But I shouldn't be too critical of the IDF...

Courtesy of Sephira and her "IDF Death Babe of the Week".

Damn, I need a vacation...

The basics...

The more I research the 2006 Lebanon War between Hezbollah and Israel, the more I'm struck by how many people are alternatively claiming that the IDF either spent too much time studying counterinsurgency or too much time preparing to fight conventional tank battles.

Certainly, I think the operating environment of the past few years--which included counterinsurgency against the Palestinians-- contributed to a decline in the IDF's capability. In this sense, too much of an emphasis on counterinsurgency degraded their ability to deal with well-trained teams of Hezbollah fighters. However, to use this to justify proposals to have the US military shift away from counterinsurgency seems alarmist, as it misconstrues the differences between the Palestinians and the Taliban.

Palestine is a far cry from the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, with even a retired Israeli general noting that, compared to the Palestinians, the Taliban were "tough fighters...real hooligans". Unlike Palestine, battles at Wanat, COP Keating, Tora Bora and Operation Anaconda have been fierce pitched battles between determined light infantry forces not too dissimilar to the fighting Israel faced against Hezbollah. In numerous engagements, ISAF troops have squared off against hundreds of well-trained and well-armed Taliban insurgents in firefights which sometimes last for hours.

While counterinsurgency must, of course, involve population security, economic development, and the promotion of legitimate governments, few counterinsurgency advocates will deny that "kinetic" operations play a critical role. As General David Petraeus, referencing a famous line in the Counterinsurgency Manual, quipped: "Sometimes the best weapons do shoot". Certainly, just by emphasizing counterinsurgency doesn't mean that we let our ability to shoot, maneuver, and communicate atrophy. Yet, apparently, the IDF did.

The culprit, in many cases, appeared to be gross complacency and a lack of discipline. On 11 July 2006, a patrol of IDF Reservists--on their last day of their annual training--set out in two Humvees along the Lebanese border near the town of Zarit. These soldiers were so interested in simply going home to their families that they were grossly careless, conducting little, if any pre-mission planning, and ignored most of their routine operating procedures. They made for easy prey for the Hezbollah team, who had planned their ambush over a period of months.

The US military, though engaged in counterinsurgency, should not forget the basics of pre-combat inspections. A failure to perform the basic, fundamental soldiering tasks will lead to defeat, no matter what type of battlefield you're on.

Spencer Ackerman gets the award for the most old-school Counter-Terror post of the day...

Al-Qaeda may not have toned down their rhetoric in the past months, but fortunately for us, their actions as of late have failed to deliver--with a failed underwear bomb on Christmas Day and a "butt bomb" that failed to deliver.

Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent notes that, as of late, al-Qaeda's over-the-top rhetoric, mixed with their laughable incompetence reminds us a little bit of...

And to destroy your childhood even further, I propose some outtakes from the legendary Thundercats cartoons, where the voice actors curse, swear, and generally complain about being voice actors on a childrens' TV show.

Edit: Jackpot!

Retro Flash Back Day

Blogging has slown down recently due to the fact that I'm currently producing a paper for the Council for Emerging National Security Affiars' (CENSA's) latest collection of essays.

I've been doing some reading on much of the thinking about Effects-Based Operations, Network-Centric Warfare and Systemic Operational Design from about a decade ago, and I found a particularly embarrassing line being spoken by US Central Command's General Tommy Franks, courtesy of Noah Shachtman. According to Shachtman, General Franks boasted, in his 2004 autobiography that new C4ISTAR (Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Asquisition and Reconaissance--how's that for an acronym?) would give commanders the "type of Olympian perspective Homer had given his gods".

But can they find Osama bin Laden? Can a camera tell me if that village supports the Taliban? Which provinces are the most sympathetic? These are all things that billions of dollars worth of sensors can't tell us.

Seriously, if we're going to make bold claims about the prowess of American technology, why not claim that American troops can defeat any adversary simply by pressing up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start?

