An online journal of commentary, analysis, and dignified rants on national security issues. Other posts on home life, annoying things, and a vast 'other' are clearly marked.
I live and write in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan AB and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. Former American history instructor and retired nonpartisan research analyst. I write on Blogger and Substack. Various military and private journals have published my occasional articles on military subjects. See "My Published Works" on the TDR web version or under the mobile version drop-down menu for citations and links.
I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry.
But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world.
And for your own safety, don't click on any old Geocities links or any of their similar variations in my posts. Those sites have been taken over by bad and/or dangerous sites. Hover over links first!
After Iran struck Saudi oil export facilities the question was whether America would strike back. I figured it was up to Saudi Arabia to strike back for an act of war against them. Apparently the Saudis will not retaliate militarily.
Saudi Arabia's crown prince said in an interview aired Sunday that war with Iran would devastate the global economy and he prefers a non-military solution to tensions with his regional rival.
Russia is building up base facilities in Syria as their payoff for saving Assad with Putin's 2015 intervention. I'm fine with every defense ruble spent away from the Baltic Sea region.
A Russian submarine has moored at Russia's base in Syria after a patrol mission while another one is getting ready to sail off after replenishing supplies — the rotation that underlines Moscow's growing military foothold in the Mediterranean Sea.
The naval base in Tartus is the only such facility Russia has outside the former Soviet Union. In 2017, Moscow struck a deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad to extend its lease on Tartus for 49 years. The agreement allows Russia to keep up to 11 warships there, including nuclear-powered ones.
Personally I prefer to have Russian defense resources diverted away from the Baltic Sea area to a place where NATO and other allies unlikely to help in the Baltic Sea region (like Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey (?), and to a lesser extent France) can destroy some of Russia's military power in the Mediterranean Sea.
You don't have to believe that Jesus is actually appearing to figure that if this is truly a trend in what Moslem people believe they see (or believe what other people say they see) that this is significant, no? Tip to Instapundit.
It is mind boggling that the long-delayed KC-46 is still having problems getting into service. Our ancient aerial refuelers aren't getting any newer. Strategypage has more. The Air Force has been eager to replace its aging tanker planes since before I started this blog in June 2002. That's effed up.
The Air Force is pivoting to great power competition. Air Force commitment to close air support for the Army isn't going to get any stronger. Not that the Air Force doesn't have a point that without getting air superiority nothing else can happen. But the lack of positive help from the air is a reality for the Army. Train and equip accordingly.
Cheap autonomous ground combat vehicles are the way to go. I assume networked ground combat will be a war of attrition whether waged by people or robots or blends of the two. So we have to be able to rapidly replace the robot casualties.
Diced and fried. Sure, cats kill more birds per year. But you can't dispute that solar and wind generation add quite a bit to the death toll. What really amazes me is that there are statistics on bird deaths caused by cats, windmills, and solar panels! And if the Green New Deal gets going, those second-place energy sources will leave those felines chewing on their dust in the ranking!
This makes total strategic sense if Russia is to avoid falling farther behind economically, they do need to slow down Western economies. Not that Russia pledged to reduce their carbon footprint! Oh no. Unlike America which has despite pulling out of that actually worthless accord--even if you fully subscribe to the belief system. And remember, Russian and European goals are based on pre-Soviet collapse emissions. Which allows both imperial bodies to claim significant reductions based on closing old heavy industry factories that would have closed from economics regardless of climate change concerns. Besides, in the back of Putin's mind he has to know that if Siberia warms up he'll have no Hellish landscape to send political prisoners if he wants to restart that whole gulag system, eh?
I remain flabbergasted that even as marijuana is legalized and normalized, that people are in full panic mode over vaping nicotine. And the worse results come from people putting illegal substances into their vaping devices, it seems.
China is pushing hard at Vietnam over drilling rights in the South China Sea that China claims as its own territory (contrary to international law). Vietnam will likely turn more to America. That's fine. But eventually Vietnam will have to resist more forcefully if they hope to prevent China from stopping Vietnam from using their own EEZ in the South China Sea.
All three Zumwalt "destroyers" are "in the water." The truncated class of stealth destroyers is odd. Can they sail with non-stealthy ships without making their stealth moot? And how stealthy are they with stuff tacked on? Will one at sea (if all three are based in one fleet, allowing one to be deployed at all times while one recovers from and the other prepares for deployment) do any good for sea control? Or are they primarily to be test platforms for a new class that "affordably" uses the tech sunk into Zumwalt? Still, at least any mission makes more sense than the land-attack purpose given for the ship.
