Comments for H&I Fires* 07 AUG 2008

H&I Fires* 07 AUG 2008

2008-08-08T04:20:22Z

Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite.

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From the Long War Journal: Mapping the Rising Violence in Afghanistan

The modern day Fighting 69th, New York: carrying on the tradition.

The U.S. soldiers who came here are firefighters, paramedics, police officers, civil engineers and information technology consultants, most from New York City. They were seasoned by years in the National Guard and a tour in Iraq. Many of them had walked through the rubble left by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in Lower Manhattan. Now, this tightknit crew of New Yorkers is in Afghanistan as part of what its members consider a very personal war.

Flip flop in Pakistan? ISI will NOT be rolled under the Ministry of Interior to strengthen civilian control. Nobody has the guts to take it on apparently. And, you thought OUR intelligence agency was "rogue".

Well, don't ever say that you miss the headlines from Iraq. The NYT is beginning their usual job on Afghanistan with an admiring headline for the Taliban: Ragtag Taliban Show Tenacity in Afghanistan.

Hey, maybe the next headline will call them "freedom fighters"?

Al Qaeda's Nuclear Strategy: to Nuke or not to Nuke, that is the question. That someone sits around all day and thinks about.

Another Iranian Magical Weapon:

Monday's report gave no details on when or where the new weapon was tested. Its range indicates it could be a type of torpedo, but state radio called it a missile.

Probably something like those fake air planes and those not so new missiles that didn't all make it off the ground. - Kat

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Big Tobacco, with another view into leadership:

Will I Lead if you follow? Will you Follow If I Lead?

I wrote this while smoking a La Gloria Cubana Wavel.

I planned the operation weeks in advance. The proper pieces of the puzzle dropped into place. The right paperwork completed. The right people notified slowly, getting them used to the idea. The end result was a sergeant who was fired and left with the feeling that it was his idea all along.

That's right. I fired one of my E5 team leaders today and replaced him with an E4 corporal. If I did the right thing, why do I feel less like Machiavelli and more like a dirtbag?

That's how it starts. It ends like this: I'm confident that I did the right thing but I'm still awake. Go read The War on Big Tobacco to see why. -the Armorer

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Imagine what we could do to the pirates if we could figure out how to take task groups like this and patrol pirate waters...

U.S., Canadian and Japanese navy ships transit the Pacific Ocean during a group exercise off the coast of Hawaii in support of Rim of the Pacific, RIMPAC, July 28, 2008. RIMPAC is a biennial exercise hosted by U.S. Pacific Fleet that brings together military forces from Australia, Canada, Chile, Peru, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea. U.S. Navy photo by Pety Officer 3rd Class Kyle D. Gahlau

Oh, I know, it's never that simple, is it? -the Armorer

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Snerk! Over at Stop the ACLU, Jay *continues to drill Speaker Pelosi, only to find it's a dry hole. Behave yourselves. I went far enough... -the Armorer

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On the subject of the first link of this section, Harry Reid says:

After 9/11, we spent a little time here and left. It would have been better if we'd spent more resources here. We didn't, and that can't be undone. But we are in a better position now... I feel we're in pretty good shape."

He goes on to say that what we've learned in Iraq can be successfully applied to Afghanistan. Once again, I'm left nearly speechless. Allahpundit has a far kinder interpretation of Reid's comments than I do. I swear, it's come to the point where the only possible interpretations of statements like this reflect poorly on either the speaker's sanity, integrity, intelligence/seriousness, or patriotism. Which one it is, I'm afraid to find out. - FbL

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Well, when it comes to pirate waters, Armorer, Canada's finally doing something deliberate about it (as opposed to accidental, as a side benefit of another mission):

Defence Minister Peter MacKay confirmed Wednesday that Canada is sending a Halifax-based frigate to waters off the horn of Africa to stop pirates from attacking food shipments bound for Somalia.

The navy has diverted HMCS Ville de Quebec, which left Halifax last month for a 5½-month NATO mission to the Mediterranean and Black seas.

