Bring The HEAT

Worth a Thousand Words

Courtesy of Delta Bravo, and the work of someone named "Earl", whose name I could not capture in the lower right-hand corner of the image.  But, well-done, Earl.   URR here.

Because Hillary Was Supposed to Win

At Hillary Clinton's direction, the Democratic National Committee paid for the Fusion GPS dossier and then handed it (with John McCain's fingerprints on it) to the FBI's Counterintelligence Chief, who washed that information through the Intelligence Community to give it the appearance of intelligence information gathered by US agencies, to hand to a FISA judge to obtain a warrant to conduct surveillance on a political opponent.  These events can only be a surprise, however, to the willfully blind.  If you recall, during the Democratic Primary debates Candidate Hillary Clinton was asked whom she was most proud to consider an enemy.  Was it Kim Jong-un?  Bashir Assad?  Putin?  Saddam Hussein?  Qaddafi?  No siree.  Her answer, you may recall, was a group of law-abiding American citizens.  The NRA. 

Candidate Clinton's answer was in keeping with the policies of her benefactor, Barack Hussein Obama, who had weaponized the IRS and the EPA and the Justice Department against domestic political challengers, bringing the full weight of government power to bear to extralegally persecute those of us who were the wrong race or gender, or held the wrong viewpoint about which of our Constitutional liberties we should have.  This autocratic tyranny stood poised to permanently occupy the positions of power in what would have become our former Republic.   And Hillary Clinton was a lock to win the White House.  

Except she didn't.  And we may thank God and the Deplorables for it.  The residue of the Left's fecal contamination of our Republic's institutions is very publicly being scrubbed from the walls, of late.  With the release of the "FBI memo", the disinfectant effect of sunlight seems to have caught the roaches before they could scurry away.  

But National Review's Victor David Hanson tells us what was supposed to happen.

Had Hillary won, as she was supposed to, Comey would probably have been mildly chastised for his herky-jerky press conferences, but ultimately praised for making sure the email scandal didn’t derail her. Comey’s later implosion, recall, occurred only after the improbable election of Donald Trump, as he desperately reversed course a fourth time and tried to ingratiate himself with Trump while hedging his bets by winking and nodding at the ongoing, unraveling fantasy of the Steele dossier.

And Barack Obama? We now know that he himself used an alias to communicate at least 20 times with Hillary on her private, non-secure gmail account. But Obama lied on national TV, saying he learned of Hillary’s illegal server only when the rest of the nation did, by reading the news. Would he have dared to lie so publicly if he’d assumed that Trump’s presidency was imminent? Would he ever have allowed his subordinates to use the dossier to obtain FISA warrants and pass around and unmask the resulting surveillance transcripts if he’d seen Trump as the likely winner and a potentially angered president with powers to reinvestigate all these illegal acts?

We sometimes forget that Barack Obama, not candidate Hillary Clinton, was president when the FBI conducted the lax investigation of the email scandal, when Loretta Lynch outsourced her prosecutorial prerogatives to James Comey, when the FBI trafficked with the Clinton-funded Fusion GPS dossier, when various DOJ and FBI lawyers requested FISA-approved surveillance largely on the basis of a fraudulent document, and when administration officials unmasked and leaked the names of American citizens.

Had Hillary Clinton polled ten points behind Donald Trump in early 2016, we’d have none of these scandals — not because those involved were moral actors (none were), but because Hillary would have been considered yesterday’s damaged goods and not worth any extra-legal exposure taken on her behalf.

Similarly, if the clear front-runner Hillary Clinton had won the election, we’d now have no scandals. Again, the reason is not that she and her careerist enablers did not engage in scandalous behavior, but that such foul play would have been recalibrated as rewardable fealty and absorbed into the folds of the progressive deep state.

The deranged panic of the Schiffs and the Pelosis is a sure sign that this is far worse than anyone in their complicit news media dared let on.  Hillary Clinton.  Bill Clinton.  Barack Obama.  Loretta Lynch.  James Comey.  James Clapper.  John Brennan.  Peter Strzok.  Andrew McCabe.  Samantha Power.  Susan Rice.  Huma Abedein.  Cheryl Mills.  And yes, Robert Mueller and John McCain.  

