Is it possible to de-Nazi-fy Gaza?

Nazi Germany worshipped the tribe and state, with Hitler as its prophet. The Japanese worshipped the tribe and the Emperor. Outsiders weren't entirely human.

The way the Nazis treated the Russians seems calculated to make any kind of compromise or forgiveness impossible; likewise the way the Japanese treated prisoners and most everybody else. Oct 7 seems intended the same way, to announce to the world (possibly especially Iran?) that there would never be any reconciliation.

After the war we and the Soviets both tried to de-Nazi-fy Germany. The Soviets were somewhat better at it, but in both cases we ran into a problem. Who is a devout Nazi? On one scale (are they willing to throw stones at Jews?), lots and lots—perhaps a majority of the population. They were raised to it, after all. Were they Party members? Since you pretty much had to be for lots of jobs, that also is quite a fraction. Do you want to dispose of all of them? "Stare into the abyss"--you start to sound like a Nazi too.

Instead, if you had control of the ground and the schools, and control of the religion that inspired them, you could simply make examples of the leaders, put temporary restrictions on the "Inner Party" members, and rely on control of education and the media to grow a new generation without the Nazi religion.

We weren't thorough in Germany, and even less so in Japan. But so long as the direction changed, and the worship of the state either went away or trended benign, we decided that was good enough, under the circumstances. Stalin and Mao were almost as vile, and as dangerous, as Hitler and Hirohito. And since the Nazi Werwolf project was never widely implemented (and I don't recall hearing of anything significant during the occupation of Japan), we could focus on trying to make the institutional changes we wanted.

After all, the German tribe was defeated and their demi-god Hitler was dead, and the Japanese tribe was defeated and their demi-god Hirohito told them to cooperate with the Americans. The locus of their religions was within the occupied states. There were no outside powers that still supported the Axis states.

Gaza differs. They do have something like Werwolf going, the ground is not occupied, the schools are not controlled, and the locus of the Hamas brand of the religion lies elsewhere. And Hamas has plenty of support around the world.

The cost of occupying the ground will be high, and it won't be over quickly. Control of the media is probably nearly impossible, and I suspect that controlling the schools will be undermined in every direction. And as for the religion—Islam doesn't have to be Jew-hating, but it frequently is, especially if the Jews are "uppity."

De-Nazi-fication of Gaza may not be possible at a price Israel is willing to pay.

Communications in wartime

From an interrogation of Commander Nishino about the battle of Surigao Strait. His ship (the Shigure) was in the Second Squadron, and was the only survivor of that encounter with American forces. Apparently the overall commanders weren't talking to each other very clearly, and even after Kurita had been chased off and their overall time-table screwed up, everybody was instructed to go on as planned. Second Squadron got there four hours early and went in, and got mauled. Second Squadron's flagship blew up and Nishino couldn't figure out who was supposed to be in charge. Eventually he figured everybody was done for and headed out--the Shigure was just a destroyer.

On the way out he spotted Admiral Shima's force advancing in. From the interrogation:

A. About 0350 I sighted Admiral SHIMA's force advancing northward, while we were repairing the rudder.

Q. Did you communicate with Admiral SHIMA's force to tell him what damage had occurred?

A. I signaled to Admiral SHIMA by blinker because the telephone was broken.

Q. What did you tell Admiral SHIMA?

A. I signalled to the approaching force requesting them to identify themselves, as I was not sure but that they might be American surface units. The answer received was "I am the NACHI". I answered "I am the SHIGURE, I have rudder difficulties." There was no communication after this message.

Q. Why did you not inform Admiral SHIMA of the course of the battle?

A. At 1200 hours of the 25th I sent the following dispatch to Admirals TOYODA and KURITA, "The Third or 'C' Force has been annihilated, location of enemy unknown, please send me your instructions. I have trouble with my rudder, my wireless, my radar, and my gyro, and I received one hit." The reason I did not communicate directly with Admiral SHIMA and inform him of the situation was that I had no connection with him and was not under his command.

Q. Under such circumstances as you mention, was that the usual procedure? Was it not Japanese practice to exchange useful information between separate forces?

A. I assumed that SHIMA knew conditions of the battle and that he would get his instructions from his Commanding Officer, Admiral KURITA or from TOYODA.

Q. How did you assume he had learned of the battle in the entrance to the Gulf?

A. In my opinion Admiral SHIMA would know the situation by sighting the burning ships FUSO and MOGAMI, and by seeing me on a retiring course.

Q. That being the case, it was not considered necessary to give any other further information?

A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. Why was it necessary to wait until 1200 to send the message to KURITA and TOYODA?

A. Because my wireless was not functioning, and secondly I was busy with the air attack.

Q. At what time approximately did you complete repairs to your wireless?

A. I used my auxiliary wireless set, the "TM" set. This set had been in commission all the time. I probably could have used it earlier to send the message. When I sent the message I relayed it through Admiral SHIMA because of the short range of the TM set. Its range is about 150 miles.

Drone weapon market

Trent Telenko's latest thread about drones and snipers suggested a million drones minimum would be required for training our own forces. The numbers don't seem crazy. We train snipers with optics and rifles now while the next battlefields will be using drones for both spotting and shooting.

The first thing that came to my mind was "How many will fall off the back of a truck?" A few years ago AP did some research on how many weapons the US military, and came up with 1900 over 10 years (2010's). 190/year doesn't sound too terrible. FWIW, the AP article is pretty crappy: it only gave numbers for a single burglary (6 M4's and 10 pistols). I'd bet that quite a few of those counted were explosives, e.g. grenades, which are a bit hard to track after use.

