Your LCS Sad of the Day

So, they recently christened a LCS named after a Premier League team, the USS MANCHESTER (LCS-14). 

The PR work here and most of the quotes - well the whole sad ceremony - seems as if it were staged by an LCS critic, ahem, to outline some of the major points that are wrong with the entire program and what it has done to the public capital of our service.

I really don't know where to start. We'll go with quotes from the article first;

Making their support loud and clear, Shaheen along with Congressman Bradley Byrne pledged to fight for a full order of 52 ships and two suppliers. 

"I am going to watch over the Manchester and the entire LCS Program and do everything I can to protect it," said Shaheen. 

"We are going to continue to build these ships with the pace to get to 52," said Byrne, (R-Alabama).

Right off the bat, what is the one concern? Not the Sailors. Not the Navy. Not combat capability - but pork and politics. Of course, we have known this about LCS for years that combat capability was no longer a primary concern, simply numbers on a chart and obsequious cult of personality program support - but it is nice for such a tone-deafness, out in the open without shame clarity from those on The Hill. Makes the LCS critics job easier.

"It really gives you a different perspective of this ship. Being able to walk under it and see just how large these ships really are. Pictures don't do it justice and quiet frankly video doesn't either. So we are really happy to do it, and we hope we can do it like this going forward," said Craig Perciavalle, Pres. Austal USA.

Why yes, they are large. They are not small combatants. They are not stealthy. At 418', they are about 32' longer than a WWII FLETCHER Class destroyer. A ship, BTW, that no Fleet LCS in 2016, eight years after commissioning of Hull-1 can defeat in combat. Yes, 1942 defeats 2016 in a walk. Maybe a few 57mm holes before the 5'/38 finished her work, but to a 1942 FLETCHER DC team, that would just be training. Thank you again.

"It's very important ship because of it's ability to do many different missions and because of its flexibility," said Shaheen.

MANCHESTER is an INDEPENDENCE Class LCS. Hull-1 was christened in 2008 and commissioned in 2010. It is 2016. Name one mission, Senator, that this Class has conducted or has the ability to conduct? No, "presence" is not a mission. Liberty may be for some, but notsumuch. PMA please. Also, name one deployment this Class of ship has done with the ability to be even PMC in more than one PMA?

It is 2016

The answer is zero.

"Her shallow depth which enables her to go into most of the world's shores, so we can be present in a better capacity than any other ship in the United States Navy," said Commander Emily Bassett, USN and Prospective Commanding Officer, Manchester (LCS 14).

How many times does this need debunking?

Name one MIW mission of the last half century that LCS can conduct due to its draft? One ASW mission? Once ASUW mission?

The answer is zero. That is also the same number of the number of missions the LCS can conduct - the entire fleet of them now commissioned.

Finally, watch to the end of the video. It is so sad. We have reached the point that our Commanding Officers are coached to parrot industry talking points that never survive the first follow-on question.

FOX10 News | WALA

From the inside, it may look like everyone followed the talking points and kept to message etc - but here is where this is horribly damaging to our Navy. We have a uniformed Field Grade officer who is sounding exactly like a politician or an industry flack. We have them saying things that cannot survive the follow-on questions and if not on its face in a gray area near falsehood, are at best spin and fudge. As such, it degrades the officer saying it, and erodes the professional capital of the entire body of the officers. This is self-destructive behavior on a service wide scale. Not CDR Bassett's fault, but she is the one paying the price. It is as painful to watch as if we asked someone to read their last FITREP at open-mic, spoken word poetry reading.

Until we as a Navy get to the point we start acting like a customer of the military industrial complex as opposed to industry flacks, we will continue to get sub-optimal platforms like the Little Crappy Ship.

In the end, this is our fault. We ask our leaders in the Field to sell their word so cheap.

A final note. Here we are eight years since LCS was first commissioned. FLETCHER Hull-1 was commissioned in 1942. In the same period of time ... well ... you look what had happened, been developed, been done, etc.

1952-1960.

1962-1970.

1972-1980.

Something is broken. It is not a budget problem. It is not a technology problem. 

This is a people and a process problem, in that order.

Hat tip MTH.

