Self-Reliance

Tools of the Trade: The Military Staff

Michael Cessna January 20, 2023

When people think of military actions, those thoughts are usually centered on frenetic Hollywood action sequences. There are the occasional meetings/briefings where the stock, lantern-jawed heroes get their orders from a grizzled, crusty-looking officer, who occasionally pushes their “knife hand” across what is probably a real enough map of…somewhere, but probably not the “somewhere” of the show.

The effect is even more divorced from reality when watching the average news broadcast: the tall, swarthy, lantern-jawed heroes are almost always either completely hidden by helmets and body armor, or are somewhat short, usually bald, and squinting through their sunburns and badly wind-dried skin. The vehicles and surrounding terrain are anonymous and dusty (or heavy with tropical foliage, or a blasted city-scape) – things are certainly happening, but the viewer has little context. The reporter delivering the story probably has even less.

The grizzled and lantern-jawed stock characters from Central Casting do occasionally appear – and are even frequently as heroic as Hollywood portrays them to be – but the above images (real and fictional) obscure the reality: the Grunts who have to carry out the mission have their tasks explained to them by sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, and hyper-stressed troops suffering from ulcers, who have likely been awake for over 24 hours, straight, and have been monitoring units in combat with the enemy, while coordinating artillery fires, air support, medical evacuations, resupply, reinforcement and probably armored support, as well…and have to get creative on short notice when one, some or most of those things are not available, because of shipping delays, bad weather, enemy attacks on the supply lines and just plain bad-to-non-existent maintenance means that something else needs to be found to help the Grunts get the job done.

Those officers and troops, punchy from lack of sleep, are the Staff.

In the “old days”, military staff work was not overly taxing, by today’s standard. Literate officers and troops (read the letters of some officers on campaign in the old days – yikes) made the decisions and wrote the orders, trying to be as clear – yet couched and polite – as the writing conventions of the time allowed. Unit sizes were rarely above the Brigade level (c.3-5,000 troops), and the “optempo” (“operations tempo”, or, the pace of operations) was measured by how far a unit could march in a day. By modern standards, it was quite sedate. The only real “specialization” in the military staff were the Surgeon (for obvious reasons) and the Quartermaster, who handled the acquisition of supplies; this last position, while recognized as highly important, was not much sought after, as it was viewed as a rather menial task.

That all began to change with three wars in the 19^th Century: The American Civil War of 1861-1865, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The actual mechanism for the increase to optempo in those wars was the railroad.

The railroad revolutionized warfare in a way not seen before in land warfare. In the past, like cargo, the fastest and most efficient way to move troops more than 100 miles was by water. By 1863, the United States Military Railroad (USMRR) was able to transfer some 25,000 troops a distance of 1,200 miles in just 12 days. The USMRR did this by creating a dispersed staff of railroad schedule planners who communicated via telegraph to coordinate their movement plans. In 1866, the Prussian Army – having sent observers to both sides of the American Civil War – calculated that they could concentrate 285,000 troops in twenty-five days, and used this ability to overwhelm Austrian forces. Four years later, Prussia would demonstrate the defensive advantage of the railroad, by using their internal rail system to rapidly shift their outnumbered troops around the country to first blunt, and then counterattack the French invasion, resulting in not simply the defeat of France, but the capture of an Emperor and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, specifically because they had established a “railway section” as a part of their ‘general staff’ system after the return of their observers from the American Civil War.

This is not, however, an article on the military use of railroads. Instead, it shows the first real expansion of the military staff system since the days of Napoleon, and going well beyond his reforms.

Napoleon Bonaparte created what we now refer to as the “Continental Staff System”, minutely categorizing and specializing roles that had previously been handled somewhat haphazardly. As armies began to grow in size and complexity after Napoleon, the old staff methods simply could not keep up. Even in the case of Napoleon’s own staff reforms, they could barely keep up with the demands of La Grande Armée. The US Army, first, then quickly followed by Germany, began to make significant reforms and expansions.

However, this was not a streamlined or consistent process. In fact, in Germany’s case, it became a decided negative, as the German General Staff took the statistical process too far, imparting a rigidity that more or less completely ignored the Clausewitzian warnings about “friction” and the “fog of war”. This rigidity contributed to the failure of the Schlieffen Plan and led directly to the hell of trench warfare on the Western Front of World War 1.

In the modern day, the staff system has evolved to the point where it can swiftly alter itself to account for new technologies. As radio replaced visual-sight signaling, dispatch riders, carrier pigeons and the telegraph, staffs were increasingly able to effectively control and support their subordinated commands in real-time. Today, that progression includes satellite communications and (theoretically) secure internet connections, as well as incorporating intelligence from ground- and air-based drones.

In order to better streamline the core functions of a staff, tasks and responsibilities are divided between departments led by specialized officers. Even in the last 30-odd years, there has been expansion and readjustment, as some of the current offices either did not exist in the 1980’s, or were considered to be part of a “Special Staff” section, created on an ‘as needed’ basis.

Currently, there are a total of nine departments recognized as part of the Continental Staff System. These nine offices scale upwards, as designated by a prefix letter code (see below), and generally only begin to appear as part of a battalion-level staff. The nine offices in general use are:

1. Manpower or Personnel. This office manages the more mundane, non-combat personnel-management tasks of a unit, such as record-keeping and handling pay for the troops.
2. Intelligence and Security. This is the office with the unenviable task of trying to predict what the enemy in a local area are planning. However, their ‘side functions’ are much more extensive, and include everything from weather monitoring and map making, to cultural and demographic surveys to refine information that was likely glossed over by their national-level counterparts.
3. Operations. This is the office that actually controls the troops in the field. The unit commander, their executive officer (i.e., the “second in command”) and the “-3” officer (who is effectively 3^rd in command) direct operations, through the mechanism of the “command post” system.
4. Logistics. Logistics – what used to be called the “Quartermaster” office – is one of those dreary, ho-hum functions that people only get annoyed over when they either fail, or when someone points out that the military unit in question is incapable of functioning if they ignore the “4-Shop”. If your logistical plan is deficient in the civilian world, that is annoying and inconvenient. In the military world, bad logistics lose battles, campaigns and wars.
5. Plans. This is where you will find those grizzled old officers making knife-hands over a map. The Plans office has to take the commander’s ideas and vision, lay them out coherently on a map, then write the orders to the various sub-units to carry out those plans.
6. Signals (i.e., communications or IT). “Signals” are the people who run the radios, and make sure the computers are working right. They will also occasionally restore telephone service to a town or city…usually inside of 36 hours.
7. Military education and training. Exactly what it says – there are always new things coming out, that troops need to be trained on, which can also include seemingly non-military course like the dreaded “Personal Finance” course. In case anyone is wondering why distance-learning courses like that are offered, troops who badly manage their pay are frequently preoccupied, hyper-tense and distracted in the field; this leads to very unpleasant results for them, and likely everyone in their general vicinity.
8. Finance and Contracts. Also known as resource management. This is the department that handles buying tools, materials and food from the local area. In the “home country”, these kinds of contracts are normally handled at higher levels; when operating in a foreign country, however, the situation frequently dictates that a units needs to let contracts with the locals…which not only gets the unit supplies locally, easing the logistics burden of the higher commands, but also helps a local economy that may have been destroyed and needs more than simple hand-outs of cash.
9. Civil-Military Co-operation (CIMIC) or “civil affairs”, as well as PIO functions, who generally deal with the news media.

As noted above, there are a variety of letter designators for these staff functions, depending on the size and/or function of the unit in question. The most commonly used designators are:

- A, for air force headquarters.
- C, for combined headquarters (multiple nations) headquarters.
- F, for certain forward or deployable headquarters.
- G, for army or marine general staff sections within headquarters of organizations commanded by a general officer and having a chief of staff to coordinate the actions of the general staff, such as divisions or equivalent organizations (e.g., USMC Marine Aircraft Wing and Marine Logistics Group) and separate (i.e., non-divisional) brigade level (USMC MEB) and above.
- J, for joint (multiple services) headquarters, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff).
- N, for navy headquarters.
- S, for army or marines executive staff sections within headquarters of organizations commanded by a field grade officer (i.e., major through colonel) and having an executive officer to coordinate the actions of the executive staff (e.g., divisional brigades, regiments, groups, battalions, and squadrons; not used by all countries); S is also used in the Naval Mobile Construction Battalions (SeaBees) and in the Air Force Security Forces Squadron.
- U, is used for United Nations military operations mission headquarters.
- CG, is unique to the US Coast Guard.

