When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor; gay or straight. When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one Nation, leaving no one behind.

Mr. President, you're right. Especially Gen-X and younger, we don't.

When we come back from the mission though, when we try to keep that bind, there is an entire army of self-serving racialists on the DoD pay roster who see as their whole job to obsess over our differences; to count or invent every white, black, Asian or Latino nose. They force sectarianism and division for their own purposes, eroding out progress to a more equal and fair nation.

They are a cancer - a cancer that is eating at exactly the good that you spoke of. If you truly believe your words - act. As of right now, your military actively discriminates on the basis of race, creed, color and national origin - all you need to do is start with the actions of the Navy's Diversity Bullies and go from there.

It is just the tip of the iceberg.

Sic Semper Pirata

2012-01-25T07:49:00.004-05:00

... as it should be done. BZ and many happy returns.

U.S. Special Forces troops flew into Somalia on a nighttime helicopter raid early Wednesday, freed an American and a Danish hostage and killed nine of the kidnappers ... Ahmed Hashi said two helicopters attacked at about 2 a.m. about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the Somali town of Adado where the hostages were being held. ... The Danish Refugee Council confirmed that the two aid workers, American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Hagen Thisted, were freed and "are on their way to be reunited with their families."

Oh, there are some helo pilots out there who are quite green today. What a great mission to be on.

UPDATE: ... and yes, yes, yes to all you nit-pic'rs out there - these were not technically "pirates." That ain't the point. Geezzzzz ....

Hat tip Katharine Houreld via EagleOne.

Retro Wednesday: Cold War Edition

2012-01-25T01:56:00.001-05:00

We haven't done a combo Retro Wednesday and RECCE quiz in awhile. This one will be fun.

See the below, and then see if you can guess what you are looking at before you read the text below it.

I remember that thing as a young MIDN when I first read about it. Just a grainy pic and a little hyperbole - a lot of things about tremendous speed and quick strike ability in the littorals or some such transformationalism ....

Yes my friends, its the Caspian Sea Monster; the Ekranoplan - more great pics here.

Note the background - it reminds me of my trip to Russia a couple of years ago - the smell of imperial decay is thick. Heck - how many old Soviet Republics have I been in - four? They all have "that" look.

Why not everything by 5%?

2012-01-24T23:41:00.003-05:00

Of course - I know the answer. The defense budget is easy to get to and is just a happy bucket of money.

Have them pay more than they need for each unit of energy while we cut their budget (result is even less energy which means less deployments, training, etc ... use it as a slush fund while you ignore the whole problem hoping the crisis and hard choices will happen on someone else's watch down the road ....

From the State of the Union speech tonight;

And I’m proud to announce that the Department of Defense, the world’s largest consumer of energy, will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history – with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year.

...

Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.

... and now;

The U.S. defense budget to be proposed next month by President Barack Obama will cut military spending five percent to $525 million, Pentagon officials said Jan. 24.

The fiscal 2013 budget proposal will show the first decline since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in the base Pentagon budget, which excludes operations in conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Those “overseas contingency operations” amounted to $118 billion in the current fiscal year in addition to the main Pentagon operations.
...
The budget is set to be unveiled as President Barack Obama moves to create a leaner U.S. military focused on countering China’s rising power while signaling a shift away from large ground wars against insurgents.

The administration is preparing for $487 billion in defense cuts over the next 10 years. But the reduction could be as high as $600 billion if automatic cuts are imposed under a budget deal between the White House and Congress, which calls for certain measures to trim the deficit if no agreement is reached on other cuts.

I've seen this movie before. The budget cuts - real budget cuts, not baseline cuts - will come only from the military. They will claim cutting XXX,XXX government jobs - almost all will be DoD, and so on.

Sigh. Thing is, I am sure most military would be happy to take even more than a 5% cut to ensure our nation's financial security ... if everyone else does as well. It all needs to be cut - but I don't see any real seriousness.

Yep, seen this movie before. Click.

Disuniting the Kingdom

2012-01-24T05:42:00.002-05:00

The Republic of Scotland? Commonwealth of Scotland? We may be closer than many think. As reported in The Economist here and here;

AFTER three hundred years of union, Scots are to be given the chance to vote for independence. The offer of a legally-binding referendum, probably in 2014, ...
...
Polls suggest that Scots are keener on more power than on outright independence. Give them three options, and the unionist vote could split, possibly producing a plurality for independence. Whatever the result of the vote, Scotland would surely end up with more powers. The SNP would have delivered something to its nationalist supporters.
...
A simple question also makes for straightforward campaigning. The Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties would have to explain why union is good for Scotland—something they have so far done poorly, which is one reason they are in headlong retreat north of the border. The SNP, for its part, would have to explain the problem to which independence is the solution—which they haven’t done either. And if the Scots turn down independence, they can later be asked if they want more devolution.

Mr Cameron’s question, then, is the right one. And he should have a say on the referendum’s terms. Divorces affect both partners. Scottish independence would have mighty consequences for Britain, raising questions from how to settle the two nations’ fiscal accounts to where the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines should be parked, if not in Scotland’s deep lochs.

Canada has a sensible model for moving towards independence: its government has passed a law which sets various conditions on any future referendum on Quebec’s independence, including that the question should be a clear one. If most Scots wish to leave Britain, so be it. But it must be a clean divorce, not a long, finger-pointing row that hurts everyone.

Having spent a fair bit of time in the UK and with their military - some thoughts from a friendly outsider.

When you are in Scotland - you see a lot more Scottish flags than you do English flags in England. You see very few Union Jacks.

Scots are much more nationalistic than the English. So much so, that the last time I was there (visiting the family Clan's castle, natch) the Edinburgh paper was talking about how the "Muslim terrorist problem" was mostly and English issue as the vast majority of British Muslims were in England - and very few in Scotland. Not something you would see on the front page of the self-hating English press.

On balance - not much downside - but there is a lot of political funny stuff going on that, frankly, I will let the Scots work out.

You know me - I am a firm believer that words mean things, even more so that history means even more.

What is significant about 2014? It is the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn. Interesting.

The British government wants independent oversight of the poll and dislikes Mr Salmond’s idea of votes for 16- and 17-year-old Scots (seen as gung-ho about a split). For a heady day or so, aides to Mr Cameron talked about forcing the Scottish government to hold a referendum within 18 months, before Mr Salmond retaliated with his own date, accusing Mr Cameron of “almost Thatcheresque” conduct (a grave charge north of the border). Westminster teasing about a “neverendum” aside, Mr Salmond will probably pick the date. Everything else is up for grabs.

Mr Salmond is on soothing form. He denies “any thought” of hijacking the Bannockburn anniversary. He insists, with a straight face, that his referendum is being delayed almost three years merely to ensure it is well-organised. The SNP, he says, is considering a multi-option referendum because it cannot ignore a big section of public opinion, not because it wants a fallback if Scots reject independence.

Mr Salmond confirms that Britain’s submarine-based nuclear deterrent would have to leave its current home in the deep waters of a Scottish loch. Scotland would leave NATO but would retain an army of perhaps 8,000-12,000 men, a navy and an air force. Scottish warplanes could have served in Libya. But Scotland would have shunned the “illegal” invasion of Iraq.

An independent Scotland would be a co-operative neighbour, Mr Salmond repeatedly says. Queen Elizabeth II would remain Scotland’s monarch. He would accept a stability pact as a basis for sharing the pound with the British. Asked if he would accept binding debt and deficit rules, he ducks the question. With its oil wealth, Scotland will be a better credit risk than England, he beams.

Once voters choose independence, the Scottish government will be an easy negotiator with “few red lines”, predicts the first minister. The friendship between the Scots and English will be “re-invigorated”. But until then, no meddling in Scotland’s vote. The warning is clear. Mr Salmond faces a tough battle. He intends to pick the ground on which he fights it.

History - just when you think some things are all figured out.

As for me? Most of my blood comes from the losing end of various Scottish uprisings and clearings. Whatever the Scotts wish to do - I wish they well, they always treated me very well.

Nashville Standoff

2012-01-23T12:46:00.003-05:00

I'm not the greatest fan of his father - but I am a fan of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

This will be fun to watch.

“Senator Paul is being detained at the Nashville Airport by the TSA,” Sen. Rand Paul’s Facebook post reads. “We will update you as the situation develops.”

Sen. Rand Paul’s chief of staff Doug Stafford told The Daily Caller the Senator “was detained by the TSA after their scanner had an ‘anomaly’ on the first scan.”

“He offered to go through again,” Stafford said in an email. “The TSA said he could only have a full body pat down. He would not consent to it. He offered to go through the scanner again. The situation is ongoing.”

Senator Paul - the whole nation is watching.

BZ, the TSA needs to be humbled. They've picked on the wrong Senator, methinks.

LCS: A Global Force for Confusion

2012-01-23T11:31:00.004-05:00

From the mouths of Malaysians ....

This whole article is full of win for a variety of reasons. First let's start with something that I really wish a USA lawmaker would say about LCS. This quote is from Malaysian lawmaker Tony Pua about their government jumping on the Bu11sh1tBingo bandwagon on their next purchase of corvettes,

“We would now like to call upon Mindef to ‘call a spade a spade’ and stop the attempt to disguise our acquisition with fancy names to justify their substantial cost,” he said in a statement today.

Amen my Malaysian brother.

We all know that LCS is just a speed-fetish's version of a large corvette. A slightly armed, sub-optimal corvette at that.

He pointed out that the LCS is a specific type of ship built to a specific length, speed and design by the US navy and no other country. He added that the US’ currently had only two such vessels in service and was building others.

Of course - no one else can afford to pay so much for a ship that provides so little. Then again, we are flush with cash that we can afford to spend $1.75 for $.90 in utility, right?

While we are at it - let's look at what they are buying.

The DAP lawmaker said he could now confirm that the government was not acquiring “littoral combat ships (LCS)” as claimed, but another class of naval vehicles called “Gowind Class Corvettes”.

... and it is ...

DCNS, through its local partner in Malaysia, Boustead Naval Shipyard (BNS), has won its first export contract for a Gowind ship. The €2.14 bn deal has been signed by BNS with the Malaysian government for six Gowind-class corvettes
...
The six corvettes, the first of which will be delivered in 2017, the others following at six-monthly intervals, will be armed with a 57mm gun as well as surface-to-air missiles and torpedoes. The 107-m long, 2,400-ton ships will also carry a Eurocopter EC-275 helicopter.

It is a "scalable" class of warships that, though small to medium-small, seem to pack quite a punch in the generic package.

Displacement: 1,100 to 2,500 tons
Length: 90 to 105m
Beam: 13 to 14.2m
Speed: 22 to 27kt
Armament: 16 Mica RF air to air missiles or 16 Aster 15 SAMs
8 Exocet anti-ship missiles or 8 RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles or 8 RBS-15 Mk.3

Oh, and cost? Using today's conversion rate and a wee bit of math: €2.14bil=$2.76bil/6=$460 million each.

It would be interesting to see what comes with that price ... but what it does come with is a multipurpose/multimission patrol corvette. LCS?

All told, Stackley said, the average cost to buy an LCS should be between $430 million and $440 million.

That is without a single mission module and it does not include the cost for the first two ships of $637 million for Freedom and $704 million for Independence; so average that up a bit.

If you look at the smaller versions of the GOWIND class (with a lower cost than the Malaysian types - it makes me think of the conversation we had with Bryan McGrath yesterday on Midrats about his ideas on the utility of fast patrol boats.

If you want to be able to run away - LCS is your ship - but being that in this line of work running away isn't an option more often than not - GOWIND or LCS; which ship do you want to take in harm's way? Even more - which would you rather have - 6 GOWIND or 4 LCS?

Klaus, you get only partial credit

2012-01-23T05:47:00.000-05:00

I know - everyone likes to harumph at the tax eaters in Davos - but this stuff matters.

Those who created this problem are starting to come to grips with it - but they are only talking around the edges. Via Breitbart;

"We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations," said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.

"Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole.

"We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual," the 73-year-old said...
"The main issue would be the preoccupation with the global economy. There will be relatively less conversation about social responsibility and environment issues -- those tend to come to the fore when the economy is doing well," John Quelch, dean of the China European International Business School, told AFP.

"The main conversation will be about a deficit of leadership in Europe as a prime problem," he added.

But here is why this will take a long time to fix. Those at Davos love certain theories - and even after their theories have been beaten silly by a gang on unmerciful facts - they still can't say it right.

Economic and political elites meeting this week at the Swiss resort of Davos will be asked to urgently find ways to reform a capitalist system that has been described as "outdated and crumbling."
...
"...capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us."

Now let's back this up a bit. The crisis we are in is caused by two things.
1. Government interference in the home lending market in the USA forcing institutions to led money to those who could not pay it back. That created the toxic asset derivites and the bubble and .... you're living the rest.
2. The unsustainable, unsupportable, and unrealistic promises of the Western Welfare State.

Full stop. Capitalism had nothing to do with this. The core and driving force is big and overreaching government. It isn't captialism, unless you mean crony-capitalism, that needs changing - it is political leadership and structures.

Klaus, you helped create this mess we are in - why don't you retire and let the generation who is going to have to fix it - those Gen-X and younger - take it from here.

Sunday Funnies

2012-01-22T20:24:00.004-05:00

... and there also used to be packs ... yes packs ... of a half dozen or so not-legal-to-drive pre-teens and teens wandering down roads and woods with BB guns, 22s, 30-30s, and single shot shotguns.

People would drive down the road and .... wave.

Sigh.

Hat tip Paul.

Air-Sea, Strategy, & the Pacific; on Midrats

2012-01-21T05:45:00.001-05:00

Most agree that our nation's national security focus needs to shift its weight towards the swath across the Western Pacific through the Strait of Malacca to the Northern Arabian Gulf.

We have started down the same path in response to national budget and debt problems that started a decade ago in Europe; and the defense budget here as there will take the first hit.

Are we starting in the right direction - or are we in danger of inserting in to the equasion a fundemantel error?

Our guest this Sunday, 22 JAN from 5-6pm EST for the entire hour will be returning guest and panel member, Bryan McGrath.

Bryan is the Founding Director of Delex Consulting, Studies and Analysis specializing in Defense and National Security issues, including strategy and strategic planning, executive communications, and strategic communications.

You can also find him online at Conservative Wahoo and Information Dissemination.

A retired Naval Officer, Bryan spent 21 years on active duty including a tour in command of USS Bulkeley (DDG 84), with his final duties ashore included serving as Team Lead and Primary Author of the U.S. Navy's 2007 Maritime Strategy; A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.

Join us live if you can and pile in with the usual suspects in the chat room where you can contribute your thoughts and observation. If you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - but the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Listen to Midrats on Blog Talk Ra

I am humbled by the honor ...

2012-01-20T17:04:00.003-05:00

Hey, don't I get a gratuity or at least a comp on this?

Please Save the Date: Feb. 7, 2012

On Tuesday, Feb. 7, Gibbs Technologies will unveil Phibian – one of the largest and fastest amphibians ever built – at an event preceding the annual American Society of Naval Engineers conference. Phibian is a high-speed amphibian (HSA) with humanitarian and military capabilities. It can travel on land at speeds in excess of 50 mph and more than 40 mph on water.

Please join us at 1 p.m. (13:00) for a special presentation at the Columbia Island Marina in Washington, D.C. At the event you’ll have an opportunity to ride in Phibian and experience HSA technology for yourself.

Look for additional details soon. To reserve a spot, or if you have questions, please contact MSL Detroit in care of Katie Barnes (katie.barnes@mslgroup.com) or Stephanie Lowet (s_lowet@verizon.net).

Hat tip Maggie.

Fullbore Friday

2012-01-20T06:43:00.001-05:00

Naval History Magazine has an article (membership required) out in the latest edition about the WWI Battlecruiser HMS Invincible. It reminded me of a FbF I did back in 2007 on the WWI Battle of the Falkland Islands. Let's revisit.

Time for Part 2 ... of 3 of the story of Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee' glorious and beautiful, but doomed fleet. It is time for a classic story of revenge at sea: The Battle of the Falkland Islands, 8 December 1914. I like to pay a lot of attention to HMS Canopus. If you review Part 1, you will see how you could dismiss this old ship full of Reservists; but it that what a leader does? No, a leader finds a way to make every bit of kit count.

On November 11 1914 the battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible under Admiral Sturdee left for the Falkland Islands. HMS Princess Royal was dispatched to the Caribbean to guard the Panama Canal. The shock of the defeat at Coronel had made the Royal Navy take decisive action to destroy Spee and the battlecruisers were the chosen means for retribution.

After his victory Spee coaled and then loitered in the Pacific whilst he decided what to do next, little did he realise that this indecision would prove fatal. Eventually he decided to enter the Atlantic and try to make it home. The squadron had passed Cape Horn by December 1 and on the following day they captured the Drummuir carrying coal. They then rested for three days at Pictou Island. Spee wanted to raid the Falkland Islands but his captains were opposed to the idea, however in the end Spee decided to go ahead anyway, another decision he was to regret.

HMS Canopus was now beached at Port Stanley, the capital of the Falklands, as guard ship. On December 7 Sturdee arrived, bringing the British warships at Port Stanley to the pre-dreadnought Canopus, the battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible, the armoured cruisers Kent, Carnarvon and Cornwall, the light cruisers Bristol and Glasgow and the armed merchant cruiser Macedonia.

On the morning of December 8 1914 Gneisenau and Nürnberg were detached from the main squadron, which followed about fifteen miles behind, to attack the wireless station and port facilities at Port Stanley. At 0830 they sighted the wireless mast and smoke from Macedonia returning from patrol.

They didn't know that at 0750 they had been sighted by a hill top spotter which signalled Canopus which then signalled Invincible, flagship, via Glasgow. The British ships were still coaling and most ships, including the battlecruisers, would take a couple of hours to get up steam. If the Germans attacked the British ships would be stationary targets and any ship which tried to leave harbour would face the concentrated fire of the full German squadron, if they were sunk whilst leaving harbour the rest of the squadron would be trapped in port. Sturdee kept calm, ordered steam to be raised and then went and had breakfast!

0900 the Germans made out the tripod masts of capital ships. They were unsure of what theses ships were but they knew Canopus was in the area and they hoped that these were pre-dreadnoughts, which they could easily outrun.

Canopus was beached out of site of the German ships, behind hills but had set up a system for targeting using land based spotters. At 13,000 yards her forward turret fired but was well short, the massive shell splashes astonished the German ships who could see no enemy warships. The rear turret then fired using practice rounds which were already loaded for an expected practice shoot later. The blank shells ricocheted off the sea, one of them hitting the rearmost funnel of Gneisenau. The two German ships turned away. Canopus didn't fire again but she saved the British from a perilous situation.

