Raw Intel

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 …

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…

You know I liked the LCS-I better than the mission-module-madness ..... and it looks like LCS-I has morphed into the cringe inducing Multi-Mission Surface Combatant .... that has morphed into what is showing up at the Dubai Air Show as the "Named by Captain Obvious" Surface Combatant Ship ...... which if you must give me something in a USA designed hull that is ready to go now and is smaller than a DDG-51 in order to meet the Frigate Gap ..... I'll take this over the uni-mission LCS any day. Just look at it! ...provides simultaneous Anti-Air, Anti-Surface, Anti-Submarine, Electronic Warfare and Special Operations support capabilities. ... is a high speed, highly …

Wait .... let me put that in better context. From our buddy over at ELP. On another note, this from insidedefense.com (subscription). LCS - the gift that keeps giving. Roll in the fail. I guess putting Sailors in combat not knowing the ability of their "warship" to actually do that "overseas contingency operation" thingy is asking too much. Making sure you can explain to the family members of those killed in combat why their sons and daughters are at the bottom of the sea is "unreasonably expensive" and "impractical." I'll let you answer that question in front of a Senate investigation committee sometime later this decade or next. View …

Packed away in one of my boxes is a speech I outlined back in 2004. It was concerning a concept, a word, that with the last few generations we seem to have forgotten about.This forgetfulness manifests itself in different ways and in different degrees throughout history’s path. This isn't the first time - but in our living memory it is acute.It was on a word that is both a concept and a worldview; stewardship. I can’t find my outlined speech, but I was reminded of it Friday when I read this line from David Brooks article, Why Our Elites Stink: … today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the … old boys’ network did possess. If you went t…

From a little side-bar I was having with our buddy Galrahn - we wandered in the Royal Navy's VERY retro sounding Joint Concept Note 1/12: Future 'Black Swan' Class Sloop-of-War: A Group System. OK, the only retro use is "Sloop-of-War" - which I fully support. It ain't a corvette ... and it is almost more like the exceptionally poorly named LCS. Read the whole thing - but without picking it apart all over the place - right or wrong I like some of the intellectual work behind it. The Brits have done some good, modest, and reasonable intellectual ponderings; "122. The UK needs affordable solutions to deliver a balanced fleet. It requires the agility to adjust to a…

The latest iteration of the People’s Republic of China’s highly successful island hopping campaign in the Southwest Pacific has brought us to another round of the US national security nomenklatura and chatterati pounding away at their keyboards trying to figure out not just what is going on, but what China’s goals are. Everyone continues to talk each other in circles, your humble blogg’r included. Towards the end of last week it started to dawn on me that perhaps part of the problem is that “we” continue to think ourselves in to the same intellectual box canyons. As a result, at the end of each iteration we don’t make progress and the Chinese get more islands. The last …

Ungh. He strikes; again. "What our task force is here to do is really to understand what the impacts of climate change, especially in the arctic, will have on Navy's operations, said Rear Adm. David Titley, Navy oceanographer and director of task force climate change. "We look at climate change simply as changing geography, and we work on, above and under the water and the ocean every day, so we need to understand as that environment is changing, how that will impact our naval operations. So, really it's all about readiness for us." Where exactly have poorly researched, fraud infused, socio-religious, neo-paganism made its way in to the readiness matrix again…

Professor Bruce Fleming has some observations and thoughts over at The Chronicle of Higher Education; Should we keep the academies? Maybe there's a place for them, if we can eliminate their worst flaws. The academies attract a certain type of student: hard-charging, military-oriented, with expectations of both physical and mental challenges. But the academies squander that rich resource. If we want to preserve the academies, and can accept the fact that they don't produce better officers than the cheaper routes of ROTC and Officer Candidate School, it should be possible to find a serviceable hull of a military educational institution under all the barnacles. American ex…

VAQ-129 aboard Reagan over the Veteran's Day weekend. Hat tip DW. View the full article

All you old Cold Warriors ... remember those innocent "tattletales" that always seemed to want to collect "Electronic Intelligence" on our HVU? What's a few torpedo tubes between friends? This was in dry dock in St. Petersburg in the middle of last decade. I am pretty sure this was just a test and development ship - at least that is what a quickie search about the hull number says. I tend to believe that - because I really don't see how you could hide that for long. Remember what part of the world they were found in more than not? You see the underside of every hull eventually. Still though .... Innocent? Sure they were! Hat tip RS and other dudes in e…

Nice. No sketchy sound track. Just Sailors and their ships.Me? I like it because it reminds me of one of the best views in my Navy career - early AM when an UDALOY and a RAPUSHKA came out of the fog off Portugal en route to the STROG.This is the ADMIRAL CHABANENKO of Udaloy II class. The Russians do make attractive ships. View the full article

The upkeep ain't worth it and you have bigger fish to fry. Iraqi officials have discovered that they may have a real air force, after all. The Defense Ministry revealed Sunday that it had recently learned that Iraq owns 19 MIG-21 and MIG-23 jet fighters, which are in storage in Serbia. Ministry officials are negotiating with the Serbs to restore and return the aircraft. I know someone who might take a '21 for the mid-five figures. View the full article

If a nation is at peace where do you draw the line from a risk management point of view if you should meet a scheduled underway period? Where is a good example of when to decide it is just best to stay pierside? I think we have a good example from an unexpected ally. Details over at USNIBlog. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=yIl2AUoC8zA http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?d=qj6IDK7rITs http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=6hc7TIVQ-RY:YREjStQHk6I:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=6hc7TIVQ-RY:YREjStQHk6I:-BTjWOF_DHI http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/FAFV?i=6hc7TIVQ-RY:YREjStQHk6I:V_sGLiPBpWU http://feeds.…

China is interested in a lot more than just the first or second island chain. In the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean, the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia are critical to the sea lines of communication for the economic powerhouses on both sides. From the Age of Discovery to today, their importance rises to the top of any power who wished to influence the area. To look at this area of returning importance with us for the full hour from 5-6pm Eastern this Sunday will be Alexander B. Gray. The starting point for our conversation will be the issues he raised in two recent articles; How the US Can Protect the Sovereignty of the Smallest Pacific Island i…

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. …

How much faster would it be, and how much more range would it have. That was my first thought; what is your first tactical application? BM1 have some thoughts? View the full article

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

I'm not drinking my breakfast ... yet ... but I've read this twice and all I can think of is a need to say, "BINGO!" Booz Allen Hamilton, Norfolk, Va., is being awarded a not-to-exceed $20,000,000 modification to previously awarded indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price pricing provisions contract (N00189-08-D-0022) to increase funded amount. The total contract value inclusive of all modifications is estimated at $184,103,663. The contract will provide leadership teams, providing expertise in change management, barrier identification and removal, and key enterprise performance metrics. The contractor will focus efforts on app…

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…