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American Psyops: Ben Rhodes' "Force Multipliers" Now Being Called Out by Foreign Policy Experts

Note: If you're just seeing this story, you might want to read this piece from yesterday first, or Lee Smith's Weekly Standard piece to get up to speed.

It's huge.

The legacy media is, get this, giving this story the silent treatment, not interested in covering a scandal that affects so many of their colleagues and late-night bootycall side-pieces.

But conservative writers are writing about it. This Lee Smith piece at the WS has additional horrifying quotes from the New York Times piece about Ben Rhodes and his army of "force multipliers."

via ace.mu.nu

So, the Obama administration foreign policy isn't about the foreign policy, it's about crafting a narrative that makes the policy sound good, when in fact, it's a disaster.

Operation Deadstick was the first engagement of D-Day but many people don’t know the awesome story of how a small group of British glider soldiers captured two bridges intact and held them against German counterattacks. Now, the epic fight is becoming a movie.

The idea was that holding these two vital bridges over the Caen Canal and a nearby river would give the Allies a route inland and would prevent a German counterattack on the Normandy beaches.

So, on Jun. 6, 1944, the men of D Company, 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry crash-landed in gliders at only 16 minutes past midnight. A brilliant performance by pilots put the closest group of paratroopers only 47 yards from the first objective while avoiding anti-glider poles that were still being emplaced around the bridges.

via www.wearethemighty.com

Operation Deadstick was given brief, but glorious, attention in the movie The Longest Day.

But a full length feature film of this epic small unit action?

Oh heck yes!

Ox and Bucks!

The military is launching tests on the world's largest unmanned surface vessel.

Dubbed the 'Sea Hunter', the 132ft ship is designed to travel thousands of miles out at sea without a single crew member on board.

Experts say the vessel has the potential to revolutionise not only the military's maritime service but also commercial shipping.

via www.dailymail.co.uk

Weird hull form aside, an autonomous ship has some potential.

In antisubmarine warefare, patience and endurance are key. Towing a passive (or possibly an active) sonar array for long periods, this ship could potentially detect enemy air independent or diesel electric subs. Of course, an array sensitive enough to detect such subs won't have the discrimination to localize them, but detection is the first step in the kill chain, and far better to do it via a towed array than the flaming datum of a sunken ship. And an unmanned ship can potentially exploit long endurance times for a given size vessel that manned vessels cannot match.

Minesweeping and mine detection is another obvious role for autonomous ships. Most current US mine warfare programs already envision some level of use of autonomous vehicles. Why not use an autonomous ship to launch the UUVs?

Interestingly, the tactics for the use of Sea Hunter were crowd sourced by DARPA via a simple computer simulation about 5 years ago, in which people of all walks of life were encouraged to use a simple simulation to achieve certain goals, and then report back to DARPA. How effective that was, and how much was incorporated into the end product, I don't know, but I do remember hunting subs with the program.

In the early 1950s, Canada had quite a respectable aviation industry. The A.V. Roe Company of Canada had become Avro, and was building the large, subsonic CF-100 Canuck air defense interceptor as its contribution to what would eventually become NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a US and Canadian force that controlled all the air defenses of both countries.  The shortest route for Soviet bombers to attack America involved flying polar routes, and of course, this would then entail overflying Canada. 

You may have noticed that Canada is an awfully big country. That meant any interceptor would need good speed and long range. The CF-100 was relatively fast for its day, and had good range. But the ever increasing speeds of the jet age meant even it would be hard pressed to effectively intercept jet bombers, even if they weren’t supersonic. And so, to replace the Canuck, the Canadian government and Avro began to design a long range, supersonic all weather interceptor.

The resulting design, the Avro CF-105 Arrow, was a large twin engine jet, with a crew of two, and a shoulder mounted delta wing.  Designed to be powered by the Pratt & Whitney Canada Iroquois engine, the first four prototypes were ordered fitted with the Pratt & Whitney J75 as an interim, while the Iroquois was under development. Even with the less powerful J75s, the Arrow demonstrated a speed of Mach 1.90 in level flight.

Armament was originally intended to be the Sparrow II radar guided missile, but when that US program was cancelled, Avro replaced it with the Hughes Falcon missile system. The large internal weapons bay would have held several missiles.

The prototype Arrow MkIs were not fitted with weapons or radar, but instead were intended to prove the aerodynamics and structure of the design.

One major risk taken with the program was that all the jets were built on production jigs. Any major changes in the design prompted by lessons learned with the MkIs would have meant costly changes to the jigs. On the other hand, building on production jigs from the start meant development could be accomplished much faster. The normal method of hand crafting prototypes was time consuming and costly.

Fabrication of the MkIIs had begun, and the first MkII was almost ready to begin taxi tests with the Iroquois engine when disaster struck.

The Arrow program, in spite of producing an aircraft at least as sophisticated and capable as any of its competitors worldwide, was in political trouble. It was an expensive program, and not everyone on Canada thought the money was worth it. Further, the increasing threat of Soviet ballistic missiles, coupled with US pressure to purchase the BOMARC guided missile system, meant there simply weren’t enough defense dollars to go around.

And so, in February 1959, the Canadian government abruptly cancelled the Arrow program. And more than simply cancelling the program, the government ordered the destruction of the existing aircraft, those partially assembled, the production jigs, the engines, and all technical data.

Avro knew the program was under scrutiny, but was still stunned by the cancellation and destruction order.  Almost immediately, over 14,000 Avro employees, and 15,000 subcontractor employees were out of work. The cancellation doomed Avro, and the company soon went dark.

One interesting upside, for the US, of the sudden layoffs was the immediate availability of large numbers of very talented aerospace engineers. A surprisingly large number of Avro engineers found their way to NASA, and made major contributions to the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.