Also a lesson on not pressing the attack and getting spooked. Probably remembering what happened when the British pushed the attack against his Squadron and were sunk for it - Admiral Graf Spee was too cautious by half, perhaps with a bit of "get-home-itis," a disease that will get you killed.

By 0945 Bristol had left harbour, followed 15 minutes later by Invincible, Inflexible, Kent, Carnarvon and Cornwall, Bristol and Macedonia stayed behind. The German squadron had a 15-20 mile lead but with over eight hours of daylight left and fine weather the battlecruisers would be in action in a couple of hours.

The German lookouts could now tell that the tripod masts belonged to battlecruisers which at c25 knots were considerably faster than the 20 knots the in need of refit German ships could manage. Spee set course to the South East in the hope of finding bad weather.

At first the British squadron stayed together but the battlecruisers were being slowed down by the other ships and so pulled ahead on their own.

At 1247 at 16,500 yards the battlecruisers opened fire, with little accuracy, taking half an hour to straddle the rear ship, Leipzig. Spee realised he was caught and turned his armoured cruisers to slow the British whilst ordering his light cruisers to try and escape. Sturdee had made contingency plans for this and Invincible, Inflexible and the trailing Carnarvon engaged the armoured cruisers whilst the rest of the force set off after the light cruisers.

The battlecruisers turned onto a parallel course to Scharnhorst and Gneisenau at 14,000 yards. The Germans had the advantage of being in the lee position of the wind, the British gunnery was badly affected by their own smoke. The German shooting was excellent but at this long range their shells did little damage to the battlecruisers. The British also scored a few hits which did more damage but they were unaware of this as the visibility prevented them from seeing these.

In an attempt to gain the lee (smoke free) position Sturdee made a sharp turn to starboard towards Spee's stern. Whilst performing this turn the British were shrouded in their own smoke and Spee took this opportunity to turn south, pulling out of firing range. It took the British another 45 minute stern chase before they could resume firing.

At 1450 the battlecruisers turned to port to bring their broadsides to bear. Spee decided that his only chance was to close the range and use his superior secondary armament but his change of course made the smoke much less of a problem for the British. Their firing became much more accurate and both German ships, but especially Scharnhorst suffered severe damage and casualties. By had received over fifty hits, three funnels were down, she was on fire and listing. The range kept falling and at 1604 Scharnhorst listed suddenly to port and by 1617 she had disappeared. As Gneisenau was still firing no rescue attempts were possible and her entire crew including Spee were lost. Invincible had received 22 hits, over half 8.2 inch, but these caused no serious damage and only one crew member was injured.

Gneisenau kept on alone, zigzagging to the south west. At 1715 she scored her last hit on Invincible before her ammunition ran out. The British stopped firing soon afterwards and the burning German ship ground to a halt, her crew opening the sea-cocks and abandoning ship, 190 crew from a total of 765 were rescued but many of these died from their wounds. Inflexible was only hit 3 times and had 1 killed and 3 injured.

The brutal facts of war at sea. There is little room for caution or pause.

Whilst the big ships were fighting the smaller cruisers were having their own battles. The German light cruisers were in the order Dresden leading followed by Nürnberg and Leipzig whilst the British were led by Glasgow with Cornwall and Kent trying to keep up with her.

At 1445 Glasgow opened fire on Leipzig, Leipzig turning to port to reply, scoring two early ships whilst Glasgow's fell short. Glasgow had to turn away, allowing Leipzig to resume her earlier course. The other German ships had not turned to help Leipzig but had carried on their escape attempt.

Glasgow fired on Leipzig again, but this time the other German cruisers changed course, Dresden to the South West and Nürnberg to the South East. Glasgow's ploy of forcing Leipzig to turn and fire succeeded in slowing her so that at 1617 Cornwall had her in range, Kent setting off after Nürnberg.

Leipzig's firing was good but she didn't hit Glasgow and her shells didn't do much damage to Cornwall. By 1900 Leipzig's mainmast and two funnels were down and she was on fire. When her ammunition was exhausted she made an unsuccessful torpedo attack on Cornwall and then her crew prepared to abandon ship.

Glasgow closed the range to finish her off as her flag was still flying, stopping when two green flares were fired by the crippled German cruiser. At 2120 she rolled over and sank leaving eighteen survivors.

Cornwall had received eighteen hits but no casualties. Glasgow had received no damage after the two early hits which killed one and four wounded. Her boilers were damaged which reduced her speed enough for there to be no chance of catching Dresden which escaped.

Nürnberg had a 10 mile led on Kent and was, on paper, faster, but Nürnberg needed an engine overhaul and Kent's crew worked so hard that the old cruiser exceeded her designed horsepower, reaching 25 knots, being forced to burn all available wood on board and causing the whole ship to vibrate violently.

By 1700 the range was down to 12,000 yards and Nürnberg opened fire with the by now expected superb accuracy. When Kent returned fire ten minutes later her shells fell short. Once the range had fallen to 7,000 yards both sides started to score regular hits and Nürnberg gave up her escape attempt and turned to bring her broadside to action.

By 1730 the range was down to 3,000 yards and Kent's heavier shells and thicker armour gave her the upper hand. An hour later, just as bad weather arrived which may have saved her, two of Nürnberg's boilers exploded, reducing her speed. Kent was now able to easily outmanoeuvre her opponent and within half an hour Nürnberg was dead in the water, at 1926 she rolled over to starboard and sank with only twelve survivors.
Kent had received thirty eight hits but only sixteen casualties.

Whilst these battles had gone on Bristol and Macedonia had sunk Spee's colliers Baden and Santa Isabel, the other collier, Seydlitz escaped, eventually being interned in Argentina.

Even in victory, you will be second guessed by those who don't know; they just don't know but their petty concerns.

Sturdee searched for the Dresden before returning to the UK with the battlecruisers. There was some criticism (mainly from the 1st Sea Lord Fisher) of him for letting Dresden escape and for the heavy ammunition expenditure of his battlecruisers (Invincible 513 12 inch rounds, Inflexible 661 12 inch rounds fired) but generally his clear victory was welcomed. He had destroyed Spee's squadron without any serious damage to any of his ships and their shooting (c.6.5%) was considerably better than was managed by British (and German) battlecruisers at Dogger Bank and Jutland.

Ah, the SMS Dresden. That will be Part 3, with a twist. See you there in March.

Diversity Thursday

2012-01-19T05:14:00.001-05:00

This will continue to spread and spread until good people stand athwart its progress and yell, "Stop."

This should be one of these lines.

From: [redacted]@gmail.com [mailto:[redacted]@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Nikki Dell'Ara
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 11:14 AM
To: SDCBA Business & Corporate Law Section
Subject: [sdcbabusiness] Fwd: Diversity/Veterans Bar Association Event on January 19th

SDCBA Community Message Sent by: Nikki Dell'ara. To reply privately to Nikki Dell'ara, Click Here

Dear Members,

We are pleased to co-sponsor the following program:

They're Back! Now What?: Diversity and Inclusion of Veterans in the Legal Profession

Ted Gizweski, Senior Counsel at Microsoft and former Marine will provide insights and discussion of current events of veterans returning from active/reserve duty overseas; discuss the basis of veterans as "diverse" members of the legal profession (including the diversity of veterans as ethnic, disabled, and LGBT) and the elimination of bias against veterans; discuss the laws that relate to veteran hiring, employment, and reserve commitments; discuss the benefit of hiring veterans into the legal profession; and provide recommendations for the legal community to increase hiring of veterans and/or the pipeline for veterans in the legal community.

Time: 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Location:
San Diego County Bar Association
Bar Center
1333 7th Avenue
San Diego, CA 92101

Sponsors:
Veterans Bar Association; the Ethnic Relations & Diversity Committee of the SDCBA; the Business & Corporate Law Section

EOB CLE Credit cost $15

For registration is open at: https://www.sdcba.org/index.cfm?pg=events&evAction=showDetail&eid=6437&evSubAction=listMonth&calmonth=201201

Thank you,

Nikki Dell'Ara & Tristan Higgins
Co-Chairs, Business & Corporate Law Section

I don't know what is worse here:

1.

... insights and discussion of current events of veterans returning from active/reserve duty overseas

That everyone that comes back from deployment is returning - WWII draftee style - to the civilian market? No. Having done this in the last three years, I know the drill; but this just builds on the already high and thick wall of ignorance about what being a veteran is. This archiac understanding is unhelpful.

2.

... discuss the basis of veterans as "diverse" members of the legal profession (including the diversity of veterans as ethnic, disabled, and LGBT)

OK, what are we talking about here? At first glance, it seems that they want to just add having a DD214 as another "Diversity" check in the block. No thank you.

At second glance, it looks more like they are looking for a twofer, almost as if someone with a DD214 is even better if they can help you fill another box to justify your job. We also need to define "disabled." Defined by who, VA? What percentage? If you say 50% VA rating - you know you just covered someone with hemorrhoids, flat feet, tinnitus, and a trick knee. Is that a pile of goo you really want to wade in to? No - so lets give that a pass. LGBT - you are going to ask someone that? So, what if you are a heteronormative, male, caucasian with a DD214, or you less desirable?

3.

...elimination of bias against veterans...

That does exist. I'll discuss my experience over beers with you some time.

4.

Sponsors: Veterans Bar Association; the Ethnic Relations & Diversity Committee of the SDCBA; the Business & Corporate Law Section

Please tell me that the VBA is going to run as fast as possible away from the Diversity Bullies. If not, they are pathetic and worthy of nothing but scorn.

West Coast Seabees .... a good day

2012-01-18T11:35:00.002-05:00

BZ Shipmates!

How Many Elevation Clicks on That G3, URR?

2012-01-18T05:41:00.000-05:00

Caption Contest!

FILE - In this Friday, Dec. 30, 2011 file photo, a member of the Iranian military takes position in a drill on the shore of the sea of Oman, on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011. For leaders on the Iranian side of the Gulf, the past days have offered some hard lessons in the politics of oil. Iran has watched as the leader of its most influential ally, China, began a tour of Gulf Arab states and other Asian envoys held talks with oil-rich Gulf rulers, who have shown growing confidence to stand up against rival Iran and use tougher tactics to try to gain the upper hand in their standoffs with the Islamic Republic. (AP Photo/YJC, Mohammad Ali Marizad, File)

Ahhh, yes. The Protesting Youth

2012-01-18T01:33:00.000-05:00

I think I am going to have some pics to ponder today.

As you may see on the right, I am listening to 1968: The Year That Rocked the World. How is the communist youth movement doing?

Protesters take part in a rally organized by the PAME Communist-affiliated union as a Greek flag is seen on a department store advertising banner in Athens, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Strikes and demonstrations over austerity measures hit the Greek capital of Athens on Tuesday, as international debt inspectors returned to resume their scrutiny of the country's reforms. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Yep - what is that? Three baby boomers and one older-cohort Gen-X type?

Snort. Ha, ha Greek commie b@st@rds; we still won the Cold War you bloodless, mass murdering useful idiots.

What is "Yellow Stain" in Italian?

2012-01-17T11:06:00.004-05:00

Captain Francesco Schettino - I think we need a leadership award named after him. Via CBS;

The newspaper Corriere della Sera has posted online what it states is an audio recording and transcript of phone communications early Saturday morning between Schettino and the Coast Guard commander at the port of Livorno, who is heard pleading with the captain to return to his ship until all aboard had been safely evacuated.
...
Coast Guard: "Listen Schettino, there are people trapped on board. Now you need to go on your life boat, under the bow of the ship on the side. There is a ladder. You need to climb up the ladder and board the ship. Get on board and report to me how many people there are. Is that clear?. . . . "

Schettino: "At this moment the ship is tilted."

Coast Guard: "I understand. Listen, there are people who are coming down the ladder on the bow. Go back in the opposite direction, get back on the ship, and tell me how many people there are and what they have on board. . . . Tell me if there are children, women and what type of help they need. And you tell me the number of each of these categories. Is that clear? . . . Listen Schettino, perhaps you have saved yourself from the sea but I will make you look very bad. I will make you pay for this. Dammit, go back on board!"

Schettino: "Please . . . "

Coast Guard: "There is no please about it. Go back on board. Assure me you are going back on board!"

Schettino: "I am in the life boat, under the ship, I haven't gone anywhere, I'm here."

Coast Guard: "What are you doing?"

Schettino: "I am coordinating . . . "

Coast Guard: "What are you coordinating there? Go on board! Coordinate the rescue from on board! Are you refusing?"

Schettino: "No, I am not refusing."

Coast Guard: "Tell me the reason why you are not going back on board."

Schettino: "There is another life boat ... "

Coast Guard: "You go back on board! That is an order! There is nothing else for you to consider. You have sounded the 'abandon ship.' Now I am giving the orders. Go back on board. Is that clear? Don't you hear me?"

Schettino: "I am going on board."

Coast Guard: "Go! Call me immediately when you are on board. My rescue people are in front of the bow."
The Coast Guard said Schettino defied their entreaties to return to his ship as the chaotic evacuation of some 4,200 people was in progress.
Corriere della Sera also reports that the crew mutinied, ordering passengers into lifeboats before the captain issued an abandon ship order.

You can hear the audio here. If memory serves me right, a Captain who abandons a shipwreck in this manner in Italy can be sentenced to 12 years or more in jail; as it should be.

UPDATE: Via SJS on FB;

Admiral Canute Sits Upon His Chair

2012-01-17T05:30:00.000-05:00

I knew it would take time. We are, well others are, a polite bunch. We don't want to make our predecessors look bad. We don't want them to lose face.

On balance, we like for there to be a little time to pass before we start to back away from the really bad things that previous leaders said and did - things that were wrong on its face, though no one could say so.

In that light, I am glad to hear this from David Axe in The Diplomat;

With looming defense cuts of at least $450 billion over 10 years, the U.S. military is reconsidering long-standing modernization schemes. For the U.S. Navy, that means potentially abandoning a six-year-old plan that envisioned growing today’s fleet of 285 major warships to at least 313 ships.

But Navy leaders claimed the reduction will not degrade the sailing branch’s ability to influence world events and deter rivals. At roughly 3 million tons displacement combined, today’s Navy is by far the largest in the world, exceeding the tonnage of the next dozen navies, combined. The Navy maintains around 2/3 of its forces in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.

Adm. Mark Ferguson, the Navy’s second-ranking officer, signaled a possible shift away from the 313-ship plan in a recent speech. He said a new shipbuilding plan could take three years to finalize.

No one has thought the 313 was doable for years; one of the reasons Admiral Roughead in his last few years had so little credibility on The Hill.

This is good. Let us be adults and talk plainly among ourselves as adults.

Potomac Flotilla PPT Pom-Pom

2012-01-16T01:07:00.007-05:00

Do you hear it? Sometimes it is as a whisper; sometimes as through clenched teeth; and sometimes as a warning.

Every professional should somewhere in their nogg'n have Rear Admiral Meyer’s philosophy on memory speed dial; and short little mental audio file of;

“Build a Little, Test a Little, Learn a Lot”

The Meyer school, like those that developed the cruisers and naval missiles before him, are from one school. That progressive, optimistic, but engineering minded caution which has a great track record.

To truly advance, which they did, that school needed to interact with the type of person perhaps best described as a "futurist"; people who have quick and agile minds; those who try to think 3-4 steps ahead. You know the type. The two types work great together either as a group, or in the best of cases, in the mind of a single person. It works well as long as the Meyer school gets 51% of the vote. When out of balance, sub-optimization happens.

The futurists live in a world of ideas; constantly flowing ideas. They bounce from the possible, to the improbable, to the impossible often in the same paragraph. They don't want to be bothered with the green eye-shade types and their "Cult of the No." They are aggravated by what they see as the obstructionists inertia of the establishmentarian "new-is-different-different-is-scary-scary-is-bad" trolls at the end of the conference table. Those types raise the futurists' blood pressure, elevate an octave of their voice, and most infuriatingly - slow down the inevitable dialectics of technological progress; as the futurists see it.

Futurists are needed, but with too much power and a lack of strong pragmatists to counter them, they soon start to wander from the probable, to the possible in a parallel universe, to the disaster of tomorrow's reality. There is a reason H.G. Wells and Robert A. Heinlein were never given a major decision making position in real institutions doing real things; outside perhaps of Heinlein's worker bee engineering work in WWII.

When a futurist's idea gains an advocate who bets the balance of a professional reputation blended with a healthy bit of ego, you can have problems as truth changes and the laws of physics and math remain.

That is where Undersecretary of the Navy Work comes in to this post. If you were following DoDBuzz's twitter feed last week, there were a couple of interesting tweets about Work's comments at the Surface Navy Association's 24th National Symposium.

Work, in funny high voice, mocked hand-wringing over numbers of ships in fleet: "Is it 313? Is it 310?" Doesn't matter, he sez. Cont (1/2)
...
(2/2) Work says look at capabilities of ships, new systems such as BAMS, NIFC-CA, global placement. That means ship numbers matter less

I would feel better if he were, with a wave of the hand, dismissing concerns of shrinking numbers based upon gains in effeciencey through known, and demonstrated technology - not modeled, presumed, simulated, vignette'd, believed, felt, thought, or hoped.

Known. BAMS, NIFC-CA, global placement, and LCS are all in the believed, felt, thought, or hoped category right now.

Meanwhile, even our shrinking global committments are taking a toll on our present Fleet in both personnel and material condition. Numbers matter - real numbers - when faced with real requirements.

Look at the condition of our ships and manpower needs. If we cannot get the numbers and capabilities we need inside the budget - then as a Navy we need to cut back on our operations and make sure the national command authority knows we can't do X, Y, & Z. The worst thing we can do is say that there is no need to worry, with my bag of pixie dust, 1+1=3 and all is well.

Let's talk about Work's solutions:
1. Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS): That this the UAS companion to the P-8A. Thank goodness it is built on the Global Hawk platform, so the technology risk is minimum. How it will actually contribute is still only PPT thick. It will augment some of P-8A's lower-end mission areas, that we know. It is just an UAS - and evolutionary UAS at that - and will take all the knows quirks and requirements of UAS with it. That is all. As for ships - it will only help on the margins in some mission areas. Its manpower footprint is not small either. In any analysis, it is a wash given a shrinking fleet.

