Please send this to General Eric Smith and have note well the comments on Rotoray Wing assets and “large deck amphibious ships.” He’s busy running his yap about the ARG/MEU being th crown jewel of the Marine Corps, we need the jewels for the crown!
CDR Sal, excellent analysis that avoids the trap of over-simplifying the "why" and "what next". Foundationally, creating an international incentive structure that convinces nations to align with the U.S. is happening...often whether other governments like it or not. The cement of that foundation (IMO) comes from convincing a lot of previous bad actors in our government and business communities to align with clearly stated U.S. goals and objectives...and not their own power and / or wealth. This is an incredibly messy kluge of "interests"...how many people in U.S. government were taking money from the Maduro cartel? Many, truth be told, and not all had a "D" after their name. Militarily, "diversity" IS our strength...meaning diversity of capabilities (great list btw) applied with UNITY OF PURPOSE to create a force multiplier in execution. All domain, interoperable, mutually supporting...2 times 2 equals 8...not zero like the failed Iran raid decades ago. As you wisely say, now for the "what next"...
This seems like a corollary to the old saw about free market enterprise being the way to get bad people to do the right thing out of their own best interests.
"Having a wide variety of inefficient and underutilized bases and facilities scattered around is a feature,"
The demise of the bases in Puerto Rico has been an ingredient to the current situation understood late. From infrastructure immaturity to education in Puerto Rico is a problem that must be addressed. Many of those in Puerto Rico still think that Communism/Socialism is a great thing mostly due to lack of education in world HiStory.
Recapitalization of a Ramey AFB/NAS Roosevelt Roads are required, and that is a great location for a shipyard, or home for a Maintenance Ready Group. A United States Naval Construction Battalions used to be stationed there for use around the region. This would be a great home for a new Destroyer Tender and Drydock.
Best way to educate is to remove the vestiges of imperialism/colonialism. Make them a state. Reform the Jones act and make US shipbuilding and domestic shipping cost competitive so they get goods delivered at the best price possible.
Status quo is just fine. Two main reasons: (1) No one speaks English. If you've spent any time in Puerto Rico, you know it is a Spanish-speaking land. (2) It's dirt poor. The country is far poorer than the poorest state in the Union: 2021 Median Household Income United States = $69,717; Mississippi = $48,716; Puerto Rico = $22,237. It is already US territory; there are no benefits to making Puerto Rico a state.
Moral authority and the fact the island keeps getting worse as the population declines. Your economic argument is the argument to do something. Language is irrelevant. About half the population knows English. Their overall rate is a little lower than L.A. County.
Do something -- sure. But not statehood. It should be economically viable as a state; it's not. I have traveled a fair amount in PR and I do not believe for a second that half the population "knows" English, unless you mean they know the language exists. I simply do not believe based on my empirical experience that their facility with the English language is remotely close to LA County, whatever that is. I have never run into someone in LA who doesn't know English or at least isn't trying. PR they do not care about trying to learn the language. It is a very different culture from the rest of the United States, sorry.
I would fully endorse moving more defense manufacturing such as shipbuilding to PR just because you could have cheaper labor, which is a non-trivial share of our expenses.
Any industrial development affects the economy in a positive way. A shipyard would be a real shot in the arm. An JOINT Force Base in the NW would be another shot in the arm.
Putting a "shipyard" in Puerto Rico sounds good, but you need skilled workers who will show up and do quality work in a timely manner. All of those are contrary to the habits of the Puerto Rican workforce and culture.
They are not as far behind as the Afghans, but quite content to live in the 18th century dependent on the largess of the government, while immune from the civic and tax obligations applicable to the states.
But, yes, reactivate NAVSTA Roosevelt Roads and Ramey AFB but plan on importing workers for all but the most menial jobs.
We need shipyards period. The place we most need a Naval Shipyard is on the West Coast..because once we’re at war with the PRC (the much bigger monster), what capacity we now have is simply not enough.
The capacity on the East coast on the other hand is more than enough to help survive any potential threats.
With emphasis on the "new" in new destroyer tender and floating drydock.
The AFDMs and AFDLs were crucial in WW2. There is no physical, strategic, or tactical reason they wouldn't be in the future (says the guy who qualified in graving docks and AFDM-6). Scrapping the ones we did was just another badly conceived benefit of "peace".
The "PEACE DIVIDEND' wasn't . . . a dividend. It was the beginning of the slow consumption of our defense apparatus. For a decade and a half it was plain to see . . . but those benefiting from the activity were DELIBERATELY BLINDED by their own GREED/BENEFIT/POWER/WEALTH.
YT popped up a What's Up with Shipping vid yesterday - a few years old. About the Red Hill facility in Pearl Harbor.
With the tank leakage at the Red Hill fuel facility at Pearl, and the decommissioning of them, is there any replacement in place and full to refuel those scattered around the Pacific?
NAS Keflavik is far more valuable than Roosevelt Roads but the US thanks to Trump's big mouth is never going to be let back in. Actually the Icelanders have been maintaining the former US facilities better than the US did. It is funny seeing the old barrack turned into "Icelandic chic" apartments and hotels.
What is the thing with Greenland anyways. Keflavik and Iceland is far more strategically located than Greenland.
NOT a valid comparison. Two different environments, situation, locations, and defense requirements. Puerto Rico is a key element in a resurgence of the Monroe Doctrine and power projection in the Caribbean/Central/South America. NAS Keflavik is pretty much already redeveloped and a key element in the GIUK Gap protection, and Arctic Power Projection.
Destroyer tender? They went the way of the dinosaurs decades ago unfortunately, as did TOO much of our military (particularly naval) bases and infrastructure…under BRAC.
Short sighted and ill-advised. Current Navy is lost with this respect. We cannot fight a naval expeditionary action, take damage, fix damage, and get back into the fight quickly . . . BY DESIGN!!!
Exactly. T-ADs were forward deployed IMAs (sadly with more capability than the current Regional Maintenance Centers, which have shifted to “Product Lines” vs actual individual shops.
Outstanding big picture analysis of the new USA military attitude following Midnight Hammer in Iran, and now the Maduro arrest (Noriega 2.0).
This reminds me of the historic improvement in US military performance when George Patton replaced Fredendall in command of army forces in North Africa in the spring of 1943. Leadership matters.
That's some bullshit. We had this capability under Presidents of both parties. That's the point of the post. Capability like this does not happen overnight, or in a year. It takes decades.
The Special Operations Forces operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan is an example of brave men executing a complicated plan to deliver justice. And, unlike this event, President Obama was operating under explicit congressional authorization. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), specifically authorized the President to use military force against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks” of September 11th. Al-Qaeda, led by bin Laden, claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, placing him directly within the scope of Congress's AUMF.
"[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons." Public Law 107–40 (107th Congress).
His loyalty is to Islam. He is an avowed Marxist. Unabashedly anti-American and anti- Israel.
It may not be punishable by a court of law but his politics are tribal pure and simple. He just wraps up his presentation in the soft marinade of New York liberalism.
He may have been democratically elected but be careful when you follow the masses, sometimes the " m" is silent.
His beliefs and loyalties. Unabashed Marxist and Socialist with a sprinkling of militant Islam.
He may have been democratically elected but it's nothing but a suicide pact.
Then when the voters tire of the rhetoric and ruin they move somewhere else trying to recreate the shit hole they just fled. So it does have a trickle down effect which I've experienced first hand.
So in the long term I'll vote for the criminal over the communist. Trump can be a bullying bastard at times but he'll never be a blood thirsty Bolshevik.
Then don’t vote for someone running on that platform….but don’t you dare try and ignore democracy if someone wins fair and square and you don’t like their platform
Did Maduro win his last three elections fair and square?
And if he didn't, what were the majority of Venezuelans whose politics were not in alignment with Maduro's narco-socialism supposed to do about it?
Could that Venezuelan majority have had any unassisted success in toppling Maduro, and hopefully his narco-terrorist gang, without external help of some kind?