Perjury.  Obstruction of justice.  Conspiracy.  Falsifying government documents.  Mishandling of classified information.  Influence-peddling.  Malfeasance and abuse of government power.  And, quite possibly, treason.  

This makes Watergate look like a parking ticket.   

URR here.  

"...should we not inquire if America sees its military clearly?"

We hear endlessly that the solution to the so-called "civil-military divide" is to make the military more like  civilian culture.   And that whatever "divide" exists is somehow more the military's fault than anyone else's.  We are surrounded by such assertions, even from the mouths of senior officers.  The President of the Naval War College makes no bones about "normalizing" the institution responsible for preserving and advancing the intellectual and warfighting consciousness of the United States Navy, as if Brown University must educate Naval Officers about how to fight and win America's wars at sea.  

Such assertions have seemed to me to be much more the stuff of political claptrap than the astute observations of people who have fought and studied war.  It always seemed to me to be a deliberate effort to erode the warrior ethos and the culture of a military fighting force.  That "traditions of things endured, and things accomplished, such as regiments hand down forever" is merely toxic masculinity and must be stamped out.  Over at the Washington Examiner, Michael Ferguson writes an op-ed piece that makes the point superbly, far better than I ever have.  

Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan, published a May 2017 article in The Nation suggesting pop star Ariana Grande's philosophy of open-armed inclusion might deter Islamic State more effectively than Secretary of Defense James Mattis' pugnacious strategy of envelopment, isolation, and annihilation. Cole describes Mattis, an erudite warrior-scholar, as symptomatic of a reckless military culture that creates terrorists.

Behold, the push for the female infantryman, or artilleryman, or tanker.  Because all-male units are "hypermasculine".   And, well, GIRL POWER!  Never mind what veterans of ground combat in many wars have cautioned.  Ignore Captain Kate Petronio's voice of experience in trying to keep up with men in harsh and unforgiving environments.    Or the numerous studies that told us everything we already knew.  Except that Ferguson tells us again about the supposed "changing nature of war".

Subjective notions of social propriety, however well-intentioned, will not change the fixed identity of ground warfare. It is a brutally masculine and inherently violent enterprise. Warrior culture serves as a utilitarian mechanism that not only allows our troops to ignore their instincts of self-preservation and rush toward gunfire, but also steel their minds to the psychological rigors of armed conflict. Stigmatizing this culture by making it a problem to be “fixed” instead of a core principle in the combat conditioning process is, for the men and women who will fight tomorrow’s war, a dangerous game indeed.

But not dangerous to Ellen Haring, or Juan Cole, or DACOWITS.  Or the President of the Naval War College, for that matter.  Because "lean-in circles" happen a long way from the furnace of combat.  URR Here.

 

H/T RMH

 

So Long, Concrete Bob

Blackfive posted on the loss of a Big. Damn. Hero.  

Bob championed, I mean CHAMPIONED, veteran causes.  His work on behalf of veterans raised tons of money, awareness and gave vets and their families hope.  Of all people, Concrete Bob brought a sense of normalcy to people whose lives had changed dramatically.  Bob would hear of someone in need and immediately reach out to his network to find a way to help.  He saved lives.  Because that’s what Concrete Bob does.

Big. Damn. Hero.

Indeed he was.  Always giving his time and work to Veterans' causes, like "Feed the Troops".  Worth the whole read.  And a hand salute.   Sorry for the late word on this, but life and work preclude the perusal of the milblogs as I once had.

URR here.

The Near-Extinction of the British Dreadnoughts, 1921-28

In August of 1914, as war unexpectedly loomed over both sides of the English Channel, the Royal Navy was unquestionably the most modern and powerful force ever to ply the world's oceans.  Though challenged over the previous decades by an upstart Imperial Germany for maritime dominance of the Baltic and North Seas, in 1914 it was still the Union Jack which flew at the top of the mast of world naval power.  

