Scratching My Head.

Ahem. I don't know how to read into this.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is taking major steps in an attempt to shake off years of false starts and setbacks with the Littoral Combat Ship program, an effort Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said he’d oversee on his watch. In an exclusive interview with Defense News on July 16, Gilday listed LCS as a major priority, saying he will turn up the heat on efforts to get the ship to become a major contributor to fleet operations.“There are things in the near term that I have to deliver, that I’m putting heat on now, and one of them is LCS,” Gilday said. “One part is sustainability and reliability. We know enough about that platform and the problems that we have that plague us with regard to reliability and sustainability, and I need them resolved.”

My take on this whole spike in activity regarding these very expensive and grossly under-gunned, putting it politely, ships is related to news from Russia who started trials for her combat modules for project 22160 patrol ships.

Gilday’s goal of fielding the mission modules is well along already, according to two sources familiar with the progress, who spoke to Defense News on condition of anonymity.The mine-warfare mission module is on track for a final test and evaluation by the end of this year, a source with knowledge of the program told Defense News, and the individual components have already passed testing and are in initial low-rate production.End-to-end testing of the mine-warfare mission module is set to begin in fiscal 2021 and is on track to have its initial operating capability declared in 2022, another source said.The status of the ASW mission module, which has been a regular target of Congress-imposed budget cuts, is a little less clear.

Let's face it--the issue with combat modules for LCS is nothing new, as is the issue of preposterous costs for such a ship, in excess of $700 million per hull. What may become an issue, and a huge one at that, will be if Russians will succeed (I am pretty sure they will) with testing of their own modules, including ASW one, and appearance of project 22160, say in Mediterranean, carrying containers with Kalibrs or P-800s, or 3M22s together with ASW packages. This WILL create a shitstorm in appropriate Committees and subcommittees in Congress--remember, pr. 22160 are shitstorm corvettes--because the question will be this: why those fvcking Russians managed in few years to come up with several working modules for what amounts to their version of LCS (of sorts) and we cannot do it for more than a decade? I would say such a question, actually, will be a legitimate one. But then guess what--have you heard about F-15X lately? I heard:

And now the Air Force is doing just that. Last week, the Defense Department announced in its daily digest of defense contracts awarded that Boeing will produce an unspecified number of F-15EX aircraft over the next three years, at a total cost of $22.89 billion.

Oh baby, for around $90 million a pop for a venerable and slightly up-gunned F-15 that looks so...so... Pentagonish. But isn't it how the whole US Defense Budget is spent? I omit here all those "doctrinal" decisions such as producing a rather mediocre aircraft such as F-35, but it will do for attacking third world nations, and calling it "Stealth" because 1950s radar cannot "detect" it, but generally one has to wonder "where's the beef"?  Argument of "complexity" of US weapon systems is a complete bunk--I write about this for years and people at TAC question this too.

How Bells, Whistles & Greed Blew Up the Defense Budget. The hawks say we need to spend $740B a year because our weapons systems are so much more complex now. Here's the real story.

OK, let me cut to the chase--most American "hawks" are not hawks but chicken-hawks most of who do not know shit from shinola when dealing with military, because they lack proper education and experience which would allow them to pass sound judgements on the issue of actual warfare. US weapon systems are no more complex than many from Europe, let alone Russia. Term "sophisticated" is a false equivalency and is used merely to impress dumb-asses who sign the checks for Pentagon. Criteria of Combat Efficiency of the system has long been discarded in the US in favor of monetary gain (through ridiculous unreal costs) and making Hollywood movies. The issue is not even that SU-35C, not speaking of SU-57, will tear F-35 a new one, or that Patriot PAC whatever the version, looks like, using Publius Tacitus terminology, a Nerf Gun when compared to Russian Air Defense systems. The issue is that the US simply cannot produce decent weapon system on time, on budget and, most important, cannot make it combat effective in real combat environment. 

