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Though I would like them to be UNCLAS again - overall, the Salamander nods in approval.
The president of the Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) rolled out major changes to the frequency and grading method of the INSURV program effective Jan. 1, 2013.
INSURV President Rear Adm. Robert Wray said changes to the frequency of the inspections and the grading system were implemented to improve the readiness of Navy ships and crews and to provide Navy and congressional leaders with an accurate reflection of that readiness.
Under the old program, INSURV teams conducted exhaustive inspections and surveys of ships every five years and reported their material readiness to Congress. Now ships will be inspected about every
30 months.
Under the new inspection timeline, INSURV inspectors will conduct a traditional "Material Inspection" during a unit's Fleet Readiness Plan cycle. In the alternating cycle, a similar inspection will be conducted by the unit's type commander with INSURV support.
"The major change for the average sailor will be twofold," Wray said. "First, each ship, prior to each deployment, will have a full-blown material inspection in which the ship will be expected to get under way, do full power, anchor, shoot guns, operate combat systems, etc., for a team of external inspectors. Second, ships will be expected to do this on their own, without months of external preparation and assistance."
While twice as many inspections may sound like a bad thing, Wray stressed that the new process will benefit the sailors who have to prepare the ship for INSURV.
"We want the pre-deployment material inspection to be a normal part of doing business, like the Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMPTUEX), something ships know how to do on their own," he said. "In a larger sense, we want to create a 'culture of material readiness' in which ships and their crews are always thinking about being ready for INSURV. The concept is to create a culture for material readiness, in which any ship, at any time in the appropriate part of the FRP, could successfully shoot their guns, do full-power runs, anchor, and demonstrate her combat systems."
Hat tip H2.
This is something that, at first glance, seems quite harmless ... but when you understand the whole current of Cultural Marxism that under-girds so much of the (D)iversity industry ... well ... it just looks sad.
Officer candidates from the Officer Candidate School (OCS) wade waist deep in water as they perform a log carry on the Montford Point Challenge obstacle course at Marine Corps Base Quantico. The challenge was designed in 2011 to give candidates a taste of the hardships of the first African-Americans allowed to enlist in the Marine Corps. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Thomas DeMelo/Released)
More here, here, and here.
Is this really what you need to build combat leaders in the second decade of the 21st Century?
Why is this struggle so important for leaders now? Why does this in-your-face grievance self-criticism exercise important for building leaders, promoting unity, and executing the mission of the USMC?
Marines should be taught about what it means to be a Marine - not a this or that Marine, much less pick at a clean skin until you open a sore that you can later pic at the scab over and over and over.
Pathetic - but not shocking. Patronizing to both the Montford Marines' barrier breaking efforts, and the Marines of the 21st Century. Perhaps the first week everyone should wear hair-shirts.
Well, for the romantic Sailors out there, this is an interesting economic vanity;
"We wanted to keep the energy that the producers had already put in the wine, and not break the chain. And, I'm telling you... this wine just tasted amazing."
On a warm summer's day in August, Danish wine merchant Sune Rosforth took delivery of 8,000 bottles of wine that had arrived from France.
From the offices of financial institutions flanking the quay, workers looked out at something that had not been seen in central Copenhagen for many years.
The ship that had brought the wine from the Breton port of Brest was a 32m-long brigantine, a twin-masted sailing ship, called the Tres Hombres.
Mr Rosforth's company, Rosforth and Rosforth, supplies restaurants in Denmark with organic and biodynamic wines.
Sometimes though, economic vanity can also simply be meeting a different customer's market preferences; and they are willing to pay for it.
I will say this; I get it. I am a member and extra supporter of a local organic farm. I have my own garden and orchards. A lot of the pork and beef I ate this year, my family knew the animal by name. I also eat what I kill on my own land during hunting season, from animals fed in part by the foot plots I plant, and they live and grow well via the improvements in the land I have made over the years. So, I'm guilty of a little food vanity myself.
I could get the same raw calories at a much lower price by simply getting what I need from the frozen and canned goods bargain section at the Piggly-Wiggly … but I don’t.
