Category Archives: military stuff

yeah, we’re going to attack venezuela

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As you know, Comrade President Trump ordered the destruction of at least 10 vessels in the Caribbean, killing more than 40 people. He and Pete Hegseth (Secretary of Biceps) claim these boats were manned by Venezuelan drug couriers and jammed full of illegal Venezuelan drugs, but they haven’t offered an ounce of supporting evidence. Nor have they asked for Congressional approval to kill random Venezuelans.

Now Trump and Hegseth have ordered the aircraft-carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to leave the Mediterranean Sea and make way to the Caribbean. There are already eight Navy vessels (crewed by some 6,500 sailors and Marines) operating in the Caribbean region. Why do they need an aircraft carrier?

Good question.

By the way, this isn’t just any aircraft carrier. The Ford is the world’s largest aircraft carrier. In fact, she’s the largest warship ever constructed. She carries an air wing of 65 to 70 aircraft, including F/A-18 fighters, which have a range of over a thousand miles and can carry laser-guided bombs and missiles for air-to-air, air-to-ground, and anti-ship assaults. Wait, there’s more. The Ford is also the heart and command center of an entire carrier strike group. That means she’s usually accompanied by at least one cruiser (armed with guided missiles for ship-to-shore combat) as well as a couple of destroyers (also armed with missiles for both ship-to-shore or ship-to-ship combat) or frigates (similar to destroyers, but smaller, faster, and more maneuverable. but still stocked with a whole lot of missiles), as well as a logistic ship and a supply ship.

USS Gerald R. Ford

SO MANY MISSILES! Clearly, a carrier strike group is massively over-armed for attacking and sinking a few small suspected drug-running vessels. There’s only one reason to send the Ford and its attendant strike force to the Caribbean.

The US is going to attack targets ashore. Venezuelan targets.

Now, you may be wondering, “Greg, old sock, what has Venezuela ever done to us?” The answer is: nothing, really. I mean, sure, Trump says it’s all about drugs, but like so much of what he says, that’s bullshit. Relatively few drugs are trafficked through Venezuela. If it was about drugs, we’d be attacking Colombia or Mexico.

The most optimistic analysts suggest we’d attack Venezuela because the current government is making the region less stable; taking down the Maduro regime, they think, would help stabilize South America. But does anybody really believe Trump cares a rat’s ass about South American stabilization? Marco Rubio, the so-called Secretary of State, has some strong feelings about the Maduro government (I don’t know why and couldn’t be bothered to find out), but Trump wouldn’t open a door for Rubio, let alone attack a sovereign nation for him.

It might be because of the number of Venezuelan immigrants coming to the US. There are something like three-quarters of a million Venezuelan immigrants living here now. And who can blame them? Life in Venezuela is grim. But 750,000 Venezuelans is less that 2% of the immigrants living in the US. Then again, math isn’t Trump’s strong suit.

Bullying is his strong suit. Picking on much weaker opponents, that’s also one of Trump’s strong suits. And hey, we can safely bully Venezuela. I mean, their annual military budget is about 1/18th the cost of the USS Gerald Ford. I’m sure they’ll put up some sort of defense, but c’mon. It’s not what you’d call a fair fight.

I’m sure there are some military analysts who can cobble together some legitimate-sounding reason for the US to attack Venezuela. But the real reason is probably that Trump and Hegseth want an excuse to impress the world by the size of their dicks.

we’re straight up murdering people now

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Yesterday the United States military attacked and destroyed a civilian vessel in international waters, killing eleven people. Comrade Trump claims the boat was carrying narcotics bound for the US, and that the victims were members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan drug cartel.

The alleged ‘drug boat’ moments before being obliterated.

That may be true. We don’t know. We can’t know because we blew them up. What we DO know is this:

  1. It was a civilian vessel.
  2. The vessel wasn’t an immediate threat to anybody or anything.
  3. There was apparently no attempt to intercept the vessel.
  4. There was no attempt to disable the vessel.
  5. There’s no declaration of hostilities against Venezuela.