He's not taking about Maduro. He's talking about New York City. In a free society, the folks in a community are free to choose who their leaders are. This bullshit about putting Mamdani in jail because folks far from the city don't like him, is un-American.
If you don't like who the Mayor of New York City is, get off your fat ass and organize. To equate the voting in a city in New York State as being the equivalent to an election in a third-world dictatorship is just stupid.
The US military is on a stunning streak of success and professional operations, which is in stark contrast to operations under the previous administration. I assume that there's been even more addition by subtraction than we're aware of. For Venezuela, they should or should be forced to set-up an El Salvador like prison system to house their narco terrorists in the most uncomfortable style possible. Secondly, we should have a mass deportation of Venezuelan criminals from the US to that prison system. Thirdly, deport the rest of the Venezuelans from the US back to a more peaceful Venezuela so they can rejoin an improved lifestyle in their true home.
I'm interested in the fact, if it is a fact, that Maduro met with a Chinese delegation the day before The Event. One possibility is that the Chinese had no idea The Event was coming, which would be a major intelligence failure on their part and suggests that Chinese penetration of our government is less than I fear. Another possibility is that the Chinese knew or had a good idea that The Event was about to happen, and sent their delegation on the assumption that the presence of their delegation would cause Trump to cancel or delay The Event; in which case the logical Chinese inference is that Trump is one unpredictable SOB, as if they needed more evidence. And if the Chinese were in Caracas for The Event (presumably safe in some hotel), the delegation's report back to the CCP must make for interesting reading. ("Who? What? We didn't hear nuthin'.") Combining all that with the de facto US seizure of a massive oil reserve, I tentatively conclude that the U.S. totally pantsed China.
Consider also that... per reports (eg, WSJ today)... The mission was planned for an earlier time but delayed by bad weather. Perhaps there was a Christmas Eve or Day target date; perhaps New Year's Eve or Day. But... weather. In this sense, that Chinese delegation might not have been there at all, or perhaps might have been enroute, or unpacking bags at the hotel. Meanwhile, Senor Maduro met with his Chinese guests the day before his roof caved in. Seems that Nobody Knew, except people who Needed to Know.
The New Year’s Eve Party at Mar a Lago might have been used to lull Maduro into a false sense of security. Who would launch an attack while hosting a party?
"May Day," the First of May, is World Labor Day for most of the world. It has nothing to do with communism per se.
Your imagination is running away with you on this one, as it also seems to have on the current state of New York City. (On the other hand, last time we visited the Big Apple, several people did stop me, big, strong men with tears in their eyes, to ask, "Sir, where's Pete? Did we do something to upset him? We miss him so! And Donald too... .")
"Another possibility is that the Chinese knew or had a good idea that The Event was about to happen, and sent their delegation on the assumption that the presence of their delegation would cause Trump to cancel or delay The Event;"
Martin Skold (former NSC guy) on Twitter has another interpretation: the PRC knew about the Event, and went to tell Maduro he would be getting a visit from OD-D tomorrow and would he kindly get on the helicopter, as his services were no longer needed (Skold's thesis is generally that us, the PRC, and the Venezuelans generally reached an agreement for this all to happen).
That's plausible, and I certainly can't prove otherwise. It would explain the apparently minimal resistance, although the dead Cuban bodyguards would say they resisted to their last breath. I will say that the optics are terrible for the CCP ("CCP client gets ass kicked by US commandos".) So I don't know why the CCP would have agreed to that loss of face unless, and that's a big unless, an undisclosed quid pro quo was involved.
Yeah, it's hard to say why the CCP seems to be going along with this, but they definitely don't seem as upset as I would expect them to be given the situation.
One thing I will note is that the Chinese seem to be less loyal in general than either us or the Russians. Putin makes a point of trying to defend his guys; it may not always work out for them, but he tries. The Chinese seem to be more willing to let guys go when they lose value (I'm guessing they're confident they can bribe the next guy, too, whoever that is).
One thought occurs to me as we look at the (apparent) massive success of Absolute Resolve, and (disputed but seemingly effective) Midnight Hammer, while also digesting the redacted report on the Gettysburg blue on blue:
The US is showing unquestionable mastery of Special Operations and Aerial Warfare. But with our most likely peer conflict being China, Naval power is going to be paramount, and peer level combat is going to require more than just SOF and individual global airstrikes (Midnight Hammer looking to have required enough resources that I doubt we could have carried out the same raid again in the following days, and the forward deployed support assets, notably tankers, would be at significant risk moving forward both in time and space had we attempted the same against China and ended up in a shooting war).
Looking at the Gettysburg report I'm gravely disappointed (though not surprised) at the level of rot that seems to have set-in within Naval leadership at the operational level. The reported failings both within the Gettysburg's wardroom and between the Strike Group, Air Wing, and Gettysburg are disturbing but should not be news to anyone who's been paying attention to the state of the Navy in general and Surface Warfare in particular for the past 20 years or longer.
Gettysburg's leadership was questionable at best (with regards to basic standards of shipboard watchstanding, casualty reporting, and planning), and the Air Wing's decision to plan seemingly without participation or even knowledge of the Air Defense Commander (Gettysburg), apparently with at least tacit approval of the Strike Group, is unprofessional if understandable, and was very nearly fatal.
While now almost a decade removed, the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions must remind us that these failings are now endemic within Surface Warfare.
While there have been bright spots (notably the USS Carney's performance along side several other DDGs in the Red Sea), it is clear that our Navy, and in particular Surface Warfare CRUDES forces, have significant problems.
Coming back to the topic at hand, I worry that the US, and particularly the Navy, is going to see success in operations such as Absolute Resolve and Midnight Hammer and rest on those laurels, not realizing that they were executed (superbly) by forces that are culturally far different from the General Purpose Force, and particularly those that don't routinely operate with SOF or Jointly in general.
This should be a wakeup call to the Navy and Surface Warfare in general that operational excellence must trump (no pun intended) all else, not an excuse to claim excellence on the backs of others while continuing the culture of failure.
We could start with reevaluating training and promotion in the SWO community.
Every last remnant of DEI should be burned and the ashes tossed into the Potomac.
SWOS should be several months not a few weeks. No one should graduate without a thorough knowledge of the rules of the road. Paper charts. Parallel rulers. Compasses. That’s the only way you learn what CBDR means.
Bonuses and early promotions for those who excel on the job. Deadwood should not make it past O2.
Be generous with awards. Nothing hurts morale more than a stingy CO who has plenty of his own medals.
Couldn't agree more. Celestial is hard. Really hard. But it's worked for centuries. And it pays to understand WHY all our superwhamydyne GPS tricks work, and how maritime navigation has worked since its genesis.
I'm not sure about cash bonuses just yet, only because they didn't seem to work 20-25 years ago. No one stayed for their DH tour for the money, as lucrative as it was.
My spicy take is that being a good Surface Warfare Officer (and for the record, when I meet non-SWO Navy people I explain that I loved being a Surface Warfare Officer but hated being a SWO, and they get it instantly), is no less difficult than being an NFO, and in some cases frankly more difficult. So why in the world aren't we sending prospective SWOs to a flight school analogue?
It doesn't have to be 18 months, we're not nearly as dependent upon weather to get training, but a meaningful 8-12 months of classroom AND afloat training.
And we need to take a hard look at our FITREP and promotion process. Yes, exemplary performance should be rewarded with faster promotion, but unless we fundamentally change the system we'll just have CO's promoting their golden children early rather than going through the kabuki dance of giving them the one EP.
We need to accept that our community is fundamentally broken, and it will be painful to fix. It's not enough anymore to trust CO's judgement on promotions, sad as it it to say. One idea: do away with the quota system for EPs and MPs. What happens is that a Wardroom of hot runners gets most of them screwed, and a lackluster Wardroom gets someone promoted who probably shouldn't be.
