Our Self Indulgent Nation

Back in 2008 when the Army was recruiting our daughter, the wife and I had several conversations with the recruiters. This subject came up even then.  Military recruitment is vital to our national interests; if new war fighters can't be found we are in deep kimchi.

Americans continue to get fatter and it's delivering a huge blow to the country, both in higher health care costs and undercutting military recruiting, according to a huge new study.

The 14th annual State of Obesity: Better Policies for a Healthier America report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation bluntly reported that 70 percent of the nation is obese or overweight.

And while the rate of obesity growth is leveling off, the costs aren't. The report, for example, said additional health care for obese adults and children is $150 billion a year and billions of dollars more in lost worker productivity.

It is also costly to the military, said the report. Nearly one-quarter of military recruits are rejected because they are obese and it costs the Pentagon $1 billion a year in added health care costs for obese troops and their families.

more here.

73 Years Ago Today

Tourists, not troops, now cover the beaches of Normandy.

Story and more pics here.

Braggadocious

That little s**t pot North Korean dictator, Kim Turd-un, is threatening to hit the USA with a "super-mighty preemptive strike," whatever that is. His threats to destroy the US are really directed towards his own people because no one else in the world believes him. Still he is truly an annoying little psychopath and hopefully the 1-2-3 combo of China, Japan and the US will remove him from being an annoyance to realizing his potential as fertilizer.

Even Mary Poppins wants to kick his Fat Asian Ass.

Super-Mighty-Suicidal-Extra-Braggadocious
Threatenings from that little shit who wants to be ferocious
The bombing that is soon to come is something quite atrocious
Super-Mighty-Suicidal-Extra-Braggadocious!

US Military Command Responsible For Deaths Of US Soldiers?

A retired Air Force Captain relates how she watched US soldiers die as she was denied permission to engage Taliban terrorists.

A decorated retired Air Force officer who witnessed one of the most deadly attacks on Navy SEALs in U.S. history is breaking her silence, saying the government covered up evidence detailing that the 2011 downing of a Chinook helicopter gunship that killed 38 fighters in Afghanistan could have been prevented had it not been for restrictions to the military's rules of engagement that were changed under the Obama administration.

The article lists some of the ROE that get American soldiers killed.

• No night or surprise searches
• Villagers warned prior to searches
• U.S. units on searches
• U.S. soldiers may not fire at the enemy unless the enemy is preparing to fire first
• Afghan National Army or Afghan National Police must accompany
• U.S. forces cannot engage the enemy if civilians are present
• Troops can fire at an insurgent if they catch them placing an IED, but not if they’re walking away from placing an IED.
• Only engage an enemy fighter if you see a weapon, and they’ve fired first

Trump simply has to make this nonsense disappear. Nothing will return these brave men and women to their loved ones; the military's leadership should be held accountable for this.

Apparently Obama has removed many good fighting generals and replaced them with ass kissers. I desperately hope I am wrong on this account as my daughter joined the National Guard's, 20th Group SF and has already been asked if she is willing to be deployed (again).

More.

MOAB vs MOP vs The Cloudmaker

The Massive Ordnance Air Blast, GBU-43/B or MOAB, was just used to shatter a network of tunnels used by ISIS in Afghanistan. This is a thermobaric munition that uses over pressure to kill people and break things. It is over 30 feet long, 40 inches wide and weighs 21,600 pounds (almost 11 tons). The explosive power (energy) of this device is 46 gigajoules (billion joules) or almost 13,000 kwh. A joule is the energy required to send an electrical current of one ampere through a resistance of one ohm for one second.

MOAB

A joule is an amount of energy and a watt is a rate at which energy is used, defined as 1 W = 1 J∕sec The Hoover Dam produces an average of 4.5 billion kwh of electricity per year. When detonated, the MOAB releases the same amount of energy as the Hoover Dam produces in 1.5 minutes. While that doesn't sound like much, consider that a 10-ton truck traveling at 100 mph generates only 10 megajoules upon impact. The MOAB delivers an impact 460 times greater.