In other words, the Trump administration hasn’t presented any evidence to justify the use of military force against this boat. It appears to be an extrajudicial killing of 11 people. Which is illegal as fuck.

If we can locate and track the vessel accurately enough to fire a missile up its ass (and we obviously did), then we can track it long enough to intercept it in US waters. At that point, we could determine if there were, in fact, narcotics onboard. If so, we could then detain the crew, interrogate them about the source of the drugs, and hold them for trial in a criminal court. We could have followed the law.

But nope.

There appears to be no reason to blow them up except to gratify the blood lust of Trump and his Cabinet of Nazgûl. This is literally murder. It’s criminal on the part of the people who ordered the missile fired and the person who actually fired it. However, there’s no chance any of them will be held accountable.

It’s important to remember that back in February, just a few weeks after Trump resumed the presidency, Pete Hegseth summarily fired the senior Judge Advocates General of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. These are the officers responsible for enforcing the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Hegseth actually said the JAGs were fired because he didn’t want them to be “roadblocks to orders given by a commander in chief.” That was, in effect, an announcement that Trump intended to use US military forces in ways forbidden by the UCMJ.

And now he has. And what’s perhaps scarier is this: military personnel have shown themselves willing to execute orders they know are illegal, in direct violation of the oath they swore when they entered military service.

Killing these eleven people in this particular way–and doing it openly–is a test and a declaration. It’s a test to see the domestic and international response. And it’s a declaration that Trump intends to use the US military in ways that are expressly forbidden to further his own political and personal agenda.

This is straight up dictatorial bullshit. And with a MAGA-controlled Congress, Trump will get away with it.

tactical yardwork

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I’m sure you’ve all asked yourselves this very same question: “What do I do when I’ve declared a national emergency and activated the National Guard to fight crime, but then there’s almost no crime to fight?” It’s annoying, right?

I mean, they elect you to be POTUS and they give you the entire District of Columbia National Guard to play with, so obviously you’d want to use them to guard the nation against something. Otherwise they’re just wasted, sitting there on the shelf. So, crime. Nobody likes crime. Crime is a good thing to fight. Everybody likes crime-fighting. It’s popular on television. It’s not YOUR fault there’s not much crime to fight.

Courageous National Guard troops, dressed in camouflage AND hi-visibility vests engage trash.

So there you are, you’ve got your troops all dressed up and no crime to fight. What to do, what to do? EASY! Make them fight trash! DC is host to tens of thousands of foreign tourists who toss trash all over the fucking place because that’s how they behave in foreign countries. Except, not so many people are coming to DC now, because they’re not really welcome. Besides, you’ve told them DC is a dangerous shit-hole. So the trash assault is a pretty short term event.

Courageous National Guard troops mulching like nobody has mulched before.

But hey, DC is also beautiful. Trees and bushes and all sorts of pretty flowers, and that shit has to be mulched. The National Guard may not be trained to mulch, but they know how to improvise, adapt, and overcome. Issue them rakes and hoes and other geoponic implements, and turn them loose. They’ll mulch the absolute shit out of whatever needs mulching.

Tactical yardwork is fine, but you really really wanted them to fight crime. That means you have to send the troops where crime exists. Fortunately, there are some pretty tough, crime-ridden neighborhoods in DC, neighborhoods where people don’t always feel safe at night, neighborhoods where news photographers are reluctant to visit. There’s no point in sending your troops there. However, you’ve heard from your pretty-eyed Vice President that vagrants–actual people without proper employment and/or lacking a fixed abode, like in those movies from the 1930s–have been loitering around Union Station. Vagrants are smelly (probably) and unsightly, like windmills off the coast of Scotland. We can’t have that. Also, somebody on your staff might have said something about maybe somebody they knew almost had their luggage stolen while at Union Station.

Courageous National Guard troops supported by an MRAP guarding carry-on luggage.

