THE DOD FAFO

 We have all heard that the Army has failed to meet its recruiting goal this year by over 20,000 young men and women who won't be joining the ranks and replacing the soldiers who are getting out and enjoying the benefits of the GI Bill. That is 20,000 fewer soldiers this year followed by a like number next year and the year after that. In response the Army has opened its recruiting scope to include the lowest mental category for the first time since the Vietnam War because the Army is learning that young men and women that historically joined in large numbers from certain well targeted states are no longer interested in serving the woke morons who call Washington DC home. They don't just despise the civilian leadership, such as it is, they also despise the 4 stars and the 3 stars and probably most of the Colonels too. They have good reason to feel contempt and disgust for the leadership.

We and they know what a complete and utter fiasco and military disaster resulted when the generals and civilian leaders ordered the shutdown of the military airbase in Afghanistan and then followed up that idiocy by fleeing Iraq in terror as the taliban rolled right over those alleged Afghani soldiers we had been training for the last 20 years like they weren't even there, largely because they weren't. Soldiers killed, Americans simply abandoned to their fate, true allies of ours left out in the cold in Afghanistan at the tender non-existent mercy of the Taliban fanatics. Well done Milley, Well Done Austin. You somehow managed to reach 4 star rank and the senior most leadership positions in the Pentagon and you bungled a withdrawal from a stone age blighted area to the point where there is almost no way to recover from it in this generation or the next. 

The younger ones listen to the older ones that once wore the uniform and none of us would even breath the words, "enlist in today's Army or military." Not even under our breath. Pentagon leaders really have a few really important jobs.

1. Take care of the troops. Pay them, their families when they fall, provide medical care, treat their lives as you would the lives of your own adult kids. Don't toss them away for an empire that doesn't exist anymore.

2. Maintain and procure the weapons that they use now and will need in 20 years time so that when the war does come as it will come, they have the means to wage war without making the ultimate sacrifice in obsolete, broken or worthless weapon systems. You really screwed up the Littoral Combat Ship and there is no mistaking how every single admiral came forward (was shoved really hard) and bleated about how the LCS was an effective warship and well up to the task of waging 21st century war at sea. Everyone knows that was  and is a lie. The ships are worse than useless since their construction and development came at the cost of designing, building and fielding real surface combatants such as the DDGs or CGs that the Navy is quickly retiring before they simply fall apart (the cruisers are coming up on 40 years of service.) I don't have the numbers but ships that complex and that old spend a lot of time in shipyards and not that much time at sea. We had the same problem with the missile frigates from the end of the Cold War that gradually declined as they aged and so various weapon systems that were too difficult to maintain were simply removed. Thus, they retained the name guided missile frigates long after the missile launchers had been removed.

3.The Pentagon is where our Operational Plans originate and where they are approved and it is there that the Military and leadership have failed to maintain even the lowest standard of competence. I saw this happen in real time in Hawaii as notional units that had no equipment were treated by the planners as if they were fully manned and equipped for the missions they were assigned when there was nothing further from the truth. It appears that the planners and leaders in the Pentagon really think those units are real much like Hitler thought Patton's fake armies in England were real in 1944.

The alt media which is largely now where one finds the truth of things has pointed out that the left has captured and suborned Academia, the Bureaucracy, Hollywood, the Media and the Military. That last started happening under Clinton who was able to get a couple of powerful adjutants into the Pentagon and they started selecting the future generals and admirals who would run the armed forces. Clinton was followed by a President who manifestly did not care about what was going on in the Pentagon or Yugoslavia or anywhere else for that matter despite having once been titular head of the CIA. Under Obama the process initiated by the Clintons accelerated and worthy candidates for the rank of 3 and 4 star were passed over for more woke, democrat, leftist leaning, communists and command failures. They in turn selected the Colonels they found worthy for promotion to Brigadier and Major General. Those last two ranks used to be merit promotions while the 3 and 4 star jobs have always been a "who do you know" appointment.

The military is now broken at its most fundamental level. As with the other parts of the National identity captured by the leftists, there is no easy come back from this level of profound dishonesty, deceit and incompetence. It will take an epic disaster and given those we've suffered from in the last 20 years it will take something much worse than Pearl Harbor. The Chinese are showing the way. 71 attack aircraft made attack runs on Taiwan in conjunction with a number of Naval ships yesterday. There is very little between Taiwan and China.

I heard on the BBC tonight that the Premier of Taiwan announced today that 4 months of mandatory military service was no longer enough and that starting in 2024 all young men would be required to serve a full year on active duty in order to receive the training necessary to wage modern war and to beef up the military's numbers and  make it look bigger and scarier. Well, they let their military decline to almost nothing just as we have and we may have the whole of the Pacific Ocean between us and them, it will be the whole of 7th Fleet  that will pay the price if we actually rush to aid Taiwan when Xi decides to invade. Personally I think pigs will fly before the PTB in DC, whoever they really are, will come to the military aid of Taiwan

And if that wasn't bad enough, we have a shooting war in Ukraine where it is very much NATO vs Russia and they only people that haven't figured that out or what it implies are the same ones that reliably vote for democrats, socialists and communists plus the eco-freaking green parties.

I saw in the press over the weekend that Putin is supposedly at death's door from cancer. You ever hear the story about what happens when a man really has nothing left to lose? It seldom ends well. It's really going to suck in Europe which not only unilaterally disarmed itself and took to relying on US for all their military and geo-political muscle, they have also expended 90% of their weapon stocks/ammo by sending it Ukraine to kill Russians and have no plans to fund or make new ammo and, and this is really important, the US they are counting on has done much the same thing. Remember, we shut down the Tomahawk production lines years ago. We'll wage the next 2 wars with the ammo we have on hand at this moment. That's going to suck.

I'd recommend a reread of The Village by Bing West.

Some of the takeaway observations on the struggle in Ukraine. 

Helicopters will not survive over a modern battlefield

Tanks and APC will not survive on a modern battlefield

You will run out of artillery ammunition long before you run out of targets

You will run out of missiles long before you run out of enemy

Anything the US does not have on hand at the outbreak of war is UNAVAILABLE from ANYWHERE else in the world. Nobody is going to rearm us when we go winchester and most of the components for the more complex smart weapons come from China.