We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

HPM == EMP

Glenn Reynolds put me on the trail of this one: EMP weapons.

I personally don’t know what all the fuss is about. New Scientist published an article a year or three ago which shows how to build one of these in your garage. Perhaps getting things right for targeting from a moving cruise missile and accurately controlling the output energy are the special part… but the main concept is dead easy.

If you are interested, go dig it up yourself. I’m not going to tell you how.

Once WWIII is over with… perhaps.

‘Honor’ where honour’s due

America is to award the Congressional Medal of Honour, the equivalent of the Victoria Cross, to a British Special Boat Service (formerly Special Boat Squadron) commando who led the rescue of a CIA officer from an Afghan prison revolt.

It will be the first time the medal has been awarded to a living foreigner. The Queen will have to give permission for the SBS soldier to wear it.

The SBS senior NCO led a patrol of half-a-dozen SBS commandos who rescued a member of the CIA’s special activities section from the fort at Qala-i-Jangi near Mazar-i-Sharif, last November. The fort was holding 500 al-Qa’eda and Taliban prisoners, many of whom had not been searched and were still armed.

An exchange of fire developed into a full-scale revolt and two CIA officers who had been interrogating the prisoners were caught in the battle in which one was killed. The uprising went on for three days and the SBS commandos remained throughout, bringing down aerial fire to quell the revolt.

The battle was one of the most contentious episodes in the war last year with human rights groups raising concerns over air strikes against prisoners, some of them unarmed.

The eagerness of the Americans to recognise the courage of the NCO contrasts with suspicion within the regiment that two SAS soldiers being considered for VCs for an attack on the al-Qaeda cave complex will not get them.

Not by strength, by guile

Why doesn’t the CIA tell them?

There has been some discussion on the Libertarian Alliance Forum about “if they know where the weapons are, then why don’t they just tell the inspectors where to go?” I will attempt to tackle this question from a tacticians’ point of view.

Iraq is big: about the size of France and a hell of a lot emptier. There are miles of underground facilities. We can’t possibly be one hundred percent certain we’ve found everything. No matter how long the inspectors take there is uncertainty for the Searchers. However there is also uncertainty for Saddam. He can’t know what our spies have found out, if anything.

So we have a mathematical “game” with two players that might be likened to “battleship”, but is far more complex. It’s also deadly serious. There are potentially hundreds of thousands of lives at stake.

One player has assets on his hidden board and the other player is trying to find them. The second player knows where some of the assets are but can’t even be sure what percentage they know of; the other side knows all of its’ assets but can’t be sure how many of them the other side knows. This gives us a matrix of four possibilities:

  1. Searcher knows of the asset : Owner believes the Searcher knows of it.
  2. Searcher does not know of the asset : Owner believes the Searcher knows of it.
  3. Searcher knows of the asset : Owner believes the Searcher does not know of it.
  4. Searcher does not know of the asset : Owner believes the Searcher does not know of it.

What is the best strategy for each player?

The owner will be as helpful as possible on all the sites they believe the Searcher knows of. They can clean them out in advance and pretend great surprise at the inspection. The pretense also assists them in their game playing over the other three categories. → Continue reading: Why doesn’t the CIA tell them?

New Jerzy

I don’t think anyone is naive enough to believe that the highly state-controlled business of arms sales isn’t a tool of foreign policy. With that is mind, news of this deal might be interesting:

“Lockheed Martin has won a contract to supply 48 new F-16 fighter jets to Poland, in Eastern Europe’s biggest military deal.

The US firm beat off competition from the French manufacturer Dassault and a joint British-Swedish venture by BAE Systems and Saab to secure the deal.”

I have not the first clue about the relative technical merits, or otherwise, of the various fighter jets concerned but I do know that high-grade weapons deals such as this are loaded (scuse pun) with political and diplomatic significance. The arms business is seldom just about business as one of the parties to the negotiations is only too quick to point out:

“Dassault chief executive Charles Edelstenne accused the Polish government of making a political decision by choosing an American plane rather than a European one.