Now that’s crime worth fighting! Deploy the MRAP! Nothing discourages loitering like a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle. Ain’t nobody gonna sleep on benches–if there were any benches–at Union Fucking Station when your National Guard is on duty. Ain’t nobody gonna roll away some poor tourist’s Samsonite hardside, not when you’re in charge and you have a MRAP handy.

So there you are. You’ve ended crime in DC. Trash is gone. Plants are mulched. You’ve established peace through superior firepower. Now all you have to do is wait for your Nobel Peace Prize. It’s good to be POTUS.

but that’s not the real problem

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As you may recall, recently Comrade Donald Trump, as Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, made this claim on national television:

“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

Yeah, no. Didn’t happen. Just another in the endless series of Trump’s self-aggrandizing lies. The Defense Intelligence Agency conducted a preliminary Bomb Damage Assessment of the US attack (that’s right, the DIA did a BDA) and assessed that the damage at the primary Fordo site was “not extensive.” Certainly, the site was not obliterated like Trump claimed. But that’s not the real problem.

This morning the Unlikeliest Secretary of Defense Ever, Pete Hegseth, complained about the news coverage of Comrade Trump’s pointless attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hegseth claimed that reports detailing the limited damage done by the bombing was, in effect, an attack on the integrity and honor of the pilots and air crew who flew the mission. Which, obv. is total bullshit. Which, again, is in keeping with almost everything Hegseth says. But that’s not the real problem.

GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator

It’s been reliably reported that at the primary uraniam enrichment site at Fordo, two of the so-called ‘bunker buster’ bombs (okay, technically they’re called ‘Massive Ordnance Penetrators’ or MOPs) were dropped on the entry point to the facility and on a ventilation shaft, one after the other, to increase the level of destruction. The destruction that, you’ll recall, the DIA described as “not extensive.” Which means the MOPs didn’t do what they were intended to do. But that’s not the real problem.

Here’s the real problem: for a couple of decades, the threat of the ‘bunker buster’ gave the US leverage. Hostile nations, fearful of the power of that specific bomb, were reluctant to test the US resolve. If a nation started to build a highly secure underground facility against the wishes of the US, the US would dangle the ‘bunker buster’ and that was generally enough to dissuade them. The threat of the ‘bunker busters’ was enough to cow most of our adversaries.

They were incredibly effective as a deterrent…as long as we didn’t actually USE them.

Not anymore. Now everybody knows the most fearsome conventional high explosive bomb in the US arsenal can’t do what it was designed to do. You know North Korea is digging deep today.

Trump has once again made the US weaker. Nothing he can say or do—nothing Hegseth or any of Trump’s other sock puppets can say or do—can change the reality. Oh, the ‘bunker buster’ is still a formidable conventional weapon. But now the world knows it’s just another really big bomb, and if you dig deep enough it won’t hurt you.

silent sentinel

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In the late 19th century, there was a rush to memorialize the American Civil War. There were still a lot of living Civil War veterans around, but enough time had passed that the emotional trauma of that awful war was being scarred over by sentiment. There was a national desire–maybe even a national need–to attempt to ennoble the killing and the dying, to transform the horrific mass slaughter into something virtuous.

Communities did this by erecting monuments and memorials to the fallen soldiers. It’s important to distinguish between these commonplace memorials and the statues of the leaders of the armies. The statues of Civil War generals–Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, William T. Sherman–were created to celebrate both the individuals and the cause they fought for. Every statue of a Confederate general is also a statue defending a war to protect slavery; every statue of Union general is a statue defending the notion of a united nation.

Civil War memorial, Hanson, Massachusetts

But the vast majority of Civil War memorials and monuments–the ones you’ll find in parks and standing in front of courthouses in small towns–are dedicated to the people who did most of the fighting and dying. They’re actually memorials to the grunts, the men who went where they were told to go, who shot at the people they were told to shoot at, and who died because that’s what grunts do. Grunts don’t die for vaguely defined moral or political concepts; they die because somebody in a suit decided those concepts were worth somebody–somebody else–dying for.