2. Navy Integrated Fire Control - Counter Air (NIFC-CA): Again, nice system but is just another technical evolution - one that is a bit more than PPT thick - but in the operations we are and will be doing will only impact shrinking numbers on the margins.

3. Global Placement: OK, I'll bite. Is this a new way of saying "Forward Deployed Naval Forces?" DDG to Rota for BMD or LCS to Singapore to .... go to Singapore? Stationing ships overseas. OK, that has been a practice of navies for a few thousand years, but sure - use it if you need to.

4. LCS: Ahhhh yes - LCS the gift that keeps on giving. A short legged, overpriced, undermanned, exquisite bit of Tiffany, heavy, uni-mission, incomplete corvette. Hey, you've all heard my assaults on LCS, let's let someone else speak about it for a moment.

Navy surface requirements boss RADM Rowden says Navy must, must, must get LCS right, as it's make-or-break for surface force.

Thank you RADM Rowden. You are right. We have no idea if we have LCS right - even if Work and others continue to tell us of its wonderful ability to ride rainbows and skittles flow out of its exhaust ports. We are planning based on hope. What is our Branch Plan if our Planning Assumption (getting LCS right) is shown not to be valid? Ahem.

Too bad we don't know if we got it right - we are betting the farm on it. A ship based on a buzz-word, distorted from its original concept founded on an archaic concept, foisted upon a Navy by false vignettes three strategies ago. Even our friends and allies don't want it. It used to be that our "low end" ships were so well designed that in addition to buying USA made ones - our allies built their own versions (see KNOX and OHP). (BTW, we discussed the LCS silliness a bit on Midrats with Bob Killebrew on Sunday.)

Throwing acronyms at a problem is not solving it or addressing concerns it brings; neither does waiving away critics.

Remember at West2011 last year? I am glad that Work mentioned John Patch's article - even if he was dismissive and slightly insulting. No biggie there - I can be dismissive and slightly insulting myself - but it fits a pattern. That is also when we heard him yell that,

"We don't need more frigates, if we need more we can use our allies."

From capabilities to caveats, I think our experience from HOA to the Gulf of Sidra should have reminded everyone, again, the utility of having your own multi-use frigates under your own command.

Again, numbers matter. Look at our deployment stats the last few years. Look at the BATAAN ARG if nothing else.

In the end though, Undersecretary Work is an exceptionally talented patriot and in the short time I have spent across the table from him last year, he seems like someone who would be fun to buy a few pints of Boddingtons with.

Phil calls him a "happy warrior." I think that is fair, and his position is one part of the creative friction that will be needed to get the Navy this nation will need. I don't have the solution (though I would love for Plan Salamander to be run years ago when I first proposed it - what was that - at least 5 years ago) - but neither does he. The answer is somewhere in between.

That being said, I think he is wrong in the way many futurists get lost without the leavening of a good the pragmatist by their side. He sees the problems in front of us, but as solutions to the problems only offers PPT programs, best case scenario outcomes with no backups, and solutions to even partially fix problems identified over a decade ago with what we have now. "Now is bad; and tomorrow will have to sacrifice and accept risk for the perfect next year."

The answer, you see, is always in the out years.

Work admitted that he might be accused of “talking nirvana,” and he acknowledged to reporters afterward that part of Washington’s emphasis on Navy fleet numbers was because of the Navy itself. Two consecutive chiefs of naval operations spent years selling 313 as at least the minimum number of warships the Navy must have, but as we saw Wednesday from Senator Susan Collins, even the Navy’s own projections aren’t very optimistic about that.

Work said he thought the Navy should begin trying to tell Congress a broader story about the Navy as “a total integrated battle force,” as opposed to just a simple number of ships, but he and other top Navy leaders this week did not concede the service should change its official requirements.

Ummmm .... many, including your humble host, have been saying "balderdash" to 313 since it came out - and we were right. Math is funny like that - you can't spin it away once you start paying welders. No one who is serious has accepted 313 as doable for years, much less in the last three years.

As for the Navy being "a total integrated battle force" - what is the news with that again? Is not water wet? Yes, I know he is going down the network-centric hobby horse way; but again that example is a self-parody. Water one day will be wetter they say; one day.

Always,

"Ignore Meyer, your sensors, your instruments, and their reactionary data. The answer to your problems is over the horizon - go faster, you'll get there - ignore the shoal water you are in and the fact we were warned about it two watches ago, and your ears that hear the scraping against the hull - go faster to the future, I can feel it's just over the horizon."

Sunday Funnies

2012-01-15T10:40:00.002-05:00

More Broadside here.

Sober up about the budget, on Midrats

2012-01-14T01:52:00.000-05:00

Many are sobering up to the fact that the military is about to face a budget challenge not seen in a generation.

Especially from those who have seen this movie before; a number know that this one has the potential to be the most challenging seen in over half a century.

This Sunday from 5-6pm EST, EagleOne and I have a guest to give you plenty to ponder.

For the full hour, our guest will be Col. Robert Killebrew, USA (Ret.), using his article in the DEC Armed Forces Journal, Cutbacks & Crisis, as a starting point for the conversation.

In addition to being a contributing editor at AFJ, mong the many other things he has done since retirement he writes and consults on national defense issues as a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Prior to his retirement from active duty he served for thirty years in a variety of Special Forces, infantry and staff duties. His assignments ranged included duty in Vietnam with MACVSOG, the Vietnamese Airborne Division, command in mechanized, air assault and airborne units, and staff positions in the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, as director of plans, XVIII Airborne Corps, special assistant to the Chief of Staff of the Army, command of a deployed joint task force and as an instructor in strategy and policy at the Army War College.

If you want to be ahead of the game in the growing budget battles, make sure and tune in this Sunday at 5pm EST or get the archive.

Join us live if you can and pile in with the usual suspects in the chat room where you can contribute your thoughts and observation. If you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - but the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Listen to Midrats on Blog Talk Ra

Fullbore Friday

2012-01-13T01:07:00.004-05:00

About a week late perhaps ... but I owe it to him.

When Mr Kyle finally pulled the trigger, the woman dropped the grenade. He shot her again as it exploded.

But after four deployments to Iraq, he learned to stop hesitating and start shooting straight.
With 255 kills, 160 of them officially confirmed by the Pentagon, the retired Navy Seal sniper is the deadliest marksman in US military history.

... and he has your back at home too.

... any yes; I'll believe Kyle's side of the story.

Pirates fail their RECCE quiz ... again

2012-01-12T17:26:00.003-05:00

They are real lucky they didn't try this on a US, Chinese or Russian warship.

At first light on 12 January 2012, having just completed the escort of a World Food Programme ship carrying food-aid into Somalia and while operating close to the Somali port of Mogadishu, the EU NAVFOR Flagship, the ESPS PATINO, was approached by one skiff with a group of suspected pirates onboard.

The suspected pirates opened fire with light calibre weapons and tried to board the PATINO. The ship’s force-protection team returned fire in self-defense and the ship’s helicopter was launched.

The skiff broke off the attack and the men surrendered to the helicopter after throwing their weapons, ladder and fuel barrels overboard.Five of the six men who were in the skiff had received injuries, two of which required medical treatment onboard the SPS PATINO.

Diversity Thursday

2012-01-12T01:51:00.001-05:00

It is time to bask in it again - naked in tooth and claw; the Diversity autogeneration machine, zombie like, exudes its annual display of what (D)iveristy is all about.

Simple cultural Marxist, sectarian, socio-political division. It is the Navy's ongoing disgrace that it has slathered its honor with such a patronizing, intellectually fetid, cheesy, sebaceous concept as this.

Behold the Navy's annual mal-translation of E Pluribus Unum; add up the manhours and TAD funds. Wallow in the hypocracy; cry the beloved country.

-----OFFICIAL INFORMATION DISPATCH FOLLOWS-----
R 031934Z JAN 12
FM CNO WASHINGTON DC
TO NAVADMIN
INFO RUENAAA/CNO WASHINGTON DC
BT
UNCLAS
QQQQ
SUBJ: 2012 NAVY MILITARY DIVERSITY AWARD NOMINATIONS (CORRECTED COPY)
UNCLASSIFIED/
FM CNO WASHINGTON DC//N1//
TO NAVADMIN
INFO CNO WASHINGTON DC//N1//
UNCLAS//N01650//
NAVADMIN 004/12
MSGID/GENADMIN/CNO WASHINGTON DC/N1/JAN//
SUBJ/2012 NAVY MILITARY DIVERSITY AWARD NOMINATIONS//
RMKS/1. NOMINATIONS ARE BEING COLLECTED FOR THE 2012 OFFICE OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AWARDS (ODMEO). ODMEO ENGAGES WITH EXTERNAL AFFINITY GROUPS TO PARTICIPATE IN ANNUAL EVENTS TO RECOGNIZE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE MILITARY AND CIVILIAN PERSONNEL AT AWARD CEREMONIES THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. THESE AWARDS HONOR MILITARY MEMBERS AND DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD) CIVILIAN EMPLOYEES, MEN AND WOMEN, WHO HAVE SUPPORTED THE DOD MISSION, OVERSEAS CONTINGENCY OPERATIONS, OR WHOSE ATTRIBUTES BEST EPITOMIZED THE QUALITIES AND CORE VALUES OF THEIR RESPECTIVE MILITARY SERVICE OR OTHER DOD COMPONENT. THE NAVY OFFICE OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION (N134) WILL BE COLLECTING NAVY MILITARY NOMINATIONS FOR 2012. MILITARY NOMINATIONS INCLUDE ACTIVE DUTY AND RESERVE SERVICE MEMBERS, BUT CRITERIA VARY FOR EACH AWARD. FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT (WWW.NPC.NAVY.MIL/COMMANDSUPPORT/DIVERSITY/AWARDS).
2. THE FOLLOWING ARE THE CURRENT DIVERSITY MILITARY AWARDS:
A. FEDERAL ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN COUNCIL (FAPAC) MILITARY
MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARD
EVENT DATE: 30 APRIL - 4 MAY 2012
LOC: ATLANTA, GA
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 1 MARCH 2012
B. SOCIETY OF AMERICAN INDIAN GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES (SAIGE)
MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARD
EVENT DATE: 3-7 JUNE 2012
LOC: DENVER, CO
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 16 APRIL 2012
C. LEAGUE OF UNITED LATIN AMERICAN CITIZENS (LULAC) EXCELLENCE AWARD
EVENT DATE: 25-30 JUNE 2012
LOC: ORLANDO, FL
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 27 APRIL 2012
D. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE (NAACP) ROY WILKINS RENOWN SERVICE AWARD
EVENT DATE: TBD JULY 2012
LOC: HOUSTON, TX
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 10 MAY 2012
E. FEDERALLY EMPLOYED WOMEN (FEW) RECOGNITION AWARD
EVENT DATE: 16-20 JULY 2012
LOC: DETROIT, MI
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 24 MAY 2012
F. BLACKS IN GOVERNMENT (BIG) MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARD
EVENT DATE: TBD AUGUST 2012
LOC: TBD
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 28 JUNE 2012
G. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR MEXICAN AMERICAN RIGHTS (NOMAR)
MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARD
EVENT DATE: 27-31 SEPTEMBER 2012
LOC: TBD
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 13 JULY 2012
H. NATIONAL IMAGE, INCORPORATED MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARD
EVENT DATE: TBD SEPTEMBER 2012
LOC: LAS VEGAS, NV
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 23 JULY 2012
I. HISPANIC ENGINEER NATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD CORPORATION
(HENAAC) CADET ROLE MODEL AWARD
EVENT DATE: TBD OCTOBER 2012
LOC: TBD
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 30 AUGUST 2012
J. OUTSTANDING DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD) EMPLOYEE WITH A DISABILITY AWARD
EVENT DATE: TBD DECEMBER 2012
LOC: BETHESDA, MD
AWARD NOMINATIONS DUE: 17 JULY 2012
3. CANDIDATES MUST BE NOMINATED BY THEIR COMMANDING OFFICER OR OFFICER-IN-CHARGE. THE NOMINATING COMMAND'S IMMEDIATE SUPERIOR IN COMMAND (ISIC) MUST PROVIDE AN ENDORSEMENT PRIOR TO PACKAGE SUBMISSION. IF AN ISIC RECEIVES MULTIPLE NOMINATION PACKAGES, THE ISIC SHOULD ENDORSE AND FORWARD ONLY ONE NOMINATION FOR EACH CATEGORY. NOMINATION PACKAGES MUST INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:
A. COVER OR TRANSMITTAL MEMORANDUM WITH ISIC, CO OR OIC ENDORSEMENT.
B. NOMINEE AND NOMINATING OFFICIAL CONTACT INFORMATION TO INCLUDE NAME, POSITION, ADDRESS, PHONE, AND E-MAIL.
C. A NARRATIVE DESCRIBING THE AWARD WINNERS ACCOMPLISHMENTS WARRANTING THE RECOGNITION SPECIFIC TO THE AWARD AS A MICROSOFT WORD DOCUMENT NOT TO EXCEED TWO PAGES (SINGLE-SPACED, 12-POINT FONT, WITH 1 INCH LEFT AND RIGHT MARGINS).
D. AN AWARD CITATION HIGHLIGHTING THE AWARD WINNER'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS A MICROSOFT WORD DOCUMENT (SINGLE-SPACED, NOT TO EXCEED TWELVE LINES OF NARRATIVE, 12-PITCH FONT, WITH 1 INCH LEFT AND RIGHT MARGINS). PLEASE DO NOT SEND A SCANNED OR PDF DOCUMENT.
E. A SINGLE-SPACED BIOGRAPHY OF THE AWARD WINNER NOT TO EXCEED ONE PAGE.
F. A DIGITAL HEAD AND SHOULDERS COLOR OR BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE AWARD WINNER (.JPG FORMAT PREFERRED).
4. NOMINATIONS ARE DUE NLT 1700 (EST), ON THEIR RESPECTIVE DUE DATES. NOMINATIONS MISSING AN ISIC ENDORSEMENT WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. SUBMIT ELECTRONIC NOMINATION PACKAGES DIRECTLY TO LT JOSEPH [redacted] VIA E-MAIL AT JOSEPH.[redacted](AT)NAVY.MIL. DO NOT MAIL NOMINATION PACKAGES DIRECTLY TO THE APPLICABLE ORGANIZATION.
5. OPNAV N134 WILL HOST AN AWARDS BOARD COMPRISED OF OPNAV N1 STAFF AND FORWARD NOMINATIONS TO ODMEO. THE NAMES OF THE AWARD WINNERS WILL BE POSTED PUBLICLY ON THE DIVERSITY AWARD WEBPAGE AND COMMANDS WILL BE NOTIFIED VIA PERSONAL FOR MESSAGE.
6. AWARDS WILL BE PRESENTED AT THE APPLICABLE CONFERENCE LISTED ABOVE. THE AWARD RECIPIENT'S ORGANIZATION IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CERTIFYING THE NOMINATIONS AND FUNDING ANY TRAVEL AND PER DIEM COSTS FOR THE AWARDS PRESENTATION.
7. POINT OF CONTACT IS LT JOSEPH [redacted], NAVY (MILITARY) DIVERSITY AWARDS COORDINATOR, ENGAGEMENT, OPNAV N134, (703) 604-[redacted] OR E-MAIL AT JOSEPH.[redacted]AT)NAVY.MIL AND MS. SONYA TUCKER-LONG AT (202) 685-[redacted] OR E-MAIL AT SONYA.TUCKER-[redacted](AT)NAVY.MIL.
8. RELEASED BY VICE ADMIRAL S. R. VAN BUSKIRK, N1.//
BT
#1886
NNNN

UNCLASSIFIED//

Getting Naykid With 'Ya Friends

2012-01-11T07:38:00.000-05:00

If the USA deployed ~40,600 ground forces to combat, would you consider that a significant national contribution to an operation? A sign of national seriousness?

As I've mentioned a couple of times, one of our new nations who deserves a nod of the hat a lot more than it gets is Estonia. She contributed forces to Iraq and have been fighting relatively caveat free in AFG even longer. If you adjust for population size, that is her national contribution.

A great people the few I have had a chance to work with. There are though, some cultural habits that may require a little adjustment for your average American. Via the folks over at LimePhotographic;

Culturally closer to Scandinavia than Russia, they are a friendly bunch and have a mental toughness that is obvious. Most of its soldiers are physical giants.
...
As we all sat around in the evening waiting for their two chefs to rustle up a fine meal, we began to talk about the welfare facilities these guys had and the subject of saunas were raised. It turns out that they have a mobile sauna on the Patrol base ‘Wahid’………….. No really an actual sauna.

Suspiciously we enquired more to discover that in Estonian military law, every soldier must sauna at least once a week, so that although this was not possible on ‘Brekna’, an ops sauna on ‘Wahid’ was a sight to behold.

“And so it came to pass that on the last night, hosted by the Estonians, the Combat Camera Team were all sat (naked) in a fully functioning Sauna on the front line of the Helmand campaign”.

On average, mentally sharp and physically tough. A lot of their senior personnel, MAJ on up, were in the Red Army. Interesting stories from those guys. They like Russians even less that most; if you study their national history the reasons are clear.

So, look for the wee black-white-blue flag around the sauna and introduce yourself.

As a cultural side-note, their capital Tallinn is a must visit if you have a chance - and on a weird note, as one of the last European nations to convert to Christianity, they still retain some rather neat pagan traditions about such things as burials.

Strategery, smatergery

2012-01-10T06:16:00.001-05:00

Want to talk some more about the President's "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense?"

Well, I'm doing it over at USNIBlog. Come visit and ponder with me.

Duct tape me to the rack; seriously

2012-01-10T01:30:00.000-05:00

(sshhhh, don't tell anyone at the DDG-1000 office. shhhhh)

Hat tip Paul.

Vote for the husband's haircut ...

2012-01-09T23:28:00.002-05:00

... if nothing else.

Mia: she's full of win!

Hat tip Tina.

The Cherry on Top of the Terrible 20s

2012-01-09T05:38:00.001-05:00

Via The Economist; read all the way to the bottom.

When you think about it - their population is 4x ours and their economy has been growing 2-3+ more than ours for over a decade; is was only a matter of time barring a bad black swan. Not all is smooth sailing for China; but 2025 is not that far down the road.

Ponder.

How may yards passing was that again?

2012-01-08T22:58:00.001-05:00

Byron - for you again.

Happy 2nd Birthday Midrats!

2012-01-07T17:42:00.001-05:00

This Sunday starting at 5pm and ending when EagleOne gets tired, we're having ringing in our third year of Midrats.

