Stop Being World Police?

You here it a lot now.  In fact you've heard a lot over the last 20 years.  The US should stop playing 'World Police' and intervening in every problem.  Only one problem with that.  The US hasn't been playing 'World Police' over the last 20 years and only has intervened a few times.  Though I don't expect many here in the US to understand this.  The amount of information about what's happening in the rest of the world rarely gets to the average American.  They don't hear about most of the conflicts happening around to world, except in passing.  And they rarely hear about UN and other Peacekeeping missions when something goes horribly wrong. 

Will stating this on another blog someone responded with a Wikipedia Link about US Military Operations.  It's interesting to look at all the interventions over the last 20 years.  If you take out Iraq and the problems the US have had there over the last 20 years, peacekeeping and military operations in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia (which I consider on Meta-Problem) and the Invasion of Afghanistan (a response to a direct attack by an organization that was deeply involved with the ruling Taliban) the US really hasn't done much in the way of 'Intervention'.  In fact most of the military operations were aimed at non-intervention.  Most involved the evacuation of US citizens, reinforcing US embassies or giving limited support to other nations intervening.  There are the cases when the US either bombed or launched cruise missiles at a group or country.  Though wouldn't those be examples of the US trying to do everything BUT intervene with ground forces?  Kind of like a Cop getting a call of a robbery-in-progress, driving up to the location, firing random shots into the building, then driving off to go get coffee w/o going in and seeing if he hit anything.  And when the US does intervene they do it for a very short time and immediately look for someone else to take over the mission.  Not exactly a sterling example of leadership. 

The US is now trying to get Uganda to send more troops into Somalia, so the US doesn't have to get involved.  There is already 7,000 AU troops there, but the most they can do is hold between  1/3 to 1/2 of Mogadishu at any given time.  This isn't the first time the US has asked a Somali neighbor to intervene.  Somalia was invaded twice by Ethiopia in the last 5 years. 

Americans, even those who do want to do more globally, live in a fantasy world were 600 US Soldiers or Marines is a 'major commitment'.  Instead 5 times that many is nothing more then an empty show of force.  Technology simply doesn't give the US enough leverage to make up the difference.  Especially when the US insists on deploying inadequately equipped Light Infantry forces.  On top of this is the insane notion of deploying said under-sized and under-equipped can accomplish even the most complex tasks in less then 6 months.  Nor does the 'full might' of the US Air Force or Navy have any impact on the majority of military missions.  They usually are nothing other then transport.  Something the USAF in particular loaths to do (because the longer they can keep ground forces away the more sorties they can fly, thus legitamizing there 'budget share').

I'm not say the US has to litterally intervene in every circumstance.  But you can't complain about others cutting back their forces, of 'not doing enough' when you yourself expect a place of privedge and expect to tell others what to do and how to do it.  All while cutting back your own forces and cherrypicking the missions you actually do.  Especially when you're ignorant of what is going on in the rest of the world.   

Sink or Swim time for EFV...

A lot of stuff about the EFV recently.

I've never liked the EFV.  It's too big, drinks too much fuel, is too complex and will cost way too much.  But the Marine Corps has backed itself into a corner.  Either replace the AAVP7A1 or be non-mission capable.

The simple fact is without some kind of Amphibious Assault Vehicle the Marines can't put troops ashore.  Landing craft and Air Assault is simply too risky because the platforms are too vulnerable to enemy fire.  For their lift capacity landing craft take up more room on Landing Ships while delivering less to the beach.  And they have to make multiple trips, slowing down the landing operations.  The number of helicopters an amphibious force can carry limits the amount of troops that can be landed as well.  And there is no margin for error or margin for loses.  And Air Assault troops are too lightly equipped, lack staying power and too immobile on the modern battlefield.  Their lack of ground mobility becomes a huge issue when you take in account the fact that you need to land in a LZ that is far away from enemy forces.  Once you land in a safe LZ you can only move slowly toward your objective and even the slightest resistance will being the assaulting force to a dead stop.

The Marines need to grow up.  They need enough EFVs and MPCs (a Stryker-like APC under development) to mechanize and motorize their entire force.  No ifs, ands or buts.  No matter how much some people want it there is no going back to pre-1914.  They also need to realized that landing one-company-at-a-time isn't good enough.  The idea that you only need a few hundred, or even a few thousand troops to carry out even the most basic of military missions should be dispelled.  Likewise you can't get away with light-weight, ineffective, unprotected force that lacks firepower and staying power.  No matter how close you are to the beach.  TF Ranger was stranded within 5 miles of the surf zone. 