Russia's effort to screw with our 2016 election was like peeing in the ocean given the large amount of money Americans spent to influence us (although by getting the Democrats to unzip and join the stream it was fully cost effective). So I don't know what to make of this report that Russia's cyber effort in 2020 could be massive. Either way, why don't we go to paper ballots rather than try to harden electronic voting?
New angles in lightweight armor. While this is great for infantry and unarmored trucks, I don't see this as a means to allow for lightweight main battle tanks. If this works, won't enemies that don't have to ship their tanks across an ocean simply add a lot more of this lightweight armor and just race back to the total weight of current MBTs? And then we'd have to increase the weight again. And put an even bigger weapon on the MBT, making all MBTs ultimately even heavier? Unless we go to cheap disposable robot tanks that focus on lethality at the expense of protection because there is no crew.
Maduro is hanging on in Venezuela. Really, shouldn't we know by now that telling a thug ruler he has to step aside doesn't work? With the power of caring about the health and welfare of his people less than our level of caring, he can sit on a mounting pile of corpses if he has to and wait us out. Unless his people revolt instead of fleeing abroad; or if his military gets sick of defending Maduro--and the Cuban enforcers go away. More here.
The California state legislature couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel. To be fair, the rate of inflation really has eaten into felony thresholds of $50 or $100 established in the 19th century in many statute books. I think in 1992 when I worked for Michigan's legislature I calculated that it would be about a thousand dollars in Michigan if you looked at inflation (I looked at a couple other factors, too, to provide comparison measures given the change in our economy over that time span). And it is legitimate to debate whether someone should be sent to prison for that level of theft. But are the crooks being pursued, caught, and sentenced to something? Or are these newly classified misdemeanors too low for police and prosecutors to bother with? If people aren't being punished under the limits of the law's dividing line--old or new--don't be shocked that criminals will gravitate to those crimes. That's an own-goal, dudes.
I have feared that Remainers would not allow Britain to leave the European Union,notwithstanding the pledge to abide by the Brexit referendum results. Was I right?Is hope this weak? I was long in favor of accepting any Brexit on the theory that it was most important to get out. And then work on fixing the bad terms of the Brexit. We'll see. Rule of law is dead in Britain if Brexit is denied.
It looks bad for the Democrats to impeach Trump when an election is half a year away from giving mere voters a chance to say whether Trump should be sent home (that observation was made by someone else but I can't find the source). It would almost be worth the impeachment process hysteria and divisiveness to have it work. And then have Trump with an election campaign infrastructure already in place simply run for election rather than reelection. I mean, is it even illegal for an impeached and removed president to run for the office?
Related to my frustration with the Resistance, I've often said that if the Democrats had worked with Trump--who has a long history of being a liberal supporters of Democrats prior to running as a Republican--the Democrats could have gotten an infrastructure spending program in 2017 that would have made Obama blush. Just call it the Total Reconstruction Using Money Piles Act, and Trump would have signed it.
On October 1st the Chinese will celebrate 70 years of Communist Party tyranny in China. Will they celebrate the tens of millions they murdered and the countless people they've imprisoned and terrorized? But oh well, they industrialized and modernized so all is forgiven--as if that kind of body count is required--according to some fools in the West. For those fools, the modernization isn't the omelet--the tyranny is.
On home front news, I finally figured out--perhaps because it got worse lately--that intermittent leaking under one of my sinks was caused by a leak in the sink itself. I had no idea that was a thing. They aren't one piece things that you can see from the top whether there is a hole or not. I pulled the sink out, caulked the heck out of the seams, and reinstalled it. No leak! But I inadvertently scared the heck out of myself. Apparently--in retrospect--during the removal process some water leaked into my kitchen below the bathroom a little bit. I noticed a water stain in the ceiling which looked like it was beneath the toilet. Egad! Is everything breaking down? I turned off the water to the toilet and contemplated by alternatives. But the stain dried out. And it made little sense that if there was a pipe leak that turning off the water into the toilet would stop the water from dripping. So I turned the toilet back on. Still okay. I was the cause of the water leak somehow. And now I'm spraying the ceiling with a mix of water and bleach which over time nicely fades the water stain after repeated spraying and drying. That was fascinating, I know.
Strategypage discusses tanks and threats to them. Tank survival is not just a matter of passive and active protection. Tank survival requires combined arms with infantry and fire support keeping threats to the tanks suppressed, dead, or away; trained officers and crews; and less appreciated, controlling the battlefield after the fight to recover disabled tanks to repair them and return them to the fight.