Yes friends, believe it or not we are on our 105th episode!

Two years behind us, and a third in front. Though we already have some great guests lined up in the upcoming weeks, as a way of saying thanks to everyone for tuning in, for this show we are going to try something a little different - we are going to turn the tables on ourselves.

This time, it is our friends, listeners and regular guests who will get to ask the questions and visit for awhile.

What would you like the hosts to talk about? Is there a topic you would like us to address that we don't? Well here is your chance.

The number to the switchboard is (347) 308-8397. Give us a call.

Join us live if you can and pile in with the usual suspects in the chat room where you can contribute your thoughts and observation - if you are too chicken to call in.

If you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - but the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Listen to Midrats on Blog Talk Ra

Caption Contest!

2012-01-07T00:09:00.002-05:00

If there was a picture that needed a caption contest, this would be it; the inquisitive & slightly patronizing professor, the grinning politician, and the badda55 with the “soon” look on his face.

As I was posting this though, I thought that some of you would like the opportunity to discuss something that should be more than just a cheeky Caption Contest.

I’ll give it a start.

First of all; no one, especially on the Front Porch, should be in any way shocked about the depth of the cuts that are coming. We have been discussing for years it was on the way; the question was only the degree and emphasis. The reasons are self-evident:

1. Political: the politicians have structured the budget such that the area easiest to cut to any degree is DoD. They are cutting DoD because it is easy and they can say they are doing something. They are not serious about debt reduction though – if they were you would see cuts everywhere; and you won’t. Additionally, no one is going to surround a Congressman’s car and pound on his hood, or march on Washington (pun intended) because the budget for the military is being cut.

This is political in two ways; it feeds the blood-lust of the President’s supporters on the Left to punish the military by taking away money (though there is blowback already for not being enough), and it gives him talking points to the right about being concerned about the budget. There is no downside here for the President – especially as if you read the document there is a lot there that is good. Just watch the money.

2. President Obama: The Commander in Chief comes from the far-Left of the Democrat Party. If you need more help understanding what he is doing at Defense, review “Scorpion and Frog.” He has a long and clear record of opposing both the conduct and the ability of the USA to conduct extended ground combat overseas. He has a long record of wanting a much smaller military, he is just being consistent; elections have consequences. I do not subscribe to the line of thought that this is done with malice. The President just sees things differently than some when it comes to the place of the military in the American project. It is not an unusual perspective, it has a lineage that goes back to the founding of this nation. Though left of center, his D&G is well within a standard deviation of the norm when it comes to our history.

3. Operational: We have left the field in IRQ and soon will in AFG. A draw-down of land forces, like we saw a build-up when combat expanded, is natural.

What about his strategy? Well, you can read it here.

The actual bucket-o-money that goes to DoD will be determined by Congress, so we will just have to watch things as they develop. What is important is the Direction & Guidance that comes from the Commander in Chief. From that you will see planning revised and priorities set, as it should be.

In that light, let’s look at it. There is actually a lot here to like, at least for me. Perfect? No. What I would produce? No. Better than expected? Let's see. Some pull quotes:

“As we end today’s wars and reshape our Armed Forces, we will ensure that our military is agile, flexible, and ready for the full range of contingencies. In particular, we will continue to invest in the capabilities critical to future success, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; counterterrorism; countering weapons of mass destruction; operating in anti-access environments; and prevailing in all domains, including cyber.”

ISR, CT, WMD, A2/AD, & Cyber. No issues there.

Out of the assessment we developed a defense strategy that transitions our Defense enterprise from an emphasis on today’s wars to preparing for future challenges, protects the broad range of U.S. national security interests, advances the Department’s efforts to rebalance and reform, and supports the national security imperative of deficit reduction through a lower level of defense spending.

This strategic guidance document describes the projected security environment and the key military missions for which the Department of Defense (DoD) will prepare. It is intended as a blueprint for the Joint Force in 2020, providing a set of precepts that will help guide decisions regarding the size and shape of the force over subsequent program and budget cycles, and highlighting some of the strategic risks that may be associated with the proposed strategy.

That is what a responsible leader does. You cannot fault him for this. You may not agree with his proposals, but the process is sound.

For the foreseeable future, the United States will continue to take an active approach to countering these threats by monitoring the activities of non-state threats worldwide, working with allies and partners to establish control over ungoverned territories, and directly striking the most dangerous groups and individuals when necessary.
…
we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.

That is very close to Plan Salamander. The devil is in the details, but this represents continuity of broader concepts we have been operating under for a long time.

Our defense efforts in the Middle East will be aimed at countering violent extremists and destabilizing threats, as well as upholding our commitment to allies and partner states.
…
To support these objectives, the United States will continue to place a premium on U.S. and allied military presence in .– and support of .– partner nations in and around this region.

There is a subtle shift from trying to create a Middle East safe for democracy as we saw a decade ago, but in light of national will and present realities – that is very reasonable.

Speaking of reasonable and Plan Salamander, this was almost lifted from one of my posts over the years.

Most European countries are now producers of security rather than consumers of it. Combined with the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan, this has created a strategic opportunity to rebalance the U.S. military investment in Europe, moving from a focus on current conflicts toward a focus on future capabilities. In keeping with this evolving strategic landscape, our posture in Europe must also evolve.

Verily. WWII and the Cold War are both over. Keep a few Combined training and logistics bases with our NATO allies and come home; lock, stock, and barrel.

Speaking of amphibian echoes … Jerry, call your office.

Across the globe we will seek to be the security partner of choice, pursuing new partnerships with a growing number of nations .–including those in Africa and Latin America .– whose interests and viewpoints are merging into a common vision of freedom, stability, and prosperity. Whenever possible, we will develop innovative, low-cost, and small-footprint approaches to achieve our security objectives, relying on exercises, rotational presence, and advisory capabilities.

I am tempted just to do a bunch of “continuity” quotes of what is almost boilerplate national security concepts in this document, just to emphasize that everyone should take a powder. One will do, here is an example;

The United States will continue to lead global efforts with capable allies and partners to assure access to and use of the global commons, both by strengthening international norms of responsible behavior and by maintaining relevant and interoperable military capabilities.

That has been true for going on 70 years.

What about the Primary Mission Areas? Can you argue with these?

Counter Terrorism and Irregular Warfare
Deter and Defeat Aggression
Project Power Despite Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenges
Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction
Operate Effectively in Cyberspace and Space
Maintain a Safe, Secure, and Effective Nuclear Deterrent
Defend the Homeland and Provide Support to Civil Authorities
Provide a Stabilizing Presence
Conduct Stability and Counterinsurgency Operations
Conduct Humanitarian, Disaster Relief, and Other Operations

The order and emphasis may be different, but Rummy or Dick Cheney could have put that list out.

Looking forward in the “Toward the Joint Force of 2020” there is more to thank the influence of those in the background who worked on this under the guidance of Secretary Panetta.

… we have sought to differentiate between those investments that should be made
today and those that can be deferred. This includes an accounting of our ability to make a course change that could be driven by many factors, including shocks or evolutions in the strategic, operational, economic, and technological spheres. Accordingly, the concept of “reversibility” – including the vectors on which we place our industrial base, our people, our active-reserve component balance, our posture, and our partnership emphasis – is a key part of our decision calculus.
… We will resist the temptation to sacrifice readiness in order to retain force structure, and will in fact rebuild readiness in areas that, by necessity, were deemphasized over the past decade. An ill-prepared force will be vulnerable to corrosion in its morale, recruitment, and retention.
… the Department must continue to reduce the .“cost of doing business..” This entails
reducing the rate of growth of manpower costs, finding further efficiencies in overhead and headquarters, business practices, and other support activities before taking further risk in meeting the demands of the strategy.

This sets the foundation for a lot of creative friction. This is a great opportunity. A2/AD, “Influence Squadrons,” rebuilding neglected readiness areas – these are all Navy areas. We need to embrace them and lean in to the President’s challenge.

Having trouble finding enough personnel to make this happen in an environment of decreasing resources? Balderdash. So much more was done by those who came before with fewer people. Take a broad axe to staffs. Cleave off our top-heavy force structure and decouple non value-added BA/NMP.

Heck, give me a stack of manning documents and a case of beer. I’ll grab 3-4 retried CDR/CAPT and ensconce our little cabal in my hunting cabin in the swamp for a fortnight and we’ll give you the cuts you need.

Wait, thinking about the people I would take with me – make that a half-dozen cases and a mixed case of scotch. Better yet – just make it two cases of beer, a bottle of Oban, and we’ll do it in a weekend instead – we have paying gigs to take care of.

We’ll do it pro-bono too.

So, put down the hair shirt. Pack up the sack cloth and ashes. Save the flail for post 2012 election results if needed. This is an opportunity to do some good. The fat of last decade only made our Navy distracted, lazy, and in an intellectual stupor. The stress on they system may fix things.

Be cheerful, rosin up your hands and pull on your oar with vigor.

To end things up like we started; I’m sorry. Can’t help myself.

Fullbore Friday

2012-01-06T01:40:00.000-05:00

I can't help myself; it is time again to revisit the crew of The Swan of the East; the SMS EMDEN.

Everyone should know the story of The Ayesha by Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke;

Taking no one with me, I got into the steam launch and went out to the schooner to learn whether she was at all seaworthy. The captain and a single sailor were aboard her. Of the former I inquired casually whether he had any ammunition aboard, for I did not wish him to suspect the real purpose of my coming. He said there was none, and a brief inspection of the ship led me to believe that she was still seaworthy. Consequently I sent my officers and men aboard the "Ayesha" to get her into trim for sailing.

There was plenty to do on the little ship. All the sails and rigging had been taken down and stowed away, and had now to be put in place again.

When the Englishmen on the island realized that it was my intention to sail off in the schooner, they warned me with great earnestness against trusting ourselves to her, saying that the "Ayesha" was old and rotten, and could not stand a sea voyage. Furthermore, they informed me that an English man-of-war, the "Minotaur," and a Japanese cruiser were in the vicinity of the island, and that we would surely fall a prey to one of them. As my predecessor in command of the "Ayesha" was leaving her, he wished us Godspeed, and concluded with the comforting remark, "But the ship's bottom is worn through."

When, in spite of all these warnings, we remained firm in our purpose, and continued the work of getting the "Ayesha" ready for sea, the sporting side of the situation began to appeal to the Englishmen, and they almost ran their legs off in their eagerness to help us. Could it have been gratitude that impelled them to lend us their aid? It is a question I have never been able to answer to my satisfaction, although, to be sure, several of them did express a feeling of relief at the thought that now the fatiguing telegraph service with its many hours of overwork, and its lack of diversion, was a thing of the past. They showed us where the provisions and water were kept, and urgently advised us to take provisions from the one side, where they were new and fresh, rather than from the other, where they were stale. They fetched out cooking utensils, water, barrels of petroleum, old clothes, blankets, and the like, and themselves loaded them on trucks and brought them to us. From every side invitations to dinner poured down upon us; my men were supplied with pipes and tobacco; in short, the Englishmen did all they could to help us out.

Read it all; for free online - or buy the book.

Diversity Thursday

2012-01-05T08:19:00.002-05:00

We have a follow-up to the "ladder of shame" story from last month.

Shall we let out a collective "sigh" now, or wait until the end? Once again, retrograde forces are trying to pull us back to a time of segregation and disunity and away from cohesion. For their own socio-political reasons as well, spiced up with a bit of insecurity and self-loathing to make it interesting.

As Lex points out in the thread that CO links to, looks like the CO of the HOWARD has other priorities.

On July 3, 75 women from USS Howard (DDG 83) and USS Chung Hoon (DDG 93) gathered for a women’s symposium hosted by USS Howard’s female commanding officer, Cmdr. Ande Bergmann, to discuss professional development topics for women in the US Navy, and to discuss sexual harassment, assault and the policies governing the issues.

“We heard a cry, specifically on how to address and confront sexual assault and harassment,” Bergmann said. “In response, we decided that a small symposium would allow us to come together and truly educate ourselves on these issues in the workplace that women throughout the fleet face.”

Held at an off-ship location, women from all ranks were able to meet in a more intimate setting and discuss the tough issues confronting women embarked on ships.

Being that you did this little stunt in civies - Skipper I'm going to call by your first name, Ande.

Ande, I have supported women in the service since I was a wee-MIDN - but it is leaders like you that, in 2012, continue to pull us back and make it difficult for men like me to tell others to treat you as equals. The reason? You don't act like you think you are.

I won't speak to your personal reasons that led to your discriminatory actions - only you know your heart - but I will say this; it is a cancer on your wardroom and others - a cancer of your creation.

Would you like it if a couple of male destroyer COs had a "men only" event to discuss ways to avoid false accusations of sexual harassment? False claims do happen, you know.

How about any "men only" event? Would you celebrate that?

I know that you are just following the cues from people like RADM Klein - but that really isn't an excuse. This is the second decade of the 21st Century. Lead all your people Ande; don't act like a patronizing sexist. You're better than that - and so is our Navy.

How about holding a marlinspike seamanship seminar next month instead? Something radical like an "all hands event."

You should have asked your Mother for Advice

2012-01-04T14:21:00.003-05:00

1. Dude, the beard.
2. Lame sweater and rolled up button-up sleeves? Really?
3. Never do something like this at a sporting event unless SHE is the sports nut and/or THAT is where you met her.
4. If a sporting event - make sure it isn't one that is 4/5 empty.

So many bad omens for a woman here - I'm shocked she didn't run sooner.

As a side-note; way too early in the marriage to invite a young, buxom blonde with audio-visual equipment to get in between the two of you. Just say'n.

Pentagon - home of the New Janissaries?

2012-01-04T07:31:00.000-05:00

Time to use that picture again ...

From our friends at POGO;

Despite a plan set forth by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to rein in the Department of Defense's (DoD) increasingly top-heavy force and assurances from Pentagon personnel that these plans were being enacted, the U.S. military is still adding top brass ...
...
Seventeen general and flag officers were scheduled to be eliminated between May and September through Gates’ Efficiency Initiatives. But the DoD didn’t reduce its top brass at all. Instead, six generals were added from May to September, increasing the number of general and flag officers from 964 to 970. Moreover, from July 1, 2011—Panetta’s first day as Secretary of Defense—to September 30, the Pentagon added three four-star officers. Coincidentally, this is precisely the number of four-star officers Gates cut during his final year as SecDef, from June 2010 to the end of June 2011. Thus, in just three months, Panetta undid a year’s worth of Gates’ attempts to cut the Pentagon’s very top brass. It’s doubtful that Gates would consider Panetta’s current rate of adding a new four-star officer every month conducive to efficiency.

One of these new four-star officers is Admiral Mark Ferguson, who became vice chief of naval operations and consequently a four-star admiral less than a month before he testified at Senator Webb’s hearing. Ironically, this beneficiary of Star Creep wrote in his prepared statement that the “Navy supports these efficiency actions and anticipates additional review to reduce or merge flag officer positions.” At the hearing he expanded upon this, stating that “We [the Navy] remain absolutely committed to create a more agile, flexible, and effective flag officer staff structure.” Apparently, this support and commitment to flag officer efficiencies includes adding admirals.

All the while - look at what we are doing with PTS and ERB. ERB especially.

Total costs? They're low balling it.

The cost to taxpayers of uniformed military personnel increases markedly with their rank. In just basic compensation, these six new generals will cost taxpayers more than $1.25 million per year. Over the next ten years, they’ll cost taxpayers more than $14 million (methodology).

The total cost to taxpayers of Star Creep is not trivial, even in the Pentagon’s bloated budget. Since the war in Afghanistan began, the Pentagon has added 99 general and flag officers, a rate of growth that’s tops among all DoD uniformed personnel groups, as can be seen in the above graph. In 2012, these general and flag officers will cost taxpayers more than $22 million in just direct financial compensation. Between 2012 and 2021, they’ll cost nearly $250 million.

But the cost of Star Creep only begins with direct compensation. Other costs that surround generals and admirals—such as staff, contractors, and travel—increase with higher ranks. For example, Bloomberg recently reported that taxpayers in Huntsville, Alabama, footed a $3.8-million bill to build luxurious homes for generals in a successful effort to keep Pentagon pork flowing into the area. One such home, built for a major general, was a sprawling 4,200-square-foot mansion that included granite countertops, hardwood floors, and stainless steel appliances.

Luxurious homes are just the beginning of the extravagances available to top military commanders. According to Raymond Dubois, former DoD director of administration and management from 2002 to 2005, there are other perks:

Do you get the second-order detail from the graph above? Note that 3-4 Star have increased more than GOFO in general. As a recividist staff weenie I'll try to explain a very childish attribute about GOFOdom. It isn't enough to make Flag - you must get more stars. A 1-Star, you see, is almost seen as a non-qual. To not get promoted to 2-Star is looked at as a "fail to launch."

Just a 2-star? What did you screw up? And so on.

So, no shock to the above. As we have discussed before - those we hoped would bring accounting to the Pentagon - McCain and Webb - have turned out toothless.

So, we wait. We wait for leadership - leadership that can look its force in the face with a clear conscience. As we are moving in the exact opposite direction we need to go - when change comes it will be with a broad-axe and not a scalpel.

Lead from the front? When it comes to end-strength management, our GOFO does not know the word.

The Art of War

2012-01-03T07:10:00.000-05:00

BZ to all who took care of her while she waited for her next lover - LT B; gird your loins.

Mark 41 Stable Vertical (those hand-firing keys are incredible!) in Iowa's main battery plotting room. You can see that the condition is excellent!

Just look at that face! That is pride. My face is green right now.

Hat tip Ken.

About that USNI ballot ...

2012-01-02T21:46:00.002-05:00

First thing - if you aren't a member of the U.S. Naval Institute; sign up or shut up.

Second, if you are a member, look for the ballot. There might be someone you know on it.

Vote early; vote often.

A Decade Late, but We'll Take Them

2012-01-02T09:48:00.000-05:00

Well before AFG we knew we needed these - I still remember people saying, "It would be nice to have a few OV-10s around ... "

From the start of the march from Camp Rhino, we doubly knew we needed this capability.

The same mentality that hates the A-10 hates this even more. They are the same people, BTW, who will tell you with a straight face that the F-35 can replace the A-10. Yep - "those" people.

Anyway, a decade late and a "good enough" - if we can keep them. This doesn't pack quite the punch it should - but it is good enough.