The famous postcards depicting the Royal Navy Fleet Review in July of 1914 showed most (but not all) of the twenty-three dreadnought battleships and nine battle cruisers then in commission.   (Also shown were the 40 obsolescent pre-dreadnought battleships commissioned between 1896 and 1908.)  Not shown, of course, were the ten additional dreadnought battleships and five battle cruisers nearing completion, each more modern and far more powerful than their namesake.

The dreadnought battleship in 1914 was considered rightly the ultimate measuring stick of a nation's sea power.   The potential of such ships, individually and in squadrons or even fleets, to wreak destruction on an enemy fleet, seemed without limit.  But their immense cost, both to build and operate, increased the asymmetry of the means by which these "castles of steel", as Churchill's called them, might be destroyed.   The evolution of the torpedo from a short-range nuisance to a long-range ship-killer, and the concomitant development of ocean-going ships and submarines on which they would be employed, accelerated apace with the evolution of the dreadnought battleships.  And that old nemesis, the naval mine, remained a very vexing problem.  

In the course of the Great War, the dreadnought, both in its battleship and battlecruiser incarnation, proved both a fulfillment of its awesome potential, and a disappointment.   In the Falklands in December 1914, two RN battlecruisers destroyed Graf von Spee's Südseegeschwader in a running fight, without damage to themselves, despite abysmally poor British gunnery.   At Scarborough and Hartlepool, the High Seas Fleet bombardment presaged the possible destructive power of long-range artillery against cities and towns.  The Battle of Jutland, though a bitter disappointment and tactical reverse for the Royal Navy, was very much a strategic victory.  The outcome decisively determined that the High Seas Fleet would not be able to loosen the Royal Navy stranglehold that was slowly starving Germany.    However, the Allied naval effort at Gallipoli to break the domination of the Turkish forts over the Dardanelles was an utter failure, and highlighted the limitations of dreadnought power, and their vulnerability to mines and torpedoes.  

When the war ended in November 1918 as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had begun, Great Britain was bloodied, exhausted, and economically prostrate.  With the High Seas Fleet interned at Scapa Flow, and the Austro-Hungarian Navy reduced by combat loss to insignificance in the Adriatic, the only other powerful navies on the globe were those of the United States, France, and Japan, all British allies.  It was clear that retaining the massive wartime Royal Navy was not sustainable.   Additionally, technological developments in fire control, gun power, armor plate composition and distribution, propulsion, and watertight integrity had accelerated ever faster since 1906, when HMS Dreadnought had made the world's capital ships obsolete at a stroke.   Dreadnought herself, as well as her immediately succeeding classes of dreadnoughts, were hopelessly outdated, no match for the newer and more powerful "super-dreadnoughts" which were faster, better protected, and capable of accurate very long-range fire with 15-inch guns.  

The Royal Navy had lost five dreadnoughts during the war.  HMS Audacious had struck a mine in the Irish Sea not long after the war began.  At Jutland, three of Beatty's battlecruisers had fallen victim to magazine explosions resulting from German fire.  And HMS Vanguard had in 1917 suffered an internal explosion while in port.   Not long following the armistice, the dissolution of the Royal Navy's battle line began.   The older dreadnoughts were almost immediately decommissioned or placed in reserve, and were soon  sold for scrap or otherwise tagged for disposal.   Others of some combat value were retained for a few years, a handful were employed as training ships, but these also passed quickly out of commission and to the shipbreakers.

Between 1921 and 1928, an astounding twenty-three Royal Navy dreadnoughts were disposed of, representing more than half a million tons of warship strength.   One, HMS Canada, was sold to Chile (her original destination when impressed by the British in 1914).  Another, HMS Monarch, was disposed of as a gunnery target.   The other 21 were scrapped.  Dreadnought herself had been in service for just thirteen years.  Two others, HMS Agincourt and HMS Erin, were but eight years old. 

I will note here that the Washingon Naval Treaty of 1922 is often credited as the impetus for the mass dismantling of Britain's dreadnought fleet. This is not an accurate portrayal.  The agreement was instead a boon to the Exchequer, who was searching frantically for ways to stanch the economic bleeding.  The Washington Treaty provided a justification for the disposal of a great number of capital ships of questionable combat use, and the cancellation of those battleships still on the ways determined to be in excess of Royal Navy requirements for the post-war world.  While it is true that the 1922 treaty indeed stifled future construction for more than a decade, the vast majority of the decisions to dispose of the Grand Fleet's dreadnoughts had been made before the Washington Conference had even begun.  

