Raptor Woes Continue to Plague the Air Force

by | Aug 2, 2024 |

More mismanagement and strategic deficit disorder at the Pentagon. The F22 Raptor is a very capable late 20th century aircraft and arguably superior to the much more expensive and increasingly anachronistic  F35; it is being put out to pasture early because of planning missteps, acquisition problems, maintenance issues, software difficulties and a distinctly dysfunctional strategic environment that is not prepared for the near-peer and peer fight ahead. Both the F22 and the F35 are maintenance hogs and expensive to maintain over their lifetimes. If the Air Force and the US Congress don’t...

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Is the Medal of Honor Now Subject to Woke Revisionism?

by | Jul 31, 2024 |

Note: We just returned from a short vacation visiting new grandchildren hence the brief interregnum of posting. The Medal of Honor is the highest citation for combat action in the US military. It's premature to say exactly what direction this is going because the DoD is being hazy and coy about what this is all about. If it turns out the reassessment is determining whether extraordinary single combat actions on the part of soldiers was exaggerated, it may hold water but if it is the curious chronological conceit that haunts the historians in academia today, the woke virus may reach back...

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Ep 048 “CG Excursion: Peer Strike ISR Complex: The Need for Rational Fires Coordination”

Ep 048 “CG Excursion: Peer Strike ISR Complex: The Need for Rational Fires Coordination”

by | Jul 29, 2024 |

Link to episode on RSS Feed. Fires synchronization is the effective coordination of sensors and effectors in near-real time or real time in a hostile non-permissive combat environment. The West has no working system to coordinate its artillery, air and Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) assets in a peer or near-peer fight that works. The Russians do. The Russian Strike Reconnaissance Complex has come of age and the Russians have one of the most effective fires synchronization modalities on Earth. The system is now battle proven in the first near-peer and peer conflict of the 21st...

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Ford Follies: The Carrier Grift That Just Keeps Giving

by | Jul 24, 2024 |

Stop building these things. Even the corporate/access defense media is starting to sound the alarm bells on the multi-billion carrier fiasco that is the USS Ford which is probably causing plenty of public relations professionals in the Navy to go apoplectic. As my readers know (Podcast Episode 034 and Dispatch # 006 on my Substack), I am a long-time critic of the carrier forces thinking that they are the chariot and crossbow of the 21st century in the Earthly realm of war craft. It's sad that the tens of billions the US Navy has utterly wasted on these homages to WWII naval combat continue...

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Ticonderoga Leaves the Fleet: The US Surface Navy Continues to Shrink

by | Jul 23, 2024 |

The US Navy surface fleet continues to shrink. And every surface hull commissioned after the Arleigh Burke class in 1991 has been a failure. The Chinese Navy exceeds the US Navy in total warships deployed. What makes this even more astonishing is that the Chinese maintain a regional naval power with optional blue water projection capabilities (mind you, untested) while the US maintains the fiction of a global capability. The current U.S. fleet is smaller, with more than 280 vessels. The Secretary of the Navy expects that strength to reach 300 in the early 2030s which is a pipe dream...

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US Forces Booted Out of Niger

by | Jul 22, 2024 |

2024 is the end of the ten year lease after expending $110 million to build and $30 million a year to maintain the base. The French forces were booted in October 2023. American troops are leaving now and the German troops will leave in September. The military regimes of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso marked their divorce from the rest of West Africa 10 July 2024 as they signed a treaty setting up a confederation between them and all pulled out of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) this year. Indeed, ECOWAS might not survive the Nigerien debacle in its current 15-member...

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If Pigs Could Fly: The F35 Continues to Miss the Mark

by | Jul 18, 2024 |

The Pentagon will continue to pay Bugatti prices for Yugos until the morale improves. Software upgrades have haunted this flying circus since its "full operational status" was fabricated years ago. The combination of a severely Sovietized acquisition system married to the trillions spent on "defense" makes for a witches brew of chaos avalanches that keep on giving. And remember, the GAO further highlighted that the defense contractor’s liability cap is $100,000 per F-35 jet, despite each aircraft’s price tag ranging from $82.5 million to $109 million. Not only is the aircraft idling at a...

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The Empire Strikes Back: Soldiering and Brain Injury

by | Jul 17, 2024 |

Whatever empires do abroad eventually comes home. Yet another unintended consequences come home in a tidal wave. This is personal; I was diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury in 2019. I spent nearly a quarter century in the US military. I know there's a connection. This isn't isolated to the military, concussion in amateur and professional sports is real along with a number of blue collar jobs. The downstream effects of so many soldiers deployed overseas in combat theaters for the first two decades of the 21st century will resonate through American society for generations and even on the...

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