If you can believe him, this is the beginning of the rehabilitation of Eric Swalwell. I don't believe California politicians are actually capable of the truth so that's my starting point on this:
It appears that our President has ponied up a declaration that indicates that the United States Navy will impose a full blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. That would be interpreted just about anywhere as us putting in place a naval blockade against the shipping of our allies in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. This is ridiculous on the face of it.
Now we're going to impound ships inside the Gulf and put them where? We are going to intercept ships inbound in the North Arabian Sea and park them where? If they refuse to heave to are we really going to fire on neutral shipping? In case you are unaware, that is not our way. Hell, we didn't interdict any shipping going into North Vietnam ports during the entirety of the war there.
I cannot imagine how the President climbs down from this kind of statement.
Earlier today, Donald Trump warned that US forces will immediately 'begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz', hours after peace talks with Iran held in Pakistan broke down.
The US President added in his Truth Social post announcing the bombshell move: 'I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran.
He later claimed that NATO forces, including the UK, will be sending minesweepers to assist the US' military operation in the waterway - a statement that Britain has since denied.
This is going to be epic.
It appears that the idiots running Britain for the idiots that elected them to run Britain have decided that perhaps giving Diego Garcia to a bunch of people in the bag with China with absolutely no connection to the atolls and then leasing them back to Britain for 35 billion pounds is now off the table. That's what they're saying now but I have learned that the Dimwits can reverse on a dime and give back 9 cents change.
At any rate, it does not appear that we will have to ask a couple of Marines to walk over and haul down the British flag on Diego Garcia after all.
Yet.
To watch the decline of England is painful. To see a country that once had hundreds of warships and a world spanning empire degrade into a state of being no more than Minnesota is history in front of our eyes. I used to wonder as I read history how could people react to the rollback as empires faded visibly from their world and now we can see it today in both the West and the East.
One of the downsides to a collapse driven by ideology is how insidious and unstoppable a pathological ideology can be as it undermines every single aspect of the empire and State from within. England was not defeated by an enemy it could fight over a gunsight but by losing its institutions (all of them) to revolutionaries who despised everything about the State and yet managed to get hold of the levers and run it all into a ditch from which there is no recovery.
We watched as England struggled to get even one warship underway in response to a direct attack on one of its bases and it took them more than a month to get the damned thing underway. After a week on station it has withdrawn due to a 'maintenance issue' with its ability to make water. I suspect that one of the reasons for this failure to make water is not intestinal fortitude but the Royal Navy's reliance on personnel drawn from the ranks of the ideological and pathological insane haters that pollute all society these days. All it takes is one 'green warrior' or BLM or white hating fool and the water stops flowing.
Back when I was on my first ship which was based in Bahrain, we spent a month in Karachi and got some minor repair work done as a test of the ability of Karachi to repair USN warships. It was not a good showing by any measure and as we left port we had special representatives come aboard while we were proceeding down the river towards the North Arabian Sea and they went through every inch of the ship with drug detector dogs and MPs searching for drugs because drugs are freely available in places like Karachi. We all had a fine time and importantly, we conducted a full command urinalysis looking to see who had been foolish enough to partake of drugs during our month in Karachi. As I recall, we turned up 2 men.
The unamusing bit was that we did drug sweep again two days later and we caught 11 in just Engineering Department alone. That was 11 men that went to Captain's Mast and got punished for drug abuse and also key personnel who the Engineer would no longer permit to enter the engine rooms under any circumstances and certainly not to stand watch. Everybody had to work harder but we all knew the Engineer would not let those men stand watch on the evaporators or the boilers or the switchboards. We could no longer trust them.
England may be finding out, as we are, that it is one thing to bring in recruits to an established military and induct them into all the traditions and ethics of serving their country in a vital military role but if those inductees are not really body and soul men of good will then you cannot trust them. You can never trust them. This and this alone is why the 3rd World is the way it is. There is a total lack of trust.
The liberals in the West have brought down a rain of fire and ruin on the sacred bonds of trust because they assure their believers that they are 'doing the right thing' and that there are therefore no consequences for doing the right thing even if it means breaking the law. So far, the Courts, another liberal owned former institution of the government, are backing them up. Everyone, all their lives is telling them to do the right thing even if it means breaking the law and the little fools rush right in and set fire to the world, or the ship, as the case may be.
The only way to start bringing things back into alignment is to punish those at the top most severely for breaking our trust and carrying out attacks that cause both grave and serious damage to the Nation because right now absolutely nobody under the age of 50 really believes that the State will punish them if they simply act out of conviction because they are doing the 'right thing.' Nothing I've seen indicates that they are wrong in their belief.
I think it is too late to disabuse them of this pernicious idea so the next few decades will be pretty agonizing for many people as they go from a formerly Industrial/Post Industrial Age Society to the Dark Ages with rolling blackouts and the collapse of law and order.
On that note I'll return to my favorite topics, Pirate Submarines!!! I hear from NPR that both the UK and Norway are alarmed at finding up to 3 Russian submarines conducting survey work near their infrastructure in the North Sea. You think its bad now but what if Russia collapses the oil production/distribution of energy from the North Sea? They could do that.
The UK was further humiliated by Russia which sent one of its tanker fleet through the English Channel but this time with a naval escort. It sailed right down the English coast and the English could do nothing. Mind you, what they said they were going to do in this event was to board the ship and behave like pirates which is their right under the Rules Based Order they helped create but the thing about waging economic war against another State is that all too often in history it turns into a real no kidding shooting war. Since the UK have no operational warships they decided to hold off on their pirate activities and let the ships pass unmolested.
Wow, a return to 17th - 19th centuries with countries forced to send warships along with their merchants to protect them from pirates! What is the world coming to?
I see that the folks on Islas Malvinas are brushing up on their Spanish. The rollback continues.
It actually happened a number of years ago. Europe was the first to notice its end but it is taking our American defense contractors a little longer to come off the gravy train and start doing honest work and in this they are of considerable help to the various congressional campaign funds. Everyone recognized (except Congress) that the collapse of the USSR meant that the entire raison d'etre for OTAN just went away overnight. It was done, it was over, we won.
For the dimwitted and here we must thank Congress because few living things are as dimwitted as all of Congress, the next spiral of NATO circling the drain, as it were, was the war in Ukraine which saw all of Russia take on little corrupt Ukraine and fight itself to a complete standstill. I have articulated why I think Russia has been happy with this situation but others may see it differently. At any rate, Ukraine with a lot of the European Union's money, Germany, France and England's money and weapons, has managed to fight the Russian stalk to a draw and push weapons innovations far beyond even the magnificent invention of the Dreadnought which overnight rendered obsolete every other navy in the world.
NATO. has been circling the drain now for over 30 years and it is unrealistic to presume that people may not have noticed.