“The political element was the dominating element, much more than the quality of the material and the price,” he told Radio France Info.

“I felt for a very long time that they very much favoured rapprochement with the Americans. So it’s not a surprise,” he said.”

Sour grapes? Well, possibly. But, then again, he might just be right:

“Lockheed was backed by a $3.8bn US government financing package and some heavy lobbying by President George W Bush’s administration.”

Alright, every government lobbies on behalf of its domestic arms industry. But Poland is one of the ten or so former Eastern Bloc countries pencilled in to join the European Union in 2004 and, arguably, the most important of them. How odd that the Poles should so publicly rebuff their prospective Euro-partners in favour of the Great Satan.

Could it be that the above-mentioned ‘lobbying’ was about more than jet-fighters and that the Bush administration has decided it would be good strategy to gently lure the Poles away from the twitching tentacles of Brussels? Watch that space.

The future of naval warfare

It looks like there are some very interesting air defense systems being brainstormed for future US aircraft carriers:

“The discussion about the CVN-21 has been around quite a bit, and again reminds you that the Navy was looking to start with what they call CVNX-1 in ’07, and then follow that with a second ship in FY ’11, that they call the CVNX-2. I think you are all familiar with sort of the general characteristics of it. And we had a long and very fruitful conversation with the Navy leadership on this, and they proposed — the Navy leadership proposed what we are now calling the CVN-21, which is a ship which will have roughly, give or take — don’t hold me to the number here — but roughly 80 percent of the kinds of new capability that as anticipated by the time we would have reached the CVNX-2. So that includes crew reductions, new flight decks, and maybe most importantly of all a new nuclear reactor power plant, which will provide upwards of three times the electrical output of the current power plant. And, that being so, it opens up the opportunity to begin experimenting with the kinds of weapons systems that heretofore were not possible with the kind of electrical power available. So whether those are electromagnetic rail guns, free electron lasers — I mean, there are all kinds of proposals that one has heard in the past which were impractical given the unavailability of power in large quantities that could be focused down for those kinds of purposes.”

The above item is from a DOD background briefing.

Anti-draft sentiment at the top

Since I was once an anti-draft demonstrator, I find it heartening to read the DefSec of the United States state pretty much what my feelings were then and are now: a draft is slavery. In his words:

“My guess is that if one looks over a span of time, the history of our country, we’ll see that we have tended, during the periods that we had a draft, we tended to pay people about 40, 50, 60 percent of what they could have made in the civilian manpower market and use compulsion to have them serve.

Once that ended, we then were forced — properly in my view — to go to incentives that can attract out of the public sector the people we need and reward them properly so that they will in fact stay and serve and develop the kind of educational background and the kinds of skills and the kinds of time in position so that they can perform well for the country.”

A nation whose citizens will not defend it does not deserve to survive, and a government which must rely on volunteers must be more circumspect about the use of those volunteers. Wars must be for the protection of family and society or else volunteers will not be forthcoming.

I think one could make a very strong “original intent” argument here. The times may require the “standing armies”, but a volunteeer service at least acts as a brake on adventurism.

Death from the skies

Truly awesome video footage taken from an American AC-130 gunship. [Media Player required].

Presumably, the footage was taken in Afghanistan.

UK opens discussion on missile defense

The Ministry of Defense released a paper for public discussion (pdf) on missile defense today. Mr. Hoon would like the public debate on the issues to begin now because deployment will take many years here from the start of such discussion.

The media reports claim there is currently no threat. I was surprised not even Mr Hoon pointed out how even an existing short range ballistic missile can be fired from a tramp steamer outside of the UK territorial waters.

I hope to find some mention of this in the aforementioned document which I have not yet had a chance to read.