Sorry, but SpecFor ISN'T winning the Afghan War...

A Washington Post Op-Ed tries to spread some 'good news' about the War in Afghanistan. 

Success in Afghanistan is beginning to come in the first muddy trickles after a long drought.

Small groups of Taliban fighters -- sometimes a dozen with a leader -- are approaching local Afghan government officials, asking what kind of deal they might get. "First, they want to be taken off any list, so they are not targeted," explains a NATO official in Afghanistan. "Second, they want protection from the insurgency. Third, some kind of economic opportunity."
In counterinsurgency doctrine, this is known as "reintegration." The official admits it is "spotty" in Afghanistan but spreading in all regions. "It is happening in small numbers -- drip, drip, drip. It has not yet changed the battle space. . . . It is not a tipping point, at this point." The goal is to push these numbers much higher, with more insurgents driven to negotiation and exhaustion, so they "put down their weapons and go home."

 Sounds good, but you always have to we wary of happy-talk.  And you always have to worry about simpletons jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Eighteen months ago, Afghan insurgents had the morale that comes from momentum. But the surge in NATO operations, particularly Special Operations, has started to change the psychological battlefield. Special Forces now go after eight to 10 major objectives each night -- perhaps three-quarters of these raids result in the death or capture of an insurgent leader. Two Taliban shadow governors -- a key position in the leadership structure -- were killed in the last week. Such roles are quickly refilled, but replacements tend to be less seasoned and more frightened.
"We hear a lot of chatter," says the official, "from networks inside of Afghanistan." Some fighters don't feel "a moment of peace. They can't sleep. They keep moving all the time. They can't plan attacks because they are planning to survive." And this is opening up a "real rift" with Taliban "bosses leading from the relative comfort of Pakistan." While some units are well supplied, others are "not supplied, not paid, but told to keep fighting."

Lets say it is happening.  Why?  It's not because of SOF troops like the Rambo-loving author would like people to believe.  First, SOF can't operate without security.  That security is provided by the conventional forces in-country.  The T-ban/AQ fighters feel constricted because of the patrols and security provided by the conventional forces.  Day in and day out.  While I'm sure the SOF raids help, the fact is it's conventional forces grinding down the enemy's ability to fight, disrupting their communications and logistics.

In Somalia TF Ranger was only able to operate because it had conventional forces to protects it's base.  And those conventional forces were the ones who ended up rescuing them.  At the beginning of the Afghan War it was large numbers of Northern Alliance troops that filled this role.  When that force began to break down and wasn't replaced adequately or in a timely fashion is when the war started going against us.  Because SOF troops, even with all the Air Power and PGMs in the world just aren't a substitute for competent, capable ground forces deployed in sufficient numbers.  In the Iraq Invasion those SOF troops that succeeded were enabled by the conventional force.  Those that failed (and there were plenty of failures) were forced to withdraw to the safety that only the massed conventional forces only the ground could provided.

Some Question UAV Othodoxy...

Uncertainty, Challenges Mark Future For Military’s Unpiloted Aircraft over at NDM.

First there is the question about survivability if the US Forces must face an enemy with a working Air Force or air defenses.

Unmanned aerial systems have enjoyed a coming-out party in war zones. Their use in Iraq and Afghanistan has shown that they are invaluable in uncontested airspace. But questions remain about how the current generation of U.S. drones would fair in unfriendly skies.

At a recent industry conference, Air Force Lt. Col. Steven Tanner made a gun with his fingers and impersonated the sound of planes being shot down.

“If we went to a North Korea scenario right now and put a bunch of Predators and Reapers in the air, you better bring the replacements because they’d be falling out of the sky,” said Tanner, doctrine division chief of the Joint UAS Center of Excellence at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

“The UAS honeymoon is over,” he said.

There there are the security and command and control issues...

“It does not meet my definition of a weapons system,” said Air Force Gen. Roger A. Brady, who at a conference in July all but dared a crowd of UAS enthusiasts to prove him wrong. “If I see an F-16, that’s a weapons system. You know where it is, you know where all the electrons are going, you know what’s happening, you know who’s responsible. There’s a program manager that you can call and yell at. There are operators. There’s a command chain.”

It doesn’t work that way for a UAS, said the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe. A signal from an aircraft is sent to a satellite, “then a million miracles happen along optical links and it ends up in Las Vegas. I’m not even confident we’ve mapped that whole thing. And by the way, it goes through commercial links.”

