Somewhere in my reading today I ran across a brief mention that Gens. Kelly and Mattis found themselves opposing Gen. McMaster on some issues--it seems the split was between those who tried to rein Trump in (Kelly-Mattis) versus McMaster who was more willing to go along.
I can't wait for McMaster's memoir. If I recall his dissertation, converted into a well-regarded history called Dereliction of Duty, was critical of LBJ's Joint Chiefs for not being straight with him, for going along with his policies rather than resisting the expansion of the war without being open with the public. So if today's item was correct, it might be that McMaster found it hard to play the role of adviser than he thought it was back in his academic and youthful days. Wouldn't be the first, nor will it be the last, person to make the discovery.
[Update: it was a New Yorker piece: "On one side were Mattis, Tillerson, and Kelly, each of whom in varying degrees sought to push back against the President; on the other was McMaster, who made his natural allies furious for what they saw as his habit of trying to accommodate the President’s demands, even if they were far-fetched. “General McMaster was trying to find a way to try to execute, not to tell him no,” the former government official told me."
Blogging on bureaucracy, organizations, USDA, agriculture programs, American history, the food movement, and other interests. Often contrarian, usually optimistic, sometimes didactic, occasionally funny, rarely wrong, always a nitpicker.
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military. Show all posts
Friday, April 20, 2018
Monday, January 15, 2018
Why Is a Human in the Loop?
I'm referring to the false nuclear missile warning in Hawaii. Apparently someone had a choice of two buttons on a screen to click on, one "test", one "real", and chose the wrong one. I can sympathize--I fairly often click on something which I realize a minute later is the wrong choice.
But as a bureaucrat, I see no reason for a human to have that choice. Presumably what is supposed to happen is that the military determines a missile strike is imminent and puts out messages to the appropriate people. So the person in Hawaii gets the military's notification and says what? She has no way of testing the military's conclusion, all she can do is click on the real button. So, if the human is just relaying the message, the system should be designed to automatically trigger the alert system.
The software she was looking at should show a status screen, which would show any incoming message and the fact it's been relayed on, and allow for initiating a test alert.
But as a bureaucrat, I see no reason for a human to have that choice. Presumably what is supposed to happen is that the military determines a missile strike is imminent and puts out messages to the appropriate people. So the person in Hawaii gets the military's notification and says what? She has no way of testing the military's conclusion, all she can do is click on the real button. So, if the human is just relaying the message, the system should be designed to automatically trigger the alert system.
The software she was looking at should show a status screen, which would show any incoming message and the fact it's been relayed on, and allow for initiating a test alert.
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
The Future Is Now: Amphib Warfare
Born before US entry into WWII, I grew up with a lot of military history available. I didn't like the military when I served, but retain some interest. Here's an excerpt from a Bloomberg piece on Trump's problems with our new aircraft carrier:
How soon will we have "drone destroyers"--inquiring minds want to know?
Last week, at Camp Pendleton in California, I watched a Marine landing exercise. First, drones came in to map out what was on shore. Then an amphibious landing vehicle hits the shore, but the first thing off it was a machine-gun-armed robot, not a human. Then the human Marines arrive. But they are being resupplied by drones. One quadricopter drone comes down to drop an MRE. Then, a Marine changes that supply drone into a strike one, by now putting on board it a grenade and flying it off to hit the enemy. Sounds science fiction? Islamic State is doing similar things with jury-rigged drones in Mosul, Iraq, right now.Back in the late 19th century the new thing for navies was the torpedo. So we had torpedo boats intended to launch them. And then the navies developed "torpedo boat destroyers", to counter torpedo boats, a name then shortened to "destroyers". The article notes that our new destroyer is now comparable to a heavy cruiser of WWII.
How soon will we have "drone destroyers"--inquiring minds want to know?
Sunday, April 30, 2017
The Difference a Job Makes for Marriage
A higher proportion of ever enlisted men (born 1980-1984) are marrying than their civilian counterparts. Find out more at #PAA2017 #CFDR pic.twitter.com/GLReTHLnWi— Paul Hemez (@hemezp) April 25, 2017
That's a tweet which I probably could have better incorporated in this post. Anyhow, the graph shows the marriage rates for whites, Hispanics and blacks, divided between "ever enlisted" and "civilians". What caught my eye were the rates for enlisted blacks, very much the same as enlisted whites, and enlisted Hispanics, significantly higher than enlisted whites and blacks. The rates for all enlisteds were significantly above those for civilians.
What I take from this is that secure jobs enable marriages. I may be wrong, there may be significant differences between the men and women who enlist and those who don't. But I like the idea that a steady salary leads to marriage.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
I'm a Born Civilian
That's what I joke to my wife, as a description of my time in the Army.
