THE LAST PLACE

 I see that some American soldiers were killed and wounded along with one interpreter while they were doing something in Syria with the current rulers of Syria's armed forces. I am sorry to see that. That said, Syria is just about the last place on the planet where we need to have any American soldiers at all. It is a famous dead zone much like Afghanistan and Pakistan where there is nothing worth preserving, nothing worth saving, nothing worth defending and nothing that is ours.

I believe that President Trump tried to order our forces out of Syria in his first term but the contemptible slime in the Pentagon and State Department fought that every inch of the way and left our troops there on a pointless and useless mission that served no benefit to anyone, least of all Americans. Every single soldier there needs to go. 

We have done the thing we do best to preserve the flow of oil and that is pretty much guaranteed one way or another and you all know that we simply don't need it. It used to serve our purpose to help the oils flow to Europe and the Far East but not so much anymore. In fact, I cannot think of any reason to worry about the flow of oil out of the Middle East. If they want to sell it, they have the means to guard it and we'll profit from selling them more weapons to do it with. In the meantime, suggest to your representatives that they should urge the total withdrawal of American forces from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and the rest of north Africa.

When the little Barbary pirates decide that the time is ripe to sneak back out and do their thing, we will still be there, just based and supported out of the northern north African bases in Italy and Greece. Who knows, perhaps the north Africans living in Marseilles would like to support an American battle group visit every month or two. With the French you never know and with the new pseudo-French it is impossible to know.

HUMDINGER OF A PROBLEM

 I was looking for a quote about there being insufficient manpower for a 3rd immediate generation of war and found this at the usual source of misinformation. I suspect it has a lot to do with why it is a source of misinformation.

 –In the first identified problem area, it appears that a person who cares enough to write about it may have a close connection to the problem (maybe knows a thing or two about it)

–In the second problem area they seem to say that it is dubious because the drafter relied too much on sources that reflected enormous interest in the subject (knew a thing or two about it)

–and having grown to know to much about it based on direct experience it potentially makes the information it contains unverifiable and neutral (Do these idiots not know they are talking about wikipedia?) 

–Gasp! It contains original research! (Seriously, what can I say, this sounds awful)

–Holy Cow! It relies on primary sources for its facts?@! The nerve!

It amazes me that anybody ever relied upon wikipedia for anything real or true. I think in my generation this was best expressed in the old usenet days on sci.mil.naval when all of the commenters would sneer at anybody who cited wiki as their source and didn't have one of the standard desk top references available to use as source for cites, claims and counterclaims. The facts were endlessly arguable but nobody was going to bother debating clowns who relied on wikipedia for the facts they 'knew' about anything.

The online encyclopedia was an amazing idea and invention and doomed by the natural inclination of trolls to be trolls and OCD types to take control and make it is as painful and pointless as possible. It has become the gold standard for the original sin of DEI  where you know that some of it is garbage you freely jump to the assumption that all the rest is also garbage.

Remember when GIGO was not said with resignation but with the conviction that you could eliminate the Garbage? I do.

THE DIFFERENCE

 I was just reading some more of Kurt Schlichter over at Townhall and was struck by the unbalanced nature of his disdain for the euroweenies. I don't disagree with him, in fact I'm fully onboard with his characterization of Europeans of the NATO flavor but that was the difference between the two of us otherwise near peers. He served our country in Europe where we imagined that the soldiers and staffs merely grazed from one decent posh restaurant to the next with long interludes spent drifting down the Rhine or Danube stopping for a sip of wine every 5 minutes and this was contrasted with our days and nights in the Desert or afloat in the most dangerous body of water in the world.

Where the real difference was though came after 1990 and Desert Storm. Everywhere we went we were greeted warmly and if we did find ourselves in a posh hotel at breakfast on our way to a conference at an embassy or headquarters any number of tables would send over free pots of delicious coffee and pick up the check for everything. We kind of stood out in our camouflage uniforms because despite my best efforts, OPNAV simply refused to adopt Hotel Camouflage patterns.

The people in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE liked us. To be honest I sensed more than tolerance for me when I was there even back in 1984, 1985, 1988 and 1989 but it was warmer and friendlier after we rolled back Saddam. If you contrast the Colonel's experience in NATO it was mostly with liberal dimwits with egos the size of planets that didn't like Americans on principle, hated soldiers; and that is our former allies. Our old enemies have elephant memories and let's not kid ourselves, they did not like us but tolerated us because we kept the Russians out. Then they dropped the act.

Europe is on a track they don't recognize now and they don't know it. They think they have some sort of hold on Americans that they really don't. The fossils that liked Europe are mostly dead and all are out of power now. Their kids were the Euro-explorers and they got their fill of a Europe much closer to the current form of Western Europe and none of them are interested in fighting and dying for it. The current war fighters fought alone in the sandbox and watched as their "allies" did nothing at all for year after year. I suppose I can't really fault them for that because it was all for nothing but still, it left marks that never go away. They didn't make any friends there. None. 

We can actually see what the Europeans have for a refined advanced military and found that almost none of it was fit for battle and certainly none of it came in large enough chunks to be useful for more than about 30 seconds of combat.

