Open Comment Post. Aug 24, 2017

Australia's 2nd Battalion transitions PERMANENTLY to an amphibious force!

Thanks to Jonathan for the link!

via Herald Sun.

TOWNSVILLE’S 3rd Brigade is on the cusp of a major overhaul which will see one of the city’s historic light-infantry battalions permanently transition to an amphibious force.

The 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, will officially leave the command of 3rd Brigade on October 15 — which is also the unit’s birthday — to become part of the Brisbane-based 1st Division’s Amphibious Task Group.
The shift will see 2RAR, currently made up of about 550 personnel, remain based in Townsville but they will also have the option of operating from a variety of Royal Australian Navy platforms and potentially partner-nation ships.

Story here. 

Ok you fucking Aussies!  About damn time!

This had to be the best kept secret in Australia because everyone I know of from down there said that they would never do it.  They said Australia would NEVER dedicate a Battalion to the amphibious assault/naval infantry/Marine role.

But they just did.

Fucking outstanding!

Breaking! Mattis sets rules to separate current Transexual servicemembers.

This is just breaking but the overshot is that current transexual servicemembers will be given a chance to remain if they can serve in a combat zone, hardship location or onboard ship without special consideration (my interpretation...I AM PROBABLY a bit off on this).

More to come and I'm trying to find a link that's not behind a firewall.

One last jump...thanks Ft. Bragg (Military Humor via Military Footage Instagram Page)

The Marine Corps approves the AAV Survivability Upgrade for production...AND does a preemptive strike against critics!

via USNI News.

The Marine Corps approved the Amphibious Assault Vehicle Survivability Upgrade (AAV-SU) program to begin low-rate initial production (LRIP), with the program executive officer for land systems signing a Milestone C decision on Aug. 17 and the program manager awarding SAIC funding for 21 vehicles Tuesday, Advanced Amphibious Assault Program Manager Col. Wendell Leimbach told USNI News yesterday.

SAIC delivered its first of 10 engineering and manufacturing development vehicles in March 2016, and the Marine Corps has spent the last year and a half putting these vehicles through developmental tests and operational assessments to ensure they meet all the criteria for “making the vehicle relevant to the modern battlefield.” Those upgrades – which SAIC performed on legacy AAVs that first went into production 45 years ago – include enhanced survivability through added armor and blast-mitigating seats, and an improved engine and suspension to allow equal mobility as the legacy AAVs despite the added weight.

Developmental testing took place at Aberdeen Test Center in Maryland and the Amphibious Vehicle Test Branch (AVTB) at Camp Pendleton, and the operational assessment took place at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms and AVTB.

Throughout the testing, which wrapped up in June, the program office learned a lot of lessons that were fed back into the design. For example, Leimbach said, adding new survivability features into a fixed vehicle hull size “constrained the internal volume” of the vehicle.

Story here. 

A year and a half?  To test an upgrade to a vehicle we've had in service for almost 50 years?

I guess the good news is that they're finally getting it done.  The bad is that this is entirely too long.

To be blunt, they're full of shit.

No way in hell it should take that long to test a vehicle and decide whether it meets specs.

That part of the story I highlighted?  Consider that a preemptive strike against the critics (like me) that are pounding the table saying this is taking too long and is too slow.

The real problem?  I'm just a blogger.  Why isn't some Marine General, Colonel or SgtMajor in the GCE saying enough is enough?  If the Commandant no longer represents the GCE then who does?  Consider this exhibit number one on why the Marine Corps Ground Combat Element needs an advocate at the Deputy Commandant level just like the Wing and Logistics.

NORINCO rolls out VP10 8x8 vehicle variants...an OBVIOUS Patria AMV clone....

via Janes.

China North Industries Corporation (NORINCO) has developed new variants of its export-oriented 8x8 VP10 armoured personnel carrier (APC), Jane's has learnt.

The baseline VP10 APC is typically operated by a two-person crew, and carries up to 12 dismounts in the rear troop compartment. The vehicle is equipped with a small roof-mounted remote weapon station (RWS) armed with a 12.7 mm machine gun (MG).

The VP10 APC is also understood from its original unveiling to be fully amphibious, with two shrouded propellers – mounted either side at the rear of the hull – that propel the vehicle in water at a maximum speed of 8 km/h.

NORINCO has disclosed a new variant fitted with a turret-mounted 105 mm rifled gun. The gun features a muzzle brake and fume extractor, though it lacks a muzzle reference system or thermal sleeve.

The gun is laid onto the target by a computerised fire control system (FCS), with commander and gunner using stabilised sighting systems.

Secondary armament comprises a 7.62 mm coaxial MG, with banks of electrically operated 76 mm grenade launchers mounted on the roof and firing forwards.

