Will she be enslaved?

Well, while we are on the music theme; no one in Argentina is going to cry for you.

The Ministry of Defence has produced a plan to decommission five warships from next April, which would reduce the Navy's capability to the level where it could carry out only "one small-scale operation".

Separate documentation from inside the department suggests that the total number of ships in the Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary could fall from the present level of 103 to 76 in 2017 and only 50 in 2027 — a reduction of more than half.
...
However, it also contained a commitment to buy two 65,000-ton aircraft carriers, at a cost of £4 billion — meaning savings had to be found elsewhere if the MoD were to meet its "operational commitments."

The email reads: "The Chief Sec directed that no further money from the CSR would be allocated to Defence and to maintain force levels the Dept must find the savings/cuts.

"For the RN [Royal Navy], the poor CSR deal and the commitment to 2 carriers is such that a proposal for the immediate decommissioning of 5 ships (frigates and destroyers) from April next year has been considered.

"This would reduce the RN's capabilities to just one small scale operation and that is it."

Sources said that under the plan the Navy, once the pride of the Armed Forces, would be unable to provide anything like the 1982 Falklands task force.

In what is likely to be a "worst-case" scenario, with no further commissioning of ships, total numbers of what the MoD terms "platforms" is slated to fall steadily from 103 to 50 within 20 years.

The truth is somewhere in between to the low side, I would guess. At least they have Gov'munt health care (sic).

Protecting your kids from the "funny" pages

I am a newspaper nut because before I cared about anything else, a daily ritual at the Salamander household was my Dad would grab the Sports Section and I would grab the comics. As a byproduct, I grew up liking the paper and all that comes with it.

Not for my kids. I don't encourage them to read the comics. Mostly because I don't want to have to explain cr@p like this. Now and then they see Daddy dressed like this. I would rather not go deep into explaining self-hating, envy filled, overpaid, Boomer, narcissistic, Moonbats with them quite yet. Wait until their friends start going to their Bat Mitzvahs first.

The Salamander newspaper tradition will die with me, I am afraid. I get 85% of my news from the computer, but I still love 'em. Shifting from sail to steam - and I still like a simple sail.

Double down in Helmand

War is a tough teacher. Stretched thin by the "ridden hard and left-up wet" policies of Labour, the British are pushing their own surge in AFG.

BRITAIN is to deploy its biggest contingent of paratroopers and special forces since the second world war in a bid to crush the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Ministers are to send 3,000 paratroopers, including the entire Parachute Regiment, to southern Afghanistan in the spring, as well as trebling the number of special forces in the country.

It will be the first time in the regiment’s history that all four para battalions, including its reservists, have fought together on the same battlefield.

Hmmm. Looks like a 12-month fighting season this year.

There is another background story running in parallel here. As the Anglo-Saxon-Dutch-Pole-Dane-Estonian army digs in - the soft underbelly of NATO continues to look at the face of the enemy and starts making glances at the exit.

NATO's failure to deliver on pledges made to Afghanistan has frustrated the United States and raised questions in Washington about Europe's commitment to that war, according to U.S. officials.

Next week marks the first anniversary of NATO taking control of operations throughout Afghanistan. It also marks a year of unfilled requirements that military officers say hurt their ability to combat a resurgent Taliban.

The requirements, many of which are classified, include more helicopters, hundreds of troops and 3,200 trainers for Afghan forces, according to U.S. officials.

NATO has about 35,000 troops in Afghanistan. Of the 26,000 U.S. troops there, 15,000 are dedicated to the NATO mission while the rest conduct counterterrorism operations. Britain has the second-largest presence, with about 7,000 troops.

...

"NATO countries at the highest level made commitments at Riga about what they would do and when they would do it in Afghanistan and those commitments have not been fulfilled," Long said.

"The biggest example of that is exactly the example you're talking about," she said when asked about Germany.

Gates blamed apathetic voters in Europe for the lack of commitment on the part of NATO allies more broadly.

"My overall impression is most European governments get it. They understand how important Afghanistan is and they are actually eager to fill the commitments they've made," he said.

"The problem is many of them are coalition governments. Some of them are minority governments in a coalition. And there is a lack of appreciation on the part of their voters of why Afghanistan is important."

The Pentagon chief has ordered a report from his staff before the October meeting on pledges allies have not met.

So, what lesson has the teacher given us? Well, let me give you a quote.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past."

--Edward Gibbon

The lesson is that having a functioning, useful and effective military able to execute national policy takes numbers; numbers in both material and equipment. It takes funding, it takes a long-term focus on sustainable warfighting, industry, and intellectual capital pipelines that feed it.

You cannot "transform" yourself into the cheap and easy. From a historical perspective, even the "huge" USA military is small when judged by the amount of treasure we are spending on it. Unfortunately, while I applaud the British efforts, there is a great question on their ability to sustain what they are doing. One hopes the first act or two are strong - as I am not sure if there can be a third or fourth (we have that challenge as well in IRQ, so yes I know the glass house I play in). The USA at least is trying at least to grow its military and is spending to try to match its burn-through of personnel & equipment. Notsomuch with our British allies. The mal-treatment of their military by Labour is a scandal - at least it would be treated as such if there was a Conservative Government in power. Sigh.