And then, mandate that while the CO can give as many EPs and MPs as he wants, but every officer in that ranking group across the fleet must take a fleet wide / class wide proctored test on basic core competency. If you can't get 100% on rules of the road, you're neither an EP nor an MP. If you can't repeat your CSOSS / EOSS procedures competently your not an EP or MP.
Our aviator brethren take NATOPS seriously. It's time we did the same.
Excellent points. I have personally seen some of the finest officers not promoted because they rated behind some other fine officer. I have served as assistant recorder and sad to say the numbers carry the most weight.
What SWO's need is time at sea. Stick them on a USNS for three months, and have them get the hours of underway time that is required to be a competent mariner.
In my celestial nav class in NROTC we had to work HO-249 as part of the Day's Work in Navigation from Norfolk to Gibraltar - actual star sights being very, very tough in Albuquerque due to the rocky horizon. My 1st class summer cruise was on an SSBN, so no sextant sights then. And then, 6 years later I was the Navigator on Spru can and left in a Sargasso Sea somewhere between re-reading the pubs, talking to my QM1, and figuring it out for myself. it all worked out, but only because I filled in the gaps myself. I hope that is not the current situation.
Just because a person is paid to be a naval officer, that alone does not make them a professional naval officer. Being a competent surface warfare officer is really hard. We need to make the training just as hard.
I am awestruck that it is even possible to determine your lat and long given a sextant, a chronometer and accurate tables of stars. Thank you Sir Isaac Newton, Jonathan Harrison and John Flamsteed.
We rightly celebrate these men, who I would say only re-discovered and documented the details of things known long before. I am a Latter-Day Saint, and approach this topic from that viewpoint. Even if a person is not LDS and would never consider becoming one, I urge everyone to find and read what we have canonized as Moses 1:30-39, simply for the poetry, if nothing else.
"One idea: do away with the quota system for EPs and MPs. What happens is that a Wardroom of hot runners gets most of them screwed, and a lackluster Wardroom gets someone promoted who probably shouldn't be."
Absolutely correct. I've seen this first hand with a few squadrons.
I don't want to seem pedantic or patronizing, so apologies if it comes off that way.
If you mean using "GET" for Gettysburg, it's standard procedure in Navy message traffic and correspondence to be as brief as possible (cultural DNA of sending via Morse or flag hoist).
If you mean that sometimes they say GET and sometimes XW it's because while physically IN Gettysburg, the Gettysburg watch team and the XW (Air Defense Commander) watch teams are two operationally separate components.
Think of it like a Destroyer serving as the Flagship for a Destroyer Squadron (DESRON). They occupy the same CIC, literally sitting side by side, but their actions are distinct and separate.
It's the same with a Cruiser and the XW role, but there's no embarked staff, just the XW watchstanders being taken out of hide by the Cruiser.
And just for clarity, the X in XW applies to this particular Strike Group. Others will have a different prefix letter but the same "warfare" letter. So "W" is universally Air Defense, for the Truman Strike Group the Air Defense Commander was "XW". On my first deployment the Carl Vinson's Air Defense Commander was "CW".
Not to take away from the report (I’ve only actually read an AAR type report so I may be behind) it clearly outlines failures at every level up and down the CoC, but what scares me most were not just the number of personnel failures, but the number of actual “systems failures “.
AEGIS is FAR from new and neither is Link 16. One of the core operational laws/rules written into the AEGIS program load has ALWAYS been “Positive Mode 4 = no shot”. Positive Mode 4 is supposed to be a prelaunch requirement (personnel driven).
Once airborne though the AEGIS Combat System takes over and we’re back to system driven “Positive Mode 4 = no shot”. Additionally, these aircraft should also have been participating in a datalink clearly identifying them as friendly . Seems that somehow we have failed to recognize actual system failures so critical they nearly resulted in loss of life and further that we may well allowed that “bug” to make its way through untold iterations of the different versions/loads of the AEGIS Combat System and Link 16.
I did hear there was allegedly a problem with Mode 4 on one of the aircraft (which is as stated is a personnel driven go/no-go for launch).
I also personally wondered why the AEGIS suite hadn’t been set up with a no fire sector around the CVN.
These indicate watchstander shortcomings at many levels.
Again, I haven’t read the full report yet, so some of my comments may have already been proven incorrect.
I'm going to try to answer but also stay way clear of anything that might be OPSEC related.
Aegis is supposed to not allow an engagement against a target with valid encrypted IFF (formerly Mode 4, now Mode 5). And as far as I know (former Aegis CSO, but I'm 25 years removed from that), that capability is proven and robust.
However, it's neither the missile nor the SPY radar that is making that check, it's the firing unit's IFF feed into the Aegis weapons system.
From the unclassified and released report almost 2/3 of Gettysburg's IFF antennas were degraded or out of service. There were known issues with their IFF being "glitchy" (one of the operator's quotes) but there is no solid answer on how much the CO knew.
On that issue of what the CO did or did not know, I firmly believe I can read between the lines of the report, and I don't like what I see, but it's almost a moot point if the CO in fact DID know about the IFF degradation or not. If he knew and did not report it he's derelict in his duties, and if he didn't know he is still by definition derelict in his duties.
In theory a positive Mode 5 from a shared track (be it Link, CEC or other) should also feed the system, but in this case there was a cascade of events. Using our aviator brethren's model, all the holes in the Swiss Cheese lined up.
-I&W (Indications and Warnings) of ASCM and OWA (One Way Attack) Drone launches had been received about 40 minutes prior.
-The Air Wing took charge of manipulating the Air Defense picture around and in spite of Gettysburg who actually had the doctrinal responsibility; this led to confusion as to what friendly aircraft were airborne, both electronically and intellectually
-The E-2D controlling that part of the air picture had its radar go down just before the Friendly Fire Incident (FFI); this was unclear to Gettysburg, and exacerbated the claimed fact that Gettysburg's CO believed his ship was active in CEC but actually was not and had not been for several days.
-The above meant the prior tracks correlating to the friendly aircraft (three total) were not displayed in the Gettysburg's system and then were reacquired by SPY, but, as SPY does, as a tentative or pending track that is being firmed up
-These tentative tracks had not been correlated with friendly aircraft, even though that data was available to some watchstanders on both Gettysburg and Truman
-Not recognizing IFF was degraded, and that they actually weren't receiving CEC data, and that the E-2D was down (which would have been feeding CEC), and that the new pending tracks met Aegis doctrine criteria for a threat, the Gettysburg watch team made the decision to engage.
So essentially they believed everything you stated above, which is how the system should have worked, but their system wasn't working correctly and their watchstanders weren't maintaining situational awareness.
There are many other factors in the report, and I have to believe that no one was fired because my first read of the report (I ended up taking 14 pages of notes) indicated just about everyone except the third aircraft (that never had a missile launched against it though it may have been targeted) had some share of the blame.
Gettysburg has by far the biggest share across training, training documentation, watchstanding, maintenance, and operations, but the Strike Group and the Air Wing contributed to the situation in their planning outside doctrine and guidance, and the two aircraft targeted failed to check in with REDCROWN. That last probably didn't make a difference as the third aircraft did but was still targeted.
Regarding a no fire zone around the carrier, it's a no win situation. The shotgun "cruiser" (very often a destroyer now) is specifically tasked with defending the carrier against inbound threats. Which in this case had very similar profiles to aircraft returning to land. Put a no fire zone in place and you're not doing your job.
Being a retired Surface Electronics LDO once qualified as TAO on 2 different AEGIS Baselines, I left out (probably received as a lack of understanding) that it is in fact the Electronically Steerable Antenna (ESA) interface which provides the info to the AEGIS Combat System.
Deploying with 2/3 of those down is nothing short of dereliction from the EMO, CSO and CO..Courts Martial worthy IMHO.
I could go on but (and I’ll say it) I suspect your “read between the lines” might just be that the O-6 didn’t want to lose the Air Defense Commander (ADC) role to (AC) the O-5 on the DDG.
