So, anyone consult an infantryman on this?

Someone please tell me there is more to this than what it looks like;

The Army’s Picatinny Arsenal is working on a “green” version of the M80A1 7.62 mm bullet, which troops are supposed to start being issued in 2014, according to an Army press release.

The Army has been looking to “green” small caliber ammo for some time now. In 2010, the Army switched to the greener 5.56 mm M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round.
...
“The EPR replaces the lead slug with a copper slug,” said Lt. Col. Phil Clark, product manager for small caliber ammunition in the Program Executive Officer Ammunition. “This makes the projectile environmentally-friendly, while still giving soldiers the performance capabilities they need on the battlefield. So far we have eliminated 1,994 metric tons of lead from 5.56 ammunition production.”

“Thirty-two grains of lead are eliminated per M855A1 projectile, and 114.5 grains of lead will be eliminated per M80A1 projectile,” according to the Army.

Oh no, no, no. We already know that the 5.56mm is iffy as an infantry round. It is already limited in what it can do, especially in the ranges we have been fighting as of late. There is a reason the M-14 was brought back. There is a reason - until the burocrats killed it - last decade a move was under foot to more to something between 6.5-6.8mm.

Could this be as bad as it seems? Could it make the Big Green Navy push seem sane?

In times of woe, as all good Sailors do, I turn to the USMC. Three years ago they decided that the Marines in the field were more important that the PPT on the Potomac, it seems;

Special Operations Command and now the Marine Corps are fielding a deadlier 5.56mm round, but the Army says soldiers can't have it. Instead, the service is holding on to its dream of environmentally friendly ammunition.

Army ammunition officials are on their third attempt at redesigning the Cold War-era M855 5.56mm round by adding a better-performing, lead-free bullet. The service had to halt the M855A1 Lead-Free Slug program in July when the new bullet failed to perform under high temperatures. The setback delayed fielding by nearly a year.

The newest version of the green round is in the live-fire test phase, and Army officials said they are confident it will be ready for combat use by June.

The Marine Corps, however, doesn't share this confidence. The Corps has dropped its plans to field the Army's M855A1 and approved the new SOST round for Marines to use in Afghanistan. SOST, short for Special Operations Science and Technology, is SOCom's enhanced 5.56mm round. It isn't green, but it is deadlier than the current M855 round and it's available now, Marine officials say.

I see nothing that shows me the Marines have changed their mind either.

A few more things come to mind - first of all cost. Copper is a lot more expensive than lead. For 29JUL the London cash price for copper is $6,860 a ton. Lead is $2,504 per ton. I'll let you do the rest of the math.

So, let us try to find a neutral party to look at the "green" bullet designed to make the battlefield friendly enough to turn humans in to pink mist.

Guns & Ammo, over to you;

... the reason it shoots flatter is because they’ve juiced the round up so that it will fly at 3,100 fps. This would be a great achievement except for the fact that they did it by increasing the chamber pressure from 55,000 psi to 63,000 psi. That’s a number closely approaching proof-load pressures. So are new M4s being constructed using stronger materials to handle this hot round? No, of course not. The M4 is being manufactured to the same Technical Data Package (TDP) that they have always been. This means that not only are parts going to wear out at a much higher rate (which is already is an issue with the M4), but if, God forbid, there is any bullet set-back, the number of M4s reportedly going “high order” (i.e., blowing up) should increase exponentially.

While on the subject of the effect of the M855A1 on service weapons, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the new round cuts barrel life by almost 50 percent (information sourced by Individual Carbine contenders recently supplied 10,080 rounds of the M855A1 EPR so that they could tune their submission for this new load).

But no amount of tuning is going to alter the fact that the EPR has a 5.5 MOA accuracy standard. 5.5 MOA? Seriously? The Mk 318 SOST round that the USMC has fielded in Afghanistan is held to a 2 MOA standard, but the latest and greatest round that it’s being replaced by is held to a 5.5 MOA standard? Additionally, the Mk 318 has better terminal ballistics against soft targets, holds together better through intermediate barriers and costs half what the M855A1 costs.

Read the whole thing if you must ... but do we need to do any more?

Someone, anyone, please tell me where this is a better solution for our infantry. Where does this better do the job of killing the enemy before he kills you?