I would like American-German relations to be better. But the decline long pre-dates Trump. And as I noted during the Obama administration, the public love of Obama over there didn't translate into Germany being a better ally. Let's hope relations recover--without a major Russian threat to revive them. I reject that notion that Merkel was prescient in refusing to support the Iraq War because the evidence of Iraqi WMD stockpiles wasn't evident. The 1991 ceasefire required Saddam's Iraq to prove he had disarmed--not for America to prove Saddam still had WMD. Can anyone doubt Saddam would have rebuilt his arsenal--and perhaps used it against the Kurds again to regain that territory--if he had not been defeated? Fellow Baathist Assad has been using chemical weapons notwithstanding the 2013 chemical weapons agreement that Kerry made with Russia's Lavrov. Saddam would have followed a similar path.
Although perhaps a Democratic rival with ties in the government got it going. That's if this plays out to harm Biden, of course.
Or it might be something bad, I must admit. I'm not willing to say it is inconceivable that Trump might do something wrong (especially given his conviction--with some justification--that the Democrats have done worse the last three-plus years and gotten away with it). But that's not the way to bet as far as I can see--especially after reading the "transcript" of the phone call (not based on a recording but from people listening and taking notes). Tips to Instapundit. More here.
Oh, and what's with that part in the transcript about a Democratic Party server in Ukraine?
Still, from someone whose opinion I respect, the Biden Ukraine episode isn't as bad as Republicans are making it out to be in defense of Trump. So shouldn't Biden welcome a Ukraine investigation that demonstrates that the charge is baseless?
It is apparently not improper for the president of the United States, caught in a hot-mic exchange with the Russian president, to offer a quid pro quo deal in which the United States suggests it will pull back from missile-defense agendas in exchange for good Russian behavior designed to help the president and hurt his opponent in the forthcoming reelection.
I'm open to the idea that Trump acted wrongly. But the Ukraine call doesn't seem bad or that unusual. And it certainly doesn't seem like an impeachable offense.
What am I missing? After all this time of serial breathless reports on smoking guns of treason to be revealed any minute now, this is what will get Pelosi to drop the hammer?
Yet I will admit that if I hadn't been fed a steady fire hose blast of "OhmyGodlookwhatTrumpdid!" hysteria for the last three years I might not yawn at this flavor of the day "crisis." Seriously, people, I'm one of the people you could have convinced to oppose Trump based on my long opposition to his political ambitions and distaste for him personally. Democrats think they are saving the country with their hysteria. But they look like partisans willing to destroy the village in order to save it for their own political ambitions.
But the insanity of the Democratic opposition (with an assist from some Republicans), the volume of the opposition, the unrelenting pace of the turn-the-dial-to-11 opposition, and the unfair demonization of his supporters by the opposition has made me willing to figuratively crawl across glass to vote for Trump--for the first time, you morons! Because Democrats of The Resistance have made it clear that the visibly flawed Trump is superior to anybody the Democrats could put up against him in 2020.
Bravo. Really. Brilliant work you guys.
UPDATE: Let me add some thoughts on Biden's threat to withhold a major loan to Ukraine if Ukraine didn't fire a corrupt prosecutor. It is fair enough to say everyone here wanted that man fired. We have an interest in increasing rule of law in Ukraine.
The problem is that Biden's son escaped an investigation for his actions in Ukraine because that prosecutor was fired.
Given the issue of Biden's son, Biden was the wrong man to send to Ukraine with the message to fire the prosecutor if the only issue was promoting rule of law. Didn't the choice of Biden to go to Ukraine with the job of getting the prosecutor fired also send the message to Ukraine that the new prosecutor shouldn't continue the case against Biden's son?
Wasn't there an implicit deal just from the fact of sending Biden, with the clear backing of Obama? The investigation into Biden's son was dropped, after all, right? Or at the very least there were no consequences for the amazingly lucrative career of the Biden son in the wake of Biden's role in Ukraine.
I mean, with all the talk of quid pro quos, isn't that a more plausible case for wrongdoing than Ukrainegate 2019?
UPDATE: Of course, if there was no investigation of the company that hired Hunter Biden, I'd have to reconsider that aspect. Each side is saying opposite things and I guess I'm not sure what the reality is.
UPDATE: A Hunter Biden timeline. It looks corrupt. But I'm unclear if there was a Hunter Biden investigation in Ukraine.
