Moving the Marines

The Navy isn't going to build the ships the Marines need:

The Navy's 2020 budget has more ship-building funds than the service has seen in decades, but it also cuts money for the vessels that bring Marines to the fight.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller said Wednesday that he'll talk to members of Congress about the lack of funding for the warships and the effect that could have on national security.

Perhaps the Marines could use The AFRICOM Queen for power projection capabilities in lower threat environments to save the big amphibious ships for higher threat regions.

And trying out modified older warships to function as small armed amphibious transports (sorry, membership required to read online) would help.

Nothing Will Change

The Mueller report on possible Trump "collusion" with Russia in the 2016 election is completed. Based on initial reports (with the caveat that things can change from initial reports), there are zero charges on this issue--to add on top of the zero charges already filed on this issue. For those who died lamenting they didn't get a chance to read the report, the timing is a mercy, really.

Ponder the investigation results. With unlimited resources, two years, and the help of 90% of the media cheerleading them on, the investigation could not find evidence of the made-up crime of "collusion."

Indeed, if there was something to the accusation, it would be treasonous for Mueller to have kept it quiet for this long, wouldn't it?

Anyway, this is the report executive summary:



After all this time and money spent on this Democratic-driven sturm und drang investigation we know that in 2016, as I argued at the time, the Russians act like bastard Russians.

And we know Trump acts like crude Trump.

And we know Democrats act like Democrats--which in the last two years consisted of amplifying (to 11!) the Russian actions and adopting the Trump style to the point that they make Trump look good by comparison.

Although it isn't quite fair to say nothing changes. Against all the odds Trump managed to get the Democrats--of all people--to go full General Ripper on the Russians in defense of our precious electoral body fluids.

After two years of Democrats insisting that Mueller had to be allowed to finish his investigation; now that he did exactly that the Democrats will argue it wasn't enough.

And it never will be enough to overcome their embarrassment of nominating the only Democrat capable of losing to Trump in 2016.

No conspiracy is too wild to believe if it allows them to avoid facing the reality that they gave us Trump. Imagine how they'll act when they give us more Trump by turning their fantasy world resistance to 11 for four years.

Hysteria cannot be deflated by a mere report. Not even by a report that the hysterics insisted had to be completed. Is it possible to turn the dial to 12?

UPDATE: I stand corrected. Almost nothing will change much:

Forty-one percent of voters say that there is “no chance at all” that something in Mueller’s report could change how they feel about Trump.

Half, 50 percent, say there is at least a small chance they could change their view. That includes one in five who say there is a “strong” chance (7 percent) or “some” chance (14 percent), and another 29 percent who say there is “only a small chance.”

So there you go.

UPDATE: Oh, and for a lot of conservatives, the so-called Deep State* is pretty inept if it couldn't come up with something after all this time, no?

*"Deep State" as a term simply overstates the basic notion that the executive bureaucracy is a virtual 4th branch of government that has inertia difficult to change; and of course individuals in it can behave criminally or with unacceptable political bias, without it being a vast entity acting as the "real" government.

UPDATE: "The letter." Basically vindication. The people claiming they had clear evidence of collusion--whatever that was supposed to be--should have some explaining to do.

And I'll note again that it took the defeat of Hillary to get Obama angry at a foreign foe.

UPDATE: Mueller "deniers" seem to be big on the left side of the aisle. Could they be called "Dearthers" over their continued belief in collusion despite a dearth of evidence?

Of course, even if this epic faceplant of false accusations gives Trump the White House in 2020, did the damage done by the process (and the media in assuming guilt in its coverage) give Democrats the House in 2018?

Perhaps one way to judge that question is to watch Trump's approval rate over the next 6 months. If it goes up--absent any other factors that would raise his approval, if it is possible--doesn't that tell us that the constant hammering of the Russia fantasy dragged Trump--and so the Republicans--down before the 2018 election?

UPDATE: Now it would be good to know how the flimsy accusations got traction for government investigation.

UPDATE: Yes, there could still be collusion that rises to the level of a crime. "No harm, no foul" should not be the guiding philosophy post-Mueller.

UPDATE: I suspect this will go down in history (but not any time soon given the ideological state of the history profession) with the Salem Witch trials and the child care Satanist sex abuse trials as examples of mass hysteria.

UPDATE: Well at least the conspiracy mongers got this:

Nearly half of all Americans still believe President Donald Trump worked with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after Special Counsel Robert Mueller cleared Trump of that allegation.

Americans did feel slightly more positive about Trump after learning the findings of the 22-month investigation into Russian meddling in the election, the national opinion poll released on Tuesday showed.

So there you go. But it is early.

UPDATE: Hah, Austin Bay thinks like me:

Department of Justice has finally received special prosecutor Robert Mueller's long-awaited report. Media Sturm und Drang sensationalism to the contrary, Mueller found no evidence (zip, zero, nada) that President Donald Trump, his erstwhile campaign staff or his relatives "colluded" with Vladimir Putin's Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election and insidiously deny Hillary Clinton the White House. [emphasis added]

But seriously, this false-charge colonoscopy harmed America:

The security agency corruption and media collusion produced a cold, hard totalitarian horror committed in and against America, the world's paramount democracy.

It is important to know whether that is an accurate summary of what happened to our democracy.

Bay thinks the foreign policy damage was contained. Credit Trump's ability to shrug off the campaign without cracking and hyper-focusing on the domestic problem, I suppose.

Obviously, if Trump had colluded with Russia that would have been an important thing to know. But he didn't. And it never made sense that the Russians would want that or that Trump would agree to it.

Now what about the other side's role in this sturm und drang?

Last Ass Standing

Should we all go change our underwear?

Research organization RAND has run dozens of wargames simulating major conflict scenarios in what it describes as Russia and China’s “backyards.” The wargames suggest that the U.S. forces in those locations would get attacked by a vast array of both conventional and cyber weapons.

RAND Senior Defense Analyst David Ochmanek discussed the simulations at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington D.C. last week. “In our games, where we fight China or Russia … blue gets its a** handed to it, not to put too fine a point on it,” he said, during a panel discussion. Blue denotes U.S. forces in the simulations.

Calm down. If the scenarios are "in Russia's and China's 'backyards'" of course they have the advantage. They are close and we are far. They are much more powerful than their close targets.

Do the math. We get our ass handed to us.

Since 2014 I've noted this reality in the Baltic states; and I've long argued than China could invade and capture Taiwan before we can gather forces if the Chinese are willing to risk the casualties needed to do it. In those scenarios RAND wargamed Russia can't lose in the short run although China could lose. That is consistent with my back-of-the-envelope judgments.

But then we get the chance to fight back. The key is surviving the initial blow without suffering crippling losses and then gathering forces to counter-attack.

And for Taiwan scenario, that means Taiwan is the key actor which has to arm up despite China's vast size advantage. A 100-mile wide anti-tank ditch is nothing to discount. So this is good news:

The Trump administration has approved the sale of dozens of new F-16 jet fighters to Taiwan, the first major warplane sale to the island state in nearly 30 years.

The interagency decision, to be announced in the near future, authorized the sale of up to 66 F-16V jet fighters at an estimated cost of $13 billion, according to administration officials familiar with internal discussions'

This situation is nothing new. It doesn't mean we shouldn't work the problem--of course we should. But don't panic. The issue of who holds whose ass remains in doubt until the end.

Damn the Defects, Full Delivery Ahead

America's warship industry is giving the Navy broken ships. How is that continuing?

From the article below:



With renewed focus on our Navy to counter China in Asia, this is an unacceptable problem:

For the U.S. Navy, buying warships that are defective, unfinished or both has become the norm.

The habit is expensive, dangerous and leaves overworked sailors to deal with faulty ships in need of repair from day one — yet it has escaped sufficient scrutiny in Washington.

Contrary to the Navy’s own policy, and despite spending nearly $16 billion on average in each of the last 30 years on new warships, most U.S. combat vessels are delivered from private shipbuilders with flaws significant enough to impair the vessels’ ability to perform missions or to keep crews safe, according to recent audits conducted for Congress.

It's not just the builders who are at fault:

The technical problems on most Navy warship programs almost always start, experts say, with the Navy launching a new class of vessels before its technologies are mature, and then building ships before their designs are complete.

Although how engine and electrical systems are failing when that hardly seems like groundbreaking technology is beyond me.

I've long been aware of the problem with our shipbuilding industry. The only consolation was that in the post-Cold War era we faced no serious threats to our control of the seas.

Unfortunately, the collapse of the Soviet fleet did not create a new norm for long as China's fleet expanded in numbers and sophistication to replace that threat that a smaller Navy must now face.