Of course that assumes a few things such as the EMO and CSO understood the impact, reported it up and the CO made a decision.
There is also the chance that none of them fully understood the impact (which I find harder to believe).
I am shocked to learn that a) any of the aircraft got airborne w/o valid Mode (5) and b) GET retained REDCROWN duties (yet another indicator that the ADC didn’t want to lose the duty).
As with every such incident, all these factors aligned at the exact wrong moment (ADC degraded, E-2 down, no mode 5 etc) to allow for the perfect failure chain. It’s amazing they lived through it.
Thinking through all that has been said/alluded to in this string I’ve been able to gain a far greater understanding of the “error chain” without having read the report.
All seemingly boiling down to several equipment failures, but far more personnel failures (doctrinal, tactical and operational) than I had first thought, so much so that I might not need to read the full report, though I will.
Let me opine that, while unstated, this operation was heavily dependent on "exquisite" intelligence, developed from deep penetration over lengthy period of time, thorough knowledge of the battlefield and adversary TTPs, and application of a broad spectrum of countermeasures. Having "spooks on the ground" before "boots on the ground" was critical. Jedrry Burke
I’m surprised at the OPSEC from the fleet as well. They must have been in river city for a week. It’s good to see the CH47’s being launched from big deck amphibious vessels. We practiced this pre GWOT on Big E and we mastered it with USS KH post 9-11. This was also coincidental or not, conducted the same day we captured Noriega. Synchronized symbology perhaps. Not as messy as Panama. Now we should take back Howard AFB and resume SOUTHCOM presence along with Roosevelt Roads.
At first I thought it might be good for the Venezuelan people, but it appears Trump will leave the tyrannical regime in place if they give him what he wants with oil. That's how he is, zfg about rights or democracy, all about predation.
So it's like the end of The Dogs of War but Shannon does not kill Col. Bobi and Bobi takes over in behalf of the mining companies.
An oil company executive was quoted in a Politico story two days ago. He said that oil services companies will expect US government contracts to guarantee their expenses and profits before they go in to improve Venezuelan oil infrastructure. So another contractor boondoggle a la Iraq.
The writer John Ganz said Trump is stuck in the 20th century, and so thinks Venezuelan oil is important.
Meanwhile China added 450 terawatthours of solar and wind generation last year.
It's not going to be good for the American or Venezuelan people.
It also seems to have encouraged the bastards against Greenland.
Thomas: "The writer John Ganz said Trump is stuck in the 20th century, and so thinks Venezuelan oil is important. .... Meanwhile China added 450 terawatthours of solar and wind generation last year."
Please don't stop there. Give us your best guess as to when China will achieve Net Zero carbon emissions and will therefore have much less need, or possibly no need at all, for imports of oil and coal.
Their consumption dipped during Covid, before resuming a steady climb. Then it dipped again in 2024. If that dip continues in 2025 and accelerates, we need take it more seriously. Could be tarriffs, but unlikely.
China is opening a new coal-fired power plant every week. Sure, many if not most of those new plants replace older plants which are less efficient and more polluting. But the fact remains that a coal plant has a service life of forty to fifty years. The Chinese will be burning a lot of coal for a long, long time to come.
I'm going to give Trump a little benefit of the doubt here, at least for a little while. We kept huge swaths of the Nazi infrastructure in place and did well, as opposed to dismantling the Ba'ath regime and Army in Iraq and creating our own worst enemy.
There's some wisdom in keeping establishments in place and seeing if they'll play ball to our tune.
Will we do that? I don't know, but if we wholesale dismantle the Venezuelan government we'll have a fully established hierarchy of strongmen who will be able to call upon the dissatisfaction of the populace that will result from us trying to immediately impose a new bureaucracy that will likely utterly fail to keep the lights on etc.
And it would lunacy to announce to the Venezuelan leadership let alone the rest of the world that we're keeping them in place for the moment but intend to replace them soon.
So I for one am going to let this play out and see what happens.
Much of BRAC -- several iterations over several years -- was a massive giveaway of valuable (and in many instances irreplaceable) government property to well-connected state/local political players, check-writing real estate interests, and related speculators in the affected areas.
Speaking of which, with Mare Island going bankrupt, someone should be exercising eminent domain to make Mare Island Navy Yard great again. Take back Alameda while you're at it.
Looking out in the broader Pacific, we need to get serious about corruption on Saipan, to aid our friends in Palau with their problems with Chinese characteristics, and move the needle on rehabilitating Manus.
Excellent point re Mare Island! I suspect that the Real Estate Guy-In-Chief might leap at the opportunity if it ever crosses his desk. Instant-Navy-Shipyard. Just add water. (Okay; nothing happens that fast, but still…).
Under “Strategic”, lest anyone be dismissive or derisive, OIL should not be thought of as icing on the cake. Oil is the cake, itself. Vitally strategically paramount.
The icing on the cake will be the U.S. in a position to broker a favorable deal on the 4-5 trillion cubic feet Dragon gas field reserves. That has been a very public initiative for those paying attention to the Adminsitration moves over the past year. Unlike the heavy crude, the gas field will be tap-and-go. That will piss off the Vlad.
Please send this to General Eric Smith and have note well the comments on Rotoray Wing assets and “large deck amphibious ships.” He’s busy running his yap about the ARG/MEU being th crown jewel of the Marine Corps, we need the jewels for the crown!
CDR Sal, excellent analysis that avoids the trap of over-simplifying the "why" and "what next". Foundationally, creating an international incentive structure that convinces nations to align with the U.S. is happening...often whether other governments like it or not. The cement of that foundation (IMO) comes from convincing a lot of previous bad actors in our government and business communities to align with clearly stated U.S. goals and objectives...and not their own power and / or wealth. This is an incredibly messy kluge of "interests"...how many people in U.S. government were taking money from the Maduro cartel? Many, truth be told, and not all had a "D" after their name. Militarily, "diversity" IS our strength...meaning diversity of capabilities (great list btw) applied with UNITY OF PURPOSE to create a force multiplier in execution. All domain, interoperable, mutually supporting...2 times 2 equals 8...not zero like the failed Iran raid decades ago. As you wisely say, now for the "what next"...
This seems like a corollary to the old saw about free market enterprise being the way to get bad people to do the right thing out of their own best interests.
Couldn't agree more...
But I'm assured "ThE dRoNeS wIlL aLwAyS gEt ThRoUgH!".
Now off to the gym in case @maphumanintent wants me to carry duffel bags full of $100 bills around Greenland for no reason.
And congratulations to Marcus Atonius Rubious on his proconsulship of Venezuela!
The new GITMO: “Give It to Marco.” So far so good….
The man has to be absolutely exhausted every night.
🤣🤣🤣
"Having a wide variety of inefficient and underutilized bases and facilities scattered around is a feature,"
The demise of the bases in Puerto Rico has been an ingredient to the current situation understood late. From infrastructure immaturity to education in Puerto Rico is a problem that must be addressed. Many of those in Puerto Rico still think that Communism/Socialism is a great thing mostly due to lack of education in world HiStory.
Recapitalization of a Ramey AFB/NAS Roosevelt Roads are required, and that is a great location for a shipyard, or home for a Maintenance Ready Group. A United States Naval Construction Battalions used to be stationed there for use around the region. This would be a great home for a new Destroyer Tender and Drydock.
Seems like they keep voting in the leftists for the "freebies" that never seem to actually materialize.
Best way to educate is to remove the vestiges of imperialism/colonialism. Make them a state. Reform the Jones act and make US shipbuilding and domestic shipping cost competitive so they get goods delivered at the best price possible.
Status quo is just fine. Two main reasons: (1) No one speaks English. If you've spent any time in Puerto Rico, you know it is a Spanish-speaking land. (2) It's dirt poor. The country is far poorer than the poorest state in the Union: 2021 Median Household Income United States = $69,717; Mississippi = $48,716; Puerto Rico = $22,237. It is already US territory; there are no benefits to making Puerto Rico a state.
