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Napalm Sticks to Kids
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All the Places Veterans Can Eat & Drink Free on Veteran’s Day | Money.com
To thank members of the military past and present for their service, food and drink are on the house all over the country on Veteran’s Day 2015, which takes place on Wednesday, November 11. Before getting to the bars and restaurants offering freebies, let us also point out that they’re not the only deals available to military service personnel.Among the non-food freebies, Great Clips is giving anyone who gets a haircut on November 11 will receive a card that a veteran or active-duty military service member can later use for a free haircut; UFC Gyms are giving free gym access to those with military ID and their families from November 11 to 15; Meineke offers free oil changes with military ID on Veteran’s Day; and national park admission is free for everyone on November 11.As for free food and drink, check out the list below. Unless otherwise stated, the offers are valid on November 11 only. In all cases, be sure to bring ID with proof of status as a current or former member of the military. Happy Veteran’s Day!
Source: All the Places Veterans Can Eat & Drink Free on Veteran’s Day | Money.com
I always go to the local Applebee’s. It’s close, and they treat me very well (and not just on Veteran’s Day).
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More on the Doctors Without Borders attack in Kunduz
A reader kindly forwarded MSF’s own internal review of the incident. Of course, it’s no surprise they found that they certainly weren’t at fault.
Here’s our tipster’s commentary that he sent along with the review.
A couple of things stand out for me.
– p5, Wednesday, mention of two higher ranking Taliban being admitted
– p5, Thursday, contact from DC about number of Taliban present on site
I’m going to draw that out a bit…
Firstly, these guys were high-value targets who were either already being tracked or on a list to be found (a guy in Washington doesn’t just call randomly!).
Secondly, the amount of interest in these guys (i.e. by their own people, hinted at by MSF report) created doubts that the hospital was compromised somehow – either by the number or frequency of Taliban coming and going, or by the thought that the high ranking guys were running operations from their beds (or both).
Two scenarios:
1 – general intel picture was seeing hospital as compromised somehow. Lots of little bits of info here and there. Made someone upstairs more inclined to approve air strike when request came. No major evidence, but enough to reach a tipping point for someone.
2 – Afghan forces wanted to get these two senior guys and ‘gamed’ the system to get the US to do an air strike. Perhaps they seeded/filtered the small intel pieces, or more likely they just took advantage of the mood at the time.
Both imply a rapidly changing view, some lax intel review/analysis, and a willingness to err to the side of ‘shoot first’. Strange that whatever the MSF guys said to the mystery DC man doesn’t seem to have had an impact on the judgment.
Still seems pretty clear to me that the strike was a mistake. Not enough to justify militarily and just plain dumb politically. However, once the release was given it was going to make a mess that couldn’t be stopped in time. Folks had better hope that the AC130 gun-cam footage of fleeing people being mowed down by mini-guns doesn’t get leaked like that Apache film from a few years back – that won’t be pretty for the PR guys to deal with.
I’ve worked with a couple of MSF guys. Say what you want about bleeding-heart civilian socialist French political views, but they run a tight ship because they are aware of the dangers.
Doctors without Borders confirm that their hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, did not display any internationally recognized markings showing it was a hospital when a U.S. gunship attacked the facility Oct. 3, killing 22 and injuring hundreds, according to the group’s interim report released Thursday.
The report may also open the group to accusations that it violated international law by forcibly removing civilian patients in favor of wounded Taliban soldiers.
That’s pretty weak sauce. Yes, they should have had the hospital marked. But if a combatant knows the facility is, in fact, a medical facility, a simple failure to mark it doesn’t justify attacking it. There’s still a burden on the combatant to refrain from attacking. As to the removal of patients, that’s awfully weak sauce, as the MSF review certainly gives the impression that the movement was to open beds for an influx of critically wounded, both Taliban, and government forces. Even if the entirety of the treatment offered by MSF was to Taliban forces, that would not be justification to target the facility, just as our own US Army field hospitals are (theoretically) protected by law.
Having said that, a close review of the MSF paper leaves a lot of questions. Our tipster has some theories. He may well be right. Or, there’s information we simply don’t have access to that swayed the US chain of command to authorize an attack on the facility.