The fired Ukrainian prosecutor--who Biden said Ukraine had to fire or lose a large loan--says there was an investigation. But he was fired for corruption. Still, we don't have to trust his word for it. What does Ukraine say now about that question?
Assad has sort of won his civil war (which became a multi-war with multiple foreign interventions), so naturally he is rubbing his enemies in the poop of their defeat.
The United States vowed a response Thursday as it said it had confirmed another chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces, although there were no fatalities.
The Assad regime used chlorine on May 19 in Latakia province during its ferocious offensive to take back the last major rebel stronghold in nearby Idlib, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.
I know, I know, the brilliant 2013 Syrian chemical weapons deal that Kerry negotiated with Lavrov eliminated all of Assad's chemical weapons! How can this be?
Wait? Your argument is that since chlorine wasn't part of the deal that its use as poison gas doesn't count? Phew! The dead and lung-crippled survivors will be relieved to hear that!
We will strike again, apparently. And it will have little effect other than putting us on record that we reject the use of such weapons. There is probably value in that. But don't expect more.
Countries without the experience of the western front in World War I (who are also democracies, and maybe that's the key) just don't seem to have the cultural taboos about chemical weapons use.
And honestly, for much of America and Western Europe, revulsion of Trump may be so great that the trauma of mass gas use in World War I will fade even in the West. If Trump is against gas use, maybe the global left will start to think it isn't so bad compared to bombs and bullets.
I'd be curious to see opinion polls of Kurds and Iranians who have been on the receiving end on the issue of poison gas use.
Russia’s annual major autumnal exercises are usually accompanied by a loud propaganda campaign advertising the country’s military might; this year, however, official reporting on the Tsentr 2019 war games was rather low key.
Why was it low key? Well this might explain it:
The strategic design for Tsentr 2019 was focused on testing Russia’s capabilities to project military power into Central Asia[.]
Notwithstanding twenty years of increasingly prominent political, economic and security relations, China remains poorly understood and even feared among Central Asians.
Russia has some leverage to compete with a stronger China. But it may not be able to pretend to be China's ally much longer if Russia wants to reassure Central Asians of Russian support.
I wanted American troops to remain in Iraq after 2011 after winning the war in 2009--yeah, we won--and after defeating ISIL in 2017. Staying works.
Staying in Iraq to bolster democracy, keep jihadis down, and reducing Iranian influence were important jobs after the kinetics. We screwed up by being out from 2012 until ISIL overran large chunks of Sunni Arab-majority Iraq in the first half of 2014.
The government and Iraqis in general are particularly keen to retain American troops in Iraq, to discourage Iran from trying to take over the government by force. Elections and opinion polls show Iran is losing support and the Iranians are desperate to turn that around and do dangerous things as part of that effort. Iraqi government efforts to stop the verbal threats to American facilities and forces as well as the actual violence are hampered by the fact that while a shrinking minority of Iraqis support Iran those supporters still occupy key political and security force jobs.
And Iraq is one of those fronts. It is a front that we can win--if we wage the battle. It doesn't take many Americans in Iraq to bolster Iraqi will to resist the Iranian influence. But this will take time.
Let me add that I am relieved that our small force in Iraq (plus allies) today is enough to work against Iranian influence. I certainly felt that much more was needed in 2011. I was apparently wrong back then to think we needed 25,000 American troops to defend the win. Although the ability to push back Iran's influence since 2017 when the ISIL caliphate was dismantled in Iraq doesn't mean necessarily that I was wrong in 2011, I suppose.
[I clarified the last paragraph and added a link I meant to include in the first sentence.]
Russia likes threatening NATO with all kinds of destruction but doesn't like it when NATO acts like it might fight back. Lord the Russians are annoying.
Russia on Friday accused the United States of brazenly threatening it after a senior U.S. general said Washington had drawn up a plan in case it needed to destroy air defences in Russia's Kaliningrad exclave in Europe.
U.S. General Jeffrey Harrigian said on Tuesday that "If we have to go in there to take down, for instance, the Kaliningrad IADS (Integrated Air Defense System), let there be no doubt we have a plan to go after that," the Breaking Defense magazine reported.
NATO didn't have any plans or infrastructure to defend post-Soviet NATO states in the east until the Russians starting acting like aggressive SOBs by invading Ukraine and threatening even nuclear weapons against NATO and other states in the region.
And now the Russians are upset that we reveal the bloody obvious that we'd attack Russian air defenses in Kaliningrad during a war?
Okay. The moment passed.