The flaws in our new ships is now potentially a matter of life and death.

Maybe our naval expansion should use European or Asian allied shipbuilders to build our new frigates as a shot across the bow to our own shipbuilders.

Great, Now We Have to Worry About a Mine Shaft Gap?

Good Lord, why?

Russia will deploy what's been described as the deadliest nuclear weapon ever aboard mysterious submarines by 2020, Russian state media said, citing a Russian defense-industry source.

The "Poseidon" nuclear-powered torpedo — reputed to carry a 100 megaton nuclear warhead and meant to erupt underwater for maximum effect — will reportedly deploy aboard the Project 09852 sub Belgorod, which is a converted nuclear-powered cruise-missile sub expected to go on combat duty in 2020.

The weapon is huge and would kick up a radioactive cloud that could threaten life on Earth.

Seriously, what is their major malfunction? Other than building Russia's reputation as dangerous nutballs, what is the purpose of this threat when Putin has boasted of his current first-strike capabilities?

Is he truly worried American missile defenses will make his masses of nukes obsolete?

Or does he think his strategic rocket forces are a Potemkin deterrent that does not work?

Have a super sparkly day.

#WhyRussiaCan'tHaveNiceThings

The Dragon's Cyber-Fire

China's technology espionage threat is broad and deep:

This is not merely a Chinese version of What’s good for General Motors is good for the country. Traditional economic espionage involves stealing industrial secrets; the merger of state and corporate interests, as well as the world's growing connectivity, add a new dimension of peril. Last week's intelligence assessment notably reported that for the first time that Beijing can conduct cyberattacks against critical U.S. infrastructure.

Consider that a strategic attack on our homeland could come not from long-range bombers and missiles but from cyber-assaults that take out electricity grids or even cause mass highway accidents by hacking self-driving car networks.

I admit that I have no idea what our capabilities are to fight this threat. By its nature it is kept quiet and so I don't know what we can do right now even as I read speculation about what they can--or could in the future--do.

Part of me says not to worry too much because comparisons of what we can do now and what China could do in a decade necessarily look scary.

But China has already stolen a lot of advanced technology and valuable information (people, the Navy is under "cyber siege"); and the look down the road a decade away is pretty scary.

Sweet Glorious Victory?

What alternate universe is this man living in to say this of Putin's 2014 invasion of Ukraine?

On balance, it is this author’s view that the intervention advanced one vital national interest for Russia, as seen from the Kremlin—preventing the growing proximity of a hostile military alliance—while doing damage to several others, primarily involving development of the economy and constructive relations with both post-Soviet neighbors and key Western countries.

Russia did not prevent a hostile military alliance from approaching their border--Russia created a hostile military alliance on their border.

Where once NATO didn't trod, in the new NATO post-Soviet empire, NATO is now building up military forces and logistics systems, as well as thinking about how to fight Russia over the new NATO members.

Where once America didn't provide conventional fighting power to Georgia or Ukraine, America and our allies now help prepare Georgia and Ukraine to fight conventional heavy enemy invasions.

Where once membership in NATO was questioned from an arc from Finland to Georgia, the value of NATO in light of Russian aggression is gaining traction.

This is sweet glorious victory for Holy Mother Russia? Really? NATO was happy to ignore Russia until 2014 and European neutrals were happy to remain neutral.

Now? Everyone wants the protection of NATO in one form or another.

Putin effed up royally and if the Russian people start wondering why too much, he could be in trouble.

A Justified and Victorious War. Period

Sixteen years ago we destroyed the Saddam regime. Disinformation persists. Bush 43 did not lie to get us into the Iraq War. And we won the war.

Apparently some analyst recently tweeted that he still stands by his judgment that Bush lied to get us into war with Iraq in 2003, leading off with this argument:

In October 2002, Bush said that Saddam Hussein had a "massive stockpile" of biological weapons. But as CIA Director George Tenet noted in early 2004, the CIA had informed policymakers it had "no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons agent or stockpiles at Baghdad's disposal." The "massive stockpile" was just literally made up.

I followed that first link. Bush said:

In 1995, after several years of deceit by the Iraqi regime, the head of Iraq's military industries defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. The inspectors, however, concluded that Iraq had likely produced two to four times that amount. This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and capable of killing millions.

What Tenet said--even if the author accurately relayed the context of that quote--did not dispute what Bush said. Bush said they produced a massive stockpile. That is true.

Tenet said that we had no evidence that Saddam had that stockpile. That was also true.

It is also rather irrelevant because under the 1991 ceasefire terms Saddam had an obligation to prove he destroyed his WMD stocks, equipment, and raw materials. Not only did Saddam not do that he embarked on a new program of biological weapons that we found out about in 1995. And he did not demonstrate what happened to the production.

The ceasefire did not authorize a massive hide and seek game that required America to prove Saddam had WMD. 

So the author, who I've seen in the past occasionally and dismiss as a serious analyst, completely took those two words out of context (literally making it up?). And that was his first so-called evidence. I didn't bother with the rest, but I assume it is safe to say that he was just as rigorous with his research and analysis.

For a thorough examination of the question (and other issues) I suggest Learning Curve's examination at his stand-alone site.

At this point, as I wrote, people who still claim Bush 43 lied us into the Iraq War are themselves lying--or have no excuse for still being completely wrong. I quoted Hans Blix from January 2003 extensively in that post. Do read it all.

Just as frustrating to me is that people think we lost the war. Iraq was enough of a victory that Obama boasted that we had left a sovereign, stable, and self reliant-Iraq, while Biden boasted that Iraq would be one of the administration's great achievements.

And note that Obama--to his credit despite his error of walking away--embarked on Iraq War 2.0 to retrieve the situation in Iraq after the ISIL onslaught in 2014.

Truly, I am amazed at how easily our victory is overlooked.

UPDATE: Thoughts on the Army study on the anniversary of the Iraq War. I don't see how an earlier publication would have helped with dealing with the ISIL caliphate which was a proto-state and not an insurgency.

I also contest the idea that a surge conducted earlier than 2007 would have worked since in the summer of 2006 we had two surges into Baghdad that failed miserably to suppress the escalating sectarian killings that took off after the bombing of the Samarra Golden Dome Mosque early in the year.

People forget that the vital partners of the surge of troops to secure the Baghdad region was both a COIN approach and the Awakening that led Sunni Arabs to switch sides to oppose al Qaeda rather than be a part of that insurgency.

And a rare defense of the war here. Although I dispute the idea that disbanding the Iraqi army was a mistake (or even actually done since it self-disbanded during the war). And I have other quibbles over the scale or impact of other mistakes noted. But yeah, the war was justified and we won it.

UPDATE: Eric has more on the pre-war intelligence (and other issues).

La Reine AFRICOM

The French have a plug-and-play air defense system now:

MBDA, the French producer of the Mistral portable anti-aircraft missiles, recently announced a version of its Mistral air-defense missile suitable for quick installation (or removal) on any ship but in particular unarmed navy support ships that are operating in areas where there is a threat from hostile aircraft, anti-ship missiles or fast attack boats (like Iran, pirates and Islamic terrorists are fond of). Called SPIMM (Self-Protection Integrated Mistral Module) it is a standard 10 foot (3.1 meter) shipping container that contains a standard two missile Mistral launcher turret that is already used on many warships. ... The SPIMM container weighs seven tons and is simply placed on the deck of a ship and bolted or lashed down and attached to the standard ship power supply.

Four extra missiles are included in the system. So there is another weapon for The AFRICOM Queen modularized auxiliary cruiser.

And add in a drone in a box a little bigger than this and you can extend the recon and targeting footprint around an auxiliary cruiser.

I'm Game, Kill Them All

I have no problem adding white supremacists to our target list of terrorists.

If they have international reach and organization intent on killing Americans at home, and if we or our allies can't suppress them with law enforcement, bombs away, I say. Drone strike their hate-filled asses. Remember, much of the war on terror in the West is a law enforcement issue. We don't bomb New Zealand or Germany--or even Saudi Arabia-- because we count on them to police their own territory. So it isn't as if we'd have a lot of target regions for bombing. But if we do, go for it.

But I have difficulty believing our Left really thinks white supremacists are a significant terror threat. If they did think that they would, as they've done since September 11, 2001 when al Qaeda attacked us at home, ask "why do they hate us?" as if we did something to deserve the hate and death.

If the Left truly thought white supremacists were a threat they'd try to duck fighting them by asserting they are not "animals" because they have a "spark of divinity" in them.