I don't suppose it's an altogether bad thing to raise your children to hate war and despise those that prepare for it but it sort of relies upon a solid iron core of disciplined warriors you can call your own to leap to your defense if and when the next war comes and Europe doesn't have that, hasn't had it for about 40 years and has really torqued the only people on the planet that had, up to this point, been prepared to fight and die for Europe.

Well guys, not anymore. Kurt isn't wrong and the truly sad thing is that now any country in NATO that even attempts to rearm for 21st century war is going to be destroyed by its own allies, the media and of course the Russians for being warmongers. It's going to look very much like what happened the last time lax Europeans tried to rearm before the obvious looming war that wasn't just on the horizon, it was right there. Of course, Europeans simply don't comprehend how pathetic their military situation is without the US.

The good news for Europe might be that nobody wants what they have other than hordes of the military age arab muslims they have let into their countries in overwhelming numbers. Well, them and all the African military age muslims they have let into their countries. Oh well, from here it looks like a real problem but I'm sure I'm wrong. Nothing to worry about, really.

Really. 

INTO THE VANISHING POINT

 We see a couple of bothersome and not so trivial conclusions being drawn from really pointless and idiotic ideas. The two that bug me the most are the idiots in the media and elsewhere who all seem to clamor that we are in a "space race" with China or somebody and need to spend more money to be better faster and damn the cost and second that we need to invest trillions of taxpayer money and natural resources into building a lot of AI data centers.

It isn't a race anymore. We raced to the moon and we 'won' for whatever that is worth. Nobody is 'racing' to get to Mars. We are trying to build an architecture that will push mankind into space to stay not to win some stupid pointless race against people who aren't even playing. 

What nobody asks is why do we need all this AI data center nonsense? Is it to make videos without paying actors? Is it to answer deep questions that nobody knows the answers to? Is it for some other reason like critical research questions that need answers before engineering can develop the technology? In each of these events the answer is the same, why not pay people to do it? People can make good movies and others can earn a living writing, directing, acting, lighting, mixing and even doing computer effects so why not let them? 

How many deep questions are there? Can't one AI answer them all and that's it, all done and you can shut down that AI data center?

How much Research do you think an AI can do using nothing but LLM? It's a scam just like global warming is a scam. There is no sign at all that any researchers are on the right track to develop a computer or program that is smarter than humans so why do we need all these data centers? 

If it was a national priority to build the first true AI there might be some reason to focus resources on outproducing everyone else but I'll just point out the obvious, ARPA, DARPA and the rest of the SciTech Government Research taps have not been turned on for this effort so it really doesn't appear to be in the national interest as any kind of priority or project. That being the case, why is everyone lining up to fork over money and resources to billionaires to get richer building useless data centers?

Does anybody know what they're really doing with all that money? Is anyone following the money?

On the economics of large scale production and in the interest of enhancing and increasing our shipbuilding capability has anyone considered sinking all those billionaire yachts that float around the world wide open to mysterious hull breaches and unexplained fires? If not, why not? You'd think General Dynamics would be all over a money making scheme like that....It's not like anybody cares about them, just look at the strange case of the capsized billionaire's yacht that for some reason decided to go full metacentric unstable for no reason at all and flipped over and sank one night taking the billionaire and his daughter to the bottom.

I don't mind people investing their own money but I hate when it turns into the sports stadium type investment where the billionaires get all the money to build it, own it and manage it and the taxpayers simply subsidize every single penny of construction and operation forever. Are we doing this again but for so-called data centers that will never make a penny of profit or return a penny on investment?

Ask questions. It's the only way to be sure.....you know, other than pulling back and nuking it from orbit.

SHAPING THE BATTLEFIELD

 Lost in the art of war is the simple reconsideration of war in all its aspects. What is the point of war is always the first question. What do you intend to achieve by waging war? Is it right to simply slip into a war because you don't know what you're doing or did not know that actions sometimes lead to war? The questions for the new war seem not to be asked and most certainly aren't getting answered anymore. One of the most irksome questions that seems most glossed over is, who wants war?

Let us assume that all the questions are answered and we are now faced with making war so lets get on with the strategy and the operational art for making war in the modern era. What are the goals and what are the desired outcomes and how best are they met by invoking violence taken to the max to achieve them? Let us say that our goal is ending the war in Ukraine by attacking Russia until Russia retaliates and then we jump straight into war with Russia, win that sucker and liberate Ukraine! It's a stupid certainty that this is almost bound to be what the EU gets up to out of its continued intent for making war on Russia, except for the winning that sucker and liberating Ukraine.

Let us say that Russia retaliates with a number of decapitation strikes aimed at taking out the warmongers in France, Germany, the Baltic States and always Poland. That's all. They stop shooting and now NATO is going to retaliate. I'm curious to see how that next Phony War works out as the generals and leaders all confess that without 100% backing from Donald Trump they are unable to do more than spit at Russians and there is no way in the world that they will have forces ready to line up and cross the line of departure and advance into Russia except mabye in Kaliningrad and there they are scared to because President Putin has said he will nuke the first invader to step foot into the territory.  