Those Russian air defenses would threaten the rear of the Baltic NATO states and would interfere with aerial reinforcements to Poland. Of course we'd plan to knock them out. And the Russians know that. Everyone knows that. But the Russians profess shock and outrage.
Poor, poor, victimized Russia.
Let me clue the Russians in a bit more. If Russia invades NATO we'd also go after their surface-to-surface missiles there.
For Britain, the consolidation of the Continent into a single bloc was a perpetual nightmare. Britain was militarily weak compared to the Continent as a whole and saw Napoleon, for example, as an existential threat. Had he been able to impose a stable system, dominated by Paris, on the Continent, the economic and military force he could have mustered would have overwhelmed Britain’s naval defenses in the not-too-long run and compelled Britain to accommodate itself to French hegemony.
Turning to America and non-European places instead of Europe abandons the long-held goal of preventing Europe from being controlled by a single power, the author says.
But isn't NATO with a strong America and non-EU Britain as major member states a way to thwart the rise of the proto-empire EU into an actual empire to achieve that long-held goal?
America has the same long-term goal--if not held as long as Britain--of not wanting a single power to control Europe, lest it be hostile to America. Economic and security ties would help both of us.
I don't know what happens despite the Brexit vote more than three years ago that told Britain to leave the European Union. It seems like Remainers and the British Supreme Court want to act as agents of the proto-empire.
In mid-2019 the United States Navy ordered two more ESB (Expeditionary Mobile Base) type amphibious support ships, with the option for a third. These ships will enter service by 2023 and if all three are built the navy would have eight ESB type ships.
I didn't realize there were that many planned.
The concept has been tested:
This was not a new concept as in 2006 an Austin class amphibious ship was sent to the Indian Ocean without the normal complement of marines. That ship was instead used as a floating base for UAVs and SOF (special operations forces). A similar task was assigned a navy carrier in 2002, to support SOF operations in Afghanistan. In 2006, it was believed that the amphibious ship was also supporting SOF operations ashore in Somalia or Iran.
I recall the 2002 Afghanistan mission. I was not familiar with the others (unless I have forgotten them). I'll add that in the 1990s a Haiti operation against opposition would have put Army air mobile infantry and special forces on a couple carriers. If memory serves me just one was used for a permissive landing after negotiations. And I do recall the Ponce modifications.
Still, AFRICOM (whose unofficial motto is probably "Thank God for SOUTHCOM.") is low on the priority list and a renewed focus on China and Russia does nothing to improve its ranking in the regional unified command standings. Will any make it to African waters to support our friends there and hunt our enemies?
While there is technically no time limit on dictatorship, the CPC is approaching the longevity frontier for one-party regimes.
The timelines of comparison includes the Chinese Communist Party's CCP, or CPC as that author uses) tenure as an insurgency rather than as the governing organization of the comparison states.
So if 70+ years is the danger point, that indicates the CCP could have 20-30 years of life left in it, no?
I don't know about the prediction. But I find this amusing:
With its superior military capabilities, technology, economic efficiency, and alliance networks (which remain robust, despite President Donald Trump’s destructive leadership), the US is far more likely to prevail in the Sino-American cold war than China. [emphasis added]"
Not that victory wouldn't harm America perhaps too seriously, too, he says. Although why it (as opposed to a Hot War) would be worse than the Cold War with the USSR that left us as the lone superpower after the West's victory is not explained.
But if our alliances are robust under Trump, perhaps the author wants to reconsider the "despite" part. Especially considering his predecessor, Obama.
This author pretty much ascribes to the quote above after the "despite", but still writes:
But neither [Trump's "alienating allies and total abdication of America’s moral standing"] should obscure the poisoned chalice he was ceded by his predecessor, whose disastrous legacy grows more and more palpable by the day.
Maybe Trump has harmed our diplomacy. His style is not my cup of tea, to be sure.
But how "robust" was our alliance structure in our "enemy-centric" policy under Obama that tried to appease foes into friends, as that second author writes?
A similar range [to our "reset" policy to appease Russia] of “enemy-centric” policies, to use the tart phrase of former Czech foreign and defence minister Sasha Vondra, were implemented in practically every region of the world.
And Trump's success in keeping allies in the fight "despite" his ham-fisted bluster even after Obama's disaster is the way to look at Trump?
A number of people keep saying that it is inconceivable that Trump isn't wrecking our foreign policy.
I don't think Trump is playing 3D chess. But I don't see the horrible effects of his bluster.
