Military

The Story Keeps Changing

As far back as February 8, Russia claimed that the US had secret laboratories in Ukraine that were and are researching biological weapons. Russia claimed that they had destroyed 7 of the 11 laboratories using missiles during the early hours of the Russian invasion. Politifact, the same people who told us all about COVID and totally debunked the rumors of a stolen election, immediately fact checked the entire story as being “false”

On March 8, China echoed Russia’s claims that the Pentagon has been funding bioweapons labs in Ukraine.

The US called the claims absurd on March 9th. The US press secretary took to Twitter to call the claims made by Russia “preposterous” and made the claim that it was a disinformation operation by both China and Russia.

In a statement, Ned Price, spokesperson for the Department of State, accused Russia of “inventing false pretexts in an attempt to justify its own horrific actions in Ukraine” and said Washington was “in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere.”

John Kirby, Pentagon spokesperson, called the Russian accusations “absurd,” “laughable,” and a “bunch of malarkey.” “There’s nothing to it. It’s classic Russian propaganda,” he told reporters.

Then on March 10, the US government admitted that there were biological research laboratories, but stated that the labs were not secret and were not being used to research weapons. The US maintained that, even though the labs were funded through the Department of Defense, they were for purely scientific in nature and totally not for biological warfare.

On March 11, the World Health Organization advised the Ukraine to destroy the pathogens in the laboratories so that they wouldn’t fall into Russian hands. You know, because the pathogens that are in the labs are totally for peaceful research and couldn’t possibly be weapons, but would be dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands. We all know how forthright and trustworthy the WHO is, since they so masterfully and truthfully handled the worldwide COVID response.

Then on March 14, White House press secretary Jen Psaki cautioned officials to be on the lookout “for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them.”

On March 15, the UK intelligence community predicted that Russia would use fabricated claims of weapons of mass destruction to discredit the west and justify their invasion of Ukraine.

By April 1, the US government’s story had changed. Now the Pentagon was telling Congress that there are “no offensive biologic weapons in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been involved with.”

According to a Pentagon fact sheet released in March (pdf warning), since 2005, the United States has “invested approximately $200 million in Ukraine … supporting 46 Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and diagnostic sites.”

Robert Pope, the director of the DTRA’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, told the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in February that the labs might contain Soviet-era bioweapons and warned that the conflict in Ukraine could accidentally lead to the dangerous disease-causing pathogens being released. Wait a minute- I thought the Pentagon said that there were “no offensive biologic weapons in the Ukraine laboratories that the United States has been involved with?”

The ever changing nature of the story being released by the Pentagon is what smells like disinformation. Have you ever caught someone in a lie, so that person then modifies the lie to fit the newly discovered facts? That is what this looks like.

The most likely story that fits these facts is that the US, along with the rest of NATO, has been engaged in illegal research into biological weapons in China (don’t forget that Fauci was funneling money into the Wuhan lab) and the Ukraine. The Ukraine was kicking some of the money back to the then Vice President of the US in order to keep the money train moving. They did this by hiring Hunter Biden at an outrageous salary to be in charge of a fake company that he was wholly unqualified to run.

It is looking more and more like our government is evil, corrupt, and willing to do anything to gain more power.

By Divemedic, ago

Trannies in Space

China and Russia are quaking in fear of the US Space Force. Is that a rocket in her pocket? Nope. She is actually a dude.

The Lt Col proves that men are better at being women than women are. Is there nothing that men can do better than women?

By Divemedic, ago

Extremes

When I was in the military, one thing we were frequently told was, “If we wanted you to have a family, we would have issued you one.” Admittedly, that was a bit extreme, but what the country is doing now is even more so.

The military isn’t a jobs program. It’s supposed to be how our nation is protected. Our current force isn’t up to the task.

By Divemedic, ago

Stupid and Evil Parties Unite

Republicans and Democrats have decided to jointly start WW3. I was watching Hannity on FOX News last night, and he had several Republicans and talk show pundits on there. All of them were pushing for US military involvement.

The biggest idea that I have heard, one that 72% Americans support, is a no fly zone. A no fly zone means that anything flying over Ukraine would have to be shot down. As soon as a NATO aircraft shoots down a Russian aircraft, it’s on. Russia will surely down a few NATO aircraft. On top of it, it’s pretty likely that NATO airfields would receive attention from Russian missiles and aircraft. NATO is now in a full on war. What if the Russians sink a US aircraft carrier? How will US citizens respond to the loss of 6,000 sailors?

If that isn’t enough, Marco Rubio has decided that he wants to simultaneously take on China.

So then what? You think the supply chain issues are bad now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. As for me, I have been buying stock in oil companies and agriculture companies.