It’s official, the Air Force has selected Embraer’s A-29 Super Tucano as the Light Air Support (LAS) aircraft, better known as a counterinsurgency (COIN) plane. ... a couple of years ago the Air Force planned to buy dozens of cheap, turboprop-driven COIN aircraft that could be used to provide light air support and ISR for troops fighting insurgents in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The planes were supposed to take the burden for such unglamorous missions off of jet fighters like the F-16, which cost far more to operate. However, the draw-down from Iraq combined with shrinking defense budgets forced the air service to dramatically reduce the program. Now, the service will use the small fleet of turboprop planes to help build up the nascent Afghan air force, and “other nations.” Those last two words leave the possibility open for more Super T sales beyond those to the U.S. Air Force and Afghan air force.

I know that the USAF will try to kill this as soon as they can - just like I know there are many in the Navy who want to kill Riverine again - but for now let us say, "Good."

... and yes - they will be built in the USA; can someone get me a ride?

The A-29 Super Tucano will be built in Jacksonville, FL by American employees with parts from American companies. Aircraft training will be provided in Clovis, NM. More than 70 U.S. suppliers in 21 states will supply parts or services for this contract. At least 1,200 U.S. jobs will be supported through this contract

It would be nice if the USN could get a squadron or three for NSW support. Put them in the Reserves if the active duty Hornet Mafia gets the vapors. Two squadrons in Norfolk, two squadrons in San Diego. Better yet - make is six total; 3 & 3. One active and two reserve squadrons per coast.

I know Captain Hendrix could tell us how they would fold in well with influence squadrons - if you could get the NSW folks to let a DET or two go for a few months.

You will have no problem getting pilots to sign up that's for sure; it has guns in the wings for goodness sakes!

ASW Geeks of the World UNITE!

2012-01-02T01:52:00.001-05:00

Hey - I've got my CZ slide-rule ... and our buddy Johninjax sends along something that may require AW1 Tim to find some "quality time."

I'm sorry - there are few things that requires a well trained crew than a multi-day, non-permissive ASW prosecution. You can't just throw your "A-Team" at the problem and succeed. 24/7 every watch has to be ready for prime time.

Sigh ... few people under age 45 (except for some of my 1120 buds) have any idea what I am talking about .... but odds are; those under 25 now will.

Sunday Funnies

2012-01-01T10:09:00.000-05:00

New Years Eve ....

2011-12-31T01:10:00.000-05:00

Fullbore Friday

2011-12-30T00:01:00.006-05:00

Let's take a nice, small, tactical Joint action going in to the New Year.

You're outnumbered six to two. Your enemy's ships are better armed, manned, and provisioned. They guard one of your cities that they have held for a year and they have many soldiers ashore.

Your army, navy, and nation are strangled by a blockade. You need that city. You need that port.

What do you do? Attack - of course.

For a naval attack he placed artillery and dismounted cavalry from Sibley's brigade, led by Colonel Thomas Green, aboard two river steamers, the Bayou City and the Neptune, commanded by Capt. Leon Smith. Magruder gathered infantry and cavalry, led by Brig. General William R. Scurry, and supported by twenty light and heavy cannons, to cross the railroad bridge onto the island to capture the federal forces ashore. To meet the attack Renshaw had six ships that mounted twenty-nine pieces of heavy artillery.

The Confederates entered Galveston on New Year's night, January 1, 1863, and opened fire before dawn. Cook failed to seize the wharf because of the short ladders provided for his men. Naval guns helped drive back the assault. Then the Confederate "cottonclads" struck from the rear of the Union squadron. The Harriet Lane sank the Neptune when it tried to ram the Union ship, but men from the Bayou City boarded and seized the federal vessel despite the explosion of their own heavy cannon. Renshaw's flagship, the Westfield, ran aground, and the commander died trying to blow up his ship rather than surrender it. The other Union ships sailed out to sea, ignoring Confederate surrender demands, which could be enforced only upon the abandoned federal infantry in town.

Magruder had retaken Galveston with a loss of twenty-six killed and 117 wounded. Union losses included the captured infantry and the Harriet Lane, about 150 casualties on the naval ships, as well as the destruction of the Westfield. The port remained under Confederate control for the rest of the war.

The Northern invaders actually were hit even worse - they had over 400 soldiers taken prisoner.

Why did they lose? Simple - poor leadership and a lack of battlemindedness. The occupation made them complacent and over-confident. All the equipment in the world will not help you if you don't have the right leadership.

Diversity Thursday

2011-12-29T01:23:00.002-05:00

This is sad and in many ways pathetic.

As we've discussed often - I served with females from the start of my career and have supported their service everywhere they are physically and otherwise qualified - just like everyone else - with a few logical exceptions.

I have had some great mentors who were female - including one crusty old-school CMDCM who would not want to be called a "mentor" - especially by an officer; but by a modern definition, she was one. If I told her that, she would probably have called me a pu55y and to get out of her Navy ... but different subject for a different day.

On the other side, I have had the chance to "mentor" (I don't like the concept BTW - it is just plain professionalism and leadership - it is part of the job) - females as well. Even after retirement, I still keep in touch with a few; and via this blog/email I have female - officer and enlisted, MIDN too - who honor me with the opportunity to throw in a word of advice now and then when asked.

It is incredibly counter-productive - as the CO on the PONCE knows - to push a s3x-segregation program (RDML Klein call your office). There are a lot of good that can come from getting advice from the other side of the XX-XY divide.

Our Navy isn't interested in that though. Oh, no - it is debunked 1970s theories it needs to re-animate and pick at. The Navy is just a place to do social work you can't do elsewhere dontchaknow.

Navy policy on such issues is driven by the worst byproducts of gender studies departments at universities - afterall, who else will give those oxygen thieves a paycheck - and the resulting cognitive disfunction is on display again. As a result - our organization does things like this.

Hello [redacted]

Thank you for your past participation in the NavyWomen eMentor program. Since that program sunsetted, and our AcademyWomen eMentor is restricted to women only, I'm sorry to inform you we had to delete your profile from the program. However, we are currently talking with several organizations regarding launching new eMentor programs that might apply to you, so please periodically check back to our site (http://academywomen.org/e-mentorprogram.php) for announcements of new programs.

Warm regards,

Shannon
--
Shannon [redacted]
Manager, eMentor Leadership Program
[redacted]@ementorprogram.org
http://ementorprogram.org
www.academywomen.org

We have a retired Navy Captain - one who is very well placed in his community and very involved in with his Navy still - who was extending a hand to offer advice.

It seems that gender politics and an agenda of exclusion is more important than building leaders.

Classic s3xual discrimination. Not only does it insult those who offer to help - it takes away an opportunity for one of our rising stars to benefit from decades of experience.

Shame on our Navy - and shame on all of us. This is our Navy; we let this happen.

For the record - the POC above is a graduate of the USAFA - so we're letting the Air Farce do this to us - can we be more of a Beta Service?

Ahhh, the Commie useful idiots are still with us ...

2011-12-28T06:06:00.000-05:00

Some people just never quit ... or have any shame.

These are British - but we have them here. They are people who are no better than those blood and gore flecked apologists of Nazis.

Simon Winchester finds time to disgorge this charmer (subscriber only);

... seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.

What a typical Leftist hypocrite. That British tool lives in the USA; MASS and NYC to be exact. Enjoy his writing, you paid for it - one of the teats he sucks off of is public radio.

The next useful idiot is a Brit too; Neil Clark.

Havel's anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women's rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.
...
While the years following the liberation of eastern Europe from communism by Havel and his fellow dissidents are routinely portrayed in the west as one big success story, the reality is rather different.
...
Lauding Havel is not only doing a disservice to the millions of ordinary people in eastern Europe who have not been served well by his politics, but to the innocent men, women and children killed by the western military adventures he supported

Let them speak and by their words be d@mned.

I See Your Train Wreck and Raise You a Pathetic

2011-12-27T23:18:00.004-05:00

We've talked about it here, and we talked to our buddy Phil about it on Midrats - and Phil hits on it again.

Just when you thought it was safe to take a knee and run out the clock on 2011 in the hopes that the new year would be better — it ain’t.

Sandra Erwin of National Defense magazine penned a deeply pessimistic look ahead Wednesday that concluded the Pentagon’s 2012 could make 2011 look like a box social by comparison. The Building will continue to cover its eyes and plug its ears about the truth of the big crunch; the services’ food fights will only intensify; strategy types’ lazy groupthink will persist; and cost and schedule problems are only going to worsen on the big programs.

We've been talking about it for years - any economic historian could tell you it was coming - and we haven't even hit the Terrible 20s yet.

The problem is deep, ugly, and institutional. It will only change with the right leadership; first in suits - then in uniform. There are people who can do what needs to be done - but they don't have the top cover bureaucratically and politically to do it.

We don't that that right combination of professional and intellectual courage at the front right now. As a result, things will be much worse before they get better.

You'll know change when you see it - when leaders who have clearer and more active priorities than the socio-political fads of Diversity and green energy come to the front.

Sandra sees it along with another Midrats alumni, Daniel Gouré.

The Pentagon Will Continue to Live in Denial About the Approaching Fiscal Train Wreck

Yes, a budget train wreck is a shopworn cliché inside the Beltway. It dates back to 1995, when the Center for Strategic and International Studies published, “Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millennium.” One of the authors, industry analyst Daniel Gouré, admits that the Pentagon has so far avoided fiscal disaster. The post 9/11 spending surge prevented the Defense Department from fixing its weapons cost-growth problem and only exacerbated an imbalance between tooth and tail. But with the nation in dire financial straits and its leaders incapable of addressing the debt crisis, “We know the train wreck is inevitable,” says Gouré. “We choose not to think about it because it’s not here right now.”

The trends that the CSIS report brought to light in 1995 have not changed, he says. “Nobody wants to address cost growth in major systems.” At the time, the message was that the Defense Department needed to make strategic choices of whether to modernize its aging equipment or reduce its work force. The same dilemma exists, and it’s only been made worse by the huge increases in the cost of military personnel.

Regardless of the election outcome, Gouré predicts, whoever takes over has to come to grips with the reality that the current defense apparatus is unaffordable.

New Buzzwords Will Masquerade Old Thinking

Pentagon strategists and think tanks have a history of becoming infatuated with “concepts,” which also can be described as the Pentagon’s worldview captured in three-letter acronyms. The decade of the 1990s was all about NCW (network centric warfare) which morphed into RMA (revolution in military affairs). Then came EBO (effects-based operations), coupled with CBR (capabilities based requirements) or TBR (threat based requirements).

Changes in buzzwords didn’t really bring about innovative thinking, however, says Frank Hoffman, military analyst at the National Defense University. “We suffer from strategic amnesia,” he says, “and continue to repeat [mistakes of] the past.”

Part of the problem is that we don't study our own history; recent or far. Combine that with a culture that does not reward aggressive debate - and you drift until you run aground.

There are signs of the problem at the core of our military structures all over the place if you want to see them. They are I&W of a deep fault a the core of the system. That is where the pathetic comes in.

DFAS is unable to reconcile the cash activity recorded in the Navy’s general ledger accounting systems to that recorded in DCAS. DFAS officials stated they acquired the Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) tool to perform this reconciliation; however, after 4 years of effort and $29 million, the BAM tool does not yet provide the information needed to identify and resolve the underlying causes of differences between DCAS and Navy general ledger systems. As of April 2011, there were more than $22 billion unmatched disbursements and collections affecting more than 10,000 lines of accounting. DOD IG officials stated they were performing substantive testing to confirm the balance of the Marine Corps FBWT as part of their audit of the Marine Corps’s Fiscal Year 2011 Statement of Budgetary Resources. This testing did not include internal control and did not provide assurance on the effectiveness of the Marine Corps’ FBWT reconciliation process. Navy, Marine Corps, and DFAS-CL officials agreed existing FBWT policies and procedures are inadequate. DFAS-CL and Navy officials stated the base realignment and closure changes 2006–2008 resulted in loss of experienced DFAS-CL personnel and that remaining staff have not received needed training. The Navy is developing a plan of action and milestones (POAM) to address weaknesses in audit readiness.
...
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in October that the Pentagon is preparing to be audit-ready by 2014. The Senate passed an amendment in the defense authorization bill from Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) that would have required the 2014 Pentagon audit, but the amendment was stripped out of the final legislation.

Excuses. Acceptance of a systemic incompetence that if practiced in the civilian sector would land people in jail.

So - when do we turn? No time soon I am afraid. It will take crisis that will require bold action - or a civilian leadership who can break the cycle that has us where we are.

In the meantime - good people will do their best to serve their nation - a nation bereft of the right people in the right place at the right time - thrashing away in a quagmire of our own creation.

Is Called a Rediness Assist

2011-12-27T14:37:00.006-05:00

No worries here Dave; this is great news. May they deploy early and often; brother needs the readiness points.

The military’s latest secret assessment of China’s rapidly modernizing submarines has good news and bad news for the U.S. Navy. On one hand, the roughly 60 submarines in the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet are spending more and more time on combat-ready patrols — signaling China’s increasing naval competence and growing seriousness about influencing the western Pacific Ocean.

On the other hand, the flurry of undersea activity gives American forces more opportunities to tail and examine Chinese subs. And U.S. analysts discovered a silver lining in the gathering strategic storm clouds. Chinese submarines are a hell of a lot noisier than anyone expected. The sound you hear is the Pacific balance of power tipping in Washington’s favor.

Hey ---- we need to break the adhesions that have built up since the early '90s, the complacency that comes from canned exercises, and the inattention to everything from sonobuoy inventories to LWT performance.

Hey - and who can complain about a submarine that can't turn off her augmenter?

Leaving aside the PLAN’s dozen imported Russian subs, new Chinese submarines can be detected at what’s known as the “first convergence zone,” a ring approximately 25 miles from an undersea vessel where outward-traveling sound waves pack close together.

During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy would arrange its own submarines in lines where each boat was 25 miles from the next, forming a sort of net to catch Soviet subs. With the introduction of the latest generation of quiet Russian diesel subs in the 1990s, the Americans thought that convergence-zone detection was no longer possible. But the Navy’s just discovered that China’s homemade subs are even louder than 20-year-old Russian boats. “Apparently they [U.S. subs] are making first convergence zone detections and holding them,” the analyst reports.

Now, where is my CZ Slide Rule?

Oh yea; here it is.

An Armstrong Festivus

2011-12-26T22:12:00.003-05:00

I don't know about the rest of you - but my stomach is full and my disposable income squirrel money has been, ahem, re-baselined.

... but even when the well is dry - that doesn't mean you can't water your brain.

From good friend of the blog - and an even better helo pilot - LCDR B.J. Armstrong, USN takes a break from keeping us in the way of life we have become accustomed to send along a Festivus Reading list.

Now that you have plowed through your airing of grievances ... enjoy.

Is being frugal a proper aspect of a Naval Officer? Maybe it is an O-4 thing.

It’s the day after Christmas and you’re wondering where to begin with that e-reader you discovered under the Tree. One of the few places e-readers have an advantage over the physical book is with out of print books that are beyond their copyright (the other is the ability to bring a large library on deployment). These books are available for free in epub or pdf formats that are readable on most e-readers and tablets, whether from Google Books or websites like the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg (PG is one of the better sources because of the hard working volunteers who edit the formatting of the books). So, if you’re looking to start building the foundation of your navalist e-library with a few no-cost choices, here are five to begin with.

The Influence of Seapower Upon History; 1660 to 1782.

By Alfred Thayer Mahan.

Do I need to say anything more? ATM is admittedly a difficult author to read. His pseudo-late-Victorian writing style doesn’t help, and he himself wrote in his autobiography that in his book length works he tended to think of every caveat and explanation possible and throw them in. The result is sentenances that would take an English PhD like Dr. Fleming to diagram and paragraphs that extend over entire pages of the book. You know there’s a situation when the good Captain’s own son was reputed to say he couldn’t read his father’s books.

But here’s the thing…with a copy of “The Influence” on your e-reader, you can read the book in small sections. The ideas in this book set the bedrock for naval strategy for the entire 20th century. If you read Dr.’s Holmes and Yoshihara and their analysis of today’s Indian and Chinese navies you’ll begin to think that it may be the foundation for the 21st century as well. Mahan is the inventor of such ideas as the global commons, national grand strategy, and was one of the first to define what it meant to be a maritime nation. Since the book is free, there’s no excuse for not having it in your e-library, and even starting to add some notes and bookmarks to the text.

Mahan on Naval Warfare: Selections from the Writings of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan.

Edited by Allen Westcott

This book was edited by a professor at the Naval Academy who was attempting to make the writing of the great Navalist more approachable for Midshipmen. Less than a decade after the Captain’s death he worked through many of Mahan’s books and essays and pulled important ideas and passages out, editing them into this textbook. In search of ideas or quotes that help you define what Mahan thought? This book is an excellent place to begin.

There is a risk with this book though; because Professor Westcott’s approach tends to pull shorter passages, or pull a series of quotes out of a book together and link them, so there is a tendency to lose the context in which Mahan was writing. Big ideas, like naval strategy, require context. Despite the loss of context, the book is a good one for your e-library because it can inspire you to find other Mahanian texts and expand your knowledge of his thinking and writing. Naval Historian Geoffrey Till put it well when he wrote “Mahan frequently suffers from writing more than most people are willing to read.” Westcott’s book can help get you started.

Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.

By Julian Corbett

Corbett is often taught as something akin to the anti-Mahan. The comparison is frequently made that while Mahan is the Antoine-Henri Jomini of naval warfare, Corbett is the Karl von Clausewitz. That comparison is inaccurate and has created a perception that enhances the differences between the two naval thinkers. Mahan wrote that he considered his own writing and thinking a foundation which Corbett’s ideas then built upon.

Corbett’s writing often appears more relevant to today’s naval professionals, and it discusses expeditionary operations and operations beyond fleet on fleet engagements. His section on naval “Limited Wars” is particularly relevant to American naval policy at the start of our new century. There’s also a hidden gem in “Some Principles,” and that is Corbett’s early summary of the thinking of von Clausewitz. The Briton did study the Prussian extensively, and his chapter on the former head of the General Staff is a great starting point for those who are unfamiliar with him.

The Naval War of 1812, Volume 1 & 2.

By Theodore Roosevelt

This coming year is the bicentennial of the start of the War of 1812, a conflict very few people are genuinely familiar with. The War of 1812 was a defining conflict for the United States Navy. Until the Declaration of War in June of 1812 Congress had been inconsistent with its funding and support for the service. The very existence of the service was debated on the floors of the House and Senate repeatedly in the first decades of our nation’s independence. After the War of 1812, however, nobody doubted the need for a United States Navy.