While there is certainly much more to military staff functions than this brief outline, the goal was to introduce the Reader to the idea behind the Military Staff, in a general way. If you would like more information on the subject from the source, check out the US military’s field manual on the subject, FM 6-0 – Commander and Staff Organization and Operations, in print here, or as a pdf download directly from the US Army, here. (Note that most military manuals in the United States are unclassified and publicly available for anyone to own – if it’s classified, you will definitely know, and you are definitely on your own, in that regard.)

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

The PCC – Useless, Essential, Or Just ‘Okay’?

Michael Cessna December 23, 2022

In the firearms world, there is a wide array of classifications for various types of weapons. These varying classes and “families” of weapons change over time, as buzzwords come and go; one of the current buzz terms, and one that generates a great deal of controversy, is the “PCC”, or the “Pistol-Caliber Carbine”.

A PCC is best defined as a firearm intended to be used like a rifle, but which fires a projectile and cartridge caliber commonly associated with a handgun. This is not really a “new thing” – the majority of the 19^th Century Winchester family (YouTube) of level-action rifles all came in pistol cartridges, at first.

Big caliber cartridge comparison. L to R: .22lr, 9x18mm, 9x19mm, 7.62x25mm, .40 S&W, 10mm Auto, .45 ACP, .454 Casull, .30 Carbine, 4.6mm HK, 5.56x45mm NATO, 5.45x39mm, 7.62x39mm, 7.62x51mm, 7.62x54mmR, .303, 7.92x57mm, .30-06. CCa/4.0

The first true “PCC’s” of the modern era, though, were the German submachine guns of the First World War, closely followed by the Thompson SMG, the famous “Tommy Gun” (a term that comes from WW2). These weapons – while not exactly “carbines”, as they were not “shortened rifles”, as such – showed armies that there was room in their doctrines for a lightweight and compact (comparatively speaking) type of “long-ish” weapon, that was cheaper and easier to produce than more conventional rifles and carbines.

In the United States this would eventually result, in 1942, with the introduction of the M1 Carbine. While using a cartridge considerably more powerful than most handgun cartridges, the .30 Carbine cartridge was far less powerful than a “full-power” cartridge, like the .30-06 used by the M1 Garand Rifle. The M1 Carbine was significantly lighter and handier than the larger and heavier M1 Rifle, and was only really usable out to about 150 yards/138 meters, but that was deemed to be perfectly sufficient for its intended use: giving troops who did not really need a “full-power” M1 Rifle something to defend themselves with that was more accurate and longer-ranged than a handgun.

*M1 Garand rifle and M1 carbine. Public Domain.*

The “carbine” field became somewhat muddied with the widespread adoption of the “intermediate” cartridge class after World War 2, but eventually settled back to the original idea of a “carbine”, that being a shortened version of a service rifle. One of the side effects of this adoption trend, meanwhile, led to fewer and fewer true “pistol-caliber” SMG’s being developed, as post-war battlefield developments made SMG’s largely redundant. Submachine guns were slowly pushed to the fringes, eventually used only by police or elite and highly specialized military units, primarily for hostage rescue and use in very crowded areas like airport concourses and large entertainment venues, where rifle cartridges – even coming from a shortened barrel – were not satisfactory, due to over-penetration at close-quarters’ range.

However, in areas that were friendly to private firearms ownership, the first PCC’s began to appear in the 1970’s. At first, these were weapons that mimicked the “look and feel” of SMG’s, but that fired only on semi-automatic. Soon, however, companies began to move away from the “military look”, as hysteria in certain quarters arose, and took on a more “civilian-friendly” look.

*M105 Calico .22 carbine (Photo by Oleg Volk)*

As the 21^st Century dawned, companies in the United States began – after the 2004 sunset of the 1994 “Assault Weapons Ban” – to release PCC’s onto the civilian market. While little regard was given to these weapons at first, closer looks ensued as more an more people bought various types of PCC’s, for everything from recreational shooting to home defense. Inevitably, perhaps, highly raucous debate began as some quarters began to discuss the “tactical” uses of PCC’s…

…And, as in most debates about modern firearms, much hysterical screeching ensued.

The essential point of contention are that PCC’s are more or less useless against modern body armor – which is true…although the numbers of criminals staging “home invasions” at 2AM, while wearing high-grade body armor, is very low. As a result, the PCC is a good choice for home defense instead of a “full power” rifle or carbine, as its projectiles are less likely to leave your home and land a block or two away, in someone else’s home. As well, although there is a net savings on ammunition for practice, “training” (two different things) and recreational shooting, the savings are not that large, overall. One thing PCC’s are demonstrably good at, is acting as introductory weapon to ease new shooters into long-arm use.

*Just Right Carbines (JC Carbine) 9mm. CCA/4.0*

Do PCC’s have a “military” use? For an established national armies or police forces, the answer is “not really”. Although some arguments could be made that police forces would do better with a PCC than an actual “patrol rifle” (usually a military carbine), any real need for a pistol-caliber long-arm is usually better filled by a submachine gun.

However…as we pointed out in a previous article, there is one military area in which this class of weapon excels: insurgent warfare.

Unlike more high-powered firearms, PCC’s are well suited to “guerrilla factories”, especially using “additive manufacturing” infrastructures, as the tolerances required are considerably less than those required for fully-automatic weapons. Likewise, additive manufacture requires few, if any, of the tools, equipment and supplies needed – and thus more-easily tracked – for more conventional weapons.

*Anti-junta rebels in Myanmar, armed with FCG-9 carbines. 2021-2022. Author unknown.*

In sum, then, if you are living in a “gun-friendly” location, a PCC is a good tool for both recreation and home defense, while also being a good choice for introducing new shooters to long-arms…and, if things really go sideways, they are a good choice for arming an insurgency or resistance movement, with the intention – as in Myanmar – of using them to capture more powerful enemy weapons.

The only “obsolete” weapon is the weapon that can no longer harm you. You have to work with what you have at hand. Thinking in advance is one of the keys to personal safety and survival.

The Mighty Maxim

Michael Cessna December 1, 2022

There are very few machines in the world, today, that can claim to have been designed over a hundred years ago. There are some railroad engines, for example, that are still run as “living museums”, ferrying the curious around closed rail circuits, allowing modern riders to experience some of the feels and smells of bygone eras. In other places, there are hydroelectric dams that have changed little in the near-century since they were built; Hoover Dam comes to mind, as it nears its own century mark, with only minimal updates to its internal design.

*Series of massive electrical generators beneath the Hoover Dam. CCA/4.0*

This is equally true of firearms. The Browning Machine Gun, in both .30 and .50 calibers, and the Colt 1911 (also designed by John Moses Browning) all date from over a century ago, yet remain in both first- or second-line service around the world. The Mosin-Nagant rifle, and its 7.62x54mmR cartridge, in contrast, date all the way back to 1891, and while the Mosin rifle may no longer be in common service (aside from a few WW2-era examples turning up in Ukraine), the 7.62x54mmR remains the cartridge of choice for the PKM GPMG, one of the most widely deployed machine guns of the early 21st Century.

*7.62 mm PKM machine gun used by Finnish military. 2012. Public Domain.*

But one weapon stands apart from all of these: the Maxim Machine Gun.

*Swiss Maxim Machine gun Model 1911, cal 7.5 mm. CCA/3.0*

First invented in 1884 by an American inventory, Hiram Stevens Maxim, and first offered for sale in 1886, the Maxim Gun has been used in every part of the world, in virtually every conflict of note since that time. The Maxim was the first true “machine gun”, in the mechanical sense that we understand the term today. Unlike most machine guns of today, the Maxim is recoil-operated, meaning that it only uses the recoil impulse of the cartridge firing, to retract, extract, and eject spent cartridges, then chamber and fire a new cartridge. In contrast, most modern automatic weapons use some form of gas-operated piston – very similar to the piston in a car engine – to operate their cycle.

*An Australian soldier manning a Vickers machine gun during the Korean War. Date Unknown. Public Domain.*

Similarly, the Maxim typically use a large, cylindrical water jacket to cool and protect the barrel from the heat of firing, unlike modern weapons which rely on the flow of air and “quick-change” barrels to accomplish the same task. While very good at cooling barrels, the water jackets were very cumbersome, and prone to damage, both in and out of combat, which could cause catastrophic damage to the weapon if no immediately repaired.

With a cyclic rate of about 600 rounds per minute, the Maxim is – by modern standards – heavy, clunky, and awkward. As well, it is certainly nowhere near to modern standards of reliability in the field…and yet, the gun refuses to quietly disappear into a museum, because it continues to soldier on in the 21st Century.