But the Left won't sign off on a bombs away strategy to kill white supremacists over there so they don't attack over here (including in New Zealand). Heck, they probably wouldn't even approve of putting them in Guantanamo Bay as I suggested in the last weekend data dump. Our Left will just want more government bureaucrats to clamp down on American freedoms and of course government spending programs of various sorts.

In the end, the war on white supremacists is likely just one more of those "more urgent" threats that has to be taken care of first at the expense of the current war on Islamist terror or the problem of potential North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons.

And if we do go to war against white supremacist terrorists, will our Left do as good a job as so many people who support fighting the war on Islamist terror of separating the vile fiends who kill for their version of Islam from the vast majority of Moslems who are not killers and not supporters of the killers? We'll see if the Left can distinguish between the killers and the vast majority of white people who are neither killers nor supporters of killers.

How Burden-Sharing Becomes Burden Avoiding?

Let's see. Germany is "not satisfied with readiness of submarines, some aircraft" yet wants to invest money in a much larger type of vessel that carries aircraft:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has endorsed the idea of a joint European aircraft carrier.

The only way this German proposal is understandable is if France is desperate for help to replace their aging and somewhat troubled aircraft carrier, France asked Germany for help, and Germany--unwilling to step up to a leadership role in Europe--is desperate to dump the financial burden on the entire European Union instead.

Really, the idea is so dumb that another explanation doesn't come to mind.

Regardless, just don't let the Germans build the carrier.

UPDATE: Burden avoiding:

President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused the biggest EU economy of freeloading on US military might with defence spending far below the NATO member target of two percent of GDP.

Germany's finance ministry had Monday presented its budget planning for coming years, which signalled a drop.

It said defence spending would first rise to 1.37 percent of gross domestic product in 2020 but then likely fall back to 1.25 percent by 2023.

That's quite shocking. Germany has a military?

The Germans promised Obama in 2014 they'd increase defense spending to the NATO goal by 2024.

UPDATE: Seriously, what the Hell is wrong with the Germans?

The German government is poised to renege on its pledge to raise military spending, the latest gesture of defiance by Chancellor Angela Merkel toward President Donald Trump.

If confirmed at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the move would mark a fresh step in the gradual estrangement between the U.S. and its erstwhile loyal European ally and comes after Mr. Trump’s repeated attacks of North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders for not meeting a 2% military-spending target. ...

Berlin currently spends about €43 billion ($49 billion) or over 1.2% of GDP on defense. Under the new budget plan, unveiled by the finance ministry Monday, the spending would rise to 1.37% of GDP next year, but then decrease again to 1.33% in 2019, 1.29% in 2022 and 1.25% in 2023.

Estrangement from America? What about estrangement from all of their NATO allies who rely on Germany to carry their weight in defense of the continent.

What about estrangement with the EU which has no hope of a European-only defense without Germany.

Emit and Die

Electronic warfare is a threat to American forces in conventional combat.

Not only do enemy capabilities threaten our units with indirect fire, as Russian military action in Ukraine demonstrates, they can cripple our own operations:

“The denial of accurate position, navigation and timing can cause U.S. units to remediate their attack effects, cause fratricide or other accidents and create command and control confusion during operations,” she said. “The enemy recognizes that and they look at our ability to target our movement and our coordination. This could drastically be reduced by the enemy due to inaccurate [position, navigation and timing] information.

In the post-Cold War world such threats were nuisances that weren't decisive in deciding the outcomes of battles or wars. That will change if we don't master that threat.

Indeed, I'm not terribly confident at all that we would have mastered the threat if the Cold War had gone hot against the Soviet Union.

He's Mister Short-Term Memory!*

Well this is just stupid:

Europe—the continent that over the last 70 years has stood like no other for overcoming war and violence with the help of law and diplomacy—finds itself in 2019 a staging ground once more for the competition of the great powers.

The article is about how Germany is reluctant to use its power in Europe.

But how can I take it seriously when it says 1), that law and diplomacy kept the peace since 1945 when it was really American power through NATO that did the trick; and 2), that Europe is "once more" in 2019 a staging ground for great power competition? Again, did the author miss the whole Cold War superpower competition? Ring a bell?

The Berlin Airlift? The Fulda Gap? Theater nuclear weapons? East Germany?

Anything at all coming back to you guys?

Sometimes this is how I feel.



Anyway, I couldn't take the article seriously and stopped right there. I'm sure I missed some important points but good Lord, come on, I can only take so much stupid.

*Am I wrong?

Weekend Data Dump

The Iranians are getting rather ticked off at Pakistan for hosting and tolerating terrorists who target Iran. India, Afghanistan, and America say welcome to the club, pal. We'll see if Iran's complaints result in anything other than pushing Pakistan closer to Saudi Arabia.

Sudan continues to be a Third World Hell Hole while South Sudan seems to have advanced to Heck Hole status--for now.

Time heals all wounds (to our sense of propriety).

If you think taxes on the "rich" will pay for a massive expansion of government spending, you might want to check the definitions section for what "rich" means. You will be included in it. Always check the definitions section, I advise.

More on the eDystopian State that China is building. On the bright side, when the revolution comes the victorious rebels will know who to execute based on their high social credit score. So they've got that going for them. Which is nice. Unless corruption undermines the accuracy of the score, of course. Which could also harm the party-state if it merely thinks it has the people securely thought-controlled when they do not.

Oh please, Netanyahu is not the cause of Democratic creeping embrace of anti-semitism. If some leftist was in charge of Israel somebody would just say he was a "pretty face" obscuring Israel's crimes.

Uh oh. That ruling that says Britain has to give up the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius which could lose America our rather important Diego Garcia base that enables us to operate in the Indian Ocean region. Not that the history of how that happened makes America or Britain look good. And simply hanging on to the island base--even though the ruling is non-binding--would be used by China to justify their actions in the South China Sea despite a binding ruling against them in a dispute with the Philippines. Would Mauritius allow America to keep the base? I'm sure discussions are going on now. Even if Britain declines to obey the ruling, America should probably have some completely unrelated payment to Mauritius (which is quietly completely related and intended to continue should Mauritius gain formal control of Diego Garcia). There is precedent for that. Or would India provide another base option? And if we leave, could China move in and get rights to a base on Diego Garcia? That would be bad. On a related note, the CNN map of "bases" that America has around the world is misleading if you think of it as a major post with major combat units, rather than a mix of those and small contingents of American troops for some purpose. For example, I have no idea why the map shows we have a base in China-owned Hong Kong. Perhaps we have a small staff of Navy personnel to handle the logistics of port visits by our ships. Oh, and being CNN, it has to use the term "manspreading" in the article. Seriously? They still claim to know the difference between apples and bananas?

Question: If climate science is "settled" with a consensus, why does the federal government still allocate money to study climate change? Aren't we bouncing the warming rubble at this point with more study?

Ugh, another 737 dropped from the sky, in Ethiopia this time. Is there a problem to be fixed or just random clumping of rare events?

I'm glad that is cleared up: " [China's facilities for Moslems aren't concentration camps.] They are the same as boarding schools,' [Xinjiang's governor] said, adding that the personal freedoms of the 'students' were guaranteed." Guaranteed to be zero.

I suspect the EUstapo won. I can only hope a no-deal Brexit is the result rather than a victory of Remain over the vote of the people that the terms of the vote said would be final. The Russians must be stunned at how effectively the EU is managing to hold on to their British province despite the vote of the people 2-1/2 years ago to leave the EU given that Russian tanks and secret police couldn't hold their empire together in the 2-1/2 years after the Berlin Wall was cracked open. With a win like this over a major nuclear-armed power, how much longer will the EU proto-imperial state have that prefix? I really hope that my view that the Brexit side should take the deal Prime Minister May offered and work on amending it over time after getting out of the EU because, as I've long worried, turning down a flawed deal just gives the Remain side a chance to reverse the vote is a complete misreading of the British political scene. But killing the good--or even the adequate--in pursuit of the perfect is not a new thing in human thinking.

"Elderly Americans Are Dying Without Getting to Read Mueller's Report - And They're Not Happy About It" Sure, you are thinking it is a funny Onion or Babylon Bee article. But no, it is Newsweek. My how the mighty have fallen.

The king is dead. Long live the king? I suspect this is a tactical victory for the people in a losing war. It would be nice to be wrong. Their young people want more than pretend change. Good luck with that.

The less committed jihadis in the last pocket of ISIL in Syria are surrendering. I'm a bit shocked that there were any less committed jihadis left there. But it is a good sign when people on a mission from God don't fight to the death.

