Wednesday, November 30, 2022

WAR? WHAT KIND OF WAR

 The old hippy saying was, "if nobody showed up would there be a war." We're getting close to that now, again. The United States Army failed to recruit 60,000 new men for the first time. The fleet is a tiny shadow what it was and the Air Force has, surprisingly, priced itself out of business and there are no young men to die as cannon fodder anymore. They see that on UTube and frankly, they're not impressed.

The invasions go on and will go on but there is nobody left in the West prepared to resist. Wow, we get to see history repeat again.

In many ways it was an island nation off the coast of France and it's distaff colony that saw the birth and burst of the scientific method and science and more engineery than you could shake a stout stick at. What is coming is the what happens when the hardest working people in the world overrun science and technology.

The 21st century really isn't turning out at all like I hoped. Those hard working ones? Yeah, places just exactly like Venezuela that ripped their own guts out to spill on the ground. What do you think they will do to ours?

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

I WENT WALKING

 It's been awhile since I stretched my legs.  Years. Deciding to go for a walk out of deepest darkest Cleveland was a surprise tonight but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Still, I managed to stop into a hotel I'd driven by a thousand times and this time, since I was already on the sidewalk, stepped in for a cup of coffee. Having left that place I was walking by THE mosque and happened to find that timing was perfect and let me meet and shake hands with the "no, I'm not the imam."  Imam.

I was put on notice that the world works just as I imagine it. My philosophy is that one is only cold if one thinks so and noone is ever really cold if there is no breeze. There was a pretty stiff breeze. The car I stepped out of has enough cold weather gear to let me and friends survive for a couple of months north of the arctic circle or lake erie or perhaps ontario but I'm just guessing at this point.

I walked 50 fucking blocks in Cleveland starving and did not pass a single place to eat. This city sucks. I really miss Hillcrest, 70 restaurants in walking distance.

LET'S SEE WHAT CURTIS HAD TO SAY

Oh, there was a good blog post but entropy killed it.

Monday, November 28, 2022

JOHN RINGO

 "When you sail in harm's way you don't take hostages."

I never did, I never would.

On the other hand, I've returned to land at sunrise with passengers who did a damned good imitation of hostages.......the bastards..

IN BETWEEN THE LINES

I'm reading instapundit and he is talking about race. A thing I know. I remember many of us in California voted yes on Prop 206. We were schmucks who actually wanted to bring to an end discriminating on the basis of race.

I tend to mock the Karens. I met them all in California.  On Sundays when I wasn't in Korea I wasn't at home either. Nope, I took the little one to Jimboree and to be honest, I enjoyed it but an awful lot of mothers dropped their sprogs off and went right next door to do pilates in front of the awesome gigantic windows between the narrow corridor of our little jimboree mall. I could watch fit girls stretch all day.

I was a shmuck. I could enjoy the view enormously and then go with my girl to get the weekend Madelines and coffee and where I would reliably tell them, "damn, I forgot my wallet and they would still fork over the Madelines and coffee because they knew I'd stop by the next day on my way to work and pay them.

I remember being a little stunned when a friend said, "so wait, they gave you food and coffee and you couldn't pay?" I always paid.

A full 15 years later, she's coming here in a couple of weeks. For all the time I've lived in this place, I don't have that sense of community I had from the widely distributed community I used to know in SOCAL. I kind of miss it. The girls would see me coming with my Sunday New York Times, a bundle of energy and have the Lady milk, coffee and packet of madelines on the counter waiting for us.

Sunday, November 27, 2022

READING TODAY

 NATO is tapped out of weapons they can give to Ukraine. That's right, 100% of NATO doesn't have the means to defend itself, not that it ever did but now they admit they gave all the weapons they had to Ukraine to kill Russians with and having done that, are tapped out. It is remarkably similar to when NATO/EU wanted to bomb Libya and ran out of bombs after the first 3 days and asked America to replenish their stocks of bombs, you know, the missing bombs that they were going to use to stop to the 1st thru 96tth Tank Guard Russian divisions when they stormed across the Fulda Gap. It has to be admitted that the USN was looking at some serious losses if war came. Our SSNs better be every bit as good as the silent service claims because those Russian missiles and Backfires were going to eat our lunch.

