Bring back the Iwo Jima?

View 773 Thursday, May 09, 2013

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Discussion of the Benghazi Incident in which the American Consulate in Benghazi was left hung out to dry in the face of a major terrorist attack over a period of some ten hours resulted in the deaths of four Americans including the US Ambassador to the newly “liberated” Libya continues without much result. For reasons not yet revealed, the US Ambassador to the United Nations went on national television five times with the story that the Benghazi Incident was a general uprising in reaction to an obscure anti-Prophet video posted on You tube. This supposedly erupted into a spontaneous demonstration which grew into an actual attack by mortars and other heavy weapons. Various US responses including sending in a military reaction team to secure the Benghazi airport and conduct an evacuation of US personnel were contemplated, and at one point a team was ready to depart from Tripoli when it was told to stand down. We do not know who gave the order to stand down – either who was directly responsible for conveying the order, or who originated it. Normally the US military is more clear in defining its chain of command.

The US State Department second in command in Libya (a career Foreign Service Officer who was in Tripoli) was told by the Ambassador on the telephone that the Consulate in Benghazi (and the Ambassador personally) was under armed attack. There was no mention of a video or of any spontaneous demonstration. He has since been demoted from second in command to a desk officer. No explanation of this has been published.

The Congress is the Grand Inquest of the Nation, and it is supposed to determine why extraordinary events happen. Such inquiries can be used as political weapons, but that is not their purpose. One would think that both political parties would be interested in knowing how such a thing could happen and what the US, with the world’s most powerful military establishment, might do for the future. Perhaps a company of airborne troops on ready alert in each major theater? That might be overly expensive. Still we have this greatly powerful military – surely that confers some capabilities? We have carrier groups. We have various air weapons. Has no one given any thought to such matters?

And for the record, the President left the scene at 5 PM with the instruction to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State to “do what you have to do”, which I would have read as a blank check to include anything up to a nuclear weapons response. One can understand that a President with no military experience might turn the matter over to the Department of War (well, we call it defense now). It may be that he simply went back to the domestic quarters of the White House having left the matter in what he thought was good hands with full power to deal with it.

What happened was that nothing happened. No rescue units were sent, no airplanes were sent to buzz the area, no tankers were sent to stand by to refuel any fighters that might be sent; there not only was no single integrated operational plan (although one might think that on the anniversary of 9/11 there might be some reason to have some active forces on ready alert), there don’t seem to have been any plans at all for dealing with major incidents in Northern Africa – an area that is still volatile.

Is that worth discussion? Are operational plans being formed now? Have any units been designated as standby for alert in case of a repeat incident? If so I don’t know of any. It all seems very odd.

In past times here wasn’t a lot of choice. Technology dictated that we would do nothing but react to incidents of this sort although I seem to recall that we had contingency plans on how we could react swiftly – it was the lack of any real operational plan that led to the developments in the early days of the Korean War with the defeat of Task Force Smith and the near disaster when the Pusan Perimeter was threatened. MacArthur and the Marines saved us at Inchon, but with that came a determination that we would be more ready in future. Of course that is a long time ago and few will remember those times.

The Iwo Jima class helicopter carriers with a battalion of Marines aboard were designed to be the ready force available for brush fire wars and general world peace keeping. They came about due to a number of strategic theory papers published in the 1950’s: a way to project a fair amount of force in a reasonable time. They were built and in use in the last part of the 20th Century, and were quite effective. Over time they were sold off and scrapped, supposedly replaced with more effective systems. Perhaps so but has a couple of Iwo Jima class ships been cruising the Mediterranean the Benghazi incident would not have happened. Of course those ships were not cheap and keeping operational level of troops on alert is expensive, but if we have goals requiring the projection of force we need to have forces to project.

Perhaps we need to rethink the need for swift reaction forces for the future with the technologies available to us now. They would be useful for either a Republic or a Competent Empire.

It has been a while since I gave serious thought to these matters; but it is time someone did.

Subject: space shuttle main computers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AP-101

They required a cold plate to keep from burning up. Brute force, the flower of 1970’s tech. 24 layer printed circuit boards etc.

Phil

Even more primitive than I remembered.

IBM_AP-101

You missed this ( or at least didn’t point it out ) in the link about the space shuttle’s computer.

"The shuttle software was written in HAL/S, a special-purpose high-level language."

Arthur C. Clarke, where are you?

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

Pete

Peter Wityk