This just hit my email inbox, unsolicited. I was previously unaware of this group. Those of you who have questioned my fidelity to my oath & have tried to shame me for my views as a USNA alum may find this interesting. Perhaps you don't know us military vets as well as you think you do.
https://calverttaskgroup.org/about/
This is one article from this group, on immigration, which was published in Real Clear Defense.
https://calverttaskgroup.org/national-s ... on-policy/
...insights into military minds.
Military readiness
Re: Military readiness
Certainly insight into SOME military minds. Likely not all and no idea if this view is even a majority opinion across all branches, ranks, active or retiredold salt wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2024 12:52 am This just hit my email inbox, unsolicited. I was previously unaware of this group. Those of you who have questioned my fidelity to my oath & have tried to shame me for my views as a USNA alum may find this interesting. Perhaps you don't know us military vets as well as you think you do.
https://calverttaskgroup.org/about/
This is one article from this group, on immigration, which was published in Real Clear Defense.
https://calverttaskgroup.org/national-s ... on-policy/
...insights into military minds.
Re: Military readiness
https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press ... ota-spain/
The number of USN AEGIS Destroyers homeported in Rota, Spain just increased from 4 to 5, with number 6 on the way.
4 of the current 5 will each carry 2 x MH-60R Seahawk LAMPS Mk III helos. Naval Station Rota is booming.
They'll rule the Med. Wish I was still there.
The number of USN AEGIS Destroyers homeported in Rota, Spain just increased from 4 to 5, with number 6 on the way.
4 of the current 5 will each carry 2 x MH-60R Seahawk LAMPS Mk III helos. Naval Station Rota is booming.
They'll rule the Med. Wish I was still there.
Re: Military readiness
Lolol sure Jan. A group of right wing political wannabes is hardly an objective or reliable source and not at all representstive of the service let alone all services, pretty much 100% of his posts omit a major piece.Kismet wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2024 9:27 amCertainly insight into SOME military minds. Likely not all and no idea if this view is even a majority opinion across all branches, ranks, active or retiredold salt wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2024 12:52 am This just hit my email inbox, unsolicited. I was previously unaware of this group. Those of you who have questioned my fidelity to my oath & have tried to shame me for my views as a USNA alum may find this interesting. Perhaps you don't know us military vets as well as you think you do.
https://calverttaskgroup.org/about/
This is one article from this group, on immigration, which was published in Real Clear Defense.
https://calverttaskgroup.org/national-s ... on-policy/
...insights into military minds.
Re: Military readiness
"Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat by David Sanger
In a classified document approved in March, the president ordered U.S. forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.
Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat
In a classified document approved in March, the president ordered U.S. forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.
ut in recent speeches, two senior administration officials were allowed to allude to the change — in carefully constrained, single sentences — ahead of a more detailed, unclassified notification to Congress expected before Mr. Biden leaves office.
“The president recently issued updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance to account for multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” Vipin Narang, an M.I.T. nuclear strategist who served in the Pentagon, said earlier this month before returning to academia. “And in particular,” he added, the weapons guidance accounted for “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s nuclear arsenal.
In June, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, also referred to the document, the first to examine in detail whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that break out simultaneously or sequentially, with a combination of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons.
The new strategy, Mr. Vaddi said, emphasizes “the need to deter Russia, the PRC and North Korea simultaneously,” using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
In the past, the likelihood that American adversaries could coordinate nuclear threats to outmaneuver the American nuclear arsenal seemed remote. But the emerging partnership between Russia and China, and the conventional arms North Korea and Iran are providing to Russia for the war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed Washington’s thinking.
Already, Russia and China are conducting military exercises together. Intelligence agencies are trying to determine whether Russia is aiding the North Korean and Iranian missile programs in return.
The new document is a stark reminder that whoever is sworn in next Jan. 20 will confront a changed and far more volatile nuclear landscape than the one that existed just three years ago. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, including during a crisis in October 2022, when Mr. Biden and his aides, looking at intercepts of conversations between senior Russian commanders, feared the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher.
Mr. Biden, along with leaders of Germany and Britain, got China and India to make public statements that there was no role for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and the crisis abated, at least temporarily.
“It was an important moment,” Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department and National Security Council official for several Republican presidents, and the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in an interview. “We are dealing with a Russia that is radicalized; the idea that nukes wouldn’t be used in a conventional conflict is not longer a safe assumption.”
The second big change arises from China’s nuclear ambitions. The country’s nuclear expansion is running at an even faster pace than American intelligence officials anticipated two years ago, driven by President Xi Jinping’s determination to scrap the decades-long strategy of maintaining a “minimum deterrent” to reach or exceed the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s arsenals. China’s nuclear complex is now the fastest growing in the world.