For small towns that wanted to memorialize the common soldiers who died in the Civil War, the cost of marble or granite statues was prohibitive. However, there were a small number of New England monument companies that specialized in casting bronze or zinc cemetery statues. The Monumental Bronze Co. of Bridgeport, Connecticut produced a model known as the Silent Sentinel. It was a life-size statue of a generic soldier standing at parade rest and sold for an affordable US$450 (an 8-foot-6-inch version could be had for $750). For Northern markets, the belt buckle of the Silent Sentinel was stamped with US; for Southern markets, it was stamped with CS. Other than that, the statues were exactly the same. The same longcoat, the same rifle, the same knapsack, the same forage cap.

Civil War memorial, New Market, Virginia

Eventually, Southern markets caught on to the fact that they were paying Yankee industrialists for statues of Yankee soldiers passing as Confederate soldiers. They began to insist on changes to their statues–a shorter jacket, a bedroll instead of a knapsack, a different style forage cap. But the fact remains, that many of the Civil War memorials you’ll find in town squares from New England to the Midwest to the Deep South depict the same generic soldier.

That’s appropriate, especially on Memorial Day, when we’re meant to honor the troops who died in military service to their nation. The leaders–the generals, the politicians, the industrialists who profit from the weapons of war–fuck those guys. But all those poor indistinguishable bastards who put on a uniform and went to war because they were told there was a good reason for them to risk death and kill strangers, those people deserve our compassion. They earned those memorials.

quick note on tanks

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An online acquaintance recently sneered at the UK for pledging to send 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, asking, “What possible difference can 14 tanks make?” It’s a good question, but a questionable sneer.

It’s important to remember that there are a LOT of different armored combat vehicles being used in the war in Ukraine. Most of them aren’t tanks; some are personnel carriers with heavy weapons, some are fighting vehicles designed to be fast and maneuverable, some are self-propelled artillery or rocket launchers. They sorta kinda look like tanks, but aren’t; they don’t have the same level of armor or armaments. Of the actual tanks, most are light or medium tanks. Very few are main battle tanks.

Light tanks are, obviously, lighter and smaller and faster. They’re mostly used for reconnaissance and skirmishing, probing enemy lines, getting in and out quickly. Medium tanks have better armor and guns, but aren’t quite as mobile; they pack a better punch and are designed to be used in groups, which means they use different tactics. Then there are the heavy tanks, the main battle tanks (MBTs). These are big, heavy bastards, not as mobile, but massively armed and armored. MBTs are designed to act as the hub of a combined force–infantry on foot, infantry in armored fighting vehicles, and medium tanks. They’re the centerpiece of group operations, the tip of the spear.

Challenger 2

How good is this Challenger 2 MBT? They’ve been in service since 1998 and, as near as I can tell, only four have been rendered inoperable in combat. Four. One was destroyed in 2003 in Iraq, killing two of its four-person crew. However, that tank had been hit while its crew hatch was open–and it was a friendly fire incident; it was mistakenly fired on by another Challenger 2 tank. Even then, it took two rounds to destroy the tank. Two other Challenger 2s were made inoperable when their front underbelly armor was penetrated–one by an RPG and the other by an IED. Since then the underbelly armor has been upgraded. And one Challenger 2 had been hit by an anti-tank missile PLUS 14 RPGS, and was still able to retreat; unfortunately, it backed into a deep ditch and lost a track. The crew was quickly rescued unharmed, the track was replaced, and the tank was back in action within six hours. That’s four times in 25 years. I’d call that a success.

This is a seriously badass tank. So when the UK is sending 14 Challenger 2 MBTs, they’re essentially providing Ukraine with the core unit around which a larger ground fighting force can be arrayed. The same is true for all the MBTs being sent by other nations. The US has sent/will be sending 31 M1 Abrams tanks, and a half dozen European nations have sent/will be sending 49 German Leopard 2 tanks.