The ship's motto is Don de Dieu feray valoir - which translates to "I will put God's gift to good use." I have no doubt that they'll do just that. - Damian

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*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires. Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute. Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is. The UAVs we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now. Of course, now I have to call them UAS's, because someone got a Legion of Merit for the name change.Anyway, I call the post H&I Fires because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to that particular topic. Another term of art that might be appropriate is Free Fire Zone.

Comment from BillT on 2008-08-08

2008-08-08T16:07:49Z

There's already a Russian tank column inside South Ossetsia and Georgia claimed to have shot down two ~~Soviet~~ Russian aircraft attacking Georgian positions.

This could get interesting.

Comment from RetRsvMike on 2008-08-08

2008-08-08T15:31:09Z

Guidons, Guidons, Guidons...

don't pack away your Cold Warrior gear just yet...

http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary/geopolitical_diary_decision_time_south_ossetia#top

Comment from wolfwalker on 2008-08-08

2008-08-08T11:12:03Z

Ymar, to my thinking intel is a strategic advantage because it tells you where the enemy is and what he's planning to do. That becomes a tactical advantage once battle is joined and you can actively send your forces against him, knowing down to a few minutes exactly where he'll be and what he'll be doing. This is especially true in a carrier sea battle, when knowing the enemy's position is essential before you can attack him.

The authors of Shattered Sword spent many pages on exploring the reasons behind Japan's loss at Midway, and I'm not sure I can summarize their conclusions in a blog-comment. They develop several examples of the 'cultural' aspect to the battle. The most telling one (assuming that the authors are right) is that in the old Japanese culture, commanders tended to love order and avoid improvisation. They approved strongly of following orders and disliked taking personal initiative, for fear that if things went wrong they'd be singled out for blame and dishonored. This led to a situation where Japanese commanders would go to enormous lengths to develop their battle plan, then stick to that battle plan even after things started going seriously wrong. You can see this in the way Hiryu stayed to counterstrike the American carriers. Realistically, losing three of four carriers meant the Japanese operation had already failed. An American admiral, having lost three-quarters of his fighting strength, probably would have retreated in order to save what he had left. Then there's also the way the Japanese always sought to settle the war in a single decisive battle -- which in a modern war, with a battlefield the size of the Pacific and combatant forces the size of the US and Japanese navies, is effectively impossible.

Comment from Ymarsakar on 2008-08-07

2008-08-08T02:35:27Z

That raises an interesting issue of what happens when you have tactical advantage vs strategic advantage. Which one wins? Or does it matter which one wins, or does it only matter because tactical victories can translate to strategic advantages?

I don't think that it was a tactical advantage to be able to know ahead of time that the Japanese would attack Midway, unless they were using such codes during the battle to encrypt orders to move.

The American task force still had to find the Japanese fleet, after all, even if they knew they would be around the area somewhere.

What cultural issues are you refering to, John?

The only ones I know about were the Japanese tendency to go for land war at sea strategies with these "flanking" armies like NOrth, Central, Southern force at Leyte Gulf. That's pretty much insane for a Navy because commands cannot be passed and obeyed as quickly at sea as it can be on land when the forces are only a few miles apart.

Then there's that facet with how the individual Japanese soldier was very enamored of attacking, but the strategic masterminds behind the overall shindig was very conservative and cautious and would never take a risky gamble even if the rewards warranted it.

After all the losses they took at Leyte Gulf, they made the decision to withdraw. Man, if you were going to do that, might as well have done that at the beginning before you lost all your ships.

Comment from wolfwalker on 2008-08-07

2008-08-08T02:04:37Z

Nah. You're right that it's a very strong strategic and tactical advantage, but it's not an unbeatable one. The Americans came close to losing at Midway despite it. If not for a good decision by Wade McClusky (commander of Big E's dive bombers), the luck that brought Yorktown's and Enterprise's SBDs over the target at the same time, and the magnificent skill of Dick Best in scoring a one-bomb kill on Akagi, Midway might have ended in a draw or even a tactical Japanese victory.

It's also worth noting that the German Navy was reading British naval codes for a large chunk of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Cryptography helps, but it's not a panacea.