Although former President Donald J. Trump confidently predicted that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, would surrender his nuclear weapons after their three in-person meetings, the opposite happened. Mr. Kim has doubled down, and now has more than 60 weapons, officials estimate, and the fuel for many more.
That expansion has changed the nature of the North Korean challenge: When the country possessed just a handful of weapons, it could be deterred by missile defenses. But its expanded arsenal is fast approaching the size of Pakistan’s and Israel’s, and it is large enough that it could, in theory, coordinate threats with Moscow and Beijing.
t was only a matter of time before a fundamentally different nuclear environment began to alter American war plans and strategy, officials say.
“It is our responsibility to see the world as it is, not as we hoped or wished it would be,” Mr. Narang said as he was leaving the Pentagon. “It is possible that we will one day look back and see the quarter-century after the Cold War as nuclear intermission.”
The new challenge is “the real possibility of collaboration and even collusion between our nuclear-armed adversaries,” he said.
So far in the presidential campaign, the new challenges to American nuclear strategy have not been a topic of debate. Mr. Biden, who spent much of his political career as an advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, has never publicly talked in any detail about how he is responding to the challenges of deterring China’s and North Korea’s expanded forces. Nor has Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic Party’s nominee.
At his last news conference in July, just days before he announced he would no longer seek the Democratic nomination for a second term, Mr. Biden acknowledged that he had adopted a policy of seeking ways to interfere in the broader China-Russia partnership.
“Yes, I do, but I’m not prepared to talk about the detail of it in public,” Mr. Biden said. He made no reference to — and was not asked about — how that partnership was altering American nuclear strategy.
Since Harry Truman’s presidency, that strategy has been overwhelmingly focused on the Kremlin’s arsenal. Mr. Biden’s new guidance suggests how quickly that is shifting.
China was mentioned in the last nuclear guidance, issued at the end of the Trump administration, according to an unclassified account provided to Congress in 2020. But that was before the scope of Mr. Xi’s ambitions was understood.
The Biden strategy sharpens that focus to reflect the Pentagon’s estimates that China’s nuclear force would expand to 1,000 by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, roughly the numbers that the United States and Russia now deploy. In fact, Beijing now appears ahead of that schedule, officials say, and has begun loading nuclear missiles into new silo fields that were spotted by commercial satellites three years ago.
There is another concern about Beijing: It has now halted a short-lived conversation with the United States about improving nuclear safety and security — for example, by agreeing to warn each other of impending missile tests, or setting up hotlines or other means of communication to assure that incidents or accidents do not escalate into nuclear encounters.
One discussion between the two countries took place late last fall, just before Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi met in California, where they sought to repair relations between the two countries. They referred to those talks in a joint statement, but by that time the Chinese had already hinted they were not interested in further discussions, and earlier this summer said the conversations were over. They cited American arms sales to Taiwan, which were underway long before the nuclear safety conversations began.
Mallory Stewart, the assistant secretary for arms control, deterrence and stability at the State Department, said in an interview that the Chinese government was “actively preventing us from having conversations about the risks.”
Instead, she said, Beijing “seems to be taking a page out of Russia’s playbook that, until we address tensions and challenges in our bilateral relationship, they will choose not to continue our arms control, risk reduction and nonproliferation conversations.”
It was in China’s interest, she argued, “to prevent these risks of miscalculation and misunderstanding.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/p ... ussia.html
In a classified document approved in March, the president ordered U.S. forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.
Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat
In a classified document approved in March, the president ordered U.S. forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.
ut in recent speeches, two senior administration officials were allowed to allude to the change — in carefully constrained, single sentences — ahead of a more detailed, unclassified notification to Congress expected before Mr. Biden leaves office.
“The president recently issued updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance to account for multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” Vipin Narang, an M.I.T. nuclear strategist who served in the Pentagon, said earlier this month before returning to academia. “And in particular,” he added, the weapons guidance accounted for “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s nuclear arsenal.
In June, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, also referred to the document, the first to examine in detail whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that break out simultaneously or sequentially, with a combination of nuclear and nonnuclear weapons.
The new strategy, Mr. Vaddi said, emphasizes “the need to deter Russia, the PRC and North Korea simultaneously,” using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
In the past, the likelihood that American adversaries could coordinate nuclear threats to outmaneuver the American nuclear arsenal seemed remote. But the emerging partnership between Russia and China, and the conventional arms North Korea and Iran are providing to Russia for the war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed Washington’s thinking.