Is this just another case of a desire to look "green" we are willing to sacrifice our young men and women and put our battlefield success at risk? 

Where is everyone from the USMC to G&A wrong? Why are the rank and file Army types silent?

I was having a little trouble thinking that this much stupid could stay for this long, so I bounced this off and Army type who gave me his six ohbytheways about this mess. The stupid is real. Only 1 of the 6 isn't a red mark. #6 is what will get us killed more than any other.

1. While both are in the inventory, you'll need two zeros. Because they'll fly different.
2. You get to die knowing the bullet that hit you won't pollute the environment.
3. Sure, it's better for ranges, until you look at the megatons of lead we've already shot there (not to mention the DU... An issue anywhere the davy crocket was fired, including the spotting round).
4. Copper is harder, meaning more penetration, at low velocity. At high velocity, if it hits hard stuff, it shatters.
5. Barrel/chamber/parts wear doesn't hunt, most rifles never live to see their wear-out date before being replaced.
6. Greater cost per round=less shooting or less $ for training.

The 5.56 mm belly button

Time to pick at it again. I can't believe I am linking to a CBS report, but this is about one of my favorite subjects. Guns -

One particular episode immediately caught our eye. It involved a Special Forces raid in Ramadi in response to the bombing of the U.N. Headquarters in Baghdad back in August 2003. According to a soldier who was there, during a fierce exchange of gunfire, one insurgent was hit seven — count ‘em, seven — times in the torso by the 5.56, only to be brought down by a single shot to the head from a .45 caliber pistol. But before the insurgent died, he killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded seven.

The man who brought that story to our attention was retired Marine Maj. Anthony Milavic, who's hardly shy in his anger over the 5.56.

"The lack of lethality of that bullet has caused United States soldiers to die," said Milavic, a veteran of two tours of duty in Vietnam.

Yep, the 40 yr old argument. It has been a head scratcher for me since I did a report on it for 11th Grade chemistry. I am, with varyinging degrees of success, a hunter. It is illegal to hunt 150-200# deer with a .223 Remington (what the 5.56 NATO round is). The reason is that you simply cannot kill effectively with one. We will throw you in jail and/or fine you for trying to kill a 150# herbivoreore with a round we expect you to kill an excited 150# Jihadi. It just boggles.

Pierre Sprey couldn'’t have been less impressed when I told him what we had seen. A former Pentagon weapons expert, he championed the 5.56 to secretaries of state and presidents believing it both lethal and light. During our time together, he shook his head at the online debate sparked, he felt, by those who are far from expert in the field of testing and war. He believes the more bullets the better, and that soldiers carrying 300 rounds and firing on automatic don't compare to those carrying 100 and firing one big bullet at a time. "There is no such thing as a well-aimed shot in combat," said Sprey. "Combat is fought by scared 18-year-olds who haven't trained enough and are in places they've never seen before."

Ground combat is not my specialty, my professional toolbox has big things that make big fireballs going out and going in, look cool on video, and require AC power - but please. There are more bad theories there than you can shake a stick at. I thought we stressed Aimed Fire? Spray and pray is what poorly trained targets do. Say what you want about the Soldier or Marine of 2006, but "..poorly trained and clueless 18 yr old" isn't very accurate. There was a move post OEF/OIF experience to go to a 6.5/6.8mm, but the bean counters, again, are trying to kill it. This sounds familiar.

So off we went — eventually discovering a confidential report to Congress in which active Marine commanders complained about the 5.56 ("the most worthless round, torso shots not lethal") and two more internal reports based upon the Army's most extensive testing of the 5.56 since 1990.

The testing took place at the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. In an initial interim report dated September 2004 the 5.56 ranked last in lethality out of three bullets tested. A second draft, dated March of this year, confirmed those rankings to a CBS producer who looked at the report. To top it off we found a story in a recent issue of Marine Corps Times magazine that was particularly enlightening. In it a squad leader said his Marines carried and used "found" enemy AK-47s because their 7.62 bullets packed "more stopping power." In effect, they put down their own weapons in favor of those carried by the enemy because they felt more secure, especially in close-quarter battle.

We contacted both an arsenal and an Army spokesman at the Pentagon about our story, and both knocked it down. Initially, they called the reports and rankings "wrong Â… not statistically grounded" and "not the final version."

