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OAK HARBOR, Wash. – The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) graduated its first five aviators from the training pipeline of the EA-18G Growler during a ceremony at the Naval Air Station Whidbey Island (NASWI) Officers’ Club, Feb. 27.

Australia currently flies F/A-18 Hornets and F/A-18E Super Hornets so joint cooperation on the new EA-18G Growler is based on a familiar airframe.

“It’s gone very well for the first [Australian] graduates,” said Cmdr. Tabb Stringer, Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 129 commanding officer. “It was obvious they hand-picked them and sent really bright people.”

RAAF will continue to train and work with electronic attack squadrons in preparation for receiving their own Growlers. One of the five graduates is already deployed with VAQ-135.

via First Australians Graduate Growler Program | Homeport Northwest.

I have no  doubt that the Oak Harbor community has been making them feel right at home. Indeed, it’s probably something of a social coup to host them for dinner.

Events in Yemen continue to accelerate much faster than many experts predicted, and the potential for widespread sectarian war between Sunni and Shi’a grows more acute by the day. In some ways this portends even more trouble than ISIS’s fight against Iran’s proxies in Syria and Iraq: that fight is both bloody and strategically important, but ISIS is also an enemy of the Sunni powers (whose rule it wants to overthrow). Now, the Saudis and their allies are clearly prepared to confront Iran’s allies head-on.

via Egypt-Saudi Invasion of Yemen Imminent – The American Interest.

In the long term, I think events in Yemen will be of greater strategic importance than those involving ISIS. For one thing, I don’t think ISIS can truly destabilize Saudi Arabia.

Also,  I’m kinda scared to read the news this morning, for fear of finding out what the heck else our feckless leadership has screwed up overnight.

One way to know that someone is Fullbore? Well, for starters, they have their own tag at CDRSalamander.

For well over a decade I have seen Ayaan Hirsi Ali for exactly what she is; a hero to the West and the ideals of The Enlightenment.

Strong, fearless and direct – there is no better advocate for the freedoms that the West takes for granted, and few better at describing the true nature of the fringes that threaten modernity, human rights, and the progress of our civilization.

via CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday.

Like I said at Sal’s place, there’s a reason the left vilifies Ayaan.

Any acknowledgment of Ayaan as a true victim of the war on women (in Islam) has to be avoided or discredited because it shows what an utter sham the supposed GOP war on women is.

Weeks prior to the Army’s announcement on Wednesday that it would charge Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, with desertion, personnel assigned to a unit within the military’s Tampa, Florida-based Central Command headquarters read signs of bad things to come for the man they spent five years searching for in Afghanistan.

“Shortly after Bergdahl disappeared, his parents gave one of Bowe’s horseshoes to Gen. Mattis as a keepsake,” says an Army source who has knowledge of the incident.

General James Mattis, the charismatic, now-retired Marine Corps four-star, was head of Central Command at the time. “Mattis hung the horseshoe at CentCom. He put it on a wall. He hung it prominently, where everyone could see it, every day, as a constant reminder that we were searching for Bowe.”

via Bowe Bergdahl Charged with Desertion : People.com.

We don’t usually link to People Magazine,* but SKK is a long time friend of the blog, and she tells an interesting story.

*We do like to read it while waiting for our haircut at Supercuts. Gotta find Load HEAT candidates somewhere!

For the purposes of full disclosure, I have a duty to inform you all that I am a U.S. Navy (Reserve) F/A-18 Hornet pilot. And while some may remark of a bias because of that, please follow along and draw your own conclusions.

When I read the remarks of the current Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, to Congress about the impending Navy strike fighter shortfall, I couldn’t help but feel that the answer is staring us right in the face: the Navy needs to buy more Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets as a stop-gap measure until Lockheed-Martin can deliver the F-35C Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter to the fleet.

Originally designed to serve for 6,000 flight hours, the Navy and Marine Corps’ Hornet fleet is well into its prime with over 62% of the fleet already beyond 7,000 flight hours. Instead of reconstituting the fleet with newer aircraft, the Navy has gone “all in” on the Joint Strike Fighter.

via Strike Fighter Shortfall: Are More Super Hornets The Answer? | Fighter Sweep.

Jack argues for 36 more Supers. That’s a good start, but I’d really like to see a two year buy of 36 Supers each year. That covers the shortfall, covers attrition, and may even allow some of the very oldest legacy Hornets retire, all while buying just a bit of cushion for any more slippage in the F-35C program.

Seriously, the Navy has never had too many planes. And Congress is likely to be in a fairly giving mood, even in the face of very tight budgets.

SGT Bowe Bergdahl* has been charged with Desertion (Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice) , and Misbehavior Before the Enemy (Article 99 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice).

News reports such as this from the Washington Post tell us that if convicted, Bergdahl faces the possibility of life in prison. Without having seen the actual charge sheet, I’ll admit that this confuses me somewhat, as theoretically, both articles, and especially Article 99, provide for the death penalty.

Since 1942, the services have executed 160 service members. Of these, three were Air Force personnel, and the remainder were all Army personnel. The vast majority were during World War II. The last person executed under the UCMJ was John A. Bennett, in 1961, for the rape and attempted murder of a young girl in Austria.

The only execution not for murder or rape was that of Eddie Slovik, famously the only American soldier executed for Desertion during World War II.

There are currently six servicemembers facing the death penalty for convictions under the UCMJ. Four are, for want of a better term, rather garden variety spree murders. Two are rather more imfamous, Hasan K. Akbar and Nidal Hasan, both cases of “Sudden Jihad Syndrome,” if you will.

The military, while arguing against appeals in the above cases, does not currently seem to be pressing forward toward actually executing any of the above. Every death sentence under the UCMJ must be personally affirmed by the President.

*Here is an interesting aside. SGT Bergdahl was a Private First Class when he was alleged to have deserted. His promotions were automatic, under the presumption of satisfactory service, as is the norm with POW/MIA personnel. The Army now alleges that his performance was not satisfactory. Would the reduction from Sergeant to PFC be administrative, or would a conviction under the charges listed be required for reduction? Any JAG officers around?

Just a nifty little hooah video from our friends up north, showing operations well to east.

The future? At best, we cull the herd and let the scavengers fight over the remains of the Islamic State. Even if the Islamic State is defeated, thousands of radicalized young fighters who survive will return home to France, Germany, Britain, Australia and the USA. They will not come home in peace.

via CDR Salamander: What if we gave a war and everyone came.

For myself, in the short term, I see the defeat of ISIS as a pressing matter. In the  rather more long term, the containment of Iran is, I think, more important to our long term security.

Having said that, the bolded part of that piece from CDR Salamander will almost certainly haunt us for years to come.

Western societies are, by their nature, quite open. That inherently makes them vulnerable to some level of terrorist attack, be it as simple as driving a car into a crowd, or something rather more sophisticated.

We will have to deal with these radicalized people. But we also have to do so without losing the soul of what it means to be a free society. We’ve not done well on that front to date. We’ve already seen the reaction by Boston PD to what was, really, a rather small incident, essentially placing a major metropolitan region under house arrest.

Saudi diplomacy in preparation for yesterday’s air strikes in Yemen is impressive. The Kingdom is reaching out to the Sunni world with apparent success: Pakistan, which only last week rejected any role in Yemen, is now considering a role in the Saudi-led operation against Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Pakistan is by far the largest Sunni state with a strong military and air force, and its alignment with the Saudi-led coalition is of decisive importance. Egypt has sent four warships to the Gulf of Aden to secure the southern approach to the Suez Canal, and may have deterred an Iranian naval presence. The Israel news service Aretz Sheva reports, “Senior editor of Saudi online paper Arab News, Siraj Wahab, has just tweeted that Egyptian ships forced Iranian retreat from Bab Al-Mandab strait near the Port of Aden.”

via Saudis contest Iran’s hegemony – and might just win | Asia Times.

At this point, I think the best we can hope for from our current administration is to shut up and stay away from the grown-ups at the table.

And that’s ringing alarm bells among Israelis.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shiite group, an old enemy of Israel, which came out openly in support of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad almost two years ago. Both Assad and Hezbollah are allies of Iran, another Israeli enemy.

Hezbollah is “fighting on multiple fronts,” explains Nicholas Blanford, Beirut correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and author of ‘Warriors of God,’ a military history of Hezbollah. But he says Israel’s concern is focussed on one particular area — “the region [of Syria] adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.”

“The Iranians and Hezbollah, and various other Iranian allies — Shia paramilitary groups from Iraq and even Afghanistan — are waging an offensive in southern Syria against the rebel forces there. But that’s going to put them face-to-face with Israeli troops on the Golan, which is a prospect that has filled the Israelis with some alarm.”

via Hezbollah’s gains in Syria have triggered concerns in Israel | Public Radio International.

The Golan Heights are THE dominant terrain feature in Israel. It’s unlikely Hezbollah can force them, but on the other hand, they can make continued possession of them expensive and painful. Israel cannot strategically afford to abandon them. Israel will find itself either having to absorb casualties from Hezbollah attacks, or launch an attack from the Heights against well prepared defensive positions to push Hezbollah back. Neither is a particularly attractive prospect.