Let's Try Q & A And Whatever Else Sticky Post

Here is the post which I will try to keep sticky for people to ask questions and share their thoughts which are not on topic. This, I think is known as Open Thread. Fire away.

You Can Read Me Now In US Naval Institute Blog.

Russian Navy, Mission Found?

You may read my new piece on some doctrine-technology issues in today's USNI Blog post. Link is below. 

Aircraft Carriers’ Drama 

France Being... France.

 Leo Tolstoy said it best. 

A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known.

I still don't understand why France's political and pseudo-intellectual elites think and are assured in their thinking that they are "irresistibly attractive" to Russia but they, evidently, are self-assured. Why, because they think that Russia owes them something. Hm, really?

МОСКВА, 31 окт - РИА Новости. В посольстве Франции в России глубоко обеспокоены угрозами в адрес республики, сообщили об этом российским властям, призывая их выступить с официальным осуждением, заявила дипмиссия.  

Translation: Moscow, 31 October, Ria. France's embassy in Russia is deeply concerned with the threats against the republic as they informed Russian authorities and called on them to officially condemn those. 

There was a group of Russian Muslims, I don't know 30-40 men, which held a protest at French embassy in Moscow regarding this whole business with Mohamed's caricatures and decapitation of the teacher, Moscow police observed them for a short time and then dispersed them. Big fvcking deal. What is happening inside France is France's internal affair and let France deal with her own problems. I may remind French diplomats St. Petersburg's terrorist act of April, 2017. Let's see, as Kathy Hopkins describes it, France, it is about you:

Only Trump called to offer support. And only Tel Aviv lit up the City Hall with the colours of the Russian flag. Thank God for the decency of these two leaders — for both of whom the threat posed by Islamic extremism is so stark.

Only after public outcry did Paris do something (turned lights off, I recall) with Eiffel Tower. By then it didn't matter. As Hopkins points out and overwhelming majority of Russian know it:

After Westminster we 'stood united', we 'were not cowed' and we would 'carry on'. Our leaders (such as they are) spoke of the bravery of the victims, the swift response of the emergency services; we heard from the families of the victims, who held no grudge against the attacker. The Eiffel Tower was plunged into darkness. Merkel said she stood with Britain. The hashtag #prayforLondon and #WeStandUnited trended around the globe. This is our terror-response template, to which we are encouraged to conform when we need to self-soothe. But, it is now clear, it is not universal. It is not extended to all. It is not extended to Putin's Russia.

France supported throughout the years all kinds of jihadists all over the world from Syria to Russia. In fact, as I state non-stop, France gave shelter to Chechen terrorists whose hands were covered in blood of Russia's servicemen and civilians, from pregnant women to children. France continues to play a decisive role in destabilizing Syria, French native population is being diluted by non-stop stream of people who are incompatible with the values of France and the process is long time out of control. France supported Chechen separatism, so it is really simple--what goes around, comes around. I can only remind French diplomats what their Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov stated couple of weeks ago:

Those people in the West who are responsible for foreign policy and do not understand the necessity of mutually respectable conversation--well, we must simply stop for a while communicate with them. Especially since Ursula von der Leyen states that geopolitical partnership with current Russia's leadership is impossible. If this is the way they want it, so be it.   

I don't understand what's so complicated with all that? Russia owes nothing to anyone. Want to deal with Russia and have Russia's support--be nice and take a number. I do feel for average French people but it is what it is--they voted for those who are in power, so it is a moot point. Plus, French on average do not consider Russians a European people and, finally, Russians arrived to the same conclusion. Considering who French "elites" largely are and where they came from, I don't think there is any future for Russian-French relations in any serious sense. Economics, you know, some trade, sure. Other than that, they want Russians? How about cleaning Paris from dirt, crime, rats and maybe using some air freshener for it not to stink with urine. That could be a good start, including dropping a pretense and self-assurance in own attractiveness and looking at the reality of Western Europe in general, and French motherland in particular. 

