Tag Archives: MilSpec Notes

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Flash! Bang!

Navy Sets World Record With Incredible, Sci-Fi Weapon

In the perennial naval contest between guns and armor, score a big one for guns!

A theoretical dream for decades, the railgun is unlike any other weapon used in warfare. And it’s quite real too, as the U.S. Navy has proven in a record-setting test today in Dahlgren, VA.

Rather than relying on a explosion to fire a projectile, the technology uses an electomagnetic current to accelerate a non-explosive bullet at several times the speed of sound. The conductive projectile zips along a set of electrically charged parallel rails and out of the barrel at speeds up to Mach 7. The result: a weapon that can hit a target 100 miles or more away within minutes.

“It’s an over-used term, but it really changes several games,” Rear Admiral Nevin P. Carr, Jr., the chief of Naval Research, told FoxNews.com prior to the test.

For a generation raised on shoot-’em-up video games, the word “railgun” invokes sci-fi images of an impossibly destructive weapon annihilating monsters and aliens. But the railgun is nonetheless very real.

Can the BFG-9000 be far behind?

An electromagnetic railgun offers a velocity previously unattainable in a conventional weapon, speeds that are incredibly powerful on their own. In fact, since the projectile doesn’t have any explosives itself, it relies upon that kinetic energy to do damage. And at 11 a.m. today, the Navy produced a 33-megajoule firing — more than three times the previous record set by the Navy in 2008.

“It bursts radially, but it’s hard to quantify,” said Roger Ellis, electromagnetic railgun program manager with the Office of Naval Research. To convey a sense of just how much damage, Ellis told FoxNews.com that the big guns on the deck of a warship are measured by their muzzle energy in megajoules. A single megajoule is roughly equivalent to a 1-ton car traveling at 100 mph. Multiple that by 33 and you get a picture of what would happen when such a weapon hits a target.

Uff da!

The article goes on to describe some more of the characteristics, as well as some of the tactical and strategic implications of the deployment of this sort of system. It really does remind the Chief of something from military science fiction…aspects of something from Hammer’s Slammers, or perhaps David Weber’s Honorverse series.

China Watch, National Insecurity

Military Malpractice: Blitzkrieg then and Now

Remember the Blitzkrieg before it’s too late

First, a basic history review:

Seventy years ago today, on May 10, 1940, the German armed forces launched the deep-penetration attack through southern Belgium to the English Channel that split the French and British armies in two – a form of warfare known to the world as Blitzkrieg or “lightning war.” Three weeks later, the campaign ended with the German subjugation of France, Belgium and the Netherlands and Britain’s ignominious withdrawal from the European continent.

To contemporary Western military observers accustomed to the grinding attrition battles of World War I, Germany’s incredibly successful Blitzkrieg seemed magical. But there was no magic. For any great victory to occur, the winning side must get most things right while the losing side gets most things wrong.

How did this happen?

The Germans got most things right. They integrated new technology into new organizations – radio communications, tanks, armored infantry and air power – under vastly superior battlefield commanders, commanders who led Germany’s superbly educated, physically fit and trained soldiers from the front, not the rear. But it’s what the British and French got wrong that should command America’s attention.

First the Brits:

In the 1920s, Britain’s top generals focused the British army on organizing, training and equipping its troops to police the declining British Empire. British military leaders decided the only enemy Britain would fight for at least 10 years would be a colonial enemy, a hostile tribesman or insurgent. The long-term results of this thinking were nearly fatal to Britain.

As far as the frogs were concerned:

In France, where defense spending rose to account for one-third of all government expenditures by 1939, there was no shortage of modern equipment, only a shortage of competent senior leadership in the general-officer ranks. “Methodical battle,” a concept of war-fighting emphasizing set-piece battles and the application of preplanned firepower over maneuver, was enshrined as the French national vision of future war. Its strategic effect was devastating.

(France fell is six weeks.)
Now for the really scary bit; what are WE doing lately?

Today, stars will only fall on American Army and Marine officers who religiously embrace counterinsurgency inside the Islamic world as the future. The notion that the generals have “discovered” a military solution to Islam’s societal misery in the form of counterinsurgency is untrue, but no one in the White House, the Senate or the House, let alone the media, is willing to challenge it.

