Syed Jafry of Holland, Mich., a U.S. citizen who had flown from the United Arab Emirates, emerged from the airport and said he was a passenger on the flight. He said people ran out of their seats to tackle the man.Jafry was sitting in the 16th row when he heard “a pop and saw some smoke and fire.” Then, he said, “a young man behind me jumped on him.”Jafry said there was a little bit of commotion for about 10 to 15 minutes.He said the way passengers responded made him proud to be an American.
via Reports: NWA passenger was trying to blow up flight into Detroit | freep.com | Detroit Free Press.
First responders rock.
“I would tell you that a long-range, penetrating ISR/strike aircraft yields great advantages over any other kind of system,” Deptula says. “It's about putting flexibility and the ability to introduce unambiguous statements [for the consideration] of our national leaders. When
via New Bomber to Focus Heavily on ISR.
An unambiguous statement like “boom”?
This seems to amount to a call for a deniable flavor of deterrence. A new wrinkle! Not exactly a clarion call of confidence, in anything …
Tokyo sees the Tomahawk, especially submarine-launched cruise missiles, as the most logical weapon of deterrence in the neighborhood, since the last tactical bombs were removed from US bases in South Korea and aboard US Navy aircraft carriers nearly two decades ago.
This summer Japanese embassy officials in Washington quietly but strongly lobbied against American plans to retire the nuclear version of the Tomahawk in the context of the Congressional Commission on Strategic Posture of the United States. Its recommendation will go into Washington's forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review, which will determine the basic nuclear defense, disarmament and proliferation policies for the next decade.
The body, headed by two former defense secretaries, was formed in 2008 and issued its first report in May. It said: “One particularly important ally has argued to the commission privately that the credibility of the US extended [nuclear] deterrence depends on the specific capability to hold a variety of targets at risk in a way that is either visible or stealthy as circumstances warrant.”
It went on to elaborate: “In Asia extended deterrence relies heavily on the deployment of nuclear cruise missiles on some Los Angeles-class attack submarines… it has become clear that some allies in Asia would be very concerned about [Tomahawk] retirement.”
via Asia Sentinel – Japan: Save the Endangered Tomahawk!.
I am looking for authors for concise monographs (48 – 150 pp.) for books in a new series called DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE 21ST CENTURY. My inspiration is THE FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD by Sir Edward Shephard Creasy. I am thinking of key moments like 9′/11, Tora Bora, Operation Anaconda, Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Surge, etc., but I am open to out of the box ideas like Mumbai, Lehman Brothers, Bush-Gore, the Russia-Georgia War, etc. If this strikes a chord, please contact me at wfz at nimble books dot com
The first book in the series is a “nimble” republication of the U.S. Senate’s report on Tora Bora.
As so often seems to be the case, the problem with missile defense was not the actual plan, but the stated rationale.
The net effect of the Eastern European missile defense shield would have been
1) moderately increased security against Iranian nuclear threat (helpful, but not something one would want to rely on …)
2) an infuriated Russia …
3) because it perceived its nuclear influence over Europe to be weakened …
4) closer relationships with the historically oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe.
IMHO, #3 and #4 would be beneficial to the national interests of the United States. the question is whether #2 is worth the benefits of 1, 3, and 4. Reasonable for Obama to say “no,” but sort of like shooting fish in a barrel, b/c #3 was not a publicly admissible rationale.
BUILDING THE PT BOATS is vastly exceeding my sales expectations. Terrific book.
It was waiting for me when I got home from work this afternoon. I haven’t read it yet, but have looked through it a number of times. Bottom line, I think this is the most significant book on PTs in decades!! I’m just delighted to have it. Ya done gud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A nit pick – there is no PT-200 sub-class. Boats in this group began with 197.
Thanks again for creating this important work.
Al Ross
via The PT Boat Message Board – Your book has arrived, Frank….
Some complaints later in the post about picture quality. Bottom line: the photos tell a story that comes through just fine. Glossier paper, higher dpi would have meant much higher production cost. Higher cost = no book. It’s well worth it anyway.
Disagree. That is exactly the sort of person that you entrust with the military decisions upon which hinge the safety of the nation.
Also, if the safety of the nation can hinge upon decisions (which is doubtful — are decisions doors?) then, since it’s “decisions,” plural, it’s “hinge”, plural.
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don’t entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation.
via Charles Krauthammer – The Use of Torture and What Nancy Pelosi Knew – washingtonpost.com.
This makes sense if you think of agriculture as a device for enabling leaders to concentrate resources for their own benefit.
Agriculture and cities made human life better, right? Wrong, say archaeologists who presented stunning new evidence at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting. They pooled data on standardized indicators of health from skeletal remains, including stature, dental health, degenerative joint disease, anemia, trauma, and the isotopic signatures of what they ate, and gathered data on settlement size, latitude, and socioeconomic and subsistence patterns. They found that the health of many Europeans began to worsen markedly about 3000 years ago, after agriculture became widely adopted in Europe and during the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations.
via Civilization’s Cost: The Decline and Fall of Human Health — Gibbons 324 (5927): 588 — Science.
- This defense budget is a liberal dream, the rolling back of scores of hitherto invulnerable mega-programs. but …
- It remains to be seen what the budget will actually be after Congress gets done saving programs that protect jobs in the midst of the worst recession since 1945.
- People seem to forget that these defense spending waves are cyclical. A surge of dovish sentiment and force reduction in the 70s was followed by the Reagan rearmament. How much do you want to bet that we see another spending surge in 2017?
Defense Secretary Gates just proposed the most sweeping overhaul of America’s arsenal — and of the Pentagon budget — in decades. Major weapons programs, from aircraft carriers to next-gen bombers to new school fighting vehicles, will be cut back, or eliminated. Billions more will be put into growing the American fighting force, both human and robotic.
via Gates Proposes Radical Overhaul of Pentagon Arsenal | Danger Room from Wired.com.
Whether you call the LCS the modern equivalent of a torpedo boat, or the modern equivalent of a torpedo boat destroyer, either way it is a validation of the threat from small, fast ships so well chronicled in Joe Hinds’s THE DEFINITIVE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE TORPEDO BOAT.
We will increase the buy of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) – a key capability for presence, stability, and counterinsurgency operations in coastal regions – from two to three ships in FY 2010. Our goal is to eventually acquire 55 of these ships.
via DefenseLink Speech
Actually, Obama’s #1 priority is driving General Motors into the grave.
“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told The Atlantic. The Iranian drive for a nuclear weapon was a “hinge of history,” he said, emphasizing that all of “Western civilization” was responsible for preventing an Iranian bomb.
“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs,” Netanyahu said of the Iranian regime. “When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”
via PM: We may be forced to attack Iran | Iran news | Jerusalem Post .
Worth’s book does three things well:
1) Defines the cruiser designation in a historical context with special attention to “Treaty Cruisers.”
2) Explains how armor layout was as much art as science and how that renders many standardized references on the topic moot or misleading.
3) Compares Treaty Cruisers across navies in Med and Pacific contexts.
I found most of it fascinating and read it through in one sitting. I also share most of Mr. Worth’s biases. But it bears mentioning that:
1) There is little discussion of torpedo or AAA doctrine and virtually none on underwater or AAA protection.
2) His choices for “best” are not classes of cruisers but ‘one-offs’
3) This pamphlet cries out for comparison tables with a variety of weightings.
Yes, Worth is correct that raw numbers are misleading and on the continuum of data -> information -> knowledge, his discussion quite refreshingly belongs in the realm of knowledge. So, no doubt about it: he’s done his homework and expresses his opinions forcefully. But this publication would have been better if it ALSO organized his decision criteria in tables (not merely in the text,) so that readers could more conveniently assign (or add) their own weightings and arrive at their own conclusions.
Still, this book will be a real eye opener for beginners and a great niche publication for those who have already spent considerable time dwelling on the trade-offs inherent in warship design…as long as they don’t find the price too dear for 40 pages. Btw, interspersed throughout the text are some wonderful black and white “ship portraits” (i.e. pictures) that I’ve never seen published before.
Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: In the Shadow of the Battleship: Considering the Cruisers of World War II.
Some great discussion of Joe Hind’s magnum opus in the thread below. The message board is a great find for anyone interested in MTBs!
The PT Boat Message Board – “The Definitive Illustrated History of the Torpedo Boat”.
All a laughable misunderstanding? that’s what the rest of the article says. But even so, very, very frightening.
As if the dollar didn’t have enough problems, Timothy Geithner took China’s bait yesterday and said he was “quite open” to its suggestion this week to displace the greenback with an “international reserve currency.” The dollar promptly fell and stocks followed, before the Treasury Secretary re-emerged to say “the dollar remains the world’s dominant reserve currency. I think that’s likely to continue for a long time.”
via China and the Dollar – WSJ.com.
This is the second time in 24 hours that I have seen a reference to the current era as “apocalyptic.”*
No. This is not the apocalpyse. “Apocalypse” means “apocalypse,” just as “literally” means “literally” and “complete” means “complete.”
In the current crisis:
- A lot of people have lost their jobs.
- A few big companies have disappeared.
- A lot of people and organizations have less money to spend.
- A lot of people are suffering extremely painful disruptions.
but …
- There have been few direct fatalities (excepting perhaps the poor guy who was friends with Bernie Madoff); compare this to World War II with 150M dead.
- Not one jot or mote of physical infrastructure has been destroyed — in fact, we are about to build a whole bunch of new infrastructure.
- No species have been made extinct, no forests have been laid waste, no crops have been sown with salt.
- Not one byte or scintilla of human knowledge has been lost.
To be sure, as the recession deepens, there will be further direct fatalities and continued real suffering. But the point is that most of the damage is not occurring in the physical layer of the world. Rather, this is a disruption in the social abstraction that v2.0 chimps use to manage resources.
This is not the end of capitalism or the beginning of socialism.
This is not The Great Disruption or the Inflection Point.
This is a period of rapid change in our social abstractions, and humans are fearful of change.
Angle everyone’s missing so far: the Chinese were a lot more careful this time than when they bumped the P-3 early in Bush’s term. They chose an unarmed ship … the likelihood of loss of life from “bumping” much lower than when a fighter bumps a plane. For latest coverage, see Galrahn’s best-in-class naval blog, Information Dissemination.
Nice to see members of the Nimble network moving upward and onward!
Red Team Journal is pleased to announce the addition of three contributing editors to the RTJ team …
Mr. Adam Elkus, Contributing Editor for Future Military Operations and Homeland Security. Adam is an analyst specializing in foreign policy and security. His articles have been published in Small Wars Journal, Athena Intelligence Journal, GroupIntel, and other publications. He has contributed chapters to The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War (Ann Arbor: Nimble LLC, 2008) and the compilation Threats in the Age of Obama, now on sale from Nimble LLC. Elkus blogs at Rethinking Security,Dreaming 5GW, and The Huffington Post. He is currently a contributor to the Center for Threat Awareness’ ThreatsWatch project.”
via New RTJ Contributing Editors | Red Team Journal.
Wikipedia has what may be a far more cost-effective solution, with their army of bot-like volunteer first level editors who patrol Wiki looking for trivial infractions of editing guidelines. Why not put all these 20-somethings on the job of guarding government computer systems?
The part about the cybots communicating with each other sounds like a possible HUGE OBVIOUS GLARING FATAL FLAW.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has created software that uses colonies of borg-like cyberrobots it says will help government agencies detect and fend off attacks on the nation’s computer network infrastructure.
The Ubiquitous Network Transient Autonomous Mission Entities (Untame) differs from traditional security software agents in that its cybot “entities” form collectives that are mutually aware of the condition and activities of other bots in their colony (PDF).
When these cybots detect network intruders, they communicate with one another, preventing cybercrooks from creating and using a diversion in one spot within the network to then break through in another.
via Borg-like cybots may patrol government networks | Military Tech – CNET News.
It’s an amazing coincidence that McCain singled out the one program that directly affects the day-to-day personal life
of the person who was elected President.
And, McCain noted, “your helicopter is now going to cost as much as Air Force One. I don’t think that there’s any more graphic demonstration of how good ideas have — have cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money.”
Said Obama, “I’ve already talked to (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates about a thorough review of the helicopter situation.”
Added the president, to laughter, “the helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me. Of course, I’ve never had a helicopter before. So, you know, maybe — maybe I’ve been deprived and I didn’t know it.But I think it is a — it is an — an example of the procurement process gone amuck, and — and we’re going to have to fix it.”
via Obama Beats McCain Again – The Plank .
Long-awaited and eagerly anticipated,a sequel to one of my favorite books of all time, but disappointing.
Confusing structure with opening scene running in parallel with a forward running flashback, I don’t see why they didn’t just start with one story or the other.
Doesn’t have the same magic as the original Niven & Pournelle INFERNO, and not nearly as good as the recent Niven/Lerner collaborations about the Puppeteers.
