Have a look at the photo above, showing Ukrainian tanks and armored personnel carriers destroyed by a Russian artillery strike in the early days of Ukraine’s spring offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region. Now imagine that the photo shows what American armored vehicles would look like if they are destroyed in a future war.
I'm so tired of the military industrial complex. Despite 20 years of trying in Afghanistan we got our ass handed to us by a small army of bearded troglodytes armed with Toyotas and peashooters. FFS must we be wasting all these resources for my entire life?
We are the worlds largest supplier of weaponry. Arms deals to the Saudi's, Turks and we donate them by default to some of the worst players on the planet. Today there are food shortages in Africa and the Middle East that are threatening to become full blown famine. NYC cannot afford to resource the influx of refugees and Biden refuses to help, while Congress won't touch realistic immigration policy. The only bi-partisan reality is all the money you want for the defense industry. Step right up folks, the spigot never closes.
I think the same. They know their budget will never be cut or examined. One of the reasons other counties can afford free college tuition and health care is they don't have bloated military budgets
Exactly - US-led coalition troops from over forty nations* intervened in early October 2001 and by a few months later, in December 2001, the Taliban was expelled from Kabul, Osama Bin Laden had fled and narrowly escaped through the Banshir Passes , that should have marked the beginning of a measured, but still rapid withdrawal without any utopian dreams of "nation building.
No external power can, as if by magic and a wave of the hands, transplant accountable democratic popularly supported political institutions in a matter of months or years, even decades, there are special difficulties when the history is similar to that of Afghanistan, "Graveyard of Empires" - beginning with Alexander the Great some 2400 years ago!
Don't get me (or tens of millions around the planet, I am guessing) started on Iraq, bogus yellow cake Uranium from Niger, the pretext for a completely needless invasion, the later shameful outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the thousands of dead and severely wounded US and allied soldiers and Iraqi, Kurdish and oppressed ethnic groups within Iraq, Uday and Qusay the vicious, amoral rapist sons of Hussein, other soldiers and civilians still suffering from PTSD...you see what I mean! I didn't even mention that rat Scooter Libby or murderous fanatics like Nasrullah, either!
I can't thank you enough for the analysis (even the snark, or ESPECIALLY the snark). How do these things happen? Oh silly me. I worked in DC for 36 years and if there's one thing I know is "how these things happen." Let me just point out that I had a large scale, upscale catering company and worked for defense contractors. In fact, many years ago my company catered "Air Force One: the Plane and the Presidents" at the National Air & Space Museum. The evening was a huge enterprise with hundreds of guests and an elaborate movie to boot. But the whole rigamarole was only to impress the people who were going to approve the contract for the then "in the works" Air Force One. I know who got the contract: our client. Don't know if the plane has even been built yet. You know who really paid for the party and for everything you complained about in your column: American taxpayers. Why aren't these people and the whole process investigated. OK I know why: because the defense industry has spread it's manufacturing out to most (if not all) states so that it can rely of all those Senators and Congresspeople to listen to the industry lobbyists. In case you didn't know it: Money talks. And it seems to be speaking the language of our greedy politicians. Enough said.
I remember the presidential campaign and despite being supporters of
Adlei Stevenson, I still sing: "We Like Ike!" Sadly, years later my brother voted for Nixon and supported... I won't say who else. Fortunately he married an intelligent woman who was born in the West Indies and she said she would divorce him if he voted Republican!
"Power, sought or unsought...." Ike recognized the tendency of the legislators to be panicked or willingly push far too much funding to the Pentagon, following the so-called "Politician's Fallacy":
Premise: This is terrible, something must be done!
Wickipedia puts it in a different ordrr, same meaning:
"In the context of the United States, the appellation is sometimes extended to military–industrial–congressional complex (MICC), adding the U.S. Congress to form a three-sided relationship termed an "iron triangle".[10] Its three legs include political contributions, political approval for military spending, lobbying to support bureaucracies, and oversight of the industry; or more broadly, the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as corporations and institutions of the defense contractors, private military contractors, the Pentagon, Congress, and the executive branch.[11]"
Hurrah for your brother’s wife. Not so fortunate here. My brother is not only a Republican but also a Fox News and Former Guy supporter. Needless to say, communication is limited to health, weather and grandchildren. There’s always a snide attempt to get me riled though. I refuse to discuss politics with an idiot!
Now the Navy is scrapping all of it’s Litoral Ships. These ships that were promised to do everything when they were first sold and built less than a decade ago.