Then just before our story ran, the Army issued a press release stating it had completed a detailed study affirming the effectiveness of the 5.56. Surprisingly, at least to us (given the rankings and reports we had seen) the Army said their study actually was not a comparison of the 5.56 to any other caliber bullets in close-quarter fighting but rather the 5.56 to "commercially-available" rounds. The release pointed out the 5.56 did "have the same potential effectiveness in the hands of a Warfighter during the heat of battle."

You can read what you want in that last paragraph. I can tell you many of the people to whom we were talking expressed a great deal of displeasure over it. No matter what side youÂ’re on, one thing is abundantly clear: with nearly 800,000 U.S. soldiers carrying M-16 rifles around the world, the cost of modifying those guns to fire any other bullet seems certain to spark a firestorm all its own.

Hey, all I know is that when I am hunting Wild Boar, I would be checked into a Psych Ward if I went out there with a 5.56mm. 30-30 or 41 mag min, and if there is a big, bad sow out there, get me a 45-70. My trusty, not-rusty Sako 75 in 30-06 for Deer (180gr) and Elk (200gr).

Oh, one of the "5.56mm is great" theories that is always thrown out there is the "..if you wound a man, you make his whole unit less effective by making his fellow soldiers take care of him. If you kill him, you only stop one." I am sorry, when you have a room of 4 Jihadi, or a car coming at you at 50 mph; you need to kill - now. Since 11th grade I have listened, with an open mind, to both sides. The only argument that the 5.56mm side seems to have are accounting and inertia. But, I'm a squid. What do I know....if 10 is good, wouldn't 11 be better?

Well, that was fun. Who wants to do 9mm vs 45?

Hat tip Emperor Darth Misha I and Kim du Toit.

REMF Army wins

Remember the flush days when it looked like at any moment the realities of combat would help us move from teh 9mm back to the .45 or at least a .40 in side-arms and ditch teh 5.56mm varmint round to something in the 6.5-6.8mm range?

When the Logistics types managed to bury the 5.56mm ditch and fought a rear action against the assault on the 9mm, at least we thought we cold get rid of the M-16/M4 family.

Well, you underestimated the sitting Army REMF bureaucracy. Via DID.

A class 1 stoppage is one a Soldier can clear within 10 seconds; a class 2 stoppage is one a Soldier can clear, but requires more than 10 seconds; and, class 3 is a stoppage that requires an armorer to clear."

DID will simply point out that 10 seconds can be a rather fatally long time when people are shooting at you, and at your friends. So, what happens when the Extreme Dust Test III stoppages are broken out by weapon?

The M4 Carbine is the Army's existing weapon.

• 882 jams, 1 jam every 68 rounds, again using heavy lubrication. In addition all 10 of the M4 barrels needed to be replaced, and a number of their parts were replaced during the test. None of the cold hammer forged HK416 and XM-8 barrels needed replacement.

The HK416 is a modified M4 carbine, which can be and has been converted from existing rifles. Used by US Special Forces.

• 233 jams, 1 jam every 257 rounds, 3.77x more reliable than the M4.

FN SCAR is US special Forces' new weapon, designed by SOSOCM. It just went into production in late 2007.

• 226 jams, 1 jam every 265 rounds, 3.85x more reliable than the M4

XM-8 is a developmental rifle. It's an advanced version of HK's G36, a rifle in wide use by many NATO armies. The US Army cancelled the XM-8 weapons family 2 years ago.

• 127 jams, I jam every 472 rounds, 6.95x more reliable than the M4.

The failure of M4 barrels at 6,000 rounds confirms SOCOM objections that date back to the Feb 23/01 report "M4A1 5.56mm Carbine and Related Systems Deficiencies and Solutions," which ended up concluding that "M4A1 Carbine… does not meet the requirements of SOF." The barrel replacement also increases the rifle's life cycle costs when compared with the 10,000 round advertised barrel life, as additional barrels are sold to the Army for $240 each. A longer, heavier M16 barrel, which is a competed production weapon, cost $100 by comparison. While the dust test is indeed an extreme test, the 10,000 round requirement is under "all conditions" – not just ideal conditions.