The West is out of HIMARS, out of missiles, out of smart and brilliant weapons. As people gathered around a reservoir in Korea might have said, we seem to have an infinite number of infantry closing in on us. As St. Hillary would say, does it really matter if they're Chinese or Russian? She probably couldn't tell the difference anyway.

The only company I know of that makes feral is Tesla and they make cars and spaceX rockets.

One of the things I had reason to look into, because it became a concern was something called NEW. It stood for Net Explosive Weight and for some ships it was an issue when it came to getting diplomatic clearance. You could see little  countries like Qatar concerned that perhaps one of our Maritime pre-position force ships with a NEWT of 1.2 kilotons of High Explosive might not be all that welcome in Doha or even further down the coast.

How much explosive you got there captain? It's just 4 million pounds, nothing to be unduly alarmed about.

I think at this point our NATO allies have essentially armed Ukraine with the NEWT of all 3 of our pre positioning squadrons and they not only don't have anymore, they can't make it either. and, neither can we.

One of the sad things I see in the latest Russian videos of the front is that they have returned to artillery, like their and my grandfathers. If you remember the tiny little European wars of just 20 years ago what we saw was a thousand videos from the smart drones and smart weapons that literally homed in on the men in the trench and wherever three were gathered, they were killed. It's not like that now though is it? Its the  salvo fire of artillery batteries and regiments hitting targets  and if they're using smart munitions you see it only in the way they explode over trenches.

There was a term of art, not my art, SADARM.  Yeah, we had come up with an artillery round that did seek and destroy armor. SADARM. I guarded the house of my father's oldest friend when the family buried him at Arlington. At that point the thieves would read the obits and break in and steal from the family of those being buried at a given time and place handily published in the newspaper. He was an Armor officer and I would have felt better for my unprepared adventure with a weapon but I found out he was unlike me and there wasn't so much as a saber on the wall. Heck, my Navy friends had more weapons in their front hall closets than what was available at that house.

Friday, November 25, 2022

MUTATIS MUTANDIS

 I was sitting here tonight after a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with a friend who drove in from Pittsburgh and he left with as much food as we could convince him to take because otherwise, you know, leftovers are in our future for some time to come. Somehow the name Somalia came up and while I've never been there I did once get a message from our Ambassador to that place who strongly proposed that we eschew any upcoming port calls in Mogadishu because, as the ambassador relayed, "even the trees have VD." We, after consultation with the very absent Middle East Force staff who never seemed to be aboard, this their flagship, decided to go to the Seychelles where we got one whole day and then were ordered to steam at maximum power to Jeddah to embark 3 minesweeping helicopters, or in the actual event, 2 that flew, one that didn't and none of them was the slightest bit interested in pretending to sweep mines in the Red Sea.

So anyway, thinking. I will never again fly across the Pacific. I won't do it again and certainly not 2 to 4 times a month for years on end. I will never again play soccer against the French Foreign Legion or the Pakistani Army. With any luck I will never again have to be the french interpreter on Jules Verne or with 'Omani" maritime patrol aircraft in the Strait of Hormuz.

As I got up from the table tonight it was with some serious pain and there is a mystery bruise on my left thigh muscle and so I can only be grateful that I no longer represent America on the soccer fields in Djibouti and Pakistan because those really hurt, a lot.

I hope that you all enjoyed Thanksgiving with family and friends as we did. It is one of the wonderful holidays we try to capture every month with our dinarians nights out with friends where we pick a venue and invite our friends to join us either at a local (ish) eatery or maybe down by the creek at one of the Metro Parks for a picnic lunch/dinner.

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

RIDING DEATH'S PONY AT THE END

 Each and every form of government these days takes up one singular aspect. There is just one guy in charge. Oh sure, some have girls in charge but that kind of looks like a charade after Maggie. There was no doubt who was in charge with her. The lesser leaders, not so much. Having said that, I harken back to what I hear was an old Athenian rule. You remember them? They were the first to have a lash at democracy. They did not by any stroke of the imagination think it was what you think it was but for want of a better word, "one better man, one vote" and they held on to this idiocy for a good long time.

My favorite though was that if anybody disagreed with the vote a way was found for him to nominate some other rich bastard to pay the tax because that dude was richer and so pass along the entire onus for building a naval trireme for the Athenian Fleet out of his own pockets.

I'd like to see the likes of John Kerry and Obama pay to build, each of them, another Nimitz class carrier or 10 guided missile destroyers, apiece.

NEW LAWS FOR NEW CRIMES

The Supreme Court has decided that they should order President Trump to turn over his tax records to Congress so that they may use them as weapons against him in all future campaigns and also ensure the full employment of legal scholars and pundits. Having decided that this is the most judicious take on the whole affair I cannot see any reason at all why the next Republican President does not, as his first act, sign an Executive Order mandating that all Supreme Court justices must make public 100% of their tax returns and documentation for the previous 10 years and also mandates that all Congressman must publish online 100% of their tax returns and documentation so that we can all scrutinize it and then moan about how ethically corrupt and crooked they all are.

I really don't understand this action by the Court. It serves no legitimate purpose at all.

Saturday, November 19, 2022

LOOKING FORWARD

 As the FTX scam collapses around them the legislators are trying in vain to get people focused on anything else. Good luck felons. I don’t recall it happening in the past but think the democrats have opened the door for a new level of partisan warfare, the House demanding that sitting and former senators come in and testify under oath to various House committees investigating financial fraud and insider trading. 

Once almost impossible to imagine it becomes more possible after the Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety and Suppression of all Dissent kept calling in everyone under the sun to testify including people from the Executive Branch and wanted the President to come in for a “chat.”

I don’t think the RINOs will but they may do it accidentally.

Friday, November 18, 2022

YOU SEE THE PROBLEM

 If you take even a quick look at the map below you might see the problem with the Ukrainian missile errantly  straying into Poland when it was allegedly fired at incoming Russian cruise missiles.

How did a anti-aircraft missile find itself in Poland since Poland is not really in the flight path for any Russian cruise missiles?

Russia is using its latest and best cruise missiles against targets in Ukraine and they are doing it repeatedly and the Ukrainian air defenses are allegedly improving against these attacks. The way you improve is by studying most carefully the previous attacks and working out how to defend against them with missiles and electronic counter-measures. You know who would be real interested in just how both sides are working out the teething problems of new missiles and new air defense techniques? That's right, NATO.

There is almost certainly an AWACs or later generation ECM aircraft keeping a focused eye on the airspace in and around and above Ukraine and every single thing that moves through it is tracked and monitored in real time. NATO would know instantly if the missile that killed two Poles in Poland was launched by Ukraine or Russia. That whole bit of fake outrage at Russia was just gas on the fire hoping that somebody would propose shooting at the Russians ourselves rather than leaving all that to the Ukrainians, mercenaries and hundreds of NATO 'advisors' that are 'assisting Ukraine's armed forces with exotic weapons they never saw before in their lives. You know, all those German tanks, HIMARS and Javelin missiles and all that artillery NATO sent them.

I believe that there are thousands of people in DC and other NATO capitals thirsting for a chance at a nice little war with Russia since they perceive depth as weakness. They're stupid but they are convinced that with the right trigger they can pull off another Tonkin Gulf incident and drag us kicking and screaming into a war with Russia.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

THE NO GO ZONES OF THOUGHT IN WAR

 Today I read some analysis of the Significant Military Operation in Ukraine and how it appears as if Russia has lost the strategic and operational war by retreating to their side of the river in preparation for the winter war to come. The analysts don't even pretend to see the war as it really is. By that I mean they cannot even conceptualize what remaining steps have yet to be followed to the bitter end and if there is one thing I know of that part of Eurasia, they always go to the bitter end before going down to defeat. I mean this applies to both Russia and Ukraine.