You may email your comments to the UK MoD on this subject at:

Missile-Defence@mod.gsi.gov.uk


Dec. 3, 2001 Prototype Kill Vehicle
launch from Mecklin Island.
Courtesy US DOD

What’s wrong with the British Army

From being the envy of the world, the British armed forces are in danger of becoming merely average: a cut-price, camouflaged UNICEF…

My sources tell me that this is an accurate account of what’s going on in the British Army at the moment. Or more precisely, how the New Labour government has been undermining one of the most respected and professional British institutions:

The British military and New Labour are politically and philosophically polar opposites. The government has made these differences even more acute by spending much of the last few years forcing soldiers to adopt a work ethic more in line with commerce than with combat. Who Dares Wins has been replaced by Health and Safety. The government believes that it has a duty to look after soldiers by protecting their ‘rights’, but this approach to soldiering seriously undermines the ability of the men and women of the armed forces to get on with a difficult and dangerous job.

[…]

The government’s obsession with political correctness has been applied to the military with such relish that at times it seems almost insane. I have lost count of the number of forms I have had to fill in giving details of my ethnic origin. These forms used to be anonymous, but the last one I had to complete carried my name, rank and service number. Perhaps this was a reaction to an earlier (anonymous) form, which had revealed that in our all-male unit there was a huge number of Bangladeshi single mothers!

[…]

Health-and-safety inspectors are blamed for recommending that chlorine be introduced into the underwater tunnel, in case some poor Commando picks up a bit of dysentery or a sore throat as a result of wading through dirty water. The steep ravines worn into the slopes that recruits had to run up and down at various points on the seven-mile course were also contrary to all sorts of well-meaning legislation. The recommendation was for proper steps and handrails to be installed — just like the ones you find in the mountains of Afghanistan or the wadis of Iraq.

The armed forces in the UK are currently so over-streched that their management amounts to a permanent crisis-management. The professionalism and high quality of the British army currently rests on the dedication of its officers. Let’s face it, they are not there for the money and they don’t get to shoot much these days either. The British military doesn’t lobby, speak out, point out the ignorance of the current government of military matters (which has no limits as this is the first government where nobody has a direct military experience) or do anything that would undermine its strong ethos as a ‘civilian’ army. Her Majesty the Queen, a civilian, is head of the Navy, Army and Air Force of Britain.

Perhaps they should.

Uncle Sam wants Brits

“Dear Britain,

In accordance with our jointly agreed plan for regime change in Iraq, we would like to place an order for various British fighting personel in order to assist with our military plans in the region.

Having carefully considered the wide range of assets that your country has to offer, we would be most obliged if you would arrange to place the following units at our disposal:

1. A large contingent of Glaswegians to be stationed at Iraqi pubs and bars where they can be relied upon to inflict heavy casualties on the enemy when their drinks gets spilled.

2. A contingent of chirpy, cheeky Cockneys who will boost moral by inventing rowdy, obscene songs about Saddam Hussein and who will also greatly liven up the eventual victory celebrations by dancing around in the fountains of Baghdad, half-naked and wearing Union Jack underpants on their heads.

3. Since we expect some degree of close-quarters fighting, a division of soccer fans will also be required; most particularly those with experience in ripping out the seats of football stadia and using them to hospitalise European policemen.

4. A contigent from Liverpool will also be desirable as it is anticipated that we will have to occupy Saddam Hussein’s heavily-guarded Palaces and therefore burglary skills will be required.

5. Also please supply all available drug-running gangs from Manchester as we understand that they have even more firepower at their disposal than we do.

Please confirm at your earliest convenience that the above-listed requirements can be met.

We look forward to working with you on what we are confident will be a successful joint venture.

Yours Sincerely
The Pentagon”

Who you gonna call?

If you ever wondered who handles bomb disposals when the bombs contain the bad stuff you will find this transcript of a demonstration by the Army’s TEU of interest.

NRO weighs in on translator dustup

A few days ago I wrote about my anger at Arabic translators being kicked out of the military. It seems I am not alone in my condemnation.