*Twin-mounted Maxim Guns with a modern optical sight. Ukraine. Author Unknown.*

The Maxim was tweaked and fiddled with by every state operator who bought copies. But Maxim wasn’t done with his design: in the early 1890’s, he released a much larger version of his machine gun (YouTube link) that fired 37mm explosive shells, at a rate of c.300 rounds per minute, to about 4,500 yards. Versions of this “pom-pom gun” (so-called, because the sound it made while firing) would be used as secondary and tertiary armament on ships, as well as early anti-aircraft weapons, until the end of WW1.

*U.S.S. Vixen, Maxim machine gun and gunner Smith. The gun appears to be a Maxim-Nordenfelt 37-mm 1-pounder autocannon, known to the British as a “pom-pom”. Public Domain.*

*British QF 1 pounder Mk II 37 mm “pom-pom” gun, World War I era, on display at the Imperial War Museum, London. CCA/2.0*

The Maxim would be used as a frontline weapon through the war in Korea. By then, though, it was showing its age, as better materials and designs produced lighter, more reliable and more portable weapons. The surviving weapons, around the world, were mostly placed in storage…but the Maxim’s legacy continued: the PKM and its successor, the Pecheneg GPMG, both use ammunition belts that are backwards-compatible with the PM1910, the Imperial Russian version of Maxim’s design, dating from before WW1.

*Photo of a 1910 Maxim Machine gun. CCA/4.0*

But again – Maxim’s design refuses to gently go into that good night.

As the world exploded in the aftermath of the so-called “Arab Spring”, many citizen rebels and resistance fighters overran government armories, and found Maxim’s old guns in storage crates. Those guns were broken out and cleaned, training and maintenance manuals were sourced from online repositories, and the century-old weapons went back into action. They may no longer be the best guns available, but old and creaky guns are better that harsh words and rocks.

*Captured German Maxim machine gun. Malard Wood, 9 August 1918. Imperial War Museums. Public Domain*

Firearms – of all categories – are very recent additions to Mankind’s arsenal, as they have been effective combat tools for considerably less than 1,000 years. They are one of the most – if not the most – decisive “force multiplers” in human history. Learning about firearms makes no one “evil”, nor is it “glorifying” weapons – it makes them well informed and productive members of the societies…who should REALLY be wondering just whose side they are really on.

Don’t go gently into the night – because it may not be as gentle of a night as you think it to be.

Outside The Box: DIY Navies?

Michael Cessna November 11, 2022

In previous articles, we have touched on the ideas for building “DIY” ground- and air-combat forces. Today, we will take a look at the naval aspect of this idea.

Water-based travel is not new. In fact, for the majority of human history, travel further than 100 miles in any direction was usually faster, cheaper and safer than overland travel, even if wide detours were necessary. Without getting into the physics of fluid dynamics, movement is a lot easier when nature is helping you along, especially when friction resistance is determined more by shape than by weight. It was not until the advent of railroads in the early 19^th Century that land travel became faster and comparatively safer than travel by water.

*River Landscape with Man in Rowing Boat and Tree-Lined Shore. Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek (1778–1851). 1800-1850. Public Domain.*

However, when looking at the military dimensions of water travel, while there were early examples of purpose-built warships, such as the Greek and Roman “triremes”, the vast majority of ships were perfectly suitable for both military and commercial use. Mostly, this consisted for transporting troops, animals, equipment and other supplies. Because of the ships’ designs of these eras, most vessels were also capable of going fairly far upriver; this was the main tactic of Viking raiders, from the 8^th-11^th Centuries, whose “Karvis”, “Snekkjas” and “Drakkars” drew as little as 30in/762mm in draft.

*Gokstad Ship, late 9th Century, Viking Ship Museum, Oslo. CCA/2.0 Generic.*

As previously noted, however, after about 1860, a dramatic divergence began to open between purely military and purely civilian merchant vessels. Without restating those points here, by the end of World War 2, it seemed that the divide was complete and unbridgeable: “Warships” fought in wars, and civilian vessels supported the warships, while remaining mostly unarmed.

But, there lurked an exception: the PT Boat.

*Patrol Torpedo Boat (PT) 658 transits past U.S. Navy ships at the Portland Rose Festival. US Navy photo. Public Domain.*

Developed just as WW2 was starting, the “Patrol Torpedo Boat” quickly became famous as the heavily armed war vessel of WW2, on a weapon-to-tonnage basis. Not much larger than most commercial yachts, the PT’s were fully capable of sinking full-size warships – as long as their torpedoes worked. If there weren’t enough enemy warships around to sink, the PT’s could easily remove their torpedoes, and bolt on heavier cannons to destroy lightly armored barges and lighters, as well as extra machine guns, turning them into floating anti-aircraft batteries.

While the US Navy seemed to have forgotten the lessons of PT Boat warfare after the end of the war, that turned out to not be the case. While light-armed craft more or less vanished from the Navy’s inventory after WW2, that was due to the savage budget cuts and vicious organizational fights of the post-war years, more than because the Navy didn’t want the boats. Indeed, the Navy had to burn significant political clout just to help prevent the Marine Corps from being disbanded by an Army and Air Force that were battling for scarce funding.

As soon as the Vietnam War began to heat up, it was discovered that North Vietnam was supplying the Viet Cong and its own troops in the South by smuggling arms and supplies down the coast in civilian sampans. The solution to this were the “Swift Boats” – small, high-speed, aluminum-hulled boats, heavily armed with machine guns. With very shallow drafts, these fast craft were able to chase down almost any watercraft, and usually outgunned whatever they could catch. As well, they could land small parties of US and Vietnamese Marines or SEALs deep in enemy territory, doing great damage to areas the enemy had thought to be relatively safe.

*Fast Patrol Craft (PCF, Swift boat) during riverine operation in Vietnam. US Navy photo. Public Domian.*

After the war in Vietnam ended, the US Navy once again had to struggle for funding, and small combat craft went onto the back burner. But not completely. As funding improved in the 1980’s small combat craft came back to prominence, leading to the expansion of the Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen (SWCC) career field in the Navy, and the development of the SOC-R. NATO partners took note, at least to some extent.

And all seemed rosy.

But – what about smaller groups? What about “guerrillas at sea”?

Like naval warfare and transport in general, small craft-based warfare is not new. In the modern era, say from 1800 to today, military raids against pirates operating from swampland bases with open canoes and boats was far more common than fighting large ships, à la Hollywood pirate films. Indeed, in World War 1, the “Battle for Lake Tanganyika” was fought and decided by a handful of small boats that barely qualified as life rafts; the largest vessel, the SMS Graf von Goetzen, was barely 235ft long; that’s short for a warship.

*German steamship Goetzen before its warship conversion in 1915. Public Domain.*

Likewise, Filipino guerrillas fighting the Japanese in their archipelago after Japan’s conquest of the island group in early-1942 made good use of small-boat smuggling tactics to make amphibious raids throughout the islands for three years, until the war ended. The Philippine government continued this successful strategy in the Huk Rebellion that followed the war, and both government and anti-government forces continue to use boats for the same purposes to this day.

But the real advent of modern guerrilla small craft warfare begins (as do many things in this realm) with the LTTE – the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Starting from essentially scratch in 1976, the LTTE quickly showed – much as the Islamic State would do, decades later – that all that was required for an insurgency to grow exponentially, was intelligent, cunning and quick-witted leadership…Even if they end up using straight-out terror tactics.

In its 25-year history, the LTTE’s “Sea Tigers”, with no more than 3,000 personnel at any given time, not only fought the Sri Lankan Navy to a standstill, sinking nearly 30 vessels, while also conducting amphibious raids, it conducted widespread “strategic support operations”, until the Sri Lankan military got serious, got its collective act together, and ground the LTTE down by mid-2009.

*Slovenian fast patrol boat HPL-21 Ankaran (Super Dvora MK II class), 2009, of a type used by the Sri Lankan Navy. CCA-3.0*

But – what about other groups?

While the LTTE managed to create a ferociously effective “commando navy,” the “Navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps”, has taken the direction of using masses of small “Boghammer”-type speedboats. Based on a design from the Swedish company Boghammar Marin AB developed in the 1980’s, the modern “Boghammer” has taken on the moniker to describe any improvised naval fighting vessel.

*A speed boat (used in a terror attack attempt on 5 May 1990) in the Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum, Haifa, Israel. CCA/3.0*

As used by the IRGC-N, the Boghammer is armed with a variety of weapons, including RPG-7 type rocket launchers, as many as three 12.7mm heavy machine guns, recoilless rifles and 107mm multiple rocket launchers based on the Type 63 MRL. And these craft do pose a threat to major-nation warships, when used in swarms. After nearly ten years of study, it remains a problem that major-state navies – including those of the United States and Great Britain – don’t talk about in public.

That’s all well and good…but, what about “modern guerrillas”? The above examples, including the LTTE, were all either formally organized navies, or were at least funded on a regular basis. What about a small guerrilla force? What can they do on the water?

Quite a bit, actually.

While large, ocean going vessels are going to be mostly out of a small group’s reach, at least initially, acquiring civilian pleasure craft (through theft or “under the table” deals) that can be modified to carry weapons is not at all difficult. While craft as large as Boghammers are uncommon, they are not so unusual that they would be noticed.

There is, however, another class of vessel normally associated with major states that most people would not associated with guerrilla warfare: long-range submersibles – i.e., submarines…Specifically, drug-running “narco-subs”.

*Narco-submarine captured by the Peruvian Navy in December 2019. Ministerio de Defensa del Perú. CCA/2.0.*

While “combat submersibles” in the modern era begin with David Bushnell’s Turtle in 1775-1776, submarines have only played a pivotal role in naval warfare since WW1, and the first “Battle of the Atlantic”. Submarines have always been complicated and dangerous craft – there is always a solid chance that something will go catastrophically wrong while submerged. Survival rates when things like that happen at sea are never good.

Submarines are also expensive, in the extreme. As a result, few people imagine a threadbare guerrilla army being able to operate something as technically complex and ridiculously expensive as a submarine. Sure, there are “vanity” submarines out there, used to excursions by cash-rich vacationers, but surely no one is actually building submarines intended for combat.

Established navies, however, beg to differ – which is why they are spending significant amounts of money designing advanced harbor-protection systems…specifically to counter small combat submarines.

But, for our purposes, narco-subs are not that. Narco-subs are generally thought of as “semi-submersible”, in that they cannot “deep dive,” like a conventional submarine. Instead, they are designed to run at or just below the surface. And these craft are not small – narco-subs with cargo capacities of up to 17,000lbs have been captured. That’s a significant capacity for a “guerrilla shipyard”.

And, as hard as the militaries of North and South America try, they cannot catch them all; at best, one in ten are estimated to be intercepted. Worse, the drug subs are being much more sophisticated, diving deeper, becoming less detectable, carrying more, and extending their range, with some now being able to cross the Atlantic, to bring drugs into the waters of Spain and Portugal.

This is a serious concern, and not from the narcotics angle. While infiltrating “operators” into a nation (even the United States) is relatively easy, importing weapons and explosives is not. And 10-17,000lbs of weapons, ammunition and explosives at a time provides significant capacity for an attacker.

Indeed, since 2000, abandoned narco-subs – true deep-diving models – have been discovered in South America that have cargo capacities in the range of 20,000lbs or more, and with ranges of c.3,700km, more than enough to reach New Orleans from most of the South American Caribbean coast.

A fully-operational submarine built for the primary purpose of transporting multi-ton quantities of cocaine located near a tributary close to the Ecuador/Colombia border that was seized by the Ecuador Anti-Narcotics Police Forces and Ecuador Military authorities with the assistance of the DEA in 2010. Public Domain.

Making matters much worse, these craft are very difficult to detect at sea, because their hulls are made mostly of fiberglass and Kevlar; are painted sea-blue; and vent their engine exhaust along the bottom of their hulls before releasing it to the atmosphere, cooling it to the point of being indistinguishable from the surrounding water. Coupled to them running just below – or well under – the surface, this makes them virtually invisible to radar and sonar. In fact, the vast majority of the narco-subs captured were spotted by aircraft, running on the surface.

So – why is this important? It’s “just” drugs, right?

Well, “cargo” covers a very broad scope. Narco-subs don’t have to carry drugs, after all. Coupled to this, is the fact the fact that the South American and Mexican cartels operate these subs in alliance with guerrilla groups such as the FARC, among others. It requires no great leap of imagination to picture a scenario of a group like Revolutionary Iran or the I.S. infiltrating two- to four-hundred trigger-pullers into the US, hidden among the masses of illegal immigrants being allowed into the country by a criminally – if not deliberately – incompetent political establishment so arrogant, that they believe that the Rules of War do not apply to them.

Why is the author so vehement about this?

In 1974, R&D Associates – a think tank in Santa Monica, California – working under contract for the Department of Defense, produced a document titled A Soviet Paramilitary Attack on U.S. Nuclear Forces – A Concept (PDF link). The paper sketched out a threat concept to US strategic nuclear forces, wherein Soviet Spetznatz special forces could potentially infiltrate sabotage teams into the US to attack ICBM, bomber and nuclear submarine bases, simply by walking in over the borders from Mexico and/or Canada. It goes into detail of then-current estimated numbers of illegal aliens crossing the US border, who were not intercepted by the Border Patrol, and pointed out that enough four- to six-man teams could be infiltrated and housed by ‘illegal’ KGB agents just long enough to sabotage US nuclear forces in preparation for a Soviet first strike.

Very James Bond, yes?

This paper remained classified until 1995.

*ISIS fighters execute Taliban fighter In the city of Jalalabad, December 2021. CCA/4.0*

A threat – a clear and present one – exists against the United States, and its citizens. While some would argue that this author is “letting the cat out of the bag” by speculating on this in public, none of the information in this article is classified; there is no “whistle-blower” information here. If this author can find it, anyone can. You, the Reader, simply aren’t being told any of this. I will let you speculate as to why that is the case. The author, here alone, is unable to take corrective measures against this threat – it is the job of the Reader to do so.

All I can do, is warn you.

Biden’s Failure & Ghosts of Mumbai

Michael Cessna October 28, 2022

With all the recent talk of nuclear war, catastrophic shortages of vital fuels, Europe in complete economic meltdown and Communist China’s stock markets tanking as a dictator is “reelected“, a person could be forgiven for thinking that “The End” really might be nigh. However, there is one thing that most people have forgotten about in all the tumult…and Joe Biden’s Democrat Party is directly responsible for it:

Terrorism inside the United States.

Now, again, the Reader could be forgiven for thinking that this is hyperbole, or some desperate attempt at cashing in on some “counter terrorism” degree, but no – this is quite serious. There is a clear and present terrorist threat to the home territories of the United States, one that was set up (whether by intent or incompetence is irrelevant, now) by the Democrat Party, and that has been exacerbated and accelerated by the Biden Administration since January of 2021. What is the source of this, you might ask?

Illegal immigration.

I can hear the groans in the back rows, already…You would do well to keep reading.

Back in the “good old days,” illegal immigration was tolerated by both parties, because it scored points for the Democrats with the Hispanic Community, and it provided a source of cheap labor for agribusiness and later, for construction, making certain GOP interests happy. While there were occasional scandals, followed by roundups by “La Migra”, it was still tolerated, even though it was beginning to erode the viability of “entry-level” work in the United States.

Over time, however, the Democrats began to change the game: it was no longer about simply scoring fractional points with minority communities, but about actually using illegal aliens as “straw voters”, who could be shuttled to polling stations, posing as dead people to vote…for a certain party, of course. Like most things, it didn’t start out big, but it began to grow unchecked, in the late-1990’s. After 9/11 there was some concern about terrorists infiltrating over the border, but since nothing happened, the Democrats quickly spun the notion as unhinged paranoia, that verged on racism. Meanwhile, the economy – for many reasons – continued to sag.

In the chaos of 2016-2022, however, illegal immigration began to skyrocket out of control, as the US descended into a low-key civil war. Inside the US Government, loyalists of President Donald J. Trump and bureaucrats trying to simply do their jobs, attempted to carry out the directives of the President, as they are legally obligated to do, while others actively worked to undermine the President, sometimes verging close to sedition, if not treason. While the Trump Administration accomplished many things, those within the government structure who decided that their personal political beliefs were more important than their oaths deliberately hindered many more. Dangerously, this rose to the point of Democrat loyalists declining to comment on open support for waves of illegal immigration openly being supported by the United Nations, even given the extreme dangers faced by migrants, themselves, on the journey north

Once President Trump’s reelection bid failed – again, whether legitimately or by malfeasance no longer matters – and Joe Biden entered office, the proverbial floodgates were opened: the numbers of illegal aliens being detained by the Border Patrol are the highest ever recorded in the 97 year history of the agency, with nearly 2 million being reported by the agency in the first nine months of the Biden presidency. As of the end of October 2022, the cross-border flood continues.