The command and control ship of 7th Fleet sailed through the China-claimed South China Sea and to make it a two-fer, docked in Manila in a symbol of support for the Philippines which is under threat from Chinese claims. I'd be happier if a ship like that was escorted and overwatched as it sailed because one day China may escalate their response.

I know, I know, this time it's different. Honestly, I grow weary of the hysterical cries of doom. I yawn about global warming not because I don't care about the future but because I'm fairly confident we'll be just fine without hysterical responses that cost us ungodly sums of money. Tip to Instapundit.

I don't understand why Jews vote for Democrats so heavily. But I don't understand why African Americans vote heavily for Democrats despite the party's position on increasing immigration that competes with African-American job seekers; and I don't understand why feminists support Democrats despite Democratic tendency to excuse Islamist ideology that is highly misogynist, to say the least. I realize there are other policies that clearly take precedence. But I don't want to hear another damn word about how working class whites vote "against their true interests" by voting Republican. Of course, I deny that supporting a party that just promises to give you stuff is really in one's interest. Tip to the PJ Media Live Blog.

Israel says it might take direct action to stop Iran's banned oil exports. Is this an Israeli warning for Iran to stay away if Israel hammers Hezbollah?

It's funny that Hollywood prides itself for its resistance to the Trumptatorship given that in their world dissent is not the highest form of artistry. Tip to Instapundit. But of course, Hollywood's predatory nature that victimized women didn't stop Hollywood from posing as defenders of women.

Interesting. I don't consider myself as "pro-Trump" as much as I consider myself relieved that a Trump I did not trust in 2016 has been willing to push conservative policies. I also consider myself pro-Trump supporters (I grew up in Deplorableville and recognize that their concerns have been discounted for a long time) and resent the demonization of them by the Left. And I resent calling any people who oppose a Trump policy or comment as "never Trumpers." And I really don't like the term RINO as if being 80% with you is a crime as bad as being 80% against you. I am never invested so much either for or against an individual person. So I judge Trump on policies and recognize that if our media concealed his flaws the way they hid those of past presidents rather than amplify Trump's flaws, we'd have nothing to discuss about "breaking presidential norms." If that new magazine discussed by Hanson is really just a place for Republicans to oppose Trump, I see no reason to read it despite having positive views from past writings of a number of people associated with it. There's plenty of that genre already. We'll see if those writers are disappointing. But as I said, I don't invest much in individuals.

Hamas and related issues. The idea that it is an Israeli war crime because Israel has lost 2 soldiers while Palestinians have lost over 250 in a year of "protests" that look an awful lot like border assaults with human shields is ludicrous. The war crime charge rests on misapplying the concept of "proportionality" in lawful battle by mistakenly arguing it means balance in death tolls instead of balancing means with ends. My common hyperbolic example is that you don't drop a nuke on an apartment building to get rid of a sniper. Obviously the casualty disparity is not disproportionate given that Hamas continues to assault the Israeli border. If Hamas doesn't feel they are suffering too many deaths why should the world? And if Hamas suddenly gets much better at killing Israelis, is everything all okey dokey?

These people--and those as yet uncharged--should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Actual collusion and obstruction of justice.

I really do keep in mind that it is possible (and necessary) to try to respect people even if I think their ideas are idiotic. I hope that comes through. I really don't think (99% of) people I disagree with here are stupid and/or evil. Although our jihadi enemies are clearly evil and I swear to God the Russian leadership is sand-pounding stupid.

Please remember that it is a myth that President Trump said that both sides--including white nationalists or Nazis as one of the sides--in the 2017 Charlottesville confrontation had "very fine people." He clearly referred to the Confederate statue issue (keep them for history/heritage or tear them down for symbolic justice) and not the confrontation between Antifa and Neo-Nazis. He clearly separated the statue people from the hard core violent people, explicitly condemning the racists. Listen to it. All of it. What is unclear? Or do you really believe he thought people who hate Jewish members of his family are very fine people? And do you really believe he thought some of the Antifa scum on the other side were very fine people, too? Jussie Smollett is surely stunned his hate hoax didn't work out as well.

Sometimes it seems as if our problems with Russia stem from their rapid collapse and defeat in the 1989-1991 period between the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It seems like the Russians resented that they were no longer feared and the center of attention. A slow decline might have gotten them used to their loss of centrality, but the big bang collapse did not allow that transition. On the other hand, a slow decline might have led Russia to enter the Thucydides Trap and attempt to roll the dice with a war against NATO while they still had a chance of advancing their tanks to the Rhine River.

Perhaps the senator thought the kids were fine if they were 1/1024th qualified? Just as important, how good are those schools that those unqualified students got into on fake credentials if such students graduate? It's almost like Hollywood knows that all you really need from college is the credential. In their world, anyway. If the students choose a bullshit major--which have long existed--that would be an explanation all by itself. And it doesn't matter if they can't use the bullshit degree for a job--they'll be fine with their family connections. It really is depressing for the issue of equality of opportunity. I grew up in Detroit and getting good scores on the SAT and ACT--and I didn't even know that test preparation courses existed--were my ticket to a good school (the University of Michigan) that bypassed social status and connections (and ability to bribe and cheat). It isn't enough for the well off that they can afford to give their children opportunities that cost scads of money which can be put on a college application to show how "well rounded" the student is. What chance does a bright young person from a place like Detroit have these days on such a tilted playing field even without the bribery? Tips to Instapundit.

It is depressing that the national debt continues to climb with nobody giving a damn.

The Russians tried to stop the production of the F-35 with propaganda claiming it didn't work. Now we know it works. Is a protest group focusing on how the plane is nuclear-capable a replacement effort?

Who says America doesn't think ahead? Fifty-year-old moon rock samples saved until scientific methods advanced will be opened for researchers. On the other hand, it is depressing that NASA assumed that over the course of 50 years we wouldn't get any more moon rocks. Of course, they were right.

Assad warns that the war is not over. He has a point. There are still rebels and terrorists in Syria. The Kurds in the northeast are outside of the state, backed by American and other foreign forces. Turkey and Iran occupy portions of Syria. And Israel attacks Iranian assets at will. The only people Assad welcomes are the Russians who gained bases during the war. But more important, after surviving by telling his backers that the choice was Assad or death at the hands of his enemies, Assad has to be careful about peace. At peace, his backers may relax as the threat dries up and start to react to the brutal casualties and hardships they endured to keep Assad in power. So peace could be just as dangerous to Assad.

An American base in Poland gets closer. We should not base large amounts of ground troops in Poland. It would be enough to scare the paranoid Russians but not be enough to stop the Russians.  What I would like to see is a base that is protected against air, missile, and ground attack by special forces or airborne forces, designed to receive reinforcements coming in by air and land. It would have a rotating heavy brigade as we send now; and it would have prepositioned unit sets modelded on the Cold War era REFORGER--REFORPOL, as I called it.

It remains unclear if India actually struck a terrorist camp in Pakistan after a Pakistani terror attack inside India or if India conducted retaliation theater by hitting an empty field somewhere.

Defeating ISIL in the long campaign to liberate Mosul by early 2017 is not the end of the war in Iraq. We've helped liberate Mosul before and if we don't help/prod Iraq in the relative peace we will need to help liberate Mosul from jihadis again. Luckily, we do plan to stay in Iraq to keep the pressure on ISIL, which, yes, has the side benefit of keeping an eye on and blocking Iranian influence in Iraq.

I would love to have unmanned Navy ships take over the forward presence role that is now conducted by crewed ships. We need forward presence in peacetime but if an enemy decides on war our forward ships dangled in front of them and operating on a non-wartime footing will be tempting targets for our enemy. And their presence could in fact prompt an enemy to strike in the hope of taking out a significant portion of our naval combat power to allow the enemy to achieve their military goals in that temporary vacuum of our power. The Japanese went all the way to Pearl Harbor to do that so our forward ships shouldn't be thought of as immune to similar attacks.

Oh? (Massive eye-roll in progress)

A Navy amphibious warfare ship is essentially quarantined at sea in the Middle East because of parotitis? This is probably exactly as described but I do wonder if there is another reason to keep a ship at sea isolated. As I've said many times, you basically don't hide what you are doing by preventing foes from seeing what you are doing, but by giving them a harmless reason why they see what they see. No idea what that could be, but my suspicious mind wonders if the ship picked up something interesting at its last port call in Romania. Again, it is almost surely as described.