NATO came about to keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in Europe. Europe has moved past the first 2 conditions and we have moved away from the final condition. We no longer want to be a part of Europe's defense or their idiotic wars. Based on their current trajectory, Europe will be at war within the next 10 years. As usual, it will come as a terrible surprise to them.
The downside to terminating a defunct defense umbrella is that it may encourage some to go about creating that thing they have secretly left to America all these years because they all know in the dim and murky place where they ponder the tiny bits of reality they can grasp, that it is a really bad idea to let the Italians, Germans, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks start building WMD in order to 'stay safe.'
On the other hand, now everyone knows that killer drones are not just science fiction anymore and that a solution must be embraced. Yes yes, I know. We all know. The damned Europeans will announce an international summit at, maybe, Geneva and they will all get together, universally condemn drones and BAN THEM. Yes, they will ban all drones and declare them illegal.
No, they will not fund or carry out any research on weapons to destroy drones because, as any fool can plainly see, they have been BANNED!
I thoroughly enjoyed all of my trips to Europe but something that was apparent even on the first trip back in 1984 was that they are very unserious people when it comes to war. I realize that this is because they had all recently had a conference somewhere and BANNED WAR so they no longer felt the need to be serious about it but their enemies have not forgotten and they have let in millions of people who hate them with a passion. The thing is though, I expect those enemies to assimilate just enough so that the ones in Germany will hate the ones in France and vice versa and so on throughout the Unholy Empire and so even after it falls to islam, they will duke it out with each other in Europe in the same joyful sharing way they wasted Lebanon.
Let's not be there for that.
Supposedly all kinds of idiots are given access to microphones and pens and allowed to make up any damned thing they want to and get it published in our media. I just laughed at this headline and wondered at the extraordinary lengths people's imaginations will take them whenever they have access to blank newspaper.
How about if instead we just issue every aviator and pilot a fitbit that they can turn on when they get shot down over enemy territory or the open sea? All they have to do, according to the Ministry of Truth, is turn the damned thing on and their position is instantly pinpointed by the entire world!
It is almost like they cannot help themselves and they just have to whip off their shoes so they can tie and knot the laces around their neck very tightly. On the other hand, it is kind of amusing. What do you call a country that is not an ally and yet insists on stabbing you in the back? Enemy springs to mind.
‼️πΊπΈπ¬π§ The United Kingdom will refuse to allow the United States to use RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia for strikes on Iran targeting bridges, power plants, or civilian sites, citing risks to civilians and potential war crimes, senior officials tell The i Paper. pic.twitter.com/MsJd1AD7A8
— Defense Intelligence (@DI313_) April 7, 2026
There is an obvious solution to a situation like this. The American Base Commander at Diego Garcia gets orders to implement contingency plans and takes over the entire atoll, rounds up the British and their minions and puts them on a plane to Kenya with some well meant advice to, "never come back!"
This way we get the Indian Ocean base that we need, Britain gets shed of a dilemma it thrust itself into with the wild abandon of a teenager shedding his clothes with a girl for the very first time and everyone gets to nod sagely and suggest that a diplomatic solution is perhaps the best thing in these circumstances.
On the gripping hand, I wonder how much/many SEALs have been flown in to Mildenhall AFB over the last 4 weeks in preparation for this moment of inevitable betrayal.
//TFIC
Oh, and should this come to pass, the North Atlantic Treaty is dead. Secretary Rubio will start pointing out to Poland and Hungary all the benefits from reestablishing ties with Gazprom and Eastern Europe's economies will take off as Western Europe slips into the dustbin of history. I think I'll laugh if Presidents Putin and Trump have a summit and decide to enter into a new Arctic Treaty Organization and exploit all the vulnerabilities that Europe has opened itself to by behaving like principled spoiled islamic idiots.
I have to admit, I thought it would be another 10 years before Britain joined France and declared jihad against America.
Keep in mind that 100% of the base infrastructure that we built in the Middle East over the last 40 years served one purpose and that was to provide C4I for our forces in the long war against Iraq and Iran. With the upcoming demise of Iran there will be no need for the enormous infrastructure and the Middle East Force can return to being a pair of frigate/destroyer type ships and perhaps a flag ship although that sounds positively medieval in the 21st century. CENTCOM remains at MacDill.
We really don't need that vast 3 star ensemble in Bahrain. The old Middle East Force worked just fine as a 2 star command with a few dozen staff back in 1985 and there is no reason it cannot return to that size and shape when we're done with Iran. The Combined Air Ops Center in Qatar can shut down and the various players can go home and absolutely everything we operate in Saudi Arabia can be shut down.
I'm reminded of C6F who had a scroll running on their homepage for years that showed that back in 1949 Sixth Fleet staff were tasked with oversight for 12,000 aircraft movements and 2000 ship/vessel movements per day and the staff consisted of a couple of dozen officers. In 2000 the Sixth Fleet staff provided C2 for 40 aircraft and 2 ship movements per day and that staff had grown to over 7,000.
All of NATO has demonstrated that it no longer serves any useful purpose and we can go ahead and expand our reductions to all of Western Europe and there really is no need to build unprotected infrastructure in the new frontline countries of Eastern Europe. All of that stuff can be shelved or disposed of and the money saved returned to the people or to to develop serious infinite repeaters that can destroy drones at all altitudes ranging from 1 foot to 90,000.
The money to design and build a Bolo has to come from somewhere.......*
And we're going to need them everywhere as people catch on to just how terribly lethal drones are, how anonymous they can be and how they can appear out of nowhere to attack every kind of infrastructure ranging from oil and gas lines, production fields, shipping and transportation and of course every level of government.
Russia really opened a can of worms when they went after Ukraine. The world has no idea how everything they know/knew about warfare and getting even changed over night.
*the discerning reader will closely examine the link.
I am sensing a very different pattern to the array of news from this war. Nobody is sitting pretty this time with their own Wolf Blitzer reporting from Tehran and what news does filter out of organs of disinformation, shading and flat out fabrication don't seem to have anything but rumors and innuendo to report.
On the other hand, this is the war that Russia and Putin wish that they had waged against Ukraine. Do the decapitation and do it long and hard and then drop a couple of airborne divisions on the capital and send Wagner up the middle. Ukraine does not have the regional warlord infrastructure that littered Afghanistan and Iran. With an absolute command of the ether Russia could have tracked down and destroyed every replacement Zelensky and every new and acting head of the military components and field commanders. For all their fearsome reputation as significant actors in deep penetration and cyber warfare, they don't seem to be in the same league as US and Israel. I'm surprised by that.
I have to admit, I'm also surprised by the relative absence of Iran's favorite warriors in this conflict. Sure their terrorist commandos have been gutted and destroyed in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen but I was sure they had lots of true believers here in America ready to act. Post war analysis will be fascinating. As it is I've been impressed by just about everything and really impressed by the Combat Search and Rescue guys.