Once the peace talks were cancelled, U.S. forces in Afghanistan were ordered to hit the Taliban with maximum effort. The Afghan security forces were already doing so and the Afghan troops are have been carrying out nearly all the attacks against the Taliban this year. That is something the Afghans are proud of as they have been training and reorganizing for over a decade to reach that level of combat performance. Afghan soldiers and police also realize that they and their families have a lot to lose if the Taliban gain control. The last time that happened, in the mid-1990s, the Taliban retaliated against Afghans who had fought against them and families were not exempt. Technically the Taliban have abandoned such tactics but the Taliban still go after those who desert or switch sides. [emphasis added]
Remember, our intervention didn't have to finally defeat the enemy before we left. What we had to do was build up allied local forces who could fight as long as they need to in order to defeat our common enemies.
We've done that. And that achievement includes the Obama administration in that training program.
That doesn't mean that these trained troops don't need American help. Our air power is very important:
It’s not just the airstrikes, it’s also the American ability to airdrop supplies to areas that the Taliban have under siege. The Taliban take heavy losses maintaining those sieges and American supply drops enable Afghan forces to survive and win most of those battles. The Taliban learned this the hard way in 2018 when they saw many of their sieges fail because of the air delivered supplies. In 2017 the U.S. Air Force dropped 15 tons of supplies by parachute (often guided parachutes that can assure delivery in a small area.) In 2018 that increased to 304 tons and that, plus even more airstrikes made sieges unpopular with Taliban fighters.
And air strikes, recon, transport, and casualty evacuation, don't forget.
I don't know what the purpose of peace talks is. I sure isn't to achieve peace with the Taliban. But if the peace talks never achieve peace, with our help friendly Afghan security forces will continue to kill the Taliban who hosted al Qaeda which struck America on September 11, 2001.
And don't forget that peace talks are probably futile as long as our black-sheep ally Pakistan supports jihadis in Afghanistan.
To listen to the Obama administration, you would think the JCPOA leaves no stone unturned. The accord provides “the most comprehensive and intrusive inspection and verification regime ever negotiated,” President Obama claimed. The JCPOA “is not built on trust,” he contended. “It is built on verification.”
Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that Washington already knew the full extent of Iran’s past and present nuclear weaponization activities. “We know what they did,” he declared. “We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge with respect to the certain military activities they were engaged in.”
And people complain about Trump's lies? I'll take false statements on crowd size any day.
And Kerry was a blithering idiot to make his claim. He turned around the observation that a diplomat is an honorable man sent to lie for his country. Kerry was a dishonorable man sent to lie to his own country on behalf of an enemy.
Instead of allocating its limited defense budget on expensive equipment such as stealth fighters, tanks or submarines, the Taiwanese military should invest in cheap, expendable, mass-produced weapons systems that can be easily moved, disguised, and deployed against an amphibious invasion force. In practical terms, this means a navy composed of missile patrol boats, mine-laying ships, small semi-submersibles, and underwater drones; an air defense component reliant on mobile surface-to-air missile batteries; ground forces armed to the teeth with aerial drones, land mines, and antiship and antiarmor guided missiles; a reserve force and civilian population fluent in guerilla tactics; and an industrial policy focused on developing breakthroughs in missile and drone technologies.
Two, counting on keeping the Chinese off the island assumes that Taiwan can stop the invasion off the beaches. What if Taiwan can't do that? What if China can nullify some of Taiwan's missiles and is able to absorb the casualties and still get ashore? What then?
The very fact that the advice says Taiwan should get fluent in guerilla tactics concedes that Taiwan won't keep China's invasion force off of Taiwan. And it assumes that once China lands it will take the whole island.
Four, with a Taiwanese crust defense at sea without a capable army (with tanks), any weak Chinese landing on a beachhead can't be thrown back into the sea (or captured at an airhead), paving the way for a build up and offensive.
Five, if China successfully lands and sets up its own anti-ship and anti-ship missiles for A2/AD use, how will America approach Taiwan to liberate it any time soon even if Taiwanese are still resisting? Will Congress approve that kind of full war? Or say, "Oh well, too late. Too bad for the Taiwanese."
Maduro's socialist idiocy has finally gotten bad enough for Maduro to turn to the last resort--a little bit of free market. Lenin did the same thing. Which worked well enough to give the USSR Stalin and decades of misery and death for Russians and the world.
I managed to grab a 2018 edition of The Military Balance. It's rather a bible of international security affairs. Normally they go for many, many hundreds of dollars. But I try to get one every five years or so when I find an older version at a cheaper price. My new one wasn't exactly cheap but at least it wasn't many hundreds of dollars. My last version was 2012, so for the moment I'm not too badly out of date!