I've long noted that as communism falters as a justification for Chinese Communist Party rule--and as economic growth slows, undermining that pillar of legitimacy--that the Chinese rulers seem to be relying more on nationalism to justify the party's monopoly of power. I've worried that the party is riding a tiger it can't control if the people demand China take military action in some crisis. Could the party ignore a widespread call for war by an increasingly nationalist public and remain in power? Losing a war to retain power rather than risking a nationalist rebellion should not be ruled out as the best option from the CCP's point of view. That is why I never take too much comfort from analysts who say China would lose a war with America. That might not be relevant to their decision. I bring this up because I wonder if we have a strange interest in China perfecting their dystopian police state surveillance and social credit rating system if it can blunt a call for war rising from China's people when China's rulers don't want to go to war?

A pack--not a flock. It's almost as if ... they're organized.

Bastard! I hope New Zealand has the death penalty. My God, 49 50 murdered. I have warned that if Westerners didn't think their government was doing enough to fight Islamist terrorism that ordinary (if criminally twisted) people would, vigilante-style, fight the war themselves (with just two examples searching the term "vigilante") no matter how misguided and evil that effort could be. And of course killing innocents identified as "enemies" relies on those close by for the easiest targets. My warning (if this is a reflection of that issue, of course, since it could be pure hate--although taking too much time to win the war on Islamic terror provides time and opportunity for hate to thrive) in no way is an excuse for the murderous monster who killed innocents, if that isn't obvious. I want the war on terror to be one of Westerners and most Moslems versus Islamists jihadis and not a civilizational war between a radicalized West and a radicalized Islam. Oh, and if New Zealand doesn't have the death penalty, we should offer to house him at our Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

While the French updated their carrier, French carrier aircraft trained on board an American carrier to maintain proficiency. Cool. French political leadership may ... frustrate me; but the French do have some good units across the board in capabilities. So when leadership chooses to be an ally, their military can step up.

The Army's "big six" priorities of artillery, armored vehicles, aircraft, a battlefield intetnet, air defense, and infantry.

After decades of hoping that China will be a growing partner, the West led by America is pushing back against China's trade policies, espionage, propaganda, territorial claims, and military build up. And China is vulnerable economically. Just what is "learn to code" in Chinese?

And as the above link notes, China has a 99-year lease on a port in Sri Lanka that China grabbed when Sri Lanka couldn't repay the loan burden China put on them (with Sri Lanka's idiotic cooperation, of course). Which is ironic when you consider how China claimed they endured a century of humiliation at the hands of the West which grabbed ports (like Hong Kong with a 99-year British lease on most of Hong Kong).

Oh good grief, for those trying to blame the Christchurch massacre on Trump the killer in New Zealand hates capitalism and America; and is an environmental extremist who admires communist-run China. God almighty does everything have to be about Trump? The killer was Australian so why isn't Australia getting the blame? I have no idea if that site is accurate (or what that site is), but if it accurately conveys the murderer's sick world view it is not what the Trump-obsessed think it is. Even if the killer (and any accomplices) is a panty-throwing Trump fanboy, that no more makes Trump guilty than Islam is guilty because murderous jihadi scum claim to murder on the name of Islam for the benefit of all Moslems. White nationalists should obviously be resisted and defeated. Full stop. The baseless accusations against Americans from those who make excuses for jihadi hatred and murder are hard to take given their record.

Socialism still has so many fans in the West because unlike after World War II when Nazism was exposed and literally tried for its crimes, after the Cold War there was no such reckoning for communism (which was in theory the end result of socialism). Like I've said, we weren't too hard on Russia after the Cold War, we were too easy on them. But with all those ex-Soviet nukes we had no choice. We defeated the dangerous and evil Union of Soviet Socialist Republics despite their nukes; while today we bizarrely have to battle our own people who think socialism means you care. Socialism is quite simply evil and power hungry, and you should have no doubt of that.

Israel pounded Hamas targets after rockets were fired at Tel Aviv. Tit-for-tat is a loser's game.

4,500 years ago, invaders from "people from the steppes near the Black and Caspian seas" basically wiped out the local stock in the Iberian peninsula as DNA analysis shows. The fate of native populations when Europeans arrived in the Americas at the end of the 15th century was less dramatic for the target population than past collisions of people. This is not to defend European impact, except to say that it was once a very normal pattern. Historically speaking they should not be judged by our standards. We would not and should not do that now. But spare a little perspective before tearing down Christopher Columbus statues.

Representative AOC is complaining about working all the time. Well, it is mid-March. So she is right on schedule.

Strategypage looks at the F-15X and how it fills gaps. It seemed obvious to me that the proven design could still be useful. And that's not even counting the foreign sales angle.

The production of our Arleigh Burke destroyers was extended and now extended again before it is anticipated that a replacement ship will go into production. We'll see if the technology designed for the cancelled Zumwalt will allow the new SOZ ship to be affordable. Although that would better be DOZ, I suppose.

U.S-Brazilian military ties are growing. Does this reflect discussions about what Brazil can do with their military? Like if Venezuela finally goes full belly up in the fish bowl? We'll see whether Brazil helps if Guaido gets in trouble in his "next phase" tour of Venezuela to rally support against Maduro's criminal regime.

Well that's generally good news--but for Germany, naturally. And what's with Canada? But for accuracy's sake since the NATO defense spending agreement was made in 2014 it is technically an Obama demand. Not that you heard anything on the paper pledge until Trump.

I'm only slowly reading the Army study of the Iraq War (volumes one and two). One clear failure was that in the aftermath of the war the Army started out without a real overall plan, with each division going its own way in devising a strategy. Combined with poorly drawn divisional boundaries, that hampered our early efforts. I still don't think having a good strategy right off the bat would have prevented the insurgencies given Sunni Arab resentment at losing power-and being stunned by their rapid defeat wouldn't last forever--and Iran's long-standing efforts to build influence in Iraq. But it would have started us off better to face the new threat.

Yeah, no officer wants that kind of attention.

Estonia warns of Russian civilian ships being used for intelligence purposes. Yeah, like interfering in our domestic politics this is nothing new. When I was a child I built a model of a Soviet "fishing trawler" used for intelligence gathering.

I see the Red Woke Guards are hard at work on their cultural revolution. I don't consider Chelsea Clinton to be the brightest star in the firmament of intelligence, but she does not deserve this type of treatment. For years I've been saying that leftists really do assume all Moslems are Islamist terrorists because they continually treat any desire to defeat Islamist terrorists--who kill more Moslems than they kill Westerners--as "Islamophobic" hate. Now the revolution starts eating its own. Or maybe after years of targeting people who don't give a damn about their angry false tirades they decided to go after people who do care. Clinton is sorry her accusers feel that way? I'm sorry those people are so effing ignorant. Tip to Instapundit.

The six reasons buildings collapse so often in Africa are really just one reason: corruption that allows too weak foundations, materials that aren't strong enough, shoddy workmanship, exceeding weight capacity, failure to inspect, and people remaining in condemned building.

Singapore will buy the F-35. Probably.Which provides good air defense if we use the city-state as a  base at the southwestern outlet to the South China Sea. Although if the salty sea air is a problem perhaps the carrier F-35C rather than the F-35A land version should be chosen.

Protests that morph into riots continue in France.

There was a false reporting and police reaction to an active shooter on the University of Michigan campus Saturday evening. My first thought was, "where is my daughter?" But my second thought was that I bet it was a hoax. As it turns out this happened right after a campus rally about the Christchurch massacre. So people were primed to think about and fear a shooter. Then there may have been some balloons popped that people assumed were gunshots. After that it snowballed. There was a report of a shooter walking down State Street. Which obviously didn't happen. So it lies somewhere between a hoax and a panic. I lean to the latter.

I see on the news that ANSWER is standing with thug ruler Maduro. ANSWER is a communist group in America that loves to organize protests in defense of threatened thug rulers around the world. The yellow and black signs are a hallmark of the group, for whatever reason.

What's with all those cultural appropriators who aren't even Irish like I am clogging up the pubs today? Who gave them permission to wear green? Should I be micro- or macro-offended? 

Limited Means and Unlimited Vulnerability

I think Russia has a strategy of limited means rather than one of limited actions. Which is a problem when you have an unlimited land border.

Yeah, good luck with that:

Indeed, the earliest reports on Gerasimov’s speech also noted his assertion of a new Russian strategy of “limited actions,” which, drawing upon lessons from Moscow’s intervention in Syria, seeks to defend and promote “national interests” beyond Russian territory. Gerasimov explained that the foundation for implementing this strategy involves the “creation of a self-sufficient grouping of troops (forces) based on force elements of one of the branches of the Russian Armed Forces possessing high mobility and the capability to make the greatest contribution to executing assigned missions. In Syria, that role was set aside for elements of the Aerospace Forces [Vozdushno-Kosmicheskiye Sily—VKS]. Winning and holding information superiority, preemptive readiness of command-and-control and comprehensive support systems, and covert deployment of the necessary grouping are the most important conditions for implementing this strategy” (Interfax, March 2).

