More of that Smart Diplomacy we were promised[tm]

“We have confronted the Russians about stopping their continued arms shipments to Syria,” Mrs. Clinton said at an appearance with President Shimon Peres of Israel. “They have, from time to time, said that we shouldn’t worry; everything they’re shipping is unrelated to their actions internally. That’s patently untrue.”…

The fierce government assaults from the air are partly a response to improved tactics and weaponry among the opposition forces, which have recently received more powerful antitank missiles from Turkey, with the financial support of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to members of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, and other activists.

The United States, these activists said, was consulted about these weapons transfers. Officials in Washington said the United States did not take part in arms shipments to the rebels, though they recognized that Syria’s neighbors would do so, and that it was important to ensure that weapons did not end up in the hands of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups…
–“Heavier Weapons Push Syrian Crisis Toward Civil War“: New York Times, By MARK LANDLER and NEIL MacFARQUHAR:June 12, 2012

(h/t: Hotair.com)

Dafuq did i just read? Isn’t Russia on our side? Oh wait…we’ve seen this before:

According to the Moscow Centre for Strategy and Technology Analysis, the Iskander-M system was combat-tested in the 2008 South Ossetia war with Georgia and it proved highly effective in destroying military targets and infrastructure.[10] Quoting unconfirmed reports,[who?] Moscow Defense Brief says that it was an Iskander missile that inflicted a high precision strike on the Georgian Separate Tank Battalion base in Gori, destroying 28 tanks. Russian officials have admitted to using the Iskander missile against Georgia and official reports[who?] testify to the high effectiveness of the Iskander missiles, as one of the most devastating and accurate weapons in the Russian arsenal.[11] Georgian authorities later claimed that none of the targeted areas had any military installations or troops formations at the time of attacks; and the Iskander missiles were fired at civilian areas, including Baku-Supsa Oil Pipeline.[12]
–Wikipeida

Treaties are ink on a page. Russia will just do what it wants, as will China. They don’t care. North Korea is propped up by China because it ties up US forces in Asia. Russia wants to see the US hurt. Our allies bleeding and US forces humiliated. Korea, Vietnam, Israel, South America, Africa. Rifles, machine guns, tanks, ships, Migs and lots of Ak-47’s. There is a reason Hollywood loves to put them in the hands of their characters.

The left keeps talking about the UN and diplomacy. How conflict resolution and blah blah blah….

When it comes down to it, bad men will do bad things. The left that hates the military, can’t stand George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq will scream for troops on the ground. The UN? Useless.

The world is a dangerous place. We need real leadership in the State Department. Not liberals thinking that good intentions and “reset buttons” are the answers to everything.

Rock Beats Laser? Drones, smart bombs and such.

Via Wired comes another essay in the endless argument against our high tech force.

Taking the Measure of a Slam-Dunk Weapons System

Robot war. It just couldn’t be cooler, could it? Especially if the only blood you spill is the other guy’s, since our “pilots” are flying those planes from thousands of miles away. Soon, it seems, the world will be a drone fest. In his first nine months, President Obama has authorized more drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal borderlands than the Bush administration did in its last three years in office and is now considering upping their use in areas of rural Afghanistan where U.S. troops will be scarce.

In Washington, drones are even considered the “de-escalatory” option for the Afghan War by some critics, while CIA Director Leon Panetta, whose agency runs our drone war in Pakistan, has hailed them as “the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al-Qaeda leadership.” Among the few people who don’t adore them here are hard-core war-fighters who don’t want an armada of robot planes standing in the way of sending in oodles more troops. The vice president, however, is a drone-atic. He loves ’em to death and reportedly wants to up their missions, especially in Pakistan, rather than go the oodles route.

—Drone Race to a Known Future
Why Military Dreams Fail — and Why It Doesn’t Matter
By Tom Engelhardt

Mr. Engelhardt starts here then goes on to try and breathe life into some dead cliches.

