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Su-34 Fullback
H/T to Steeljaw Scribe for tweeting a link to the vids.
The Sukhoi Su-34 (NATO reporting name: Fullback) is Russian Air Force’s successor to the Su-24 Fencer in the long range strike role. It recently made its combat debut in Syria, making strikes against forces opposing Russia’s long time ally, Assad.
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Gun Control and the 2nd Amendment
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Whenever a gun grabber discusses Heller vs. DC, they’re quick to point out that the argument made focused on the second half of the amendment – “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”.
They somehow read the prefatory clause, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” as intending for only the National Guard to keep and bear arms.
Let’s unpack that argument a bit. First, it ignores conveniently the fact that the National Guard was not in existence when the Bill of Rights was ratified. The militia was understood to be the entirety of the adult male population, a understanding that was soon legally established via legislation.
Indeed, the second Militia Act of 1792 required each adult male to equip himself with a military grade weapon, ammunition and sundries.
Let’s also take a bit of a look at history, and the security of a free State. Recall that the Constitution gives the Congress the power to raise armies, and maintain a Navy. The Founding Fathers were deeply distrustful of a standing army. Why, you ask? Because their experience with a standing army was with that of the British Army and its regiments. And note I use the word regiment deliberately, as its etymology is linked to regis, or king. Literally regiments were in the service of the King. The British army in the colonies was not just a military force, it was the arm of oppression used by the crown to enforce its edicts upon our people. The Founding Fathers knew that any large standing army would have the potential to similarly become such an oppressor.
I would remind them that the American Revolution literally started with an attempt at gun confiscation.
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Women in Combat: What Repealing the Combat Exclusion Means for Our Military | The Stream
This week was the deadline for the leaders of the armed services to issue their recommendation for opening all combat units to women, though these have not yet been made public and the major media have hardly mentioned it. Repealing the combat ban will not only harm women but weaken our effectiveness in combat.You may think women are already serving in these roles; but there’s a world of difference between the combat zone and direct ground combat. Women have served honorably and well on deployments, but none who has been injured or died was in direct ground combat or on a combat mission. Performing well and bravely when engaged by the enemy is not the same as qualifying for the infantry. Returning fire isn’t combat, nor is surviving an IED on convoy. Combat is the ferocious, dirty and bloody destruction of the enemy at close quarters, often face to face and hand to hand.Think about our foreign enemies from al Qaeda to the Taliban to ISIS raping and beheading their way across Iraq. Imagine your daughter there, not in support, but going after these bad guys where they live: hard, fast, with the greatest possible violence.For infantry to achieve their top priority — victory with the fewest casualties — the combat arms require the best of the best, the toughest, strongest and fastest. When speaking of rates of injury or performance, we’re not comparing civilian averages, or military women to civilian men. We’re talking about trained and fit military women compared with not just military men, but the top one percent of military men.
Source: Women in Combat: What Repealing the Combat Exclusion Means for Our Military | The Stream
Concur all.
With a few caveats.
While the combat arms, particularly the infantry are the “top 1%” they’re really more than just one percent.
Secondly, I can take any reasonably healthy high school graduate male, and have a reasonable expectation that he can be trained to be physically fit enough to successfully perform in combat. That’s simply not the case with the vast majority of women. I could probably get 5-10% of women that fit. But as the article notes, I’m still going to be stuck with the issue that they suffer injuries at twice the rate of men. And even if I put that aside, what benefit have I gained? What measurable metric shows that my unit has been improved by adding women? Does it move faster? Does it suddenly increase its load carrying capacity?
Here’s a hint. There’s no upside.
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The naked gunner, Rescue at Rabaul, 1944
This young crewman of a US Navy “Dumbo” PBY rescue mission has just jumped into the water of Rabaul Harbor to rescue a badly burned Marine pilot who was shot down while bombing the Japanese-held fortress of Rabaul. Since Japanese coastal defense guns were firing at the plane while it was in the water during take-off, this brave young man, after rescuing the pilot, manned his position as machine gunner without taking time to put on his clothes. A hero photographed right after he’d completed his heroic act. Naked.
Source: The naked gunner, Rescue at Rabaul, 1944
I figure after 7 years of Load HEAT, I can toss Roamy and Aggie a little red meat.
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I Was Wrong About NBC News, I Admit It
I didn’t think NBC News could be any more ignorant or more obtuse. But, I was wrong. Apparently, I misunderestimated the ingenuity of fools (with access to the news room). What is the on-line feature article from NBC.com this morning?
Israel announced a relaxation of the nation’s gun laws on Wednesday, widening civilian access to weapons permits. Teachers in Jerusalem’s Jewish orthodox community, for example, could be eligible for a special permit to possess a weapon under the new rules.
Some concerned civilians visited the Mitvach Adumim gun range in Ma’ale Adumim — a Jewish settlement outside Jerusalem — where manager Gabi Efrat-Begin said business was “very good.”
Their unintended irony cup runneth over. Their cup of stupidity, too. There is so much of both there, it is difficult to know where to begin. I spose I will start with the irony. Israelis believe in the right to self-protection, always have. So the image, and the video that accompanies it, shows Israelis practicing at a pistol range, with privately owned handguns. NBC News has been a virtual mouthpiece for the gun-grabbing far-Left in this country, featuring time and again articles calling for restriction of private firearms ownership, repeal of the Second Amendment, and the drumbeat propaganda of Obama and his cronies that guns somehow don’t make us safer. (While surrounded by taxpayer-funded armed security, of course.) Yet, how are the Israelis countering the threats to themselves and their families/communities? By making sure they are armed, and proficient with those arms. Even to the point of arming teachers to defend themselves and students in the classroom. Hmmmm.
The notion, spelled out in the headline, that Israel is suffering a “string of lone wolf stabbings” is even more senseless than usual. String of lone wolf stabbings? As if they are not somehow connected? That would be like calling 9/11 a “string of lone wolf hijackings”. Or a informing us that a man yelling “Allahu Akbar!” while shooting 45 people at Fort Hood somehow had “unclear motives”. (Yes, it was the FBI that gave us that gem, but NBC and CNN parroted such nonsense unquestioningly.) The efforts by the mainstream media to assiduously avoid actually labeling Islamist terrorism as either terrorism or Islamist, leads to such stupidity. And again, it reflects the lock-step “religion of peace” fable we are fed by the White House and fellow travelers after each and every ghastly incident.
The irony, unintended as it may be, won’t pass unnoticed. Nor will the stupidity. Except, possibly, by NBC News.
Oh, and Happy Birthday to MissileChick!
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This is why even jetliner pilots are supposed to do a walkaround.
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The Stars are in our Future
Well, celestial navigation is, anyway.
The same techniques guided ancient Polynesians in the open Pacific and led Sir Ernest Shackleton to remote Antarctica, then oriented astronauts when the Apollo 12 was disabled by lightning, the techniques of celestial navigation.
A glimmer of the old lore has returned to the Naval Academy.
Officials reinstated brief lessons in celestial navigation this year, nearly two decades after the full class was determined outdated and cut from the curriculum.
That decision, in the late 1990s, made national news and caused a stir among the old guard of navigators.
Maritime nostalgia, however, isn’t behind the return.
Rather, it’s the escalating threat of cyber attacks that has led the Navy to dust off its tools to measure the angles of stars.
After all, you can’t hack a sextant.
I was in the “never should have quit” camp, btw. That’s the same position I take on paper maps and protractors for land navigation.
This 1940s sextant is among the supply stored at the Naval Academy. Midshipmen were tested on celestial navigation for more than a century before the required class was cut in the late 1990s. (By Tim Prudente / Capital Gazette)
GPS does offer several advantages over celestial navigation. For one thing, much greater accuracy, measured literally in single digits of feet. For another, it is continuously updating. Other navigational systems, such as inertial, start with a known fix, and then “drift” after that, with the error in position accumulating over time until the next opportunity to update from a known position.
But as the cited article notes, you can’t jam a sextant. Sorta. Cloud cover actually does a pretty good job of jamming a sextant.
Ordinarily, I’m not at all in favor of gold-plating a system. Here, I’ll make a bit of an exception. While having midshipmen pick up a sextant and the sight reduction tables is the best way to learn, I think it would be pretty silly for the XO or Navigator to stand on the bridge wing shooting Local Apparent Noon with a 100 year old design.
Why not field a modern gyro stabilized star/sun tracker? And of course, an iPad app that you simply input the sightings into. Heck, you could have that capability built into the star tracker.
This is not some fantastic idea I just came up with. Did you know some early ballistic missiles used celestial navigation, with automatic trackers? Day or night, once the missile got up high enough above any clouds and most of the atmosphere, the needed stars were always visible.
The Navy (and the Army to a certain extent) desperately needs to relearn how to operate in an Emission Controlled (EMCON) environment. That means not only using EMCON to deny the enemy information, but also retaining the ability to work when networked sensors are denied or degraded. As fast as we are increasing our capability to field better capabilities through networks, you can bet China and others are working to disrupt or exploit those networks.
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More on C-RAM and EAPS
Basically, it looks like the existing 35mm Bushmaster ammo has a case that is 50mm at the base, and necked down to 35mm. Which, if you remove the shoulder, and leave the case at 50mm, means you only need to change the barrel and breech, and the feed rotors, to turn it into a 50mm gun. Those are actually changes you can make in the field. I’ve seen references to Oerlikon doing the same thing with their 35mm autocannon.
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Chinese media: military must be ready to counter US in South China Sea | World news | The Guardian
Chinese media criticised the US on Thursday for “ceaseless provocations” in the South China Sea, with Washington expected to soon send warships close to artificial islands Beijing has built in disputed waters.An editorial in the Global Times, which is close to China’s ruling Communist party, condemned US “coercion”, adding: “China mustn’t tolerate rampant US violations of China’s adjacent waters and the skies over those expanding islands.”It said China’s military should “be ready to launch countermeasures according to Washington’s level of provocation”.Tensions have mounted since China transformed reefs in the area – also claimed by several neighbouring countries – into small islands capable of supporting military facilities, a move the US says threatens freedom of navigation.
Source: Chinese media: military must be ready to counter US in South China Sea | World news | The Guardian
International law is quite explicit that artificial islands have no sovereignty, and thus no territorial waters.
On the other hand, international law is only true as long as the US is willing to exercise its rights under that law to Freedom of Navigation (FoN). And in this case, the Obama administration basically had to be shamed into planning these Freedom of Navigation exercises by the Congress.
China is unlikely to counter these voyages with lethal force. But they’ll surely react in some manner. My best bet is they’ll have fishing vessels putting nets in the water to make navigation more difficult, and possibly having their coast guard vessels maneuvering obnoxiously to harass any US vessel.
They’ll also blather on the radio warning our vessel to steer clear. Ironically, for a society that worries about losing face, this is the wrong reaction. Should they simply ignore any US FoN exercise, and minimize the attention it receives, they’d save face, and still have the practical benefit of physically holding the islands. And since the US isn’t going to park a warship in those waters permanently, they would also still be able to continue to coerce their neighbors, particularly Vietnam. But by making noise, they’re convincing Japan that maybe they too need to conduct FoN ops in the area.
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Beginning of the End for Kaneohe Bay Squadrons | Military.com
One of the longest-lived military airplanes in Hawaii — the P-3 Orion turboprop — is starting to fade away, with the Navy deciding its sub-hunting jet replacements could be more economically based in Washington state.Six to eight of the P-3Cs are assigned to each of three patrol squadrons — VP-4, VP-9 and VP-47 — at Kaneohe Bay.But when the VP-4 “Skinny Dragons,” with up to 340 personnel, deploy in the spring, the squadron that first flew P-3As out of Barbers Point Naval Air Station in 1966 won’t be coming back, the Navy said.They’ll head to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington state for transformation to the P-8A Poseidon, a jet based on the Boeing 737 that can fly faster and longer on the maritime surveillance and sub-hunting missions that are still so important to the Navy, officials said.When the Navy wants to take a look at the controversial island-building that China’s been up to in the South China Sea, for example, it’s sent a P-8 to do it. Two of the jets were dispatched to search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 last year.
Source: Beginning of the End for Kaneohe Bay Squadrons | Military.com
This is good news for the Oak Harbor/NAS Whidbey economy. And the P-8 program is coming along nicely, even if they aren’t buying as many aircraft as I’d like to see. I’m hoping the international sales will keep the line open a while, and allow the Navy to quietly buy a few handfuls in future years outside the current programmed buy.
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