A Millennials telling of the Battle of Guadalcanal...

 

http://tanks-a-lot.tumblr.com/post/153164258577/guadalcanal-1942

 

He leaves out a few details but gave us a nice, quick overview....

YPG Improvised armored vehicle with BMP-1

via Syrialivemap

Wow.  Just plain wow.

Open Comment Post. Nov 14, 2016.

Point of order.  USA bashing is like pornography.  No one can define it but we all know it when we see it.  I can't give you a precise definition of it but I know it when I see it so watch your step.  I had to ban another idiot because he thought that this was an open forum and not a private enterprise.

The funny thing?  I don't delve into the politics of other nations.  Many of my foreign visitors think that their opinion of our politics is valid and that their counsel should be heeded.

And you wonder why nationalism is on the rise in America?

For those of you that want to cross the line then fine.  Just be advised.  I'm a vindictive person.  You want to do a deep dive into the US then be ready for me to do a deep dive into your country.  For all our problems I bet that you're living in a glass house.

Slow walking into the Ukrainian conflict thru multinational training groups...

Pics via US Army Europe Flickr Page.

Units involved- US Army 6th Squadron, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division & Ukrainian Army  1st Battalion, 80th Airmobile Brigade

so now we're riding side saddle on BTR's?  maybe a better idea would be to have allies that actually operate the host countries equipment do the training instead of the trainers being trained by the people that are suppose to be trained?!!?!?!?!?!

Two things.  First.  Will someone tell me the threat that Russia's Army poses to Europe?  Something stupid happened in Ukraine and we all got a glimpse of the games being played by the US State Dept and Russians.  No one is without dirty hands in that affair.  But even with the Russians annexing a portion of the basket case that is Ukraine I don't see a wider conflict being inevitable.  Additionally even if you could properly make a case for why we should be willing to spend lives and treasure defending Ukraine, I could easily make the case that the time for action has long passed.

Second.  Is it just me or do we use the excuse of training missions to slow walk ourselves into either wars or major commitments that cost us more than they're worth.  Do you remember when the "training mission" meme was first used in the modern era?  Yeah.  It was used in Vietnam.  Fast forward to the end of 2016 and they're still rolling out that old chestnut.

I would pay good money for a decisive foreign policy that makes a decision and acts promptly on it.  We're seeing too many half measures and its costing us what remains of our prestige globally.

Et tu, David Axe?

If you live in or near Columbia, S.C. and you want to protest Trump's un-American policies, you can join us here: https://t.co/AKHtQE8Ze6

— David Axe (@daxe) November 14, 2016

I saw this tweet and was a bit shocked.  I shouldn't have been though.  Its a reminder that not everyone that is a defense professional, journalist (obviously...David is a journalist first and foremost), or interested in military matters is conservative.

Still.  David!  Fucking seriously!

Hezbollah's Armored Brigades Order of Battle

Thanks to Fillipo for the link!

via misterxanlisis.wordpress.com

During 13th November 2016 merged a lot of images about a Hezbollah parade on the Syrian-Lebanese border town of Al-Qusayr it was very interesting as far as we could saw an unexpected huge armored force owned by the group.
We will divide the article in to three parts, the first will be dedciated to the material found on the images in general, the second will treat the images on their own and in the third part I am going to expose my conclusions.
There were a lot of unconfirmed rumors about Assad supplying heavy material to Hezbollah, even during the 2013 battle for Al Qusayr the Institute for the Study of War said that Hezbollah probably operated T-54 or T-55 tanks however we never see before such evidence of heavy material in hands of Hezbollah this represnts a quality leap on their improvement as a military force able to fight in hybrid and now more conventional conflicts.

This article is a MUST READ (here).

I don't know this guy but he did good work.  He gives an order of battle, informs his readers when he speculates on details and documents when it's confirmable.  Again!  Read the article!

For all the SOCOM bubbas out there I have bad news for you.  Your job of curb stomping terrorists is about to come to an end in the Middle East.  From my chair SOCOM allowed themselves to be "overused" for questionable missions that could have been better handled by conventional forces, they got caught up in the raid-raid and more raid mindset and they started believing the press clippings.

But back on task.  Why is SOCOM about to find its effectiveness shut down in the Middle East?  Because Special Ops is vulnerable to conventional forces and these terrorist are starting to look more and more like nation state armies.  via ADRP 3-05 Army Special Operations Forces

The mission or tasks must be operationally feasible. ARSOF are not structured for attrition or force-on-force warfare and should not be assigned missions beyond their capabilities. ARSOF commanders and their staffs must consider the vulnerability of ARSOF units to larger, more heavily armed or mobile forces, particularly in hostile territory.

The ramifications of this are clear.  Beyond Special Ops, you have the Marine Corps moving toward distributed warfare.  Even more worrying is the idea of Expeditionary Rifle Squads and Company Landing Teams.  Deploying these Marine Corps formations at distance (they're practicing 1,000 mile raids) against "classic" terrorists might be a winner.  Against these new hybrid forces it's a recipe for disaster.

For our friends in the region (really only Israel, maybe Jordan and some foolish individuals might say Saudi Arabia) the threat compounds.  The Marine Corps once focused on motivation, the will to fight and the desire of each Marine to win that fight.  I don't hear that as much anymore with the move towards a more tech centric Marine Corps.  Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations pound that into their recruits.  When these terrorists, using hybrid formations or even mirroring nation state armies goes head to head against our friends (both real and imagined) we can expect them to be as motivated to win or even more motivated depending on the country being fought.

Combat is changing.  It's going toward an Armored/Mech future that will see even "low level" enemies being equipped with Tanks, APCs, IFVs and Self Propelled Guns.  

