There Is Nothing "Disturbing" Here, Mr. Davis.

Daniel Davis writes about US Vice-President Mike Pence's Memorial Day address in next terms:

Memorial Day. It was designed to be a somber remembrance of the pain and loss suffered by those made the ultimate sacrifice for the security of the nation. Now, however, it seems it’s becoming more a celebration of combat.On Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence told the graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy that the world is “a dangerous place” and that future combat isn’t a possibility, but a near-sure deal. “It is a virtual certainty that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life,” he said. “It will happen.” With all due respect to the Vice President, I find these statements and underlying mentality disturbing.  The Commander in Chief’s number one priority is to keep our citizens safe—but his sacred duty to the men and women who wear the uniform is to consider their lives as the most precious commodity our country produces. 

Well, yes, Lieutenant Colonel, you assess Mike Pence's, indeed, disturbing mentality as a military professional and, which shines through your writings, an American patriot. But you miss the point. From Mike Pence point of view--there is nothing disturbing about what he states. In fact, what he states is a normal, fully organic and natural thing for people like Mike Pence. Let us open his biography, it speaks volumes.

Pence graduated from Columbus North High School in 1977. He earned a BA degree in history from Hanover College in 1981, and a JD degree from the Indiana University's Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis in 1986. While at Hanover, Pence joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, where he became the chapter president. After graduating from Hanover, Pence was an admissions counselor at the college from 1981 to 1983. In his childhood and early adulthood, Pence was a Roman Catholic and a Democrat. He volunteered for the Bartholomew County Democratic Party in 1976 and voted for Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, and has stated that he was originally inspired to get involved in politics by people such as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. While in college, Pence became an evangelical, born-again Christian, to the great disappointment of his mother. His political views also started shifting to the right during this time in his life, something which Pence attributes to the "common-sense conservatism of Ronald Reagan" that he began to identify with.After graduating from law school in 1986, Pence was an attorney in private practice. He ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat in 1988 and in 1990. In 1991, he became the president of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, a self-described free-market think tank and a member of the State Policy Network, a position he held until 1993.

This is a biography of a colorless lawyer who slowly migrated from Roman Catholicism to "born-again" allegedly "Christianity", which is a euphemism for being a Christian Zionist and a neocon--a precise strata of American society who, together with a number Israeli and Gulfies' influence groups, make sure that US is Israel's (and sometimes Saudi's) stooge and fights wars on behalf of those in the Middle East. As we can see, Mike Pence doesn't know (as doesn't his President) shit from shinola in anything war related. This is NORMAL for D.C. bureaucracies, and especially those parts which are vehemently pro-Israel. In this case, Pence, must make sure that his son is sent to combat zone together with West Point's graduates and takes part in those promised battles. Fact is, it would have been really good to send Mike Pence himself to spend couple months at some FOB in Afghanistan and experience all pleasures of said combat. After all, he is second in the chain of command of the United States and should have his leadership qualities honed in real conditions, before sending someone's sons and daughters to die for Israel or Saudis. No? Well, too bad. It is such a pity that most militarily aggressive nation since 1993 is continuously led by pathetic mediocrities who are good only for private law practice or real estate business and who never served a day in uniform. 

I can totally understand Lt. Colonel Davis' plea, but it is in vain, as will be any attempt in trying to find any qualities which make a real man (not just a dick-bearer) in Donald Trump, Mike Pence or, for that matter, Bill Clinton or Barak Obama. US political top today is a combination of perverts, imbeciles and cowards who wouldn't last a day when and if faced with military realities. So, I get it:

You want to honor the memory of those who have sacrificed so much for this nation on Memorial Day? The best way to honor those who have fallen is to make sure their sacrifices prevent future generations from having to fight. A good first step towards that goal would be to stop boasting about how much combat our current generation of troops will see and start looking for non-lethal ways to foster and maintain peace.  

But it will fall on deaf ears. Normal for these people is evil covered by the fig leaf of their perverted "faith"--it is the world of upside down being normal. 

About "Fascism". Ahem.