Fullbore Friday

There is no such thing as a "normal watch," especially on Nov. 22, 1975 onboard the USS BELKNAP (CG-26);

We were on plane guard. They put us on a plane guard because their TACAN was down. We had been making this same maneuver to port eight or nine times a day – from the start of the turn to completion was 3600 yards. This time we made a turn to starboard. I’ve read the investigation report, so even though I was down in the fire room, I’ve since come to know what happened up on the bridge. With the lights of the carrier looking the same, there was confusion, and miscommunication, and we made a right-hand turn this time, and the arc was half of what it had been for the last 15 or 20 times. We were going to stop, let them go past us, come across the wake, and get back in position, but we couldn’t determine what their position was. So, I’m in the phone booth, and the next thing I know, we’re getting all these bells. I said, “Okay, everybody, be alert.” Usually on this shift there is nothing going on—no exercises or drills, and the off-watch crew is watching the movie. I was actually writing a letter to my wife and I put it down in the phone booth. The engineering spaces are very noisy, and the phone booth is a place where you could talk. I saw the shaft stop, and I said, “What the hell’s going on?” So I told the guys, “Everybody pay attention. Something’s going on.” And then they called “Captain to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!” on the 1MC general announcing system. I knew they would normally pass the word, “Commanding Officer, your presence is requested on the bridge,” and only if they couldn’t reach him on the phone, or send the messenger to find him in time. But I knew from when I was on Blandy, going to Viet Nam, that “If you hear this terminology, you know there’s a serious problem.” So, I said, “Okay, everybody, get up. Get up. Get ready. Something’s gonna happen.” And then all of a sudden the ship started to shudder, and I thought, “What’s going on?” And I looked over to the stack periscope. With the periscope, you can look out to see whether you’re smoking or not. And usually, if you were smoking it gets black at the bottom and it goes up to the top. What we didn’t know down in the fire room at that time was that when we hit, JP-5 fuel lines were cut up on the carrier, and fuel poured down onto our ship, and into the air supply for ventilating the engineering spaces. We had combination stacks and masts, called macks. All that fuel came down into the after mack. The forward mack never got any oil on it. All that fuel came down MY mack, and they estimated like 18 hundred gallons.

Required reading of an interview with a great Sailor, BT1 Andrew Gallagher.

Hat tip Sean.

Diversity Thursday

This Thursday, let's just look at the garden variety of diversity SPAM that the Fleet is subjected to.

Of course, I want you to think about the BA/NMP, $$$, opportunity cost, and lost productivity going to these fried-air events created by overactive diversity cadre at places like NAVAIR. More than that, today I want to to read critically the patronozing, soft-bigotry that is a core principal of this socio-political movement the US Navy endorses.

-----Original Message-----
From: TOTALFORCE_HR_NEWS
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2016 1:00 PM
Subject: Asian-American/Pacific Islander Heritage Month event: 17 May

All hands,

Join us for NAVAIR's national celebration of Asian-American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, co-sponsored by the AAPI diversity advisory team and NAVAIR's Equal Employment Opportunity & Diversity Division.

The event, with a theme of "Walk Together, Embrace Differences, Build Legacies," features keynote speaker and Rutgers philosophy professor Dr. Ruth Chang. Dr. Chang's TED talk on the topic of making hard choices in your personal and professional life has had more than three million views. At this event, you'll gain insight on becoming a better leader, better teammate and better individual through an examination of how you make hard choices.

EVENT DETAILS:
-- Date: Tuesday, 17 May
-- Time: 1300-1500 EST
-- Location: River's Edge Catering & Conference Center, Patuxent River, and via national video teleconference
-- More information: https://mynavair.navair.navy.mil/portal/server.pt/community/navair_diversity___equal_employment_opportunity/

REGISTRATION (REQUIRED):
Visit NAVAIR University at https://navairu.navair.navy.mil. Search for course number CISL-EVT-0119.

Thank you,
Total Force Strategy & Management Department

Look at that and ponder.

