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I’m not a hunter. I’m not against it by any means, I just wasn’t raised as one. My dad was poor enough that he had to hunt for food as a youngster, and lucky enough he never had to as an adult.

Ordinarily, I’d shun this video as unsportsmanlike. On the other hand, feral hogs are becoming a massive pest problem in parts of Texas. And if you just happen to have a pack of wild boars running by when you’re already out to shoot your minigun, why not?

Found at The Feral Irishman, with a tip o’ the hat to Quartermaster.

Rep0rts of 20 injured, some seriously. It’s easy  enough to believe that.

More pics and video at gCaptain, where I found this.

To the Editor:

David Vine (“Shut Bases There, Save Money Here,” Op-Ed, July 27) treats bases as mere military holding areas, overlooking their utility in military readiness and foreign policy.

Military readiness faces constant entropy, requiring manning, training and equipping support. Overseas bases provide that support, allowing forces to spend less time in transit and more time forward: deterring, reassuring and reacting. No study disavows the faster response or impact of forces already on scene; it’s physics.

Allied interoperability is built as we observe our adversaries and cultivate crisis-avoiding normalization. What bases in the United States lack in forward presence they gain in lower costs and the engagement they provide between local communities and their warfighters.

Basing in general provides strategic flexibility. A proliferation of bases decreases risk, creating redundancy if facilities are disabled or harbors blocked. Because of increasing demands and decreasing resources, bases have been deprioritized and may seem a burden. But those who see robust basing as a luxury do not understand the critical utility of their services, locations and number.

MATTHEW RICHARD HIPPLE

via Is It Wise to Cut Military Spending? – The New York Times.

LT Hipple and I have been Facebook friends for some time now. And he’s part of a vibrant community of junior officers seeking to improve the state of operational and strategic thinking in the service.

One normally doesn’t look to Lieutenants for deep thoughts, as they’re usually still learning the master the basics of their craft. But in the Navy, a fundamental understanding of strategy is a great help to mastering the basics.

Growing up in Oak Harbor was a treat. It was a small, safe town. It was also somewhat isolated. The nearest major airport was SEATAC some 100 miles by road. In spite of a nice big airfield that could accommodate most any jet, people assigned to the Naval Air Station just north of town would ordinarily arrive via commercial aviation. That meant they flew into Seattle. Getting the rest of the way was the challenge.  So in 1964, local businessman Wes Lupien modernized the small local airport, and founded Whidbey Flying Service. Within a few years, WFS transformed into Harbor Air, and was regularly shuttling from Lupien Airport to SEATAC.

Harbor Airlines Islander N68HA taxis at Wes Lupien Airport on Whidbey Island on 17 Dec 1983. The Islanders were later replaced by Pipers, which in turn later changed to Cessna Caravans. –  Rick Morgan at Rickmorganbooks.com

The first ride of Harbor Air was the trusty Britten Norman BN-2 Islander. The Islander was a great, reliable plane that was easy to operate and fit into the tiny airfield at Oak Harbor. But it wasn’t certified to operate in icing conditions, which occasionally crop up on the Northwest, so the company eventually switched to the Piper Navajo.

Most of the Harbor Air Piper Navajo fleet at Lupien Airport in 1997. Photo by Rick Morgan.

Eventually, Lupien would sell the airline, and it would reequip once again with the turboprop Cessna Caravan.

Harbor Air Caravans on the ramp at SEA in 1999. Photo by Rick Morgan.

The airline business is tough, and margins are always thin. Rising costs, an ill timed attempt at expansion, and mismanagement by the new ownership lead to the airline closing shop in mid 2001. 

You probably don’t really care about the fate of a small commuter airline in a small town in Washington. But I have a few fond memories.

Air travel in the 1970s and 1980s was a tad different from the humiliation of today.  It was a somewhat more relaxed environment.  First, take a look at the picture of the Navajos. That’s a tiny little airstrip. There’s a reason the locals called Harbor Air “White Knuckle Airlines.”  Lupien was challenging enough to fly in and out of in fair weather like that. On a dark and stormy night, the fun meter would just about peg. Not surprisingly, an awful lot of of its pilots were retired or former A-6 or EA-6B pilots. *

The Islander held one pilot and nine passengers in five rows of seats. What that worked out to was, the first passenger to reach the plane was seated in the co-pilot’s seat. You guessed correctly if you guessed that as a young lad, I sprinted to the plane every time. And, as things were a bit more relaxed back then, it wasn’t unusual for my friend Jerry Patterson, a retired A-6 squadron commander, to put a headset on me, and chat with me during the half hour hop to SEATAC.

Harbor Air was nominally a publicly traded stock (though I’m not sure it was listed even in the pink sheets). And one of the perks of ownership was a free pair of round trip tickets annually. Which I found out when my friend Brian casually invited me to spent a day in Seattle. Mind you, were were about 13 at the time. In this age of parenting where letting your child walk to school is worthy of a criminal investigation, imagine letting two young boys fly to Seattle early in the morning, spend all day unsupervised in a major metropolitan city, and fly home later that evening.

Of course, after that grand adventure, I had to buy my own stock!  What meager earnings I had quickly went to buying five shares in Harbor, at a price of about $20 a share, I think. In the event, the free tickets usually went to my dad during his many trips to care for his family in the South, but still, I had my own stock portfolio!

Any time dad came home via Harbor Air, it was an occasion for a party. Friends and family would gather at the airport, just by the fence right next to the runway, and unveil an enormous banner saying “Welcome Home, Art!” Very often,  champagne in the parking lot with canapes would be followed by a cocktail party or dinner at home.  Of course, sometimes things didn’t always work out.  I recall waving the banner and watching the passengers deplane one time, only to find that dad wasn’t aboard. Turns out, his flight from Atlanta was delayed, and he’d missed his connection. No problem, we just packed up and moved the party to the house, and eventually dispatched someone to pick him up later that evening on the next flight.

That banner came in handy again in 1991. Returning from Saudi Arabia after Desert Storm, I finally was able to take some leave at the end of May. Long flights from Germany to New York to Seattle left me anxious to catch the very last Harbor Air flight of the day, departing at about 10pm. And my “confirmed” ticket bought through SATO** turned out to be “standby.” Fortunately, there was a no-show, and I made the flight.

And sure enough, there was a crowd of about 60 well wishers watching the Navajo taxi back to the ramp. The pilot saw that huge banner welcoming Art home, and asked which one of us was so popular that evening. And my fellow passengers, mostly sailors returning the air station, kindly let me deplane first. And so it came, that I triumphantly stood at the top of the steps waving a “V for Victory” and stepped down.

And promptly tripped and fell flat on my face on the tarmac.

*Stephen Coont’s novel The Intruders begins with his hero, Jake Grafton, in a SEATAC bar waiting for a Harbor Airlines flight.

**Scheduled Airline Ticket Office. A kind of government run travel agency, where tickets for official travel are issued, and tickets for personal travel may be purchased. It is run with  the usual government efficiency.

WASHINGTON — The US military has for weeks been training Ukrainian forces in US tactics, but the commander of US Army Europe says Ukrainian forces, who are fighting Russian-backed separatists, have much to teach their US trainers.

Ukrainian forces have grappled with formidable Russian electronic warfare capabilities that analysts say would prove withering even to the US ground forces. The US Army has also jammed insurgent communications from the air and ground on a limited basis, and it is developing a powerful arsenal of jamming systems, but these are not expected until 2023.

via Electronic Warfare: What US Army Can Learn From Ukraine.

For the most part, the US has relied on airborne electronic attack, from its EA-6B Prowler and EA-18G Growler aircraft. While those are tasked primarily with jamming enemy air defenses, they have a robust capability to jam other radio frequency emitters.

The short range jammers used in Iraq and Afghanistan have mostly been for self defense. But countering a foe like Russia or other near peer powers would require more powerful, and simultaneously more discrete jammers. One issue is that while you’re jamming the enemy, you need to be sure you’re not denying the useful parts of the RF spectrum to yourself.

I visited Baghdad in 2007 as a guest of Gen. David Petraeus. Before the trip I had written a column forecasting another broken Army, but it was clear from what Petraeus showed me that the Army was holding on and fighting well in the dangerous streets of Baghdad. Such a small and overcommitted force should have broken after so many serial deployments to that hateful place. But Petraeus said that his Army was different. It held together because junior leaders were still dedicated to the fight. To this day, I don’t know how they did it.

Sadly, the Army that stayed cohesive in Iraq and Afghanistan even after losing 5,000 dead is now being broken again by an ungrateful, ahistorical and strategically tone-deaf leadership in Washington.

via How a massive threat to our Army may be coming from Washington – The Washington Post.

To some extent, the downsizing and underfunding of the Army after every war is almost inevitable. Our public grows weary of war, and of the expense of war.

But MG Scales overlooks one of the key factors driving young men and women from the ranks today. That is the studious focus of senior leadership today on social engineering in the force, rather than focusing limited resources on mission essential tasks.

For instance, while we have best wishes for the three remaining women currently cycling through Ranger School, we also find it an incredible waste of time and energy to be pushing for women in combat arms.  Proponents are quick to tout the benefits of increased opportunity to the soldiers involved, but have not ever coherently explained just how opening the career fields to women will actually enhance the mission readiness of maneuver units.