Moral authority and the fact the island keeps getting worse as the population declines. Your economic argument is the argument to do something. Language is irrelevant. About half the population knows English. Their overall rate is a little lower than L.A. County.
Do something -- sure. But not statehood. It should be economically viable as a state; it's not. I have traveled a fair amount in PR and I do not believe for a second that half the population "knows" English, unless you mean they know the language exists. I simply do not believe based on my empirical experience that their facility with the English language is remotely close to LA County, whatever that is. I have never run into someone in LA who doesn't know English or at least isn't trying. PR they do not care about trying to learn the language. It is a very different culture from the rest of the United States, sorry.
I would fully endorse moving more defense manufacturing such as shipbuilding to PR just because you could have cheaper labor, which is a non-trivial share of our expenses.
But statehood? Nah.
One might think a naval shipyard might be a good way to go down there in light of recent events.
Any industrial development affects the economy in a positive way. A shipyard would be a real shot in the arm. An JOINT Force Base in the NW would be another shot in the arm.
Putting a "shipyard" in Puerto Rico sounds good, but you need skilled workers who will show up and do quality work in a timely manner. All of those are contrary to the habits of the Puerto Rican workforce and culture.
They are not as far behind as the Afghans, but quite content to live in the 18th century dependent on the largess of the government, while immune from the civic and tax obligations applicable to the states.
But, yes, reactivate NAVSTA Roosevelt Roads and Ramey AFB but plan on importing workers for all but the most menial jobs.
We need shipyards period. The place we most need a Naval Shipyard is on the West Coast..because once we’re at war with the PRC (the much bigger monster), what capacity we now have is simply not enough.
The capacity on the East coast on the other hand is more than enough to help survive any potential threats.
No one speaks English in Miami, and we do just fine. !Bienvenido a la Florida!
With emphasis on the "new" in new destroyer tender and floating drydock.
The AFDMs and AFDLs were crucial in WW2. There is no physical, strategic, or tactical reason they wouldn't be in the future (says the guy who qualified in graving docks and AFDM-6). Scrapping the ones we did was just another badly conceived benefit of "peace".
The "PEACE DIVIDEND' wasn't . . . a dividend. It was the beginning of the slow consumption of our defense apparatus. For a decade and a half it was plain to see . . . but those benefiting from the activity were DELIBERATELY BLINDED by their own GREED/BENEFIT/POWER/WEALTH.
And perhaps another full on shipyard?
Speaking of which and somewhat OT:
YT popped up a What's Up with Shipping vid yesterday - a few years old. About the Red Hill facility in Pearl Harbor.
With the tank leakage at the Red Hill fuel facility at Pearl, and the decommissioning of them, is there any replacement in place and full to refuel those scattered around the Pacific?
None that have been published that I am aware of.
Just leasing some tankers. Not enough.
NAS Keflavik is far more valuable than Roosevelt Roads but the US thanks to Trump's big mouth is never going to be let back in. Actually the Icelanders have been maintaining the former US facilities better than the US did. It is funny seeing the old barrack turned into "Icelandic chic" apartments and hotels.
What is the thing with Greenland anyways. Keflavik and Iceland is far more strategically located than Greenland.
NOT a valid comparison. Two different environments, situation, locations, and defense requirements. Puerto Rico is a key element in a resurgence of the Monroe Doctrine and power projection in the Caribbean/Central/South America. NAS Keflavik is pretty much already redeveloped and a key element in the GIUK Gap protection, and Arctic Power Projection.
Position and resources at play in Greenland.
Destroyer tender? They went the way of the dinosaurs decades ago unfortunately, as did TOO much of our military (particularly naval) bases and infrastructure…under BRAC.
SO . . . we don't need Destroyer Tenders (T-ADs)?
We absolutely do. Just noting the point that there aren’t any left. We decommissioned them only 1/2 way through their intended life.
And with our current shipbuilding capacity there’s none on the horizon.
Short sighted and ill-advised. Current Navy is lost with this respect. We cannot fight a naval expeditionary action, take damage, fix damage, and get back into the fight quickly . . . BY DESIGN!!!
Exactly. T-ADs were forward deployed IMAs (sadly with more capability than the current Regional Maintenance Centers, which have shifted to “Product Lines” vs actual individual shops.
Outstanding big picture analysis of the new USA military attitude following Midnight Hammer in Iran, and now the Maduro arrest (Noriega 2.0).
This reminds me of the historic improvement in US military performance when George Patton replaced Fredendall in command of army forces in North Africa in the spring of 1943. Leadership matters.
It is amazing how things have turned around in just one year.
That's some bullshit. We had this capability under Presidents of both parties. That's the point of the post. Capability like this does not happen overnight, or in a year. It takes decades.
The Special Operations Forces operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan is an example of brave men executing a complicated plan to deliver justice. And, unlike this event, President Obama was operating under explicit congressional authorization. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), specifically authorized the President to use military force against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks” of September 11th. Al-Qaeda, led by bin Laden, claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, placing him directly within the scope of Congress's AUMF.
Was that before or after Obama gave the mullahs billions in cash?
Trump has a great opportunity to undo the damage wrought by Jimmy Carter and Obama with respect to Iran. Maybe even Cuba.
You must have been a barracks lawyer - I do believe the 2001 AUMF is STILL in effect or was there an expiration date?!
It's Yardley.
How was Maduro involved in 9/11?
"[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons." Public Law 107–40 (107th Congress).
We can now say that Maduro will not be involved in any future attack on America.
I remember back when conservatives professed great respect and admiration for the constitution.
Hey Tompon, maybe you ought to head up to Philly and school their DA on the Constitution. Actually, any Democrat run city will do.
Oh, he gets better. Ask him why eight year old boys need tampons.
And Libya and Benghazi? Whose idea was that?
Replace the DEI deadwood and look what happens. Merit matters.
Someone finally has the nads to finally use the big stick
good midrats then, good recap and read this AM. Keep us all on our toes!
When will Trump remove the Marxist jihadist running NYC?
He should be cell mates with Maduro...
Trump? Absolutely! United by a love of taco bowls... .
I meant Mamdani !!!
Can you please identify his crime?
His loyalty is to Islam. He is an avowed Marxist. Unabashedly anti-American and anti- Israel.
It may not be punishable by a court of law but his politics are tribal pure and simple. He just wraps up his presentation in the soft marinade of New York liberalism.
He may have been democratically elected but be careful when you follow the masses, sometimes the " m" is silent.
Your politics are tribal pure and simple. I once thought like this, but then chose the lesser of two evils.
Troll
This brings a chill down my spine:
https://youtube.com/shorts/L-7o38fwRLI?si=SHsqSOLeY1w4AAxt
Oh! My mistake: I thought you meant that 34-count felon/sex criminal. Donald Trump.
What’s Mamdani done to upset you so?
His beliefs and loyalties. Unabashed Marxist and Socialist with a sprinkling of militant Islam.
He may have been democratically elected but it's nothing but a suicide pact.
Then when the voters tire of the rhetoric and ruin they move somewhere else trying to recreate the shit hole they just fled. So it does have a trickle down effect which I've experienced first hand.
So in the long term I'll vote for the criminal over the communist. Trump can be a bullying bastard at times but he'll never be a blood thirsty Bolshevik.
Oops, meant this troll
You mean the democratically elected mayor? You want to throw him in jail just because you don’t like his policies? That’s very un American
I think communism is very unamerican but maybe that’s just me.
Then don’t vote for someone running on that platform….but don’t you dare try and ignore democracy if someone wins fair and square and you don’t like their platform
DD1980, a question for you ....
Did Maduro win his last three elections fair and square?
And if he didn't, what were the majority of Venezuelans whose politics were not in alignment with Maduro's narco-socialism supposed to do about it?
Could that Venezuelan majority have had any unassisted success in toppling Maduro, and hopefully his narco-terrorist gang, without external help of some kind?
