Ack! It's Don't Ask Don't Tell.....Again!

Surprise! (not really)

General Peter Pace, good military man that he is, defers to and supports official policy (“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” or DADT) but makes the egregious error of thinking he was speaking to human beings when in reality he was speaking to reporters and also offers an aside on his personal beliefs, that he was raised with the belief ….gasp!....that homosexuality is immoral.

Why if one believes the Christianphobic press machine, this is as outrageous a thing as if he said he actually believed in the 10 Commandments! (If one can be ‘homophobic’ simply by not believing homosexuality is moral, the press can be ‘Christianphobic’ for insisting a Christian belief is ‘bigoted’)

Now that an aged moderate (but pro-defense) Republican has come out calling a Christian belief ‘bigoted’ by reversing his position on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, Captain’s Quarters has chimed in on the topic (where Captain Ed is, alas, un-typically WAY off-base this time). There’s a lot of popping sounds in the comments section drowning out the few comments by people who understand the real issue….and the real issue is this:

Until separate sleeping and hygiene facilities that are provided in every possible field situation can be reasonably guaranteed to be equal to a female’s vis-à-vis heterosexual male and vice versa -- how will (insert name here)’s sense of personal privacy and freedom from harassment be protected? Doesn’t (insert name here) have as much of a right to not be quartered with a homosexual of the same sex as (insert name here) does to not be quartered with a heterosexual of the opposite sex? (And isn’t all this PC gender-speak lovely?)

An Illustrative Tale (all quotes approximate since it has been 25 years)

One of my most interesting off-duty moments while stationed at Keflavik NAS (Iceland) in the early 80’s came while sitting in my quarters watching the weekly AFRTS cable show called “Feedback”. The show was like a weekly Commander’s Call and bulletin board all wrapped up in one. This particular show was the monthly edition with the senior commanders of the Naval and Air Force components of the Icelandic Defense Force taking telephone questions from people on the base.

There was a grand opening (or reopening ) coming up of a dormitory that would house the unaccompanied Senior Enlisted (mostly Navy Chiefs) with the top floor to be dedicated to housing unaccompanied female naval personnel. This was controversial at the time because the Navy housed its people by units, and the new arrangement would move the females out of ‘female-only’ areas of their respective unit living quarters. The female personnel were not at all happy about this change: they did not want to be separated from their units -- so the phone calls became more and more irate as the show went on.

The AF Colonel was barely containing his enjoyment at his counterpart’s difficulty in fielding the tough questions, when the Navy Captain finally blurted out at the last questioner that he really “didn’t see the problem” with or "understand everyone's resistance" to the move and that this new arrangement would help “protect the females from ‘all the predatory’ males”…..when the female caller responded with heartfelt concern:

‘But who is going to protect me from all the females?”

The Colonel and Captain’ jaws dropped and crickets chirped for a while….

Then the Captain responded sheepishly with:

‘um, ah, we like to think that we don’t have that kind of problem …..

And the show wrapped up faster than you can say "DADT".

So all you people who say it won’t be a problem to lower the bar of acceptable behavior and allow homosexuals to openly serve in the military and that it won’t be prejudicial to good order and discipline, I hear:

‘um, ah, we like to think that we won’t have that kind of problem …..

Epilogue:

Navy Chiefs at ‘Kef’ were extremely heavy-handed in many things, and among them were being especially aggressive in gathering females in areas off-limits to junior enlisted without an invitation. A couple of months after the dorm was occupied, ‘someone’ (no doubt a junior enlisted male) pulled the fire alarm of the dorm in question. I was treated to quite a good show from my ‘accompanied’ quarters: all those flashing lights, with Chiefs and ladies milling around in the cold after being made to evacuate their Toga Party on the second floor, but not having enough clothes on to go anywhere else.

Extra Homework: Advanced Reading Topic

Talk about the tyranny of the minority!

Can anyone believe we would still be rehashing this as a ‘civil rights’ issue if NORC hadn’t chickened out and gamed the data summaries to hide the fact that homosexuals make up closer to 1% of the population instead of 3%?

For those who might not remember or be familiar with the study, the normally respected and disciplined NORC tried to pawn off ‘3%’ to the population in their study/book: “Sex in America”, in 1994. They did it by drawing the circle around the definition of homosexuality in an extremely broad context. All it did was piss off those (primarily religious conservatives) who thought it should be less than 1% on the one hand, and pro-homosexual activists that thought it should be 10% or more on the other. I think the end result was that hardly anybody actually read the book or studied the data provided. I highly recommend it. Read it and see for yourself what YOU think the data indicates.

Update 03/25/07 - corrected another fat-fingered typo

About that "Don't Ask Don't Tell" So-Called 'Study'

It was a 'study group' of retired senior zeros. THEY CONDUCTED SURVEYS OF PEOPLE'S OPINIONS. I'll get to the so-called 'bipartisan' bit in a minute.

I recently told a late commenter to an earlier post of mine:

I believe one should always argue the data and judge the source by the data, not the data by the source.

The 'study' report gives no REAL data that supports the repeal of the DADT, but that doesn't stop them from asserting that it should be repealed because there is no real data (as they see it) that supports its continuance. This report is at the very least a mere issue advocacy PR release. Is it something else? Let's see.

Now having judged the 'data' (what the source had to say) let us look at the source a little more closely and with some earned skepticism.

I've never heard of the source of the study before: The Palm Center. Nice, friendly, name....What is it?

From their website:

The Palm Center, formerly the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, uses rigorous social science to inform public discussions of controversial social issues, enabling policy outcomes to be informed more by evidence than by emotion. Our data-driven approach is premised on the notion that the public makes wise choices on social issues when high quality information is available.

The Center promotes the interdisciplinary analysis of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other marginalized sexual identities in the armed forces by forging a community of scholars, creating a forum for information exchange and debate, offering itself as a launching point for researchers who need access to data and scholarly networks, and supporting graduate student training.

The Center's ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell Project’ will continue to be its first priority under its new name – The Michael D. Palm Center. The goal of the DADT Project is to improve the quality of information available to public deliberations about the military policy.

So, the center's whole reason for its existence is to promote this kind of s*** as science (I love the hilarious claim of 'rigorous social science' - who says engineers don't have a sense of humor?). All the while hiding behind the 'bipartisan' disclaimer. How much press would this tripe have received if it the press release read "Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military Study Calls For the End of DADT"?

George Carlin once said something to the effect of: "Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out."

That sounds about right. Oh, and unless study techniques and data are forthcoming very quickly, I will have to call this BS 'study' PROPAGANDA!

Update 9Jun08 @2300Hrs: I've been commenting on this topic over at Box Turtle Bulletin, and have been waiting patiently for someone to pick up on the ramifications of my asserting the 'study' has a propaganda stink. Why? Because I am OF the surveyed population, and am a part of it at least as much if not more than a lot of retired generals: I am still close to my once-2lts who are now approaching flag rank, my Son is now on a base in Japan, and another significant other (don't know if this is still sensitive info and so will not reveal the relationship at this time) is headed for Afghanistan very soon. Are my opinions and reasons for them a form of bigotry? Hardly. I assert that the insistence that I must think other than I do under some PC mandate could be viewed as a form of fascism. (thank you, Jonah Goldberg). Oh, and as anyone who has read this blog for any length of time is well aware, some of my thoughts on DADT can be found here.

Update 2, 20Jul08, 2107hrs. Visited the Box Turtle Bulletin to see if any more comments of interest had materialized. Saw only one worth replying to. Saw another one from some swell guy(?) calling himself 'Ben in Oakland' who went off on a long tirade about something. I think he's upset just because I and other heterosexuals in the military don't want to sleep with him. Evidently that makes guys like me evil.

Don't Ask Don't Tell Issue: Its Back...Again

President Obama, finally receiving pushback in his efforts to Socialize the United States of America to date, now seeks to subvert the only part of the Federal Government that is viewed positively by the American public: The Military. And it's all just to appease the radical 'homosexual activist' subset of an already small minority of the population. At Pajamas Media, I've posted my 2 cents, including reusing some point's I've made already earlier here and elsewhere:

The criteria as to what is acceptable in the military has not changed, nor should it to appease some tyrannical minority’s demand of not only acceptance but of ‘endorsement’. In the military, what delineates that which is acceptable conduct and behaviors from the unacceptable is how this this single question is answered:

Is it predjudicial to the good order and discipline of the Armed Forces of the United States?

DADT, while IMHO not a perfect solution, has worked because it focuses on conduct and behavior, and generally fits within the larger construct of required behaviors of all types.
All this bleating about ‘civil rights’ is rather limited in scope and focused on only the rights of that tyrannical minority don’t you think? Until separate sleeping and hygiene facilities that are provided in every possible field situation can be reasonably guaranteed to be equal to a heterosexual female’s vis-à-vis heterosexual male and vice versa — how will (insert heterosexual’s name here)’s sense of personal privacy and freedom from harassment be protected? Doesn’t (insert heterosexual’s name here) have as much of a right to not be quartered with a homosexual of the same sex as (insert name here) to not be quartered with a heterosexual of the opposite sex? (And isn’t all this PC gender-speak lovely?)