The Wonder Weapons Succeed — at Home

So why am I not excited — other than the fact that the drones are also killing civilians in disputed but significant numbers in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, creating enemies and animosity wherever they strike, and turning us into a nation of 24/7 assassins beyond the law or accountability of any sort? Thought of another way, the drones put wings on the original Bush-era Guantanamo principle — that Americans have the inalienable right to act as global judge, jury, and executioner, and in doing so are beyond the reach of any court or law.

And here’s another factor that dulls my excitement just a tad — if the history of air warfare has shown one thing, it’s this: it never breaks populations. Rather, it only increases their sense of unity, as in London during the Blitz under Winston Churchill, in Germany under Adolf Hitler, Imperial Japan under Emperor Hirohito, North Korea under Kim Il Sung, North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and of course (though we never put ourselves in such company, being the exceptions to all history), the United States after 9/11 under George W. Bush. Why should the peoples of rural Afghanistan and the Pakistani borderlands be any different?

Really? “round the clock” bombing hurt the Germans so bad their air force stopped flying. Not the morale but the INDUSTRY was destroyed. Towards the end of the war, their aircraft were made of wood and scraps. Same with Japan. It was the atomic bomb that forced them to end the war, their military was reduced to meeting the allies with sharpened bamboo sticks on the beaches of Japan.

The Viet Cong and North Vietnam were aided and abetted by the USSR. Without the flow of arms, technical know how, intelligence and surface to air missiles, North Vietnam would have folded. They LOST the Tet offensive. America lost the will to fight due to losses (fueled by Russian aid). Iraq both times did not have that aid. And got their brains beat out both times.

Of course, you know the results of this sort of magical thinking about wonder weapons (or technologies) and their properties just as well as I do. The atomic bomb ended nothing, but led to an almost half-century-long nuclear superpower standoff/nightmare, to nuclear proliferation, and so to the possibility that, someday, even terrorists might possess such weapons. The electronic battlefield was incapable of staving off defeat in Vietnam. That impermeable anti-missile shield never came even faintly close to making it into our skies. Those “smart bombs” of the Gulf War proved remarkably dumb, while the 50 “decapitation” strikes the Bush administration launched against Saddam Hussein’s regime on the first day of the 2003 invasion of Iraq took out not a single Iraqi leader, but “dozens” of civilians. And the history of the netcentric military in Iraq is well known. Its “success” sent Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld into retirement and ignominy.

Huh, MAD (mutually assured destruction) kept the Cold War cold. Would he have liked WWII to be come WWIII? Nuclear proliferation is the result of humans wanting to kill each other. India did their bomb on their own. North Korea may have had some help, Pakistan did theirs on their own. So did China. The USSR stole nuclear secrets. We killed the Rosenburgs for their crime in aiding the USSR and making the world a more dangerous place.

The GAO, in the report cited, liked to claim bombs carried by airplanes that didn’t fly (bad weather, mechanical problems etc.) as dropped. Donald Rumsfeld left as SecDef because of the insurgency after the war. We won that one not just with the surge, but by air power and our high tech advantage. The Sons Of Iraq would not have succeeded if it were not for US military might backing them up. Contrawise, the insurgets have had help from Iran, Al Queda and other evil doers. Not enough to save them, just enough to break our hearts.

True, Reagan’s impermeable shield was the purest of nuclear fantasies, but the “high frontiersmen” gathered and, taking a sizeable bite of the military budget, went on a decades-long binge of way-out research, space warfare plans and commands, and boondoggles of all sorts, including the staggeringly expensive, still not operational anti-missile system that the Bush and now Obama administrations have struggled to emplace somewhere in Europe. Similarly, ever newer generations of smart bombs and ever brighter missiles have been, and are being, developed ad infinitum.

Really? My career field is in missile defense. We do what you call impossible everyday. Critics keep insiting that the system wont work or that our enemies are too dumb to build missiles that can hit us. Or they argue that terrorists will sneak a bomb past our borders. Now they try to have it every which way but lose. They won’t lest us strengthen our borders, now will they lest us build anti-missile systems. Nor do they believe our intel.

