Quotulatiousness

February 17, 2011

Building an (even better) army helmet

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:45

The US Army and USMC like the latest combat helmet even more than they liked the next-most recent improved model:

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps have found that their new Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH) is even more bullet proof than expected. While testing the ECH, it was discovered that the machine firing metal fragments at the ECH (to represent shell and bomb fragments) could not fire fragments fast enough to penetrate. The ECH was supposed to be invulnerable to pistol bullets, and it was, but some types of metal fragments were expected to still be dangerous. So ECH was tested to see how well it could resist high-powered rifle bullets. ECH was not 100 percent invulnerable, but in most cases, it would stop anything fired from a sniper rifle. Overall, it was calculated that the ECH was 40 percent more resistant to projectiles and 70 percent stronger than the current ACH helmet.

The ECH is made of a new thermoplastic material (UHMWP, or Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene). It is lighter and stronger than the Kevlar used in the ACH and earlier PASGT and, it turned out, provided much better protection as well. The ECH will begin replacing the current ACH later this year, with 200,000 being eventually purchased. The ECH costs $600 each, twice as much as the ACH. But for troops under fire, the additional cost is well worth the additional protection.

Combat helmets, which appear to be low-tech, have been anything-but over the last three decades. Advances in the design and construction of helmets have been accelerating, especially in the last decade. For example, the current ACH (Advanced Combat Helmet) recently underwent some tweaks to make it more stable. That was required because more troops are being equipped with a flip down (over one eye) transparent computer screen. The device is close to the eye, so it looks like a laptop computer display to the soldier, and can display maps, orders, troop locations or whatever. If the helmet jumps around too much, it’s difficult for the solider to make out what’s on the display. This can be dangerous in combat.

February 16, 2011

QotD: For dictators, storm troopers are not a luxury

Filed under: Government, Middle East, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:11

A major reason for the inability of the recently deposed Egyptian dictatorship to suppress anti-government demonstrations was the lack of a large, loyal and reliable security force. Not having such a force handy was unthinkable for any security conscious dictator. For example, in Iraq, Saddam Hussein had his Republican Guard, a force that was filled with well paid, well armed men who were, above all, loyal to Saddam. All other successful dictatorships have similar forces. Russia had the KGB, which not only employed spies, but also several divisions of troops trained and equipped to deal with rebellions by the population, or the armed forces. Iran has a similar force, the Revolutionary Guard, that serves a similar role as the old KGB. During World War II, Adolf Hitler had the SS, Gestapo and his private army, the Waffen SS, all of which kept Germany fighting until the very end.

Former Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak got lazy and greedy by filling his “regime maintenance” forces with conscripts (as troops) and recent college graduates (as officers). Theses security forces, like the 325,000 paramilitary police in the Central Security Services (belonging to the Interior Ministry, nor the Defense Ministry), were more loyal to the people than to the small group of corrupt politicians running the country. Things had gotten so bad that the small secret police force had taken to hiring criminal gangs to harass or intimidate visible opponents of the government. These thugs fled if faced with serious opposition. And that’s what they got during February, 2011.

“Murphy’s Law: Storm Troopers Are Not A Luxury”, Strategy Page, 2011-02-16

February 13, 2011

Egypt’s long road to reform

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:50

Strategy Page lists some of the many difficulties facing Egypt:

Although deposed dictator Mubarak officially maintained the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Mubarak also had the state controlled media constantly criticize Israel for real and (mostly) imagined crimes against Moslems. Mubarak allowed Hamas to bring in Iranian weapons and cash (for an eventual attack on Israel). Mubarak did what any dictator does, he found an external enemy to blame things on. But all of Egypt’s problems are internal, mostly in the form of corrupt government officials and most of the economy controlled by a few hundred families. It’s as the Russian czar said once, when asked about his great power, “I do not run Russia, 10,000 clerks do.” It’s the same in Egypt (or any other country). Replacing enough of the several hundred thousand officials (government and business), to really be in power, will be difficult for any reform politicians. Replacing all the current “clerks” with honest ones will be impossible. Eliminating corruption takes a generation or more, assuming you really try. There are centuries of history with that sort of thing, but Arabs tend to consult their own special history book, one found in the fiction section, and full of tales of imaginary Arab accomplishments, and a long list of self-inflicted injuries blamed on others. The fact is that Egypt, like most Arab nations, has long neglected education and economic opportunity. Literacy is only 71 percent, and corrupt officials make it impossible to start a legal business. Economic activity is monopolized by the several hundred families who see nothing wrong with crippling the economy for their own gain. The wealthy have not hesitated to use thugs and death squads to maintain their power. While often at each other’s throats over business or personal matters, the several hundred thousand officials and business leaders will largely unite at any attempts to dismantle their economic arrangements. Bribes, threats and all sorts of enticements will be offered cripple the reform efforts. While most Egyptians demand reform, those benefitting from the current arrangements know that they have thousands of years of Egyptian history on their side. Occasionally, foreigners would take advantage of this culture of corruption, which extended to the army, and invade. But the Egyptian ruling class would soon absorb the invaders, and the business of running Egypt would return to its normal ways.