MUST READ!!!! America's dominance is over. By 2030, we'll have a handful of global powers

via Forbes.

The world’s political landscape in 2030 will look considerably different to the present one. Nation states will remain the central players. There will be no single hegemonic force but instead a handful of countries – the U.S., Russia, China, Germany, India and Japan chief among them – exhibiting semi-imperial tendencies. Power will be more widely distributed across non-state networks, including regressive ones. And vast conurbations of mega-cities and their peripheries will exert ever greater influence. The post-war order that held since the middle of the twentieth century is coming unstuck. Expect uncertainty and instability ahead.

Nation states are making a comeback. The largest ones are busily expanding their global reach even as they shore-up their territorial and digital borders. As the onslaught of reactionary politics around the world amply shows, there are no guarantees that these vast territorial dominions and their satellites will become more liberal or democratic. Instead, relentless climate change, migration, terrorism, inequality and rapid technological change are going to ratchet up anxiety, insecurity and, as is already painfully apparent, populism and authoritarianism. While showing cracks, the four-century reign of the nation state will endure for some decades more.

It was not supposed to be this way. During the 1990s, scholars forecasted the decline and demise of the nation state. Globalization was expected to hasten their irrelevance. With the apparent triumph of liberal democracy, spread of free-market capitalism, and promise of minimal state interference, Francis Fukayama famously predicted the end of history and, by extension, the fading away of anachronistic nation states. A similar claim was made a century earlier: Friedreich Engels predicted the “withering away of the state” in the wake of socialism.

Reading between the lines of this story I get the impression that some thought that globalization would bring utopia to the planet and that because of free trade we would see nation states and by extension war 'be no more'. 

How wrong they were.

Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters lost cool points and showed he's part of the elite.

This guy made a name for himself as a military "futurist" and then as a conservative commentator.  After Stuart got finished roasting him and the Free Beacon posting this video this morning, the Lt Col seriously miscalculated.

Not only did he lose cool points, showed that he's part of the elite but probably ruined himself with the evolving "New Republican Party".

The funny thing?  Peters won't be the last of the people that made a miscalculation and find themselves on the outside of power looking in.  Welcome to my world bubba. The water is cold, make yourself at home.

Open Comment Post. Nov. 13, 2016

What's on your mind?

Mike Hill's Call of Duty Infinite Warfare Concept Art...

Has anyone noticed that when it comes to future "armor" for Marines that the designs are starting to look alike?  What I find intriguing is that "power armor" is really just skinned up skeletal systems that are being worked on now.  I asked in an earlier post how close we were to Orbital Drop Ship Troopers/Space Marines.  A better question might be how close are we to Power Armor!

Sci-Fi Sunday. How far are we away from Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODST)?

via Future Wars Stories Blog

"Feet First into Hell!", that is the motto of the HALO universe UNSC ODST Helljumpers. These specialized soldiers are trained in the unique combat skill of dropping onto a planetary surface from space in personal drop-pods, and they are almost as iconic as the SPARTANs of HALO. They also carrying on an important tradition in science fiction: the concept of Space-Drop Infantry or "Spaceborne". These orbital parajumpers is one that is common throughout sci-fi, and is even being researched by military organizations for realistic real-world applications. In some ways, these futuristic warfighters that drop from star-side to dirt-side are very linked to the brave airborne soldiers of the 2nd World War and Korea along with current Special Operations soldiers. In this blogpost, FWS will examining the sci-fi space-drop soldier and their tools of the trade: the drop-pod along with digging into the sci-fi vision of space paratroopers and why the genre of science fiction is so obsessed with these elite soldiers. For the purposes of this blogpost, we will be using multiple terms for space drop paratroopers. This blogpost does not preclude future one detailing Airborne operations in the near future.

FWS goes into detail about Orbital Drop Shock Troopers in Sci-Fi on his blog.  Additional he talks about Space Marines and how they've been depicted in movies/tv shows etc...

This led me to the craziness of wondering how far off are we from Space Marines and Orbital Shock Troops (I kinda miss Marines being called "Shock Troops"...it was another proud touchstone of our history that's been thrown away by the current leadership).

Question.  Do you remember the musing from the Marine Corps back in 2006 about the possibility of Space Marines?  If not then check out this Popular Science article.

Did you know that during the height of the space program (during the Gemini missions and ending shortly after Apollo) that our brainiacs at NASA and the Defense Dept actually schemed the same?  Remember the Ithacus Rocket? The idea was to transport a Company of Marines anywhere on the planet in two hours (yeah...you could call it an early Company Landing Team concept but the speed of action adds to the inherent power of the formation) but if you're fuzzy then check out a writeup on it here.

The question remains.  How far are we away from Orbital Drop Shock Troopers or Space Marines?

Trump brings sanity to the Syria crisis!

Thanks to William for the link!

via NYTimes.

President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday that he was likely to abandon the American effort to support “moderate” opposition groups in Syria who are battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying “we have no idea who these people are.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal that dealt largely with economic issues, including his willingness to retain parts of the Affordable Care Act, he repeated a position he took often during his campaign: that the United States should focus on defeating the Islamic State, and find common ground with the Syrians and their Russian backers.
“I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria,” Mr. Trump told The Journal. “My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria.”

Here. 

FINALLY!  I have never understood the Neo-Cons and Neo-Liberals love affair with supporting "moderate" rebels!  Is their any such thing?  Personally I'd rather we sent the money to unicorns...at least they exist in fiction...a moderate rebel is a creation out of whole cloth!

As usual his explanation for his move is a bit hard to digest and understand but at least he's doing the right thing.

Thank God.  The Republican Elite have been defeated and it looks like the Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs are being put in a cage.