Raw Intel

The Royal Navy speaks so it can sleep at night. Adml Sir Mark Stanhope said the campaign would have been more effective without the Government's defence cuts. The aircraft carrier and the Harrier jump-jets scrapped under last year's strategic defence review would have made the mission more effective, faster and cheaper, he said. Sir Mark warned that the Navy would not be able to sustain its operations in Libya for another three months without making cuts elsewhere. ... "The pros would have been a much more reactive force," he said. "Rather than deploying from Gioia del Colle, we would deploy within 20 minutes as opposed to an hour and a half, so obvious…

Yesterday around 6.00 CET pirates in a fishing vessel attacked the MV Flintstone 93NM north east of the island of Socotra. The pirates in their dhow where seen coming and the crew of the Flintstone went into hid in a special compartment of the ship. Meanwhile the Dutch Vessel Protection Detachment, consisting of marines, prepared for the arrival of the skiff that came from the dhow, that was being used as a mother ship. At first the VPD fired flares at the coming ship, in which they could see several weapons including a RPG. When this RPG was aimed at the Flintstone the marines answered with direct fire, forcing the skiff to return to the dhow. What I don't un…

Politics can be pretty disgusting on a good day, but this is a new low. My good friend, combat veteran and legitimate American hero David Bellavia is running for Congress in NY's 27th District. He would be an Allen West-ian breath of fresh air in the House and God-willing and the creek don't rise we will see him there. He is running against a rich guy (and kicking his ass) who is willing to throw money and now disgraceful allegations at David and a charity that we both helped found, the Warrior Legacy Foundation (WLF). There have been claims made by proxies and political tools of David's opponent Chris Collins that WLF is a scam designed to line David's pockets and defrau…

Heard the one about the UFO seen from NewFoundland? Check out the picture in the story. One might think the Canadians were watching the new French M51. Seems odd to me though. While the time would match up, that is a heck of a distance to get such accurate photography. In other news, North Korea looks to be preparing for their next ballistic missile launch. Not surprising, they traded artillery fire last night. Have you noticed Somali piracy has slowed down quite a bit in the new year? It must be coincidence the level of violence inside Somalia has risen considerably during the same time. They are different issues, but there are interesting patterns and relations …

In late May 1943, the B-24 carrying the 26-year-old Zamperini went down over the Pacific. For nearly seven weeks — longer, Hillenbrand believes, than any other such instance in recorded history — Zamperini and his pilot managed to survive on a fragile raft. They traveled 2,000 miles, only to land in a series of Japanese prison camps, where, for the next two years, Zamperini underwent a whole new set of tortures. His is one of the most spectacular odysseys of this or any other war, and “odyssey†is the right word, for with its tempests and furies and monsters, many of them human, Zamperini’s saga is something out of Greek mythology. For you sports minded folks, t…

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 …

If you worry what kind of impact the money trouble in DC may have on the condition of the ships we are riding hard and leaving up wet, I invite you to spend some time with RDML Joe Carnevale, USN (Ret), Senior Defense Advisor for the Shipbuilders Council of America, presentation from 5 December 2012. I recommend slide 31 if you are in a hurry. View the full article

Ummmm ... errrr .... DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY Boston Dynamics, Inc., Waltham, Mass., is being awarded a $10,882,438 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The contractor will develop and build a set of identical humanoid robot systems for use by performers in both phases of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Robotics Challenge Program. This effort will develop robotic platforms consisting of two legs, a torso, on board computing, two arms with hands, and a sensor head. The robots to be delivered to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will be distributed to the top software development teams based on the results of th…

Reuters Photo A U.S. Army cadet reads a book entitled "Kill Bin Laden" as he waits with other cadets for U.S. President Barack Obama to deliver an address on U.S. policy and the war in Afghanistan at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York December 1, 2009. View the full article

For the Little Crappy Ship and its sub-optimal construct; it's the easiest thing to do. We've been discussing Chris Cavas's articles on LCS for well over a half decade - and his latest work outlines in painful detail what critics have been warning about from the start. More from the Perez report is so Salamanderesque that I swear their team has been hanging out on the front porch. As we said in the middle of last decade, once hulls displace water in number; our reality will trump your PPT. The limited ability of the LCS crew to perform onboard maintenance, and the need to return to port for even basic repairs, “negatively impacts†the ships’ availabilit…