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2008-08-07

2008-08-08T02:04:14Z

Ymar - it was still a near-run thing, and the Japanese had structural issues (doctrinal as well in terms of ship-building) and, in the end, cultural, that all came together to make the stew that was Midway.

Which takes nothing away from the American side.

Comment from Ymarsakar on 2008-08-07

2008-08-08T00:02:15Z

When the enemy cracks your code and knows what you are doing and you don't know that they have your code cracked, that's a kind of unbeatable strategic advantage.

Comment from wolfwalker on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T23:59:35Z

Quite welcome, John. Yes, Shattered Sword is very interesting indeed. The authors are definitely right that the classic account of Midway is biased in a number of ways, although the biases aren't obvious unless you look really really closely. Their portrait of the Nagumo Force feels (for lack of a better word) much more real than the classic view does. The Nagumo Force was neither an unstoppable juggernaut nor a gang of bumblers that succeeded mainly because of Allied incompetence. It was a highly trained, highly skilled task force that was brought down at Midway by a cascade failure on the part of its commanders combined with a magnificent performance by the American dive-bombers and a fair amount of luck. I'd guess that the 'Stockholm Syndrome' approach grew out of the authors' very strong desire to set the historical record straight and rescue the Japanese Navy from Mitsuo Fuchida's damned lies.

Comment from Ymarsakar on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T22:27:12Z

What happened to those nuclear torpedoes they decommissioned? At least if you fire them off in a direction away from the fleet, you'll know whether an enemy sub is in that general location or not.

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T20:27:55Z

Wolfwalker - speaking of reading WWII history - thanks for the tip about Shattered Sword. A very interesting view of things. It was a bit weird with the almost Stockholm Syndromish way they referred to the IJN, contrasting with the usual jabber on the subject. It was also interesting to see the Japanese Navy was no better with prisoners than the Japanese Army, just as an aside.

But the insider stories from the survivors of the Japanese carriers was every bit as interesting as the techincal analysis of flight deck and hangar ops.

Comment from fmr_grunt on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T20:25:36Z

I'm with John. Certainly one of the gator Navy. The stern is hiding a ramp for a well deck.

Comment from BillT on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T18:06:28Z

Nope, what you're talking about is a 'wake homing' torpedo--which also follows some pressure differntials as well as screw noise

Nope, what I'm talking about is an acoustical homing torpedo that tracks by the cavitation noise of a ship's propeller. They were called "cavitation-homing" torps until somebody got an MSM for re-naming them "acoustic" torpedoes.

A wake-homing torpedo works strictly with pressure differentials.

Comment from John of Argghhh! on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T17:30:58Z

Wolfwalker - I believe the far ship is a Wasp-class LHD, can't read a hull number.

As for the apparently-missing wakes - I suspect that's an artifact of the waves. The view of some wakes are blocked my "hills" of water, or whatever the proper nautical term is.

Comment from wolfwalker on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T16:52:50Z

CBT & all:

Here's a very good article (or at least, it seems to be) about the Russian Shkval supercavitating torpedo and the concept behind it. Iran claimed to have tested a derivative of the Shkval about two years ago.

Comment from Charlie Browns Teacher on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T16:26:19Z

Wolf, before I split. That could be the newest JNSDF destroyer. Sort of a helo carrier on 'roids. People are pissed(read PRC) over it because it is almost big enough to be a fixed wing carrier, which is forbidden by the Jap constitution. I haven't looked at photos of her often enough to be sure, but that's my guess.

Comment from Charlie Browns Teacher on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T16:22:52Z

Nope, it's not like a missile based on it's speed (although it's a zippy little thing), it's like a missile because it's guided -- it homes on the cavitation sound emitted by the target ship's screws.

Nope, what you're talking about is a 'wake homing' torpedo--which also follows some pressure differntials as well as screw noise(not the same thing, though they can be in certain contexts). THe USN used something called Nixe and other stuff to spoof those.

