Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) continues to use what little power the Republican Party has to prevent further infestation of the military by woke leaders who are beholden to the Democratic Party and not the American Constitution. He has been holding all new considerations for military leadership confirmation required by the Senate, now numbering over 200, until they come clean on the military’s embracing of a partisan issue like abortion. The media, of course, is portraying this as irresponsibility, but this writer calls it courage, a courage rarely displayed by the GOP, which is why many top GOP leaders are loathe to openly support him, and some are inclined to seek to undermine his heroic efforts.
Note how the headline below subliminally characterizes this move as being irresponsible by whining about a woke military not having the “leaders” it needs to function. A military that is being transformed to become an enemy of the republic is one that does not leaders, it needs federal prosecution against the treasonous leaders currently in positions of leadership it has today.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is holding up the nominations of more than 200 general and flag officers in protest against the Pentagon’s abortion policy, a move that has impacted top military roles.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday stepped down from his position on Monday, leaving the Navy— along with the Army and Marine Corps — without a Senate-confirmed leader.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman slated to lead the Navy, is now an acting leader awaiting Senate confirmation.
The genesis of this article came from a completely different angle, namely, the deployment of laser weapons to the battlefield. However, as things frequently go, that initial idea led to something of much more immediate interest.
Previously, the Freedomist has covered some aspects of “improvised warfare” that some seem to take as James Bond-like fantasy. Yet, as we progress through the third decade of the 21st Century, remotely controlled drones – available in most countries through their local Amazon store – capable of both conducting tactical combat surveillance, as well as tactical air support by dropping small fragmentation grenades, are serious and maturing battlefield threats, threats that military and security forces are struggling to counter.
“Improvised warfare” has been around since the first caveman grabbed the jawbone of his last dinner to bash in the noggin of another caveman trying to muscle in on the first one’s turf. Throughout military history, outside of the heroically vast and sweeping battles of storied yore, there has always lurked the “PBI” – the “Poor, Bloody Infantry” – struggling to make do with usually-substandard weapons and equipment, improvising on the fly, on the idea that “if it looks stupid, but works – it isn’t stupid.”
This is also true in naval warfare. “Suicide boats,” in the form of “fire ships”, go back to at least the 3rd Century AD in China, and the 5th Century AD in the Mediterranean, and those dates are only the earliest we have on record. The use of fire ships in combat has always been problematic, as controlling the vessels after the skeleton crews abandoned them was impossible, and the abandoned vessels could easily come back on the attackers.
Chinese fire ships used by the navy as floating incendiaries, from the Wujing Zongyao military manuscript written in the year 1044 during the Song Dynasty. Public Domain.
As naval technology advanced however, fire ships, as such, disappeared, replaced by explosive-laden boats propelled by early steam engines. These boats had some advantages, not being as subject to winds as the old ships, and their explosive warheads were much more capable of inflicting serious, if not fatal, damage to large warships. Still, the inability to steer the boats remotely left their utility still strictly limited.
As with so many things in the military sphere, during World War 2, everything changed. The intersection of technologies with mass production and sincere desperation, allowed the first tactically useful guided weapons, not simply on land and in the air, but at sea, human control was still the primary aiming method until the last moment.
Post-WW2, the use of explosive motorboats continued, eventually evolving into actual “suicide boats”, where the crews rode the craft directly into their targets. While this was always a danger for the operators of these boats, very few navies outside of WW2 Japan set out with this as their operating profile. Beginning in the 1980’s, this began to change, first with the LTTE in Sri Lanka and with Iran in its “WW1, 2.0” war with Iraq. This is, in fact, what happened to the USS Cole (DDG 67) when it was attacked at anchor in October of 2000, as the suicide crew happily “saluted” the American crew before detonating their massive charge, nearly destroying the ship.
And then – another “sea change” (no pun intended) happened.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, and Communist China finally figured out how mix capitalism with a brutal, totalitarian governmental system, the West welcomed the Communist remnants into a burgeoning world trade system with open arms. As the global economy shifted and changed, the technology sector exploded in its own form of “business as war.” Technology once reserved only to the “Great Powers” became ‘democratized’, available at reasonable prices to the general public. While major nations certainly had far better and more capable – and much more expensive – systems, smaller states (and groups) suddenly had access to technology and manufacturing bases that significantly increased their capabilities versus local opponents (including their own citizens, but that’s another conversation, entirely).
Container port in operation. Credit: Piqsels.com. Public Domain.
All that was waiting was another spate of desperation to drive improvisation.
As the “Global War on Terror” (the “GWOT”) drove on in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the many small, localized wars it spawned drove desperate innovation, once again. Various ethnic and religious factions around the world desperately sought some sort of advantage. This has led to everything from “homemade tanks”, to artillery, to ‘sci-fi’ weapons manufacture.
But now, desperation-induced technological innovation has caught up with the navies of the world.
On January 30, 2017, the Saudi Arabian frigate RSN Al Madinah (FG 702) was struck and seriously damaged by an explosive-laden speedboat. Initially, it was believed that the craft was a piloted suicide boat deployed by the Shi’a Islam Houthi rebels of Yemen, which country has been in its most recent civil war since 2014. Soon, though, it became apparent that the attack craft was actually a remotely- controlled craft.