I would be curious to see what kind of aviation response they try to pull off because that is always the first response now to any situation that gets out of hand. I mean to say, I'm sure that our NATO allies have a dozen flavors of long range artillery missiles that they're prepared to unload on Russia that are similar to our ATACMS or ground launched cruise missiles, I've just never heard of them and given who we're talking about, I very much doubt that any such thing exists. At any rate, the European Air Forces are sure to be deadly after all the relentless practice they have had at precision air strikes over the last 50 years.

I was wondering earlier about the Fleet-in-Being and while some say it exists, I tend to doubt it. More to the point, it would be a fleet without much purpose given all the sanctions on Moscow which have no doubt already disposed of almost 100% of its seaborne trade and the Russian Navy never really had any strategic or operational relevance outside its ballistic missile fleet and vast flocks of SSNs that would have proven a tough nut if we could still even dream of pulling off a REFORGER (return of forces to Germany). I kind of laugh at the idea of NATO Surface Action Groups and Carrier Battle Groups built around French and British carriers taking the war against Russia into the Baltic or the Black Sea.....

For all the posturing and verbal bellicosity I'm not seeing much war here. I don't think anybody else is either which really only leaves us with blundering into war and the neocons behind that kind of idiocy are fairly well contained on this continent and never much in favor in Europe so that spares us all that. So the real question remains, why beggar ourselves to position ourselves to fight Europe's wars for them?  

Next up, Rolling Thunder II. 

SNUB NO MORE

 I like reading Zerohedge. It is always informative and interesting. I did think of a few subtitles for the photos in the article attached. Here you go:

The Scourge and Flail of Moscow

 

Where's the leader?

This is the EU. Not shown is their Leader for Animal Welfare.

Oh for Heaven's sake, just look at the titles they give themselves in the EU. They are clearly missing an essential element of any self-proclaimed sovereign and that it obviously the military arm.

When you realize that the EU is simply the European Coal and Steel Community that was established in 1951 to ensure that coal and steel were used in Europe for peaceful purposes and that as a result of the enlargement of that insignificant institution into the colossus known as the EU, it is easy to see how they simply did away with most of their production of coal and steel. I don't think there are any blast furnaces in the United Kingdom and God only knows what is left in Germany, France and the Netherlands. 

Job titles:

What is a a Clean Just and Competitive Transition? Is this where you dismiss the popular votes and referendums that rejected the EU but which were nonetheless set aside and imposed by fiat? Or is this where most of the countries involved had so little faith in their arguments for the EU that they refused to submit them to referendums and approval by the actual people of Europe? 

This overlaps that amazing office known as Technical Sovereignty, Security and Democracy whose stated purpose is at odds with all of its actions. There simply isn't much if any tech in Europe and the way they interpret security and democracy is one vote, one time and maximum enforcement of government directed censorship and jailing of the any and all opposition. Doesn't sound very clean, just, secure or democratic to me.

Prosperity and Industrial Strategy sounds nice but it appears to have led Europe to completely destroy its energy generation, nuclear power, steel, coal and most other energy intensive industries which invites the question, what kind of stupid industrial strategy is that? Where is the productivity in any of that?

High Rep for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy doesn't really sound like 'Office devoted to kicking America's ass out of Europe and making war on Russia using any and every flimsy excuse or casus belli we can dig up and shove up Putin's nose.' I mean, that's apparently what that means in European but I'm not a native speaker fluent in European.

My favorite one other than the Animal Welfare dude has got to be, Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness. Just how this title conforms with the EU DEMANDS that the member nations let in every single African and muslim on the planet and give them all the native's money, housing, education, medical and dental plus unlimited free housing, free transportation etc, is a complete mystery to me. It seems to mean, in European, 'Screw the whities, take all their money, schools, houses, freedoms and give them to people with zero skills, no understanding of civilized behavior and who do not know, follow or understand the concept of rules.' Again, as I said, not a fluent speaker of European but it does sound like a devilishly complex language.

We come finally to Cohesion and Reforms. This sounds almost too evil to be true. I mean it sounds like once you voted yourself into the sick twisted 4th Reich that there is no getting out because it is really very sticky and you cannot reform it because why would anyone reform perfection?

I studied the ECSC, BENELUX, the Western Union and of course the European Economic Community in school a long time ago and never dreamed that Europeans would vote themselves into the worst aspects of a combined Holy Roman Empire and 4th Reich....but they did. To say that this thing is 10 times worse than its idiot predecessor is not wrong and like that and all the rest, the only way out is war on a new scale not seen 1648.

When you look at the history of the place it is inevitable:

The 30 Years War and the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648

The Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna and Concert of Europe in 1815

The First World War and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919

The Second World War and the United Nations.  

When you think about it, each of the institutions created out of the wars that preceded them became instantly corrupt and the corruption has grown far worse in each iteration of the World Peace Enforcement Nirvana created by idealists after the last 2 world wars. There were no idealists at Westphalia or Vienna in 1815. 