So Russia is developing a strategy of limited actions that codifies their recent history? Meh. They can dress it up all they like but it is still a reflection of weakness. Russia would roll in with mass armor and carpet bombing if they thought they could do that and wrap up a crisis in a month.

People (and I'll move beyond the shock that the EU is continuing to sanction Russia over their invasion of Ukraine), Russia still denies the obvious:

"The EU's claim that Russia 'broke international law' and used unjustified force does not correspond with reality at all," the [Russian foreign] ministry said.

"The excuse for placing our fellow countrymen on the European Union's illegitimate sanctions lists amazes with its hypocrisy and cynicism," it added, saying the individuals targeted were simply doing their jobs.

Would a powerful Russia bother denying that they invaded a country and took its territory?

And I thought "simply doing their jobs just following orders" was established as not being a defense to committing crimes.

The fact that they don't bulldoze an enemy and then claim a "frozen conflict" (aka "bleeding ulcer" of constant casualties, expense, and foreign hostility in reaction) is exactly what they intend is farcical.

We call it "hybrid warfare," propping up Russian conventional weakness as a novel scary doctrine.

Also, claiming America has a strategy of inspiring a "color revolution" in Russia that would be supported by American precision bombing sounds like Russia just wants a convenient excuse to violently suppress any signs of dissent from their own people who the Kremlin bosses clearly fear more than America and NATO.

And God help us if the Russians truly believe that protests in Russia must be the work of America given that the Russians seem to feel that they have the right to strike at the heart of the real threat.

Unless, of course, I'm wrong and this is just Russian disinformation. What if the Russians really see this new strategy to counter supposed foreign subversion linked to precision weapons as applying to China which poses a threat to the territorial integrity of Russia in their Far East. A Chinese threat only suspended by the 20-year treaty they signed in 2001. Russia is running out of time to be able to defend their territory in the Far East rather than appease play second fiddle to China while the power differential favors China.

In that light, Russian investment in long-range air and missile precision strike capability isn't intended to reach America but is intended to reach Russia's own Far East and neighboring China from European Russia. The fifth column might not be Russian protesters on the streets of Moscow but ethnic Chinese illegally settling in Russian territory in the Far East (and maybe local Russians who'd rather go with China than distant Moscow which siphons off their natural resources) where their empire is truly at risk.

Russia's exercises for their airborne forces could be seen in this light, too.

Also, a peace treaty with Japan might signal that Russia is getting serious about having a conventional capability to deter China.

A "limited actions" strategy signals that the correlation of forces isn't going Moscow's way any time soon, doesn't it?

And China Keeps Building More "Cars"

China compares its policy of absorbing Taiwan to a car hitting a pedestrian:

Attempts to block Beijing's goal of bringing Taiwan under its control are like "stretching out an arm to block a car," China said in its latest rhetorical broadside against the self-governing island republic's independence-minded president.

When they're right, they're right. Bringing Taiwan under China's control truly would kill or cripple Taiwan.

But I'm not sure that Peking thought through the implications of their simile.

Russia Will Agree to Peace With Japan When it is Strong Enough to Contain China

Russia needs a peace treaty with Japan to be able to pivot against China to protect Russia's imperial conquest of Chinese territory from a rising China out to reverse a "century of humiliation" at the hands of Europeans. But not if it reveals Russia's intention to contain China before it is ready. Is Russia strong enough to do that?

This issue keeps bouncing around:

Little has been made public about the details of the [March 5 Russian-Japanese peace treaty] discussions, yet it is widely reported in the Japanese media that Abe is aiming to conclude an outline agreement when Putin visits Japan for the Group of 20 summit in June. What would such a peace agreement include and can it be delivered?

The first priority for the Japanese side is that the document addresses the countries’ dispute over the Northern Territories, which are known in Russia as the Southern Kurils. It is these disputed islands that have prevented the conclusion of a peace treaty due to Japan’s refusal to sign an agreement until the status of the territory is resolved.

It is possible that Abe will agree to something that leaves territory in Russian hands just to be known as the leader who ended the state of war with Russia that has existed since 1945. Would that be so bad for Japan if it could flip Russia to oppose China? That sounds like a good deal to me.

Russia would really like to set the precedent that it can keep land it conquered. Of course, Russia already admitted that they should give back land to China in the Far East. A counter-precedent with Japan would be helpful, no? Because I have no doubt China will reassert their claims to Russia's Far Eastern territory taken from China in the 19th century.

And if Japan and Russia agree to a treaty, then Russia's pivot to the Far East could openly deal with China rather than pretend it is focused on Japan. Is Russia's conventional force level in the Far East, ostensibly aimed at Japan (and America indirectly), strong enough if focused on China to deter China?

Of course, Russia might be too weak to abandon the fiction that they are really worried about Japan. If that is true, I'd say a peace treaty won't be part of Abe's legacy. And so far, Russia seems to agree:

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that talks with Japan aimed at clinching a World War Two peace treaty between the two countries and ending a territorial dispute over a chain of islands in the Pacific could go on for years and were complex.

Perhaps the Russians just want to keep the talks warm until they judge the correlation of forces between China and Russia doesn't suck nearly as much as it has since 1991.

The Plot Thickens

Not only is Russia's so-called "hybrid warfare" as exemplified by the Crimea seizure not some revolutionary doctrine, their "frozen war" in Ukraine's Donbas is not a brilliant strategy because it just drove Ukrainians away from Russia and toward Western Europe:

And by carving out of Ukraine the regions most skeptical of a Western trajectory for the country, Russia has eliminated a natural, internal brake on Ukraine’s drive to integrate with Europe. Ukraine has turned toward the West before, most recently with the Orange Revolution in 2005. But by 2010, Ukrainians were fed up with the infighting and lack of progress of their pro-Western government, and voted in the Russia-friendly Vladimir Yanukovich. Russia’s seizure of Crimea and fomenting of separatism in the Donbas have eliminated the potential for another such voluntary turn to the East by removing the most Russia-friendly voters from the Ukrainian electorate and catalyzing the formation of a strongly anti-Russian national identity in the rest of Ukraine.

And the collateral damage from Russia's Ukraine adventure spread out from there, as the article describes.

Consider what the Russians reversed with their Ukraine adventure:

Russia’s quest for perfect security has left it relatively less secure in 2019 than it was even in the 1990s, when – according to Putin’s rhetoric – it was “on its knees” and at the mercy of the West. But in the 1990s the West had no interest in confronting Russia. Instead, Western states alternated between ignoring and assisting it. Europe was struggling to deal with the Balkan Wars and attempting to engage Russia as a partner in the effort. The U.S. was demobilizing from the Cold War and focused on spending the “peace dividend” it expected to reap – the U.S. Army reduced its presence in Europe from 300,000 to some 30,000 and the U.S. defense budget declined from $426 billion in 1988 to $296 billion in 1998.

Putin can only hope that his own people judge his results in the same highly skewed way Westerners judge American and Russian success or failure.

Seriously, when Russians figure out just how badly Putin has effed things up, their natural paranoia might make them wonder just who Putin works for.

My Three Whys

The Russians under Putin are pre-provoked. Stop making excuses for them.

Interesting news in the world of big power politics:

The U.S. leaned on German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month to conduct a naval maneuver in Russia’s backyard aimed at provoking President Vladimir Putin, according to three people familiar with the talks.

Why would it be a provocation for Germany to sail a ship in waters that are not recognized by international law and a bilateral Ukrainian-Russian agreement as Russian territorial waters?

The Russian territorial claim is only possible for Russia to make because they invaded Ukraine, illegally annexed Crimea, and occupied portions of the Donbas on the Sea of Azov. It provokes Russia to deny the legitimacy of that?

But more importantly--contrary to all evidence--why would America believe Germany would be willing to defy Russian aggression with a symbol of opposition?

And indeed, why would America believe Germany could even successfully sail a warship to the Black Sea?

Shouldn't all the blame in this situation be on Russia? With a side issue of whatever happened to our once-solid NATO ally Germany?

#WhyRussiaCan'tHaveNiceThings

When the Ford Was Still a Blueprint

Is the Pentagon dethroning the carrier as the queen of the fleet?