Already, Russia and China are conducting military exercises together. Intelligence agencies are trying to determine whether Russia is aiding the North Korean and Iranian missile programs in return.
The new document is a stark reminder that whoever is sworn in next Jan. 20 will confront a changed and far more volatile nuclear landscape than the one that existed just three years ago. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, including during a crisis in October 2022, when Mr. Biden and his aides, looking at intercepts of conversations between senior Russian commanders, feared the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher.
Mr. Biden, along with leaders of Germany and Britain, got China and India to make public statements that there was no role for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and the crisis abated, at least temporarily.
“It was an important moment,” Richard N. Haass, a former senior State Department and National Security Council official for several Republican presidents, and the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in an interview. “We are dealing with a Russia that is radicalized; the idea that nukes wouldn’t be used in a conventional conflict is not longer a safe assumption.”
The second big change arises from China’s nuclear ambitions. The country’s nuclear expansion is running at an even faster pace than American intelligence officials anticipated two years ago, driven by President Xi Jinping’s determination to scrap the decades-long strategy of maintaining a “minimum deterrent” to reach or exceed the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s arsenals. China’s nuclear complex is now the fastest growing in the world.
Although former President Donald J. Trump confidently predicted that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, would surrender his nuclear weapons after their three in-person meetings, the opposite happened. Mr. Kim has doubled down, and now has more than 60 weapons, officials estimate, and the fuel for many more.
That expansion has changed the nature of the North Korean challenge: When the country possessed just a handful of weapons, it could be deterred by missile defenses. But its expanded arsenal is fast approaching the size of Pakistan’s and Israel’s, and it is large enough that it could, in theory, coordinate threats with Moscow and Beijing.
t was only a matter of time before a fundamentally different nuclear environment began to alter American war plans and strategy, officials say.
“It is our responsibility to see the world as it is, not as we hoped or wished it would be,” Mr. Narang said as he was leaving the Pentagon. “It is possible that we will one day look back and see the quarter-century after the Cold War as nuclear intermission.”
The new challenge is “the real possibility of collaboration and even collusion between our nuclear-armed adversaries,” he said.
So far in the presidential campaign, the new challenges to American nuclear strategy have not been a topic of debate. Mr. Biden, who spent much of his political career as an advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, has never publicly talked in any detail about how he is responding to the challenges of deterring China’s and North Korea’s expanded forces. Nor has Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic Party’s nominee.
At his last news conference in July, just days before he announced he would no longer seek the Democratic nomination for a second term, Mr. Biden acknowledged that he had adopted a policy of seeking ways to interfere in the broader China-Russia partnership.
“Yes, I do, but I’m not prepared to talk about the detail of it in public,” Mr. Biden said. He made no reference to — and was not asked about — how that partnership was altering American nuclear strategy.
Since Harry Truman’s presidency, that strategy has been overwhelmingly focused on the Kremlin’s arsenal. Mr. Biden’s new guidance suggests how quickly that is shifting.
China was mentioned in the last nuclear guidance, issued at the end of the Trump administration, according to an unclassified account provided to Congress in 2020. But that was before the scope of Mr. Xi’s ambitions was understood.
The Biden strategy sharpens that focus to reflect the Pentagon’s estimates that China’s nuclear force would expand to 1,000 by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, roughly the numbers that the United States and Russia now deploy. In fact, Beijing now appears ahead of that schedule, officials say, and has begun loading nuclear missiles into new silo fields that were spotted by commercial satellites three years ago.
There is another concern about Beijing: It has now halted a short-lived conversation with the United States about improving nuclear safety and security — for example, by agreeing to warn each other of impending missile tests, or setting up hotlines or other means of communication to assure that incidents or accidents do not escalate into nuclear encounters.
One discussion between the two countries took place late last fall, just before Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi met in California, where they sought to repair relations between the two countries. They referred to those talks in a joint statement, but by that time the Chinese had already hinted they were not interested in further discussions, and earlier this summer said the conversations were over. They cited American arms sales to Taiwan, which were underway long before the nuclear safety conversations began.
Mallory Stewart, the assistant secretary for arms control, deterrence and stability at the State Department, said in an interview that the Chinese government was “actively preventing us from having conversations about the risks.”
Instead, she said, Beijing “seems to be taking a page out of Russia’s playbook that, until we address tensions and challenges in our bilateral relationship, they will choose not to continue our arms control, risk reduction and nonproliferation conversations.”