Even without all these MBTs, Ukraine has proven adept at destroying and capturing Russian tanks. Oryx, the Dutch defense analysis website, can account for 1761 Russian tanks destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured in the last year. These are confirmed numbers, verified by photographic evidence; the true number of destroyed tanks is significantly higher.

Russian T-72

My online acquaintance says, “But Russia has something like ten thousand tanks in reserve, right?” Probably not. Russia may claim thousands of tanks in reserve, but who can rely on that? They also claimed they could take Ukraine in three days. But even if they DO actually have 10,000 tanks in reserve, they’d be mostly older models–not Russia’s primary MBT, the T-90. We’re already seeing the Russian Army deploying old T-62 tanks in Ukraine, and they haven’t been manufactured since 1975; that’s almost half a century ago.

Given what we know of the corruption in the Russian Army procurement system, we can be pretty confident many of those ten thousand tanks won’t be battle-ready. Not only are manufacturers producing military equipment and parts that don’t meet military specifications (and pocketing the cash), there are also multiple sources reporting Russian commanders selling parts and equipment necessary for vehicle maintenance (and pocketing the cash). We’re hearing about radical equipment failures; for example, cannon barrels (on both tanks and field artillery) need to be regularly replaced because of the tremendous pressure of repeated fire. If they’re not replaced, they…well, explode. That’s hard on the crew.

And if that’s not enough, remember that Russia has a LONG border and needs to keep a large chunk of its military defending that border. It’s not as though Russia can send ALL of its tanks to Ukraine.

So, what possible difference can 14 British Challenger 2 main battle tanks make in the defense of Ukraine? In conjunction with the MBTs and other armored combat vehicles NATO allies are sending, they can make a big difference. This is partly because of the tanks themselves, but also because the Ukrainian Army has proven to be incredibly creative and adaptable in their approach to combat. They’ve learned combined arms operation tactics, at which Russia has failed miserably.

The fact is, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been stalled for months. They not only lack the ability to advance, they lack the ability to sustain major combat operations at this same stalled level. The arrival of new, powerful MBTs will very likely allow Ukraine to advance into Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine by the end of the coming summer.

There’s no way Russia can win this war. The only questions are how they’ll lose and how much suffering they’ll cause as they lose. The most likely outcome (and, of course, this is just my opinion) will be Russia withdrawing from much/most of Eastern Ukraine, followed by the same sort of long, consistent, localized border war Russian and Ukraine have fought since 2014.

meat shield

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Yeah, so Vlad Putin is ‘mobilizing’ 300,000 Russian men to serve in his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. In fact, he’s probably ordered a much larger conscription; some estimate as many as a million Russian men, mostly from the more rural ethnic regions of Russia.

The vast majority of these conscripts will receive little (or no) training before being deployed. This is a feature of the Russian Army, not a design flaw. The lack of training is a deliberate aspect of Russian military strategy in Ukraine.

You may be thinking, “Greg, old sock, that doesn’t make a lick of sense.” And you’d be right (aside from calling me ‘old sock’ and I don’t know WHY you insist on calling me that) IF we were thinking about any conventional Western military strategy. But the current Russian military approach is built around what they call a Battalion Tactical Group (BTG).

The BTG approach involves a cadre of highly skilled soldiers around which poor quality infantry units can be attached. Different types of unskilled units will be attached to a BTG depending upon the nature of the mission or the condition under which they’re fighting. The unskilled or untrained units serve as a literal meat shield to protect the core of the BTG.

This is how it works. Say you’re a Russian officer and you want to know if there’s an ambush ahead, or if there are tanks in that village. You send the meat shield forward to draw their fire. That exposes the location of the enemy units, allowing the BTG’s artillery to target those positions. It works the same way on defense; station the meat shield in between the advancing Ukrainians and the core BTG; when the conscripts get attacked, the BTG artillery can target Ukrainian attackers more effectively.