The Pentagon reportedly wants to cancel the mid-life refueling for the aircraft carrier USS Truman, an unexpected move that would save $1.5 billion in fiscal years 2021-23, but only $16.9 million in 2020. More than a desire for cost-savings seems to be at work here.

The decision to prematurely retire Truman likely represents the first skirmish in an internal Pentagon clash concerning the future warfighting relevance of aircraft carriers. The debate pits those who believe aircraft carriers are obsolete against those who are confident that new tactics, weapons, and changes to the carrier air wing can keep the aircraft carrier the critical component of the joint force for the foreseeable future.

I won't bother to go over the arguments made in defense of the carrier. Suffice it to say that the problem of arguing the merits of power projection apples versus sea control oranges is continued to the detriment of a real seapower debate.

What I will do is post an entry I submitted to the United States Naval Institute back in 2000 when the Ford class was but a gleam in the Navy's eye. It was accepted for publication but never published. Based on my experience since then I clearly made a rookie mistake of not prodding them until they published it. I recently got my rights to it back from USNI and was thinking about modernizing it. But I doubt I will get around to it any time soon.

So here it is (with end notes removed), my two-decade-year old support for the desire to downgrade the big deck carrier as the queen of the fleet. If you have followed this blog, you will no doubt recognize the arguments made in pieces over the years (here's a post with a selection of post links on the subject).

/BEGIN MANUSCRIPT/
THE DAWN OF THE NETWORK AND THE TWILIGHT OF THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER

Introduction
The end of the Cold War presents the United States with the opportunity and obligation to re-evaluate both strategy and forces. The debate over what the post-Cold War world means for American security and foreign policy has been vigorous. So too has the debate over the potential of the developing Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Adopting and implementing the naval application of the RMA, network-centric warfare (NCW), is a "fundamental shift from what we call platform-centric warfare[.]" Both the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and National Defense Panel (NDP) final report of 1997 endorsed NCW as the proper path for the Navy. Victory in warfare dominated by networks will in large measure depend on making strategic choices that fit with the new and changing system. After over forty years of optimizing our naval forces to fight the Soviets in a global war, taking a fresh look at the Navy is a daunting task.

The question of whether large aircraft carriers deserve to be the center of our future naval strategy is a fundamental question that has not been adequately explored. Network-centric warfare signals the beginning of the end for the United States Navy's large aircraft carriers. They will lose their value as an instrument of forward presence and become valuable targets that, if struck, will encourage an enemy at the outset of war by apparently demonstrating that American technological prowess can be nullified and beaten. In the long run, large aircraft carriers will add little to most offensive missions and will absorb scarce resources and assets simply evading attack rather than striking the enemy and contributing to victory.

Network-Centric Warfare
Under the conditions of today’s platform-centric warfare, dispersal weakens a force and makes it slow to respond and mount a concentrated attack. In order to concentrate effect in an attack with platforms, forces need to be collocated or, if dispersed, near the enemy (or collocated with or near the friendly asset to be defended). Aircraft carriers overcome this problem of delivering massed effect by collocating a powerful air wing on a mobile airfield that, on its own, can deliver strong blows. While a carrier may be assisted by outside sensors and weapons systems, the carrier's and associated battle group's organic capability to fight enemy assets is substantial and greater than any other individual naval platform. Before Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles entered service with the fleet’s escorts, the carriers were the sole means of offensive action and represented “the highest value seaborne target against which an enemy could aim.” These newer weapons allowed any surface action group to conduct offensive warfare.

According to the United States Navy, the basic advantage of network-centric warfare is that the Navy will be able to deploy widely dispersed units that mass effect in a timely manner without needing to mass the components themselves, as platform-centric warfare requires, for coordinated action. Superior surveillance, communications, mobility, and weapons effectiveness and range will allow this geographic dispersal of units. Even before the dawn of network-centric warfare, the widespread deployment of surface-to-surface missiles throughout the Navy made the aircraft carrier an important asset rather than one vital for offensive missions. By allowing all the units in the network to fight as a physically dispersed but tactically unified force, networks will make the carrier platform’s ability redundant. Concentration of effect will no longer rely on concentration of forces. In addition to the evident offensive value, this characteristic has defensive value by reducing the footprint of our forces, thus avoiding giving the enemy an attractive, high-value target. Dispersed small units that can fight as one yet remain dangerous despite the loss of even many of the individually less capable platforms will confound the enemy's efforts to deliver a decisive strike against the Navy.

The NDP recommended accelerating network-centric operations linking sensors and weapons generally and, for the Navy specifically, recommended "small-signature ships capable of providing sustained long-range, precision firepower." The panel also recommended a new smaller carrier (CVX) for short take off/vertical landing (STO/VL) aircraft and various unmanned aerial vehicles, including weaponized versions. Clearly, a networked Navy built from scratch would look far different from our current Navy which has evolved over time with overlapping assumptions and new technologies governing ship design over a generation or two.

Force Structure Today and Tomorrow
The Navy's reevaluation of its role following the collapse of the Soviet Union began with ... From the Sea and identified projecting power ashore as the primary mission of the Navy. The blue water focus of defeating the Soviet navy in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Mediterranean disappeared and there is no new peer competitor on the horizon. Almost overnight, the Navy could assume it would control the seas at the very beginning of a war rather than fighting to achieve control. The Navy can now sail in the littorals close to the enemy's home and directly influence events ashore. Forward ... From the Sea: The Navy Operational Concept specifies three missions for the forward-deployed Navy: peacetime engagement; deterrence and conflict prevention; and fighting and winning.

In carrying out this wide range of missions reflecting America’s worldwide interests and history as a maritime nation, the Navy must reconcile its current inventory with the RMA and the new post-Cold War operating and fiscal environment. A planned force structure maintained at about 50 SSNs, at least 125 surface combatants (although the QDR called only for 116), 12 aircraft carriers, and a full range of amphibious and support vessels plus aircraft, will strain the Navy’s budget as it seeks to replace retiring ships. The Navy's assumptions about ship life may prove to be far too optimistic to sustain the surface fleet at projected replacement rates. Retaining at least 125 surface combatants will be especially difficult after 2010 as large numbers of ships reach retirement age. Even if the Navy can maintain these numbers, some argue this will be insufficient and that nearly 70 submarines and perhaps 145 surface warships are necessary.

The twelve aircraft carriers remain the core of the Navy. Although possessing great power, carriers do not operate alone. An ideal battle group also contains six surface warships, two attack submarines, and a combat support ship. The supporting warships add defensive capabilities to fend off attacks on the carrier. The carrier battle group is a glaring exception to the dispersal possible with network-centric warfare. First, the threat of aircraft and missiles made protective escorts a necessity long before network-centric warfare. Enemy networks will enhance this air threat. Second, screening warships may be required because of the difficulty of integrating anti-submarine warfare (ASW) into network-centric warfare (also true for offensive submarine warfare but this is not an issue impacting Navy carrier survivability). It will be impossible for the Navy's large carriers to sail alone even though the battle group's screening surface vessels are capable of dispersing into the network to fight. Both the air and submarine threats require carriers to retain a large protective entourage.

The question of whether large aircraft carriers should remain the Navy's main striking platform has so far been answered with a solid 'yes.' The QDR supported the Navy's purchase of a tenth Nimitz class carrier to sustain America's forward deployment of carriers. The smaller post-Cold War Navy's determination to maintain a large aircraft carrier force including the battle group’s supporting ships will absorb much of the Navy's budget and personnel at the expense of preserving the rest of the fleet let alone funding newly emerging systems that the NDP would like to see. The crew requirements for the carrier (3,200 to 3,400) plus the air wing (2,480) are a great burden on a much smaller Navy having difficulty recruiting and retaining sailors. The 50-year life-cycle costs for either conventional or nuclear-powered carriers, at $14 and $22 billion respectively, are a tremendous cost. The Navy does recognize that the Nimitz behemoths suffer because of recruiting shortfalls in an economic expansion. The Navy also knows it needs to reduce the detectability of such large and valuable ships.

Implications of Network-Centric Warfare for Large Aircraft Carriers
Under network-centric warfare, the United States Navy will fight in a completely new environment. Forces with the characteristics of "speed, precision, and reach [will] achieve the massing of effects versus the massing of forces." Network-centric warfare has three themes:

1) Emphasis on the network and not the platform;
2) Platforms are not independent but part of a larger continuously adapting system; and
3) The importance of making strategic choices to adapt to the changes.

The sensor grid of a network will increase situational awareness and make it constant rather than fluctuating. The offensive power of this network, especially against a platform-centric enemy, will be tremendous. The defensive problem of fighting so close to an enemy’s land-based power as ... From the Sea foresaw, can be overcome with a networked Navy fighting as a resilient system and not individual platforms.