Israel knows well how corrupt the Egyptian armed forces are. Except for a few years before the 1973 war, when a highly efficient Anwar Sadat was running the army, the Egyptian armed forces have been allowed to wallow in their usual incompetent self-delusion. Peacetime armies have long been seen as perfect sources of wealth for corrupt politicians. Thus, in the last three decades, the Egyptian forces have done their job in this department. A new Egyptian government, seeking to gain domestic and foreign popularity by cancelling the peace treaty with Israel, would restore the threat of Egypt foolishly starting another war they would lose. Israel would have to redeploy its forces to deal with this. That would cost money, and weaken the edge Israel has in the north against Hezbollah and Syria. All this would not really change the balance of power. What might do that is reforms in the Egyptian military, to eliminate corruption and raise standards. Good luck with that.

Egypt may achieve reform, to include a sharp reduction in corruption and true rule of law. What is less certain is dealing with the effects of three decades of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic propaganda in the state controlled media. But the biggest problems are internal, and solving those are a long shot.

Many Egyptians have doubts that democracy will work in Egypt. They point to Lebanon and Iraq as examples of what happens when you allow Arabs to use democracy to rule themselves. The 22 year old Lebanese democracy fell apart in 1975, followed by fifteen years of civil war, then a peace deal that left the country divided into the “democratic” north, with the south ruled by a Shia religious dictatorship (Hezbollah) financed by Iran. Iraq has a barely functioning democracy that many Arabs despise because it was facilitated by an American/British invasion to remove an Arab dictator. What Arabs really find discouraging about Iraq’s democracy is that it reveals how difficult it is to run such a government. But as Westerners constantly point out, freedom isn’t free and democracy isn’t easy. If you want the goodies, you have to make the effort.

Update: Lawrence Solomon thinks that the path to democracy is even harder, and less likely to succeed:

In Egypt, the ends that democracy would bring are more likely death, submission and the pursuit of jihad, as defined by the country’s Muslim Brotherhood. “The Koran is our constitution, the Jihad is our way, and the Death for Allah is our most exalted wish,” it proclaims. The word Islam does mean “submission.”

Most Egyptians — three-quarters of its overwhelmingly Muslim population, public opinion polls say — want “strict imposition of Sharia law” and a larger proportion wants policies that most in the West would view as human rights abuses — 82% would stone adulterers and 84% want the death penalty for Muslims who leave their faith.

While most of the urban generation in Cairo’s Tahrir Square desires a modern Egyptian state of some kind, the Egyptian majority does not: 91% of Muslims want to keep “Western values out of Islamic countries.” For the vast majority outside the main cities, the outrages perpetrated by Mubarak lie mostly in his suppression of Islamic fundamentalist values, such as his ban on female genital mutilation and his moves to phase out polygamy and child brides. Most Muslim Egyptians not only oppose a modern Egyptian state, they would dismantle the existing Egyptian state, two-thirds wanting instead “to unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or caliphate.”

But even with all of that said, he points out that things are not totally hopeless:

But traditional Egypt need not forever prevail. A poll just released by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, taken between Feb. 5 and Feb. 8 of residents of Cairo and Alexandria, the two centres of protest, shows both how different the major cities are from the rest of the country, and how much hope there is for a modern Egypt in the future.