The massed scrapping of Royal Navy dreadnoughts did have some very positive effects for Britain's shipbuilders. Shipbreaking companies at Faslane, Inverkeithing, Troon, Clydebank, Rosyth, and many other locations, kept skilled work forces employed, and shipyards and equipment in active use.  The market for high-quality scrap steel also provided an inject of capital into a British economy desperately short of liquidity.

The list of Royal Navy dreadnoughts disposed of between 1921 and 1928 is long and impressive.  Such a collection would have been the strongest force of capital ships in the world in 1914.  The original HMS Dreadnought, plus Bellerophon, Superb, Temeraire, St Vincent, Collingwood, Neptune, Colossus, Hercules, Orion, Conqueror, Thunderer, King George V, Ajax, Agincourt, Erin, Inflexible, Indomidable, New Zealand, Lion, and Princess Royal all were broken up.  Canada was sold to Chile, Monarch sunk as a gunnery target.   Mounted on these battleships and battlecruisers had been a staggering 128 12-inch and 86 13.5-inch guns, with a total broadside weight of more than 212,000 pounds.  

Following the decommissioning of the four Iron Dukes (and HMS Tiger), to comply with the London Treaty of 1930, the Royal Navy retained just fifteen dreadnoughts, the five Queen Elizabeths, the five Revenges, the two 16-inch post-war Nelsons, and battlecruisers Renown, Repulse, and Hood.   

At Jutland, it was the concentrated fire of 24 Grand Fleet dreadnoughts, steaming in line-ahead, creating the vision of "a horizon aflame", that had had such a powerful psychological effect on the sailors of the High Seas Fleet.  It was that image, and a sense that they had escaped the noose of certain destruction once, that played no small part in the mutinies in Kiel and the Jade in 1918, when they were ordered once again to face the Grand Fleet in a last, sacrificial gesture.     

Of Jellicoe's fearsome Jutland battle line, by 1931 only Royal Oak remained, along with the four veteran battleships of Evan-Thomas's 5th Battle Squadron.   The cutting torch had accomplished what no other force on the world's oceans could manage, the dismantling of the might of the Royal Navy, and the near extinction of the British Dreadnought.   (URR here.)

Colonel Wesley Fox, 43-year Marine and Recipient of the Medal of Honor, Dead at 86

Colonel Wesley Fox, one of the true legends of the Corps, has died in his birthplace of Herndon, VA, at the age of 86.  Born on 30 September 1931, Colonel Fox enlisted in the Marine Corps in August of 1950, and served two tours of duty in Korea with 3/5.  On his first tour, as a rifleman, he was wounded, and awarded a Bronze Star for bravery. 

Between Korea and Vietnam, Fox rose to the rank of First Sergeant, serving a tour as a Drill Instructor, and as a Platoon Sergeant in Force Reconnaissance.  He was commissioned in 1966, returning to Force Recon, before being assigned to command Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines.   It was with Alpha 1/9 in the A Shau Valley in February of 1969 that Wesley Fox earned our nation's highest honor for bravery.

Colonel Fox would go on to write two books, both of which should be on the shelf of any leader.  The first is Courage and Fear; A Primer, and the second is Marine Rifleman; Forty-three Years in the Corps.  

Men like Wesley Fox are leaving us in ever greater numbers.   They will be missed more than can be measured, as their courage and their honor represent values that are the subject of ridicule and derision, and have been all but drummed out of our social consciousness.  

Semper Fidelis, Colonel Fox.  We stand on the shoulders of giants, and for three generations of Marines, you were prominent among them.  

URR here.  

I hadn't Heard About This...

Which, I spose, is not surprising...  

https://www.duffelblog.com/2015/03/artilleryman-starves-during-hearing-test/#ixzz4zG6bx2CG

Artilleryman Starves to Death Inside Hearing Test Booth

FORT CAMPBELL, KY — A soldier assigned to the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division was found dead this Monday in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center (SRPC) by fellow service members, according to base security officials. Sources report that Sgt. Aaron Sanchez allegedly succumbed to starvation after two weeks alone in a hearing test booth, because his tinnitus prevented him from hearing most frequencies.