In an offensive orientation, with a level of transparency hitherto unknown to the Navy, commanders will know where friendly forces are and their status; and will see the enemy's units as they enter the American sensor grid. Allocation of strikes based on this knowledge will be devastating, responsive, and promote economy of force. This capability will allow the rapid destruction of important enemy assets rather than stretching out their losses in a war of attrition. This speed is more important than the simple number of assets destroyed because when "50% of something important to the enemy is destroyed at the outset, so is his strategy. That stops wars--which is what network-centric warfare is all about."

The concentrated power of the carrier platform's air wing will simply be one element adding to the massed effect of dispersed attack platforms achievable in network-centric warfare. An enemy will face massed firepower from all directions from U.S. forces wielding a plethora of weapons deployed on surface ships, submarines, and aircraft. This attack capability will be potent whether carriers are part of the network or not. Today, even though more and more of our surface combatants possess surface-to-surface missiles and are capable of more independent operations, they are still tied to the carrier battle groups. In this role, their primary mission is to protect the carrier. To exploit the network, the capable surface ships must be cut loose and dispersed in accordance with the logic of network-centric warfare. Aircraft carriers will not add a bang commensurate with the billions of bucks they cost. Did the Theodore Roosevelt really help in Kosovo? A couple score of shooters was irrelevant in NATO's thousand plane force.

Eventually, an enemy will develop a network even if it only covers their immediate area or is limited in scope. The problem of defending in a networked environment will be brutally apparent to the Navy if it fights an enemy possessing a similar attack network which will seek the high value target of an aircraft carrier. If the Navy’s carriers enter an enemy grid to come within striking range, they will no longer have the safety of getting lost in the vastness of the oceans. Nor can large carriers be made stealthy enough to remain obscured within an enemy grid. They will need to dash to striking range, strike, and get out before being struck themselves. When the Navy faces such an enemy, the carriers will be a tremendously important "something" to America, and the loss of even one will shock the American public and might well stop the war if fighting anything short of a war for a vital American interest. Setting a carrier afire will make excellent CNN footage. Given the potential of network-centric warfare, the demise of the proposed Arsenal Ship, a floating magazine with few integral defenses that would have relied on a networked air defense for survival, should be applauded. Although cancellation has been derided by some as reflecting a lack of vision, the Arsenal Ship does not fit the vision of network-centric warfare. This ship would have been just another high value "something" whose loss would cause disproportionate harm to the Navy and therefore draw disproportionate attention from an enemy. A network does not need a high value asset. Certainly, it is true that network-centric warfare defenses can bring dispersed air defenses together to defend the carrier (if they have sufficiently long range) but why expend that effort? In a developed networked force, the aircraft carrier adds little that numerous smaller platforms cannot provide and only represents a potential loss of great propaganda value.

The emergence of network-centric warfare does not mean the near-term obsolescence of large aircraft carriers. The useful roles for these aircraft carriers will diminish in time, however, beginning with the forward presence role. In a peacetime operating routine, aircraft carriers that sail in another nation's surveillance and strike network will be vulnerable to a bolt from the blue and may actually invite war rather than deter it. Only against enemies incapable of striking them will carriers retain their power to awe in peacetime engagement. They may become the aging gunslingers relying on their reputation from the glory days. As strike platforms in the Navy's network, aircraft carriers will retain a role far longer, but even in this role they will face limits. The Navy will need to keep them far from the enemy, closing the range only to strike. This will preserve the carriers for war fighting missions on American terms and preclude tempting an enemy into initiating a conflict in order to strike a serious blow at the onset of war.

Pulling back the carriers will also reduce the need for the number of carriers now maintained to provide a rotation base for forward deployments. The expense of maintaining large aircraft carriers when equivalent effects can be duplicated in other cheaper, less vulnerable, and more numerous platforms argues against extraordinary efforts to retain aircraft carriers in the long run. Fewer carriers will lessen the Navy's recruiting problem and free resources for newer platforms better suited to network-centric warfare as the NDP recommended.

Although America does not yet need to retire aircraft carriers, we should certainly be beyond the conservative debate of oil versus nuclear powered carriers. We need to consider whether to build new carriers at all; and, if carriers can play a role in network-centric warfare, whether CVX should be significantly smaller than Nimitz class ships (though bigger than the British jump jet mini-carriers). Nor can the debate over large versus small carriers be argued with the platform-based threat data of World War II and the Cold War. Network-centric warfare may have rendered such data irrelevant and the proper debate is whether we need even small carriers when survival depends on dispersal. We must honestly evaluate carriers to see if the Navy can replace the effects of the present large carrier battle group with platforms less vulnerable, costly, and personnel intense.

The Navy must evolve as the RMA changes its environment. Even as the Navy pursues network-centric warfare, the inescapable conclusion that a fully functioning network-centric Navy simply does not need large carriers is not broached in polite society. Yet remaining silent in the face of a naval RMA does the Navy no favor. An enemy with its own network will pose a deadly danger to the Navy's large carriers. The Navy must not loyally but blindly defend expensive large carriers simply because they were once (and admittedly still are) the best naval system in the world. We will not, however, refight 1942-1945 in the Pacific and we must consider the possibility that as network-centric warfare develops, the value of our carriers will degrade.

Just as battleships are mostly fit for a niche market of shore bombardment when once they ruled the waves, large carriers will fall from the centerpiece of our fleet. Even though we debate whether we should utilize our existing battleships for their narrow usefulness we do not debate building new ones. The decline of carrier usefulness will be obscured by the continuing value large carriers will retain. But that value will be in situations narrower as time passes. Eventually, they will occupy only a niche market but will absorb tremendous resources to carry out their missions. Still, the large carrier will not be obsolete overnight and the Navy has decades of service left from them if adapted to their narrowing utility.

Conclusion
The Navy’s carriers are sacred. Their achievements after persevering in the face of doubters before World War II still shield them from criticism today. Their epic fight in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor and their central role in Cold War crises is a record that inspires strong loyalty. A revolution produces a new elite and displacing the carrier elite will be difficult. But such a challenge to the status quo must begin now. The old elite is entrenched and has the advantages of doubt whether the new warfare will work, the history of successful carrier aviation, and the enthusiasm of the network challengers who will claim too much too soon and be demonstrably wrong enough times to sow doubt. The challengers will also display the arrogance of true believers which will not endear them to defenders of the status quo. Nonetheless, we must be willing to endure a line if inquiry that may radically change the Navy we have spent lifetimes perfecting. The United States Navy exists, after all, to control the sea and project power ashore, not to persist in any particular form.

Will the rules of naval warfare change so much because of network-centric warfare that we must change the way we look at the value of the various platforms in the Navy? If the potential of network-centric warfare is realized, and if we commit to it (or even if just our enemies do), then we must change how the Navy trains, organizes, and allocates resources. Most would agree in theory that when circumstances change, wisdom requires us to re-evaluate our course. Longstanding questions about carrier survivability in the face of massed Soviet-era missile strikes have perhaps made carrier loyalists dismissive of yet another round of questions. Although difficult to accept, when network-centric warfare evolves into a mature system, the Navy must either abandon the platform-centric power of large carriers or America's enemies will sink them.

Losing a carrier, which will remain a symbol of American might even when other vessels have superseded them in importance, will be a shock that could compel the United States to halt a war before we can marshal our power to win. Coming to terms with the implications of networks and eventually phasing out the carriers over decades will allow the Navy to evolve and continue to fulfill its valuable roles of peacetime engagement; deterrence and conflict prevention; and fighting and winning. We must be prepared to let the Navy’s large aircraft carriers take their well-earned place in our history along with our fir-built frigates, gritty river ironclads, and the battle line of dreadnoughts. If the Navy sends carriers into battle beyond their time, they will have their fine reputations tarnished even if the United States overcomes naval setbacks to emerge victorious in a war. The United States Navy, even without carriers as its centerpiece, will still be a vital asset to the nation and will carry on a tradition of excellence that will bring America pride in the post-Nimitz Navy defined by network-centric warfare.
/END MANUSCRIPT/

Since then I've concluded that if we are to have sea-based aviation they should be big carriers for efficiency rather than medium or small. Our small amphibious ships are useful as mini-carriers only because they are actually built as amphibious warfare ships for their primary role. Having a secondary carrier role is a bonus. It would not be useful to build carriers that size as a replacement for the big carriers.

May the skirmish commence. Let's have a seapower debate and not a carrier debate.