Sad but true!

But armies are what they do, and, for the moment, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are light constabulary forces designed to police Muslim Arabs and Afghans with AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mines. This conversion to light forces designed to operate from fixed bases while depending heavily on timely and accurate air strikes for effectiveness and survival has left American ground forces in a weakened, vulnerable state.

For the United States, the critical military lesson of May 10, 1940, means avoiding Britain’s mistake of optimizing its forces to fight weak insurgents, especially when Muslim rebellions against unwanted American military occupations are easily avoided. It also means understanding that future conflicts will involve wars among nations and alliances of nations waged by powerful armed forces for regional power and influence; fights for energy, water, food, mineral resources and the wealth they create. Otherwise, the generals’ current obsession with counterinsurgency will leave the American armed forces as unprepared for a real war in 10 years as the British and French forces were for their confrontation with Germany in 1940.

Of course, it is claimed that now there is no likelihood of anyone being able to fight a “real war” against us, right?

(Move along folks, nothing to see here.  Ignore that 800 lb. gorilla that lives just to the north of the South China Sea; or what his buddy in the USSR Russian Federation is up to with continuing to develop shiny new high-performance aircraft, subs, nuclear weapons, missiles, and tanks.  No concerns at all, right?)

National Insecurity

Strategy & the G.W.O.T.*

Getting beyond the daily concern over the immediate details of the Islamoterror War, it is instructive to back up, and take a look at “the big picture” of the Great War on Terror (* GWOT) in a historical and strategic sense.

The Chief humbly offers this posting from the Gates of Vienna blog as being a worth while offering towards doing this.

Islamic Jihad vs. the Western Way of War

I [written by a noted Norwegian blogger posting as Fjordman] had a conversation recently with a good friend of mine regarding the situation in Western Europe, with rapidly rising ethnic and religious tensions caused by mass immigration. Historically, the usual situation is that Muslims keep the lands they have taken possession of. There are a few exceptions, for instance with the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula, but this took centuries. If this pattern still holds up, the situation does admittedly look bleak.

The problem is that the circumstances this time around are very special. We are dealing with the unprecedented situation where a militarily inferior group is allowed by the authorities in technologically stronger countries to settle in their lands and harass the local population. Muslims haven’t actually defeated us in warfare. Do the old rules then apply? Nobody knows for certain. It is difficult to predict the future, apart from the fact that there will be a lot of turbulence here in the coming years and decades.

In my book Defeating Eurabia I quoted the American scholar Daniel Pipes, who believes that the decisive events in Europe have yet to take place, perhaps within the next decade or so. As Pipes puts it, the situation is historically unprecedented: “No large territory has ever shifted from one civilization to another by virtue of a collapsed population, faith, and identity; nor has a people risen on so grand a scale to reclaim its patrimony. The novelty and magnitude of Europe’s predicament make it difficult to understand, tempting to overlook, and nearly impossible to predict. Europe marches us all into terra incognita.”

I write about European history in order to gain inspiration from our past so that we can face the future with self-confidence. While reading about our artistic and scientific contributions to world culture is inspiring, we should not leave out our military traditions. They, too, constitute a part of our heritage, and we may soon need to revive some of those traditions.

Go to the original full posting for a lot of details and further analysis…if you have a serious interest in what we REALLY have to consider in dealing with this continuing “long war”.

As an additional historical note, Gates of Vienna takes it’s name from commemorating the successful defense of Vienna against the Islamic Ottoman Empire in 1683, which should reinforce for the reader the idea that fighting against Islamic aggression is nothing new, and continues to this day.

This fact remains, in spite of “politically correct” changes in terminology from B.O., Napolitano, et al,and their ilk referring to “overseas contingency operations” and such like, refusing to admit that there IS a continuing (if asymmetric) war declared on us by an Islamic militancy rejuvenated by petrodollars.

They (and we) ignore this cardinal fact at our peril.

Defense Matters!

Royal Navy Taking on Water

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Navy would struggle to fight a war – report

As a former naval person, the Chief is saddened to see this, and is concerned over some evident declines in our own naval forces, especially in the face of the ChiCom drive towards a 600 ship fleet of their own.

The Royal Navy can no longer fight a major war because of years of under­funding and cutbacks, a leaked Whitehall report has revealed. With an “under-resourced” fleet composed of “ageing and operationally defective ships”, the Navy would struggle even to repeat its role in the Iraq war and is now “far more vulnerable to unexpected shocks”, the top-level Ministry of Defence document says.

The report was ordered by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, who had intended to use it to “counter criticism” on the state of the Navy in the media and from opposition parties.

At least that was the plan…but it looks like the Brownian EngSoc regime got mugged by reality instead:

But in a damning conclusion, the report states: “The current material state of the fleet is not good; the Royal Navy would be challenged to mount a medium-scale operation in accordance with current policy against a technologically capable adversary.”

Key findings of Royal Navy report
• Funding shortfall is “eroding” Navy’s fighting capability
• Fleet is “ageing” and ever more “thinly stretched”
• Anti-submarine capability is now below a “prudent minimum level”
• Royal Marines’ ability to conduct amphibious operations is being “eroded”
• Too many ships are putting to sea with “operational defects”
• Navy’s ability to “deliver influence at strategic level” is under threat
• Navy vulnerable to unexpected shocks compared with 20 years ago
• In 1987 35 ships patrolled UK waters, compared with just 10 today
• New aircraft carriers “provide significant global and military leverage”
• Navy’s modern ships are more capable and cost-effective

Admittedly the last two points are hopeful, but there’s far too much that’s not for an island nation (or its friends) to feel comfortable with the current state of affairs.

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A Light in the Darkness

Charges dropped in Iraq against sniper
The U.S. soldier, along with other members of his unit, was been implicated in the deaths of Iraqi men.

The subheader on this one is a classic DUH! Snipers implicated in the deaths of Iraqi men? Hello ! THE CHIEF CERTAINLY HOPES SO! Snipers are SUPPOSED to be killing people – that’s what they are trained & tasked to do!

Members of U.S. Army Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval Jr.’s unit hugged him Friday in the minutes after a military court dropped murder charges against him in the deaths of two Iraqis.

One soldier, Sgt. Anthony Murphy, savored the good news. “It’s been really tough. Today is a good day,” he said. Murphy bristled at the idea that there was a cloud over their unit. “What we did was honorable — what we were trained to do and ordered to do,” he said. Spc. Joshua Meachum said, “Snipers have no other job but to kill. We don’t shake hands with sheiks. We don’t give candy to kids. We don’t set up a checkpoint. We have one sole job and that is to kill.”

Score one for the good guys.

Defense Matters!

US Attacks on USMC?!

Haditha Video Doctored by Investigators

The Chief has been following this for some time…and has noted with satisfaction that the case against the Marine “boots on the ground” has started to unravel. It looks like this process is continuing, with these reports of doctored video evidence.

A video taped from a Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle – purported to show the action that took place in Haditha when 24 Iraqi civilians and insurgents were killed – was heavily edited by government investigators, a NewsMax investigation reveals. The reason, according to an inside source: to avoid showing anything that exonerates the Marines who were accused of murdering the victims. Four Marines originally faced murder charges stemming from the Haditha incident. Charges against three of them have since been dropped, but Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich is still facing a court martial.

What was actually recorded leaves a very clear history that the Marines’ actions were fully justified by the rules of engagement. What WAS actually recorded?

The Marine intelligence officer who monitored the Scan Eagle’s video transmissions throughout the day told NewsMax that therewas continuous video feed from the Scan Eagle for 8 to 10 hours. Yet barely an hour of it was provided to the Marines’ defense teams by the prosecution or the Naval Criminal Investigation Service. “This 8 to 10 hours, viewed in its entirety, shows men in black, with weapons, fleeing the neighborhood of houses 1, 2, 3 and 4 [the area where the civilians and eight of the insurgents were killed]. It follows their route as they meet up with other insurgents throughout the city. It clearly demonstrates the magnitude of the insurgents’ organization, skill, and timing in attacking Marines.”

The video, he recalled, “shows them parking, exiting the vehicle, and entering the housing complex. It shows Marines assaulting the building, insurgents fleeing out the back of the building, and Marines falling back from the assault as the insurgents defend the house.” Finally, the intelligence officer revealed, the full, undoctored Scan Eagle video “shows an insurgent, at the end of the day, under continuous observation from the air and under continuous pursuit and fire, emerge from a family’s home holding their children hostage, in order to protect himself from further air strikes.”

