Does this mean that green tips will be back in fashion?

quote:

Originally posted by xanth:
The generalities of that article can apply to our Air Force too. Old/lack of equipment and lack of qualified people (maintenance/pilots).

"What does it mean when you see ten C-5s on the flightline and five are on jacks? Not enough jacks!"

quote:

Originally posted by xanth:
The generalities of that article can apply to our Air Force too. Old/lack of equipment and lack of qualified people (maintenance/pilots).

Yup. In many ways we are a paper tiger. If the shtf many AF "leaders" would get exposed rather quickly and more aircraft would be broken than flyable.

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
Some of the Central (formerly eastern) European nations have started to issue guerrilla manuals to their population.

Is there a source for this statement?

Here's one.

quote:

Lithuania issues manual on what to do if Russia invades

By Nic Robertson, Antonia Mortensen, Elizabeth Roberts and Woj Treszczynski CNN

Updated 1644 GMT (0044 HKT) October 28, 2016

(CNN)- If you invade, don't expect our people to make it easy for you.

That was the message Lithuania sent to Russia Friday as it published a manual for its three million citizens on how to defend their homeland in the event of invasion.

Since Russia annexed Crimea two years ago, Lithuanians have been on edge.

Conscription has been restarted and defense spending ramped up, not to mention their now-answered calls for NATO to deploy more troops to the Baltics.

But even this is not enough to assuage anxiety -- the Lithuanian government has Friday issued a 75-page guide on what to do if the country is invaded, entitled "Prepare to survive emergencies and war."

"Attention needs to be paid to the actions of the neighboring country -- Russia," says the manual.

"This country does not hesitate to use a military force against its neighbors, and at this moment it basically continues the military aggression against Ukraine."

It notes the Russian method of using "denial and ambiguity" at the beginning of an invasion and warns: "It is most important that the civilians are aware and have a will to resist -- when these elements are strong, an aggressor has difficulties in creating an environment for military invasion."

[...]

https://edition.cnn.com/2016/1...ar-manual/index.html

Poland has also stood up a volunteer Homeguard, and the Scandinavian countries are re-emphasizing their "Total Defense" concepts. Sweden recently re-issued its "If Crisis Or War Comes" popular information booklet for the first time since 1980, and conducted a snap drill of its Homeguard for the first time since 1975 this June. And it seems everybody and Santa Claus turned up.



Norway is going to test its own Total Defense during TRIDENT JUNCTURE 2018, the biggest NATO exercise since the end of the Cold War that will kick off in two weeks, involving 45,000 troops from all 29 member nations plus Sweden and Finland, plus the USS Harry S. Truman carrier battlegroup. Though in respect to the thread topic, the deployment phase for that was two months; and we're talking mostly European forces here. If you want an overview of the mobility problems I mentioned earlier, look at Chapter V of this CSIS study (from page 15).

Santa Claus looks ready!

I'd be interested in seeing how similar the guerrilla manuals are to MAJ Von Drach's "Total Resistance" used (or once used) by the Swiss. (The one that laid out plans for keeping an eye on pro-Communist educators and local government officials and "eliminating" them.)

quote:

Originally posted by craigcpa:

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
Some of the Central (formerly eastern) European nations have started to issue guerrilla manuals to their population.

Is there a source for this statement?

Link
That's Sweden and It references other nations as well. There is a lot of things going on in Europe that the mainstream US media has completely glossed over or relegated to page 12.

Thanks for both of those sources.

Yeah, it's not like Russia has never just rolled into a neighbouring country anytime in the last 70 or so years.

quote:

Originally posted by SgtGold:
Yeah, it's not like Russia has never just rolled into a neighbouring country anytime in the last 70 or so years.

Yeah, you have to watch out for those "Little Green Men".

quote:

Originally posted by craigcpa:
Thanks for both of those sources.

Intrestingly enough the Poles were looking at a volunteer civilian Cyber security Corp as well.

https://www.defensenews.com/na...Early%20Bird%20Brief

US Army warns of crippling sealift shortfalls during wartime

By: David B. Larter   14 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is pushing Congress to act on a looming sealift shortfall that will create “unacceptable risk in force projection” within the next five years if the Navy doesn’t act quickly, according to a document from the Army’s G-4 logistics shop obtained by Defense News.

In response to a committee inquiry, the Army in February sent a warning to the House Armed Services Committee in an information paper noting the nation’s surge sealift capacity — which would be responsible for transporting up to 90 percent of Army and Marine Corps equipment in the event of a major war — would fall below its requirement by 2024.

“Without proactive recapitalization of the Organic Surge Sealift Fleet, the Army will face unacceptable risk in force projection capability beginning in 2024,” the document said, adding that the advanced age of the current fleet adds further risk to the equation.

“By 2034, 70% of the organic fleet will be over 60 years old — well past its economic useful life; further degrading the Army’s ability to deploy forces,” the document reads.

The Army’s G-4 also alluded to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ readiness push, adding that even the most prepared forces wouldn’t matter if they can’t reach the front line.

“Shortfalls in sealift capacity undermine the effectiveness of US conventional deterrence as even a fully-resourced and trained force has limited deterrent value if an adversary believes they can achieve their strategic objective in the window of opportunity before American land forces arrive,” the paper reads. “The Army’s ability to project military power influences adversaries’ risk calculations.”

The document reflects the Army’s growing impatience with the Navy’s efforts to recapitalize its surge sealift ships, which are composed of a series of roll-on/roll-off ships and other special-purpose vessels operated by Military Sealift Command and the Maritime Administration. And Capitol Hill shares the Army’s view, according to two HASC staffers, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Navy, which is responsible for recapitalizing the surge sealift force, put forward a budget in 2019 that called for about $242 million over the next five years, the bulk of which would go toward designing and developing a new platform that will replace the current vessels. HASC lawmakers considered that amount of funding not enough to make any serious inroads on recapitalization, and certainly not enough to forestall the critical shortfall identified in the information paper, the staffers said.