The Massive Ordnance Penetrator, GBU-57A/B or MOP, is a munition designed to defeat deeply buried structures, as much as 200 feet underground. Intended to destroy Iraqi bunkers, It is 4 tons heavier than the MOAB. The MOP weighs 30,000 pounds (15 tons) is 20.5 feet in length and is 31.5" in diameter. It is armed with 5,300 pounds of high explosives, about half that of the MOAB.

Like the MOAB, it uses GPS guidance and egg crate vanes to bring it on target. Although the MOP has been successfully tested, it has never been used in a hostile action. There are probably twenty or so upgraded versions of these bombs ready for use. Reportedly the new versions weigh 37,000 pounds.

MOP

The Next Generation Penetrator (NGP) is being designed in a smaller, lighter configuration to enable it to be delivered by aircraft with a more conventional payload. The weight of the MOP is a major contributing factor to it's penetrating ability. The NGP may use rockets to give it a velocity (greater speed equal greater kinetic energy) that will achieve the same penetration.

Neither of these bombs approaches the weight of America's heaviest air borne munition, the T-12 Cloudmaker. The T-12 was a 44,000 pound bunker buster developed near the end of WWII. It was almost 17' long and 54" wide; designed to be carried by the B-36 bomber, two at a time. Nuclear weapons quickly made the T-12 obsolete.

T-12

Trump: I'd Hit It Again

The Drudge Report had this to say about the recent US response to Syrian chemical warfare: TRUMP: I'D HIT ASSAD AGAIN...


Now that's pushing it a bit. I'm sure President Trump doesn't stray from Melania and I'm sure Assad wouldn't welcome it either.  Well, pretty sure... those lines in the sand Obama drew for Assad might have been directions.

All joking Assad, err , aside, Russia has vowed to assist Syria by upping it's air defense game against further American attacks and has sent a cruise missile frigate into the area of the Mediterranean where the two American destroyers are stationed. No word on how long the air defense changes will take or the proposed enhancements.

It is also reported that after the gas attacks last Tuesday, there were additional air strikes in the Syrian city of Khan Sheikhoun on Saturday. 

Hopefully Their Army Works Better Than Their Navy

In response to apparent Russian provocation, the Brits are beefing up their military presence in Estonia.

British troops began a long-term deployment to Estonia on Saturday as Germany’s intelligence chief warned Russia had doubled its military presence on its Western border.

An advanced contingent of 120 British soldiers landed at Estonia’s Amari airbase late on Friday night as part of a new Nato deployment designed to deter Russia from attempting a repeat of its invasions of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in the Baltic.

Eight hundred British troops with Challenger 2 tanks, AS90 self-propelled guns, and Warrior armoured vehicles, will be based in the town of Tapa, 80 miles from the Russian border, from next month.

This is part of a planned exercise with French and other NATO forces in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Additional British troops will be sent to Poland to augment American forces already stationed there.

Story here.

As far as the readiness of the best warships in Her Majesty's Navy, go here.  Unfortunately our own navy apparently isn't in much better shape.

Spooky Science In The Military

I have read about "entangled photons" and it is definitely a subject beyond my understanding. But, if true, this application to radar detection may have disastrous implications for American military aircraft.

CHINA claims it has a radical new ‘quantum’ radar capable of detecting stealth fighters at great distances. Does this mean our ultra-expensive new F-35 is obsolete, even before we get it?

The RAAF’s first F-35’s will be making their debut Australian appearance at the Avalon air show this week. It’s not a combat-capable aircraft, yet, though the first partially operational US squadron of the type was deployed to Japan earlier this year.

But Beijing state media has boasted its scientists have successfully tested a new type of radar capable of defeating stealth technology at ranges out to 100km.
With a single stroke, such a capability would render the $US1 trillion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program obsolete. This includes Australia’s $17 billion investment in some 72 examples of the controversial aircraft.

Existing radars cast beams of radio waves into the sky, with sensors detecting reflections from aircraft or ships. The whole point of stealth technology is to minimise such reflections.

But what if the beam was something other than a radio wave?