By Divemedic, ago

Troops

The Biden administration is going to take us to war with Russia because his poll numbers are in the toilet, and it might as well be Ukraine we are doing it over, because after all, they paid for it.

The troops are moving. It looks like the following troops are being deployed to the area:

  • 82nd Airborne division is contributing an infantry brigade combat team
  • The XVIII Airborne Corps is moving a field headquarters to Germany
  • It also looks like the Second Cavalry Regiment (Stryker) will be deploying there from Germany.

The 82nd, being an airborne division, doesn’t have heavy enough equipment to take on the armor and artillery heavy Russian forces. The Stryker is essentially an armored car, and is by no means capable of taking on Russian main battle tank formations, especially considering that they are outnumbered and outgunned.

On the other side of the coin, we have the Russian forces. Nearly half of Russia’s 280,000 strong Army is arrayed near Ukraine. The Russians have amassed more than 1,000 tanks in theater.

This is a conflict that the limited number of US troops in theater can’t hope to win. This means one of two things: these troops are sacrificial lambs who will act as a tripwire to allow US expansion of the conflict, or that the Democrats are thinking that Russia will blink.

For those of you who think that the Republicans will oppose this, you have another thing coming. In fact, the Republicans in Congress told Tucker Carlson “We’re the decision-makers on Ukraine, not you” in a recent release that was intended to respond to the harsh criticism that Carlson has levied against Ukraine involvement.

“I don’t agree with those views,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said when asked about Carlson’s monologues. “[It’s] the U.S. interest not just in Europe but around the world in not having countries decide, ‘That belongs to us, we’re going to go ahead and take it.’”

I agree that one country shouldn’t be able to simply invade another. I also agree that it isn’t a problem that US citizens should be dying to correct. All of this could be avoided by simply not admitting Ukraine to NATO. Why should we go to war and chance a world war that would cost millions of American lives, all so that we can defend another country? Of course, that isn’t what all of this is about.

Joe Biden owes the Ukraine because he was bought and paid for by the ten percent he got as “the big guy.” Besides, he is lagging in the polls, and there is nothing like a war to boost sagging poll numbers.

It’s insane.

By Divemedic, ago

Analog Fire Control

When I was in the Navy, the ship that I was on had a 48 inch diameter carbon arc searchlight on it. The searchlight worked by taking what was essentially two welding rods, pressing them together, and maintaining an electrical arc in order to create a searchlight beam that was bright enough to be seen for miles. In fact, by shining that light at a cloud, it was possible to send Morse code signals to other ships over the horizon.

When my ship was built in the mid 70’s, these lights weren’t made any longer, and the one that was on my ship had been salvaged from a WW2 era destroyer that had been decommissioned. Built in the days before electronics, the system that ran this searchlight was incredibly complicated. It was an analog power supply that ran on a system of motors and gears, with lenses focusing beams of light on various parts of the system that turned motors on and off, pushing the rods closer together, or pulling them apart, as needed to maintain the light beam. A technical manual for a 24 inch example can be found here.

By the time I reported aboard the ship, the light no longer worked and no one knew how to fix it. At one point as a young E-4, I took an interest in this searchlight and decided to get it working. I made a project out of it. I found a manual in the ship’s tech library, brought the control unit down, and spent several weeks rebuilding it. When we finally got the thing lit, it was amazingly bright. The light hadn’t worked in years, and I didn’t get so much as an “attaboy” for getting it working. Nowadays, it seems like you would get a Navy Achievement Medal for fixing that thing.

I tell you this as a setup and explanation of where I got this interest in how early electrical engineers solved problems that seem easy today using electronics. The focus today is on the Ford Mark I fire control system.

The Navy needed a way to calculate the elevation and deflection of Naval guns so as to put shells on target. This was no trivial exercise in math. Both the target and the gun platform were likely moving, the target might even be airborne, the platform might be rocking in heavy seas. Different shells were of different weights and ballistic coefficients. Or you might want to put a starburst shell 50 feet over the target for illumination. Ranges were sometimes 30 or more miles away. All of these factors required math in three axes in order to be overcome: direction, distance, and elevation. Enter the Ford fire control computer.

A frigate might have one. Destroyers had two, allowing multiple batteries to engage different targets. An Iowa class battleship had four of them. They were accurate enough that this computer was still in use until the battleships were retired in the mid 90s. 50 years old is not bad for an analog computer living in the age of transistors.

Check out this video on how the system worked to direct the secondary batteries on the 5 inch guns of the battleship New Jersey.

What can be done today with a laptop computer took an entire room of switches and a 3,000 pound box filled with motors, switches, relays, and gears. It was bulky, heavy, and more complicated than a box full of Swiss watches, but it worked. It worked quite well, in fact.

I consider myself lucky to have worked on that searchlight. It was one of the most interesting projects that I have ever taken on.

By Divemedic, ago

Let’s look at the Navy

With two oceans insulating us from Asia and Europe, along with friendly (and relatively weak) neighbors to the north and south, the United States has relied on the oceans as a buffer zone against hostile forces. Those oceans are the main reason why Americans haven’t seen a war in our cities in over 150 years.

In any conflict against the Russians, winning or losing will come down to how well we can get munitions, supplies, and reinforcements across the oceans.

Both of these facts mean that we need a Navy to protect the shores and to keep our sea lanes open.

During the cold war, the US had 15 carrier battlegroups. Now it has 10. A 1980s carrier battle group had the carrier, two cruisers, three destroyers, three frigates, and a pair of supply ships. (I am not counting the submarines as a part of the group, because they seldom stay close to the carrier. Besides, submarines are not there to keep sea lanes open, they are there to deny those sea lanes to others.)

The air wing of the 1980s consisted of an Airborne Early Warning Squadron flying E2 Hawkeyes, a pair of F14 squadrons flying the F14 Tomcat, a pair of attack squadrons flying the A-7 corsair, an ASW squadron flying the S-3 Viking, a squadron of A6 bombers and tankers, an Electronic Warfare squadron flying the EA6B prowler, an ASW helicopter squadron flying the SH-3 sea king. In all, there were 92 aircraft and 11 ships in a cold war carrier battle group. The aircraft back then had more than double the combat radius as today’s airwing. The battle group had a dedicated ASW capability that was far more capable than today.

Fast forward to today: The CBG has a much diminished ASW capability, and the group consists of the carrier, one cruiser, five destroyers, and a supply ship. The airwing still has 9 squadrons, but they are smaller than squadrons just 30 years ago and carry just 53 aircraft. The Navy has eliminated the submarine hunting S-3, and has combined the functions of the A-6, EA-6B, KA-6D, F-14, and A-7 into just one aircraft platform: the F/A-18.

It doesn’t do most of those jobs as well as the aircraft they replaced. The A-6F Intruder had a 16 ton payload (pdf alert). The A-7 Corsair could carry a 6.8 ton payload. The Hornet has a 4.5 ton payload.

The F/A-18 Hornet has a much shorter range than aircraft of the cold war. This means that the carrier group must get closer to potential adversaries, which is more dangerous.

As an example, the A-6 Intruder had a combat radius of 900 miles, the A7 a radius of 700 miles, the F-14 had a radius of 650 nautical miles. Compare that to the Hornet’s radius of only 330 nautical miles. Now the carrier has to get more than 300 miles closer to the enemy in order to conduct operations.

The CBG used to have the capability of carrying and delivering nuclear weapons. With the elimination of the carriers’ W division, and the elimination of the TLAM-N, that capability has been lost. The personnel who were trained to handle and load these weapons are gone, and it would take years to regain the knowledge and weapons.

Claims of technology

I can hear it now- the forces we have are technologically more advanced, meaning that we don’t need as many ships and aircraft to do the job. While I agree that our platforms and weapons are more capable, so are the platforms and weapons of any near peer enemy. Russian and China have stealth platforms. They have long range missiles. They have hypersonic weapons. So I don’t think we can rely on a technology edge to the point where we can do with fewer ships and aircraft with shorter ranges.

Smaller and top heavy, too

Not only are the ships we have less capable than in the past, the Navy is smaller, as well. In all, the US Navy is half the size now (289 ships) as it was under Secretary Lehman, when the Navy had 594 ships.

One thing the Navy has plenty of is senior officers. In World War II, there were 30 Navy ships for every admiral. In 2022, the Navy has 243 Admirals and only 289 ships. There is one commissioned officer for every five enlisted sailors.

Don’t think that the Navy is the only branch that has this problem. One in 400 soldiers in the US Army is a general. The Air Force has more 3 and 4 star Generals than the Army, despite having half as many personnel.

Generals and Admirals aren’t cheap.  Many of those top officers are surrounded with entourages including chauffeurs, chefs and executive aids. Top flag officers have private jets always at the ready. They live in sometimes palatial homes and frequently travel in motorcades. 

Investigations have shown some in power misuse these perks. General Wiliam “Kip” Ward was demoted for using his staff and military vehicles to take his wife shopping, to spas and on vacations in $700-a-night suites, all at taxpayer expense. Demoted. When I was in the Navy, I saw sailors get kicked out on an OTH discharge for being 15 minutes late to work, and this guy gets a demotion for stealing tens of thousands of dollars.

Our military is no longer capable of doing the job it needs to do. Like a banana republic, it is only really good at taking on small bands of civilian militia. It’s only a matter of time before it is used for exactly that.

The US has cut its ability to project power so severely, that it can no longer afford to be, nor can it be, the world’s policeman.

Russia and China know that.

By Divemedic, ago