If someone wants to enjoy wine that – in theory – has moved around without tons of refined fuel … why not.
In any event, the world could use a few more gainfully employed works of art – which tall ship are – moving about.
If you can earn a living doing it – more power to everyone involved. Think about it – who wouldn’t want to one day see the Cutty Sark underway under full sail again (with modern improvements that minimize manning requirements)?
But ... sadly, those beautiful lines are not the plan. FairTransport Ships has other designs. Who knows. I wish them well.
I'll give you a hint; it has nothing to do with the military.
Mort Zuckerman outlines it well;
All eyes have been on the clear and present danger of the fiscal cliff—understandably—but there's a sound in the mountain range that's even scarier than the cliff. It's the sound made by an avalanche, the trillions of dollars of debt that's heading our way, gathering speed and mass. For most people, it's out of earshot now, and that's the way our government prefers to play it in its financial statements. Liabilities are not set out there in accordance with the well-established norms of the private sector, where this overhang of liabilities would set off alarm bells in the markets, with boards of directors in emergency sessions.
We'll come to why that's not happening, but let's consider first why we should regard our predicaments as gravely as any private company does on the path to bankruptcy.
We are on a trajectory of cumulative fiscal deficits that cannot possibly be sustained. We have gone from being the world's largest creditor nation, with no foreign debt at the end of World War II, to the world's largest debtor, with roughly half of our public debt held by foreign lenders. Over the last four years, our national debt has grown by more than $5 trillion to over $16 trillion. We have to service that debt. The Federal Reserve is keeping rates historically low but here's the cost of paying interest on the debt for fiscal 2012: $359,796,008,919.49.
What do you get for that? Nothing.
The greatest fiscal challenge to the U.S. government is not just its annual deficit but its total liabilities. Our federal balance sheet does not include the unfunded social insurance obligations of Medicare, Social Security, and the future retirement benefits of federal employees. Only in the small print of the financial statements do you get some idea of the enormous size of the unfunded commitments. Today the estimated unfunded total is more than $87 trillion, or 550 percent of our GDP. And the debt per household is more than 10 times the median family income.
...
If we continue in these irresponsible ways, an eventual reckoning cannot be avoided. The liabilities are so huge, and multiplying so fast, that there will be one unavoidable demand as the various bills come to their due date. Show us the money!
How will the bills be honored? Let's remember that 100 percent of the payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare are spent in the year that they are collected, leaving no leftovers for the unfunded obligations. And this doesn't take into account other risks, hardly minimal, like the fact that the Federal Housing Authority confronts a $16.3 billion net deficit after its latest audit that may force a taxpayer bailout for the first time in its 78-year history. And just four years from now, in 2016, the Disability Insurance trust fund will be fully depleted.
...
Merely to avoid going deeper into debt, to cope with the speed at which compound interest is growing the real debt annually, we would have to collect $8 trillion in taxes each year, Cox and Archer point out. And here's the nub of it: All individuals filing tax returns in the country with incomes over $66,198 have a total adjusted gross income of about $5.2 trillion. The total corporate taxable income (at its peak in 2006) amounted to $1.6 trillion. This means that we have a maximum of roughly $7 trillion available if the government confiscated the entire gross income of individuals and corporations—not nearly enough to cover the yearly growth of U.S. liabilities.
Read it all - that only touches the surface in an article that really pulls it all together. None of your military theory, concepts, COAs or contracts mean anything if a nation's economic structure eats itself alive.
The "deal" that everyone is talking about from last night will do nothing. The problem is spending, and all the class warfare perpetual campaign taxing will do nothing to either grow the economy of fix the budget problem. A promise to cut spending some insignificant amount at a later date is just an advertisement of the dismal state of leadership, vision, and courage we are in.
The Republicans only control the House, so there is only so much they can do even if they had a different Speaker than Boehner. Senator Reid's Senate has not passed a budget (in violation of the Constitution) in years. The President has neither the background or the inclination to be a national leader or to govern, he is a revolutionary. He is doing exactly what he wants to do, that is to create wholesale change in this nation more in line with his ideology. We elected him to do so, and he is doing it. Agree or disagree, but what do you expect him to do?
