View from Chaos Manor, Monday, February 02, 2015

I got Firefox spelling checker to work on the SFWA forum, but it was a lot of effort.The easiest way to explain it is that after much searching I found:

Firefox Enable Internal Spell Checker

I occasionally find a problem with Firefox where it will stop spell checking all fields. It’s a small bug, but it’s easily fixed.

Firstly, make sure you have spell checking on:

Tools > Options > Advanced > Check my spelling as I type

If that is checked then uncheck it and restart the browser, then recheck it and again restart the browser – if the spell check still doesn’t work, then once again uncheck the option, then enter about:config in the address bar.

Search for Layout.spellcheckDefault and change the setting from 0 to 1 to enable spell checking in all <textarea> fields, or make the value 2 to enable spell checking in all text input fields.

See also: Layout.spellcheckDefault – MozillaZine Knowledge Base

http://www.liamdelahunty.com/tips/firefox_enable_spelling_check.php

It told me more about Mozilla than ever I wanted to know – I just use the thing, I’m not developing it – but going through that rigmarole did the job.

Yesterday we got a lot said about air supremacy; if you are interested, scroll down. There was plenty. Alas I have had many distractions today and I am a bit tired.

“About 75% of these sorties were in Vietnam (shame we didn’t win that one, eh?). “
The United States did not lose the Vietnam war. The United States destroyed the Viet Cong, and drove the North Vietnamese Army out of South Vietnam. The United States signed a peace treaty with North Vietnam and withdrew its troops from Vietnam.
After that, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese request American aid to repel the Northern Invasion. Congress under the control of the Democrat Party refused to provide funds or permission for the US to aid South Vietnam, which in due course collapsed, causing the deaths of millions of innocent people in Vietnam and Cambodia.
This is an extraordinarily shameful chapter of American History. But it is about the treacherous behavior of the Democrat Party, not about any failure of the United States Armed Forces.
The leftists who run the schools and the media have created the legend of the loss of the Vietnam War, as part of their mimetic assault on patriotism, and also because they want to lie and blame others for their perfidy.

Robert Schwartz

Actually it’s worse than that: in 1972 the North invaded with 150,000 men.  Fewer than 50,000 ever got home. The Army of the Republic of Viet Nam, (ARVN) with US air support decisively defeated an invasion force the Wehrmacht would have been proud of, and it had more tanks than many WW II campaigns in Russia. ARVN won big, and there were only 650 Americans KIA in a campaign as big as Kharkov.  ARVN won big.  Then in 1975 the North sent another invasion force south, just as large, and the Congress would not allow US air support, while Russia supported its ally.  Viet Nam accordingly fell. But America was not defeated. And the tanks destroyed in 1972 were Russian and had to be replaced, with bad effects on the Soviet economy.

We could have won the Viet Nam War, but Congress did not want to.

I do not say our air support in Viet Nam was not effective, even though we did not have many USAF planes designed for that mission – the Navy and Marines were better.  USAF did a good job when they had to. But we need better ground support against ISIS.

: The End of Mutually Assured Destruction?

This article is worth your time; it covers how changes in ballistic missile accuracy undermine the assumptions necessary for Mutually Assured Destruction; to wit, second strike capabilities and the relatively haphazard nature of nuclear weapons.

Matt at 1913Intel.com wrote a small commentary about this article that presses the point:

<.>

Changes in missile accuracy in effect force the other side to act earlier. They lower the threshold for a bolt-out-of-the-blue preemptive nuclear strike </> http://www.1913intel.com/2015/02/01/the-5-most-dangerous-nuclear-threats-no-one-is-talking-about-the-national-interest/

The crux of the article is here:

<.>

However, after modeling a prospective first strike against Russia’s strategic forces, Lieber and Press concluded that the U.S. could execute a successful first strike with a high degree of probability against even Moscow’s massive nuclear arsenal. In fact, they claimed that U.S. policy makers had actually constructed America’s strategic forces with the goal of strategic primacy (defined as “the ability to use nuclear weapons to destroy the strategic forces of any other

country”) in mind. Furthermore, they later concluded that this effort extended beyond nuclear weapons. As they explained in 2013, “the effort to neutralize adversary strategic forces—that is, achieve strategic primacy—spans nearly every realm of warfare: for example, ballistic missile defense, anti-submarine warfare, intelligence surveillance-and-reconnaissance systems, offensive cyber warfare, conventional precision strike, and long-range precision strike, in addition to nuclear strike capabilities.”

</>

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-5-most-dangerous-nuclear-threats-no-one-talking-about-12160?page=show

This is most interesting and it almost forces Russia to keep pace, develop it’s own methods of primacy, and — perhaps as Matt points out

— act while they have the advantage. And, what about China?

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

We have seen the increasing accuracy of ICBM’s coming on since the 60’s, although I doubt anyone anticipated Moore’s Law then; I certainly did not when I was editor of Project 75 in 1964, We knew technology was advancing on an s curve. See the Strategy of Technology by Possony and Pournelle. And in my International Stability Study for the Air Council I noted that the stabilizer power needs escalation dominance at the high end. That remains true – but we have given up SAC. Nuclear stability requires a Force that is always ready but if successful will never be used. That is an elite force, hard to build, and USAF has let it go. It’s more fun to zoom around.

We sow the wind.

How long is Australia’s history with Jihad?

Now, that’s not a question I expect many people to be able to answer. As it turns out Australia imported a number of “Ghans” in 1860. While that’s short for Afghan the group included Muslims from many places around the world.

In 1914 the Ottoman ruler issued a jihad fatwa.

===8<— quote

The Ottoman fatwa declared that it was a religious duty “for all the Muslims in all countries, whether young or old, infantry or cavalry, to resort to jihad with all their properties and lives, as required by the Quranic verse of enfiru.” The verse of enfiru (Arabic ‘go forth’) is a reference to Sura 9:38:

===8<— quote

You who believe! What is the matter with you, that, when ye are asked to go forth in the path of Allah, you cling heavily to the earth? Do you prefer the life of this world to the Hereafter? But little is the comfort of this life, as compared with the Hereafter. Unless you go forth, He will punish you with a grievous penalty, and put others in your place…

===8<— end quote

===8<— end quote

“From Broken Hill to Martin Place: A Tale of Two Jihad Assaults in Australia a Century Apart”

http://www.islam-watch.org/authors/89-other-authors/1600-from-broken-hill-to-martin-place-a-tale-of-two-jihad-assaults-in-australia-a-century-apart.html

You’d think people would have learned by now that Jihad is built into Islam.

True believers must answer calls to Jihad.

The saving grace is that such calls can only be issued by a real Caliph, a ruler over the entire (or a very substantial portion of) the Islams in the world. So today, nobody is authorized to issue the call to Jihad. This is why ISIS and all the others try so hard to pass themselves off as setting up a Caliphate. Then their calls must be obeyed by all observant Muslims.

Another saving grace is that most Muslims really do not understand or know the Qur’an or Sunnah. The Sunnah is the way of life for Muslims derived from Mohammed’s words and actions. The Qur’an, by contrast, is supposedly revealed to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel and is Allah’s actual words, despite how utterly clumsy they appear.

So Australia has had 100 years to have figured out that regardless of how many Muslims adopt the strict Islamic way of life, terrorism, violence, and destruction follow Muslims as they migrate.

I wonder when WE will figure out what Thomas Jefferson had figured out when he sent the Marines to visit Tripoli et al.

{^_^}

This email is from a Marine who’s in Afghanistan; his buddy Jordan provides many of the details.
No politics here; just a Marine with a bird’s eye view opinion.

US Weapons:

1) The M-16 rifle: Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder like sand over there. The sand is everywhere. Jordan says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it’s lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They lack the ability to mount the various optical gun sights and weapons lights on the picatinny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment.
They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round. Poor penetration on the cinder block structure common over there and even torso hits can’t be reliably counted on to put the enemy down.

Fun fact:
1) Random autopsies on dead insurgents show a high level of opiate use.

2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon): .223 cal. Drum fed light machine gun. Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of shit. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly (that’s fun in the middle of a firefight).

3) The M9 Beretta 9mm: Mixed bag. Good gun performs well in desert environment; but they all hate the 9mm cartridge. The use of handguns for self-defense is actually fairly common. Same old story on the 9mm: Bad guys hit multiple times and still in the fight.

4) Mossberg 12 ga. Military shotgun : Works well, used frequently for clearing houses to good effect. (Great weapon – I used these when transporting prisoners).
5)The M240 Machine Gun: 7.62 NATO (.308) cal . belt fed machine gun, developed to replace the old M-60 (what a beautiful weapon that was!) Thumbs up.Accurate, reliable, and the 7.62 round puts ’em down. Originally developed as a vehicle mounted weapon, more and more are being dismounted and taken into the field by infantry. The 7.62 round chews up the structure over there.
6) The M2 .50 cal heavy machine gun : Thumbs way, way up. “Ma Deuce” is still worth her considerable weight in gold. The ultimate fight stopper – puts their dicks in the dirt every time. The most coveted weapon in-theater.
7) The .45 pistol: Thumbs up. Still the best pistol around out there. Everybody authorized to carry a sidearm is trying to get their hands on one. With few exceptions, one can reliably be expected to put ’em down with a torso hit. The special ops guys (who are doing most of the pistol work) use the HK military model and supposedly love it. The old government model .45’s are being re-issued en masse.
8) The M-14: Thumbs up. They are being re-issued in bulk, mostly in a modified version to special ops guys. Modifications include lightweight Kevlar stocks and low power red dot or ACOG sights. Very reliable in the sandy environment, and they love the 7.62 round.
9) The Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle: Thumbs way up. Spectacular range and accuracy and hits like a freight train. Used frequently to take out vehicle suicide bombers (we actually stop a lot of them) and barricaded enemy. It is definitely here to stay.

10) The M24 sniper rifle: Thumbs up. Mostly in .308 but some in 300 win mag. Heavily modified Remington 700’s. Great performance. Snipers have been used heavily to great effect. Rumor has it a marine sniper on his third tour in Anbar province has actually exceeded Carlos Hathcock’s record for confirmed kills with OVER 100.

11) The new body armor: Thumbs up. Relatively light at approx. 6 lbs. and can reliably be expected to soak up small shrapnel and even will stop an AK-47 round.
The bad news: Hot as hell to wear, almost unbearable in the summer heat (which averages over 120 degrees). Also, the enemy now goes for head shots whenever possible. All the bullshit about the “old” body armor making our guys vulnerable to the IED’s was a non-starter. The IED explosions are enormous and body armor doesn’t make any difference at all in most cases.

12) Night Vision and Infrared Equipment: Thumbs way up. Spectacular performance. Our guys see in the dark and own the night, period. Very little enemy action after evening prayers. More and more enemy being whacked at night during movement by our hunter-killer teams. We’ve all seen the videos.

13) Lights: Thumbs up. Most of the weapon mounted and personal lights are Surefires, and the troops love them. Invaluable for night urban operations. Jordan carried a $34 Surefire G2 on a neck lanyard and loved it. I can’t help but notice that most of the good fighting weapons and ordnance are 50 or more years old! With all our technology, it’s the WWII and Vietnam era weapons that everybody wants! The infantry fighting is frequent, up close and brutal. No quarter is given or shown.

Bad guy weapons:
1) Mostly AK47s: The entire country is an arsenal. Works better in the desert than the M16 and the .308 Russian round kills reliably. PKM belt fed light machine guns are also common and effective. Luckily, the enemy mostly shoots like shit. Undisciplined “spray and pray” type fire. However, they are seeing more and more precision weapons, especially sniper rifles. ( Iran, again)

2) The RPG: Probably the infantry weapon most feared by our guys. Simple, reliable and as common as dogshit. The enemy responded to our up-armored Humvees by aiming at the windshields, often at point blank range. Still killing a lot of our guys.

3) The IED: The biggest killer of all. Can be anything from old Soviet anti-armor mines to jury rigged artillery shells. A lot found in Jordan’s area were in abandoned cars. The enemy would take 2 or 3 155 mmartillery shells and wire them together. Most were detonated by cell phone and the explosions are enormous. You’re not safe in any vehicle, even an M1 tank. Driving is by far the most dangerous thing our guys do over there. Lately, they are much more sophisticated “shape charges” (Iranian) specifically designed to penetrate armor.
Fact: Most of the ready made IEDs are supplied by Iran, who is also providing terrorists (Hezbollah types) to train the insurgents in their use and tactics. That’s why the attacks have been so deadly lately. Their concealment methods are ingenious, the latest being shape charges, in Styrofoam containers spray painted to look like the cinderblocks that litter all Iraqi roads. We find about 40% before they detonate, and the bomb disposal guys are unsung heroes of this war.

4) Mortars and rockets: Very prevalent. The soviet era 122 mm rockets (with an 18 km range) are becoming more prevalent. One of Jordan’s NCO’s lost a leg to one. These weapons cause a lot of damage “inside the wire.” Jordan’s base was hit almost daily his entire time there by mortar and rocket fire, often at night to disrupt sleep patterns and cause fatigue (It did.). More of a psychological weapon than anything else. The enemy mortar teams would jump out of vehicles, fire a few rounds, and then haul ass in a matter of seconds.

Fun fact: Captured enemy have apparently marveled at the marksmanship of our guys and how hard they fight. They are apparently told in Jihad school that the Americans rely solely on technology, and can be easily beaten in close quarters combat for their lack of toughness. Let’s just say they know better now.

Bad guy technology: Simple yet effective. Most communication is by cell and satellite phones and also by email on laptops. They use handheld GPS units for navigation and “Google Earth” for overhead views of our positions. Their weapons are good, if not fancy, and prevalent. Their explosives and bomb technology is TOP OF THE LINE. Night vision is rare. They are very careless with their equipment and the GPS units and laptops are treasure troves of Intel when captured.

Who are the bad guys? These are mostly “foreigners,” non-Afghan Jihadists from all over the Muslim world (and Europe). Some are virtually untrained young Jihadists that often end up as suicide bombers or in various “sacrifice squads.” Most, however, are hard core terrorists from all the usual suspects (Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas etc.). These are the guys running around murdering civilians en masse and cutting heads off.
The Chechens (many of whom are Caucasian) are supposedly the most ruthless and the best fighters. They have been fighting the Russians for years. The terrorists have been very adept at infiltrating the Afghan local government, the police forces, and the Army. They have had a spy and agitator network there since the Iran-Iraq war in the early 80s.

Bad Guy Tactics: When they are engaged on an infantry level they get their asses kicked every time! Brave, but stupid. Suicidal Banzai-type charges were very common earlier in the war and still occur. They will literally sacrifice 8-10 man teams in suicide squads by sending them screaming and firing AKs and RPGs directly at our bases just to probe the defenses. They get mowed down like grass every time (see the M2 and M240 above). Jordan’s base was hit like this often. When engaged, they have a tendency to flee to the same building, probably for what they think will be a glorious last stand. Instead, we call in air and that’s the end of that more often than not. These hole-ups are referred to as Alpha Whiskey Romeos (Allah’s Waiting Room).
We have the laser guided ground-air thing down to a science. The fast movers, mostly Marine F-18s, are taking an ever increasing toll on the enemy. When caught out in the open, the helicopter gunships and AC-130 Spectre Gunships cut them to ribbons with cannon and rocket fire, especially at night. Interestingly, artillery is hardly used at all.

Fun facts: The enemy death toll is supposedly between 45-50 thousand. That is why we’re seeing less and less infantry attacks and more IED, suicide bomber shit. The new strategy is just simple attrition. The insurgent tactic most frustrating is their use of civilian non-combatants as cover. They know we do all we can to avoid civilian casualties and therefore schools, hospitals and especially Mosques are locations where they meet, stage for attacks, cache weapons, and ammo and flee to when engaged. They have absolutely no regard whatsoever for inflicting civilian casualties. They will terrorize locals and murder without hesitation anyone believed to be sympathetic to the Americans. Kidnapping of family members, especially children, is common to influence people they are trying to influence but can’t reach, such as local govt. officials, clerics, tribal leaders, etc. The first thing our guys are told is “don’t get captured.” They know that if captured they will be tortured and beheaded on the internet. They openly offer bounties for anyone who brings in a live American serviceman. This motivates the criminal element who otherwise don’t give a shit about the war. A lot of the beheading victims were actually kidnapped by common criminals and sold to them. As such, for our guys, every fight is to the death. Surrender is not an option. The Afghanis are a mixed bag. Some fight well; others aren’t worth a damn. Most do okay with American support.

Finding leaders is hard, but they are getting better. Many Afghanis were galvanized and the caliber of recruits in the Army and the police forces went right up, along with their motivation. It also led to an exponential increase in good intel because the Afghanis are sick of the insurgent attacks against civilians.
Morale: According to Jordan, morale among our guys is very high. They not only believe that they are winning, but that they are winning decisively. They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them. The embedded reporters are despised and distrusted. Our guys are inflicting casualties at a rate of 20-1 and then see lies like “Are we losing in Iraq” on TV and the print media. For the most part, our guys are satisfied with their equipment, food, and leadership. Bottom line though, and they all say this, is that there are not enough guys there to drive the final stake through the heart of the insurgency, primarily because there aren’t enough troops in-theater to shut down the borders with Afghanisan and Pakistan. The Iranians and the Syrians just can’t stand the thought of Afganistan being an American ally (with, of course, permanent US bases there).
Anyway, that’s it, hope you found this interesting.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Chaos Manor, Sunday, February 01, 2015

Hatred is a sin, so I must be content with despising the Microsoft team that designed the user interface for Office 10; but despise them I do since they despise users. Things that you could find easily in Office 2007, once you got used to the ribbon, have sunk into a long train of subfolders which make sense only to the despicable designers. Yes, the Ribbon was hard to learn and was itself badly designed for Office 2003 users; but it had a kind of logic, and had not the team that writes Microsoft Help been recruited from an asylum for the mentally challenged it would have been learnable, without much effort; and indeed I learned it although as usual Help was no Help at all.

Now there is another odd logic to learn, and they were clever in removing redundancy so they did not leave the old ways in for those who made the effort to learn them.

I remember when Microsoft had a team of Human Factors engineers who studied how people USED Office; observing volunteers from working offices and other places where Office is used. Those seem now to have been replaced with a team of not very bright sadists. I wonder if they are cheaper?

Jerry,

There is only one thing you need to remember about Microsoft.

They are The Government of Windows and MS Office Applications. Their treatment of Users follows naturally from that.

Bob Holmes

I think I may have stimulated some debate over uses of air power and organization to achieve it, which is what I set out to do. We have a few more comments to publish before we can draw conclusions.

USAF ground support

“I think you confuse effort with work: number of sorties looks good, but what they accomplished is a better measure.”
Not at all. I wanted to address the issue of effort, because the claim was that the Air Force hadn’t made much effort to support the Army because they regarded the CAS mission with contempt. In fact, the Air Force made a major – indeed, staggering – effort to support the Army since 1945. It is hard to see what more the USAF could possibly have done.
As for what the Air Force accomplished, we should ask the shades of countless thousands of German, North Korean, Chinese, North Vietnamese, Iraqi, and Taliban troops who were annihilated by American airpower before they ever had a chance to raise their weapons and aim at an American soldier.
In Korea, USAF air support was lavish and as effective as it could be within the limits of early 1950s technology. CAS came faster and in higher quantities than during WW2. Airpower played a decisive role at several points, e.g. stopping the North Korean assault on the Pusan perimeter and covering the UN retreat after the Chinese attacked. Sure, the Army wanted more CAS and wanted it faster, but that’s always true. Believe me, I sympathize — if bad guys were shooting at me, I’d want all the USAF to send all its planes at once. But in the real world we’d never be able to build the number of aircraft the Army would like to have to support it.

James Perry

That is the point: the aircraft are not designed for the mission. What makes a good air superiority plane does not do the sort of work that the Stuka did in the Fall of France, to use a very old example. And of course a good ground support craft is not much use in dogfights, although in its time the P-47 was in fact able to do multiple missions, interdiction, recce-strike, and air supremacy both in ground strikes and supply interruption and interception and dogfights. But the P-51 turned out to be the escort plane (once it got the super-Rolls engine).

I was part of the Boeing design team for the TFX; we tried to design a multi mission ship, but it was my job to write a paper saying you couldn’t do it: you would end up with a craft that was second place in air to air combat, and there are few prizes for second place. The TFX – also known as the LBJ after 11 military boards chose Boeing but a Texas firm got the contract – became the FB-111, and was a very good recce/strike craft in Viet Nam, but it was not an air superiority ship. Of course the egregious McNamara wanted to make it a strategic bomber too: one weapon fits all. This is treated at length in Strategy of Technology by Possony and Pournelle (1970).

Of course we cannot build all the aircraft the Army wants. We can’t build all the guns and tanks they would like to have. But USAF wants to get rid of the best ground support and recce/strike birds we already have. There is a solution to this, give ground support to the Army and let the Air Force concentrate on strategic bombing, air supremacy, and supply; but USAF has rejected that.

Get the dog out of the manger; if need be get another dog. The nature of war is changing and we face ISIS and others like them; the Army can learn air supremacy, but USAF refuses even to think about supporting the field army, except it is adamant about keeping the mission.

= = = =

Anent Air Power

Dr. Pournelle

re: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/air-power-and-other-matters/

I see you have returned to one of your favorite rants: Let’s abolish the Air Force!

I will not engage on that subject for a number of reasons, none of which really matter. I was Air Force and wore the blue proudly, even if it did make me look like a trumped up train conductor. After all, I did not get pride from the uniform. I got it from the blue brotherhood, enlisted and officer, that I served with.

When I was in the Air Force, I said repeatedly in seminars and such that our mission was to support some 19-year-old kid on the ground with an M-16. This made me something of a pariah and may have contributed to the decision to move me out of the cockpit and into engineering.

Anyway, air power is important. I think we agree on that. Whether the USAF or the USAAF does it, the US needs it done.

The US has at least four air forces: the Air Force, the Army air forces (mostly rotary wing), the Navy air forces, and the Marine air forces.

Air forces have five missions: 1) recce, 2) artillery spotting, 3) munitions delivery, 4) transport, and 5) air supremacy. If you know different, please educate me.

To me, the question is not whether the Air Force should be a separate service. The question is how our air forces get those missions done. Like, should we use a manned airplane or an RPV?

Do we need flattops? Can the air missions be performed without big flattops? (The first mission of a carrier air group is to protect its landing field. All else is secondary.)

I liked the A-10, although I never flew one. Had UPT classmates who drove Hogs. Sadly, they were not of my tribe, and I kinda lost touch. But given what PGMs can do launched from drones, do we need to put a man over the battlefield to deliver ordinance on target?

IMO these are things worth thinking about.

To end this missive, again IMO, the only purpose the F-35 serves is to transfer money from the national treasury to Lockheed-Martin. The Marines may have a role for one version, but I do not believe the Air Force model or the Navy model can be justified. Harkens back to McNamara’s statement: ‘Build one airplane and let both the Air Force and the Navy fly it.’ We know how that turned out.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

Well, what you call recce and artillery spotting we called recce/strike, and I don’t see Interdiction – isolating the battle area – in your list, but it will do.

You do know USAF is not going to give up manned aircraft everywhere?

And note McNamara wanted one plane to do all missions. But see Strategy of Technology. Your story of being thought odd because you believe the primary mission is to stand an 18 year old kid with a rifle on the other guy’s command post says it all: the Air Force has lost sight of that. It is true that air supremacy is vital, and the Army does not always understand (until they lose it). We must have that capability; but air supremacy accomplishes nothing if the field army does not advance. We must retake Iraq from ISIS and we cannot do it with F-35’s or with 10,000 drones. And USAF does not get that.

How do we get the modern equivalent of the Stuka in France 1940 back? USAF doesn’t want it, and will not let the Army have it.

USAF Priorities

Jerry,

Good to see you, glad to see you recovering. The amount of your energy budget being taken up by recovery must be annoying the hell out of you – my impression is you’ve been used to getting ungodly amounts of productive time out of a day by disdaining layabout indulgences like naps. Me, absent deadline/crisis adrenalin, I’ve always run out of steam after a few hours then set up for the next round with a nap. I recommend the habit highly for anyone not gifted with the metabolism to routinely just power through. Post-lunch, doubly so. With luck, for you, just a temporary expedient while repairs are underway… For me, it’s a way of life. Anyway, back to the point I was wandering toward when you got tired:

Regarding USAF priorities, General George Kenney’s time running the Southwest Pacific air forces for MacArthur in WW II is instructive.

Kenney was very good at what he did and also got along with MacArthur without being a yes-man (facts possibly related given the disastrous nature of MacArthur’s air efforts before Kenney’s arrival.) (See “MacArthur’s Airman”, Thomas Griffith for the full story.)

Short version: the Southwest Pacific theatre was explicitly a low priority for the US; Europe came first. It was also at the far end of a supply chain that ran across the Pacific the long way. Where Europe saw hundreds then thousands of airplanes, Southwest Pacific saw dozens, eventually hundreds, and had to make do.

Fortunately the Japanese in the theater had similar problems, a long supply chain and other competing priorities. (They also had a problem with not knowing their codes had been broken, alluded to in Neal Stephenson’s wonderful novel Cryptonomicon and covered thoroughly in a book called “MacArthur’s Ultra” by IIRC Edward Drea.) Nevertheless, their air and ground forces were a match (and sometimes more) for what the Allies had and it was a close-run thing well into 1943.

General Kenney focused on two things: Establishing air supremacy, and interdicting Japanese supply lines, particularly seaborne supply. He did both very effectively – ongoing aerial attrition aside, he famously caught hundreds of Japanese aircraft massed on the ground at Hollandia, and the Battle of the Bismark Sea was one of the better-known occasions when he destroyed Japanese shipping – in that case, his Fifth Air Force sank the entire convoy carrying a Japanese infantry division bound for New Guinea. (This incident also showed up in Cryptonomicon.)

Kenney had his priorities: close air support was an afterthought, something you might use your planes for once you’d run out of aerial opposition and the enemy had stopped even trying to send in supplies and reinforcements. He was quite explicit about this: close support of Army formations was the job of artillery, as airplanes were a far more expensive way of delivering explosives than cannon and he didn’t have enough airplanes as it was.

They really did not do close air support in SW Pacific. I asked my uncle, an artillery forward observer officer with the 31st Division at Driniumor River, Wakde, Morotai, and Mindanao, what their procedures were for coordinating close air support, and his answer was, they didn’t have any procedures because it was understood they’d never get close air support. The one mention I’ve found of close air support happening in the theater before the Japanese ran out of airplanes in the region in

’45 involved P-39 pilots of the 35th Group figuring out the night before how best to dive-bomb with their airplanes, then the next day taking out a particularly troublesome mountaintop artillery emplacement under direction from the divisional general on the ground – obviously not a standard procedure.

My point here is not that General Kenney was wrong. Under his circumstances, given his limited theater resources, his priorities look to me to have been correct. His approach led directly to MacArthur’s ability to leapfrog powerful Japanese forces that had been isolated and starved into impotence, arguably shortening the campaign by a year or more and saving a lot of soldiers’ lives.

But Kenney was vastly influential in the direction USAAF then USAF took after the war. (He went on to become the first head of SAC.)

My point is that modern day USAF still has the same priorities and reacts the same way: If there’s a resource shortage, air supremacy and deep interdiction come first, and close air support gets cut to pay for them.

Only the resource shortage is now an organizational artifact, not a theater supply reality. USAF is unable to control costs on new air supremacy/interdiction fighters – $200 million for an F-22? $300 million and climbing for an F-35? *Really*? The result is that hundreds of A-10’s get retired to pay for a couple more F-35’s.

This is insanely organizationally dysfunctional, but I think the solution is obvious: Give the close air support mission and aircraft to the Army, which can better protect the CAS budget from raids by the tactical fighter establishment. Meanwhile, tell USAF that their mission is air supremacy when and where required, that their budget is set, and that they can either produce what’s required or have their bureaucracy gone through with fire and sword till results improve.

Henry

Accepting your analysis, what must be done? USAF will always retire hundreds of Warthog to buy another F-35. Always, so long as it exists. And it will never give up a mission. And it even gave up SAC. I worked for USAF most of my high tech career, I admire their people , but I cannot accept their choices.

The Strategic Implications of Iran’s STD Epidemic

by David P. Goldman

Asia Times Online

January 30, 2015

http://www.meforum.org/5000/strategic-implications-iran-std

“In the 5th Century BC, the “Persian disease” noted by Hippocrates probably was bubonic plague; in 8th-century Japan, it meant the measles. Today it well might mean chlamydia. Standout levels of infertility among Iranian couples, a major cause of the country’s falling birth rate, coincide with epidemic levels of sexually transmitted disease. Both reflect deep-seated social pathologies. Iran has become a country radically different from the vision of its theocratic rulers, with prevailing social pathologies quite at odds with the self-image of radical Islam.

“In the 5th Century BC, the “Persian disease” noted by Hippocrates probably was bubonic plague; in 8th-century Japan, it meant the measles. Today it well might mean chlamydia. Standout levels of infertility among Iranian couples, a major cause of the country’s falling birth rate, coincide with epidemic levels of sexually transmitted disease. Both reflect deep-seated social pathologies. Iran has become a country radically different from the vision of its theocratic rulers, with prevailing social pathologies quite at odds with the self-image of radical Islam.

Unremovable supercookies, 

Jerry

Some readers will be interested in this:

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/197646-verizon-partner-wont-stop-using-undeletable-tracking-cookies-refuses-to-honor-its-own-opt-out-requests

It’s about unremovable ‘supercookies.’ It looks like Verizon takes the concept of unchecked capitalism’s peddling human flesh on the street to heart.

Such lovelies.

Ed

Interplanetary Climate Change NASA’s Hottest Secret. A clip from David Wilcock – YouTube

Jerry

All nine planets are warming up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqOkMaaYaAs&feature=youtu.be

I know nothing about this guy, but I remember reading years ago that other planets are experiencing global warming. Consider this a follow-up.

Ed

Just how does CO2 on Earth warm Mars? Yet we find it there, and other planets are warming. We see warming all over the solar system.  I remarked on the brightness changes ten years ago, but climate change is “science.”

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Chaos Manor, Saturday, January 31, 2015

Went for a walk to end of the block. Tiring and I will have to buy a speed walker to do more. Mine is a very good indoor walker, and fine on good sidewalks, but horrible in this neighborhood.

Firefox for some reason does not use autocorrect or spell check on this Windows 7 system. It works on the laptop but other things are different there. I even used Uninstall on Firefox, but when I reinstalled it came up with the same settings and add-ons as before and spell check does not work. At all. It is infuriating.

I will be looking for a good speed walker that has a seat; suggestions welcome. It is painful to take a walk with me now. I am slow and so concentrating on not falling that it has to be boring for everyone else around me.

I have many comments and much more to say about Air Power. We will get to some of it shortly.

Jerry,
I took a quick look at what the Air Force has done since 1945, using readily available sources. They have flown about 6.5 million sorties in Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and the War on Terror. About 75% of these sorties were in Vietnam (shame we didn’t win that one, eh?). Sorties are a crude metric, especially now that with precision munitions you can hit many more than one target per sortie. For example, the B-1 and B-52 flew 11% of the sorties in the first three months of Enduring Freedom but dropped 75% of the PGMs. Furthermore, the aircraft does not necessarily drop a bomb on every sortie, especially during the War on Terror. Nevertheless, sortie numbers tell you something about what the Air Force actually did.
Contrary to what you might think, the Air Force has spent most of its time supporting our ground troops in the field. Fully 26% of the sorties were close air support or interdiction – i.e., killing enemy troops and destroying their supplies. Another 44% were tactical airlift – not glamorous, but keeps the troops supplied. Recon missions were 12%. Most of those were over South Vietnam, meaning they involved looking for enemy ground troops so we could kill them. That supports the Army. Only 3% of the sorties were counterair missions – but that includes bombing airfields and SAM sites, not just combat air patrol. Another 4% were “strategic bombing”. This generously counts missions over North Vietnam as strategic bombing, although most of the targets were transportation targets so it was really an extension of the interdiction campaign. In sum, 82% of the sorties supported the field army (close air support, interdiction, airlift, recon) while only 7% were “independent” Air Force missions (counterair, strategic bombing).
After WW2, when the USAF dropped a bomb, it was almost always aimed at enemy ground forces:
Vietnam:
4 million tons on South Vietnam (i.e., CAS, interdiction)
3 million tons on Laos/Cambodia (i.e., interdiction)
1 million tons on North Vietnam (mostly on transportation and air defense targets)
Desert Storm USAF airstrikes:
64% on the Iraqi Army
3% to cut lines of communication into Kuwait (bridges, etc.)
15% on air defense targets
13% on “strategic” targets (industry, WMD facilities, government control)
4% on SCUDs
Operation Iraqi Freedom USAF airstrikes:
78% on the Iraqi Army
7% on air defenses
15% on “strategic” targets (WMD, government control)
This is not a picture of an Air Force that has forgotten that the purpose of air superiority is to bomb the enemy, or that regards supporting the Army with contempt. If they hate CAS, they sure have done a heck of a lot of it – almost a million sorties! What more could they have done than the astounding efforts they exerted to support the Army in Vietnam and Iraq?
Regarding the P-47 being a “better” close air support aircraft than what we have, I disagree. The USAF used both propeller and jet aircraft in Korea and Vietnam. Yes, the prop planes had more loiter time, but they were less responsive and more vulnerable to ground fire. By the way, despite the advent of jets, the USAF “response time” to an Army CAS request dropped from 3 hours in WW2, to 1 hour in Korea, to 15 minutes in Vietnam, to 10 minutes or less today.
Our fighters are so good that the enemy refuses to fly against them. The Iraqis buried their planes in the ground in 2003 rather than engage us. This is not a reason to stop being good at air combat. If we stop having the best-trained pilots in the best aircraft, the enemy will contest control of the air.
Frankly I think there’s a better argument for abolishing the Army than the Air Force. Every time we have a good Army, a politician does something stupid with it. Oh but land power is decisive and airpower is indecisive? Gimme a break. Nowadays the Army isn’t even allowed to fight decisively, and the enemy knows all they have to do is wait for us to get tired and go away. Better not even to have the option to get stuck in another long, indecisive “stability” operation.
James Perry

I think you confuse effort with work: number of sorties looks good, but what they accomplished is a better measure.  The USAF air support in Korea was awful – compared to their air war in which they justly claimed that our ground forces suffered no casualties from enemy air. Be sure to note the word enemy because on the retreat from the Yalu we suffered plenty of casualties from air attacks as jet planes came in fast with guns and bombs.

I suspect we will continue to disagree, but the designers of future USAF craft are not listening to either of us. You cite impressive numbers; I only know stories from people I trust who say the A10 was very effective so of course USAF doesn’t want it because it is ugly. 

“This is very serious, to accuse people of treason for communicating with Congress,”

Read more here: Air Force probing alleged ‘treason’ remark by general

Air Force probing alleged ‘treason’ remark by general The Air Force is investigating allegations that the No. 2 commander at its prestigious Air Combat Command told lower-ranking officers that talking to members of Con…
View on www.kansascity.com

Ask Douglas MacArthur

Well MacArthur’s story is more complex.  And for all his genius he didn’t understand air war.  Air supremacy is a vital mission and a lot of ground officers do not understand the necessary targeting philosophy,  

Jerry:

Goering, himself a fighter pilot during WWI, had a firm grasp on the concepts of and need for air superiority. Following the Spanish Civil War, he also had highly skilled single-seater pilots.

What he DIDN’T have was the ability to override the Command Authority.

The Battle of Britain was going in Germany’s favor during the early stages, and the Luftwaffe doctrine was to destroy RAF Fighter Command.

The first bombing campaign was against Fighter Command airfields, because a fighter that can’t land today won’t take off tomorrow.

However, this doctrine didn’t survive the 26 August (1940) retaliatory raid in which the RAF bombed Berlin. Furious, Hitler ordered the unrestricted mass bombing of London and other British cities, and Goering wasn’t able to talk him out of it.

This was where Germany lost the war against the UK, and ultimately the Allies.

With the focus on bombing shifted away from his airfields, Air Vice Marshall Keith Park now had the time to rebuild his runways and move 11 Group fighters back into them (from the fallback fields where they had been moved to get out from under the “Heinkel Umbrella”). They could strike at the German bombers, while the German fighters had significantly less loiter time in the combat area (a lesson that the USAAC had to re-learn, when our fighters arrived without long-range tanks and were unable to stay with the B-17 and B-24 groups over Europe).

Thus, Germany’s defeat is laid squarely at the feet of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, not the Luftwaffe.

There are three types of military plane: fighters, bombers and transports. The A-10 is a bomber (even the gun is intended for attacking ground targets), so it relies on the fighters to sweep the skies for it. The fighters rely on the A-10 to see to it that the enemy tank commander isn’t hosting lunch in the Officers’ Mess when they get back.

OUR National Command Authority is as ignorant as the NSDAP, when it comes to the needs of air superiority and air defense. By cancelling the F-22 builds and shelving the A-10, they put all of our eggs in one basket, guarded by the F-35 — in a role it wasn’t designed for.

If the Republicans can find a presidential candidate whose spine is anything more than the connection between his cranium and rectum, perhaps the F-22 will go back into production and the USAF generals won’t have to sacrifice the A-10 in order to get the F-35 that they’ve been forced to need.

Keep recovering, Jerry!

Keith

That is one explanation, but the decision to swat hornets one at a time continued. It may be that Hitler did not understand and forced the decision; but he listened to Goering – to his detriment at Stalingrad – and we don’t really know what happened.  In any event the Battle of Britain showed that fuel stores and planes on the ground air targets than Spitfires in the air.

Why not give the A-10 – the whole CAS mission, for that matter – to the Marines?

They already have their own fixed-wing air arm, and they’re often the beneficiaries of CAS.

Roland Dobbins

Marine Air gives good support to Marines and Navy; it is not so fine at support of the ground Army.  It works; why change it?  But the War Dept. needs air support also. And both need Air Supremacy.

China’s Wind Power Capacity Exceeds Entire UK Power Grid

The third paragraph is the most interesting, but the first two are worth noting:

<.>

Installations of wind power in the U.S. surged sixfold last year, making it the largest market for the technology worldwide after China.

The U.S. added 4.7 gigawatts of new onshore wind capacity in 2014 compared with 764 megawatts a year earlier, largely due to the extension of the Production Tax Credit in January 2013, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said today in a statement. Total U.S. onshore wind installations are now 64.2 megawatts.

China remains the biggest market for wind with installations rising a record 38 percent, or 20.7 gigawatts, from a year earlier, according to BNEF. China’s grid-connected wind-energy capacity now is 96 gigawatts, more than that of the entire U.K. power fleet. Wind energy is China’s largest power source after coal and hydropower.

</>

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-22/u-s-wind-power-installations-rose-sixfold-in-2014-bnef

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Do not confuse capacity with output. The US has high capacity. So does Germany. Alas that is only when the wind is blowing. The result is brownout where wind is the main supplier. Storage is the problem; and it is lousy. As far as I know there is nothing more efficient than pumped storage — using wind energy to pump water up hill, where it will later run down into a turbine – and that is at best 80% efficient, generally less so, and creates a not very useful lake whose level rises and falls frequently. Look up pumped storage for more. Batteries are obviously less complicated, but also more expensive. China’s investment is not likely to be optimum.

: Fred Reed: ‘It is well known that Paul Bremer, the virtual viceroy of Bagdad after the city’s fall in Gulf I, disbanded the Iraqi army. Less known is that he replaced Mohammed al Aksa, the chief of intelligence, with Abdul dhar es Salaam, *a known Sufi

‘It is well known that Paul Bremer, the virtual viceroy of Bagdad after the city’s fall in Gulf I, disbanded the Iraqi army. Less known is that he replaced Mohammed al Aksa, the chief of intelligence, with Abdul dhar es Salaam, *a known Sufi extremist* with ties to Iranian intelligence.’

<http://www.fredoneverything.net/METwaddle.shtml>

Roland Dobbins

Bremer has the loss of Iraq to answer for. H should be made aware of that.

Peggy Noonan’s column in today’s Wall Street Journal is worth your time. America’s foreign policy since 2009 has been a disaster. It is now getting worse. If you have no goal, it is difficult to achieve it.

Something is going on here.

On Tuesday retired Gen. James Mattis, former head of U.S. Central Command (2010-13) told the Senate Armed Services Committee of his unhappiness at the current conduct of U.S. foreign policy. He said the U.S. is not “adapting to changed circumstances” in the Mideast and must “come out now from our reactive crouch.” Washington needs a “refreshed national strategy”; the White House needs to stop being consumed by specific, daily occurrences that leave it “reacting” to events as if they were isolated and unconnected. He suggested deep bumbling: “Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates” and declaring “certain capabilities” off the table is no way to operate.

Sitting beside him was Gen. Jack Keane, also a respected retired four-star, and a former Army vice chief of staff, who said al Qaeda has “grown fourfold in the last five years” and is “beginning to dominate multiple countries.” He called radical Islam “the major security challenge of our generation” and said we are failing to meet it.

The same day the generals testified, Kimberly Dozier of the Daily Beast reported that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a retired director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, had told a Washington conference: “You cannot defeat an enemy you do not admit exists.” The audience of military and intelligence professionals applauded. Officials, he continued, are “paralyzed” by the complexity of the problems connected to militant Islam, and so do little, reasoning that “passivity is less likely to provoke our enemies.”

These statements come on the heels of the criticisms from President Obama’s own former secretaries of defense. Robert Gates, in “Duty,” published in January 2014, wrote of a White House-centric foreign policy developed by aides and staffers who are too green or too merely political. One day in a meeting the thought occurred that Mr. Obama “doesn’t trust” the military, “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his.” That’s pretty damning. Leon Panetta , in his 2014 memoir, “Worthy Fights,” said Mr. Obama “avoids the battle, complains, and misses opportunities.”

No one thinks this administration is the A Team when it comes to foreign affairs, but this is unprecedented push-back from top military and intelligence players. They are fed up, they’re less afraid, they’re retired, and they’re speaking out. We are going to be seeing more of this kind of criticism, not less.

On Thursday came the testimony of three former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger (1973-77), George Shultz (1982-89) and Madeleine Albrigh t (1997-2001). Senators asked them to think aloud about what America’s national-security strategy should be, what approaches are appropriate to the moment. It was good to hear serious, not-green, not-merely-political people give a sense of the big picture. Their comments formed a kind of bookend to the generals’ criticisms.

They seemed to be in agreement on these points:

We are living through a moment of monumental world change.

Old orders are collapsing while any new stability has yet to emerge.

When you’re in uncharted waters your boat must be strong.

If America attempts to disengage from this dangerous world it will only make all the turmoil worse.

Mr. Kissinger observed that in the Mideast, multiple upheavals are unfolding simultaneously—within states, between states, between ethnic and religious groups. Conflicts often merge and produce such a phenomenon as the Islamic State, which in the name of the caliphate is creating a power base to undo all existing patterns.

Mr. Shultz said we are seeing an attack on the state system and the rise of a “different view of how the world should work.” What’s concerning is “the scope of it.”

Mr. Kissinger: “We haven’t faced such diverse crises since the end of the Second World War.” The U.S. is in “a paradoxical situation” in that “by any standard of national capacity . . . we can shape international relations,” but the complexity of the present moment is daunting. The Cold War was more dangerous, but the world we face now is more complicated.

How to proceed in creating a helpful and constructive U.S. posture?

Mr. Shultz said his attitude when secretary of state was, “If you want me in on the landing, include me in the takeoff.” Communication and consensus building between the administration and Congress is key. He added: “The government seems to have forgotten about the idea of ‘execution.’ ” It’s not enough that you say something, you have to do it, make all the pieces work.

When you make a decision, he went on, “stick with it.” Be careful with words. Never make a threat or draw a line you can’t or won’t make good on.

In negotiations, don’t waste time wondering what the other side will accept, keep your eye on what you can and work from there.

Keep the U.S. military strong, peerless, pertinent to current challenges.

Proceed to negotiations with your agenda clear and your strength unquestionable.

Mr. Kissinger: “In our national experience . . . we have trouble doing a national strategy” because we have been secure behind two big oceans. We see ourselves as a people who respond to immediate, specific challenges and then go home. But foreign policy today is not a series of discrete events, it is a question of continuous strategy in the world.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-strategy-deficit-1422573879?tesla=y

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Chaos Manor, Thursday, January 29, 2015

I continue to recover, and part of that is consolidating most operations onto a new fast machine. Still use Windows 7, but changing to Office 10 and various updates.  It seems needlessly complex. Microsoft has never discovered the joys of redundancy when it comes to ways of doing things,  They still want to “save” a kb of memory, as if anyone cares.

Bill Gates on dangers of artificial intelligence: ‘I don’t understand why some people are not concerned’ (WP)

By Peter Holley January 28 at 6:28 PM

Bill Gates is a passionate technology advocate (big surprise), but his predictions about the future of computing aren’t uniformly positive.

During a wide-ranging Reddit “Ask me Anything” session on Wednesday — one that touched upon everything from Gates’s biggest regrets to his favorite spread to lather on bread — the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist outlined a future that is equal parts promising and ominous.

Midway through the discussion, Gates was asked what personal computing will look like in 2045. Gates responded by asserting that the next 30 years will be a time of rapid progress.

“Even in the next 10 problems like vision and speech understanding and translation will be very good,” he wrote. “Mechanical robot tasks like picking fruit or moving a hospital patient will be solved. Once computers/robots get to a level of capability where seeing and moving is easy for them then they will be used very extensively.”

He went on to highlight a Microsoft project known as the “Personal Agent,” which is being designed to help people manage their memory, attention and focus. “The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model – the agent will help solve this,” he said. “It will work across all your devices.”

The response from Reddit users was mixed, with some making light of Gates’s revelation and others sounding the alarm.

“Clippy 2.0?,” wrote one user.

“Please…more like Clippy 2020,” another replied.

“This technology you are developing sounds at its essence like the centralization of knowledge intake,” a third user wrote. “Ergo, whomever controls this will control what information people make their own. Even today, we see the daily consequences of people who live in an environment that essentially tunnel-visions their knowledge.”

Shortly after, a Reddit user asked Gates how much of an existential threat superintelligent machines pose to humans. The question has been at the forefront of several recent discussions among prominent futurists. Last month, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said artificial intelligence “could spell the end of the human race.”

Speaking at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium in October, Tesla boss Elon Musk referred to artificial intelligence as “summoning the demon.”

I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.

After gushing about the immediate future of technology on Reddit, Gates aligned himself with Musk and struck a more cautious tone.

“I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence,” Gates wrote. “First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned.”

Once he finished addressing the potential demise of humankind, Gates got back to more immediate questions, like revealing his favorite spread to put on bread.

“Butter? Peanut butter? Cheese spread?” he wrote. “Any of these.”

==

I am working with John DeChancie on a novel that has some of this trend, It is very much worth while opening a discussion on the consequences and effects of AI. Comments welcome. Should we regulate this? How?

Dr. Pournelle,
So happy to see you are recovering. Your posts and mail are always a highlight in my day.
I’d not thought you’d misquoted the SAC motto the other day, just that you’d tried to re-form it to fit your statement. Considering your CoDominium Marines had adopted it, was pretty sure you knew it.
The other day, I was able to speak with a retired A-10 pilot, and found him in agreement with many of your views on the way the system has been treated by the Air Force. In addition to the direct ground support mission, he also emphasized the utility of the aircraft in CSAR and in tactical scouting. It was his opinion that there is nothing else in any service inventory that can do these jobs as well as an A-10.
While I tend to agree with much of the criticism of the USAF, I really think we should be wary of signs of Iron Law stagnation in the Army, too. As an engineering contractor, my former employers were all involved with several U. S. Army acquisition programs that were rife with blatant waste and borderline fraud, usually driven by flag-ranked Army officers and staffed by current and former Army officers. I learned that those who most frequently stated that “the warfighter” was their prime concern were the most self-serving, cynical, resource wasters of the bunch. The other services (and several of the three-letter agencies) for which I worked on similar programs were not quite as bad.
While I agree with your correspondents who state that lack of political will, leadership, and direction is the cause of the losses of recent wars by the best-equipped fighting forces in history, from my worms-eye view much of the blame also belongs within the services. Eisenhower said it (after it was too late for him to do much about it):
” In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. “
I’ll stand with you on the abolition of the USAF only if it comes with complete reform of the Pentagon force and acquisition structure, otherwise, for the Army, a reboot of the USAAF will be as much pearls before swine as it was for Mitchell a century ago (and for many of the same reasons), and we’d be better off to let it alone.
-d
==

The creation of USAF from USAAF was intended to make possible “the unification of the services,” What it has accomplished is to make our military less effective in its primary mission, which is to win wars. Gaining air supremacy is complicated, and older army types did not understand that.  You do not fight hornets by swatting them one a time, even if you are good at swatting.  The goal is to be able to fly when the other guy cannot, and to eliminate his counter air resources. Goering didn’t understand this, and thus the Battle of Britain, which was a terrible waste of the Luftwaffe in an attempt to remove the RAF long enough for the Wehrmacht to get across the Channel.  The US Army got the wrong message from that battle. 

And later the Army chose wrong missions for the ground support forces.  You can’t do close support without air supremacy, USAAF knew that; the rest of the Army did not. They never learned that once you have air supremacy you get close support.

But when USAAF replaced USAF, the hot pilots forgot that you wanted air supremacy not just to protect you own troops from enemy air power, but also so that you could use air power against the enemy; and once USAF was formed, protecting and preserving missions became of prime importance. The Army got helicopters but never P-47’s, and new aircraft were for air supremacy, but never for ground attacks.  And here we are today.The Air Force puts itself as more important than winning battles.

Gen. LeMay learned one of the nastiest lessons in warfare history in the early days of the 8th Air Force against Germany. Germany was good and we were not, we had little fighter escort, and as a result, LeMay lost a lot of good men and planes correcting that problem. He never forgot, and after WWII, we got SAC which as you’ve mentioned, was the most effective military force the world has ever seen. The whole world knew it, and the bad guys were scared silly of SAC. As LeMay used to say, “Flying fighters are fun, flying bombers are important”.

SAC’s command and control was even more impressive than it’s flying and bombing. In the movie, “A Gathering of Eagles”, Rock Hudson’s character is showing some dignitaries around the mole hole (SAC’s command and control center at Offit AFB). Within seconds, positive control is demonstrated for the entire SAC force including an airborne B52 flying 5000 miles away. All of this with 1960’s technology. No cell phones, no internet, no satellites, just SSB HF radio and hardliner’s. I’ve always thought that was a message to the Soviets, look how quickly we can be ready to kill you.

SAC was the heart of the USAF. The rest were spear carriers. If we have lost that, then you are right, it’s time for USAF to go.

In the 70’s the Army had more ships than the Navy, and more aircraft than the Air Force. The problem was the aircraft were severely limited in gross weight and many of the ships had no propellers and had to be towed.

My Dad’s best friend was a SAC radar navigator (a polite phrase for Nuclear bombardier). About the time I graduated from high school, he was the Air Force program manager for the A10. He gave me a tour of the production line. It was pretty neat. At the front of the line was the titanium bathtub that pilot set in and a small, stapled set of sheets of paper. At the other end was a completed airplane and a locked room of paper. Max did not think the A10 was anti air force, after 20 years of alert duty, ORI’s and ridding BUFF’s, he knew what an air force was for, winning wars. I have a message in 6 parts….

Phil Tharp

Does not fit the Narrative

Jerry,

An article from the AP. Apparently the A-10 does not fit the narrative.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article8499242.html>

“Air Force probing alleged ‘treason’ remark by general By ROBERT BURNS- AP National Security Writer

01/28/2015 5:53 PM | Updated: 01/28/2015 5:53 PM

“WASHINGTON

The Air Force is investigating allegations that the No. 2 commander at its prestigious Air Combat Command told lower-ranking officers that talking to members of Congress about the capabilities of the A-10 attack aircraft is tantamount to treason.”

Given that the USN has operationally deployed a directed energy weapon, I do wonder just how much of a future airpower has in a “if you can detect it, you can kill it” environment.
Sure it is early days for the ship borne laser, but they will only get better and the quoted cost of “ammunition” is $5 (five dollars) a shot.

Kev Metcalfe

Abolish the Air Force

An aircraft so ugly it is beautiful. Like the PBY.
The Air Force attempted to abolish the A10 back in the 90s. During the budget hearings, after Gulf War I.
The Air Force spoke first. The Army followed them and proposed that the Army be given these wonderful aircraft, along with the personnel slots and funding.
The Air Force came back and removed the proposal.

Chuck Pelto

Jerry:

“We know that it was warmer in Viking times than now, and surely that

was not due to Medieval human activities.”

Actually, we don’t know this.

For your perusal:
http://phys.org/news/2011-10-team-european-ice-age-due.html
“Research team suggests European Little Ice Age came about due to reforestation in New World”

Charles Mann talks about this in his book “1491.”  The idea is, Native Americans did a lot of slash and burn, and the Americas were essentially a maintained landscape — one that produced a lot of smoke.  Come the Columbian Exchange, and the subsequent reforestation after the pronounced population decline, there wasn’t as much carbon.  This had global consequences.

Hoping this finds you well,

Hal

We may not KNOW it but it’s a very reasonable hypothesis. They cut trees in the 16th Century too, and if CO2 caused the Viking Warm, where did it go when things got cool?

Jerry,

It must be nice to be a Monopoly and be able to change your Service Standards whenever you can not meet the existing standards.

The USPS has changed their delivery standards for First Class Mail effective January 1, 2015. There is, effectively, no such thing as next day delivery for First Class Mail. (If you are mailing to a PO box associated with a USPS Sorting Center, the letter might get put into the PO Box the next day, but don’t count on it.)

The new standard is two to four days.

There is one bright spot. Your mail might be delivered earlier in the day.

I guess it is time for a name change to US Post Office since there is precious little Service left.

Bob Holmes

and I found this while consolidating..

Blackship

Dr. Pournelle,

The release of Blackship Island was timed perfectly as a self-gifted birthday present, and I am enjoying it immensely. Inexpensive, too, on my Kindle. I think that I’m learning to differentiate between the Niven, Barnes, and Pournelle parts, but it is difficult.

As a result, I will have to re-read the rest of the Avalon series. I’ve avoided buying Kindle copies of books I’ve read in the past — mostly. _The Legend of Blackship Island_ has (*sorry*) re-kindled my interest. I never tire of re-reading books of yours, and of your collaborators, and my paperbacks are wearing out. I’m going to have to break down and buy copies of some of my old friends in electronic format.

Trying not to throw spoilers for others, should you choose to publish this: I ran into a technical edit issue — a young character is presented with a paintball gun, and successfully fires on a target — which is said to have had two darts embedded into it. The ammo doesn’t seem to match the weapon. I don’t know of any other way of bringing this to your attention. I will provide paragraph and kindle location if you wish.

How does one get into the business of providing editing services? I can find errors in other’s work easily. Never in my own. Perhaps I’m in the wrong profession.

Looking forward to the release of the next Tran novel, as well,

Regards,

-d

I had lunch yesterday with Niven and Barnes,  We are making use of the creatures on Black Ship…  Alas I missed this letter two years ago.  I will try to fix the text…  I suspect this is a collaborator error

Fermi’s Paradox solved?

<http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/59937>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

We need to come back and discuss this.  Interesting.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.