Rep. Skelton's (D-MO) Top 50

When I first read that,

The House Armed Services Committee chairman has come up with a new national security reading list of 50 essential books that he personally recommends for military officers and noncommissioned and petty officers, as well as his colleagues.

... at first I rolled my eyes, then I thought better of myself and thought, "Hey, Rep. Skelton may be many things, but out of the loop he isn't." and then, "Books! Let's see what he has lined up!"

Well, I have thoroughly counseled myself on my attitude. Rep. Skelton's list is, in a word, outstanding.

There are a couple of books here I have an issue with, but they are flee's poop on the back of an elephant compared to the rest. Some of these books are hard to find, some well known. Taken as a canon though, what a great suggestion and recommended reading list for, as he states,

Skelton, an avid reader, said he feels strongly that officers and senior enlisted members need to read books about military strategy and American history to benefit from lessons of the past and better understand American values.

BZ and thanks to Rep. Skelton for his recommendations and obvious enthusiasm to share something we both have in common; a deep understanding of the critical role of history in our future.

All 50 recommendations (51 books) are at the widget below. Browse around a bit.

The useful idiocy of Nirthers

I can’t take it anymore. I have done my best. I have ignored the emails, tweets, and general bag-o-nuts that the whole CINC birth certificate has thrown about the blogosphere.

Why? Well, first thing --- it all reeks of he 90’s BlackHelicopter and militia madness. It also is a twister sister of the Bushitler/Selected-not-elected crowd of the 00’s.

Second, it is just not a story.

Why does the madness continue? Well part of it is, I am convinced, by design or accident, good politics by the CINC’s supporters.

If your opponents are dead-set on marginalizing themselves and generally degrade their credibility, why on Gia’s Green Earth would you want to convince them to do otherwise?

If I were Axlerod, I would have the framed original of the CINC’s birth certificate firmly on the wall above the head in my master bedroom and would kiss it as part of my morning ablutions - and ignore every and all questions about it ... forever.

Think of it in military terms.

For some reason you do not understand, your enemy has decided that you are protecting your supplies at the far end of a swamp half-way to your left flank - and he want them. All you know that is at the end of the swamp is a septic lake. Your supplies are where they should be - well in the rear, mobile, and well defended.

Because the swamp is almost impossible to maneuver troops and supporting arms through, you have it thinly covered. You have discovered through intelligence that your enemy is pondering committing his reserves as they find thin resistance. Of course it is thin - the swamp is its best defender and you have your weak mountain cousin defending it.

The enemy doesn’t know that the swamp gets progressively deeper with sections of quicksand and ROUS everywhere …. And on top of that, is surrounded by high ground on three sides.

Well, you have two divisions of cavalry in reserve and one of grenadiers from an allied nation just showed up on the battlefield (Walloon, late again of course).

One of your antsy Brigadiers wants to slow the enemy advance through the swamp by shifting two battalions of artillery from the center … but no. Instead, you want Prince Rupert von Klagenfurt, whose infantry is covering the swamp, to withdrawal faster … and make it look panicky.

From a previous campaign, you know von Klagenfurt’s troops won’t have a problem with that … so you start to get that grin that makes your Chief of Staff sit a little higher in the saddle when he sees it.

“No," you say, "Let them come. Tell the Walloon grenadiers and one of the cavalry that I want them to move up the valley, quiet and hidden, around and to the near left flank on the rise north of the swamp. The other division of cavalry should move behind us to the center rise to the south of the swamp. I also want the Elector of Vulgaria to move half of his hussars from the right flank behind the smoke of the artillery. No one is to betray their positions until I give them the signal. When I do, if in the end I even have to, they are to give no quarter.

Oh, and tell Marshall Count Mountjoy and his artillery to expect to shift his fire left soon.

Under no circumstances are the enemy to have any feeling that we have detected their penetration through the swamp. Again, von Klagenfurt will have no problem pretending to have a lousy A6.”

That is it in a Seven Year's War sense.

The more effort the CINC’s political opponents invest into chasing birth certificate childish fantasies, the more they are going to be ignored. No one in the White House is going to give them anything they want, and therefore make the nirthers even more mad – putting their AFDB on even tighter.

The more Becks, Limbaughs, and Dobbs that they can get to commit their forces to the ever deepening swamp, the better.

Once they feel they have as much in the swamp that will fit there, the grenadiers with a division of cavalry will show up on the northern rise, the other division of cavalry on the south rise with shell and shot coming in the middle. The left flank will fold in ---- and the Elector of Vulgaria’s hussars will close the pocket. Either that, or the ROUS will take care of them all.

As a result, less time and effort will be dedicated to real issues, and some of the opposition’s most influential forces will be discredited.

Beautiful, isn’t it? Remember, when your opponent is destroying himself, by all means, don’t get in his way. Help if you can.