For the record, lest I (~sigh~once again) be accused of a being a 'homophobe'. Hardly. I am completely indifferent to it in my public life and the civilian workplace. Personally, I find the concept of 'exclusive homosexuality' itself to be in the grand scheme of things: 'pointless'. But that hasn't kept me from liking and respecting coworkers on their merits or not liking them and disrespecting them when warranted for a lack thereof.

William Hartung: You got Yer'self a Reckoning a'Coming Boy!

I'm going to take this craptastic, yet all so formulaic and predictable op-ed piece by William Hartung apart ...... piece by piece.

William Hartung describing the most inches of column he ever wrote without perverting
reality to serve his ideological bent. 

Everybody ready? All settled in? Then without further ado let’s throw ole Hartung’s Op Ed up on the slab, drain the corpse, and do the postmortem.

Don’t rush forward on the F-35 

By William D. Hartung 

To hear Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon tell it, the myriad problems with the F-35 combat aircraft are all behind us, and it is time to dramatically ramp up production of the plane. Nothing could be further from the truth. The plane continues to have basic problems with engine performance, software development, operating costs, maintenance, and reliability that suggest the Pentagon and the military services should proceed with caution.

This is a CLASSIC ‘Hartung’ opener. He begins with a scurilous attack: calling a dehumanized Lockheed Martin and Pentagon ‘liars’ [Hartung claims “they” say ‘x’ but Hartung says it is not ‘true’!]. Hartung then follows with an intentionally over-generalized laundry list of things that he asserts are in the ‘present tense’ (“The plane continues to have basic problems”) instead of observing these things he lists have occurred (more or less--usually less than how he describes them) and are either already in the past, or are being addressed per a viable plan now in execution. In any case, his over–generalization obfuscates events and encourages the casual reader to assume all the problems are significant and peculiar to the F-35 in the first place, when for the most part, these kinds of ‘problems’ have been part and parcel with any advanced aircraft development program since…..ever.

Hartung’s opening is ‘battlefield prep’. We’ve noted before the use of P.A.C.E. by the faux ‘reformers’ and this is a Hartung-style invocation of same. Hartung employs it for the same reason(s) POGO et al employ it: It is critical to the trite and cliché polemic-to-follow that Hartung bases his pitch upon two fundamental assumptions--which the Faux Military Reform crowd unvaryingly ground the bulk of their argumentation. These bases are:

1) A ‘problem’ is something that is never overcome or overtaken by events until it is proven to the ‘reformers’ satisfaction. And one wonders if it can ever REALLY be proven to be a thing of the past to the ‘reformer’ mind.

2) Closely related to #1 is the usually inferred assertion that no weapon system should be fielded until it is ‘mature’ (as decided by the ‘reformers’) vs. ‘mature enough’ (as decided BY THE OPERATORS). I would call the assertion “a belief” except I’m not nearly naïve enough to think they really believe what they want everyone else to accept.

Neither of these bases have any logical relationship to any generic real-world problem-solving nor program management activities, much less any proximity to weapon-system specific development experience. While it is exceedingly rare for a ‘Reformer’ to openly acknowledge these tenets, they are among the pillars of their basic doctrine.
Both bases of ‘reformer’ argumentation will be seen in full display through the rest of Hartung’s bloviating, but I consider the second basis the more onerous. It is easy for the average reader to catch on when the ‘reformers’ inevitably cling to claims about a specific problem too long after it is apparent it is no longer a problem to the average person. But as Hartung and his ilk are chronic agitators and manipulators of the technologically ignorant, those whom the ‘reformers’ gull into actually believing a weapon system COULD be ‘matured’ (to some unspoken and/or poorly defined standard BTW) before it is in the hands of the operators are MORE vulnerable. After all, most people have no idea of the amount of work is behind even the most trivial technology they use every day. Without these presumptive non-truths propping up the protestations, their  hollow arguments immediately crumble and their motives become openly suspect to anyone applying the 'reasonable man test. I bring out this point upfront because just by remembering these are the key major premises, the reader is forewarned (and thus forearmed) to enjoy the rest of this ‘Fisking’ of Hartung’s yellow-press editorializing.
The ‘reformers’ chant their mantras of “risk”, “maturity”, etc.to explain their motivations, but this in spite of the fact that no one can show us such a case EVER occurring where a fully-functional weapon system emerged as a fully effective ‘whole’ coming out of the development phase. Nor has anyone ever adequately described how it could even be ‘possible’ without introducing more unspoken and equally erroneous ‘reformer’ assumptions into the equation. I’ve stated what I believe, but I leave it to the reader to decide if Hartung and his ilk are victims of their own bizarre ideology and rhetoric and therefore are of a kind with the people J.R. Pierce (I never tire of that guy!) identified in his famous dictum

Novices in mathematics, science, or engineering are forever demanding infallible, universal, mechanical methods for solving problems.

....Or not.

Let’s continue dissecting Hartung’s rant….

If the F-35 isn’t ready for prime time, what’s the rush? The answer can be summed up in one word: politics. The decision to approve the Marines’ version of the plane for Initial Operating Capability (IOC) before the end of this year and the recent proposal to fund over 450 planes in the next several years are designed to make the F-35 program “too big to fail.” Once production reaches a certain tipping point, it will become even harder for members of Congress, independent experts, or taxpayers to slow down or exert control over the program.

See how after setting up his presumptive preface (“If the F-35 isn’t ready for prime time..”) Hartung works from the assumption the reader has accepted his presumption and THEN builds a Strawman argument (or “begs the question”) :

” … what’s the rush? The answer can be summed up in one word: politics.”?

Hartung then attempts to suck the reader into his way of thinking by making more unsupported assertions up front. Hartung desires the slow-witted among us to view the F-35 program as HE says it is, not what those who are working the program say it is. And on a program that has seen its share of delays due more to preemptive programmatic decisions (risk avoidance) and external influences (stretching SDD to reduce concurrency) than from any real manifestations of technical issues (2 years), 

Hartung slimes on the idea that working on a bulk buy to lower unit costs at this time is a “rush”? Eventually Hartung will get around to listing ‘problems’ but not until (in typical Hartung fashion) he beats the jungle drums more in the effort to get the tribe lathered up and buy into his coming attempts at misdirection. 

I note that in his observation about when a program moves further down the road it becomes harder to ‘control’ he REALLY means it will be harder for the Faux Reformers to terminate it. After all, it is part of basic program and project management common knowledge that the further any project gets down the road, the fewer opportunities there are to change it, if only because there is less in the future that can be influenced as the present becomes past. So…. Freaking…. what? Even Hartung’s publisher of his execrable books knows that is even a truism for a simple book project. 

Note the reference to 'independent experts'. While there are always a few outside a program, they are never who the 'reformers' are really referring to. When a Hartung, or other 'reformer' say this kind of thing, what they are referring to is their fellow travelers in the anti-defense industry (more on this later).

What next?……

What needs to be fixed before the F-35 is determined to be adequate to join the active force? Let’s start with the engine. On June 23 of last year an F-35’s engine caught on fire while the plane was taxiing on the runway at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Now, nearly a year later, a new report from the Air Force’s Accident Investigation Board attributed the fire to a catastrophic failure of the engine. So far, no long-term solution has been found to the problems identified by the accident investigation board. An April report by the Government Accountability Office has described the reliability of the engine as “very poor (less than half of what it should be).”

Hartung often goes more than two paragraphs without making any concrete assertions before he starts introducing any specificity. I presume there was column-space limitation that curtailed his stem-winding this go-around. In any case, here he asserts, knowingly or unknowingly, two falsehoods.

In the first case, he characterizes the state of the permanent fix for the F135 engine as “no long-term solution has been found”. He would have been more accurate and far less deceptive if he had stated “no long-term solution selection has been publically announced”, as it has been ‘in all the papers’ that Pratt and Whitney had identified a number of options for the program to pick from, and that it is essentially a matter of evaluating the options and selecting the best option to follow.. But that isn’t hopeless sounding at all, certainly not as dire as Hartung’s little misdirection makes things sound does it? There is also no guarantee, because there is no need, that a detailed description of the final fix will even be announced.

In the second assertion, Hartung commits the Biased Sample (Cherry Picking) logical fallacy by holding up the GAO report as evidence and conveniently excluding uncontested Pratt and Whitney responses to same.

Hartung now proceeds to speak of the past as if 1) It matters and 2) treat the past as indicative of the present and future. This time, it is ‘ALIS’.

