Train the Way You Fight Because You'll Fight the Way You Train

Remember that German soldier with so much time on his hands that he could masquerade as a non-Arabic speaking refugee in order to carry out a terror attack? That was just the tip of the Gott im Himmel moment.

Gott im Himmel:

The bizarre case of a racist soldier allegedly plotting an attack while posing as a Syrian refugee and several abuse scandals have sparked a war of words between Germany's defence minister and the military.

It is a dangerous political battle for Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman in charge of the Bundeswehr, who is often mentioned as a potential successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The mother-of-seven has sternly criticised military "attitude and leadership problems", highlighted by the case of the soldier and by recent sexual abuse and hazing scandals.

This in turn has made her a target of chastened rank-and-file soldiers who charge she is tarring them all while dodging personal responsibility after more than three years on the job.

I'm sure that Germans opposed to Germany spending 2% of their GDP on defense to protect the West against Russians and jihadis will use this incident to say the German military can't be trusted with weapons.

And this doesn't help either:

The head of Germany's armed forces has called for an inspection of all army barracks after investigators discovered Nazi-era military memorabilia in a garrison, broadening a scandal about right-wing extremism among soldiers.

By all means root out right-wing extremism there. Looking the other way can have bad consequences as we learned (we did learn, right?) at Fort Hood.

But what this really says is that the German military should have the money to put their army into the field to train up to combat standards until they are too focused on conventional combat against actual enemies and too tired to dabble in terrorism and Nazi fantasies in their free time.

Rather than argue for that, Minister von der Leyen peddles excuses for why criminally inadequate defense spending is okey dokey by her.

Instead of having a military that can fight, von de Leyen has given Germany an army that can't take the field even to train and can't fight a real war, but can plot against civilians in their ample free time.

Heckuva job Ursula!

And then we get to the really horrifying part: van de Leyen is "often mentioned as a potential successor" to Merkel? Really?

Germany just doesn't value defense. America has a secretary of defense who is a former general and combat veteran whose nickname is "Mad Dog." This is an appointment that speaks to taking defense seriously.

Germany's current minister of defense was a medical doctor who previously served as the Minister of Family Affairs and Youth and the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs. Well.

No offense to Minister von der Leyen, but she's a Fluffy Kitten.

This difference in defense leadership demonstrates the contrast between America and Germany about the priority of national defense. We care about it and the Germans don't.

So she's going to bring her skill sets that make the German army the scourge of civilian foes to the highest office of the land?

Good Lord, von der Leyen is seriously being considered for the chancellorship? What has she done to earn that? Have the Germans lost their minds?

I don't mean to pick on von der Leyen in particular, but she seems typical of European defense ministers who don't see their jobs as particularly important, viewing them as speed bumps on the way to a real job like minister of human services.

UPDATE: The German defense minister will work to purge the military of Nazis.  That's good. Sure, I hate Chicago Nazis as much as the next guy. But German Nazis are a bigger problem, all things considered.

But actually equipping and  training the German military to fight the Russians would do a lot of good to fill the void that apparently allows troops to be radicalized that way.

On the surface, this is a good thing:

The German Army is in line for an upgrade of its tanks, based on the expectation that future conflicts will rely heavily on ground warfare with armored vehicles.

All told, the Bundeswehr stands to get 104 used Leopard 2 battle tanks out of storage that manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann will upgrade under a contract with the German Defence Ministry from the A4 configuration to the newest A7V standard.

Germany will field 328 tanks when that is done. Which is a bit more than a single American tank division had in the Cold War.

Although it isn't clear to me if this is to increase the number of tank brigades or is to provide for war loss replacements. Both are necessary these days.

And if Germany's already inadequate funding for equipment, maintenance, and training continues, will more tanks in the force just mean already inadequate support is spread even more thinly?

The Germans need to do a lot of things that cost money to fix what ails their military.

What Money Buys

Yes, America spends a lot more than potential enemies. But our spending dominance conceals as much as it reveals.

Sure, the American military is clearly the most capable military force on the planet. But simple comparisons of spending don't reveal the true picture.

One, if that is the true picture, let's all recall how America easily defeated far smaller North Vietnam in the Vietnam War. No?

So already we know that simple comparisons of spending don't always tell the full story.

More important are factors that eat up our superior spending.

Much of our military is more expensive than our foes who spend far less on payroll and personnel expenses. Yes, we have better personnel capable of being turned into good troops. But we pay for that potential edge.

Much of our military is dedicated to moving combat forces overseas across vast oceans before the first combat troop has the ability to fire the first bullet; and then has to support those forces.

A good chunk of our military is the training base that churns out troops. This does give us the ability to sustain our military in combat, but they are troops who are not trigger pullers.

We also maintain the ability to sustain our allies who lack the same depth, like war reserve stocks and that logistics capability.

Distance forces certain realities. Our ships, for example, have to be larger just to sail overseas unlike some allies whose small combatants can leave port and pretty much be in their patrol area.

We have expensive nuclear forces and expensive space forces.

We have a lot of research and development to maintain a tech edge; which means our production costs are higher, too, forging a path to new weapons.

And we actually train our forces, making them more effective . That's expensive, too.

And once a war starts, we have a problem. Our forces are largely based in the United States. So when an enemy attacks, they will have the initial advantage while America mobilizes and sends forces abroad.

Because right now, American forces are an ocean away (From "AUSA's 5 Things" email):

Speed of deployment is becoming a closely watched measurement of Army readiness. The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team from Fort Carson, Colo., moved to Poland in 76 days in January, and the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Drum, N.Y., moved to Greece in 62 days in February.

While America will gain the advantage as a war continues, an enemy will have an opportunity to take territory until we build up forces. (See Saddam's conquest of Kuwait in August 1990 and the American-led counter-offensive in January 1991.)

So we spend more. But we need to spend more. And we get a lot for it, including lower casualties for our troops we send into battle.

UPDATE: Some fear the scope of military spending creates a harmful military-industrial complex that warps American policy. But that spending on military equipment is really a small portion of our vast economy.

And you have to remember that Eisenhower actually said that we needed what the military-industrial complex produced in our dangerous world. People always forget that part of his address.

Or did the world get less threatening while I was watching hockey playoffs?

Times Change and So Must the Army's Force Structure

I agree with this author that if you want to fight a tank, bring a tank; and that the Stryker armored personnel carrier even with a 30mm gun is inadequate to fight tanks. But I disagree that it is futile to arm up the Stryker and I think we can trust commanders not to confuse a 30mm-armed light Stryker with a heavily armored Abrams that has massively effective armor.

I just don't think it is wrong to up-arm the Stryker even if I agree with the basic point about fighting heavy armor. But the ability to kill enemy light armor is nothing to discard lightly just because it will lack the ability to kill tanks.

Yet I'm not defending the Stryker brigade's role in conventional combat against heavy forces.

I've long been critical of using Stryker-equipped units (first called interim brigade combat teams--IBCT) for high intensity conventional warfare against heavy armor (see page 28-33):

Experience with IBCTs may well give the Army a better sense of what light armor can do and lead it to accept that it cannot succeed in all threat environments. The IBCT has a limited role as an early entry force and clearly recognizes that it is not the main fighting force. It will eventually be supplanted by heavier divisions if the enemy is heavy and will fight as a maneuver unit of a division.

So yeah, with its large infantry complement, it is useful for counter-insurgency and for urban warfare, or in support of heavy forces. But we can't expect more.