Roosevelt’s book, though over a century old, is still a standard text of the War. The future President wrote it while a student at Yale as his senior thesis, at 23 years old, and published it. The work, rather than a vain attempt at publishing by a well off young man, has stood the academic test of time. This is what many military historians would call “drum and trumpets” history, with a focus on detailed accounts of the individual battles rather than larger strategic or geopolitical implications. However, Roosevelt did work from primary source documents and produced a two volume history that NHHC’s Dr. Michael Crawford has written is “More than a classic, it remains, after 120 years, a standard study of the war.”

The Mirror of the Sea

By: Joseph Conrad

Most of us have read Joseph Conrad because we were assigned “The Heart of Darkness” in our high school or college years. We remember the novella briefly, if at all, and probably only in reference to our repeated viewing of Coppala’s adaptation in the movie “Apocalypse Now.” Before becoming a man of letters, Joseph Conrad was a man of the sea. Most of his novels and stories involve ships or sailors, however not everyone realizes he spent decades as an officer in the British merchant marine. The Mirror of the Sea is a memoir, of sorts, of Conrad’s service afloat. Written in the form of a series of essays, the book offers frequent reminders of the challenges that await those who elect to earn their living at sea. Conrad’s memories of his time on the worlds oceans are earily recognizable for today’s Sailors and at times poetic.

There’s a bit of a romantic hidden away in most of us who put on a naval uniform and head for open water in defense of our nation. Reading Conrad will help you realize that the thoughts, emotions, and challenges we face at sea haven’t changed much in centuries. Sometimes, when you’re deep into a long deployment at sea and feeling like you are on your own, that can be comforting. Conrad will surprise you with how much he knows, and how much you share.

STRATFOR's STRATCOM Fail

2011-12-26T09:56:00.002-05:00

My first instinct was; STRAFOR? Why STRATFOR?

On Saturday, hackers who say they are members of the collective known as Anonymous claimed responsibility for crashing the Web site of the group, Stratfor Global Intelligence Service, and pilfering its client list, e-mails and credit card information in an operation they say is intended to steal $1 million for donations to charity. The hackers posted a list online that they say contains Stratfor’s confidential client list as well as credit card details, passwords and home addresses for some 4,000 Stratfor clients. The hackers also said they had details for more than 90,000 credit card accounts. Among the organizations listed as Stratfor clients: Bank of America, the Defense Department, Doctors Without Borders, Lockheed Martin, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the United Nations.

The group also posted five receipts online that it said were of donations made with pilfered credit card details. One receipt showed a $180 donation from a United States Homeland Security employee, Edmund H. Tupay, to the American Red Cross. Another showed a $200 donation to the Red Cross from Allen Barr, a recently retired employee from the Texas Department of Banking.

Hey, I like those guys. Why didn't they pick on Greenpeace or sump'n? Now, I'm not a Ron Paul supporter, but my first instincts were to ponder - there must be some deeper conspiracy going on here ... what was REALLY on STRATFOR's servers .... and was this REALLY Anon ..... but then ....

Stratfor didn't just expose a website to the public. It also, apparently, put all this other stuff online, in the clear, for the taking.

It's true that websites are like storefronts, and that it's more or less impossible to stop determined people from blocking or defacing them now and again.

Here, however, it looks like Stratfor left private files in the window display, waiting to be grabbed by the first guy to put a brick through the glass.

Now, I'm not America's premier intelligence and security research group, and I'm not a member of its national IT security planning task force. But I'm pretty sure that putting unencrypted lists of credit card numbers and client details on public-exposed servers isn't quite explained by "no matter what you do, every system has some level of vulnerability."

Oh come on. Talk about an easy target. Ummmmm .... let me guess - no one will be contracting STRATFOR for cyber security work in the near future.

What is "The West" and its outposts

2011-12-26T01:22:00.000-05:00

It is hard to get a visual of what is, in a Furgusonesque definition, what the West looks like on a map and its lines of cultural communication.

Well - here is an interesting proxy.Via blprnt,

... tweets containing the phrases 'just landed in...' or 'just arrived in...'. Locations from these tweets are located using MetaCarta's Location Finder API. The home location for the traveling users are scraped from their Twitter pages. The system then plots these voyages over time.

Over the years you've heard me talk of the Anglosphere, non-Russia Europe and its auxiliaries in Asia constituting the true West. That mostly overlaps a Furfusonesque definition of the West.

This visualizes the concept very well methinks.

Perspective

2011-12-25T06:02:00.000-05:00

Sunday Funnies

2011-12-25T01:10:00.000-05:00

What did Santa bring you?

Hat tip InkSpots via Andrew.

Fullbore Friday

2011-12-23T01:15:00.000-05:00

Thank goodness we never had to have a FbF for NORAD ... but on the Friday before Christmas - perhaps we should.

The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations "hotline." The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.

In 1958, the governments of Canada and the United States created a bi-national air defense command for North America called the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD, which then took on the tradition of tracking Santa.

Col. Shoup - Santa gives your heart a nice Fullbore. Your actions are in the finest traditions of the most humane Great Power military the world has ever seen.

Merry Christmas to everyone on the front porch; Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Zoroastrians, agnostic, atheist, and Pagan.

Even if you don't believe in him; Jesus loves you too.

A Christmas Message from URR ...

2011-12-22T22:45:00.003-05:00

OK, it's not URR - mostly.

Standard Kristen warning.

If you haven't enjoyed the guilty pleasure of AFT - take a visit.

Serial numbers are ....

2011-12-22T08:04:00.004-05:00

Please tell me they found them about 10 days ago and have already pulled the string on this ...

The Finnish authorities have impounded an Isle of Man-flagged ship bound for China with undeclared missiles and explosives, officials say.

Police are questioning the crew of the MS Thor Liberty after what were described as 69 Patriot anti-missile missiles were found aboard.

Interior Minister Paivi Rasanen said the missiles were marked "fireworks".

The MS Thor Liberty had docked in the Finnish port of Kotka after leaving Germany last week.

A+ for effort on the Chinese part; F for execution. Imagine what they do get through.

The forensics on this should be fairly easy to do for the Germans, who BTW have a very good intelligence service. Maybe what drew their attention was, "Who exports fireworks to China?"

In a larger sense - be careful what you export, get shot down, or leave behind.

Diversity Thursday

2011-12-22T01:44:00.001-05:00

Now and then you just have to laugh. The original reasons for the entire Diversity Industry are so far passed, that it is little more now than racialists justifying their jobs by, well, being racialists.

A fact. As a generalized ethnic group, Americas of Asian extraction have the highest economic success as any other general ethnic group.

From family stability to academic achievement - they are thriving. Here is one reference - there are many more.

Do they, as a group, really need any help to "level the playing field?"

With Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders representing just 3 percent of the Senior Executive Service, a pilot program seeks to prepare more Asians for the government's top ranks.

The year-long program, run by the Asian American Government Executives Network, will give 20 Asian hopefuls training, one-on-one mentoring, networking and placement assistance to "help them through the last leg of the journey to the SES," AAGEN chairman Tommy Hwang told Federal News Radio.

Six percent of the federal workforce is Asian, which mirrors the U.S. population. That proportion holds true at all levels of government except for the SES.

Of course not - but the Diversity Industry is not about equality. It is about promoting institutional discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color or national origin. Why? Simple. Because they can.

When will the Diversity Industry start to demand that their ranks reflect the population as a whole? Have you ever been to one of their conferences? Let us see that study, then we can talk about SES jelly bean counting.

More lipstick than butch ...

2011-12-21T19:01:00.005-05:00

... no further comment required.

A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule on Wednesday when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted "first kiss" on the dock after one of them returned from 80 days at sea.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, Calif., descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles. The crowd screamed and waved flags around them.

Both women, ages 22 and 23 respectively, are fire controlmen in the Navy. They met at training school and have been dating for two years.

Navy officials said it was the first time on record that a same-sex couple was chosen to kiss first upon a ship's return. Sailors and their loved ones bought $1 raffle tickets for the opportunity. Gaeta said she bought $50 of tickets. The Navy said the money would be used to host a Christmas party for the children of sailors.

I think Navy Relief missed an opportunity here ... but maybe I should stick to my "no further comment" above.

I just hope they didn't chip a tooth. OK, I need to stop right now.

UPDATE: OK, not the video a lot of you want to see - but let this put the Sailors in a bit more depth.

Self-detonations

2011-12-21T07:51:00.003-05:00

No, no, no - I'm not talking about Command Pins, this is a bit different.

Among the many other blessings that come with being born an American, another thing we have is the fact that besides the spare Japanese bomb and German torpedo, no war has been fought on our land since the 1860s. As a result, we don't have to deal with things like this;

Two anti-tank mines from World War II exploded spontaneously along a road in the eastern German state of Brandenburg in the past week, confirming warnings that unexploded bombs are becoming increasingly unstable.

Last Wednesday, Dec. 14, a detonation tore a crater 10 meters (33 feet) wide next to a road between the towns of Gross Ossnig and Neuhausen, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of Berlin, Brandenburg police said. No one was hurt. One eyewitness, Gerhard Willing, said a schoolbus had just driven past the spot. "It was damned lucky that no one was hurt," he told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. The area had been a storage site for a nearby bridge construction project. "Metal struts weighing tons were dumped there, big trucks drove past and workers were constantly walking around," said Willing.
A stretch of the road subsided and the police cordoned off the area. Bomb disposal experts found two more mines nearby. They were too unstable to remove and had to be blown up where they lay on Friday. Some 400 residents living within one kilometer of the area were evacuated and told to leave their doors and windows open to prevent the glass shattering from the shockwaves.

Then, on Saturday, another mine exploded of its own accord. "Self-detonations are very rare," Torsten Schwieg, a local council official, said. "But having two go off at such a short interval is highly unusual."
...
"Germany will have to deal with the munitions problem for a very long time to come," Hans-Jürgen Weise, the former bomb disposal chief for the west of Brandenburg, now retired, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Unexploded bombs are becoming more dangerous by the day through material fatigue as a result of ageing and through the erosion of safety elements in the trigger mechanisms."

Oh wait - Carolina shrimpers are still waiting for this critter though....

You first

2011-12-20T09:33:00.004-05:00

I appreciate their thoughts ... but ... there you have 16-17 young men asking for American young men and women to fight for their freedom. I don't see a single weapon among those Syrians.

Fight for your own freedom, and then ask for help --- that is what we did. Americans should help those who help themselves - not do the dying for those who a few months later will do little but blame us for their problems anyway.

Good luck men of Kafranbel - but put down the sign and pick up a gun if you want your freedom. You'll only appreciate it if you earn it yourself. If not, then keep on as the slave that you are.

Hat tip Bad Rachel via Jawa.

VMI Demonstrates Leadership

2011-12-20T05:52:00.002-05:00

Part of being a leader is to put yourself out there ahead of everyone else. Usually physically, but also morally, intellectually, and in general go where you want others to follow.

I wish I could embed the video - but go here and watch these cadets from VMI as they discuss their upcoming 2nd Biennial Leadership Conference, coming 5-6 MAR 2012 focused on Cheating, Lying & Honor in America's High Schools, Colleges & Universities.

"When honor lives, a nation thrives"

Indeed. What an interesting and appropriate step for VMI. The more I think about this concept, the more impressed I am. It says a lot about the institution and its priorities that it would put itself out like this.

Very impressed; check out the program. BZ to all involved. If anyone goes in March - report back how it went.

Hat tip Chris.

BM1, report to the XOs office

2011-12-19T22:11:00.004-05:00

When I read this and saw the pic at gCaptain - I frankly could not believe it .... well ....

This is a warship. A warship of the United States Navy. Here is a bit of the story.

On Monday however, the pilot assigned to the USS Howard, a guided missile destroyer stationed in San Diego, experienced the surprise of his life.

A few miles out to sea, the pilot boat operator approached the warship, but immediately noticed blatant safety issues needed to be corrected. Noting the poor state of repair of the ladder hanging over the side, the pilot boat requested its replacement.

After the swapping out the bad ladder, the pilot began his climb up the vertical grey-painted steel. Upon reaching the very top rung, disaster struck and the ladder slipped over the edge about 2 feet.

The knots tying it to the ship had failed.

Losing his footing, the Pilot held on to the ladder with one hand until finally his grip let go. He fell approximately 18 feet to the wavetops.

Over at gCaptain, Rob has seven very good questions. I'm still in shock - I can add more. You?

C-14, what does an ISIC do with a photo like that coming through the NIPRNET from the pilot service company?

I hate to sound like this sounds but it is a fact - that ladder and knot problem would not happen on a Royal Navy or Royal Netherlands Navy ship. No. Not. Never.

Hat tip SP.

Another great man passes

2011-12-19T10:37:00.004-05:00

It has been a bad week for writers who influenced your humble blogg'r in his young adulthood.

As most of you know, Václav Havel has passed. First Hitch, then Václav; both died as a byproduct of a love of cigarettes, BTW.

What a giant - and a perfect example of the mindlessness of the Communist mindset in the face of human nature. Afraid of a guy who wrote plays.

Well, in the end he won; in spades.

The great thing about Havel was the same thing that drove me to him - a focus on freedom. Shortly after it was published back in 1991, I picked up Open Letters: Selected Writings; there it is in the upper-right corner pulled out from its place in my library this morning.

A well worn book that I took on deployment in '92. It could use a good translation - but for anyone who wanted to look in to the mind of a free man living in an intellectual prison, this should be on your short list.

Anyway - thank you Václav.Jindřich Šídlo I think outlines him very well.

.... Vaclav Havel was neither an angel, nor God, and he knew that the nation would not change.

For all that, he always did exactly what he thought was the right thing. He talked constantly about things that were not exactly easy to listen to after years of hearing about them over and over again – morality, conscience, responsibility, but also of racism and corruption, whose dangers he was very quick to recognise in the early 90s.

And he did all that knowing full well the risk that people would measure his words against their own experience and against what he would do himself. A confrontation between moral authority and politics in the real world cannot, it seems, end up without some disenchantment all round.

Truth and love have not won over lies and hatred, but there can be no doubt that everything Vaclav Havel did or said arose from his deepest conviction that precisely that way leads the path. And no matter what the majority may think about it at any moment.

As a side note - it looks like Admiral Stavridis and I are on the same page here.

The transition

2011-12-19T01:36:00.001-05:00

With the Iraq war done - what about those who served? Unlike your humble blogg'r - not everyone makes a career out of it.

What now?

A nice overview from the West Coast about a few making the transition to the civilian world from being a warrior;

So here he is. Single — because who can date when deployed four times in seven years? — and eschewing the safer graduate school route to gamble on a startup company.

No regrets, he says. His Marine Corps experience taught him to be humble, like when he was a green 2nd lieutenant facing a battle-toughened platoon. It also taught him to go with his feelings.

“It’s safer to go to business school, to go work at a bank. This is scary. There’s no net. The partners could fire me any day,” Martin said.

OK regulars - name sound familiar? CPT Alex Martin, USMC? Yep - you've read his name here in FEB - and we interviewed him on Midrats the month before.

As a side note; Alex is 29. From one perspective - especially the civilian perspective - that is young. In the military, nosomuch.

29 is an age an officer starts to hit his stride. I've recently become aware of a few other guys and what they did in the late-20s. In the book I am listening to right now, Valkyrie, Georg & Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager were leading Regiments on the Eastern Front and were critical members of the plot to kill Hitler. They were in their late 20s too.

Perhaps that is part of the civilian-military divide. We put our lives in the hands of 18-19 yr old "kids" all the time, and put people in their late 20s in charge of hundreds to thousands of lives without thinking about it.

Think about Alex and thousands of others like him who have spent their 20s at war. Then read what is going on the civilian side. Just search for random 29-yr olds ..... and here you go.

That was the case for C.J. Dulberger. The Bolles School grad studied history at the University of Florida in preparation for law school. He worked for a private law firm and the State Attorney’s Office while studying for the law school entrance exam.

That cured him of the profession.

So he went back and began a bachelor’s program in information technology management at Florida State College at Jacksonville. He’s still two semesters shy of getting that degree, but he’s already bucked trends that have kept many of his contemporaries underemployed: At 29, he’s in his first year as an account executive at Robert Half Technology, placing IT professionals in jobs.

Yes, he is 29 and is in his first actual job outside of pre-law busy work. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy for the guy and wish him a great adulthood.

Good grief. There isn't a divide in life experience; a chasm.

Why do we prefer each others company inside and out of uniform? Well - review Alex vs. C.J. and there's a start.

The Media at war, at a pivot point - on Midrats

2011-12-18T13:55:00.004-05:00

It started after 911, something not seen for any significant duration since Vietnam - and sustained interest in military matters. As a result, we have seen an increase in the variety and number of places where you can find reporting on military matters.

From retired officers on the news networks using maps to explain the big picture, to new media, to expanded traditional coverage - a decade of war has brought a depth of knowledge that was almost non-existent in the last two decades of the last century.

With two wars and smaller skirmishes in the Long War taking place on a regular basis, the need and interest for information has kept knowledge of military history, strategy, tactics, equipment, and plans as an ongoing requirement in the media.

As the American military presence in the Iraqi war ends, Afghanistan scheduled to fade, and defense budgets contract - what is the state of the military focused media going forward?

Today, Sunday 18 DEC from 5-6pm EST for the full hour to discuss the above and to review the major Navy and military topics of the year will be returning guest Phil Ewing, editor of DODBuzz and previously with Politico and Navy Times.

Join us live if you can and pile in with the usual suspects in the chat room where you can contribute your thoughts and observation - and suggest to us questions for our guests.

If you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - but the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Listen to Midrats on Blog Talk Ra

Sunday Funnies

2011-12-18T04:08:00.000-05:00

Knowing your Republicans

2011-12-17T07:18:00.000-05:00

The passing of a great man

2011-12-16T14:09:00.004-05:00

I only had time to hit this a bit on twitter and FB this AM - but while I am in between a few things at the paying gig today - I wanted to add in my thoughts on the loss of a great intellectual and American. He, along with David Horowitz, helped me to understand that the instincts I had in many areas were not of the Left - but were of freedom and liberty. Libertarian with a small "l." No reason to feel conflicted, the Left co-opted freedom's words, but couldn't follow through with freedom's actions.

He also emphasized the importance of free thought, investigation, fact, and knowledge as opposed to the refined sugar of feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Sure, I didn't agree with him on everything - but that was OK. Through my adult life the helped me understand the value of creative friction and the requirement to debate. Throw elbows where needed and call things as you see fit - but as long as people made principled arguments - give them the respect to respond in kind. Likewise, when they do not - feel free to hang, draw, and quarter them.