While this is clearly a massive problem on many levels, for security professionals, this is particularly worrying, because a very large percentage of the border-crossers fall into the dangerous category of “military-age males”, or, those males between the late-teens and mid-30’s, who are suitable for military service. Further, increasing numbers of border crossers are from African countries.

Why is this important?

Simply put, while the mainstream media decided that terrorism was passé, the actual terror groups out there have very much ignored that pronouncement. As well, while many people, and especially many in the under-30 year old demographic within the United States, have been fed a steady media diet of the concept that “terrorist” equates only to “Middle Easterners” and “straight, white males,” the truth is that many of the radical Islamist groups since 2000 have recruited far and wide, and are just as diverse as either the US military – or the Leftist protestors of North America and Europe who lack the education or worldly experience to understand what is happening.

So – is this just hysterical paranoia? After all, there have been no major terror attacks inside the United States since 9/11, right? (We’re not going to talk about Las Vegas today, because you’re not ready for that conversation.) So why marginalize ‘migrants’?

Because, as the second President Bush said: They hate us. And they will not stop.

Assuming – for the sake of argument, to placate the naysayers – that the last sentence is true, how does that relate to immigration/migration?

In 1974, R&D Associates – a think tank in Santa Monica, California – working under contract for the Department of Defense, produced a document titled A Soviet Paramilitary Attack on U.S. Nuclear Forces – A Concept (PDF link). The paper sketched out a threat concept to US strategic nuclear forces, wherein Soviet Spetznatz special forces could potentially infiltrate sabotage teams into the US to attack ICBM, bomber and nuclear submarine bases, simply by walking in over the borders from Mexico and/or Canada. It goes into detail of then-current estimated numbers of illegal aliens crossing the US border, who were not intercepted by the Border Patrol, and pointed out that enough four- to six-man teams could be infiltrated and housed by ‘illegal’ KGB agents just long enough to sabotage US nuclear forces in preparation for a Soviet first strike.

Very James Bond, yes?

This paper remained classified until 1995.

Fast forward to 2008, in Mumbai, India…

A group of about ten terrorists (it may have been a smaller team) slipped into the seaside megacity, and launched a brutal assault on the city’s tourist district, killing at least 166, and wounding over 300 over the course of a 3-day battle, doggedly holding out against elite Indian Army commando forces and troops from the crack Jat Regiment to the bitter end.

Those are the facts that most people who know anything at all about this incident know.

Much less well known, is how the terrorists got to Mumbai.

The terrorists were given advanced military training by elements of the Pakistani army and intelligence services, including boat training. The terrorist team headed out into the Indian Ocean on November 21, 2008, and motored along for two days, until they hijacked the Indian fishing trawler Kuber, killed four of the crew, and forced the captain to sail for Mumbai. Arriving off Mumbai at dusk on November 26, the terrorists dropped anchor, killed the captain, and headed into Mumbai Harbor in three inflatable boats. Shortly after, the terrorists begin attacking civilians, and took up positions in various locations.
And, to top it all off, the terrorists were in constant communication – via cell phone – with an internet-capable “tactical operations center” (TOC) that had been set up on the fly in an apartment in Pakistan.

Very James Bond, yes?

So, how do illegal immigration, a moldy study from the 1970’s, and a terrorist attack in 2008 track with each other?

Mumbai was not a “hardened” target; quite the opposite – it was a treasure trove of “soft” targets: train stations, hotels, nightclubs, hospitals and a religious school.

Just like American cities.

For a well-financed terror group, slipping 200 to 300 ‘actors’ into the United States by simply hiking over the border is not a difficult challenge. Potentially, they could slip in as a single group. It’s not as if anyone would notice, amid the throngs moving over the border. Arming them? Also not hard – they don’t need to actually try and purchase weapons legally; AKM’s and M16 and M4 carbines abandoned in Afghanistan are light enough to fit into a backpack, and making homemade hand grenades can be done by a simple shopping trip to a hardware store (no, we will not discuss “how to”).

And all of this, if before we start talking about attacks on the power grid, as winter arrives.

Now, am I implying that the Democrat Party set this up deliberately? Certainly not – I don’t think they are smart enough, to be perfectly frank. I am, however, absolutely certain that there are plenty of terror groups out there who are smart enough to figure this out. Nothing talked about above is “classified”, and really doesn’t take much to figure out.

Security professionals – the real ones – rarely sleep well, knowing that these threats are out there…much less, when they know that significant elements in Washington, DC are actively creating the permissive environment necessary for all of this to happen.

Stock up now. Arm up now. Talk to your neighbors now. If you don’t – you will be very much on your own.

Good luck.

As The World Burns…

Michael Cessna October 13, 2022

As any sane person in the world nervously watches the continuous back-and-forth between Russia and the West over Ukraine, wondering if they are going to see mushroom clouds start sprouting over their cities, Emperor Joe and his deranged courtiers are doing their absolute best attempt at impersonating Emperor Nero (or, perhaps, Elagabalus). With the potential of World War 3 looming (not that the dissolute Imperial Swamp Court believes that it could really happen, so why not play with nuclear toys?), the Imperial Court (I could call them the “Legion of Doom,” but they’re not cool enough) have decided that they need to continue the geopolitical game – the one they should have been paying more attention to, that is – by plotting to be invited to invade, of ALL places…Haiti.

…What?

Oh, yes. Haiti.

Haiti has long been ranked as one of the poorest nations in the world. With a low-end economy based on minuscule agricultural and mining sectors, the country’s only real manufacturing sector involves pennies-on-the dollar clothing manufacture; in fact, the country’s only real claim to economic fame, is that it supplies around half of the world’s supply of “vetier oil” (an essential oil used in high-end perfumes). Otherwise, the country is, almost literally, a “banana republic.” As a result, Haiti can’t even capitalize on a tourism industry, although it is well-suited to one, since most vacationers dislike chilling on the beach while the country literally disintegrates around them.

*Royal Decameron Indigo Beach Resort & Spa, Cote des Arcadins, Haiti, 2015.*

The main reason for this disintegration, is the political instability that followed the demise of the Duvalier dynasty in 1986. After “Baby Doc” was forced to flee the country, Haiti tried to recover from the depredations of that regime, but it suffered from continual economic decline, political instability, repeated coups d’état, and a wave of major earthquakes.

Which brings us to Jovenel Moïse.

*Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, 2019. US Dept. of State photo.*

Elected to the Presidency of Haiti in early 2017, Moïse had started out as a local businessman. His ideas earned him the attention of a center-right political policy, that would catapult him into the Presidency of the island nation. Despite accusations of a corrupted election, Moïse did make notable progress in developing both infrastructure projects, as well as launching new initiatives to expand Haiti’s agricultural sector, by improving rice production.

However, continued controversy over when Moïse’s actual term of office was supposed to end continued to simmer. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a group of what can only be described as “hitmen” stormed Moïse’s residence in the early morning hours of 7 July 2021. Like many rulers in the world, Moïse’s residence had little real security; in fact, only six police officers were present that night – two were active informants to the attackers and the other four did their best to do nothing at all.

What followed could be favorably described as a “Keystone Kops” caper, had no one actually died. The survivors of the 26 actual attackers would later claim that they had been hired – via WhatsApp, of all things – to be security for Moïse…who were then informed that the mission was actually to kidnap the president, although several of them apparently knew well in advance that the real plan was to assassinate him. Video and audio evidence showed the attackers shouting via a bullhorn that the operation was a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) operation, which at least help to momentarily confuse Haitian authorities.

There followed a wild chase through the capital of Port-au-Prince, as police and civilians tried to hunt down the suspects who were now fleeing in panic, as it seems that no one had thought through what might happen afterwards. Eleven of the suspects broke into the Embassy of Taiwan, apparently seeking sanctuary, but were promptly arrested after Taiwan waived the embassy’s extraterritoriality status to allow the attacker’s arrest.

Bookmark that last – we’ll come back to it.

The subsequent investigation revealed a tangled web of conspirators, spanning Haitians, Americans, Colombians, among others, who seemingly accreted out of thin air, on a jumble of ideas about what kind of operation they were running: Were they seizing power in a coup? Were they launching a revolution? Were they arresting the president? Were they simply hitmen? The answer to all of these questions, at one point or another, was “Yes”. In this regard, the planning and execution of this operation make 2020’s “Operation Gideon” look like D-Day.

*Venezuelan authorities detaining Operación Gedeón militants, 2020. Venezuelan Government photo.*

As a result, Haiti began to spiral out of control. That descent continues a year later, as certain parties are now calling for international – and specifically American – intervention…Which is odd, given Haiti’s history of intervention with the United States…Doubly so, when the United States is currently “eyeball to eyeball” with Russia, in an international confrontation that is more serious than anything since the early 1980’s.