It was in China’s interest, she argued, “to prevent these risks of miscalculation and misunderstanding.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/p ... ussia.html
Re: Military readiness
When I hear Rota I think of my last cruise on the USS Portland, LSD37. I let the bureau know I was not reenlisting, thought it might be better to leave me where I was on recruiting duty. Nope. Had about ten months to go when I got orders to Little Creek where the Portland was home ported. Had 60 days leave on the books + whatever travel time was allotted. Life was good, had a Dodge van (318 good engine) all hippied up inside with pretty much everything you needed, including nice sound. Took all 60+ days to get there, good times (too bad marijuana was illegal, woulda been a good time for some). West Virginia and Virginia camping with some surf fishing...love that long pole. The Portland was heading to Rota for it's last stop before heading home, they flew me there to catch her and ride her home. thirty day stand down was a nice bonus for riding her home. I didn't do a whole lot my last couple/few months. Was a real welfare queen. Shoulda left me where I was.
End of little story.
-
Typical Lax Dad
- Posts: 34092
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 12:10 pm
Re: Military readiness
+1. Nothing like good memories.DMac wrote: ↑Tue Aug 20, 2024 7:48 pmWhen I hear Rota I think of my last cruise on the USS Portland, LSD37. I let the bureau know I was not reenlisting, thought it might be better to leave me where I was on recruiting duty. Nope. Had about ten months to go when I got orders to Little Creek where the Portland was home ported. Had 60 days leave on the books + whatever travel time was allotted. Life was good, had a Dodge van (318 good engine) all hippied up inside with pretty much everything you needed, including nice sound. Took all 60+ days to get there, good times (too bad marijuana was illegal, woulda been a good time for some). West Virginia and Virginia camping with some surf fishing...love that long pole. The Portland was heading to Rota for it's last stop before heading home, they flew me there to catch her and ride her home. thirty day stand down was a nice bonus for riding her home. I didn't do a whole lot my last couple/few months. Was a real welfare queen. Shoulda left me where I was.
End of little story.
“I wish you would!”
-
PizzaSnake
- Posts: 5300
- Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:36 pm
Re: Military readiness
Preparing.
“The memo, provided first to Military.com and shared publicly Tuesday, was titled "Refocusing Family Readiness." Amid the Air Force's latest shift to reorganize the force for great power competition -- the service's term for increased spending and strategy against adversaries such as Russia and, most notably, China -- it offered an inward look at how it plans to support airmen and families during the sweeping changes.
"While our efforts to prepare the force for future challenges are essential, they will be incomplete without a parallel focus on family readiness," Allvin wrote. "In order to meet the moment in this time of consequence, we need to ensure that families and communities connected to the Air Force are as well prepared as our service members for the possible challenges that lay ahead."
https://www.military.com/daily-news/202 ... .html?amp=
“The memo, provided first to Military.com and shared publicly Tuesday, was titled "Refocusing Family Readiness." Amid the Air Force's latest shift to reorganize the force for great power competition -- the service's term for increased spending and strategy against adversaries such as Russia and, most notably, China -- it offered an inward look at how it plans to support airmen and families during the sweeping changes.
"While our efforts to prepare the force for future challenges are essential, they will be incomplete without a parallel focus on family readiness," Allvin wrote. "In order to meet the moment in this time of consequence, we need to ensure that families and communities connected to the Air Force are as well prepared as our service members for the possible challenges that lay ahead."
https://www.military.com/daily-news/202 ... .html?amp=
"There is nothing more difficult and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes. One makes enemies of those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support from those who would prosper under the new."
-
youthathletics
- Posts: 15831
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:36 pm
Re: Military readiness
Kind of strange this was not mentioned or brought up in news (from 11-AUG)....was waiting to see if it was mentioned prior to or during the DNC, not that I found.
Google Search --> https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f ... 9&dpr=1.25
Google Search --> https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f ... 9&dpr=1.25
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” -Soren Kierkegaard
~Livy
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” -Soren Kierkegaard
Re: Military readiness
Meh. We "have" to be there. Apparently I'm an idiot if I think we should get our troops....sitting ducks.....out of these countries.youthathletics wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2024 6:17 pm Kind of strange this was not mentioned or brought up in news (from 11-AUG)....was waiting to see if it was mentioned prior to or during the DNC, not that I found.
Google Search --> https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f ... 9&dpr=1.25
Re: Military readiness
Meanwhile, in the Red Sea :
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morn ... care-less/
Islamists Are Reenacting the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, and the Green Crowd Couldn’t Care Less
August 26, 2024
The Houthis are reenacting the Exxon Valdez spill in the Red Sea, to the yawns of environmentalists in the West;
If you want to get a good sense of how the Democratic nominee would perform in the Oval Office, take a good look at the performance of the administration in which she’s currently vice president.
It’s an Islamist Oil Spill; That Kind of Spill Is Completely Different
Do America’s environmentalists oppose the Houthis’ blowing up oil tankers because it results in massive spills and a “severe ecological disaster,” or quietly support them because they represent attacks on the fossil-fuel industry?
It’s easy to wonder about the latter, as life stateside is full of people who will give you grief about your Big Mac, your SUV, your gas stove, and now your air conditioning. Meanwhile, these kidnapping, humanitarian-aid-obstructing, cholera-exacerbating Islamists who carried out a “partial and limited reintroduction of slavery” are reenacting the Exxon Valdez spill, and you barely hear a peep from the green crowd. It’s easy to conclude their movement is primarily focused upon hassling you, not about protecting the Earth.
Obviously, Hit the Houthis
The current president of the United States — that’s Joe Biden if you’ve forgotten. I know it’s easy to forget when he only does one public event per week — has not made any substantive remarks about the threat from the Houthis since January. The Biden administration would probably prefer if you forgot that one of its first actions was to remove the Iranian-backed Houthis from the U.S. list of global terrorist organizations.
The Houthis’ continued attacks threaten to spill a million barrels of oil into the Red Sea, an amount four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster. While the crew has been evacuated, the Houthis appear determined to sink the ship and its cargo into the sea.
Through these attacks, the Houthis have made clear they are willing to destroy the fishing industry and regional ecosystems that Yemenis and other communities in the region rely on for their livelihoods, just as they have undermined the delivery of vital humanitarian aid to the region through their reckless attacks.
(For those wondering, the Exxon Valdez spilled 257,000 barrels, or roughly 17 Olympic-sized swimming pools, or 35,000 metric tons. The Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion is carrying 150,000 metric tons of crude oil.)
Way back in January, after some coalition airstrikes, President Biden said:
Today’s defensive action follows this extensive diplomatic campaign and Houthi rebels’ escalating attacks against commercial vessels. These targeted strikes are a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes. I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.
Hey, how are those “further measures” doing? The only thing we’ve got going for us is that the Houthis don’t always check to see whose ships they’re attacking, and end up shooting ships carrying Russian oil and Chinese goods, even though the terrorists pledged to spare ships from those countries.
Oh, and hey, look who else is benefitting from the Houthis’ turning the Red Sea shipping lanes into the site of the U.S. Navy’s “most intense combat since World War II”:
Freight companies operating between China and Europe are increasingly turning to rail lines that run through Russia as Houthi rebel attacks on ships travelling through the Suez Canal trigger delays and higher costs. The volume of goods transported from China to Europe via the Eurasian Rail Alliance (Era) — a Russian freight company which uses Russian rail lines — has more than doubled since the Red Sea crisis began at the end of last year.
We’re up against an axis of the devils that operates like an international crime syndicate with protection rackets. If Biden insists upon being president until January 20, is it too much to ask that he comes out and talk about these sorts of things once in a while?
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/b ... term=first
Biden’s Policy of Deterrence Has Failed in the Red Sea
... the “severe ecological disaster” that could result from the Houthis sinking a crude-oil tanker in the Red Sea. ... while... the environmental factor is one that should be taken seriously, what we are witnessing in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a disaster of a potentially much greater significance: The sun may be setting on the Anglo-American guarantee of the security of the sea-lines of communication, a guarantee that has ensured our prosperity and safety for 200 years.
It remains an astonishing fact that Joe Biden — he is, after all, still the president — and his administration seem remarkably unperturbed by the fact that an Iran-aligned Islamist group has managed to threaten one of the world’s key oceanic shipping routes and access to the Suez Canal without suffering a catastrophic setback by allied naval forces. What’s more, this tenuous and unacceptable situation has endured for almost a full year’s time.
...no disrespect to the U.S. Navy or the sailors that have been... conducting one of the most extended periods of combat by our navy, or any navy, since the Second World War.
...this is a total failure of American policy and strategy at the highest levels.
Since October 7, 2023, U.S. and allied forces have shot down hundreds of drones, missiles, and rockets fired from Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen. We have targeted shore-based launchers, logistics hubs, and Houthi command-and-control nodes. We have used state-of-the-art kill chains to identify and prosecute targets. We have used the most advanced precision-guided munitions in our arsenals. We have caused a lot of damage to the Houthi military infrastructure. And we have eliminated a fair number of Houthi militants.
Nearly everything we’ve done has demonstrated the professionalism, commitment to duty, and technological know-how of American naval forces operating in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
But what we have manifestly not done is convince the Houthis that it is a very, very bad idea to shoot at U.S. warships or friendly merchantmen transiting international waters. We have failed to deter the Houthis and their allies in Tehran.
There’s a lesson here, if we care to learn it: Even with advanced munitions, signals-intelligence infrastructure, and high-tech delivery platforms, modern naval forces will struggle to win a long-term campaign to neutralize a determined enemy who wishes to exert influence over strategic littoral chokepoints if the naval force is not combined with some ability to influence events on shore.
...not suggesting that the American people have the appetite to send the Marines into Yemen, whatever the merits of that idea. And ...not suggesting that our so-called allies on the Arabian Peninsula — the Saudis, the Omanis, and the Emiratis — or other powers in the region such as the Egyptians will be of any help at all.
...we should not expect the current policy of Whac-A-Mole from the air and sea to be any sort of a solution to what is a very serious problem. Are we prepared to cede the free transit of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the whims of the mullahs in Tehran? Well, we’re living through it.
One must of course wonder what lessons the failure of U.S. naval strategy at the choke point between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are teaching our adversaries in Iran and China. How will the U.S. Navy’s inability to get the Houthis to quit shooting at us or merchant shipping on the high seas translate to a no-kidding shooting war in the Strait of Hormuz or a Chinese-imposed blockade in the Taiwan Strait? We haven’t yet faced that eventuality, ...But make no mistake: America’s enemies are no friends of American sea power. They revel in the idea of breaking it. Is America committed to maintaining American naval supremacy?
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morn ... care-less/
Islamists Are Reenacting the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, and the Green Crowd Couldn’t Care Less
August 26, 2024
The Houthis are reenacting the Exxon Valdez spill in the Red Sea, to the yawns of environmentalists in the West;
If you want to get a good sense of how the Democratic nominee would perform in the Oval Office, take a good look at the performance of the administration in which she’s currently vice president.
It’s an Islamist Oil Spill; That Kind of Spill Is Completely Different
Do America’s environmentalists oppose the Houthis’ blowing up oil tankers because it results in massive spills and a “severe ecological disaster,” or quietly support them because they represent attacks on the fossil-fuel industry?
It’s easy to wonder about the latter, as life stateside is full of people who will give you grief about your Big Mac, your SUV, your gas stove, and now your air conditioning. Meanwhile, these kidnapping, humanitarian-aid-obstructing, cholera-exacerbating Islamists who carried out a “partial and limited reintroduction of slavery” are reenacting the Exxon Valdez spill, and you barely hear a peep from the green crowd. It’s easy to conclude their movement is primarily focused upon hassling you, not about protecting the Earth.
Obviously, Hit the Houthis
The current president of the United States — that’s Joe Biden if you’ve forgotten. I know it’s easy to forget when he only does one public event per week — has not made any substantive remarks about the threat from the Houthis since January. The Biden administration would probably prefer if you forgot that one of its first actions was to remove the Iranian-backed Houthis from the U.S. list of global terrorist organizations.
The Houthis’ continued attacks threaten to spill a million barrels of oil into the Red Sea, an amount four times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster. While the crew has been evacuated, the Houthis appear determined to sink the ship and its cargo into the sea.
Through these attacks, the Houthis have made clear they are willing to destroy the fishing industry and regional ecosystems that Yemenis and other communities in the region rely on for their livelihoods, just as they have undermined the delivery of vital humanitarian aid to the region through their reckless attacks.
(For those wondering, the Exxon Valdez spilled 257,000 barrels, or roughly 17 Olympic-sized swimming pools, or 35,000 metric tons. The Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion is carrying 150,000 metric tons of crude oil.)
Way back in January, after some coalition airstrikes, President Biden said:
Today’s defensive action follows this extensive diplomatic campaign and Houthi rebels’ escalating attacks against commercial vessels. These targeted strikes are a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes. I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.
Hey, how are those “further measures” doing? The only thing we’ve got going for us is that the Houthis don’t always check to see whose ships they’re attacking, and end up shooting ships carrying Russian oil and Chinese goods, even though the terrorists pledged to spare ships from those countries.
Oh, and hey, look who else is benefitting from the Houthis’ turning the Red Sea shipping lanes into the site of the U.S. Navy’s “most intense combat since World War II”:
Freight companies operating between China and Europe are increasingly turning to rail lines that run through Russia as Houthi rebel attacks on ships travelling through the Suez Canal trigger delays and higher costs. The volume of goods transported from China to Europe via the Eurasian Rail Alliance (Era) — a Russian freight company which uses Russian rail lines — has more than doubled since the Red Sea crisis began at the end of last year.
We’re up against an axis of the devils that operates like an international crime syndicate with protection rackets. If Biden insists upon being president until January 20, is it too much to ask that he comes out and talk about these sorts of things once in a while?
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/b ... term=first
Biden’s Policy of Deterrence Has Failed in the Red Sea
... the “severe ecological disaster” that could result from the Houthis sinking a crude-oil tanker in the Red Sea. ... while... the environmental factor is one that should be taken seriously, what we are witnessing in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a disaster of a potentially much greater significance: The sun may be setting on the Anglo-American guarantee of the security of the sea-lines of communication, a guarantee that has ensured our prosperity and safety for 200 years.
It remains an astonishing fact that Joe Biden — he is, after all, still the president — and his administration seem remarkably unperturbed by the fact that an Iran-aligned Islamist group has managed to threaten one of the world’s key oceanic shipping routes and access to the Suez Canal without suffering a catastrophic setback by allied naval forces. What’s more, this tenuous and unacceptable situation has endured for almost a full year’s time.
...no disrespect to the U.S. Navy or the sailors that have been... conducting one of the most extended periods of combat by our navy, or any navy, since the Second World War.
...this is a total failure of American policy and strategy at the highest levels.
Since October 7, 2023, U.S. and allied forces have shot down hundreds of drones, missiles, and rockets fired from Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen. We have targeted shore-based launchers, logistics hubs, and Houthi command-and-control nodes. We have used state-of-the-art kill chains to identify and prosecute targets. We have used the most advanced precision-guided munitions in our arsenals. We have caused a lot of damage to the Houthi military infrastructure. And we have eliminated a fair number of Houthi militants.
Nearly everything we’ve done has demonstrated the professionalism, commitment to duty, and technological know-how of American naval forces operating in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
But what we have manifestly not done is convince the Houthis that it is a very, very bad idea to shoot at U.S. warships or friendly merchantmen transiting international waters. We have failed to deter the Houthis and their allies in Tehran.
There’s a lesson here, if we care to learn it: Even with advanced munitions, signals-intelligence infrastructure, and high-tech delivery platforms, modern naval forces will struggle to win a long-term campaign to neutralize a determined enemy who wishes to exert influence over strategic littoral chokepoints if the naval force is not combined with some ability to influence events on shore.
...not suggesting that the American people have the appetite to send the Marines into Yemen, whatever the merits of that idea. And ...not suggesting that our so-called allies on the Arabian Peninsula — the Saudis, the Omanis, and the Emiratis — or other powers in the region such as the Egyptians will be of any help at all.
...we should not expect the current policy of Whac-A-Mole from the air and sea to be any sort of a solution to what is a very serious problem. Are we prepared to cede the free transit of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the whims of the mullahs in Tehran? Well, we’re living through it.
One must of course wonder what lessons the failure of U.S. naval strategy at the choke point between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden are teaching our adversaries in Iran and China. How will the U.S. Navy’s inability to get the Houthis to quit shooting at us or merchant shipping on the high seas translate to a no-kidding shooting war in the Strait of Hormuz or a Chinese-imposed blockade in the Taiwan Strait? We haven’t yet faced that eventuality, ...But make no mistake: America’s enemies are no friends of American sea power. They revel in the idea of breaking it. Is America committed to maintaining American naval supremacy?
Re: Military readiness
Seems very selective in what they chose to provide.
On the other hand their very recent article on Trump tabbed as a very poor/lousy and weak candidate
On the other hand their very recent article on Trump tabbed as a very poor/lousy and weak candidate
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PizzaSnake
- Posts: 5300
- Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:36 pm
Re: Military readiness
Hmm. In the vein of, couldn’t pour psis out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel”…
“ The commander of a Navy destroyer that’s helping protect the San Diego-based aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Middle East has been relieved of duty about four months after he was seen in a photo firing a rifle with a scope mounted backward.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/04/nx-s1-51 ... d-backward
“ The commander of a Navy destroyer that’s helping protect the San Diego-based aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Middle East has been relieved of duty about four months after he was seen in a photo firing a rifle with a scope mounted backward.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/04/nx-s1-51 ... d-backward
"There is nothing more difficult and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes. One makes enemies of those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support from those who would prosper under the new."
Re: Military readiness
https://apnews.com/article/navy-yaste-u ... 68aea43135
"Commander of Navy warship relieved of duty months after backward rifle scope photo flap
he commander of a Navy destroyer that’s helping protect the San Diego-based aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Middle East has been relieved of duty about four months after he was seen in a photo firing a rifle with a scope mounted backward.
The image brought the Navy considerable ridicule on social media. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Cameron Yaste, commanding officer of the destroyer USS John McCain, was removed on Friday.