Problems have also plagued the plane’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), which is needed to keep the F-35 up and running. As Mandy Smithberger of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight puts it, “ALIS is the core to making sure the F-35 functions.” A report last year by the Pentagon’s independent testing office noted that the system had been “fielded with deficiencies.” In April, F-35 maintainers told members of the House Armed Services committee that 80 percent of the problems identified by ALIS were “false positives.” In addition, as Smithberger has noted, the rush to deployment means that there will be no careful assessment of how changes in ALIS affect other aspects of the aircraft’s performance.

The funniest thing about this paragraph is I’m pretty sure neither Hartung nor Smithberger really know what the true scope and function of ‘ALIS’ is, but wha-ta-hay, let’s dissect some more.
First off, these guys apparently didn’t get the memo that the portable ‘ALIS’ was used in the Recent OT-1 aboard the USS Wasp. Software and hardware updates are pretty much going to plan. One exception is the 'downlink' to maintenance on inbound jets, which won’t be seen until Block 4. Personally, I don’t think that is a bad thing, as it is really evolved DoD security requirements driving the delay. The ‘false positives’ Mandy is quoted as all worried about are on their way to being overcome already. Maybe if Mandy had gone to a better school, y’know—an “Engineering College”, then advanced technology wouldn’t seem so daunting to her. That is, assuming she believes the crap she writes.

Mandy Smithberger, for those who haven’t been following the ‘reformer’ industry as closely as I have lo these many years, is the next-gen ‘Winslow Wheeler’ at POGO. For those who don’t know what “the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight” is…it’s a long story. Bottom line, it is a jobs program for anti-defense miscreants sponsored by one Phil Straus: an under-achieving-trust-fund-baby-cum-itinerant-‘photographer’ who is also, BTW, the Chairman of the Board of “Mother Jones”.

Chairman Phil Strauss: Intellect held hostage by Ideology

Mandy Smithberger, is a long-time POGOette who has only recently returned to the POGO sty from a finishing school of sorts. She dropped off POGO’s payroll for a while (to get her network mojo going with Congress and elsewhere I presume) spending time as a part-time “National Security Staffer” for a cheapa** Leftard Congresswoman whose main claim to fame is she didn’t get kill’t in the runup to, or climax of, the Jim Jones tragedy. Sure, Mandy looks pretty “cleaned-up’ nowadays, but just a few of years ago she was showing a more candid side:

Mandy Smithberger (2011) letting out a little more of the inner feral SJW than thse days, Nothing says 'serious defense thinker' than a little body-modification involving piercings in places prone to infection.     

So why is it important you know the relationship between these people? Because, as it has been known for quite some time, the ‘reform’ crowd collude and collaborate on their special targets, Their very tight clown network habitually use each other’s quotes and mutually cite or refer to each other as 'experts' in fields where the real experts wouldn’t let them in the door to call for a tow. It is more classic application of the P.A.C.E. approach.. 

Let's move on to the next bit of spittle on the floor shall we?

There have also been serious problems with the helmet that is supposed to serve as an F-35 pilot’s eyes in the sky. Until the helmet is working to full capacity, the ability of an F-35 to drop bombs accurately or recognize enemy fighters will be impaired. And in April, the Pentagon’s office of independent testing noted that in the event of a failure of the helmet, a pilot would not be able to see what is happening below or behind the plane.

In typical ‘Reform’ fashion, Hartung artfully ignores 1) the fact that the helmet’s capabilities are every bit under development as the rest of the plane, 2) the needed capabilities weren’t even known to be possible when the program began but were seen as desirous and worth the effort, and 3) that the capabilities are coming online in accordance with the current plan. 

He makes his unqualified and un-quantified assertion that the operators will be ‘impaired’ until the helmet is developed without acknowledging with the fact that the operators consider the initial capability sufficient for now (and some already say it is better than what it replaces) AND the Gen III helmet is planned by AF IOC next year. 

It IS quaint that Hartung and his fellow travelers feel qualified to presume they know better what is good for the Marine Corps than the Marine Corps does. That is if you believe THEY believe the drivel they are spreading and aren’t just trying to stop or curtail yet another program. BTW: the second option would make them lying b*stards of the worst kind…among other things.
The last assertion Hartung makes is a howler. Somebody tell him 1) no one else can even see through their plane on their BEST day and 2) the pilot doesn’t have to look behind him or use his helmet to ‘see’(eyeball) anything behind him as he can ‘see’ it on his panel if he or she desires. In any case, the rest of the F-35 systems still provide the pilot with situational awareness superior to any other candidate Hartung could imagine….if he could 'imagine' that is.

Declaring planes ready before they can actually meet basic performance standards is not a responsible approach to fielding an aircraft. Down the road, many of the problems that have yet to be resolved will require expensive retrofits of planes already in the force.

I could really pick on Hartung here and challenge him on exactly what he means by ‘basic’ performance standards, but the real problem is he’s F.O.S. about what kind of capability EVER can be initially fielded, because EVEN IF A WEAPON WAS PERFECT from the first article rolling out the door, the operators are the ones that will mature the capability over time. His claim is essentially 'not doing the impossible is irresponsible'. No. What IS irresponsible, is his penchant for making these kind of asinine assertions. It is yet another typical ‘Reformer’ tactic: ignore the real expectations set by the acquisition system and complain that the possible isn’t ‘enough’.

Hartung begins his signoff by making the now-cliché assertion that the F-35 is somehow ‘flawed’ because it is a multi-role fighter and attack aircraft:

The specific performance issues cited above don’t address a more fundamental problem with the F-35. The program is grounded in a basic conceptual flaw. Expecting variants of the same aircraft to serve as a fighter, a bomber, a close air support aircraft, and a plane that can land on Navy carriers and do vertical take off and landing for the Marines has resulted in design compromises that means it does none of these things as well as it should, given its immense cost.

Why, oddly enough, the above is EXACTLY the kind of stupid-think one would expect from a ‘journalist’ who came out years ago as a peace-at-any-price social activist and who I note STILL has NO relevant experience or knowledge base upon which to make such a judgement. If one did have the relevant qualifications, one might ask oneself why it is then that among the most produced aircraft in the post Korean-War era, nearly all of them are multi-role fighters? Hartung is just being an over-the-top idiot on this point, but he’s not alone. This has become ‘Reformer’ Canon, so expect it to persist years after FOC.

Current plans call for an average expenditure of over $12 billion per year for procurement of the F-35 through 2038, a figure that will be unsustainable unless other proposed programs like a new tanker, a new bomber, and a new generation of more capable unmanned aerial vehicles are substantially scaled back.

Gee. More Hartung-Brand pronouncements (“will be unsustainable unless X, Y, or Z”) that exclude the little point that the F-35 costs are coming down into current 4th Generation cost territory (as planned) and I think what Hartung fears most about the bulk buy is that if it happens then the costs will almost certainly continue to drop faster. I note here (again) that the only way the procurement of the F-35 goes through to 2038 is if they are successful AND the need for as many as planned continues. The most important thing for keeping total acquisition cost down is not the total number to be bought, but the rate at which they are bought: more ‘early’ equals more ‘cheaper’.

‘Dropping names’ as he does when mentioning new 'bombers' and new 'UAVs' reminds me of another favorite ‘reformer’ tactic: always promote the last program or the next program over the current program: lather, rinse, repeat.

Unless further, realistic testing can demonstrate that the F-35 can adequately perform all of its proposed missions, it’s not worth the cost. The Pentagon should slow down and make sure it knows what it’s getting before it spends tens of billions of additional taxpayer dollars on the F-35. And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) should subject the program to close scrutiny during his committee’s proposed strategic review of major acquisition programs.

Ah, the final ‘pronouncement’. The DoD Customers (even the Navy) , US Partners, and FMS Customers know exactly what they are getting. Hartung just wants everyone to agree with his crap. This last paragraph does perhaps identify who his real target audience is though. I don’t think even McCain is that stupid, but maybe his constituents are?

Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

No. Hartung’s a rabid anti-defense shill from within the Faux Reform Astroturf Noise Machine. He'd be a loyal babbler if he was still a journalist, and the CIP has it's toes in many things 'left', so Hartung could be considered a Stalwart operating inside a Fellow Traveler network.

Clueless Stanford Law School Dean

That’s not TOO redundant is it?
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has put up a recent series of interesting posts that questions whether Stanford Law School is in compliance with the Solomon Act which (as described in Powerline):

…requires schools receiving federal funding to give access to military representatives for recruiting purposes, and to treat military recruiters in the same way they treat all other employment recruiters

Powerline has now received correspondence from the Dean of the Stanford Law School that puts up a rather weak case against the military’s Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy among other things, but the most telling point in the whole e-mail from the Dean gets picked up by Scott Johnson at the end. Johnson notes the Deans’ statement:

“[N]o other employer has a rule precluding some students from obtaining employment for reasons wholly irrelevant to their ability to do the work. The military's recruitment policy tells a segment of our community, for reasons that have no bearing whatsoever on their willingness or ability to serve, that they cannot do so because some other people fear or hate them for who they are.”