What was actually used as “evidence” and which was released to CNN, who played thr role of the willing fool in helping the prosecution, was somewhat less that this:

“Someone, under the supervision of NCIS, screened this video feed, and made the conscious decision to preserve only four segments of approximately 15 minutes each – according to the defense attorneys who received it upon discovery release,” our intelligence source confided.

What the Chief really CANNOT wrap his mind around, is an understanding of the attitudes and motivation of any bottom-feeding, slime-sucking, traitorous scum who would do this to our own troops.

Execution is too good for them. One needs to hearken back to the old-style penalty of the British monarchs to APPROACH justice: hung by the neck, taken down while still alive, racked, disembowled, with the innards still attached and then thrown into a fire, and only then beheaded, with the body quartered, and the fragments placed on public display as an instructive lesson.

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Irish Rough Justice

Tarred, feathered and tied to a lamppost

Tied to a lamppost, he stands with his head and upper body covered in tar and feathers. A makeshift placard hung around his neck with a piece of string announces the reason for his treatment. It is a very public humiliation, and a medieval one. Almost ten years since Northern Ireland’s Troubles officially ended, this remains the crude face of justice on the streets of south Belfast.

This man was subjected to the painful tarring and feathering on the Taughmonagh estate, a loyalist stronghold in the city. Locals had accused the victim, who is in his thirties, of being a drug dealer. And when police allegedly did not act, they took the law into their own hands. Two masked men tied up the accused victim, poured tar over his head and then covered him in white feathers, apparently from a pillow case.

Hmmmm. This could be a solution to the urban phenomenon of the “known crack house”, which everyone knows about, but which the authorities have somehow overlooked.

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Surf’s Up! Oh – that’s a WATERboard, not a Surfboard. Oh well.

Some Tortured Thoughts on Torture

Ken over at South Dakota Politics shares some of his thoughts and concerns stimulated by the President’s recent order banning torture by the C.I.A. He (rightly) states his general agreement with same. Nevertheless, this posting raises several points of possible divergence with my reading on the situation.

First of all, waterboarding is an extremely unpleasant experience. Ken’s post describes the set-up and execution of same in detail.
It’ is also, as he notes, very effective at inducing the sharing of information without any physical damage (bloodshed, wounding, broken bones, etc).

There is another point concerning this type of interrogation that the Chief has never seen mention of: the US military is in the business of routinely torturing it’s own personnel during training exercises.

During the Chief’s naval career, he had a Commanding Officer who was a former carrier pilot. Pilots, air crewmen, and others who have a higher than usual probability or possibility of being captured must complete training that is referred to in the best tradition of military abbreviations as SERE, standing for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. In other words, it is a realistic and practical introduction, up close and personal, of what could be expected if captured by typical enemy forces.

After some preliminary orientation, the trainees are taken into a field environment, and are given the opportunity to try to escape being captured by the “Aggressor” or enemy force, which is very realistically enacted by fellow US personnel. Resistance is futile. Even if the trainee is a former Boy Scout, and able to evade, after a time loudspeakers direct “surrender”.

Then the REAL fun begins, with aggressive and hostile interrogation by the enemy “re-enactors”, INCLUDING at times direct application fo physical force (non-damaging beatings), unpleasant temperature exposures for extended periods, sleep deprivation, denial fo food and water, isolation, and other forms of unpleasantness INCLUDING WATER-BOARDING.

It was the stated opinion of the officer that virtually anyone subjected to this would eventually crack, and threat the purpose of the training was to prepare our guys so they wouldn’t be surprised by their poor treatment, and that if/when they did give in to the inevitable, it wouldn’t totally destroy their sense of worth to themselves, or to the nation.

This officer added in conclusion, that although the (then future) Chief was not in a category that ordinarily received SERE training, that he still had connections that could get me into that if I wanted to. I passed on the opportunity, but crazily enough, as I think about it I almost which I hadn’t…just to know that I could have faced it and survived. Oh well.

