Archive for the 'Department of Defense' Category

It works.  The Marines and Soldiers love it.  It’s a life saver.  It’s the greatest close air support aircraft ever built. It isn’t a “fifth generation warfare” F-35, so the flybois don’t want it.

Of course.

This is a long but good interview.  If you don’t have time for the entire video, watch 1:27 – 1:34.

We all know that there were other assets to respond to Benghazi, and we’ve covered that in the past.  But here we learn straight from the guy who was there after the event that he had a “full platter” of potential responses for the perps, including kill-capture.

He was told that the political climate was “too sensitive” and we weren’t going to do anything.  Presumably because the cover-up (i.e., blaming it on a ridiculous video) was still in progress by the Obama administration.  You also learn from him that it was often said that there were no dangers in Libya prior to that event, and he clearly says he got the sitreps and knew there were many threats.

Threats that left the U.S. unprepared, all by intent.

Via David Codrea, this kid thinks he knows something.

Perhaps the biggest factor that stands between modern America and another civil war is obvious: the armed forces. Prior to the American Civil War in 1860, the U.S. military consisted of a mere 16,000 men. As the civil war broke out, one in five of the U.S. Army’s officers resigned to join the confederacy, leaving the armed forces too small and powerless to put a stop to what was occurring. Such a thing would be impossible today with how vast and expansive America’s military is now. The groups vowing to rally around Trump if he should be impeached, such as the Oath Keepers and United Constitutional Patriots, are unauthorized and scarce in number, making them a minor threat to America’s military.

Oh.  Is that how it works?  “Unathorized?”  In other news, the democrat house is spending time on making sure the U.S. military is a welcoming place for folks confused about their gender.

Nothing says “Thanks for your service” like ignoring the needs of U.S. troops. But apparently, that’s the most our military can hope for under Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) majority. While the president tries to deal with conflicts around the globe, contain the threats from ISIS and rogue nations like North Korea, you’ll be relieved to know that the House is hard at work on its most important mission: ushering into the military people who are in conflict over their biological sex. And they’re willing to tie up the most important bill of the year to do it.

In yet more recent news, the U.S. military has been buying Chinese-made cameras for their rifles.

Federal agents refrained from naming the Chinese manufacturers involved. But over the years, Aventura received shipments from more than 40 different suppliers in China. The network surveillance equipment also suffered from publicly known vulnerabilities documented by the Department of Homeland Security that could pave the way for remote takeovers.

Well then.  I guess the Chinese can watch while the U.S. military tries to keep the peace across 3.8 million square miles of land in the case of any trouble.  That is, unless they’re not using rifles because they’re in mutilation surgery.

News and views.

Do  you remember when Obama started purging the upper echelons in the Pentagon, sometimes under cover of law, sometimes under cover of darkness? After the pullout from Iraq, Obama had a little list of those people he didn’t want to see serving anymore in America’s military. Some he fired outright. Others he treated so shabbily that they had no option put to leave.

Just in the first five years of his presidency, Obama fired almost 200 military officers:

[W]hat has happened to our officer corps since President Obama took office is viewed in many quarters as unprecedented, baffling and even harmful to our national security posture. We have commented on some of the higher profile cases, such as Gen. Carter Ham. He was relieved as head of U.S. Africa Command after only a year and a half because he disagreed with orders not to mount a rescue mission in response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi.

Rear Adm. Chuck Gaouette, commander of the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, was relieved in October 2012 for disobeying orders when he sent his group on Sept. 11 to “assist and provide intelligence for” military forces ordered into action by Gen. Ham.

[ … ]

Retired Army Major General Paul Vallely: The White House protects their own. That’s why they stalled on the investigation into fast and furious, Benghazi and Obamacare. He’s intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.

I know some readers have brought this up in the past, but it’s good to see some folks have gone public with Obama’s treachery.

One interesting factoid for me is that I’d never seen in publication before that General Carter Ham was relieved because he disagreed with the decision not to mount a rescue.

Benghazi is on the Obama administration’s shoulders.  God will hold them accountable in eternity.  They are murderers.

Via this piece, I was sent to this piece.

When John Bolton took over for McMaster in April 2018 and began appointing his own defense and foreign policy team, Mattis stopped receiving transcripts of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders, the kinds of sensitive conversations that are now at the center of the House’s impeachment inquiry.

Mattis’ patience began to wear especially thin in the spring of 2018 when Trump failed to consult with him on a host of big policy moves, from ordering the creation of a military Space Force to deploying troops to the U.S.-Mexican border, Snodgrass writes.