With that perspective, may I offer a small caveat to the praise being
heaped on the President's new national security adviser, Gen. McMaster?
I don't know when having a Phd became the automatic basis for being an
intellectual? I suppose it partly reflects our (liberals) general
incredulity that a military man could earn one.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
First the Truck Drivers, Then the Soldiers
Kevin Drum blogs about the threat to long distance truck drivers (and a commenter notes the follow-on impacts on restaurants, etc.) presaged by Uber's use of a self-driving truck (with driver on board) to ship Budweiser a long distance.
Meanwhile, the NYTimes discusses new developments in weapons, including autonomous drones.
Meanwhile, the NYTimes discusses new developments in weapons, including autonomous drones.
Wednesday, June 01, 2016
Bureaucracy at Jutland
Brad DeLong blogs often about the day-to-day events of various wars. Recently he's been posting on the battle of Jutland, the biggest naval battle of WWI and the subject of controversy ever since.
On the British side part of the issue has been the relationship between Admiral Jellicoe, the overall commander of the British forces, and Admiral Beatty, the commander of the most important subordinate force. The first was cautious, the second not. The first was older, the second a young whipper-snapper. Beatty had the battle cruisers, fast and hard-hitting, but vulnerable, ultimately their trade-offs between striking power and armor were judged to be bad choices
The Brits had superior numbers, the Germans had better ships. The Brits had controlled the seas for centuries, the Germans were the upstarts. The battle itself was inconclusive--the Brits suffered more losses, but maintained control of the seas. Both sides arguably had chances to do better, possibly even to win a decisive victory. Between the personalities, the So there's a lot of room for historians to come up with different narratives
Excerpts from tooday's post, which in turn is excerpts from a book:
On the British side part of the issue has been the relationship between Admiral Jellicoe, the overall commander of the British forces, and Admiral Beatty, the commander of the most important subordinate force. The first was cautious, the second not. The first was older, the second a young whipper-snapper. Beatty had the battle cruisers, fast and hard-hitting, but vulnerable, ultimately their trade-offs between striking power and armor were judged to be bad choices
The Brits had superior numbers, the Germans had better ships. The Brits had controlled the seas for centuries, the Germans were the upstarts. The battle itself was inconclusive--the Brits suffered more losses, but maintained control of the seas. Both sides arguably had chances to do better, possibly even to win a decisive victory. Between the personalities, the So there's a lot of room for historians to come up with different narratives
Excerpts from tooday's post, which in turn is excerpts from a book:
"As discussed in Chapter 4, Evan-Thomas had not been favoured with a copy of BCFOs [Beatty's orders]. Had he been, he would have found informative Beatty’s ‘Instructions for Concentrating Battle Cruisers when Spread, and Forming Order of Battle’, for while these injunctions were framed with individual battlecruisers, rather than a squadron of battleships, in mind, the impression they impart of the thrust of BCF lore is unmistakable:My point is simply that you find bureaucracy everywhere, and knowledge of and compliance with instructions is important.
A sudden alteration of course by the ship sighting the enemy is seen by those on either side of her far more rapidly than any signal could be sent, and, being an almost certain indication of an enemy having been sighted it should be acted upon immediately. All ships that may be required to support must proceed to do so until they know definitely that they will not be required. The immediate sequel to concentrating is forming Order of Battle and engaging the enemy. In future this will be done so far as possible without signal, and each Captain is to use his discretion in handling his ship as he considers that the Admiral would wish.... Each detached ship should, at her discretion, close and engage the enemy without waiting for further orders.... Ships must never suppose that the absence of a signal implies that any given action is not sanctioned by the Flagship; on the contrary it usually denotes that the Admiral relies on each ship to take whatever action may be necessary without waiting to be told.... The sole object of these instructions is to enable ships to understand beforehand the principles of rapid co-operation, so that the enemy may be brought to action at the earliest possible moment without any ship needing or wishing to wait for detailed orders from the Admiral.To point out again that Evan-Thomas’s ignorance of BCFOs was not mainly his fault is to emphasize again the divergence between the tactical regimes of the Battle Fleet and the BCF, and more specifically, between the habits of thought expected of their respective junior flag-officers. But if one ferrets around in the ‘70 closely printed pages’ of GFBOs, one finds, amongst the ‘mass of detail which should have been common knowledge’, ‘initiative’ injunctions which, while designed to preserve the unity of a deployed battle-line, are at least partly transferable in sense to Barham’s dilemma at 2.32...."