Our weapons work. Not the way politicians want them to, but they do work. Civilian deaths? It’s called war for a reason. Sadly terrorists and other scum surround themselves with innocent people. We don’t attack we’re cowards. We hit them and we are cruel. Well, they want cruel, and they admit that they love death more than we love life.

Mr. Engelhardt goes on to lament the monies spent on drones. Classic hippe arguments that don’t hold water. Every dollar spent on our military brings back civlian returns and makes sure that people are free to read this blog and Mr. Engelhardt’s too. We must fight them. We care about innocent lives and grieve their loss. The enemy does not. Their bloodlust knows no bounds. Well our weapons have a longer reach and bigger punch. Too bad for them.

The last paragraph is a risible mention of the Terminator movies. *facepalms* In the real world American Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen risk their lives. Drones help save our people, innocent civilians and our allies.

To hell with the enemy.

Drones are tools nothing more.

“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”

General George S. Patton

Dumbth: Liberals and the War on Terror

“See – we have a problem,” Matthews said. “How do we know when someone like Hasan is going to make his move and do we know he’s an Islamist until he’s made his move? He makes a phone call or whatever, according to Reuters right now. Apparently he tried to contact al Qaeda. Is that the point at which you say, ‘This guy is dangerous?’ That’s not a crime to call up al Qaeda, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?”
—
Newsbusters: “Matthews on Ft. Hood Suspect Warning Signal: ‘That’s Not a Crime to Call al Qaeda, Is It?'”

By Jeff Poor, November 9, 2009 – 21:11 ET

YES it is a crime to all a TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.

We had Naomi Wolf claiming that Sara Palin “falsely linked al Qaeda to 9/11.”, when she wasn’t afraid of a military coup taht never happened.

Reason number #102938 I don’t miss college is people like Wolf and Mathews. They love lefty politics and see the world in Marx colored glasses.

“While the Obamas host a Halloween Party outside the White House for military families, peace activists will also don costumes and call on Obama to oppose the surge in Afghanistan and end the wars… The activists will be dressed as zombie soldiers, ghosts of war victims, a monstrous Obama’s Afghanistein and more.
–Big Government: “Obama Ally Code Pink Targets Children of Military Families for Psychological Abuse“

Have these people no shame? No decency? At long last, someone needs to ask these idiots “Have you no shame?”. FYI: Code Pink was/is a major donor to the Democratic Party.

20 years ago this week the Berlin Wall came down.

No mention of Ronald Regan, US forces in West Germany or the aid America gave to freedom.

The popular myth is that the wall kind of toppled over by itself, with a little push from people power. That of course ignores not only the prior 44 years of Cold War … interspersed with several hot ones that cost us tens of thousands of American lives … it also ignores the massive military buildup of the 1980s, the encouragement of liberation movements behind the Iron Curtain, the tough engagement with old-school Soviet leaders and, not least, the cordial engagement with a Soviet leader who realized it was time to throw in the towel. An atmosphere was finally created in which people felt like the could challenge the wretched, murdeorus regime with impunity, and they did.

…
Here’s Ross Douthat at NYT, who was not yet 10 when that happened, not only thinks the wall was shoved over by German flower children…

” Never has liberation come to so many people all at once — to Eastern Europe’s millions, released from decades of bondage; to the world, freed from the shadow of nuclear Armageddon; and to the democratic West, victorious after a century of ideological struggle.
Never has so great a revolution been accomplished so swiftly and so peacefully, by ordinary men and women rather than utopians with guns.”

—
VEE Day, Jules Crittenden

And now we have Militant Islamic terror[tm], trying to kill us. Many in this country are in deep denial.

Former Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko, in his first book, criticized President Regan for seeing terrorism through the cold war. He felt it was more of chaos vs. order. I think it’s more good vs. evil. Terrorists are not the poor downtrodden masses or innocent people swept up in the war on terror. They are thugs and hatemongers pure and simple.

The Stazi killed many Germans, they funded the Red Brigades to kidnap and kill more. One President dared their soviet master to tare down the wall they hid behind.

