Weekend Data Dump

The sainted international community can eff themselves. Tip to Instapundit. Will Peak Stupid never arrive?

The AMARC ("bone yard") explained.

Worst. homophobe. ever.

Strategypage looked at an Israeli response to kite and balloon incendiary bombs that apply to my air defense drone suggestion in Army magazine. One, ground troops might have a better ability to shoot down drones than I thought if the SMASH scope could work. Still, I worry that troops looking up to fight too much will be fatally distracted from the ground battle. In that case the use of drones flown by civilians to knock down the balloons and kites might have some lessons on how even an unarmed but ruggedized drone might knock down small enemy drones.

When fearful of war, appear eager?  Tip to Instapundit.

Oh good, the Ebola epidemic in Congo (Kinshasha version) is multiplied by ISIL which thinks the virus is a lovely weapon to spread terror.

Jim Acosta says that under Trump it is a dangerous time to “tell the truth.” So he wrote a book about that, had it published, an went on tour with Dan Rather. Wait. What? Meanwhile, the real war on journalism here. Tips to Instapundit.

Ukraine converted their 61st Separate Infantry Brigade into a Jager brigade designed to fight in the forests and swamps along the border with Belarus.

The Australian navy is stepping up in the South China Sea, with our Marines as a component. That's the main point of the article notwithstanding the highlighting of Chinese fishing boats (part of China's naval militia, most likely) shining lasers at Australian helicopter pilots while in the region.

Yes, the F-15 can still perform missions quite well that don't require stealth aircraft. Like I said.

It really isn't true that a high proportion of Americans couldn't pay an unexpected $400 bill. Silly me, I accepted the commonly held reports on that incorrect fact. The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect strikes again.

Don't put tactical nukes on our Trident missiles on our SSBNs. We need the big nukes for deterrence and shouldn't reduce their number for tactical nukes, we shouldn't count on an enemy thinking that a strategic weapon system like the Trident is only firing a tactical nuclear warhead rather than being the opening salvo of a strategic nuclear first strike, we shouldn't want to risk an enemy seeing where one of our few SSBNs is, and how on Earth could that tactical weapon be fired and hit its target in a timely enough fashion to get a tactical result? Of course, I'm not sure how many tactical nukes are needed given that they were designed to hit moving military targets before the age of precision weapons made that need obsolete. But I don't really have enough knowledge of this subject--including a number of other issues raised in that article--to really give a good answer to that part. But definitely don't put tactical nuclear warheads on our SSBNs, which are our safest nuclear deterrent.

I knew she was corrupt and inept, but now she is just deplorable.

Syrian WMD might set the region ablaze?  How is that possible? The stunning diplomatic genius of John Kerry guided by the wise President Obama ended that threat with the 2013 chemical weapons deal engineered by Putin’s Lavrov!

Oh FFS, it’s now Fort Sill! Who cares what it was 75 years ago? Even Saint Obama sent illegal minor  aliens there. Note the contrast in reporting and Democratic reaction now and then.

The Chinese are trying to crush freedom in Hong Kong 28 years earlier than scheduled.

Can China afford to spend money on defense and everything else it wants without budgetary limits?

Polling that shows Americans scarily favorable to socialism is a problem because most people don't understand the term. Socialism is really about the government controlling the means of production. And that will come with loss of freedom across a broader spectrum than just the economy. Yes, government-run programs like Medicare and Social Security are kind of socialism. If you squint. But they are really social welfare programs. Like actual socialist entities they are less efficient than private systems would be. But they really aren't socialism. If you think they are, by that logic our military is socialist. I think most people in America use "socialism" to mean "really liberal" in favor of more government spending and higher taxes. And wait until they get the news that Nazis were socialists too (just national socialists in contrast to the communist international socialists).

If the Russians did this in our elections, it would already be illegal.

Is it just me, or is the decision to use "older" F-35s as aggressor aircraft to train our pilots kind of odd given that the F-35 is barely operational within the American military? Given that the excuse is that it is too expensive to upgrade these new planes to the latest combat capabilities, does this say we pushed the plane into service before it was ready? If not, wouldn't we want every one built so far on combat duty? Not that eventually having some of those planes help train our pilots to face enemy fifth generation fighters, but it does seem odd to me.

Concerns about "homelessness" and "crime?" Sounds like a dog whistle for racists, if you ask me.

I'm still rather stunned that 36% of American don't think we should use force in response to an Iranian attack on America. Tip to Instapundit. Of course, the question ignores that Iran has been at war with America for 40 years now, with an American body count and a devastated American embassy in Tehran to prove it.

I celebrate their success. Because this is America and merit should rule. Although I think this should be like NHL playoff rules and they should keep going until one wins.

I remain conflicted about the idea that we should spread the Washington, D.C. bureaucracy out to the rest of the country. The hope among conservatives is that it would get the bureaucrats into "real" America. My fear is that the bureaucrats will infect "real" America into acting like the "swamp" back in D.C. If the saying "you stand where you sit" reflects reality then "real" Americans from the heartland working for the system will convert the locals into swamp creatures regardless of their geographic location. Again, don't try to control the federal government--reduce it in size and powers. The only winning move is not to play that game.

It is silly and offensive and downright stupid to say that Trump is forcing Mexico to build a new Berlin Wall to keep Mexicans out of America. Mexicans (and really, in this case, Central Americans) will be as free as anybody else in the world to enter America--or go anywhere else--through the "wall" if they want to apply for legal entry under our rules. Although it would help if Congress would end the law that encourages Central Americans to come here for asylum. You let me know when the Mexican refuses to let people leave Mexico to any other country according to that other country's immigration rules. Tip to Instapundit.

Note to the "turn it to 11" Resistance: Actual tyranny waging an actual war on journalists. And no, you morons, it didn't start with tweets slamming them for bias and inaccuracy.

I've mentioned that the anti-Trump fanatics resemble the anti-Obama fanatics. Instead of thinking Obama is a secret Moslem literally born in Kenya, the current group of nutballs on the left think Trump is a secret Nazi figuratively born in Russia. And now the fixation of the left on getting Trump's tax returns released mirrors those on the right who were fixated on getting Obama's birth certificate released. Just get a grip, people. This should be embarrassing. But they aren't.

Policies and not global warming burned California's forests.

It isn't that I'm against giving air crews a long arm to better evade capture if shot down, but isn't the addition of this firepower kind of odd when we are going to stealth fighters with stand-off weapons that should mean the planes are less likely to be shot down over enemy territory and require air crews to evade capture until rescued?

Why don't the suddenly anti-Russian Democrats wonder why Obama didn't do anything to stop Russian propaganda in our 2016 election? We should all rightly be upset with Russia for that interference. But Russia and the Soviets before them were doing that for decades and it really bugs me that the Democrats are so late to the issue.

No, America is not an empire. Sure, we aren't a nation--a collection of people with common language, ethnicity, and culture. That's because our people mostly come from nations around the world. But we are a state--a government that oversees our territory and people. With as much authority as any nation-state--a government with territory that basically coincided with their nation. And arguments in favor of claiming America is an empire rely on definitions that are twisted from the actual meaning of direct control of many nations brought under control of a single state by either force or submission--or even voluntarily. This idea never seems to go away. And at some point, won't America become a nation? How long does it take to say we have a common language and culture? While submerging the ethnicity into a soft pride instead of the Old World versions that defined the borders of the Other. Won't we become a nation at some point? Could we have passed that point already?

Unless folding our diplomats into EUCOM is about making sure our forces can cross European borders rapidly in a crisis in the east--which isn't mentioned in the article--I'm not really sure what the point is.

Has the destruction of our heroes with their statues and monuments gone far enough yet? Yeah, it's all fun and games until the wrong hero is shown to be a flawed human, if that is all it takes to erase the greatness of their achievement.

I honestly don't know why so many analysts are so eager to plunge the Army into urban combat in megacities.  Mega-cities, by their size, seem to be modern versions of castles or walled cities. Historically, you bypassed forces inside those places and starved them into submission rather than bloody your own forces storming them. I am fine on learning how to fight in mega-cities. But I want to know why we need to take any particular mega-city and if that particular mega-city needs to be taken to advance the objective of the campaign, what exactly in the city do we need to secure? Don't be so eager to enter those meat grinders. Ask questions first.

Pakistan has effed up, no doubt, by alienating America as Pakistan embraced jihadis.

I still don't understand how China's boycott of American soybeans hurts American farmers. I've read we are really efficient in this crop. Doesn't China's boycott just make China's soybean imports more expensive for them? And doesn't China's boycott just give non-Chinese customers who used to buy from whoever is now supplying China the chance to buy our cheaper soybeans? I'm assuming a constant global demand. And I assume nobody could rapidly enter the field to make our soybeans unneeded. This is way out of my lane, I admit. So maybe I am missing something obvious. But shouldn't China's boycott simply rearrange who sells to whom rather than mean our farmers can't sell their soybeans?

I don't think that the problem is that the American headquarters in South Korea is moving south, thus separating American and ROK command elements; but that the South Koreans are keeping their command element in Seoul. There's a reason we moved south. It applies to ROK headquarters, too.

I thought it was bad enough that so many journalists are really Democrat activists. How many are actually communist/anarchist Antifa scum?

I mentioned an expanded program to get countries to switch from Russian/Chinese weapons to American or Western weapons in a data dump a while ago. This article looks at the ERIP rearming program for former Warsaw Pact countries equipped by the Soviet Union and now in NATO, which was accelerated after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This author thinks that the Navy-Coast Guard partnership must be restored in an age of great power competition. The Coast Guard used to be a reserve combat force rather than a mostly law enforcement agency.

Yeah, I don't kneel before the false gods of multi-colored recycling bins. It would be more accurate to label the plastics bin the "Ship to Asia and dump in their rivers" bin. Tip to Instapundit.