SWEDISH POLICE FIASCO 3 female cops beaten by 1 male refugee

Thanks to Filippo for the link!



1. Don't laugh.  This is coming to a Police Dept or Infantry Squad near you!

2. Reality is a bitch.  Women do not possess the strength of men.  Biology is biology.

3. Lethal force MUST be taught and the understanding to use it sooner in the force continuum is the only way females can effectively (there is no efficient way) deal with a physical aggressor.

4.  A man/woman or woman/woman team will always be at a disadvantage against all male competitors/assailants of equal and sometimes lesser numbers.

Consider this a well known secret.  This social experiment will get the daughters of the women pushing it and their male enablers killed...unknowing Americans that send their sons will suffer too.   I will mourn the dead and brutalized but I will curse this generation of leaders for a lack of moral courage.

What the Jim Webb Debacle in Annapolis Is Teaching the Military

via Free Beacon

Webb opened a tremendous number of new positions in the service to women. Most of all, never mind that as of December 2015, combat units were all opened to women by order of then-Secretary of Defense Carter, overriding the objections of the Marine Corps (though not of the Army).

In other words, the proponents of including women in combat units have won. But, as the case of Webb shows, that's not enough. You have to salt the fields.

Returning to our midshipman, here is what the Naval Academy has taught you this week:

Do not take a bold stand, especially in public. It does not matter if your argument is made honestly and in good faith, or if you are an expert on the matter of policy under discussion.
Keep a keen sense of which way the political wind is blowing. Don't fight it—drift with it.
No matter the number of your accomplishments or their objective prestige, you will be humiliated for once having promoted a Wrong Opinion.
The more effectively and memorably you promoted the Wrong Opinion, the greater your punishment will be.
From the perspective of the left, of course, Webb's punishment is richly deserved, in part because of claims that his words contributed to an unsafe environment for females in the military at the time. The tactics used to force him to withdraw this week also have the familiar flavor of left-wing activism to them. In a statement last night, Webb noted that "those protesting my receipt of this award now threaten to disrupt the ceremonies surrounding its issuance." At the U.S. Naval Academy, just as at Middlebury College, a heckler's veto is apparently possible—though it is hard to imagine midshipmen themselves doing the protesting.

Just as interesting is how Webb describes the manner in which pressure was applied. He was told "that my presence at the ceremony would likely mar the otherwise celebratory nature of that special day" in "conversations with the Alumni Association, including information passed down from top Navy leadership in the Pentagon…"

A nation gets the military leadership it deserves. America's future military leaders are learning some important lessons this week—just not the ones we should want.

The fight wasn't lost.  It was never engaged.  Courage in battle is common...moral courage is rare.

Open Comment Post. April 2, 2017.

ATMOS on an 8x8 MAN platform

Thanks to Costas TT for the link!

Artillery.  We need to start looking at self propelled artillery on this blog!  I don't know jack about it but we'll see what we'll see!

Open Comment Post. April 1, 2017.

Blast from the past. Lockheed Martin ACV Candidate.

Note:  This is the vehicle that LM placed into the ACV competition after they stole the plans of the AMV/acquired the plans of the ACV/decided to go it alone after working with Patria.

However they came to designing this vehicle its obvious that they needed more time.  Little things like that jacked up troop door at the rear of the vehicle just don't make sense!  But overlooking the "roughness" of the design its apparent to me that if the contest dragged on a bit longer they could have made an extremely competitive vehicle.

It really was shortsighted of the management to throw away the partnership with Patria.  By teaming with Patria to win the ACV contest they would have gotten a solid footing in the armored vehicle market and its obvious that they had some engineering talent in house.  Now?  Now they're left on the outside looking in and while aviation is having its time in the sun that won't last.

Soon we will see the rise of armor (especially when new Chinese designs start popping up) and the likes of General Dynamics and BAE will rake in the money with new contracts to help the US gain parity.

40 Commando exercising in Belize (pics)

Politics Talk. The Russia Investigation took a strange turn.

Thanks to Moebius for the link!

via Hot Air.com

Fox News’ Adam Housley is reporting that sources within the intelligence community have confirmed some of what Rep. Devin Nunes told reporters last week about the unmasking of names in intelligence documents to embarrass the incoming Trump administration. Housley summarized the information he was given in a series of tweets Friday morning:

Read it here!

This is getting good.

MSNBC is reporting (once again) that the Obama administration spread secret material about the Trump campaign far and wide throughout the govt in an attempt to keep it from being buried.

Now?  Now we're seeing that all is not what they're saying (as if there was any doubt!).

According to Fox News the Obama admin used the intel agencies for political purposes.

In summation?  They tried to get Trump but it looks like they're gonna get themselves.  The likely outcome is that both sides let this drop before we see high ranking establishment figures from both parties in jail.

The F-35. FUBAR BUNDY!

