Category: Military

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Marcus Aurelius: The Battle For The Military’s Future

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Military
Marcus Aurelius

Note the contradiction between the planned personnel cuts and the comments on the urgency of keeping the volunteer force intact and coherent.

The Battle For The Military's Future

Walter Pincus

The Washington Post, 13 June 2012

“The face of war, the face of how we do business, is changing.”

That’s retired Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sharing how he sees the military’s future at a National Press Club session for reporters Tuesday. Cartwright, who was known for his forward thinking while on active duty, has apparently decided to share his ideas through a series of public appearances.

One area that he sees changing in the military is what he calls “the platforms” — by which he means tanks, troop carriers, ships, aircraft, heavy guns and even rifles. They are becoming less important in Cartwright’s view than the new electronics, sensors and other gadgetry.

He recalls being with then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Georgia reviewing an Army unit ready to deploy to Central Asia with new systems that included iPads and droids for individual soldiers. Cartwright said Gates asked one sergeant during a barracks walkthrough, “What do you think of all this stuff?”

The sergeant replied, “I’d sooner leave this barracks without my rifle as to leave without these things.”

The lesson for Cartwright was that the new electronics, which the military calls information technology (IT), will replace in importance the current platforms — in which the side with the most modern guns, tanks and aircraft often won. Platforms, however, take time to develop.

Read full article.

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DefDog: War Study – Troops Had Bad Intel, Worse Spin

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Military
DefDog

This has been true since Vietnam (from my personal experience) and for all the money and technology that has been thrown at the IC, the return is dismal at best, criminal at worst….see my previous identifying your tribal summary as better than 99% of the intel I saw in Afghanistan.

War Study: Troops Had Bad Intel, Worse Spin

EXTRACT:

Ten years of war have given the U.S. military more than its share of frustrations. According to an internal Pentagon study, two of them were as fundamental as they were related: Troops had terrible intelligence about Iraq and Afghanistan, and they told their own stories just as badly.

Those are some preliminary conclusions from an ongoing Pentagon study into the lessons of a decade of combat, authorized by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the multi-tour Iraq veteran and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The study doesn’t single out any sensor or spy platform for criticism.  Instead, it finds that U.S. troops didn’t understand the basic realities of society, culture and power structures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and couldn’t explain what they were doing to skeptical populations.

. . . . . . . .

The study Dempsey ordered is ongoing and will have several volumes, each with multiple iterations, before the military produces a definitive assessment of what went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is just the first volume. But it helps identify a series of problems that the military thinks it needs to fix to win the wars of the future.

That future military needs to “leverag[e] technology and social media” in order to consider “all relevant actors’ instruments of power; cultural, religious, and other demographic factors; and employs innovative, non-traditional methods and sources.” In other words, spin harder — and know what you’re talking about.

Read full article.

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Chuck Spinney: Drones — Of Idiots, By Idiots, For Idiots + Meta-RECAP

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call
Chuck Spinney

Attached is a really first rate assessment of the real benefits and costs of the American infatuation with drone warfare.  The writer, Patrick Cockburn, is one of the very best reporters now covering the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Chuck Spinney
Cap Ferat, France

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America is deluded by its drone-warfare propaganda

World View: The use of unmanned aircraft to assassinate its enemies is guaranteed to backfire on Washington

Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, Sunday, 10 June 2012

As the US and its allies ponder what to do about Syria, one suggestion advanced by the protagonists of armed intervention is to use unmanned drones to attack Syrian government targets. The proposal is a measure of the extraordinary success of the White House, CIA and Defense Department in selling the drone as a wonder weapon despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The attraction of the drone for President Obama and his administration five months before the presidential election is self-evident.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Drones — Of Idiots, By Idiots, For Idiots + Meta-RECAP”

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John Robb: Worms, Drones, SuperBugs, & Plagues – The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

07 Other Atrocities, Government, Idiocy, Military, Peace Intelligence
John Robb

This Version of the Four Horsemen the Apocalypse actually Makes Sense

What types of weapons will use self-replication (which in this context means the ability to easily and rapidly make exact copies of themselves on a massive scale without human oversight)?

Here's a really simple taxonomy.  Had some fun with this.  All of these use rapid, very difficult to counter self-replication to do massive damage.

  • Weaponized computer worms/viruses/malware.  Legal bot networks that control/manipulate society and markets (think in terms of quant hedge funds).  That's the White horse.  Conquest.
  • Drones/robots.  Weaponized drones that at first self-perpetuate by acquiring fuel from the environment.  Weaponized drones that can self-replicate ala 3-D fabrication and scavanged materials (think rep-rap).  That's the Red Horse.  War.
  • Superbugs/superweeds (some may be aided by engineered modification, but all get their start due to the stupidity of growing food in monocultures).  Organisms that can wipe out monocultures and cause the loss of productive farmland and crops ond a global scale.   That's the Black Horse.  Famine.
  • Plague.  Genetically modified weapons, laboratory mistakes, or naturally occuring disease (due to too much physical proximity) that result in plagues.  That's the Pale Green horse.  Death.

Again, folks.  The only long term counter to self-replication is through the smart decentralization afforded by networked resilient communities.

Communities that produce most of what they need locally.  Communities that can physically disconnect themselves as needed. Communities that aren't dependent on complex global computer systems that can be corrupted.  Communities that use diverse polycultures to produce their food.