A couple of things I recommend for today, first this bit from James Fenton at Slate, and secondly take time to see Hitch in full flower in a long debate on the Iraq war - something that flows well with today's FbF. It is Hitch debated George Galloway in 2005. Joel Pollack at my guest house, BigPeace, has links to all - but below is the start.

Fullbore Friday

2011-12-16T05:57:00.000-05:00

I did a little post earlier this week about the wind up in Iraq. Just a little note.

The historians will spend their time picking this apart - this strange war; this very political war.

As for me; I know what I saw; I know what I read closed source and open; I know what happened in a historical context; I know what I did; I know what others did. My thoughts are the same now as they have always been from 2003 through victory in late 2008 though everyone coming home in 2011.

It is done for us; the rest is up to the Iraqis to figure out.

For those who served and supported OIF; BZ and fullbore.

So that is where our FITREP concept comes from ...

2011-12-15T11:04:00.000-05:00

I had to read this article by Sam Fellman at NavyTimes twice. Surely this is a mistake.

The Naval Academy is artificially inflating its number of applicants to boost its status among other colleges, according to an academy professor who based his accusations on the school’s own documents.

Specifically, the academy counts as “applicants” people who have not completed an application but have shown an interest through other means, such as applying to the school’s weeklong Summer Seminar or beginning an online application, the documents show.

Come on - surely we have at least the same standards for proper accounting of what is and is not complete for USNA as we do for Seaman Timmy's PQS.

An academy admissions official Dec. 5 used this standard to boast that the school had 18,651 applicants so far this year, saying it put the school on track for a record year for the Class of 2016.

The academy’s number of completed applications is much lower. For example, the Class of 2015, which began training during the summer, had 5,720 completed applications; the academy cited its applicant number as 19,145 — more than three times the number of completed applications.

YMBFKM. Can't you go to mast for sea lawyering/gundecking PQS?

Does US News have UCMJ procedures ... they should as it reads like someone needs to press their dress whites.

An official with U.S. News & World Report, which ranks colleges annually, said it’s “very atypical” for schools to use such a benchmark.

Here is what burns me a bit; shouldn't the press have broken this story? They don't expect mild mannered English professors to do this kind of inquirey ... or do the?

Bruce Fleming, an academy English professor and frequent critic of the school’s admissions process, filed a Freedom of Information Act request on how the academy counts applicants and provided the results to Navy Times.

Yep, our friend Professor Bruce - doing the job the press won't; wait, that isn't fair - he did the prep work and Sam did the rest.

This is nothing new.

The documents Fleming received from the academy show that the school’s total number of applicants includes every high schooler who applied to participate in Summer Seminar, regardless of whether the prospective student later completed an official academy application. It also includes high school juniors and seniors who initiated an application online, according to the documents.

An academy official said the practice of counting applicants this way has been in effect for at least 20 years.

Whoa. If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying - I guess.

The documents Fleming received from the academy show that the school’s total number of applicants includes every high schooler who applied to participate in Summer Seminar, regardless of whether the prospective student later completed an official academy application. It also includes high school juniors and seniors who initiated an application online, according to the documents.

An academy official said the practice of counting applicants this way has been in effect for at least 20 years.

You need to read it all - as it gets very complicated from there.

Not everyone is doing the same thing.

Similar to Annapolis, both the Air Force Academy and the U.S. Military Academy report the total number of applicants as anyone who has started an application. However, both of these academies also provide the total “qualified” applicants — a figure that Annapolis doesn’t provide. The Coast Guard Academy bases its acceptance rate on the number of qualified applicants.

This is important as it is a matter of integrity and transparency - critical for a military institution in a Representive Republic. We shouldn't be playing games like this. When we do, we don't just hurt our institutional reputation, but that of our MIDN - who as anyone can tell you - represent the best our nation has to offer - but this just puts a cloud over them. Uncalled for.

We should be able to hold our own - and if we don't we should take defendable steps to raise our game. Really.

In the 2011 U.S. News rankings, Annapolis and West Point were in a three-way tie for 14th among liberal arts colleges nationally alongside Vassar College, a private college in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Yet Vassar counts only completed applications when reporting admissions statistics.

“The only applicants we count are the ones who we get a completed application from, certainly not anyone who begins an application,” said Vassar spokesman Jeffrey Kosmacher. “Basically, you won’t even be considered for admission if your application were incomplete.”

Still, Kosmacher stopped short of blaming the academy for misreporting its statistics.

“I think the onus is on U.S. News to be sure that if they’re measuring the Naval Academy against any other undergraduate institution, that the way that data like this is being gathered is consistent,” Kosmacher said. “Otherwise, there’s no validity to comparing one school to the other.”

Vassar has more integrity than the Navy? Vassar? Please tell me this is just all a misunderstanding.

How about this. Assuming there isn't a double-secret protocol that no one knows about and USNA didn't throw out with a dismissive, "Take that Fleming!" that makes all the above a sad misunderstanding; in the future let's hold ourselves to the same level of integrity we demand of our junior enlisted's PQS books ... or at least meet the same standard as the bloody Coast Guard.

We're better than that; and I know our MIDN are.

... and Iraq concludes.

2011-12-15T10:03:00.004-05:00

I will leave this without much commentary. I called victory a little over three years ago; this just wraps things up. The end game isn't playing out the way I would like it to, but elections have consequences.

This war was the right thing to do. The tactical performance of our military will stand the test of time. Since the Prussian infantry marched through Europe, the world has never seen a finer military. BZ.

About right ....

2011-12-15T09:58:00.001-05:00

Hat tip Ace.

PC Talking Points Vapor Lock

2011-12-15T07:49:00.003-05:00

Like I've said before - if your enemy is attacking you for his religious reasons, then you are by definition in a religious war. Not of your choosing, but a religious war nonetheless.

I actually feel sorry for Paul Stockton, President Obama’s Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Defense & America’s Security Affairs who you will see in the following video. He literally squirms. You can almost see the truth wanting to come out, but he is fighting to keep it in.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) did an outstanding service here in pointing out the fact that we are taking bad advice. Until we accurately address the problem, we won't defeat it. I would also say that by not even using the "I" word or "M" word we are patronizing our Muslim countrymen who have as much in common with AQ as I do with the Christian Identity Movement. They and we are big enough to handle the truth, not that transparent PC babble.

Hat tip Andrew McCarthy @ NRO.

Diversity Thursday

2011-12-15T05:50:00.001-05:00

Harmless, low cost Diversity initiatives - right? What's the harm? Via Heather MacDonald;

... last Friday, UC Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion declared that the rising tuition at California’s public universities is giving him “heartburn.” It should, since Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri and his fellow diversity bureaucrats are a large cause of those skyrocketing college fees, not just in California but nationally

....

Basri commands a staff of 17, allegedly all required to make sure that fanatically left-wing UC Berkeley is sufficiently attuned to the values of “diversity” and “inclusion”; his 2009 base pay of $194,000 was nearly four times that of starting assistant professors. Basri was given responsibility for a $4.5 million slice of Berkeley’s vast diversity bureaucracy when he became the school’s first Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion in 2007;
...
UC Berkeley’s diversity apparatus, which spreads far beyond the office of the VC for E and I, is utterly typical. For the last three decades, colleges have added more and more tuition-busting bureaucratic fat; since 2006, full-time administrators have outnumbered faculty nationally. UC Davis,... offers the usual menu of diversity effluvia under the auspices of an Associate Executive Vice Chancellor for Campus Community Relations. A flow chart of Linnaean complexity would be needed to accurately map all the activities overseen by the AEVC for CCR. They include a Diversity Trainers Institute, staffed by Davis’s Administrator of Diversity Education; the Director of Faculty Relations and Development in Academic Personnel; the Director of the UC Davis Cross-Cultural Center; the Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; an Education Specialist with the UC Davis Sexual Harassment Education Program; an Academic Enrichment Coordinator with the UC Davis Department of Academic Preparation Programs; and the Diversity Program Coordinator and Early Resolution Discrimination Coordinator with the Office of Campus Community Relations. The Diversity Trainers Institute recruits “a cadre of individuals who will serve as diversity trainers/educators,” a function that would seem largely superfluous, given that the Associate Executive Vice Chancellor for Campus Community Relations already offers a Diversity Education Series that grants Understanding Diversity Certificates in “Unpacking Oppression” and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in “Understanding Diversity and Social Justice.”
...
In 2005, Harvard created a new Senior Vice Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development, responsible for $50 million in diversity funding, and six new diversity deanships. Whereas Harvard’s previous diversity bureaucrats collected mere diversity data about faculty hiring and promotions, the new SVP for D and FD would be collecting “diversity metrics.” Yale already has 14 Title IX coordinators (not enough to stave off a specious Title IX investigation by the Office of Civil Rights in the federal Education Department), but it nevertheless recently put a Deputy Provost in charge of assessing the “campus climate” with respect to gender and overseeing the 14 Title IX coordinators. All these new bureaucrats in campuses across the country — nearly 72,000 non-teaching positions added from 2006 to 2009 — cost $3.6 billion, estimated Harvey Silverglate in Minding the Campus earlier this year.
...
The Big Lie of the campus diversity industry has been that without constant monitoring by diversity bureaucrats, faculty and other administrators would discriminate against minority and female professors and students. In fact, anyone who has spent a day inside a university knows that the exact opposite is demonstrably the case: Hundreds of thousands of hours and dollars are wasted each year in the futile pursuit of the same inadequate pool of remotely qualified underrepresented minority and female applicants that every other campus in the country is chasing with as much desperate zeal. The hiring process has been thoroughly corrupted. Faculty applicants are brought onto campus who have no chance of being hired, either because the hiring committee incorrectly assumed from their names or résumés that they were the right sort of minority (East Asians don’t count) for a position set aside for just such a minority, or because, although they were the right sort of minority, their qualifications were so low that their only purpose in being interviewed was to fill an outreach quota.

Diversity Industry - indeed.

There are two important things to keep in mind - in the Navy we have the same problem. Take all the manpower documents and add up all the full-time Diversity BA/NMP. Include the multiple "Gender Advisors" as well. That represents a huge opportunity cost.

Then you need to add up all the money we spend on travel to all the various racialist "Affinity Group" awards and recognition efforts. All documented here over the years - that includes the millions spent on race specific recruiting and consultants at Annapolis - again all documented under the Diversity tag below.

Still, none of it actually does anything to go after actual discrimination or racists. No, it is more often than not a talking club and an effort of inoculating the Navy against the overseers and supporters of the diversity industry.

Especially for the younger generations - none of this reflects their day to day experience. It is always 1971 in someone's head.

People wonder why our budgets just don't seem to get much bang for the buck - why Staffs are so bloated. Part of the reason is that there are a lot of jobs that exist only to create things that justify their own existence. They define their requirements in such a way that if anyone ever tries to take the job away - either their job isn't done (because it is defined such that its work is never done) or if you try anyway ... you are a racist, bigot, etc.

Meanwhile we send exceptionally talented Sailors with 16 years and millions of dollars of technical training out the door via ERB/PTS with nothing but the taste of bile in their mouths.

Tuition at universities are high for the same reason - they are spending too much money on things that add nothing to the intellectual product they are there to produce. Just pet projects for pet theories that cannot exist outside the university or guv'munt lifelines.

Administrators and managers? They don't care - after all - it is other people's money.

I'm guessing, what, 18 kts?

2011-12-14T19:51:00.001-05:00

DigitalGlobe Inc., a commercial satellite company, said Wednesday that it took a photograph of China’s first aircraft carrier during a sea trial in the Yellow Sea, off the Chinese coast.

A Very Fleming Christmas; 2011

2011-12-14T01:17:00.006-05:00

For many years running, a good friend to the blog, Professor Bruce Fleming from the Unites States Naval Academy, has offered up his recommended reading list for this Christmas season. Always a good mix for the other side of a well-rounded naval officer's brain.

Bruce; over to you!

Christmas book list

Tired of versions of Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”? Not the type for the books with embossed covers in the supermarket checkout line? Tired of the usual guy-type blow-‘em-up Terrorists Take Over The Capitol thrillers? Tired, in short, of dessert books and hungry for meat and potatoes? Prof. Bruce has some suggestions, all of them set in other times, other places—yet posing problems and questions are firmly and somewhat surprisingly of our own.

Let’s start with the thick one—let’s say you’re stuck for a week at your in-laws and can retreat to the back bedroom. Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now is a so-timely-it’s scary novel set in high Victorian London about a Ponzi scheme among the rich and titled that sets high society awhirl and ends by bankrupting the slimy financier behind it, as well as most of his greedy clients. Too modern as well is the way high society flocks to promises of easy wealth and convinces itself to the end that they are beating the system. Based on real-world events that occurred several times in the mid-to-late l800s in England, this novel shows us that there really is nothing new under the sun. Plus it makes us think about timeless values like honor and courage, that in such a flimsy get-rich-quick world go out the window first. What happens when we lose our moral anchor?

Ready for the nautical one? Try Melville’s classic short novel Billy Budd. It’s set just in the good old days of rigging and (literal) midshipmen, not to mention what Churchill is supposed to have said were the traditions of the Royal Navy: rum, buggery, and the lash. Well, none of the middle one—at least not blatant. But plenty of readers have sensed it latent. Just why is this Claggert, so ugly and mean, out to harass the placid baby-faced Billy? Does ugliness hate beauty? Attraction expressing itself as antipathy? In more general terms, why is it that second-rate officers seem so merciless to their locked-on subordinates? What of the fact that the Captain feels he has to hang Billy because that is what the regs say has to happen even though he doesn’t want to: the administratively sanctioned act vs. the moral one? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Now for some movie tie-ins. After all, it’s the holidays. Maybe you’ve seen the Robert Redford/Meryl Streep Kenya-in-the-old-days movie from the early 1980s called Out of Africa. Try the book that was one of its sources, Karen Blixen’s memoir of her disastrous marriage and equally disastrous attempt to farm under the African sun, also called Out of Africa. (In the movie, Streep plays Blixen, whose pen name was Isak Dinesen.) It’s episodic and tragic, if rather beautiful, and then just ends—rather like life itself. (The movie also draws from Judith Thurman’s biography of the author, Isak Dinesen; read this next.) Dinesen’s book is bitter-sweet but not as biographical as the movie, which is more explicit about her faithless husband, her syphilis (contracted from him), and her hopeless love for a British expat. Many people “join the Navy to see the world” and come back wondering if they did. Out of Africa suggests we rarely discover a new world, but, in seeking adventure, we at least discover ourselves.

Things haven’t gone so well with our interventions in the Middle East: some people still insist they were worth it; others disagree. It doesn’t seem they wanted to be like us at all! Ever wonder what a world looks like where they do? Joyce Carey’s Mister Johnson, about Nigerians attempting to be like their European masters under British colonial rule, suggests that this isn’t so pretty either. Mister Johnson is a Nigerian clerk who wears full whites and a sun hat—and is proud of behaving like an Englishman. The result is both comic and painful, and makes us reflect on the alternative to not being appreciated enough: being appreciated too well. What’s the direction Western foreign policy should take? Should we police the world? Hug our shores? It’s all been tried. Also a movie of the same name, directed by Bruce Beresford, with a former 007 Pierce Brosnan. But don’t cheat! Read the book first.

Ready for a play that’s just as relevant to our times? Okay, cheat on this: watch the movie first. It’s even literature! George Bernard Shaw, who wrote the play, also wrote the screenplay: Major Barbara (black and white, 1941, with my personal favorite actress Wendy Hiller—Dame Wendy to you, now sadly deceased). Both play and movie play comic riffs on a serious question: is it possible to make war on war? To take wealth in a different direction than that of self-indulgence and destruction? If so, who will do it—the powerful or the weak? The daughter of a munitions manufacturer--Barbara, a major in the hyper-moral Salvation Army, must decide whether to overcome her repugnance for the source of her father’s immense wealth and take on the power they bestow, or whether to remain morally pure. Barbara accepts the power and resolves to use it for good rather than being pure and powerless. Does she, in your view, do the right thing? Discuss, 50 minutes, papers collected promptly. In this age of Occupy Wall Street, and the 99% vs. the 1%, this compulsively readable (or watchable) play makes us ask: should change be effected? If so, how? By whom?

So, you want to decom Tico's, eh?

2011-12-13T22:31:00.004-05:00

As the budget shrinks - cuts will have to be made. The only way to make sure we get the best result is through vigorous debate - as our system is designed.

Checks and balances are messy and time consuming - but they are the best thing out there.

Along those lines, six Congressmen; Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA), Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL), Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), and Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) sent a letter to the CNO that starts thus;

We are writing to express our deep concern about ongoing USN consideration to deviate from the current ship modernization program of record by decommissioning up to nine CG-47 Aegis class ships. US security and prosperity requires a maritime strategy dependent on capable seapower projection. Therefore, We strongly oppose the premature decommissioning of any USN ships and especially those of the CG-47 Aegis class.

You can download the letter here.

Oh, and if you want to feel sad; click this.

How serious is the threat from Mexico?

2011-12-13T05:15:00.001-05:00

You can often judge the importance a nation sees things something in the world by who they send to keep an eye on it.

In that light - this announcement got my attention.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert announced today the following assignment:

Capt. Colin J. Kilrain, who has been selected for promotion to rear admiral (lower half), will be assigned as senior defense official and defense attache to Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico. Kilrain is currently serving as director, combating terrorism, National Security Council, Washington, D.C.

Shipmate - CAPT Kilrain (sorry, I don't believe in the whole (sel) thingy; nothing personal) ain't no intel weenie. No sir.

Three time All-American wrestler, Navy SEAL, and married to an astronaut with whom he has had four children.

Geezzz ... I feel like a lazy putz who wasted his life all of a sudden.

Ummmm, I don't know about you - but I think it is time to start a Mexico tag.

Hat tip Mike.

Could we even produce something like a Spitfire?

2011-12-13T01:53:00.002-05:00

Think about our present acquisition system - just as bad as the Brits.

Think about DDG-100, F-22, LCS ... heck even F-35. All our computers, all our money ... and yet ...

The answer is, in a word; no.

In 1931, the British Air Ministry sent out a demanding new specification for a fighter aircraft. It was a remarkable document for two reasons. The first was that throughout its existence the Royal Air Force had been dismissive of fighters. The conventional wisdom was that bombers could not be stopped. Instead, foreshadowing the nuclear doctrine of mutually assured destruction, the correct use of air power was widely presumed to be to build the largest possible fleet of bombers and strike any enemy with overwhelming force. The second reason was that the specification's demands seemed almost impossible to meet. Rather than rely on known technology, the bureaucrats wanted aviation engineers to abandon their orthodoxies and produce something completely new.