Those links are largely outsourced and lack central oversight. The “net” can easily be disrupted. “Sometimes it’s because we stumble over extension chords and sometimes it’s because somebody is messing with us,” Brady explained. “Why would an enemy try to directly oppose a multi-million dollar aircraft when he can disrupt it or strip away its advantage by using $30 of pieces and parts from Radio Shack or off the Internet?”

Brady was referring to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan who have used inexpensive software programs to intercept video feeds from U.S. drones. And while the insurgency doesn’t employ an air force, the statistics weren’t pretty the last time the United States flew unmanned planes in contested air space. The NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999 lasted two months. During that time, two U.S. jet fighters were shot down. The United States also lost 15 drones. The entire conflict saw the loss of about 50 unmanned aircraft belonging to allied forces. Current potential adversaries have improved their tactics for countering remotely controlled planes, experts said.

“Our adversaries have UASs,” Tanner said. “Our adversaries know what our vulnerabilities are. Our adversaries can see our pictures.” At a conference in Israel two years ago, Tanner met a computer hacker who breaks into terrorist websites. The man handed him a disc containing al-Qaida documents on how to counter the Predator and Hellfire missiles.

“That was two years ago,” Tanner said. “What’s out there in the street today?”

Then there is the notion that UAVs are automatically cheaper and easier to use...

An assumption persists that flying unmanned systems saves resources. Some military leaders have begun questioning that notion. Savings associated with a UAS depends on the type of vehicle. A handheld system can be operated on less money than a piloted plane. But cost grows exponentially for those that fly beyond the line of sight and carry an array of sensors, weapons and defense systems, Brady said.

The Army’s hand-launched Raven is advertised at $35,000 per vehicle or $250,000 for an entire system. An Air Force fact sheet lists at $20 million a Predator system that includes four aircraft with sensors. The closest manned comparison is the $23 million MC-12, which comes with a slew of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) equipment and requires two pilots and two sensor operators. A Global Hawk can cost between $38 million and $103 million depending on the model and capabilities. The prices of next-generation unmanned aircraft may equal those of fifth-generation fighter jets, Brady said.

But the expense of a UAS doesn’t stop with the purchase, he warned.

“There is nothing unmanned about an unmanned aerial system,” he said.

The support tail for an unmanned system can meet and exceed that of a piloted plane. The ratio of crew members to UAS can approach 10 to one, Brady noted. The same ratio for an MC-12 is five to one. Fighter jets require two crew members at most and usually just one pilot. As the Pentagon looks for savings, the hidden costs of operating unmanned aircraft must be brought to the forefront, Brady said.

“Manpower costs are ultimately more challenging for restricted defense budgets than the systems they operate,” he said.

As much as UAV proponents like to talk about their theoretical savings and utility it still has yet to be PROVEN. 

The Cost of the Endless Development Cycle

Back in 1990 the Department of Defense under Dick Cheney made a decision.  It greatly cut back Procurement (the purchasing of equipment) and started poring that money into R&D.  This wasn't the first time it had happened.  The DoD (and Army in particular) started poring money into development programs as the War in Vietnam was winding down in the early 70s.  And by the early-80s that money was then diverted into purchasing en masse the equipment developed in that time period (F-14/15/16/18, M1/M2/M3, MLRS, AH-64, etc).  The difference between the R&D boost in the early-70s and that ni the early-90s is that for the last 20 years the DoD has pored Hundreds of billions of dollars into R&D programs and has gotten very little out of it. 

You can try to blame the Clinton-Era defense spending cuts, but the DoD purposely targeted Personnel and Procurement to keep R&D spending high.  Kind of strange how most Programs were cancelled right when they would transition from development to production, isn't it?  That wasn't by chance.  The Defense Industry found out that the 'endless development cycle' was much more profitable and carried far less liability then having to actually produce anything.  Now the US military is suffering the consequences.  It has older, heavily used equipment and the now-cancelled programs meant to replace them were nothing more the BS and Hype.

Over at National Defense Magazine they touch on the problem...

That tech-happy zeitgeist is from an era that now seems long gone. Ten years of grinding counterinsurgency wars, big-ticket research programs that failed to deliver combat-ready products and a rapidly rising national debt have transformed the mindset of what it means to design cutting-edge weapons.

It’s not as if the military doesn’t need innovation. Commanders for years have been asking for new and improved technology to combat roadside bombs and to find wily enemies who hide in bunkers. They also are seeking smarter munitions that hit targets precisely without killing innocent bystanders.