Johnson first notes that the Dean Kramer is “attributing phobic motives to those who disagree with him” but he then immediately skips forward to the ‘legal aspects’ of the issue (the legal-eagle that he is) and properly points out that is not just ‘recruitment policy’ but the LAW OF THE LAND.
I want to not get into the policy-law distinction though and go back to the ‘phobic motives’ point.

What caught my eye in Dean Kramer’s description was NOT the embedded ‘phobia’ canard at the end. What struck me was the absolute cluelessness of what the military is about and the lack of awareness of the argument behind not permitting open homosexuality in the military. The argument against homosexuals openly serving in the military is the SAME standard by which ALL types of conduct in the military is measured: social activity and behaviors MUST not adversely impact good order and discipline.

Perhaps as a simple civilian, Dean Kramer is unaware that putting on the uniform involves more than just ‘doing a job’ 9 to 5 with 'billable hours': even JAGs may find themselves bunked in a Combat Outpost at some time in their career.

Actually, I covered this a while back when Peter Pace was being attacked over his thoughts on the subject so here’s an excerpt of that earlier post , because the Dean seems like he might need a good example to help him think things through:

...the real issue is this:Until separate sleeping and hygiene facilities that are provided in every possible field situation can be reasonably guaranteed to be equal to a female’s vis-à-vis heterosexual male and vice versa -- how will (insert name here)’s sense of personal privacy and freedom from harassment be protected? Doesn’t (insert name here) have as much of a right to not be quartered with a homosexual of the same sex as (insert name here) does to not be quartered with a heterosexual of the opposite sex? (And isn’t all this PC gender-speak lovely?)

~Sigh~

When I run into ignorami spouting off about things military when they are totally ignorant of what it means to actually be IN the military I want to run their nose up and down my sleeve so they can count the bumps 'till they bleed. (The only thing worse is someone who should know better and still engages in WILLFUL ignorance. They get both sleeves. )

'Carpet Bombing' vs CARPET BOMBING!

Etymological Observations: A Safari into the Semantics of the Left

From the back and forth in my last adventure in the threads at Defense Tech here, it was driven home that industrious but small minds had sometime succeeded in perverting the English language (once again) to suit their purposes. In this specific instance I am referring to the use of the term: 'Carpet Bombing'.

From the thread at the referenced link, two individuals identify air strike activity conducted in wars after Vietnam as 'carpet bombing'. I ruminated as to why this must be, since I distinctly remember interviews and briefings with senior DOD civilian and military leaders where they corrected such mis-perceptions...repeatedly. I specifically remembered the 'repeatedly' part because it seemed that the questioners/interviewers seized on the term in Desert Storm and seized upon it again early during Operation Allied Force. It then reappeared again for Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. The term was not originating within DOD and NOWHERE is it spoken of in military community as an acceptable, much less preferred 'technique' in applying force through Airpower.

It did not take much researching to verify my memories of on the topic during the wars from Desert Storm forward were correct. From a 15 March 1991 briefing during Desert Storm (emphasis mine):

This is the 117, you've seen it. It's been operational now for nearly 10 years. It still represents the state of the art as far as operationally fielded technology. As far as we know, it's never been tracked by any Iraqi radar. It has certainly never been touched by bullets or SAMs or anything else. We operated for 43 days with this aircraft completely invulnerable,so far as we know. As it says, never touched by target defenses.
I want to make a little more on this point here, because with the combination of stealth and precision attack capability in the 117, we were able to attack targets very discretely. We did not carpet bomb downtown Baghdad. As a matter of fact, it's obvious to anyone who has been watching on television, the pictures of Baghdad neighborhoods untouched,people driving around, walking around on the sidewalks, and so forth. We took special care to make sure that we attacked only military targets, and we attacked them quite precisely.
Aircrews were informed to bring home the ordnance if they weren't sure they were locked to the right targets. We made very few mistakes. I'm quite proud of the fact that we achieved high levels of destruction against military targets with minimum collateral damage.

The statement reads as if someone was out there claiming that the US was 'carpet bombing' Baghdad doesn't it? Such claims must have happened more than once: From an article in the Spring 1997 Airpower Journal (emphasis mine):

When news from Basra in early February suggested carpet bombing, Pentagon spokesmen seemed increasingly exasperated. “We never said there would be no collateral damage,” Lt Gen Thomas Kelly complained at one of his afternoon briefings:
What we did say is that our pilots scrupulously adhered to good targeting . . .and in fact flew that target profile to the best of their ability. We go to great lengths . . . to avoid collateral damage. But war is a dirty business, and unfortunately, there will be collateral damage. There's no way one can prohibit it.
Iraq wasn't claiming even five hundred civilian casualties, yet military spokesmen were practically admitting hidden damage. One might have thought Dresden or Tokyo had occurred.

Now we skip forward to 1999, and Operation Allied Force. From a May 1, 1999 Pentagon briefing (again, all emphasis mine) where the briefer describes precision attack against area targets, and specifically how sticks of unguided bombs are laid down in very defined target areas:

One of the things that's been talked about a little bit is targets and collateral damage. We've talked about that a lot. There's some discussion about B-52s being used in carpet type bombing. We don't do that with B-52.
I mentioned yesterday that our B-52s have changed over the years dramatically, with increases to their avionics capability, increases to their GPS capability, increasing in their overall avionics.

[Chart - Prahovo Petroleum Production Storage Facility, Serbia]

This is a target, you've seen many of these before. This is about 1,000 feet long in this area, probably, maybe a couple of hundred feet wide. It's not an atypical target. We have several of those we've seen before.
Next slide.

[Prahovo Petroleum Production Storage Facility, Serbia]

This would be about the lay down pattern of the B-52 today at whatever altitude we want them to fly at. So you can see that, basically, this is not carpet bombing. This would be a perfect target for that type of weapon to hit. There are other targets, assembly areas we could use with the B-52, and it has a very, very capable delivery method with their avionics they have today to attack a target like this with very little collateral damage. As you can see, there wouldn't be much of a problem with anything around here being in the category of collateral damage.
So as we talk about the B-52, it has the capability to attack with standoff weapons or gravity weapons, and these gravity weapons are not dumb bombs anymore because of the avionics we have in the aircraft to make sure that we do, in this case, what would be called precision on that area target.

But it seems there is 'movement' out there who insists on perverting the term 'carpet bombing' for reasons of their own - perhaps as part of a fey attempt to evoke some emotional response among the weaker and more unprepared minds among the masses. I have to conclude as much because the knee-jerk response of crying 'carpet bombing' again emerged in Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. First, from a 31 October 2001 DOD briefing (still my emphasis) on operations in Afghanistan:

Q: Admiral, of all the strikes south of Mazar-e Sharif -- the airstrikes on the Taliban positions, have they all involved precision-guided weapons? Or have the B-52s started to drop strings of 500-pound unguided bombs -- colloquially "carpet bombing" -- now that you have better information on where these divisions are.
Stufflebeem: I'm not sure if it's -- if it's necessary to get into specific mission by mission, but it is -- it is fair to say that we're using both precision and non-precision weapons while attacking Taliban forces -- you know, while they're deployed.
Q: Could use [sic] deterrent carpet bombing and the strings of the unguided bombs against those positions around Mazar-e Sharif?
Stufflebeem: I'm familiar with the term "carpet bombing." I think it's an inaccurate term. It's an old -- an old expression. Heavy bombers have the capacity to carry large loads of weapons, and oftentimes if a target presents itself either in an engagement zone, or when directed, it's possible to release an entire load of bombs at once, in which case -- the real formal term for that is called a "long stick," which has also been called carpet bombing.

So now 'carpet bombing is a 'colloquialism' versus a highly defined term? It is a slippery slope that we seem to be riding.
Now, from an interview that Paul Wolfowitz gave to the BBC in November the same year (more of my emphasis) we see further refutation of the the term 'carpet bombing':

BBC: Can I just ask you first of all about the latest developments in the war in Afghanistan which is that positions north of Kabul are being now carpet bombed,we hear. Is that a change of strategy?

Wolfowitz: I don't think it's a change of strategy. That's a journalistic term, I believe. We are certainly putting very heavy effort against Taliban positions. The strategy from the beginning has been to empower the opposition forces inside Afghanistan to be able to undermine and eventually hopefully overthrow the Taliban.

BBC: But moving from a position where clearly the strikes were one off from surgical to B-52s going in and it looks like carpet bombing to anyone who saw the pictures.

Wolfowitz: Again, I find it -- this is not carpet bombing a la Dresden and World War II. It is one of the reasons, by the way, we did not send (inaudible) from the beginning is, it is twice the size, it covers a significant area, but it's areas that are chosen quite precisely to be front line units. When you're going after front line units you don't take out one soldier at a time.

So even the civilian leadership gets the difference between bombing a city and bombing 'front line' units in the field. A fine point as to why Dresden doesn't meet my high standard for the term 'carpet bombing' is one I will put aside as 1) irrelevant for this argument and 2) a more complex issue than can be tackled in a blog post - Heck, I have read books that have fallen short on the issue.