The protest was mostly driven by the economy, with 37% citing either “poor economic conditions” or “Unemployment/Job conditions.” Corruption came in next, at 22%, followed by “poor delivery of services like electricity and water” at 5%. The social causes touted by the Western media were all but non-existent: Just 3% cited “political repression/no democracy” and another 3% cited “abuses by security services/arrests/torture etc.” Neither are the populations in these urban centres motivated by fundamentalism. Only 4% complained of a “Regime not Islamic enough,” only 4% of a “Regime Too Connected to the U.S.,” and just 3% of a “Regime Too Supportive of Israel.” In a hypothetical election for president, one-third of the residents of these cities favoured either Mubarak (16%) or his vice-president, Omar Suleiman (17%), compared to 26% for Amr Musa, a prominent diplomat.

Mohammed ElBaradei, a diplomat endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood, would receive just 3% of the vote.

US Army orders more HIMARS

Filed under: Asia, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:32

The pint-sized MLRS vehicle has been (if you’ll pardon the expression) a big hit with US troops in Afghanistan:

The U.S. Army has ordered another 44 HIMARS rocket launchers, for $3.2 million each. These will be delivered over the next two years, and give the army a total of 375 HIMARs vehicles. It was because of the success of the GPS version of the U.S. MLRS rocket, that the smaller, truck mounted MLRS (HIMARS) rocket launcher system became the most popular vehicle for launching the rocket. HIMARS carries only one, six MLRS rocket, container (instead of two in the original MLRS vehicle), but the 12 ton truck can fit into a C-130 transport (unlike the 22 ton tracked MLRS) and is much cheaper to operate. The first HIMARS entered service in 2005, about a year after GPS guided rockets did.

[. . .]

The U.S. Army is getting most of the 900 HIMARS vehicles planned, with the marines getting the rest. There are also several export customers. The U.S. Army is buying 100,000 GMLRS rockets, most of them fitted with a 89 kg (196 pound) high explosive warhead. These have been used with great success in Iraq and Afghanistan, where over a thousand have been fired so far. The guided rocket is much more effective than the older, unguided, version, and is replacing it in most cases. No more of the unguided rockets are being purchased by the U.S. The accuracy of GMLRS means that one or two rockets does the job that previously required a dozen or more of the unguided ones. That’s why HIMARS is so popular. While it only carries six rockets, that’s often enough to last for days, even when there’s a lot of combat. HIMARS can be reloaded, with another container of six GPS guided rockets, in less than ten minutes.


HIMARS: High Mobility Artillery Rocket System

February 11, 2011

Taming the US defence budget

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:29

The US government is in a financial bind — that’s not exactly news. What is new, however, is that the military may actually have to take cuts, not just smaller increases in the annual budget:

On one side of the argument are fiscal hawks like Rand Paul, newly elected senator from Kentucky, who fear that a national debt heading towards 100% of GDP by the end of the decade is in itself a menace to the nation and defence must take its share of the pain. The sheer size of America’s defence budget puts it in the crosshairs. At around $700 billion a year including war expenditures, it as big as those of the world’s next 20 highest military spenders combined. Last year American defence spending exceeded the average spent during the cold-war years by 50% (adjusted for inflation), while in the past 10 years it has grown by 67% in real terms.

[. . .]

Mr Gates, a canny operator whom Barack Obama retained after he took over from George Bush, began to sniff which way the wind was likely to turn in 2008. He calculated that if he took the initiative, he might stave off deeper and more unwelcome cuts. So he curbed or cancelled more than 30 weapons systems including the army’s Future Combat System, the F-22 Stealth fighter, two missile defence systems and the Zumwalt-class destroyer. Last year he went further, proposing the closure of the Joint Forces Command in Virginia and a 10% reduction in the budget for contract workers for each of the next three years. He asked the armed services to find at least $100 billion worth of “efficiency savings” over the next five years, which he promised to reinvest in other programmes.

[. . .]

Buck McKeon, the Republican who now leads the House Armed Services Committee, has responded with predictable fury to the Gates plan, saying it was “a dramatic shift for a nation at war and a dangerous signal from the commander-in-chief”. Mr Gates can take some comfort from the fact there has been at least as much “incoming” from critics who say he has not gone nearly far enough. They point out that what is being planned is not so much a cut as a small reduction on what the Pentagon had been planning to spend over the next four to five years. The budget will still creep up in real terms until it flattens off in 2015. Given his intention to retire from office later this year, Mr Gates may not have the stomach for attempting anything more radical on his watch.

