Women pilots aren't the full solution for military pilot shortages. I once read that as a general rule, because of better reflexes, women made better pilots than men. But as jets got faster and capable of not being ripped apart in high-G maneuvers and those forces increased on pilots, men get the advantage again in fighter planes because of the upper body strength needed to train to resist the Gs so you don't pass out. Will the F-35 with its promise of fighting with the tray table down (as I put it) mean women can be a significant source of fighter pilots?
France's Pacific possession New Caledonia rejected independence. It is the source of a quarter of the world's nickel supply. Could bad feelings toward France give China an opening? It was an important bastion to maintain the line of supply between America and Australia in World War II. China might have that in mind.
The Russians are working to undermine cohesiveness in the American military via social media warfare. The cost-benefit analysis of social media seems to tilt more and more to the cost side every day.
Norway is happy to host the large NATO Trident Juncture exercise. They have a border with Russia. During NATO's Cold War nadir, Norway faced the prospect of being cut off from reinforcements as the Soviet fleet surged toward the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap to challenge the Atlantic supply lines. Today Russia is a weaker air and naval threat to Norway and is not capable of cutting off Norway from help. As a bonus, non-NATO Sweden and Finland are more openly supportive.
I recently heard the Fox and Friends morning show called the Presidential Daily Briefing. Heh. That's pretty clever, you must admit.
The Saudi-led offensive to take the major port city Hodeida drags on.
And America has stopped refueling Saudi coalition aircraft providing air support over concerns about civilian casualties in air strikes despite the fact that the Houthi are far more responsible for those casualties. But I suspect that the Saudis will simply use contractor air refueling from a private company. We probably just stopped using enough of such contracted service to make up for our cancellation. Still, true compassion would have led the "concerned" world to back the Saudis to wage more intense combat over a shorter period of time to secure the port and reopen it for humanitarian aid quickly (and in the bigger picture to defeat the Iran-backed Houthis more quickly). But here we are, blaming the Saudis for both their conduct of the battle and war against an enemy that uses human shields, and for the impact of shutting down the port while the battle is cautiously waged. Iran's propaganda is effective.
I think these pilots struck the Penn State offense during their flyover of Michigan Stadium last week.
The US granted China, India, Italy, Greece, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey temporary exemptions on our renewed sanctions on buying Iranian oil. They are mostly allies who we need to keep strong (India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) or allies who are economically vulnerable (Italy and Greece). Turkey is interesting. They aren't much of an ally under Erdogan, so I'm not sure we care much about their economic health. But did we get a quiet Turkish concession to refrain from striking Syrian Kurds east of the Euphrates River in exchange for the exemption? As for China, a concession that is simply keeping the status quo is a fairly cheap "concession" to them to keep them reasonably cooperative on North Korea. And other sanctions are hurting Iran, so we didn't completely undermine pressure on those dangerous nutballs.
I got a couple mailings showing my voting history and the history of two neighbors whose name and address were redacted. It was very creepy and stalky. I don't know anything about the group that sent them out.
China has a full slate of UAVs in production these days.
Last Tuesday we held free elections across America, which I've been told has become a fascist dictatorship the last two years. Odd, that is, eh? Please people, very few among us are true enemies of America. Stop acting like everyone on the other side is the enemy. If we can do that, a period when the other side is in charge won't result in people panicking to join the Resistance or a militia. And let's celebrate yet another election and transfer of legislative and gubernatorial power, plus other lesser offices. Which is a good example to set for the world despite our intense political competition. I for one will contribute by not spending the next two years rioting or wailing to the sky in frustration. You're welcome.
Why air power needs land power. Because the point of air power is to control the ground and not simply destroy it? But do read it. My simplified view of air power is here. Also, here's an old essay on air power that I tried to get published during and shortly after the 1999 Allied Force campaign.
Russia has expanded sanctions on Ukrainians. Presumably for the outrage of resisting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Add this to the quasi-blockade of Ukraine's Sea of Azov coastline.
It isn't always jihadis plotting mayhem in Europe these days.
