Body armor, gear, helmets, military and government vehicle armors and aircraft armor?
Wow.
BAE is diversifying big time.
The result of their effort? The largest body of public knowledge about thousands of miles of tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps, a secretive branch of the Chinese military in charge of protecting and deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.Its coming slowly. But it is coming.
The study is yet to be released, but already it has sparked a congressional hearing and been circulated among top officials in the Pentagon, including the Air Force vice chief of staff.
Most of the attention has focused on the 363-page study’s provocative conclusion — that China’s nuclear arsenal could be many times larger than the well-established estimates of arms-control experts.
“It’s not quite a bombshell, but those thoughts and estimates are being checked against what people think they know based on classified information,” said a Defense Department strategist who would discuss the study only on the condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, radicals roam the globe with a closed play book, and no rules. To be effective against this kind of threat, you need to build some more agility into SOCOM. I’ll acknowledge that US SOCOM will always have a handicap when it comes to being forced to play by the rules, and having checks and balances in place are good things.Wow.
We need to work smarter, not harder, and nobody knows this saying better than my former teammate, McRaven.
“The military’s regional combatant commanders have feared a decrease of their authority”-NY Times
Modern warfare has changed, and it’s a Special Operations Centric DoD these days. Some in DoD may not be happy with that, but either we get with the times or the times will get with us.
I’m skeptical of the New York Times quote above; It amazes me how a respectable publication like The NY times (I like most of what they do) does a great job of representing speculation as fact in their morning write up on McRaven. The quote above cites no source. So I ask the authors this question: Which regional commanders are you talking about? Because I’d like to know, and where I come from, when you represent speculation as fact, it’s called bullshitting.
We are dealing with a distributed enemy that has no problem killing innocent people to drive their radical agenda. There are some big sponsor states in the mix and they are a huge source of funding, and often provide safe haven for Radical Ideologists. Pakistan or Iran anyone? At least Iran only talks out of one side of the mouth.
To deal with an Asymmetric threat requires agility to remain effective. So we think McRaven and SOCOM should get what they’re asking for. I just hope we can build a few schools along the way.