While we are on the subject, check in tomorrow for an overview of what is happening to Nelson's legacy. Bring a glass of Port or shot of Rum with you, you will need it.

New document cover sheets

CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, and all the rest just don't meet all your Staff Weenie needs? Well, we have a few new ones that might help out; ones like this.

Oh, there are many more. Download them here.

Hat tip Tim.

First they came for the Long War

Ungh. First The Long War, now this. We may never have another Navy CJCS in my lifetime. Over at The Castle Argghhh!!!, John has a copy of an email that, well, says "Stop the GWOT!"

OK, if we can't call it the "Gxxxxx Wxx Ox Txxxxx," what do we call it? John is having a contest, here is my $.02; "War Against Dhimmitude."

Why not? It will make the WAD Expeditionary and the WAD Service more fun.

I hope this is one of John's jokes. Is there an October Fools Day??

Sigh. I wish LTG Mattis was going to be CJCS.

Engineers the Navy needs

Have you heard of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering? Via the NYT magazine, there is a solid overview of an investment in the USA I wish we cold replicate in each corner of the USA. Put one in the Southeast, say near the Research Triangle Park in NC. One in SoCal, and one near Seattle. This nations needs well rounded Engineers - Engineers we are not producing in the numbers we need. I wish the folks at Annapolis and other Engineering specific institutions benchmark what they are doing.

My readers know the problem I have with the results of an Engineering education that I have seen come across the quarterdeck - the people who built Olin from the ground up have seen it too.

At its tiny campus in Needham, Mass., outside Boston, Olin is trying to design a new kind of engineer. Most engineering schools stress subjects like differential calculus and physics, and their graduates tend to end up narrowly focused and likely to fit the stereotype of a socially awkward clock-puncher. Richard K. Miller, the president of the school, likes to share a professional joke: “How can you tell an extroverted engineer? He’s the one who looks at your shoes when he talks to you.” Olin came into being, Miller told me last spring in his office on campus, to make engineers “comfortable as citizens and not just calculating machines.” Olin is stressing creativity, teamwork and entrepreneurship — and, in no small part, courage. “I don’t see how you can make a positive difference in the world,” he emphasized, “if you’re not motivated to take a tough stand and do the right thing.”
...
Lawrence W. Milas, the president of the foundation, said he had grown frustrated with a process that helped schools but didn’t change engineering education, which he says he thought was in a rut. He wondered whether it might be a good idea to fold the foundation and devote its assets to the creation of a new college.

A conversation with an executive of the National Science Foundation, Joseph Bordogna, persuaded Milas that his idea was sound. As a major, engineering was slipping in popularity. And the schools and their graduates were suffering from many of the ills of higher education generally. More and more, the schools were demanding specialized courses of study instead of an interdisciplinary approach. Bordogna explained how the National Science Foundation had been lending support to schools that were trying to adopt reforms and foster an undergraduate experience that focused on learning through inquiry and discovery. Yet Milas understood that these programs were competing with a strong institutional inertia. Engineering schools had structured themselves, largely for the convenience of faculty, around a comfortable way of teaching but not the best methods of learning. There was too much note-taking in the classroom and not enough hands-on learning. Institutions stressed research over undergraduate teaching, because that’s where the recognition and grant money come from.

The Bordogna meeting got Milas thinking. “That’s when the light went on,” Milas recalled. “We can start with a blank slate.” He went back to the Olin Foundation and started to push. He recalled that the other members of his small board had reservations, but Milas was certain. “I was a little bit of a terrier on this,” he said. “We went for it.” Eventually, the F. W. Olin Foundation agreed to give more than $400 million to create a whole new school.

As the father of a mathematically inclined daughter, I also like the fact that 40% of the school's students are female.

This is what we need in the Fleet.

The problem-based process is good preparation for the real world, said another student, Meenakshi Vembusubramanian. “You’re not going to go into a job and get a thermodynamics problem set,” she said. “You’re going to have a problem that’s badly defined.”
...
The result is a school with no academic departments or tenure, and one that emphasizes entrepreneurship and humanities as well as technical education. Its method of instruction has more in common with a liberal arts college, where the focus is on learning how to learn, than with a standard engineering curriculum. “How can you possibly provide everything they need in their knapsack of education to sustain them in their 40-year career?” Miller asked. “I think those days are over. Learning the skill of how to learn is more important than trying to fill every possible cup of knowledge in every possible discipline.

Worth looking at.

Phoney Soldiers

I don't think Soros's slime merchants really understand the minefield they have wandered into. Sure, lie about Limbaugh if you want - next you can go to ABC News.

As I have recommended before; this and other post-Vietnam War FOD, are nothing new. Read B.G. Burkett's book Stolen Valor for the context.

Hat tip HotAir.