It's not as old school as Olympian deities, but it's pretty close.

Happy Valentines' Day

Today we recognize the day when loving couples all over the world can embrace and...OH MY GOD!!!!!

Luke's father said it best: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

(This bit of humor actually comes from the official Lucasfilm Star Wars Twitter feed)

That Pixelated Camouflage? It's Old-School...

Check out the camouflage pattern known as Dual-Tex, initially used by the US Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment in 1978, as well as with the Australian Army in the early 1980s.

You know, back when huge pixels were actually high-tech...

I should order stuff from Amazon in a drunken stupor more often...

Last week, I was out at the bar and ran into a friend from the 10th Mountain Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team, who had just returned from Afghanistan. As I was mentioning War is Boring's reporter Jason Reich, who was embedded with the 3rd Brigade, I found out that a Soldier within the 3rd Brigade was also a writer, and apparently a pretty good one, too.

The writer was none other than Lt. Col. Jason K. Dempsey, author of the new book "Our Army: Soldiers, Politicians, and American Civil-Military Relations". I actually whipped out my Blackberry at the bar, and pulled up the book using the Amazon plugin on my Blackberry. True to form, I decided to buy it from Amazon while actually standing at the bar. The next morning, I had feelings of regret, largely due to the fact that I keep telling myself that I really need to put a breathalyzer on my Blackberry to prevent me from doing incredibly outrageous stuff with it when I go out drinking.

However, my fears were allayed this week when I received Lt. Col. Dempsey's book, and found that it's actually really good. It's a detailed study of the demographics of American Soldiers, comparing and contrasting their ideological deviations from American society as a mean (summary--Soldiers aren't as different as most people like to think). Certainly, it was one of the best things I've done with my Blackberry while drunk.

At least I'm not the only one who has done something embarrassing with his Blackberry while drunk...

Conscription--there was a reason we did away with it

Lt. Col. Paul Yingling always posts some rather provocative articles, such as the infamous "A Failure in Generalship", which appeared in Armed Forces Journal in 2007. This past week, he released another thought-provoking article in AFJ regarding the issue of conscription, entitled "The Founders' Wisdom".

While I can't say that I fully agree with Lt. Col. Yingling's article, I respect enough of his writing to offer a bit of a constructive critique. I suppose that the biggest problem that I have with conscription in America is, of course, that I doubt that the US would ever reinstate the draft to begin with, making the article more academic than anything else. Seriously, only once in the years since the Vietnam War has a Congressional proposal in favor of any sort of compulsory service ever made it out of committee, whereupon it was defeated by a vote of 400 to 2.

Yet, mandatory peacetime conscription isn't unheard of among democratic nation-states. Many typically associate conscription with totalitarian regimes, such as Iran, North Korea, Cuba and even modern-day Russia. However, a number of modern liberal democracies practice some form of compulsory service as well, including Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Norway, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel. Most of these countries have, or had at some point, implemented conscription as a means of retaining a pool of military reservists to augment a full-time military cadre in the event of invasion from one or more hostile neighbors.

For many of these nations, this made for sound defense policy. During the industrial era, Napoleon's levee en masse created national armies on a scale previously unheard of. In order to mobilize on a scale necessary to stave off attack, modern nation-states implemented some form of conscription in order to ensure their very survival, particularly if they found themselves among one or more hostile states. The most obvious example would be Israel; surrounded by potential enemies, and small enough for jet fighters to cross the length of the country in a matter of minutes, it would have ceased to exist in 1973 had it not been for a large pool of reserve military manpower.

Nevertheless, not all nations with compulsory service live under the imminent threat of annihilation. Certainly, in the year 2010, most European nations are hardly worried about being overrun by Russian tanks, yet conscription remains. Why? In the absence of a credible land-based threat, many nations use still use conscription as a program of national service, with young men and women serving in disaster relief and emergency jobs, such as firefighting duties.

