Archive for January, 2005

This is truly something to be proud of. You can read the post here. No wonder traffic is up a bit.

UPDATE: I had noticed that the googler in question had misspelled “repellent”, and that Google had suggested the correct spelling. I hadn’t checked the results using the correct spelling until today (1/23), though. Now that I do, I see that I’m currently #1 if you spell “repellent” correctly. Simply stupid beyond belief.

White House cuts Hubble fix-up funds: NASA told to focus on destroying telescope safely

A reader tips me off to this.

It’s ironic that the Hubble Space Telescope is doomed largely due to problems with the Space Shuttle. I consider the shuttle missions to service the Hubble to be among the program’s greatest accomplishments.

…one Senate source predicted that the decision would “go over like a lead balloon” for many lawmakers.

Which is also about how the Hubble is going to come down.

Very sad. Probably very necessary. But very sad.

Testing of new presidential helicopters questioned

Well, it’s probably just a way of life with military equipment, but a number of systems have been called out for having serious issues in a report by the Pentagon. The lead item is the replacement for Marine One, the Presidential helicopter:

Next Friday, the Navy is expected to announce who will get the $1.6 billion contract to produce 23 of the aircraft. Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp. and Connecticut-based Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. are competing for the job. The full fleet is supposed to be in operation by 2014.

However, Thomas P. Christie, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation, says in his report that the Navy’s schedule will mean the new helicopters will be tested even as they are being built–meaning that lessons learned in the testing process cannot be incorporated into the early production models.

The report claims that the early models would lack even some of the features the present model has. I’m not really sure why we’d need to rush this particular vehicle through the system. It’s not like tanks coming off the end of the assembly line in Stalingrad and being needed ten minutes later on the other side of town to fight the invaders. It seems to me that this one could have a few extra months or years if it needed it.

Other systems noted in the report:

• The C-130J transport aircraft – This is nothing new. MO noted the claims of trouble in a post about the Stryker last August. There is some debate whether the claims are accurate or not and the J models are already serving, but their inclusion in this report indicates that everything isn’t completely rosy. And speaking of the Stryker,
• The Stryker – The mortar carrier, the mobile gun system, and the NBC Recon variants are all still having problems. 66 of the 105mm gun-armed MGS models are scheduled to be produced later this year.
• The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – This fighter bomber is having trouble meeting weight specifications. Big surprise. Just about everything in the military is heavier than it’s supposed to be. MO has high hopes for the F35.

I was going to point out that another system that has been reported to be skipping testing phases is the National Missile Defense system. But a google turns up a Reuters story on CNN about the same report that headlines with the NMD shortcomings:

[Christie] said it was not possible to estimate the system’s capability with “high confidence” because of a lack of flight testing of the Pentagon’s costliest weapons program.

But Philip Coyle, Christie’s predecessor as the Pentagon’s top weapons tester and now an adviser to the private Center for Defense Information, said it was not even possible to estimate with “low confidence.”

The interceptor missiles “have no[t] demonstrated capability to defend against a real attack because they have only been tested with artificial targeting aids, with location beacons onboard the target and with advance information about the attack that no enemy would provide,” Coyle said by email.

I’ve written previously on the plans to skip testing phases in order to rush the NMD into service:

Again, this is similar to what some in the administration and the Pentagon want to to with the National Missile Defense program. Unless the threat of ICBM attack is high (exactly like it isn’t right now) this would be a BAD IDEA. Shooting down military fighters in the Persian Gulf is bad enough, but what happens if the NMD accidentally shoots down an airliner (or a space shuttle, for that matter) near US territory? I suggest that extra testing rather than less testing is the right approach with this thing, especially if software is the main issue. The hardware can be manufactured, or even put in place, so that when the computers are ready to go the system can go online. But we can’t screw this one up.

I originally wrote that after our own Patriot missiles had shot down two Allied aircraft during the invasion of and targeted another. The PAC-3 version of the Patriot had skipped most of its operational testing phase and software problems had been the prime contributers to the tragic errors.

The most recent failure by NMD interceptors was a software failure.

Are we really sure we want to skip that testing?

Here’s more in the Washington Times on NMD and testing. It includes

[Pentagon spokesman Larry] DiRita said the system might never actually be declared operational.

“We haven’t made a declaration that we are now hereby operational. I don’t know that such a declaration will ever be made. But we have a nascent operational capability,” he said.

“Some capability exists, it will continue to improve as we continue to test it, and the testing is, at the moment, a higher priority,” DiRita said.

“Operational” has a very specific meaning when it comes to Defense Department acquisition programs, and Pentagon officials are conscientiously avoiding invoking it.

Asked if the missile defense system has an operational capability that could intercept a North Korean missile launched tomorrow, DiRita responded, “I think I just don’t need to expand on what I’ve said.”

It then goes on to describe the “spiral development”:

Spiral development is a concept that gained favor with the explosion of information technologies in the 1990s. The commercial information technology sector was developing products so quickly that by the time the Pentagon had even agreed to requirements on a system, the state of the art had long since eclipsed them

In May 2003, the Pentagon made it official: spiral development was the desired method for all acquisition projects. In this construct, the system’s desired capability is identified, but the end-state requirements are not known when the program starts. Those are developed in negotiation during the development as the contractor and government program office sees what capabilities are possible on what schedule and at what cost.

This basically takes a bad situation (the government spending our money) and makes it worse (by removing a lot of the requirements that must be met).

At the same time, a 100% perfect defense against ICBMs that has completed a thorough and rigorous testing phase and is declared ‘fully operational’ in 2010 isn’t much good if someone manages to take a potshot at us in 2009.

As I’ve said before: I’m 100% in favor of national missile defense. I’m 100% in favor of spending buckets of money on it if that’s what it takes. I’m 100% sure we can make it work. I’m also 100% sure that we’re probably not nearly as protected as we should be by the present semi-operational, semi-tested system.

We’re at war. Some corners need to be cut. But some priorities, like the national missile defense, shouldn’t cut too much. And other, like Marine One, probably don’t need to cut at all.

Inaugural price tag in line with history

First of all, I don’t care if Bush’s inauguration was the most expensive in history.

Second of all, it wasn’t.

Bill ‘Balanced Budget’ Clinton’s second inauguration apparently cost $42 million in 1997 compared to W’s $40 million yesterday. That means, in an apples-to-apples, inflation-adjusted world, Bill’s 1997 bash cost about 25% more than George’s 2005 bash.

Is this story just plain inaccurate? How could this possibly be missed by all of those harping on Bush? I mean, the media wouldn’t distort something like this intentionally, would they?

In fact, with all the added security, I’m shocked that it isn’t easily the most expensive ever.

Request for those who confronted me personally (as in ‘to my face’) on this: Please explain your position to me again. I think I must have misunderstood what you were getting at.

UPDATE: Ooops. This was via Wizbang.

The Caliber Conflict

I think this might be a re-post of an old article, but James Dunnigan summarizes the discussion of 6.8 SPC vs. 6.5 Grendel vs. 5.56 NATO. I point it out because MO readers eat this stuff up.

Bush salute a Satan sign? Norwegians think so

Fortunately, the Karl Rove spin machine was able to fabricate some semi-credible excuse about the Texas Longhorns or something.

UPDATE: Weird. Michelle Malkin points out that Wonkette has a post on this, as well. It consists of another pic of Jenna Bush giving the “hook-um horns” (which, not being from Texas or a fan of Texas football, I always thought were sorta dumb) and this:

She went to University of Texas, whatever. You don’t have to be in Skull and Bones to drink Jew baby blood. . .

Nice. Don’t you love America? In a lot of places Wonkette, her family, and several of her friends would already be cold after getting “vanished” for writing such a thing about the leader’s daughter.

Army’s most modern high-tech forces discover hard lesson.

The Kansas City Star has a Stryker article today, too. I guess it’s “bash on Stryker Thursday”, or something.

It’s weird. Earlier in the year, when folks were trashing the Stryker, they’d dismiss the brigade’s combat record because Mosul was a piece of cake. Now the Stryker isn’t good enough because Mosul is too tough for it.

The Stryker brigades are the vanguard of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s vision of a new Army, one transformed into smaller, more agile units with high-tech equipment that can go anywhere, anytime. The brigades’ heavily armored vehicles can reach 70 mph, carry advanced computer systems and heavy firepower, and absorb blasts from roadside bombs or rocket-propelled grenades, which can destroy a Humvee or even a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

The approximately 5,000 soldiers of the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division who took control of Mosul last February were the first full-sized Stryker force to go into combat. They replaced some 20,000 soldiers from the 101st Airborne, a division with the ability to drop units in by helicopter, but based mainly on traditional infantry structure.

The men of the 101st moved around Mosul in Humvees but sustained few casualties, even though some of their Humvees lacked armor.

Conditions in Mosul, however, have gotten worse since the Strykers arrived.

Much was made last spring of the fact that a brigade (albeit one of the new-fangled larger ones supported by some Iraqi forces) was replacing an entire air assault division. But they kept things running pretty smoothly, as evidenced by the “piece of cake”-type comments throughout the summer and fall. The increased mobility that the troops had, along with the advanced command, control, and communication gear available in the Stryker, allowed fewer soldiers to perform the same duties.

Now, that’s all well and good to a point. But when it comes time to fight larger-scale fights, a brigade is, after all, a brigade and not a division. Obviously it doesn’t have as many men, and it can’t pull as many triggers.

But, with a few notable exceptions, the Mosul area has been relatively calm until the last couple of months or so. Things started heating up significantly about the time US troops entered Fallujah in force in November, and they’ve been building up ever since. In fact, one battalion of Strykers in the Fallujah area was quickly recalled to Mosul before the conclusion of the Fallujah operation to help fight increased insurgent activity.

Reports at the time indicated the insurgents the brigade was encountering in Mosul were not only better-trained and better-equipped than the insurgents they were used to facing, but they also didn’t even seem to be local to the Mosul area.

These reports and their timing seem to indicate that the fighters displaced from parts of the Sunni Triangle have taken up residence farther north. If you’ll look at a map, you’ll see that ‘north’ also means ‘closer to Syria’. Two of the officers in the article said that Fallujah fighters might be a factor, but not as big of a factor as having too few men. While I’m not about to debate it with men who are over there, the number of men would not be a factor if the insurgents hadn’t stepped up the number and the quality of attacks. I think that its a case of the bad guys migrating to an area with fewer men, not a case of too few men to deal with a particular area.

If this is the case, you’d think that insurgent activity in other parts of Iraq may have quieted some. It’s hard to tell, as the bad guys really seem to be working hard on building to a crescendo of violence timed to disrupt the elections at the end of the month. But nowhere else seems to have picked up nearly as much as Mosul has, and if there is a little less pressure in other parts, the Army would probably shift other units up to Mosul to help pick up the slack.

And this is exactly what’s been going on.

So, rather than a sign that the Stryker isn’t up to the job, I think this is more a sign that the insurgency has decided it wants to fight in an area where we don’t have as many bodies. Although the Stryker’s speed and electronics allow one man to do the work and cover the ground of more than one, they don’t allow him to be in two places at once.

That’s sort of what the KC Star story is getting at, and it’s correct. But it’s presented as a mark against the Stryker and Donald Rumsfeld (who is probably the real target of much of this criticism). This smacks of opportunistic reporting, spinning things slightly to get the twist they’re looking for. For a while it was body armor. More recently it was Humvee and truck armor. Now transformation (personified by Donald Rumsfeld, though it’s been planned for over a decade and going on for years) is the story du jour.

Everyone’s out there looking for a Tet or a Pentagon Papers or a Mai Lai.

First, some photos from Frontline Photos (Jan 17 and 18):

Also, Stryker Brigade News points out a bunch of good photos on Yahoo! News.

Next up, a reader alerted me to a story in The Irish Times about the incident near Mosul where a car tried to drive through a patrol and was shot up by Stryker soldiers. The incident left two Iraqi civilians dead and five children spattered with blood and without parents. A photo of a crying, bloody Iraqi child is on the front page of the Irish Times’ paper and website with the headline “Troops kill Iraqi couple in front of children”. Do I detect a hint of bias there, or am I just oversensitive?

This is, of course, a terrible incident. The Army is investigating it, and I hope that things are handled properly. I expect that they will be.

It’s been known pretty much since March 2003 that Iraqis don’t seem to take things like roadblocks, checkpoints, armed patrols, and firing tanks very seriously while driving. In fact, I noticed a post on A Day in Iraq a couple of weeks ago (but relating a story from April, 2003, apparently) that included the following:

All day we layed on the pavement pulling guard and watching the Brads shoot at cars that wouldn’t turn back. Bazarre thing to watch. On a few occasions, after warning shots were ignored, the Brads would fire at the tires or hood, disabling the vehicles. I couldn’t help but wonder what these people were thinking. Why would they keep driving towards two Bradleys shooting at them. Why don’t they just turn around. I was happy to see that the people in the disabled vehicles walked away unharmed. One man, the hood of his car in flames from three rounds of HE, casually got out of his car and walked away. He acted as one might act after discovering they had a flat tire.

Besides pulling guard and watching cars get shot at, there were other strange sights to be seen considering our locale. Guys eating MRE’s while in the prone, looking up from there meal to see which car was getting shot at.