One comment under the Russian song Those Were the Days reads:

Europe needs Russia! Russia come back!

I don't think so. Too little, too late--Russia's plans are Eurasian in essence and scale, Europe in general, and France in particular, can remain in their belief in own attractiveness. I liked this meme:

Transliterated phrase means: we don't give a fuck. They better learn to live with this reality in Europe.  

How To Deal With All That.

Dostoevsky said that beauty will save the world. Of course, everyone has their own standard of beauty and as they say--the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or in the ear. But, but, there are universals. Is America beautiful? Goodness gracious, the United States and Canada are breathtaking. In the times of the serious upheaval, such as today's, it is good to simply recall what is truly beautiful and talented and that it is still out there. In fact, it is in the subconsciousness, it is hard-wired. I may bitch and write serious books with some serious forecasts, hoping they never come true, but in the end of the day anyone whose head is screwed on correctly on his (her) body must have a retreat into the realm of simply beautiful. Like paintings of women by Konstantin Razumov in this rendition of classic Russian song known as Those Were the Days (By a Long Road). 

Or just enjoy breathtakingly beautiful and talented Lucy Thomas who is just 16 years old but her talent is just boundless. 

Or, good ol' Neal Sedaka from America which is no more. 

In other words, one needs the infusion of a true beauty to stay alive. 

Friday today. 

P.S. Neal Diamond's masterpiece is one of few truly our, my and my wife's, songs, as I am sure it is true for millions around the world. I know how Pink Floyd saved my sanity. So, enjoy if you will, a real culture. 

Is It New Strategic Or Inter-Mediate Range LOL?

Are they THAT dumb that they do not even understand that they are already a laughing stock? Here is Hudson Institute meeting today with Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Robert O’Brien. Do not miss first few minutes of introduction of O'Brien and his professional background and experience. 

I know, it is a torturous hour-long molasses of pseudo-scholar bloviation, beaten to death false cliches and tropes about US "national security" to the audience of one of the most neocon and war-mongering "think tanks" (more like a wagon) and this non-event of a typical pre-election chest-thumping and BS spin would have gone unnoticed if not for O'Brien's threat to Russia. Russians even reported it. You can listen to this starting at 56:00. 

"Мы вышли из договора о РСМД, мы разрабатываем гиперзвуковое оружие, системы доставки баллистических ракет. <...> Мы разместим такое же вооружение при необходимости в Европе для сдерживания России"

Translation: We quit INF Treaty, we are developing hypersonic weapons, systems of delivery by ballistic missiles... We will deploy same weapons, if necessary, in Europe to contain Russia.  

Ahem, as I already stated it not for once, most US top political echelon speeches today have a surreal similarity to North Korean party gatherings in their sloganeering, catch phrases, but go even further from North Korea in a full detachment from reality. I listened to O'Brien's hollow boilerplate that you would spare your personal time by not doing this. But claim about hypersonic weapons was so ridiculous that Russians started... laughing. Sure, US threatening Russia with weapon systems it doesn't have is a good ol' American tradition. But, unlike it was with corrupted and cowardly Gorbachev and his surrounding, times are different in Moscow today and nobody, really, buys this BS anymore, because everyone knows that the gap is generational and the Air-Defense/Anti-Missile system which Russia deploys today, from a mind-boggling ABM position area around Moscow, which simply has no analogues anywhere, to systems designed specifically for working against perspective hyper-sonic weapons--S-300V4--S-400--S-500--is simply unbridgeable anymore. So, sure, a deployment of non-existing weapons is such a threat. 