I just want to leave this here for people, who use frivolously such terms as "Nazism", "Fascism" and who do not understand that EU long ago lives in the liberal fascist totalitarian dystopia, to get the idea what Russia brings to the world and how Europe has committed a suicide long time ago precisely because she allowed the "far-right" BS to obscure what was and is going on with what remains (possibly unsalvageable anymore) from once great culture. The screenshots of weather forecast from Syrian and Swedish (Swedish???) TV. I leave it without comments. 

Weather Report.

Sad Day For Brazil.

But that is how "investments" work nowadays--takeovers. 

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Boeing Co on Thursday said that after taking over Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA's passenger jet unit, it will call the division Boeing Brasil - Commercial, dropping one of Brazil's most iconic company names. The name change comes after Boeing agreed to pay $4.2 billion to buy 80% of Embraer's operation making passenger jets with fewer than 150 seats. Embraer will retain a 20% stake. That division is still Embraer's most profitable and considered a gold standard of Brazilian engineering.

Of course, rebranded Embraer will stay in Brazil, for now. But I can totally feel for Brazilians--it is their icon. It is akin to Ford Mustang, an American icon, being rebranded into Toyota, or, for that matter seeing Boeing being rebranded into, well, Embraer.   

After Airbus SE took a controlling stake in the C Series division of Bombardier Inc, which competes directly with Embraer's commercial jets, it rebranded the planes Airbus A220, in line with the branding of other Airbus planes. The twin takeovers effectively halted the aerospace ambitions of Canada and Brazil and left China as the main threat to the transatlantic duopoly, with Russia and Japan making slower inroads, analysts said. The Embraer name holds special meaning in Brazil, evoking its founding in 1969 as a state-run company that grew into a national champion and was privatized in 1994. Embraer is short for Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica or Brazilian Aeronautics Company. After the deal with Boeing, Embraer will still exist as a company focused on executive jets and defense. The deal with Boeing has been approved by shareholders but is still waiting on regulatory approval.

And here is the deal with commercial (and military too, to a certain degree) aerospace. While I agree with analyst (see highlighted in yellow) in terms of Bomardier and Embraer takeovers, and, as a consequence, removal of Canada and Brazil from competition, assessing Chinese commercial aerospace industry as a threat to Airbus-Boeing duopoly is an overstatement to say the least. It rings true ONLY for China's internal, granted gigantic, commercial aircraft market, that much is true. On international arena, however, Chinese COMAC is not a competitor to either Boeing, Airbus or what is coming soon from Russia, also let's not forget where major components for such aircraft as latest upgrades for B-747 or B-787 were designed--they were designed at Russia's Boeing engineering facility. Yes, Japan is getting into the commercial aircraft market but so far those attempts with Mitsubishi's Regional Jet (MRJ) are still tightly connected with the United States, not least through, inevitably, engines.

Yes, engines, yet again. It is them, not even the ability to design and manufacture aircraft, however high level skill this is, but the ability to provide a power-plant fro aircraft which define the game. Only four (FOUR) nations possess such a strategic ability: United States (PW, GE etc.), UK (Rolls-Royce), Russia (PS and PD series) and France (Safran, and LEAP--a JV between Safran and GE). Moreover, Russians finally had it with their JV with Safran (Snecma) hot parts of SAM146 jet engine for Sukhoi SSJ-100 and are going to completely Russify SSJ-100 from avionics to APU, including substituting SAM146s with fully Russian PD-10. So, as many times was pointed out by me--only those who produce modern cutting edge power-plant for commercial aircraft are the real players in commercial airspace. In other words--only those who possess a complete enclosed technological cycle, from R&D, manufacturing composites, metals, ability to design to electronics and engines, only those can withstand competition and, in fact, will lead it. For all its elegance and a proud history, Embraer aircraft had only Brazilian fuselage--everything else, including the heart of the aircraft--its power-plant--was of Western origin. Once Embraer was privatized, it became clear what will be its final fate. Brazilians are now denied even a partial credit for their most important high-tech proud product. It really is a shame and I am slightly sad.   