Nevertheless – a collector’s item that will go on my shelf in a protective cover.
Escape from Hell (Hardcover)
by Larry Niven (Author), Jerry Pournelle (Author)
via Amazon.com: Escape from Hell: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle: Books.
This is the best single-volume history of the Napoleonic wars that I have ever read. It is full of casually brilliant essays in which Esdaile uses just a few pages to explains complicated phenomena that have detained other authors for multiple volumes (the Peninsular War, the War of 1812). It is truly an international, and a global history, that gives sufficient weight to the Americas, North and South, and addresses the actions of every major and minor European power.
I do think it is a shade overly Anglophilic. Esdaile reports Continental skepticism about English motives dutifully, but without, perhaps, complete belief. And his treatment of the appalling English “press gangs” against American sailors is tame considering the complete illegality and injustice of the practice–reminiscent of a later era’s “superpower” defense of extraordinary detention.
Napoleon’s Wars: An International History, 1803-1815 (Hardcover)
by Charles Esdaile (Author)
via Amazon.com: Napoleon’s Wars: An International History, 1803-1815: Charles Esdaile: Books.
Bonk!
A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was involved in a collision with a French nuclear sub in the middle of the Atlantic, the MoD has confirmed.
HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant were badly damaged in the crash in heavy seas earlier this month.
Suggesting they weren’t underwater, and were probably maneuvering at the surface for some reason — since the heavy seas would be irrelevant at depth.
BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said the incident was “incredibly embarrassing” for the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Not really. Stuff happens.
Who should really be embarrassed is the BBC to have a defence correspondent who has no sense of perspective.
via BBC NEWS | UK | Nuclear subs collide in Atlantic.
The fourth Age of Obama book, Pepe Escobar’s OBAMA DOES GLOBALISTAN , is finally up with full cover color on Amazon and at the AGE OF OBAMA store.
Pepe is a gifted author who provides a coherent, provocative take on international politics that is radically different from standard American political discourse. That alone would make it well worth publishing him, but beyond that he is an enormously cultivated man, a true globe-trotter who speaks several languages and has a dazzling “kaleidoscopic” writing style that really captures the vibrancy, diversity, and (if I may) insanity of the 21st C.
If you want an idea of what Pepe’s all about, take a look at his first Nimble Book, GLOBALISTAN, which was a t our de force that met with extremely positive reviews, or at “:the best of Pepe Escobar” on Asia Times.
In which I continue to tilt at windmills like a contrarian Don Quixote.
Dear Ms. Wang,
thank you for your thoughtful note, which was refreshing and civil in that it acknowledged my point that “traditional” culture is important too. It is indeed difficult to talk skeptically about cultural diversity without coming across as bigoted, racist, or nativist, and I appreciate your reasonable response.
I suspect that at bottom we share a similar concern, i.e. passing along cultural meaning, participation, and understanding, without seeing it denatured or alienated, but that we start from a different set of experiences and priorities. For better or worse (and I would not disagree that it is often for worse), the global society we live in today, the American constitution that governs our national politics, even our local culture here in Ann Arbor, all are directly descended from the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, European, Anglo-Saxon, Renaissance, Enlightenmnent “tree.”
It is simply incorrect to say, for example, that the current rules of international law, or the educational organizational of the University of Michigan into lectures and seminars, or the legal rationale decision in US v. Wong Kim Ark are descended from Confucian, Ottoman, Swahili, Aboriginal, cultures, or anything other than the culture of “dead white guys” like Grotius, Thomas Aquinas, and Blackstone.
We live in an enormously complex, densely overgrown “forest” of cultures (http://www.Ethnologue.com identifies 6,197 living languages), nations (193 members of the United Nations), societies, traditions, disciplines, organizations, religions, movements, and what have you. My point is that not that I oppose learning about the rest of the forest, but simply that we remember that we do in fact live on one particular tree.
To be sure, the “tree” which is American civilization has become enormously more complex and intertwined over the last century, with vibrant strands of renewed and revised and revived multiculturalism adding themselves to it, and that is a good thing — but we all still live here, embedded in this one particular nation, state, city, not somewhere else. I like it when people write as if they remember that–which is exactly what you did in your response.
Cheers,
Fred
in response to The Ann Arbor Chronicle » Column: Adventures in Multicultural Living.
|
|