Note that none of these aggressive interrogations PERFORMED AS ROUTINE TRAINING IN THE US MILITARY were considered to be torture.

What DOES constitute practical torture? Check out Sen. John McCain’s (and others’) experiences.

So…where does this leave things? The Chief would submit that if it is something that we were willing to put ourselves through, then there should be no problem with using the same procedures on REAL enemies, especially in light of the circumstances of WW-IV/Great War on Terror, as so aptly described in Ken’s conclusion:

If a weapon of mass destruction were to go off on American soil, it would put the nation into a state of emergency such as it has never seen. The army and all police forces, state and federal, would proceed to do whatever they could to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, without bothering with such conveniences as due process.

And if it were made public that we could have stopped the disaster if only we had been willing to use more brutal means, I can assure you that both parties would immediately cleanse themselves of any scruples they might have had about torture. Nor would anyone who opposed the use of torture for state security have a chance to be elected dog catcher ever again. I am not telling you what should happen. I am telling you what will happen.

If you want to preserve a republic that can afford scruples about torture, you have to prevent the unthinkable from happening. And that may mean making some hard choices now.

Hear, hear!

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Semper Fi!

Bombshell Cripples Case Against Haditha Marines

This whole has been a travesty of injustice.

The stunning announcement that all charges are being dropped against Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz, formerly accused of murder in the Haditha incident where 24 Iraqis were killed during an insurgent ambush against the Marines, is indication that the prosecutors have a very weak case against all the defendants, lawyers for the some of the accused say.

NewsMax goes on to report more about the apparent legal collapse of the case against the Marines in this unfortunate series of events.

Haditha: Is McGirk the New Mary Mapes?

Meanwhile, and directly stimulated and related to this, is a report on the American Thinker site detailing not only the legal skullduggery, but the actual details of the ACTUAL incident as now known:

Evidence accumulates of a hoax in Haditha. The weblog Sweetness & Light has done an estimable service gathering together the articles which cast substantial doubt on the charge of a massacre of civilians at Haditha . Because the blog is too busy gathering and fisking the news, I offered and�the publisher�accepted my offer to put what he has uncovered in a narrative form.

Having done so, I can tell you that the story has a whiff of yet another mediagenic scandal like the TANG memos or the Plame ‘outing.’�While the Marines quite correctly will not comment on the case pending the outcome of their investigation, I am not bound by those rules, and�I will sum up the story for you.

Check it out. The Chief would like to take this whole deal and deposit it firmly in that posterior orifice of Donk CongMutha where the sun never shines.

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“The Young Americans”

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Video Direct from the Front…Untouched by the MSM! 

This is some video stock from an upcoming Iraq war documentary…it’s the REAL deal for sure! Some of it has extremely rough language, and yes, people die.

Remember the bit about “War is hell.”  This is Ramallah…which elsewhere on this site is described as a spot “where Satan moved in and set up his throne”.

This is sure not CNN!  Pass it on.

After seeing this all I can say is that it reinforcews even more (if possible) the Chief’s opinion that Donk Harry Reid & the Queen Bitch Pelosi of the House and their ilk totally have their heads stuck up the rear end of a horse.

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Direct From the Iraq Front!

Marine Corporal From A Bunker In Ramadi: “I Got A Message For That Douche Harry Reid”

This is really good – it doesn’t get any more real than this posting from within a few hours of when I make this posting!

Yeah and I got a quote for that douche harry reid. These families need us here. obviously he has never been in iraq. or at least the area worth seeing, the parts where insurgency is rampant and the buildings are blown to pieces. We need to stay here and help rebuild. If Iraq didn’t want us here then why do we have IP’s voluntering everyday to rebuild their cities. and working directly with us too. same with the IA’s. It sucks that Iraqi’s have more patriotism for a country that has turned to complete shit. More than the people in America who drink Starbucks everyday. We could leave this place and say we are sorry to the terrorists. and then we could wait for 3,000 more American civilians to die before we say “Hey thats not nice” again, and the sad thing is after we WIN this war people like him will say he was there for us the whole time.

This Marine couldn’t have said it any better as far as the Copperhead Senator Reid is concerned.

The Pat Dollard site I found this on is one of the best warblogs I think I’ve seen. Check it out