He's not taking about Maduro. He's talking about New York City. In a free society, the folks in a community are free to choose who their leaders are. This bullshit about putting Mamdani in jail because folks far from the city don't like him, is un-American.
If you don't like who the Mayor of New York City is, get off your fat ass and organize. To equate the voting in a city in New York State as being the equivalent to an election in a third-world dictatorship is just stupid.
Obviously you haven’t been to NYC lately.
I guess we will just have wait till there is a pogrom in NYC before Trump can send in the NG.
Now that has a familiar ring to it.
The US military is on a stunning streak of success and professional operations, which is in stark contrast to operations under the previous administration. I assume that there's been even more addition by subtraction than we're aware of. For Venezuela, they should or should be forced to set-up an El Salvador like prison system to house their narco terrorists in the most uncomfortable style possible. Secondly, we should have a mass deportation of Venezuelan criminals from the US to that prison system. Thirdly, deport the rest of the Venezuelans from the US back to a more peaceful Venezuela so they can rejoin an improved lifestyle in their true home.
Hitler had a good run of success too........
I'm interested in the fact, if it is a fact, that Maduro met with a Chinese delegation the day before The Event. One possibility is that the Chinese had no idea The Event was coming, which would be a major intelligence failure on their part and suggests that Chinese penetration of our government is less than I fear. Another possibility is that the Chinese knew or had a good idea that The Event was about to happen, and sent their delegation on the assumption that the presence of their delegation would cause Trump to cancel or delay The Event; in which case the logical Chinese inference is that Trump is one unpredictable SOB, as if they needed more evidence. And if the Chinese were in Caracas for The Event (presumably safe in some hotel), the delegation's report back to the CCP must make for interesting reading. ("Who? What? We didn't hear nuthin'.") Combining all that with the de facto US seizure of a massive oil reserve, I tentatively conclude that the U.S. totally pantsed China.
Consider also that... per reports (eg, WSJ today)... The mission was planned for an earlier time but delayed by bad weather. Perhaps there was a Christmas Eve or Day target date; perhaps New Year's Eve or Day. But... weather. In this sense, that Chinese delegation might not have been there at all, or perhaps might have been enroute, or unpacking bags at the hotel. Meanwhile, Senor Maduro met with his Chinese guests the day before his roof caved in. Seems that Nobody Knew, except people who Needed to Know.
The New Year’s Eve Party at Mar a Lago might have been used to lull Maduro into a false sense of security. Who would launch an attack while hosting a party?
Obama, April 30 - May 1, 2011.
Obama was celebrating May Day. Probably toasting Karl Marx.
"May Day," the First of May, is World Labor Day for most of the world. It has nothing to do with communism per se.
Your imagination is running away with you on this one, as it also seems to have on the current state of New York City. (On the other hand, last time we visited the Big Apple, several people did stop me, big, strong men with tears in their eyes, to ask, "Sir, where's Pete? Did we do something to upset him? We miss him so! And Donald too... .")
May Day was a public holiday in the USSR. Just google communism and May Day.
"Another possibility is that the Chinese knew or had a good idea that The Event was about to happen, and sent their delegation on the assumption that the presence of their delegation would cause Trump to cancel or delay The Event;"
Martin Skold (former NSC guy) on Twitter has another interpretation: the PRC knew about the Event, and went to tell Maduro he would be getting a visit from OD-D tomorrow and would he kindly get on the helicopter, as his services were no longer needed (Skold's thesis is generally that us, the PRC, and the Venezuelans generally reached an agreement for this all to happen).
That's plausible, and I certainly can't prove otherwise. It would explain the apparently minimal resistance, although the dead Cuban bodyguards would say they resisted to their last breath. I will say that the optics are terrible for the CCP ("CCP client gets ass kicked by US commandos".) So I don't know why the CCP would have agreed to that loss of face unless, and that's a big unless, an undisclosed quid pro quo was involved.
The Cuban bodyguards knew they were really fighting for their regime's lifeline. They probably had greater incentive to fight than the Venezuelans.
What Cuban wouldn’t want to lay his life down for Maduro?
Desi Arnaz
Yeah, it's hard to say why the CCP seems to be going along with this, but they definitely don't seem as upset as I would expect them to be given the situation.
One thing I will note is that the Chinese seem to be less loyal in general than either us or the Russians. Putin makes a point of trying to defend his guys; it may not always work out for them, but he tries. The Chinese seem to be more willing to let guys go when they lose value (I'm guessing they're confident they can bribe the next guy, too, whoever that is).
One thought occurs to me as we look at the (apparent) massive success of Absolute Resolve, and (disputed but seemingly effective) Midnight Hammer, while also digesting the redacted report on the Gettysburg blue on blue:
The US is showing unquestionable mastery of Special Operations and Aerial Warfare. But with our most likely peer conflict being China, Naval power is going to be paramount, and peer level combat is going to require more than just SOF and individual global airstrikes (Midnight Hammer looking to have required enough resources that I doubt we could have carried out the same raid again in the following days, and the forward deployed support assets, notably tankers, would be at significant risk moving forward both in time and space had we attempted the same against China and ended up in a shooting war).
Looking at the Gettysburg report I'm gravely disappointed (though not surprised) at the level of rot that seems to have set-in within Naval leadership at the operational level. The reported failings both within the Gettysburg's wardroom and between the Strike Group, Air Wing, and Gettysburg are disturbing but should not be news to anyone who's been paying attention to the state of the Navy in general and Surface Warfare in particular for the past 20 years or longer.
Gettysburg's leadership was questionable at best (with regards to basic standards of shipboard watchstanding, casualty reporting, and planning), and the Air Wing's decision to plan seemingly without participation or even knowledge of the Air Defense Commander (Gettysburg), apparently with at least tacit approval of the Strike Group, is unprofessional if understandable, and was very nearly fatal.
While now almost a decade removed, the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions must remind us that these failings are now endemic within Surface Warfare.
While there have been bright spots (notably the USS Carney's performance along side several other DDGs in the Red Sea), it is clear that our Navy, and in particular Surface Warfare CRUDES forces, have significant problems.
Coming back to the topic at hand, I worry that the US, and particularly the Navy, is going to see success in operations such as Absolute Resolve and Midnight Hammer and rest on those laurels, not realizing that they were executed (superbly) by forces that are culturally far different from the General Purpose Force, and particularly those that don't routinely operate with SOF or Jointly in general.
This should be a wakeup call to the Navy and Surface Warfare in general that operational excellence must trump (no pun intended) all else, not an excuse to claim excellence on the backs of others while continuing the culture of failure.
We could start with reevaluating training and promotion in the SWO community.
Every last remnant of DEI should be burned and the ashes tossed into the Potomac.
SWOS should be several months not a few weeks. No one should graduate without a thorough knowledge of the rules of the road. Paper charts. Parallel rulers. Compasses. That’s the only way you learn what CBDR means.
Bonuses and early promotions for those who excel on the job. Deadwood should not make it past O2.
Be generous with awards. Nothing hurts morale more than a stingy CO who has plenty of his own medals.
Cash awards, too.
Etc.
Sextant, too. Your iPhone may not work on the ocean. Bad guys might even try to destroy your electronics.
Couldn't agree more. Celestial is hard. Really hard. But it's worked for centuries. And it pays to understand WHY all our superwhamydyne GPS tricks work, and how maritime navigation has worked since its genesis.
I'm not sure about cash bonuses just yet, only because they didn't seem to work 20-25 years ago. No one stayed for their DH tour for the money, as lucrative as it was.
My spicy take is that being a good Surface Warfare Officer (and for the record, when I meet non-SWO Navy people I explain that I loved being a Surface Warfare Officer but hated being a SWO, and they get it instantly), is no less difficult than being an NFO, and in some cases frankly more difficult. So why in the world aren't we sending prospective SWOs to a flight school analogue?