For instance, while providing medical treatment to enemy fighters is fine, if the Taliban were in fact using the protected status of the facility as a sanctuary, that removes the legal protections from the hospital. Here’s a tidbit, even if Taliban were not armed, but were using it as a sanctuary, and via the “one attendant per patient” were using it as a command and control center, that is a military operation, and a valid, legal target.
I’d also like to hear what the conversation between MSF and US representatives was like. Quite obviously, already the US had at a minimum, suspicions that MSF Kunduz was not protected. Further, exactly which Americans MSF dealt with would be enlightening.
We shall, eventually, see what our own military reviews come up with. Some have contended that even if the technical violations of the Law of War are sufficient to legally justify an attack, the bad publicity resulting from it would still make it an error to attack.
But that’s not going to happen. The story is mostly gone from the press already, and if it was in fact an approved attack, that would reflect badly on Obama, and you know the press isn’t going there.
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Early China Nukes
Nothing like horse mounted cavalry with sabers attacking under a mushroom cloud.
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Daily Dose of Splodey
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F/A-18 Depots See 40-Percent Increase In Productivity After Adapting New Work Model – USNI News
The Navy’s aviation depots have seen a 40-percent increase in fighter jet throughput since they changed how to approach repairing the legacy F/A-18C Hornets a year ago, the Navy’s director of air warfare told the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.Rear Adm. Michael Manazir said in a hearing on aircraft carrier presence that the depots moved from a lean manufacturing model, which emphasizes rigid scheduling, to a critical chain process management emphasizes having the correct resources and allows for flexible scheduling.
Source: F/A-18 Depots See 40-Percent Increase In Productivity After Adapting New Work Model – USNI News
Okay, that’s just some inside baseball on depot level work on the legacy Hornets.
But near the end of the post, there’s this:
The second reason for the projected shortfall is that the Navy hasn’t procured enough extra F-18s to make up for running the planes – and the carrier strike group as a whole – harder than anticipated due to global demand for carrier presence.
That’s pretty inexcusable. I can’t think of an airframe that the Navy hasn’t had to extend the lifetime on going back to the A-4 Skyhawk and F-4 Phantom. And the crunch of high deployment rates and airframe hours has been a persistent problem for a similar length of time.
Every cynic and critic that complained when NavAir adopted the Naval Aviation Enterprise model of management warned that issues like this would undoubtedly rise were told to shut up and color inside the lines. Maybe they’re owed an apology.
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The Remote Control Ambush
Yesterday’s post on remote control warfare reminded me of a nifty little trick my platoon pulled during training while I was in Hawaii. It’s a blend of (then) state of the art technology, and redneck engineering.
Remember these?
WD-1 field telephone wire on a DR-8 spool with RL-39B reeling kit.
Claymore mine M57 electrical firing device.
First, the redneck engineering. One mission we practiced almost constantly in Hawaii was the ambush. Most especially, the night ambush. An ambush is a sudden planned attack on a moving or temporarily halted enemy force. And for most missions, the plan was to initiate the ambush with Claymore mines.
But while we had plenty of inert Claymores to practice setting up and aiming, they were pretty useless for force on force training, as they had no “signature” to cue the OpFor that they’d been whomped by a Claymore.
One bright fellow figured out that he could take apart a flash cube into four individual bulbs, and connect a length of WD-1 wire to the electrical posts on the bulb. He could then splice the wire to a surplus bit of Claymore firing wire to plug into the M57. One press of the clacker, and the bulb would flash. On a dark night, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that a “Claymore” had gone off. Prepping these improvised training aids became a routine part of planning to go to the local training areas.
I spent about half my tour in Hawaii as the Platoon Leader’s Radio Telephone Operator, or RTO. In addition to carrying the PRC-77, I was also de facto responsible for all the other communications and electronics in the platoon, with the exception of night vision equipment. That included the TA-312 telephone, four TA-1 field telephones, four RL-39s with spools and wire, eight PRC-68 walkie talkies and a few other items.
We had one other bit of equipment that we rarely used, because it was rather bulky, and was seen as unreliable, and not terribly useful.
That was the TSR-2(V) Platoon Early Warning System, or PEWS. PEWS was a set of 10 seismic/acoustic sensors that would transmit the presence of people or vehicles in their vicinity via either radio or field wire back to a hand held monitor.
As you see, PEWS was somewhat bulky. It was also quite finicky. Each remote sensor had two aluminum spikes that screwed into the bottom. Those were what detected moving personnel or vehicles. Each detector theoretically had a detection range of 50 meters for personnel, but in practice, it was closer to 10-15 meters. And great care had to be used in selecting exactly where the remote was emplaced. Ideally it would be firm ground near an area that the enemy would most likely pass through. And while the detectors had an advertised radio range of 1500 meters, experience showed it was more realistically about 500 meters, provided great care was taken that no terrain blocked the line of sight back to the receiver.
The idea was that the PEWS would be used by light infantry platoons as, well, early warning devices while they were established in patrol bases. But the care and training needed to get even modest results from the system meant they weren’t used often. That and they were an additional 13 pounds of equipment to be hauled around by the platoon, and the risk of losing one of the (expensive) detectors meant most platoons left them at home.
Most.
My Platoon Leader at the time insisted we bring ours. And since as his RTO I was in charge of the PEWS, I set about training myself to really understand how to set up and use the PEWS. And between the LT and I, and our really, really sharp platoon Sergeant, we came up with a plan.
Our next trip to the woods was, like so many others, focused on practicing the ambush. We’d crawl through the steps of the ambush during the morning, then walk through them in the afternoon, and then at night, one of our company’s other platoons would provide a squad to serve as the OpFor, and walk through our ambush. Typical infantry training.
The PL and PSG had the bright idea that rather than using the PEWS to guard the patrol base, we would emplace detectors along the likely routes leading into the kill zone. Knowing the enemy was a couple hundred meters away would give plenty of advance warning, and help ensure the success of the ambush.
It actually worked pretty well.
Then one of the squad leaders had the bright idea. If he had to dispatch a fire team to emplace the detectors, why not have them emplace one or two of the flashbulb “Claymores” at the site as well, and simply roll out the wire on the way back to the ambush site?
Two detectors would be emplaced on each likely avenue of approach. The first gave a “heads up” that someone was coming. The second was to announce the enemy was in the remote kill zone. The receiver would give an indication of which detector was sensing movement. All that had to be done was plug in the proper “Claymore” and wait for the second detector to signal.
The first time we tried it, sure enough, a sensor about 300 meters away pinged, and I pointed it out to the PL. He plugged the wire into the clacker. And sure enough, about a minute later, the second sensor pinged, and LT O squeezed the clacker. A bright flash in the distance assailed our night adjusted eyes, and almost instantly, the disgusted cry of “Dammit!” came floating back to our ears.
Eventually the OpFor squad managed to get themselves squared away, and continue in to the real kill zone and get themselves slaughtered by a conventional ambush.
Afterwards, they couldn’t figure out how we had managed to set off the “Claymore” without a trip wire. We pulled that trick a couple more times before sharing the tactic with the rest of the company.
We didn’t always use the PEWS, but it was there and ready if we needed it.
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AH-1Z Viper
An AH-1Z Viper gunship performing CAS as a part of the Marine Corps Weapons and Tactics Instructor course.
That little pop up maneuver is interesting. I’m sure it works for them, but I’ve never seen US Army gunships use it.
While I think the Marines took a wrong turn in developing the Viper, vice a variant of the Apache, I have to admit, since I like my aircraft a little on the ugly/bumpy side, it’s one imposing looking bird.
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Have some Scooter
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Name That Armor Answer
Congrats to Jason (not Spill, another guy) for the correct answer, the YPR-765. The YPR-765 is a variant of the Advanced Infantry Fighting Vehicle based on the US M113. Skaterdad was mighty close with the FNSS ACV-15 guess, as they’re virtually the same vehicle.
The M113 was replaced in the mechanized Infantry battalions of the US Army by the M2 Bradley. But the Bradley is frightfully expensive, and most other armies couldn’t afford them. And so, FMC, the manufacturer of the M113 developed the AICV. It was quite a successful program. Between the YPR-765, the Turkish ACV variant and a host of other variants differing in only minor details, several thousand have been built, and serve in Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Asia.
A tip o’ the hat to Esli, who kinda sorta stumped me when he sent me this, because I didn’t realize we were playing Name That Armor.
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