The new Presidential helicopters at HMX-1 can not fly the President because of some communications issue. So our President is being flown in VH-3Ds that were delivered the week I left HMX in 1975! I understand they don’t have the fancy communications stuff either.
FUBAR.
How many B-17s were built and delivered every day during WWII?
We have come a long way in lining the pockets of the rich and huge monopolistic corporations.
For one thing, it had people like this guy ready to alter his previously solidly isolationist views and enlist, people in Iowa and elsewhere were convinced he would become at least a U.S. Senator and likely President:
Upon receiving the Heisman at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City, Kinnick made the following statement during his acceptance speech:[10]
Finally, if you'll permit me, I'd like to make a comment which in my mind, is indicative perhaps of the greater significance of football, and sports emphasis in general in this country, and that is; I thank God I was warring on the gridirons of the Midwest and not on the battlefields of Europe. I can speak confidently and positively that the players of this country would much more, much rather struggle and fight to win the Heisman award than the Croix de Guerre.
Bill Cunningham of the Boston Post wrote in response, "This country's okay as long as it produces Nile Kinnicks. The football part is incidental." AP reporter Whitney Martin wrote, "You realized the ovation (after his Heisman speech) wasn't alone for Nile Kinnick, the outstanding college football player of the year. It was also for Nile Kinnick, typifying everything admirable in American youth."[11] Another observer said that Kinnick's remarks "tackled Demosthenes and threw Cicero for a 15-yard loss."[12] The University of Iowa recently began playing an excerpt from the speech on the Kinnick Stadium scoreboard before "The Star-Spangled Banner" at every Hawkeye home game. ***** He enlisted
BEFORE Pearl Harbor:
Naval service
Kinnick left law school after one year and enlisted in the Naval Air Reserve. After completing a speaking tour of Iowa communities and visiting his parents in Omaha, he reported for induction three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He wrote, "There is no reason in the world why we shouldn't fight for the preservation of a chance to live freely, no reason why we shouldn't suffer to uphold that which we want to endure. May God give me the courage to do my duty and not falter." *****
Death
On June 2, 1943, Ensign Kinnick[1] was on a routine training flight from the aircraft carrier USS Lexington off the coast of Venezuela in the Gulf of Paria. He had been flying for over an hour when his Grumman F4F Wildcat developed an oil leak so serious that he could neither reach land nor the Lexington, whose flight deck was already crowded with planes preparing for launch anyway. He followed standard military procedure and executed an emergency landing in the water, but died in the process. Rescue boats arrived on the scene eight minutes later, but found only an oil slick. His body was never recovered. He was one month and seven days away from his 25th birthday, and was the first Heisman Trophy winner to die. ******
I skipped the football exploits that won him the Heisman Trophy - and named Athlete of the Year in 1939 by The Sporting News, over Joe Di Maggio and Joe Louis. *****
During the United States occupation of Japan, the Eighth Army renamed Meiji Jingu Gaien Stadium in Tokyo "Nile Kinnick Stadium."[29][30] A high school in Yokosuka, Japan, for dependents of military personnel is named Nile C. Kinnick High School.[31] The coin flipped at the start of every Big Ten football game bears his image, and each captain of a Big Ten team receives one such coin at the end of the year.
Kinnick represented much more than one extraordinary American's willingness to drop everything else and risk his life, I leave that for someone else to summarize, I can't do it justice.
He enlisted before Pearl Harbor? Ok, sounds good to me, all I learned about Gopher football when I was an undergrad and grad student here about that era was about Bronko Nagurski, not just his football records, but the "recruiting anecdote," etc.
I did live for eight years directly across from the Gophers practice facility on SE 15th Avenue, it was great as the marching band would practice and the whole neighborhood could hear them! The PA system the team used could get to be way too loud, though. The Fender Twin Reverb I have directly behind my chair as I type this - now 17 blocks away towards downtown - I only tried to play
ONCE in that apartment, it's SO LOUD even on the lowest setting it cut right through the FB team's PA system growling funk rock / hiphop they were playing! Needs to have an attenuator installed, maybe El Diablo Music a block and a half from here can do that, kinda pricey though, when I use THIS now;
(1st amp with built-in WI FI, 200 Watts, and only weighs 35 lbs - the beast Twin Reverb is awkward as hell at 62 lbs, saves my back! Plus the TONES are versatile as can be and almost infinitely tweakable....only tube amp purists are liable to be unmoved, etc.)
Your last sentence says it all. Perhaps tanks as we now know them, are no longer the best armored equipment for the field. They have gotten stuck in the mud since they first appeared in WWI. Development of lighter, faster, more nimble and more fuel-efficient armored vehicles that can deliver close to tank firepower would seem to be the smart move.
Charles, you hit the nail on the head. In fact, I’ve often mused that for all of the science fiction special effects used over the years, a really harrowing scenario to me rarely if ever appears - a swarm of small, automated, lethal objects targeting an enemy. For the price of a tail of Abrams fuel, might you not be able to deploy a 1/2 mile wide multi-wave series of remote/AI/statistically disposable mine sweepers able to clear a path? Just thinking out loud...
This scenario would in fact be perfect for de-mining fields and enemy positions - swarms of cheap AI-integrated drones providing intelligence, surveillance and targeted attacks on enemy troops, largely unstoppable. They could even be reusable.....
That’s seems like the stuff of science fiction, but in many instances science fiction becomes science reality, so maybe the technology can be developed for the things you suggest. I just hope our civilian and military leadership and think tanks have not been so dumbed-down by political division that things like this can’t easily be developed.
Not sure how futuristic that off-the-cuff idea might be, but in any case, it’s the principle. You can just see an atrophied decision making organization glomming the latest targeting technology on to a once deadly, but now boat-anchor platform.
We can’t keep on with a 20-year development cycle mindset!! It’s tactical suicide! Start some 3-year/limited but powerfully scoped projects! I’m sure many have been trying to figure out how to do mil-spec “Agile”, which is the contemporary engineering life-cycle methodology that’s the opposite of “targeted for 2040”.
AT&T went through a “re-imagining/modernizing of itself” decades back. Their labs were partly DoD funded and their “40-year equipment life expectancy standard” had still been in place. It ain’t easy, as their rocky road has shown since. But it has to be done! <rant-end>
On the other hand, tank crews had the lowest casualties of any US troops in WW2 - fewer than 1580 killed in all tanks in all theaters of operations. Many of the destroyed US and German tanks and IFVs in Ukraine did protect their crews, who survived when many Russian crews did not.
I don't have any military experience or background and even I can see that relatively inexpensive drones, possibly independently controlled by AI (hello SkyNet) and armed with munitions like "fire and forget" Hellfire missiles are going to swarm the airspace above the battlefield. Isn't it already happening?
This sounds very much like the Air Force debacle with the F-35, a failed combat fighter that the Pentagon is still building despite its many failures in all kinds of tests, for the simple reason that the contracts for this plane are scattered all over the U. S. in various Congressional districts where they, the Congressmen, insist they keep on bu9ilding because they like the money in their districts. The F-35 is overcomplicated, promises too many things, costs millions per plane, and Congress doesn't care because it likes the money. We're still in the era of $60 hammers and $100 wrenches. and this tank seems to be part of that same system, The more things change ....
Blame the Pentagon and Congress for $60 hammers, $7000 coffee makers and $13,000 toilet seats. Military specs require certain steps, all of which involve costs. LTV used to make the bolts that fastened the tiles onto the Space Shuttle. NASA would order replacements as needed. LTV suggested ordering the expected usage for the program, but they refused. Each order required that all the drawings and specifications had to be reviewed and signed off. If NASA had ordered 300, they would have cost $10 each. Because they typically would order 2-3, they cost $300 each because of the fixed engineering review costs, plus the costs of setting up the tooling for such short runs and the quality testing.
When a friend Fred asked me to supervise his finances and screen his mail, he neglected to tell me he had been receiving phone calls of a suspicious nature. Then I discovered he was authorizing money transfers for $45 dollar packs of garbage bags and light bulbs. I told him it was a charity scam, and had to cancel his debit card and have a new one reissued.
As I learned auditing Contracts classes in night law school while my husband, Harry was enrolled: "If it looks like shit and smells like shit...it probably is." When I explained this to Fred, he realized the error of his ways. I have been monitors his finances for 15 years and we've been laughing ever since! And I'm still married to the retired prosecutor I picked up in high school nearly 60 years ago!
Sometimes you don't have to be a genius, you just have to know the difference between a fraud and a good deal!
And how many hundreds of these rolling junk heaps do we have deployed around the world and sitting in the Arizona desert? And how many more roll off the assembly line in some safely red state every week?
There are thousands..... The one thing we must be grateful for at this point is that this war is our Spanish Civil War, a war that is testing our weapons and doctrine as the Spanish war tested the weapons and doctrine of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the late 1930s. One clear lesson is that future wars will be "come as you are" parties; another is, we have no idea how much ammunition will be required, but it looks as though we underestimated the amounts needed by a logarithmic level..... We must remember though that the Ukrainians are operating without the air supremacy we have always required to assure our soldiers can be successful. If we had given them better weapons (much of what we are sending them are obsolescent, including all the F-16s and Abrams tanks) in greater numbers and much earlier, the Russians would not have had a year to prepare their southern lines of defense. We criticize the Ukrainians for not doing better , but US troops in the same situation would not have done significantly better.
I hadn't thought about this in the context of the Spanish Civil War. Having studied the SCW and America's role (or lack thereof) for more than a two decades I think that our intervention in Bosnia might be a better SCW analogy that this one. I agree, the SCW was a test of Nazi and Soviet power. For the Nazis it was their military hardware, especially air power; for the Soviets it was political power, and that political power entering into the vacuum left by the Americans, the Brits and the French is what ultimately cost the Republicans the war. They could sustain the troops in the field when the military and civilian leadership was busy arguing over Trotsky, Stalin and the rest. That said, this, to me, is more like America's opportunity to avoid the mistakes of 1939 and 1940 when the Brits and French came to the aid of the Poles and we succumbed to the demands of isolationist Republicans...again. Never forget that Congressional and Senate isolationists told FDR that he could intervene in Europe or he could have the New Deal, he could not have both.
As for the Ukrainians, I have nothing but admiration and respect for them. In the face of what should have been long odds, they have distinguished themselves. I also have great admiration for Biden and his ability to bring a suspicious bunch of NATO allies together to help in Ukraine's defense.
it's funny...I had lunch with an old student a few years ago. she had been a JW but was never properly baptized. I asked her what she thought about "current events" and she said "can't you tell it's obviously End Times?" she meant it religiously. less than a year later, she got married and, not much later, pregnant. go figure.
Jews are not baptized, but that’s for another day. As for the student feeling it’s all going to end and yet getting on with her life, I would think that’s the only sensible thing to do. Think “Cabaret.” “What good is staying alone in your room?” 🎵🎼
These Abrams tank drawbacks remind me of what was said about the German Tigers of WWII -- they may have been very lethal tanks, but only under optimum operating conditions. They cost a lot, were very heavy, consumed a huge load of fuel, and were too prone to mechanical breakdowns. So they were eventually negated by American and Soviet tanks that greatly outnumbered them and were less finicky.
Wow. This tank is even worse than I thought. I'd hate to be in one with all that JP-8, even in the USA.
One thing Lucian didn't mention about tanks is that even a small stream will stop them cold.
In Vietnam there were lots and lots of streams, canals, rivers, swampy areas, and not all of them were on the maps. Even light APC's were stopped. Which reminds me of a funny story: as a young 2nd Lt a buddy of mine commanded a handful of APC's. I wish I could remember all the things he told me which could stop any armored vehicle. Initially, his were all powered with non-diesel fuel, making them very dangerous and explosible by tracers. This LT told me that within a month all his APCs were destroyed; not all by the enemy! They were replaced by diesel powered APCs. As Rumsfeld said in one his most lucid moments,, "You fight with the Army you got." And some of our stuff doesn't work.
Tanks need protection and they still aren't immune to mines.
Point of clarification, pretty much all the military uses JP8 to fuel the trucks that used to run on Diesel so there is a single fuel in the logistics pipeline, unlike when we were soldiers (and young) where we had to deal with MoGas, Diesel and JP4.
I'm so tired of the military industrial complex. Despite 20 years of trying in Afghanistan we got our ass handed to us by a small army of bearded troglodytes armed with Toyotas and peashooters. FFS must we be wasting all these resources for my entire life?
We are the worlds largest supplier of weaponry. Arms deals to the Saudi's, Turks and we donate them by default to some of the worst players on the planet. Today there are food shortages in Africa and the Middle East that are threatening to become full blown famine. NYC cannot afford to resource the influx of refugees and Biden refuses to help, while Congress won't touch realistic immigration policy. The only bi-partisan reality is all the money you want for the defense industry. Step right up folks, the spigot never closes.
Sadly.
I think the same. They know their budget will never be cut or examined. One of the reasons other counties can afford free college tuition and health care is they don't have bloated military budgets
.
And where the hell are the billions of dollars that went to Afghanistan and Iraq??? Both countries are an effing mess!
Exactly - US-led coalition troops from over forty nations* intervened in early October 2001 and by a few months later, in December 2001, the Taliban was expelled from Kabul, Osama Bin Laden had fled and narrowly escaped through the Banshir Passes , that should have marked the beginning of a measured, but still rapid withdrawal without any utopian dreams of "nation building.
No external power can, as if by magic and a wave of the hands, transplant accountable democratic popularly supported political institutions in a matter of months or years, even decades, there are special difficulties when the history is similar to that of Afghanistan, "Graveyard of Empires" - beginning with Alexander the Great some 2400 years ago!
Don't get me (or tens of millions around the planet, I am guessing) started on Iraq, bogus yellow cake Uranium from Niger, the pretext for a completely needless invasion, the later shameful outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the thousands of dead and severely wounded US and allied soldiers and Iraqi, Kurdish and oppressed ethnic groups within Iraq, Uday and Qusay the vicious, amoral rapist sons of Hussein, other soldiers and civilians still suffering from PTSD...you see what I mean! I didn't even mention that rat Scooter Libby or murderous fanatics like Nasrullah, either!
*cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan
britannica.com/event/Afghanistan-War
Raytheon, Martin, Boeing. Dick Cheney's pocket...
I can't thank you enough for the analysis (even the snark, or ESPECIALLY the snark). How do these things happen? Oh silly me. I worked in DC for 36 years and if there's one thing I know is "how these things happen." Let me just point out that I had a large scale, upscale catering company and worked for defense contractors. In fact, many years ago my company catered "Air Force One: the Plane and the Presidents" at the National Air & Space Museum. The evening was a huge enterprise with hundreds of guests and an elaborate movie to boot. But the whole rigamarole was only to impress the people who were going to approve the contract for the then "in the works" Air Force One. I know who got the contract: our client. Don't know if the plane has even been built yet. You know who really paid for the party and for everything you complained about in your column: American taxpayers. Why aren't these people and the whole process investigated. OK I know why: because the defense industry has spread it's manufacturing out to most (if not all) states so that it can rely of all those Senators and Congresspeople to listen to the industry lobbyists. In case you didn't know it: Money talks. And it seems to be speaking the language of our greedy politicians. Enough said.
One's mind goes to Eisenhower ...
Explain.
I remember the presidential campaign and despite being supporters of
Adlei Stevenson, I still sing: "We Like Ike!" Sadly, years later my brother voted for Nixon and supported... I won't say who else. Fortunately he married an intelligent woman who was born in the West Indies and she said she would divorce him if he voted Republican!
Eisenhower's valedictory, as it were, was to "Beware of the military industrial complex."
"Power, sought or unsought...." Ike recognized the tendency of the legislators to be panicked or willingly push far too much funding to the Pentagon, following the so-called "Politician's Fallacy":
Premise: This is terrible, something must be done!
Premise : This x, y and z is something!
Conclusion: Therefore, x, y and z must be done!
exactly, from the horse's mouth.
yeah, but, as I keep saying, he was there while the whole thing metastasized. maybe it was his "buyer's remorse," but but he WAS the president.
as for Bush and his minions, it's easy to forget in the wake of TFF, but things were fucking BAD c.2008.
Military Congressional Industrial Complex.
Thank you. I'm not sure I ever knew the word "Congressional" was in there.
Wickipedia puts it in a different ordrr, same meaning:
"In the context of the United States, the appellation is sometimes extended to military–industrial–congressional complex (MICC), adding the U.S. Congress to form a three-sided relationship termed an "iron triangle".[10] Its three legs include political contributions, political approval for military spending, lobbying to support bureaucracies, and oversight of the industry; or more broadly, the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as corporations and institutions of the defense contractors, private military contractors, the Pentagon, Congress, and the executive branch.[11]"
Hurrah for your brother’s wife. Not so fortunate here. My brother is not only a Republican but also a Fox News and Former Guy supporter. Needless to say, communication is limited to health, weather and grandchildren. There’s always a snide attempt to get me riled though. I refuse to discuss politics with an idiot!
Now the Navy is scrapping all of it’s Litoral Ships. These ships that were promised to do everything when they were first sold and built less than a decade ago.
The new Presidential helicopters at HMX-1 can not fly the President because of some communications issue. So our President is being flown in VH-3Ds that were delivered the week I left HMX in 1975! I understand they don’t have the fancy communications stuff either.
FUBAR.
How many B-17s were built and delivered every day during WWII?
We have come a long way in lining the pockets of the rich and huge monopolistic corporations.
How the hell did this country win WWII???
My Dad’s generation was a lot different from my grandchildren,s. Also WWII was the last the US was in that was worth fighting! (From Middlesex Vt)
that raises the whole question who and what actually won that war. if the Russians hadn't held out till D-Day...
For one thing, it had people like this guy ready to alter his previously solidly isolationist views and enlist, people in Iowa and elsewhere were convinced he would become at least a U.S. Senator and likely President:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_Kinnick
Heisman Trophy speech
Upon receiving the Heisman at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City, Kinnick made the following statement during his acceptance speech:[10]
Finally, if you'll permit me, I'd like to make a comment which in my mind, is indicative perhaps of the greater significance of football, and sports emphasis in general in this country, and that is; I thank God I was warring on the gridirons of the Midwest and not on the battlefields of Europe. I can speak confidently and positively that the players of this country would much more, much rather struggle and fight to win the Heisman award than the Croix de Guerre.
Bill Cunningham of the Boston Post wrote in response, "This country's okay as long as it produces Nile Kinnicks. The football part is incidental." AP reporter Whitney Martin wrote, "You realized the ovation (after his Heisman speech) wasn't alone for Nile Kinnick, the outstanding college football player of the year. It was also for Nile Kinnick, typifying everything admirable in American youth."[11] Another observer said that Kinnick's remarks "tackled Demosthenes and threw Cicero for a 15-yard loss."[12] The University of Iowa recently began playing an excerpt from the speech on the Kinnick Stadium scoreboard before "The Star-Spangled Banner" at every Hawkeye home game. ***** He enlisted
BEFORE Pearl Harbor:
Naval service
Kinnick left law school after one year and enlisted in the Naval Air Reserve. After completing a speaking tour of Iowa communities and visiting his parents in Omaha, he reported for induction three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He wrote, "There is no reason in the world why we shouldn't fight for the preservation of a chance to live freely, no reason why we shouldn't suffer to uphold that which we want to endure. May God give me the courage to do my duty and not falter." *****
Death
On June 2, 1943, Ensign Kinnick[1] was on a routine training flight from the aircraft carrier USS Lexington off the coast of Venezuela in the Gulf of Paria. He had been flying for over an hour when his Grumman F4F Wildcat developed an oil leak so serious that he could neither reach land nor the Lexington, whose flight deck was already crowded with planes preparing for launch anyway. He followed standard military procedure and executed an emergency landing in the water, but died in the process. Rescue boats arrived on the scene eight minutes later, but found only an oil slick. His body was never recovered. He was one month and seven days away from his 25th birthday, and was the first Heisman Trophy winner to die. ******
I skipped the football exploits that won him the Heisman Trophy - and named Athlete of the Year in 1939 by The Sporting News, over Joe Di Maggio and Joe Louis. *****
During the United States occupation of Japan, the Eighth Army renamed Meiji Jingu Gaien Stadium in Tokyo "Nile Kinnick Stadium."[29][30] A high school in Yokosuka, Japan, for dependents of military personnel is named Nile C. Kinnick High School.[31] The coin flipped at the start of every Big Ten football game bears his image, and each captain of a Big Ten team receives one such coin at the end of the year.
Kinnick represented much more than one extraordinary American's willingness to drop everything else and risk his life, I leave that for someone else to summarize, I can't do it justice.
Bruce Smith....what about him?
He enlisted before Pearl Harbor? Ok, sounds good to me, all I learned about Gopher football when I was an undergrad and grad student here about that era was about Bronko Nagurski, not just his football records, but the "recruiting anecdote," etc.
I did live for eight years directly across from the Gophers practice facility on SE 15th Avenue, it was great as the marching band would practice and the whole neighborhood could hear them! The PA system the team used could get to be way too loud, though. The Fender Twin Reverb I have directly behind my chair as I type this - now 17 blocks away towards downtown - I only tried to play
ONCE in that apartment, it's SO LOUD even on the lowest setting it cut right through the FB team's PA system growling funk rock / hiphop they were playing! Needs to have an attenuator installed, maybe El Diablo Music a block and a half from here can do that, kinda pricey though, when I use THIS now;
FENDER MUSTANG GT200 - QUICK REVIEW
Haworth Guitars
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzFkoKOoAls
(1st amp with built-in WI FI, 200 Watts, and only weighs 35 lbs - the beast Twin Reverb is awkward as hell at 62 lbs, saves my back! Plus the TONES are versatile as can be and almost infinitely tweakable....only tube amp purists are liable to be unmoved, etc.)
Yes, FUBAR, indeed
Your last sentence says it all. Perhaps tanks as we now know them, are no longer the best armored equipment for the field. They have gotten stuck in the mud since they first appeared in WWI. Development of lighter, faster, more nimble and more fuel-efficient armored vehicles that can deliver close to tank firepower would seem to be the smart move.
Charles, you hit the nail on the head. In fact, I’ve often mused that for all of the science fiction special effects used over the years, a really harrowing scenario to me rarely if ever appears - a swarm of small, automated, lethal objects targeting an enemy. For the price of a tail of Abrams fuel, might you not be able to deploy a 1/2 mile wide multi-wave series of remote/AI/statistically disposable mine sweepers able to clear a path? Just thinking out loud...
This scenario would in fact be perfect for de-mining fields and enemy positions - swarms of cheap AI-integrated drones providing intelligence, surveillance and targeted attacks on enemy troops, largely unstoppable. They could even be reusable.....
We should develop this and name it The Piranha.
That’s seems like the stuff of science fiction, but in many instances science fiction becomes science reality, so maybe the technology can be developed for the things you suggest. I just hope our civilian and military leadership and think tanks have not been so dumbed-down by political division that things like this can’t easily be developed.
Not sure how futuristic that off-the-cuff idea might be, but in any case, it’s the principle. You can just see an atrophied decision making organization glomming the latest targeting technology on to a once deadly, but now boat-anchor platform.
We can’t keep on with a 20-year development cycle mindset!! It’s tactical suicide! Start some 3-year/limited but powerfully scoped projects! I’m sure many have been trying to figure out how to do mil-spec “Agile”, which is the contemporary engineering life-cycle methodology that’s the opposite of “targeted for 2040”.
AT&T went through a “re-imagining/modernizing of itself” decades back. Their labs were partly DoD funded and their “40-year equipment life expectancy standard” had still been in place. It ain’t easy, as their rocky road has shown since. But it has to be done! <rant-end>
As Bill Maulin's Willie said to fellow infantry grunt Joe regarding the nearby tank: "A moving foxhole attracts the eye!"
On the other hand, tank crews had the lowest casualties of any US troops in WW2 - fewer than 1580 killed in all tanks in all theaters of operations. Many of the destroyed US and German tanks and IFVs in Ukraine did protect their crews, who survived when many Russian crews did not.
I don't have any military experience or background and even I can see that relatively inexpensive drones, possibly independently controlled by AI (hello SkyNet) and armed with munitions like "fire and forget" Hellfire missiles are going to swarm the airspace above the battlefield. Isn't it already happening?
This sounds very much like the Air Force debacle with the F-35, a failed combat fighter that the Pentagon is still building despite its many failures in all kinds of tests, for the simple reason that the contracts for this plane are scattered all over the U. S. in various Congressional districts where they, the Congressmen, insist they keep on bu9ilding because they like the money in their districts. The F-35 is overcomplicated, promises too many things, costs millions per plane, and Congress doesn't care because it likes the money. We're still in the era of $60 hammers and $100 wrenches. and this tank seems to be part of that same system, The more things change ....
Blame the Pentagon and Congress for $60 hammers, $7000 coffee makers and $13,000 toilet seats. Military specs require certain steps, all of which involve costs. LTV used to make the bolts that fastened the tiles onto the Space Shuttle. NASA would order replacements as needed. LTV suggested ordering the expected usage for the program, but they refused. Each order required that all the drawings and specifications had to be reviewed and signed off. If NASA had ordered 300, they would have cost $10 each. Because they typically would order 2-3, they cost $300 each because of the fixed engineering review costs, plus the costs of setting up the tooling for such short runs and the quality testing.
When a friend Fred asked me to supervise his finances and screen his mail, he neglected to tell me he had been receiving phone calls of a suspicious nature. Then I discovered he was authorizing money transfers for $45 dollar packs of garbage bags and light bulbs. I told him it was a charity scam, and had to cancel his debit card and have a new one reissued.
As I learned auditing Contracts classes in night law school while my husband, Harry was enrolled: "If it looks like shit and smells like shit...it probably is." When I explained this to Fred, he realized the error of his ways. I have been monitors his finances for 15 years and we've been laughing ever since! And I'm still married to the retired prosecutor I picked up in high school nearly 60 years ago!
Sometimes you don't have to be a genius, you just have to know the difference between a fraud and a good deal!
And how many hundreds of these rolling junk heaps do we have deployed around the world and sitting in the Arizona desert? And how many more roll off the assembly line in some safely red state every week?
There are thousands..... The one thing we must be grateful for at this point is that this war is our Spanish Civil War, a war that is testing our weapons and doctrine as the Spanish war tested the weapons and doctrine of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the late 1930s. One clear lesson is that future wars will be "come as you are" parties; another is, we have no idea how much ammunition will be required, but it looks as though we underestimated the amounts needed by a logarithmic level..... We must remember though that the Ukrainians are operating without the air supremacy we have always required to assure our soldiers can be successful. If we had given them better weapons (much of what we are sending them are obsolescent, including all the F-16s and Abrams tanks) in greater numbers and much earlier, the Russians would not have had a year to prepare their southern lines of defense. We criticize the Ukrainians for not doing better , but US troops in the same situation would not have done significantly better.
I hadn't thought about this in the context of the Spanish Civil War. Having studied the SCW and America's role (or lack thereof) for more than a two decades I think that our intervention in Bosnia might be a better SCW analogy that this one. I agree, the SCW was a test of Nazi and Soviet power. For the Nazis it was their military hardware, especially air power; for the Soviets it was political power, and that political power entering into the vacuum left by the Americans, the Brits and the French is what ultimately cost the Republicans the war. They could sustain the troops in the field when the military and civilian leadership was busy arguing over Trotsky, Stalin and the rest. That said, this, to me, is more like America's opportunity to avoid the mistakes of 1939 and 1940 when the Brits and French came to the aid of the Poles and we succumbed to the demands of isolationist Republicans...again. Never forget that Congressional and Senate isolationists told FDR that he could intervene in Europe or he could have the New Deal, he could not have both.
As for the Ukrainians, I have nothing but admiration and respect for them. In the face of what should have been long odds, they have distinguished themselves. I also have great admiration for Biden and his ability to bring a suspicious bunch of NATO allies together to help in Ukraine's defense.
Re the outdated, ergo useless war machines, this verifies (at least for me) that the country, or in this case, the military is too large to manage.
As this column pertains to Ukraine, the possible outcomes I see are Ukraine is destroyed/absorbed, or WWIII. Have a nice day.
Every day in every way, I'm getting depressed and more depressed.
Ain't it the truth? There is no other way to feel, really. End times, I think, and not in the religious sense, but the literal sense.
it's funny...I had lunch with an old student a few years ago. she had been a JW but was never properly baptized. I asked her what she thought about "current events" and she said "can't you tell it's obviously End Times?" she meant it religiously. less than a year later, she got married and, not much later, pregnant. go figure.
Jews are not baptized, but that’s for another day. As for the student feeling it’s all going to end and yet getting on with her life, I would think that’s the only sensible thing to do. Think “Cabaret.” “What good is staying alone in your room?” 🎵🎼
Isn’t there a saying “ the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way?”
The dictionary defines "intelligence" as animal, human and military - in that order.....
I’m sure there were lots of people working on this project who knew it was a mess. Get the tanks out the door and get the check mentality
The always too young are remembered only by the bereft, while the the old men keep playing their games.
https://youtu.be/JamLmpVOgE0
*edit* For clarity: Putin is yet another old man playing the game, of killing while being safely out of range.
Also, an opinion from someone with a closer view ... https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-state-of-the-war
These Abrams tank drawbacks remind me of what was said about the German Tigers of WWII -- they may have been very lethal tanks, but only under optimum operating conditions. They cost a lot, were very heavy, consumed a huge load of fuel, and were too prone to mechanical breakdowns. So they were eventually negated by American and Soviet tanks that greatly outnumbered them and were less finicky.
Wow. This tank is even worse than I thought. I'd hate to be in one with all that JP-8, even in the USA.
One thing Lucian didn't mention about tanks is that even a small stream will stop them cold.
In Vietnam there were lots and lots of streams, canals, rivers, swampy areas, and not all of them were on the maps. Even light APC's were stopped. Which reminds me of a funny story: as a young 2nd Lt a buddy of mine commanded a handful of APC's. I wish I could remember all the things he told me which could stop any armored vehicle. Initially, his were all powered with non-diesel fuel, making them very dangerous and explosible by tracers. This LT told me that within a month all his APCs were destroyed; not all by the enemy! They were replaced by diesel powered APCs. As Rumsfeld said in one his most lucid moments,, "You fight with the Army you got." And some of our stuff doesn't work.
Tanks need protection and they still aren't immune to mines.
Point of clarification, pretty much all the military uses JP8 to fuel the trucks that used to run on Diesel so there is a single fuel in the logistics pipeline, unlike when we were soldiers (and young) where we had to deal with MoGas, Diesel and JP4.
Jesus wept.