February 10, 2011

XM-25 man-packable artillery piece takes the field

Filed under: Asia, Military, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

Lewis Page has some information on the first field use of the XM-25:

First reports are emerging on the performance of the futuristic, Judge Dredd style XM-25 computer smartgun, which went into combat with frontline US troops in Afghanistan in December. The hi-tech rifle — almost a portable artillery piece — is said to have been dubbed “the Punisher” by soldiers who have used it.

The US Army news service reports that the existing five custom-made prototype XM-25 weapons, which have long been trialled and tested in the States, arrived in Afghanistan in November and were first used in combat on 3 December. Since then, as of the army report, some 55 explosive smartshells have been fired in combat and hundreds more in practice.

“We silenced two machine-gun positions — two PKM positions,” said Major Christopher Conley, describing some of the firefights in which the XM-25 has been used. “We destroyed four ambush locations, where the survivors fled.”

Earlier post on the XM-25 here.

Update, 1 April: The XM-25 program is now under contract:

The US Army’s futuristic Judge Dredd style computer smart-rifle project, the XM-25, is moving ahead. Developer ATK, which has so far made just five prototype weapons, inked a $65.8m deal this week to move the weapon into manufacturing.

[. . .]

US troops in Afghanistan, who are trying out the initial five prototype weapons, apparently don’t favour Judge Dredd references. They have reportedly chosen to dub the new smartgun “the Punisher” instead.

Feedback from these users has apparently been positive, with the AM-25’s ability to strike out accurately and speedily at Taliban snipers or machine-gun teams lurking in cover at long range highly prized. The soldiers don’t much care for the gun’s battery system, however, which reportedly has the same flaws as an iPhone’s: it can’t be swapped for a new one and must be plugged in to charge up. ATK are apparently to sort this out as the design develops.

The new engineering and manufacturing development deal is to run for 30 months.

I’m not sure what the change from XM-25 to AM-25 in that report means . . . that is, if the weapon’s designation has changed with the switch to production, or if it’s just a typo in the write-up.

February 2, 2011

UK government trying to further economize on helicopters for Afghan service

Filed under: Asia, Britain, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:25

Lewis Page is concerned that, on top of the wrong-headed approach to cutting military costs, the coalition government may further reduce the Chinook helicopter plans:

In its last months in office, the previous Labour government announced plans to order 22 new Chinook helicopters (in addition to two which would replace recent combat losses in Afghanistan). The money was to be found by cutting squadrons of fast jets — in particular, Tornado low-level deep strike bombers. The first 10 helicopters were to come into service in 2012-13.

On arrival in office the Coalition carried out a Strategic Defence Review, personally supervised by Prime Minister Cameron, in which it was decided that the Tornado bomber fleet would be preserved intact, the Chinook order would be cut to just 12 — and, controversially, that the Harrier jumpjet fleet would be scrapped entirely.

Even the much reduced Chinook order has so far failed to actually be signed, and there have since been suggestions that the Ministry of Defence financial assumptions which underlay the Review were too optimistic – thus, that more cuts might be required.

January 31, 2011

US Army to keep MRAP, speed up development of JLTV

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:48

For your morning dose of military acronyms, here’s a report from Strategy Page on a recent change in US Army planning caused by field experience in Iraq and Afghanistan:

The U.S. Army has decided that the MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) should be a permanent part of their vehicle fleet. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Four years ago, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps were in the midst of spending $20 billion to buy over 20,000 MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles. Shortly thereafter, the terrorist resistance in Iraq collapsed, and so did the need for MRAPs. This resulted in about a quarter of the MRAP orders being cancelled, and others changed to designs more suitable for use in Afghanistan, which had far fewer roads to use them on.

While the troops appreciated the MRAPs, some of the generals saw serious problems in the future. In Iraq and Afghanistan, people in these bomb resistant vehicles were much less likely to be killed or injured if they encountered a roadside bomb. But MRAPs are basically armored trucks (weighing 8-23 tons) that are hardened to survive bombs and mines, and cost about five to ten times more than an armored hummer.