Finally, we note that the 'carpet bombing' meme survived to OIF, and that the press refuses to make/see the distinction between precision use of unguided weapons and 'carpet bombing' as a convenient scare term. From a March 3, 2003 briefing at the Pentagon we find the now-retired General McChrystal jumping in to correct a questioner on the topic:

Q: Torie, on the use of the heavy bombers -- and I address this to the general primarily -- the B-1s, B-2s and B-52s, can you tell what kind of ordnance they're dropping? The B-52 is dropping dumb bombs, what we used to call carpet bombing, on the Republican Guard troops?

McChrystal: Sir, they are not. They are dropping a combination of munitions, a large number of precision munitions. So there's really not carpet bombing occurring.

I would have loved to know who asked that question. The phrasing dismisses the distinction that exists between carpet bombing and techniques into a simple change or terms for the same thing.

You don't have to look hard for where the MSM gets their ideas on 'carpet bombing'. Just enter the terms "carpet bombing" with the name of the war you are interested in in your search engine and you get such lovely link suggestions:

"Operation Desert Slaughter": http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Oper_Desert_Slaughter_1991

PBS Frontline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/weapons/b52.html

Rabid Montclair State University faculty (A Stalinist-English Teacher?-ROFLMAO!):
http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/gulf-war-fingrut.html

Project on Defense Alternatives:
http://www.comw.org/pda/0201oef.html

...you get the drift. All the usual 'Blame America First' scumb...er...suspects.

Merrill McPeak (Blind Pig) Finds an Acorn

And Max Boot then Glenn Reynolds take issue with it.

Even a University of Tennessee Law Professor finds Gen Merrill McPeak 'unpersuasive'. (Even though the General for once in his political-military career is on the right side of the argument)

I would also ask Max Boot how those in today's military could gauge the 'corrosiveness' of women on the battlefield? Since none serving (active duty anyway) can remember what it was like before modern times - back when women were relatively scarce in the military?

I'm reading Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society at the moment, and there's a lot in the book relevant to most major modern societal issues. I would commend it to Max Boot and Professor Reynold's: especially as it concerns the observation that societal norms are not the product of ignorance and inattention, but the product of systemic processes.

Systemic processes can bring into play more knowledge for decision-making purposes, through the interactions and mutual accommodations of many individuals, than any one of those individuals [participants] possesses. (p.16)

Max Boot, in his Commentary Contentions article trots out the old 'other militaries are doing it' argument [Did Moms stop using the Socratic "if everybody else jumped off a bridge would you do it?" stopper after my generation?]. He then goes off the deep end:

One would think that the presence of women would do even more than the presence of gays to undermine “male bonding.” Yet women have been granted admittance into almost all military occupations, in roles including flying fighter jets as McPeak once did. They are present on all major and most minor bases even in war zones. They frequently and regularly circulate on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan. What evidence is there that their presence has undermined combat effectiveness? And if it hasn’t, why would the presence of un-closeted gays be more corrosive than that of women?

'Evidence'? Hmmm. I'll answer his first question, which will dispense with the second.

First it must be recognized that such 'problems' are real and ongoing:

Some shore commands in the Norfolk, Va., area report that up to 34 percent of their billets are filled by pregnant sailors, and commanders are complaining about a “lack of proper manning to conduct their mission,” according to a Naval Inspector General report.

Second, it must be recognized that there is evidence that, I assume for politically correct reasons, such information is routinely suppressed or played down, it has been going on for years, and is a current problem.

I'm not picking on the Navy here: it is just a more obvious problem when you are structured to live, deploy and fight in geographically discrete units (aka 'ships'). The problem is one that affects all the services to varying degrees.

I enjoy the writings of both Max Boot and Professor Reynolds: they both have pretty good instincts, but they are both wrong on on repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell". I am guessing both Professor Reynolds and Max Boot view this as some sort of 'equal rights' issue instead of a military effectiveness issue. It would help both of them to recognize the military as a unique sub-culture in America, with unique limitations on civil rights, freely acknowledged by its members in taking an oath and accepted for the duration of our service.

I would only add that I find Max Boot's attitude somewhat irritating, but only because he suffers from the same shortcomings found in so many of those analysts and historians that are involved with the military, but are not of the military: not a part of the continuum of "systemic processes" that "can bring into play more knowledge for decision-making purposes, through the interactions and mutual accommodations of many individuals", over two centuries of the American military experience.

This is not a case of 'special pleading'. I assume ALL subcultures within the greater American civilization have systemic processes that have evolved and are unique to their groups (why would they not?). I claim no insight of any to which I do not also belong. I merely insist others do not claim relevant knowledge of mine in return.

Almost forgot: 'Heh'.

P.S. Recommended reading on Women in the Military: Coed Combat

Air Force 'Force Reshaping' Sales Pitch. Part 4

For the story so far, see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

As mentioned earlier, Part 4 is where we will examine the part of the AF brief where they inadvertently highlight the US military’s slide into ‘superpower-lite’ status”. Since this turned into a particularly long piece, we will now defer the AF’s delusional ‘vision’ of the ‘better, cheaper, faster’ mantra as a follow-on in Part 5.

And now.... Part 4

Slide 13 is a 'marvel'.

Hmmmm, There is Something Missing….

What makes this slide extremely interesting is as much about what not shown as anything else, so we will give it special attention. While this slide is used as a simple attention-getter in preparation to the AF’s next point, it gives hints about so much of what has happened to the AF since 1989, while it avoids giving any information that would take the audience ‘off-message’. Indeed, the missing information must surely be considered ‘counter-message’ by HQAF.

As presented, this slide is little more than factoids on a timeline. To be useful as anything more, one needs to have a good grasp of the ‘whys’ behind the numbers. But an understanding of the ‘whys’ would also tend to subvert the AF’s message. Remember: The ‘message’ the AF is trying to sell is that 'force reshaping’ -- AKA force(d) reductions -- are necessary”!

There is a major intermediate ‘conceptual’ step that occurred between 1989 and 2006. Although a pure cynic might think it was skipped over only because it would be ‘counter message’, it was most likely not mentioned due to a combination of slide space considerations and the fact that in implementation, the intermediate step became little more than a whistle stop on the way to current force constructs, which would have made it harder to couch comparable numbers for that step on this slide. Therefore, I will generously chalk the omission up as due to chartsmanship and sloth instead of intent. As the AF suffered a major purge in 1993-7 (discussed below) it is also entirely possible that the 'functionary' that built the slide is a ‘newbie’ and has little or no awareness of what is missing.

Fact: Today’s ‘2006’ force construct is largely an outcome of Les Aspin’s (Clinton’s first SecDef) efforts to gut the military.

It is quite remarkable how much of our current perspectives on defense spending can be traced all the way back to Clinton, Aspin, and a Democrat-controlled Congress that was salivating at the thought of meting out the ‘Peace Dividend’ to their various pet projects and constituencies. If anything, the current force posture and the predicament the military is in are more than anything a clear statement about how disastrous and lasting the impact of an incompetent ideologue such as Aspin can be. This is what happens when a twit is given free reign over the DoD for even a short tenure (9 months!) by a feckless ‘party boy’ in the Oval Office.

Now: On to the missing piece!
The ‘step’ that is missing was ‘The Base Force’ (previously mentioned here, and for Lorna Jaffe’s definitive paper on the topic see here. What became "The Base Force" can be largely credited to then-JCS Chairman Colin Powell, and a few visionaries who picked up early on the decline of the Soviet Union and the impacts of President Reagan’s direct confrontation with the Evil Empire. Gen. Powell may not have been the originator, but he sure recognized the need and provided the horsepower that developed the Base Force concept.

The ‘Base Force’ construct was conceived as a rational way forward to draw down the size and composition of the post-Cold War military in a way that also allowed for future defense need uncertainties that the U.S would face as the sole remaining ‘superpower’. It wasn’t perfect of course, but it was at least based upon reasonable assumptions and prudence. At the time, Aspin was HASC Chairman---or rather I should say “was a HASC Chairman who envisioned that he alone understood what kind of military that was needed in the future”. Powell’s run-ins with Aspin on the subject were public and loud. I dare say it was one of the main reasons Aspin got the SecDef job, much to the chagrin of too many troopers in Somalia a short time later.

Overshadowing even his 'Blackhawk Down' moment in lasting impact, Aspin implemented what he called the ‘Bottom Up Review’ (BUR) which gamed all the analyses to arrive at the (his) predetermined conclusions. If Aspin got information he didn’t want, he ignored it: nothing would stop him from slashing the military to well below the levels required for the US to fulfill its superpower responsibilities and commitments.

While the objective of saving the almighty dollar was the most 'popular' excuse for this endeavor, in my opinion Aspin was determined to ‘demilitarize’ the US at any cost to our security and safety—and I stand on his voting record in Congress to say it.