It doesn't have to be 18 months, we're not nearly as dependent upon weather to get training, but a meaningful 8-12 months of classroom AND afloat training.
And we need to take a hard look at our FITREP and promotion process. Yes, exemplary performance should be rewarded with faster promotion, but unless we fundamentally change the system we'll just have CO's promoting their golden children early rather than going through the kabuki dance of giving them the one EP.
We need to accept that our community is fundamentally broken, and it will be painful to fix. It's not enough anymore to trust CO's judgement on promotions, sad as it it to say. One idea: do away with the quota system for EPs and MPs. What happens is that a Wardroom of hot runners gets most of them screwed, and a lackluster Wardroom gets someone promoted who probably shouldn't be.
And then, mandate that while the CO can give as many EPs and MPs as he wants, but every officer in that ranking group across the fleet must take a fleet wide / class wide proctored test on basic core competency. If you can't get 100% on rules of the road, you're neither an EP nor an MP. If you can't repeat your CSOSS / EOSS procedures competently your not an EP or MP.
Our aviator brethren take NATOPS seriously. It's time we did the same.
Excellent points. I have personally seen some of the finest officers not promoted because they rated behind some other fine officer. I have served as assistant recorder and sad to say the numbers carry the most weight.
What SWO's need is time at sea. Stick them on a USNS for three months, and have them get the hours of underway time that is required to be a competent mariner.
Couldn’t agree more. It’d take a lot of pressure off the qual process.
In my celestial nav class in NROTC we had to work HO-249 as part of the Day's Work in Navigation from Norfolk to Gibraltar - actual star sights being very, very tough in Albuquerque due to the rocky horizon. My 1st class summer cruise was on an SSBN, so no sextant sights then. And then, 6 years later I was the Navigator on Spru can and left in a Sargasso Sea somewhere between re-reading the pubs, talking to my QM1, and figuring it out for myself. it all worked out, but only because I filled in the gaps myself. I hope that is not the current situation.
Just because a person is paid to be a naval officer, that alone does not make them a professional naval officer. Being a competent surface warfare officer is really hard. We need to make the training just as hard.
I am awestruck that it is even possible to determine your lat and long given a sextant, a chronometer and accurate tables of stars. Thank you Sir Isaac Newton, Jonathan Harrison and John Flamsteed.
We rightly celebrate these men, who I would say only re-discovered and documented the details of things known long before. I am a Latter-Day Saint, and approach this topic from that viewpoint. Even if a person is not LDS and would never consider becoming one, I urge everyone to find and read what we have canonized as Moses 1:30-39, simply for the poetry, if nothing else.
"One idea: do away with the quota system for EPs and MPs. What happens is that a Wardroom of hot runners gets most of them screwed, and a lackluster Wardroom gets someone promoted who probably shouldn't be."
Absolutely correct. I've seen this first hand with a few squadrons.
Surface Warfare needs to take many notes from both the Navair and Sub communities.
That was a tough read, between the redactions and the acronyms, whew. Query, why not use the ship's names instead of an acronym?
Seems like IFF is a system you'd want to have working.
I don't want to seem pedantic or patronizing, so apologies if it comes off that way.
If you mean using "GET" for Gettysburg, it's standard procedure in Navy message traffic and correspondence to be as brief as possible (cultural DNA of sending via Morse or flag hoist).
If you mean that sometimes they say GET and sometimes XW it's because while physically IN Gettysburg, the Gettysburg watch team and the XW (Air Defense Commander) watch teams are two operationally separate components.
Think of it like a Destroyer serving as the Flagship for a Destroyer Squadron (DESRON). They occupy the same CIC, literally sitting side by side, but their actions are distinct and separate.
It's the same with a Cruiser and the XW role, but there's no embarked staff, just the XW watchstanders being taken out of hide by the Cruiser.
And just for clarity, the X in XW applies to this particular Strike Group. Others will have a different prefix letter but the same "warfare" letter. So "W" is universally Air Defense, for the Truman Strike Group the Air Defense Commander was "XW". On my first deployment the Carl Vinson's Air Defense Commander was "CW".
Not to take away from the report (I’ve only actually read an AAR type report so I may be behind) it clearly outlines failures at every level up and down the CoC, but what scares me most were not just the number of personnel failures, but the number of actual “systems failures “.
AEGIS is FAR from new and neither is Link 16. One of the core operational laws/rules written into the AEGIS program load has ALWAYS been “Positive Mode 4 = no shot”. Positive Mode 4 is supposed to be a prelaunch requirement (personnel driven).
Once airborne though the AEGIS Combat System takes over and we’re back to system driven “Positive Mode 4 = no shot”. Additionally, these aircraft should also have been participating in a datalink clearly identifying them as friendly . Seems that somehow we have failed to recognize actual system failures so critical they nearly resulted in loss of life and further that we may well allowed that “bug” to make its way through untold iterations of the different versions/loads of the AEGIS Combat System and Link 16.
I did hear there was allegedly a problem with Mode 4 on one of the aircraft (which is as stated is a personnel driven go/no-go for launch).
I also personally wondered why the AEGIS suite hadn’t been set up with a no fire sector around the CVN.
These indicate watchstander shortcomings at many levels.
Again, I haven’t read the full report yet, so some of my comments may have already been proven incorrect.
I'm going to try to answer but also stay way clear of anything that might be OPSEC related.
Aegis is supposed to not allow an engagement against a target with valid encrypted IFF (formerly Mode 4, now Mode 5). And as far as I know (former Aegis CSO, but I'm 25 years removed from that), that capability is proven and robust.
However, it's neither the missile nor the SPY radar that is making that check, it's the firing unit's IFF feed into the Aegis weapons system.
From the unclassified and released report almost 2/3 of Gettysburg's IFF antennas were degraded or out of service. There were known issues with their IFF being "glitchy" (one of the operator's quotes) but there is no solid answer on how much the CO knew.
On that issue of what the CO did or did not know, I firmly believe I can read between the lines of the report, and I don't like what I see, but it's almost a moot point if the CO in fact DID know about the IFF degradation or not. If he knew and did not report it he's derelict in his duties, and if he didn't know he is still by definition derelict in his duties.
In theory a positive Mode 5 from a shared track (be it Link, CEC or other) should also feed the system, but in this case there was a cascade of events. Using our aviator brethren's model, all the holes in the Swiss Cheese lined up.
-I&W (Indications and Warnings) of ASCM and OWA (One Way Attack) Drone launches had been received about 40 minutes prior.
-The Air Wing took charge of manipulating the Air Defense picture around and in spite of Gettysburg who actually had the doctrinal responsibility; this led to confusion as to what friendly aircraft were airborne, both electronically and intellectually
-The E-2D controlling that part of the air picture had its radar go down just before the Friendly Fire Incident (FFI); this was unclear to Gettysburg, and exacerbated the claimed fact that Gettysburg's CO believed his ship was active in CEC but actually was not and had not been for several days.
-The above meant the prior tracks correlating to the friendly aircraft (three total) were not displayed in the Gettysburg's system and then were reacquired by SPY, but, as SPY does, as a tentative or pending track that is being firmed up
-These tentative tracks had not been correlated with friendly aircraft, even though that data was available to some watchstanders on both Gettysburg and Truman
-Not recognizing IFF was degraded, and that they actually weren't receiving CEC data, and that the E-2D was down (which would have been feeding CEC), and that the new pending tracks met Aegis doctrine criteria for a threat, the Gettysburg watch team made the decision to engage.
So essentially they believed everything you stated above, which is how the system should have worked, but their system wasn't working correctly and their watchstanders weren't maintaining situational awareness.
There are many other factors in the report, and I have to believe that no one was fired because my first read of the report (I ended up taking 14 pages of notes) indicated just about everyone except the third aircraft (that never had a missile launched against it though it may have been targeted) had some share of the blame.