Come on, Russians know this, so do many many people in DoD in the US, but they are not talking because US warfare long ago became about money, appearances and propaganda, not about defense. Come to think about it, not about offense either, since the US military record as of lately is not that impressive. Ridiculous price tags of US weapons didn't help much in Afghanistan or Syria, once Russia got involved there. Well, as one of the pundits concludes:

Wood’s argument that the only way to deal with adversary technology is with better technology is also false. We don’t need to out-engineer the Russias and Chinas of the world, we need to out-think them. For virtually every high-tech weapon, there is a low-tech counter. Our struggles to deal with IEDs in Iraq is the perfect example of this. The Pentagon spent $20 billion to develop counter-IED systems only to come to the realization that nothing worked as well as a dog.

Out-think is a fancy euphemism for coming to terms with military reality and facing facts, which for Pentagon will be really painful and goes completely against Modus Operandi and Vivendi both in US military and the US Congress agreed upon for the sake of keeping a gravy train running. Well, the run may continue but the US realistically cannot win a war with the peer. In fact, it will sustain colossal materiel and reputational losses gigantic price tags of its weapons notwithstanding. Just yesterday I listened to one discussion between some totally delusional "Marxist" Alekseev and former Colonel from General Staff Vladimir Trukhan, who apart from wiping the floor with Alekseev, noted that as a former Officer-operator of General Staff he doesn't take militarily NATO seriously. Or as he said: "we don't even break sweat". He has a point, but then again, I can only repeat myself--the real danger is in the United States stumbling into open military confrontation with China, let alone Russia, see its expensive military hardware destroyed en masse, not to speak of human losses, and being pushed to the threshold of the unthinkable. This is the only "out-thinking" the United Sates is capable of today and that makes me scratch my head. I heard there was a proposition to put a ballistic missile on Zumwalt-class DDGs to enable these three white elephants with a whopper of a price tag to have missiles capable of carrying hyper-sonic glider vehicles within Prompt Global Strike paradigm. If that is "out-thinking" what can I say.... Sergei Viktorovich, help!   

Ike, Strategy Rant #1

Late Stephen Ambrose, who for a while was considered America's foremost scholar on Eisenhower, not for once commented to the effect that Ike was not necessarily that great of a strategist. These comments, evidently shared by some other American historians, good and bad, all derive from the Caesarist  (or Napoleonic, if one wishes) view of the warfare. American military bias to Napoleon and his campaigns is not surprising, Carl Sandburg in his Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (if my Alzheimer doesn't fail me. If mistaken I will correct the reference later)  wrote about frustration of US West Point-graduates with the fact that they, instead of studying Napoleon campaigns, were forced to study this Russian Suvara (Alexander Suvorov). Indeed, ideas of beautiful maneuvers, lightning strikes or strategies developed by a single brilliant military mind were all good for wars fought using linear tactics and cavalry, with set-piece battles. Yet, even those set piece battles culminated in a slaughter on unprecedented scale during the Battle Of Borodino and, in the end, tore away the mantle of pure strategic genius from Napoleon. Brilliant tactician certainly he was, a strategist? A strategy as a system of (military) measures designed to achieve  political objectives of a war (Clausewitz inspired definition, later adopted by Marxists) was something else completely and, when judged against the result achieved, tactical and operational brilliance means very little when the war is lost. 

By WW II, strategic thought became what we know it today--a function of military power, which, in its turn, encompassed a huge spectrum of national capabilities ranging from industries to public education and culture. Real strategists saw the world in a very different light than Napoleon saw it. Modern armies and navies required now immense industries, massive logistical chains, originating in national centers of industry and agriculture, new weapons such as radio, tanks and combat aviation changed the outlook of the war dramatically and changed the way armies were commanded and controlled. WW II was the first war with a full blown C3ISR complex becoming a decisive factor. To command a massive army group of 800 000 troops simultaneously required more than just ability to conduct brilliant maneuvers or inspire troops with pep-talks on the even of the battle, it required a profound understanding of the mechanisms of such a command and control and that, on a strategic level, that is level of large bodies of troops capable to influence the dynamics of a whole campaign, it meant the ability to harmonize a huge number of political, purely military, human and other factors. By 1939 to have such an ability one had to be extremely well educated not only as a good field officer, one had to have a serious both education and pedigree in (general) staff work. 