Dec 18/07: The US Army publishes "M-4 Carbine Has High Soldier Confidence Despite Test." Not exactly a headline to inspire confidence, as the Army acknowledges that the M4 Carbine finished last among the 4 contenders – but amazingly, asserts that the rifle is just fine and shows no interest in buying even the HK416's parts swap-out into the existing M4:

"After being exposed to the heavy dusting, 10 of each weapon fired 6,000 rounds apiece. They were fired in 50 120-round cycles. Each was then wiped and re-lubricated at the 600 round mark. After 1,200 rounds were fired from each weapon, they were fully cleaned and re-lubricated… "While the M-4 finished fourth out of four, 98 percent of all the rounds fired from it went off down range as they were supposed to do," Brig. Gen. [Mark] Brown [commander of Program Executive Office Soldier and the Natick Soldier Systems Center] said. "However, the three other candidates did perform better at about a 99 percent rate or better, which is a mathematically statistically significant difference, but not an operationally statistical difference.".... The Army has put an option on an existing contract for 64,450 M4s, according to the general."

"A mathematically statistically significant difference, but not an operationally statistical difference." Perhaps the US Army could put that on their recruiting posters, next to a picture of a jammed rifle.

Sigh. What could have been.



What we have (caution, Sailor language).

The Simple, Right Thing is Often the Most Difficult Thing

It's a simple fundamental.

Everything a military does - every branch - is for one thing; to create conditions for a young person to stand on a street corner and state; this is ours. It is not yours.

So many billions of dollars are spent for the sexy and sparkly support equipment for others to enable that man there, and yet over and over again we nickle and dime the kit he is issued.

The fact we do this with his primary weapon is a crime.

As I may have mentioned here before, the real "1st appearance" of "CDR Salamander" was circa 1982 when in a high school ethics class (yes, I went to such a high school). I wrote my term paper about the horrible decisions that brought the M-16/5.56mm in to service roughly the year I was born.

Even though much has been done in the last half-century to correct some of the problems - its inadequacies are well known and still show up on the battlefield, unnecessarily resulting in the death of those who carry it.

The green-eyeshade argument has only become more callous with age and is another datapoint showing that - regardless of what their self-esteem workshops may tell them - those resisting change are blinkered and close-minded in understanding their jobs compared to those who came before.

Let's look at how other generations responded to better technology and calibers to give their soldiers. With the exception of the 30-06, each change in caliber corresponded with a new weapon.

1866 - 50-70 Sharps; 7-yrs
1873 - 45-70 Govt; 19-yrs
1892 - 30-40 Krag; 14-yrs
1906 - 30-06 Springfield; 48-yrs
1954 - 7.62x51mm NATO; 8-yrs (NB: still a "NATO caliber" and in use, but largely replaced by 5.56mm in front-line use).
1962 - 5.56×45mm NATO; 56-yrs and counting.

Don't listen to me on this, there are plenty of smarter people on my side;

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Bob Scales was a keynote speaker at the annual National Defense Industry Association Armament Systems forum here, and he didn’t waste any time launching into a takedown of key components that equip the close combat infantryman.

Scales recounted how he’d spoken at the conference three years ago, pushing industry and government procurement officials to create an intermediate caliber rifle with a piston action, polymer ammunition casing, a suppressor and digital fire controls.

“Now, in 2018, does any of that sound familiar?” he asked.
...
The rifle he described in his opening remarks is handled under the Next Generation Squad Weapon project, headed by the Army.

But there, too, are problems, he noted.

The NGSW program was aimed at making a rifle or carbine to replace the flawed M16/M4 system, which Scales has railed against since his own experience with early versions of the M16 in Vietnam.

You would think we would start there, but ...

But an incredulous Scales told the audience that developers on the NGSW are now prioritizing the light machine gun in a program called the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle to replace the Squad Automatic Weapon, with the rifle or carbine to come later.

“It’s the Next Generation rifle or carbine, damn it,” Scales said.

For those who have studied the history, government entities had been a problem and not a solution in getting modern weapons in the hands of those on the frontline for a long time. More often than not, it is an outside force that brings the infantryman what they need;

The change in focus means that under current schedules, the rifle/carbine won’t be ready until 2024.

That is not acceptable, Scales said. To either him or his boss.

“Let me tell you something, folks. It’s not working,” Scales said. “Make the rifle by 2020. My God, folks, it’s a nine-pound piece of steel. The cost isn’t as much as a lug nut on a B-1 bomber.”