Gettysburg has by far the biggest share across training, training documentation, watchstanding, maintenance, and operations, but the Strike Group and the Air Wing contributed to the situation in their planning outside doctrine and guidance, and the two aircraft targeted failed to check in with REDCROWN. That last probably didn't make a difference as the third aircraft did but was still targeted.
Regarding a no fire zone around the carrier, it's a no win situation. The shotgun "cruiser" (very often a destroyer now) is specifically tasked with defending the carrier against inbound threats. Which in this case had very similar profiles to aircraft returning to land. Put a no fire zone in place and you're not doing your job.
Being a retired Surface Electronics LDO once qualified as TAO on 2 different AEGIS Baselines, I left out (probably received as a lack of understanding) that it is in fact the Electronically Steerable Antenna (ESA) interface which provides the info to the AEGIS Combat System.
Deploying with 2/3 of those down is nothing short of dereliction from the EMO, CSO and CO..Courts Martial worthy IMHO.
I could go on but (and I’ll say it) I suspect your “read between the lines” might just be that the O-6 didn’t want to lose the Air Defense Commander (ADC) role to (AC) the O-5 on the DDG.
Of course that assumes a few things such as the EMO and CSO understood the impact, reported it up and the CO made a decision.
There is also the chance that none of them fully understood the impact (which I find harder to believe).
I am shocked to learn that a) any of the aircraft got airborne w/o valid Mode (5) and b) GET retained REDCROWN duties (yet another indicator that the ADC didn’t want to lose the duty).
As with every such incident, all these factors aligned at the exact wrong moment (ADC degraded, E-2 down, no mode 5 etc) to allow for the perfect failure chain. It’s amazing they lived through it.
Thinking through all that has been said/alluded to in this string I’ve been able to gain a far greater understanding of the “error chain” without having read the report.
All seemingly boiling down to several equipment failures, but far more personnel failures (doctrinal, tactical and operational) than I had first thought, so much so that I might not need to read the full report, though I will.
Let me opine that, while unstated, this operation was heavily dependent on "exquisite" intelligence, developed from deep penetration over lengthy period of time, thorough knowledge of the battlefield and adversary TTPs, and application of a broad spectrum of countermeasures. Having "spooks on the ground" before "boots on the ground" was critical. Jedrry Burke
We seem to have been having a good run on that the past several years, post-Afghanistan.
Given that the US historic pattern was exemplary SigInt/GeoInt and terrible HumInt I wonder what changed when?
I’m surprised at the OPSEC from the fleet as well. They must have been in river city for a week. It’s good to see the CH47’s being launched from big deck amphibious vessels. We practiced this pre GWOT on Big E and we mastered it with USS KH post 9-11. This was also coincidental or not, conducted the same day we captured Noriega. Synchronized symbology perhaps. Not as messy as Panama. Now we should take back Howard AFB and resume SOUTHCOM presence along with Roosevelt Roads.
At first I thought it might be good for the Venezuelan people, but it appears Trump will leave the tyrannical regime in place if they give him what he wants with oil. That's how he is, zfg about rights or democracy, all about predation.
So it's like the end of The Dogs of War but Shannon does not kill Col. Bobi and Bobi takes over in behalf of the mining companies.
An oil company executive was quoted in a Politico story two days ago. He said that oil services companies will expect US government contracts to guarantee their expenses and profits before they go in to improve Venezuelan oil infrastructure. So another contractor boondoggle a la Iraq.
The writer John Ganz said Trump is stuck in the 20th century, and so thinks Venezuelan oil is important.
Meanwhile China added 450 terawatthours of solar and wind generation last year.
It's not going to be good for the American or Venezuelan people.
It also seems to have encouraged the bastards against Greenland.
Trump is no Woodrow Wilson.
True. He's not an arrogant racist.
Really? Trump? Donald Trump?
While he displays occaisional flashes of arrogance, he is in no way a racist. Wilson was a piestic, academic , arrogant racist.
Shit Yardley, you attended a private high school and live in an all white community. I love the soft racism of the left.
Thomas: "The writer John Ganz said Trump is stuck in the 20th century, and so thinks Venezuelan oil is important. .... Meanwhile China added 450 terawatthours of solar and wind generation last year."
Please don't stop there. Give us your best guess as to when China will achieve Net Zero carbon emissions and will therefore have much less need, or possibly no need at all, for imports of oil and coal.
🤣🤣🤣
"The 13th of Never" is *my* guess on that...
What would you bet that "The 13th of Never" occurs on a Friday?
Their consumption dipped during Covid, before resuming a steady climb. Then it dipped again in 2024. If that dip continues in 2025 and accelerates, we need take it more seriously. Could be tarriffs, but unlikely.
> Meanwhile China added 450 terawatthours of solar and wind generation last year.
Well, always nice to see one's enemies do that sort of thing to themselves.
China is opening a new coal-fired power plant every week. Sure, many if not most of those new plants replace older plants which are less efficient and more polluting. But the fact remains that a coal plant has a service life of forty to fifty years. The Chinese will be burning a lot of coal for a long, long time to come.
They're adding hydro and nuclear plants too.
First, great Dogs of War reference.
I'm going to give Trump a little benefit of the doubt here, at least for a little while. We kept huge swaths of the Nazi infrastructure in place and did well, as opposed to dismantling the Ba'ath regime and Army in Iraq and creating our own worst enemy.
There's some wisdom in keeping establishments in place and seeing if they'll play ball to our tune.
Will we do that? I don't know, but if we wholesale dismantle the Venezuelan government we'll have a fully established hierarchy of strongmen who will be able to call upon the dissatisfaction of the populace that will result from us trying to immediately impose a new bureaucracy that will likely utterly fail to keep the lights on etc.
And it would lunacy to announce to the Venezuelan leadership let alone the rest of the world that we're keeping them in place for the moment but intend to replace them soon.
So I for one am going to let this play out and see what happens.
I think the key is to not sit back and wait. Don't let them or China, Iran, Russia, Cuba, etc. a chance to do anything we need to then react to.
Excellent synopsis. Right on target.
Lawyers call land "real property." That's 'cause it is the only thing that's real.
The flaw of BRAC was the government's giving up ownership of Real Property. It was foolish to give up ownership of land.
Much of BRAC -- several iterations over several years -- was a massive giveaway of valuable (and in many instances irreplaceable) government property to well-connected state/local political players, check-writing real estate interests, and related speculators in the affected areas.
According to Francis Fukuyama history ended in the 1990s so who needed all these bases anyway? Too bad, bin Laden, Xi and Putin didn’t read the book.
Land is always irreplaceable; only the Dutch are making more of it.
My point is the Cdr's point. The sovereign should never give up ownership of land. Nobody knows what the future will hold.
Agreed. I was being sarcastic mastic with my reference to the End of History
And China, Vietnam, and the UAE.
Speaking of which, with Mare Island going bankrupt, someone should be exercising eminent domain to make Mare Island Navy Yard great again. Take back Alameda while you're at it.
Looking out in the broader Pacific, we need to get serious about corruption on Saipan, to aid our friends in Palau with their problems with Chinese characteristics, and move the needle on rehabilitating Manus.
All of that gets me excited. They will really need to strip down and rebuild the yard. Do that first and fast.
Excellent point re Mare Island! I suspect that the Real Estate Guy-In-Chief might leap at the opportunity if it ever crosses his desk. Instant-Navy-Shipyard. Just add water. (Okay; nothing happens that fast, but still…).
Good summary, Commander.
Under “Strategic”, lest anyone be dismissive or derisive, OIL should not be thought of as icing on the cake. Oil is the cake, itself. Vitally strategically paramount.
The icing on the cake will be the U.S. in a position to broker a favorable deal on the 4-5 trillion cubic feet Dragon gas field reserves. That has been a very public initiative for those paying attention to the Adminsitration moves over the past year. Unlike the heavy crude, the gas field will be tap-and-go. That will piss off the Vlad.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trinidad-receives-us-support-cross-border-energy-projects-2025-09-30/