What if Albert Einstein’s mysterious “spooky action at a distance” could be harnessed?

[...]The implications of such quantum radar are enormous.

If true, it could negate the effectiveness of the single aircraft in which all the West’s defence hopes lay — the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. This controversial aircraft is 10 years overdue and billions of dollars over budget.

And this is all due to its complete reliance on an ability to fly unseen.

What if it was visible?

It carriers fewer weapons, flies slower and is less manoeuvrable than its predecessors. But all this was justified on the basis that its design was optimised to be invisible to radar.

Take that invisibility away and the F-35 looks much less capable than its counterparts.

US Military Not Reporting Air Strikes

From the Military Times:

The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed. The enormous data gap raises serious doubts about transparency in reported progress against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban, and calls into question the accuracy of other Defense Department disclosures documenting everything from costs to casualty counts.

In 2016 alone, U.S. combat aircraft conducted at least 456 airstrikes in Afghanistan that were not recorded as part of an open-source database maintained by the U.S. Air Force, information relied on by Congress, American allies, military analysts, academic researchers, the media and independent watchdog groups to assess each war's expense, manpower requirements and human toll.

Delayed Reaction

Obama's moving kind of slow these days. I can't see how this man plays basketball.

US Army moves 2,500 tanks, trucks and military vehicles into Europe in the biggest troop transfer since the Cold War

Troops arrive to respond to Russian aggression in the region after annexation of Crimea in 2014

THOUSANDS of heavily armoured US military vehicles have arrived in Germany to respond to Russian aggression in Europe.

The military brigade of 3,500 troops is the largest to be deployed to the continent since the end of the Cold War.

The annexation took place in 2014 and now it's.... 2017?

Or maybe the UK Sun reporters need to take some vitamins or something.

Story here.

Mad Dog's Christma Mojo

General Mattis is exactly the kind of leader that is desperately needed today, not only in the military but also in many other positions of responsibility. This link is to a story that will you an idea how a man's sense of duty influences his actions. And there's cookies.

A Hollow Military

Obama hates America. There are few areas where this is more apparent than in the condition of our nation's armed forces.

Forget about the longtime standard of a military capable of fighting two major wars simultaneously, which the United States abandoned four years ago. The current military would have trouble fighting one major conflict.

That is the assessment of some prominent defense experts, who contend the military has degraded to dangerous levels after eight years under President Obama.

“We have lost our edge,” said Daniel Goure, senior vice president of the Lexington Institute. “We are no longer technologically superior in a whole list of areas … This is a military that is on the brink of collapse.”

For years liberals have argued that America cannot be the world's policeman. But most other nations do not operate under the same guiding principles of freedom and personal liberty that America possesses. It is foolish to assume otherwise.

Throughout recorded history we are  reminded that powerful nations will extend their sphere of influence and crush those that oppose them. The only way that this oppression can be resisted is through the application of military power.

If and when our political leaders determine that we are not capable of resisting foreign influence, they will surrender our interests to please other nations. Under whose sphere of influence do you wish to live your life? China? Russia? Iran?

Our overwhelming superior military strength is what has kept us free. That freedom could be lost if our military becomes weak and ineffective, which is exactly what Obama's agenda is trying to accomplish.

“We are actually below peacetime levels,” said John Venable, a retired Air Force colonel who serves as a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense. “But we’re actually fighting a war.”

This is the change that Obama promised.

• The Army needs 25 brigades to fight one major conflict. It has 31, but Venable said only 10 are “mission ready.” 

• The Navy had 272 ships, below its 308-ship goal, and Venable said only about a third of the vessels are ready for combat. 

• The Air Force needs 600 planes to fight one major conflict. Although the service currently has 1,159, Venable said less than half are ready for combat. 

• The Marine Cops has 23 battalions, more than the 13 needed to fight one major conflict, but the Heritage report estimates only half are ready.

Story here and more here.

Ah Come On Guys!

Do We Treat PTSD By Healing America?

Journalist Sebastian Junger has an extremely interesting view on PTSD and how we might address it.

