D[avid] A[stor] very damping about the Dieppe raid, which he saw at more or less close quarters and which he says was an almost complete failure except for the very heavy destruction of German fighter planes, which was not part of the plan. He says that the affair was definitely misrepresented in the press and is now being misrepresented in the reports to the P.M., and that the main facts were: – Something over 5000 men were engaged, of whom at least 2000 were killed or prisoners. It was not intended to stay longer on shore than was actually done (ie. till about 4pm), but the idea was to destroy all the defences of Dieppe, and the attempt to do this was an utter failure. In fact only comparatively trivial damage was done, a few batteries of guns knocked out etc., and only one of the three main parties really made its objective. The others did not get far and many were massacred on the beach by artillery fire. The defences were formidable and would have been difficult to deal with even if there had been artillery support, as the guns were sunk in the face of the cliffs or under enormous concrete coverings. More tank-landing craft were sunk then got ashore. About 20 or 30 tanks were landed but none got off again. The newspaper photos which showed tanks apparently being brought back to England were intentionally misleading. The general impression was that the Germans knew of the raid beforehand. Almost as soon as it was begun they had a man broadcasting a spurious “eye-witness” account from somewhere further up the coast, and another man broadcasting false orders in English. On the other hand the Germans were evidently surprised by the strength of the air support. Whereas normally they have kept their fighters on the ground so as to conserve their strength, they sent them into the air as soon as they heard that tanks were landing, and lost a number of planes variously estimated, but considered by some RAF officers to be as high as 270. Owing to the British strength in the air the destroyers were able to lie outside Dieppe all day. One was sunk, by this was by a shore battery. When a request came to attack some objective on shore, the destroyers formed in line and raced inshore firing their guns while the fighter planes supported them overhead.
George Orwell, diary entry for August 22, 1942.
August 22, 2012
QotD: Orwell on the Dieppe raid
August 11, 2012
US Army’s first openly gay general
James Joyner at the Below the Beltway blog:
Tammy Smith has been promoted to brigadier general, thus becoming the first American general officer who also happens to be openly gay.
Stars and Stripes (“Smith becomes first gay general officer to serve openly“):
Army reserve officer Tammy Smith calls her recent promotion to brigadier general exciting and humbling, saying it gives her a chance to be a leader in advancing Army values and excellence.
What she glosses over is that along with the promotion she is also publicly acknowledging her sexuality for the first time, making her the first general officer to come out as gay while still serving. It comes less than a year after the end of the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” law.
[. . .]
Tom Ricks observes, “It is an interesting moment, in part because it is so uncontroversial.”
While I think Ricks is right, a couple of caveats are in order. First, this just happened today. And most of the news reports thus far are in the gay press and niche outlets. The sole exception is the right-wing Washington Times, which thus far has only a very short clip on the matter presented without commentary. Second, being a lesbian in the military simply hasn’t come with the same stigma as being a gay man. When one of the latter comes out — and it’ll happen sooner rather than later — we’ll really know how much the culture has evolved.
August 2, 2012
US military faces recruiting nightmare
Strategy Page outlines the most recent major problem the US military is facing: the bloat of potential recruits (not in numbers, but in individual mass). While the number of new recruits needed is declining, the pool of potential recruits to draw from has been declining even faster:
The problem is that Americans have, in the last two decades, become very fat and out-of-shape. There are 32 million male Americans of prime military age (17-24). But because of bad lifestyle choices, only 13 percent of them (4.2 million) are physically eligible for service. Each year, the armed forces have to recruit 150,000 new troops. The military is allowed to waive some physical or mental standards, and this means that only about 20 percent of those 32 million potential recruits qualify. Each year, recruiters have to convince about two percent of those eligible that they should join up. It’s a tough job, made worse by a generation that eats too much, exercises too little and doesn’t pay enough attention in school. You not only have to be physically fit enough to join, you also have to be smart enough and have no criminal record.
The enormous growth in computer entertainment, and subsequent massive reduction in exercise teenage boys get is the major reason for the body fat percentage crisis. As a result, one of the biggest problems American military recruiters have is unfit young Americans trying to enlist. Some 57 percent of potential recruits are not eligible because they do not score high enough on the aptitude test the military uses to see if people have enough education and mental skills to handle military life. Many of those who score too low do so because they did not do well at school. A lot of these folks have high IQs, but low motivation. Most of the remainder are not eligible for physical reasons. But get this; the most common physical disqualifier is being overweight. Nearly a third of the people of military age are considered obese. Many of these big folks are eager to join, and are told how much weight they have to lose before they can enlist. Few return light enough to sign up.