Here’s a cheerful thought: The next Congress looks like it is going to be run by all the 60’s retreads who now have seniority, so expect ‘Aspinesque’ idiocy to be issuing forth soon. As far as National Defense needs go, we are entering another dark age. Remember, President George H. Bush lost re-election on the heels of fighting and winning exactly the kind of war the Base Force was designed to handle. But sometime between 1991 and the election in 1992 the winning political battle cry would become: “It’s the ‘The Economy Stupid”.

And so this chart rushes past any mention of “Why” we are continuing what might one day be acknowledged as our largest and longest running defense misstep in the 20th and possibly the 21st century: the gutting of the DoD (and the Air Force as a subset thereof).

There are a couple of gems here as well…

Force Sizing Basis
First, note the particular differences in ‘strategy’ as it is addressed in each column. This is a pretty ‘interesting’ summary of the decline in our national defense objectives over the last 15 years.

Reading across the top we can see that we are expected to believe we have gone from planning against an overarching known threat (threat-based), to a ‘capabilities-based’ planning approach, to a ‘capabilities-based & budget-constrained’ planning approach. If this wasn’t such a serious topic, this little twist on reality would be hilarious. Why? It is because even when we were using ‘threat-based’ planning, we were ‘budget-constrained’ --- as we (properly) have been since the end of WWII. Paul Kennedy’s fantasies aside, as a nation we have not had to choose between guns and butter since 1945.

What the ‘strategy’ line on the slide really tells us is that the AF 'leadership':
1. Cannot or is unwilling to make the case to expand the budget,
2. Cannot or is unwilling to even recognize the need to expand the budget, or
3. There are leadership 'factions' guilty of one or the other.

Basing Concept
I just LOVE this part. Now the AF is telling its Airmen that the ‘expeditionary’ concept so prominently employed today is only ‘semi-expeditionary’! So I suppose things are really going to be ‘expeditionary’ in the future?!

The ‘expeditionary’ idea was conceived as an option to deal with the reduced force structure and projected associated reduced overseas basing footprint (but didn’t have the neat shades-of-Black-Jack-Pershing moniker at the time). It became absolutely necessary in the wake of Aspin’s BUR debacle, and now AF management is calling today’s concept ‘semi-expeditionary’? If the current situation is ‘semi-expeditionary’ then ‘future expeditionary’ has to translate into English as: ‘permanently deployed’. Yep, I can see a lot of people wanting to spend 20-30 years forward-deployed. Good luck with that!

And so now HQAF sets up the audience for the bloody details by first spreading a little pablum:

Oh, tell us! Please!

Whoah!

This slide is…is…-- Well I’ll just hit each point they try to make and you can come to your own conclusions. The second row will be dealt with last because that is the ‘money shot’ as far as I’m concerned.

First Row: Environments

The 20th Century was 'predictable'? Outside of two world wars that were telegraphed to us from a long way off before we got involved, what exactly was predictable about it? The 20th Century was about ‘conventional’ threats? Again, outside the two world wars, what was ‘conventional’ about them?

The only thing that makes the 20th Century 'predictable' is that it is now ‘history’.

Asymmetric threats are a new problem? For reference, here are some asymmetrical threat situations that the US has had to deal with in the 20th Century:

• 1910-1916 Mexican Expedition
• 1909-1933 Intervention in Nicaragua and,
• Most of the rest of these as well as,
• The entire Vietnam War involved dealing with asymmetric threats.

Third Row: “Force vs. Effects Focus”

This line looks like a ‘slide filler’. Either that or a ‘Butter Bar’ with no prior enlisted experience wrote it. We were never ‘geographically focused’ except in the respect that we set our butts in geographic regions necessary to address whatever the national defense needs required. We had forces forward-deployed because the threat they faced was forward deployed AND leaning forward, and we had unilaterally decided to give them the initiative (lest we be thought of as "provacative"!) in any combat scenario: hence the term ‘tripwire’ to describe our (NATO’s) posture. We would give up too much too fast if we hadn’t also been ‘forward deployed’. My fighter squadron wasn’t in Iceland because of the beaches, fiords, or volcanoes. It was there because the Soviets were very keen on sending submarines, Bear bombers, and other players down the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap so they could operate off the coast of the United States (frequently at a surprisingly high tempo), and pull good duty in the Worker’s Paradise. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to keep an eye on them as they came by.

“Effects Focus”?

We have always been an “effects-focused” force. We bomb = they die. This is just recognizing that the desired effects we’re looking for are somewhat different than before, or to put it another way: “We bomb = they die but also some other ‘they’ is ALSO terribly inconvenienced”. This is actually still an awfully abstract concept to be touting as a solution to anything. This concept has very vocal defenders and opponents in DoD, and what an “effects-based” air campaign looks like is still evolving. But it IS a really cool sounding concept so the term gets bandied about quite a bit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for ‘effects based’: the better we define the desired effects we wish to achieve, the better we can execute the mission to meet our objectives. But this represents less a paradigm shift than a six-sigma quality effort in force employment. Structuring one’s forces so that they are perpetually stressed by the "ops tempo" hardly promotes the ability to ‘adjust’ the force employment and deployment patterns in pursuit of the current desired ‘effect’, much less address new needs that can and will pop up.

‘Garrison Based’?

Operationally, the only advantage of forward deploying over forward basing is the cost savings from not having to move households and other infrastructure overhead, but even that isn’t a one-for-one-savings. Everything pretty much just changes ‘cost buckets’. For example, we can either pay to store bombs where we will operate or we pay extra to store them on pre-positioning ships or pay extra to ship them where we need them, when we need them.

We can pay to put the infrastructure in place where we need it, or pay a lot more to put less in
place when and where we need it. We could also pay more dearly in other ways when we don’t get it in place in time or at all. Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m actually for the US basing and forward deployment scheme as long as there is ‘enough’ Air Force to do the job over the long haul. The current path is only a good one as long as the world behaves in a way that is known and ‘hoped for’.

Fourth Row: “Trim the Fat”

This almost made the top of the list for reasons I will go into covering another slide later in the brief. At this time, just let us observe that for this aspect of the AF, the ‘20th Century’ ended about a decade earlier. Also please ask yourself the question: “If forward forces are ‘reaching back for support’, who are they reaching back to, if AF management is also gutting the home stations?”

The punch line at the bottom of the slide is good as far as it goes, but it is incomplete. It
should read:

This is a different Air Force we’re building…not “the same, but smaller”, and also a heck of a lot less capable and not nearly good enough to use as a
deterrent.

Seriously, this is eerily reminiscent of the early 90’s when we were looking at the post Cold War environment and were told something to the effect of:

In the past, it was ‘do more with less’, this time we’re going to ‘do less with
less’.

At least in the 90’s, AF ‘Leadership’ openly acknowledged the impact of the course we were taking. What a stark contrast to today’s AF ‘Management Team’.

And finally…..The Second Row: “Force Structure”

This is the most frightening bit in the whole brief, as it is an explicit admission that the AF on its current path will in the very near future NOT have the essential element of ‘mass’, and are consciously choosing to dispense with it. I’ve been on the bleeding-edge of operations research and have performed a ton of force employment studies. The number one question that is always asked is:

How many aimpoints can we service in X amount of time and how long can we keep it up?

To do well with either half of that question, the AF needs to be able to bring ‘Mass’ against it’s foes. Now the concept itself has changed somewhat in the sense we no longer need (for now) hundreds of platforms going against an industrial center in the hopes of hitting a couple of factories. But we still need the capability to strike many places at once, and do many missions at once, and do it over long distances. For all the above you need to have "mass".

To get the most out of any aerospace force, you need flexibility, precision, lethality, speed (airspeed, a subset of speed is only better to a point), and survivability/sustainability. If you want to be able to operate over a sustained period of time, or really press an advantage quickly, you need sufficient ‘numbers’ ladies! This slide tells me the AF is only planning on fighting wars against greatly inferior forces, which of course will only encourage undesirable behaviors in near-peer competitors, (or petty despots when they see us occupied elsewhere).

This line on the slide tells me that the 'leadership' either thinks we do not need mass anymore, and/or they really don’t understand the modern definition, or (most likely) is betting they can keep the hardware costs at bay until they can ‘afford it’ in the future. Any of these three beliefs should be completely unacceptable to any real commander of warfighters.

As Vegitus asserted "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." (loosely translated: “if you want peace, prepare for war”). It appears AF 'leadership’ has decided they want a ‘little peace’, so they’re only preparing for ‘little wars’.

Part 5 will be the last substantial post on the subject. If this had been an ‘external’ brief, instead of a sales pitch to the thousands of service men and women affected, most of the slides after this would have been ‘backup’ slides, but I will present those without a lot of comment to keep the full impact and thrust of this briefing in full view for posterity.

Check Six!