So, as we talk about "payloads and platforms," Pacific Pivot, the LCS makeitwork patch of the month, and all that good stuff, remember this - it is no more important than Napoleon in 1812 deciding on the best winter gear for his infantry. Important in an isolated sense, but not critical to the macro decisions happening in the background.
All this has been known for years - Professor Lieberman warned us about it in the late 80s as I sat in his classroom in quasi disbelief that we would ever let this happen. Well, we did, and here we are.
As I outlined in an email to some folks last night, our plans for a future fleet right now is vapor-locked, and unless a major global war or significant regional maritime war breaks out in the next decade, there is a better than even chance that on the Surface side of the house at least, we will be in stasis until we leave the 2020s.
The big challenge for the next 15-years will be force level preservation in a military fiscal environment not unlike the the time period of 1920-1933 - without the innovation that we saw in the same period in carrier and cruiser development.
Where does anyone see innovation in a tight budgetary environment that can seed future advancement if/when the fiscal house is put in order? I'm looking. Rail guns, maybe coming out of the 2020s. UCAV (aka re-usable TLAM) may add some flavor to the mix, though are problematic in their own way. We can at worst hold our own or be a half-generation ahead in cyber if we want. Directed energy is half a century out from operational utility.
No, as unsexy as it is, the smart minds are looking at force and capability preservation with the best technology and weapons we have now. We already had one lost decade of PPT success, we don't need another. With the cutting edge Chinese technology tickling the late 70s through the late 80s, and the Russians just bringing themselves in to the late 90s in places - we have time.
As always, the question will be - do we have the leadership?
While working on the orchard at my Dacha/bolthole this weekend, acreage so far off the grid I can't even get broadcast TV unless I get a 20' tower, I had a little revelation when thinking about a video I saw last week.
What is one of the breathless reasons we seem to have disgorged so much intellectual, professional, political, and real capital on LCS over the last decade? What is the panic button ... ah yes; "the swarm." Sure, you hear MIW and ASW wishfull chattering of "make it work" about; but the swarm is the driver.
The fear of a bunch of expendable guys in small expendable boats with unguided weapons or suicide packages attacking ships in relatively confined waters. Yep, to some, that is the billion dollar tactical challenge of this generation.
Excuse me if I am not impressed.
Not content with doing the logical thing, which would be to plus-up existing ships with everything from .50cal crew served weapons, to the well developed 25mm and 30mm manned or remote weapons out there that are "bolt and go" with a few minor alterations and training (which we have done some, here and there) - no - instead we had to throw away decades of solid experience in shipbuilding, repeat the vice of our ancestors with speed fetish, and squash anyone who spoke against the buzzword named Littoral Combat Ship.
Now we have a sub-optimal Tiffany China Doll of a ship with nothing but shame and excuses to show for it. All of this for what is really only a very small, and frankly, a relatively easy tactical problem to solve in just a couple of years of pondering; if that for a partial solution - heck, WWII could have been fought twice+ in the time we have been trying to find "the" solution.
If you need any evidence of how broke our system is - look at the inability to efficiently address the smallness of our problems.
You want a tactical problem to solve?
How about a regiment sized horizon of these guys?
A couple-three generations ago, those who came before had significant challenges with the TU-22M and the older bombers with newer ASCM. From the F-4 to the F-14 and Aegis, they found solid solutions to that tactical challenge. A challenge that was from a serious peer competitor.
Those who drove the Pop Warner level LCS clown car over the last decade+ were JO's when the varsity-level challenge of long-range naval aviation and the ASCM came to the front - along with the submarine threat, and the .... etc.
In the large scheme of things, look at the exquisite dog's breakfast that is the attempt to confront a 3rd-rate power's suicide fleet and terrorist bomb laden clusters of Carolina Skiffs.