I really don't understand why Europe's leaders and rulers are so intent on irritating Russia but as noted, not a fluent European am I. That there is money to be made I don't doubt but I don't see how they need to keep killing men in the mud in Ukraine to make that money since historically the real thieving and stealing begins when the peace breaks out and beaks get dipped so frantically in reconstruction money that people are blinded by flying $. On the other hand, there is also endless corruption in European military spending.

CONSIDER THE MAN WHO RULES

 Grok did its thing for me when I typed in "Vladimir Putin" and it was pretty interesting and informative. It is worth keeping in mind as you hear and read about what a dangerous lunatic he is that he has actually been running things in Russia for 26 years now and doesn't seem to be doing at all badly. YMMV. For those who think war and special military operations define both the man and the country, consider that this country waged war on the far side of the planet for 18 years against countries so far beneath us as to be unnoticeable while also apparently warring in 18 or 19 African countries at the same time under Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden.

Anyway, I'd be curious what your Grok has to say about Vladimir Putin. Mine says this at the outset:

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer serving as President of Russia since 7 May 2012, having previously held the office from 31 December 1999 to 7 May 2008 and the position of Prime Minister from 8 May 2008 to 7 May 2012.[1][2] Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) to working-class parents, Putin graduated from Leningrad State University with a law degree in 1975 before joining the KGB, where he served for 16 years, including as a foreign intelligence officer in Dresden, East Germany, from 1985 to 1990. Following the Soviet Union's dissolution, he entered politics in Saint Petersburg as deputy mayor, then relocated to Moscow, ascending to director of the Federal Security Service in 1998, Prime Minister in August 1999 under Boris Yeltsin, and acting president later that year. 

Putin's leadership has focused on Russia's economic recovery from the 1990s crises, consolidation of central authority through federal reforms and oversight of key economic sectors, and assertive foreign policies aimed at safeguarding national interests amid shifting post-Soviet geopolitics and Western institutional expansions. Re-elected in 2024 for a term extending to 2030 following constitutional amendments, his tenure emphasizes sovereignty, strategic partnerships with non-Western powers, and resistance to perceived external pressures.

He has already headed up the Soviet Union Russia for more than twice as long as FDR ruled the United States. The entire story at Grok is worth reading. It shows just how his life and times defined the man who defines Russia in this century. He swims in the most dangerous seas in modern times and is clearly a very large shark when compared to all the tadpoles flailing around in Europe demanding his head for being naughty. It really is a wonder that he takes any of them at all seriously. Well, OK. No. I don't take any of them seriously so I very much doubt that Putin does. 

ON TYRANNY AND ULTIMA RATIO REGIS

 You know I used to admire Great Britain. It was something I picked up from my father and other relatives and it did seem like quite a nice place when I started visiting it in 1988 but it is now no less than it always was and it always was a First Class Tyranny. There's a reason we split away from those demons and as I watch them caper and dance in like lunatic zombies trying to shed head lice I can see why our Founders were so willing to fight them and to make damned sure that this nation and its peoples would always retain the right to fight the reptiles using all the weapons that come to hand when nations get to fighting among themselves. As I recall, it is still quite legal to own personal artillery in this country.

As one of the Cavaliers quipped in one of those BBC shows about their Civil War, “this house needs a cannon.” It’s a pity they allowed themselves to be gelded and turned back into peasants and serfs.

Not us, of course. 

 

In fact, I just saw this today while driving down to Wooster to pick up some replacement windows from an Amish guy for my 100 year old house.

TO THE BREAKERS

 What will it take for America to be able to build warships again? There are several answers but each is merely a reflection of the underlying basis for building ships. Is there a compelling need for warships today or tomorrow?

Up in the Great Lakes they were building a new Constellation class frigate. It was to an Italian design that Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and the dedicated work force of 80,000 people all of whom worship at the alter of NotInventedHere made every effort to sink before it even left the building ways in Marinette, Wisconsin. The trolls of NAVSEA are a well known hazard to navigation but the real downfall is probably one that can be laid at the feet of the shipyard selected as the Prime to build the damned things. They failed across the board.

In the real world of accomplishments, builders are forced to pay for what they need and they don't get to whinge about having to pay too dearly for things that are absolute requirements. For instance, when building the Alaska Pipeline there was a need for skilled welders and other trades all along the route and you don't hire a workforce like that from the leavings at the 7/11 employment line. You pay enormous wages and benefits to attract the workers you need. It is obvious that Fincantieri Marinette simply declined to follow this path. 

The problems as I see it are:

– There is no compelling need to build surface force warships given the nature of the threat and the paralyzed infantile state of national will and leadership. The business of a Navy is to control the seas and the only reason to control the seas is to deny them to others and permit your trade to pass freely. We don't have much outgoing seaborne trade and our leadership thinks it is against some law to order the death or destruction of our enemies. Navies cannot survive in that kind of environment yet that is what the US is like today.