As you can see, the MRAP isn’t a dainty sort of vehicle (this one has the recent overhead wire kit attached):

But now, thousands of those MRAPs will stay in service after the war in Afghanistan has ended. They will be considered armored combat vehicles, not transport, like the hummer and army trucks, and not used on a daily basis. This will keep down the operating expenses, as MRAPs consume a lot of fuel.

In addition to keeping thousands of the MRAPS, the army is developing a heavier replacement for the hummer, using a design with lots of MRAP features. This is the JLTV(Joint Light Tactical Vehicle), which is arriving a little ahead of schedule, as part of a program to massively upgrade army vehicles every few decades.

The JLTV competition is still underway, with three vehicles being tested:


Image from Wikipedia.

In addition to being built to better survive mines and roadside bombs, the JLTV will be able to generate 30 KW of electricity (for operating all the new electronic gear, and recharging batteries), have an automatic fire extinguishing system and jam-resistant doors. Like the hummer, JLTV will be easy to reconfigure, for everything from a four seat, armed scout vehicle, to an ambulance, command vehicle or cargo or troop transport. The hummer will continue to be used outside of the combat zone, where most troops spend most of their time. But the JLTV will be built to better handle the beating vehicles take in the combat zone, including a design that enables troops to quickly slide in armor and Kevlar panels to make the vehicles bullet and blast proof.

January 25, 2011

Russian army still suffering from Soviet hangover

Filed under: History, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:47

Strategy Page reports on the troubles the Russian army is still experiencing twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union:

Russian efforts to reform and upgrade its armed forces have, so far, failed. The basic problem is that few Russian men are willing to join, even at good pay rates. Efforts to recruit women and foreigners have not made up for this. The Russian military has an image problem that just won’t go away. This resulted in the period of service for conscripts being lowered to one year (from two) in 2008. That was partly to placate the growing number of parents who were encouraging, and assisting, their kids in avoiding military service.

But there are other problems. The latest crop of draftees are those born after the Soviet Union dissolved. That was when the birth rate went south. Not so much because the Soviet Union was gone, but more because of the economic collapse (caused by decades of communist misrule) that precipitated the collapse of the communist government. The number of available draftees went from 1.5 million a year in the early 1990s, to 800,000 today. Less than half those potential conscripts are showing up, and many have criminal records (or tendencies) that help sustain the abuse of new recruits that has made military service so unsavory. With conscripts in for only a year, rather than two, the military is forced to take a lot of marginal (sickly, overweight, bad attitudes, drug users) recruits in order to keep the military and Ministry of Interior units up to strength. But this means that even elite airborne and commando units are using a lot of conscripts. Most of these young guys take a year to master the skills needed to be useful, and then they are discharged. Few choose to remain in uniform and become a career soldiers. That’s primarily because the Russian armed forces is seen as a crippled institution, and one not likely to get better any time soon. With so many of the troops now one year conscripts, an increasing number of the best officers and NCOs get tired of coping with all the alcoholics, drug users and petty criminals that are taken in just to make quotas. With the exodus of the best leaders, and growing number of ill-trained and unreliable conscripts, the Russian military is more of a mirage than an effective combat (or even police) organization.

January 21, 2011

Not your granddaddy’s binoculars

Filed under: France, Military, Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:21

Strategy Page reports on some new kit for the French army:

The French Army is buying 1,175 new electronic binoculars for its troops. The JIM LR 2 looks a little different than your traditional binoculars. There are four, instead of two, round glass windows in the front, and the usual two eyepieces in the back. The controls are electronic, not mechanical. Batteries are required. The zoom equipped stabilized binoculars also include infrared (night vision) electronics, as well as a laser rangefinder (max range of 5,000 meters) GPS, digital compass, a laser designator (max range of 10,000 meters), and communications systems to transmit coordinates of targets. The binoculars can also record video and still images. Weighing about 3 kg (6.7 pounds), one battery charge lasts four hours. Individuals can be detected at 5,000 meters and identified at about 900. Vehicles can be spotted at 8,600 meters and identified and 1,700.