So — why Haiti? Why the push for intervention? Haiti’s politics aside, who would be behind such an attack? There are only three real possibilities:

Christian Emmanuel Sanon, an over-60 year old Haitian-American doctor from South Florida, who was identified as a possible front-man for the operation.
The US government of Joe Biden.
The government of Communist China.

The first case, of the 60-something doctor, is more than a little bizarre. An operation like this requires a lot of money, and the rewards need to balance out the risks. While it has never been illegal (mostly) for Americans to travel to a foreign country to fight in a war, it has always been illegal to plan and conduct such operations from within US borders. As in, serious and very real jail time to those involved. In this regard, it is not really credible to assume that this came solely out of a Florida office complex.

The second case is more interesting, but verges into “4-D Chess“. It is barely – just barely – possible that Joe Biden’s administration may have set up a deliberately bungled operation to send Haiti over the edge. Why? Because that would please the Communist Party of China, who were very upset about the strengthening ties between its claimed ‘province’ of Taiwan and Haiti, while giving the US an excuse to play the White Knight, riding to Haiti’s rescue, yet again.

On Communist China’s part, they could have easily concocted the same plot, for mostly the same reasons, and ran such an operation with the help of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s intelligence services, who were actually embedded into the aforementioned “Operation Gideon” from basically the start. For Communist China, implying tacit Taiwanese support to the operation (recall some of the plotters fleeing to the Taiwan embassy compound) could give Taiwan a black eye, locally inside Haiti. On Maduro’s part, getting the United States to launch another intervention into a Caribbean nation would be a spectacular win, that he can make hay from for the next decade or so, while burnishing his image with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, of general purposes.

My own assessment? The sordid affair is most likely a combination of #2 and #3, because of the confused nature of planning, and the byzantine levels of actors involved. The US has to maintain the image of being in control of its own back yard, and with fires burning all around it, Imperial Joe’s Court of Jesters needs to distract its populace from evermore ridiculous gaffe’s and disasters…

…Until, of course, scary noises and bright lights commence.

Which, naturally, does nothing for the long-suffering people of Haiti.

Why Electric Vehicles Have A LONG Way To Go Before They Are A True Solution

Bill Collier October 12, 2022

Most Electric Vehicles Are Non-Sustainable Fake Solutions

By Bill Collier- While I like EV’s and want to have one to plug in to me house, I am dedicated both to increasing human freedom and sustainability as well as a clean and sustainable economy powered/owned by and for local people. Most EV’s today do not fit the need described and perpetuate a dependency upon top-down centralized systems and are too easily abused by authoritarian nutjobs in high office.

Let me explain, starting with what I truly desire.

I want to custom build an electric car but with a multi-fuel backup charging engine that is powered from alternative sustainable energy and/or biodiesel locally produced.

My aim is not purely to “save the planet” but to unplug from the supply chain and the centralized power grid, all of which commit the sin of being part of “One Big System” (OBS).

I want to custom build an EV, based on the planet scout matchbox car. Unlike all the ev’s out there that are connected to some form of OBS and have no regard for right to repair, I want the opposite of these negatives.

You don’t effectively own an EV and that can be remotely shut off by the company, and therefore by hackers and/or rogue governments that disregard human rights. You don’t own something you aren’t even allowed to repair or choose someone to repair outside the manufacturer giving you “permission.”

I reject this and find it morally offensive and that it violates human dignity and human rights.

If we could create a microfactory and use advanced 3d printing and nanotechnology, we could, I suspect, build a fleet of around 20,000 ev’s per year within a factory around 100′ by 200′ in size and using mostly either recycled or renewable materials. We could, again I theorize, do so for around $10k per modernized ev planet scout vehicle.

Of course, whoever owns Matchbox may not let us use the planet scout as our model, so maybe we have to do our own design and call it the Planet Guardian or something that conveys that buying this car is good both for people’s freedom and sustainability on one hand and the local and global environment on the other hand.

Sustainability, renewables, and recyclables along with nanotechnology and 3d printing may all be “good for the planet”, but my main draw to them has always been that they empower average people and can free us from OBS if the point of manufacture is locally-owned.

EV’s like Tesla are a mess because they are no less OBS than what we have now. In fact, due to lack of owner repair rights and remote shutting off by the manufacturer (which can be grossly abused), they are more like the stuff of a dystopian totalitarian nightmare.

Simply buying an EV does not make you a good planetary citizen, and it may actually both reduce local sustainability and bind you even more to an OBS that can too easily control you and stamp out your rights.

A locally-produced EV by a locally-owned factory, primarily using local renewables and recycled materials, with a strong right to repair by owners, and with no ability to remotely shut off or control the vehicle, is the only truly “sustainable solution” that serves both people and the planet admirably.

When Politics Fails

Michael Cessna October 7, 2022

Despite the title, this article is not about politics, per se. Nor is it any kind of product endorsement. This is an advisory, drawn on current events. As well, these are strictly my own opinions, based on my own training and experience, and are not necessarily the position of FreedomistMIA.

I have frequently stated that fifteen or twenty years ago, I would never have imagined that this aspect of CBRN (Chemical/Biological/Radiological/Nuclear) would be what I would find myself advising people about. The first three, certainly: chemical spills happen all the time, as do pandemics (COVID is only the latest, and the one that hit me, personally), and as someone who both watched the real Chernobyl on the news when it happened, and received briefings on it later, accidents at nuclear power plants and storage areas are nothing to sneeze at.

But full-scale nuclear war, between Russia and the United States? In the early 21st Century? I’d have told you that Hollywood was no longer accepting derivative scripts like that.

Now, however, that very term is being tossed around blithely by many “leaders” in the world, and very seriously by one in particular. This has generated the usual, shockingly uninformed response from the shrill and the trolls, to scare people for the “lulz.”

So — I am going to talk to you about nuclear war, in order to inform you, rather than scare you.

The picture below is a “before and after” image of the city of Nagasaki, Japan, following it’s destruction by an atomic bomb on August 9, 1945. This was the “other” atomic bomb that week. I have been to the memorial site in Hiroshima (familial connection…on the Japanese side); should you, the Reader, ever get to Japan, you need to put it on your must-see list.

Just try to avoid going in the first week of August.

*Nagasaki, Japan, before and after the atomic bombing of August 9, 1945.*

This is the image most people have about nuclear war. That it is mostly wrong, is not something the wider news media is going to waste time talking to you about. The general consensus about nuclear war, as presented in such movies as The Day After, On The Beach, and Threads and reinforced by scientists of a certain political persuasion, is that after the bombs drop, those who live through that, will soon join the rest.

The reality is going to be closer to a downmarket, Road Warrior rip-off. No zombies; sorry.

While the notion of being turned into a shadow on a street by a nuclear blast is very real, the simple truth is that you have to be almost directly underneath the blast. For most Americans, that is simply not going to happen. To find out why, take a stroll through the Nuke Map website, and find the closest major city to you. This is one of the most educational sites of its kind on the internet, and a great companion to Alternate Wars’ World War 3 section.

Most people who live near a major urban area don’t actually live “in” said city, but in the surrounding suburbs. For example, I tell people that I live in “Dallas, Texas” – the reality is that I live well outside the city, itself; in fact, I don’t even live in the same county. That is a conscious choice on my part, because – in my heart of hearts – I never trusted the political leadership of the USA to not do something monumentally stupid, so I try to live outside target zones.

Nuclear weapons are expensive and complicated, so anyone deciding to fire one at an enemy long ago realized that they needed to think very carefully about targeting. Targeting enemy commands and military facilities are almost always not the first option, because – under the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) – it was assumed that as soon as you launched your missiles, the other side would launch theirs. As a result, there was no point in targeting empty air bases and missile silo’s. Likewise, targeting command elements (i.e., the President, et al) was not a good idea, because if you succeeded, there was no one left to negotiate with. So, the target planners settled on “economic and communications nodes.”

In short – cities.

If you look at a map of almost any major city, there are almost always a confluence of major highways in or near the city centers, conveniently close to major office towers housing the headquarters of companies that control “war production industries“…meaning, essentially anything that can be useful in warfare…which is virtually everything.

But, what if you don’t live in one of these “target-rich environments“? If you live “out in the ‘burbs,” like me, at most, you will get a certain amount of damage to your home (unless you are staring directly at the blast when it goes off; that will make your life…problematic). If you live in an actual rural area, you might not notice that a nuclear event has happened, until your local emergency services suddenly turn out in force.

