Lawman

You saw dead men loaded on the back of your plane. Oh my god what a unique position to find yourself in. Nobody else who has done such could possibly call you out for your apologetic doublespeak of “let’s avoid conflict” and paint the current one as if we were filling coffins and draping them with US Flags. All while parroting Russian propaganda and talking points to invalidate any positions we have to support the current regime over there. You wanna classify the Maiden revolutions as some sort of US orchestrated overthrow of an elected government is a gross misrepresentation of our actions or the decade+ of that ousted governments actions that led to protests, casualties, and their parliamentary vote. And it’s nothing if not an often repeated piece of Russians disinformation widely put out to somehow justify their military backed invasion of the Donbas and Crimea. Thank you for rowing the boat from whichever position in the canoe you did, but you are far from unique in this room. And I doubt your attempt to feature some poor dead grunt as a reason to adopt strategic foreign policy positions is anything more than the same Cindy Sheehan kind of crap she was doing when her chosen political flavor wasn’t in higher office. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes it’s impossible to examine historical actions by Russia and ponder whether or not Ukrainian citizens would be “better off” had we (the west) simply cut off any aid or attempt to neuter Russia in response to THEIR naked aggression. No we couldn’t possibly look at the last decade+ of bad decisions with regards to treating them either apologetically when they invaded countries, or seeking ways to back away from any real effective resistance to their actions in Europe/Syria/Etc. maybe make a conscious decision that just going the way we’ve been going has done nothing to head off further aggressions (backing away during Georgia, Crimea, etc). But there would have been no human cost yo simply letting them invade. And Atlantic Resolve would just go away. Some guy that was in GWOT for a hot minute on the internet told us all so. We’ve adopted the “middle ground” position you’ve been demanding yet you and others want to portray such as open military warfare. What we are doing right now is nothing of the sort. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The lesson from hindsight isn’t “well if they’d just” as an appeal to how much smarter we are, it’s to go “that was stupid, they ignored warnings x/y/z,” and then learn and apply it to present situations. Rewarding naked Russian aggression by simply sitting over here and “seeing to our own problems” or whatever BS excuse is offered would be the opposite of that. In <2 years we have gone from posturing NATO to repel a viable conventional military threat from the Suwalki gap, to watching that threat absorb 100-125k casualties, loose 1/3 of its conventional attack helicopters, somewhere between 1500-2500 front line armored vehicles (its pulling BTR-50s out of storage for Christ sake), and empty munition stocks that would be necessary for any engagement with NATO. And it cost us how many lives exactly? But sure we could just see to our own problems and nobody would have died for sure. Nothing would have been gained, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be deploying (again) this year to Poland. And by doing so despite you and others pretending it doesn’t, the Chinese are evaluating a war stock of weapons they get to watch underperform embarrassingly in Ukraine. Now take those same weapons and put yourself in executing the largest amphibious operation since D Day but really, except over 4 times the distance without any of the logistics. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Had the world military powers of the time done the right thing and refused Hitler the Sudetenland, he would have lacked much of the necessary military industrial strength necessary to fight wars. Had they then when given a second bite at the apple actually gone to war as they said they would instead of executing 6mo of, “the phony war,” they’d have engaged a German Army depleted in strength and sapped with casualties and logistical shortcomings, instead they waited and allowed them to consolidate and engage on their terms. They did that because of a populist belief they could/should avoid conflict and aggression at the cost of “those people over there” who aren’t in our foreign interests. In the end that commitment to inaction left them with no choice but to fight an eventually far more bloody/costly war. So when you bring up that one time you pulled a Hero mission up your ramp you are attempting to do the same, particularly when you make some appeal on one hand to maintaining influence and avoiding conflict, and pretend with the other that we aren’t doing exactly that successfully in places like the Ukraine. And it also serves as a bold warning to a Chinese government trying to figure out how to divert from its home front population problems. A war in your own terms is not nearly the attractive idea when it looks like you will lose badly. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