It’s hard on the meat shield, to be sure, but it keeps the core of skilled professional troops more or less intact. Since the conscripts require little or no training and, for the most part, aren’t given decent weaponry, the meat shield is easily replaced. Just conscript a few thousand more ethnic peasants, and hey bingo, you’re back in business.

It’s a mistake to think of the effectiveness of the Russian Army in terms of casualties. It’s designed to have high casualty rates. Lots of dead and wounded conscripts are acceptable, so long as they achieve the strategic and tactical goals, and keep the core BTG units relatively secure.

The mobilization of a 300,000 body meat shield will help the Russian Army defend the territory they’ve stolen — for a period of time. Maybe it’ll be enough to get them through the winter, which will give them time to train and reinforce the BTGs. And that will prolong the war.

This, of course, is assuming Putin doesn’t contract ‘high building syndrome’ because of his unpopular war policies. It’s looking more and more like he’s losing control of the nation.

inert, but lethal

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I confess, I’m fascinated by military tech. Always have been. It’s awful, of course. So much military tech is about killing people, and, well, you know—killing people, by and large, is pretty much wrong, right? Yeah.

And yet, there it is; I’m still intrigued by military technology. I mention this because over the weekend the US, at the order of President Uncle Joe, killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda. They killed him with a modified Hellfire missile fired by a Predator drone (and yeah, there’s a whole deeply weird, perverse taxonomy at work here—a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone). They killed him “as he stepped onto the balcony of a safe house in Kabul.”

Him. Just him. Just al-Zawahiri. Nobody else. No so-called ‘collateral damage’.

They were able to do that because the Department of Defense, in conjunction with the CIA and engineers from Lockheed Martin, modified an AGM-114 Hellfire missile and turned it into an AGM-114 RX9—basically a hundred-pound laser-guided Ginsu Knife Bomb. Instead of explosives, this missile has—and I’m NOT making this up—six sword-like blades that pop out of the sides of the missile moments before it strikes the target (and by ‘target’ I mean ‘the person the CIA really seriously no-shit wants to kill’).

Smaller than a six-foot-tall human (not sure why that’s important).

The idea, of course, is to limit the number of casualties. Most versions of Hellfire missiles involve explosives, which are notoriously indiscriminate. When shit blows up, anybody in the blast radius is going to get fucked up. That’s a problem. I mean, if the person the CIA really want to kills is, says, standing on a balcony in Kabul and you fire an explosive weapon at him, you’re going to see a lot of kinetic damage to the building and anybody in it (and anybody near it). Kinetic damage is a nice way of saying blown the fuck up.

When a hundred pounds of inert steel with half a dozen blades hits a target on a balcony, the damage is significantly more limited.

Okay, maybe not a Toyota—I dunno. But still.

This missile is so precise that it can target a specific side of a moving vehicle. When the CIA decided to kill Abu Khayr al-Masri, who was riding in the passenger seat of a Toyota (okay, I’m not certain it was a Toyota) the missile hit the passenger side of the Toyota. And yeah, it also killed the driver, because we’re still talking about a hundred pounds of metal WITH a half dozen sword blades flying at mach 1.3, so it’s not like the driver could duck and escape. And sure, anybody in the back seat probably got dinged up and will very likely require years of serious therapy. But still, that’s better than a fucking explosion, right?

Let’s face it. The Hellfire AGM-114 RX9 is a monstrous weapon. We should look on it with horror. And yet, I’m fascinated by it. I have deep, contradictory feelings about the US (or any nation, for that matter) conducting extra-judicial assassinations. But I also think terrorists like Ayman al-Zawahiri (and yeah, he was a terrorist) can’t be allowed to roam around free to plot acts of terror. Given the option, I’d prefer they get a fair trial and, if convicted of a crime, incarcerated. But that wasn’t really an option, was it. So I’m perversely glad that some heinous engineers put this Ninja Ginsu missile together.

What was it Walt Whitman said about containing multitudes?