The United States has reached the limit of its endurance with its European satraps in the disarmed and ineffective wing of NATO. I don't think any rational student of foreign policy and war could watch the Europeans in the EU bait and attack Russia for the last 4 years and not worry that they have lost all sight of objective reality. Their disdain and contempt for Russia and President Putin knows no limits and is very much like the disdain and contempt for President Trump and the United States under its current majority party rule. They hate US and Russia and we don't care.
Militarily, European military forces are not even a pimple on the butt of either the United States or Russia. Those who believe in the fantasy of numbers point to the number of aircraft or tanks or soldiers that Europe has and imagine that the numbers alone mean that they are on par with the US or even Russia because there is "so much." The problem being, none of it is real and the numbers lie and on top of that the will to employ force at the national level is dead and buried in Western Europe.
Every war you can recall to mind in Europe was fought for nationalist reasons and it is really hard to get men to fight for a "better standard of living for our islamic and african refugees." The idiots running Europe into the ground over the last 50 years have done everything in their power to torch nationalism and make sure it never rises again. What they've done is just exactly what the old European Empires did when they set out to destroy nationalists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Napoleonic Empire, British Empire, 3rd Reich, and the Warsaw Pact. Everyone knows how that worked out each time.
Let us look at recent history and the actual form nationalism takes in Europe and elsewhere. Once upon a time the collapse of one empire led to the formation of a mini-empire called Yugoslavia which was made up of Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians, Macedonians, etc. When it was destroyed by its indebtedness and torn apart by rival ethnic nationalism it was the leading edge of nationalist dissent in Europe but it was way out on the fringe and everyone in Western Europe pretended it wasn't really part of Europe, really. They never think back to who fired the shot that allegedly led to World War I.
It won't surprise anyone who reads here to learn that using Yugoslavia for inspiration the CzechoSlovakian State decided to split on purely ethnic/nationalist lines and a number of other states in Europe experienced a resurgence in real nationalism from peoples long thought to be fully integrated into the miasma that is Spain or the intricate partitions of ethnarchies all along the old Soviet Frontier.
These people are relentless and they are slowly winning because the ruling class forgot that without the Primary Nationalist Front to hold everyone together it became easier for each ethnic minority to claim it was owed not just a slice of the pie, but also their homeland and its slice of the pie. You can see these devils ranging everywhere such as around Kurdistan (which does not and never existed but bedevils Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran.)
You also get the Alliance for Germany which merely wants to have all the foreigners kicked out of Germany and for the German government to stop giving German money to the immigrants and also to stop giving it Italy and Spain and all the less productive member states of the EU. The ruling class has one universal response to this which is to stamp it all out of existence and jail the leaders of such nationalist parties everywhere they arise. I can't wait to see what they hang on Nigel Farage.
All of this simply covers the polite face of nationalism in Europe but doesn't begin to address the old issues that nothing short of extermination or removal seems to address. All these old tribes also want their land back. People everywhere are quietly interested in going home but they don't want to live under the governments that currently rule these lands, they want their own governments to run them. Every time you turn around in Ukraine you find another proposal for slicing up more of Ukraine and giving it back to Poland or Hungary or......And you thought it was just the Russians that wanted their land back.
The original intent of the ruling class that understood the underlying basis of upstart nationalism was to prevent just this. It was not to stamp out their own national identities but to curtail and dismember the radical movements that wanted, for instance, Prussia back. (Honestly, nobody anywhere wants Prussia back in German hands.) The thing is, the borders shifted so much after World War II that all countries are affected and yet all of them took the idiotic path of stamping out nationalism and importing foreign workers because they tied nationalism to naziism in their diseased minds and so anything the nazis praised was, ipso facto a bad or evil thing. Remember how the nazis wanted great big families?
My fellows and I have just about had it with European idiocy and disdain. We can see them all heading right back into the same rat war they get into every 20 to 40 years and we don't want to be any part of it. This is not a West against the East War or an anti-communist war, it is the collapse of an entire civilization on one continent that ruled the world. I keep thinking it will be like the fervent nationalist time of 1848 but it could also look a lot more like Spain in 1936.
Right now we tend to think of Europeans as sheep. No bark, no bite. They didn't used to be like that but they have been socialized into being essentially harmless. You have only to look at the extraordinary number of foreigners running their governments to realize how far down the pole they have managed to slide. What happens when they realize that they are far more broke then the United States is and all the benefits of living with your parents until you are 45 go away?
It would be interesting if our break with NATO did nothing but take the form of De Gualle's politique de grandeur and we simply announce that we are withdrawing from the NATO integrated military command and withdrawing all of our armed forces to North America and turning over all of our bases and installations to the owning governments. As they used to say of France; still a NATO member, just not a military member of a military alliance. We can do that too.
You see one of the problems everyone else has is articulating what specific benefits the United States gets from being a member of NATO. Right off the bat I cannot see any. In fact, from here, everything argues that it long past time for America to leave Europe to its own devices because right now they appear to be insane and vicious to an unexpected degree. They prefer their rulers and their rulers prefer the extinction of Israel to any other thing. They probably forgot that this has already happened before, any number of times, and yet they persist.
A few people wonder that we seem to have entered into a war with Iran, a much more dangerous power than Iraq and yet for some reason we did not spend 6 months building up an enormous and ceremonial alliance and deploying hundreds of thousands of troops to staging areas near by and we made no effort as we did in Iraq to sweet talk our putative allies into aiding us in that war called Desert Storm where our very good friends and NATO allies in Turkey refused to permit the 4th ID to deploy through and to sit on the Iraqi frontier and draw off some of Saddam Hussein's armies from Kuwait. It was a buildup that saw us concentrate the bulk of our naval power in the region before launching the counterattack and yet NONE OF THAT HAPPENED IN IRAN.
I have a theory about that. I think that the last real Intelligence Agency in the World showed its cards to President Trump and the Head of that State told him that if aid was not immediately forthcoming to assist with the destruction of Iran's incredible missile threat, they would have no choice but to use nukes. There are just two places left in the West where the hard men rule and neither of them shirked the necessity to act immediately and decisively.
I guarantee that the relevant leaders told the National Command Authority that we had the power to break Iran but there was no way on earth to fix what we broke and there was also no way on earth to establish free and unfettered commerce through the SOH given the nature of the geography and the sheer number of platforms available to attack some of the most defenseless ships in the world. The response must have been something along the lines of, 'that will do very well, it solves a number of pressing issues in urgent need of resolution.' Europe is finding out that their issues are simply no longer our issues. That's not really congruent with having and maintaining a military alliance.
There is the usual presumption that justices of the supreme court don't want to die in office and want to retire and enjoy the good life and also make sure the President of their party gets to choose a successor like them, unlike the poor unfortunate RBG who had the misfortune to drop dead during President Trump's first term. I have seen many comments about this in my reading.
There is an alternative though:
Have the stupidest Supreme Court Justice in all history gibberish them all to death. I would go mad if I had to listen to that profoundly stupid arrogant jackass talk for more than 10 minutes.
