It’s hard out there for a pimp jihadi.

Video below the jump.

The (False) Gospel According to John – Dana M. Perino and Bill Burck – The Corner on National Review Online

I sure wish we had some grownups in the White House.

Nor has anyone suggested that Abdulmutallab could not be charged and convicted in a criminal trial eventually. The unanswered question is why the administration rushed to put him in the criminal system from the get-go. This was completely unnecessary: The law is clear that a foreign terrorist affiliated with al-Qaeda who is captured on U.S. soil may be lawfully held as an enemy combatant. Once Abdulmutallab had been thoroughly interrogated, the administration would have been free to choose whether to charge him in the civilian or military system (though we think the latter would be preferable). The point of interrogation, and holding Abdulmutallab even temporarily as an enemy combatant, is to get information to stop future attacks; the point of a trial, whether civilian or military, is to punish the wrongdoer. Conflating the two is Brennan’s — and the administration’s — most frustrating and dangerous mistake.

via The (False) Gospel According to John – Dana M. Perino and Bill Burck – The Corner on National Review Online.

In the Army, there’s a form for everything

Rather shamelessly stolen from Theo. Click to enlarge.

Logistics, Old School

It’s funny, I’ve had logistics on my mind quite a bit lately.  It’s funny, because I never gave a lot of thought to it when I was in the Army. I was usually on the receiving end of logistics. Other people had to make sure that I was fed and watered, had all the ammo, fuel and spare parts I needed. While I was vaguely aware of how most of it worked, I actually spent most of my time studying other topics, like leadership and maneuver. It wasn’t until after I left the Army I started giving a lot of in-depth thought to the topic. And now, it seems that every time I turn around, I see another lesson on the constraints that logistics impose on a force.

AW1 Tim, whom I normally think of as an Anti-Submarine Warfare guy, is also something of an expert on the Civil War. And he’s got  a great post that shows not only the rations for a soldier in that war, but if you read down to the bottom, shows just how that ration can impose very real constraints on the schemes of maneuver available to a commander.

Load HEAT

I was a little worried about putting up this week’s hottie. Stana Katic is hot, as anyone who’s seen her on Castle or Heroes knows, but I was hard pressed to find photos that brought out her sensuality.

Like many actresses who play cops on TV, she tones it down, but it is obviously there (the last female cops that weren’t sexy were probably Cagney &  Lacey).  Castle pretends to have some dramatic moments, but let’s face it, the best part of the show is the comedic interplay between Nathan Fillion and Stana’s character, Kate Beckett.

Update: I just found another great photo of her:

Airmail

We’ve talked before about the tyranny of logistics, and how difficult it can be to get supplies where they are needed, when they are needed in remote places like Afghanistan. Just getting supplies to Afghanistan is a challenge. Then, once they are in country, you need to get them to the troops in the field.

Michael Yon has another dispatch from the front showing one way of doing business.

SuperBowl Sunday…

And I got nuttin’.

Who’s gonna win? What’s gonna be the best commecial?

And take a moment to remember that there’s a ton of troops who won’t get a chance to sit on the couch and catch the game today.

Question- I know they waived the prohibition on beer for troops in Iraq last year. Does anyone know if they waived it again for this year’s Superbowl?

It’s Ronnie Reagan’s birthday.

Happy 99th Birthday, Mr. President.

via Ronnie and Joe – Paul Kengor – The Corner on National Review Online.

Hey, Virgil Xenephon, have I got a treat for you.

Swiped from the good folks at Threedonia, a nice clip of the RecceRhino.

Stolen Valor Update

CJ, from A Soldier’s Perspective, tells me that as of tonight, 5 Feb, this… thing… has been arrested by the FBI for Stolen Valor Act violations.

Good.

CDR Salamander has the details. And the video.

Heh.

Indeed.

An Update on Pelosi Airlines

Via Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette:

While accepting their newly-acquired role as “shuttle service” for the Speaker of the House, the Department of Defense is attempting to draw a line in the sand regarding congressional transportation with an updated directive on DoD Support for Travel of Members and Employees of Congress. Some of the language in the newly-released regulation (dated 15 January, 2010 – the first update since 1964) appears to be the direct result of lessons learned in dealing with Nancy Pelosi.

For the record, I don’t have a huge issue with DoD and the 89th Airlift Wing setting aside a Gulfstream for the Speaker of the House.  After all, the Speaker is third in line of succession. The problem is, that’s not what the rules state right now. It looks like the DoD is finally getting around to updating the rules to more clearly specify under what circumstances family members or employees of Congress may fly on DoD flight.