The surprise presidential decisions had grown for months, after beginning in earnest with a tweet from Trump in the summer of 2017 banning transgender troops from the military.

“Trump’s tweets created chaos in the Pentagon,” writes Snodgrass, who was detailed to work for Mattis early in his tenure. The damage from the transgender pronouncement “was a terrific example of how an ill-informed, and ill-considered, tweet from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue could result in a strategic defeat.”

[ … ]

Mattis also chafed at the president’s push for the Pentagon to deploy active-duty troops to the border to help stem the flow of illegal immigrants, a move the secretary considered an abuse of the military. “Mattis was now caught in his own graveyard spiral, expressing public support for a policy he didn’t agree with, bending his personal and professional beliefs to support the president,” the book says.

What in the name of all that is decent and sensible would make someone think it’s appropriate to consult a general for policy decisions or to care what the military thought of presidential orders?  Does the civilian not still command the military in this country?

Why on earth would Mattis expect to receive transcripts of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders?  What world do I live in?

So did Mattis support transgender troops being in the military?  This book makes it sound like he did.

Finally, the one, single, solitary duty of the armed forces under the constitution is to prevent and respond to invasion.  And Mattis apparently rejected that mission in favor of foreign entanglements.  Good Lord.

And good riddance.

Via WRSA, from Matt Bracken.

I have no doubt he was promised something for this bit is silliness.  No one actually believes those things about Hillary Clinton.  With the corruption, Uranium One, the misadventures in Haiti, and the trail of dead bodies lining the streets from Arkansas to Washington, D.C., everyone knows all about the Clintons.  This isn’t hard.  It’s also not difficult to believe that no one in the audience believed a word of his speech.  The more difficult thing is to understand why anyone would care what McRaven thinks?

Let me switch gears for a moment to General Mattis.  He comes with indisputable creds form the USMC, but even then, his view of things is broken.  He upbraided Trump several days ago with these words.

“I earned my spurs on the battlefield … Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor,” Mattis joked at one point, in a reference to the medical deferment for bone spurs that kept Mr. Trump from serving in the military during the Vietnam War.

At another point, Mattis responded to reports that Mr. Trump called him “the world’s most overrated general” during a meeting with Democrats earlier this week. Mattis joked that he felt like he had “achieved greatness,” because he was “not just an overrated general, I am the greatest, the world’s most overrated.”

“I’m honored to be considered that by Donald Trump, because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress,” he continued. “So, I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals. Frankly that sounds pretty good to me.”

I have no problem with his upbraiding of the president.  I don’t like him.  I didn’t like the one before him, nor the one before him, nor the one before him.  What I do have a problem with is discussed here.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, military brass quickly began to plan an attack on al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But Marines almost missed being a part of this effort, as planners including Army Gen. Tommy Franks, then CENTCOM commander, didn’t see the point in sending an amphibious force into a landlocked country. But Mattis was part of a small team of officials who crafted a plan to send Task Force 58 — amphibious ships and a landing force — into Camp Rhino in southern Afghanistan. “The minute [5th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. William Moore] pointed to a map showing landlocked Afghanistan, hundreds of miles from the sea, I knew I could land there with thousands of Marines,” Mattis writes.

Mattis indicates another clash with Franks, the CENTCOM commander, elsewhere in the book, when he describes the 2001 search for Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Mattis believed, with the use of light infantry and special operations troops, he could close off the escape routes and take bin Laden. Franks thought sending Marines and vehicles into the mountains would only repeat Soviet mistakes. Ultimately, the trap was not laid, and bin Laden would not be killed until 2011. “If I had to do it again,” Mattis wrote, “I would have called both [the U.S. Army Central Command] commander and Admiral Moore and said, ‘Sir, I have a plan to accomplish the mission, kill Osama bin Laden, and hand you a victory. All I need is your permission.'”

And he was right.  Readers from long ago may recall that my counsel would have been to put Marines on the border with Pakistan in the Hindu Kush, perhaps supplemented by Rangers, while a MEU drove him and his fighters towards the border and snared him there before he could escape to live a lot longer.  After this brief campaign, we should have withdrawn.

But instead, Mattis kept his mouth shut and allowed America to get bogged down into a two decade COIN effort as part of nation building and winning hearts and minds, all run by social justice warriors, college graduates with guns who wanted to cure the world’s evils.  Petraeus was too busy with his concubine to do much there, while McChrystal brought in ROE that hampered the effort and killed American troops.