The last launch of the fully invoked DEI lunacy went off without a hitch this evening and according to the knowledgeable Space Viewers, it was about as boringly nominal as a Falcon 9 launch but quieter. I think that is probably the very best thing one could ever wish or hope for in a manned space launch.
They are the latest pioneers to go in search of:
The Europeans may find out what it means to so thoroughly piss off the last KGB man in the world. There is all kinds of room for mischief in the middle east now that we have taken the lid off and the rats are scurrying around and it wouldn't surprise me if Putin found a way to capitalize on the oil and gas shortage that now wraps the entire world in its cold clammy embrace.
I think some people and countries that lost sight of the real meaning of diplomacy and statesmanship are about to relearn an important lesson. Every single factor in the world today unites to impel Russia to screw over Europe to the maximum extent possible and they are just the tricky devils to do it. Yes, Europeans would be delighted to pay billions to Iran for reopening the Strait but there is no reason for Russia to accommodate this desire.
I wonder what part will split along the fault lines that must be there already underlying Iranian sovereignty. Perhaps a tinge of Baluchi, who knows. The new People's Democratic Republic of Baluchia lying there along the Strait is going to welcome the pirate submarines and endless drones of the 21st Century. It seems there is always some frisson of nationalism or old tribal hatred that can be inflamed by anybody with a match and the will to find out if it will catch fire.
Who knows, the Iranians may be willing to let their supertankers use the Strait but deny passage to all their GCC enemies who failed the allah test. What a fascinating time to live in America!
I may have to pick up Mark Steyn's books and read them now.
I keep seeing our President doing things that would have been well done 70 years ago or 50 years ago or even 10 years ago and I am enjoying it. I don't think most people realize how he was slow-rolled by the bureaucrats in his first term by every Agency, every Department and how they frustrated every single move he tried to make in his first term. He literally could not get the State Department, the Defense Department or the Intel Agencies to do what they were ordered to do. They point blank refused to follow orders. What we are seeing today is what happens when the elected head of state gives the orders and the people charged with obeying those orders or resigning promptly, are actually following those orders in a full blooded American way and not refusing or slow-rolling them to death.
Every single one of those bureaucrats from the first Trump administration that failed to conduct themselves as honorable men should answer for their actions and yeah, I'm talking here about men like Pompeo, Barr and Mattis. They were like a disease that only kills Republics. The guys that did all that negotiating with the mullahs during the Obama, Biden, Carter and Bush administrations must be kicking themselves.
I am enjoying watching the President do to Europe what it has been doing to us since the European Common Market came into being. I don't see it as us playing hardball, I see it as us not playing at all anymore. The moaners who think it will all end in tears are welcome to their feelings but they should understand that I am not opposed to it all ending in tears. The spiteful little children will find themselves in that state when the adults are in charge and right now, they are.
It would be fascinating to see what the servants of the West are doing and saying as they beg, plead and grovel in the Oval Office for some love and some understanding because they have a little 'muslim' problem at home that they have to kowtow to but some of us still know where and how the word kowtow came into our lexicon and we don't see any reason to go along with it or to encourage it in others.
In about 2 days we plan to launch 4 people towards the moon. It is kind of mind boggling how screwed up NASA became in just 40 years. Imagine what went horribly wrong time after time in the War Department, Department of the Navy, Bureau of Indian Affairs and other agencies that have been around much longer than NASA. It's a wonder that we survive.
As far as I can tell, we haven't seen a single piece of successful space hardware other than the folks at SpaceX and they only got to where they are now by experimenting to destruction with every single iteration of their hardware. The NASA astronauts are launching on a rocket like no other built in the world after several failures of some extraordinarily simple things that real rocket designers and operators would have ironed out decades ago. Oh, that's right, they did that 60 years ago and then they got sucked into the full blown decline of NASA.
Speaking of planning, 5 days from now is probably right about the time that lights go out in New Zealand and perhaps much of Australia. It seems nobody ever thought it might be a good idea to build in some extraordinary resilience into their national energy planning and supplies and maybe stockpile a lot of fuel for emergency use like, for instance, the oil stops coming.
Silly bears.
On the gripping hand, it is never as dire as people want you to think.
We have finally reached the point where political awareness catches up with the military awareness of 25 years ago and what we have before us now is a situation unchanged in 25 years. Literally every military person with a brain has been pointing out, observing, noting in considerable obnoxious detail that our air bases and infrastructure have zero air defense weaponry deployed to prevent overflight, attack or simple wholesale destruction of our aircraft and bases and nobody did a thing about it. We are now well into the Find Out stage that Russia is in and we have no more means to counter rogue drones or all out drone attacks than Russia does.
A long time ago, faced with a tank gap on the future battlefields of Europe some genius came up with the idea of the A-10 and more importantly, got the Air Force to present it to Congress and sold it so well it actually came into existence with all the planes, spares, logistics, training and everything else needed to field a full blown serious Program of Record and we were left with a solution to many problems. The Army did the same thing with the Hellfire missiles, the Bradley, the TOW and the Javelin. Serious people looked at the threats and developed means to deal with them.
What happened to those guys who looked at Base Defense and Infrastructure defense and led them to throw away any and all effort to design, engineer, build and field a weapon that could destroy any slow moving air targets in enormous numbers over bases in Louisiana and Saudi Arabia? Where did the crazy people win and simply shelve this necessary component of 21st century warfare and nobody did anything?
I was pretty sure that by now we'd have lasers and gauss cannon* to destroy any air threats but we have nothing but the most expensive missiles mankind can build to use against $500.00 drones made by the thousands. This should have been the First Priority of a Program Office dedicated to nothing but a solution to the problem posed by drones and we have nothing.
I'd look on FedBusOps to see if there are any RFPs out there for anybody to furnish a technical solution but I suspect that the answer is that there is nobody who bothered to hit the system with such a request or even a Sources Sought.
If they think it is bad and looks dire now, wait until the drones get personal and use face recognition to home in on selected people or simply hit a person's house again and again and again and again because it's not like that house is moving anywhere.
The man on the street now has the means and the will to kill the oligarchs. They should really be afraid starting right about now.
Everyone saw it coming, but nobody did anything about it.
*a very cool idea for treating a magnetic field like a laser and being able to point a 10,000G laser beam at a target and basically sweep it with an intense magnetic field. Admittedly my targets back then were magnetic storage media and computers.....
The internet gets more amusing every day which is a good thing because when I look out over it some mornings it is filled with one awful story after another. Therefore, I have decided to join friends and go see Hail Mary. I think I only conned a ship through the strait twice and it never really felt all that bendy. On the other hand, ships move extremely slowly compared to most cars and you can start a long turn that lasts for miles with a single helm order.
I have been silent about this for a long time, but I can no longer keep quiet about it in good conscience.