– The modern threat environment militates rather heavily against surface warships and projecting into the future, their survival on the surface is one that looks pretty bleak. In the littoral seas they can be tracked and attacked at will from drones launched from the shore. It is easy to say that drones can be suppressed as easily as ever we talked about suppressing shore batteries of anti-ship missiles but then we NEVER went up against dozens of shore batteries of anti-ship missiles in a drone environment and people have literally no conception of how cheap and easy it is to mass manufacture long range attack drones and fire them off in waves of hundreds.

– I used to laugh at the idea of our modern navy enforcing EMCON. I still laugh at it. Home on Jam was easy, Home on ELINT signals was even easier and you know why of course.....NAVSEA probably doesn't but I'll share it with you. Drones do not shift into Terminal Homing and a final course to target the way that an ASCM does. A drone, unless jammed, can also furnish the operator with video of the target in final acquisition and the operator knows if it is being spoofed.

The massive battles of WWII that saw our Navy essentially ward off attacks by thousands of manned drones reflect something not seen since the late days of the Cold War; redundancy and layers of it applied over a real Battle Group. Long Range Naval aviation is long gone. The layers of frigates and destroyers providing anti-missile and anti-aircraft defenses are now just one or two ships close in and the fleets combat logistics train of endless resupplies of missiles and ammo are long gone.

The doctrine is now so outdated as to be almost useless. The tactics and methods are astonishingly weak and probably completely ineffective against a real bad guy. You can look around now and you'll hear everyone in the trade whining about China and what a terrible threat China is because it has a big navy and once again I would be asking, why? It was our biggest trading partner and shipped us millions of tons of goods in thousands of its own commercial ships. Are they going to attack their own ships to deny us the trade? Are we going to attack China for some reason?

Look at who talks about attacking China or needing a Navy to fight China and ask yourself, what do they get out of such a silly posture? Why do they want this thing? Who benefits from such a war? Who loses the most in such a war?

So the Soviet Union is no more and Europe is the most pathetic excrescence ever and the question being asked again, why do we need this large and powerful Navy? We have raised a third generation now since Vietnam that does not believe that we should police the world and make it safe for Soros and Bill Gates. A lot of them would not fight for the USA so why does anyone think they would fight to the death for Ukraine?

The Pentagon has carefully selected the very worst people to be admirals and generals for 25 years now and there is no real way to stop that except to send all of the current ones home and convene a board of terminal Captains to select the next future leaders of the Navy and only select the best without any resort whatsoever to the DIE and sex of the future admirals. One helpful aspect to this would be the final understanding and realization that we only need a couple of dozen admirals since that is about all the Navy we have and/or need. We might also begin to accept that we don't need perfect angels at the top of the pyramid. A few personal foibles and an interest in pretty women should not be disqualifying.

You know what else we don't need? Yeah, we don't need 80,000 people whose job it is to tell industry how to build ships. Not one of them ever built a ship, the vast majority never served at sea and probably fewer than 100 have sailed off a lee shore in a storm. 

I read a story in the Surface Forces Pacific Maintenance Quarterly about one of our Missile Patrol Hydrofoils that had run into a difficulty getting up on its foils. The Fleet engineers had investigated and researched and delved into the reason for some time before they concluded that everything was working exactly according to spec and design but the ship would not come up on its foils and reach anywhere near full speed......until they removed 11 tons of unnecessary paperwork, manuals and files from the ship. That pretty much describes NAVSEA at this point and most of the Navy. 

NOW we have hardly scratched the surface and that is the point that the Navy would make. Drones attacking ships can really only scratch the hulls and superstructure they will claim but warships are no stronger now than merchant ship hulls are and we have seen just how flimsy merchant ships can be when attacked. The not invented here also applies to our naval architects and specifiers who simply decline to believe that we have made giant strides in strength of materials and that other forces can contribute to a real modern lethal warship design other than EM cannons and lasers that seemingly never work at sea for some damned reason. Oh yeah, salt air and humidity. Maybe if we had the deck force paint them....

 

WAR CRIMES ALL THE WAY DOWN NOW

 Well, it didn't take long did it? Every single officer involved in killing our enemies is now accused of war crimes and there will be investigations. Nothing will gut a military faster than breaking faith with your soldiers that they will not be used as political pawns in pointless games played by politicians. When Judge Napolitano comes out and declares a reattack on an enemy vessel is a war crime there is a social failure on a massive and damned near unfixable level.

Right off the bat it calls into question the deterrent patrols. It opens the door to endless post facto prosecutions of every single shot fired in the last 80 years and it must be crushed right now at the outset or there is no defense. This is not a time for pussyfooting around and narrowly edging or trimming to appease stupid people. 

The problem is that right now there are zero men of the stature necessary to knock this on the head and put it away. There is no George Washington, Eisenhower or MacArthur and there is zero credibility in the legal profession as a whole or in part and the Church pissed away every scrap of moral authority it ever had over the last 30 years.

If soldiers fear that they will only meet endless legal retribution and attacks for their actions, we have lost. This is the goal sought for all these decades by the left and the liberal machine. The military was the last crutch propping up the idea of a State and if falls there is nothing left. 

A HARD BLOW AT NASA

 I was reading this article and it seems to have left out the most important bit of pseudo news. It suggests that the Russian launch pad for its Soyuz program took a devastating and severe hit during the last manned launch to the International Space Station and that it looks like this could end Soviet Russian cooperation in the boondoggle. It seems that the damaged structure must be replaced if any further Soyuz are to launch and there is some doubt that Russia still feels the need for ISS games.

The article does mention that Russia will have difficulty replacing the launch complex and fixing it up since the country is so heavily sanctioned for waging war on its frontiers and has, as a consequence got every stupid dolt in NATO talking about launching preemptive strikes on Russia and cutting off all trade and technical support and exchanges. This is amusing on several fronts.

Why is anyone wasting time in orbit now? LEO is not even the back yard in space exploration and development and the tricky bits all now happen much further out and sadly, NASA is not really playing any kind of meaningful role in any of it. The only people that seem interested in getting to the moon and to Mars are working at Space X and they don't seem to feel any need to spend time messing around in orbit. They plan to play much further out and it shows.

NASA has been building a replacement space suit for something like 25 years and is no further along then when they started the whole process 25 years ago. Think about it, 25 years is a long time to screw up something as simple as making a modern space suit out of modern materials and processors and yet this is simply the margarine on NASA's cold toast. NASA does nothing well and it shows.

OK, the slings and arrows are well deserved but if Roscosmos and the Russians simply terminate their share of the missions in support of the ISS, is NASA going to pick them up? The Russians have already cut their investment by 25% and with a war that is costing them far more than they anticipated once they realized that every tinhorn dictator in the EU and EU Commission got involved in furthering the war to the bitterest end and the death of every Ukrainian, it looks like they need to trim their expenditures at no cost to their own enterprises. What better thing to cut than the ISS?

Can NASA and Boeing take up the 'slack'? It's an interesting question.

Oh, and do you believe a mission critical structure that survived dozens of Soyuz launches just happens to have failed catastrophically when the need for it went away in the minds of those who work in the Kremlin? Yeah, me neither. 

A QUIET WEEK

There was a meal with a very large bird and then there was the road trip and the whole time there was an absence of news, radio, tv, the internet and it was all quite good and relaxing. I think that it was time very well spent but it did mean that the cylinders that autoload with ideas worth writing down were all put away and are only now starting to recharge. 

Back at 11.

EVIL COUNSELORS

 The six scumbag democrat politicians that made the video basically encouraging junior enlisted and even young junior officers to consider disobeying the orders of their superiors is familiar territory to me. Those politicians just took to the media and encouraged some really ignorant people to gamely consider that they can defy a direct order they don't like because in their simple minds, the order is illegal. 

I once signed and gave the order that this whole thing all turned on:

The order I gave was for her to have no further contact with Petty Officer Lewis-Wiggan. That was the sum total of the whole entire case and she could not obey it and in fact ramped it up and up until it cost her everything she worked 19 years for. If we're charitable, she thought it was an illegal order.

Those idiots who decided that they needed to advise the entire military that they could disobey orders have basically invited a thousand more cases where dumb people do dumb things and take stupid advice, and really stupid advice from non-JAG lawyers and end up with a felony conviction.

Understand, that idiot above was free and clear and could have walked away with a simple letter that ordered her to cease contact and it would not have gone in anyone's files and it would have been forgotten about and probably not considered when it came time to write her fitness report if she had otherwise been doing an outstanding job. That was easy. She made it hard and then harder and then she compounded it and made it really hard. Had she listened to reason she would have done the thing ordered. Had she listened to her sane friends she would have taken Commodore's Mast and walked it off. By demanding a Court Martial she reaped every bad thing from a simple failure to obey orders and the lawyers got involved. Never involve the lawyers.

 What this all was for those who don't know the military, was the worst fallout from a simple easily fixable non-criminal admonishment. Life doesn't get fairer than that. Now junior sailors and military personnel who despise President Trump are going to consider that they have the RIGHT to disobey an order they disagree with and there is NO UPSIDE to this behavior. Even if they win, they lose and they will never win.

I remember a conversation I had one night on an island off the coast of Kuwait during Desert Storm and the Petty Officer I was talking to was telling me how much he hated the navy and that his dad had told him that if he really wanted out all he had to do was slug an officer. It was late at night, we're both armed to the teeth and there's nobody around so I asked him, "what did you think of that advice?"

"He don't know shit!" 

Captain Kelly and the rest of the scumbags deliberately and with malice gave stupid advice to dumb people wearing our uniform and Kelly knows that part of the mandatory training for all the decades after My Lai  has been instruction on illegal orders. He and those other idiots just threw it into a political context where stupidity abounds and idiocy is compounded daily.

You cannot despise them enough. 

HERDING TERRORISTS

 The always amusing British tabloid press came up with this winner of a headline to show just how dismal things are in Iran.

 You have to wonder at the idiocy of headline writers, tabloid press types and the idiots who read this sort of tripe to imagine how lost to reality they are if they thought some mullah in Tehran was calling the shots in Houthiland. The Soviets had a knack for running what looked like terrorist cells but they were all fakes.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure none of the controllers in Iran had any illusions and they all knew what they were doing was sending money and weapons to psychopaths* pretty much just like how the EU and we are sending weapons to psychopaths running Ukraine. I think Houthis probably don't cost Iran nearly as much as Ukrainians cost and the Russians used to say that Ukrainians were cheap....

*PolySci types and other dullards imagine that terrorists are behaving like terrorists because they want something. Realists know that this is not so. Terrorists exist to kill and maim and that is about the sum total of their purpose, plans and intent. They also want to get rich and become professors at Universities in Chicago and California but that's strictly an individual goal and not the group's goal.

NEW COLOR REVOLUTIONARIES

 Remember the Good Ole Days™ when all revolutionaries intent on overthrowing the State were black and brown? These losers are trying to balance the colors, yes, balance them.

I do wish they'd pose in front of their own flag

 

THAT LITTLE X TRICK

 It seems that much of what appeared to be a kerfuffle on the Constitutional side of politics when it looked like it was splitting over Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson and other issues, was largely just a matter of fakers pretending to be Constitutionalists and living abroad where they enjoyed a no doubt surreal life pretending to be real men and probably stroking their imaginary AR-15 doom guns. That is a relief. I was getting a little concerned that the idiots were way more numerous then expected and now it turns out they were mostly imaginary. The whole thing was revealed when Elon Musk ordered X to drop the mask on commenters and reveal where they are posting from.

We are fortunate in this regard because we have,

For Strength

Don't listen to crazies and nutjobs. If what you hear or read seems unreal, it probably is and somebody somewhere else is making it up. Relax and have another one, for the strength that's in it.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

 If only there was a sign.

It is so easy to go astray. You just put one foot wrong and the next thing you know….

MAKES YOU WONDER

 As I was reading about a sliver of New Yorkers trying to exercise their Second Amendment rights I was suddenly struck by an errant thought. It is probably illegal to sell anybody in NYC a gun without going through all the ridiculous hassle of forms and paperwork that don't seem to have any basis in our Constitution and so should not exist but,

what if I loaned them a 3D printer that also had directions to the sites on the web where it is possible to download files that would allow a 3D printer operator to download and print a .45 or an AR-15? It's not like selling someone a gun or giving someone a gun, it's just a technology transfer and I don't know if ITAR applies when transferring tech between Americans in America.

It's like loaning someone a book or a car. Nothing illegal about that.... 

RUNNING DOWN THE ENEMY

When I read those words as a boy they usually involved a frigate chasing another ship for days and miles in what could be called a running battle if it involved less running and more battling but the outcome was almost always going to be a battle. The same seems true with President Trump and as someone who does the NYT puzzles most days, I always take a moment to enjoy their outrage as they get run over yet again by not just President Trump but every single member of his family. It is a wonderment and fun.

I was reading that they finally cottoned on to the simple fact that a man so clearly and so obviously with nothing to hide, did not need to have anyone withhold the Epstein emails for his sake. His position is unlike that of just about every other friend of the man who loved to destroy people, he despised him and was despised in turn. Wow, what a shocker. So he carefully arranges for the leading stupid idiots to demand full production of the emails and yep, they are going to blow out of the water all the democrats who have not already retired. 

The whole delay and obfuscation was not just about limiting damage but to give some politicians and other people time to retire and clear the stage so the outrage would fall on the unwary and the slow. The Congress voted to demand the release of the emails and so in time we will see some heavily redacted shit shower of emails lacking all context and simply naming the names of people who shared email addresses with someone who knew Epstein. Not exactly the smoking guns the democrats were lusting for. OTOH, they have a weird gun lusts so there's no telling.

Of course, the dolts are fooled again because the emails were not the Epstein files. Those were the boxes and boxes (scores of boxes) that federal agents were filmed walking away from Epstein's various residences carrying into safe and secure FBI and DOJ storage. Those are the files people were once interested in and curiously, 100% of them have gone missing. Ssssshhhh, don't tell anybody.

Did you ever wonder what was going to happen if New York pulled off a Haiti and what the effects would be downstream for everyone? It is almost like nobody reads or comprehends history or understands that great cities get abandoned almost overnight and it happens all the time. Cities like Detroit and Cleveland were once among the richest and most productive cities in the world and then something happened, almost overnight.

I wonder where all those pedophile friends of Epstein call home these days. Do you think they can muster the Congressional votes to bail out New York again? I certainly don't want to bail them out. I'm kind of looking forward to them refugeeing out to Camden and other garden spots in the Garden State. Anything to get away from what the people elected.
 

You know the funny thing is that Ford never said those words but still contributes the sentiment that page engendered with costing him reelection as people turned to the dufus to save New York. 

LIKE WAR BUT BETTER

 As we learn more about the Deep State and the sheer mass of conniving bureaucratic hate filled leftoids controlling every single bureaucracy and school and university and so on, it always occurs to some people that we need to prune it back and what better place to start than at the top. On the other hand there is plenty of evidence to show that when the rot goes all the way to the tail, cutting off the head doesn't do a thing about the smell or the effects of slimy bureaucracy and the whole thing needs to be purged.