Maybe if the FBI and White House hadn't been so focused on mythical Russian collusion with Trump, the FBI would have done its job and not been FUTA by Russian intelligence: "The operation, which targeted FBI communications, hampered the bureau’s ability to track Russian spies on U.S. soil at a time of increasing tension with Moscow, forced the FBI and CIA to cease contact with some of their Russian assets, and prompted tighter security procedures at key U.S. national security facilities in the Washington area and elsewhere, according to former U.S. officials."
Cuba's oil shortage. Couldn't happen to a nicer communist dictatorship. Without a superpower or even an oil-rich idioocracy in Venezuela to subsidize it, the failure is easier to see.
If Brexit is so bad for Britain, why isn't the European Union welcoming Britain's exit confident that Britain will fail without the embrace of the proto-empire?
I know the NRA isn't a terrorist group, as so many Democrats claim. I know because if the NRA was an actual terrorist group, Democrats would make excuses for them and ask "why do they hate us?" all the time, as if we did something to deserve it.
I don't know why people pick on white girls so much for liking pumpkin spice. I think it may be the only thing they can like without being accused of cultural appropriation (which is a stupid concept, of course).
A real 2-decade hate is reserved for Koch brother political opponents exercising free speech rights (and dancing on the grave of one) and not for an actual killer and sexual deviant (allegedly) who donates big to your side. It's all a big yawn in the media. Still, a couple more deaths due to overdosing on meth while in his home and he would have been a mass murderer (allegedly) and perhaps earned the hatred that the AR-15 gets from Democrats. Maybe all the AR-15 has to do is bundle money for Democrats to get immunity. Tip to Instapundit.
But seriously, why is California declaring economic warfare on other states? Isn't this a violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause? Or in violation of something that assumes we are one country?
Yes, an evergreen topic for our Navy is that it should do more work on mine warfare defenses. counter-mine warfare isn't as sexy as hyper-sonic anti-ship missiles but even simple mines sure are effective.
Great. I'm glad Obamacare required the health industry to digitize our health records. Sure, a different law requires them to remain private. But oh well. Tip to Instapundit.
Yeah, ef the NYT and their fellow travelers. And yes, if the free states hadn't compromised with the slave states, the slave states wouldn't have faced the pressure (and war) to end slavery. How long would slavery have continued in the south without the effects of America's founding commitment to freedom and equality? Oh, and since the NYT has addressed slavery in the Americas as an ever-damning episode for modern America (but not for anybody else in the Western hemisphere), now do Islam. I dare them. Although to be fair it would be a longer project that begins well before 1619 and doesn't end in 1865.
Have I mentioned lately that professors as a class have forfeited the presumption of intelligence and knowledge? The most vocal professors seem to be pampered clowns who have cushy jobs that provide nothing of value to America. They are ruining the reputation of the vast majority of even left-wing professors who do their jobs. Eventually, state legislatures will decline to fund these clowns as they have in the past. Remember who to blame. It won't be the fault of legislators "starving" higher education. Best and brightest, indeed.
Prime Minister Trudeau has apparently been addicted to brown-face costumes. I heard we are now up to three incidents. But he's progressive so that's okay. Canadians will still think Trump is the big ol' racity racist with racist thoughts and policies in North America. But even if Canadians turn against Trudeau, at least he could run for governor of Virginia, eh? That's how the left works. Trudeau is lucky the campaign is on so it is too late to replace him. Throwing him under the bus after his use-by date would also be how the left works.
In related news, conservatives shouldn't impose "cancel culture" on Trudeau? In theory, yes. Cancel culture that looks for any blemish no matter how old and paints that as the total person is toxic and should be killed. But until the left feels enough pain from the rules they thought would only harm conservatives, I say cancel away with them. Still, the author has a point that if you didn't think Trudeau should resign for policies and scandal, resignation over this is ridiculous.
I find it amazing that people are talking about whether America would start a hot war be retaliating against Iran's missile/drone strike when Iran started the hot war by knocking out half of Saudi Arabia's oil export capacity. Why is Iran getting a pass by the Nervous-American class for initiating a war? And how are the Europeans so eager to help Iran avoid sanctions reacting to Iran's act of war? With resolve or a renewed drive to give the mullahs the Sudetenland?
South Korea and Japan have formidable militaries. Why South Korea is hacking away at their alliance with Japan is beyond me. South Korea and Japan need each other. Yes, Japan was a cruel colonial master. But America got over the Kaiser and Hitler. Our problems with Germany stem from Germany's refusal to help defend Europe. Japan seems fully on board defending their region, including South Korea, from threats from China and North Korea (and Russia).