He posits that the armed forces of many other nations have a very low rate of PTSD among their combat troops as opposed to ours (i.e., US armed forces, 50% claim PTSD, whereas in Israel it is only 1% - the Kurds don't have any).

Junger claims that their societies are more supportive than American culture and that our troops would normally recover completely within a few weeks or months if it were not for the screwed social mores of America that tend to isolate from each other.

Video and supporting article here. It's really worth a read.

Now, Junger, who announced his retirement from war reporting soon after Hetherington was killed in Misrata, Libya, during the civil war, is shifting his attention to the home front. His latest book, “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging,” which hit shelves on May 24, takes a hard look at the difficulties veterans face as they transition back into civilian life. Front and center is the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder, which Junger believes is overdiagnosed, and, in cases where it’s misdiagnosed, damaging to long-term psychological health. The veteran struggle, he theorizes, has more to do with the nature of American society than it does combat itself.

[...]The irony is that 10% of the U.S. military experiences combat. Something like 50% of the military has applied for PTSD disability. So what’s going on with that 40%? Now, I’m not prepared to be as cynical about that 40% as some people might be. I think an awful lot of those people are honestly describing something that is actually a transition disorder. It isn’t PTSD, but the only vocabulary we have right now is PTSD, so they call it PTSD. And a lot of these people are honest people, and I think they’re probably quite insecure about the fact that they know they were never traumatized, and, yeah, PTSD is the only category that they have available to describe what they’re truly feeling. What they’re truly feeling is this tremendous depression that comes from going from a close-knit communal life to the alienated life of modern society.

You can see the same effect in Peace Corps volunteers. There’s an incredibly high rate of depression among Peace Corps volunteers when they come home. They’re in Guinea, they’re in Sierra Leone, they’re in all these fucked up places. You’d think when they’d get home it’d be this big party. It’s not at all. About half of them struggle with depression afterwards. They don’t call it PTSD because they’re not vets. In their mind, they weren’t traumatized. What they’re really experiencing is the trauma of transitioning from a close-knit life in a village or a platoon to everyone’s living in their own apartment in New York City and contemplating hanging themselves in their closet.

That’s the irony of modern society: As wealth and affluence goes up, independence goes up and so does suicide, and so does depression, and so does all this other stuff.

White House Pussy: We Continue To Be Concerned.

Russian Su-24 planes thundered over the USS Donald Cook at a height of just 30ft in what a military official branded the most 'aggressive' incident between Russia and the United States in years.

The 'simulated attack' maneuver saw the jets pass so close to the ocean that they created a 'wake in the water', the defense official said.

The shock move came as a Polish helicopter was taking off from the US Destroyer on Tuesday evening.

This is not the first time the USS Donald Cook was was buzzed by Rooskie aircraft.

Somebody oughta swat those flies.

Story

Never Mind Mexicans, Could We Stop Godzilla?

Over the years I have lost a great deal of sleep worrying about our Beloved Nation being overrun by our enemies. And by monsters; gigantic, radioactive halitosis, shambling freaks of nature that seem fixed on destroying our major cities. Luckily there are civic minded leaders who also are concerned and have made plans to protect us.

Godzilla. Kings of the monsters. The original Kaiju. Born of humanity’s hubris, it comes from the depths of the Pacific ocean. It comes to wreak havoc. It comes to kill. Some of the more soft-hearted elements of the American military wish to weaponize the beast. Fools! The creature must be destroyed.

But how?

The U.S. Air Force’s 18th Wing in Japan—America’s largest combat wing—thinks it would have no problem felling the beast. Senior Airman Mark Hermann told Air & Space magazine he could destroy the monster with “.50-caliber [machine guns], four helicopters.” He thinks Godzilla is a joke.

He’s wrong. Godzilla is a force of nature. The mighty King of Monsters would shrug off a mere four helicopters armed with machine guns.

There are people in the military taking seriously the threat of giant atomic-powered lizards emerging from the Pacific Ocean.

Story here.

Myths Of American Armor

The Sherman M4 got a bad rep... undeservedly. This is a very interesting video if you're into WWII history.