Computer gaming and other forms of indoor entertainment certainly bear some of the blame for the obesity problem, but other issues should also be included: helicopter parents who don’t dare let their kids go outside to play without full-time parental supervision, schools that have reduced or eliminated physical education for budget or liability reasons, and the huge increase in availability of low-priced, high-calorie fast foods.
July 29, 2012
British army dispatches troops to … fill empty seats at the Olympics?
I don’t want to turn the blog into an exercise in mocking the major international sporting event being held in a major English city, but this report from the Guardian can’t be missed:
Soldiers have been drafted in to fill empty seats at the London 2012 Olympics after prime blocks of seating at the Aquatics Centre and gymnastics arena went unused on the first day of competition.
Troops were despatched to the North Greenwich Arena this morning by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog), to take up seats left empty by accredited officials from Olympic and sporting federations, as well as some sponsors and members of the media. More troops, many of whom had their leave cancelled to provide emergency cover after the organisers failed to find enough security guards, will be issued with last-minute invites to take seats in venues when blocks of seats are found to be empty, the games organisers said this morning.
The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said on Saturday the empty seats were “very disappointing” and suggested they could be offered to members of the public. He said the matter was being looked at “very urgently”.
I guess giving the seats to members of the public would be too much of a security risk?
July 27, 2012
US admiral calls for more “trucks” and fewer “limousines”
The Economist reports on a recent article in the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings by Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations:
The “luxury-car” platforms designed in the last days of the cold war (and which still dominate much military procurement) have not adapted well to changes in security and technology, he says. Such platforms must always carry the sophisticated equipment to defeat a sophisticated foe. Yet much of this may be irrelevant to the navy’s typical missions in the past 20 years: counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, mine-clearing, maritime patrolling and carrier operations in support of counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Given the cost of building new platforms and the need to keep them in service for 30 to 50 years or even longer, Admiral Greenert wants them to be more like “trucks”: with plenty of space and power to accommodate different payloads. Some of the Pentagon’s oldest platforms have turned out to be much better trucks than their successors.
Because of its sheer size, its reserve electrical power and its small number of integral systems, at least compared with newer aircraft-carriers, the 50-year-old USS Enterprise has proved more adaptable than modern, densely packed designs. Unlike them, it has the space, storage and power-generating capacity to carry new aircraft types and new systems.
The same is true of the stalwart B-52 bomber. It first flew 60 years ago. It is now expected to stay in service until 2045. Conceived as a strategic bomber after the second world war, it has been recast many times. It is now proving to be a cost-effective platform for the latest precision-guided “stand-off” weapons (meaning those fired from afar). It is also more dependable than any of its more advanced successors.
Another advantage of high-tech payloads over platforms stems from Moore’s law: the doubling of computer-chip speed every two years or less. This embarrasses military planners. Even their latest and fabulously expensive equipment often lacks the processing power of cheap consumer gadgets. It takes at least 15 years to bring a new ship or aircraft from design to completion. That can be eight or more cycles of Moore’s law.
July 23, 2012
Disproportional British and Canadian combat casualties in Afghanistan
Although the total losses hide it, British and Canadian soldiers took higher casualty rates than Americans during combat in Afghanistan:
In the last year, British troops in Afghanistan have been getting killed at twice the rate (1,300 per 100,000 troops per year) as Americans during the height of the fighting in Iraq. Canadian troops, until they withdrew from combat, had an even higher rate of loss. But the U.S. has a lot more troops in Afghanistan. Thus total combat deaths since late 2001 are; U.S.-2,050, Britain-422 and Canada-158.
The British military describes “major combat” as an operation where losses (killed) were greater than 600 per 100,000. Thus only recently did British losses go north of 600. There are several reasons for these different death rates. For one thing, a higher proportion of British and Canadian troops in Afghanistan are in combat. The Americans handle a lot more of the support functions and thus a smaller proportion of the U.S. force is combat troops. Finally, the U.S. had more helicopters for moving troops and a much larger number of MRAP (bomb resistant vehicles) for troops moving on the ground.
[. . .]