McChrystal and his ROE was directly responsible for the boys at Joyce denying support to the Americans at Ganjgal, along with the corollary deaths of 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, 25; Gunnery Sgts. Aaron Kenefick, 30; and Edwin Johnson, 31; and Hospitalman 3rd Class James Layton, 22, and Army Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Westbrook, 41.  Three marines and naval corpsman, 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick, Gunnery Sgt. Edwin W. Johnson, and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class James Layton, were killed after remaining behind to cover the withdrawal of the Afghan soldiers from the ambush site.

Yet after all of that, Petraeus and McChrystal have the temerity to continue to push for gun control over Americans, despite the oath to the constitution they swore to uphold.  There is a sense of entitlement among the military elite, as if experience in strategy and logistics enables them and gives them righteous jurisdiction over American policy.

This is an error made by not only McChrystal, Petraeus, and Mattis, but Trump as well.  Trump’s insult to Mattis is as irrelevant and unimportant as Mattis’ rebuttal.  But this is an error made by many of the American people.  Even the left will engage the error as long as the general pushes policies of which they approve, despite their hatred of everything America.

So why should anyone care about McRaven’s policy preferences?  They shouldn’t, any more than they should care about those of McChrystal or Petraeus or Mattis.  But Americans are always searching for a hero to worship, and they find them in the military elite.

Oh, and there is one more item of interest here.  McRaven is as much of a gun controller as Petraeus and McChrystal.  How do you SpecOps guys feel about that?  And McChrystal?  Didn’t you call him “The Pope?”

Via WRSA, this report wasn’t authored in China.  No, it was written by Nicholas Blasco, of the U.S. Army War College.

The second concern regards the use of paramilitary forces, especially as a deterrent. The Chinese military started to build up across the border from Hong Kong on 11 August. A paramilitary force known as the People’s Armed Police can loosely be equated to a stability policing unit. Stability police conducts activities along the full spectrum of conflict with one of its primary missions being the restoration of public order and security. Some NATO countries have paramilitary units with stability policing skills, particularly within the French Gendarmerie and the Italian Carabinieri. The U.S. military lacks the skills possessed by these countries’ forces to carry out stability policing operations. Whether or not the People’s Armed Police has the skills to restore order to the situation is difficult to determine or predict. They are currently running drills and exercises in full view of the media demonstrating the kinds of tactics they would use.

[ … ]

The Department of Defense (DoD) has specific mission set known as the Defense Support of Civil Authority (DSCA). More often than not, DSCA applies to natural disasters or events that are not manmade. Recently, work by the U.S. Army War College’s Homeland Defense and Security Issues Group has been focused on the DSCA subcategory Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Authorities (DSCLEA). As the name suggests, research analyzes the ways the DoD can effectively aid law enforcement during times of crisis.

Key areas to analyze during the unfolding events in Hong Kong would be the role the military plays. The role in the U.S. military’s mission set is purely a support function of civil authority, whether that authority comes from a police officer or another civil servant, and any military commander, regardless of rank, must answer to that civil authority. Furthermore, once local authorities or private-sector organizations have the capacity to fulfill services being provided by the military, the military must cease providing those functions. Interesting data can be gathered whether the Chinese military is a support function or take complete command and institute martial law.

Furthermore, because the U.S. military is limited to a support function, it leaves policing authority to law enforcement, as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the U.S. military from arresting American citizens. However, the U.S. military could support police forces in the form of intelligence, logistics, and communications support. The Posse Comitatus Act can be interpreted as the government’s respect for the country’s federalist system. The Chinese’ centralized form of government does not have the same respect for local authority and separation of power.  This has been expressed by the unfulfilled promises of more democracy in Hong Kong. Given the current governmental policies accompanied by the inability to regain control of the situation, Beijing has determined it will intervene if necessary.

Currently, there is very little research focused on the DSCLEA issue in the DoD. The U.S. is a relatively stable nation with few events that require escalated use of force and resources provided by the federal government. A close eye should be kept on Hong Kong and Beijing’s posturing in the region. Any actions or inactions taken by the Chinese government will provide valuable information on how to determine proper use of force during a crisis that requires a military response in the homeland.

It reminds you why the founders were opposed to a standing army, yes?  And is there really any difference between a militarized police and a standing army?

The way to gain acceptance of an idea is first to engage in so-called “scholarly” flirtations with it.  The idea of use of our very own standing army in the “homeland” is in its embryonic stage.  Expect it to keep growing, because I assure you, it will.  They will not abort this baby because it all has to do with control.  Controllers study and discuss controlling.  It’s what they do.  It’s who they are.