What I'm talking about is something they're supposed(not much more than RumInt, but it's persistent) have bought from the Russians that uses a series of gas nozzels along the nose and body to to create a 'pocket' of very low pressure and resistance. It's dumb as a rock(or me) but well over 50knots(never seen a prcise figure, but I've not looked that hard. SFAIK nobody has ever used one in a war shot test, not that I've looked that hard.). There's better links out there than the everything.com one. I just can't spend 20 minutes trying to get thru GlobSec's archives for a decent one right now. Gotta go, gotta go, gotta get the resume all set to send to Dayton, OH.

Comment from wolfwalker on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T16:14:07Z

dammit, too much time reading WW2 history... of course, it's not the IJN anymore, it's the Japanese Self-Defense Forces.

Comment from wolfwalker on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T16:10:53Z

I recall a story a year or two ago about Iran testing something called a "supercavitating" torpedo: essentially an underwater rocket that encloses itself in a sheath of bubbles that reduce drag to nil. It can achieve speeds of well over a hundred knots. Problem is, nobody has ever found a way to steer one of the things, so it's basically a World War One torpedo on steroids. No steering. No gyro angle offset. No homing capability. You solve for target course and speed, launch the torpedo, and pray.
On a different subject ...

What the heck is that farthest ship in the photo of the US/Japanese naval unit? It's clearly a flattop, but it doesn't look anything like a fleet carrier, and I didn't think the IJN had carriers of any kind. And why are most of the ships not showing any wake?

Comment from kat-missouri on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T15:51:49Z

It's not that they have nothing, it's that there is so much hype with it that your average citizen thinks that Iran has an invincible army and we should just swallow their nuclear demands or that Iran is built into such a bogeyman that it can shape economics at will through opening their big mouths and spewing this BS. Next thing you know, oil zip again when Iran starts talking BS about shutting down the straits of Hormuz.

I'm getting pretty sick of it, frankly.

Comment from BillT on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T15:41:00Z

They also seem to have a 'cavitating' torpedo---which is like a missile that runs in the water based on its speed.

Nope, it's not like a missile based on it's speed (although it's a zippy little thing), it's like a missile because it's guided -- it homes on the cavitation sound emitted by the target ship's screws.

Which is WWII technology.

Comment from Charlie Browns Teacher on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T14:40:07Z

Iran and it's claims. It is too easy to just blow stuff off as puffery.

Yet, there's stuff there to worry about. The 'sunburn' (forget the non-NATO designation) is problematic. They also seem to have a 'cavitating' torpedo---which is like a missile that runs in the water based on its speed. Last I heard from an old ME hand I know they were taking old HAWK SAM missiles and mating them to F14s. He wasn't sure what the purpose was. Could be a poor man's BVR AAM, or could be a poor mans anti-ship missile. He wasn't sure. Then he retired from the service and became a lawyer so he's dried up on me.

I'm sure some of our claims, written by industry types that sound more like commercials, ring as hollow to non-US audiences. Not saying that everything coming out of Iran is true, but be careful you don't wind up in the same boat as Prof Juan Cole who claims that speed boats pose absolutely zero threat to USN assets in Hormuz. They do pose a threat. Depends on what they carry and whether they carry openly. A fusilade of RPG at the waterline is not going to do a destroyer any favors. She proll'y won't sink, but she can be mission incapable. Worse for one of the few remaining FFG we've got. I don't wanna think about what'd do to an LH(X)---since there I'm talking more about people than machine. Nor does Prof COle take into consideration the ability to lay nautical mines.

Don't buy the hype, but don't lull yourself into a false sense of invulnerability either. The Iranians can and will do damage if it comes to blows.

Comment from BillT on 2008-08-07

2008-08-07T14:15:07Z

Al-Qaida is sometimes portrayed as a terrorist group with an apocalyptic vision, intent mainly on destroying its enemies, without a focus on long-term goals of its own. But Mowatt-Larssen and other terrorism experts argue that it should be seen instead as acting strategically — at least from its own perspective.

Ummmm, guys? Al-Q *is* an apocalyptic terrorist group -- its *apocalyptic vision* is its long-term, strategic goal.

*sigh*

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