A Taiwan-born American citizen has admitted selling nuclear information to China while he was a senior manager at the U.S. government's Tennessee Valley Authority, federal officials say.

Court records unsealed Friday show that Ching Ning Guey admitted traveling to China and receiving payments in return for handing over restricted information about U.S. nuclear technology. Federal officials who discussed the case indicated China is suspected of running a spy program to evade U.S. security precautions and collect high-tech information.

An indictment filed more than a year ago but kept secret charged Guey with one count of conspiracy to illegally participate in the development of nuclear material outside of the United States and one count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors say he had been specifically warned not to share restricted nuclear information in advance of his trip to China.

via www.voanews.com

Can we maybe consider not granting security clearances to foreign born nationals when we know that's exactly who China recruits? Or at least put travel restrictions on them?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill to hand out hectares of land free of charge in Russia's Far East in a bid to attract people to the vast region.

The law was published on the official law information portal on May 2. 

The offer is open to all Russian citizens, with the only requirement being that they put the land to use. 

via www.rferl.org

Interesting. I suspect not a lot of Russians will actually take up the offer. There's not a whole lot of infrastructure in the region.

But why would Russia seek to shift a significant portion of its population to the east?

Well, for one thing, there are vast natural resources in the area that simply haven't even been identified, let alone extracted. Having people in the region to help find and exploit those resources could potentially be a boon the domestic Russian economy.

Secondly, you don't hear much about it, but Russia has an illegal immigration problem, with as many as one million Chinese living in Russia, and the threat of a Chinese expansion into Siberia has colored the Russian thought on the region as far back as the Czars.

Produced during World War II, a lot of the footage is quite real. But the interior shots of the Memphis Belle and her crew supposedly during the mission are quite clearly staged. How do I know? Well, at 25,000 feet, you’re looking at temperatures of –30 to –40 degrees. Pilots flying around in their crush caps would lose their ears to frostbite in a matter of minutes. Heck, in 1943, even with heated flying suits, frostbite was still a major problem.

Still, movie is pretty damn good.

This weird plane will soon get weapons. Probably normal weapons, maybe weird weapons too.

South Africa’s AHRLAC is a weird bird. With a narrow, high body, and stadium seating for the pilot and sensor operator, it looks like a rough draft for an F-4 phantom. A pusher prop and slightly forward-swept wings seem like an aviation mistake from the First World War. Built as a bushwacking scout, able to operate from rough fields without runways, AHRLAC is an odd drone alternative, a peopled plane built to do a drone’s job. Now, thanks to a deal Paramount (AHRLAC's maker) struck with Boeing, it’s going to get weapons.

via www.msn.com

Yeah, that's one weird looking plane. On the other hand, with the exception of the pusher turboprop, it has a similar layout to the OV-10 Bronco, in a somewhat smaller aircraft.

Add a sensor ball, and maybe the APKWS guided 70mm rocket, and you might have a handy little light attack aircraft.

Click through to the article to see this weird little plane.

So, Esli left a rather wonderful comment on the last post on callsigns, which prompted me to think that perhaps I should give a little explanation on “fixed” call signs at company and below level.

There’s three types of rifle company, light (to include Airborne, Air Assault, and Ranger), Stryker, and Bradley mounted mechanized.

In a light company, there are three platoons of three squads and a weapon squad, and a company headquarters. 

In the Stryker and Bradley companies, each company has three platoons and a headquarters. Importantly, the platoons are each organized around four vehicles each.

As Esli noted in his comment, call signs at the company level tend to be color coded. We’ll use my last company, A Co., 1-12IN as an example. Company headquarters call signs were Black. So the company commander was Black 6. The XO Black 5, and the 1st Sergeant Black 7.

At the platoon level, things were a little different. The platoon leader in a Bradley platoon is also a Bradley Commander, when mounted. And since there are four Bradleys in the platoon, each Brad has its own call sign, 1 through 4.  Our first platoon was color coded Blue (2nd Platoon was Red, and 3rd Platoon was White).  And so, the platoon leader was Blue 1. The platoon sergeant was likewise a Bradley Commander when mounted. And so, the platoon sergeant was Blue 4. The second Bradley in the platoon is Blue 2, and generally acts as the wingman for Blue 1. The third Bradley is, of course, Blue 3,and acts as the wingman of Blue 4.

The gunner of a Bradley uses “Golf” as an appendage to the call sign, and similarly, the driver uses “Delta.” For instance, if the platoon leader is dismounted, he retains his Blue 1 call sign, and people wanting to talk to the vehicle would simply call Blue 1 Golf.

There are two dismount rifle squads in a Bradley platoon,* and their call signs are typically 5 and 6. And each squad had two fire teams. Accordingly, my time as a Team Leader came with the call sign Blue 5 Bravo. That is, I was the team leader of the second fire team in the first dismount squad. The other team was, of course, Blue 5 Alpha, and the squad leader simply Blue 5.

During my time in a light infantry unit, the unit was really rather disciplined about actually using the random alphanumeric call signs dictated by the Signal Operating Instructions.  As a backup, however, we did have a color coded fixed call sign scheme. It differed from a mounted platoon structure. For instance, 1st Platoon A Co. 1-27IN was “Red” with the platoon leader being Red 6, the platoon sergeant Red 7, and the rifle squads being Red 1 through 3, and the weapons squad Red 4. Second platoon was White,  Third platoon was Blue, and again, the company headquarters was Black.

The reason we were supposed to use the random alphanumeric call signs was to make it harder for any enemy listening in to our communications to build an accurate order of battle through traffic analysis.  With todays encrypted, frequency hopping radios, that’s much harder to do, and so a fixed call sign isn’t the operational security violation it once was.

*Ideally. Quite often, we were so short of people, we only had enough to constitute one dismount squad.