Why can’t the left do the same today?

Dogs and Cat’s living together: Irregular forces and National Armies

Seeing the shellacing Iraq took in OIF, the bloody fight during the occupation and the current situation in Afghanistan, North Korea has began coping their methods:

North Korea Mimics Al Qaeda
North Korea’s army is big, but antiquated, only marginally mobile and it presents a massive target to allied airpower.

Pyongyang knows that and is shifting some of its troops, tactics and technology to benefit from lessons learned during the U.S. fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 80,000-man special operations force has been recently schooled in the employment of enhanced, improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Their use was refined in Middle East fighting and the combination of SOF and IEDs is considered one of the top threats to the government in Seoul.

Russia used irregular forces in it’s war with Georgia.

Now a 1,000-page report commissioned by the European Union lays the blame on Georgia for the artillery attack that touched off the war. But it doesn’t let Russia off the hook either: The Russians, the report states, turned a blind eye to atrocities by South Ossetian irregulars, and deliberately stoked tensions in the run-up to war.
…
Russian troops pushed well outside the boundaries of the disputed enclave of South Ossetia; opened a second front in Abkhazia; and were followed by militias who conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Georgians in South Ossetia.

What does this mean? It means that forces dedicated to ‘irregular’ warfare could get eaten alive when the enemy suddenly morphs into a regular fighting force . When Chinese forces entered the Korean War, the US Army and Marines were taken aback. Some in the Pentagon even called for the use of atomic weapons. Only bombing and napalm held the line. Even then the ‘war’ ended in an armistice.

When backed by a superpower (North Vietnam and the Viet Cong were backed by the USSR) or the next best thing (Russia’s ‘militias’ in South Osseta) smaller forces are hurt badly. Downsiing the military may not work if terrorists and insurgents can flee to safe areas with AAA and regular forces protecting them. A lighter military may be outgunned.

Light Fighter Planes: From Crop-Dusting to Counterinsurgency?
Moreover, in its haste to show that it is not focused on the next war, the Air Force may be trying to fight the last war. These planes won’t be deployable for use in Iraq or Afghanistan until 2013 at best. The plan thus rests on two huge assumptions: 1) that we’ll still be fighting counterinsurgencies there or elsewhere for which we’ll need 100 more planes, and 2) while we are going back in time militarily, our enemies won’t be going forward. Even within insurgencies, various non-state actors like Hezbollah already field anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles; now we would just be providing them with easier targets.

May have argued for the US Air Force to go back to prop-driver COIN airctaf (COunter Insurgency). These aircraft are slow, traveling at WWII-era speeds. One desigen is in fact a WWII era plane modified with a turbo prop. The above quote comes from the Brookings Institute. They are notorious for being anti-military, but here they give surprise with a vote of confident for the MQ-9 UAV and for conventional forces.

The DOD should prepare for both. The conventional fight should not be sacrificed for today’s wars.

War and Peace: What War? (Why the left is made of fail Part II)

It seems that a change of presidents has changed the agenda of the far left.

Remember Bush’s War[tm]? Remember all those children in Iraq/Afghanistan that were beling killed by Bushhitler?
The left did, right up until a few months ago.

“It’s not getting much attention, but the Netroots Nation conference (formerly known as YearlyKos, a spinoff from the left-wing website DailyKos) is going on in Pittsburgh this weekend. Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg has conducted a straw poll of the participants and found that a majority of those surveyed, 53 percent, say they “cannot support a health care reform bill that does not include a public option.” Other results include word that most of the attendees are willing to compromise a bit on environmental legislation, even though it gives a lot of benefits to big corporations, and the finding that, amazingly enough, attendees voice near-unanimous approval, 95 percent, of the job Barack Obama is doing as president.

What’s truly striking in Greenberg’s poll is the degree to which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have fallen off the progressive radar. ”
—
—The netroots agenda: War? What war?, Byron York, Washington Examiner.