“Old Sancho died trying to pass eh? That’s nothing!” Sanchez’s supervisor Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Barber yelled at reporters. “Two of my redlegs got run over by a train the other day!”

A preliminary investigation into the death has determined that Sgt. Sanchez, an artilleryman currently serving as a 105mm gunner, did not want to reveal just how badly his hearing had deteriorated over the course of his four years in the Army and risk being rendered medically non-deployable.

“We have discovered on the test playback that Sgt. Sanchez repeatedly pushed the trigger when there were no tones being played, and failed to press it when there were,” explained Mr. Robert Hogan, the investigator assigned the case. “Unfortunately, it appears that Sgt. Sanchez’s hearing was so bad that he couldn’t even hear the computer telling him that the test was restarting.”

Sources inside the SRPC further revealed that the particular booth that Sgt. Sanchez was sitting inside had recently been upgraded to remain locked from the outside until the completion of the test, a modernization that the SRPC claims has boosted success rates by 13%.

The trapped Sgt. Sanchez went unnoticed both by soldiers hurrying to get their deployment papers stamped and the enlisted lab technicians stationed outside the booths, as they never actually look inside them.

URR here.  I said "URR HERE!"  "URR HERE!"  "I'M NOT YELLING!"  "OKAY!"

Argentine Submarine ARA San Juan Confirmed Lost

Very sad news to hear for anyone who has made a living plying "the old grey widowmaker".  ARA San Juan S-42 is now reported as being lost, with no sign of survivors from the crew of 40.  Initially, reports were that she was having communications issues, but would continue her mission.  She was not an antique boat by any means, being of the German-built TR-1700 design and having been commissioned in 1985.  She is a modern, capable diesel boat, with 30-days' endurance and a submerged speed greater than 25 knots.  San Juan underwent refit, and was modernized not long ago, being in the yard from 2008-2012.  

Now comes the search for survivors.  But those are some inhospitable waters off Patagonia.

A total of 13 ships and six aeroplanes are braving strong winds and high waves over an area of 66,000 sq km (25,500 sq miles) more than 400 km (250 miles) east of the bay of San Jorge off the coast of Patagonia in southern Argentina.

And the US Navy, as is virtually always the case, is lending a big hand in the form of MPRA, providing P-8 Poseidon aircraft, aircrew, and ground crew.

Prayers for those aboard, and for their families.  URR here.

What is a woman that you forsake her, 

And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, 

To go with the old grey Widow-maker? 

-RK

 

 

MC Times: Marine artillery barrage of Raqqa was so intense two howitzers burned out

Hell f-ing YEAH!  The Marine Corps Times has the story and a hell of a motivating video to go with it.  

“Every minute of every hour we were putting some kind of fire on ISIS in Raqqa, whether it was mortars, artillery, rockets, [High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems], Hellfires, armed drones, you name it,” Troxell told reporters on Monday. Troxell had visited Raqqa a couple weeks ago for a period of four hours.

When you find them, kill them.  What a refreshing approach, to actually kill the hell out of these bastards.  SECDEF Mattis and CJCS General Dunford sure as hell understand the nature of war.  Something that pathetic political hack Missy Mullen could never dirty his nails to know.   You do kill the enemy.  By the bushel basket load.  Keep your boot on his throat.   Re-tubing guns because you fired enough cook them?  Small price to pay. 

URR here.  

 

Ahh, Recruiters

I did have sympathy for those guys, at times.  Especially during the dreaded FMAM.  February, March, April, and May, when making mission was difficult at best.   One SSgt I knew from RS Philly said that was benches and grates time, as in that is where you got your poolees, off park benches and steam grates.  Judging by the recruits who showed up at the island from those months, I had to wonder sometimes if he wasn't serious.

Our gracious host was once in the body-snatcher bidness, albeit not for the World's Finest Fighting Force, but I am sure he still can appreciate.  

 

URR here.  Stole the pic from CT