He's right. This is already late;

Snipers with Special Operations Command will see a barrel swap on their 7.62 mm rifles as early as next year to a commercially available 6.5 mm caliber.

“The SecDef said before he leaves office in 2020, if [President Donald] Trump is not re-elected, he’s going out to a range somewhere to shoot that rifle,” Scales said. “If you don’t get something in the field by then, you’ve failed.”

He pointed to lives lost due to small arms and other infantry equipment holes from Vietnam to Afghanistan to last year’s deaths of special operations soldiers in Niger.

“If you’d listened to me three years ago, those soldiers in Niger would have had this rifle in their hands,” Scales said. “So, take that to bed tonight.”

Read it all. I'd gladly exchange a F-35C or two for all this to take place on an accelerated timeline.

A century ago, we almost went .270 (6.8mm), but the green-eyeshade of their day killed it. Maybe this century we'll get it right.

Sniping goes Salamander

You know me, I'm a simple man. Vince Lombardi is king and you can never bring too large of a gun to a fight.

If a 5" won't work, sniff, then get an 8". If the 9mm is lame, man up and admit you are wrong and go back to the .45. If you are tired of more Americans dying because the 5.56mm is a varmint round and not a warfighting round - then send the Loggies packing and get your 6.8mm round in production or go back to the 7.62mm.

The M2 is the standard; when in doubt, whip it out. .50cal is nice, .338 is sexy. If your 7.62mm isn't quite what it should be but the .338 and .50 is too much to take with you ... what is a red-blooded American to do?

Simple, go with a very American solution with a very American name - upgun to a .300 Winchester Magnum.

How about a .45 instead?

.... and make it frangible too! A little something from the latest federal contracts put out.

2. Olin/Winchester (Cage 1MR34), East Alton, Ill., is being awarded a $30,000,000 Firm-Fixed, Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity contract for the acquisition of 9mm frangible ammunition. Work will be performed in East Alton, Ill. and is expected to be completed by February 2014. The Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane Division, Crane, Ind., is the contracting activity (N00164-09-D-J)

What is frangible? I'm glad you asked! The really good info is available from NAVSEA here, but from GlobalSecurity - here is the ES.

Frangible, or “soft,” rounds are designed to break apart when they hit walls or other hard surfaces to prevent ricochets during close-quarters combat. Frangible ammunition represents the first viable revolutionary change to firearms science in the past 100 years. Frangible ammunition is a relatively recent development in bullets, presenting a departure from the standard projectiles in use for both range shooting and personal protection. With the advent of modern hostage rescue tactics in the 1970s and 1980s, the military and police agencies began to look for ways to minimize overpenetration risks. One widely-accepted solution was the frangible round, also known as the AET (Advanced Energy Transfer) round.
...
Frangible rounds are available in a wide array of pistol calibers, but due to the inherently high velocities of rifle rounds, frangible ammunition is much less effective in rifles. It is only produced in 5.56mm NATO and 7.62mm NATO, and its performance in actual combat is dubious. There are two frangible rounds that have been approved for training purposes only. One is a 9mm, and the other a 5.56. Approval for operational use will depend on the special mission requirements (the military necessity) for the round.
...
Frangible bullets will break up into small, less harmful, pieces upon contact with anything harder than they are. This maximizes the round's transfer of energy to the object and minimizes the chances that pieces of the bullet will exit the object at dangerous velocities. Each of the small fragments quickly loses any energy and therefore pose very little danger to any secondary targets. This means that full-power frangible bullets can be shot at target all the way up to muzzle contact without any worries that the bullet or case will ricochet and potentially hurt either the shooter or others.

Everyone talks about training and "green" - this sounds a bit more ... interesting ...

Concerns with over penetration / ricochet hazards aboard aircraft, ships and (e. g.) nuclear power plants that might release hazardous materials have led to efforts to provide small caliber ammunition with reduced ricochet, limited penetration (RRLP) for use by SOF to reduce risk to friendly forces and innocent persons. There are three general levels of frangible: Training [may be used for training only]; reduced ricochet, limited penetration[RRLP, designed for purposes stated]; and general purpose frangible [though no military requirement has been established for a general purpose round for use by conventional forces]. Specific ammunition must undergo wound ballistics testing/ legal review once developed. It can be used for: Close Quarter Battle (CQB); Military operation in Urban Terrain (MOUT); Visit Board Search and Seizure; and Counter-Narcotics (CN) Operation.