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan was Bush’s to win or lose. Mostly lose according to the rabid left. The wikipedia entry for ANSWER, CODE PINK et. al. is filled with crap about peace, racism and other blather, but the truth is more about hatred of the US and former President Bush.

Even Cindy Sheehan is falling from the spotlight. Much was made of the mother of a fallen soldier protesting outside of Crawford Texas (Bush’s ranch). BUt she turned out to be a whore for the cameras, seeking publicity and fame over her son’s casket. Now that the left has moved on, she’s a ghost:

“Cindy Sheehan is learning that. She’s still protesting the war, and on Monday she announced plans to demonstrate at Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama will be vacationing.

“We as a movement need to continue calling for an immediate end to the occupations [in Iraq and Afghanistan] even when there is a Democrat in the Oval Office,” Sheehan said in a statement. “There is still no Noble Cause no matter how we examine the policies.”

Give her credit for consistency, if nothing else. But her days are over. The people who most fervently supported her have moved on.”– For the Left, war without Bush is not war at all
By: Byron York , Washington Examiner

“It’s such a sad story. Martha Raddatz [of ABC News] wrote a terrific book about one battle that took place in Iraq, and it was the battle in which Cindy’s son was killed. And you look at somebody like that and you think here’s somebody who’s just trying to find some meaning in her son’s death. And you have to be sympathetic to her. Anybody who has given a son to this country has made an enormous sacrifice, and you have to be sympathetic. But enough already.”
Charles Gibson, ABC News quoted by Byron Gibson

It was all about Bush, the Republicans and hatred of the same. Without a draft, with out Bush no groundswell of rage, no protests, no marches, nothing. Except outside the far left, the commies and their fellow travelers in universities and the media.

Even an organization that purports to be for veterans against the war (Iraq Veterans Against the War) is more about coating far left communism/socialism in olive drab than actually helping veterans. From advocating sabotage of military equipment to putting smelly hippies in cammies out front of protests, they have not done a thing for real veterans. Many active duty soldiers coached by anti-war groups have seen their sentences for awol/missing movement maxed. Many of their more public members had no duty in Iraq.

So waht is the take home message? The left is still made of fail. Parlor Pinks who are all talk until actual work has to be done. They were never in any danger or being drafted or seeing their civil liberties eroded. They care nothing about the people of Iraq or Afghanistan, or US troops. They would have supported US troops and ther mission overseas if the really cared about peace. Instead they wanted the US to lose. A bloodbath is sexy to them, dead bodies (any dead bodies) prove that Bush is bad. Now that the US presence in Iraq is winding down and troop levels in Afghanistan are increasing, not a peep from the left.

It was never about the war, it never was.

(major h/t to This Ain’t hell, Ace O’ Spades, Neptunus Lex, and Powerline.).

Science Fail: The new Science Czar is a nutcase

Nightmare Fuel, Germany 1939:

Hitler was in favour of killing those whom he judged to be “unworthy of life”. In a 1939 conference with health minister Leonardo Conti and the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Lammers, a few months before the euthanasia decree, Hitler gave as examples of “life unworthy of life” severely mentally ill people who could only be bedded on sawdust or sand because they “perpetually dirtied themselves”, or who “put their own excrement into their mouths, eating it and so on”.[13]– Wikipedia on the Nazi T-4 program

Flash forward to 1977:

…

Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

…

One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.
….
A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men

Neo-Nazis? Nope, that is John Holdren, the President’s new science czar. Yes, you read that correctly.

The left hates life. The left hates the family. The left hates children. Despite acting like spoiled children. They hate the elderly, the disabled and the poor too. In the book Ecosicence, John Holdren advocates a regime that would eclipse the Nazi’s, Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China in terms of butchery. Forced sterilizations and abortions, families torn apart, the population “sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food.”

All the horrors they accuse the right of planning, the left wants in the name of the environment. Holden is an environmentalist. In the 1970’s, the ecology movement sprung from the anti-war movement. Virulent anti-western and class warfare fused with pseudo-science to predict global cooling. Mass fish kills from polluted waters, world populations of 40 billion, global food shortages etc, ad nausea.

