Friday, June 17, 2011

Chauncey DeVega's World of Ghetto Nerds: Grognard Military News Roundup and Some Shameless Self-Promotion



I will be on Ring of Fire Radio tomorrow discussing the Republican presidential debate, Herman Cain, and other such matters. It should be good--the interview ran about 20 minutes at taping and we had a good rhythm going.

Here is the first of my military ghetto nerds Grognard roundups for those who are interested in such things. I grew up playing Gary Grigsby's strategy games, Microprose flight sims, and read too much G.I. Joe and military history. The interest as a layperson is still with me years later. These Internets only make it easier to learn things that years ago were confined to a very narrow set of specialist magazines and journals.

As always if you come upon something of interest send it along and I will offer a comment or add it to the list every so many weeks or so. Given the wide range of interests held by the readers of WARN, this could be fun. Let's have at it.

1. The Atlantic has some gems this week. This photo gallery of the do it yourself weapons of the Road Warrior Mad Max Libyan Rebels is a great example of both human ingenuity and foolish recklessness. If necessity is the mother of invention, these rebels are certainly proof of that folksy truism. The photo essay has some cool stuff for the gun crowd (make note of the bullpup design Belgium FN F2000). And how can you not love a guy who disassembles a land mine while smoking Marlboro cigarettes?

The past and future of camouflage is pithily surveyed here. Little did I know that one person, a genius of sorts, is responsible for most of the innovation in camo designs over the last decade or so. Active camouflage, the stuff of Predator is coming. Or is it already here?

2. This is your brain on combat: Neuroscience for Combat Leaders: A Brain-Based Approach to Leading on the Modern Battlefield. The above article also references Dave Grossman's indispensable book Learning to Kill. So it gets extra points from this ghetto nerd.

3. I'd buy that for a dollar! Active vehicle defenses are apparently a go for the U.S. military. The Israelis and the Russians have been playing with these systems which deflect incoming anti-tank rounds a few years. Question: Aren't these systems lethal to the dismounted infantry?

4. The Ipad goes to war. This makes sense given how many field manuals, translation software, and other necessities you could put on one device. And yes, the U.S. military has its own app store.

5. I have always had a good amount of worry about the effectiveness of UAV's as a catch all solution across the full spectrum of air combat needs. Call me traditional, but I am a man in the loop sort of guy. I remember luminary Robert Pape telling me some years back that UAV's were/are the future. This decision was made long ago. Thus, the sea change is inexorable.

Maybe I am paranoid about how easily some of their systems have been hacked, or that a foreign combatant could simply flip a switch and turn the Reapers, Global Hawks, and Predators off? For missions like SEAD, UAV's are quite literally a life saver. But for other duties, and in contested airspace, I remain uncertain as to the maturity of the technology. The Department of Defense would seem to share my anxieties.

6. Back to Libya. How hollowed out is NATO? After a few months of operations the European partners are running low on ammunition, cannot maintain their sortie levels, and are wavering in commitment. Never mind how sad the British navy looks--once the world's greatest force, now she is reduced to borrowing surveillance aircraft from the U.S. and consolidating flight operations with the French on their carrier.

Was NATO always such a hollow organization? Would they have been nothing but a speed pump for the Warsaw Pact? Or is this flaccidity the direct result of the post-Cold War "peace dividend?"

[Random story: my former building super was a crewman on the M60 series of tanks in the late 1970s and very early 80s and he was stationed near the Fulda Gap. I asked him if he thought the U.S. had a chance at the time. He smiled and said their expectation was to hold off the Reds for as long as possible and then beat feet out of there. My super smiled when I asked him about the nuclear land mines...]

7. Some random academic and online finds:

The first is an article that examines letters from African-American soldiers in World War 2 and how black enlistees and officers fought back against Jim Crow under arms; The second traces the rise of the "warfare state" and "how it rests upon two assumptions: that safety can be achieved only through power, that prosperity depends upon the constant pump-priming of the domestic economy through the expenditure of military billions. Both assumptions are false."

The real prize of the week is a serendipitous discovery that comes totally out of left field. Here is an issue of Collier's magazine from 1951 that worked through a hypothetical World War 3 scenario. "Preview of the War We do not Want" has it all: there are nuclear raids on the city of Chicago, saboteurs in Grand Central Station, suicide paratrooper raids over the U.S.S.R., and the occupation of Alaska. Oh yeah, some of the contributors to the issue included Edward R. Murrow with illustrations from the legendary World War 2 comic artist Bill Maudlin.

8. Did you know that China has no plans to wage cyberwar against the U.S.? Yeah, right. Try not to laugh at that one. In an admission of what we already know, the U.S. already has cyberweapons in the toolbox ready to be deployed if necessary. Stuxnet?

9. Don't mess with the Ghurkas. No, I mean never, ever...seriously.

10. Any thoughts on the free to play mmorg military game World of Tanks? Is the grind worth it?

5 comments:

CNu said...

And how can you not love a guy who disassembles a land mine while smoking Marlboro cigarettes?

Why not?

C-4 and Semtex are not flammable - they require primary high explosive detonation...,

chaunceydevega said...

I know. You can actually cook popcorn with it. Nevertheless, I would be more careful...and that laxness doesn't suggest a good amount of discipline more generally.

fred c said...

Congratulations, Cpl. Pun! Singapore is full of Ghurkas. When you drive in across the causeway from Malaysia, there's a pavilion at the Singapore end with a lone Ghurka soldier standing at parade rest, kuckri on his belt, machine pistol at port arms, and loaded too. Just showing the flag, they're at all of the immigration check points too, usually over in a corner but easily visible.

Once I had a long layover at the Singapore airport during sleep hours, and I was racked out on a bench. I always travel in a sports jacket, dress shirt and tie, people just treat you better, and on this occasion I was glad of it. About 4:00 am, I was poked awake. The first thing that I focused on was the H & K machine pistol, then the Ghurka, then the Singapore airport security guy. "Is everything okay, sir?" It went well.

But the Ghurkas . . . maybe it's like boxing, recruit among the poor and get the hungriest.

chaunceydevega said...

@Fred. I forgot you are in Singapore. Duh. They are hungry, ready, and it is the cultural business of sorts. That reminds me of a conversation I had with someone who believed in the "natural" affinity for blacks and basketball. Now you know my opinion about ball dribblers and million dollar slaves, so I offered the counter of Jews and Eastern Europeans and basketball at the turn of the 20th c.; I also mentioned the Ghurkas as they have a set of incentives and life opportunity structure that makes military service desirable.

fred c said...

Oh, no Singapore for me. I've been there a couple of times, but I steer away from the police states. Thailand does me just fine.