Gordon Duff: ANALYZING STAGED WORLD CONFLICT – Repost of our June 2010 Predictions – Lost Nukes, Israel and North Korea, the Plot Thickens

Corruption, Government, Media, Military, Peace Intelligence
Gordon Duff

2010 – Testing Our Predictions by Today’s Reality

ANALYZING STAGED WORLD CONFLICT

… by  Gordon Duff  (from June 2010)

“Twenty five months have passed since this piece was written.  We republish it today to see how it has weathered? Were we on the right track then or do we now look like fools? We write ‘em, you decide ‘em.  But remember, Fox News missed all of this. Why?”

– o –

“If those papers have to be produced over the nukes that later got lost in Oman, and on the watch of Dr. David Kelly, then it could be disastrous for David Cameron. This, particularly as one of the three atomic bombs lost back at the time of the first Gulf War, was exploded by North Korea on 25th May 2009.”

In 2006, North Korea exploded a plutonium based nuclear weapon, an unsuccessful test of a “found” nuke in poor repair, or something poorly designed.

America had predicted that they were at least five years from this capability, we always hear the same story, everyone is five years from having nuclear weapons.

On May 25th, 2009, North Korea exploded its second bomb, its first clearly identifiable nuclear weapon, a “Hiroshima sized” bomb, tiny by US standards.

What we didn’t say is that the signature of this bomb had been seen before.

An identical nuclear weapon, manufactured at the same facility, same design, same impurities, had been exploded in September 22, 1979, in a test in the Indian Ocean conducted jointly by Israel and South Africa.

Read full article with many quotes and photos.

Richard Wright: When Legends Die – the M1 Grand Rifle

Corruption, Military
Richard Wright

When Legends Die: the M1 Grand Rifle

When I was drafted in 1960 and shipped off to basic training, I discovered what could be called the “old army.”  The origins of this term are obscure, but may it have been coined to refer to the Indian fighting U.S. Army of the post-Civil War 1870’s because so many of its officers and NCOs were veterans of the Civil War.  In the same manner the U.S. Army of 1960 contained many officers and NCOs who were veterans of WWII and the Korean War (1950-1953). Indeed as I discovered the 1960 Army was training to re-fight the Korean War.

The two principal lessons of the Korean War were that the U.S. forces were physically weak (i.e. unable to march long distances on foot) and were inept rifleman (unwilling to fire their weapons and poor shots). So basic training had lots of road marches and a good deal of rifle training using what was then called ‘train fire’. This was a training exercise whereby after several weeks on the ranges firing at conventional bulls eye targets, we were taken to live firing ranges consisting of lanes dotted with pop-up man-sized targets at distances of 50 to 360 meters. As we walked along the lane followed by an NCO scorekeeper the targets would pop-up at different ranges and using so-called Kentucky wind age and Tennessee elevation (guess work) we would try and knock enough targets down to qualify. Incidentally this was a lot of fun.

The rifle that I was issued was the M1 Grand Rifle, a nine pound, semi-automatic 30 caliber, gas operated weapon of wood and steel. In my experience it was a marvelous weapon easy to shoot and extremely accurate up to about 400 meters. (It probably was accurate beyond that, but even in my youth I had crummy eyesight).  Its 30 caliber armor piercing bullet (the anti-personnel round of choice) carried a good deal of authority when it hit and would penetrate light armor. The M1 could also launch rifle grenades (even though they fouled its barrel), incendiary rounds, and tracer ammunition. It was a reliable, easy to maintain weapon, that as we were repeatedly told, would be our best friend in combat.

Continue reading “Richard Wright: When Legends Die – the M1 Grand Rifle”

Mini-Me: US Army Finally Seeing the M16 UNSAT? US Marines Captive

Corruption, Government, Military
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

AN ARMY OUTGUNNED: Physics Demands A New Basic Combat Weapon

Joseph P. Avery, Ph.D.

Military Review, 20120813

PDF 7 pages

Phi Beta Iota:  We've known since the early days of Viet-Nam that the M16 was a Mattel Toy with ammunition to match.  For lack of proper acquisition intelligence including real-world Operational Test & Evaluation, Congressional pork has been over-riding military integrity for decades.  When General Al Gray, USMC, then the Commandant, created the Marine Corps Intelligence Center, he created it primarily to provide threat and acquisition intelligence and especially logistics and counter-measures intelligence because the expeditionary environment requires systems (air, ground, sea) that have lower profiles across the board.  The Center soon got carried away with support to the Fleet Marine Force and has not made a difference where it mattered, on expeditionary acquisition and the strategy of the USMC force structure build, or the integrity of the USMC acquisition process as a whole.  The three big services routinely lie about the threat to get bigger better more complex systems; they routinely downplay the logistics and communications support costs; and they lie often and outright about the true cost of systems–not just dollars, but lost everything including human lives.  The 4% of the force that actually uses these  plastic representations of Congressional pork take 80% of the casualties and gets 1% of the Pentagon budget.  In our view, this continued neglect of the front-life infantry is the single greatest fault of every Secretary of Defense going back to McNamara and Clifford has betrayed the public trust.  We lack intelligence and integrity across  the US Government, but it is most expensive, in lives, treasure, and lost global legitimacy, in the Department of Defense.

See Also:

1992 AIJ Fall ‘New Paradigm” and Avoiding Future Failures

1991 MCG Intelligence Support for Expeditionary Planners

1990 Expeditionary Environment Analytic Model

Graphic: Expeditionary Environment Analytic Model

Journal: Intelligence & Innovation Support to Strategy, Planning, Programming, Budgeting, & Acquisition

Reference: Intelligence Support to Small Arms Acquisition–A Brilliant Indictment

Review: Lines of Fire – A Renegade Writes on Strategy, Intelligence, and Security

Robert Gates: A Brilliant Career — As a Courtier

Robert Steele: On the Record – 4% of the Force Takes 80% of the Casualties, Receives 1% of the Pentagon Budget

 

Marcus Aurelius: Marines Go Back to the Colt .45 Made in the USA

Corruption, Ethics, Military
Marcus Aurelius

BZ Marines!

[BRAVO ZULU, DON flag signal for well done]

Sticking to their guns: Marines place $22.5M order for the Colt .45 M1911

It’s been called the greatest handgun ever made, and it has barely changed sine 1911, when the legendary John Browning designed it especially for the U.S. Military.

And now, the Colt .45 M1911 is making a big comeback, now that the U.S. Marines have placed a $22.5 million order for the Connecticut-made pistols.

Read full article.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Phi Beta Iota:  There is fluff in the article.  There are a lot of good things to be said about the 9mm as well as the Walter PPK with .38 ACP as a clandestine or back-up weapon, both silencer capable.  This is a good decision, not least because it Buys American.  However, the  Marines are still lacking with respect to the shoulder-held standard M16, zero in the way of Naval Gunfire Support, and with respect to aviation platforms.  If we ever get a President that demands intelligence and integrity from his Cabinet officers and creates an intelligence community able to create intelligence with integrity, Whole of Government decision-making making will improve across the board, and this will in turn enable the cutting of the federal government in half, and the elimination of the 50% of most federal budgets, including Program 50, that is fraud, waste, and abuse.'

See Also:

2009 Intelligence for the President–and Everyone Else

2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective

Reference: Intelligence Support to Small Arms Acquisition–A Brilliant Indictment

Winslow Wheeler: Marine Aviation in the Toilet (Ethically, Technically, & Financially)

Marcus Aurelius: DoD Tries to Rip 3/4 Billion Out of Health Care – Panetta Caught and Challenged by Congress on Integrity & Intelligence

Communities of Practice, Corruption, Peace Intelligence
Marcus Aurelius
Looks like Congress has caught DoD in a credibility and integrity breach:
  • For years, DoD — including the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Service Chiefs, have been crying poormouth on military health care and trying to use military beneficiaries as cash cows to fund what should be 100% taxpayer-funded, specifically lifetime health care to career military personnel.
  • .
  • Now, DoD comes to Congress saying that they have $708 million dollars extra in their health care accounts that they wish to “reprogram” to unspecified “higher priorities.”
  • .
  • Government Executive magazine lays out the story, first below.  Military Officers Association of America provides the supporting documentation, the DoD reprogramming request (second below) and a letter to SECDEF from a bunch of curious Congressmen (third below).

David Isenberg: President Wants What IC Cannot Give – With Comment by Robert Steele

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Knowledge, Politics
David Isenberg

President Obama Wants Smartphones, Tablets To Improve Intel Monitoring: Sez Head of White House Communications Agency

WASHINGTON: When the Presidential Daily Briefing occurs, a top intelligence official traditionally hands the president a folder with a sheaf of paper inside. The president may read what's inside or have it presented by the intelligence official. Then comes question time, when the chief executive and commander in chief can ask how reliable a source is or question the assumptions of an analysis he's just read.

But that will change. The president and his top officials want and will get a single mobile device allowing them to access highly classified and unclassified data wherever they are. The early fruits of the intelligence community's early efforts to do that are visible in the photo above. It shows President Obama in the Oval Office on January 31 using a technically neutered tablet as part of the Presidential Daily Briefing.

. . . . . .

A single device is the Holy Grail for the intelligence community and senior government officials, but it will be some time before it happens, the colonel said. In the near term, the White House hopes to issue two devices: one for classified and another for unclassified communications. It is coordinating with the Defense Department and the National Security Agency to ensure access to secure defense communications networks intelligence grade cryptographic algorithms.

Read full article.

Continue reading “David Isenberg: President Wants What IC Cannot Give – With Comment by Robert Steele”

SmartPlanet: Glasses provide live language translation

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Hacking, Liberation Technology, Mobile
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Glasses provide live language translation

Here’s the scene: you’re traveling, and you walk into a little restaurant and the menu is entirely in a language you don’t understand, without pictures. You’ve got a couple of choices. You can leave, and try to find a place with English translations. You can try to hack your way through a conversation with the waiter, who also doesn’t speak your language. Or, you can point randomly at the menu and live with the consequences.

Well, in the future there will be another, better, answer. Live, realtime translation built into your glasses. Enter: Project Glass. British hacker and DIYer Will Powell has built a pair of glasses that can (albeit roughly) project a translation of your conversation onto your glasses. Here’s what it looks like:

Read full post with images.

noble gold