Captain Michael "Scott" Speicher, USN; rest in peace

May he and his family find peace.

The Department of Defense says the remains of Captain Michael "Scott" Speicher have been found.

The Jacksonville resident was the first American lost in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Acting on a tip they received in early July, DOD officials found a place in the Iraqi desert they believed to be Speicher's crash site.

That is where they found the remains.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with Captain Speicher's family for the ultimate sacrifice he made for his country," said Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. "I am extremely grateful to all those who have worked so tirelessly over the past 19 years to bring Captain Speicher home."

Hat tip LT B.

Sunday Funnies

More Bacon here.

Staff bloat explained for engineers ....

Last week, C-dore 14 asked,

I was scanning the DESRON websites a couple of months ago and saw some with "Deputy DESRON Commanders". What the heck do those guys do?

What they do is, well, whatever the Commodore wants them to do - I guess, but the more interesting thing is WHY they exist.

Via Chap, I found out about an article in 19 NOV 1955 edition of The Economist titled, Parkinson's Law.

IT is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and despatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil.

Granted that work (and especially paper work) is thus elastic in its demands on time, it is manifest that there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned. Before the discovery of a new scientific law—herewith presented to the public for the first time, and to be called Parkinson's Law*—there has, however, been insufficient recognition of the implications of this fact in the field of public administration. Politicians and taxpayers have assumed (with occasional phases of doubt) that a rising total in the number of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done. Cynics, in questioning this belief, have imagined that the multiplication of officials must have left some of them idle or all of them able to work for shorter hours. But this is a matter in which faith and doubt seem equally misplaced. The fact is that the number of the officials and the quantity of the work to be done are not related to each other at all. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson's Law, and would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish or even disappear. The importance of Parkinson's Law lies in the fact that it is a law of growth based upon an analysis of the factors by which that growth is controlled.

Here is a bone I will throw to the engineers out there ..... formulas ...

Where k is the number of staff seeking promotion through the appointment of subordinates; p represents the difference between the ages of appointment and retirement; m is the number of man-hours devoted to answering minutes within the department; and n is the number of effective units being administered. Then x will be the number of new staff required each year.

---

Mathematicians will, of course, realise that to find the percentage increase they must multiply x by 100 and divide by the total of the previous year, thus: where y represents the total original staff. And this figure will invariably prove to be between 5.17 per cent and 6.56 per cent, irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.

The discovery of this formula and of the general principles upon which it is based has, of course, no emotive value. No attempt has been made to inquire whether departments ought to grow in size. Those who hold that this growth is essential to gain full employment are fully entitled to their opinion. Those who doubt the stability of an economy based upon reading each other's minutes are equally entitled to theirs. Parkinson's Law is a purely scientific discovery, inapplicable except in theory to the politics of the day. It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow.

That, my dear C-14, is why we must have Deputy Commodores ..... that and we need the billet structure to support all those well-seasoned officers who do not have ships to go to.

A long limp to the finish ....

As the P-3 fleet wheezes, coughs, and generally collects dust praying for luck to keep giv'n ... at least there is hope on the horizon ... though 2018 is a LONG way away.

The U.S. Navy expected to confirm a contract July 30 with Boeing for three additional P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, which will be used for the operational test and evaluation phase of the program.

The aircraft are the first incremental addition to the baseline contract which covered five airframes – three flying and two ground test – for the P-8A development phase.

The P-8A is scheduled to achieve initial operating capability in late 2013 and full fleet deployment in late 2018. “Every six months the plan is to transition another squadron from P-3s to P-8s,” Navy patrol and reconnaissance group commander Rear Adm. Bill Moran says. “We’ve got enough life left to get us through to that full transition in late 2018.”

The Navy has a stated requirement for up to 117 P-8As, up from around 108 when the program was first awarded, and will use them to replace the 164 P-3s currently in service.
...
The P-8A incorporates a strengthened 737-800 fuselage and tail, with a beefed-up wing based on the design of the stretched -900 version. The fuselage is also unique in that it incorporates a weapons bay in the aft lower fuselage. The P-8A also has weapons stations under the wing and raked wingtips in place of winglets.

A good aircraft to replace a good aircraft. Evolutionary progress. So far, so good.

A gift for Skippy

Do you know that Skippy was one of the first people to be a regular commenter here? From a seniority point of view, he is at least in the Top 5.

Sure, we don't see eye to eye often, but he is without a question someone that adds to the flavor of this blog and keeps everyone honest ... if not sharper in their own views. Leave a bit of sunlight in your argument, and he will jam you for it.

In that light - Skippy pal - here is a gift of thanks. Enjoy.



Skippy, we have to agree on this; "pink is perfect for all seasons," and a "gorgeous dewy glow" is essential.