1. The whole concept of "Asian & Pacific Islander" as a single ethnic group is almost as stupid as calling "white" an ethnic group while at the same time carving out the Iberian Peninsular as its own ethnic group. Those of Spanish and Portuguese extraction have more in common with those of Scandinavian extraction than someone from the Philippines has with someone from Japan; Guam from Korea; China from Java. It is so self-evident as to be silly. However, there are jobs to justify, insecurities to reinforce, egos to boost.

2. This is where it gets fun. From her wiki entry - please tell me about her rich understanding of the Asian-American experience.

Chang graduated from Dartmouth College in 1985 with a B.A. in philosophy.[2] In 1988, she graduated from Harvard Law School with a J.D.[2] In 1991, she was appointed a Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, where she completed her D. Phil. in 1997 after two year-long visiting appointments at UCLA and the University of Chicago Law School.[2] She also lectured at several of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in this time period.
...
her research has been the subject of radio, newspaper, and magazine articles in the United States, Brazil, Taiwan, Austria, Australia, Canada, Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

OK. She has a little connection to Taiwan and Australia. Well give 1.5 points to Hufflepuff.

Besides her last name and DNA, what ... ahhh, yes - see - I almost fell in to their trap.

You see, from the diversity industry's point of view, there is nothing of significance to Dr. Change from the diversity industry's point of view. All that matters is that she is used to remind people to divided and made different by race, creed, color, or national origin everyone regardless of accomplishment. 

All that matters is that people remain in their little groups. Every day, even if they are modern people who don't care, we must remind them and everyone else that they are "the other." Avoid at all possible costs any movement to unity. Any movement towards anything but the most base concerns of tribalism.

That is the diversity industry, and the Navy's little fetid corner of it.

The banality of evil. Yes, I use the term "evil" as throughout history nothing good has ever come from making people constantly aware of their ethnic group - to either exclude them or to include them. Evil uses that to pit us against each other so we are easier to manipulate. 

If you desire to have a society where we want to bring people together, to look at people for good or bad as individuals without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin - then you do have to scorn - scorn those who have any connection to the diversity industry and their efforts. They are agents of discord, disorder, and just plain ugly brain-stem level bigotry.

Dr. Chang is better than that. I would much rather have the money being spent to have her speak at such a disgraceful sectarian event spent to have her speak to a gathering of Midshipmen at Annapolis. Have her speak there because she is a highly accomplished professional who has some tools to help professionals be better. Her experience of being a 1st generation American is not unique to one race or ethnic group. That is a story for all Americans. 

That is what makes her impressive, not her last name and her superficial DNA. 

Shame on the Navy for insulting her and everyone else.

Rode Hard and Left Up Wet

What story is this telling?

I'm discussing over at USNIBlog. Stop by.

NATO - the Non-Eurocentric View

Worth your time to consider Vijay Prashad's latest from India's The Citizen, How and Why Nato Has Become the Most Destructive Force on the Planet.

Always worth considering what things look like from the outside in - even if you think they're off a bit on their points;

Is NATO as essential to world security as Obama claims? NATO’s recent adventures—in Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and Libya—have created insecurity rather than order.

Afghanistan: When NATO entered the Afghan theatre in 2001, a decisive victory seemed imminent. Al-Qaeda fled the country and the Taliban fighters threw off their guns and went amongst the population. Elections followed and all seemed over. As the winter snows receded in 2002, the Taliban returned. Each spring they have come back, stronger and more determined to defeat their adversaries. This year has been no exception. The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jean-Nicholas Marti, says that 2016 has already shown the highest number of civilian casualties—thirty per cent higher than last year. Opium cultivation has grown, and Afghanistan now ranks as the second highest refugee exporter to Europe. A UN report on education and healthcare in Afghanistan shows that the condition is dire and getting worse. “In 2015 children increasingly struggled to access health and education services due to insecurity and conflict-related violence, further exacerbated by high levels of chronic poverty,” says UNICEF chief Akhil Iyer. NATO has begun to gradually withdraw from Afghanistan, which is fated to return—in some manner—to Taliban rule.