Speculation immediately turned to Iran. Iran, in addition to being co-religionists to the Houthis, was already supplying the rebels with short-range ballistic missiles and combat drones. In this regard, Iran differs from Ukraine only in that they supply their craft externally.
Ukrainian naval drones, c.2022. Unknown author.
Given the rapid advances in remote-operations technology, it would be no great task to re-engineer common pleasure boats to function as drone attack craft; as well, the issue of a simplified, “standard issue” refit kit (similar in theory to an aircraft JDAM unit) is virtually guaranteed.
But ultimately – what does all this actually mean, in the grand scheme of things?
Simply, insurgents and guerrillas are now much more capable than they were in the past, as they are now capable to extend remote-controlled warfare into the nautical dimension. With the democratization of military training, this opens the ugly possibility of radical forces being capable of enforcing localized (if not regional) combined-arms dominance over all the most capable of national militaries.
The fact that this is an operational possibility worthy of consideration is not something that should alarm only strategic planners – it is something that average citizen needs to seriously consider.
Act accordingly.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Unless a person is a member of the Catholic faith, most people don’t give a great deal of thought to what they think of as “the Vatican”, unless there is some noteworthy story concerning the Church. Most historians (both professionals and amateurs) are well versed, in varying degrees, about the Church’s history. Historians know that the Holy See – the actual leadership of the complex structure that is Catholicism – is an independent and sovereign nation, a condition settled by the Lateran Pacts of 1929, after seventy years of upheaval. But really – it’s not like the Catholic Church is actually a nation, right?
Right?
Well, no, actually. That is not the case, at all. And while it of course is a matter of immediate impact to the 1.3 billion-odd Catholics in the world, it is also a major concern – or should be – for non-Catholics, including non-Christians, throughout the world.
The Catholic Church – the strictly religious organization – has certainly existed in some form for over two thousand years; in fact, our formal dating system (i.e., “2023AD”, where ‘AD’ means “Anno Domini”, or, literally, “in the Year of our Lord”) is based on the Church’s established interpretation of the historical timeline.
During those twenty-odd centuries the temporal authority of the Holy See has waxed and waned. Where it once held immediate and direct sway over the secular affairs of much of the Christian world, in the minds of most people – even of most Catholics – the notion of the Pope as a secular leader is somewhat bizarre. In 1870, when Italy was finally united, the Holy See was stripped of its “Papal States”, although the Pope of the day, Pius IX, flatly refused to recognize the “Law of Guarantees” imposed on his rule, and referred to his rule, as well as that of his successors, as the “Prisoner in the Vatican” era.
This was the situation that remained in force until the signing of the aforementioned Lateran Pacts in 1929 by Pope Pius XI, which created the modern division between the Holy See, and the Vatican as a sovereign city-state, albeit a tiny one, only holding some 108 acres within the city of Rome. However, these remain technical differences. Among those differences is that Vatican City the City-State retains its own military forces…whose “commander in chief” (to use the modern term) is the Pope.
And it is here, that we reach the subject of this article.
Unlike most of the articles like this at the Freedomist, this is not a historical piece. Instead, we will consider the Vatican’s potential to impact current affairs through creating and applying military action.
While the Holy See is no stranger to maintaining military forces – some of which still exist – it has not had “operationally deployable forces” (again, to borrow the modern vernacular) since 1870. It does retain military and police forces, specifically the Pontifical Swiss Guard and the less-well known Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State.
While the Swiss Guard, famous for their Renaissance-period ceremonial armor and uniforms, directly protects the Pope (or the College of Cardinals, when they gather to elect a new Bishop of Rome), the Gendarmerie conducts more police-like duties within Vatican City, mostly managing tourist traffic. The Swiss Guard has significantly improved their protective training in the decades since the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Still, these two forces comprise barely two hundred and fifty troops, and are only armed with the lightest of small arms.
Swiss guards after a celebration inside St. Peter Dome, 29 June 2006. Photo credit: Alberto Luccaroni. CCA/3.0
Additionally, of the Church’s remaining military orders, only the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) is really “military” in any way: SMOM maintains a military medical detachment, providing medical support to the Italian Armed Forces.
Troops of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, during an army parade in Italy, 2007. Photo Credit: Utente:Jollyroger. CCA/2.5
Should the Holy See decide to expand its secular military, finances are not an issue, should the Vatican decide to reform an operational military arm. Accusations of certain fiscal shenanigans aside, the Holy See is fully capable of mobilizing all of the vast capital (much of it not easily tracked down) that it controls. At the same time, a program soliciting remittance-like donations (even tithes) from Catholics would provide a significant boost to the Holy See’s income stream. Spent wisely, Vatican finances are more than sufficient to field a very large force, and very quickly, as the world is awash in arms and equipment.
But surely, this is all hypothetical. It’s not like the Vatican is going to suddenly militarize. Right?
States have a habit of changing their nature quickly, and sometimes functionally overnight; take modern Iran as one example. How would such a thing happen to the Holy See?
While the current leadership of the Holy See and Vatican City are well known for “liberal” policies that could easily change. Granted, it would have to be an extraordinary circumstance, but a change to a staunchly conservative, even reactionary, leadership within the Church is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. In such a circumstance, assuming that a reactionary Pope ascended to the Throne of St. Peter, and decided to field a functional military, how would that take shape?
