Mebbe I'm missing something...

But it sounds like the only home this family should be in is jail - not a $250K (Aussiebucks) palace with a hot tub and horse paddocks.

Interesting government thinking out of the box here.

Mebbe *everybody* will behave if we give them a nice house.

Good luck funding that, dudes.

Ammunition, Part the Second.

Now for the JDM Warning™ - Excessively wordy post ahead!

In the first part, we met D’oh! who discovered and then lost the concept of attacking your enemy with a projectile weapon because Mean People Suck. While I postulated the idea lay dormant for another 10,000 years until rediscovered, once a guy used the trick and survived, the whole concept took off like gangbusters. You go from hand-thrown rocks , darts and spears to applying mechanical advantage to the process, with slings, bows, and atlaltls. From there you move to applying more mechanical advantage and produce catapults, onagers, ballistas and other engines of massy destruction.

Trebuchet

But with the discovery of black powder things changed dramatically. For a long time, the western world held to the myth that black powder was discovered by a monk, Black Berthold. The Chinese have a claim, that they are still working on. This fellow in New Zealand has his own opinions, but offers no definitive answer... In short, it's still up for grabs - except for the adherents of the Chinese, Hindu, Greek, Arab, German, Spanish and English theories - though the english claim is really tied to Roger Bacon, who recorded the recipe, but never claimed to have been the inventor. At least, unlike the machine gun, you can't blame America for this.

What we do know is this - in the early to middle 1200's, gunpowder made it's debut in Europe. And the governing elites haven't been happy since, because, among other things, "God Created Man, but Sam Colt made 'em equal!" And if there is anything a governing elite dislikes, it's people with power to do something about it!

It didn't take people long to figure out that if you took a rocket, plugged it with something moveable, that the resultant activity of the moveable object might have interesting uses in hunting game and Mean People Who Suck.

Just as the first motorcars had the engine in front because that's where the horses had been on carriages (and carriage-makers were making the first bodies) so too the first cannon used a common projectile - the arrow.

Cannon firing an arrow, from "De Nobilitatibus, Sapientii et Prudentiis Regum", manuscript, by Walter de Milemete, 1326

But people quickly learned that round shot was better, whether made of stone or iron. The stone balls, while comparatively cheap, didn't do that well against fortifications. As a projectile, round ball and shot lasted until the end of the blackpowder era in the late 1800's, as this little collection of projectiles in my living room demonstrates.

Just as the first form of mechanical locomotion in the form of steam engines were large, because it was technically hard to make them small, so it went with firearms. As the technology improved, the 'gonne' got both smaller and larger.

Okay. We've got gunpowder. We got barrel making. We've got lead. We've got handier weapons. And there are plenty of Mean People Who Suck. Now we've got to go through the development of ways to get all this to work - i.e., getting the powder to explode. Many methods worked. Some better than others, and for a long time, the better methods were also more expensive to make or didn't stand up well to battlefield conditions. The first, and still simplest, is bring a coal to the hole. After that, well, it gets complicated. If you want a detailed look (and I recommend it if you have the time - this is an excellent site!)

Early "Handgonne"r

The next step was to take a fuse rope and touch it to the hole, and after that came the matchlock, where the fuze was held by an arm on the weapon and a trigger bar used to bring the fuse to the touch hole. I happen to have an arm like that, a North African Jezail that was made in the late 1800's. Unfortunately, the match holder is broken - but here is a representative example of an ignition system that survived very late in the era.

Let's cover the major bits. All blackpowder muzzle loaders had this much in common: a tube, generally closed at one end (there were breechloaders, but that's a different story) with a small hole to allow flame in. The soldier dumped in his powder, with or without a wad to hold it down, tamping it as he did so. He then dropped (or after a few shots and the fouling that resulted) rammed a bullet home. After that, it changes.

The basic components look like this.

A large (in this case, .69 cal) ball, and a quantity of powder.

There were many tools in use over time to make this job easier for the soldier under the stress of combat. If you look at engravings and paintings from the era, you see soldiers festooned with odd-looking bits of paraphernalia. Like this guy, taken from a 16th Century drill manual.

He has all those little bottles all over him so that he can load without having to measure while under a little pressure - ie, Mean People Who Suck inconsiderately trying to kill him before he kills them. One of the purposes of drill was to make the loading process automatic, and correct - learned at the muscle-response level, not just intellectually, so that you can still respond to the commands even though your lizard-brain is telling you to run. The rump of drill we have left today is what's left of a much greater body of drill. Today we use it to move groups of troops around in an efficient, disciplined manner - without the natural straggling that occurs when people move as a mob. This is just a tiny bit of what was a vast body of drill designed to move blocks of muskets around the battlefield quickly (in column) and get the weapons employed in mass quickly (shift from column to line) in order to mass fires on the Mean People Who Suck.

Modern tools that do the same thing as all the little bottles do are illustrated here. Powder measures. They both allow you to fill in bulk and dispense measured amounts, the large one for the main charge, the smaller one for the finer powder used in the pan of a flintlock or similar action.

Speaking of the flintlock, let's go on into that particular weapon, as it became the dominant form of lock until the good Scot Reverend Forsyth invented the percussion cap.

We've covered the basics of the weapon already. With a flintlock you add a pan, to hold fine grained powder that will be set off by the sparks. A frizzen, which serves to both cover the pan retaining the powder and is the striking surface for the flint, and the hammer, which holds the flint.

This is the lock at half-cock, with the frizzen down, and the hammer locked back so that you can open the frizzen to charge the pan, but not inadvertently send the hammer forward.

Next step is to open the frizzen and charge the pan.

I cheated here - I also cocked it. Normally you would still be at half-cock. Starting to get an idea where the phrase "Don't go off half-cocked" came from?

Now you are locked, cocked, and loaded. All you need is a target and permission to fire.

Target? If you look at old military smoothbores, you'll see the sights are rudimentary. Targets were blocks of men. There was much windage in the bore, to make it easier to load when the weapon was fouled from firing and to make manufacturing simpler and cheaper. Since the ball bounces down the bore, final trajectory is defined by the direction of the last bounce, so fancy sights aren't needed. Troops were taught to aim low, maximizing their chances of a hit.

Once you got the command to fire - pull the trigger.

There are sparks there, but in the light it's not easy to see them.

The next major improvement came with the invention of the percussion cap (for a discussion of that, see the Reverend Forsyth link, above). This further simplified the loading and firing drill. Though improperly trained soldiers would still screw it up, witness the rifles picked up in the area of the Pennsylvania militia at Gettysburg some of which were loaded near to the muzzle with multiple charges - the militia drilled without percussion caps to save money and ammunition - and forgot to cap their piece when under fire. There are also several confederate accounts of casualties caused by ramrods. Works once.

The other nice thing from a governmental perspective was that this new technology was adapatable to older arms and didn't require a complete re-arming to take advantage of it.

And that's going to wrap it up for this installment - next up, percussion ammunition in Ammunition, part the third.

« Secure this line!

In case you haven't seen it elsewhere...

Here's the latest recruiting video for attack pilots coming out of Fort Rucker...

Thanks to JMH for prodding!

You b*st*rds!

Zeppelins L 13, L 12, and L 10 on a bombing mission, taken from an unidentified Zep.

1916 Zeppelin bombs Rosyth distillery, flooding the streets with fine malt
1917 Pres Wilson asks Congress to declare war against Germany

What I wanna know is: How come it took a year!?! We shoulda declared war the same day!

We needa gun pic!

Too much politics for one day! Here's another pic from the oft promised but not delivered ammo post...

Flintlock going home and knocking back the frizzen. More spark than it looks, but the flint needs dressing and adjusting.

Today in History.

Apropos a discussion of the "Law Enforcement Model" for combatting terrorism...

1924 Hitler gets five years for the Munich "Beer Hall" putsch
1933 Heinrich Himmler becomes Police Commander of Germany
1933 Nazi Germany begins persecution of Jews

Just random firings of a synapse.

Hat tip: Strategy Page.

A note from SGT Hook, in the 'Stan!

SGT Hook checks in!

Hello All, I'm in the Stan now and have been for a few days. I find the morale here to be both high and low. We, the incoming units, are over the top on morale and espirit which is expected. The outgoing guys, though excited to be heading home after 9 months, for the most part seem to be tired. A little negative or disgruntled (they were originally expecting a 6-month rotation) but mostly just burned out.

What effect has the negative campaigning have? Little I think. I can't
speak for the joes in Iraq, but here the op-tempo is high and little
time is spent follwing news and politics. We get the Stars and Stripes and
Armed Forces Network which typically don't inundate us with political
news anyway. Interestingly enough, those of us just arriving have been
exposed to all the campaigning hoopla just prior to departing and it has had no
effect on our morale. So, I'm not sure that such negative press plays
as much on our Soldiers as it does our families back home. My two cents.

Hook

Zac, here's an answer to one of your long ones...

Zac, who came to Castle Argghhh! via the discussions over at She Who Will Be Obeyed (I think, anyway) and I have been having an amicable chat over our differences in word-view. Rather than keep it buried in the comments, I thought I would drag at least part of it out into the light of day. Zac has more time to write than I do at the moment - so, Zac, don't feel slighted if I don't get to everything you write to this level of response!

Cut me some slack, too, readers. This originally started out as a response to a comment, and isn't neccessarily as polished as I would like it to be - but I didn't want to lose the moment, either.

With all those spineless caveats, here we go, Zac's comments are the blockquotes:

I agree with your friend partly. I think these wars are additional wars. I don't think all of those Iraqis currently committing terrorism, were terrorists to begin with. In that way, I think it's self-defeating to have gone into Iraq. But now that we are there, I agree we can't just cut and run.

(Pedantic Mode) I disagree, on technical grounds. And I fault the administration and the media for there being a disagreement between us on this simply because neither are truly accurately portraying what's going on. Afghanistan and Iraq are not two different wars. The problem is that people perceive them to be (and therein lies my gripe with the administration and the media - for allowing/fostering that perception). They are two campaigns in a larger war, and should be viewed as such. Even as you and I debate this, there are other operations on-going in the intel/SOF realm that continue the war in yet another campaign. That does not mean that further activity will be of the large-scale expeditionary nature - and this one has borne fruit, good and bad, like it or not. Libya is one such instance. Syria is trying to get on our good side (I suspect mostly in appearances, but there is still leverage there) and even North Korea has taken note that at least under this President, the US will ACT, instead of act. Like it or not, much of what has happened in the last couple of years is due to the feckless response of Bush senior and Clinton - by giving the perception of weakness. (/Pedantic Mode)

I disagree that Kerry is going to do that. I also disagree that he'd sell the US down the river, sell us out to the UN. I see it like this: he's going to engage the UN and the world community, offload some of the burden in Iraq onto them.

That's no different from what the Bush administration has been trying to do for months.

Here's something I can share.

...because the Chief of Staff wants it shared. It's a mixed bag of good and bad, and what some will see as good, others will see as bad. Bottom line, it represents how the Chief intends to address the challenges the Army faces.

Yesterday afternoon (?) at the AFNORTH Theater, MG Bargewell (MG B) gave a rather detailed rundown of a meeting he and other General fficers (GOs) had with the Chief of Staff (CoS) of the Army, GEN Schoomaker. The topic was the transformation of the Army and my notes follow (most of this information can be found on AKO and all is UNCLASSIFIED):

1) The presentation consisted of one slide the text of which was the Soldier's Creed. At the bottom of the slide was a saying/motto that GEN Schoomaker coined, "Warrior: Are you wearing your dog tags?" MG B stressed that the CoS is committed to instilling into each soldier two things: the Warrior Ethos and the fact that the Army is an expeditionary force. To this end, he has mandated the wearing of the American flag on the Battle Dress Uniform and, although he has not made it mandatory, wants soldiers to wear their dog tags. The CoS stressed that the mindset of the soldier must be one of always ready to deploy. The nature of the asymmetrical threat (as he characterizes terrorism) dictates this mindset and it looks as if it will be the reality for the forseeable future.

2) The CoS has determined that Basic Training is not producing enough
soldiers proficient in the basic skills of fire and maneuver and has ordered a revamp of the training to ensure that every soldier can perform these critical tasks (see the front page and accompanying article of this week's Army Times). To illustrate the CoS's point, MG Bargewell referenced the 507th Maintenance Company's (Jessica Lynch's unit) performance when ambushed by a relatively small enemy force last April in Iraq. MG B said that while they may have been great mechanics they were not ready for combat because they had not been afforded the opportunity to train in a combat-like situation (the 507th trained at both the National Training Center and Joint Readiness Training Center but remained in the Corps Support Area, thus, were not exposed to the direct fire/combat/POW situations they encountered).

3) The CoS outlined to the GOs seventeen areas on which he will focus,
only two of which MG B addressed:

--The Soldier: The CoS stated that it has become such a familiar mantra over the years for senior leaders to talk about "the soldier's well-being" as the "No. 1 objective" that it has become lip service. The CoS has directed that every deployed soldier in a combat situation is outfitted with the latest technology in both body armor (The Interceptor bullet-proof vest) and weapons.

--The Bench: Junior leaders (both enlisted and officer) in the active-duty Army/National Guard/Reserves need to be ready to step up to increased responsibilties due the "First Team" not always being available due to high

Flash Traffic (extended entry) Follows... »

OPTEMPO.

4) A favorite analogy, according to MG B, of the CoS is that the Army is like a fifty-five gallon drum with the spigot too high. That is to say, there is an untapped reservoir of personnel. On any given day there is a "ghost army" consisting of 81,000 non-deployable soldiers due to PCSs, schools, medical hold, and special assignments such as the Black Knights and the Army entertainment shows. While some of this is unavoidable, some changes are in the works so minimize this number ("lower the spigot"). For example, the Army is going to institute a stabilization program whereby a soldier will be stationed at an installation for seven years with the by-products being better cohesiveness within units and lower PCS costs. Furthermore, changes will be made in the Officer/NCO Education Systems. These include eliminating certain schools (CAS3 is operating the last of it's courses right now and then in the words of MG B "it is history"), curtailing the time spent in some schools (the CoS mentioned CGSC, the Sergeants Major Academy, and the First Sergeant's Course), and offering some schooling through Distance Learning.

5) The CoS talked about a new initiative which will affect the organization of the Army's ten divisions with the buzzword being "modularity". By FY 07 the number of brigades will increase from 38 to 48 which is roughly five per division. The brigades will be made smaller in the hope of increasing their maneuverability. Furthermore, the CoS wants to standardize the brigades giving him the ability to reach out and pull, for instance, the Aviation Brigade from the 82d and attach it to a Task Force as needed. Right now, each of the Aviation brigades are different hindering his ability to pick and choose.

6) 18,000 soldiers will be transferred on either a mandatory or volunteer basis to combat arms MOSs. The CoS said that by FY 07 the Army will create (counting Active-duty/NG/Reserve) 149 new MP units, 16 Transporation units,
11 Bio-chemical units, 9 Petroleum/Water Puirfication units, 8 active-duty Civil Affairs units and 4 PsyOp units. The Combat Arms units will also see an increase. He mentioned 22 new Infantry units, as well as 22 new Armor units. A few of the pros of this is an increase in the number of leadership positions and increased time spent with troops. He specifically mentioned that the MP Corps will re-focus its wartime mission to return to a more combat-oriented role. MG B mentioned that in WWII MPs acted almost like scouts in that they would be among the first units in an area thus increasing their chances of enemy contact. They will return to being utilized in such a manner.

7) The CoS is looking at linking retirement pay more closely to the amount
of years served and raising the mandatory retirement age. As it stands, whether a soldier serves 26 years or 38 years (as MG B has) they still receive the same percentage of retirement pay. The CoS intends to create incremental percentage increases based on years served over 26 years.

8) At this point, MG B segued into how the federal budget will drive many of the changes the CoS wants to make. According to MG B, the CoS said that
the FY 05 and 06 military budgets are relatively set and look good. In FY 07 and FY 08, however, the CoS anticipates things getting tighter due to the lack of funds available to pay for all of the Baby Boomers that will begin receiving retirement benefits (specifically, Medicare and Social Security).

The CoS believes that cuts will have to be made to pay for these underfunded programs and fears that the military budget could absorb the brunt of the cuts. As a result, the CoS wants to institute as many changes as is feasible over the next 2 1/2 years in order to take advantage of the favorable budget climate.

9) The CoS emphasized that the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) will be long,
with high OPTEMPO and deployments being the rule rather than the exception.
Furthermore, he anticipates the use of NG/Reserve soldiers to get tougher
with more justification required before their call-up.

10) MG B wrapped up the session by saying that he worked for 14 straight years with the CoS and knows him to be a straight shooter when it comes to communication. He told that GOs that "everything is on the table for review except the Army Values." For example, the CoS stated that he is "getting rid of the Finance branch because they don't do anything but screwup our pay anyway." The CoS said that after coming back on active duty to act as the CoS he didn't get a paycheck for 4 1/2 months. One day his wife received a letter from the VA saying "how sorry we are about the passing away of your husband...." (This is the Chief of Staff of the Army!) He also said that he is getting rid of half of the Human Resources Command (formerly PERSCOM) because they have too many people and not enough work. Finally, the CoS talked in generalities about the the future of the Army overseas. He did say that he anticipated probably five "bases" to remain in Europe--combat brigades in Grafenwoehr and Vilseck, the hospital in Heidelberg, SETAF in Italy, and some kind of task force in Eastern Europe.

With that the session was concluded.