It is currently unknown whether the 105 mm rifled gun is manually loaded, or fed by a bustle-mounted automatic loader.

The first example of the 105 mm-gun variant does not appear to be amphibious, as it has an increased gross vehicle weight (GVW) owing to the installation of the heavier turret; in addition, the vehicle has not been fitted with propellers.

The 105 mm-gun variant is fitted with appliqué passive armour package to the hull and turret, and a number of dismounts could be carried in the rear troop compartment, which is fitted with firing ports and associated vision devices.

This is gross and obscene.

The Chinese have no shame and they've obviously cloned the Patria AMV.

Is the threat from China overstated?  I don't think so.  I do believe that they are willing to do whatever it takes to move ahead...even stealing foreign designs.  It's apparent that they lack innovation and imagination. That could be our saving grace.  Unless they change course then they will always be behind on the technological curve.

There is a problem though.

Mass means something.  If they stay behind technologically but are able to produce at a high rate then they still could win.

Dallas McCarver, Professional Bodybuilder dead at 26.

This one ain't for everyone (need to start putting that on all my posts) and if it isn't for you then click to the next thing that catches your interest.

For the rest of us.  Mr. Olympia is about 3 weeks away and we're seeing massive muscle.  You thought Ronnie and Dorian were big?  Not by what I'm seeing this year.  Big Ramy (look him up) is downright massive (he's being sponsored by a Prince from some Middle Eastern country and they get NOTHING BUT pharmaceutical grade gear..once it was Eastern Europe for the good stuff, then China a little but now you're talking Kuwait)....and right behind him was Dallas McCarver.

Bodybuilding is a weird thing.  Some guys are into aesthetics.  That Greek God thing is what they're trying for.  Some are into performance.  They can look like trolls as long as they meet performance marks.  Still others simply want to add as much muscle as possible.

Dallas was after muscle.

How big was he?  Well the pic above is from 2015 and he added about 30 pounds of muscle since that was taken.  About two weeks ago he had a body fat measurement taken (much more than that...you can read the article here) and the results were jaw dropping.  270 pounds of muscle at a bodyfat of 8.5%.

The uninitiated will blame steroids.

Those in the know will look at the two other drugs that are tearing bodybuilding apart.  Growth Hormone and Insulin.  The news is just breaking that this guy passed away but if I were to bet money I'd look at GH and slin as the culprits.

Weird time for the weight lifting community.  Rich Piana is in a comma after being found passed out in his home unresponsive and now this.

Weird crime. Torso of woman found off the coast of Denmark.

via UPI

Danish police searching for missing Swedish journalist Kim Wall said a headless torso found in the water near Copenhagen could belong to her.

A passing bicyclist discovered the torso on the city's Anager island. Police said the dismembered body was missing its head, arms and legs, and that a DNA test will tell if the remains are Wall's.

"It is clear that the police, like the media and everybody else, is speculating whether this female body is Kim Wall, but it is way too soon to tell," Copenhagen police spokesman Jens Moller Jensen said, adding that divers are searching for more evidence in the area where the torso was found.

Missing since Aug. 11, Wall is presumed dead after joining Danish inventor Peter Madsen for a ride in his privately built submarine. She was planning to do a story about the sub and its creator.

Madsen told a Copenhagen court Monday that she died of an unspecified accident aboard the submarine, and that he buried her at sea.

Initially, though, police said Madsen told investigators he'd dropped Wall off unharmed in Copenhagen before the sub sank. He has been charged with negligent homicide.

Story here. 

I heard about this sub and it sinking but not that a woman might have been murdered.  Never thought about it but murder at sea is almost the perfect crime.

All you have to say is that a person had an accident and that you did a burial at sea and you can get off scot free.

Danish Forsvaret Piranha 5 being readied for climate tests in US via Toyota Wars Twitter Page.

That Saab Barracuda thermal management camo is getting real popular. I didn't think the Piranha 5 was that big.  Still like the Terrex 3 for a Stryker replacement but this could do nicely too.

Open Comment Post. Aug 22, 2017

Politics Talk. We'll miss Bannon's pragmatism.

via The National Interest.

Steve Bannon is out and he’s taking his mass of paradoxes with him. He’s a genial guy and a bureaucratic infighter. He’s a conservative and a self-styled “Leninist.” He’s a brilliant thinker who was prone to cartoonish oversimplification. He’s a populist who worked in the most powerful office building on the planet. He’s Rasputin, he’s Jean-Paul Marat, he’s whoever Washington’s boring Game of Thrones fetish dictates that he be. He was called a white nationalist (unfair), an American nationalist (sure), an economic nationalist (true), and an anti-globalist.