See Also:

Pandora Smiled – on the Insanity of Self-Replicating Computer Worms

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Marcus Aurelius: NSA Blocks www.publicintelligence.net

Idiocy, IO Impotency, Military
Marcus Aurelius

US Cyber Command (read:  NSA)  has, “for operational reasons,” blocked access to www.publicintelligence.net from DoD computers.  You get a pretty WEBSITE BLOCKED notice.

Block “category” is:  “USCC_WIKILEAKS_BLOCK”
Also contains following blurb:  “This is a DoD enterprise-level protection system intended to reduce risk to DoD users and protect DoD systems from intrusion.  It will block access to high-risk web sites and filter high-risk web content.
As far as I have seen, publicintelligence.net doesn't do any direct collection by cyber means.  I'm fairly sure that they act as an information aggregator and integrator, receiving and posting stuff independently submitted to them by third parties who may or may not have obtained it legally.
Insofar as I have seen, there is little if any of the WIKILEAKS traffic posted on publicintelligence.net.  I don't think I've ever actually seen classified material on that site.
At least this morning, cryptome.org, which is far edgier, was unblocked.
Phi Beta Iota:  This is as silly as the US Air Force telling its people that they will be punished if any of their family members read Wikileaks.  Micro-management–and especially uninformed micro-management, does not scale.
See Also:
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Penguin: USS Liberty Messages Declassified by NSA

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call
Who, Me?

U.S.S. Liberty Messages

  1. Situation Following Air Attack, 08 Jun 1967
  2. USS LIBERTY Orbited by Jet Fighters, 08 Jun 1967
  3. SIGINT Advisory, 02 Jun 1967
  4. Temporary Repairs Made to TRSSCOMM Hydraulic System, 02 Jun 1967
  5. SITREP Number One AN/SRC-33 (XN-1) System, 02 Jun 1967
  6. USS Liberty, 02 Jun 1967
  7. SIGINT Advisory, 02 Jun 1967
  8. USN 855 NSG PUR 2 Jun 67, 3 Jun 1967
  9. USN 855 Informal Technical Summary for 02 June 1967, 03 Jun 1967
  10. MED OPS, 03 Jun 1967
  11. USN 855 Tasking for MED, 03 Jun 1967
  12. SIGINT Advisory, 03 Jun 1967
  13. USN 855 Tasking Message, 04 Jun 1967
  14. Special Arabic Material, 05 Jun 1967
  15. On Call Circuit, 05 Jun 1967
  16. SITREP/POSIT, 05 Jun 1967
  17. Reporting During Current Crisis, 05 Jun 1967
  18. SIGINT Advisory, 06 Jun 1967
  19. SITREP/POSIT, 06 Jun 1967
  20. USS Liberty Operational Control, 06 Jun 1967
  21. USS Liberty Attack, 08 Jun 1967
  22. RPS Acct 18137, 08 Jun 1967
  23. Personnel CASREPT, 08 Jun 1967
  24. List of Dead and Missing, 09 Jun 1967
  25. Possible Compromise of USN-855 SIGINT Material, 09 Jun 1967
  26. List of Missing Persons, 09 Jun 1967
  27. PERS CASREPT, 09 Jun 1967
  28. U.S.S. Liberty Torpedo Hit Area, 09 Jun 1967
  29. Status of Remains, 15 Jun 1967
  30. USS Liberty Press Conference, 29 Jun 1967
  31. Visit of Rep T. P. O'Neal (D-MASS), 03 Jul 1967
  32. Classified Material Accountability, 02 Aug 1967
  33. Research Space SITREP, 11 Jun 1967
  34. SITREP Research Spaces, 09 Jun 1967
  35. USS Liberty MOVREP, 06 Jun 1967
  36. USS Liberty SITREP/Position, 08 Jun 1967
  37. USS Liberty MOVREP, 02 Jun 1967

Source

See Also:

The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship

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Gordon Duff: Germany Mounts Nuke Missiles On Subs For Israel

08 Proliferation, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Military
Gordon Duff

Germany Mounts Nuke Missiles On Subs For Israel

Israel Has No Cruise Missile Capabability, Germans Violate Non-Proliferation Treaty

Today, Germany admitted arming nuclear submarines for Israel, not just selling subs, but supplying missiles and warheads.  Did they say so openly?  In fact, based on research any journalist is capable of, they did exactly that. 

We had long suspected, as have most Germans, that Merkel was an agent of some kind, a handmaiden of the secret societies trying to bring about global Armageddon.

Germany’s admissions today aren’t news to those who follow defense issues.  They don’t even come close to full disclosure, but they do make it inexorable, that we can now safely assume that Germany has long been a rogue nation and a “behind the scenes” manipulator with leadership only slightly changed from the Hitler era.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Officially, Israel has 3 Dolphin Class submarines supplied by Germany.  Der Spiegel announced today that these boats had been specially modified to launch nuclear cruise missiles.  What Der Spiegel failed to note is that the missiles themselves were supplied with the boats, nuclear weapons included.

Germany is helping Israel to develop its military nuclear capabilities, SPIEGEL has learned. According to extensive research carried out by the magazine, Israel is equipping submarines that were built in the northern German city of Kiel and largely paid for by the German government with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The missiles can be launched using a previously secret hydraulic ejection system. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told SPIEGEL that Germans should be “proud” that they have secured the existence of the state of Israel “for many years.”

Read full article.

See Also:

Dolphin Getting Nuke Load in Germany, Violation of NP Treaty

Phi Beta Iota:  All sources have mixed reliability depending on many factors.  This is worth noting but not sufficient in and of itself.

noble gold