Eastern Europe: Perhaps NATO’s most striking disaster has been its confident march eastwards. One of the deals conducts by the West and the Soviets that bears consideration is around the unification of Germany. The Soviets agreed to the unification if NATO promised to remain at the German border. NATO was not to threaten Soviet security. That agreement was broken sharply. NATO began to absorb eastern European states and to pledge economic benefits for integration into the military alliance. A weak Russia in the 1990s did little to complain. It watched as NATO bombed the Balkans in 1999—in a war that was public relations coup for Europe, which suppressed its own role in stoking Croatian and Slovenian secessionism to dissolve Yugoslavia (as the European Union’s Badinter Commission had promised in 1991). Missile Defense shields and membership to the Baltic States poked Moscow’s eye. The Ukraine conflict is a direct product of NATO’s expansion eastwards. Now American F-22 raptors fly to Romania, while the USS Donald Cook slips into the Baltic Sea towards Russian waters. At a NATO meeting, the Russian ambassador Alexander Grushko described the Western provocations as “attempts to exercise military pressure on Russia.” Then, most chillingly, he said, “We will take all necessary measures, precautions, to compensate for these attempts to use military force.” Rather than secure Eurasia from conflict, NATO has been an instrument for discord. Moscow’s interests in its neighborhood are maligned in the Western press as the habits of empire, while Western requirements for NATO’s intervention are seen in this media as acceptable.

Libya: NATO dashed into the Libyan conflict with the imprimatur of a United Nations resolution (1973). It far exceeded its mandate – to protect civilians—by going for regime change. It later refused to allow any international investigation—even by the UN—of its bombing in Libya. NATO was happy to bomb on a UN mandate, but would not permit any UN oversight. Libya’s state was destroyed by the bombing run, creating mayhem across North Africa. Al-Qaeda’s growth in Algeria, Libya, Mali and Tunisia can be directly attributable to the NATO regime change operation and the promiscuity of Western and Gulf Arab intelligence, which allowed Libyan fighters to go and fight in Syria. Many of these fighters also returned as the core of Libya’s branch of ISIS. What did NATO bring to Libya? Destruction and chaos.

NATO needs a few in the "W" column.

Maybe back to the core mission - but encouraging Germany now.

Why You Need to Watch Occupied on Netflix

I've recommended the Norwegian mini-series, Occupied, a few times to those who follow me on twitter, but I wanted to bring it over here for discussion.

By reading some of the descriptions, including this one from Netflix, I could see where some in the natsec chatterati might give it a pass, but let me outline why you should give it a watch. As most in the entertainment press are clueless about and have little curiosity to understand military and diplomatic history, practices, or methods - the fact that they miss the forest for the trees in this series is not shocking.

Ignore them - listen to the Salamander.

The acting and sets are very well done with almost none of the usual fluff and cheese one would find if this was done in the USA. Let's get that out of the way. As it is Norwegian, it has a Scandinavian crispness to it that especially those who lived in Northern Europe for any period of time will recognize and enjoy.

The series takes place the near future in Norway. The premise of the series has a few entering arguments that are interesting to watch play out on the screen. The writers are just about pitch perfect in some areas, and certain parts strike Americans in ways an European audience wouldn't understand.

Here are a few of the bold-faced items that play out of the screen that I found the most interesting.

1. The Green Party of the Euro-left: regardless of what Slate and others say, this series is not about "climate change." If anything, it is about overreaction to weather and a political party's new religion taking normal events as signs from their gods that enable self-destructive behavior. Green parties and rabid environmentalists are well known to be relatively clueless about how the real world works, international relations, and economics. When you give such people power, they can make incredibly bad policy. Bad policy can have unexpected 2nd and 3rd order effects. That is what starts this story going. It isn't "climate change," it is neo-paganism meets useful idiots.

2. The Perfidy of the EU: any student of European history will tell you that Central Asia and Africa have nothing on the Europeans when it comes to petty tribalism and mercantilistic self-interest. They will sell you the rope to hang them with if they get the right price, and they will sell a friend down the river if it gets them a small advantage.

3. The nature of Russia and her relative power: Russian is not a Western nation. She is not an Asian nation. She is not an Eastern or Central European nation. She is Russia. I haven't figured her out, and neither have you. If you are trying to put her in a box you've made and understand, then you will subject yourself to shocks, as Russia does what Russia always does; confound. If you stop trying to understand any motive but self-interest and opportunity flavored with insecurity and respect for power, you might do a bit better. The way Russia plays out in this series is masterful.