I'm bewildered by the anti-Trump Republicans who
while understandably disliking Trump, seemingly prefer a Democrat in the
White House.
And I roll my eyes at the sometimes worshipful tones of
his elite backers. Even as I understand the relief of "civilians" across the country who are grateful to have someone who listens to their problems and fights.
But I'm not tired of Trump's policies for the most part,
although I do worry his inner New York City liberal will come out before
he leaves office in 2025.
And the Democrats who are the only
alternative are just nuts these days. If they were sane they would have
worked with Trump to coax his inner Democrat out. But thank God they
have been too dense to do that.
Is Trump too harsh in his tone?
Well, we saw what
being a gentleman who suffered Democratic dirt did for George W. Bush's
reputation. And for Romney's candidacy. So as wearisome has Trump's
demeanor may be, I can't rule out that it is necessary to ward off the
effects of the relentlessly hostile and dishonest Democrats, media,
professor class, and Hollywood.
Anyway, as I mentioned before, I've
mostly stopped watching the news to avoid the turn-it-to-11 faux Resistance and the Republican (admittedly justified) outrage over the Resistance. That's what I was weary of seeing. And I feel much better now.
But I'll still vote for Trump. For the first time. I will not reward the Democrats for what they have intensively done since 2016 to corrupt our institutions and poison our civic life. Period. That is what I am tired of these days.
The new Ford carrier is having problems with nuclear propulsion, catapults, landing system, ammo elevators, and radar. Already expensive, it will be more expensive to fix. Other than that Ford is fabulous.
The new Ford class CVN (nuclear powered aircraft carrier) has become a major disaster rather than a more effective new ship design. Several innovative new technologies were supposed to have made the Fords more effective and cheaper to operate than the previous, and similar looking Nimitz class. Two of those new technologies, EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) catapults and landing equipment and high-speed electromagnetic ammunition elevators (for getting explosive items to the deck more quickly). There are lesser problems with the nuclear propulsion system, the new radars and modifications needed so that the new F-35C can operate. ...
The Ford is already two years late and will probably be at least four years late. Much of those delays could have been avoided if many of these new technologies were not installed on the first of the Ford class. Originally these new technologies were to be introduced separately in the first three Fords. Those early CVNs could have the new tech installed during the major refurbishment/upgrade periods that take carriers out of service for a year or more every decade. Before construction began on Ford it was decided to try and save some money by introducing all this new tech in the first ship.
The super carrier is great for power projection missions that require a floating air field to fight enemies ashore without significant anti-ship capability.
The super carrier is the ultimate in platform-centric warfare. That is an environment that requires you to mass assets together to mass effects (as in striking the enemy). And the Ford-class carrier is supposed to the be ultimate super carrier with the ability to generate more sorties with fewer crew.
In a network-centric world with large numbers of long-range, precision weapons guided by persistent surveillance and within a network that can mass effects without massing assets, a few high-cost assets that mass effects on the single platform are counter-productive.
And worse, the new Ford can't carry out its mission at all--as costs go up trying to fix problems. Sure, the Navy thinks that the operating costs of the carrier will be significantly lower than the carriers before the class, but will that work out better than the construction costs?
People use the fact that China is building carriers to justify our own carriers. But what are we doing to match China's naval build up? Building more carriers? No. We are adding missiles to Navy ships and subs, and getting the Army, Air Force, and Marines to add their own cannons and missiles to the anti-ship mission (see the Army's Multi-Domain Operations concept).
But that doesn't mean we aren't also effing up by thinking the super carrier is needed to control the seas when we have cheaper weapons that we can spread throughout the fleet. A fleet that would be larger if we didn't have to put so much of our budget into carriers.
Still, as I've long argued, the super carrier is useful for power projection missions short of a major war with a major power that requires us to fight to control the seas. I wouldn't retire them all.
But I would let their numbers dwindle by slowing down our rate of construction, and retire those in service a bit early in order to mothball them with some life left in case we need to reactivate carriers if we need sea-based air power that won't face significant anti-ship threats.
I'm worried about the Navy's inability to bring new ships into service without major glitches in design and construction quality. This isn't a problem just for Ford. But the Ford problem may have a silver lining.
Will the cost and problems with the Ford class super carrier push the Navy to build more ships and subs instead when the reality of network-centric warfare (or the previous buzz words up to today's "kill web") failed to drive the change?