A crisis

The Army’s warning dovetails with a Navy report from earlier in the year that detailed a full-blown crisis and collapse in the surge sealift capacity by the late 2020s if it does not move quickly to recapitalize.

The sealift fleet is composed of 26 Military Sealift Command pre-positioning ships, 46 ships in the Ready Reserve Force and 15 command-owned roll-on/roll-off surge force ships. Many of the roll-on/roll-off ships are steam-operated, and the obsolete equipment is causing significant personnel issues in the pool of qualified civilian mariners needed to operate them.

To offset the coming crisis, the Navy and the Maritime Administration came up with a three-pronged approach, according to the service’s March report: buy used ships off the open market and retrofit them for Defense Department purposes; buy a new class of ship known as the Common Hull Auxiliary Multi-Mission Platform, or CHAMP, if the concept is practical; and perform service-life extensions on ships the Navy thinks could benefit from the servicing.

The Navy is planning 31 service-life extensions across the Maritime Administration and Military Sealift Command surge fleet, according to the report. But that would mean those ships will be 60 years old when they decommission, a service life that comes with a whole basket of issues, the report said.

“Extending service life of vessels is a temporary mitigation as the fleet’s average age will continue to increase,” the report reads. “This exacerbates the challenge of maintaining older vessels with obsolete equipment and scarce spare parts.”

The Government Accountability Office has documented increasing costs and decreasing availability among surge sealift ships.

Congress and the Navy are, in fact, moving toward the plan to buy several used ships off the market and retrofit them for use by the Defense Department. Lawmakers also want the Navy to submit plans for the CHAMP, which will be at least 10 hulls.

But now the Navy is reportedly raising questions about the feasibility of its own concept.

"What we've figured out is that mission set is very broad," Capt. Scot Searles, strategic sealift and theater sealift program manager, said at a recent expeditionary warfare conference, Inside Defense reported.

“The missions the Navy wants CHAMP to address include strategic sealift, aviation intermediate maintenance support, medical services, command and control, and submarine tending. We have some early returns from some of the investigations we’ve done so far that [say] a single hull doesn’t make sense, and so we want to make sure we’re investigating and not trying to predisposition the answer," Searles added.

But if CHAMP isn’t the answer, the Navy must find a solution soon, according to the Army paper. To the land forces, it’s a matter of maintaining credibility as a deterrent force.

“Power projection, and the ability to rapidly deploy, is the US military’s operational center of gravity and is arguably the most crucial military advantage of the United States,” the paper reads. “Strategic sealift is the Army’s primary means of power projection and 90% of the Army’s unit equipment moves by strategic sealift.

“The Organic Surge Sealift Fleet is critical to maintaining this power projection military advantage.”

Just my opinion, but if our so called allies like France and Germany keep complaining about the USA, etc. why don't we just sit this one out and have them all defend themselves ??? God Bless

Russia isn't trying to invade Germany and France this time, they're trying to get their trade business, namely Oil, and to supplant the Petro-Dollar with the Petro-Ruskie/Petro-Euro.

Furthermore, Russia needs the West (at least the European part) to help it resist Chinese expansion and domination, as their shared land border is a big problem for Russia.

Cold War feelings and animosity aside, the best thing for everyone is likely some sort of alliance between Russia and the West because China is and will be the big problem.

Russia is run by Putin, and appears to have self esteme issues. For him, he probably thinks Russians will look up to him if he invades a neighboring country. So, despite it being illogical, Putin could invade an easy target just because he thinks it makes him look good.

I doubt that the Chinese would attack Russia, they would also pick on someone who would be less of a fight.

I spoke to a Chinese-American friend of mine about the Chinese threat. He said: No, no, the Chinese just want to make money. Going to war would cost them tremendous amounts in lost income, and is the very last thing that they want.

I mean in the long term. China is on the 1000yr plan, so to speak, and their plans aren't as dependent upon the charisma/etc of one guy, and in Putin's case his time will come and go in, what, 20yrs or less...? China wants Siberia, and they want control of the South China Sea. They want free of the yoke of the West, they want to be the Dog, not the Tail. Bet on it.

Russia, conversely, under Putin, has a relatively narrow window of opportunity to advance their goals and level-up (the window being how much time Putin has left) and they too are tired of being the Tail with us the Dog who wags them, but they're more worried about China than us. We'd have to cross the world to fight them, China can drive over there.

And almost everyone in the world other than us would like to have an alternative to the Petro-Dollar just to fuck with us, and Germany and France and others are pretty much constantly working to thwart us and en-around us in that regard. By supplanting the Dollar as the international currency for Oil they deal us a severe blow without ever firing a shot.

Plus, China is increasing the size of its Navy nearly as fast as it can manage. You can bet your ass they'd like control of Guam and Okinawa, and one day they'll seek to take them. Culturally, politically, and militarily China hates being confined like we have them now, and we have no real choice but to stay there on their doorstep trying to prevent exactly this.

I don't claim to have any inside knowledge, but I can (and do) read.

And I've no particular love for Russia or China, at all. But I'm certain China is the real threat, ultimately. The fighting we did against them in Vietnam and Korea has never really stopped, it's simply transformed and ebbed and flowed. These days its largely economic, but this is a phase. And we aren't the only market from which they can make money.

Russia is no doubt up to some fuckery lately, too, Putin's gonna Putin...