And here is the deal, me being a US citizen and having America as my (our) home, it is absolutely demoralizing and embarrassing to see these clowns, who are laughed at all over the world and who wouldn't be able to run a convenience store, much less nuclear superpower, who pretend that they know something. They don't, world at large has already figured it out. Russians know this for decade, Chinese too, so does Iran. Instead of initiating a global settlement between the Great Three, a globalist cabal in the US is not only driving the country into the ground but humiliates it constantly, first by cringe-worthy flattery and praising what is not there and never was, and then by parading it as an Exhibit A of political and ideological dysfunction and inability to govern itself. It is mind-boggling. There is nothing more pathetic than in the street fight some bully quitting a bloody bare knuckle pleasantries and suddenly stating that the fight should be fought differently and that he will call now a posse of transformers or Captain America if the opponent will not put his fists in the gloves. Hollow threats, hollow promises, now down right comical bluffing which both sides know is just that, a crock o' shit.  

You already know that my third book is getting ready. I post here an excerpt, highly unedited (so, pardon my Runglish and punctuation), about American idiosyncrasies which lead today to what we all have on our hands--a systemic crisis of the United States. It is not a military analysis book per se. In fact, most of it about economy, culture, energy, what have you, but you know that I wouldn't be me if I wouldn't stick couple of chapters on RRMA, whose "evangelist" I was for many many years. So, here it is:

US Naval War College publication NWCR (Naval War College Review) is known for decades to publish wonderful introspective into the American military thought known as Newport Papers, Newport, Rhode Island, being a location of the Naval War College. A fascinating collection of thoughts and reports on war gaming was and continues to be numbered. One such Newport Paper 20, submitted in 2004 was titled Global War Game. Second Series 1984-1988. It is a monograph on global war-gaming between NATO and Warsaw pact and as foreword to this paper states that it:

“…recounts a uniquely interesting and challenging period in the Naval War College’s engagement with naval and national strategies through the war-gaming process. The games examined the ability of the United States to sustain conventional warfare with the Soviet Union until full mobilization of the nation’s resources could be achieved. Through a sustained set of sequential and interlocking games, the Global process identified a number of important and controversial findings. …these games pointed to the importance of offensive action, including maritime operations; the ability of “Blue” (the West, broadly speaking) to win without resorting to nuclear weapons; and the extensive planning necessary to conduct high-intensity combat over a lengthy period.”[i]   

The monograph is instructive in many important respects, including an attempt to look at such a massive conflict only within conventional, non-nuclear that is, framework. It is also instructive in terms of a rather severe constrains which the carrier-centricity of the US Navy imposed on an imagination of the American planners who still could not recognize an unfolding of new paradigm. The most peculiar phrase of the report on the mutual casualties of war is contained on the page 134: “D+38 Red OSCAR SSGN launches only successful ASCM attack of war.”[ii] It is an extremely important note which tells that on the 38^th day of imaginary, or simulated if one wishes, 1984 war between USSR and the West, project 949 Oscar-class missile submarine scored the only hit by the anti-shipping missiles P-700 Granit (NATO: SS-N-21 Shipwreck) on any NATO target of significance. The brief review of the mutually inflicted casualties by no means shows Western “technological superiority”, which was and continues to be tune du jour since the early days of the Cold War, and even the main asset of the US Navy, its aircraft carriers, is being torpedoed left and right and even being heavily damaged by the salvos of cruise missiles by Soviet long-range Naval Missile-carrying Aviation (MRA). It is a peculiar conclusion since unlike Soviet MRA which at that time in 1980s carried very high supersonic (Mach=4.6) missile Kh-22 with active radar homing warhead, its range was around 600 kilometers which was making the mission of Soviet carriers of this missile—Tupolev TU-22—a very calamitous affair against any Carrier Battle Group if it was on alert and had E-2 Hawkeyes and its F-14s Tomcats, with allegedly effective, long-range Aim-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles, in the air and ready to take on those swarms of TU-22s. Soviets did recognize that the early versions of a Kh-22’s homing devices were vulnerable to jamming and serious losses were expected among TU-22s.   