We’ve been “continuously engaged” in conflicts since the end of the 2nd World War. To pretend that conflict is or hasn’t been an ever present part of human existence the entire time it’s been around is just bold faced ignorance bought from a position of insulated relaxation of not having to see the sausage get made. Somehow those little brush fire wars didn’t devolve into the end of civilization or industrialized warfare on a global scale. Again, the person I’m responding to has repeatedly over and over suggested that it’s not our place or responsibility to do anything about an autocratic land-grab via direct open conflict in Europe. Peace in our time so to speak. Yeah we’ve seen how that plays out before. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, being isolationist in our foreign policy and allowing autocrats to take what they want is exactly how you prevent a World War… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That’s happened to the Army every year it’s offered. They budget for about 1/3 the available population in the hopes of forcing guys to commit early and not wait until they are in a combat zone to file for it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I feel like there is a real lesson to be learned from the cartel drone subs out there. Expendable resupply vehicle that would force somebody to burn a lot of effort to find it or use it to build a wider intel picture. That seems like the perfect way to augment resupply of guys doing their best impression of the coast watchers where airdrop or other methods might show too much of your hand. But before somebody goes over the top with capabilities this like so many other things doesn’t need to be overbuilt. Stay with something that isn’t intended for the hard threat mission like the SDV, just something that will boat it’s way to your friendlies without shouting to the world a trail of breadcrumbs. Maybe something small enough it could be hand rolled off the back of a small amphibious ramp equipped logistics platform… dropped far enough from an island chain to swim without giving away their position or to just stash its self and wait. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

China is facing a demographic collapse which in the next 3-5 years will hollow out its “cheap labor” model. They can’t fix that, even if they wanted to it would require a massive effort that simply getting rid of the 1 child rule doesn’t meet. That will have a world wide impact as it takes full effect over the next two decades. That’s because it’s not just about their population decreasing, it is simultaneously aging so it’s an exponential curve not a linear one. Right now the people to fix the problem are all approaching 30, in a few years your big bubble of population will be too old to viably produce more than they are numbers wise let alone raise a minimum of 3 kids. China’s cost to manufacture is now 5-6 times what it was in the last 20 years. Which is why anybody smart has been pushing to decouple from China which has put its self in as a middle man on supply chain refinement not finished manufacturing. That is fine in an export based economy so long as the music keeps going. And no kidding we would drop a turd in the punch bowl to fight a war, the fact of it is while it would screw up our economy and trigger a lot of heartache and supply chain issues, it would completely destroy the system theirs is built on. They use their economy to keep people employed first and foremost. That keeps them from questioning the system while party centralized banking options are limited to government control which finances their whole economic loan system. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

China is effectively 4 countries. While the North and Central China have held power the idea that China is this massive united population is a false impression/oversimplification. North China is the China culture we associate as Americans when we think of China as an opponent, but they are about to go through a disaster to their economy and debt/savings structure that will make the Great Depression look mild by comparison. And their A2AD structure works both ways, so having this collection of countries that hate you as an immediate barrier island chain able to interdict your entire coast lines importation of sea going vessels is bad for their economic model. Especially when their economy is the largest importer of pretty much ever raw material/oil/food stuffs on the planet. We don’t even need it to go kinetic to ruin them. If you did what the world did to Russia with sanctions and market exclusion you would hobble their economy, cause upwards of 35-40% unemployment overnight and completely upend their ability to just issue state backed credit models to keep their economy churning. It would be a death sentence for their current unification and basically send them back to the 30s. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The ground effect airfoil systems are essentially a higher speed version of hydrofoil/hovercraft type designs. They have specific niche areas where they work effectively to do rapid light transfers but they are extremely limited in any sort of dynamic open water environment. Start adding up distances and unpredictable weather patterns. There is a reason outside a very few areas you don’t see high-speed hydrofoils and even when you do, they are an augmentation to the existing heavy conventional sealift (good example the Greek isles). The real fear for the Caspian Sea monster and other ground effect systems wasn’t their ability to rapidly put a mass of troops and equipment, it was because they were effectively a warship’s worth of cruise missile platform that could rapidly move and maneuver from a relatively safe sanctuary to a firing position against a land or sea based target and then run away before presenting a viable target. Same with things like of the same era like the OSA missile boats. A swarm of them would present a real dilemma for a fleet forcing them to exercise stand off and render themselves ineffective. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