You can get your own here - including you reloaders. Nice review here. Yummy.



Note how close he is to those metal plates? Don't try that at home with normal rounds.


Hat tip NAVSEA Spy.

Just do What the Marines do

In most cases - that is very good advice. When it comes to personal firearms .... doubly so.

Not a fan of the color they are going with ... but otherwise - drinks around the house.

For the first time in several decades, the U.S. militaryis buying new batches of the Colt .45 sidearm that it used during both World Wars and for much of the 20th century.

Colt Defense LLC said Friday it has been awarded a $22.5 million, five-year contract to provide theU.S. Marine Corpswith the latest .45 caliber pistols that were originally provided to the military in 1911.
...
The contract is to provide as many as 12,000 tan-colored, M45 Close Quarter Battle Pistols (CQBP), plus spare parts and logistical support for the pistols. The new version of the semi-automatic .45-caliber pistol, CQBP, is a descendant of the Colt M1911 first used by the military in 1911.

"This is a truly gratifying contract award," said Gerry Dinkel, CEO and president of Colt Defense. "To have the 1911 selected again for U. S. Forces 101 years after its initial introduction is just an incredible testament to the timeless design and effectiveness of the Colt 1911. Colt Defense looks forward to another great partnership with the Marine Corps as we renew industry production of the military 1911."

The USMC never fully embraced the M9, and it is great news that they are backing away further to a better solution.

Now - if we can just move from 5.56mm to a 6.5 or 6.8mm in long arms ...

Hat tip Nic.

Bye, bye to the 9....

How did I miss this?

After two decades of use, the U.S. Department of Defense is getting rid of its Beretta M9 9mm pistol, and going back to the 11.4mm (.45 caliber) weapon. ...SOCOM has been given the task of finding a design that will be suitable as the JCP (Joint Combat Pistol). Various designs are being evaluated, but all must be .45 caliber and have a eight round magazine (at least), and high capacity mags holding up to 15. The new .45 will also have a rail up top for attachments, and be able to take a silencer. Length must be no more than 9.65 inches, and width no more than 1.53 inches.

More good news. Now, about the 5.56mm......

No more jokes about the Italian or Belgian economy

I am going to take up drinking and smoking - every day - again.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its outlook today (“The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2009 to 2019,” January, 2009, available at www.cbo.gov ), and anticipates that the deficit this year will total $1.2 trillion, or 8.3% of the gross domestic product (GDP), under “baseline” assumptions. That projection does not include any effects of future legislation, including the economic stimulus measures currently under debate. (Under rules governing CBO’s budget projection, a “baseline” projection is required to assume that federal laws and policies regarding spending and taxes remain unchanged from current laws and practices). Highlights of today’s CBO release include:

· The deficit this year is projected to total $1.2 trillion, or 8.3% of GDP, well above the post-World War II record high of 6.0% realized in 1983.

Then again, last time I did that I was stupid and lost my now-wife-then-girlfriend and wound up with a - how do the kids say it now days - a skank replacement for a few months or days; I don't remember all that well.

Maybe I will just stay Saved, blog instead, and be an adult about it.

And buy more guns: no I have plenty of those - visit ammoman.com again, yes. $299 for a 1,000 rounds of Russian 5.56mm 62gr, why not?

Narcissists and Ignoramuses

When I first read this yesterday, I just shook my head at it as another clueless Leftist at the dying LATimes babbling about something he really knows nothing about. Unlike former LATimes staffer and Communist Robert Scheer, Joel Stein just seemed, well, ignorantly insulting. Really not worth the effort. I dismissed him as a fool, but he has generated, what we call in the business, a shit-storm. After Hugh Hewitt calmly disembowelled him (you can hear it via RadioBlogger) and it made the Early Bird; well I just couldn’t help myself. I will try not to be long winded, just point out the absurd points.

Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

Oh, how cute.

I want to hang with you in Vegas.

No you don’t. We are mostly Southern, Western, non-gay Republicans. Those of us not at the $2 Blackjack table will be at a low-end strip joint or looking for the nearest rodeo.