Thanks to Jim for the link!

via POGO

When Lockheed Martin first won the contract 17 years ago, the F-35 was expected to begin operational testing in 2008. Once they failed to meet that, 2017 was supposed to be the big year for the start of the combat testing process. We now know that this process will almost certainly be delayed until 2019…and possibly 2020.

The first page of the DOT&E report lists 13 major unresolved problems with the F-35 that will prevent the program from proceeding to combat testing in August 2017. But you wouldn’t know any of that from the public comments made by officials in charge of the program. During testimony before a House Armed Services subcommittee in February, officials neglected to raise any of these issues with Congress even though the DOT&E report had been released less than a month earlier.

The scale of the challenge yet remaining with the F-35 is easily quantified in this year’s DOT&E analysis. According to the report, the F-35 still has 276 “Critical to Correct” deficiencies—these must be fixed before the development process ends because they could “lead to operational mission failures during IOT&E or combat.” Of the 276, 72 were listed as “priority 1,” which are service-critical flaws that would prevent the services from fielding the jets until they are fixed.
Much has already been made about the F-35’s shortcomings in combat, yet structural problems still remain with the basic airframe. An example of this is a failure of an attachment joint between the jet’s vertical tail and the airframe. This has been a persistent problem, as the shortcoming was discovered in the original design. Engineers discovered premature wear in a bushing used to reinforce the joint during early structural tests in 2010. The joint was redesigned and incorporated in new aircraft in 2014. In September 2016, inspectors discovered the redesigned joint had failed after only 250 hours of flight testing—far short of the 8,000 lifetime hours specified in the JSF contract.

Testing of the F-35’s mission systems continued falling behind schedule in 2016. Program managers identify and budget for baseline test points, or “discrete measurements of performance under specific flight test conditions.” These are used to determine whether the system is meeting the contract specifications. Testing teams also add non-baseline test points for various reasons to fully evaluate the entire system. Examples include adding test points to prepare for the later, more complicated tests, to re-test the system after software updates to make sure the new software didn’t alter earlier results, or “discovery test points,” which are added to identify the root cause of a problem found during other testing.

The program budgeted for 3,578 test points for the F-35’s mission systems for 2016. The test teams weren’t able to accomplish them all, finishing 3,041 while also adding 250 non-budgeted test points through the year.

Despite the slipping schedule, the F-35 program office has expressed a desire to skip many needed test points and to instead rely on testing data from previous flights—where the test aircraft used earlier software versions—as proof the upgraded system software works. But DOT&E warns that the newer software versions likely perform differently, rendering the earlier results moot. Program managers essentially want to declare the developmental testing process over and move on to operational testing, even though they haven’t finished all the necessary steps.

Full story here. 

I know the thinking of Marine Corps leadership.  Get it and once we get it, we'll fix it.  That worked with the Harrier, but won't with this airplane.

Add FUBAR BUNDY to your list of military acronyms.  It applies to the F-35 in spades.

Pic of the day. Battle of Hue City.

pic via Historium Tumblr Page.

A US Marine dragging a wounded Marine to cover during the battle for Hue, 1968.

Venezuela goes full dictatorship thanks to their Supreme Court...this will be our next military intervention!

via Slate.

Venezuela’s already beleaguered democracy was dealt a near-fatal blow Wednesday, when the country’s Supreme Court usurped what power remained in the democratically elected National Assembly, leaving President Nicolás Maduro with virtually unchecked authority. The country’s top court also overturned most of the decisions made by the legislature since the opposition party to Maduro’s government took control of the chamber in late 2015. "As long as the situation of contempt in the National Assembly continues, this constitutional chamber guarantees congressional functions will be exercised by this chamber or another chosen organ," the court said in its ruling.

The move comes after Maduro—the handpicked successor to President Hugo Chavez, who died in March 2013—and his party have slowly chipped away at the legitimacy and capacity of the legislature. In 2015, when the opposition democratically won control of the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, packed with Maduro loyalists, denied four representatives from taking office due to voting irregularities, keeping the opposition from a supermajority in the body. Over the legislature’s opposition, Maduro, backed by the Supreme Court, then declared emergency powers. As the bottom fell out of the country's economy and protests flared across the country, the court went on to strip the assembly of its budgeting power. More recently, Maduro and his allies have consolidated power, detained political prisoners without trial, suppressed protesters’ dissent, stifled the media, and postponed local elections.

Wow.

I hope SouthCom is paying attention.

This will be our next military intervention.  State Dept is occupied, the Pentagon is focused on Russia and the Middle East.  Intel agencies are looking inward.

Meanwhile Venezuela is teetering on the brink.

My guess is that this will go violent, the UN will go "we must save the children" and we'll end up leading several S. American countries to restore order to prevent a FLOOD of refugees heading North.

Open Comment Post. March 31, 2017.