While I get the joke, go get the NGIC briefing on Ukraine and focus on the logistics and sustainment sides of it. (The non sexy stuff people ignore). We have hard number data now on just how much of a force multiplier a single forklift or K loader is because we are watching a peer military do without it. When I think of just how many pallets of stuff moved on Ramps at Bagram or Taji for a war where sustainment of ammunition wasn’t really a concern. Now imagine the same scenario without the automation and organized work gangs of 18-23 year olds who don’t want to be there and are poorly supervised. That is gonna be a major make/break point beyond simply having enough ready munitions in stock (the current shiny thing of focus). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Anybody that questions palletized ramp offload vs other options, go compare a Sherpa/Osprey/47 onload and offload of cargo to a C-12 or Dornier. Not pax’s and luggage I mean pallets of commo and tough boxes they need to do a job at a location. A single forklift can do the work in minutes that takes at least an hour because no only do you have people shuffling up a set of stairs with a yeti cooler of crap at a time, they can’t just turn around and back out. Also compare them as jump platforms or airdrop cargo because let’s face it that’s gonna be a big part of your customer option. Unless you can get a pallet sized sliding door on the side we shouldn’t even entertain the idea of a logistics platform that can only be loaded by hand. If it can’t be loaded up with a 10-15K fork loader it’s going to cost time and sortie rate as we unpalletized stuff that was delivered by big ramp aircraft to stick it in this and take it to a location only accessible by seaplane that then has to be unloaded again. If it’s being unloaded in a zodiac, try putting one of those through the door of the previous listed planes. Let alone carry the motor of it without accidentally dropping it down the stairs. And a rear ramp gives you an option to simply low pass and push floating supply pallets to be recovered to the beach by the receiving group. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Look everybody can agree the PBY is a classic design that has beautiful lines, but even in the time it was flying it was nowhere near the best flying boat available, just the most iconic. There have been a host of designs since then more suitable to tasks/mission sets we are now taking about. Not to mention a lot of understanding about aerodynamics or structural engineering for such designs. If this is first and foremost a logistics platform, using a sea borne scout plane as the base of design is a horridly bad idea. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We were still directly actioning on targets from the Neptune Spear intel 4 years after the fact. That wasn’t just national building, it was dismantling active efforts by AQ and its leadership network. That’s part of the misunderstand we were there to make a democratic country. That was a secondary goal to all the stuff going on in numbered task forces. If we’d said that publicly it would have been honest, but that’s a harder sell to people. “Why are we still there?!?!?” “Well Mr and Mrs Wisconsin suburban voter… there are still a lot of S-heads that need killing.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It’s funny that right now Russia has had to pull their Navy back into safe havens even further from where they could steam BEFORE they invaded Crimea. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Do you have any idea how many prepared sites for supporting dispersed operations we maintained in Europe during the Cold War or currently maintain in Korea as various echelons? Do you know how many places in the Indo-PACOM theatre we have agreements but don’t prepositions at because it’s 3rd and 4th order contingency locations? Some of its shadow guessing. Drop some connex’s and a dirt runway you never intent to use and out yourself in the RedFor commander… gonna spend some Tactical Ballistic missiles on site A, B, C?… what about this other guy. Hey look we depleted your strike capability with deception ops. Or maybe we go there with intent from the balloon going up. Either way it’s effective. This isn’t new. This is prudence of let’s not write/staff/support an O-plan while the war is actually ongoing. That’s been a true nature for strategic planning not just for us but for every major power as long as power has been expeditionary (British Empire with things like the China squadron, German General Staff, US War plan Orange/red/yellow for USA, etc).

That’s a bit overly simplistic. CAS is any air delivered kinetic effect that impacts the ground forces elements of maneuver requiring the enhanced coordination between air and ground elements to mitigate risk. That’s why it changes relative to the weapons employed and not just a range or place. Air delivered high dud munitions for example would require a far wider margin of separation/coordination over an APKWS delivered at high angle. Same is true for our fires from the ground to the ground. 155 is different than an ATACM even though it’s all “fires.” You can be doing AI and still be well short of the FSCL. See all the stuff we did striking isolated pockets of resistance that our ground forces bypassed during things like the 03 invasion. If they weren’t supporting a maneuver unit in the conduct of a developing or direct fight, it was by default AI. Or you get into those weird “shaping” ops like using you guys to knock out a bridge when a unit realizes it’s flank is about to be rolled up. You are technically out of contact, so it stops being CAS even though it’s obviously an immediate consideration to a maneuver unit (whatever echelon). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We had to explain to our Brit exchange guy that the phrase, “silly c*nt,” wasn’t nearly the benign comment he was used to culturally. Thank god the guy doesn’t smoke too… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’d say the same congressional zombies that have done things like hobbled the Raptor buy to <200 planes that have spent the last two decades screaming at people with stars on their shoulders at the mere suggestion of retiring the A-10 are doing exactly that. It is truly insulting as a guy in a green uniform to have somebody comfortably sitting in Congress and accuse another service tasked with a collection of missions that they “don’t care about the ground force.” Then after making their loud popular point they simultaneously cut back on the assets that deliver air supremacy I need to actually prevent a mass casualty event, or sign off on retiring our MTI capability, or don’t force a mass infusion in the collection tools critical to execute effective mission planning…. CAS is an effect. If a JDAm/Griffen/SDB II/etc is coming off a plane the ground force won’t care in the end what that plane (or robot) it is. They want timely application at the point of friction to maximize maneuver. That is all. Some of the most effective and timely CAS that I have relied on to change the outcome of the S show was delivered by a non pointy nosed aircraft. A damn Cessna could be doing it, just get it on target. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

