Words Have Meaning

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

LCS 2.0

Is a simple port visit a win for LCS?

I think it is.

Thoughts over at USNIBlog ... and no, I was not drinking when I wrote it.

Double-Pumping Truman: I Thought we Weren't Doing this Anymore?

Maybe it is just me, but in the self-reflection that the Navy community underwent after the horrible summer of 2017 and the growing realization of issues revolving from undermanned and under-maintained ships, that we were going to do a better job of not "shooting up the horse" by burning out sea-duty Sailors and the ships they serve on.

Already down the memory hole?

Via Megan Eckstein at USNINews, in part;

USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) and its carrier strike group are getting ready for another deployment overseas, after completing a two-part deployment last year.

... likely this fall.

USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) would have been the next carrier to head out from the East Coast under previous plans, USNI News understands, but its maintenance availability ran 19 months – more than triple the planned six-month maintenance availability the Navy planned to conduct. USNI News confirmed that the Truman CSG is heading out for its second deployment in the place of the IKE CSG, which will still have to go through its whole training cycle after wrapping up its maintenance and conducting post-maintenance sea trials in early April.

Four sources familar with the planning told to USNI News that the Truman CSG is prepping for this double-pump deployment, which will take place during the strike group’s “sustainment phase” in the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFPR) readiness generation model and will not delay the ship from conducting maintenance of its own. The sustainment phase reserves time for the ships to keep their readiness up through home-based training activities or larger exercises in case they are called upon to surge forward or deploy for other reasons.

The Truman Strike Group last year departed in April, returned home in July for a working homeport visit, and then departed again from September to December. Rather than conducting operations in the Middle East, the carrier strike group conducted flight operations north of the Arctic Circle for the first time since the Cold War, operated in Norwegian waters during the Trident Juncture 2018 exercise, and patrolled the Mediterranean Sea.

There will always be a reason to ask more. The USN has a culture of, "can do." It is up to senior leadership to say, "no."

Instead of underlining a new era, it appears we are simply regressing to the mean.

This also calls in to question those who have stated that we have enough carriers that we can not refuel the TRUMAN next decade. 

A lost opportunity resulting in another stew of mixed messaging floating in a bed of cynicism.

Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, USN Goes Salamander on Corrosion

David Larter remains the town crier for the most critical long-term crisis in our Navy, corrosion prevention. Here and elsewhere, we beat the drum with him - and good people with important jobs are starting to speak out. Excellent! 

“Corrosion is one of the big things if we want to keep the ships around for 40-45 years; we have to do what is necessary on the corrosion side of things,” Moore said. “I don’t have the exact numbers, but we are spending $10 billion on our ship depot maintenance. And I’m guessing that several billion of that is corrosion-related, so it’s a significant portion of the budget.

“We have to stay on top of it. We have to be willing to do the work necessary to limit corrosion on the ship. And it’s not just at the depot. It’s in intermediate maintenance and its with ship’s force. We have to recognize that this is a law-of-physics thing and stay on top of it.”

When you do the regression analysis, here is the hard truth of one of the largest variables with a relatively inelastic demand curve; manpower.

For a couple of decades the wrong people have been running our manpower reviews with the wrong charter; efficiency. While important, efficiency should never get 51% of the vote over effectiveness.

The Transformationalists and their manpower lackeys have had their day in the sun. They have been measured and found wanting.

The dramatic slide in corrosion control is, at least, being discussed in open at the very highest levels. Great - now let's do something about it.

Yes, people are expensive, yet so is having much of your battleforce looking like that 55 Buick in the cow pasture off of GA HWY 82 since 1978 with the pine tree growing out of the trunk.

Countering China in the South China Sea with Hunter Stires - on Midrats

China will continue to expand its holdings and presence in the South China Sea and the first and second island chain as long as it can and does not face pressure to do otherwise.

They have an unmatched shipbuilding program to expand not just their traditional navy, but their coast guard and maritime paramilitary fleets.

To discuss these and related topics this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will be returning guest, Hunter Stires.

As a starting point for our discussion, we'll review the major points in his US Naval Institute General Prize Essay Contest winning essay, The South China Sea Needs a 'COIN' Toss and related recent works.

Hunter Stires is a fellow with the John B. Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research at the U.S. Naval War College. His focus centers on maritime strategy and logistics in the Western Pacific. Hunter is the winner of the U.S. Naval Institute’s 2018 General Prize Essay Contest, with his winning entry published as “The South China Sea Needs a ‘COIN’ Toss” in the May 2019 issue of Proceedings alongside a companion piece, “Why We Defend Free Seas.” His article “’They Were Playing Chicken:’ The U.S. Asiatic Fleet’s Gray-Zone Deterrence Campaign against Japan, 1937-40,” is featured in the Summer 2019 issue of the Naval War College Review. He is an Associate at Central Gulf Lines, a division of SEACOR Holdings Inc., and is a graduate of Columbia University.

Join us live if you can, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at Spreaker. 

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

You are flying an obsolete platform by this time of the war. Patrolling a relatively quiet sector of a body of water more than a bit out of the action.

You're not out of the fight by any means ... but the headlines, eyes, and best platforms are elsewhere. You have your aircraft, you have your crew, you have your mission - and that is more than enough.

It is the height of summer in the far North Atlantic. Almost nothing but day light all day. Hours and hours of grey ocean - like it had been for days, weeks, months and countless hours before ... and then;

Late in the day on 24 June 1944, Hornell’s Canso was at the end of a 12-hour patrol over the North Atlantic when the German submarine U-1225 was sighted on the surface approximately 120 miles north of the Shetland Islands. As the aircraft made its attack run, heavy and accurate anti-aircraft fire from the U-boat crippled the starboard engine and started a fire on the starboard wing. With great determination and skill, Hornell held the vibrating Canso on course and delivered his four depth charges on target, sinking the submarine. Shortly thereafter the starboard engine fell out of the wing, forcing Flight Lieutenant Hornell to ditch the aircraft, by now a flaming wreck, in the heavy seas. With only one dinghy serviceable, for several hours the eight members of the crew had to take turns holding on to the life-raft’s side while immersed in the icy water. Although the dinghy was spotted by a Consolidated Catalina flying boat from No. 333 (Norwegian) Squadron, RAF five hours after Hornell had ditched, for the next 16 hours rescue attempts were frustrated by high seas and malfunctioning equipment. Two of the crew eventually died of exposure. At one point, Flight Lieutenant Hornell had to be restrained by his comrades when, though at the end of his own strength and about to go blind, he proposed to swim to an airborne lifeboat that had been dropped. Finally, after 21 hours, a rescue launch arrived to pick up the survivors, but all attempts to revive Hornell failed, and he died of exposure.

His plane; his mission; his crew.

Flight Lieutenant Hornell was the first member of the RCAF to be awarded the Victoria Cross.

Citation
“Flight Lieutenant Hornell was captain and first pilot of a twin-engined amphibian aircraft engaged on an anti-submarine patrol in northern waters. The patrol had lasted for some hours when a fully-surfaced U-boat was sighted, travelling at high speed on the port beam. Flight Lieutenant Hornell at once turned to the attack.

The U-boat altered course. The aircraft had been seen and there could be no surprise. The U-boat opened up with anti-aircraft fire which became increasingly fierce and accurate.

At a range of 1,200 yards, the front guns of the aircraft replied; then its starboard guns jammed, leaving only one gun effective. Hits were obtained on and around the conning-tower of the U-boat, but the aircraft was itself hit, two large holes appearing in the starboard wing.

Ignoring the enemy’s fire, Flight Lieutenant Hornell carefully manoeuvred for the attack. Oil was pouring from his starboard engine, which was, by this time, on fire, as was the starboard wing; and the petrol tanks were endangered. Meanwhile, the aircraft was hit again and again by the U-boat’s guns. Holed in many places, it was vibrating violently and very difficult to control.

Nevertheless, the captain decided to press home his attack, knowing that with every moment the chances of escape for him and his gallant crew would grow more slender. He brought his aircraft down very low and released his depth charges in a perfect straddle. The bows of the U-boat were lifted out of the water; it sank and the crew were seen in the sea.

Flight Lieutenant Hornell contrived, by superhuman efforts at the controls, to gain a little height. The fire in the starboard wing had grown more intense and the vibration had increased. Then the burning engine fell off. The plight of aircraft and crew was now desperate. With the utmost coolness, the captain took his aircraft into wind and, despite the manifold dangers, brought it safely down on the heavy swell. Badly damaged and blazing furiously, the aircraft rapidly settled.

After ordeal by fire came ordeal by water. There was only one serviceable dinghy and this could not hold all the crew. So they took turns in the water, holding on to the sides. Once, the dinghy capsized in the rough seas and was righted only with great difficulty. Two of the crew succumbed from exposure.

An airborne lifeboat was dropped to them but fell some 500 yards down wind. The men struggled vainly to reach it and Flight Lieutenant Hornell, who throughout had encouraged them by his cheerfulness and inspiring leadership, proposed to swim to it, through he was nearly exhausted. He was with difficulty restrained. The survivors were finally rescued after they had been in the water for 21 hours. By this time Flight Lieutenant Hornell was blinded and completely exhausted. He died shortly after being picked up.

Flight Lieutenant Hornell had completed 60 operational missions, involving 600 hours’ flying. He well knew the danger and difficulties attending attacks on submarines. By pressing home a skilful and successful attack against fierce opposition, with his aircraft in a precarious condition, and by fortifying and encouraging his comrades in the subsequent ordeal, this officer displayed valour and devotion to duty of the highest order.”

What a man.

Fullbore.

A note on U-1225. She was a snorkel equipped Type IX/C40 U-boat. Her Skipper was 30-yr old Oberleutnant zur See Ernst Sauerberg. He took command on 12 June, eight days before deployment and 12 days before she was sunk. This was the boat's first war patrol. She was sunk on day 5.

On LCS Manning, Even The Atlantic Goes Salamander

The worst conceit of the many in the LCS program was its manning construct. There is a decade and a half of LCS bashing on this blog, so I won't bore regular readers rehashing it - new folks can click the LCS-tag to review on their own.

The last half-decade you have seen some people try to mitigate the original sin of "Optimal Manning," but there is only so much you can do when something is baked in to the design.

Now and then we bring out LCS to gibbet it as an example to others, and at least here, it may start to have a little bit of a "doesn't everyone know by now" vibe, but we can't really stop. Every year, new leaders come online who may not fully understand the fail. They need to know what happened so when they find themselves working on a new program, they won't repeat the mistakes of the old.

When you read outside the traditional maritime natsec press, you realize that our failures are starting to leak out, and whole new sections of the population are only now discovering what we have known here since the first few years of this century.

The latest example is a very detailed and broad reaching article at The Atlantic by Jerry Useem. I have a few quibbles with some of his prose, but this is very deserving of your time - if you are an OG member of the Front Porch or someone wet behind the ears.

Give it a read. Here are a few pullquotes;

Can a few brilliant, quick-thinking generalists really replace a fleet of specialists? Is the value of true expertise in serious decline?

To ask the question is to answer it ... and I think at least for our Navy we're starting to see that we drifted too far. Expertise is starting to have a comeback.

Nice review of the hubris that was injected right in to the veins early on in the program.

“I think when the Navy started off, they had a really good plan,” Paul Francis, of the Government Accountability Office, told the Senate in 2016. “They were going to build two ships, experimental ships.” But in 2005, having assured itself that “optimal manning works,” the Navy decided to skip the experimentation and move straight to construction. From this point on, whenever the Navy tried to study the feasibility of minimal manning, its analysis was colored by the fact that—on these ships, at least—it had to work. Dozens of littoral combat ships were on their way. The Giffords was the 10th to deploy.

The cult of personality. Suppression and outright persecution of contrary opinion. The "make it happen" mentality begat the horrible record of LCS to date. No other warship class has commissioned so many ships for so many years that have done do little as the LCS.

None.

Should a fire break out, Butler said, he would become a “boundaryman” and work to stop the spread of smoke to other compartments—a job that, on another ship, would be supervised by a full-time damage-control specialist. The LCS has only two of these—which is one reason it has a “survivability” rating of 1, the lowest score possible. If the ship is critically struck, crew members are expected to simply abandon ship and escape. Traditionalists hate the idea.

Expected? More like don't have a choice.

Nice comical vignette that really needs no more commentary from me;

Butler wasn’t the only character to reappear in different form. During an all-hands meeting—the smallness of the group exaggerated by the large size of the flight deck they stood on—someone pointed to the figure strolling in from stage right. It was one of the two boatswain’s mates who had been overseeing the line-handlers that morning. He had swapped his blue coveralls for head-to-toe green camo, and was walking back and forth, appearing to survey the upper deck of the ship. Such costume changes gave the whole ship the feel of a small theater troupe in which the actor playing the prince’s cousin also plays the apothecary, the friar, and Messenger No. 2.

Look at that scattering of uniforms in the headline pic of the article I copied above. Just silly.

Yet the limitations of curious, fluidly intelligent groups of generalists quickly become apparent in the real world. The devaluation of expertise opens up ample room for different sorts of mistakes—and sometimes creates a kind of helplessness.

Aboard littoral combat ships, the crew lacks the expertise to carry out some important tasks, and instead has to rely on civilian help. A malfunctioning crane on board one LCS, for example, meant that the crew had to summon an expert to solve the problem, and then had to wait four days for him to arrive.

A tired, burned out crew that with each passing week has less and less capability as things break they cannot fix. It barely works in peace. In war? Forget it.

This is what everyone was screaming 15 years ago;

the Navy’s initial, full-throttle approach to minimal manning—and are an object lesson on the dangers of embracing any radical concept without thinking hard enough about the downsides.

The fact new people are still pointing this out is nice validation, but a shame it even has to happen.

Better late than never ... maybe.