Lt. Col. Yingling advocates the draft for two reasons 1.) because he believes that it will increase the quality of recruits, and 2.) because having a separate volunteer warrior class--largely removed from American society as a whole--has made America more willing to go to war. I'm not quite certain either of these are entirely true.

When we think of the positive aspects of the draft, we tend to think of the many Americans who fought in the Second World War (glossing over the fact that many of them actually volunteered for service, and were not drafted). We might look at John F. Kennedy--who actually used his father's power and influence to get the Navy to overlook his medical records and place him in the torpedo boat squadrons, which were among the most dangerous branches of the US Navy. One might also look at famous baseball players such as Ted Williams, or actors such as Clark Gable--the latter of which actually had a bounty placed on his head by Hitler. (Apparently, Hitler was a Clark Gable fan. Who knew?)

The draft continued through the 1950s and 60s, when the US felt that it needed to keep a large, trained, standing Army in order to prevent the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe. During this period, even Elvis Presley served in uniform.

Nevertheless, the Vietnam experience soured most of America on the draft, with recruit quality taking a massive nose-dive. Those who remembered the Vietnam era (and the years shortly thereafter) recall an Army where drug use and violent crime was rampant and discipline and morale were almost non-existent.

Other countries with conscription systems also note that there are significant flaws in the organizational culture it creates. The Israeli Defense Force has come under increasing scrutiny recently. A book by Stewart Cohen cites a recent study which noted that the best and brightest Israelis--who ordinarily used to be drawn to the infantry and armor corps--are now being attracted to jobs which have more practical civilian application, leaving the less capable to serve in the front-line jobs. Moreover, nearly 40% of the IDF receives early discharges, mostly being granted to soldiers who are given relatively simple jobs, not those who actually partake in combat. It is these soldiers, who suffer more than their fair share of the burden, who then more frequently recalled to active service, due to their competence level, dedication and training. Indeed, the flaws in the conscript system place an increasing burden on a relatively small portion of Israeli society.

And with over 3/4 of American society ineligible for military service, the same might likely happen to us, should we go back to the draft.

Why do we lose so many Soldiers to private military contractors?

Why should our men and women in uniform spend their hard-earned money on strippers, when Blackwater stuffs our taxpayer dollars into the g-strings of Filipina strippers? (H/T Nick)

Two ex-Blackwater Worldwide employees allege the company charged the government for a prostitute and strippers and kept incompetent personnel for financial reasons, part of what they call a systematic pattern to defraud authorities.

The accusations come in a lawsuit filed by Brad and Melan Davis -- who said the fraudulent activity, such as double billing and submitting false invoices, occurred while the security firm, now known as Xe, carried out its work in Iraq, Afghanistan and in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina's aftermath.

Melan Davis, who was involved in record-keeping, said Blackwater billed the government for prostitution services in Afghanistan from a Filipino female, whose name was on Blackwater's payroll roster under a category called "Morale Welfare Recreation."

She said Blackwater billed the woman's plane tickets and monthly salary to the United States.

The lawsuit also said a vendor being paid for "cleaning services" in Louisiana was providing strippers.

On Social Engineering

One issue that's been brought up recently in regards to the proposed repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is that of "social engineering" (or "experimentation") within the military. According to many, many, many commentators, the military is no place for social engineering.

However, a mere precursory glance at our history and organizational culture shows the military is always "socially engineering" itself. Indeed, the military adapts and changes its internal dynamics all the time, for better or for worse.

Just look at the integration of African-Americans and women. Those could be viewed as experimentation and engineering, and look how it turned out for us. We could look at initiatives like Idea Blogs and Wikipedia-style field manuals, which essentially aim to overhaul the military's hierarchical organizational culture and place anyone from the lowest private to the highest general on the same level--their ideas and arguments matter more than their rank. This could have incredible social impacts.

We could look at initiatives which were developed during the 80s and 90s to make the military more family-friendly, creating a whole host of social services for spouses, children, and Soldiers...but that's not social engineering. What about altering officer evaluation and promotion policies, which dictate what types of officers which will rise to the head of the military hierarchy? Isn't that social engineering, too?

Is "social engineering" simply one of those buzz-words that gets thrown about when people don't like the proposed policy?

On Snow...

As I sat in the cockpit of the aircraft, I looked down Wheeler Sack Army Airfield's Runway 3 and grimaced. The clouds--dark, grey and pregnant with snow--hung a mere hundred feet above my head. Sheets of sleet and snow streaked sideways, coating the windshield so thickly that I almost wished I were back in the middle of an Iraqi sandstorm.

I looked across the cockpit at the pilot next to me, who smirked and quipped "Ah, just a typical day at Fort Drum..."

I smacked the pause button. "You know, it's bad enough that the weather's bad outside. Did you have to ruin my day in the simulator, too?"

WOI Groupies: It's not too late...

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Blast From the Past: S-67 "Black Hawk"

I remember finding this video in the academic video archives at Fort Rucker when I was in flight school. It's an advertisement by Sikorsky for the S-67 "Blackhawk", which was a prototype gunship developed in the 1970s as a proposed replacement for the AH-1 Cobra.

It's interesting that the aircraft looks like it's modeled after the Soviet Mi-24 Hind helicopter, with its wide, lift-producing wings and engines mounted high above the cockpit. If you listen to the narrative, you'll discover that, like the Hind, it's capable of being a gunship and a troop-carrying helicopter at the same time, carrying six troops internally.

The S-67, however, was not without its problems; and the lone prototype crashed at an air show, killing both pilots. Nevertheless, a number of innovations in the S-67 Blackhawk were later incorporated into Sikorsky's UH-60 Black Hawk (two words), such as the horizontal stabilator, cambered tail fin and swept rotor tips.

Bizarre...

All my friends in Washington, DC have been getting hammered with snow while Upstate New York--typically the snowiest region of the US--has been relatively snow-free. I guess this year might be too cold for snow?

Blogging, 10th Mountain Division Style...

There are few jobs where your boss actually invites you to post on his blog, but I do, in fact have such a job. That's because the commander of the 10th Mountain Division runs a great blog at TaskForceMountain.com, and requests that Soldiers "sound off" on a variety of different issues, from preventing drinking and driving, to offering better opportunities for single Soldiers, or finding ways to boost morale.

Today, he let the floodgates open. He asked our opinions about the proposed repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

The thread is getting interesting. There appears to be a 50/50 split based on anecdotal evidence in the thread. What appears to trouble some Soldiers is that they apparently have issues showering or using the bathroom with gay Soldiers, demanding that there be a--and I'm not making this up--separate bathroom and shower facility for gay people.

(Admin note: unlike most message boards, the most recent replies are at the top and the old ones are at the bottom)

I've been somewhat quiet on this issue, but I'll say that I really don't mind gay people in the military. In fact, I'm in favor of it for two big reasons:

1.) Gay couples don't run the risk of pregnancy like straight couples do. This is a huge plus, trust me.

2.) The list of countries which allow gays in the military includes Australia, Israel, and most of NATO, including Canada and Britain. The list of countries that don't permit gays in the military includes countries like Cuba, China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, North Korea and Serbia. You know which countries I like better? I thought so.

Some of the concerns are actually quite interesting, primarily revolving around the benefits conferred upon married couples which may or may not apply to a gay couple, depending whether or not their state recognizes gay marriage. I also wonder if two dudes can simply move out of the barracks and start getting paid more just by claiming that they're gay. Granted, I doubt many guys would actually take that route, but it's an interesting "what if".

Anyway, the thread's well worth reading to get the opinions of Soldiers in the field. The opinons are as diverse as the Army is...