When the world did not cool down, they came up with global warming. Citing early probes of the planet Venus (Carl Sagan was first to popularize this), they predicted that carbon dioxide would warm the planet. So much that the effects above would kill us all.

The solution? Kill’em all. No really. Industry? Bad, pollutes and exploits the poor. Science? Only that which proves our wacko theory, all other science is bad. Capitalism? Industry and science in the service of evil white men.

From Charles Manson, to the SLA to, to Earth First, ALF and other psycho‘s, violence of some form is the solution to heal the planet/opressed/the youth. One of Earth Day’s founders was a man who killed his girlfriend and ran from the law. So they have lots of practice.

But back to John Holdren. Just what does a “science czar” do?

He was unanimously confirmed as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology on March 20, 2009.[8]– John Holdren, Wikipedia

His academic work is all on “ecology” and energy. The papers not on those are on arms control. He opposes a nuclear response to a bio or chem attack on US soil. He’s an eco-nutcase who hates the US. He clearly hates the American people. He claimed that,”if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.” Now he’s in a position to advise the president.

Advise is not the word. Groupthink is better. The left believes in the fantasy of Global Warming. The climate is not warming as much as they say it is, the ice caps are not melting. The emperor has no clothes. This nutjob would recommend crippling taxes, stifle growth and other measues while sneaking in support for radical population control “pogroms”. Yea, progroms.

You see one of the early advocates for abortion was a bigot. (h/t: Michelle Malkin)

again wikipedia on Marget Sanger:

Methods of social intervention (targeted at those seen as “genetically unfit”) advocated by some negative eugenicists have included selective breeding, sterilization and euthanasia. In A Plan for Peace (1932), for example, Sanger proposed a congressional department to:

Keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.[22]

My wife is blind. These people would have had her aborted. They want to control your life, the lives of your children. Similar views were expressed by health care “experts” on the elderly.

They are evil and now one has the ear of the president.

BTW, if you believe that the quotes above are fake, Ace of Spades had links to the book search on John Holdren hippie Mine Kaumpf.

Air Defense History: The Patriot Missile system from 1975-2003

M-901 Launching Station for the Patriot missile system circa 1991

Patriot started in 1964 with the Army Air Defense System for the 1970s (AADS-70s) which became Surface-to-Air Missile, Development (SAM-D). Development started in Huntsville Alabama. In 1975 it hit a drone at White Sands Missile range. Continued development saw the name change to Patriot. A famous Air Defense Urban Legend says that the development team were fans of the New England Patriots football team. Type classified as MIM-104, Patriot began to replace Nike missiles in 1981.

Unlike Nike, Patriot is mobile. The “Big 4”: Radar, Engagement Control Station(ECS), Antenna Mast Group(AMG), Electric Power Plant (EPP) are mounted on trucks or in the case of the radar, towed.
Nike needed buildings and commercial power with a generator backup. Patriot uses the two massive generators on the EPP to make it’s own power.

Japenese Patriot Radar

The Patriot radar is phased array. Forget what you saw in the movies, the radar sends out thousands of pulses because it has many elements. That is the “array” in phased array (the number is classified, wikipedia says 5,000 elements. The AN/MPQ-53 and AN/MPQ-65 radar sets are passively scanned arrays. That means a traveling wave tub sends radio energy at the main array and that array sends out many, many pulses. If the Nike radar was like having a man with very powerful binoculars, the Patriot radar is like having a large group of people with those binoculars.

That means that parts of the array can be dedicated to IFF, others talk to the missiles (Track-via-Missile or TVM). Imagine shooting an arrow at a target and getting to see the bull’s eye from the point of view of the arrow. That’s what TVM does. The system can steer the missile to the target much better than Nike. Plus, the many elements make Patriot lethal to small targets like stealth aircraft and UAV’s. No aircraft is invisible, stealth just makes it harder to be seen on radar, but the system can see farther and better than older radars. Jamming a phased array is harder too.