The fact that Ike graduated first out of 245 officers in Command And General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS, in 1925 should be emphasized together with Ike's serious staff pedigree prior to WW II. Yet, the shtick of many in contemporary (since WW II) US historiography, let alone vast US military history amateur circles, is pointing out that prior to WW II Ike didn't (field) command anything larger than tank battalion. But that immediately raises a question, why then, a number of battalion commanders want to attend General Staff  academies in any serious Armed Forces? It is because they know that these are academies which open the door to the command of a much larger units. How being a superb and experienced staff officer is considered a disadvantage, while, if anything else, it is an imperative for anyone who is to be considered a serious military strategist. One of the examples of such General Staff leap into the cohort of outstanding military leaders is Marshal Vasilevsky, who, and you may have guessed it already, never commanded, before entering in 1938 the world of General Staff, anything larger than regiment. Yet, one of the most outstanding military leaders of WW II emerged back into the full field command during Red Army's operations in East Prussia. All that, after Vasilevsky planned and coordinated such battles as Moscow 1941 counteroffensive, Stalingrad, Kursk and Operation Bagration.  Not too shabby for a staff officer. 

How Eisenhower's staff pedigree could be a disadvantage, as many profess, in the war where strategic inception (Zamysel) required immense planning, hence large staffs, remains a complete mystery to me. How being a star graduate of what amounted to Russian (Soviet) equivalent of General Staff Academy is not a perfect pedigree for command of large complex forces and being a good level strategist is also a mystery to me, when speaking about Ike who has an overwhelming empirical evidence in his favor. Serious wars are not fought without serious plans and Eisenhower sure as hell was a good military planner with a good grasp of what was at stake in WW II. It couldn't have been otherwise, since in many important respects serving under George C. Marshall's command was more than ample evidence of Ike's talents. Illiterate references (in many US sources) to Ike's "administrative", a euphemism for staff officer, talents merely underscore a complete lack of understanding what is involved in serious operational and strategic planning and Ike sure has done more than his share of it. He ended up, finally, the greatest American practitioner of military strategy, which becomes even more evident against the background of many today's general officer mediocrities whose "planning" (in reality promoting their own careers) helped to squander American resources and embroil her in useless and unwinnable wars globally. 

Yet, Ike's first attempt on real strategic planning was both noble and professional. The first thing Ike understood--a fact which is largely downplayed or deliberately ignored in many American sources--was the fact that successful Allied strategy in Europe hinged on Red Army. Compare this view with the view of then Senator Harry Truman: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible." The contrast in attitudes and the level of a strategic thinking couldn't be starker, when Ike wrote in his diary in July 1942, after the Second Washington Conference rejected his and Marshall's Operation Sledgehammer Plan, in favor of Torch.  Depressed and dejected Ike wrote that the prize "we seek is to keep 8 million Russian soldiers fighting Germany. Failing to provide help to Russia will constitute one of the gravest mistakes in history" (need precise quote, this one from memory, but almost exact). You can find this entry in same Stephen Ambrose's national bestseller "The Supreme Commander". Ike's prophesy will come true but Cold War ideological realities helped to not only obfuscate but essentially completely reverse the clock work of the early WW II to a such degree that, in the end, real events and strategic discussions between Allies in 1941-42 have been completely overtaken by Hollywood imagery and a mythology which only now, not least thanks to immense academic efforts of Colonel David Glantz and Lt.Colonel Jonathan House, is being penetrated with the actual facts "on the ground".  

To Be Continued...