The new binoculars look more like a militarized eye testing unit from your opthalmologist:

January 18, 2011

Simple solution to aggravating problem

Filed under: Middle East, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

Here’s an example of a US Army MRAP with a useful modification installed:

Two years ago, the U.S. Army began using the MRAP Overhead Wire Mitigation Kit (OWMK) system that uses two curved lengths of metal to safely get tall armored vehicles past low hanging power or telephone wires. For several years, troops had improvised similar systems to prevent vehicles from coming into contact with power cables, causing injury to the troops and their equipment. A more common problem was turret gunners getting snagged by low hanging wires, often electrical ones. The improvised solution usually involved just putting plastic pipe, at an angle, in front, to deal with the wire. Finally, the army took notice and developed a simple kit that could be fitted to an MRAP. The OWMK also prevents making the locals angry, because passing military vehicles tore down their power wires. The MWMK can handle wires as low as 2.6 meters (8 feet) from the ground. MRAPS are tall vehicles, and the top of the turret (if installed) is usually over three meters.

January 14, 2011

Last year’s biggest military developments

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

Strategy Page lists some of the most significant military developments of 2010:

* Infantry. Here we saw more evolution, not revolution, in infantry gear. But at least the trends continued to move in the right direction. The biggest change is the equipment that must be carried. Until the 1980s, you could strip down (for actual fighting) to your helmet, weapon (assault rifle and knife), ammo (hanging from webbing on your chest, along with grenades), canteen and first aid kit (on your belt) and your combat uniform. Total load was 13-14 kg (about 30 pounds). You could move freely, and quickly, like this, and you quickly found that speed and agility was a lifesaver in combat. But now the minimum load carried is twice as much (27 kg), and, worse yet, more restrictive. Over the last seven years, this has translated into some dramatic changes in training. In Iraq, troops found they were not in the best condition to run around with all that weight. This was worse in Afghanistan, with all those hills. Plus, the vest constricted movement, and that took time to adjust to. Commanders complained about troops not being properly trained, and that led to a series of changes in basic and unit training. The big change in basic was to condition troops to handle the heavy weights they would be carrying, for extended periods of time. This was particularly critical for non-combat troops (especially those operating convoys) outside of camps (where you usually didn’t have to wear armor and combat gear.) New exercises were developed. Infantry troops got several months of additional training after basic, and had plenty of opportunity to adjust to moving around wearing 14 kg or more of gear. The heavier weight included better armor and equipment (night vision, personal radio, weapon sights), which reduced combat deaths, and made the troops more lethal. But now the troops accept the fact that a lot of essential training takes place in the gym, particularly the weight room. The army and marines have been developing lighter and more comfortable versions of essential gear, but there’s still a need for muscle. This decade of infantry innovation has been noted by other armies around the world, and they are all hustling to emulate this American revolution. Not just to get the gadgets, but to implement the new training methods as well.

* Support. Few pay attention to support functions, especially no one in the media. But here is where big things happen. One of things has been how video games joined the army. Over the last eight years, billions of dollars has been spent on creating several generations of increasingly accurate combat simulators for training troops to deal with roadside bombs, hostile civilians, flying UAVs and new enemy tactics. These sims are taken for granted inside the army and marines, but still seem out of place to ill informed outsiders.

[. . .]

* Naval Power. The U.S. Navy has accepted the fact that is has gotten smaller, and that this process will continue. The navy shrunk by 20 percent in the last decade, to a force of 280 ships. The main reason is the high cost of new ships, to replace those that are wearing out and being retired. In the next decade, the fleet is expected to shrink another 20 percent, again because Congress refuses to provide enough money to replace older ships (only about $14 billion a year, at most, is provided for new ships, and this is expected to shrink.) New ships cost, on average, $2.5 billion each. This is made possible because of six billion dollar destroyers, seven billion dollar subs and eleven billion dollar carriers. This is offset somewhat by $1.7 billion amphibious ships and half billion dollar LCS (a compact, controversial, ship design). The big news is that the admirals are actively brainstorming how to live with a high cost/low income future, not try to magically make it go away.

December 28, 2010

The French Foreign Legion in film and in history

Filed under: Books, Europe, France, Germany, Media, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Peter Shawn Taylor explains how what was once the second most popular “adventure movie” themes has become all but invisible today:

The French Foreign Legion, steeped as it is in romance and adventure, had an entirely prosaic birth. It was a supply-side army.