For those thinking that the recent “advisory” posters and videos from various governments around the country, warning you to head indoors and wait for instructions in the event of a nuclear attack, means that the government will actually tell you how they are going to save you in the aftermath…they won’t. Those poster’s job is to keep you off the roads, to lessen traffic jams caused by fleeing people.

In short, the government wants you done. Well done, that is.

So…The foregoing naturally begs the question: If you’re outside a target area, a nuclear exchange does happen, and you’re alive afterwards — what do you do?

First, you need to plan ahead. If you think that I mean that you should become a “prepper” – you would be correct. But – should you stay in place, or go somewhere else? You know your area and your neighbors better than I do. If you live in an apartment complex, I strongly recommend that you have a plan to go somewhere else.

I am in a position where I have options in several directions. Again, I did this deliberately. That said, if you think that you are in a good position to stay where you are, that’s what you need to do. Hitting the road after a nuclear attack is, obviously, a pretty dangerous undertaking, no matter how well-prepared you think you are.

In addition to the requisite stocks of food – which is cheap to start, if you start now, by simply buying a few extra cans of beans and vegetables, and bags of beans and rice with every grocery run – you need to think seriously about water. Getting a couple of 55-ish gallon drums, along with several hand-pumped water purifiers for hiking, is a good step.

Next, I have to insert a disclaimer: the following is NOT medical advice. Do NOT “experiment” with the following. Short of a nuclear attack, do NOT take these products without consulting your doctor. Neither myself, nor FreedomistMIA are responsible if you violate this warning.

You have been warned.

The only specifically anti-radiation drug available to the general public in a pre-attack environment is Potassium Iodide. This is used as a protective for the thyroid glads from certain forms of radiation. The link above is to the Mayo Clinic’s advisory page on the drug – read that THOROUGHLY before taking. Potassium Iodide can be bought either as a product called “IOSAT“, which is sold in packets of fourteen 130mg pills. These are perfectly fine to use, but I do not recommend them, because in my opinion they are too expensive, and not as useful as the alternative. The better option are sold as tablets, by the bottle, usually coming as c.140 tablets of 130mg each (the standard dosage for an adult) to each bottle. The reason for this is simple: the IOSAT box is only good for protection after a single detonation — what do you do on Day 12, post-Attack, when their is another explosion? It’s a distinct possibility. Buy the bottle.

As well – calcium supplements. These are the only reasonable measure to counter the effects of Strontium-90 exposure. While there is no cure for Strontium exposure, calcium supplements can help you maintain bone health, since Strontium competes with calcium in the body. Again, talk to your doctor.

Last – multivitamins. Should an attack happen, your stress levels and changes in diet will throw your body out of whack for some time, until you can settle into a new normal. Multivitamins can help regulate the nutrients your body needs in the short term. Again, talk to your doctor.

Next, you need to consider, right now, what your gardening potential is. Start looking up your gardening zone, to see what kinds of food crops you can put in. As well, learn sprouting, because it really will keep you alive. Likewise, check out THIS video, as well.

That last thing we’ll talk about here, is personal defense and protection.

While I am fairly certain that many of those reading this article probably possess firearms of some sort, you need to think carefully about how to organize you personal and family protection strategies. Even if you live in a hyper gun-controlled state, you still have viable firearms options, such as pump shotguns, lever- and bolt-action rifles, and revolvers. Don’t do anything to run afoul of your local governments, but arm yourself, if you haven’t already.

Lastly, don’t neglect first aid. There are several products readily available, at very low cost that will significantly increase your chances of survival. Your options in this regard are vastly better than what was available 20-odd years ago. Also, there are plenty of training videos out there, on YouTube; “Dr. Bones & Nurse Amy” is one of the best.

Finally — I am not writing this to scare you. Even though I do not know you, I want you to live, should a nuclear attack happen…because the chances are very good that you will survive the attack, itself, and likely in relatively good physical condition. I find the idea of a person who survives a nearby nuclear explosion dying because they were not prepared beforehand, out of depression and ennui induced by sources that they should be able to trust, to be offensive in the extreme. You don’t have to know every single thing that I know, but what you need to know is that, if the worst comes, you and your family can survive, if you just exert the effort now.

I hope this helps. Good luck, check your six and keep your powder dry.

Is Newer Always Better? The Fetish Harming Western Militaries

Michael Cessna September 23, 2022

We all like nice things. Especially new, nice things. New things tend to have that “new” smell and/or touch. They “feel” better, and give us all a certain sense of accomplishment – after all, “new” tends to be expensive, in comparison to older things, and “buying new” gives us a feeling of accomplishment, because the new thing is a physical representation of our hard work paying off.

But – is “new” actually “better“?

In the realm of consumer products, the reality of new items hitting the shelves (literally or figuratively) is very much hit or miss. Many times – perhaps even most times – the new stuff offers new features, or is lighter, or does things more efficiently than what it is replacing. Conversely, many times, the new product – while looking very snazzy or streamlined on the outside – is actually flimsy, cheaply made and has a very good chance of failing if you look at it sideways, usually the day after its warranty expires (if it even came with a warranty). This can lead the frustrated consumer to try and return the product for a replacement or a refund (which sometimes, they are actually able to receive), and often going out and buying a similar product from a more reliable and trusted brand.

But in reality, buying a “new and improved” coffee maker on sale and having it fail on you after three months, while frustrating, really isn’t a monumental problem; annoying, certainly, but no one is dying over it…In the military realm, however, the consequences of untested tools – and worse, untested structural models – can be catastrophically disastrous.

Let’s look at two examples, one a matter of hardware, the other, a matter of organization.

Boom Sticks

First, with the rise of the AK-47, militaries around the world began to clamor for a rifle chambered in an “intermediate cartridge“, in short, something more powerful than a pistol-caliber submachine gun, but not as massive as a full-power cartridge. The path to the intermediate cartridge idea is one of those dark secrets of firearms history, that will make for a good, more in depth article down the line, but here, it will be sufficient to outline a brief overview.

Intermediate rounds are, on average, smaller and lighter than their larger cousins, which equals less use of materials (i.e., gunpowder and various metals); while the savings are tiny, per cartridge, when you are producing billions of rounds at a time, those tiny figures become very significant, very quickly. On the side that really matters to a land army – infantry combat – the “field experiment” of the last sixty or so years, initially seemed to validate the idea of the intermediate cartridge: the intermediate class of round seemed to be perfectly effective at its intended role. But looks, as usual, can be deceiving.

*Comparison of Pistol, Rifle and Intermediate cartridge.*
*From left:*
*9 × 19 mm Parabellum (Pistol cartridge)*
*7.92 × 33 mm Kurz (Intermediate cartridge)*
*7.92 × 57 mm Mauser (Rifle cartridge)*

While fine at ranges out to 300 meters or so (the intermediate’s intended range), when ranges moved out past that, the rifles rapidly became very ineffective, more so because – since the “maximum effective range” was accepted worldwide as 300 meters – the militaries of the world saw little reason to train the average recruit to shoot any further than that…and besides, the few times where the ranges opened up, military forces had General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMG’s), Heavy Machine Guns (HMG’s), mortars, artillery, sniper rifles and even air support to deal with anything “out there.”

And then…9/11 happened.

The resulting twenty-plus year long series of wars and interventions around the world began to show cracks in the armor of the intermediate cartridge idea. As infantry combat moved out of jungles and cities, and into vast deserts and mountain ranges, combat ranges opened up considerably, well outside the range (pdf link) of intermediate cartridge weapons. And this is where the US military hit a wall.

After going “all in” on the intermediate cartridge during the Vietnam War, the US military was stuck with an entire ensemble of weapons, equipment, training foundations and doctrines that revolved around the intermediate M-16. But now, they were finding themselves being engaged by guerrilla’s firing near century-old rifles, shooting at ranges well beyond 1200 (YouTube link) meters (pdf link). In those instances, US troops generally only had a few GPMG’s and HMG’s to respond. The US military’s response was to develop a completely new (and, inevitably, very expensive) rifle and light machine gun combination, along with a completely new type of cartridge that is best described as “intermediate plus“, that had longer range and better “hitting power” than the 60+ year old 5.56x45mm rounds.

U.S. Soldiers with the firing party with the 69th Infantry Regiment, New York Army National Guard prepare to fire a rifle salute during the Pearl Harbor Day ceremony in New York Dec. 7, 2012. US Army photo.

For those who might be scratching their heads and wondering why the US military went this route, congratulations – many other people have been doing the same thing: Why not simply adopt an older cartridge, specifically the 7.62x51mm M80, that was already in the system (such as the M240-series), and any of a number of older-pattern rifles of proven design…after all, new manufacturing techniques and materials would surely make those older designs very competitive, weight-wise, right?

The answer for the US military was, simply put, politics: with a Congress facing a public tired after twenty years of inconclusive war, and massive budgetary issues, there was no way that the military could go to Congress and ask them to fund a step “backwards”. On the other hand, they could ask Congress to fund something “new and improved” – they just had to put the right “bells and whistles” on it…or, to be peckish, a nicer ribbon.

In contrast, stands India: Faced with a rifle that just wasn’t working, no matter what they did, India bit the bullet, admitted defeat, and inked deals to both purchase and manufacture the AK-203 rifle in 7.62x39mm (a total of 670,000 – 70,000 directly from Russia, with the remainder to be manufactured under license) in Uttar Pradesh, while also purchasing slightly modified SIG 716 G2 Patrol rifles in 7.62x51mm.

*Indian Army soldier armed with a modified AK-type rifle. Indian Ministry of Defence photo.*

The bog-standard 7.62x51mm M80 cartridge has been standard for most western GPMG’s since at least 1983 – it just works.

Whether switching to a “new and improved” weapons suite is a good idea for the US military or not, remains to be seen. Hopefully, it will work.

Hopefully. Troops’ lives depend on it.

Misusing An Organizational Idea

The current war between Russia and Ukraine brought into focus the Russian idea of the “Battalion Tactical Group” (Russian: Батальонная тактическая группа, batal’onnaya takticheskaya gruppa). The BTG is one of those oddities that is rather hard to define, primarily because it only works in a very narrow area of military operations, that being as a “cadre force.”

On paper, a BTG is a combined arms formation that is technically a “battalion” of mechanized infantry, with a number of smaller specialist units (i.e., engineers, medical, air defense, etc.) being assigned as needed, and kept in a high state of readiness. Conceptually, a BTG is similar to the Western “task force” at various levels…except in artillery, where the BTG – with fewer than 1,000 troops assigned – has more long-range firepower than a US Brigade Combat Team (BCT).

There are, however, problems.

The first, is a lack of infantry support. One of the mistakes many civilians make in studying modern warfare, is the idea that tanks can do everything on their own. They cannot. A tank crew is seriously restricted in seeing what is happening around them, specifically in that they cannot see enemy infantry armed with lightweight anti-tank missiles that are more than capable to turning a tank into burning scrap metal. This is not a feature unique to Russian tanks – it is a feature of all main battle tanks in the world, in general. The only viable solution to this problem, was training specialist infantry to escort and guard the tanks against enemy infantry.

Obviously, this requires a lot of infantry…Yet Russian BTG’s, on average, have about 250 infantry escorting them, somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of what they actually need. Why?

The BTG dates from the end of the Soviet era, when the Soviet Army was refining its plans for invading Western Europe, and were carefully studying how to deal with Western company, battalion and brigade task forces. BTGs were deployed as an experiment in Afghanistan, before the final collapse of the Soviet efforts in that country in 1989, and worked well enough in that level of fighting that they were kept on, until the Soviet Union dissolved. At that point, the rancid Soviet economy that Russia inherited simply could not support the expense of permanently established combat units that required careful tactical training to work effectively. Worse, the necessary reforms to make all of this happen required a long-serving, professional corps of non-commissioned officers (NCO’s, i.e., Corporals and Sergeants), which was something the Soviets had never really tried to build. This, coupled to the political upheavals of the day, and the general Russian attitude towards their military as a barely-necessary evil (unless the enemy is literally inside the gates…and sometimes, not even then) which made an “all-volunteer” force of the likes of the United States or Great Britain an impossibility, made mass formations and a rigid conscription system moot points. While the Russian army retained the idea of brigades and divisions, at their hearts, they were really just a collection of sketchily-trained, down-market BTG’s.

*A farewell ceremony for the 331st Airborne Regiment of the 98th Airborne Division withdrawn from Chechnya. www.kremlin.ru*

As a result, while the concept of the BTG was retained after the Soviet Union became Russia again, the training of the troops in those formations was very haphazard. As the Russian economy began to rebound in the late-1990’s, training and readiness began to improve, and combat experience in forming ad hoc BTG’s during the wars in Chechnya showed that the concept was a viable way of fighting minor forces and guerrillas. This culminated in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, where the BTG idea seemed to work very well against the Western-trained Georgian Army (yet another article for the future). All of this led to the 2008 Russian military reform, an all-out attempt to revamp the Russian military establishment into something like a 21st Century force.

When Russia began its “intervention” in Ukraine in 2014, the BTG finally seemed to find its niche. While it had glaring weaknesses against comparable Western formations, Russian BTG’s being sent into eastern Ukraine were able to augment themselves with swarms of thousands of local anti-Kiev insurgents who, while poorly armed and scarcely trained, were able to advise and guide Russian units through local terrain, and were also able to help screen the BTG’s against Ukrainian anti-tank teams, backed up by the more professional Russian infantry and artillery. And, when Russia intervened in Syria in 2015, the Russian commanders on the scene quickly duplicated this model with local Syrian auxiliaries. The concept worked there, as well.

It seemed that Russia had found the perfect balance: BTG’s were simultaneously long-service soldiers, not conscripts, and – not being manpower-intensive – thus would not unduly upset the Russian population when they were sent out. At the same time, they seemed to be able to get the job done, and were very cost-effective in comparison to the older-model, mass formations of past wars.

This led, perhaps inevitably, to “Victory Disease“.

*“Scene of Gen. Custer’s last stand, looking in the direction of the ford and the Indian village.” Unknown author, ca. 1877. From the US National Archives.*

Unless carefully controlled, Victory Disease can rapidly infect a population with the idea that their forces are nigh-invincible. If left alone to fester, this breeds an arrogance that the nation can take on any opponent, anywhere, anytime, without too much effort or thought.

Which brings us back to Ukraine, 2022.

Whatever the causes of the current war may be, this is not the article to discuss them. The Russian leadership clearly assumed that their forces would overrun Ukraine with relative ease, and would allow them to accomplish limited objectives that would not be too onerous on the Russian population. While this was mostly true in the southern sectors, it only appeared to be so, initially, in the northern theater. There, the BTG’s showed all of their glaring faults, as stalled convoys strung out along roads (an inevitable consequence in armored warfare – just ask the US Army and Marines about the advance on Baghdad in 2003) were suddenly cut to pieces by Ukrainian infantry and partisans operating behind the Russian advance. Without the mass of infantry that a more conventional organization would have had, the Russians were unable to defend those convoys as US forces had in 2003, as there was no way that the razor-thin film of infantry the Russians had access to could adequately protect the long columns of vehicles packed tightly into ready-made kill-zones. It was never that the Russians were “running out of infantry” – they simply never had the necessary numbers plugged into their organizational combat unit structures. The disastrous results of this oversight have now greatly lengthened the war, and have led – as of late-September, 2022 – to the Russian leadership calling for a “partial” national mobilization.

What impact this may have on the war, remains to be seen.

For the purposes of this article, Russia took a low-impact approach to military organization out of harsh necessity, and allowed it to become a dominant aspect of its military and – dangerously – its political psychology. When it then applied that approach to smaller wars, and saw that it worked, they made the assumption that it would work against larger opponents. With the inevitable failure of the model when it stepped outside its boundaries, Russia is now in the position of being forced to escalate the conflict to avoid defeat.

This is a lesson the United States Marine Corps should pay attention to, because its own reforms look an awful lot like the BTG-model.

Ghost Gunner Maker Challenges California’s Anti-Ghost-Gun Laws

Freedomist Editor September 7, 2022

Defense Distributed is taking California to court over its Anti-American “Ghost Gunner” machine ban. Remember folks, “Ghost Gun” is an attempt to stigmatize guns made by individuals, as opposed to manufactuers. This is a basic human right one should not take for granted, especially in “current year.”

NEWSWATCH BLURB:

Maker of ‘Ghost Gunner’ machine sues California over new restrictions – Courthouse News Service – www.courthousenews.com
Excerpt:

The creator of software and milling machines that allows people to build their own firearms, including AK-47 assault riffles, went to court to fight two new California laws that criminalize the use of its equipment to make so-called ghost guns and make challenges to the state’s gun laws potentially more costly.

Defense Distributed, a Texas nonprofit business that sells the “Ghost Gunner” milling machine, said in a complaint filed Wednesday in Los Angeles that the restrictions on its products violate the Second Amendment, which according to the company implicitly includes the right to acquire and manufacture firearms.

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