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Biggest Defense Budgets
According to a Times piece on our Middle East policy, specifically Saudi Arabia:
- United States
- China
- Saudi Arabia
- Russia
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Human Expertise Endangered by Automation: the Sniper
Vox has a sort of video from DOD of a test of a bullet able to change course in mid-flight. (Don't ask me how they did it.) The bottom line to me: add "sniper" to the list of jobs endangered by technological obsolescence. With such a bullet even I could be a sniper.
In basic training you spend a bit of time on the rifle range. Although I'd shot a 22 rifle to kill skunks and possums on the farm, I was far from being a marksman. That was very evident in my early sessions on the range. When my company went to the range for qualification tests, I was seriously concerned about flunking, which would have meant having to repeat some weeks of basic. As it turned out, the test with popup targets (I don't remember that we'd trained on them, definitely not in the way the test went) was such that I passed, almost rating as "expert". The key was that I didn't have time to get nervous, so I could react to each new target and fire without over-thinking.
In basic training you spend a bit of time on the rifle range. Although I'd shot a 22 rifle to kill skunks and possums on the farm, I was far from being a marksman. That was very evident in my early sessions on the range. When my company went to the range for qualification tests, I was seriously concerned about flunking, which would have meant having to repeat some weeks of basic. As it turned out, the test with popup targets (I don't remember that we'd trained on them, definitely not in the way the test went) was such that I passed, almost rating as "expert". The key was that I didn't have time to get nervous, so I could react to each new target and fire without over-thinking.
Monday, December 29, 2014
F35 and the A10
James Fallows has a long article on the military in the Atlantic. Part of it is a discussion of the F-35 and A-10. He doesn't like the F-35 and does like the A-10. The logic is that the F-35 tries to meet too many goals, do too many functions for all our military air forces, and is essentially political, with subcontractors spread across many congressional districts. Conversely, the A-10 is single purpose and cheap.
There may be a couple parallels here:
There may be a couple parallels here:
- Robert McNamara's F111 fighter bomber which was initially designed for multiple services.
- Efforts to rationalize bureaucracy by combining organizations, like the USDA Infoshare effort which aborted.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The Worth of a Life, the Worth of Closure
Back in the 80's, I think it was, there was a movement to analyze the cost and benefits of government programs, particularly those programs which tried to save lives. Liberals tended to view the effort as a back-handed way to cut environmental and work safety programs, but I think over time it's been accepted as an exercise which is worthwhile.
For some reason that came to mind when I read the first paragraph of a Propublica post:
For some reason that came to mind when I read the first paragraph of a Propublica post:
The Pentagon spends roughly $100 million a year to identify service members “missing in action” from World War II, Korea and Vietnam – a noble effort to try and bring closure to families and loved ones. But the process has proven incredibly slow and inefficient, ProPublica’s Megan McCloskey reports, with only 60 identifications made in all of 2013.$100 million divided by 60 works out to a pretty high price tag for providing closure to families, particularly as the people who knew the service members are dying every day. (The people who didn't know the service members are also dying every day.)
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
The Monitor Redux: DDG 1000 Zumwalt
Via Lawyers, Guns, and Money, a piece on the launch of the new destroyer: Zumwalt, with a hull design which reminds me of the Monitor.
Apparently a complex and innovative project which came in okay. Hope it works out, but so far the DOD looks good.
Via the same source, an article on a new long-range bomber. Interesting that they're planning an unmanned version of it.
Apparently a complex and innovative project which came in okay. Hope it works out, but so far the DOD looks good.
Via the same source, an article on a new long-range bomber. Interesting that they're planning an unmanned version of it.
Funny Sentence About WWII Photo
"Landing, from what I’ve read, was considered one of the more important qualifications for a pilot."
Via Kottke, this sentence is from a piece on the "most honored [US]photograph" of WWII, taken by a "nutty crew".
Anyone who has the slightest interest in military history and/or heroism should read it.
Via Kottke, this sentence is from a piece on the "most honored [US]photograph" of WWII, taken by a "nutty crew".
Anyone who has the slightest interest in military history and/or heroism should read it.
Monday, October 14, 2013
The Right Stuff and Bureaucratic Reports
Was Chuck Yeager a "bureaucrat"? I guess I'd go too far to call the exemplar of the "right stuff" such, but this laconic bureaucrat's report of his breaking of Mach 1 is worth noting.
(Incidentally, I'm not sure why the National Archives website is still up.)
(Incidentally, I'm not sure why the National Archives website is still up.)
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Welcome to This Century, the US Navy
According to this PCMag item, the Navy is finally, finally going to stop using all caps for its messages. But the last two paragraphs don't give me confidence:
"At this point, the Navy still has systems that can't handle messages with upper and lowercase letters. "In these instances, the C2OIX system will be able to convert the text to upper case before making final delivery," McCarty said.