It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Looks like someone only read what they needed to in order to pass their college history course…..and reads The Nation.

Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."

How 2003 of you.

The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.

Yawn.

The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.

No, they are ignoring your morality.

An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

Cute. Yawn.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

He really hasn’t talked to anyone on active duty, has he?

So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

Beyond comment.

I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country.

The implication being that those who serve are poor, and did poorly in school. Nice. Not in-line with the facts...but nice. What about the men and women in my Wardroon (and a fair slice of the enlisted) who grew up with money(some of us drove BMWs and Mercedes in High School....), did well in school, many went to Ivy League schools (even Stanford) and have advanced degrees; yet plan to spend their youth serving something beyond their own ego?

But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.

You flatter yourself.

All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need(Well, most need something beyond 5.56mm and 9mm – but that is a different subject for a different day): hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

In the end, everything is about satisfying your guilt (or not reminding you of men better than (quote feeling bad) yourself) and not interfering with your weekend plans? Yes, you will make a nice Dhimmi.

The War Gods of the Copybook Headings Return

Industrial capacity feeds logistics. Logistics win wars. Logistics is math. Math is unforgiving to the complacent.

If you are looking for early lessons of the Russo-Ukrainian War, there are two that need to be underlined today.

Lesson 1: Don’t Fall for the Short War Fallacy:

This is a known fallacy throughout human history, but every generation must be reminded of it, sometimes more than once. At peace, people will find reasons – either phycological or financial – to promote the promise of a short war either through their superior ideas or exquisite weapons. Good people desiring good things are easily seduced by this peace-time siren’s song. 

The Russians thought that the Ukrainians would fall in 3-5 days and planned for it. The United States and Western Europe thought that so much they tried to convince the Ukrainian government to retreat to Lviv or even Poland before the first Kalibr cruise missile received intent-to-launch. Before the war, the Ukrainians did not believe the Russians would actually do this – but the moment the first Russian boot stepped off a Mi-8 at Hostomel, they knew they were in for an existential fight … and here we are at the start of month-5 of the war.

Action 1: have hard follow-on questions for anyone who is promising a short war or is selling a “Win in 72-hr Posture.” It briefs well, but it almost never works out.  Everything has to be executed perfectly and your opponent have no agency. What is their “Plan-B” or will it be like Iraq 2003’s “Phase 4” or the Russian retreat from Kiev when reality hits?

Lesson 2: The Hard Math of Shallow Magazines:

You are short of everything because you didn’t believe the warnings of Lesson-1. We have all read volumes the last few months of all the friends of Ukraine scouring the deep recesses of forgotten magazines for former Soviet compatible ammunition that could be sent to Ukraine. Well, that which was not destroyed pre-war by the Russian clandestine services. Because the answer was too painful for peacetime leaders to ponder, no one wanted to do the math of what a real war would mean. That is the subject of today’s post.

Action 2: Tell the Cult of Efficiency to Get Bent; You Have a War to Prepare For.

Alex Vershinin over at the Royal United Services Institute has a must read article I’m going to pull some quotes on supporting Lesson-2 titled, The Return of Industrial Warfare.

The rate of ammunition and equipment consumption in Ukraine can only be sustained by a large-scale industrial base.

This reality should be a concrete warning to Western countries, who have scaled down military industrial capacity and sacrificed scale and effectiveness for efficiency. This strategy relies on flawed assumptions about the future of war, and has been influenced by both the bureaucratic culture in Western governments and the legacy of low-intensity conflicts. 

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The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base.

From small arms to nuclear submarine repair, our industrial base is exquisitely designed and Tiffany-tough. Any unexpected shock can almost make the whole system grind to a stop. Though the roots go deeper, this is a direct byproduct of the 1990s “Send all senior defense leaders to a 2-week MBA school” mentality and its second order effects. The Cult of Efficiency’s green eye-shade priorities took the place of the bookshelf full of history’s example.

It didn’t take the Russo-Ukrainian War to expose this. We saw this in 2011’s operations against Libya and the war in Iraq.

