Deadheading to Buy Time with Iran

 

Perhaps one day the full story will come out how Iran's top nuclear weapons scientist was taken out, but until then we'll just have to give a nod of respect to the Israeli's ability to execute superb clandestine operations in the Islamic Republic.

Tom Rogan at the Washington Examiner has a nice "Top-5 Takeaways" list you really should read in full ... but here's the summary:

1) Biden will not be able to return America to the JCPOA nuclear accord without significant complication

2) There was likely some U.S. intelligence support for this operation

3) Israel's covert intelligence presence on Iranian soil is growing

4) The attack will fuel Iran's paranoia and provoke retaliation

5) This attack doesn't portend U.S. or Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear facilities

Especially #4.

Just amazing capabilities for such a small nation. Having everyone around you trying to kill you does focus the mind a bit.

Infamy

From Fleet to the NSC, with Mark Vandroff - on Midrats

Midrats regulars and all sound thinking navalists rejoiced earlier this year when one of our favorites were offered the honor to serve once again - in this case one of our favorite guests and all around great guy, Mark R. Vandroff, Captain, USN Ret.

Mark found himself back in the mix with his appointment as Deputy Assistant to the President, Senior Director, Defense Policy and Strategy at the National Security Council.

Just in time for the holiday season, Mark will come visit us this Sunday from 5-6pm to talk about his experience so far at the NSC, the NSC in general, and other related topics that may come up in the process.

A 1989 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Mark was the 10th Major Program Manager for the Arleigh Burke Class Destroyer program and the 37th Commanding Officer of NSWC Carderock.  Immediately before coming to the White House, he was the Vice President of Maritime Programs at Zenetex, LLC.  He holds a Master’s of Science in Applied Physics from the Johns Hopkins University and is a frequent contributor to the Naval Institute’s “Proceedings” and online publications such as Strategy Bridge and CIMSEC.  The programs he led have been the recipient of some of Department of Defense’s highest awards for acquisition excellence, including the 2011 Secretary of the Navy’s Competition Excellence Award and the 2012 David Packard Award.  Mark was recognized by the American Society of Naval Engineers with 2018 Gold Medal award for excellence in naval engineering.  

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Fullbore Friday

I bumped into a post I did over six years ago on the passing of one of our greats.

Phyllis. 

Thought I'd repost today ... because, she deserves it. 

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Circumstances display character. Character comes often from places least expected - unless of course you know the best of military spouses; 

She said in a Richmond News Leader interview in 1971 that while Galanti was a POW, she just “wanted to be a housewife.” She wanted to “sink into oblivion” when he returned.

By 1969, she had become active with other POW wives. 

In 1970, the wives group became the National League of Families and Friends of POWS and MIAs in Southeastern Asia. It evolved into a tour de force in crusading for the North Vietnamese to adhere to Geneva Convention protocols in treatment of prisoners and eventually for the release of POWs and the accounting for those missing in action.
Mrs. Galanti served as chairwoman of the league.

In a televised speech before the Virginia Senate on Feb. 12, 1971, she kicked off an areawide campaign, “Write Hanoi: Let’s Bring Paul Galanti Home,” part of a nationwide project.

Her efforts generated more than 450,000 letters from the Richmond area, around 300,000 letters from Northern Virginia and 378,000 from Gastonia, N.C., where Paul’s parents had moved in 1964.

More than 80 percent of people living in the Richmond area contributed a letter, which was thought to have been the greatest response to the Write Hanoi campaign anywhere in the United States.

In March 1971, Mrs. Galanti was among a delegation of 10 Write Hanoi campaigners who went to Stockholm, Sweden, to try to obtain information on the POWs from the chargé d’affaires in the North Vietnamese embassy there.

They also wanted to send the letters asking for freedom for American servicemen being held in Southeast Asia to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations attending the World Assembly of Paris for Peace and Independence of Indochinese Peoples. 

Because “they knew we had” the letters, Mrs. Galanti said they were able to talk with officials. The letters were flown to Paris to be given to the North Vietnamese delegation at the peace talks.

By Christmas Eve 1971, she received two letters and two postcards from her husband. “Those four little pieces of mail were the most elaborate Christmas gift,” she said.

She reported in March 1971 that she was using the services of a peace group to correspond with her husband.

Mrs. Galanti called for a shift in strategy in July 1971. Instead of writing Hanoi, she asked Americans to write to President Richard Nixon and Congress. “The issue has become a political matter,” she said. “Their release can come from one place — Washington.” 

In an op/ed piece in The News Leader in 1971, she wrote, “I can honestly say that I have never done anything so rewarding and worthwhile in my life. Knowing that so many people were genuinely concerned gave me a much-needed boost.”

When she and other POW wives went to Versailles, near Paris, in February 1972 to talk about release of POWs with 800 communist delegates from 75 countries at the World Assembly of Paris for Peace, they failed to get an audience. However, Mrs. Galanti said she felt a softening on the part of communist officials to Nixon’s plan to end the war.

Mrs. Galanti and two other POW wives talked about prisoner issues with Nixon and Henry Kissinger, then national security adviser, on May 15, 1972.

In October 1972, she was elected chairwoman of the league and early the next year learned that her husband’s name was on a list of living POWs.

Galanti was released on Feb. 12, 1973, among the first group of POWs freed by the North Vietnamese. Their plane landed at Clark Air Base, Philippines. He arrived in Virginia from Travis Air Force Base, Calif., on Feb. 15. He was reunited with his wife at the Norfolk Naval Station.

At the time, he told reporters, “Phyllis was pretty shy when I left, and I came back to a real tiger.”

We should all be so lucky. 

Ms. Galanti passed in the spring of 2014 after 51 years of marriage.

Fullbore.

Even the Chairman Goes Salamander on Overseas Forces

As regulars here know, from the start of the blog - and a decade earlier IRL - one of my core stands is that we are long past the need for having large formation of maneuver forces based overseas in now rich and ready allies.

Besides unit rotations, occasional exercises to practice surge, and combined training and logistics facilities, everyone needs to come home.

As a maritime and aerospace power, we need to be home based, but postured for forward deployment of land forces to support allies and interests.

We are a mercantile republic, not an empire.

It has been a lonely vigil, and I know many of the respected and wise members of the Front Porch disagree with me, but that's OK.

That being said, the Chairman is not all the way Salamander, but I'll take 80%;

In remarks on the future of warfare, Army Gen. Mark Milley said he believes the military should be more selective in its peacetime presence abroad. He said he strongly favors an overseas U.S. presence but prefers that it be rotational or “episodic” rather than permanent. He was not referring to counties like Afghanistan and Iraq, where U.S. forces have been involved in wars for nearly two decades.

“Large permanent U.S. bases overseas might be necessary for rotational forces to go into and out of, but permanently positioning U.S. forces I think needs a significant relook for the future,” not just because of the cost but also because it can leave military families vulnerable in high-risk areas, he said.

In the same article, I found these remarks interesting from a navalist point of view;

Competing effectively and peacefully with China requires a vastly larger U.S. Navy, he said, including a much larger investment in robotic surface and underwater vessels.

That was right after a discussion about flat to slightly smaller budgets. So, an Army 4-star can see the argument for Navy getting a larger slice of the pie?

Interesting. 

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UPDATE: I'm sorry, but I refuse to not LOL.

Even NAVSEA is going Salamander. No one of the Front Porch should ever have to buy a beer again. Also, we need to make clear that I am not VADM Galinis IRL. 

The Navy’s experience with fielding new warships in the last two decades has shown that an evolutionary approach to ship design is more likely to succeed than a revolutionary approach, the commander of Naval Sea Systems Command design said.   

“As we go forward and look at future platforms, [consider an] evolutionary approach versus a revolutionary approach,” said Vice Adm. William Galinis, speaking Dec. 3 in a Defense Forum 2020 webinar sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute. “Where we have done that [evolutionary approach], frankly we’ve been pretty successful.” 

I would laugh harder is it weren't for the untold hundreds of billions of dollars, and untold destroyed careers that resulted from the Age of Transformationalism.

Just read all the above and join me in saying, "NOT ONE DAMN LINK OR CREDIT TO CDRSALAMANDER? That is just rude."

Have We Forgotten the Art of Deception?

Looking back at some overlooked but critically important - and successful - naval tactics that have a direct and sometimes dramatic strategic effect ... I found myself thinking of a great example from WWII.

Can you defeat the worlds most feared warship with just some lumber and canvas?

Maybe ... 

I'm pondering over at USNIBlog. 

Come by and give it a ponder with me ... and think why this may be of use today.

Hug Your Local SINKEX Today

Some of my most memorable peacetime experiences in my naval career were SINKEX. I mean ... really people.

There is the "fun" factor - but I also fully appreciated the good information we received from sending warshots downrange. Sure, the targets didn't shoot back or try to intercept our weapons ... but it did give you a good outline of the performance of those things in the kill chain you could control. 

That is why - while using the exceptional google translate function - this bit from Russian open source caught me off guard;

... testing modern means of destruction of the Navy on it. And as an example here, we, alas, the US Navy, which does not just use old ships as targets, such firing has a pronounced research character, all reports on which, of course, the US Navy is tightly secret (with a minimum of details for the media).

Such events have not been carried out in our fleet for many decades, despite the fact that new anti-ship missiles with a sharply reduced mass of warheads are being adopted for service, the issues of the real effectiveness of which on large ships are acute.

That's right kiddies ... the Russians and the Soviets before them were not in to doing SINKEX. 

I find that, frankly, amazing. You learn so much by doing even these highly controlled and scripted exercises from both a weaponeering and damage control point of view.

While we may need to work on basic seamanship and preservation, there are two things we like to think we are good at compared to other navies; damage control and weaponeering. Both of these assumptions - which I think are very defendable - derive a fair bit from what we learn from SINKEX.

At war, our weapons may not be as good as we think they are ... but pondering the Russian admission above, I have to wonder ... what effectiveness are Russian weapons in comparison?

I know what I assume ... but maybe even less effective?

Hmmm.

As a side note, take time to read the full article linked to above. Nice discussion of lost opportunities by not having proper stewardship of existing warships ... and even a dig at LCS. Nice confirmation of what I had heard SEPCOR about Soviet Era gas turbines. 

H/t SJS.