First, the reactionary Pope would need to define a mission for the expanding Papal forces. Given the nature of the modern era, this could easily begin with a revival of the Papacy’s long-disbanded Papal State forces, including its navy.
One of the curiosities of the Covid pandemic was that many cruise lines retired their older cruise ships, selling them off for scrap, using the suspension of cruise travel to purchase new ships. Many of the ships that were scrapped were still usable, and could have been converted into hospital ships, with a land component to handle the more delicate surgeries at dockside. This is completely in line with the current mission of SMOM, and could be presented as an expansion of the Order’s mission…Of course, the docked vessels would need armed guards.
A French Georges Leygues-class destroyer moored alongside a cruise ship and other military vessels at a pier in Bahrain, following Operation Desert Storm. TSGT Paul J. Page, USAF, March 19, 1991. USAF Photo. Public Domain
An expansion of this mission is where things start to get dicey. With the active persecution of Catholics and other Christians (to say nothing of other religious groups) by terror groups like ISIL, it would be entirely plausible to see Papal “peacekeeping forces” inserting into conflict zones to defend refugee camps from attack. As has been painfully learned in the last two decades, such defense measures require serious weapons and training. That requires an army, an army with equipment…and bases.
This is not an implausible thought exercise. The Holy See maintains diplomatic relations with some one hundred and eighty nations, giving it all the diplomatic ‘in’ it needs to open a dialogue with a potential host nation. Likewise, there are many Third World states that would welcome a Vatican military base inside their borders, even with limited extraterritoriality.
World map of the foreign relations of the Holy See; dark green: diplomatic relations, light green: other relations, gray: no official relations. Credit: Muso, 2011. CCA/3.0
But – where would all the necessary military talent come from? It’s not like this is the Renaissance, with large number of experienced troops and officers available for hire at short notice, even given the vast numbers of PMC’s available for hire. The answer is unsettlingly simple.
With an estimated worldwide population of 1.3 billion Catholics – many of them, from many countries, being former soldiers and officers, many with recent combat experience – the Holy See has no shortage of potential recruits to recruit from, including many officers and long-serving enlisted personnel with all the necessary skills to train a force that would resemble the French Foreign Legion in character, given the disparate origins of its recruits.
Numbers-wise, it should be remembered that India – with a population similar in size to the Catholic Church – currently fields a force of around 2.5 million troops, counting reverses. The Holy See would not need anything approaching that number…at least, not initially. However, given the money and space to house and train troops, it could easily assemble a comparable force.
…Now, all of the preceding is speculation. There is no sign that the Catholic Church is going to suddenly “arm up”, drawing in hundreds of thousands of Catholics from around the world to join a massive military force, and no indication that it is even thinking about it.
But it is possible…And possibilities offer options.
Deus Vult, indeed.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
When the tank appeared on the battlefields of World War One, it sparked terror among armies, who had no answer to it at first. The Germans attempted to counter it with new artillery tactics and later, new artillery weapons to destroy the armored beasts, followed by their first attempt to copy the British behemoths. After World War One ended, all of the militaries involved (the professional ones, at least) reviewed their activities during the war, trying to learn what had gone right, and – more importantly – what had gone wrong.
Regarding the tank, it was found to be useful, certainly, but it suffered from all the ills of any prototype concept, being ridiculously unreliable, too large, too slow, and poorly armored by the end of the war. The next two decades saw continual developments in all of the nations who felt that they might well be on the front line of the next war which – platitudes and wishful thinking about the “war to end all wars” aside – knew was coming.
World War two proved to be the watershed in tank design that most militaries expected. Designs were refined, weapons were improved, and tactics were evolved by force. In general, the things that didn’t work were ruthlessly cast aside, in favor of what worked. This cycle, of course, worked in both directions.
Tanks have severe weaknesses. For the crews, the most important weakness was a painfully limited view. Sticking one’s head outside a tank in the middle of a fight was not conducive to long life, and the visions blocks inside the tank had severely limited fields of view (and still do), limiting the crews’ ability to see anything outside of their steel box. For this reason, specially trained infantry had to escort the tanks across the battlefield to protect them long enough to make it into contact with the enemy…whose infantry could be expected to be armed with whatever anti-tank weapons they had access to, usually in large quantities.
The infantry forces of the world were not about to concede the battlefield to the metal beasts, however.
From the beginning, in WW1, non-armored forces struggled to find countermeasures against the tank. By 1946, dedicated anti-tank artillery had been joined (albeit briefly) by anti-tank rifles. During the “interwar period”, anti-tank hand grenades were developed; while effective, the grenades were really desperation weapons, given how they had to be used. Another weapon was the anti-tank landmine. A very effective class of weapon, they are strictly defensive in nature, and could be problematic in use, as the mines themselves could not be easily re-positioned at need.
A combination of simple rocket technology pushing a small warhead based on the “Monroe Effect”, the first crude “bazookas” deployed by the US Army proved to be highly effective tools for the infantry. Their only real downside was their very short range, compared to tank cannons. Still it was a major advance.
Soldier holding an M1 “Bazooka”, 1943. US Army photo. Public Domain.
The American bazooka was copied directly by the Germans, in their “Panzerschrek” (or, “tank’s bane”), who had jump-started their own research program early in 1943 with their “Panzerfaust” (or, “armor-fist”), a one-shot weapon much like a conventional hand grenade. Both weapon concepts continue today, in a variety of models.
But, it was quickly recognized early on that a ‘middle ground’ was needed. Where conventional – if specialized – artillery was effective, the materials involved in building the dedicated weapons took away from more conventional artillery fire missions. At the same time, hand-held weapons – while also effective – were quickly being countered with better tank armor, and better coordination between enemy tanks and infantry.
In the aftermath of World War 2, the victorious states quickly divided into two mutually hostile camps, initiating the “Cold War”. And, like their fathers in the interwar period, continued the search for the middle ground.
To a great extent, anti-tank artillery disappeared after WW2, in a concession to realism, because the class of weapons was simply not dynamic enough to keep pace with the speed demands of a modern battlefield. It was here, however, that the next development arrived.
Although very crude versions of the “recoilless rifle” were developed in World War 1, the Second World War would see their mechanical maturity, and the first deployments in combat, in the hands of German paratroopers.
A U.S. Special Forces soldier fires a Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle during a training exercise conducted in Basrah, Iraq, May 2, 2009. US Army Photo. Public Domain.
Resembling a conventional artillery tube, the recoilless rifle barrel is much thinner, for its caliber. Recoilless rifles work, basically, by firing a shell from a specially designed shell casing. This casing is perforated to allow a portion of the ballistic gases to vent to the rear, through a hollow breach. While not completely “recoil-less”, these weapons were a serious threat to tanks, as their warheads were fully capable of destroying a “main battle tank” of the day in one shot. And, while too heavy to be carried by hand, they were still light enough to be mounted in the back of a Jeep or pickup truck.
The recoilless rifle, in its turn, was sidelined by improvements to tank armor. Replacing it, however, was the ATGM. The Anti-Tank Guided Missile dawned in the early 1950’s. They were crude by modern standards, were hard to control in flight, and had a limited range, but technology was advancing rapidly, and the weapons improved dramatically in the 1960’s, especially in warhead technology.
The 1970’s dawned, and with it, the ATGM. In 1972, the US Army deployed the TOW Missile System to Vietnam, where it quickly began destroying tanks, being fired from helicopters. But this was just the proverbial ‘opening round’.
On October 6, 1973, the armed forces of Egypt invaded the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula. The furious, three-week long battle that resulted fundamentally changed the landscape of war for the first time since World War 1.
The Israelis had built up a well-deserved reputation for military prowess, one that would hold true in 1973…but not without taking a severe bruising in the process.
When Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and overran the Israeli defensive line, they halted and set up their own line, waiting for the Israeli counterattack. That should have been the first sign of trouble. Israeli tank commanders, however elected to not wait for more infantry to come up to support them, and attacked directly into the Egyptian line. The result was a bloodbath: the Israelis lost more than sixty tanks in a matter of minutes, as Egyptian ATGM troops cut the unsupported tanks to shreds.
An Israeli M60 Patton destroyed in the Sinai. Photo credit: Sherif9282. Public Domain.
The 9M14 Malyutka (NATO Reporting Name : AT-3 ‘Sagger’), first produced by the Soviet Union in 1963, is probably the most-produced ATGM in history, a weapon still in both production and use as of this writing.
Serbian-made modified Malyutka wire-guided anti-tank missile on display at “Partner 2009” military fair. Photo credit: Kos93. CCA/4.0 Int’l.
A tiny weapon, the Malyutka/Sagger fits into a briefcase-sized carrier. Assembled at its launch sight, the missile has an effective range of 500-3,000 meters. Its warhead remains potent even today: although no longer effective against most tanks, it remains very effective against buildings and light vehicles. The weapon’s warhead is in the same general category as that of the RPG-7, but has a much longer range.
Armies – and other groups – took note.
Now, there are a wide array of ATGM’s prevalent throughout the world. From the European MILAN launchers mounted to Toyota Hilux pickup trucks in the Chadian desert, to American Javelin missiles destroying invading Russian tanks in Ukraine, lightweight military forces around the world have finally found the balance they need to meet heavier forces equally on the field.
U.S. Army paratrooper engages targets with Javelin shoulder fired anti tank missile during a live-fire exercise as part of Exercise Rock Sokol at Pocek Range in Postojna, Slovenia, March 9, 2016. U.S. Army photo by Paolo Bovo. Public Domain.
The dust these changes have stirred up have not fully settled as of 2023. Tanks remain dangerous actors on the battlefield, pundit declarations to the contrary aside. But, as we increasingly enter a period of “discount war”, high-powered weapons in the hands of light, fast-moving forces with tiny logistical footprints and easy-to-acquire and -operate combat vehicles is forcing a serious rethink of the scope of military action…
…At least, among those who pause long enough to reflect on the question.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Since 2021, there has been a war simmering between the United States and Iran. The US began seizing – via court-based “arrest” orders – ships carrying cargo (mostly oil) –out of Iran, to various nations that the United States has under economic sanction. The nations under US sanctions, such as Venezuela, have no real method to respond to the United States.
Iran, however, is a different matter.