...there is an assumption about overall ammunition consumption rates. The US government has always lowballed this number. From the Vietnam era to today, small arms plants have shrunk from five to just one. This was glaring at the height of the Iraq war, when US started to run low on small arms ammunition, causing the US government to buy British and Israeli ammunition during the initial stage of the war. At one point, the US had to dip into Vietnam and even Second World War-era ammo stockpiles of .50 calibre ammunition to feed the war effort. This was largely the result of incorrect assumptions about how effective US troops would be. Indeed, the Government Accountability Office estimated that it took 250,000 rounds to kill one insurgent. Luckily for the US, its gun culture ensured that small arms ammunition industry has a civilian component in the US. This is not the case with other types of ammunition, as shown earlier with Javelin and Stinger missiles. Without access to government methodology, it is impossible to understand why US government estimates were off, but there is a risk that the same errors were made with other types of munitions.

As I alluded to above, there are some important influencers in the natsec arena who are in love with the “72-hr War.” Their premise is that if we design our force around convincing the Chinese – and ourselves – that in the first 72-hrs we have the capacity to destroy any ability of the enemy to proceed towards their objectives then they won’t start the war. If they do, well, we have what our wargames tell us we need to win in 72-hrs.

I’m sorry, but your modeling and wargames are just that – models and games. You tell any competent designer what outcome you want, and they/we can tweak the assumptions and variables such that we can give you that result. I am very sure all the Russian models and wargames showed them conducting a victory parade in Kiev before March … but how did that work out for them?

If you don’t win quick – there are no mulligans in war. Let’s quote me again; “Industrial capacity feeds logistics. Logistics win wars. Logistics is math. Math is unforgiving to the complacent."

...390 daily missions fired by tube artillery...With four guns per battery and four rounds per gun, the tube artillery fires about 6,240 rounds per day. We can estimate an additional 15% wastage for rounds that were set on the ground but abandoned when the battery moved in a hurry, rounds destroyed by Ukrainian strikes on ammunition dumps, or rounds fired but not reported to higher command levels. This number comes up to 7,176 artillery rounds a day. It should be noted that the Russian Ministry of Defense only reports fire missions by forces of the Russian Federation. These do not include formations from the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist republics, which are treated as different countries. The numbers are not perfect, but even if they are off by 50%, it still does not change the overall logistics challenge.

Presently, the US is decreasing its artillery ammunition stockpiles. In 2020, artillery ammunition purchases decreased by 36% to $425 million. In 2022, the plan is to reduce expenditure on 155mm artillery rounds to $174 million. This is equivalent to 75,357 M795 basic ‘dumb’ rounds for regular artillery, 1,400 XM1113 rounds for the M777, and 1,046 XM1113 rounds for Extended Round Artillery Cannons. Finally, there are $75 million dedicated for Excalibur precision-guided munitions that costs $176K per round, thus totaling 426 rounds. In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.

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The expenditure of cruise missiles and theatre ballistic missiles is just as massive. The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually, meaning that in three months of combat, Russia has burned through four times the US annual missile production. The Russian rate of production can only be estimated. Russia started missile production in 2015 in limited initial runs, and even in 2016 the production runs were estimated at 47 missiles. This means that it had only five to six years of full-scale production.

...(a)crucial assumption is that industry can be turned on and off at will. This mode of thinking was imported from the business sector and has spread through US government culture. In the civilian sector, customers can increase or decrease their orders. The producer may be hurt by a drop in orders but rarely is that drop catastrophic because usually there are multiple consumers and losses can be spread among consumers. Unfortunately, this does not work for military purchases. There is only one customer in the US for artillery shells – the military. Once the orders drop off, the manufacturer must close production lines to cut costs to stay in business. Small businesses may close entirely. 

Now is the time for Congress to force The Pentagon to stop with foolish ideas. Demand to see the full inventory for everything from 5.56mm to 21-inch torpedoes and run the long war. Not 72-hrs, but 72-weeks. Heck, take an extra day and make it 72-months.

Look at our single points of failure. From magazines and airfields west of Wake to production facilities in CONUS – expect at war that through direct action or sabotage, we will lose some of these facilities/capabilities. The Chinese have seen this in the build-up and execution of the war by the Russians against Ukraine. They will go after these non-resilient targets that even without prompting can go up in a – pun intended – flash. There is even a term of art for it; Unplanned Explosions at Munitions Sites (UEMS).

We need to start acting on this now.  There are more lessons to come, but we don’t have to wait for them all to come in – we don’t have time to.