— Wasson Watch Co. (@WassonWatch) March 28, 2026
The "Strait" of Hormuz isn't straight at all. It's super crooked. You can see in the helpful graphic I put together below.
The elites don't want you to know this. pic.twitter.com/ICVFRuVPNP
I get a kick out of this because it shows the thinking of a man who thinks that geopolmil is like chess and one can lay out the moves 10 or 12 moves in advance. OTGH, I don't see anything wrong with what is put forward below and I get a real kick out of all the absolute idiots who are convinced that Donald Trump is not a smart man. Read the entire thing. It's gold.
3 weeks ago I argued the US goal in Iran is to seize the global oil spigot. Venezuela in January -> Iran in February.
— 10Ξ (@_10delta_) March 26, 2026
Neutralize every supply channel outside the dollar system within 90 days. Achieve a compliant successor government and complete energy dominance.
The oil…
The very reluctant, very slow, practically unarmed fellow travelers are lining up now to admit they were wrong accept appointments and high offices now that they think all the heavy lifting is done. No doubt they imagine roles for all of them in the new Persian Anarchy that follows the fall of the mullahs. I think it's about time somebody let them know that their first task in the new order is to wipe out all the pirates in the Red Sea and down around Perim and the Bab al Mandeb.
They'll have to go it alone this time because everyone knows our warships have shot their wad at Persia and have to go all the way back to Jacksonville and Yorktown to rearm. There's certainly no place in Djibouti, Bahrain, Jebel Ali or Fujairah to poke a missile into a hole in the deck. Nope.
I'm pretty sure they can do nothing at all against the pirates but isn't it about time that they learn that for themselves?
All the lying, dissembling, idiotic mind-numbing idiocy over the SAVE Act voter ID issue is all overturned within the same stupid document which offers this AFFADAVIT REQUIREMENT:
They come out after dark but you can still spot them running around in daylight. They are the ones made miserable by the success of others or the hacks that are unhappy that others are gaining the laurels and they always make sure they share their unhappiness with everyone else. Oh look, they moan and observe that after an excruciating 47 hours of war, it's STILL GOING ON!!!!! Their lesser cousins, the spotted dingo curs all then chime in with varying degrees of angst about the:
It's all perfectly normal human behavior but we see a lot more of it then we used to. I'm pretty sure they still don't understand what total war looks like and I'm sure they'd be appalled if we ever decided to go that route. Right now they imagine that we are at the very limits of what military power can achieve and they base this on the idiotic indoctrination they have received and the endless pundits who appear every single time and mock the effort and deride the planners and demonize the people executing the national policy.
I've written before how war can work in the fashion they sort of semi-imagine but they really would not like it. It's kind of strange because they have the records right in front of them and somehow they must know that we can do tomorrow what we did to both Germany and Japan overnight. But no, these people never see that because their teachers told them that strategic bombing is a pointless waste of time, money and resources and inflicts unfair damage and ...... well, you get the point. They base 100% off two facts they made up in their heads.
So there you are sitting on the broken airport tarmac on a timeless island in the great big Caribbean Sea and finally, 60 years of socialism under the Castros and their lickspittles is about to end with the arrival of a whole team of experts from the United States who are going to straighten out the fiscal, financial and ruined economy that socialism always leaves in its wake....
and Governor Hochul, Mayor Mamdami, Paul Bremer and former vice president Kamala Harris get off the plane leading a team of advisors from the Harvard Faculty Lounge.
Can you appreciate the sheer irony of your situation?
As I watch the avalanche of glee that delights in President Trump getting the reluctant dindu's of our alliance to offer to consider a meeting to discuss putting together a planning group to propose ways to possibly pony up a few things, I cannot help but note that the historical form of their support took on qualities you might best describe as ghostly or nebulous or transparent or missing altogether and it makes me laugh just as it always has. Sure, the countries that are offering ships to 'help with Hormuz' are finally awake to the danger of US just walking away from the faux alliance but I doubt they will offer anything even remotely like assistance with the problems presented in the Gulf. This is their nature.
Not just by their nature but also by their relentless parsimony and idiotic rules of engagement and meaningless integration, they are each and every one marked by an inability to wage war or anything at all like war. Their warships are as useless in the air threat environment as are our LCS platforms and their minesweeping assets will comport themselves in great comfort in Fujairah or possibly Muscat as they await the opportunity to 'safely' enter the Gulf and commence some serious permanent R&R in Dubai.
Some people imagine that this time will be different, this time they'll do it right. Those people are idiots. Pigs will fly before any working warships from either the West or Japan show up to make a difference. What they will meet to discuss in about 3 months is the possibility of establishing something like their Observer operations in Lebanon or in the Sinai or in xYugoslavia where they sit around and do little or nothing to stop the bad guys from doing things. Their 'mission' in the SOH will probably have a nice set of offices in Dubai and their ships will range the area from Abu Dhabi to Dubai with perhaps a rare sortie to Fujairah or Muscat.
Nobody takes OTAN seriously anymore and this is why.
Well it appears that the drones have finally risen to become masters of all and so now the question is, when do they start to make their appearance here? Drones and explosives are easy and plentiful and this is probably the most target rich environment on the planet with many worthy targets and worthwhile objectives just lying out there supine and ready for the moment. At the moment there is no defense at all.
I don't recall that the Diamond Age started with a bang but I'm willing to bet the next age of civilization does. There is going to be a lot of money for whoever comes up with a surefire drone killer and unleashes it on the market first. I wouldn't be surprised if Elon already has a company up and running and a team of engineers and weapon shops working on a solution already.
Consider the following and wonder at the depth of savvyness and intelligence that combined to put this on display for the whole world to see..
The British government and military knowing that the US was going to launch an attack on Iran decided to take a long nap and think about it before deciding that the best and only course of action was to do nothing and also to drag their last minehunter home and to scrap their last frigate in Bahrain.
The significant lesson this week was that each of NATOs other members just confessed that they have no actual weapons or warships that are up to the task of fending off even a dismal 3rd world air threat. OTAN will not be joining the battle in the Gulf and will not even attempt to furnish escorts for their oil and gas needs coming through the Strait of Hormuz. I guess they think that their needs will be met via the pipeline to Yanbu. Still, it's a day of reckoning and the tally is in:
There have been some rude shocks to the system as we watched Ukraine inflict killing blows on serious warships and the total lack of any meaningful navy efforts in the Black Sea during the war. I do wonder though if the idiots at NAVSEA are now reconsidering the blisteringly stupid and insane idea of buying and building unmanned 'warships.' Show platforms are not worth a penny in a shooting war and now everyone knows it. It would be nice if NAVSEA acknowledged the truth.
Oh, and U-2s? Srsly?
The first U-2 flight was over 70 years ago.