Debunking Close Air Support Myths, 2nd Edition: Part 7

Sourcing ‘AF Hates A-10’ Nonsense

We tackled the ‘big’ myths in a while back Parts 1-6. This post, at the root of things, is about the little myth that if the Air Force retires the A-10, that somehow means the Air Force doesn’t care about the mission, the Army, or both. I believe it is based upon other little myths that are sometimes based upon big lies and/or uniformed opinions more than anything else. The lies and opinions get planted as ‘fact’ in places where they line up neatly with already well-entrenched points of view. Then over time, if they get repeated often enough, they become ‘facts’… that aren’t.

The Current Sequester ‘Crisis’ and Close Air Support

At last week’s Air Force Association convention Air Force Leadership statements, acknowledging the reality of how Defense Sequestration was making the military a hollow force. As reported by Defense News:

With the F-35 coming online to take over the close-air support role, the venerable Thunderbolt II will be a likely target, Gen. Mike Hostage told reporters at the Air Force Association's Air and Space Conference.
“This is not something I want to do,” Hostage said, explaining that no decisions had been made.
Hostage said he had already talked to Army officials about losing the A-10 and using other jets to take over the close-air support role. The Army was “not happy” about the possibility, Hostage said.
“I will not lose what we have gained in how we learned to support the Army,” Hostage said. “I had to make sure the Army understood that I am not backing away from the mission.”
Hostage said the service can do the close-air support role with the F-35, but it would be more expensive and “not as impressive” without the famous GAU-8 Avenger 30 millimeter gun.
“In a perfect world, I would have 1,000 A-10s,” Hostage said. “I can’t afford it. I can’t afford the fleet I have now. If I cut the fleet in half, do I save enough to get through this problem?
“My view is, while I don’t want to do it, I would rather lose the entire fleet and save everything I do in the infrastructure.” 

Hostage’s comments follow similar statements from both acting Secretary of the Air Force Eric Fanning and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh that single-mission aircraft would need to be cut if budgets continue to decrease.

“If we go into [fiscal year 2014] with sequestration still in effect, and we need to achieve those savings, you have to look at cuts,” Fanning said Monday…

What is facing the Air Force right now is same for all the services: they must plan on doing ‘less with less’ because of the current ‘budget reality’ [Though it is arguable that is really about a lack of defense-as-a-national-priority ‘reality’]. Within the framework of the ‘budget reality’, the services have to figure out how can they fulfill as many of their responsibilities, and to what extent, with the ‘less’ budget they will be left to work with going forward.

The Lesser of Evils?

It now appears that part of the best way (or least ‘worst way’) forward, involves the possibility of retiring the entire (such as it remains) A-10 fleet

Aside from the sentimentality of General Hostage’s statement, I have no problem with it, and there is one part that sums things up perfectly:

“My view is, while I don’t want to do it, I would rather lose the entire fleet and save everything I do in the infrastructure.”

Got that? Retire selected weapon systems and save all the capability (“everything I do”).

The A-10 is Going Away Anyway

This is certain to cause a groundswell of emotion and irrational fear in some quarters if the A-10 fleet is forcibly retired. I would say ‘retired early’ but that would be less correct than stating ‘earlier than planned’, as we have kept the A-10 past it’s freshness date. the A-10 was considered as rapidly obsolescing AND rapidly aging when the Air Force first proposed replacing it with A-7Fs and A-16's the first time in the late 1980's. All but the last A-10s built (~1983-84) were manufactured with known deficiency in structural strength to begin with.

A-10s in AMARG: The Largest Supply Source for Keeping Operational A-10s Flying.  

"...fourteen airplanes sitting on the ramp having battle damage repaired, and I lost two A-10s in one day..."

Desert Storm Air Boss Made the Call: Pulled A-10s Off the
Iraqi Republican Guard Due to High Attrition

Tales of  the A-10's effectiveness in Desert Storm overshadowed it's shortcomings, which no one wanted to talk about (see Gen Horner's observations in Part 6 of this Debunking CAS Myths Series ) . Between Desert Storm and Congressional dabbling in matters they did not understand, the A-10 got a reprieve. The reprieve has lasted this long because we have not had to fight a war like Desert Storm again (Yes, there were significant differences between then and Operations Allied Force, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom).

Once again, there will be the ubiquitous ‘some’ who will complain that the AF is abandoning the needs of the Army by abandoning the Close Air Support (CAS) mission. In reality, the complaint will/would be over little more than a ‘hardware’ and ‘tactics’ change in the mission, NOT a retreat from the mission itself. Let us note here, that such complaints ignore the fact that the current plan already has the F-35 replacing the A-10 in the CAS role. If the A-10 fleet is retired due to sequestration, then sequestration is only causing a change in schedule for something that was going to happen anyway and NOT changing an inevitable end-state (not that changes themselves are good things, they usually cause chaos and added costs themselves).

Here We Go Again

With this emerging probability that the A-10s will finally be retired, we can expect a repeat of past experience: someone (or rather, many someones) will, in their ignorance, decry such a move as yet another example of the Air Force trying to get rid of the A-10 ‘they never wanted’ in the first place. Never mind that the reason for retiring the A-10 is clearly articulated in the present time: In the future the mythology will be that it was just another exhibit of ‘proof’ that the Air Force has ‘never wanted the A-10’ or never ‘took CAS seriously’. One in a laundry list of other examples. The problem is that laundry list, is a list of myths as well: a compendium of untruths, perversions of the truth, and biased opinions promoting a theme masquerading as the truth.

And I can back up my claims with hard evidence.

Taking Down the Myths, One Myth at a Time

To me, one of the most annoying myths about the Air Force and the A-10 is the one that asserts that when the AH-56 Cheyenne program was cancelled, the Air Force “tried to back out of the A-10 commitment” but it was “made” to keep it by some greater outside force, See "Close Air Support: Why all the Fuss?"  (Garrett, P.10) .

 I’ve picked the ‘Garrett’ (Thomas W. Garrett) reference to use as a starting point for a few reasons. First, when he stays away from the politics involved and deals strictly with the whys and wherefores of the logical division of responsibilities and missions between the Army and the Air Force, the paper is quite admirable. (His snarky delivery however, which no doubt raises a chuckle or two in Army quarters, comes across as snide and mean-spirited in its essence when experienced by this Airman.) Second, He reprised his War College paper in the Army War College quarterly Parameters under a different title (Close Air Support: Which Way Do We Go) . Over a dozen papers written later directly cite these two Garrett papers, and even more papers spring from these.
Third, the paper was written shortly before Desert Storm when Garrett was a Lt. Colonel. Later in Desert Storm “he commanded, trained and led the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Aviation Brigade, the largest Army Aviation rotary wing task force in conventional land warfare history”. Garrett also served in Vietnam, retired as a Major General, and has been inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame, so he has sufficient ‘street cred’ to be a reliable reference on this topic.

Myth: The Air Force Tried to Kill the A-10 After the AH-56 Cheyenne Program was Cancelled.

When you go to the bibliography to find the source of the claim as quoted in Garrett above, you are taken to a reference:

Horton and David Halperin, "The Key West Key," Foreign Relations. Winter 1983-1981, pp. 117.

This source took me longer to find than I thought it would, because the citation is wrong (It should read “Foreign Policy” ). I initially thought it was some State Department trade publication, but instead find it was in a magazine we’ve all probably seen many time at Barnes & Noble. A magazine that describes itself thusly:

“Since its founding in 1922, Foreign Affairs has been the leading forum for serious discussion of American foreign policy and global affairs. It is now a multiplatform media organization with a print magazine, a website, a mobile site, various apps and social media feeds, an event business, and more. Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas.”

References to the web, mobile, apps and social media aside, I suspect their self-perception hasn’t changed much since the Halperin & Halperin ‘article’. Put succinctly: Foreign Policy is a magazine for self-identified ‘movers and shakers’. In the referenced article we find multiple complaints and examples of “interservice rivalry” causing ‘problems’. Close Air Support was but one example:

The Army next tried to build the Cheyenne, a large antitank helicopter priced at $8 million. This time the Air Force feared that the Army, with its new weapon, might be able to acquire officially the close-support function. While the Air Force still had no interest in providing close support, it wanted to protect its bureaucratic territory. Thus it developed the Fairchild A-10, which Easterbrook notes, "many aircraft observers believe is one of the best planes ever built." And priced at $3 million, the A-10 could do a far better job than the Cheyenne at less than one-half the cost. 

The Cheyenne was canceled. But having headed off the Army, the Air Force saw no further use for the A-10 and attempted to cut the plane from its budget. Congress has insisted that the A-10s be built. But Air Force reluctance has sent the Army back to the drawing board, once again in the no-win realm of the helicopter.

There’s A LOT wrong with the above besides the claim the Air Force tried to ‘back out’ of the A-10, such as tying what would become development of the AH-64 Apache to some sort of Air Force ‘reluctance’ ‘Halperin x 2’ were apparently unaware the Army began pursuing what would become the AH-64 the day after the Cheyenne was cancelled. The Air Force was fast in those days, but it wasn’t that fast. The Army simply went back to the drawing board trying to replace perhaps the longest-lived interim system ever: the AH-1 Huey Cobra. But we’ll let the niggling things slide and keep our focus on the task at hand.