I’ve seen this sort of tale over and over. I’ve heard that the two things soldiers like about the Stryker’s slat armor are that it 1) stops RPGs and 2) keeps Iraqi drivers at least a couple of feet from the vehicle. Iraqi drivers just won’t stop sometimes. Many times they end up with a destroyed car. Sometimes they end up wounded or even dead. But what are our guys supposed to do about it? It sounds like they acted appropriately in this case.

Taiwan unveils armored vehicle
Like the Israelis, the Taiwanese have opted against buying Strykers and instead are going to go with a home-built vehicle:

Chen lauded the military research team responsible for developing the CM-32 vehicle as a “warrior for life” for its ability to complete research and development on the project at a very low cost.

One military observer said the CM-32 represented an effort by Taiwan to become less dependent on foreign defense contractors.

Wendell Minnick, Jane’s Defence Weekly Taiwan correspondent, said that many in the United States wanted Taiwan to kill the project.

“The U.S. wants Taiwan to buy the eight-by-eight Stryker light armored vehicle, and there are many in the army here who would like to buy it, due to its dependability and proven war record.”

The CM-32 is called the ‘Yunpao’, or “Cloud Leopard”. They admit that there are a few problems to work out yet, including stability while firing a 105mm main gun on some versions (cough, cough). But it’s passed a major test already:

Then it went down a 40-degree slope in second gear without breaking.

I imagine they meant “braking”, but come on. That’s funny.

Stryker Brigade Concept Proves Itself in Ninewa
There’s no doubt that the Stryker has certain limitations. But when it’s used for what it’s designed to be used for, it seems to be performing exceptionally well.

“But it’s important to remember that it’s not an ‘either-or’ proposition,” he continued. “There is a definite place for Bradleys and main battle tanks. We have tanks in Mosul right now, and I’m here to tell you that the insurgents don’t like them.”

Although the Mosul area has been the Stryker Brigade’s AOR since the first Stryker unit took over from the 101st Airborne in early 2004, recently the Mosul area has been beefed up by other Army units. It seems to me that many of the insurgents that escaped from Fallujah are trying to make Mosul their new home, and the Army wants to discourage them. (Pics of non-Stryker armor unloading in Mosul here.)

“When I boarded the plane, I detected some scowls …”

I respect Donald Sensing as much as anyone in the blogosphere, and far more than most. But I must point out that I whole-heartedly disagree with him on this.

He relates the story of a soldier returning from Iraq via Northwest Airlines:

and every one of us had to take off our boots, our dog tags, our wallets, our belts and a few had to be individually searched with the same wand we used on suspected terrorists.

Now, it’s not totally clear from the story whether or not the searches were the same as for everyone else or not. I happen to think that the searches should be no different FOR ANYONE FOR ANY REASON when boarding commercial flights. If the soldiers were singled out, that’s a little different, but not much. And though the screener’s attitude apparently needs a little adjustment, I don’t think giving uniformed soldiers the thorough check is at all out of line.

The reason that I say I clearly disagree with Rev. Sensing is that, in the comments section, he claims that

Soldiers returning from combat in Iraq – in uniform – should have been exempted from the harassment that other passengers endure.

THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN TREATED AS PRIVILEGED! THEY EARNED IT! [emphasis in original]

He’s absolutely correct that they have earned the exemption. I agree 101%. But the implementation of a such a policy would be difficult to do properly and would open up gaping holes in our security system.

(Never mind that the security system is already full of gaping holes for the moment. I’m talking about the way things should be.)

Getting uniforms and forged orders probably isn’t as difficult as it should be. And getting screeners to consistently look closely and follow up on suspicious items is probably far more difficult than it should be. Therefore, soldiers must be screened the same as everyone else despite the fact that they’ve earned an exemption.

Part of the policy should maybe include a part about screeners literally falling over backwards while apologizing for the inconvenience. But those guys need to be searched the same as everyone else. Because we won’t ever know for sure that those guys are really the guys that deserve to be exempted.

We badly need to recognize that our enemies will find a hole somewhere, and they will exploit it. I fully support draconian security measures on commercial airliners. I’m more than a little ashamed that more hasn’t been done.

Another part of the soldier’s post (also noted by Rev. Sensing–it’s what his post title actually refers to) burns me up:

We were late, but the airline was nice enough to delay the flight just for us. When I boarded the plane, I detected some scowls and nasty whispers from the First Class folks. No doubt, we were the reason they would be an hour late for their business meeting and tennis lessons. Then, like crossing into another world, my feet touched coach, where the construction workers, middle managers and school teachers sat. I didn’t pass a single person without hearing “Thank you.”

Sounds a bit stereotypical. And about right. I’d say that someday people everywhere will come to appreciate what our guys are doing, but I don’t believe it for a second.