K-MAX Mission Extended Indefinitely in Afghanistan

Northrop Grumman MAV-L

CDR Salamander is right.

CDR Salamander had this to say about the above vid...

As a watched this video, all I could think of is - they just got back from a 5-month deployment.
Look at the condition of the ships. Look at the uniforms and general squared away nature of the Sailors.
I'm sorry - but appearances matter and can tell you a lot about the rest of a Navy; just ask the Imperial Russian Navy after the Russian-Japanese War a bit over a century ago.
I don't know about you - but it makes me want a whole bunch of Chinese BM1s.

I had a few more take aways....

* Yeah.  Their ships look better coming off deployment than ours do heading out.
* Did you catch the belligerence concerning the disputed islands?  There will be trouble in this region soon.
* Did you catch the Officer sporting 782 gear and a Battle Rifle while in dress uniform?  That's old skool stuff.  I mean that's what the Marine Corps did during WW2.  That's an indication of a martial spirit that I fear we're losing.  Bad news for us.

Sal is right.  Appearances matter and as much as I hate to admit it, the Chinese Navy is looking good.  Warrior good.

Jungle Experts, Mountain Leaders, Desert Specialist but no regionally aligned units.

Jungle Expert Patch.

Mountain Leader School Logo (Summer and Winter package).

via Defense News.

Some of those BCTs will become regionally aligned brigades (RAB), which will train and deploy in support of regional combatant commanders. The first such brigade, the 2nd BCT of the 1st Infantry Division, will align with the AFRICOM command in 2013.
While the 2/1 deployment will be a pilot test, some leaders are concerned about how ready the force is to start conducting training, advising and other “soft” missions on such short notice.
In remarks at a Nov. 27 Special Operations conference in Alexandria, Va., hosted by the Defense Strategies Institute, Lt. Gen. Charles Cleveland, commander of the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Command, said that while he supports the RAB concept, “I have cautioned the Army about all of those things like [teaching soldiers] language. It’s expensive.”
Cleveland added that in discussions with Army leadership, “I have told them that the first thing you need to do is increase your … exercise funds so you can increase multinational training events,” since building those relationships on the ground will be key to the success of the program.

The entire article is worth reading.  It initially concerns the draw down but quickly turns to the Army's future.

This is one trend that the Marine Corps should rethink and definitely NOT follow.

Left unsaid in this particular article (but not others) is the fact that the Army will essentially begin having specialist units that are capable of operating in a particular environment to great effect  but will be much less capable in others.

That is not how you create a force that is capable of landing and winning anywhere they are sent.

Regionally assigned units will eventually lead to weapons and equipment specialization that the Marine Corps cannot afford, and should not desire.  Instead of following the US Army's example we should continue on our current course and if possible enhance those capabilities by taking a page from the Royal Marines.

We already have Mountain Leaders, Scout Swimmers and other specialist throughout the Marine Corps.  We should expand that to create Officer and Enlisted area specialist in the form of Jungle Experts, Mountain Leaders, Desert Specialist and Urban Specialist (to give each battalion or division experts in fighting in different locations) but also create schooling for regional experts that will advise when fighting in different locales.

Obviously this would follow the same pattern but instead of focusing on the HOW to fight in certain areas that your Jungle, Mountain, Desert and Urban Specialist would have, the Regional Experts would be aware of the human terrain.  They would receive the expensive language training, cultural awareness and other skills necessary for our forces to fight, influence and (forgive me Chesty) not offend the people whose land we happen to be fighting in.

Regional units no.  Jungle, Mountain, Desert, Urban and Regional Specialist Marines?  Yes!

LMAO

H. H. Holmes. America's first serial killer.

via Wikipedia.

Holmes purchased a lot across from the drugstore, where he built his three-story, block-long "Castle"—as it was dubbed by those in the neighborhood. It was opened as a hotel for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, with part of the structure used as commercial space. The ground floor of the Castle contained Holmes's own relocated drugstore and various shops, while the upper two floors contained his personal office and a maze of over 100 windowless rooms with doorways opening to brick walls, oddly-angled hallways, stairways to nowhere, doors openable only from the outside, and a host of other strange and labyrinthine constructions. Holmes repeatedly changed builders during the construction of the Castle, so only he fully understood the design of the house.[3]
During the period of building construction in 1889, Holmes met Benjamin Pitezel, a carpenter with a past of lawbreaking, whom Holmes exploited as a stooge for his criminal schemes. A district attorney later described Pitezel as Holmes's "tool... his creature."[11]
After the completion of the hotel, Holmes selected mostly female victims from among his employees (many of whom were required as a condition of employment to take out life insurance policies, for which Holmes would pay the premiums but was also the beneficiary), as well as his lovers and hotel guests. He tortured and killed them.[8] Some were locked in soundproof bedrooms fitted with gas lines that let him asphyxiate them at any time. Other victims were locked in a huge soundproof bank vault near his office, where they were left to suffocate.[6] The victims' bodies were dropped by secret chute to the basement,[3]where some were meticulously dissected, stripped of flesh, crafted into skeleton models, and then sold to medical schools. Holmes also cremated some of the bodies or placed them in lime pits for destruction. Holmes had two giant furnaces as well as pits of acid, bottles of various poisons, and even a stretching rack.[3] Through the connections he had gained in medical school, he sold skeletons and organs with little difficulty.

I heard an interview on this guy last and night and he's a piece of work.

They estimate that he could have killed up to 200 people.

He built his kill house in Chicago just before the World's Fair.

He lured women to his maze filled house and also killed a few men and at least 3 children.

Lastly, this bastard was so vile that he had a woman placed on a stretching table, impregnated her and continued to stretch her so he could see if that would make a taller race of people.

The documentary,  H. H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer, is something I'm definitely gonna have to see.  And if this wasn't bad enough, the FBI believes that at any one time there are at least 35 to 50 serial killers active in the US.

A little side dish.  Check out this cracked article on serial killers who are free right now.