The Navy said Yaste was relieved of duty “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command the guided-missile destroyer” that’s currently deployed in the Gulf of Oman. The statement didn’t elaborate about why Yaste was replaced.
In April, a photo posted on the Navy’s social media showed Yaste in a firing stance gripping the rifle with a backward scope.
The military news outlet Stars and Stripes reported that the Marine Corps took a dig at the Navy, sharing a photo on its social media of a Marine firing a weapon aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer. The caption read: “Clear Sight Picture.”
The post featuring Yaste was ultimately deleted. “Thank you for pointing out our rifle scope error in the previous post,” the Navy later wrote on social media. “Picture has been removed until EMI (extra military instruction) is"
The Marines are still laughing. You'd never know they are part of the Navy.
"Commander of Navy warship relieved of duty months after backward rifle scope photo flap
he commander of a Navy destroyer that’s helping protect the San Diego-based aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Middle East has been relieved of duty about four months after he was seen in a photo firing a rifle with a scope mounted backward.
The image brought the Navy considerable ridicule on social media. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Cameron Yaste, commanding officer of the destroyer USS John McCain, was removed on Friday.
The Navy said Yaste was relieved of duty “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command the guided-missile destroyer” that’s currently deployed in the Gulf of Oman. The statement didn’t elaborate about why Yaste was replaced.
In April, a photo posted on the Navy’s social media showed Yaste in a firing stance gripping the rifle with a backward scope.
The military news outlet Stars and Stripes reported that the Marine Corps took a dig at the Navy, sharing a photo on its social media of a Marine firing a weapon aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer. The caption read: “Clear Sight Picture.”
The post featuring Yaste was ultimately deleted. “Thank you for pointing out our rifle scope error in the previous post,” the Navy later wrote on social media. “Picture has been removed until EMI (extra military instruction) is"
The Marines are still laughing. You'd never know they are part of the Navy.
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youthathletics
- Posts: 15831
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:36 pm
Re: Military readiness
Makes we wonder....who handed this weapon and why did they do this to him. I suspect it was an intentional. I would have played it off and said " I can shoot better than you, even with the scope backwards" 
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” -Soren Kierkegaard
~Livy
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” -Soren Kierkegaard
Re: Military readiness
A modern day Lieutenant Commander Queeg, perhaps?youthathletics wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:17 am Makes we wonder....who handed this weapon and why did they do this to him. I suspect it was an intentional. I would have played it off and said " I can shoot better than you, even with the scope backwards"
The timing is also unusual as this ship has currently been deployed to the ME for the past 4 months as part of the Roosevelt battle group.
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cradleandshoot
- Posts: 15391
- Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2018 4:42 pm
Re: Military readiness
Maybe he simply lost his marbles?Kismet wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:57 amA modern day Lieutenant Commander Queeg, perhaps?youthathletics wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:17 am Makes we wonder....who handed this weapon and why did they do this to him. I suspect it was an intentional. I would have played it off and said " I can shoot better than you, even with the scope backwards"
The timing is also unusual as this ship has currently been deployed to the ME for the past 4 months as part of the Roosevelt battle group.
We don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents.
Bob Ross:
Bob Ross:
Re: Military readiness
or maybe just a Jonah.cradleandshoot wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 8:06 amMaybe he simply lost his marbles?Kismet wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:57 amA modern day Lieutenant Commander Queeg, perhaps?youthathletics wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:17 am Makes we wonder....who handed this weapon and why did they do this to him. I suspect it was an intentional. I would have played it off and said " I can shoot better than you, even with the scope backwards"
The timing is also unusual as this ship has currently been deployed to the ME for the past 4 months as part of the Roosevelt battle group.
Although the Navy relieved a total of 16 commanding officers in 2023 alone.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... 023-212601
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cradleandshoot
- Posts: 15391
- Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2018 4:42 pm
Re: Military readiness
There certainly is no job security in being a naval commander anymore. The Army isn't doing much better when it comes to CSMs either.Kismet wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 8:13 amor maybe just a Jonah.cradleandshoot wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 8:06 amMaybe he simply lost his marbles?Kismet wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:57 amA modern day Lieutenant Commander Queeg, perhaps?youthathletics wrote: ↑Thu Sep 05, 2024 7:17 am Makes we wonder....who handed this weapon and why did they do this to him. I suspect it was an intentional. I would have played it off and said " I can shoot better than you, even with the scope backwards"
The timing is also unusual as this ship has currently been deployed to the ME for the past 4 months as part of the Roosevelt battle group.
Although the Navy relieved a total of 16 commanding officers in 2023 alone.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... 023-212601
We don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents.
Bob Ross:
Bob Ross: