Be Careful Of Your Sources

Michael Cessna November 10, 2023

In the last week or so, many people have been sharing images of what they feel are alarming amounts of military air traffic culled from various online tracking websites, purporting to show a “highly unusual” increase in air traffic throughout the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean (a.k.a., “The Levant”).

For those who are exploring a new landscape on the internet, such as aircraft and ship tracking websites, these images can, in fact, look incredible. Most of the online maps are indeed very cluttered, to such an extent that many computers have a hard time keeping up with the running updates, unless a user “drills down” to a very narrow region.

And to be fair, given the recent events within the region, with terrorist massacres in Israel, leading to brutal counterattacks by Israel, and the hysterical responses from throughout not just the region, but the threat of this new “Yom Kippur War” expanding to include most of the region – something that the few sane leaders of the world ‘body politic’ is desperate to prevent – is certainly making many people terrified of anything new and strange, that is presented with either incomplete, or flat-out wrong context, deliberately or otherwise.

The short answer to the “unusual increase” in aircraft activity in the Middle East is that it is a giant “nothingburger.” The long answer is far more mundane…but not so the reason behind it.

The fact is that Israel has severely neglected its defenses, both internal and external, for at least twenty years. Externally, Israel fell into the complacency trap of “Victory Disease” (the laziness and complacency resulting from too many victories), in that it felt that its “Iron Dome” missile defense system was mostly unbeatable, while its more conventional forces could easily handle anything that “Iron Dome” could not.

Internally, this dangerous complacency was compounded by Israel’s disastrous moves, beginning in 2012, to restrict the ability of Israeli citizens not on military or police duty, to owning or possessing military style firearms.

And on October 7, 2023, Israel and its citizens were given a stark wake up call as to why you should never beat your swords into plowshares before the right time.

As a result, Israel suddenly found itself in a desperate, grueling and bloody war against an implacable and bloodthirsty enemy at one end of its country, while facing another potential – and much more dangerous – foe to their north. While this is certainly not an unusual circumstance for Israel, Israel the state, as well as Israeli citizens, now finds itself being rudely forced to reorient its mental perspective on reality.

All-out war, as should be clear to anyone who has read an article on the Russo-Ukrainian War in the last almost two years, consumes people, ammunition, vehicles and supplies at a ferocious rate. While the scale and pace of the war in Israel may not currently be at the same overall scale as what is happening in Ukraine, when adjusted for scale, Israel is not much better off than Ukrainians.

In answer, the United States – long Israel’s only truly reliable ally – has doubled down on US support to Israel in the current conflict, complete with sending two complete carrier battle groups to the region, potentially committing US forces to direct combat in the conflict.

And fears of a widening of the conflict have already been realized, as the USS Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, has shot down multiple missiles launched by Houthi insurgents from their base areas in Yemen.

Obviously, no matter the Reader’s feelings – one way or another – about the current conflict, the United States has to supply Israel with weapons, ammunition and much else, exactly as it has for Ukraine. Normally, such supplies are sent by ship, and then by rail or road. The reason is simple: it is vastly more efficient than air transport.

Sometimes, however, speed is essential. Relatively small and light supplies, like ammunition and medical supplies, can be rushed to a conflict zone relatively quickly, as these are always the most critical supplies that would be needed early on in a conflict. In the case of any sudden uptick of military air traffic, however, there is currently another factor:

Volcanoes.

In 2010, a series of volcanic eruptions from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in April of that year completely shut down all air traffic in Europe outside of Spain and a tiny portion of France. That was, obviously, a very annoying situation for many travelers, as it up-ended flights throughout the world.

Now, however, another Icelandic volcano threatens to erupt: the Blue Lagoon thermal spa, long a popular tourist destination, is threatening to erupt.

Military planners, already struggling to juggle the delivery of supplies to multiple active and potential combat areas, now have no choice but add the potential of a natural disaster shutting down European airspace for an unknown period. The only real option is to start drawing supplies from existing bases in the region, and sending those to Israel…by air.

At the same time, however, those supply bases will need to be restocked, and fast, given the potential for regional escalation. This problem can be solved via a surge in sending war materials and equipment to those bases via conventional shipping…that seems to be happening.

The Ready Reserve Force ship MV Cape Orlando is currently underway from Tacoma, WA, crossing the Pacific Ocean. The Cape Orlando, originally berthed in Oakland, was actually boarded by pro-Palestinian protesters on November 4th, delaying its departure for Tacoma. (The protestors were not charged.)

While the MV Orlando is certainly the most public of the ships potentially carrying supplies to the combat area, it is also certainly not the only one.

What is happening is clear: a giant “shell game” is underway, with supplies being shuffled as quickly as possible, to cover as many holes as have been left open by shockingly poor military policies by the West and its allies over the preceding c.30 years…But such circumstances cannot endure forever.

*Sun Tzu, Author of Art of War. Photo: Gary Todd, 2008. Public Domain.*

Because, as the Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote some 2,500 years ago, if you try to defend every point equally, every point will be weak.

*The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To*

No, They’re Not Drafting People…Yet

Michael Cessna November 3, 2023

A funny thing happened on the first of November of 2023. A few hundred (ultimately, up to eight hundred) Non-Commissioned Officers in the active duty US Army were stunned when they received orders, via email, to report – within a week – to a school none of them were expecting to attend: the Army’s recruiting school at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

This order, coming with no warning, is up-ending hundreds of enlisted families as there is little time to reorder the lives of married NCO’s. Compounding the problem, none of the soldiers ordered to the school knows where they will be assigned, leading to extreme uncertainty on where their new posting will be, as active duty recruiters are spread out across the country. This is guaranteed to strain relationships to the breaking point, compounding an already high divorce rate within the service.

As we reported previously, the harsh realities of the third decade of the 21st Century have caused not only the US Congress, but also the Defense Department, to begin discussing an idea that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago: the reinstatement of conscription, i.e., the Draft – and not simply the draft of the old days, which was male-only, but a draft which would almost certainly apply equally to women.

Needless to say, the sudden nature of the Army’s move has added fuel to the strident denunciations of the very idea by “Gen-Z” and their “Millennial” parents…And the Army’s move on the 1st of November is elevating the hysteria.

For the troops, it’s not so much that the recruiting school itself is overly difficult. It is the fact that most recruiters only volunteer for the duty reluctantly, as their usual alternative is a tour as a drill instructor, something that many NCO’s dread. This is because there has always been a stigma to the duty, dating from at least the official end of the draft in 1973, in that failing to meet assigned quotas of recruits can seriously damage the continuing career prospects of the recruiter. Recruiters are usually long serving NCO’s, with ten to twelve years in the service when they enter the recruiting school; this means that they have seriously committed to the idea of twenty to twenty-five years of service, in order to retire with a reasonable pension. That continued career, however, could be seriously damaged by a failed tour as a recruiter.

The reality, despite Gen-Z’s hysteria, is that the Army’s move has come – officially – as an unexpected result of recruiters and possible recruiter candidates leaving the service at an unexpectedly high rate. Functionally, sending an emergency draft of NCO’s to school to become recruiters – whether they want to be or not – is not a preparation for a reinstatement of conscription.

As we discussed previously, the military’s recruiting woes, where all of the military services except the Marine Corps and the Space Force, are missing their recruiting targets, are made worse when taking into account the comparatively small size of the Marine Corps and Space Force in contrast to the other services. The effects of badly managed “forever wars” and conflicts for over twenty years, coupled to other astoundingly bad decisions, have left the majority of the US population severely disinclined to support enlistment in general.

Obviously, the resulting falling recruitment numbers have left the US military, as a whole, in a dangerous situation, as mounting threats – from Ukraine and Israel, to Iran and China – equate to the likelihood that the United States may well find itself in a very large war – or two…or three – sooner than later. And, after spending some twenty years laser focused (albeit with a very smudged lens) on fighting insurgencies, the armed forces got a stark wake-up call from the Russo-Ukrainian War on casualty rates in large scale combat, to the point that the Army is desperately trying to relearn the flawed strategies of the 1970’s and 80’s, all while missing the mark in spectacularly catastrophic ways, that would be funny, if their effects were negligible…which they are not.

*105th Medical Battalion Aid Station (30th Inf Div), Mortain, France, August 1944. US Army Photo.*

Having stated the above, while the Army’s sudden orders are not a herald of a return to conscription in and of themselves, there is are a pair of outlying possibilities, that it could signal a middle ground” move, neutralizing a flawed medical screening system that has slashed the number of recruits by upwards of 25%. The return of medical waivers for volunteers for minor conditions dating from as long as a decade prior, would be seen as a solid move to increase recruit intakes. Of course, such a move would also open the way to waive medical issues for potential draftees.

Secondly, this move could signal actual preparation for renewed conscription laws, where recruiters could be assigned secondary duties to process a new wave of draftees. As we implied previously, a reintroduction of a Draft for Gen-Z and/or some Millennial’s would almost certainly spark a wave of draft dodging and draft riots on a scale that would make those of the Civil War era pale in comparison.

*An illustration in The Illustrated London News depicting armed rioters clashing with Union Army soldiers in New York City, July 1863. The Illustrated London News, 1863. Public Domain.*

And, of course, a third possibility is hanging in the air, namely, the idea of offering bounties and legal amnesty via recruitment to those “military age males” currently flooding across the southern border of the United States…

…However, considering how armed forces frequently act in their countries origin, this may well be more of a curse than a benefit.

The American Foreign Legion – Revisited

Michael Cessna October 27, 2023

Over a year ago, we discussed the possibility of an “American Foreign Legion”. This was a hypothetical idea, based on most of the US Armed Forces’ continual failure to meet their recruitment targets. Tangentially, about a month prior to this article, we discussed a possible “deep plan” (an idea that, admittedly, verged into raw “conspiracy theory”) that the disaster at the border, specifically in allowing ‘unfettered’ access to the nation for tens of thousands of “military-age males”, potentially allowing in a hostile army, an army that could be used for nefarious purposes against Americans in general, not simply that percentage of the population that is armed and very unhappy with the status quo in Washington, DC.

But – what if there is something else going on?

In writing that article this past September, there was a wrinkle that kept bothering this author, namely, that while the numbers of unaccompanied males entering the country was indeed dangerously large, it was not large enough to actually be a significant threat to the supposed target, that being those unhappy gun owners.

Something, some other point, was missing.

But then, a funny thing happened: Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, and the most likely contender for the Republican nomination for President in 2024, stated “categorically” that he would round up and deport every person currently being allowed over the border…

However, this doesn’t make a great deal of sense: how could such a thing be accomplished? Leaving aside the fact that such a program would certainly be fought tooth and nail at every step in Congress and the Courts, the problem is similar to “confiscating guns”: With no registry of firearms, police officers would have to raid and search every single building in the United States, to effectively “confiscate” privately-held firearms. Even assuming that absolutely no resistance to such a thing would occur – a notion that is, quite literally, “whistling past the graveyard” – there are simply not enough law enforcement officers available to conduct those searches. The idea is ludicrous.

But not when it comes to the flood of “migrants” crossing the border. The reason is that those crossing the line, while largely vanishing into the masses of large cities, are in fact on the radar of various agencies of the Federal government, not least because the governors of Texas and Florida are not doing all of the busing of those migrants to cities like Chicago and New York City. And this is over and above the “CBP One” app those migrants carrying smartphones are encouraged to place onto their phones. Those carrying such apps on their devices are loading tracking software that gives them a level of legitimacy to then file for status as refugees entitled to economic support with state and local agencies.

Assuming that Donald Trump were to win in 2024, and would attempt to make good on his campaign promise to deport illegal migrants, and, given the certain resistance to such an attempt, if presented with an option to “negotiate a middle ground”, would Donald Trump do so?

Given both the nature of his character, and factors we will look at below, such a negotiation is almost a given.

What is this “middle ground” approach? Simply put – join an “American Foreign Legion”, or face immediate arrest and deportation.

This is not idle speculation. In Issue 3 of Volume 53 of Parameters, the magazine of the US Army War College, there is an article from August of 2023, “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force”, discussing the need to seriously rethink the Draft. Strident calls from the mainstream press’ gatekeepers to the contrary, this article is blunt, to the point that it is worth quoting:

“…These numbers cannot fill the existing gaps in the active force, let alone
any casualty replacement or expansion during a large-scale combat operation.
The implication is that the 1970s concept of an all-volunteer force has outlived
its shelf life and does not align with the current operating environment.
The technological revolution described below suggests this force has reached
obsolescence. Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well
require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and
a move toward partial conscription.16…”

It is that superscript note that presents an issue, as at press-time, the referenced article, “Was Fifty Years Long Enough? The All-Volunteer Force in an Era of Large-Scale Combat Operations”, by Kent Park, is not available for review.

This is a direct and pointed statement that the US Armed Forces need to consider the likelihood that the government will have to resort to a new Draft to meet it’s operations needs.

But – why?

Simply put, both “Millennial’s” and “Gen-Z” have little interest in volunteering for military, despite eye-watering bonuses of up to $75,000, over and above issues such as chronic obesity and a medical screening process that eliminates up to 25% of potential recruits who do volunteer. Bland platitudes from military managers wearing stars to the contrary, this is situation is very likely to persist.

And yet – for good or ill, the United States needs to keep recruits flowing into its units…And a “negotiated solution” to the illegal immigrant crisis is a very attractive answer.

Speaking strictly hypothetically, such a force would be easily and quickly fielded. All that would be necessary would be deploying fingerprint scanners to recruiting offices, to verify whether the illegal immigrant had been arrested while in the United States before that point. If not, the illegal immigrant could be offered a minimal cash bounty for enlisting, considerably less than those currently being offered to citizens born here, along with a guarantee of amnesty and legitimized citizenship after a minimum of four years’ service.

This is a very attractive prospect to someone coming from a culture that respects and/or fears soldiers, and which neatly sidesteps the problem of a large percentage of bitter and bluntly un-patriotic teens and twenty-something’s who would absolutely not report to a Draft board if faced with the prospect…

…It’s almost as if it were a planned operation.

“Five-D Chess”, indeed.

The New Pulse of the Neo-Con Forever War

Michael Cessna October 20, 2023

What follows is an “estimate of the situation”, concerning what may well become known as the “Guns of October”. This is a strategic assessment of the current situation in the Levant, and what the deeper plan[s] may be. Nothing in this article is based on “classified information” or “anonymous sources”, but sober estimates based on training, experience, intuition and “informed speculation”.

Around the world, October 7th stunned many people. Even after over twenty years of continuous warfare, the scenes of slaughter coming out of Israel were stunning, both in their daring, but even moreso for their brutality and savagery. Inevitably, perhaps, some people have began to promote an idea that the Israeli High Command was operating in full knowledge of what Hamas was going to do, because there was “no way” that the vaunted Israeli intelligence agencies could have missed Hamas’ preparations.

The fact is, people are always people, and people make mistakes – often, those mistakes boggle the imagination with their stupidity. There is no real evidence of anything like an intentional conspiracy on the part of the Israeli High Command’s part happening.

In this case, however, there are parties throughout the world, who have been desperate for a crisis like Yom Kippur 2.0 to restore their flagging efforts. This group has been pushing an endless series of wars since the 1990’s, and while their influence is, indeed great, they are masters of the notion espoused by one-time White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s quip, “… you never want a serious crisis to go to waste…”

The people in power, or hanging on to the tailings of power, who espouse such ideas, are known as “neo-cons”…But – what is a “neo-con”?

Foreign Policy Magazine accurately describes neo-cons as “liberal imperialists on steroids”. They are firm believers in the notion of a highly totalitarian vision of the so-called “Pax Americana”, a series of policies that have produced a national debt in excess of an eye-watering $33 trillion, as of 10/18/2023. These beliefs – and the people behind them – also led to the roiling disasters in Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and most of the rest of the Middle East.

Another key descriptor of the neo-cons is that they have no political party, beyond that which is most expedient for them at the moment. Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928 – 2017), one-time National Security Advisor to Democrat party President Jimmy Carter, laid out the neo-con strategy and thought in his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard”. His criticisms of Republican President George W. Bush’s handling of the post-9/11 wars were not one of actual opposition, but complaining about their mis-handling.

Neo-Con thinking is also at the core of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in February of 2022. No matter what side of that conflict the Reader may fall on, the fact is that – like Japan attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941 – the West, led by the United States, goaded Russia into its attempt to dismember the Ukrainian state. Why? Because the neo-cons desperately wanted to initiate Cold War 2.0, because Islamic jihadi’s were simply not working as an existential threat to Western society that justified obscenely massive military spending; terrorists are annoying, but they will never seriously threaten the Western social order.

Russia and China, on the other hand…

In early-to-mid 2022, there was a point where the world held its breath, as it seemed that the major powers of the world might actually enter into direct, large-scale combat with each other, something that has not been seen since 1945. While that danger still looms, the important takeaway, is that these situations have sparked increasingly strident calls to revamp western military establishments, to something resembling “the old days”.

But – how does this relate to the “Guns of October”?

In the aftermath of the seeming failure of neo-con ambitions as the “Global War On Terror” sputtered out in the mid-20-teens, despite the flare-up provided by the so-called “Arab Spring”, the neo-con movement became increasingly desperate for something to revive their plans to continue their series of planned wars, the exhaustion and disgust of the people’s of the West – and Russia – over the never-ending series of wars at the dawn of what should have been a “golden century” for humanity.

The clearest example of the desperation of the neo-cons, including their abject hatred of US President Donald Trump, came when Trump rejected their plans to strike three targets in Iran in response to the 2019 downing of an unmanned US drone. Trump canceled the retaliatory attacks when he was informed that the attacks were expected to kill at least 150 Iranians; Trump did not feel that level of retaliation to be a “proportionate” response to shooting down an unmanned drone.

But now, with a reimposition of sanctions against Russia in April of 2021, leading to a near-war with that state, the neo-cons within Washington DC and allies in several European governments have been awaiting a crisis of an appropriate scale to move the world back into the realm of “forever wars”.

Enter October 7th, of 2023.

With increasing calls in the West to end the open and naked barbarity of Hamas – barbarity that organization happily live-streamed, until it realized how bad the optics were – coupled to the deranged bleatings of the Communist mullahs in control of Iran – handed the neo-cons the golden crisis they have desperately needed to galvanize Western governments into continuing the wars: the United States – even under an “anti-Israel” establishment – cannot oppose Israel in assaulting Gaza, nor in hammering the Iranian-back Hezbollah organization in southern Lebanon, especially in the face of Hamas’ barbarity, without suffering catastrophic political consequences. Similarly, the Western European “street” is fed up with their government’s policies of accommodation and appeasement of “refugees” who spare no expense to tell the world how much they hate their “hosts”, who spared little expense to give them shelter and sanctuary.

Caught in the middle, are the Muslim governments of the region, none of whom want anything to do with this war, but who have enough internal problems that they cannot be seen by their populations to be completely abandoning the Palestinians. But, with more and more US Navy warships being deployed to the region at speed, the possibility of an “incident” occurring that “required” a military response against Iran – one that would make the Iraq war look like a training exercise – is an increasingly likely possibility.

Why is this important? Put simply, the United States does not have the manpower to fight the wars the neo-cons want the West to fight. As has been pointed out previously at the Freedomist, two decades of no-victory wars – as well as policies to insult and demean the US military’s primary recruiting pool – have turned a generation of potential recruits firmly against military service…so much so, that there has been a quietly increasing spate of military officers “speaking truth to power”, pointing out that the current world strategic will eventually force the United States to return to conscription, the dreaded “D-word”, that has been anathema to both the political and military spheres alike, for fifty years, since peacetime conscription was ended in the US by President Richard M. Nixon in 1973.

The neo-cons have painted themselves into a corner: They have relentlessly pursued aggressive policies that have burned off most of any good will built up by the United States over the past four decades, in pursuit of a strategy of continual conflict that requires a level of military recruitment that is a pale memory. At the same time, their actions have severely damaged the US economy, because markets not under a regimen of centralized planning respond poorly to toxic cycles of borrowing money, then borrowing more money to simply pay the interest, all while expanding the pool of currency by running the printing presses at high speed.

Likewise, the manufacture of basic war materials has been so neglected the West is finding it difficult to supply a single large war, much less multiple wars.

With much of the potential military recruit-base firmly rejecting staggering enlistment bonuses of over $50,000, there will come a point where the United States will be forced to attempt to revive the Draft for 18-to-30 year-olds…and there has been legislation language already draft, that was repeatedly submitted for some thirteen years.

By Democrat Party apparatchiks.

Needless to say, a Democrat administration reviving the Draft for 18-to-30 year-olds will be “interesting”, to say the least.

The bottom line?

Be careful what you wish for – especially if you have children.

Hamas And The Dangers Of Wargaming As Military Training

Michael Cessna October 16, 2023

SYNOPSIS

Let us start off by addressing the proverbial elephant in the room.

On October 7^th, 2023, the forces of Hamas – the Palestinian terror group with such delusions of legitimacy that they haven’t bothered with elections since attaining power – launched a short, sharp and brutal assault into southern Israel. For the first time since the rise of ISIL in 2011, the world was “treated” to a level of sadistic brutality that beggars the imagination. The acts of savagery – including the live-streamed slaughter, brutalization and kidnapping of mostly under-30 year olds at a literal “peace festival” – stunned the “polite” world as much as the apparent failure of some of the most vaunted intelligence services in the world.

The resulting war, on the fifty-year anniversary of the first “Yom Kippur War”, is now being termed “Israel’s 9/11”.

This article will not go any further into the political situation. Likewise, “sides” are not our purpose, here. This is strictly an examination of Hamas’ military operations, based on published reports and “informed supposition”, from October 7 to October 14, 2023. A much more in-depth examination of the situation will be available to our subscribers towards the end of the month.

OVERVIEW

In the early dawn hours of October 7, Hamas combat units launched a “broad spectrum” attack from its sanctuaries in the Gaza Strip. The assault opened with a massive and concentrated barrage of rocket artillery. The artillery assault was large enough and concentrated enough that it overwhelmed the “Iron Dome” anti-missile system that Israel has relied on for over a decade to defend itself from such attacks.

As the rocket attacks opened, mobile combat groups – some dressed in Israeli Defense Force (IDF) uniforms – infiltrated border checkpoints and massacred or captured the troops within, most of whom seem to have still been asleep. Simultaneously, other units conducted combat breaching operations at several points along the border, using a variety of techniques, ranging from simple RPG-7 rocket, to dedicated breaching charges, to using civilian construction equipment to batter holes in the security fences. Mobil combat groups, mounted on “technicals” and small motorcycles, quickly swarmed through the breaches, and fanned out to assault small town and villages, ultimately capturing and holding these urban areas for up to four days, a circumstance that has not happened since Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.

*A map of the Gaza Strip showing key towns and neighbouring countries, 2009. Credit: Wikimedia User: Gringer. CCA/3.0*

Perhaps most spectacularly, an airborne element assaulted the aforementioned peace festival using “paragliders” to insert a raiding force into the festival grounds, timed to strike shortly before the arrival a relief convoy mounted in technicals.

In both cases, at the peace festival and in Israeli urban settlements, Hamas forces deliberately massacred civilians, and captured as many as possible, carting them off to Gaza to be explicitly used as hostages and human shields against the expected Israeli counterattack. This has resulted in the largest number of Jewish lives lost in a single weekend since the Holocaust of World War Two.

While some Hamas forces held out for as long as four or five days in places, the bulk of surviving Hamas units had retreated into Gaza within seventy-two hours.

ANALYSIS

Hamas’ attack, on the purely tactical level, stands as a masterclass in operational deception, tactical ingenuity, flexibility and maximizing limited supplies on a shoestring budget.

It was also a complete and abject failure.

Way back in 2022, we discussed the emerging phenomenon of small-scale, targeted, and focused military training that was available to the general public around the world with nothing more than an internet connection. And that remains true – anyone who is at least moderately intelligent and educated can learn a very great deal by searching out real military informational guides via the internet.

The unspoken cautionary warning in the last paragraph is that such information, if not presented in a coherent manner, will most certainly not convey the level of competence necessary to fight and win.

Case in point – Hamas.

While Hamas demonstrated a surprisingly level of competence at the commando/light infantry level of warfare, its forces were absolutely no match for their enemy, once that enemy roused itself, and organized a coordinated counterattack. While Hamas’ leadership seems to have understood this, in a strictly tactical sense, it completely failed to tie tactical acumen to a realistic operational or strategic plan.

There was no possibility that Hamas was going to “win” against Israel in a conventional military sense. Hamas could – and did – certainly bloody Israel’s nose, exposing staggering complacency within the IDF, while also demonstrating the stark reminder that unarmed civilians are nothing but targets in a combat environment. As a result, as of this writing (October 16^th 2023), the IDF has eliminated all Hamas forces that remained within Israel after the initial assault…and the IDF is now girding for an all-out assault into the Gaza Strip to put an end to Hamas, once and for all, world opinion be damned.

This also demonstrated the defective strategic thinking of Hamas, as the avowed purpose of taking hostages, to be used as human shields – and joyously live-streaming it via the internet – is something that they allowed themselves to believe would be a viable tool of negotiation with Israel…The problem being, this is not an “intifada” – Hamas’ very success is the agent of their coming destruction, because the State of Israel will now stop at nothing to destroy them.

Put more prosaically, Hamas’ combination of tactical acumen with idiotic and outdated strategic thinking, is effectively the strategy for a “live action” first-person shooter video game, like a combination of “Call of Duty” with “Grand Theft Auto”, where the player gets more rewards for being more ruthless and savage, a view that is being reinforced daily, with the gleeful cheering on of troops in combat zones operating drone that drop grenades on enemy forces…just like in a video game – and if a war crime is committed in the process, that is worth double-XP.

Video games, however, are not real life. They are nothing more than a pale and warped reflection of reality – and basing your military plans on visions of video game victory is not simply a poor strategy, it is a strategy of suicide.

Yours.

Write that on your hand, if you need to.

For a more detailed look at this conflict, subscribe to the FREEDOMIST today for exclusive content

The Forgotten Cold Warrior – The MAS 49/56

Michael Cessna October 6, 2023

Unless you are a “gun person”, it is very likely that the reader has never heard of the MAS 49, much less its final iteration, the “49/56”…which is not surprising. However, this little-known weapon had a huge impact on world, not least because it remains in action on the world’s battlegrounds, into the current day.

The MAS (Manufacture d’Armes de Saint-Étienne, formerly one of the weapons makers for the government of France) series of rifles were the result of the French military and government trying to learn from their (many) mistakes made during World War One.

During that war, France – like most nations, being fair – had found itself woefully unprepared for the conflict. One of the main lessons learned by all of the combatant nations was the sheer scale of wastage of all categories of weapons and equipment, especially small arms. As casualties began to quickly mount, national military establishments found it nearly impossible to keep ahead of the need for weapons to both arm new troops, and to rearm troops whose weapons had been lost, destroyed or worn out.

This proved a windfall for arms manufacturers in the rest of the world, who were uninvolved in the fighting. Indeed, Great Britain found itself in such dire need of small arms that its Royal Navy had to turn in its standard-issue SMLE’s, and rearm themselves with everything from Winchester level-action rifles to Japanese Arisaka’s. Even Imperial Russia bought extensively from anyone they could, including Winchester.

In the aftermath of the war, France found itself with literal piles of small arms of all descriptions, from countries and manufacturers from around the world, all using different ammunition and parts, most of which wasn’t made in France, and which could not be easily (nor cheaply) licensed for manufacture. As well, the standard French rifle and machinegun cartridge, the venerable 8mm Lebel, was not a very good cartridge, and needed to be replaced. As the 1920’s dawned, France seemed to have placed itself on the path to rearmament, with a realistic and well-thought out program to develop a broad spectrum of small arms and light infantry weapons for its armed forces.

The execution of that program, however, was an entirely different matter.

While the Chatellerault M1924/29 light machinegun and the MAS 36 rifle were both excellent weapons that worked very well, and were mostly on time in their development, France failed to get the weapons into production in enough numbers to completely rearm its forces. It would not be until World War 2 was almost upon Europe that France saw the danger, and began to ramp up production in earnest. Of course, it would be too little, too late.

The reasons for this are not difficult to understand. France, like most of the “winners” of the ‘war to end all wars’, was in financial ruin after the end of the war. With the advent of the Great Depression on the world, money for military-anything was in short supply, and for France, especially, having lost the better part of an entire generation of young men during 1914-1918, was spending much of what little money it had for defense on an alternative plan.

After France was overrun in 1940, the Various French arsenals were in German hands. While the Nazi forces kept some of the factories working to produce ammunition for captured weapons (“beutewaffe”), as German industrial capacity was simply incapable of meeting Hitler’s war needs, very little new work was done on the incomplete French designs, until the country was liberated in 1944.

Almost as soon as the Germans had been driven out of the various French state arsenals, their workers flooded back in, retrieved blueprints and designs that had been hidden for four years, and immediately got back to work, completing production on the MAS 36, quickly finalizing the first MAS 44 semiautomatic rifles and getting those first guns into production just as the war was ending.

The MAS 44, like most prototype designs, had a lot of issues. Although the design had been in its final stage of development when France was overrun, it had not been perfected, and was rushed into production primarily to show the resilience of French industry. One critical flaw in the design – a flaw never corrected – was the rifle’s detachable magazine.

In the rush to complete the design, the decision was made to use tooling for the rifle receivers that was originally made for the bolt-action MAS 36. All that was modified for the MAS 44 was to remove the floorplate of the MAS 36’s fixed, five-shot magazine. The “magazine catch”, which locks a detachable magazine in place, was simply a ledge-shaped shelf milled into the outer-right side of the receiver. The rifle’s ten-round magazines were all fitted with a thumb latch on the magazine’s exterior, making it very awkward to try to fit two magazines into a pouch. For reasons unknown – but likely related to the magazine’s inability to safely hold the weight of additional ammunition – the magazines would remain at their ten-round limit throughout the rifle’s service life. However, the semiautomatic rifles would still retain their ability to be loaded via five-round strip-clips.

*French rifle MAS 49. Photo Credit: Joe Loong. CCA/2.0*

By 1949, enough lessons had been learned from the -44 that a new model began to make it out to the troops. The MAS 49 corrected several internal reliability issues (but not the magazine, nor the silly “spike” bayonet that the French arms industry was fascinated with), streamlined some aspects of the rifle to make it cheaper and faster to produce, and added a method to add a rifle grenade launcher, something the French infantry establishment had a long-standing love affair with.

It was this rifle that France would sell to many of its colonies (resulting in the so-called “Syrian Contract” rifles) and take into battle in Indochina, Algeria, and the Suez Crisis, all of which – in time-honored tradition – revealed where yet more improvements to the rifle could be made.

The result, developed in 1956 and deployed in 1957, was the rifle’s final form, as the “MAS 49/56”.

While retaining the overall look, feel and handling (and the magazine, still) as its predecessors, the stock was significantly changed, as was the rifle grenade system. As France had joined NATO, it was attempting bring its weapons in line with early NATO standards. The rifle grenade system was altered to use the NATO-standard 22mm grenades, which required the installation of a gas cut-off, to prevent damage to the rifle. This also resulted in a better sighting system for firing the grenades, as the grenade sight had to be raised, in order to disengage the gas system. Most importantly, this system was installed on all MAS 49/56 rifles. Another significant improvement was the incorporation of a scope mount milled into the left side of the rifle’s receiver, a feature also incorporated into every 49/56. And, because of the redesign, the rifle lost the spike bayonet, and received a proper knife-type pig-sticker.

*MAS49-56 with APX Scope and Bayonet from personal collection of Wikimedia User TL-Wiz63. CCA/4.0*

Despite some lingering problems, the matured design continued in service as France’s standard infantry rifle until 1979, when it was replaced by the FAMAS rifle), and remained in combat action until its complete replacement. The MAS semiautomatic rifles were mostly sent as aid to many armies in the newly-free states resulting from France’s abandonment of empire. Many of those rifles remain in combat as of this writing.

In an interesting twist to the end of this story, a good number of MAS 49 and 49/56 rifles are on the surplus market in the United States. Many rifles were sold into the American surplus market, beginning in the late 1980s. Some versions were modified to take 7.62x51mm, instead of the 7.5x54mm French round. As a word of warning, if those conversions were done in France, they most likely work well, but the ones converted in the US are known for gas-cycling issues.

Look into older firearms – they tend to have very long lives.

Intentional Consequences – How A Cold War Warning Framed A 21st Century Battleplan

Michael Cessna September 29, 2023

BACKGROUND

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this, that there is something strange happening at the southern border of the United States…even NEWSWEEK magazine is talking about it. No one who claims to watch the news at any level of attention has failed to see the hysterical cries from all levels of society in New York City that the mainstream media bothers to pay attention to, that the “migrant crisis” has finally come home to roost in the self-declared “sanctuary cities”, who are now facing just a fraction of what tiny towns along the US-Mexico border have been dealing with on a weekly basis, and for decades.

But, it is considerably more than that. In fact, it is alarming in the extreme.

In previous decades, a significant proportion of the illegal aliens crossing the US-Mexico border were women and small children; indeed, despite breathless denunciations to the contrary, the phenomenon of the “Anchor Baby” is very real. Prior to 2020, many, if not most, of the illegal crossers were unaccompanied men, actual “economic refugees” from Mexico and other parts of Central & South America, who were coming north to seek work, because even making significantly less than American-born workers, they were still able to make enough to more than fully support their families back home.

However, beginning at some point in 2020, that mixture began to significantly shift.

Beginning, again, in 2020, more and more Africans began to be observed at the border, crossing in illegally. However, like Mexican illegals before them, significant proportions of the flow were women and children.

But, beginning in 2022, the numbers shifted again. Increasingly, unaccompanied men of “fighting ages” (17-45 years old) began to appear – not mixed in with families, but in very large – alarmingly large, in fact – proportions of crossing groups.

What follows is an analysis that may sound “conspiratorial”. Given the current rhetoric from certain organizations – it is most definitely something that needs to be taken seriously.

ACTORS IN PLACE

“Men fleeing their country to take refuge in a foreign land, bring their women and children with them.

Men invading a foreign land – do not.” – Anonymous

Nearly fifty years ago, now, 1974 was a strange time. It was the height of the Cold War; the Vietnam War was grinding to its bloody end; tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were still very frosty, and getting more hostile as the political fallout from Richard M. Nixon’s resignation from the Presidency threw treaties and agreements into doubt.

In the midst of this turmoil, a small, 18-page study was presented to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under contract number RDA-TR-4301-001. Its title?

“A SOVIET PARAMILITARY ATTACK ON U.S. NUCLEAR FORCES – A CONCEPT”

(HTML) (PDF)

The paper outlines the feasibility of an “asymmetric” (to borrow a phrase from the modern day) attack on the US’s “nuclear triad” by Soviet special forces teams inserted into the US by slipping them over the border, mixed in with the yearly flow of illegal migrant workers.

When viewed through a more modern lens, this study stands as a stark warning for the current situation at the border, with only minimal editing for the current situation: simply replace “Soviet” with “militant actor groups”, and “nuclear forces” with “civilian soft targets”.

This is not hyperbole – if the numbers remained as small as they once were, this view would, indeed, verge into paranoia. However, with even the low figures hovering around 10,000 people per week, and even being generous in estimating the numbers of actual refugees, that equates to the core cadre of an infantry division entering the United States each week.

BEANS, BULLETS & TRAITORS

Now, the above is a pretty heady statement to make. After all, how would such a hypothetical force be armed and supplied, to what purpose, and by whom?

If you, the Reader, think that we are about to go to a very dark place – you would be correct.

It has long been known that certain elements of the United States government’s apparatus have deliberately tread very carefully, lest they goad the c.100,000,000 private firearms owners in the country into doing something “rather rash”. Frequently, they even try to crack jokes about it – jokes which absolutely no one finds funny.

Those same elements, however, certainly seem hell-bent to inflict demented plans on not simply the US population, but on the populations of the wider world. The United States’ population, though, is unique as it has not simply the highest proportion of private firearms ownership per capita, but also the largest numbers overall…and a significant proportion of that number are military veterans, many with recent combat experience.

In fact, those elements are so concerned about this potential threat to their plans that they have been issuing increasingly strident warning calls about the situation since the mid-1990’s. Yet, for them, the “problem” remains.

But – how to mitigate that problem?

It is clear to these elements that deploying the actual US armed forces, or even police, against the citizens they are sworn to defend through “kinetic action” is not an option: far too many would almost certainly either desert outright, or might actually mutiny, taking their weapons and joining their fellow citizens who are being attacked. And this is all aside from the fact that those “regular” forces, even in concert with law enforcement officers, simply do not have the numbers to make “martial law” a viable option.

But…What if those forces were given an actual, hostile foreign target inside the United States? For that matter, what if those private firearms owners could be induced by circumstance to join the regular armed forces and law enforcement in an action to “defend America” against that force? Stentorian denials from the “right wing” on social media aside, this “Reichstag Fire” scenario would force self-proclaimed “2A supporters” into a Catch-22: Either support the direct defense of the nation – in concert with the armed forces and the police – or suffer consequences far worse than being exposed as fakes.

*FMLN guerrillas, El Salvador, c.1980’s. Photographer Unknown.*

However, as there has been no such credible threat inside the United States – because “Antifa” is not the threat many, including that group’s members, suppose it to be – such a force would have to be “imported”.

Hence: foreign, fighting-age men, flooding into the country in massive numbers – but numbers not sufficient to actually conquer the country, but certainly enough to cause a sufficiently large and alarming threat…a flood actively encouraged, by public policy.

Note that none of either the foregoing, or what follows, is even a possibility without the active collusion of large sections of the government apparatus in Washington, DC.

It is vital to understand that, even assuming that certain reporting, dismissed a decade ago as “deranged conspiracy theories” were to be true, such a potential hostile force cannot successfully seize control of any great portion of the United States – at least, not for any real length of time.

But – why?

Simply put, the potentially hostile forces that would act, would be extremely disjointed and lacking in any more than the most basic of direction, and outside the cities, would find themselves vastly outnumbered, outgunned and over-matched by the local population. Unlike other parts of the world where groups like these operate, the local population in the United States – overall, but most certainly in the more suburban and rural areas – are very well-armed, by current world standards, and are peopled with a high percentage of recent military veterans, most of whom are armed.

This does not mean that such hostile forces would be completely impotent. Indeed, current technology means that these forces could easily arm and equip themselves effectively, simply by raiding firearms dealers (making the publication of the personal information of firearms permit holders over the last few years…“interesting”) not simply for weapons and ammunition, but also for the information on the dealers’ Form 4473’s, as described in the famous scene from the original “Red Dawn” (1984). As well, functional support equipment could be constructed at reasonable speed, allowing this potential hostile force to cause a lot of “hate & discontent”, and all without a great deal of the typical heavy ordnance one would see in most of the conflicts of the last c.25 years…for a time, at least.

In the aftermath – if this strictly hypothetical plan were to be real – the surviving American citizens would be ready to fall in line behind a government professing to have “learned its lesson”, that would revitalize and regularize citizen “militias”…under strict government control and supervision, of course.

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND

Is any of the foregoing true, though?

There are no “smoking gun” documents – that the author is aware of – that detail the above speculative plan as a real, deliberate and ongoing operation…That in no way means that it is impossible.

There is an overused saw in current vogue, to wit, that “history does not repeat – but it does rhyme”. In this case, real, fundamental manipulation of a population to a meaningful purpose they would otherwise not only have no interest in, but would actively oppose if said plan were enacted too quickly, is not a thing that can be achieved overnight. It is a process that takes years to plan and decades to implement.

Once again – 1974 was an odd time. Lot of plans were flitting around the literal swamp that Washington, DC perches in, like a vulture’s nest…Plans like “NSSM 200”.

You, the Reader, should reflect on that link.

Coughing Tiger, Drunken Dragon – The Danger Of Globalization

Michael Cessna September 22, 2023

Amid all the shrill backbiting over continuing to flagellate the dying Ukrainian efforts against Russia, as well as the capering of France trying to stave off the disintegration of its African satrapies, as those states internally realign themselves with Russia and China – by force, when necessary – a specter lurks in the background, the proverbial “elephant in the room”: Communist Chinese insecurity over Taiwan.

In this insecurity, lay the seeds of global economic collapse.

At the end of World War Two, Communist leader Mao Zedong led his “People’s Liberation Army” out of their mountain hideouts, and slid in behind Soviet forces occupying Manchuria, swiftly arming themselves with ex-Japanese military equipment captured from the defeated Imperial Japanese Army. Thus armed, the Communists went on the offensive against the exhausted Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) forces, which had born the brunt of fighting against the Japanese for the preceding eight years (1937-1945).

Despite several billion dollars in US aid, and the poorly though-out deployment of the III Amphibious Corps and elements of the 7^th Fleet, the sheer exhaustion and demoralization of the KMT resulted in a series of worsening defeats on the battlefield, until, in 1949, the surviving KMT military and government units retreated (for the most part) to the island of Formosa (now, Taiwan), and established a government in exile.

That is the situation as it remains, today.

Communist China, throughout its bloody and draconian history from 1950 until today, cannot abide that a recognized province of the country is not under its thumb. This manifests itself in the news of today, as near-continual violations of Taiwan’s declared air and sea boundaries by Communist military forces. The normal response of the United States has been to occasionally deploy aircraft carrier battle groups into the disputed waters as a dare to the Communists to fire on them.

The question for many, however, is – why? After all, the United States famously showed Taiwan the door in 1972, which made the country a diplomatic pariah state…so, why does the United States constantly go “eyeball-to-eyeball” with Communist Beijing over the island? For that matter, why can’t Beijing just let it go?