Dutch Engagement Control Station

The AN/MSQ-104 Engagement Control Station (ECS) it the brains of the outfit. “The Van” as we call it has two consoles, UHF/VHF radios and the weapons control computer (WCC). An enlisted soldier is on one stations, an officer is on the other. The WCC is ancient by today’s standards, but it gets the job done. It aims and fires the missiles and diagnoses system faults. The officer controls the fight from his station by watching the IFF indications, but the enlisted soldier fires the missiles.

AMG OMG!!

The radios are in “stacks” inside the van. But radios are useless without antennas. FM radios inside the van have antennas on the roof. They are used to talk to the rest of the battery and HQ. But to send data large UHF/VHF radios have cables that connect to a truck called the Antenna Mast Group or AMG. The AMG is a pair of big antennas that provide communications (both unencrypted and encrypted).

Now about that launcher pic on the first paragraph. The launcher has not changed much. Hydraulics point the missiles at the sky. Radios and fiber optic cables provide two forms of communications fromt he launcher to the ECS. 14T soldiers drive the launchers where they need to go and they use a special crane to reload them.

Crane loading missiles

Patriot Missile Launch, PAC-2

In the 1988, Patriot was tasked against tactical ballistic missiles(TBM’s). Previously, Patriot Advanced Capability-1 missiles were only for use against aircraft. PAC-2 was an upgrade in explosive power and radar and software. It made the missiles more powerful and added the ability to search for TBM’s in the sky. During Desert Storm, PAC-2 intercepted Scud missiles fired by Iraq against Saudi Arabia and Israel. While many dispute Patriot’s effectiveness, it did much to end the Scud menace. One Scud did hit a barracks due to a software error. Latter upgrades for PAC-2 included better fused to hit missiles sooner and harder. Some scuds were hit in the back or motor section and not in the warhead. They still fell despite being hit.

A PAC-3 Launcher in South Korea

As part of SDI, the Extended Range Interceptor (ERINT) was added to Patriot. Called PAC-3, thse smaller missiles hit the target instead of blowing up next to it. PAC-3 added more missiles (16 per launcher instead of the earlier 4) and a complete software and hardware changes. Whereas PAC-2 could look for a TBM, PAC-3 could tailor it’s search for a specific threat much faster and more efficiently. It can have a “keepout” altitude where it hits missiles before they get too close. By hitting the missiles directly instead of hitting them with fragments, the PAC-3 missile destroys WMD warheads inflight. Further upgrades included Link-16 for data transfers to allied units and our Air Force and Navy, LCD screens to replace the CRT’s we use and more software upgrades.

All in all it’s a hell of a system for a 1960’s era cold war baby. In 2003, the PAC-3 missiles destroyed all Scuds fired.

Fort Bliss has a long history with Patriot. The 6th ADA Brigade used to train Patriot soldiers there. MOS 14E and 14T are the fire control and launcher soldiers respectively. 6th Brigade has moved to Fort Sill Oklahoma to be next to the field artillery school.

The system is used by our allies as well. It replaces Nike or compliments it in the following countries.
* Egypt

Egyptian Air Defense Command

* Germany

Luftwaffe

* Israel

Israeli Air Force

* Japan

Japan Air Self-Defense Force

* Republic of China (Taiwan)

Republic of China Air Force

* Kuwait

Kuwait Air Force

* Netherlands

Royal Netherlands Air Force

* Saudi Arabia

Royal Saudi Air Defense

* South Korea

Republic of Korea Air Force

* Spain

Spanish Army

* United States

United States Army Air Defense Artillery

Links:

• Current Air Defense Units in the US ARMY
• Wikipedia article
• [PDF] Gulf War: Arabian Knights
  Unit-by-Unit Narratives of Air Defense Artillery Units in Operation Desert Storm. (ADA Online)
• ADA in the Global War On Terror (ADA Online)
• PATRIOT photos (ADA Online)

Chew on this: RIP the King Of Pop

August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009

Tasty Links around the interwebs:

1. 101 Game Facts That will Rock Your world
2. ‘Stoned wallabies make crop circles’ BBC
3. politicsdaily.com, New Basic Training: Not your father’s (or Hollywood’s) Army. (H/T XBradTC)
4. F-22 is not a cold war jet! (H/T ELP Defens(c)e Blog)
5. F-22? The Senate wants MOAR! (wired)
6. F-22’s for Japan? Some in the Senate are pricing them already. (Ares blog)
7. Universal Health Care: Not a hit with health care consumers (Michelle Malkin)
8. “15 Year Old Invents Algae Powered Energy System” (Slashdot)

9. President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don’t stand to gain from the extra care.

   (Powerline)

10. “You need youngsters who are deep into this stuff…. If they have been slightly naughty boys, very often they really enjoy stopping other naughty boys,” said Lord West, who was appointed Britain’s first cyber security minister.

    (wired on the UK’s cybercommand)

Chew on this: Strykers, health care and Dream Cars

Tasty links, Deloreans and a phony vet club gets a beatdown:

1. VoteVets: not about Vets, and not about voting for them, This ain’t Hell exposes their agenda.
2. ArmyofDude: more Strykers on the way. Gee, and here I thought that the Strykers sucked? Isn’t that right POGO?
3. CDR Salamander’s Fullbore Friday: A man jumps a barbwire fence and becomes an icon of hope during the cold war.
4. So much for hope and change: Ace of Spades reports that the Administration’s agenda is on life support.
5. “SSG Sean Samaroo Receives Silver Star For His Actions At The Battle Of Wanat, Afghanistan”; Tankerbabe posts a link to a hero of not only receiving a medal, but a range at Fort Jackson is named after that battle.
6. Georiga, home of Fort Stuart and Fort Benning, is not getting any love from this administration: Chickenhawk Express (h/t: This Ain’t Hell)
7. Jawa Report: Smoking dope is bad for you. That explains a lot about the American left.
8. Guess who voted against supporting Iran: Uncle Ron, the bigots pal.
9. Attack of the Bridezilla: Pujiba brings teh crazy brides and the weddings they commit.
10. two from Agent Bedhead: Pixar film Up! brings hope to a girl with cancer and Anonymous fights the Iranian regime.
11. Iraqi’s back the Iranian revolution: Gateway Pundit
12. Some thoughts on Iran from Brad.

And now a DMC:
John Delorean made a classic car, lost his fortune and inspired the public imagination. His story is the basis of an album and three movies. Neon Neon dedicated their album “Stainless Style” to him:

Chew on this: Iran, Iran so far away… (UPDATED)

Iran burns, elections are rigged and the President springs into action:

1. Ace of Spades takes our leadership to task, and so does Powerline, over the administration’s reluctance to lead during this crisis.
2. The MSM is shut out by Iran’s corrupt regime. So much for old media (Wired/CNN)
3. The revolution is on twitter and in the streets. (Wired)
4. The battlespills onto cyberspace. (wired)
5. “Thousands of Mousavi Supporters March in Iran”, video of Iranian militia firing on civilian crowds. *WARNING* CONTAINS VIOLENT FOOTAGE, BE ADVISED (LFG)
6. CNN gets raked over the coals for not covering the Iran situation early.(CNET)
7. Guards fire on crowds (Gatewaypundit, WARNING: VIDEO OF GUNFIRE ON CIVILIANS), LFG as more here and here.
8. NY Times columnist gets pOwned by reality, has to retreat from leftist fantasy land. (Newsbusters)
9. US asleep at the switch? (Patterico)
10. Time magazine looks into the election.
11. The President reacts to the violence in Iran days after it started
12. Oppositon leader Vows to “Pay any cost” CNN finally jumps on the story.
13. President Bush Obama plays golf during this crisis, watch his drive! (HT: Doubleplusundead)

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP (if you have twitter) hat Tip from the Jawa Report:

The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through Twitter.

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.

2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.

3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.

4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them.

5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind…