Archive for the 'Department of Defense' Category

Washington Times:

Marine Corps headquarters has sent out a Communications Playbook that says top brass in Washington, not local public affairs officers, will control press statements about women in combat.

The edict was issued in the aftermath of strong disagreements with civilian leaders on gender integration.

The Corps normally gives wide latitude for spokespeople worldwide to discuss all sorts of Marine issues — but not in this case.

Under “[public affairs] posture,” the playbook says: “Proper PA coordination both up to the Office of United States Marine Corps Communication (OUSMCC) and down to lower division and Recruiting District PAO’s will be due prior to any media engagement or release,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Times.

All commands, says the 68-page playbook, “will coordinate closely with OUSMCC to synchronize communication efforts to fulfill integration measures and communication goals.”

The playbook lists 36 Corps issues such as weapons development and aircraft accidents, but gender integration is the only topic for which Washington headquarters must approve all messaging.

Not to be outdone, the Army is following lock step as well.

Calling all female noncommissioned officers: The Army wants you to consider transferring into combat arms jobs.

Just weeks after Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Dailey sent a memo to the force calling for volunteers, the Army is preparing to send a team of subject matter experts to several major installations to inform soldiers about the opportunities available to them.

“Currently, we have over 100 young women across America who have volunteered to join our ranks as cavalry scouts, armor crewmen, fire support specialists and infantrymen,” Dailey wrote in the Aug. 1 memo. “… As young soldiers do, they will look for leadership and mentorship from their superiors. Unfortunately, we have not had a sufficient number of serving female soldiers and NCOs volunteer to transfer into these mentorship and leadership roles.”

But they’ve got to do better.  They should follow the lead of the Navy, who seems to be leading the pack.

It’s been a long time since Americans read a headline about the U.S. military that actually had to do with national defense. And thanks to the Navy, that’s not about to change any time soon. While Congress has yet to weigh in on the administration’s push for open transgenderism in the ranks, Navy brass are making it clear that it’s full steam ahead on President Obama’s radical social policy that threatens to unravel whatever unit cohesion the military has left.

Starting November 1 (a week before an election that could help end this nonsense), all sailors will be required to undergo “transgender behavioral education.” According to Navy Chief of Personnel Vice Admiral Robert Burke, the training will include everything from multi-hour briefings to discussion groups about how to best coddle gender confusion in the ranks. Supervisors will be taught to be “on alert” for signs of mistreatment of people who identify as transgender and deal with offenders appropriately.

“Training for sailors will be conducted by command triads via mobile training teams or DVD with a facilitation guide if the unit is in a remote area and unable to receive face-to-face training. There will also be webinars for COs to ask questions prior to delivering training to their commands,” explained a branch spokesman. At a time when our troops could use real reinforcements, the Navy is even dispatching special mobile units for the sole purpose of indoctrinating sailors on transgenderism!

Oh, I doubt the election will change a thing.  The author is ascribing too much traditionalism to Trump, and he will disappoint most of his voters.  Regardless of who wins, the U.S. military loses.  If I was Vladimir Putin or the Chinese communists, I’d be laughing my ass off right about now.

ABC News:

As gun ownership drops among young Americans and the Army trains a generation more accustomed to blasting out emojis on cellphones than taking aim at targets, drill sergeants are confronting a new challenge: More than half of raw recruits have never held, let alone fired, a weapon. Young people who form the bulk of the Army’s rookie soldiers don’t have nearly the exposure to guns as past generations. And the drill sergeants tasked with transforming these men and women into competent marksmen are going back into training to adjust their approach. Many are dropping the tendency to bark out orders and are adopting a more mentor-like coaching attitude. “You don’t hear any drill sergeants yelling, unless it’s a huge safety issue,” said Staff Sgt. Randy Fisher, one of about 600 drill sergeants working daily with recruits at South Carolina’s Fort Jackson, the Army’s largest basic combat training post. “We don’t want the soldiers to get all freaked out.” Amid deafening blasts of semi-automatic rifle fire at one of Fort Jackson’s 30 ranges, Army drill sergeants paced behind four dozen soldiers aiming M-4s at distant targets during a recent practice session. The hard-nosed, barked commands from the first days of basic training were absent. And though real bullets were being used, not one of the young recruits nor any sergeants wore heavy body armor or helmets. And, during a lull in the shooting, drill sergeants leaned over to offer guidance in measured tones to soldiers learning to fire.

My former Marine, Daniel, is thrilled he is no longer associated with a military like this.  His text reply to me concerning this article was this.

Oh …

My …

God …

Granted, he was a Marine, but even the Marine Corps is being pressed to send women through the Marine Corps infantry officer course at Quantico. We will lose the next legitimate war we fight.  But perhaps we’re already there.  A saddening question comes to mind.  The kill ratio of the U.S. military has been around 6:1 – 10:1 in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  What would it have been with no CAS, no AC-130 gunships, so helicopters, no A-10s?

It will get worse, as the U.S. government continues to fill the ranks of the military with weaklings, homosexuals, women and nonconformists (here you can safely assume what I would have to say about people like the Sikh Army Captain wearing nonconventional cover).  It’s a sad day for the U.S. military

David Codrea gives a thorough fisking to the folks at Politifact.  Sorry, but I almost can’t type or say the word “Politifact” without belly laughing.  I put them in the same category as Snopes.  Ignore all of it.

Alabama Senate on guns in cars.  Well, it’s a start.  Let’s see what the governor does with this.

Nice review of the Springfield Armory Range Officer.  It’s affinity for light ammunition and occasional FTF/FTE is troubling, but then again, the notion of a 9mm 1911 is troubling too.  If I ever got one, it would certainly be .45 ACP like God and John Moses Browning intended them to be.  I’ve been thinking about getting a RO compact for IWB carry.  Then again, Sig makes a nice desert tan Cerakote small/medium 1911 that’s on display at Gander Mountain right down the road.  Oh, life is filled with such hard choices.  What to do, what to do?

Why the U.S. Navy didn’t shoot down that Russian fighter that buzzed our ship.  I rather think it has to do with being pussies.

Only a bigot would be offended by the sight of another woman’s penis.

Beaten for being white.  This is partially why public schooling sucks.  Home school.  Your children will be better off, and so will you.

David Codrea:

And just to prove he’s willing to sell out freedom of expression and online conduct (the same way “Don’t be evil” Google has done), Facebook, in order to please domestic collectivists every bit as anti-gun as their Chinese counterparts, has implemented a ban on private account gun ads …

As if we needed any more reason to hate Mark Zuckerberg.  What a horrible, terrible man.  I knew this about him when he designed a business deal that ensured his partner would hold worthless shares, giving him sole ownership of the company.  If you have a Facebook account, then so be it.  I closed mine out.  I won’t judge you, but Mark Zuckerberg is a horrible man (did I say already say that?) and I won’t give him any more power.

From Mike Vanderboegh, here are plans and details of work weekend.  I am afraid that I won’t be able to make it due to family and other issues.  I had hoped to see Mike in person, but that will have to wait.  What I can do, and have done, is donate to assist him and Rosie.  You can too, georgemason1776@aol.com.  Oh, and don’t forget to pray for him.

The F-35 software is overrun with bugs.  Well, I’ve given you a solution before, and I’ll do it again.  Shit can the whole idea, this pathetic, overblown, one-size-fits-all super jet that can’t really do anything very well, refurbish the existing fleet of fighters, and buy A-10s.  Lots and lots of A-10s.

Where are all the German men?  They fell victim to The Alienork way.

Can China copy the U.S. Marine Corps?  Ha.  They won’t try.  They wouldn’t have women in their combat ranks.

Stars and Stripes:

The Army granted a West Point-educated officer a rare religious accommodation that will allow him to wear a beard and turban, requirements of his Sikh faith.

Capt. Simratpal Singh, 27, was granted the appearance waiver last week that will allow him to grow his beard and hair and wear a turban through at least Jan. 8, Debra S. Wada, the assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, wrote in a Dec. 9 letter. Singh is the fourth Sikh soldier in recent years to be granted such uniform exemptions.

Not to be outdone, the Marine Corps caved on females in combat after the pathetic Ashton Carter made it clear that the conclusion was done before the studies and bitching was ever started, and Commandant Robert Neller joined the chorus.

The top officer of the Marine Corps sent an unequivocal message to troops: It’s time to get behind the mandate to integrate women into combat units.

Gen. Robert Neller released a sternly worded video late Friday, a day after Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that all military jobs — including infantry and special forces positions — would be open to female troops by the start of next year.

The commandant tried to feign toughness when he said they are in danger of becoming Gucci gear people.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller is proving to be quite the quotable general.

His way with words was on display last week at the I/ITSEC (Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference) in Orlando, Florida, when he reportedly said, “We’ve allowed ourselves to become Gucci gear people.”

That was his way of saying that military gear has become overly complicated, according to Jen Judson, a reporter for Defense News who attended the show.

Blah, blah, blah, yawn, blah, blah blah.  Yea, that’s the problem and that’s the answer.  Gear.  And take it away and make them use second rate gear.  Good grief.  I’m unimpressed.

This ain’t your grandfather’s or father’s army or marines.  They’re a shell of what they once were, and destined to become worse.  And the Air Force is focused on how to stop their football team from praying before games.  If you had as your intent to destroy the armed forces of the U.S., what would you have done any differently?

The drill Sergeant and his discipline has no place any more.

We know many things about the attack at Benghazi, much more than the administration wishes we did.  First of all, my military readers knew within 24 hours that this was the result of a well-planned, well-coordinated combined-arms attack with the use of crew served weapons (e.g., see DirtyMick’s comments), not the result of some ridiculous YouTube video.

We also know that weapons were being moved through Libya to Syrian insurgents, those whom we now know as ISIS.  We know that this was illegal, immoral and ill-advised, and was being funded by the U.S. government.  I also said three years ago that I didn’t believe administration claims that no assets were available for response to the battle.

Finally, I completely disemboweled the administration’s excuse that we don’t deploy troops into battle without good, real-time intelligence.  We do that all of the time.  Nothing this administration has said has been honest.  Now we come to find out, due to the hard work of Judicial Watch, that I was right.

Judicial Watch today released a new Benghazi email from then-Department of Defense Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash to State Department leadership immediately offering “forces that could move to Benghazi” during the terrorist attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. In an email sent to top Department of State officials, at 7:19 p.m. ET, only hours after the attack had begun, Bash says, “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” The Obama administration redacted the details of the military forces available, oddly citing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption that allows the withholding of “deliberative process” information.

Bash’s email seems to directly contradict testimony given by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2013. Defending the Obama administration’s lack of military response to the nearly six-hour-long attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Panetta claimed that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”

The first assault occurred at the main compound at about 9:40 pm local time – 3:40 p.m. ET in Washington, DC.  The second attack on a CIA annex 1.2 miles away began three hours later, at about 12 am local time the following morning – 6 p.m. ET.

Leon Panetta knows more than he has said, and what he has said has been primarily prevarication and obfuscation.  The same is true of David Petraeus, and General Ham, who knows things very important for us to know, hasn’t spoken on this.  We will all find out what assets were available, who told them to stand down, and who chose to leave good men to perish in Libya that fateful night.

We will know the truth one day.  All of it.  God knows it now, and He will hold you accountable, whether I am in a position to do that or not.

Finally, I am willing to bet that everything I say and have said about Benghazi will be proven accurate and correct.  I have said “As to what I suspect – but cannot yet prove – the movement of weapons to terrorists was becoming hard to hide, and the whole operation had ripened to the point of rottenness.  Stevens had to be moved out and told to shut up about what he knew.  Even if the administration didn’t plan the military operation to take down the consulate at Benghazi, they nevertheless used it to hide their tracks.”

Somebody prove me wrong.

Fox News:

A Marine Corps officer who sent classified material from an unclassified email account in an attempt to warn fellow troops about a corrupt Afghan police chief had his honorable discharge upheld on Monday by a senior Navy Department official, The Washington Post reported.

Maj. Jason Brezler’s attorney, Michael Bowe, said the next step is a lawsuit to be filed against the Marine Corps.

“We will now proceed to a real court and prove that Commandant [Gen. James F.] Amos and his generals illegally retaliated against Major Brezler because they were more concerned with politics and their careers than the lives of their Marines and the service of a good Marine who did the right thing,” Bowe told The Post in an emailed statement. “I look forward to their cross-examination.”

Amos was the Marine Corps’ top officer when the investigation into Brezler’s actions began. Brezler attached classified documents to an email alerting fellow marines in August 2012 that Taliban-linked police chief Sarwar Jan was corrupt and sexually abusing kids.

If you aren’t familiar with the case of Major Jason Brezler, you ought to be.  Thus does the DoD, and USMC side with murderers, child abusers and pedophiles and against honorable men.

This is to be expected by the likes of the man who made the decision, Juan Garcia, who said:

Leadership at all levels of the organization, by both military and civilians, is essential to eliminating discrimination and encouraging the acceptance of differences … We acknowledge the Department of the Navy LGBT community as a vital force in our work and integral part of our success

“Vital.”  An “integral part of our success.”  Well damn.  I sure am glad this administration is spending time and effort on the right things.

Via Mike Vanderboegh, this:

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter would like to stop buying and launching navigation satellites—at least as a military project. Sure, Lockheed is testing GPS III, and a team at the University of Texas is working on centimetric accuracy without differential. Through the MEOSAR project, the Canadian military will even use the new satellites to update the Cospas-SARSat system for geolocating search-and-rescue beacons. But GPS is looking more vulnerable to spoofing than we previously figured. So during a podcast hosted by venture firm Andreesen Horowitz in April, Carter argued that future forces would want their navigation on micro-electromechanical chips with inertials and precision clocks. Even just by reducing the need for constant updates from above, that sort of technology could improve the systemic defensibility of satellite navigation.

At the same time, Carter pretty much wants to wrap electronics around everything, proliferating precision and combat-networking down to every Iron Man suit in the force.

Wheeee … look at me!  I’m a cyborg!

Well, it looks like Ash Carter has bought whole hog into the concept of fifth generation warfare.  Magical suits that enable anyone to do anything, meaning that it doesn’t really matter that the women who passed Ranger school shouldn’t really have passed.  And it doesn’t matter that the Navy Secretary wants to see female Marines in combat regardless of the fact that they can’t perform.

Several years ago I was with Daniel in the truck pulling into a parking lot.  We had to come to a stop for four fat ass black girls waddling across the road in High School ROTC uniforms (their race is irrelevant except for the fact that it might be a harbinger of turning the armed forces into a gigantic social program of entitlement).  I looked at Daniel and said, “There goes the future of the United States armed forces.”  He said, “My God.  I’m glad I got out.”

Except it isn’t that easy.  The Army long ago decided to turn to mechanized warfare, and the concept of marching to battle, carrying a load, and assaulting a position fell to folks in Bradley’s riding from FOBs to the front, piling out of the car, shooting a while, piling back in, and going back to the FOB so they can use their iPads and watch movies.

It didn’t work out so well in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The so-called “big dog” robot sounds like a million angry Africanized bees, requires remote power, and won’t function for long away from charging stations or maintenance technicians.  Radios require power.  Servos and motors can be shot to pieces.  And people still bleed red blood and need to be transported back to medical care by being picked up off the field of battle and carried to medics by fellow Soldiers or Marines.