That problem is expected to be fixed by 2015, the Navy said."
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny: the Case of Drones
The "ontogeny" bit is a stray factoid from my 55+ years old high school biology class. I assume it's been invalidated by now, but the idea was that looking at the progress of the human embryo you could see the progress of the phylla (i.e. single-cell through gills to lungs, etc.)
Anyhow, on a completely different subject, here's a piece on the arms race in drones. Every country with a military seems to want to add armed drones to their arsenal. Now the evolution of aircraft went from reconnaissance and artillery spotting to bombing to hand guns and rifles to machine guns. So far drones have gone through the first two stages. I'm waiting for a drone-destroyer aircraft/drone that will seek to regain dominance over the airspace. (That's what happened on the sea when torpedoes arrived: first you had torpedo boats, then you had torpedo boat destroyers, which became just destroyers.)
Anyhow, on a completely different subject, here's a piece on the arms race in drones. Every country with a military seems to want to add armed drones to their arsenal. Now the evolution of aircraft went from reconnaissance and artillery spotting to bombing to hand guns and rifles to machine guns. So far drones have gone through the first two stages. I'm waiting for a drone-destroyer aircraft/drone that will seek to regain dominance over the airspace. (That's what happened on the sea when torpedoes arrived: first you had torpedo boats, then you had torpedo boat destroyers, which became just destroyers.)
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Discovered: The Undetectable Extension Charm and Rolling Thunder
Wife and I recently watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I, on DVD in which Hermione's handbag with its inexhaustible contents plays a key role. Turns out it's because she applied the "Undetectable Extension Charm" to it, making it capable of infinite expansion.
According to this Washington Times article, there were 750,000 motorcycle riders in last year's Rolling Thunder. And this says 500,000 are expected for this years. Apparently someone will apply the charm to the Pentagon parking lots, which are the staging area for the riders.
Why do I say this? Well, lets say 4 motorcycles can fit in the space for one car. Most of the cycles I see on TV have only one rider, so lets say 500,000 divided by 4 = 125,000 car equivalents, but take off 25,000 to allow for double riders. Assume that all the people at the Pentagon drive to work with no car pooling (not true--car pooling and subway and bus all serve the building), so there must be 100,000 people working there?
Not so, it's more like 30,000. Bottom line is, the organizers of all demonstrations in DC claim numbers which are too high, including even the vets, but the media never scrutinize the vets. That would be politically incorrect.
(Wiki answers says the Pentagon has 8,000 parking spots.)
According to this Washington Times article, there were 750,000 motorcycle riders in last year's Rolling Thunder. And this says 500,000 are expected for this years. Apparently someone will apply the charm to the Pentagon parking lots, which are the staging area for the riders.
Why do I say this? Well, lets say 4 motorcycles can fit in the space for one car. Most of the cycles I see on TV have only one rider, so lets say 500,000 divided by 4 = 125,000 car equivalents, but take off 25,000 to allow for double riders. Assume that all the people at the Pentagon drive to work with no car pooling (not true--car pooling and subway and bus all serve the building), so there must be 100,000 people working there?
Not so, it's more like 30,000. Bottom line is, the organizers of all demonstrations in DC claim numbers which are too high, including even the vets, but the media never scrutinize the vets. That would be politically incorrect.
(Wiki answers says the Pentagon has 8,000 parking spots.)
Monday, January 14, 2013
Suicides and Combat Deaths
According to this military suicides exceeded the number of combat deaths in Afghanistan in 2012. We don't pay much attention to either these days but apparently suicides are up and combat deaths down. There might even be a relationship: possibly combat creates meaning which is missing when based in the states? I don't know.
Thursday, November 01, 2012
Robo Call to Vets: Poor Research
Somehow the opponent of my Representative (or someone backing him) discovered I'm a vet, so I got a robo-call this noon alerting me to something despicable Mr. Connelly had said about the military. Guess their research didn't find out how firmly committed to the Dems I am.
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Our Fighters Are Fat
From Tom Ricks The Best Defense:
And Gov. Romney wants to spend more money on the military? If he wins, I hope a good bit of it is with Weight Watchers.
(Have I ever mentioned that my worst prejudice, the one I have least under control, is probably weightism?)
At present, 62 percent of active duty military members over the age of 20 have a body mass index that falls into either the overweight or obese category.My title is, I hope, unfair. I'd assume the 62 percent REMF's or FOBBITS, part of the "tail" supporting the fighters, and we have a bigger tail than ever.
And Gov. Romney wants to spend more money on the military? If he wins, I hope a good bit of it is with Weight Watchers.
(Have I ever mentioned that my worst prejudice, the one I have least under control, is probably weightism?)
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