Yet, the appearance in 1980 of the project 949(A) Oscar-class anti-shipping cruise missile submarines, which were called carrier-killers, together with less-flattering moniker of nuclear loafs, due to their enormous width for housing of the revolutionary anti-shipping missile complex P-700 Granit, was one of the major factors contributing to the appearance of the Aegis-equipped cruisers of Ticonderoga-class and of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. Both ships were designed with a strong emphasis on AAW (Anti-Air Warfare) and despite their ability to carry many Tomahawk cruise missiles, were and are primarily viewed as an organic integral air-defense and anti-submarine escort of the aircraft carriers. First Aegis-equipped Ticonderoga-class cruisers began to be deployed since 1983 and instead of being equipped with MK-41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) carried outdated and slow MK-26 dual-rail launchers for its Standard MR SM -2 anti-air missiles—system simply not designed to deal with a massive salvo of anti-shipping missiles. Not until the end of 1986 would the US Navy see new ‘improved’ Ticonderoga-class cruisers, starting from USS Bunker Hill (CG 52), entering the fleet. These ships carried much more ‘productive’, meaning higher rate of fire, MK 41 VLS.[iii] Arleigh Burke-class destroyers would not appear in the US Navy until 1991 altogether. Moreover, the issues with much touted Aegis combat control system build around SPY-1 Radar would not only continue to plague it early on, but the whole system failed to intercept even slow and ‘one-after-another’—a scenario excluded from real combat—missiles in tests. Out of 16 missiles launched ‘one-after-another’ only 5 were shot down--a dismal and a deadly failure in case of a real war.[iv] Yet, even set in the realities of 1984 military-technological paradigm, US Naval War College assumed that some of its carriers will be damaged by torpedo salvos from Soviet submarines, while remaining largely impervious to newest supersonic and highly resistant to jamming state-of-the-art M=2.5 capable missile designed to operate in a artificial intelligence network of a large salvo, with missiles capable to communicate between each-other in the salvo, reassign targets by importance and decide on the further course of action. The whole notion that torpedo attacks from maximum distances of 30-40 kilometers, in reality much closer than that, at aircraft carrier would be more effective and less dangerous for the attacking submarine than a salvo of 10-12 supersonic P-700s from a distance of 300-650 kilometers, 650 kilometers being maximum distance at which such missile could be launched, seems at best contrived, at worst—delusional.

There is a vast record of foreign and domestic submarines breaking through ASW screens of the American carriers and ‘scoring’ a torpedo hit on them.[v] But that was under the conditions of however intense but simulated combat. Real life combat would make such a torpedo attack extremely dangerous for attacker which would have to face an intense search operation from both escorts and US submarines operating with the carrier battle group. Anti-shipping cruise missiles were invented and evolved specifically as stand-off weapons ensuring much better chances of survival for an attacker.

A favorite and false premise of the American strategists that modern wars will be fought by traditional weapons revealed a very American idiosyncrasy—lack of desire to adapt. It was this lack of desire which prevented the United States to see and follow an easily predictable evolution of the missiles and enablers, such as highly successful ‘Legenda’ to a modern fusion of sea, ground, air and space-based sensors capable to deliver a reliable targeting for any kind of modern supersonic and hypersonic weapons, capable to strike anywhere around the world.

---

[i] Global War Game. Second Series 1984-1988. Captain Robert H. Gile (U.S. Navy, Ret.). The Newport Papers. 20. August, 2004. Foreword.
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/newport-papers/34

[ii] Ibid, 134.

[iii] The Naval Institute Guide to Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet. Eighteens Edition. Norman Polmar. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 2005, 138-142.

[iv] Lessons Not Learned: The U.S. Navy Status Quo Culture. Roger Thompson (Naval Institute Press, 2007), 176-177.

[v] Ibid, 45, 81.

So, here it is. US "elites" on display, who still live in their little bubble and who do not care about how they look from the outside. A complete intellectual and moral collapse.