Load HEAT

You may have heard of this little show. House. What started as a quirky little drama quickly became a ratings powerhouse, and a starmaking vehicle for Hugh Laurie. And of course, we’ve seen Olivia Wilde swept up in the whirlwind. But for our money, our favorite House girl is Lisa Edelstein.

Did I mention she’s really hot?

Not quite what we had in mind…

The Air Force’s 89th Airlift Wing exists to provide airlift support to government officials. The most visible part of this is operating a pair of modified 747s as Air Force One. But they also operate a fleet of other smaller aircraft to support other members of the government, such as cabinet officers, congressional leadership, and such.

Now, I don’t have a huge problem with Nancy Pelosi, ,the Speaker of the House, third in line as head of government, availing herself of a lift now and then. But apparently, she’s not satisfied to just have a C-37 (Gulfstream V) at her beck and call. No, she likes the C-32, which is the Air Force’s version of a 757 appointed as a bizjet. OK, a plane capable of carrying 200 people being used to ferry her back and forth. A bit much, but hey, her job has to have some perks, right?

Where I get greatly annoyed is when she uses her position to commandeer these jets to move her kids around, without even having her on board.

I sure wish I could get a private jet to cart me around the country and only have to pay coach fare.

They say the toughest job in the Army is being a spouse.

I’ve never been married, but of course, I knew a lot of folks that were. And while clearly being married is often a challenge, in and of itself, adding the Army to the mix makes it that much more difficult.

Then came 9/11. My husband, like so many others, saw the attacks as a call to action. He went back on active duty and volunteered for a tour in Egypt. Our children were old enough to miss their father now. I put a calendar up in the kitchen so we could check off the days, took them both for cupcakes to cheer them up as we walked home from kindergarten. A part of me was proud of how brave we were all being. The other part was weary with being brave. I took a job at an independent bookstore and started spending time with the young, funny, book-reading guys I met there. When John came back things were awkward. I couldn’t stop myself from being angry, couldn’t help feeling abandoned.

H/T: Dan Collins, at POWIP

The QDR is here.

Today is the day the administration has released the Quadrennial Defense Review. The QDR is produced ever four years (duh!) and serves as a sort of road map for the strategy of the United States defense planning. It looks at the international situation, possible peers and adversaries, and recommends a force structure and set of capabilities for dealing with it.

The QDR isn’t legislation. It is not set in stone and doesn’t have the power of law. But it does give a good idea of what force structure of the services will look like in the short term.

4 Corps HQ
18 division HQ
73 BCT (Brigade Combat Teams)
45 active 28 reserve
40 infantry BCT
8 Stryker BCT
25 heavy BCT (Bradley and Tanks)
21 combat aviation brigades (13 active 8 reserve)
15 Patriot battalions, 7 THAAD batteries (Theater High Altitude Air Defense, that is, anti-missile)

Nothing really surprising here. The only thing that really caught my eye was the ratio of infantry BCTs to heavy BCTs. I thought the force would be a little heavier. I’d like to see the breakdown as to how many of the infantry BCTs are in the reserve components. But other than that, there’s no big changes. Much of the policy part of the QDR focuses on the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and only a little looks to future challenges for the Department of the Army.

Honest, I’m not dead…

I’m trying to get something up here today, but it might not make it for a day or two. In the meantime, enjoy this eyecandy:

Load HEAT

TJ Hooker, Dynasty, Melrose Place, Spin City, Back to Melrose Place.  Our girl Heather Locklear gets around. And that doesn’t even count the gazillion guest starring roles and movies she’s done. For a woman who’s 49, and has been working for over 30 years, she’s still pretty damn hot.

Goodness knows I love me some Heather, but the poor girl can’t dance worth a hoot:

Citizens United and Citizen Hugh

Here’s a scenario:

I mean, you can just see it, can’t you?  “The proposed cap-and-trade legislation is going to raise our cost of doing business,” some cranky, dyspeptic shareholder will now almost certainly argue before the executives of, let us say, the Massey Energy Company.  ”Mr. CEO, members of the board, the Supreme Court has already told you that you have a constitutional right to fight back.  What I’m telling you now is that you have a fiduciary duty to do so.”

via Citizens United and Citizen Hugh.

It’s quiet… too quiet.

It’s Sunday, and I’ve got nothin’. So here’s a picture of my cat.