First, who were the authors of this ‘article’ and who was this ‘Easterbrook’ they were citing?

The Halperins

Around that time including before and after, Morton Halperin was the Director of the Center for National Security Studies, on the board of the ALCU, and a Brookings Institute ‘scholar’. He was nominated to be THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACEKEEPING under Les Aspin (Spit!). When nominated in 1993, he was a very well known ‘quantity’. It did not go well.

The other ‘Halperin’ was his son David, then a senior at Yale, and he has not fallen very far from the tree. By the way, Nowadays ole’ Morton is running George Soros’ Open Society Institute. So one might file this data away for future consideration: Perhaps this Father-Son duo were/are not that keen on defense in the first place?

 

We Keep Pulling the Thread: What is The Halperins’ ‘Source’

The ‘Easterbrook’ above was one Gregg Easterbrook writing for the Washington Monthly. The current WM website describes the publication thusly:

The Washington Monthly was founded in 1969 on the notion that a handful of plucky young writers and editors, armed with an honest desire to make government work and a willingness to ask uncomfortable questions, could tell the story of what really matters in Washington better than a roomful of Beltway insiders at a Georgetown dinner party. In our cluttered little downtown DC office, we’re still doing what we have done for over forty years, and what fewer and fewer publications do today: telling fascinating, deeply reported stories about the ideas and characters that animate America’s government.

When you get right down to it, the Washington Monthly is a political ‘alternative’ news outlet. It has been largely run, and overrun, by people like James Fallows whose merits I briefly noted in a sidebar here. So file that away for future consideration as well.

Easterbrook’s ‘article’ was called “All Aboard Air Oblivion” in which he rambles through a no-holds-barred screed: 

• Decrying the wastefulness of hugely-vulnerable helicopters, 
• Asserting the Air Force with a penchant for technology was requiring an expensive unnecessary “smart bomb” called the AGM-65 be carried on top of the internal 30mm gun.
• Laughably describing the Maverick as having only a “15%” probability of kill per “pass” and being impossible to operate effectively in combat.
• Making baseless claims that the Air Force Chief of Staff only pursued the A-10 because of the Army's Cheyenne.
• Citing James Fallows’ writings criticizing the TOW missile, and mocking the idea that the next missile in the works, the Hellfire in combination with the “Son of Cheyenne” (AH-64 Apache) will be any better.

 Among many, many other transgressions against logic and truth. 

And buried inside Easterbrook’s nonsensical diatribe is this little gem of our real interest:

With the Army challenge deflected, anti-close-support generals once again ascended within the Air Force. They wanted to stop wasting money on an Army-oriented project and reserve all Air Force funds for superplanes like the F-15 and B-1. So each year, the Air Force tried to cut the A-10 from its budget. Fortunately, each year politicians put the funds back in. (This year, for, example, the Air Force cut 60 A-10s, but Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger reinstated them.) Next, the Air force shunted 72 of the first 400 A-10s straight to the National Guard, the only front-line aircraft ever assigned directly to the Air National Guard

ALL the above is patently, and demonstrably untrue. All of it.
Beside there being no evidence of ‘anti-close-support’ generals in the Air Force (names?), the ‘tried to cut the A-10 from its budget’ isn’t supported by the history either. I know from a personal friend that briefed the AF budget to Members of Congress (Circa 78-79) that there was constant pressure to increase the original objective of 600 planes to something greater. The numbers WERE increased, because they had to be: just to get the budget past a Committee Chairman or two. Three years after this article was published, at the end of production there were 715 A-10s. So yeah, after the Air Force got all they originally wanted, MAYBE then they stopped asking for more. So what?

Here’s another little factor to consider. Since we don’t know the number from which Easterbrook is subtracting that 60 A-10 figure, perhaps at least some of the 60 aircraft that the Easterbrook alleges the Air Force tried to have taken out (in 1980-81) was related to the 1979 GAO report that ‘came down’ on the Air Force for buying too many total A-10s? From the GAO Report:

… We believe that our current work on reducing Defense aircraft time in maintenance further demonstrates the necessity to reevaluate aircraft needs for depot maintenance float. We focused on the potential procurement of 61 A-10 aircraft as substitutes for aircraft undergoing depot maintenance--currently called backup aircraft inventory for maintenance. Specifically, we found that: 

--Even though the A-10 is being procured under a concept designed to eliminate the need for depot overhaul, the Air Force is still using a 10-percent factor to justify the purchase of 61 A-10 aircraft for maintenance float purposes.
--While Air Force criteria also allows substitutes for aircraft undergoing modifications, the full extent of the modification program for the A-10 is not known.
--In developing the lo-percent maintenance float factor Defense has not systematically determined how quickly aircraft In the depot could be "buttoned up" and returned to their units under a wartime compressed work schedule and the influence of this rapid return on the requirements for maintenance float aircraft. 

The A-10, as well as other newer weapon systems, are being procured under a concept designed to eliminate the need for depot overhaul. New design features and reliability-centered maintenance concepts have improved maintainability and reliability so that work which used to be performed in depot facilities can now be performed in the field and at intermediate facilities. In spite of this change, we find that the planned procurement for the 61 A-10 maintenance float aircraft is still being justified using a 10-percent factor. Historical experience has been used in the past to justify the procurement of float aircraft as substitutes for those aircraft undergoing periodic overhaul. Since the A-10 is not scheduled to undergo periodic overhaul, the justification for 61 A-10s is questionable…


Funny how we never hear about this little development, eh? Congress' "watchdog" complains about too many A-10s one year, and a drive-by journalist hammers you the next. Such is life.

 

Finally, everyone and anyone who has ever played the 'budget game' knows that if someone up the chain is going to support buying system X, whether you want it or not, you can let that someone spend political capital getting more of system X, so you can spend it on system Y. Congress makes the rules, everyone else just plays the game. If the Air Force ever chose to reduce numbers of the A-10 to be bought in an annual budget, it was part of a larger strategy.

As to the characterization the Air Force “shunted” A-10’s to reserve units, and doing so was 'without precedent', the A-10 WAS the first ‘front-line’ system to go directly to reserve units, but hardly the ‘last’. The year after this article was printed, it was announced that the first F-16s would be going to reserve units beginning in 1984. I presume it would be Easterbrook’s argument that the F-16 was ‘shunted’ as well? My damning counterargument to any accusations that anybody in the Air Force was ‘shunting’ anything would be to point to a little thing we (the Air Force) had going on with a full head of steam at the time: Making Total Force a viable force.

So we’ve now pulled this thread, whereby it is claimed the Air Force “tried to back out of the A-10 commitment” all the way to it's frazzled, unattributed end. We've found NO substance to the claim at all, only B.S. 'hearsay'

 

Do I Have Suspicions? Feh. Its 'The Usual Suspects'

I don’t think you have to be much of a detective to read between the lines for Easterbrook’s sources. Aside from referencing Fallows, I see some of the same verbiage that’s been thrown around by Pierre Sprey and Winslow Wheeler for years. I also don’t find it much of a coincidence that this article found it’s way into a particular compendium of lunacy, a copy of which I own. A little book of perversions produced by the predecessor to Project on Government Oversight (POGO) in 1983; the much more verbose “Fund for Constitutional Government”, under their so-called “Project on Military Procurement”.

The title? “More Bucks: Less Bang: How the Pentagon Buys Ineffective Weapons” (If you buy a copy for goodness sake buy a used copy will you?). In this little (in more ways than one) book many weapon systems come under fire. I would say there were only 3 ‘reports’ (out of 30+) that I would call 'materially accurate'. One of those was written post facto: about the tribulations of the by-then long-fielded M-16 so it doesn't count as 'prophetic'.
The rest? Among all the other tall tales, written by a who's who of muckrakers, activists, and 'reformers', we learn that the Trident submarine and Aegis Cruisers won’t work, the Stealth Bomber is a ‘joke’, Low Probability of Intercept Radar is a ‘homing beacon’, the Abrams and Bradley are failures, and the Maverick, Pershing and Tomahawk missiles will be useless.

I marvel at the 'expertise' on display within.(/sarc)

I suspect Easterbrook was spoon-fed his article’s scary parts from the so called ‘reformer’ camp. His output then later gets rolled into the Reformer Noise Machine which then echoes down the years.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That is how these myths are born.

I further suspect the next thread I pull will lead me right to the same noisemakers as I found this time.

The Next Myth? (Part 8)

'The Air Force only started/proceeded with the A-X/A-10 because they 'had to' due to external pressure.

Note: I'm having formatting (font and case mostly, with some copy/paste gaps) issues with Blogger on this post for some reasons. Please bear with me as I find problems and make adjustments.