Two answers: For Beijing – and particularly for Premier Xi Jinping – Taiwan is a gaping sore for the Communists, as the island rapidly prospered under the KMT’s governance, while Communist China wallowed in poverty, famine and induced technological stagnation under the increasingly mentally unstable Mao…and that, in spite of the extreme brutality of the KMT’s actions in securing the island, beginning in the late 1940’s. As prosperous as Communist China has become in the aftermath of the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the Communist state still lags behind Taiwan by a long distance.

Second, the United States knows a fundamental truth that many around the world (and particularly within the United States), a truth that is the basis of this article:

Any Communist attempt to invade and conquer Taiwan – even if it failed – would collapse the global economy overnight.

The reason for this is brutally simple: microchips.

Silicon chips, semiconductors, or integrated circuits as the Reader prefers, are what drive modern technology, from the device you are reading this article on, to the CPU in your car, computer chips drive every object of any consequence in your everyday life.

And Taiwan produces at least fifty percent (50%) of the world’s supply.

Most of Taiwan’s chips are produced by one company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). Unlike other manufacturers like Samsung and Intel (who manufacture chips for internal products), however, TSMC chips are not proprietary to them. Instead, their chips supply manufacturers of computer-driven hardware around the world, companies like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm, to name just three. Other nations around the world currently hover at less than half of TSMC’s production capacity; the United States currently holds about 12% of the global manufacturing capacity.

Invasions, as proven by the Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, are bloody, messy and highly destructive affairs. Any actual Communist Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan would be no different, the severe problems of a combined arms assault on the island equating to a probable Communist failure aside. To say that such an invasion would “disrupt” TSMC’s operations is a laughable understatement, not least because standard military doctrine virtually guarantees direct attacks on the company’s production facilities, to say nothing of worker attrition from “collateral damage”.

*Devastation in Bucha, Ukraine. CC0/1.0, Public Domain.*

What would such a circumstance mean for the global economy? Simply, virtually all generalized computer and electronic device production and repair or upgrades utilizing semiconductors would grind to a halt, as stocks of chips dried up virtually overnight. This is due to the phenomenon of “just-in-time delivery”, an outgrowth of the wave of globalization that has been the norm since the 1990’s.

The Reader may recall the term “supply chain disruption” that became popular during the recent pandemic. Workers at both manufacturing plants, but also – critically – stevedores and loading crane operators stayed home, either terrified of catching the disease, by legal order, or both. This ricocheted throughout the global supply and transport system, and was greatly aggravated by what many considered to be a minor event, namely the grounding of the container ship Ever Given in March of 2021. The effects of these body blows to the global economy continue as of this writing.

*Container Ship ‘Ever Given’ stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt, March 24th, 2021. Copernicus Sential photo. CCA/2.0 Generic*

In regards to a hypothetical – but very possible – Communist invasion of Taiwan, the disruption would be vastly worse, as there is no way for global manufacturers to quickly retool to make up for the loss, even if a ceasefire were quickly closed…And note that this does not address the general disruption of commercial cargo traffic in and out of the Communist nation, in the event of such a war.

But, there is an even greater danger lurking in this very possible scenario: the facts that not only will Taiwan not go quietly, but that they have a plan to take Communist China with them.

Without resorting to nuclear weapons.

The non-Communist Chinese in Taiwan all know full well what a Communist takeover of their country would entail. Given the Communist state’s recent history, to say nothing of its habit of “disappearing” political dissidents and anyone who disagrees with their regime too loudly. Because of this, there lurks a plan that Taipei lets slip every once in a while, to remind Beijing of what the consequences of invasion would be.

*The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, China, 2009. CCA/2.0 Generic*

Taiwan’s “doomsday” plan (YouTube link) would be a series of strikes against the Three Gorges Dam. If concentrated, such a strike package would collapse at least a section of the dam, releasing the force of 39.3 km³ to pour downstream in a massive deluge.

Provisionally, this action could kill up to 400 million people…And this is not an idle threat, as the KMT has done it before. To say that this could result in a nuclear response is a given…with everything else that derives from that.

Right now, Communist China is desperate to appear tough and capable. The chances of bluster turning into an actual invasion are very real, however.

This fact is something that should be taken seriously by anyone reading this.

Unsung Heroes – The CUCV

Michael Cessna September 15, 2023

No, not that! Don’t be juvenile.

Militaries around the world use vehicles. In the 21^st Century, that should be obvious, but the range of the vehicles military forces – and their irregular counterparts – use covers a very wide spectrum. What usually makes the nightly news are vehicles like main battle tanks, various classes of APC’s, and small “tactical” vehicles that all look like they were given massive shots of steroids and testosterone.

More rarely, you may see military cargo trucks, carrying anonymous crates of “military stuff”, vaguely termed “cargo” or “supplies”. If you’re very lucky, you might see some sort of construction vehicle, similar to those you may see working on road repaid during your daily commute, albeit the military vehicles are probably painted in “Army Green”.

But, there is another class of vehicle, rarely spotted (or paid attention to) by news crews, humble little heroes that slog along in the background, mostly ignored because they appear so plain next to their more military-looking cousins…those are the COTS vehicles.

Military ground vehicles have unique requirements that civilian vehicles do not need. Military vehicles require at least some level of armor protection for their crews and passengers, as well as needing to be massively built to absorb both the recoil of heavy weapons and the impacts from bullets and shell fragments. Their drive-trains and suspension systems need to be far heavier and more robust than civilian vehicles, and their electrical systems need to be much larger, the better to handle the much heavier load of electronic equipment that most military vehicles carry – in militaries that plan for electronic and nuclear warfare, the electrical systems also need shielding against Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) – to name just a few.

Clearly civilian vehicles require few, if any, of these very heavy and very expensive systems.

However, military bases (as we have pointed out previously) very much resemble small towns. As a result, in addition to all of the specifically military vehicles needed, there are a host of functions that require vehicles, but not vehicles requiring the heavy and expensive features outlined above.

When a military identifies such a need, the smart move is to turn to the civilian sector. This is concept is called “Commercial, Off-The-Shelf”, or C.O.T.S.

In the early 1970’s, as the Vietnam War ground to its conclusion, it became painfully clear to the United States military that its faithful little warrior, the much-loved “Jeep”, was nearing the end of its service life. Requirements were changing, and the little vehicles were simply no longer equal to the task. Thus, the Pentagon began development of a new light vehicle in 1970 that would eventually become the High Mobility, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), now known as the “Hummer”.

The problem? The Hummer would not enter service for over a decade…but the M151 Jeeps would not last that long. A new idea was needed – and that idea was a COTS program to buy civilian pickup trucks as a “short-term” solution.

And thus, the CUCV was born.

*Dodge M880 CUCV, 2006. Photo Credit: Mike Davidson. CCA/3.0*

In 1976, the Pentagon began buying a “militarized” version of the Dodge D200 and W200 pickup truck models; eventually, the Pentagon would buy c.44,000 vehicles, designated the M880- (W200) and M890-series (D200); they were termed, in classical military lingo, “Civilian Utility Cargo Vehicles”, hence, “CUCV”. These early batches of vehicles were very basic civilian pickup trucks, essentially car-lot models painted “Army Green”. There were a few minor additions, however.