Douglas Macgregor Hits It Out Of The Ball Park.

Ahh, what a coincidence. The moment I write this two days ago: 

One of the very few reasons I read (as in past tense) this dumpster The National Interest was precisely for reasons that once in a while people like Douglas Macgregor or Daniel L. Davis, a cadre senior officers of the US Army, would publish their opinions. I do not always agree with them but their opinions are, which is expected from real professionals, head and shoulders above the amateur tripe the magazine's so called "military experts" (none of them military) continue to publish. Luckily, Lt. Colonel Davis' writing is beginning to appear more and more in such outlets as The American Conservative, which for all its major flaws, still tries to figure things out and still retains, despite Rod Dreher continuing to write about things he has no clue about, a degree of respectability and expertise. 

Colonel Douglas Macgregor is published in the American Conservative. And he starts with the bang:

The United States is primarily a global maritime and aerospace power, not a global land power. Washington is known for exaggerating threats, but is the notion of spending to fight a near-simultaneous war with Russia and China in 2030 a realistic goal? Wars with continental powers like Russia, China, or even Turkey or Iran, demand the persistent employment of large and powerful ground forces projected over thousands of miles. U.S. military advantages at sea and in the air are relegated to supporting roles as seen in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

It has been stated many times--American warfare is an expeditionary, or as I call it "not here", one. It is a situation which the United States must resign itself to, especially in the times of, as Macgregor quotes Under Secretary of the Navy, Robert Work:

The problem in the context of future amphibious operations: “The Navy-Marine team will never contemplate littoral maneuver until an enemy’s battle network, capable of firing dense salvos of guided weapons, is suppressed…Thus far we have only argued that some capability to conduct theater-entry operations and littoral maneuver must be retained. But it is fair to ask how much amphibious capacity is needed.”

The immediate question is--WHOSE network and suppressed how? In case, say, of Iran I can see that--eventually the pure mass of US Navy and Air Force, operating from bases near Iran may do the trick, which still doesn't mean much in case of land invasion--we can only imagine attrition rates in this case, they will be huge. Macgregor, however, uses a Chinese "scenario":

In other words, the Marine Corps’ slow, soft-skinned, virtually defenseless amphibious carriers, auxiliaries, and VTOL/STOL airlift with their fragile cargoes of Marines cannot operate against the Chinese until the U.S. Air Force and Navy eliminate China’s air and naval forces from most of the Pacific. It’s not realistic, and building more amphibious carriers won’t help. The proliferation of persistent surveillance, air defense, and precision strike technologies consign amphibious operations to the ash heap of history.

Ranges and velocities of weapons today is what drives this very real Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) sweeping away whole scores of obsolete technologies and operational concepts and the process only accelerates--it is inevitable, we are deep in the process of crossing into new combat physics reality. Macgregor was always a persistent reality-based military thinker not afraid of making his, validated not for once, views publicly known since the times of his seminal Breaking the Phalanx, which foretold many issues the United States faces today with her increasingly "top heavy" and questionably effective military power. 

I can not see as of today US forces capable of fighting a peer without sustaining catastrophic losses which may change the dynamics of the conflict dramatically and push the US  to the nuclear threshold. As I spoke for years now, the United States is nuclear-biased since roughly 2008 when the reality of a new combined arms and naval warfare started to trickle down slowly to people who actually have a clue. Not a "four-stars", as Macgregor calls them, of course. In the end, one must ask a question--what happens when the US loses a whole CBG and an amphibious group, or begins to lose 5-10 combat aircraft a day? What will be a reaction? Macgregor doesn't mince his words and is blunt and realistic as ever when concludes:

Back in Washington, deferring to the Four Stars who collectively have never fought a major battle against a capable opponent, is the wrong answer. The service bureaucracies’ insatiable appetite for money and missions to justify their structures inclines them to advocate for U.S. military engagement in lesser conflicts and regions of marginal or no strategic importance to the American people. President Donald Trump must overrule his generals and abandon the financially destructive spending strategy that Congress, industry, and the Four Stars want. If the president does not act, the dismal record of post–World War II U.S. military fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Vietnam and Korea, will persist into the future with far more serious strategic consequences than anything seen since the first battle of Bull Run.

This is real American patriot and warfare realist speaking--but being a realist, he should understand that Trump is not going to overrule his generals, even if to assume, for a minute, an unimaginable--that Trump is not a militarist. So what is in store then. Macgregor makes one key remark:

The budget of the U.S. Army is currently larger than Russia’s entire defense budget. Yet, the Russian State extracts “more capability for less” from its army than the American taxpayer does. The reason is that Putin removed most of the senior military officers in his first term of office. Putin then demanded and eventually received new plans for the reorganization of Russia’s army into a smaller, more lethal force structure.

Russia IS driving this RMA today and will continue to do so precisely because of the United States and its current position in the larger, global that is, scheme of things. As I continuously write:

For a nation with such a military history as Russia’s the issue of military technology is an issue of survival. As such, weapons in Russia are sacralized because behind them are generations of Russians who shed blood to make those weapons what they are. They have become a part of the culture to such a degree that commercial considerations take a very distant second place to a main purpose of these weapons—to actually defend the nation. This is absolutely not the case in the United States, with some exception for its Navy, with Americans having no knowledge or recollection of what real war is and what instruments for fighting and winning it are needed. Those things cannot be paid for in money, they are paid for in blood.

I guess this also answers the questions posited in the title to Macgregor's excellent piece: Why Do We Fight? How Do We Fight?  

P.S. The conclusion of my new book answers this question too.  

Hm, Something Is Missing....

And I can not exactly put my finger on what it is (wink, wink). As manufacturer of these commemorative coins states:

After a long four years of war and sacrifice in World War II, the Allies were finally victorious. It was a time for the Greatest Generation to rejoice and reflect on the gains and losses of the war, and the bright future of freedom that lay ahead. Now, remember all those who secured the liberties we enjoy today with this World War II Victory 75th Anniversary Proof Coin Collection, exclusively from The Bradford Exchange Mint. This historic collection begins with Issue One, The World War II Victory 75th Anniversary. 

I still cannot  exactly identify what is strange about this coin. 

So, I had to go and dig a bit deeper into the history of WW II and lo and behold. Even Dr. Seuss knew a thing a two in 1943 what was really going on.

Soviets certainly were much more conscious about all that:

With Unified Strike

But never mind, the idea that Overlord couldn't have been possible without coordinated actions between Allies and USSR--the exact topic number one on the agenda at Tehran Conference--can give some people an aneurysm.  Red Army, as was settled, to relieve Allies in Normandy unleashed on June 22, 1944 Operation Bagration, which annihilated Wehrmacht's Army Group Center and ensured that Allies were able to breakout of the beachheads they captured on D-Day. Well that, and a simple fact that 80% of the best Axis forces perished on Eastern Front--you know, a small contribution by the Soviets, who still erect monuments to their valiant Allies:

Other than that, this new commemorative coin is just another step in a complete rewriting of history, which is needed for reinforcing self-proclaimed exceptionalist myth of the United States. I warned about this from the start of this blog:

The crucible of the modern world we live in remains on the battlefields of the World War II. It was an event of unprecedented scale in human history. In fact, it dwarfed anything humanity had experienced before. The Allied victory over Nazism seemed to pave the way to a better future but things changed very fast. One way they changed was the fact that, as David Glantz and Jonathan House note in their seminal "When Titans Clashed" (pages 275-276):"...the Soviets,by rights, had an undisputed claim to the lion's share of the spoils of this victory over Nazi Germany. In Western perceptions, however, the political consequences of that victory deprived the Soviet Union of that right."Here, these two brilliant American scholars, make one substantial mistake--the claims were not "undisputed", the whole industry, from media to academe, was born to dispute and to completely pervert the history of WW II.This industry is alive and well and it continues to work to reinforce generally Anglo-Saxon, and American in particular, point that it was thanks to the United States that the Nazi Germany was defeated.