4. America as an enabling habit: for reasons not fleshed out in detail, the USA has left NATO and has generally left Europe to her own devices. Even then, especially ironic for a Scandinavian Green, there is an assumption that the USA will be there, willing to fight to repair European mistakes to the last American. The Greens will bluff and preen, but assume that if they go too far that it will be OK; Uncle Sam will come back and protect them. The subtle and very precise 19th Century American neutrality as played by the American Ambassador is pitch perfect. The actor who plays the Norwegian PM when he finally realized that America really is neutral does a superb, "The scales have fallen from my eyes" expression. Given Trump and Sanders's statements this election cycle, there only need to be a card or two more pulled from the deck to make this a possibility.

5. Nationalism vs. the political class: another pitch-perfect outline is how in spite of what the political class is doing, the people may have their own ideas. Large events are shaped by individual action. Individual action will drive large movements in directions they were not originally going.

6. People are neither purely good nor purely evil: every character, especially those you would think would be written as black-and-white/good-or-bad are well rounded characters. In a very efficient manner, "bad" characters are shown to have good sides or good motivations. Likewise, "good" characters are shown to perhaps not have the most clear or well meaning motivations. Some in the middle, you just don't know.

7. Reliance on other nations for your own security is for fools: the assumptions the Green PM makes about what drives the EU, NATO, and the USA are very well played out on the screen and fun to watch, if not so pathetic.

Finally, when watching you have to keep in mind that on the edges of living memory, Norway was an occupied country with a fighting underground and collaborators. Quisling was Norwegian after all. As such, there are some Norwegian specific sub-plots and messages going on that most non-Norwegians may not get, but I don't think that gets in the way. If you are student of history, you may get one or two of them - but just take them as Easter Eggs and don't worry about looking for them.

Season 1 is available and Season 2, rumor has it, is in the works.

As a side-note; the series is in Norwegian with English subtitles. That's OK, as all the conversations between the Norwegians and Russians/Americans/Europeans are done in English as the universal language. Nice.

You also have to understand that Norwegian police and criminal justice procedures are incredibly hands off and lax. In a couple of episodes, Mrs. Salamander gave me "the look" as I kept saying annoying things like, "Oh come on! In American they would have shot that guy immediately! Why are they chasing him and talking to him?" - "What, they released that guy? In that were here, they would have ... oh ... yes dear, I'll be quiet."

I don't make recommendations often, but this series gets a solid thumbs up.

Terrorists on the Ocean with CAPT Bob Hein, USN - on Midrats

When does the Long War go feet wet?

Given the track record of the preceding couple of decades, it was expected shortly after the start of this phase of the war after 911, that terrorists would take the war to sea. There was an incident now and then, but the threat never really played out to the extent we thought early on.

Recent events point to the possibility that this may be changing, in perhaps ways not originally thought.

What is the threat? Where is it coming from, and how do you deter and defeat it?

Our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss this and more will be CAPT Bob Hein, USN. We will use his latest article with CIMSEC, Terrorists on the Ocean: Sea Monsters in the 21st Century, as a starting out point for discussion.

Captain Hein is a career surface warfare officer. Over the last 28 years, he has served on seven ships around the globe and has had the privilege of commanding two of them: the USS Gettysburg (CG 64), and the USS Nitze (DDG 94),

He completed two tours as a requirements officer on the Navy staff for combatant modernization and for future logistics capabilities. He also served as the current operations officer for U.S. Fleet Forces Command. Additional tours include as an action officer on the Joint Staff, Joint Operations Directorate, and as Chief of Staff to the NATO Mediterranean Fleet.

He is currently the Branch Head for Strategy on the OPNAV Staff (N513) Captain Hein graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor's in physical science. He also holds a master's in national security affairs and strategic studies from the Naval War College, is a graduate of the Joint Forces Staff College, and a former Navy Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is also the proud father of two Surface Warfare Officers; it's a family business.

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio or Stitcher. 

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.