In 1830, France’s reputation for continual political upheaval made it a magnet for Europe’s wandering class. Political agitators, disenfranchised liberals, left-wing revolutionaries and outright criminals from every country flocked to Paris. Such an agglomeration of potential trouble-makers proved unsettling for the newly reinstalled French monarchy.

At the same time France had recently conquered Algeria, rather by accident. (It’s a long story involving Napoleon Bonaparte’s unpaid grain debt, a flyswatter to the face of a French diplomat and the Gallic need to avenge even the slightest insult.) Maintaining the colony, however, was proving perilous for regular French troops.

The genius of the French Foreign Legion was that it solved both problems.

Refugees, criminals and agitators were pressed into a special unit of the French military created exclusively for foreigners. To make this urban renewal process as efficient as possible, no questions were asked as to the background of the recruits. And because French law prevented mercenary troops from serving on French soil, these soldiers were immediately shipped off to Algeria. Out of sight, out of mind.

After the “cowboys and indians” movies, Legion movies were the next most common adventure movie in early Hollywood. They faded from Hollywood’s radar even faster than the French empire did in the real world.

I remember reading a book about the Legion in French Indochina in the late 1940s and early 1950s (The Devil’s Guard by George Robert Elford), but I assumed it was largely fictionalized. Checking the Wikipedia entry, I see I wasn’t alone in suspecting it to be less than fully factual:

[. . .] published in 1971, is the story of a former German Waffen-SS officer’s string of near-constant combat that begins on World War II’s eastern front and continues into the book’s focus — the First Indochina War, as an officer in the French Foreign Legion. The book is presented by the author as nonfiction but considered to be untrue by military historians, and usually sold as fiction. In 2006 the online bookstore AbeBooks reported that it was among the 10 novels most frequently sold to American soldiers in Iraq (the only war fiction in the top 10, in fact).

December 21, 2010

This goes far beyond accepting the end of “DADT”

Filed under: Asia, Health, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:40

As I posted back in January, one of the problems western troops have in dealing with Pashtuns in Afghanistan is the radically different sexual culture, including barely concealed pedophilia:

The vast gulf between U.S. and Afghan attitudes about homosexuality and pedophilia has generated concern among U.S. advisers in Afghanistan since the American presence there began to expand.

In late 2009, U.S. and British forces ordered a study of Pashtun male sexuality. They were worried that homosexuality and pedophilia among Afghan security forces and tribes could create cultural misunderstanding with allied troops, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Examiner.

[. . .]

“I know Marines and soldiers who have refused to work with Afghan military or police,” said one U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s not about homosexuality as much as it is about the young boys. Some of them like to show pictures on their cell phone — that should be illegal. Some of the Afghans have their own young boys they use for sexual purposes and we can’t do anything about it.”

[. . .]

“Homosexuality is strictly prohibited in Islam, but cultural interpretations of Islamic teaching prevalent in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan tacitly condone it in comparison to heterosexual relationships,” the study states.

For a male to have sex with a boy is considered a “foible,” the report said. By contrast, having sex with an “ineligible woman” would set up “issues of revenge and honor killings.”

Years of living under that cultural construct have greatly altered sexual attitudes, the study said. “One of the country’s favorite sayings is ‘women are for children, boys are for pleasure,” the report noted.

The next step in robotics: combat casualty recovery bots

Filed under: Military, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:16

It’s not ready to be used in the field yet, but the next military robot may be a stretcher bearer:

Killing a soldier removes one enemy from the fray. Wounding him removes three: the victim and the two who have to carry him from the field of battle. That cynical calculation lies behind the design of many weapons that are intended to incapacitate rather than annihilate. But robotics may change the equation.

The Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot, BEAR for short, is, in the words of Gary Gilbert of the American Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Centre (TATRC), “a highly agile and powerful mobile robot capable of lifting and carrying a combat casualty from a hazardous area across uneven terrain.” On top of that, when it is not saving lives, it can perform difficult, heavy and repetitive tasks, such as the loading and unloading of ammunition.

The current prototype BEAR is a small, tracked vehicle with two hydraulic arms and a set of video cameras that provide a view of its surroundings to its operator across a wireless link. It has been developed by TATRC in collaboration with Vecna Technologies, a company based in Maryland that invented the robot.

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