As you can see, the process of rewriting the WW II history continues. As I pointed out to one such buffoon from, where else, The National Interest dumpster, about two years ago. In the end--they need to believe, without it--their world collapses.

Daniel L. Davis Hits It Out Of The Ball Park.

One of the very few reasons I read (as in past tense) this dumpster The National Interest was precisely for reasons that once in a while people like Douglas Macgregor or Daniel L. Davis, a cadre senior officers of the US Army, would publish their opinions. I do not always agree with them but their opinions are, which is expected from real professionals, head and shoulders above the amateur tripe the magazine's so called "military experts" (none of them military) continue to publish. Luckily, Lt. Colonel Davis' writing is beginning to appear more and more in such outlets as The American Conservative, which for all its major flaws, still tries to figure things out and still retains, despite Rod Dreher continuing to write about things he has no clue about, a degree of respectability and expertise. 

The latest from Davis is his scathing retort to former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster nauseating and tired narrative about public being "defeatists" thus, as his notorious book suggested, being in a larger sense responsible for the United States losing war in Vietnam and, as current situations has it, in Iraq and Afghanistan. You see, it is always about just another push, just another hundred thousands or so  of lives, just another couple of trillions of dollars and the victory is at hand. Davies demolishes McMaster's delusion. And while doing this really well, Davis comes to the conclusion of which I am writing for years now. 

Establishment Washington claims to have the education, understanding, and firsthand experience to know what’s in America’s best interests abroad. Their record says otherwise. It is no small irony that the architects of almost 20 years of failed wars are the ones now belittling the American public for succumbing to “war weariness.”

Finally, a much needed talk in broadsides. I myself am being nauseating trying to hammer this simple point home for a very long time: having a graduate degree in what amounts to killing the enemy on both personal and industrial scale, I still cannot grasp a simple reality of how people with zero serious military training (no, I am not talking about going through the boot camp, however desirable) which allows them professional handling of the issues of operations, strategy and doctrine, which are rooted in modern times in extremely complex technologies, to offer any opinions on the issue of war. Lawyers (nothing against this profession per se) and sociologists do not make great strategists in real life. No doubt, someone with Ph.D in Political (pseudo)"Science" will be able to multiply essences through incessant and most of the time incompetent political doctrine-mongering but, the question goes, if for a person, in order to get to the operation table to perform an open heart surgery, years and years of intensive education training are required to become a surgeon, it is only natural that we see NO sociologists, economists or Ph.Ds in broadcasting (whatever that means) being allowed anywhere near operation room. Mind you, on operation table a surgeon deals with a single, however precious, life. 

Now, the US Congress which is stuffed primarily (with some exceptions) with sociopaths with zero military experiences and education--primarily lawyers and other derivatives--the same goes for the executive branch, in the American case, are responsible not just for one, two or hundred lives, no. This bunch of ignoramuses, aided by all kinds of think-tanks also stuffed to the hilt with all kinds of political "scientists" and "commentators", is responsible for millions of lives. This responsibility, mind you, is on people, who, like Donald Trump, who stated that him being in boys boarding school was a great military experience, or like John Bolton, a draft dodger and a lawyer, who have no clue about, for starters, how armor battalion deploys and fights and how required force is calculated and how attrition rates work, say, in missile exchange--these people are developing and promoting all kinds of mindless and utterly incompetent war plans which result in one after another catastrophe for millions upon millions of people. In medical terms it is called a criminal negligence and doctors go to jail and  are fined exorbitant sums of money when they kill a patient. Yet, here we have a bunch of ignorant uneducated shysters who know zero about real war, real military technologies, real operations, real strategies, real history and, in the end, real life who dare to proclaim non-stop that they "know better". Well, they don't, they never did. 