Iran has begun seizing ships in the Persian Gulf by force, and in earnest, in response to the actions by the United States; the number is now up to twenty vessels. Additionally, some firms in the United States have begun to refuse to unload ships seized with Iranian cargo, fearing Iran seizing their vessels in retaliation.
Because of the clear threat presented to the “freedom of the seas”, the United is now responding to Iran by reinforcing its forces in the Persian Gulf with additional destroyers…and a few thousand US Marines.
While the first inclination of many will be to recall that the United States severely damaged the Iranian Navy in 1988’s Operation Praying Mantis – launched in response to an Iranian naval mine severely damaging the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) – that was some thirty-five years ago.
Iranian frigate IS Sahand (74) burning on 18 April 1988 after being attacked by aircraft of U.S. Navy Carrier Air Wing 11. US Navy photo. Public Domain.
Iran’s naval capability – while still no match for the US Navy in a direct fight – has significantly improved since their defeat, very likely enough to cause serious damage to United States forces in the process. Such a defeat, were it to happen, would almost certainly spark hysterical screams from within Washington, DC, demanding an all-out invasion.
LtGen Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (retired), c.1995. LtGen Van Riper led the “opposing force” in the “Millennium Challenge 2002” exercise. USMC official photo. Public Domain.
This is certainly not a whimsical or marginal threat. There has been a long-standing resistance within the Washington establishment to any rational negotiations with Iran; indeed, this escalated after then-President Donald Trump called off a disproportionate attack in response to Iran shooting down an unmanned US surveillance drone in 2019. In fact, hysterical calls for war with Iran have been a steady feature of US rhetoric for over a decade.
While the reasons for this hysterical behavior by long-serving chickenhawks in the Washington Swamp are unclear, they are nonetheless real. And with the weak, disconnected and floundering administration currently in place in the Swamp, wallowing in failures both domestic and foreign, highly irrational decisions are a serious possibility.
Iran is not Iraq. An irrational and ill-advised war against the current iteration of Ancient Persia – no matter how technically weak it may appear – would be an absolute disaster for the United States in the immediate sense, but also for the wider world, as the impact on the global trade system would not simply be catastrophic, but could swiftly escalate out of control.
For far too long, the people of the United States have bought into the mythology of “American Invincibility”. While this belief was justifiable until about 2010, it is no longer the case. The US Navy currently fields less than 300 vessels; all of the armed services except the Marine Corps have admitted that they expect to fall short of their recruitment targets by at least 20%, if not more. As the Biden administration openly admitted less than two weeks before this writing, US industry has not been able to step up the production of basic artillery ammunition to meet the needs of the administration’s support to Ukraine.
There is nothing left for the United States’ potential need for combat operations, should that happen.
Munitions Production on the Home Front, 1914-1918. Imperial War Museums. Public Domain.
And there are painfully few options available, if any still exist at all. Despite some twenty-odd years of near-continuous combat, neither US industry nor the wider population have been mobilized for the possibility of a major war…or wars. In 1941, as the forces of Imperial Japan were attacking Pearl Harbor, the United States had been girding for war for nearly two full years, mobilizing a “command economy” to increase the production of war materiel to support Great Britain in its war against Hitler’s Germany, and instituting the first peacetime military draft in the country’s history, giving all of the armed services of the day time to bring in and train troops in readiness for war.
None of that has been happening in the last 20+ years. And the cold reality is that it is likely not possible, without twenty years, minimum, of corrective measures: Thirty years of globalism’s industrial and business realities have removed the bulk of heavy industrial manufacturing from within the borders of the United States. Likewise, there is virtually no chance of the Draft being reactivated; while it is certainly still on the books as a legal option, the social policies instituted, promoted and encouraged by the Democrat Party in the last fifteen years have poisoned the recruiting well for the military, encouraging the armed service’s core demographics to pointedly not step forward to enlist. Basic training has been eroded to the point where the vast majority of troops with under ten years service are not psychologically prepared for combat at any level.
And yet – the chickenhawks of the Swamp persist, thinking that their actions to please their vote base have had no impact on military readiness – despite facts to the contrary – because they are so disconnected from the real world…
…Now, if the issue were simply Iran and a shortfall for materiel’s shipments to Ukraine, this might not be that large of a problem. A problem, certainly, but not a critical one.
However, as many chickenhawk cheerleaders crow over the recent attack on the Kerch Bridge over the Sea of Azov, Russia’s response was swift and decisive: Russia has abandoned the deal it agreed to previously, which allows the export of Ukrainian grain crops to supply the world’s food needs.
Satellite picture of Crimea, 05-16-2015, with location of the Kerch Bridge in red. NASA. Public Domain.
Russia is now actively targeting the port city of Odessa with long-range missile strikes, and is laying naval mines to close off Ukraine’s remaining coastal regions. Moscow has also hinted at the possibility that it will attack commercial vessels attempting to reach Ukraine.
The real danger in this series of moves lies far to the south, where Egypt is critically dependent upon Ukrainian wheat to feed its population. In the face of this loss, Egypt – already struggling with massive unemployment and the irrational and childish dismissal of its concerns over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dame (GERD) project by the government in Addis Ababa.
This is important, because if Egypt lashes out against Ethiopia in desperation – using an air force largely reequipped by the US – it could easily spark a much wider war, a war that could easily result in the closing of the Suez Canal…an act that, as was demonstrated by the grounding of a single container ship in 2021 for less than a week, would up-end the world trade system.