While most vehicles had a conventional 12-volt electrical system, some models added a 24-volt system to handle an increased electrical draw for more electrical equipment. That 24-volt addition came at a cost, however, because the 24-volt system took up the space needed for a power steering pump, making them rather difficult to drive in rough terrain and snow. Their engines were also gasoline-powered, in a military that ran mostly on diesel.

The M880/890 vehicles, all of them models from 1976 and 1977, have had a long – and continuing – service life, although the vast majority have long since been either scrapped or sold off as surplus, as more and more Hummers came online.

But, that wasn’t the end of the CUCV program. This was because the M880/890 series was so successful, the military wanted to make lightning strike twice…so, beginning in 1983, the Pentagon went to General Motors, and handed them a set of requirements based on its experience with the Dodge vehicles.

The result was the “M10XX”-series vehicles.

*GMC M1009. 2011. Photo Credit: Joost J. Bakker. CCA/2.0 Generic*

Starting with a standard Chevrolet K5 Blazer chassis, the M1008 and its derivatives were all uprated to a 1¼ ton capacity, or higher, and were equipped with the GM 6.2lt J6 Detroit Diesel V8 engine. The main modification, however, was a hybrid 12/24-volt electrical system, running two 12-volt batteries and two 12-volt/100 amp alternators. The vehicles also came equipped with a NATO-standard 24-volt slave cable jumper connection, to provide jumps for 24-volt vehicles. The Pentagon would eventually purchase over 70,000 of the M10XX-series, a vehicle count rivaled only by the M113-series APC.

*View of a NATO Jumper cable slave receptacle on an M1009 CUCV, 2008. Credit: Wikimedia User CatCube. CCA/3.0*

Beginning in 1987, the US Air Force began buying limited numbers of what became known as the CUCV II. These vehicles were all based on the Chevrolet C/K, Tahoe, and Suburban models, and were “militarized” in a manner similar to the previous M100XX-series. As well, following the adoption of U.S. Army Regulation 750-1, these vehicles all received the Chemical Agent Resistant Coating (CARC) coating, which provided enhanced protection against nuclear, biological and chemical threats; while some of the earlier types of CUCV were repainted with CARC material, most of the older models were surplused before receiving the updated paint.

Although produced from 1987 to 2000, the CUCV II vehicles were never procured in large numbers. Beginning in 2001, another small order was placed for a new CUCV-type program, called the Light Service Support Vehicle (LSSV).

*Canadian Military Police Light Utility Vehicle Wheeled (LUVW)/LSSV truck. Public Domain.*

The LSSV is a GM-built Chevrolet Silverado 1500, Chevrolet Silverado 2500 HD, Chevrolet Tahoe, or Chevrolet Suburban that are powered by a Duramax 6.6 liter turbo diesel engine. In 2005, LSSV production switched to AM General, a unit of MacAndrews and Forbes Holdings.

Like all of the CUCV models, the LSSV is intended for non-combat duties, like base services and maintenance, military police patrol, light cargo and monitoring functions. With the rise of the “combat technical”, however – and especially in light of the US Army’s awful infantry squad vehicle concept – the notion of possibly revisiting the CUCV concept as an active combat vehicle is not as outrageous an idea as it would have been fifteen or twenty years ago.

Sometimes, the dedicated military design process fails. When that happens, innovation will step in, if allowed…and, almost always, in a more cost-effective manner.

Why Armies?

Michael Cessna September 8, 2023

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.” – Sun Tzu, Chinese general and strategist, c.500B.C.

There are some questions floating out there, which are generally considered as “no-brainers” – questions that appear so basic, that everyone just assumes that they know the answer, when in fact their understanding of the question is merely superficial, at best. Questions such as “Why is the sky blue?” for example – the correct answer is simple, but many people are unable to formulate the correct response.

Which brings us to the title of this article.

Why do armies (military forces, really) exist? At first glance, the possible answers appear to be self-evident. For many people, their nations create and maintain military forces to defend the country and its peoples. However, their neighbors may see the same nation’s military forces as everything from brutal police enforcers to mercenary enforcers for large business interests.

In fact, that last idea formed part of a statement from Smedley D. Butler, Major General, USMC (ret.), in a speech he gave in 1933. Butler had, in fact, seen monumental levels of corruption in 33-odd years of military service in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. He had fought in numerous wars and interventions during those 3+ decades, from Mexico to Central America and the Caribbean, to France in World War One, and in the Far East.

“It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” – Smedley D. Butler, 1933

He was not incorrect.

Likewise, many people point to the opposite extreme, best exemplified in the South American nations of Argentina and Chile, from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, where those nation’s armies were used primarily as heavy muscle to back up the nominally anti-Communist actions of brutal and irretrievably corrupt military junta’s.

Throughout history, from the time of the savagery of the Assyrians, to the rationalizations for the 1990-91 looting expedition of Saddam Hussein (some of which, if we are being honest, were valid), and beyond, military forces have been used to grab everything from gold, crops and women, to industrial plant equipment and raw materials, despite that inevitably becoming an ultimately losing proposition.

And it is no secret that military forces are extremely expensive, even when military leadership, governments and economists manage to carefully balance military budgets (an almost unheard of event, on a par with finding an actual herd of unicorns). This is because – for the reasons just outlined above, among others – military forces are a net drain on their parent economies, as they can never produce enough economic output to balance the expenditure necessary to create, organize, equip, train and maintain them.

“Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State. The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways. As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.” – Sun Tzu

And yet, the rule remains: military forces are necessary for a society to maintain, because whatever other uses militaries are put to, there is always someone on the other side of the river/mountain/ocean that wants a piece of what you have, and is not willing to negotiate for it.

There is, however, a trap inherent in all military forces, that being the breathtaking feel of the power and majesty of command. That is not hyperbole – it is very frighteningly real. “Drunk on power” is not an empty statement. The knowledge of having the ability to wield the power of literal life and death over hundreds, thousands, millions – or more – people can be more intoxicating than any mere chemical action.

People with that particular failing also believe that they are smart enough to disregard Sun Tzu.

“To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” – Sun Tzu

That is not “paranoia” – that is history…and History does not care whether you believe it or not.

So, where does this leave us?

“We, the People” – of whatever nation – need military forces. Despite the dangers of armed forces having the monopoly of violence within their borders (which, ignorant arguments to the contrary, is the entire purpose of the US Constitution’s Second Amendment), the People, as a whole, need an organized, well-trained and well-equipped force to protect them. Like any tool in a home, like any kind of vehicle, device or machine, the object itself is just an object – it is inanimate, and has no mind of its own. The “good” or “evil” actions that tool is used for, is solely the responsibility of those putting it to use.

It is responsibility of the citizens of a nation to hold their governments accountable when their military forces are misused…because if they don’t try, they have no right to complain: You, the Citizen, are paying for your military forces. Even if you have never been in a military force, if you think you have a say in how your country operates, you need to inform yourself about “things military”, in general, and your country’s military in particular.

That’s part of what is known as “adulting”.

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” – George Washington, First Annual Address to Both Houses of Congress, Friday, January 8, 1790

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