Here we go. From Admiral Harvey via WAVY; A few minutes ago, I permanently relieved Capt. Owen Honors of his duties as commanding officer of USS ENTERPRISE (CVN 65) for demonstrating exceptionally poor judgment while serving as executive officer of that ship, from 2006-2007. While Capt. Honors' performance as commanding officer of ENTERPRISE has been without incident, his profound lack of good judgment and professionalism while previously serving as executive officer in ENTERPRISE calls into question his character and undermines his credibility to continue to serve effectively in command.After personally reviewing the videos Capt. Honors created while serving as…

A few weeks ago I published aseriesofpostsanalyzing Maksim Tokarev’s outstanding Naval War College Review article that detailed the Soviet Navy’s 1980s-era doctrine for employing combined arms against U.S. Navy battleforces. At the end of my first post, I suggested that: With a finite number of bombers, missiles, and trained crews, it is reasonable to think Soviet commanders would have been somewhat hesitant to dispatch such irreplaceable forces into battle unless they had some degree of confidence in their situational picture’s accuracy; the operational-strategic penalties that would be incurred if they ‘got it wrong’ simply seem too high for this not to have b…

There was a Captain on a Navy boat (yeah I know, ship) who seems to have been auditioning for a role in the British Navy of the sailing era. WOW is she a nuttah. One look at her pic ought to send a wise soul running, but how far can you run on a boat. USNI's blog had the story back in January and now it is all the rage. View the full article

Let's go back in the time machine and quote your humble blogg'r back in May 05 on an issue I have been writing about since '04. Taking out their tried and true smear template, the Hollywood Left and their fellow travelers are starting out to libel today's veterans just like they did Vietnam veterans. I don't think they can help themselves. For the sake of this post, it would be best if you have read B.G. Burkett's book Stolen Valor . If you have not read it; buy it , read it, and then donate it to your local library. He exposes the macro lies, smears, and half truths that the anti-war/anti-military/anti-veteran slathered over the Vietnam veterans. …

An F-22 Raptor takes to the sky during a demonstration of air dominance over Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., April 11, 2015. The event featured members of the F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team, the Air Force aerial demonstration team, the Thunderbirds, and the U.S. Army Parachute Team, the Golden Knights. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Javier Cruz View the full article

My recent post on how to counter Chinese anti-shipping capabilities between the First and Second Island Chains was heavily influenced by CAPT William Toti’s seminal article in last June’s Naval Institute Proceedingson the need to tackle anti-submarine warfare from a theater-wide, threat-tailored, combined arms campaign construct. If you haven’t read his article (which is outside the paywall), do so. It is a foundational work. Toti observes that the dramatic sensor advantages that allowed the U.S. Navy to thoroughly dominate Soviet submarines throughout much of the Cold War no longer hold. Our ability to detect and attack an approaching adversary submarine before …

I came across the bit of pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation you called a thoughtful discussion just before going to be part of an honor guard for a parade and memorial service for those who fought and died for freedom. Part of what they died for is your right (and that of your fellow panelists) to display your intellectual and moral shortcomings to the world, and I would have that no other way. That said, I think your apology has far more to do with realizing you stuck another shortcoming into a 220 socket and flipped the switch, hurting both you and your struggling network. As such, I'm afraid I can't and don't accept it as I don't believe it. In fact, I have a …

The Tea Party took Madison today, and I wish I was there if just to shake the hand of the guy who made this sign. This will be remembered as the revolt that killed public sector unions. The behavior of the protesters and their grotesque sense of entitlement have awoken the bear. America doesn't cotton to looters or moochers and the folks out this week in Wisconsin were both. Comparing a Governor who was duly elected and ran on a program to cut spending to Hitler and Mubarak is disgraceful. The fact that teachers and others felt empowered to lie their way out of work and then go to the Capitol to piss and moan is shameful and it will cost them. The cry that budget cuts…

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. …

I'll let you guess which three. More than half the women quizzed (54%) said failure to put the seat down was their man's most irritating trait. Leaving wet towels on the bed was the second most frustrating habit (23%), followed by a propensity to leave dirty laundry on the floor (15%). Other annoyances cited included snoring, doing a bad job at a household chore for the fear of being asked to do it again, not replacing toilet roll, leaving toenail clippings and loose change around the home, drinking straight from the milk bottle and refusing to ask for directions when lost. View the full article