I am enjoying the squeals of outrage as everybody tears into Pete Hegseth and of course President Trump for "failing to see that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz and that of course the USN would have to escort every single ship in and out of the Persian Gulf because...." What makes it so deliciously funny is that not one of those ships everyone is demanding escorts from us, is ours. We don't have US flagged merchant ships racing each other to get in and out of the Persian Gulf. None. Zero. Zilch.
The countries that would be responsible for protecting their own ships are ranked as follows:
Other countries and organizations bleating about escort needs and requirements are entitled to look to their own navies for such things because it is no part of the United States duties to provide escorts for every Tom, Dick and Harry. Let them summon the mighty Royal Navy and of course the fleets or warships from the EU that are just lying around looking good and sunning themselves in the Baltic and Mediterranean. God knows they're not doing anything else right now.
Now Europe, now you see what President Trump was on about when he told you in no uncertain terms to start providing for your own defense needs and stop counting on the United States to do all the work and bear all the expense? Now do you get it?
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| I think Merkel is saying, "not our problem" and Trump is disagreeing. |
Where are the European navies and aircraft so eager to secure the flow of goods to Europe?
Once again the mechanics in Washington have shut down a semi-important part of the government because they have a disagreement that necessitates inconveniencing all the little people so that criminals and other ne'er-do-wells can enjoy the blessings of liberty and free stuff forever at our expense. The ironical part is that the dim party is greatly, nay, hugely concerned that our rights are being trampled by the excesses of the armed minions of the law running amok with all these powers they have always had but that under previous administrations have allowed to lie fallow.
What could possibly make this amusing? Well, because of their concerns and fear of the armed minions of the federal law agencies (ICE, Border Patrol, FBI, ATF, IRS, Fed, Capital Police, etc) they have declined to fund the ONLY UNARMED security force in the government and sent the TSA home without pay......oh wait, they want the unarmed TSA agents to continue to flog and berate and unshoe every airline passenger in America but now they want them to be even more surly and ill-tempered because they're not getting paid to do it.
Well done, Congress!
As I said the last time the clowns shut down the government, make it real, tell every single soul that is not getting paid to stay home and make no exceptions. It's long passed time that this stupid tool get thrown away for good. Yes, I know, under current idiotic arrangements this means nobody could get on a plane but I remember when that wasn't the Fed's job. For all of me, the TSA can stay unfunded forever. I'm not so sure about the Coast Guard but then I haven't seen any of them around here for more than 5 years so I'm not sure what they're doing these days.
The knowing world watches and mocks as the mighty Royal Navy and Great Britain struggle to get ONE SINGLE SHIP underway 12 days after the war started and still the damned thing is unable to leave port. I see they are blaming a contract for port services and maybe saying that they had the wrong 'mission module force package blah blah blah that had to be substituted with a real burly warfighting suite of missile killing deadliness and yeah, I don't believe a word of it. The signs of the Royal Navy's demise were all quite visible long ago. It's not what they say, it's simply that they lack the stuffing required for waging war and are only now starting to realize it.
You can say exactly the same about all of the Britain's pantywaist partners in NATO. Not one single one of them has ponied up a ship or fighter squadron or bomb wing to send off to do something about the sudden and complete dramatic disruption to their oil and gas supplies. NOT ONE OF THE BASTARDS HAS STIRRED.
I have watched as people are concerned that poor Britain is struggling to get a ship underway but that really isn't the real problem. You see, any relevant and serious government would have seen the damage to their economic fortunes by the oil and gas embargo and sortied the entire fleet and sent every other fighter and bomber to the Middle East to squash the Iranians and as we have all noticed, not one of them lifted a finger.
Nobody waging war actually wants their feeble brain damaged assistance but the governments, if they are to have any credibility, must surely be seen as trying to resolve the problem not just viewing things with alarm and preparing demarche for nobody to read.
No, as I said, this is not a NATO issue, this is a National Issue and every nation affected by the issues going on in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea has be asking themselves why aren't they doing anything at all to sort things out?
I think the first wave of European refugees is looking around now and beginning their research; where do they want to settle when they pick themselves up and their families and maybe even their businesses and move lock, stock, and barrel to the United States or Western hemisphere as they start fleeing the dire fate their elites have arranged for them all.
This wave of destruction is now unstoppable. Even if the people wanted and the elected leaders acted it is a sure thing that the courts would scrap every path leading to getting the situation resolved. There is literally nothing Europe can do now short of hitting the street with lots of rope and an abundance of near to hand lamp posts because the judges and courts don't answer to them any more.
So we get to watch the fall of western democracy in Europe as the final tyrants oversee the wholesale ruination of the place just as they have ruined everything else up to this point.
If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed indefinitely, it looks like Europe will have to come to some sort of modus vivendi with Russia and resume buying oil and gas from them and Russia may agree to the sale but only in exchange for the obvious quid pro quo, recognition of Russia's suzerainty of the territories it has taken by force of arms in Ukraine and a 100% termination of all aid and support to Ukraine by every member of the EU. Since things are coming to an end there anyway this may offer all parties a reasonable climb down from the lofty positions they currently find themselves dangling from.
Can you believe that there are a lot of people (100% in the media) who believe that every person that joins the military goes to bed at night quaking in fear that President Trump will send them on a nice little expeditionary war on the far side of the world? I know! What red blooded American serviceman(woman) doesn't join for the opportunity to go off and do something daring for a good purpose such as killing terrorists and ending evil regimes that promote terrorism worldwide?
The Media portray every war as a bad war, a war that didn't have to be fought and as an evil unrivaled on the scale of evil and in this they are joined by every single damned liberal on the planet even though half of them still have "FREE TIBET" bumper stickers on their cars and despite a world of evidence still believe that we can co-exist with evil.
People don't join the combat arms and enlist in the Expeditionary forces because they just wanted to serve 4 years and get the GI Bill. They want to contribute something really meaningful and if they're like their parents and friends and relatives they know that they will meet people and do things that the ordinary people never dream of and they don't look back on the history of our use of force over the last 100 years and see a tragic record filled with epic disasters, they see a country that toppled evil regimes, fought evil enemies, freed millions of people from the idiocy of communist tyranny and they see that the cost was worth it.
Admittedly, they don't see what happens when some guys improvise armor for themselves and they don't see the burns but they also, to a man, think that that sort of thing happens to the other guy. They are young and willing to put it all on the line to see the elephant and then maybe have a story to tell that is worth both the telling and the hearing. It all boils down to the idea of sharing in something greater than they are that is worth doing and when you contrast the likes of them with the likes of antifa and the killjoy liberals protesting against the demons in their own heads then there is no comparison at all.
For decades the ruling belief among some observers was that the Iranians could close up the Strait of Hormuz fairly easily any time they wanted to and it would take concerted military action to reopen the waterway. Oddly enough that hasn't happened this time as it looks like the whole world and heaven too is raining fire on Iran. It makes me wonder what happened so early in the conflict that ruled out this simple and obvious strategic weapon and left it to mere insurance companies to shut down the flow of oil and natural gas to Europe and China.
We used to joke that any ship could be a minesweeper, once. The corollary was that just about any ship could be a mine layer and it doesn't really take all that much in terms of modifications to roll them right off the stern or even pitch them over the side. As a semi-pro mine layer myself I recall that when we were putting out the mine shape we used every day for sonar conditions checks before proceeding into the Mine Danger Area, we made two passes. The first pass was to accurately assess the depth of water and adjust the mine tether so that our shape would float nicely about 20 feet below the surface and the second pass was to drop that whole shebang over the side and then come back around and have a look at it with sonar. On a bad day the great mine shape would be right there floating on the surface floating next to the bright red cherry float that was to mark the spot because somebody screwed something up.
On the other hand the hydro graphic data on the Strait of Hormuz is pretty much nailed down at this point. If the surveys of HMS Beagle in 1789 have not been updated by anyone else I'm pretty sure the Iranians had their own surveyors out getting really accurate charts of the area made for their own purposes. It really isn't all that difficult to to do a bottom survey and gather the data needed to accurately fix the locations for one or two thousand anchored sea mines and it is dead easy to just toss over the mines that lay on the bottom and wait for the right 'influence' to detonate under passing ships. Rocket Rising Mines sounded really delightful when I used to read about their more salient properties.
The best part of mining a Strait that you squat on the rim of, is that you can cover the entire mine field with artillery and use it to take pot shots at any mine clearing activity that doesn't meet with your full approval. It's a sort of Wonsan, Korea on steroids. Dealing with mines, anti-MCM mines and artillery and the usual hazards of navigation (would you believe ignorant merchant ships had to be dodged even while conducting MCM in an active mine field) is straight forward but time consuming.
So what happened to the mines? What happened to the coastal artillery batteries? What happened to the swarms of missile armed speed boats? I mean none of these and not all of these together even slowed down tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq Tanker War and during Praying Mantis it continued on, undaunted so what happened to make the pussies in Lloyd's scrap the insurance scam this time?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Saudis know how to read the future pretty well and saw this coming over 40 years ago and decided to not only build a brand new oil port in Yanbu on the Red Sea, they built pipelines to carry their oil there whenever needed. I don't know if they told the Kuwaitis to pound sand and refused their oil transit across Saudi Arabia or not but it doesn't look like Kuwait can do anything now but shut down. The Qataris managed to piss off just about all the Gulf arab rulers so nobody even thought about letting them build a pipeline out to the Red Sea.
On the gripping hand, nothing easier to blow a hole in then 150 miles of oil pipeline running on the desert's surface smack dab in the middle of a remarkable war zone.
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| First USN led tanker convoy and M/V Bridgeton hit a mine and carried on |
Do the people notice at all anymore that the IAF now routinely flies through the sovereign skies of the Islamic holy land on its way to and from targets in Iraq? They are doing every Gulf Arab’s business and hasten unmolested on their appointed way. Never saw that coming, did you?
It turns out that there is only really one way to deal with pirates and other ferals. Whenever you find yourself questioning how or why the Navy or the Army failed somehow in its duty to destroy the enemy, you need to refresh your understanding of what such destruction entails and how it is gained. It is not for the cowardly or faint of heart because it is ruthless beyond anything we have seen outside the vicious meaningless COVID restrictions. This is the ONLY way. It is not the best way, it is the only way.
George Washington to Major General John Sullivan, 31 May 1779 [Middlebrook, 31 May 1779]
Sir,
The expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the six nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents.1 The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.
A post at Tioga will be particularly necessary—either a stockade Fort or an intrenched camp—if the latter a blockhouse should be erected in the interior. I would recommend that some post in the center of the Indian Country should be occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provision, whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed.
I beg leave to suggest as general rules that ought to govern your operations—to make rather than receive attacks, attended with as much impetuosity, shouting and noise as possible, and to make the troops act in as loose and dispersed a way as is consistent with a proper degree of government concert and mutual support—It should be previously impressed upon the minds of the men wherever they have an opportunity, to rush on with the war hoop and fixed bayonet—Nothing will disconcert and terrify the Indians more than this.
I need not urge the necessity of using every method in your power, to gain intelligence of the enemy’s strength motions and designs; nor need I suggest the extraordinary degree of vigilance and caution which will be necessary to guard against surprises from an adversary so secret desultory & rapid as the Indians.
If a detachment operates on the Mohawk River the commanding Officer should be instructed to be very watchfull that no troops come from Oswegatchie and Niagara to Oswego without his knowledge; and for this purpose he should keep trusty spies at those three places to advertise him instantly of the movement of any party and its force. This detachment should also endeavour to keep up a constant intercourse with the main body.
More than common care will be necessary of your arms and ammunition from the nature of the service—They should be particularly inspected after a rain or the passage of any deep water.
After you have very thoroughly completed the destruction of their settlements; if the Indians should show a disposition for peace, I would have you to encourage it, on condition that they will give some decisive evidence of their sincerity by delivering up some of the principal instigators of their past hostility into our hands—Butler, Brandt, the most mischievous of the tories that have joined them or any other they may have in their power that we are interested to get into ours—They may possibly be engaged, by address, secrecy and stratagem, to surprise the Garrison of Niagara and the shipping on the lakes and put them into our possession. This may be demanded as a condition of our friendship and would be a most important point gained—If they can render a service of this kind you may stipulate to assist them in their distress with supplies of provisions and other articles of which they will stand in need, having regard in the expectations you give them to our real abilities to perform. I have no power at present to authorise you to conclude a treaty of peace with them but you may agree upon the terms of one, letting them know that it must be finally ratified by Congress and giving them every proper assurance that it will. I shall write to Congress on the subject and endeavour to obtain more ample and definitive authority.
But you will not by any means listen to ⟨any⟩ overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected—It is likely enough their fears if they are unable to oppose us, will compel them to offers of peace, or policy may lead them, to endeavour to amuse us in this way to gain time and succour for more effectual opposition. Our future security will be in their inability to injure us the distance to which they are driven and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire ⟨them.⟩ Peace without this would be fallacious and temporary—New presents and an addition of force from the enemy would engage them to break it the first fair opportunity and all the expence of our extensive preparations would be lost. When we have effectually chastised them we may then listen to peace and endeavour to draw further advantages from their fears. But even in this case great caution will be necessary to guard against the snares which their treachery may hold out—They must be explicit in their promises give substantial pledges for their performance and execute their engagements with decision and dispatch. Hostages are the only kind of security to be depended on.
Should Niagara fall into your hands in the manner I have mentioned—you will do every thing in your power for preserving & maintaining it, by establishing a chain of posts, in such manner as shall appear to you most safe and effectual and tending as little to reduce our general force as possible—Th⟨is⟩ however we shall be better able to decide as the future events of the campaign unfold themselves—I shall be more explicit on the subject hereafter.
When you have completed the objects of your expedition, unless otherwise directed in the mean time, you will return to form a junction with the main army by the most convenient expeditious and secure route according to circumstances—The Mohawk river, if it can be done without too great risk, will perhaps be most elegible on several accounts. Much should depend on the relative position of the main army at the time.
As it is impossible to foresee what may be the exigences of the service in this quarter, this united with other important reasons make⟨s⟩ it essential that your operations should be as rapid and that the expedition should be perform⟨ed in as little t⟩ime as will be consistent with ⟨its success and efficacy.
And here I cannot forbear repeating my former caution, that your troops may move as light and as little encumbered as possible even from their first outset—The state of our Magazines demands it as well as other considerations—if much time should be lost in transporting the troops and stores up the river—the provisions for the expedition will be consumed and the general scantiness of our supplies will not permit their being replaced—conse⟨quently⟩ the whole enterprise may be defeated—I would recommend it to you for this purpose that the General Officers should make an actual inspection of the baggage of their several Brigades and absolutely reject to be left behind, at proper places every articles that can be dispensed with on the expedition—This is an extraordinary case and requires extraordinary attention.
Relying perfectly upon your judgment prudence and activity—I have the highest expectation of success equal to our wishes; and I beg leave to assure you, that I anticipate with great pleasure, the honor which will redound to yourself and the advantage to the common cause, from a happy termination of this important enterprise.3 Given at Head Quarters Middle Brook 31st May 1779. ⟨Go: Washington⟩4
Various members of the nomenklatura believe that we can win hearts and minds with civilized restraint and moral behavior. They are wrong, they are always wrong and yet they are always the ones pushing restraints on executing the people's will. As long as the Armed Forces answer to them there can be no victory over savages. We merely splash around in the shallows and wait for the tide to return and wipe away all our foolish little patty cakes and watch as victory once again recedes from our grasp.
Keep in mind those that carp and complain, these were very similar to the orders that Sheridan gave to his army as it devastated the entire Shenandoah Valley. What they practiced in the Shenandoah the Army perfected under Sherman as it marched through Georgia to the sea. The only path to winning the war lay in the utter devastation and ruin of the land and everything on it.
We haven't forgotten how to make war, we just don't do it anymore. Nobody does.....that you know.
It is nothing new and it is what warships were designed for but it doesn't really take into account the burn factor on men. I spent years at wartime steaming in the Persian Gulf and it was easy enough because it basically required us to keep 50% of our weapons manned and ready at all times. This was something the ship's manning document accounted for and the second and third times I did it the ship was actually overmanned per the original manning documents. The first ship, though, was a one year unaccompanied tour and the old man let every single man go on his 365th day +- a day or two based on our location and the expected channel flights out of Bahrain.
The people at the Bureau of Personnel thought he was unreasonable in this regard and for about 4 months we were steaming along, wartime steaming along with about 50% of the required crew because they refused to detail in replacements. We were in Port and Starboard watch sections the whole time but spent a good deal of that time steaming towards Africa and the Indian Ocean not up in the war zone.
It's a little different conducting wartime steaming in a hot war zone under continuous air attack for days on end. If, at Condition III Wartime Steaming, we were attacked, we would go to General Quarters and all hands would man their battle stations which mainly consisted at that point of manning the other weapons and manning the Repair Lockers. The difference is that at General Quarters the ship is closed up and is supposed to stay that way to limit any damage from explosions and there is no sleep, no hot food, and it gets real old very quickly. In other words, you cannot do it forever. You can only do it for a few hours at a stretch and if every break of 10 minutes is followed by another attack, well, you can see the problem. The last time we really did anything like this was OIF.
I read that the USS George Washington has withdrawn from the Persian Gulf after almost a week of nonstop combat operations. I'm kind of surprised she stayed as long as she did. Back in the day it would not have been necessary since 100% of Iran could be struck by carrier aircraft operating in the North Arabian Sea. The days of long range carrier aviation and fighter bombers with legs is long gone but their loss imposes some real hardships on those waging war in close to hostile shores. Of course, we've known that since we started the carrier aviation business.
I'd be interested in seeing a film of the work of the DDGs in continuous action for weeks. A documentary of the crew doing its thing for a week in the Persian Gulf under continuous air attack. I don't think we will since accommodation and time is at a real premium in situations like that but I expect to see something about life on a carrier during long duration in-close combat operations.
I see that one of our submarines sank one of Iran's last remaining warships somewhere off the coast of Ceylon. It struck me as somewhat amusing because I was thinking back to my days on ships and how we dealt with trash and garbage is very different from how our Fleets do it today. Back then we bagged it and threw it off the fantail. No weights, no provisions for it to sink, we just left a trail of floating trashbags behind as we proceeded. No, we didn't dump it continuously, just every time we held sweepers or the mess decks master at arms got tired of loafers and ordered the garbage dumped. We left a trail of bread crumbs.
Imagine you're on a submarine and you have oodles of ways to positively identify your target using acoustic, electronic and visual means but just to be sure, you pull up to one of those bags of trash and read the mail there and find out that your target is indeed the enemy ship you were looking for. Target ID is a foregone conclusion at that point and its weapons free!
UPDATE:
Speaking of huge navies, now is a chance for them all to shine. It appears some countries need that Gulf oil pretty badly. I guess it’s time to pony up the missile ships and send them along to Ras Tanura and start escorting their tankers in and out of the Gulf. Some countries are about to learn that there is no substitute for a full blown destroyer escort and poky little patrol boats are not even in the same league as ships that can defend not only themselves but also those convoying with them. Yeah OTAN we’re looking at you and you too Japan, China and Korea. We’d do it but we really don’t need the oil and we’re beyond caring about parasites.
I no longer play the game but I am curious to know if the players out there are still ramping up their own games to play the way the cool kids play today. Back when I did play the buzzwords were Total Quality Management, Total Quality Leadership, Lean 6 Sigma, Black Belt and anything by Deming was regarded as writ from God. Prior to that we played by a system I understood pretty well which was simply called incremental progress. We'd get better every day simply by doing better every day. In every approach though there was always one point that seemed to be missed by the inspectors, what if there is no more room for improvement? Is that when you argue about what color it should be?
There are now a couple of very successful innovators out there who are making massively good products and I'm curious how they tool up, train, and operate their production lines because an organization that can build the most popular selling car, the best reusable rocket ships, the very best satellite internet systems and transceivers almost certainly knows how to get the most out of effort and capital. Are there books written by the people who actually built that stuff? Are people using it to build chip factories in America? Has someone applied it to how to streamline the law and compliance with building for industry?
If it is a teachable skill, is anyone teaching it? Are their college courses that cover it on both an approach and practical means of engineering and business? I suppose it might be time to read Eric Berger's books on Liftoff and Reentry. I don't see how if one is involved in building production facilities and capabilities, it could be possible to skip over Musk's accomplishments in this field.