It only stays unlikely in a game of balanced deterrence where the CCP looks across the water toward that Island they think is theirs and that Sea they believe is their beach, and then pause to remember that isn’t a given. Being equipped and capable of fighting is critical to them coming out of that pause with a changed mind. If they look out into that same environment to see a US military equipped and trained to fight real good in sub Saharan Africa or Southcom but not to take their A2AD and D2SOE, brush it aside, and cripple their infrastructure and military capacity they won’t feel that way anymore. We can teach an F35 to do CAS. We can’t teach AT-6 or some other Coincentric acquisitions platform like MRAP to do an effective multi domain LSCO fight. I mean we could try… but we will get some pretty predictable results. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Being less effective at the most likely war and losing it results in more S-head people in S-hole places continuing to do S-actions. Being less effective and losing the most dangerous one results in us either picking through the ashes for our daily meal or celebrating Glorious Leader’s birthday. I know which one I’d call higher stakes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One service is showing up to a combined arms fight with all three elements of the combat arms fight. The other very much isn’t and is making a commitment to engage in that fight with support from air assets. The entire Active Duty Marine Corps has 24 total HIMARs. The conventional Army had that many between 1st and 2nd SBCT at JBLM alone. The services are not congruent, even in names of unit types. The Army fight will be shaped around the Division as the maneuver element of action with the Armored Division of the engaged Corps being the vanguard of its advance. That hasn’t been the case for 20 years as we went to a BCT model doing wide area security. The bleeding edge capes of CAS will be far less important than effective AI or, what has largely just been assumed and forgotten about, Air Superiority for that units success. The guys at schoolhouses like to quote the famous “855 rounds of HE 155 to kill a tank company….” They need to understand it’s not 1982 anymore and update their thinking. There are shells in our M109s that will do just that in a single battery 6. More importantly the ground force organic firepower equation has changed from the Fulda scenario. Weapons like Javelin didn’t exist when that method of Air Land Battle CAS was modeled. The ground force even in light infantry or SBCT is capable of holding in the defense to a far greater degree, provided the Air can hobble THIER combined arms capability (IE take out their artillery/Fires/C2). That isn’t in the close engagement, it’s 4-40Km deep from the FLOT, and it’s protected by semi to fully autonomous IADS elements and directed by drones. We are far more likely to have a condition resulting in loss because we let the drone target a key element of the formation and had Red fires/aviation cause mass casualties in an assembly area than we are having to lean on organic fires because CAS wasn’t as available or plentiful as we have grown accustomed to. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The Marines and the Army are not the same CAS customers. One service is divesting it’s self of tube artillery, armor, and basic at anything that delivers a weapon at range with precision that isn’t either a Hellfire missile or GMLRs fired off a truck (that they have limited numbers of). The other is less interested in CAS than it is in shaping operations. And before anybody points at the last 20 years of stupid as an example of how much the Army needs CAS, we could provide the effects desired from a Drone or persistent light weight Bronco style aircraft in Afghanistan and meet 90% of the mission requirements. For the other 10% a small slice of a wider population of advanced aircraft are more than capable of meeting the SOF raid requirement. The Army isn’t investing in M1299 or rapidly increasing capes in fires munitions for no reason. And it’s not so we can better provide immediate close fires, it’s so we can cause a mass casualty event two phase lines deeper than the point of advance while a reinforced Armor Division punches into the enemy support zone with concentrated application of mobile protected firepower. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk