Raw Intel

Our buddy Galrahn tweeted yesterday, For the fifth time in a week, a very serious defense person described Hagel to me in private as "an idiot" or "stupid." That is chilling. — Raymond Pritchett (@Galrahn) August 22, 2013 Not the first time I have heard that, but the guy was elected to quite a few offices. So, who am I to judge his IQ - though there are lots of brilliant idiots out there and very smart people who don't know squat about what they should - or know a lot of what is just wrong. SECDEF Hagel was hired for one reason; to preside over the more rapid decline of the US military so that the next President doesn't have enough to really do anything overseas - a…

Haven't tried the game, but the trailer is awesome: Haven View the full article

Are you reading Norman Polmar's posts over at navyhistory.org blog? Well shame on you if you aren't classics like this; After dozens of letters and many hundreds of manuscript pages exchanged between us, we finally met in March 1969 when Genda visited the United States. He was invited to the United States in part to participate in the Naval Institute’s distinguished visitor program. (I had been assistant editor of the Naval Institute Proceedings from 1963 to 1967.) During his visit Genda spoke at the Naval Academy to an audience of Naval Academy midshipmen and faculty, and area USNI members. When asked if the Japanese had possessed the atomic bomb, did he …

Click on this link (right click, save as) to see the actual signed memorandum by SecDef Hagel. Here is the text. Statement by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on the Distinguished Warfare Medal The Department of Defense announced on Feb. 13 the establishment of the Distinguished Warfare Medal to recognize the achievements of a small number of service men and women who have an especially direct and immediate impact on combat operations through the use of remotely piloted aircraft and cyber operations. I agree with my predecessor Leon Panetta that such recognition is justly warranted for these men and women and thank him for raising the level of awarenes…

It is all still here - and we're on a Russia kick today. On top of that ... it is the details, details that I like. Wearing a tie, and an ill-fitting one at that, on the bridge. Old school CRTs. Paper and crayons. What looks like very unsanitary Bakelite handsets ... but besides that ... they do have some nice lines those Russian ships. View the full article

Hey ... via the latest issue of Proceedings, this should ring a bell on the Front Porch; The Littoral Combat Ship is overpriced and underperforming, yet the Navy continues to support it. It’s time to abandon the LCS and replace it with a comparable vessel that costs the same, but is far more capable. There are several great candidates in other navies, but one we might consider is the Danish-built Iver Huitfeldt –class frigate. Welcome aboard for Plan Salamander since ~ 2005, though we have often offered up from the Swedish VISBY, Norwegian NANSEN, Dutch SEVEN PROVINCES, or the other Danish ship ABSALON - anything but the Little Crappy Ship ... but IVER HUITFELT i…

He copped to some of the charges against him. FORT MEADE, Md. – A military judge on Thursday accepted guilty pleas by Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 10 lesser charges against him, leaving the ex-intelligence analyst to face 12 other counts for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of government documents to the WikiLeaks website. The acceptance of the "naked guilty pleas" -- meaning there is no agreement between the government and the defense that would limit the sentence – at a pre-trial hearing means that Manning faces up to 20 years in prison, even if he is ultimately acquitted of the most-serious charges against him. Col. Denise Lind, the military judge…

I've been in a grumpy, snarky mood all week - why stop now? I always thought that San Francisco was a bad place for Starfleet Headquarters - so Brussels is not bad by comparison. Look. NATO Headquarters Brussels. When Anders Fogh Rasmussen drives to his office in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels in the morning, he gazes longingly at a large construction site across the street. The site, where construction cranes jut into the sky, will eventually be the home of the new, 250,000-square-meter (2.7-million-square-foot) NATO headquarters. Price tag: more than a billion euros. In 28FEB13 Dollars - that comes to over $1.31 billion. That is a lot for an organization …

Introduction Every spring semester, the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky launches a 24-hour policy crisis simulation. Thirty-five or so students are divided into 6-8 teams, each led by a faculty member or program graduate. Simulation Control, normally involving myself and one or more graduates or faculty members, manages the sim with a combination of remote and direct contact. The University of Kentucky School of Journalism coordinates with the Patterson School during the simulation, independently operating at least two news websites that cover the events in-sim. This year's simulation involved thirty-three students, …

LT B .... gird your loins. View the full article

Today is the day to let a vital part of American society know that we appreciate them. Mostly for the tasty, albeit overpriced cofee, but also for not caving in to anti-gun zealots. Many people who love guns and coffee particularly appreciate Starbucks. In the 12 states with unfettered rights to “open carry†a gun, including Virginia, and the 16 others that are mostly open carry, Starbucks has rebuffed attempts by gun control activists to keep guns out of the national coffee shop chain. So on Friday, 2-22 (for the Second Amendment), gun rights supporters are holding “Gun Owners Support Starbucks Day,†and will be drinking their joe while openly packing their …

U.S. Marine Corps 1st Lt. William Kavanagh uses the optic lens on his M4 carbine to scan the area in the Kajak district of Afghanistan's Helmand province, Feb. 8, 2013. Kavanagh, a company executive officer, is assigned to Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 7. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Kowshon Ye View the full article

Hat tip ThatGuy. View the full article

I am going to anonomize this as I don't want every to tease this COS. Those who have been in the rodeo awhile will be able to narrow down who this is .... but .... Shipmate has to be thinking to himself, "I am a senior Captain in the world's largest navy. I have a respectful record of service at peace and war. I am the Chief of Staff at a significant command with oversight of thousands ... nay ... tens of thousands if you count in right ... and ... sigh ... sequestration can bite me." From: [redacted] CAPT [redacted] , N01Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 17:30 To:[redacted] _ALL_[redacted] Subject: STAFF BUDGET REDUCTION Staff, I am sure that you all hav…

The Navy just released an interesting video of Raytheon's Griffin missile testing from USS Monsoon (PC-4) off VACAPES last month. Although relatively short-range (about 5km), Griffin brings some much-needed offensive firepower to the PCs. The $45k a pop Griffin has proliferated in the U.S. military in the past few years, with roll-on installations on Marine Corps C-130s and other aircraft. Monsoon's testing also represented a successful demonstration of laser designation and targeting at sea (albeit on a clear day). The dual quad-pack Griffin set up onboard Monsoon is very compact and lends itself to installation onboard even smaller vessels such as the MK VI. The …

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Oh goodness. I really don't want to make it a habit of Fisking Flag Officers, but if you are going to put your by-line out there, well, welcome to the scrum of the marketplace of ideas. VADM Copeman, again, "With all due respect ... but ..." - you brought up the subject. Out of nothing but love ... we must engage on ... the Little Crappy Ship. BEHOLD The alternative universe of the Potomac Flotilla! Sigh. Here we go, paragraph by paragraph. By Vice Admiral Tom Copeman I'll afford you the same benefit of the doubt as I do all VADM, I really don't think you penned it all, someone on your staff got it started and you got a chop on it. Well, I don't know, maybe you did. …

Well except maybe for this lady who put 5 rounds from a .38 into a home-invading scumbag and then had to BS him when she ran out of bullets. The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window, according to Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman. He said she took her 9-year-old twins to a crawlspace before the man broke in using a crowbar. But the man eventually found the family. “The perpetrator opens that door. Of course, at that time he’s staring at her, her two children and a .38 revolver,†Chapman told Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh. The woman then shot him five times, but he survived, Chapman said. He said the woman ra…

While working on the orchard at my Dacha/bolthole this weekend, acreage so far off the grid I can't even get broadcast TV unless I get a 20' tower, I had a little revelation when thinking about a video I saw last week. What is one of the breathless reasons we seem to have disgorged so much intellectual, professional, political, and real capital on LCS over the last decade? What is the panic button ... ah yes; "the swarm." Sure, you hear MIW and ASW wishfull chattering of "make it work" about; but the swarm is the driver. The fear of a bunch of expendable guys in small expendable boats with unguided weapons or suicide packages attacking ships in relatively confin…

From almost day-one of the LCS saga, the turrets-like response to any criticism to the capabilities of this sub-optimal platform has been, “Swarm attack, swarm attack, swarm attack, boobies, pee pee†– or something like that. When the never-was-has-been that was NLOS was deleted from the PPT, about the only reasonable thing that could fill the literal gaping holes was the Griffin missile. After all, we all know in hushed tones the limitations of sensor to shooter of the single … yes single .. 57-mm “main†gun and they had to get something. An OK something now is always better than a perfect thing that may never arrive. The key is to know you just have an OK an…