Which loops us back to Iran.
If the United States tilts that windmill, it will destroy the International North–South Transport Corridor, the decade-old project by Russia, China, Turkey, India and Iran to build a trade corridor designed to drastically shorten the transit of commercial cargo, bypassing the Suez Canal entirely.
This is a hair-trigger environment that is capable of sparking World War 3. This is not hyperbole, in any way.
It is solely the construct of the Swamp – a body that imagines itself as completely immune to anyone it deems “lesser”…which term includes you and I.
Let that sink in.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
There is a perception in the world, a perception with solid reasoning behind it, that the United States of America is the most powerful nation in the recorded history of the world. In fact, the world system of the early 21st Century is hinged on that very concept.
But – is it true?
Economically, the United States is certainly a powerhouse. As measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) the US economy is almost larger than the next three economies in the world. However, in GDP per Capita the US is seventh, and in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) (a measure of the ratio of the price of a “basket of goods” in different countries, that is used to compare the absolute purchasing power of national currencies), the US is in 10th place. In exports, the US is in second place to China, and even then, the vast bulk of US exports are limited to petroleum, aircraft, pharmaceuticals and medical instruments, due primarily to the high costs of US labor. Dangerously, the imbalance of imports shows that the US is reliant on the willingness of the rest of the world for a vast amount of its real goods, like industrial machinery.
We could talk about how reporting on the quality of education in the US is “cooked”, but we’ll let the World Population Review discuss that.
But really – that’s not why you’re reading this, right? After all, if the Reader has been reading the Freedomist for any length of time, you are fully aware what my focus is. So, let’s go there.
Militarily, the United States Armed Forces possess a set of demonstrated structures that maximize its global reach and power projection…in theory. The state of the US military – and, critically, its supporting industrial base and capacity – is abysmal. This is not a question solely of culture or corruption, although those things are certainly major factors. The issue to keep in mind, here, is that the United States military is an apolitical and a-cultural bellwether for the nation – if the military works, the nation’s political and cultural problems are not insurmountable; conversely, if the military isn’t working, metaphorically speaking, the nation is in danger…How much danger, we will look into below.
Why is the military in the poor state that it is? On the surface, the issues started to became public, albeit in a very quiet way, in 2001…not with the 9/11 attacks, but with the release of the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. The 2001 QDR – one of a series of documents issued every 4 years from 1997 to 2017 by and for the Washington, DC bureaucratic swamp that describes a “4-year plan” (…) – was the first to explicitly state the plan to replace the notion of “strategy” (in the historical sense) with “capabilities-based planning”.
Basically, “strategy” was too hard to do effectively in an “asymmetric environment”, where hostile actors could erupt anywhere, at any time, and act in unpredictable ways. So…it followed that traditional strategic planning model no longer functioned. The solution – “capabilities-based planning” – posited the notion that if an issue arose, a “basket” of units with various capabilities appropriate to the nation, region and operational environment could be quickly assembled, and thrown into action, until the problem went away.
Given what should have been the obvious disaster in the making with such a childish idea, it should be no surprise that it failed, miserably, utterly and completely, almost from its first use.
But the problem is much deep than this.
JUNGLE GHOSTS
The United State Armed Forces were badly scarred, in a psychological and cultural sense, by the collapse of the Western effort in the Vietnam War. This is well known. What is not so well known, at least among the general public, is the US military’s responses to the defeat.
South Vietnamese refugees aboard a U.S. Navy vessel during Operation Frequent Wind, the final evacuation of Saigon, Republic of Vietnam. April 29, 1975. US Department of Defense. Public Domain.
The US military, as a group, essentially abandoned “counterinsurgency” in the aftermath of the Vietnam defeat. It had deployed massive forces, conventional and special, which had uniformly fought hard, in a confusing and frustrating environment. And it had failed. In the bizarre world of guerrilla warfare, while US and Allied units won every engagement above the level of the infantry company, they had still lost the war, because South Vietnam had ultimately fallen, seemingly rendering the efforts moot.
The reasons for South Vietnam’s collapse are many, and not the subject for this article. But, the reaction by the US military was to refocus all of its efforts towards very likely fights with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, in effect, “World War 3”, ala, “World War 2, but with lots more nukes.”
To do this, the US military – primarily the Army – had to rethink its concept of strategy, following the failure of its “Pentomic Army” experiment. The answer seemed to arrive in 1976, when John Boyd, Colonel, USAF (ret.) first presented his “Patterns of Conflict” work, that outlined what is now known as the “OODA Loop”. The OODA concept took the US military establishment by storm in the mid-1970’s, and resulted in two things: the revitalization of the Opposition Force (OPFOR) concept, and in a new battle strategy for winning the conventional side of World War 3 – “AirLand Battle”.
The US military had maintained the idea of an “opposing force” as a training model since 1946; in fact, the Freedomist covered this unique and seminal organization in May of this year. In the late 1970’s, the program was completely overhauled, and centered on a then state of the art training facility at Ft. Irwin, CA, and later at Ft Polk, LA (now renamed as Ft. Johnson), which focused on counterinsurgency as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan shifted in focus, in concert with the US Marine Corps’ facility at 29 Palms, CA. The concept has been maintained and updated over the years. The concept created the most realistic combat training facility ever established, that trained a generation of primarily US Army armor officers and troops in how to fight and win on an armored battlefield. The armored warfare training program fell out of extensive use during the Global War on Terror, as there was little need for massed armored formations after the successful invasion and conquest of Iraq in 2003.
Coupled to the success of the AirLand Battle concept in 1991, it seemed that the US military had recovered from Vietnam, and was back in the dominant position it had seemingly enjoyed since the end of World War 2.
A Brigade of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division masses in northern Saudi Arabia in preparation for the invasion of Iraq during the Gulf War, February 1991. US Army photo. Public Domain.
COLLAPSE?
But, lurking beneath the surface, there was a palpable, unsettled feeling – something just didn’t…“feel right”. There was suspicion, whispered in private, that we were actually training potential combat leaders how to “win the battle, but not the war”. Those concerns, however, were mostly forgotten as “bumps in the road” and “just bad luck”, as Iraq and Afghanistan metastasized into the quagmires they became.
But, hey – counterinsurgency is hard and messy, right? It’s comparatively a lot harder than the good, old-fashioned smash of the armored fist into the bad guy’s face.
Right?
But then – Russia formally invaded Ukraine. (The war had actually been going on for some eight years by 2022, but no one wants to talk about that.) And, after a year of intense combat – the very type of “main-force” combat Western combat leaders thought AirLand Battle was designed to fight – the Ukrainians launched a counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, using troops given a “quickie” training course in US/NATO AirLand Battle concepts, and fortified with deliveries of US M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and German Leopard 2 main battle tanks…..the results were as dismal as they were alarming.
A Ukrainian Leopard 2 tank and several Bradley fighting vehicles destroyed by the Russian forces in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, June 2023. Photo: Mil.ru. CCA/4.0
The US military, as well as the armed forces of the wider NATO Alliance, is getting a ringside to the live practice of the war they planned to fight…and it doesn’t look good.
The reality is that the AirLand Battle concept was never designed as an “attack” strategy, like its predecessor, the misnamed “Blitzkrieg” – it was always implicitly a defensive strategy. While people in the higher levels of the Army and the wider Pentagon establish speak confidently and relentlessly about “combined arms” and “maneuver warfare”, the cold fact is that their operational plans remain rooted in Airland Battle doctrine, a doctrine that does not play well on the offense…unless, of course, your opponent is a badly-trained, badly-equipped and demoralized rabble, who hate their leaders so much, they are willing to allow a foreign invader to enter and conquer their nation, wholesale.
The situation with Ukraine and Russia is spiraling out of control. What began as a craven attempt to restart the Cold War for “fun and profit” has now grown, until it is beginning to run off of the rails. This naked corruption, coupled to unsustainable recruiting numbers in the armies facing Russia – and soon, perhaps, those of Belarus and the People’s Republic of China – and an exhausted and flagging industrial base that cannot keep up with the vast needs for munitions and weapons – and not simply advanced weapons, but even basic arms – has led the White House to the highly unusual (and frankly rather alarming) decision to activate individuals within the “Inactive Ready Reserve” for immediate deployment to the European Combatant Command.
In 1941, as the Japanese launched their attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had spent well over a year building up its military forces in the first peacetime military draft call-up in the nation’s history. As well, war industry production had been steadily increasing since 1939; Lend-Lease would be formalized in early 1941, vastly increasing the production of war materials.
Neither the United States nor its allies have been able to increase production of basic military supplies like artillery ammunition. No one willing to support Ukraine seems to be able increase its production rates to serious war levels, even after some eighteen months of fighting. Western defense firms do, indeed, produce very high quality weapons…but that quality comes at an equally high price, in that those weapons frequently require special materials and/or complex components, all of which cost a lotof money.
And, just as there is no desire in the West to “gear down” to use simpler weapons and equipment, there is no desire to implement a peacetime draft to flesh out military numbers; in fact, a peacetime draft may be impossible, not only in the US, but in most of Western Europe…
And meanwhile – Russian industry is working multiple shifts, not simply producing war material for Ukraine, but fulfilling foreign orders as well. China is expanding its influence in resource-rich Africa, while securing “back door” supply chains to support Russia through its “Belt & Road” corridors in Asia.
The outlook is grim. For far too long irrational, incompetent and openly corrupt corporations and politicians have been inventing ways to sustain the “Great Green Machine”. For twenty-odd years, “Achmed the Goat-Herder” was touted as an existential threat to Western Civilization. When that failed – not simply because the general public realized that presentation for the lie that it is, but because using a $100million+ fighter plane to bomb Achmed is stupid and wasteful in the extreme – it was decided to push Russia into a “cold” conflict, to boost sales numbers.
And now…the incompetents in charge have no way out. They think that they do – but they do not. They are playing at a craps table, where failure will lead to a nuclear exchange.
And that exchange is aimed at you and me.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
The mass mailer President Joe Biden committee signed an order calling up 3,000 reserve troops to become part of an expanding “Operation Atlantic Resolve in Europe” mission. The mission began in 2014 after Russia annexed the Crimea from Ukraine. The move will be as an escalation of the Russians and critics say it risks further destabilizing the region rather than stabilizing it.
“The designation of OAR as a contingency operation is an important demonstration of the U.S. commitment to our NATO Allies and partners,” said U.S. European Command Spokesperson U.S. Navy Capt. Bill Speaks. “It further provides US EUCOM with greater flexibility to support continued U.S. and Allied commitments to the defense of the Euro-Atlantic and allows us to provide key entitlements to the forces who support those commitments.”
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) responded to the news in a tweet, “Biden’s weakness started this war, now he’s threatening to put our military in a shooting war with Russia.
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) commented, “I’ve been trying to figure out what this means. Bottom line up front: President Biden is arguably walking the U.S. up to the line of war and daring Russia to shoot first.”
He also challenged the legality of this escalation, saying that he has no legal authority to increase the troops involved in Operation Atlantic Resolve as it was started in 2014 with the authority given for the President to increase troops up to one year after the mission began.
He also warned, “President Biden did the same thing at the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, massively increasing our active-duty force presence when we knew hostilities were imminent. But now it’s even more risky because hostilities are active. Not only does this run the risk of further locking us into supporting Ukraine, now the military-industrial complex will say the US military presence is THE one thing preventing Russia from crossing NATO’s eastern border & that we have to maintain such presence indefinitely.”
CCP operatives have accessed sensitive U.S. email accounts, including U.S. State and Commerce Department emails linked to top officials, with the highest ranked official being Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. Microsoft provided information on the hacking, claiming it came from a group called Storm-0058.
Apparently, the group forged digital authentication tokens which they used to enter the amil accounts. They said in their statement, “As with any observied nation-state actor activity, Microsoft has contacted all targeted or compromised organizations directly via their tenant admins and provided them with important information to help them investigate and respond.”
China, through its London embassy said the accusation was “disinformation.” They added this, the U.S. government is “the world’s biggest hacking empire and global cyber chief.”
It should be noted that American business lobbyists are currently pushing on the government to ease off its aggressive approach to the CCP, whom they seem to fear and value more than they do American citizens and true American interests.
An article in The Federalist asks the question, “Is America Losing the Battle for Naval Superiority to Red China?” The evidence that it shows is compelling. China’s Navy has only been expanding this past decade, now boasting over 340 ships compared to the U.S. at 300. While the U.S. faces more slowdowns at home, China is only surging forward in adding to the world’s largest Navy.
From The Federalist:
Among the more alarming trends in China’s military rise is the rapid pace at which it has expanded its maritime fleet. On Tuesday, The Warzone published data from the Office of U.S. Naval Intelligence documenting how the growing disparity between the U.S. and Chinese fleet sizes is “being helped by China’s shipbuilders being more than 200 times more capable of producing surface warships and submarines.”
According to a May Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, Chinese efforts to modernize its navy have been underway for the past 30 years. As a result of such investments, the PLAN has evolved into a “much more modern and capable force,” giving it the ability to regularly operate throughout regional waters and expand its operations in the “the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and waters around Europe.”
To date, the PLAN is the largest navy in the world, boasting approximately 340 ships compared to the U.S.’ 300. This disparity is only expected to grow in the coming years.
Further on in The Federalist article is this most relevant finding:
A series of war games conducted by the Center for Strategic & International Studies earlier this year found in the event of a military engagement with China, the U.S. would “likely” run out of key weaponry such as “long-range, precision-guided munitions — in less than one week in a Taiwan Strait conflict.” The simulation further concluded the U.S. is “not adequately prepared” for the current, global “security environment.”
Under the current administration, efforts to demoralize American military personnel through the Woketiarain agenda that operates on the “theory” white people invented evil and heteronormativity and cis-genderism to oppress the better classes will mean that even the best technological advantage will fail when placed in the hands of emotionally damaged and immature adherents to the woketarian ideology.
Only if Americans can purge the Democratic Party from the public square can we hope to survive as a nation, a people. So long as Democrats control our institutions, we will continue to devolve towards third world status, leaving China to rise and become the new hegemon, one which will be far less benign than America ever was at the height of her power.
China has made a claim that it has build a signals intelligence facility at Bejucal, Cuba. The station, if it exists, is located only 90 miles from the U.S. At first, the U.S. denied the claim, with Pentagon spokesperson Brig. General Pat Ryder saying in May, “We are not aware of China and Cuba developing any type of station.” But now, NSA spokesperson John Kirby has tacitly admitted the base exists when he said in answer to a question on the station’s existence “We’re not going to be able to get into too much detail about own counterintelligence efforts.”
The spy base is rumored to be the beginnings of a full-scale military base just 90 miles from the coastland of Florida. A so-called expert at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute said the base was so close to the U.S. it was not of great military value to the CCP. Dr. Evan Ellis, the expert cited, said “The closeness of Cuba to the United States means that its value for PLA navy forces is probably pretty low because, again, that would be very, very vulnerable being that close to the United States.”
This writer thinks that might be what the kids these days are calling a cope or an agit prop DNC-CCP party line aimed at assuaging our natural fears over such a possibility as well as our outrage that this administration allowed for this to occur.
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_while_mooring_at_the_pier_in_Pearl_Harbor.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=d527250d1015e9f1d804b6b4a2886c37a4ddc3df3f73a74c05c897d1ec511849&ipo=images "China’s Navy Rising as U.S. Navy Sinks")