So the question must be, where do we find the people to replace all the bureaucrats? And the answer should be,

Why would anyone want to replace them? Just get rid of them all. There is no reason on earth to have 16,000 people working for the Center for Disease Control. I could see a couple of hundred but even that is probably too many. This applies to literally every bureaucracy. You don't need to find the bad ones and get rid of them, simply get rid of them all. 100% swept away overnight.

Then, the new management team appointed by the ACTUAL Constitutionally mandated authority can hire the 2-5% of employees that the job requires and terminate all the mission creep that dominated a system that rewards bureaucrats for engaging in mission creep and awards more and more resources to things that just don't matter.

Honestly, can anybody see any reason to retain even a single worker from the Bureau of Labor Statistics? 

Losing militaries shed useless drones overnight once the actual combat begins. Something like that is required for Education Departments, Agriculture Departments and especially for the Department of War. 

MANAGEMENT BY WALKING AROUND

 The MBWA theory was something I was taught on my first ship as a young division officer. My boss and the CO both felt compelled to share with me the idea that it was my job to visit every single one of my spaces every day. There was a brief time when I thought that meant that I should visit the work spaces because something like 73 spaces on that ship belonged to my division and to be honest, that was an awful lot of ladder climbing and hatch openings and closings but I soon learned that they were both sincere.

When the CO invites his newest division officer down to the forward ballast pump room and asks, "when did you first notice that none of the lights in this space actually work?" I kind of got the message loud and clear. He sort of tossed over his shoulder as we climbed up 4 decks of ladder in the access trunk that the lights also didn't work in the after ballast control pump room, ballast control room or the JP-5 pump room....

I spotted this the other day and laughed out loud. This is in a 20 building compound for older folks.

Things are beyond hope at this place of work and Nobody Cares

CONSCIPTION, AGAIN

 I see this morning that both Poland and Germany are seeking to bring back conscription. It is only fair that they start to man up just in case a war or something breaks out in Europe among NATO members because there are certain signs and portents that not everybody is getting along well. It does make me laugh.

They are both talking about another one of those completely fair conscription scams where they stuff recruits into boot camp via a fair lottery system that will of course exclude all immigrant muslims and africans and you will never ever see the sons of billionaires or millionaires or politicians or knights of the holy roman empire drafted into the army.

 The really serious problem I have with conscription is the illusion that it solves all problems because once you have men on the job, your problems are solved. This is nonsense in military terms because what you need more than fodder for the war machine is senior leaders who know how to wage war, junior leaders who know how to do it, senior noncoms that know how to motivate men and junior noncoms that know how to get the actual job done. Privates are about the least part of the problem because we haven't even addressed having the weapons, doctrine, tactics, techniques and training to make it possible for modern armies to successfully engage in combat operations without getting destroyed.

There is no sign at all anywhere in Europe that they have even started to think about the last 5 items on the list. Their great grandfathers could be sent into the line with nothing but a rifle and a handful of bullets but that just hasn't been a thing since 1950. Seventy years of taking a vacation from all things warlike and military has left a vacuum in Europe that only one thing can fill and they don't know it and would never allow it and I doubt they could afford it. Yeah, mercenary armies and condottieri like the good old days when states could wage war to the hilt without all that messy raising armies nonsense.

Well, good luck with that. 

I REMEMBER THEM

 I have a picture somewhere around here of me as a little boy wearing the outfit my mother made for me back when we were living in Carlisle while my dad was off to war in Vietnam and I had to polish up and look good for the grand opening of my great Uncle John's church there in downtown. Afterwords I recall that we went to his rooms where we watched as the Parade marched through Carlisle with a sizeable group of marchers wearing the uniforms they wore during the Great War. As I look back from now I can see that those old veteran's probably used to watch a similar parade as the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic marched on their Remembrance Day.

This time of year is not the one that any sane person would pick to honor veterans of our nation's wars but it was chosen long ago by the day that the guns finally fell silent all along the endless front as the fighting of World War I finally came to an end. It is by any light a fine day to simply take a few long moments and remember the veterans and if you know some, buy them a cup of coffee and maybe a nice chocolate cream donut or a really good bagel because we they deserve it! 

And remember, all veterans are way too old and broken to garden or shovel snow. 

SNOW ON THE GROUND

 I saved this for the first snow day of this winter. As I wrote last time, she has everything well in hand. Me? I’ve been listening to snow plow driving by since midnight.

FOOLS RUSSIAN

 So the newest members of NATO did just what you knew they would, they launched a casus belli this week by blockading Konigsberg and preventing Russia from sending fuel and goods into East Prussia exterior Russia. They turned off the power and lights in European Russia and the reward for behavior like that is almost always war.

US out of NATO, US out of Europe!

These stupid vicious idiots don’t know anything about how to stay at peace with their neighbors and they’ve never given us a good reason to fight for them. I suspect that Victoria Nuland has holdovers in the Baltic Desk at State Department. Stupid like this has to be encouraged by some nitwit with no brakes and no understanding of history or diplomacy.