Comments on: Russian missile defense systems: you don’t get what you pay for

By: WorkinStiff

WorkinStiff — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:12:09 +0000

Word is that the strike also took out numerous Syrian scientists & Techs plus the N Korean scientists & Techs who were turning the plant over to the Syrians…..

By: njcommuter

njcommuter — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:00:14 +0000

It’s been said (by Jim Dunnigan on StrategyPage.com among others) that developing sergeants takes at least five years, and is one of the biggest obstacle the Iraqi army faces. (Dunnigan’s page is a great and educating read.)

By: amr

amr — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:22:38 +0000

From my military experience and civilian experience in technical pursuits, it is very difficult to practice a top down field operation. I have heard stories where tanks’ and other equipment’s tech manuals were taken and held by officers. They did not want the enlisted personnel to know as much or more than they did. Awful hard to maintain and operate a tank or any other piece of equipment during peace time under that regime, much less during a conflict or an emergency. I have said many times that in the US military when the officer is killed, the sergeant takes over, then the corporal and then who the men respect. That is one of our strengths. Our military runs on the shoulders of the sergeants and enlisted men and women. From what I have been told that is not the case in the Arab ME or for that matter in the old USSR’s military. So did the men manning the radar know enough to operate it properly? Just asking.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:38:01 +0000

Had Germany been successful in acquiring Great Britain as an ally, it would have increased the chances of a Grand Alliance of formidable powers. GB, US, Germany against France and Russia at a minimum.

The world would have shook under the combination of the best of Europe and the best of the New World.

Germany was weakened 3 times, and eventually neutralized. Once in WWI where their entire system fell apart and social revolution came about one way or another. Second, in WWII when they were defeated by Hitler’s suicide tactics for Germany. And again, a third time, in the Cold War in which their cities and the nation itself was divided between the victors.

Now Germany is a shadow of their former glory and military efficiency. They still retain the great loyalty to law and order, their preference for making bureacracy and trains run on time, and their exceptional engineering abilities. But their Prussian warrior heart has been cut out. A nation without their warriors won’t be a nation for long.

A simple question to see for yourself how fall Germany has fallen to the winds of fate and defeat. How many terrorists has Germany released in exchange for deals beneficial to them, while harmful to the American citizens that were slaughtered by those same terrorists?

Can they even be counted?

By: Lee

Lee — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:24:57 +0000

“German military units at the lower levels,..”
Because they were trained to. Sergeants and Lieutenants would discuss tactical situations with the soldiers, then ask individuals for their “solutions” and wargame them to see which ideas worked or not. Over time, individuals gained confidence to take initiative without appealing to higher authority. Also, each soldier was given a sense of their mission, or what needed to be accomplished, so they weren’t in the dark about what they were doing in the moment.
Surprisingly, the German model is the one used by Israel. They also have a maxim: “When in doubt, attack”. Our forces use a similar model for training. It was epitomized in The Dirty Dozen.
Franco: “I thought Mayonnaise was the only one who had to climb the rope!”
Reisman: “But suppose Jimenez gets killed before he gets to the top of the chateau? Everyone checks out on the rope.”

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:11:49 +0000

The German Army in WW II, especially in the beginning, was the outgrowth of the Weimar Wehrmacht, in which every man of the allowed 100,000 was selected and trained for a slot two ranks above his own.
Thus, when the training camps started turning out privates, there was a competent cadre for vast increases in the size.
Other armies were merely small armies whose, say, corporals, were pretty good corporals, some of whom were likely to be promoted. In the von Seeckt army, the corporal didn’t get to be corporal if he didn’t seem a likely platoon sergeant.

And Blitzkrieg didn’t take advantage of some inborn ability to think and act independently, although that would have been useful. The thing was designed and the troops trained that way. “Right. You’ve lost commo with the company. This is the situation. What do you do?”

The last big German offensive of WW I included small unit initiative. The plan was to flow around resistance, not stop and assault it. Damn’ near succeeded.

But nobody’s like us. There is a kind of permanent murmur around US military installations. It’s a dozen or a hundred commanders saying, “I know it was a good idea. But, dammit, next time tell me first.”

By: david foster

david foster — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:42:16 +0000

“But societies in which individualism is highly valued find a way to allow members of their armed forces to think for themselves when circumstances permit, and to be flexible, reactive, and somewhat autonomous when needed”…this seems very logical, but it would be dangerous to assume that anti-individualist societies cannot permit autonomy in some circumstances.

Based on what I’ve read, German military units *at the lower levels* were very effective in evaluating circumstances and thinking/acting on their own. (This was less true at the higher levels, where Hitler’s influence was more direct.) The German force that conducted the blitzkrieg against France was more decentralized than the French force that opposed it.

It is possible for a society in which individualism is generally devalued to offer a certain field as an outlet for individual initiative.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:36:56 +0000

Some of us go to the mall to pick up stuff for care packages. And some of us don’t go in order to save money to send to Fisher House.
Many of us have updated various skills such as unarmed combat, first aid, shooting. We have gamed out our responses to various possibilities.
We have, in the words of Rebecca West writing during the beginning of WW II, picked up our fathers’ courage and found it familiar to our hands.
Some of us think we have a set of moves left.
One, at least.
And we make an occasional point to others. So they don’t think they are alone in their/our view.

By: Talkinkamel

Talkinkamel — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:18:58 +0000

Laura, not all America has been at the mall. Some of us saw our current troubles coming for some time.

However, whenever we criticized, say, the Palestinians (the iconic victims of the moment), Moslem leaders, (such as the Ayatollah) or even mentioned some of the negative aspects of Islam, we were told that we just said such things because we were knee-jerk supporters of Israel (it was strongly hinted we’d been brainwashed by Zionists), McCarthyites and bigots who just hated Moslems because they were poor, brown-skinned, third-world people.

Just as a side-note, the number of ordinary people who seemed to think that Israel was the entire problem, and if it just went away all would be swell, was truly amazing—and frightening.

A lot of us gave up and went to the mall—or conentrated on just living our lives—because, quite bluntly, nobody was listening to us, and we got tired of being called bigots, or Zionist tools.

The problem isn’t that America’s gone to the mall; the problem is that our elites are feeding us unrealistic fairy tales about the state of the world, and shouting down anybody who doesn’t buy them. And they were all set and prepared after 9/11, with the “Why do they hate us?” and, “It was all America’s fault!” memes.

By: sergey

sergey — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:14:51 +0000

“So, Russia, as you say, falls between what Thomas P.M. Barnett calls the Core and the Gap. Near Core in some ways, but largely a country that belongs in the Gap.”
Actually, there are two Russia’s: the rural one, which truly belongs to 19 century, and the urban one, which is as modern as you can wish. And this second Russia with its world-class universities and technoparks, manned by the brightest scientists and engineers, can produce amazing jet fighters, rocket systems and nuclear submarines. Do not underestimate it. Sputnik was not an accident, it was a product of a very efficient system, that still works.