Despite the higher casualty rates for the British and Canadians, the overall death rate for foreign troops in Afghanistan is still lower than it was in Iraq. In the last four years, foreign troops in Afghanistan lost about 300-400 dead per 100,000 troops per year. In Iraq, from 2004-7, the deaths among foreign troops ran at 500-600 per 100,000 per year. Since al Qaeda admitted defeat in Iraq four years ago, the U.S. death rate in Iraq has dropped to less than 200 dead per 100,000 troops per year within two years, and to nothing by the end of 2011 (as the last Americans troops left). Meanwhile, the rate in Afghanistan peaked at 400 dead per 100,000 troops in 2010 and has been declining ever since.
July 11, 2012
President Hollande “dwarfed” by Coldstream Guards
So much for a honeymoon period in office for French President Francois Hollande:
Francois Hollande was ridiculed today after allowing himself to look like a ‘dwarf’ alongside a British regiment which won battle honours at Waterloo and then occupied Paris.
During an official visit to London on Tuesday, the French President inspected a guard of honour from the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards at the Foreign Office.
He then appeared in hugely embarrassing photographs alongside Major James Coleby, who looked around two feet taller than the Gallic head of state.
Comments alongside the image on a website of pictures taken by AFP, France’s national news agency, suggested Hollande had fallen into a ‘trap’ made to make him look ridiculous.
‘Poor France,’ wrote Jean-Marc Rameau, from Paris, while Dmitri Kovaley mocked Mr Hollande, who is 5ft 7ins, with the words ‘Dwarfs rule the world’.
H/T to Nicholas Packwood for the link.
July 8, 2012
Britain’s “two-tier” army after the recently announced cuts
At the Thin Pinstriped Line, Sir Humphrey looks at some of the potential problems the reconfigured British army may face:
In summary, the Army will comprise two very distinct elements, the so-called ‘Reaction Force’ and the ‘Adaptable Force’. The Reaction Force will comprise what appears to be a slimmed down Armoured Division, built around three brigades, and augmented by 16 Air Assault Brigade (and effectively 3 Commando Brigade) plus supporting units to provide the short notice rapid response capability. The Adaptable Force is built around those units which are held at longer readiness to move, and which will provide the routine garrison, training and roulement duties. Within this structure some units will be held at different levels of readiness depending on how the security situation looks. Essential to this plan is the use of some 30,000 trained Army Reserve personnel to augment both forces, through a bolstered set of employment rules.
[. . .]
That said, there are real challenges that will need to be overcome in order to make this a success. From the outset real leadership is going to be needed to avoid the accusation and emergence of a ‘two-tier army’. It seems clear from looking at the wiring diagrams that large swathes of the Infantry and supporting units is going to be working under what was previously seen as the Regional Forces. Assuming that the Arms Plot has not been reintroduced, and that battalions will remain locked into their roles, it is going to take a lot of effort to convince people to join a unit which is posted to the ‘Adaptable Forces’. Who is going to want to join the part of the Army that is unlikely to deploy anywhere exciting, or where deployment is likely to be peace keeping, and not high intensity warfare? It will be a real blow to the morale of many soldiers if they perceive that their soldiering careers are in future going to be spent on Salisbury plain practising feeding Orphans or watching fake militias simulate slaughtering innocent civilians whilst they have to stand and watch in accordance with their UN ROE. Meanwhile their peers in the Reaction Forces will be charging around playing with the best equipment, newest kit, and better deployment prospects.
The Army manning cell at Glasgow is going to have to come up with a very good way of ensuring that those who join for a career regularly cross between the two forces. There already exists a sense of ‘them and us’ between the Regional Forces and the rest of the Army. One feels that this will only get worse over time, particularly if deployments go to units such as the Paras or Guards, which enjoy better publicity in the eye of politicians.
The danger is that the best posts get earmarked for the high flyers, and that over time the Officer Corps will emerge with the best and brightest occupying all the promotion jobs, while everyone else is left to stay in the Adaptable Forces. This could lead to a real challenge as good officers walk early, not leaving sufficient leadership across the Army as a whole.
July 6, 2012
July 5, 2012
British army reduces and consolidates 17 units
As reported earlier, the British army will be losing several battalions of infantry in the consolidation effort to reduce the army’s total manpower by 20,000:
The four infantry battalions to disappear are the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, the 2nd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards), the 3rd Battalion the Mercian Regiment and the 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh.
A fifth infantry battalion, the 5th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders), will become a single company to carry out public duties in Scotland.
The Armoured Corps will be reduced by two units with the mergers of the Queen’s Royal Lancers and the 9th/12th Royal Lancers and the 1st and 2nd Tank Regiments.
The Royal Artillery, the Royal Engineers, the Army Air Corps, the Royal Logistic Corps, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and the Royal Military Police will also be affected.