Listen to this US Army armor officer/historian; the M4 was an excellent weapon and did exactly what it was designed to do.

US Deploys F-15s To Turkey

Obama has put on his big boy pants and is upping the ante in Syria. We'll see if Putin calls him.

The Pentagon is sending F-15Cs—supposedly to fight the ISIS war. But the jets only have air-to-air weapons, and ISIS has no planes. Which means the real adversary is Russia.

The U.S. Air Force is deploying to Turkey up to a dozen jet fighters specializing in air-to-air combat—apparently to help protect other U.S. and allied jets from Russia’s own warplanes flying over Syria.

Officially, the deployment of F-15C Eagle twin-engine fighters to Incirlik, Turkey—which the Pentagon announced late last week—is meant to “ensure the safety” of America’s NATO allies, Laura Seal, a Defense Department spokesperson, told The Daily Beast.

That could mean that the single-seat F-15s and the eight air-to-air missiles they routinely carry will help the Turkish air force patrol Turkey’s border with Syria, intercepting Syrian planes and helicopters that periodically stray into Turkish territory.

But more likely, the F-15s will be escorting attack planes and bombers as they strike ISIS militants in close proximity to Syrian regime forces and the Russian warplanes that, since early October, have bombed ISIS and U.S.-backed rebels fighting the Syrian troops.

Story here.

Su-27

Russia has deployed Sukhoi Su-27 "Flanker" jets to Syria. Both the F-15 and the Su-27 are highly maneuverable, air superiority aircraft with similar capabilities and armament. The F-15 has had a much greater exposure to aerial combat than the SU-27 which has seen very limited engagement in Angola, Eritrea and Chechnya. The F-15 shot down over 30 Russian aircraft (mostly Migs) during the Gulf War. Of course American pilots did not face Russian pilots in those encounters.

F-15

This could get real interesting. The first F-15s were first deployed in 1972; there have been four upgrades. The F-15E is the latest variant (1988); F-15C's are being sent to Turkey. The Su-27 is a mid-80's Russian product.

The Corps Ain't What It Used To Be

According to the Marine Corps Times, Marine brass have ruled out arming recruiters following July's deadly shooting rampage in Tennessee by Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez.

The ISIS-inspired jihadist opened fire on several military recruiting officers stationed in a strip mall before attacking a military base a few minutes away.

Abdulazeez killed four Marines and a sailor before police and a Navy commander, who happened to be carrying a sidearm at the time, fired back and killed him.

Will the Corps arm their brave Marines in order that they protect themselves from attack?

Not exactly. As a matter of fact, not at all.

The Pentagon will instead "protect" recruiters from future ambushes by training them to "take cover or evacuate in the event of an attack." It also will provide them with "movable shields or desk partitions" that they can duck behind to dodge AK-47 rounds.

Might as well have them also carry tampons so they can stuff something in their bullet holes while hiding behind their partitions. Pink partitions, paint them pink. WTF....

If only Chesty Puller could come back from the dead....

Story here.

Bye-Bye Humvee, Hello JLTV

From the UK Guardian:

It became the symbol of half a dozen US military interventions – a vehicle instantly recognisable across the globe, and as popular with the US military (if not with the actual soldiers) as with Islamic State, who stole 2,300 of them in Iraq during the fall of Mosul in 2014.

Now the US Department of Defense has announced the beginning of the end for the ubiquitous Humvee, awarding a $6.7bn contract to replace it to the Wisconsin firm Oshkosh.

As the Sherman tank was indelibly associated with the second world war, the Humvee bracketed a period of US interventionism that began with the invasion to topple Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989 and will end in the chaos of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oshkosh beat a team made up of Lockheed Martin Corp and Britain’s BAE Systems, as well as AM General, the privately owned company that built the original Humvees, for a deal that could be worth $30bn over time.

The US plans to buy a total of 55,000 of the Oshkosh’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, or JLTVs, to start replacing the current combined fleet of about 140,000 Humvees. The makers claim the new vehicles will be more nimble and better protected than their 30-year-old predecessors.

Here is the latest example of American military badassery.