The Powers that Be in both NATO and Ukraine don't give a rat's ass for the poor people of Ukraine or even Western Europe which is being rolled  back to the Dark Ages the sanctions the EU imposed on Russia but which only impact the people of Western Europe and to a limited extent, America. Nobody who lives and works in a palace cares how much electricity costs or how much gas costs since they don't pay anyway. They really don't care about inflation because it doesn't have any impact on them. Nobody cares that 2/3s of Ukraine will be without power or heat this winter and nobody cares that NATO keeps the war going there by continuing to send Ukraine "free" weapons to be used in killing Russian conscripts by a country known to be utterly corrupt.

You probably wonder what those steps left unmentioned might be. They're pretty routine easy steps that any Russian oligarch would be pleased to consider as a 'good and necessary step towards an acceptable peace in our time.' 

1. Just let Chernnobyl's current online nuclear reactors melt down like they did the last time but this time there won't be any heroic Russians stepping into lethal radiation to put the fires out and cap the reactors. This time the winter winds howling off Siberia's plains and down the Ural Mountains will blow that radio-active dust all over western Europe and Scandanavia. The Russians will blame Ukraine, Ukraine and NATO will blame Russia but at that point, as St. Hillary said, "what difference does it make?"

2. There are other nuclear power reactors that could suffer mysterious runaway chain reactions leading to meltdowns. The winds blow west so it really doesn't matter to Russia if the fallout contaminates the lands of the people who have made Russians their enemy. It's probably important to keep in mind that Russians don't care at all about what happens outside of Russia; they never did and likely never will. Popular opinion is a "western" term with little to no meaning outside the West.

3. There are a number of dams in Ukraine that could suffer catastrophic failure all of a sudden one night. At this point in the war I wouldn't set any limits on Russian retaliation in western Europe/NATO  for launching an all out economic war on Russia. A war is a war. 

As I read analysts natter on about their perception of things I am once again struck by the idiotic notation that occurred in the front piece of many of my Econ and Politics textbooks. "We assume all States to be rational actors." That's it. Think about it. What part of rational struck you when the South opened fire on Fort Sumter? What part of rational do you think caused Japan to retaliate for the economic war the United States was conducting against them that caused them to decide to launch a sneak attack on the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii? You can look at just about any war and ask that question. It is best answered with, "because they thought they could get away with it."

In the current situation the Ukrainians thought they could continue to harass and kill ethnic Russians in the east and that they could actually prevail in a war with Russia. They did NOT get lucky when NATO decided to throw in with them and arm them with 'free' weapons. What part of the EU was rational when it slit its own energy throat by not just banning the import of Russian natural gas  but by blowing up the pipelines that took years to build under the Baltic Sea?  What part of rational led the long neutral states of Scandinavia and Switzerland to launch similar economic sanctions on Russia knowing that it was going to hit them much worse?

So far as I can tell, the only rational State in this farce of a war is Russia. They had a clear objective they believed was within their means and acted on it just as they did when they took Crimea back in 2014. They were going to snip off some more Ukraine and that would be that. They failed to consider that anybody in the West would be as stupid and irrational as they all proved to be.

Monday, November 14, 2022

Saturday, November 12, 2022

A TRAGEDY

 We were out south in the snow flying falcons when I saw this on my phone. One of the few remaining B-17s and its crew perished when a KingCobra collided with them in an airshow in Dallas. Of the 12,731 aircraft built, approximately 4,735 were lost during the War. Only a handful survived and only a tiny handful of pilots to fly them. A sad post Veteran's Day reminder of how so many were lost in action. 

I remember when every TV station signed off at the end of the night with High Flight. We don't see it anymore since channels no longer sign off every night.



Monday, November 7, 2022

ME AND THE COBRA

 I had become accustomed to informing the bridge that we were, "at the top of the green" when they called down to Main Control and indicated that they wanted more speed out of the engines. With all four main engines online and running at the top of the green there was no more speed to be had and in the first 9 months before the crews started rotating to the ships in the Persian Gulf, it was understood that there was nothing more to give.