I find myself in a bizarre situation, when I feel much more comfortable when I know that Dunford and Gerasimov talk directly, than hearing the reassuring BS about good intentions from State Department or lunatics like Bolton. Of course, being professional military does not guarantee, not at all, consistent and correct assessment of the global situation. But what is undeniable, that specifically in the United States, in the last decade or so, these were primarily American high level military professionals who played a crucial role in preventing imbeciles in power from unleashing even more wars and wrecking even more lives. People who draw their "military education" from entertainments should not be allowed in any capacity near levers of federal power in the United States as shouldn't any warmonger, uniformed or otherwise. American elite today is declining, it is declining fast in moral, mental and professional terms. As per war, it remains pathetically inept and uneducated due to highly favorable circumstances or geography, of which not one volume was written, by yours truly included. This, plus due to a complete implosion of American higher education degree mills which are incapable of producing real statesmen anymore.

As Nazi Germany needed denazification after the WW II ended, the United States needs a thorough dewarfarerization which will come one way or another, be that through looming large financial catastrophe or through a catastrophic military defeat once a bunch of ignorant civilians in charge of the country get it into the war with a major power which will devastate the United States. We don't want this to happen. But until US educational (that is degree mill) "machine" starts educating people properly, not least about real war, we may continue to live under the "guidance" of people who, not unlike Napoleon at Borodino, in Tolstoy's words, have no humanity or truth left in them :

Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and for which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of him, was being done. And he fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary greatness, and again—as a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing something for itself—he submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him.And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and conscience darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening lay more than on all the others who took part in it. Never to the end of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the significance of his actions which were too contrary to goodness and truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, be lauded as they were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and all humanity.

War and Peace, Chapter XXXVIII         

LOL, Amanda Macias Strikes Again.

On the other hand, this BS spreader from NBC and allegedly figure close to some US "intelligence" and defense circles (she is "stationed" in Pentagon and is most likely a shill), may have some point in a sense that the only way the US can sell its hi-end equipment is to bribe or threaten, in this particular case, Turkey. 

• Turkey has a little more than two weeks to decide whether to complete a complex arms deal with the U.S. or risk severe penalties by going through with an agreement to buy a missile system from Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
• By the end of the first week of June, Turkey must cancel the Russian deal and buy Raytheon’s U.S.-made Patriot missile defense system or face removal from Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program, forfeiture of 100 promised F-35 jets, imposition of U.S. sanctions and potential blowback from NATO.
• The U.S. State Department’s current offer is the final one, according to multiple sources.

Amanda Macias is full of sh.t, which is expected from a person with degree in journalism, that is to say having no applicable education at all except for throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. She was caught by Russian media (anyone who is interested can easily find those instances) with spreading an open BS, most likely concocted by her Pentagon and CIA "sources". But here, as I say, she may have some insight and insider track because the US is desperate for Turkey not to buy S-400, let alone SU-57. So, will see if this ultimatum will surface anytime soon, not that Turkey wasn't faced with US ultimatums before. But it is a crunch time because Erdogan was quite explicit about this whole deal. Now, knowing what US MSM and people who work for them are--you still have to take all that with a large grain of salt.  But yes, the closer the "deal" with S-400 the more desperate the United States will become--can you imagine a scandal when F-35 "capabilities" will turn....ah, you all know the score here. Anyone has a good bookie to bet on Turkey folding or otherwise;-))   

UPDATE 05/23/19. LOL! Oh, the drama.

“Nothing of that kind [has occurred] at the official level,” Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kiran said, “In March the US renewed its previous proposal on supplies of Patriot missile systems. Actually, we believe that this [media report] concerned this proposal.”

As I already mentioned it, Macias, who is nothing more than an ignorant media herald of all kinds of butt-hurt BS concocted in the deep recesses of whatever information operations org connected to Pentagon and CIA, was caught on several occasions with spreading a complete BS (in Russian) about Russian weapon systems. Again, some gal with the lack of any education (as I already stated--degree in broadcasting is not even an education) cannot possibly grasp a host of technical and operational issues related to weapons and the only thing she is good for is, yes, you guessed it already, spamming media environment with all kinds of "insider info", which is a euphemism for disinformation.