Daily Beast:

Here’s something the public didn’t know until today: If one of the U.S. military’s new F-35 stealth fighters has to climb at a steep angle in order to dodge an enemy attack, design flaws mean the plane might suddenly tumble out of control and crash.

Also, some versions of the F-35 can’t accelerate to supersonic speed without melting their own tails or shedding the expensive coating that helps to give the planes their radar-evading qualities.

The Pentagon’s $400-billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, one of the biggest and most expensive weapons programs in history, has come under fire, so to speak, over more than a decade for delays, rising costs, design problems and technical glitches.

But startling reports by trade publication Defense News on Wednesday revealed flaws that previously only builder Lockheed Martin, the military, and the plane’s foreign buyers knew about.

The newly-exposed problems underscore the potential fragility of American air power as the armed services work to replace more and more old fighters with as many as 2,300 F-35s while also reconfiguring to confront the increasingly deadly Chinese and Russian air forces.

The problems might also help to explain why acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan reportedly described the F-35 program as “fucked up.”

Defense News obtained military documents detailing a wide range of serious problems with two of the three versions of the F-35. The Air Force’s F-35A appears to be exempt from the latest flaws, but the Marine Corps’ vertical-landing F-35B and the Navy’s carrier-compatible F-35C both suffer what the services call “category 1” deficiencies. (In military parlance, a category 1 flaw in a plane can prevent a pilot from accomplishing their mission.)

[ … ]

One problem cropped up during test flights in 2011, Defense News reported, citing the trove of military documents. In the 2011 tests, at least one F-35B and F-35C both flew at speeds of Mach 1.3 and Mach 1.4. A post-flight inspection in November 2011 revealed the F-35B sustained “bubbling [and] blistering” of its stealth coating.

Further supersonic tests in December 2011 revealed structural damage on an F-35C resulting from the extreme heat coming from the plane’s single Pratt & Whitney engine, one of the most powerful fighter engines ever made.

To avoid similar damage, the military has limited F-35B and F-35C pilots to flying at supersonic speed for less than a minute at a time.

But that could make it impossible for aviators to keep up with, or avoid, Russian and Chinese fighters flying faster than the speed of sound without any restrictions. “It is infeasible for the Navy or Marine Corps to operate the F-35 against a near-peer threat under such restrictions,” Defense News paraphrased the documents as saying.

But MIC isn’t done with the insults and malfeasance.  Not by a long shot.

A Chinese-owned company is making circuit boards for the top-secret next generation F-35 warplanes flown by Britain and the United States, Sky News can reveal.

Exception PCB, a printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer in Gloucestershire, south west England, produces circuit boards that “control many of the F-35’s core capabilities”, according to publicity material produced by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD).

This includes “its engines, lighting, fuel and navigation systems”, it said.

If the FedGov had actually made an assignment to the DoD to do it’s dead level best to spend the most money on the worst possible outcome, I don’t think they could have done any better than they did.

Fifth generation warfare.  Sounds nice.  How do you feel about your dollars spent?

Sanders:

“Some of the best men I’ve ever known, I met in the military.

Some of the biggest scumsucking dirtbag pieces of crap I’ve ever known, I met in the military.

If someone throws out “I was in the military” and expects me to take that as some kind of bonafides, they are assuming wrong.”

Military Times:

U.S. officials say the Pentagon is finalizing plans that would send hundreds of additional active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border for several more months to support the Department of Homeland Security.

The troops would install another 160 miles of concertina wire in Arizona and California.

Details are being worked out, but the plan likely would extend the military’s border mission though the end of September.

None of this makes a hill of beans of difference.  They won’t be under arming orders.  They will have no mission except to perform administrative and assistance duties.

I believe that virtually the only constitutional imperative of the U.S. military is to protect and defend the country against invasion and protect the borders (with the exception of the Navy and Marines who protect and defend Americans abroad and trade on the high seas).  Therefore, I support an armed mission in which invaders are shot.

However, the lawyers, the Congress, the Senate, the military, the judiciary, and just about everyone in power, interprets Posse Comitatus as preventing the use of the military this way, even though their actions wouldn’t be taken against U.S. citizens.

So they will arm the FBI, BLM, ATF and most other federal agencies like an army and allow them to perpetrate armed actions against U.S. citizens, while preventing the military from stopping invasion.

Light is called darkness, and darkness is called light.  But until the country has the stomach to force this action, it won’t happen.  The military lawyers won’t even bother to bind the hands of Soldiers and Marines at the border by issuing ROE/RUF.  They just won’t arm them at all.