In particular it’s that last one, his allergy to global elites and their Davos-brewed social-engineering projects, that made him an occasional ally of foreign-policy restraint advocates—even if his ideas differed substantially from our ideas. His thinking seems to proceed as follows: America must always put its own interests first, America’s primary interest right now is thwarting the incipient economic hegemon that is China, dotty protectionist policies must be implemented to that end, and a Middle East that’s resisted our designs can’t continue to distract us.

Bannon was probably the best manifestation of the Jacksonian foreign-policy strain in the administration. He had no tolerance for the gauzy nation-building idealism of the George W. Bush era, but he was also hardly an Obama-style missionary for peace: hence his bitter opposition to nuclear deal with Iran. Still, when Trump bombed a Syrian regime air base earlier this year, Bannon reportedly argued against it and his opposition was leaked to New York magazine. “Steve doesn’t think we belong there,” one Bannon confidante said. That Trump went ahead with the bombing anyway was interpreted by New York as a sign of Bannon’s waning influence, though it’s worth noting that the president didn’t follow up with further strikes as many worried he would.

While we don’t yet know why Bannon up and left, White House sources have been whispering for months that he’d lost some heft thanks to his choleric infighting with other administration officials. And no one crossed his ideological wires more than H. R. McMaster, the national security advisor and three-star general who ousted Bannon from his unlikely seat on the National Security Council earlier this year. The tension between the two men reportedly came to a head at a policy meeting about Afghanistan back in July, with McMaster demanding more American intervention and Bannon arguing for a withdrawal. The debate became so fiery that Gen. James Mattis, the secretary of defense, had to step in and play peacemaker. Bannon’s ideological zeal versus McMaster’s martial temper—that must have been quite a fight.

Story here.

It's amazing how brightly Bannon's star is shining now.  If he and McMaster crossed swords and the flashpoint actually was Afghanistan then he played his cards wrong.

Bannon should have pushed the perpetual war issue.

Still.  I think Bannon will win in the end.  This decision will kill Trump's popularity more than it already has.  To make it known that he was going to push up troop levels at this time AND STILL IGNORE the economic pain that many of his supporters are feeling (with the next major issue tax cuts and keeping the govt open) will be the nails in his political coffin.

I said it yesterday and I say it again.  Trump has been de-fanged.  He might as well be called Jeb Bush.  He has morphed right before our eyes, courtesy of one press conference where he said stupid shit, along with a continuation of neo-con policies into a typical Republican.  And a typical Republican won't win the next election.

But what isn't discussed and will become a major focus of discussion going into the future will be the "Generals" that helped shape this policy.  Don't get me wrong.  The failure in Iraq and Afghanistan has many fathers.  But with the exception of the mini "Revolt of the Generals" we have seen no pushback by military leadership with regard to policy in those countries.

For better or worse McMaster, Mattis, Dunford and as much as it hurts to say it...Kelley will be smeared with this failure.  In a way they deserve it.  They could have counseled that we walk away.  They could have said we've wasted enough lives and treasure but they didn't.

One day McMaster will get his own "Dereliction of Duty" book....I wonder how he'll feel about that.

Trump's condition based standard sets the stage for another 16+ years of war in Afghanistan.

You want to know the most important and misunderstood part of Trump's speech was last night?  Check it out below.

“It’s counterproductive to set deadlines that aren’t condition-based, which gives the adversary a timetable that allowed them to wait it out.”

I'm sure both Trump and his speech writer thought that they would appeal to the base...and to the military with this statement.

They were wrong.

In essence what the current President of the United States has done is to sign the country up for another 16 years of trying to build Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban.

Conditions based?

That's simply code for fighting till you win...which we won't.

Ya know what kills me about the military leadership we've seen during our fight in the Middle East?  These are the same bubbas that talked shit about Commanders in the Vietnam War.  McMaster even penned a book about it called "Dereliction of Duty".

I am miffed, confused and more than a bit amazed that no defense reporter has asked him how he could be so critical of leadership during that era when he seems bound and determined to repeat every mistake they did and invent a few new ones they never would have dreamed about.

Make no mistake about it.  The arrogance of our military leadership in pushing for this continued war IS WEAKENING our nation.  Why did leaders during Vietnam decide to call it quits?  You better bet your ass they didn't want to be known as the generation that lost a war, but the threat of the Soviet Union was looming overhead and they knew that they could not waste combat power on that forsaken country.

Current leaders are either too blind or too ignorant to see the same threat with regard to wasting combat power and China.

One last thing.  Have you noticed the number of troops requested?  About 4k. That's right around the size of a Brigade Combat Team.  Marines will play but this will be an Army show.  By sizing it in that manner and with the push last year (gotta find the article) to establish a Counter Insurgency Battalion it really looks like someone was planning for generational warfare last year.  It's almost like Trump is just following the script...and that's NOT why he was elected.

Rant over.