The immediate response was disappointing: three designs were selected for prototyping, and none of them proved to be much use. The Air Ministry briefly went so far as to consider ordering aircraft from Poland.

Even more remarkable than the initial specification was the response of the ministry to this awkward failure. One of the competing firms, Supermarine, had delivered its prototype late and well below specification. But when Supermarine approached the ministry with a radical new design, an enterprising civil servant by the name of Air Commodore Henry Cave-Browne-Cave decided to bypass the regular commissioning process and order the new plane as "a most interesting experiment." The plane was the Supermarine Spitfire.

It's not hard to make the case that the Spitfire was one of the most significant new technologies in history. A brilliant, manoeuvrable, and superfast fighter, the Spitfire—and its pin-up pilots, brave to the point of insouciance—became the symbol of British resistance to the bombers of the Nazi air force, the Luftwaffe. The plane, with its distinctive elliptical wings, was a miraculous piece of engineering.

You really need to read the whole thing to get the importance of it all.

If the bureaucracy and politicians had their way, there would have never been a Spitfire. You know what they would have had? Defiants and Rocs. Don't know about them? Exactly.

As a side note - where is the statue of Air Vice Marshall Henry Cave-Browne-Cave, CB, DSO, DFC, RAF? There really should be one somewhere in the mother country. At least he has a Facebook page. I "liked" it. Least I can do.

And the all important Salamander primary ....

2011-12-12T21:56:00.005-05:00

Just for the record - I'm going to show my hand just so you know whose stands I'm sitting in; though I won't be a cheerleader.

I've kept quite since T-Paw left the stage; but it is time. Just like 2008 when my top candidate fell out (that time Giuliani) - this time I am with my #2; Romney.

I'm not going to talk down anyone else and I will keep my reasons simple; we need a fixer. Romney is a fixer. We don't need to repeat the 2010 mistakes of Delaware and Nevada either.

I'm not going to be pushing Romney every day either. If you want to argue about it - feel free to in comments, but I won't play.

A: Strategic; B: Operational; C: Tactical

2011-12-12T07:42:00.002-05:00

Are you making your points and observations at the correct level? Can you be correct, but also wrong?

What happens when Dr. Norman Friedman reads Red Star Over the Pacific?

Well, I'm pondering it over at USNIBlog. Come pay a visit.

The Navy of 2025: A Contrarian View

2011-12-12T06:09:00.004-05:00

In last month's Proceedings, the Admiral Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations, published a think-piece, Navy 2025: Forward Warfighters.

My view is it was on balance a missed opportunity, but with a few nuggets in it that have promise if they are fleshed out more - specifically Payloads over Platforms - but today's post isn't about my commentary.

An active duty officer and good friend to the blog has put together a response that I think is well worth your consideration. It is soundly based on recent historical precedence. Our friend has been kind enough to let me publish it here.

The rest of their post is their's; over to you Shipmate!

2025 will be a year not dissimilar to 2011. A third of the Navy will be deployed overseas, much of it in the Arabian Sea. The same ship classes in commission today will be in commission then. USS NIMITZ will celebrate its 50th anniversary in commission. USS FORD will have deployed and some system that no one was expecting to break and cause problems did.

Total aviation flying hours will have been reduced from what they are today – with make up time in simulators. However, since we will only have 8 carrier air wings the time per pilot is not significantly altered. UCAV will have made its first deployment and the lessons learned will herald it a tactical and strategic success. Deckplate hesitance over its real capabilities during deployment will remain despite the positive reports.

In submarine warfare MRUUVs will only be in early fielding tests with no significant technological changes in engine operation or communications having been solved over the next 15 years. The last of the Los Angeles Class will be decommissioned while the 688(I), Seawolf, and Virginia Classes remain operational. Block IV and V of the Virginia Class were cancelled in favor of the Ohio Replacement. The Ohio replacement program will have been delayed twice, and in all shipbuilding arenas there will be questions of the capability of the shipyards to complete quality work after a loss of skilled labor. There will be discussions in the Navy of cancelling or truncating the Ohio Replacement and restarting the Virginia class line, using Virginia Class and the Virginia Payload Module to serve as ballisitic missile submarines. The Trident II/D5 will remain the only operational sea launched ballistic missile.
In surface warfare, a spate of failed INSURV inspections will plague the Littoral Combat Ships and aged Flight I Arleigh Burkes. The first seven Arleigh Burkes will be decommissioned prior to their 35 year Expected Service Life, being deemed too costly to operate with the large required crews and too old to upgrade to modern combat systems. The same fate will befall the Ticonderoga-class cruisers, with 9 being retained in service to act as escorts for the super carriers.

The Flight III Arleigh Burkes, after having been fully optimized for atni-ballistic missile operations will be found to be suboptimized for anti-air warfare and will have been relegated to ABM deterrence patrols.

The planned replacement for the LSD 41 class will have been cancelled and the Navy will have decided to drop the amphibious lift requirement to a fiscally constrained 24 ships, having settled on the San Antonio and Wasp/America classes as the ships for the two ship amphibious readiness group (renamed “expeditionary influence squadron”). The Marine Corps will reluctantly accept this change but will openly speak against it.

In aviation, the Lightning II cancellation will have left a development gap and the type models and series flying in 2011 will remain in service. A Joint Future Fighter program between the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force will have begun seeking a single common aircraft, but will end with three differing models – one twin engined model for carrier operations, a single engine model for land based operations, and a short take off and vertical landing version to operate from the Wasp/America classes and austere airfields.

The HMMWV will remain the Marine Corps’ land mobility vehicle of choice. The drive train will have been merged with a US version of the Toyota Highlander Hybrid engine.

Navy sailors will remain the dominant fighting spirit within the Navy and will continue a century long tradition of success at sea with minimal support from the shore infrastructure. And they will do this while supporting five years at sea for every one year on shore duty. Most will separate from the service either at the end of their initial enlistment, or at the twelve to fifteen years of service mark, taking their 401K into the civilian sector. Making Chief Petty Officer will be a competition among those remaining, with Sea Duty Incentive Pay and Continuation Bonus Pay being offered to E6 and above in an attempt to convince them to remain on Active Duty.

Sunday Funnies

2011-12-11T08:03:00.000-05:00

Via HMS OCEAN who returned home 09 DEC after 7½ months away - 225 days with 176 at sea.

Hat tip Lucas.

Kido Butai at Pearl Harbor

2011-12-10T11:51:00.003-05:00

A lot has been written about what went wrong at Pearl Harbor - a very American perspective.

If you take a neutral tactical look or look at things from a Japanese perspective - there was a lot that went right at Pearl Harbor at the Tactical and Operational Level.

Join Sal from CDR Salamander and EagleOne of EagleSpeak this Sunday, 11 DEC from 5-6pm EST as they discuss for the full hour many of the less understood aspects fo the attack on Pearl Harbor and the development in the Imperial Japanese Navy's tactical innovations with one of the co-authors of the article in December's Naval History magazine, Pearl Harbor's Overlooked Answer - Jonathan Parshall.

Join us live if you can and pile in with the usual suspects in the chat room where you can contribute your thoughts and observation - and suggest to us questions for our guests.

If you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio - but the best way to get the show and download the archive to your audio player is to get a free account and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Listen to Midrats on Blog Talk Ra

Fullbore Friday

2011-12-09T05:42:00.002-05:00

How in one FbF can you do justice to a ship with 20 Battle Stars like the USS O'BANNON (DD-450)? 17 in WWII (second only to USS ENTERPRISE (CV-6) ), and three in Korea.

Well - this has been such a iffy week - let us take a moment to reflect with a smile.

We aren't the only US Navy that has trouble getting its Sailors armed ... and we aren't the only US Navy with resourceful Sailors.

From the Destroyer History Foundation and Ernest A. Herr - BEHOLD!

On 5 April 1943, DesRon 21 was returning from a night of shelling Japanese shore installations deep in the New Georgia area of the Solomon Islands. Our destroyer, the O’Bannon, as part of this force, picked up a radar contact that turned out to be a large Japanese submarine cruising on the surface and apparently unaware of our presence. The Japanese lookouts undoubtedly were fast asleep.

We approached rapidly and were preparing to ram the sub. Our captain and other officers on the bridge were trying to identify the type of sub and decided, at the last minute, that it could be a mine layer. Not wanting to blow up ourselves along with the sub, the decision was made that ramming was not a wise move. At the last moment, the rudder was swung hard to avoid a collision and we found ourselves in a rather embarrassing situation as we sailed along side of the Japanese submarine.

On board the sub, Japanese sailors, wearing dark shorts and dinky blue hats, were sleeping out on deck. In what could be considered a rude awaking, they sat up to see an American destroyer sailing along side. Our ship however, was far too close to permit our guns lowered enough to fire and since no one on deck carried a gun, not a shot was heard. Ditto on the Japanese sub, no one there had a gun either. In this situation, no one seemed sure of the proper course of action and it probably would not have been covered in the manual anyway. Therefore everyone just stared more or less spellbound.

The submarine was equipped with a 3-inch deck gun and the sub’s captain finally decided that now was probably a good time to make use of it. As the Japanese sailors ran toward their gun, our deck parties reached into storage bins that were located nearby, picked out some potatoes and threw them at the sailors on the deck of the sub. A potato battle ensued. Apparently the Japanese sailors thought the potatoes were hand grenades. This kept them very busy as they try to get rid of them by throwing them back at the O’Bannon or over the side of the sub. Thus occupied, they were too busy to man their deck gun which gave us sufficient time to put a little distance between our ship and the sub.

Finally we were far enough away to bring our guns to bear and firing commenced. One of our shells managed to hit the sub’s conning tower but the sub managed to submerge anyway. At that time our ship was able to pass directly over the sub for a depth charge attack. Later information showed that the sub did sink. When the Association of Potato Growers of Maine heard of this strange episode, they sent a plaque to commemorate the event. The plaque was mounted in an appropriate place near the crews mess hall for the crew to see. Well, it was the crew’s battle.

BTW - as any WESTPAC guy will tell you, even today the Japanese have no idea what to do with a spud.

Let the big man speak

2011-12-08T15:21:00.000-05:00

Him.

Diversity Thursday

2011-12-08T04:58:00.002-05:00

I want to take a little different tack on this week's DivThu. Flesh out a few things in the foundation.

Like many things twisted out of their original meaning - the goals of (D)iversity started out as a good and needed thing, (d)iversity. There was a time, decades before our newly minted ENS and 2LT were even born, that there was active and real discrimination against some minorities in the Navy - specifically people of sub-Saharan ancestry. That needed to be fixed.

Once all legal & policy barriers were removed and created an playing field of equal opportunity by ending wholesale discrimination; then we needed to keep an eye out for individuals who by acts of commission and omission were still discriminating on a retail level.

Bigots are a cancer to an organization as much as a thief. Cut them out or they will destroy the host.

Then we got lost.

You know the rest of the story - an industry fed by racial animosity, envy, frustration, and grevience-mongering rose to become what they once opposed - organizations who supported by acts of commission and omission, discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, and national origin.

From associating with benign but racialist organizations such as NNOA to outright cancerously racist organizations as La Raza, we joined with the forces of division in pursuit of metrics and happy outbriefs from "accountability reviews."

... and so on.

Most everyone has heard about some of the details of the firing of CDR Etta Jones, USN, former CO of the USS PONCE (LPD-15).

You know what? There is some good from this.

(CDR Etta) Jones was fired by Vice Adm. Harry Harris, then-commander of 6th Fleet, while Ponce was on deployment in the Mediterranean, a day after a command investigation by U.S. Naval Forces Africa was completed. Jones, Harris concluded, “demonstrated poor leadership” and failed “to appropriately investigate, report and hold accountable sailors found involved in hazing incidents.”

The investigator also found evidence that Jones had shown blatant favoritism toward her female officers and used demeaning words and micromanagement that created a hostile work environment aboard the ship. She failed to tell superiors about shipboard hazing in one division and in the most shocking incident, waved a loaded 9mm pistol with its safety off in the same room as two armed sailors during a shipboard security alert before handing it over.

Was her anti-male bigotry the final straw? No. But part of it ... yes. Let's run with that.

There is still part of the honorable and working system in place. This is where our effort should be.

We do have a problem with discrimination. No, no, no - for the moment ignore the official institutional discrimination of the Navy as resident with the Diversity Bullies and their ilk - just ignore them for a moment. Work with me a bit.

As a human institution, we reflect the human condition with all its glory and infamy. The best - and the worst. We have and will have bigots of all stripes, though our actual discrimination problem is small, manageable, and individual.

CDR Jones discriminated openly and blatantly against her male personnel. She was called on it, investigated, and in addition to other issues - VADM Harry Harris, USN held her to account. As. It. Should. Be.

CDR Jones happens to be female - but this doesn't matter. Male-Female; Female-Male. White-Black; Black-White. Asian-"Hispanic"; "Hispanic"-Asian. Any combo is wrong and needs to be stopped.

That is what we should do - not force a Balkanzied, tribalistic mentality on our Navy in pursuit of bad 1970s racial theories that just breeds bigotry by all instead of eliminating bigotry by a very few.

What we did with CDR Jones needs more attention, as this is how you ensure equal opportunity and a meritocracy - remove internal barriers. Educational and cultural barriers before people join the Navy are beyond our control - as they should be. This isn't Prussia after all.

Funny thing about this; as our friend at ILTCOHJ found out in the reports here and here - we seem to have a flag officer who does not get it.

While the ship was in port Bahrain, RDML (Meg) Klein (Commander, Expeditionary Strike Group Five) requested an "all girls" photo and invited all of the female officers to dinner at her home.
(Encl 8, 15, 17, 18, 39)

The male officers were not invited to the dinner at RDML Klein's residence and several felt this to be a distinct professional disadvantage. (Encl 15, 18)

No. In DEC 2011 - that will not do.

Hey - another outgoing question we ask a lot here; will we hold a Flag Officer to the same standard we hold a Commander?

We'll see.

Post Script: I ask that we let CDR Jones pass in peace. Command is a difficult place, and not a place for everyone and every personality type. That doesn't make CDR Jones a bad person, or a bad officer to a certain extent. The pressures and requirements of Command just did not fit her skill set.

Her inability to understand the basics of weapons safety - that is Big Navy's fault for a variety of reasons that is another post on its own ... again.

Her attitude towards her male subordinates - well, look at the example RDML Klein set. Contempt is contempt. Where did RDML Klein get her exclusionary ideas - well - the previous CNO and others encouraged them. Look at their mentoring programs that are racially and s3x specific - we've covered them here in detail.

I like this marker the Navy just set down. It needs follow-through, but it is a good marker.

A nod to CDR Jones; she did leave with class.

“I have apologized to my crew, my mentors, my supporters and my family for the circumstances which resulted in both my [nonjudicial punishment] and my removal from command,” she wrote. She noted the ship’s imminent decommissioning after 40 years of service and said, “For any distraction that my situation has created, I issue a very personal apology to the crew members of the Ponce and it is my hope that the public will not overlook their positive story.”

Yes, her leadership style will have some secondary effects on those on the receiving end, but ... no one was killed.

UPDATE: A member of the front porch who will remain nameless reminded me of something that happened on one of RDML Klein's previous jobs. Hmmmmmm.

The other side of "green"

2011-12-07T07:58:00.003-05:00

I never really got all that worked up about the quasi-political "Green Navy" pet project by the SECNAV. Afterall, I like concept demonstrations on a small scale to try things out. Bio-diesel isn't a new concept for anyone.

For full disclosure - I am in my own way a "Greenie." When I returned to the states, I almost got a "grease car" myself - but in the climate where Salamanders live, you need better storage options unless you want to feed legions of insects. I am a member of a local organic farm coop ... I compost ... do everything but grow a ponytail and wear patchouli oil ... so I'm not one of "those" anti-green types. I do have a sensitive BS meter though ....

The Navy seemed a little silly getting all worked up about it - kind of like the teenager who thinks they discovered s3x - but that is OK; I gave us the benefit of the doubt as I have a bit of a weakness for the Knight-Errant vibe of it all.

That was then; this is now.

We have huge problems with our budget. We are impacting the lives of thousands of our Sailors because we claim to be in a money crunch. In times like these, any normal organization has to take a serious look at where it is spending its money. You have to get rid of most all "fun to have" and get rid of or scale back the balance of "nice to have."

The Navy's experiment with bio-diesel was interesting in a way - behind the technology curve and a bit blinkered - but worth a demonstration just to confirm that military systems can do the same thing civilian systems ... silly, but OK.

Now, I'm afraid, it is out of control. It has become a vanity project, tone-death to the financial crunch that the actual operational side of the military is under. It just jumped the cost-benefit shark.

The Navy – along with its newest ally, the Agriculture Department – announced Monday that they are purchasing nearly a half-million gallons of biofuels for an air-sea military exercise next summer. “Our use of fossil fuels is a very real threat to our national security, and to the U.S. Navy's ability to protect America and to project power overseas,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said.

A quick jog around the calculator shows the deal is costing the government about $26.66 a gallon for the biofuel alone.

Wholesale.

Look though - they let the mask slip a bit.

Mabus and Tom Vilsack, the ag boss, said they are buying 450,000 gallons of fuel – for $12 million – from Solazyme and Dynamic Fuels LLC, a joint venture of Tyson Foods, Inc. and the Syntroleum Corporation. Solarzyme's fuel is derived from algae, and Dynamics comes from used cooking oil and animal fat not suitable for food. Mabus added that the fuels, his latest push for a "Great Green Fleet," can be used without engine mods.

The deal marks the largest government purchase of biofuel in history, and will be used to power a carrier battle group during next summer's maritime operation off Hawaii (the carrier is nuclear powered, but the other vessels – and the aircraft based on the carrier -- will be using a 50-50 mix of biofuel and standard petroleum products).

The Navy has long been a trendsetter in this area, Mabus noted. “We went from sail to coal in the 1850s, we went from coal to oil in the early part of the 20th century, and we pioneered nuclear in the 1950s.” he said. “And we're going to lead once again by helping establish a market for biofuels.”

Who made Van Jones Undersecretary of the Navy? And for the record - the Navy had nothing to do with establishing a market for coal or oil that wasn't already happening. Any economic historian will tell you that.

"... helping establish a market for biofuels." About as catchy as "Global Force for Good."