I’m not sure how long it will be before Ashton wants to see those fat ass girls in the Marine Corps infantry officer school at Quantico, but the best plans evaporate in a crisis, and connectivity won’t help when brave men are needed.

The New York Times Magazine has a must-read piece on the Americans fighting ISIS.  It’s a mixed bag, but this picture of a 45 year old Texan struck me.

He looks like he could rip your balls off by reaching through your teeth.  In any fight between people like this and Ms. cyborg – subject to dust, loss of power, bullets and other deleterious effects – take a wild guess as to who will win?

For those among us who don’t believe we should have a standing Army, the good news is that when Ashton Carter gets finished, we won’t.

DoD Press Release:

Colt Defense LLC, West Hartford, Connecticut (15QKN-15-D-0102); and FN America LLC, Columbia, South Carolina (W15QKN-15-D-0072), were awarded a $212,000,000 firm-fixed-price multi-year contract for M4 and M4A1 carbines for the Army and others, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 24, 2020.  Bids were solicited via the Internet with six received.  Funding and work location will be determined with each order. Army Contracting Command, Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, is the contracting activity.

I’m not sure what this means, except that for the Army, it will be Colt for the foreseeable future for M4s.

McClatchy:

The Pentagon has a message for Texas: chill.

Defense officials Monday dismissed as “wild speculation” an Internet-fueled claim that a massive summertime exercise called Jade Helm 15 for special operations commandos is a covert operation by President Barack Obama to take over Texas.

That claim was given legitimacy by Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott’s order last week for the Texas State Guard to monitor the exercises.

“Operation Jade Helm poses no threat to any American’s civil liberties,” Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday. “Operation Jade Helm is being conducted by Americans – by, specifically, American special forces personnel.”

Jade Helm 15 will be one of the biggest peacetime military exercises in six decades. Starting July 15 and lasting two months, thousands of Army Rangers, Green Berets, Navy SEALS and other special operations forces will simulate war missions in mainly remote areas of Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas and Utah.

Jade Helm 15 will take place on tracts of both public and private land in the seven states.

“In every case, extensive coordination has been completed with whoever’s responsible for that land,” Warren said. “In the case of private land, we’ve spoken and made detailed coordination with the patriotic Americans who have volunteered their land for the use of this important training.”

The Texas State Guard said Monday it would follow Abbot’s order. Asked by McClatchy whether it felt compelled to mobilize troops in order to monitor the exercises, Lt. Col. Joanne MacGregor, the unit’s public affairs officer, responded: “The Texas State Guard stands ready to support the governor of Texas when called upon to serve.”

Leaders of the Texas State Guard “are in the process of examining the best way to meet the governor’s intent,” MacGregor said. She said they are working with the U.S. Special Operations Command “in order to alleviate any possible public concerns.”

At the Pentagon, Warren said: “This is training that we’ve coordinated in great detail with both state and local officials in the various states that we’ll be conducting it.”

Abbott’s order infuriated some fellow Republicans. Former state Rep. Todd Smith, a GOP lawyer from Euless who served in the Texas legislature for 16 years, posted online Saturday what he termed an “open letter” to Abbott.

“As one of the remaining Republicans who actually believes in making decisions based on facts and evidence – you used to be a judge? – I am appalled that you would give credence to the nonsense mouthed by those who instead make decisions based on Internet or radio- or shock-jock-driven hysteria,” Smith wrote. “Is there ANYBODY who is going to stand up to this radical nonsense that is a cancer on our State and Party?”

Democrats, too, expressed dismay.

“The first thing the governor should have done when he heard about concerns with U.S. military training is to support our troops and reassure the public that our U.S. military poses absolutely no threat to Texans,” said Manny Garcia, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. “Instead, he gave credence to conspiracy theorists by ordering the Texas State Guard to monitor U.S. military operations.”