[. . .]
Details of the other changes are:
- The Royal Artillery will be reduced from 13 to 12 units with the withdrawal of the 39th Regiment Royal Artillery
- The Royal Engineers will be reduced from 14 to 11 units with the withdrawal of 24 and 28 Engineer Regiments and 67 Works Group
- The Army Air Corps will reduce from five to four units as 1 Regiment AAC merges with 9 Regiment AAC
- The Royal Logistic Corps will be reduced from 15 to 12 units with 1 and 2 Logistic Support Regiments withdrawn from the Order of Battle and 23 Pioneer Regiment disbanded
- The Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers will be reduced to seven units with the withdrawal of 101 Force Support Battalion
- 5 Regiment Royal Military Police will be removed
Update: As you’d expect, the changes are not being welcomed by current or former soldiers.
The reforms have caused anger and frustration within senior ranks. Earlier this week, a leaked letter to General Wall from one senior officer in the Royal Fusiliers showed the anger brewing over the scale of the proposed cuts.
Brigadier David Paterson, the honorary Colonel of the Regiment of Fusiliers, said the decision to axe one of its battalions would not “best serve” the armed forces and “cannot be presented as the best or most sensible military option”.
He added: “I, as Colonel, have the duty to tell my men why it is their battalion, which at the time of the announcement will be the best manned battalion in the army, with recruits waiting in the wings, was chosen by CGS. I will then also have to explain to my Fusiliers in a fully manned battalion why they are likely to be posted to battalions that cannot recruit. This will not be an easy sell.”
July 3, 2012
Details of British army cuts leaked
The Guardian has some details on the upcoming cuts to the British army, which will include the elimination of several battalions of infantry and the merging of some armoured regiments:
The acrimony and chaos surrounding plans to cut 20,000 troops from the army have been laid bare after details of the battalions to be scrapped were leaked before a ministerial statement on Thursday.
The proposals, whose publication has been delayed by Downing Street because of their sensitivity, show historic units to be axed include the third battalion of the Yorkshire regiment and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the fifth battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. One battalion will be lost from the Royal Welsh, the Mercians and the Royal Fusiliers.
[. . .]
Official letters to army commanders were sent out on Tuesday, ready for the announcement in parliament by the defence secretary, Philip Hammond. The hope had been that soldiers would hear about the cuts from senior officers, but this has been dashed by the leak in Tuesday’s Sun.
[. . .]
The army is losing a fifth of its overall strength because of budget cuts and restructuring set out in the much criticised 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review.
A subsequent MoD re-evaluation — last year’s so-called “three-month exercise” — more than doubled the number of troops to be lost to 20,000.
[. . .]
The battalions to be saved include the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, the Queen’s Dragoon Guards and the Royal Dragoon Guards. The Parachute Regiment’s three battalions will be spared.
Under the proposals, the Queen’s Royal Lancers will be merged with the 9th/12th Lancers, and the 1st Royal Tank Regiment with the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment.
US Army’s UCP camouflage pattern “makes soldiers more visible, not less”
As I mentioned briefly last week, the US Army is abandoning their most recent camouflage patterned combat uniforms:
The United States military is abandoning its recently-adopted pixelated camouflage uniforms, according to articles this week in The Daily as well as Stars and Stripes.
The drab grey digital pattern, known as the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), will be discarded after only eight years following mounting evidence that the colour scheme makes soldiers more visible, not less.
The articles pull few punches in their appraisal of the move to adopt the pattern in 2004.
“Army brass interfered in the selection process, choosing looks and politics over science,” reports Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the United States armed forces.
And while the Pentagon spent $5 Billion on the much-heralded uniforms, some of the earliest attempts to conceal soldiers on the battlefield were considerably less expensive.
The This is War blog has a discussion of the development of camouflage over the last century and a half.
June 29, 2012
US Army reluctantly admits USMC did better
In developing camouflage, that is:
The U.S. Army has decided to scrap its digital pattern camouflage combat uniforms for the more effective, but more expensive, MultiCam. In the last decade, both the army and marines adopted new, digital, camouflage pattern field uniforms. But in Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers noted that the marine digital uniforms (called MARPAT, for Marine Pattern) were superior to the army UCP (Universal Camouflage Pattern). There’s been growing dissatisfaction with UCP, and it has become a major issue because all the infantry have access to the Internet, where the constant clamor for something better than UCP forced the army to do something. This is ironic because UCP is a variant of MARPAT, but a poor one, at least according to soldiers who have encountered marines wearing MARPAT. Even more ironic is that MARPAT is based on research originally done by the army. Thus some of the resistance to copying MARPAT is admitting the marines took the same research on digital camouflage, and produced a superior pattern for combat uniforms.