Wish List

In the comments of our Bradley gallery below, frequent commenter GaigeM asks what I would like to see added to the Bradley:

If you could improve that Brad in any way, how would you? Trying to get a feel for what would be the next generation of AFV/IFV (with symmetrical warfare in mind).

Well…

Gaige, most of the improvements I’d like to see have been made. My biggest heartburn (as a dismount) was the seating in the back. It made sense when the Army thought the Firing Port Weapons would be important. But they were almost never used. Keeping the complex seating into the A2 variant, which only had the ramp weapons, was lunacy. In any event, the ODS variant introduced bench seating that made a lot of sense.

Improvements to the fire control system went far beyond what I thought it really needed. A laser rangefinder was nice, in that several Brads took TOW shots at targets beyond max range. That was never really a problem with the gun. Now, the fire control system, with a LRF and a lead-generating computer ensure first round hits, in a system comparable to the M1’s fire control. This never struck me as terribly important when the main gun is an auto-cannon. The addition of a Commander’s Independent Thermal Vision sight, with its ability to hand-off targets is very nice. I just wish there was a more elegant place to put it than sticking up like an afterthought.

As for the comm/nav/C3 installation (either BFT or FCBC2), that’s pretty neat, what little I know if it, and I especially like that there is a panel in back for the squad leader to gain situational awareness. In the bad old days, there were theoretically headsets for the dismounts to listen to the intercom, both for fire commands for the FPWs, and to maintain situational awareness, but they never worked (if you plugged them in, they tended to drain so much signal strength that the driver couldn’t hear the intercom, or even the crew in the turret). Even if they did work, it’s a poor substitute for a visual presentation. After all, seeing is believing.

For the hull, we’re rapidly approaching the max weight we can add without suffering some serious drawbacks in performance. We’ve already souped up the engine from the original 500hp to 600hp, just to keep the nominal speed up to 42mph. As a result, you aren’t going to be able to add a lot in the way of armor. Some critics have complained that the Brad’s armor won’t stop anti-tank weapons. That’s not the point. The point is that very few anti-tank weapons will cause a catastrophic loss of the vehicle so quickly that the crew doesn’t have time to escape. To date, the Army has written off 55 Brads in Iraq. That’s an entire battalion’s worth, but it would be interesting to know just how many were casualties. I suspect it is pretty low, especially compared to Humvees.

As for the armament, might as well get rid of the last two FPWs in the ramp, if they haven’t already.  I used to wish there was a commander’s weapon on a cupola around his hatch, but now I’m undecided. I’ve heard that some Brads have had the TOW system replaced with a two-round Javelin launcher, so they can “fire and forget.” That trades a little range and lethality for the ability to shift targets faster. Not sure I’d want to see the whole fleet go that way (I’d rather see Javelin seekers built into a TOW body instead), nor even sure how many have had this done. It may just be a test program. Can’t think of any changes to the co-ax I’d like.

As for the main gun, the 25mm Bushmaster… It’s pretty long in the tooth. I’d really like to see it replaced with something along the lines of the 4omm on a CV-90.  Failing that, I’d at least like to see the 30mm MK46 chain-gun. But you can’t just throw one in a turret and slap it on a Bradley. There’s a relationship to gun size and turret ring diameter, and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to enlarge the turret ring diameter on a Bradley hull to fit it.  Now, you mentioned this in the context of a next-generation vehicle, I think it’s pretty likely we’ll see a bigger gun. In the next-gen vehicle, we’ll also likely see a greater electrical generation capacity. And a battery charger.

Here’s the “stupid” part of “Bring the Heat, Bring the Stupid”

Heh.

H/T: Viral Footage

Mmm… Bradleys

I got nuttin’ today (so far!), so I thought I’d just post some pics.

Click each to embiggen:

Bleg time.

Need a little help, folks. I’m looking for some active duty or recent veterans from the Army who have experience in M1/M2/M3/Humvees with Blue Force Tracker or FBCB2. Please shoot me an email at “xbradtc” at “yahoo” dot com.

Questionable Policy on Interrogations

This is just unreal:

Various media outlets report that Obama officials are saying that Blair got his facts wrong when he testified that the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, known as HIG, should have been brought in to interrogate Abdulmutallab because the administration has not yet created the HIG. Mind you, President Obama created a task force two days after taking office in January 2009 to examine options on conducting interrogations of terrorists, and that task force announced the creation of the HIG in August 2009. The HIG was supposed to be the new administration’s answer to President Bush’s CIA interrogation program, which President Obama shut down immediately upon taking office.

via Questionable Policy on Interrogations.