Next time you hear someone make excuses about how "hard" it is to get a WWII DD sized warship to get more than a 57mm to work with a couple of Bushmasters, ask them, "Hard compared to what?"
Until then, just be glad we didn't have to face these guys - after all, it looks like someone just got their qual.
Oh, this is just rich.
They’re ready to jump off a real cliff.
New Yorkers of all income levels got a rude awakening yesterday when they saw in The Post how much more they will pay in taxes next year without a fiscal-cliff deal by Jan. 1.
“It’s that much higher?” asked IT worker Vikas Kataria, 34, who discovered that his combined household income of about $250,000 per year will cost him nearly $10,000 more in taxes.
“I thought it was a couple thousand — but that’s a lot,” said Kataria, who works at Merrill Lynch in Manhattan and is married to a systems analyst for a brokerage firm. “That’s huge!”
...
Small-business owner Haim Hagon, 51, said it’ll be tough to afford college for his two high-school-aged children.
“Every dollar counts when the situation is tough,” said Hagon, who makes about $150,000 and already moved his son from a private school to a public school due to financial concerns.
“Another $6,000 could have gone to my daughter’s tuition. I’ll have to find that money another way.”
He works 12 hours a day, six days a week to keep his children’s-clothing store in Forest Hills, Queens, afloat — and is now mulling staff and pay cuts.
“What am I supposed to do, work harder?” Hagon said. “I don’t want to find myself in front of my store dead with a heart attack!”
There's more at the NYPost. Read it and laugh like Tim the Enchanter.
Sadly, much of our WWII history is from clunky Technicolor movies decades old, or worse - even the very good movies are very American centric. If you make an effort though, there are a lot of good examples out there of those who took the initiative, who had the patience, and who had a focus on mission that should give all pause and ponder on how focused they are in their profession.
Norwegian warrior Birger Stronsheim just passed after living an example of how it is done right.
... four Norwegians became stranded in the area after British soldiers for whom they were doing advance work were captured, tortured and eventually killed. That first group hunkered down for the winter in an abandoned cabin, built a makeshift radio from a car battery and stolen fishing rods and began planning their own rescue and another assault on Norsk Hydro. They ate lichen that they scraped from rocks, killed an occasional reindeer for meat and vigilantly avoided detection by the occupying Germans.
The second effort would not fail. After parachuting to a plateau, the second group, some of whom grew up in the area, skied in subzero temperatures for several days before uniting with the four stranded soldiers. The combined group then made its way to the opposite side of a steep gorge from the Norsk Hydro facility. With the only bridge across guarded by Nazis, they descended to the bottom and climbed to the top on the other side.
Mr. Stromsheim was 31 at the time of the assault, the oldest member of the mission. He was particularly respected for his expertise in explosives and for his calm.
“We didn’t think about whether it was dangerous or not,” Joachim Ronneberg, the leader of the mission, recalled in an interview in The Telegraph of London in 2010. “We didn’t think about our retreat.”
A Norwegian caretaker, a civilian, was the only person in the room where the heavy water was produced and he quickly agreed to cooperate with the soldiers. Mr. Ronneberg said that setting the dynamite proved to be “easy,” but the men still worried that they would be detected at any moment. They lighted a 30-second fuse and ran.
“They didn’t reckon that they would get out alive,” Mr. Stromsheim’s son, also named Birger, recalled in an interview for this obituary. “They weren’t sure of that. They were scared in some ways, but there was no panic.”
Stormy conditions helped muffle the explosion inside the building, and the men made it safely back across the gorge before the Nazis realized what had happened. Nazis searched the area for days afterward, but no shots were fired and no one was hurt in the second mission. Many years later, experts determined that the Nazis were far from being able to build a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Stromsheim, who grew up skiing, hiking and bicycling, was among several soldiers who made it to safety by skiing more than 200 miles to Sweden.
Speaking of bad Techicolor history; yep, you've see it. The Heroes of Telemark
.
I like how Birger put it,
“He saw that,” Mr. Stromsheim’s son said. “He didn’t like it. It was too glamorous.”
Here is a better telling.
Hat tip BR.