A digital camouflage pattern uses “pixels” (little square or round spots of color, like you will find on your computer monitor if you look very closely), instead of just splotches of different colors. Naturally, this was called “digital camouflage.” This pattern proved considerably more effective at hiding troops than older methods. For example, in tests, it was found that soldiers wearing digital pattern uniforms were 50 percent more likely to escape detection by other troops, than if they were wearing standard green uniforms. What made the digital pattern work was the way the human brain processed information. The small “pixels” of color on the cloth makes the human brain see vegetation and terrain, not people. One could provide a more technical explanation, but the “brain processing” one pretty much says it all.
June 28, 2012
Don’t expect Korean re-unification to follow the German script of the 1990s
Some potentially chilling geo-strategic news from China:
The government has had reports issued denying American and Japanese studies of the rapid expansion of Chinese military power in the last decade. The Chinese reports were issued in Chinese, English and Japanese. China’s official line is that their armed forces are only for defense and are growing at a far more modest rate than foreign analysts are claiming. The Chinese are having a hard time refuting the foreign analysts, given the availability of satellite photos and many cell phone images of new Chinese weapons. China tries to control this sort of information leak, but has been unable to do so.
Another problem for China is the fact that internal propaganda campaigns cannot be kept secret from the outside world. This was never possible, but even with a heavily censored Chinese Internet, such embarrassing news quickly gets to an international audience very quickly. The latest example of this is remarks by Chinese officials about the “Great Wall of China.” The new claims are that the wall was larger than its current official size, and incorporates parts of North Korea. This was alarming news in South Korea, which is preparing to take over North Korea when the communist dictatorship up there collapses. The collapse is expected soon. With this new “Great Wall” argument the Chinese are announcing that if the North Korean government losses control, China will reclaim some “lost provinces” and the foreigners (including South Korea, Japan and the United States) had better stay out of it.
Given the Chinese claims in the South China Sea (that is, almost all of it), it is probably no surprise to the other nations that China might also have designs on part or all of the territory of modern day North Korea. When the German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany) collapsed in the early 1990s, the Federal Republic (West Germany) was able to pick up the pieces in a relatively co-ordinated manner. China may not want South Korea doing the same thing after a North Korean collapse.
May 29, 2012
A review of the War of 1812 (non-Canadian-centric version)
The DiploMad appears to be blogging again, and for proof, here’s a neat little capsule of the War of 1812 without the Canadian aspect being treated as the most significant campaigning area of the war:
The war was brought about by British arrogance and American stupidity. The British were not reconciled to an independent United States, and could not take the place and its bombastic pronouncements about liberty seriously. They basically ignored the USA’s assertion of being a sovereign state, and proceeded to treat American ships and seaman as some sort of Brits gone rogue. The USA, for its part, could not understand that the British were in what they saw as a life-and-death struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte. We did not respect that. We reckoned we could trade and make deals with France, such as the spectacular Louisiana Purchase which filled Napoleon’s coffers and served his aim of helping create a huge potential rival to Britain, without raising British concerns or provoking them into action.
[. . .]
The British, despite the war in Europe managed to put together a more than credible military and naval force against the distant United States. The Americans, in turn, showed a talent that would serve us well in future wars by getting our act together at the last minute and putting on a damn good defense of the country. The US army, however, remained plainly horrendous throughout the war with its corrupt and politicized officer corps, and its half-baked, ill-planned and even worse executed invasion of Canada. The US also set the precedent of burning York — today’s Toronto — which led to the British burning of the nascent US capital which the army failed to defend. The army partially redeemed itself in the Battle of New Orleans, under the otherwise reprehensible Andrew Jackson (Note: Why is he on our $20 bill?)
The US navy, however, proved completely different, and did an amazing job of fighting off the much larger British navy, wreaking havoc on it, carrying the war into British waters, and even eliciting a warning from the Admiralty to the Royal Navy to avoid one-on-one combat with US ships. The US navy also fought a superb campaign on the Great Lakes which resulted in the British fleet withdrawing from those waters.
Minor quibble: the Royal Navy withdrew from Lake Erie, not from all the Great Lakes. Lake Ontario was still the scene of a major fleet-building contest with vessels of up to 130 guns under construction or entering service when the war ended.