The Army, Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy also are saddled with aging fleets of ground vehicles, aircraft and ships that have been kept in service far longer than planned and ought to be replaced sooner, rather than later, officials say.

The defense budget has doubled since 9/11, and yet much of the military’s hardware has not been modernized in decades. Many of the next-generation programs that the Pentagon has funded in its nearly $80 billion a year research-and-development budget have failed to produce new hardware, at least in large enough quantities to rebuild the fleet. By most accounts, the problem has not been lack of money, but the failure of the Pentagon’s bureaucracies to turn promising concepts into equipment that troops find useful.

Symbols of an era of vibrant spending but stagnant modernization include the Army’s Future Combat Systems, the Navy’s DDG-1000 destroyer and the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. All three programs were technologically ambitious but ill suited to a time when there is decreasing tolerance for decades-long development cycles and spiraling costs.

For two decades the US Military has wasted considerable amounts of money on weapon systems that were based on extravagant claims but will never see the light of day.  Some of them, like the RAH-66, Future Cavalry Scout, M8 Ridgeway AGS, EFOG-M and EFV might be useful dispite the "Cold War Dinosaur" label.  Others, like the F-35, Crusader Gun System, DD-1000 and Excalibur PGM would (or will) have some utility, but would have been or will be extremely costly.  Others, like the True-Legacy-Thinking Cold War Dinosaur Future Combat System, defective and underachieving Osprey, the LOSAT Kinetic Energy Missile and 'Land Warrior' will never by anything but useless, pointless money pits.  Will the GCV be any different?  Ask me again in 15 years when the first one actually makes it to a combat unit.

How many Security 'Contractors' in the 'Stan?

Well, in this article about lewd and deviant behavior committed by security guards for the US Embassy in Kabal.

The charges come as the number of contractors in Afghanistan eclipses the number of American troops deployed there. The Congressional Research Service reported Tuesday that there are roughly 68,200 contractors in Afghanistan, representing 57 percent of all American personnel there.
"This apparently [represents] the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by DoD in any conflict in the history of the United States," the CRS report said.
As of March, when CRS assessed the data, there were about 57,000 American troops in Afghanistan, but by fall there should be about 68,000.

So the US is paying a lot of money for sub-standard 'contractors' that actually outnumber US troops on the ground.  This is what it looks like when you go for phony 'efficency' rather than effectiveness.

Marines Choose Death Over Proper Equipment...

Over at Wired.com there is an article talking about the USMC deciding to stick with Humvees even thought they've proven to be inadequate in modern combat situations.  Does that mean the Marines choose lighter, cheaper Humvees because they choose not to fight anymore?  Or do they just don't care if Marine Units are less then fully combat capable or do they just not care if Marines are maimed and killed? 

The irony is that the Marines don't want to spend the money to replace all their armored Humvees with better vehicles, but they have the stupid, expensive idea of building Flying Humvees.  I'm starting to think that HQMC if full of hashish-heads. 

Then again, maybe they really don't care if Marines live or die.  At NDM there is an article about the robotic rover the Marines are building to support light infantry troops. 

As for the Marine Corps, it has been lagging behind its peers in the use of robotics because until recently it hadn’t figured out what it wanted to do with the technology. Marines are flying unmanned aircraft as surveillance tools. Now officials want to employ ground robots as a means to reduce casualties from roadside bombs and to lighten the loads on troops.

So basically the Marines are developing this because they need something 'robotic'.  And how is some very small, complete unprotected vehicle going to protect them from roadside bombs?  Oh yeah, so the Marines have a small rover to carry equipment so they can walk slowly around the battlefield because if you just move slow enough maybe the enemy will be able to get away instead of fight.  And thus you can avoid any PR-problem casualties. 

Every minute that a marine has to spend operating the robot is a minute that he is not an active member of the 13-marine squad. Andrew Culhane, director of business development at TORC, said the company is working to upgrade vehicle autonomy and navigation capabilities to allow GUSS to operate more like the 14th member of the squad.

Johns reported that the MAARS tracked vehicle was utilized for security and surveillance purposes because it had better sensors for looking at distant objects and because it was quieter than GUSS.

Vince Goulding, director of the experiments division at the warfighting lab, said that autonomous ground vehicles are coming, whether they’re carrying a machine gun or an injured marine, or whether they take the form of a 7-ton truck moving supplies. “We’re looking to do all those things,” he said. “We just want to keep minds open to develop the [tactics, techniques and procedures] we need to have down before we put these things out into the operating forces. And that’s what experimentation is all about.”

Unfortunately a single squad on a patrol will find itself less effective because someone has to stay with the rover.  You can't just leave you're gear behind to be stolen, vandalized or booby trapped.  What is the point of carrying a heavy weapon on a vehicle that you can't fire it from?  And who goes with the wounded Marine?  Are you just going to send one of your buddies back to the BAS with nothing more then an unarmored Rover as his escort? 

So why not a dedicated vehicle properly armed to support the dismounted Marines?  Because Marines are a renewable resource.  The more that get maimed and killed the more seem to rush to enlist.  No reason for the Marines to properly equip itself to fight in current and future conflicts.  Basically the Marines have learned nothing from the failure of the armored Humvees.  Not only that but those running the Marine Corps are so simpleminded and so forgetful they don't remember that their unarmored Humvees were EVEN A BIGGER failure.  And they are willing to repeat it in the name of 'robotics'. 

More Troops, less Out-Sourcing...

For two decades the US Military in general and the Army specifically have practiced the false-economy of 'troop level reductions'.  The only thing we've got from in is soaring per-service member costs, too few troops and too many incompetent contractors.

If it wasn't bad enough that Northern Alliance troops all but let Osama Bin Laden and countless high level Al Qaida and Taliban slip through there fingers in Afghanistan late 2001 and early 2002.  It wasn't bad enough to have Blackwater running around Iraq doing Allah-knows-what to the civilians and pissing a lot of them off (all while making big bucks).  Now there was a Senate probe into contractors in Afghanistan and guess what?  The US paid them a lot of money and got taken.

Five Shocking Findings of the Afghan Contractor Probe

(Oct. 8) -- A wide-ranging review of contracts given to private security operations in Afghanistan found an egregious lack of oversight, including one case where a company paid warlords linked to the Taliban. But that's not all.

The inquiry, conducted by the Senate Armed Services Committee, covers over 125 security contracts in Afghanistan, and the resulting 89-page report provides a wealth of information about a business rife with mishaps and misdeeds.

Among the most outrageous cases were:

1. Junk Weapons. The Senate report found repeated instances where Afghan guards were poorly equipped for security duties, or not equipped at all. The companies involved often appeared to be well-aware of these problems, describing the issues in graphic details. One company's site security manager acknowledged that his company was working with substandard weapons, writing: "I mean, I could shoot out to 1,000 yards myself, and I could barely hit the broad side of the barn with some of these weapons that we had."

2. No Weapons. In some cases, Afghan guards simply didn't have weapons, or engaged in a version of musical chairs with a limited supply of guns. In one audit of a contract to provide security at an unnamed forward operating base in Zabul, auditors found the company had provided only 10 weapons "that they rotate around." On another contract, for security at the Adraskan National Training Center, the contractor "failed to provide working weapons to the members of its guard force," the Senate report found. The company resorted to borrowing weapons from a "local strongman."

3. Drugs and Crime. The report details cases of Afghan guards using and selling drugs, as well as other crimes, like stealing and selling fuel from the bases they are supposed to protect. "Pretty much everyone knows the security contractors routinely use drugs and work their posts while high on drugs," one Marine said of guards working under one contract.

4. No Training

. In Ghazni province, investigators looked at a contract to provide convoy security and found that only $40 per guard had been allocated for training for the entire year. Not surprisingly, an audit found there wasn't enough ammunition to allow the guards to train adequately. In June 2009, the same company allowed 40 untrained guards to go on patrol with a convoy, which was then ambushed by over 100 insurgents. Such problems were found in other contracts as well. In one contract for security in e Farah province, a report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service found untrained guards, including one who "the last time he fired a rifle was in the late 1980s when the Russians occupied Afghanistan."

5. Aligned With the Taliban. The report cites numerous instances where contracts may have indirectly funneled money to the Taliban, or employed guards sympathetic or aligned with the Taliban. In one contract for security in Nangarhar Province, an Afghan security guard was discovered to be "spreading Taliban propaganda" at the base. The same guard was also selling "opium and drugs," the audit found. The guard was subsequently fired.

So, when is enough going to be enough?  When will the military address it's personnel problem, including the lack of the personnel the OBVIOUSLY NEED.  When will they address the personnel cost problem by doing something other then CUT, CUT, CUT!

Afghanistan and Iraq is costing so much because of a few things.  One, over-reliance on the Air Force in general and hyper-expensive PGMs delivered by them (and the Navy).  Relying on cost-ineffective PGMs for most ground-based fire support (and with the NLOS-LS it will only get worse).  Relying on Guard and Reserve forces.  They are only 'cost effective' when they aren't mobilized.  Over-reliance on contractors who do little then shamelessly profiteer off a personnel-adverse, risk-adverse military.  Over-reliance on supposedly 'cheap' but ineffective and easily damaged ground vehicles who's 'durability and maintainability' is based on very limited usage in training environments.  And last but not least, the inability for the last twenty years to keep personnel costs in check or keeping a more balanced end strength (E-4s and below made up about 25% of soldiers in the Army in 1989, now its less then 20%).

Why They Can Get Away with Murder...

Military 'Justice' is a frigging joke.  I've already mentioned the group of soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division who are accused of killing civilians for sport in Afghanistan.  I also mentioned the problems with the UCMJ.  Now we get to see it.  Over at Military.com they have an article about one of the soldiers who has now been recommended for trial for one of the killings.  So he's going to go to Courts Martial, right?  Not until the military legal system asks his brigade commander Mother-May-I.

Col. Thomas Molloy found that Spc. Jeremy Morlock should be held accountable for any actions he might have committed. Molloy noted that Morlock was viewed by fellow Soldiers "as an effective, reliable, engaged team leader," rather than the picture painted by defense attorneys of a prescription drug-impaired Soldier who was bullied by his squad leader.
Molloy's recommendation this week does not guarantee that Morlock will go to court-martial, where he could face the death penalty. That decision is up to Col. Barry Huggins, commander of the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and it is expected within the next few weeks.
"A final decision has not been made," said Maj. Kathleen Turner, an Army spokeswoman at Lewis-McChord.

Though that isn't the only charge against him...

Morlock also is accused of violating a general order by keeping pictures of Afghan casualties, assaulting a fellow Soldier and using hashish while deployed. Molloy determined that there was enough evidence to put Morlock on trial for those charges, as well.

The problem with the process is that the Military Legal System relies far too much on the individual's chain of command, which IS NOT full of people legally qualified nor capable of criminal investigations.  And criminal investigations usually don't happen unless 1) the weak, under-qualified Chain of Command recommends one or 2) MPs or some outside authority somehow accidentally stumbles on it.  In this case it was the latter.  Even though a father of one of the soldiers tried to WARN the Army repeatedly, but the Army did everything it could to ignore him. 

Basically there is nothing uniform about how the Uniform Code of Military Justice is carried out.  It is a defective and antiquated system.  It shouldn't be up to individual units to 'do the right thing'.  It would be like giving employers veto power over criminal cases against their works in the civilian world.  And no one would think of doing that.  All crime should be reported to the MPs and handled by a qualified authority.

UAVs not Labor Intensive?

You know, going back 7 or 8 years I can remember being told repeatedly that UAVs were the 'way of the future' because they would be cheap, easy to operate and little to no maintenance.  Well, the Reaper, a updated and armed version of the Predator costs nearly $14mil.  The GlobalHawk comes in between $51mil to $80mil.  And that's the cost the AF is willing to say online.  And here the Chief-of-Staff of the AF admits that UAVs are indeed labor intensive.

Schwartz noted that the Air Force has surged its RPA capacity nearly tenfold over the past decade. More than 4,000 airmen have been reassigned from other occupations to operate and support these aircraft. Running RPA operations is so labor intensive that each “orbit” of aircraft requires 120 personnel per 24-hour shift. “We have adapted to this fight pretty spectacularly,” said Schwartz.

 

Schwartz framed the issue as one of “strategic” versus “tactical.”

The Army, he said, “operates RPA platforms in a tactical mode: close in, with relatively small platforms.” The Air Force flies larger, more advanced aircraft in strategic missions, he said. This requires a higher level of skill and responsibility that justifies having only officers at the controls. Although he noted that some enlisted airmen have been trained to fly the Army’s smaller RPAs.

Then again, what should you expect from the It's-all-about-Me USAF?Though that's not my only problem with the article.  Gen. Schwartz makes the AF's use of UAVs sound more grand by throwing out 'strategic' vs Army 'tactical'.  You want to know why UAVs are circling over head but not letting the troop on the ground have any information?  Because the AF is special.  They are 'strategic' and thus above lessing 'tactical' beings and their menial 'tactical' concerns (or even operational ones apparently).  It also justifying Officer pay for their UAV operators at a time when all the services need to be looking at ways to cut Personnel costs (preferrably without blindly cutting personnel). 

Iraq War was good for Afghan War?

There is only one way I'm able to put my opinion Christopher Hitches' view on the Iraq and Afghan Wars.  The man is a dumb fuck.  In an article over at Slate back in July of 2008 he makes a dimwitted and tired argument that fighting the Iraq War was good for the Afghan War and that people should stop saying the Iraq War hurt the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.  It did.  The reason we've had to dump more and more resources into Afghanistan over the last 7 years, seven years after we supposedly 'won' is because those resources were withheld to fight in Iraq.  The desire to attack Iraq and to attack it sooner rather then latter put HUGE limitations on the amount of resources we were able to put into Afghanistan. 

1. Many of the al-Qaida forces—most notably the horrific but now deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—made their way to Iraq in the first place only after being forcibly evicted from Afghanistan. Thus, if one did not want to be confronting Bin Laden fans in Mesopotamia, it was surely a mistake to invade Afghanistan rather than Iraq.
2. The American presence in Afghanistan is not at all "unilateral"; it meets every liberal criterion of being formally underwritten and endorsed and armed and reinforced by our NATO and U.N. allies. Indeed, the commander of the anti-Taliban forces is usually not even an American. Yet it is in these circumstances that more American casualties—and not just American ones—are being experienced than are being suffered in Iraq. If this is so, the reason cannot simply be that our resources are being deployed elsewhere.
3. Many of the most successful drives against the Taliban have been conducted by American forces redeployed from Iraq, in particular from Anbar province. But these military victories are the result of counterinsurgent tactics and strategies that were learned in Iraq and that have been applied triumphantly in Afghanistan.

Let's address Point 1 first.  Zarqawa and other AQ-types didn't 'feel after eviction' in Afghanistan, they were allowed to live and fight another day because of the lack of US troops sent to Afghanistan in the first place.  Why the lack of troops?  Because Rumsfeld was saving US ground forces for the invasion of Iraq.

Point 2, not sure what his complaint is.  I think he was stuck with just two weak 'points' so he made up a third and stuck it in the middle so no one would notice.

Point 3, US forces are still fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, 9 years later for the reason I already stated.  We didn't get it right the first time.  And the Taliban forces we've fought likewise have learned a lot because of experience in Iraq.  They've used that experience to kill US and NATO troops with far too much success for my liking. 

Fleet Week

USS Makin Island is taking some Marines to San Francisco for this year's Fleet Week.

I remember going to Fleet Week in SF back 1999.  Those were the best four days I spent in the Marines.  The trip up and back to San Diego on ship wasn't too bad. 

The worst part was the night I got back to Twenty-nine Palms there was a 7.1 earthquake.  I woke up and thought the ship was sinking.  Imagine my suprise when I realized I was not longer on ship!

Stryker: Hell on Wheels

I found what is an absolute gem for the anti-Stryker crowd.   As you might be able to tell by the M8 Ridgeway AGS at the top of my blog I'm not exactly anti-partisan myself.

Too much stuff to quote.  But I find it funny that all the 'negatives' are backed up with facts or stats, where as the few 'positives' are usually anecdotal in nature and don't have hard facts to back them up.  But the Stryker is far from the 'maintenance free' vehicle that we are always told it is.  One point the article doesn't touch on is addition fuel consumption.  And it was done before the first Stryker Brigades when to Afghanistan.

Transformational Logistics within the IBCT Monograph.

You never know what you're going to find when you do an internet search.  And I don't even remember what I was originally looking for.  But what I found is a pdf doc called Transformational Logistics within the Infantry BCT.

It's a bit long (and it's about logistics) but it points out the historic problem with supplying the Army, particularly in the "last 1,000 meters" as the author likes to say.  It also touches on the shell game of pooling assets that create theoretical efficiency at a cost to effectiveness.  Mostly it talks about the problems specifically with the logistics of the current (Light) Infantry Brigade Combat Teams regarding the lack of transportation assets, insufficient labor force and lack of material handling equipment to properly support these units when deployed. 

I thought it was interesting.  But there is no accounting for taste.

Tired of the Air Force

The latest blog entry over a National Defense Magazine is about Air Power Blues: Changing Roles for U.S. Air Force Spark Emotional Debate. 

But such rhetoric has certainly stirred anxiety among retired generals, corporate executives from top defense contractors and pundits who see this shift in posture as a dangerous sign that the United States is giving up on air-warfare dominance.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates — cast as the villain who is robbing the Air Force to pay the Army — has repeatedly dismissed criticism that he is undermining U.S. air power. What he is doing, Gates said, is rebalancing resources to bolster ground-warfare capabilities that for a long time have been neglected.

The air power crowd is not buying it, though. The Air Force’s recently retired deputy chief for intelligence Lt. Gen. David Deptula has forewarned that the United States has a “geriatric Air Force” and is losing its air power edge vis-à-vis China and Russia. “For the first time, our claim to air supremacy is in jeopardy,” Deptula said at the Air Force Association’s convention.

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., former deputy Judge Advocate General, also has echoed Deptula’s concerns and has publicly slammed the news media’s glowing portraits of Gates as a reformer who has not specifically explained why the Air Force "bugs" him so much. “On his watch the service has declined markedly in size, reputation, and combat power,” Dunlap wrote in The First Defense blog.

Deptula and others also have been fretting about how the Air Force will fare in the Pentagon’s budget wars. Although the Air Force has seen a rising budget in recent years, they worry that in a zero-sum funding environment, combat aviation will be vulnerable. As proof, critics cite the Air Force leadership dithering on how to go about developing new “long-range strike” systems to replace aging bombers.

You know what?  I'm tired of the Air Force.  Since the end of WW2 they've basically ran the DoD and got there way.  And now they are no longer the spoiled favorate child of the DoD they are throwing a fit.  They don't realized that they are becoming marginalized because they haven't came through as promised.  And they never will because they are stuck in the past. 

They are stuck in World War One, where ground combat is totally futile, naval arms races are cost-prohibitive and and mass firepower is the first, best way to win.  This was only fueled by the atomic bombing of Hirshima and Nagasaki rather than invading the Japanese home islands.  They honestly believe it was them and them alone that won the war. 

They have never been team-players, always off runinng there own, seperate 'air war' not caring if what they want to do is want needs to be done to actually win the conflict.  Their hubris is such that they honestly believe they and they alone can win any and every conflict all by themselves.  And they continue believing that no matter how many times they fail.  And they've done everything they can to hamstring, undercut and outright backstab the other services for far too long. 

The Cost of Overseas Stationing...

The Army Times writes about a GAO report on how expensive it will be to keep two additional brigades in Europe.  Two Billion Dollars!!!

GAO: Brigades in Europe cost billions

By Jim Tice - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Sep 29, 2010 18:24:24 EDT

The Army can expect to be hit with a bill of up to $2 billion in extra costs over the next 10 years should it decide to retain four, rather than two, combat brigades in Europe, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO report, issued Sept. 13, comes two months in advance of a NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal, and an assessment of a U.S. Army Europe basing plan proposed by the Pentagon in February as part of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.
The QDR proposal calls for four units to stay in Europe for the long term: The 170th and 172nd Infantry Brigade Combat Teams and the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team would remain in Germany; the fourth unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, would remain in northern Italy.

Oh my god!!!  Billions wasted!!!  Two Billion over 10 years!!!  Wait, up to $2 Billion?  And spread over 10 years?  For a military that's going to spend something between $5 Trillion and $10 Trillion.  What's the big deal? 

The big deal is that many in the US don't want troops stationed over seas and it's much more convenient to say 'we want to save $2 Billion dollars' then it is to say 'we don't want our troops contaminated by foreigners'.  Because the second part sounds xenophobic.  I don't have a problem with these troops staying there.  In fact I think they are needed.

One of the ongoing problems in Iraq and Afghanistan is the inability of our Armed Forces to deal with civilians.  Especially foreign ones that don't speak our language.  Part of the problem is that many Army and Marine bases are in rural areas.  And the 'garrison routine' is as much about filling the average soldier and Marines potential free time as it is about preparing them for war.  This effectively limits the amount of free time the average soldier and Marine can spend out among civilians.  Then you combine that with fewer permanent overseas duty stations, where they will be exposed to foreign civilians.  If you don't know how to deal with civilians in the first place, even US civilians, then don't know how to deal with ones who don't speak English when you're in a foreign country, how are you supposed to deal with them properly when there are people running around trying to kill you?

And there is another upside to stationing a larger group of soldiers in Europe versus the previously planned reduction.  You're able to directly train with European allies.  This means you are familiar with them when you have to fight along side them like we are in Afghanistan.  Likewise they become familiar with you. 

I don't see a problem with stationing troops overseas.  In the year I spent on Okinawa the biggest problem problem I had wasn't the locals or the island itself.  It was other, higher ranking, Marines who where miserable to be there and decided that the experience should be as miserable for everyone else as it was for them.