XBradTC

Off the northeastern coast of Scotland lie the Orkney Islands. As that picture above shows (taken in August of 2010), even in the summer the Orkneys are gray and bleak. The Nuke once visited the area on a high school field trip. She told us about the puffins she saw there. I remember asking her if she had seen any sunken ships there.


"No, why?" she had answered with a puzzled look.


Well, Scapa Flow was the home base of the British Grand Fleet in World War I and again in World War II. It was also the destination of the German High Seas Fleet after Germany's defeat in World War I. The Germans scuttled their ships in Scapa Flow rather than let the British have them. While most of those ships were raised (due to being hazards to navigation and of course it was a Royal Navy anchorage) a number of the Kaiser's ships still lay on the sea bed there.

via oldafsarge.blogspot.com

Go read the whole thing. Sarge has some fine history, pictures, and even a short video.

The U.S. Army in Europe will have a permanent footprint of three fully manned brigades on the continent by next February, defense officials announced Wednesday.

The Army will begin continuous rotations of U.S.-based armored brigade combat teams on nine-month deployments to train with Eastern European allies, officials said.

via www.armytimes.com

The incredible drawdown of US forces from Europe in the post Cold War era was stunning, and we should have grasped sooner that the collapse of the Soviet Union would eventually see the rise of other power in the region, either in Russia itself, or some other nations. Nature abhors a vacuum.

So the Army is looking to maintain one Armored, one Stryker, and one Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Europe for the forseeable future.

When I arrived in Germany in 1989, my division alone had three armored brigades, and was one of four divisions in Germany, along with two separate armored brigades, and two big cavalry regiments.

Oh, and there's this:

5/ Lithuanian intelligence report: deployment time of RU QRF currently capable of mil action against Baltic States: 24-48 hrs @20committee

— The OSINT Broker (@BalticFrequency) March 30, 2016

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It seems insanely complicated, to those of us who have quickly grown accustomed to the modern Vertical Launch systems in use today. But there were a couple reasons they handled the missile they way they did. First, electronics were far less reliable back then. And finding faults and fixing components meant hooking up to the test bench. Which meant lots of rails and cradles.

Second, the missile had to very quickly come into the guidance beam of the fire control radar, or it would not guide. That meant it had to be launched on the azimuth and elevation of the radar beam. Which called for a traversing, elevating launcher. Such a launcher necessitated the complex mechanical rails.

And while the complex launcher limited the rate of fire, the greater limitation was the number of fire control radars available. Each Talos installation had one twin arm launcher, and two associated guidance radars. And each radar could only guide on missile at one target.

R. Lee Ermey? Eh, he’s OK. But for a cinema DI, I’ll take Jack Webb.

Heh.

Remember this post from a few days ago?

Apparently, she’s back.

LT Rusty and I and his son had a little fun last night playing a few battles.

Which, we’re uploading a video to YouTube, and that takes forever, and sucks up all our bandwidth.

Hope to have that up in about an hour or so.

One of the issues with having blogged for 8 years is, what do I talk about now? I’ve told just about all the funny stories of my time in the service. And I’m not going to tell you all the stupid stuff I did, because I’m not entirely sure the statute of limitations has run out on some of them.

And there is really not a lot of interesting stuff going on here. I lead, by choice, a very quiet, dull life. I had my adventures in my youth. So, unless you want to hear about the email exchange with my sister regarding replacing the magnetic latches on the shutters, there’s not a lot to talk about on the home front.

Oh, alright. Here’s something. I got a new phone. The old phone worked just fine, but years of use and abuse meant the charger receptacle was getting very iffy, and I couldn’t charge the phone reliably. And boy did it need charging. It sucked through battery life like you wouldn’t believe. So, I ponied up and bought a new Samsung S5. I like it, but man, setting up all the apps and accounts is ridiculous. What a pain. Given that I mostly use my phone to read Twitter on smoke breaks… BTW, I’m @XBradTC on Twitter if you want to follow.

The video we’ll be posting shortly is World of Warships. Do you play? Not surprisingly, I’m XBradTC on World of Warships also. And I’m always looking for friends to team up in a division with.

One key aspect of playing in a division is voice comms. WoW doesn’t support voice chat. TeamSpeak does, but it’s expensive. So LT Rusty found a free app, https://discordapp.com/ that supports voice and text chat. The user interface is a little wonky, and takes a bit to figure out, but once you get it working, it’s very simple and handy. In fact, we tend to use it quite often to just chat, as opposed to using it in the game.

World of Warships doesn’t have organic replay support. You can save your games for replays, but you have to actually go into the game folder and add some text. If you have enabled replays, and you want to share them with me, that is fine. Just email me the file. If it’s really good, I might upload it to my YouTube channel.

The other app I use in connection with WoW is XSplit Gamecaster. It is a video capture app that you can use to capture the action. There’s two ways of doing that. You can either record the battle as you fight it, or you can simply open the replay file, and then record that. That’s the method I tend to use. There’s a subscription version that has original video quality with no watermark, but I’m cheap, so I use the free version, and you get the watermark.

It works pretty well with Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition as well.

I’ve recently upgraded to a much more powerful laptop, and while I’ve downloaded FSX: SE to it, what I haven’t done is add all the goodies that I use normally to improve the flight sim experience.

My favorite plane is the PMDG 737NGX. The realism, the graphic quality, and the Flight Management System is incredible. I also use a web based flight planning system, called SimBrief.com. My usual home airport is KPSP Palm Springs International Airport. And when planning a flight, I’ll go to FlightAware.com, and look to see who is flying out of KPSP in a 737, where they’re heading, and what their route is. And I’ll just input all that info into SimBrief.com, and it will generate both an FSX flight plan for me, and a PMDG flight plan for the FMC. In addition, I’ll open up my Avilasoft Electronic Flight Bag for flight planning, and tracking. All the while, I’ll listen to LiveATC.net to try to time my flight as closely as possible to the real thing. It’s a lot of work! Of course, since I use FS2Crew to provide me with a copilot, that cuts back on the workload a bit. But the video files for a flight are so huge, I never upload them. It would suck up literally hours of bandwidth.

What else? Really, World of Warships and FSX: SE are the only games I play on the computer. Most of the rest of the time, I’m looking for interesting stuff to share with you, dear reader.

WEST POINT, N.Y. — When Megan McNulty, a 22-year-old cadet at the United States Military Academy here, graduates this spring, she won’t be heading off to a conventional unit at an Army installation. Instead, she’ll start her Army career spending a year in Dublin, Ireland, studying international development at University College. She’s among a small minority of West Point students who are “breaking the routine,” she said.

“We’re getting away from the classic trajectory of what an Army career looks like,” she told Military Times. “People like us are already pushing the envelope. You need some officers to do that.” But McNulty is already cognizant that the nontraditional assignment may put her career at risk if she falls behind her peers in fulfilling the Army’s rigid requirements for advancement. “The Army will try to move some things around so I can still be with my year group. I’ll have less platoon leader time, but then at the career captains’ course mark, hopefully I'll be back with the class of 2016,” she said, referring to the normal progression for the first five years of a junior officer’s career.

via www.militarytimes.com

I'm loathe to take seriously the opinions of a 2nd Lieutenant, and Cadets have even less experience upon which to build their opinions.

Having said that, this is a pretty good article overall about the issues of Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) and the stovepipe it tends to put in place in terms of career management.

At least initially, that first five year block, it makes some sense to essentially have all junior officers following the same path.

Junior officers are both expected to be out there doing the job. The basic path is to get your branch or warfare qualification, and make your first tour as, say, a platoon leader. After a year or two of that, you can expect to move to either company XO, or over to the battalion staff, learning the admin side of how the Army works.

One big drawback to DOPMA is that it is structured as if every officer is and should be on a career path to become a general or flag officer, when instead we know that's reserved for a very, very small percentage.

And the 36 month joint tour requirement has been a major influence of the establishment of ever larger headquarters that don't necessarily add anything to the fight.

So, we believe there certainly is room for improvement to personnel policies. Of course, until Congress is willing to address the issue, not much can me done.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is in the midst of the biggest reorganization and reform effort since the 1980s. Among the major changes announced, the country’s primary nuclear deterrent, the Second Artillery Corps, was upgraded to a separate service branch called the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF). In addition, the PLA Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) was set up to bolster space, cyber, electronic warfare, and other high-tech military capabilities. Finally, the ground forces received their own, separate headquarters to improve combat effectiveness. In February, China consolidated seven military regions (大军区) into five brand-new theater commands (战区) (China Brief, February 4). Perhaps most importantly, the PLA plans to cut 300,000 personnel. More changes are expected in the next few years; the PLA’s military education system, command structure, and logistics and supply systems are all likely to be overhauled.

via www.jamestown.org

A very interesting look at the challenges and opportunities that reorganization and modernization present to the People's Liberation Army.