Top of the Green was defined as the "not to exceed" manifold pressures for the Packard main engines and it was not some arbitrary definition because we all knew that exceeding that pressure would almost instantly result in blown head gaskets and that meant the loss of an engine for the 8 hours or so it would take to repair it. It made no difference if we blew one head gasket or all of them since in any event the entire top of the engine had to come off which entailed removing all the fuel lines to the cylinder heads, removing the valve covers and ever so carefully backing out the retaining rings over each cylinder. That was the tricky part because even if done perfectly it sometimes resulted in stripping the aluminum threads in the aluminum block that held the rings and the only way to repair that was to weld the block back up and then cut new threads. The only 3 people I knew of on the west coast that could do that were my ENC, the Diesel Inspector at the Group in Seattle and Long Beach Naval Shipyard. Obviously, that was going to take a lot of time and the engine was out of commission.

When the rotations to the Gulf started one of the men who left before I did was the Commanding Officer who knew all about Top of the Green. When the Cobra (what everyone called the Mine Group chief staff officer) took over acting command to get us underway to conduct some testing of some new (ancient) Royal Navy mine sweep cutters it required extensive underway operations and the bridge kept calling down for more speed since the British said they needed to have the gear pulled at 12 knots in order to fully test the new cutters.

I was in Main Control for these events and told the bridge we had no more power to give and that we were at the top of the green at which point the Cobra himself came on the bitch box and informed me that he was speeding up from the pilot house controls. About 5 seconds later we blew all the head gaskets in 2 main engines and took manual control of propeller pitch to keep the last two engines from going offline. (Diesels don't cool/run very well on emulsified lube oil). 

Needless to say, we returned to port at about 8 knots and that was the end of testing and the Cobra headed back to Seattle.

Do you get the sense that the world right now is running at the Top of the Green? I do. I cannot believe that 81 million people actually voted for senile imbecile who is so obviously a senile imbecile. He was always an imbecile but the senile part would surely have discouraged some democrats from voting for him but it seems they came out in more than record numbers to vote for him. What the democrats/media/hollywood/et al, don't understand about the "deniers" is not that suspect the election was entirely tainted by fraud orchestrated in the major democrat controlled cities in the east and California, it's that it is all to obvious that it was since it is flat out impossible to believe 81 million Americans failed to perceive the truth about Biden's mental condition.

At Penn State we had like most schools, an undergraduate student government that did damned knows what but they were self-vested with importance and dignity on account of being in the 'government'. As I recall, in my senior year a rat was put up as a candidate for President of the USG and won the vote. He was denied office by the Administration. In that case there was no detectable difference between President Rat and whatever non-entity was given the office as a consequence of coming in second to a rat in the polls.

I would urge you to stand a responsible distance from the polling places tomorrow but hold up large signs asking "WHY VOTE FOR THE DIABOLICAL SENILE PARTY when you can get an articulate semi-honest politician instead?"

If American politics and the craziness of the left here is not enough, consider Europe which slit it's own throat and spurned Russian appeals to honor the reunification agreements and not extend the NATO border to Russia's own border. So, they destroyed the Ukraine as a result and when I write, 'they' I don't just mean the Russians. Ukraine would have been spanked and left reasonably intact but the entire EU and Switzerland decided to sanction Russia with the result that it won't just be Ukrainians freezing to death this winter due to a lack of energy and oh, by the way, somebody, British or US blew up the natural gas pipelines feeding Russian gas to northern Europe.

That's not enough of course. The Ukrainian wheat harvest is trapped in Ukraine which means many arabs in the middle east will starve. There was a route out for the wheat by sea as negotiated between Turkey and Russia and Turkey and NATO but some idiots launched a major drone attack on Russians ships from within the safe transit corridor. Why would any sane person do that knowing that the Russians would promptly retaliate?

Heinlein was prophetic decades ago when he incorporated, "The Crazy Years" into his future history. These have to be the crazy years.