Schrodinger's aircraft carrier. Yes, the carrier is and isn't obsolete. As I've long droned on about, it depends on the mission. We keep having fruitless apples and oranges debates.
If Britain doesn't leave the EU despite current polls which indicate a preference to remain, rule of law takes a hit. If Remain had won that referendum, the pro-EU side would have said that settles the question forever. But by making the Brexit negotiations difficult and promoting fear of alleged dire consequences, Remainers make it virtually impossible to leave the EU if the 2016 vote is to be overridden by future polling or even by a future vote.
More on how China and Iran gutted our CIA's assets (either killing them, arresting them, or forcing us to pull them out--and how many were turned?), quite likely on a worldwide basis. We screwed the pooch bigly on that one. I know I've mentioned this, but this article is truly horrifying.
Communist insurgents in the Philippines continue to lose support in their war, but linger on (since not long after World War II). Also, pirates in Southeast Asia take the lead.
Twitter was made for Russian disinformation efforts, which existed long before Twitter or the media discovered it in 2016.
Europeans are worried that with the House in Democratic hands that Trump will be more disruptive abroad? Oh good grief. Europeans were worried when all power was in Trump's hands. I'm starting to think "European" is some old Germanic word for "people who worry." Europeans worry when we lead and worry when we don't lead. Europeans worry when we are strong and worry when we aren't strong. They worry when we come to a deal with Russia lest they be left out and they worry when we walk away from a deal the Russians aren't obeying. Sheesh. Europeans are worried. Full stop.
Math error.
Acosta is a jerk. And if you ask him he'll tell you he's kind of a big deal. It is nice that they no longer hide their partisan nature and demonstrate why I don't trust them to report news without spin and haven't for several decades. The key is to know enough history and current events to have a chance at de-spinning the news we are given.
I'm so old that I remember when anti-Iraq War people said we should have knocked off the dictator and just left to allow the locals to work out their differences without our bad influence. Seven years after the dictator was killed we have chaos and jihadis who are destabilizing the region, including Europe, plus Russia mucking around in their old stomping grounds.
War and plague in the heart of darkness. I was worried that President Obama's deployment of the military to help contain the last Ebola outbreak would be fouled up. But his initiative worked. Is the forewarned world better able to respond without requiring American military assets?
The Army is returning to table top wargaming of conventional warfare.
NATO needs a contributing Germany able to pull its weight. They aren't and German industrial prowess is notably lacking in the military equipment they build. This article says that the NATO Trident Juncture exercise will help Germany assess the state of its military. But we know the German military is awful. It is the detailed granularity of its awfulness that Germany needs to know. Will Germany act to correct the shortcomings highlighted or seek to conceal them?
Ah yes, promoting socialism means you care! Three million fleeing the country and the remainder will be multi-millionaires soon (but couldn't buy a cup of coffee with their millions). Maduro seems to have taken to heart those "buy gold in these troubling times" commercials.
French European nuance or Nazi apologist? You decide.
China's J-10 is extremely maneuverable because of thrust vectoring. Which won't matter against the F-35 if our operating theory is correct. I hope our theory is correct.
This is from a professor of American political science? So all big states are Democratic and all small states are Republican? So you are going to compare the vote total and results when there were no votes for a Senate candidate in California because their system sends the top two vote recipients to the general election (and neither was a Republican)? But hey, at least he didn't complain that the Senate boundaries were gerrymandered in favor or Republicans like one loud-mouthed idiot on TV did.
And speaking of the gerrymandering charge that says the percentage of individually elected House seats should match the national vote total (well, only when Democrats lose out), consider a hypothetical situation where there is a country with 51% Blue voters and 49% Red voters with a legislative body of 100 seats. Let us further assume that rather than self-sorting into Blue or Red enclaves, they are evenly distributed through all the legislative districts. No gerrymandering is even possible. Assuming equal voting rates, you would expect the legislative body to have every district won by a Blue candidate with 51% of the vote. But Red voters are 49% of the country! That is unfair! Right? Explain to me how democracy is better if voters in 49 districts are told that because of "fairness" that their votes will be nullified and the losing Red candidates will be seated instead. Because fairness. Or something.
My apologies for the two previous paragraphs on domestic politics. But civics shouldn't be so obscure that BS can be left uncalled.
Stupid man with a bomb. He's mad at America for what? America doesn't bomb "the Middle East" any more than we bombed "Europe" or "Asia" in World War II. And just as a lot of Europeans and Asians were happy about who we bombed back then, our campaigns to bomb and otherwise kill jihadis in the Middle East have a lot of Middle Easterners supportive of bombing the people we bomb. But hey, hate away in prison you evil dumb ass. You got the Golden Ticket and made it to America. And that's what you did with it.
America imposed sanctions on people and entities profiting from Russia's annexation of Crimea. Russia's conquest is not forgotten.
Well of course we have "concerns," given that China claims pretty much near the whole damn sea.
China's massive effort to "reeducate" their Moslems to love Big Han Brother continues with little protest from the Moslem majority countries of the world. Yet America, which saves Moslems from tryanny, is the great Satan, or something. The world is a funny place.The post also notes how Xinjiang is basically the Beta version for a system of control that will eventually be rolled out countrywide.
Okay, Political Science 101 is called for. "Nationalism" is not the same as "white nationalism," hence the need for the "white" modifier. Personally, I'm not a nationalist (or a white nationalist, if that needs to be said). I'm patriotic. Technically "nationalism" is an ethnic thing and I believe anybody from anywhere can become an American because unlike being French or Russia, America is an idea-based country. But in America, much as I think people on the left calling themselves "socialists" really just mean "really, really liberal" (because "progressive no longer does the trick, I guess), I think people calling themselves "nationalists" mean really patriotic. With a further meaning of being anti-"internationalist" in that it puts America first over multilateral deals that restrict our freedom of action. Personally, I believe in general internationalism benefits America because we designed the international system after World War II (after--and you don't have to like Wilson to recognize this--a failed effort after World War I to do that, which showed that our absence from the world has lethal consequences). But sure, if push comes to shove and internationalism harms us, I'm good with a nationalist approach. Just because internationalism benefits America doesn't mean all internationalist policies benefit us. Since this is really a foreign policy thing, I feel justified in addressing it despite the desire of the left to make it an issue of hate.
Our problem child Pakistan has behaved badly enough by supporting jihadis that America finally cut off all economic and military aid. China is not replacing the aid but is willing to extend poison pill loans to Pakistan. I worry that rather than behaving better that Pakistan will behave worse and cut the supply lines to our forces in landlocked Afghanistan.
China continues to try to shield North Korea from the effects of American-led sanctions. Thanks China! We want North Korea to have a sense of urgency to cut a deal before they collapse. China's backing allows North Korea to believe there is no sense of urgency in moving talks forward.
Mattis plans to stay. Good.
Professional journalists and pundits who aren't very good at reporting events really like to predict the future after each election. But their ignorance of the past isn't a good sign of their predictive powers. Journalists keep seeing the unusual in the banal. Trump will no more realign our politics than Obama, Bush 43, Clinton, Reagan/Bush 41, or Carter did (either by spoiling their own party's appeal or creating a new permanent governing coalition for their party).
One of the problems in our long war is the asymmetric nature of the sides. A nutball Isamist who rampages in Melbourne is obvious and news. A moderate Moslem in a Moslem-majority state (or in a Western state) who prefers rule of law, voting, and tolerance is ... well, unseen in the news because such people go about their lives quietly obeying the law, voting, and tolerating people of different religions or even different versions of Islam. Don't be discouraged. It is a long war. It is not an unwinnable war. And we shouldn't want the nutball Islamists to win the the Islamic Civil War over who defines Islam.
Where a president literally believes a free press is the enemy of the people (as personified by the president).
We now resume our usual programming. They have nukes and Lord knows what kind of use and safety protocols.
Russia bolstered anti-vaccine advocates with Twitter disinformation. Ah, science!
The Army wants new approaches to recruit in less promising areas it long neglected in favor of more fertile recruiting ground. I had thoughts on that subject out of my usual lanes last year in Army magazine.
That's highly ironic.
China won't need a Great Firewall of China if the rest of the world doesn't put anything objectionable online.