As I wrote early on in this blog:

I'm not comfortable with the organization of the Stryker Brigade Combat Teams (formerly Interim Brigade Combat Teams: IBCTs). Yes, we need something between walking infantry that is strategically mobile yet tactically immobile with little combat power and heavy armor that is strategically immobile but tactically mobile and highly lethal and survivable. The Stryker Brigades are the medium forces we are fielding that are supposed to bridge that gap.

Essentially a light mechanized brigade, a Stryker Brigade is more strategically mobile than a heavy brigade and has good tactical mobility. It has good firepower too, but lacks the survivability of heavy forces. It has lots of infantry for peace operations. Designed to be flown in after other forces have seized an airhead, the Stryker Brigades will provide significant firepower quickly; but will hand off the main battle to heavy forces when they finally arrive. How quickly is a question of debate since they are fairly heavy despite being lighter than a heavy brigade. And just how much Air Force airlift can the Army count on to get one overseas in a crisis?

Unless adapted and augmented, the Stryker brigade cannot stop heavy armor. As far as I'm concerned a 30mm gun for the vehicle is a welcome start but hardly the end of the line for making Stryker brigades capable of fighting heavy armor--as an interim solution to replacing them with units designed to fight heavy armor.

Heck, while I was fine with making these light mechanized infantry units that could bridge the gap between heavy armor and foot infantry, I wanted such units to come at the expense of the foot infantry and not from the heavy armor:

The Army certainly needs IBCT-like forces. The creation of these medium units, however, should come at the expense of the Army's light forces and not the heavy forces. If we want foot infantry, we already have four divisions of Marines, paratroopers, and Rangers. Fortunately, the digitized Legacy Force will remain the core of the counter-attack force for some time. We have time to reconsider whether we can have lethality, survivability, and lightness.

But what happened is that we lost heavy forces as we fought insurgents and terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our need to field forces to fight insurgents and terrorists is at a lower level now, however, because we built Iraqi and Afghan forces that can fight them if we provide support and limited direct combat assistance.

And as Russian threats to Europe grow, with North Korea and even China potential land foes too, we need to not only retrain our troops for high intensity conventional combat, we need to increase the number of heavy brigades in our Army again. So we need to either convert light infantry or Stryker units to heavy brigade combat teams.

And if the Marines are thinking of taking on Russians in the Baltic Sea region or in Norway, they'd best keep a heavy armor capability up to the task, too.

Yeah, I'm Going to Stick With the Tactical Excellence Narrative

This essay really does miss the point of enemy reliance on improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq:

The U.S. military seems to have settled on the narrative that it won every tactical engagement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this view, failures of strategy and the challenges of nation-building proved the undoing of coalition counter-insurgency efforts in each conflict. Even the most critical accounts of U.S. military performance in the wars, like Lt Gen. (ret.) Bolger’s Why We Lost, emphasize American “tactical excellence” in the campaigns. Such a conclusion, however, seems to equate tactics with firefights and ignores the U.S. military’s failure to meet its objectives to counter the enemy’s weapon of choice — the improvised explosive device (IED).

This critique of American counter-IED tactics in Iraq fails to consider that the IED both represented an inability of Iraqi enemies to attack American forces with rifles and mortars and survive the encounter; and fails to consider that the IED campaign failed to stop the supplies from rolling or defeat our troops.

IEDs were a weapon of the weak that inflicted casualties with an inverse drive-by shooting (we had to drive by the mines rather than enemies driving by and shooting at us) without inflicting tactical defeats on American forces.

And American casualty rates in Iraq (and Afghanistan) were dramatically lower than in Vietnam, Korea, or World War II, even considering body armor and medical treatment. So just as killing and wounding weapons they came up short.

A tougher and more effective enemy would have followed up IED blasts on an American unit with ground attacks that exploited the confusion and casualties to inflict defeats in battle and cause more American casualties.

Instead, after a blast from an IED we secured the blast site and conducted CSI: Sunni Triangle to build a database of clues to find the bomb makers and emplacers in the campaign that did reduce IED effectiveness in inflicting casualties.

Remember, we did in fact by the winter of 2006-2007 convince many of our Sunni Arab enemies to switch to our side (who we figuratively threw out of their palaces and had fought since then, remember) and beat our enemies on the battlefield in Iraq by 2008, and put the job for winning in civilian hands.

Lord knows I'm all for improving on failures. But I'm not seeing an American tactical failure here.

Weekend Data Dump

Sure, President Obama in his post-presidency is taking gobs of money for doing what he does best--talking to the global elites crowd. I think he is wildly overrated, but it surely is his best talent. I find it amusing that some on the left defend him because he is no longer running for office. In fact, I think Obama will tour the Davos circuit in his quest to realize his true calling by becoming secretary general of the United Nations, making good on his pretense at being a citizen of the world.

While I think Republicans should have a sense of urgency in repealing or dramatically scaling back (I don't like the pursuit of the perfect to be the enemy of the good) Obamacare, I find the notion that if Republicans can't negotiate a deal acceptable to their members that the solution is to reach out to Democrats. If Republicans can't agree among themselves, how on Earth could Republicans agree with Democrats without making this just a liberal government health care scheme?

"People say Whole Foods is for pretentious people, and I can see why." You don't go to Whole Foods to buy healthy food. You go there to buy a sense of moral superiority.

I don't think the notion (tip to Instapundit) that Trump's style limited his appeal is self-evidently ridiculous. Yes, Trump won. And his electoral victory is 100% legitimate. But he did lose the popular vote rather decisively to Clinton. Bush was only a bit under Gore in 2000 in the popular vote (yet barely scraped by in electoral votes). And even Bill Clinton never cracked 50% of the popular vote in either 1992 or 1996 (when facing Dole!). As I and many other commenters noted, each party nominated the only candidate that the other party's candidate could beat. Hillary was simply awful as a candidate. Her problem wasn't that she didn't think about Trump in her false confidence--it's that she didn't think about Trump voters. Trump shouldn't get cocky and assume the Democrats will be as cooperative as they were in 2016.

This makes me worry if Iran's hand puppets in Iraq are rounding up Sunni Arab Iraqi men.

When Volkswagen cheated on diesel emissions tests, that was corporate greed triumphing over the health of people. So what is it when public school administrators cheat on lead levels in schools? Was it for the children?

I know I've mentioned this before,  but we have a bomb shortage. Yes, in a war against a pathetically small force of light infantry we are running out of bombs to drop. Mind you, I assume that this shortage doesn't count war reserve stocks that we'd be foolish to dip into for this fight against ISIL. If current production rates can't satisfy the needs of a bombing campaign against several thousand scumbags who think a hobby center drone rigged to carry a grenade is high tech, our military readiness has deteriorated far more than I thought.

Yes, being president is a hard job. That's why I had sympathy for President Obama the longer I didn't hear him speak on any issue.

So it makes no sense at all for Republicans to treat the House minority leader as a face of the opposition? She is the gift that keeps on giving. Why wouldn't the Republicans wrap her up and re-gift her?

I like to think we are in the Era of  Peak Stupid. But I am an optimist, I freely admit.

Note that reduced illegal border crossings on our southern border by migrants makes it easier for the Border Patrol to keep an eye out for national security and drug smuggling threats who have less of an opportunity to get lost in the "noise" of a people flood moving north.

Forgive the British press. The British have no written constitution and so perhaps are unclear on the difference between parliamentary rules and a written constitution.

So upper class people pay $425 for jeans that look dirty yet think people who actually get dirty jeans from working are deplorable. No word from the cultural appropriation mob on this product. Please God, let us be at Peak Stupid.

Oh yeah, May 1 was May Victims of Communism Day. Nazi Day doesn't bring out the left even though they are pretty much the same with similar blood-stained records.

I'm going to remind people again that it is the Statue of Liberty that sits in New York harbor and not the Statue of Illegal Immigration. Just saying.

So this article recounts a 1778 raid (no, it was not an invasion as the title says) by John Paul Jones on a British port, saying "it didn't go well,"  and then concludes by saying the raid helped turn British public opinion to ending the war in which America won our independence. Not too bad for a 30-man raid that tactically didn't go well.

So Russian-speaking Germans who came to Germany from Russia after the USSR collapsed are a potential Putin ally within Germany. But large-scale Moslem migration is diversity! Got it.

Democrats crack me up. They seem upset--as they were a year ago--that Trump offered to talk to the scumbag Kim Jong-un. I certainly wouldn't talk to Kim without our South Korean and Japanese allies, mind you. But the Democratic objection is puzzling when you consider that they wouldn't let federal law enforcement arrest Kim Jong-un if he showed up in an American sanctuary city.

The top American general in Europe wants more forces, including Army heavy brigades, to deter Russia. I'd like a corps back in Europe with a couple heavy divisions and two brigades each forward deployed (with REFORPOL sites for the balance), a couple armored cavalry regiments (which we'd need to rebuild) for the Russian/Belorusian border in the east, and a parachute brigade. I formally abandon my older proposal to put a lighter corps in Europe (see my article at page 15). In my defense I wanted to avoid giving the Russians an excuse to be hostile. But that ship sailed without any of our help at all.

Question: If Russia "hacked" our election, putting their friend Trump in the White House, wouldn't the Russians keep it quiet to enjoy the fruits of that success rather than go out of their way to claim Trump is a great friend of Russia with deep ties to them?

Interesting Stratfor article on illegal immigration from the southern border. Yes, I realize that Mexican inflow is being supplanted by Central American inflow. And while a "wall" across the border is not feasible, I always took that as shorthand for a barrier and a willingness to defend the barrier. As I've said, saying a 10 foot wall is easily overcome by an 11-foot ladder is lazy thinking. Any barrier if undefended or poorly defended can be penetrated by determined crossers. Barriers just buy time for defenders to react. Funny enough, the dramatic drop in crossings under Trump shows the value of determined defenders even without a barrier. People believe we defend the border more and so the flow is down for various reasons. That belief will wear off. With no barrier under construction yet, we will see how well a determination to defend the border will work without a better barrier.

We really need to ramp up and update our Red Flag and Top Gun programs to train Air Force and Navy pilots to win air superiority. The era of just being bomb truck pilots is ending.

"Amanpour blows it: Clinton interview a fluff affair[.]" In terms that the odious Colbert can understand, is either one of them a p*ssy holster? Insert the usual "if a comedian had said this about Obama" observation. And shame on liberals who laughed at Colbert's rage.

Clinton is lucky that Comey only vaguely said the investigation into her illegal email server was revived prior to the election. Clinton is right that it was political: she should have been arrested back then. She really should be prosecuted for her deliberate evasion of email security and retention requirements given all the new information out. She can't be trusted and she was almost our president. Thank Obama and Trump for the "almost" part.

Actual dictator--liberal hero edition. With bonus socialism effing up a wet dream.

For the Left, a Republican proposing a decrease in the rate of increase of some federal budget line item will kill your grandma; but North Korea's economy isn't all that bad, really.

Even if Moqtada al-Sadr is no longer a fully functional Iran hand puppet, it would be wrong to trust this three-time insurrectionist. He is dangerous for the future of Iraq. And I don't trust that Iran won't gain influence in Iraq if Sadr remains around.

Do not be confused by the horrible Obama nuclear deal, Iran under the mullahs is our enemy.

I received that Google Docs email fishing scam. On my Yahoo! email, actually. It looked like a mistake and the sender email was for an actual research scientist. I even emailed him to let him know that I'd deleted his email and emptied my trash. Luckily, my sense of honor kept me from looking at the document. Good thing.

For all the Democratic anger about Russian interference in our 2016 election (and I think it was both ineffective in changing the outcome and designed to harm the presumed winner Clinton), Susan Rice will not testify before Congress unless she is frogmarched into the hearing room, apparently. And yes, Rice's standard of being invited by both parties is new. Elections have consequences, I was assured.

Get a grip, liberals. You seriously believe the worry of being born to "handmaidens" is less ridiculous than the accusation of President Obama being born in Kenya?

Yeah, I have always assumed the kids will be all right. Most students just want a degree. Most want free speech and aren't part of the nutty fanatics who dominate Twitter. Of course, if so many faculty and administrators weren't just as nutty, it would be better.

Iraqi forces hit ISIL in Mosul from the northwest where ISIL defenses were weaker and barriers thinly placed. I'm always encouraged when friendly forces don't advance from an expected direction. Over the last 7 months my discussions of the battle have been handicapped by my expectation of this approach. Better late than never, I suppose.

Never mind.

I'd listen to those cultural appropriation folks if they just weren't so darned stupid. And wouldn't going along with them be culturally appropriating their stupidity? I'm sensitive that way, of course.

Fake news. It's not just for inbred, knuckle-dragging deplorable hill folk any more!

Democrats would have you believe that Trumpcare will lead to people bringing out their dead. Get a grip.

All that "Chinafornia" stuff is interesting--except when it is alarming like the Hollywood self-censorship--but it won't be a partnership until you add "America" to some coastal Chinese province to show how we are partnering with locals to as high a degree. Although if the Chinese move into California is less investment and more Plan B in case things go bad in China, it's a totally different thing, isn't it?

Colbert won't be fired or shunned.  I'm not in favor of claiming his scalp. At the very least, he becomes Exhibit A in defense of a non-liberal who gets hounded by the latest Twitter-based hate-fest.

How is Russian hacking of Macron's emails smart given that he is likely to beat Le Pen in the French election? Aren't the Russians just turning a socialist into an enemy of Russia? Is this "hybrid warfare" just a combination of the Internet and stupidity?

The Army once again has electronic warfare capabilities, with an interim system given to the Stryker brigade in Europe. While this isn't relevant to that topic, I'd give that brigade a battalion of Abrams tanks. But I'm my own editor, so there.

Fareed Zakaria says that President Trump is turning other countries against America. Which is funny considering that President Obama--who Zakaria desperately wanted to work for--stiffed our allies in a futile effort to make friends of our enemies. And funny enough the only country less friendly to America now seems to be Russia. I couldn't read the article without subscribing. But all you really need to know is that Zakaria couldn't find his own buttocks with both hands and a GPS signal. So I can thank the firewall for sparing me the ordeal of reading yet another word vomit from that idiot savant.

Well I'll be darned. A women's march against actual tyranny.

Yeah, so this is the mother of all stupid. I'm just glad the Pope didn't accuse America of cultural appropriation for the origins of the term.

How Hitlers are Rehabilitated

Nancy Pelosi answers "yes."

I'm so old I remember when President Bush was called "Bushitler."

Of course, Pelosi is about 8 years late in catching up with me. But whatever.

Remember, the current Republican is always Hitler for our left, only rehabilitated for the purpose of contrasting the past reasonable Republican with the current Hitler.

Tip to Instapundit.

As Always, the Definitions Section Will Be Key

Iraq doesn't want American combat troops in Iraq after the ISIL fight is won? Fine. But let's see the fine print of any agreement.

Okay:

U.S. combat troops will not stay on in Iraq after the fight against the Islamic State group is over, Iraq's Prime Minister said Friday — a statement that followed an Associated Press report on talks between Iraq and the United States on maintaining American forces in the country.

A U.S. official and an official from the Iraqi government told the AP this week that talks about keeping U.S. troops in Iraq were ongoing.

We have few combat troops anyway. Some artillery, helicopter, and special forces units of course.

And then we have to consider the definitions.

We tend not to call special forces "combat troops" for the purpose of these things. So they might be around.

Embassy guards don't count.

Contractors don't count.

We can have some combat troops earmarked for Iraqi missions stationed in Kuwait or on Navy ships in the Persian Gulf.

Do any troops in Iraq's Kurdish region count as combat troops "in Iraq?"

What of troops in Syria still fighting ISIL?

If we leave a battalion set of equipment in our embassy compound, does that count if the troops have to fly in from Italy and draw the equipment?

And remember the whopper of them all back in 2009 when our combat role ended and we called slightly modified combat brigades left in Iraq "advise and assist" brigades (and I mentioned a number of the above work-arounds)?

Remember, even with the caliphate dismembered as an entity, ISIL will exist as a terrorist force along with other Sunni jihadis and the Shia militias who will threaten the Iraqi government and an attempt to build rule of law-based democracy.

However we structure a presence, let's not blow it the way we did in 2011, okay?

UPDATE: Post Mosul, ISIL, al Qaeda, and other Sunni jihadis acting as terrorists and insurgents (and let's not forget the Sadrists and other Shia death squad types who will aid Iran) will still need to be dealt with even when the caliphate is defeated.

Don't forget that one road block on working on political deals to keep Sunni Arabs from fighting the Shia-dominated government under the black banner of Islamist terrorists is the violent Shia minorityof the population that threatens coup and so makes the government leery of cutting deals with Sunnis lest the Shia fanatics rise up and hand Iraq to Iran.

Method to the Madness?

I don't know if President Trump's comments about talking to Kim Jong-Un, revising trade rules with South Korea, or making Seoul pay for THAAD were thoughtless off-the-cuff observations or not. But they might have a good effect.

I say this because South Korean elections will put in power a new president who will be prone to being softer toward North Korea:

The current front-runner is liberal candidate Moon Jae-in, a former human rights lawyer who has repeatedly called ousted President Park Geun-hye's North Korea policy a complete failure. He wants to improve ties with Pyongyang by abandoning the hard-line approach to the North favored over the past decade by conservative governments.

His chief rival is former software mogul Ahn Cheol-soo, who is more centrist than Moon and has a tougher stance on North Korea that would more closely align with the conservative approach of sanctions, pressure and promises of aid in return for disarmament.

But Ahn has supporters who will push for a softer stance on North Korea, too.

So Trump has incentive to remind South Koreans that if they walk away from containing and squeezing North Korea, South Koreans can't count on America to maintain the pressure without South Korea and allow South Korea to have the benefits of a hard and soft policy.

America under Trump could distance itself from South Korea and cut our own deal with North Korea.

This could affect votes for the election and the policy of whoever wins.

Obviously I have no way of knowing if this interpretation is correct.

But I think that if so many people didn't have utter contempt for our president that this explanation would be considered. This contempt which rules out anything but ridicule for the comments, funny enough, increases the effectiveness of the tactic if my suggestion is true.

Or the comments could be ill-considered stream of consciousness, of course.

Strategypage has more on the Korean issues.

We Can Hardly Deny This

They got us:

North Korean state media on Friday accused the U.S. and South Korea of conspiring to assassinate Kim Jong Un using a “biochemical” substance.

The North Koreans even have the film of the plot being hatched:



Call in the International Criminal Court. Because we are totally busted.

Doesn't Anyone Notice This? I Feel Like I'm Taking Crazy Pills

We have more discussions of Russia's so-called hybrid warfare. Why??!



My basic view is that hybrid warfare is nothing new and doesn't require all the angst of how to respond to the diabolically clever ploy of Russia invading another country under the obviously false cover of a local insurrection which is backed by obviously false propaganda that legitimizes the AstroTurfed local groups and supports the Russian denial of invading.

Ukrainians increasingly believe the Donbas is lost. And it is lost--because Ukraine isn't trying to retake the region and the West isn't backing them to do so. Seriously, two divisions of the quality of American forces backed by similarly good air and fire support would shred the Russian and Russian-backed forces holding the Donbas in a short campaign.

And even Crimea, which was a rapid near-bloodless conquest in 2014 rather than the bloody ongoing stalemate of the Donbas partial conquest, isn't the example proponents of hybrid warfare like to claim it is. Ukraine was in chaos from the revolution and while the Russian invasion force was outnumbered by the "defending" Ukrainian troops, I think the 10,000 Russian invaders cited (and more than that in the Sevastopol base complex) faced but a single combat battalion of Ukrainian marines among the 16,000 largely support troops on the peninsula who remained in their bases unsure of what to do or who had authority in Ukraine--and many of whom were unsure of who they wanted to win.

The key to Russia's success with their "hybrid" warfare against Ukraine is that the West goes along with the fiction that Russia has not invaded Ukraine!

Good Lord people, Russian "hybrid warfare" is just Russian aggression that we pretend isn't happening. Sadly, there's nothing new or novel about that.

This isn't some new and baffling form of warfare. This is Western refusal to admit that Russia is committing aggression.

All the talk about "hybrid warfare" is just an excuse to avoid admitting that Russia is committing aggression. Ooh. This is new! Let's study it and avoid confronting the Russians until we comprehend this diabolically clever ploy!

And that's a sad tale as old as history.

Keep the Tanks Moving

Maybe the best way to support Abrams main battle tanks on the move is an Abrams tank fighting vehicle (TFV) that carries a couple infantry dismounts but relies on reachback technology to man remote weapon stations (RWS) on such an Abrams fighting vehicle to support the Abrams tanks.

I ran across an article that I had saved for "Reachback for the Squad." It was perfect for my premise.

The article includes this lesson from the Russia-Ukraine War:

Light infantry fighting vehicles, which prioritize mobility and firepower over survivability, are vulnerable to anti-tank weapons, medium-caliber (30 mm) automatic cannons mounted on other light armored vehicles, artillery submunitions and thermobaric warheads. When hit, infantry fighting vehicles tend to suffer catastrophic damage, killing or severely burning everyone on board. Since troop losses are so high, soldiers prefer riding on top of the vehicles, and assaults are conducted with dismounted rather than mounted infantry. As a result, tank attacks are less effective because they no longer have accompanying mechanized infantry with equal mobility to protect them from other infantry.

One of the authors is Doctor Karber, featured in this post's video that put the fear of God Artillery in me.

Three years ago, when I pondered the notion I set forth in "Reachback for the Squad," I did address the protection issue and suggested that using our excess Abrams tanks and modifying them to carry infantry and remote weapons stations might provide attacking heavy armor the fire support against infantry that the tanks need to survive.

In that post I suggested using mounted soldiers manning the RWS, with reachback over a battlefield internet used only to operate the weapons when the passenger soldiers dismount. But after my evolution in thinking shown in my article, why not have the RWS manned only by reachback, requiring just a couple infantry dismounts as passengers?

Obviously, the few dismounts advancing with the heavy armor would not be able to engage in much combat. They'd essentially be forward observers to call in fires missions. And they could reload onboard weapons (machine guns, anti-tank missiles, etc.) fired by soldiers to the rear via the battlefield internet.

But as I quoted in the Infantry magazine article, the armored attack grinds to a halt when you "drop the rear slab" and dismount the infantry (and Karber and Thibeault note this in that quote above). So ideally the infantry (whether 2 or 9) stays mounted--or is even absent for the moving to contact (or pursuit) part of the mission completely, relying on reachback for operating the RWS only--as I suggested in the article.

I would like to see how infantry support in a heavy brigade using Abrams tank fighting vehicles (TFV to avoid the acronym AFV which stands for armored fighting vehicle) works at the National Training Center against our OPFOR, which is the best Russian-style combat unit in the world for fast tempo combat operations.

Red Line in Syria

Has anybody noticed that Russia and our Turkish "ally" just declared a no-fly zone in Syria that basically bans American aircraft?

Because that's what this sounds like:

The "de-escalation zones" to be established in Syria will be closed to military aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition, the Russian official who signed the new agreement said Friday.

Alexander Lavrentyev spoke a day after he and officials from Turkey and Iran agreed to establish the zones, in the latest attempt to reduce violence in the Arab country.

Under the Russian plan, President Bashar Assad's air force would halt flights over the designated areas across the war-torn country.

This could get sticky if "Syrian" air defenses (even if a Russian or contractor is sitting at the controls) open fire on our coalition aircraft. We might need to rely more on armed drones, cruise missiles, and longer-ranged Army/Marine Corps rockets.

Not that we should rule out using aircraft. If the Russians push us back a little they will keep pushing.

But we should be careful so we don't go to war with Russia over Syria where we have no apparent objective other than destroying ISIL.

UPDATE: Four no-fly zones are proposed. This is a particular problem:

The fourth zone will include parts of the Deraa and Quneitra provinces in southern Syria, according to the memorandum seen by AFP.

That would really crimp the southern front. Which is likely not a coincidence at all.

UPDATE: Remember that Russia wants to extricate itself from the fight in Syria and simply enjoy their air and naval bases there.

Don't buy the consensus that Russia has basically won the war for Assad. Assad is still in deep trouble.

From Stratfor:

Russia's intervention in Syria, operating alongside Iran in support of Syrian loyalist forces, has succeeded in several ways. For one, Russia's involvement stabilized the battlefield and restored the advantage to Syrian troops. Furthermore, its entry into the conflict not only secured basing in the country but also provided a proving ground in which to season personnel and showcase Russian military hardware. Finally, the intervention has elevated Moscow's geopolitical heft, marking the Kremlin as a key player in the region.

Nevertheless, having played a major part in the conflict, Russia is now seeking to remove itself from the battlefield in a timely manner. For all the gains reaped from its involvement in the Syrian crisis, Moscow also understands the considerable costs — and, more important, that the advantages it has accrued thus far could easily be squandered over time, especially if the war drags on with no end in sight.

Russia certainly halted the rapidly declining fortunes of Assad. But that is far from saying Assad has won the war--or even can win the war.

When Russia intervened, I advised we should complicate Russia's choice and let them have fun storming the Syrian castle:

Russia does not want to fight for Assad. Putin wants to save Assad as cheaply as possible so he can get back to picking apart eastern Ukraine while consolidating the conquest of Crimea (and then Belarus will be in Putin's crosshairs, prior to focusing on the Baltic states). Our cooperation is key to letting Russia win in Syria on the cheap.

Don't fall for Putin's ploy. Bid him good luck and tell him to have fun storming the castle.

At the end of last year, I noted that the Russians could hardly be enjoying their adventure, and wanted America to continue to complicate their intervention:

We can still defeat Assad, Russia, and Iran in Syria. Talk of having to accept that Assad will win ignores the cost and casualties Assad and his backers have suffered just to finally--after more than four years--make serious progress in taking Aleppo in Assad's corner of Syria. There are still a lot of people fighting Assad and they will fight if supported.

Don't save Russia from the problems of their own aggression.

UPDATE: Seriously, if the Russians want to protect civilians from air attack they could stop barrel- and gas-bombing civilians without any special initiative.

This is all about pulling Putin's balls out of the vice he placed them in. We should not cooperate.

UPDATE: America's reaction:

A State Department official on Friday said that the Russian proposal calling to bar U.S. military aircrafts from flying over designated safe zones cannot “limit” the U.S.’s mission against ISIS in the country in any way.

“The coalition will continue to strike ISIS targets in Syria,” the official told The Wall Street Journal. “The campaign to defeat ISIS will continue at the same relentless pace as it is proceeding now.”

Which doesn't mean we fly aircraft over the Russian no-fly zones without caution. And it doesn't mean we might not use other means to strike ISIL in those zones when we can.

But we won't let the zones stop our aircraft when we need to use them.

Let's be careful out there.

Bombs Kill But Don't Control

Assad looks like he is preparing to go on offensive in the northwest in Idlib province. This will stretch his already inadequate ground forces.

Yes, moving in to the region is not the end of Assad's problems:

The government’s weakest point, on the other hand, is their insufficient number of troops. To hold control over an area, one needs to deploy a lot of ground forces which the Syrian Army does not possess. An eventual victory in Idlib would therefore be only of very limited value to them as they simply do not have the manpower to maintain a presence in the area. This is one reason why the Assad regime is terrorizing the civilian population: they lack the manpower to exercise control over Syria. Attacks with poison gas and mass killings of civilians are a sign of impotence and frustration.

Five years ago I figured this troop shortage was Assad's problem just for the city of Aleppo. I still think that. And adding more territory and people stretches Assad even more than just taking Aleppo as he finally did at the end of last year.

And maybe Assad's attention to the northwest explains why the southern front might become more active.

I know a lot of people think Assad has all but won his war. But I think he has a long way to go to claim victory, and could yet lose badly.

UPDATE: Not that putting bombs on target in support of ground troops isn't important.

The Few, the Cloud, the Marines

I'm sorry, but you can't stealth a Marine Expeditionary Force ashore.

These new Marine technologies are interesting:

In light of escalating tensions around the globe, the event is timely because “storming the beaches” has changed a lot since it was done in Normandy, France during World War 2.

Adversaries now possess technology that makes it difficult – if not impossible – to surprise them with a large-scale amphibious invasion. Even a kid with a social media account could post a picture that tips off forces are attempting a covert approach, making covert operations that much more difficult.

By using the newest advanced technology, it can help Marines to mount an aggressive beach invasion – and do it in a way that significantly reduces the risk to the lives of Marines compared to times past.

But I think that the idea that new technology can overcome persistent enemy surveillance and precision long-range weapons to continue the ability to launch large-scale amphibious operations is just wrong.

As long as an enemy has persistent surveillance and precision strike capabilities, amphibious operations necessarily will need to be spread out and smaller in nature, possibly even transient.

Fortunately, there are objectives consistent with this approach (and you can add the Persian Gulf and the Baltic Sea where a more diffused approach would be extremely useful).

Once the enemy persistent surveillance and precision strike are degraded enough, the new technologies won't be necessary to approach the shore in large numbers.

Predictions are Hard--Especially About the Future

The winning entry in the Army TRADOC science fiction writing contest is pretty good.

My entry did not win. I think it was good enough to win; but Hall's entry certainly is good enough.  We had common elements in our essays, although Mathison (or Mathinson?) Hall's entry assumed a peacetime environment with an interesting look at real-time observation of military operations visible to the world and how that will impact information operations by the enemy and our forces. I enjoyed reading it.

My essay was focused on more conventional warfare, with the skies above a battlefield a dangerous place to survive. I even incorporated my reachback for the squad notion that was unpublished when I submitted the Mad Scientist essay.

Hall's essay really explores my worries about our Army fighting under a microscope of such scrutiny. And the new megaphone to wrongly indict our troops adds to my worry about protecting our troops from politicized prosecutions.

This trend has implications for victory because even fighting by the rules is ugly for those far from the battlefield and the rules really can--as necessary as they are--pose a threat to effectiveness if civilian standards are applied to the battlefield. That metric will affect civilian leadership to restrict what the military can do to win a war.

So Hall's essay is welcome attention. I still have no answers to how we train our troops to deal with this scrutiny.

Or do you really believe that humanitarian organizations can't be infiltrated by enemies to wage lawfare--or worse--on the West (tip to Instapundit)?

The Mad Scientist group may still do something with my (and other) entries. I look forward to seeing what that is. I liked my story. But I'm biased. I should ask at some point about its fate.

Which is a minor complaint in this contest. There was no notification of the results of the contest and I had to find it announced on the web site. Better communication with those who entered would be appreciated.

UPDATE: In a pre-scheduled posting update, I'd like to point out this Army project (sorry, I couldn't embed the video), which is darned close in the concept to the battle suit I described in my entry (Mechanical Exo-Skeleton Liquid Armor Suit: MESLAS). It's pretty cool.

FLASH OVERRIDE Message to the Pentagon

Since September 11, 2001, we expanded special forces operators to reduce the new stress on them from the war on terror, but apparently we expanded their missions to keep the stress level the same or higher. Stop that.

This is not good:

America's special operations forces on the front lines in the war on terrorism are unable to retool and recharge because the elite commando units are in constant demand, a situation that is risking serious readiness challenges for the future, a top commander told Congress Tuesday.

It takes a lot of training and experience to create our special forces that are the envy of other militaries.

But over-use will drive those operators with years or decades left of service out from exhaustion at the pace.

The signs of the stress are there if we'd see them.

The Pentagon--or perhaps more importantly their civilian bosses--needs to react before this gets into a death spiral of stress, departures and death, and more stress on those who remain.

The end point of that path is a mission carried out by operators not nearly as good or healthy as those who order the mission believe they are. That mission will end badly.

UPDATE: Hmm:

Some special operations units have found themselves in an “unsustainable” deployment tempo, with warfighters deployed for six months, home for six months and then heading back out the door again, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee today.

Due to the high operating tempo, “we’re having some challenges for recruiting” as the Army downsizes its active force, SOCOM commander Army Gen. Raymond Thomas told lawmakers. The command is capped at 69,000 members, with members from all services but drawing the most warfighters from the Army.

Overall, “we can sustain the rate of deployment,” but “there are challenges on the force,” Thomas said.

With all due respect to General Thomas, I don't think SOC can sustain the rate of deployment.

UPDATE: Good advice:

But the truth about these operators is that for all their successes, they can’t actually have that much of an impact. The very nature of their training and standards weans thousands of recruits down to a highly-motivated elite, with stupendous capabilities for a few select missions.

But they are very few.

And in America’s struggle against violent Islamism today, there is little evidence that individuals matter. It is no accident that even our operators’ finest moment — the killing of Osama Bin Laden, six years ago this week — did not fundamentally change the extremist threat America faced.

The bigger picture apart from the strain on our special forces is that military action--whether a team of operators, air strikes, or an entire army--is largely a holding action against jihadis to protect the West while the Islamic civil war is waged to define whether Islam will look like the Islamist version of violent and intolerant Islam or whether it will allow more moderate strains to define Islam.

Special forces have a role, of course. But they are not a substitute for Moslems winning that civil war in a way that defeats and delegitimizes Islamist fanaticism.

People mock the Arab Spring. But it was the first real sign that Arabs wanted democracy--as ill understood as it was (rule of law is needed as much as voting)--rather than "pure" Islamist rule to replace corrupt autocrats (whose corruption and failures give rise to Islamists). I don't see the Arab Spring as a failure. It was the first partial success in a long process (did the West or anyone else just flip a switch to democracy?) to make Islam compatible with democracy

Joint Wishful Thinking?

India might want to reconsider this assumption as the basis for their defense planning:

Today’s stand-off precision munitions with satellite control systems have altered the physical component of conflict. The character of future wars is likely to be ambiguous, uncertain, short, swift, lethal, intense, precise, non-linear, unrestricted, unpredictable and hybrid. [emphasis added]

So what wars this century have given India this impression that wars are now inherently short?

And as long as they bring up the hybrid issue, how's that short and intense war in the Donbas going after more than 3 years?

But hey, everyone things their war will be short. I suppose America came close with Iraq and Afghanistan where we defeated the enemy government in short campaigns.

But new types of fighting extended both wars to today, though they have evolved into different struggles.

Mostly I think that assuming short wars relieves you of the need to think about how to replace losses, expend ammunition at the rate you think necessary for a long time, or raise new troops. And the cost of all that, naturally, doesn't come up.

Face it, when you have new nifty stuff, that runs out eventually and then you have to fight with cheaper stuff that can be made in the numbers needed. And until you do that, you slow the pace of warfare to stretch out what you have.

But hey, good luck with that assumption.

The Wild Card in North Korea

Yes, North Korea's army is large but weak. This is no revelation if you pay attention to these things. But it is a wild card that makes calculations very difficult.

North Korea is so broke after they lost the USSR's support, North Korea resorted to a strategy of starving the army to feed the nuclear weapons program and the secret police to keep the people and army in line.

The army is truly fragile and unlikely to survive a war. Yet it is too dangerous to demobilize.

Which leads to another problem scenario, of course. What if Kim wants South Korea to destroy that unaffordable but potentially dangerous army?

But if Kim Jong-un wants to use his military to win a war rather than to eliminate it as a threat to him, the North Korean army is so weak that for it to take ground in South Korea, North Korea would pretty much have to make massive use of chemical weapons and count on the South Korean army collapsing and breaking, allowing the North Korean army to road march south.

I can't say that hope couldn't happen even if I like our odds.

Although I half jokingly wonder if the North Korean army would fall apart looting malls and grocery stores as it moved into South Korean territory in the wake of a collapsing South Korean army.

UPDATE: From Strategypage:

Everyone knows how hard life has become for the troops. It has become so bad that North Korea troops spend more of their time farming (to feed themselves) and working in factories or construction (to pay for their housing and necessities like fuel) and this means they have less time for combat training. Another reason for low morale is the realization that these conscript troops are essentially slaves from age 17 until their late 20s and are now suffering from the growing food and fuel shortages that have long afflicted civilians only. It used to be the troops were at least guaranteed adequate supplies of food and fuel but now only officers get that.

I have no idea if the North Korean army is a threat to South Korea or a threat to the murderous elites who barely maintain them as a slave labor force.

UPDATE: Well yeah, a message should be sent to North Korea that their chemical weapons use won't be tolerated.

But I'm not sure what good that message would do if the North Koreans hope to use their army for an offensive rather than ritual suicide.

Cap the Guard at Battalions

If I was God of Army organization, I'd keep Army National Guard division headquarters but consider them part of the strategic reserve useful for beginning total mobilization for training completely new units.

And I'd eliminate Guard combat brigades and replace them with battalions that can more easily be mobilized in a reasonable amount of time to either reinforce active Army brigades or as replacement battalions for active brigades suffering casualties.

And some of the battalions would be battalion task forces capable of independent action attached to an active division or corps headquarters.

Seriously, a battalion is about as big as a Guard unit can be and still be good without a lot of additional training. Right now our 28 Guard brigades are on a 6 year rotation where 4-5 are available in any given year to be mobilized in support of the active force. The brigades need those years to gear up for overseas deployment.

And at the company level, Guard units can be better than active companies because of the continuity of membership in a Guard unit over a longer period of time. But I wouldn't make the company the basic unit of the Guard.

Although I would designate any Guard battalion or task force that fails readiness standards as  being subject to having component companies mobilized instead of the battalion as a unit.

To make up for losing brigades, I'd also give the National Guard the responsibility of preparing 1-2 division headquarters per year that would periodically be mobilized and sent abroad to command a mission, including command of active Army units. That would help make them more ready to command newly created units upon mobilization and allow career paths for career National Guard soldiers.

Do this and I think we'd be better prepared to mobilize reserve units to bolster the active Army as an operational and strategic reserve.

Which apparently is a problem these days. I'm worried that the reserve system is established to generate 4 or 5 combat brigades per year as an operational reserve. What if in order to win rapidly in the face of tougher resistance than expected or to avoid disaster we need more than 4 combat brigades faster than in 5 more years of the force generation plan?

Is our centralized system that relies on a few choke points for processing mobilized units the problem in being able to generate real manpower for a war that drags on requiring replacements and expansion?

History has continued to show the importance of a nation’s capacity to generate forces and get them to the fight. Centralized systems, by their very nature, are less responsive, less agile, and more vulnerable to disruption. It’s time to change. It’s time to push the “Bold Shift” initiative to its logical next step — a fully distributed system in the states. If the Army can do this, it will solve one strategic vulnerability that’s too important to ignore.

I've certainly worried that we haven't focused on the Army National Guard for combat units for a longer war ("A Total Army for Total War: The Guard Divisions' Role," Army Magazine, January 199--sorry, not online).

So a proposal that makes better us of our Army National Guard to bridge the gap between what the active Army can handle in a shorter campaign and what we'd need with full mobilization is welcome.

The Mother of All Red Lines

There is simmering unrest in Belarus. It takes little imagination for me to see Putin invading and annexing Belarus to the growing Russian empire.

Yeah, this worries me. A lot:

Opposition activists say defiance of Lukashenko is rising, and more protests will come. Lukashenko blames the protests on a “fifth column” of foreign spies who should be “picked out like raisins from a bun.” Rapprochement with the West, long considered a foreign policy aim for the EU to draw the country away from Russia’s influence, has been put on indefinite hold. Anger simmers.

The popular discontent with Lukashenko, a tall, broad man with a bushy moustache and a fondness for harvesting vegetables by hand, stems from issues as varied as economic hardship, corruption, and repression of basic rights.

It worries me because I don't see a free Belarus as the alternative to the dictator Lukashenko. No, I see the alternative to a Belarus dictatorship balancing between Russia and Europe as a Belarus being a province of Russia again.

Putin already has the military force to grab Belarus and could easily set them loose to arrest and shoot civilians who resist. Putin will justify an invasion of Belarus by pointing to Belarus protesters and calling them NATO agents.

Let's keep a close eye on Russia's Zapad 2017 exercise later this year, eh?

The Baltic states will press the United States and NATO to take additional security measures in the region ahead of a large Russian military exercise planned for September, Lithuania's president said on Thursday.

If that happens, the Suwalki Gap becomes NATO's new frontline along a new iron curtain.

I've long viewed a possible Russian annexation of Belarus as an Austria-like Anschluss. But it may be better thought of as remilitarizing the Rhineleand or perhaps better, the occupation of the Sudetenland.

Or, depending on whether Putin sees taking Belarus as more than an intermediate step, the new Belgium (and it could be 1914 or 1940).

For those looking for historical comparisons, of course.

If Putin occupies Belarus and annexes it, he will move his military into Belarus in force, making the defense of NATO Lithuania far more difficult.

The NATO defense of Estonia and Latvia farther north already relies on a counter-attack to liberate them, truth be told.

We'll need a non-Polish NATO heavy corps in Poland with equipment for more troops stored there.

With better logistics to funnel more troops east.

Because right now, American forces are an ocean away (From "AUSA's 5 Things" email):

Speed of deployment is becoming a closely watched measurement of Army readiness. The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team from Fort Carson, Colo., moved to Poland in 76 days in January, and the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Drum, N.Y., moved to Greece in 62 days in February.

What to watch: To improve readiness, the Army plans on treating every exercise like a wartime deployment to practice shaving time off movements, said Lt. Gen. Aundre F. Piggee, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for logistics.

Obviously, that's not fast enough to stop a Russian attack. And don't become confused and think the Europeans will buy time for us to arrive:

NATO undoubtedly needs additional funding sources, but the unwillingness of European countries to meet their 2 percent of GDP pledge isn’t NATO’s real problem. Rather the real problem is its unwillingness to realize that Europe is not at peace and will not be for a considerable time to come. NATO’s response to Russian threats to European security has been too slow and halting. As a recent Rand report suggests, European forces are still not ready for prime time. Consequently, NATO faces both conventional inferiority on the Baltic, Balkan, and Black Sea flanks and nuclear blackmail by Moscow.

A little sense of urgency from our European allies west of Poland would be helpful.

And America could use a rebuilt actual armored cavalry regiment standing guard at the Suwalki Gap to fight a delaying action while attriting the attacking Russians. With perhaps another ACR earmarked for screening the Latvian and Estonian borders.

All this comes into play because Belarus is possibly the most important territory in Europe right now.

And for real fun as we look for historical analogies, as bad as Putin seems, what if Putin is the Mussolini sidekick of our 1930s deja vu?

How About an Outreach to Global Orbiting?

How can this be a problem for our space agency?

The state of NASA’s space suit supply looks bleak in a new report from the space agency’s auditor. NASA is still “years away” from having a new space suit ready for future deep-space missions, the report claims, even though the agency has invested close to $200 million on space suit development since 2007.

Meanwhile, NASA seems to be running out of the space suits it does have for the astronauts on the ISS. Only a fraction of the original space suit supply for the station is fully functional right now, and NASA may risk not having enough space suits to last through the end of the ISS program, currently scheduled for 2024. [emphasis added]

Why would NASA--America's space agency--have bought space suits when it was busy working on global warming and an outreach to the Moslem world that clearly don't need the ability to survive in a vacuum?

Tip to Instapundit.

Killing Jihadis Really Does Help

I know that many on the left think that killing jihadis just makes more jihadis and is futile given their love of death. I've long held that if you kill enough and defeat them, that all but the most committed martyrs will give up and rethink that whole glorious caliphate notion.

Well:

Foreign fighters are leaving the Islamic State in droves, with many surrendering to or being caught by Turkish border police over the last few weeks, The Guardian reports.

People who sympathized with the terrorist group are also fleeing, as ISIS loses ground in its stronghold of Raqqa, Syria.

Yeah, dying for a losing cause isn't as glorious.

Trying to persuade jihadis to abandon the jihad with clever online propaganda should never be more than a supporting tactic to killing jihadis and putting the fear of a futile death into them.

Indeed, I addressed this long before this blog, in a draft manuscript on the Iran-Iraq War (from the online summary):

Perhaps 20,000 Iranians died in the battle. Iraq's casualties were about half of Iran's. Iraq's performance is notable in that Iraq withstood and won the kind of brutal bloodletting that supposedly only Iran could endure. Observers at the time saw only that Iran had launched yet another in a seemingly endless series of big offensives. They speculated about how many more of these attacks Iraq could endure. Actually, Iran broke at Karbala Five. It would be many months before observers began to wonder what was wrong with Iran when no further attacks were begun, yet it was true that the "Islamic Revolution bled to death in Karbala V."

I really should do something with that. But I digress. (As I can!)

Killing jihadis just buys time for the Islamic world to defeat Islamists in their civil war over who will define Islam. But killing jihadis (while avoiding killing non-jihadis) is absolutely necessary to win the Long War.

Not that the fight is easy now:

Western-backed Iraqi forces are capturing some Islamic State fighters as they fight to liberate Mosul and Raqqa but the vast majority of foreign fighters are "fighting to the death", the US-led coalition for the fight against IS said.

Colonel John Dorrian, the spokesperson for the global coalition against IS said just 1000 remain in Mosul, Iraq while between 3000-4000 are still fighting in Raqqa.

Of course, a lot of the less-than-eager-to-die have fled already. And many more simply didn't travel to Syria or Iraq in the first place. Recall that at one time ISIL had 30,000 or so fighters. While there are others scattered around Iraq and Syria, the 4-5,000 in Raqqa and Mosul are the main bodies left.

And we might not have hit the core of the hard-core jihadis. While it is possible that the Mosul pocket has shrunk enough to represent the dead-enders, is Raqqa vulnerable to desertion?

The Raqqa number of troops is a bit surprising given that I read the jihadis are transferring their capital to Dayr az Zawr.

This is How Gulag Guards Were Recruited

Global warming is a religious-based ideology that provides a higher cause for proto-tyrants to push people around.

Well, yes (via Instapundit):

AGW: when a scientific theory becomes a religion…

…then those with an opposing view become apostates.

Yes! Punish the unclean heretics!

Believe me, I've been all over this aspect of global warming activists.

Hell, I wrote a friggin' song in their honor.

But this faith/apostate clash makes sense when you consider a survey of Dartmouth students showed liberal students to be way more intolerant of different political views than conservative students:

Yup. The side that is currently breeding violence against speech they disagree with happens to be intolerant of opposing views. They've practically built an entire movement on preaching "tolerance," while those of us who didn't fall for it recognized it as Orwell's "newspeak."

Yeah, they can go scrape those COEXIST bumper stickers off their cars right now.

Long-time readers will recall that I've often said that it is a crime against language to have "liberal minded" considered the equivalent of "open minded." I've never claimed conservatives are more open minded, but deny that liberals are necessarily open minded just because they loudly insist they uniquely are capable of rationally weighing evidence.

Perhaps I should change my mind on that because of the data, eh?

But not that even general trends speak to what any individual on the left, right, or middle believes in this regard. There are of course clearly open- and closed-minded people across the spectrum.

So even with some data, I won't say that liberals are more likely to be totalitarians than conservatives:

The lie we were told as kids was this: The end of American liberty would come at the hands of the political right. ...

But the lie is obvious now, isn't it?

Because it is not conservatives who coerced today's young people or made them afraid of ideas that challenge them. Conservatives did not shame people into silence, or send thugs out on college campuses to beat down those who wanted to speak.

The left did all that.

I will say that it has long been nonsense that the left is the protector of freedom.

Just look at those "anti-fascist" violent thugs who look oddly fascist-like.

Just look at those who preen at being the founders of "free speech" eagerly suppressing or (just as bad) failing to defend free speech when it is within their power to preserve freedom of speech.

Part of that similarity is that communists are international socialists are actually very similar to Nazis (who called themselves "national socialists"). So going from one to the other is a simple word change, as you might notice Stalin did for the USSR when he proclaimed Russia would forge the path of "socialism in one country." That's way different than national socialism, eh?

So I think it is clear that left-wing tyrants at least need a "good" cause to justify suppressing dissenters and cleansing them from society. Right-wing tyrants generally are content to leave the people alone as long as they accept their place and provide the goodies to the palace. The left needs a reason that saves the world to justify hating those who stand in their way and crushing them, while sleeping just fine at night.

Global warming is the mother of all causes in this regard. It is an all-purpose Apocalyptic crisis--complete with a fiery Hell on Earth and the flood!--that justifies anything.

Seriously, people, Yahweh sent but ten plagues to torment pharaoh. Global warming's toll is orders of magnitude greater to compel us to let our carbon go!

I like to flatter myself that my disagreement with global warming claims rests on the failure of the science to prove that mankind's influence is the driver of climate change (the climate always changed even without mankind's influence and continues to change vectors even in an age--since 1950--of human influence); the failure to admit that climate change can't be good to a certain point or prove climate change can't at least be adapted to if it does get severe; or that their left-wing state-driven (or even supranational power) ideas that always seem to enrich themselves and reduce freedom and well-being for the rest of us is the answer if humans are responsible for changes that will be too dangerous to adapt to.

But so far, the way global warming activists react to any questions of the science (and there is real science going on out there) as a challenge to their faith, I'm inclined not to think they are doing anything but knocking on my door some Sunday morning and asking me in increasingly insistent tones if I'd like to discuss my faith.

Act like a fanatic and I'll view you as a fanatic who is possibly dangerous.

Now go and emit no more.

(Sorry, I meant to stop this post after the song. But I value individual freedom--even for those who disagree with me--and see the foundations of totalitarianism in the increasingly strident voices who would order the world as they see fit and regiment the people to save us all from a Hellish future that only exists in their minds. Their extremism and growing hysteria is alarming. The guards of the gulags and concentration camps believed they were good people, too, don't forget. So the post got longer and the title changed from mere mockery.)

Counting on China?

China's relationship status with America and North Korea is complicated.

China may help curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions because they worry about losing a buffer state and because the Chinese fear Japan and South Korea might go nuclear in response. And China may hope to get trade benefits with America in an age of economic uncertainty in China.

But don't be confused that the Chinese are our friend:

China demanded Seoul remove the U.S. missile defense system THAAD on Wednesday, after the U.S. military moved missiles and road-mobile launchers to a designated site in central South Korea overnight.

Beijing's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang condemned THAAD deployment during a regular press briefing and said the move "destroys the regional strategic balance and further prompts tensions on the Korean peninsula," South Korean television network SBS reported.

To be clear, China wants South Korea to remain vulnerable to being struck by (or least blackmailed by) Chinese nuclear missiles.

China may be the best hope of avoiding either a war to stop North Korea from going nuclear or accepting a nuclear North Korea, but that doesn't mean China will accept that mission.

Stratfor has more on the issue of relying on China.

By Any Means Necessary

Just when you thought the North Korean drive for nuclear missiles couldn't get uglier:

More effective sanctions are more essential now because the North Korean government is allowing another major famine (like the one in the 1990s that killed 5-10 percent of the population) to develop. The North Korean rulers believe having nuclear weapons will enable them to extort sufficient fuel, food and cash to turn things around.

Is North Korea so close to nuclear missiles that they are squeezing every last resource out of their people to cross the finish line before the government collapses or enemies strike their nuclear facilities to put off that day?

If that plays out in another famine, I'm sure that global "humanitarian" groups will argue that the world should provide food aid to North Korea, which will reward the regime for choosing nukes over their people.

Rare But Not Gone

Friendly fire may have killed two of our Rangers in Afghanistan recently:

"We are investigating the circumstances of the combat deaths of the two Army Rangers in the beginning of what was an intense three-hour firefight," [Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff] Davis said. "It is possible these Rangers were struck by friendly fire."

That has been an unfortunate fact of life little talked about in warfare. But at least it is less common now.

Although I wonder if that will hold true in a conventional war when speed of action is more necessary than in a counter-insurgency or counter-terrorist environment.

Indeed, Germans in World War II would deliberately risk it by keeping artillery going on enemy positions while their troops advanced on the enemy for longer than a Western army would.

The theory was that friendly fire would be less dangerous than unsuppressed enemy fire as their troops got close to the enemy line.