I suspect that the presence of a gigantic market for civilian arms depresses the market for stolen military ones in this country. Of course, if our military were as corrupt as Mexico's, economies of scale might enter. But aside from homemade automatic weapons like the Glocks modified with the switch, I hear more about truly automatic weapons (instead of "newspaper automatics") from instances in Europe. Maybe that's some kind of sampling bias in favor of the dramatic, or maybe stricter rules for civilian weapons make military ones a larger share of the market. (And there've been some serious civil wars on that landmass with plenty of room for tools to go missing and no big oceans to cross to get them to market.)

At any rate, I suspect the Mexican cartels will get a lot of their military-use drones from their military, and our local gangsters buy from them or from China, and not bother with US military stuff.

Iran

IIRC the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were involved in a lot of sections of the economy. I suspect that it won't be as easy as we hope for the Iranians to chuck the mullahs--a lot of Iranians are invested in the way things are.

I'm not keen on our default system of allowing a president to start a war without Congress, though I understand there can be a need for speed. In this case, there've been hostilities for years without official declarations, with a bit of plausible deniability. There's never been doubt about their ultimate goal, though. I wonder how the powers-that-be classify that kind of war-without-declaration. Words matter less than actions, and they figure that going head to head with armies isn't going to work, but having puppets lob stuff at us saves their forces. It still seems like war.

I'm guessing dirty bomb at some point. That was probably in the cards anyhow.

Jove

Sippican Cottage found a scientist who coined a very useful phrase describing air forces (and some of the space force partisans): "Jupiter Complex."

"the ease with which they could keep erring mankind in order by threatening them (as if they were Jove himself) with atomic thunderbolts."

The same sort of dream plagued WW-2 ("The bombers will always get through" -- except they didn't, and they generally couldn't hit the broadside of a factory within a half a mile.), and I hear people touting the "rods from god" as though that would solve everything. Or that bunkerbusters will solve the last problems in Iran, to be up-to-the-minute about it.

Read it

Memorial Day

Memorial Day isn't a very personal day for us. While our families have had men serving in wars from WW-I through Vietnam, and some friends who served in more recent ones, all safely returned home -- for which we are grateful. (I turned 18 just as the draft was discontinued.)

To keep the day from being abstract I must put pictures of strangers in front of me and exercise my imagination: what if that were me, or my son?

I hope some such image as this is on the President's office wall. All too often there's no choice but war, but I pray that we never go into war just because some politician feels insulted. Nor fail to when we ought just because some politician fears not getting reelected. There's a truly bloody price for mistakes--the price for success is already high enough.

Studying war and learning?

Commander Salamander wrote about US fixations about how to fight wars; how the idea that "Both graduated pressure and rapid decisive operations promised efficiency in war" had tangled and crippled us both in Vietnam and in the later wars we're fought in. "The conviction that technology offered a panacea not only impeded U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq to begin with but also slowed the ability to adapt once the true nature of those wars became apparent."

I've been somewhat immersed in WWII Pacific history recently, and see parallels with the Japanese decisive naval battle doctrine with which they hoped to beat the USA. One great victory cripples your enemy's fleet and leaves control of the seas to you. That Mahan's theory didn't quite apply in this case (the US could keep building ships even if the Japanese controlled the Pacific), and that technology changes rendered the doctrine much less relevant, didn't seem to ever sink in.

We field amazingly sophisticated technologies--but the weapon count is low. The Houthis have been exercising our ship defenses, forcing us to chew through expensive systems faster than we can replenish, using cheap stuff.

I wonder: What lessons have our war colleges learned from the Houthis, Afghanis, Ukranians and Russians? And what will those lessons translate into? Are procurements driven by projected needs or by politics and "ooh, shiney"?

I'm not looking forward to cartels (and then others) starting to use cheap drones to attack law enforcement and judges in this country. I suspect it won't be too long. Do we have countermeasures planned?

Shattered Sword

The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by John Parshall and Anthony Tully:

A lot of Japanese sources are now available in translation, and the authors took advantage of this. A number of stories about Midway (including some by a now-debunked (at least in Japan) Japanese) are myths, based on either posterior-preserving (as with the Japanese writer) or American misunderstandings and attempted propaganda.

A couple of things: the early attacks on the Japanese carriers were scattershot (the US had lousy command and control of its planes), and that kept the carriers dodging. Dodging meant they couldn't spot planes for an attack on the American carriers, though they could get a few fighters off. But even if they'd gotten an attack off, it was too late; the American planes headed their way had already taken off. If they'd used the American methods, they might have gotten enough planes up to take revenge, but their doctrine demanded a full attack group, and the way they spotted planes, though quite fast, wasn't fast enough under the circumstances.

The Japanese didn't store planes on the flight deck; they fueled and loaded them below and elevatored them up. That meant a bomb that penetrated the flight deck found a very rich environment, and since the lower decks were not open, the bombs' effects were contained and intense.

The story that the American torpedo bombers, though unsuccessful, had kept the defending Zero fighters low enough that they couldn't intercept the high-flying dive bombers that followed--it's a fable. The Zeros were perfectly capable of climbing back up in the minutes before the dive bombers' arrival. What seems to have been more of a problem is Japanese command and control of their own planes--the defending fighters, finding a problem in one sector, piled on, and left the other sectors less defended.

There's more of the backstory too--the surface fleet was kept far away to maintain secrecy, but that meant it was too far away to be of any support. The Attu invasion was not a feint, but part of their 3-pronged grand strategy. Their failed southern prong attack denied them the use of 2 carriers, so they only had 4 at Midway. Yamamoto's directions were ambiguous. And so on.

They write well. I met Parshall a few years ago--he's a nice guy and very knowledgeable. If you're interested in Pacific World War II, read the book.

That previous line reads a little strangely, doesn't it--a peaceful war?

Treaties

It's strange how the debate about Ukraine plays out over at Althouse: so much apology for Putin and running down of Zelensky. The case seems straightforward enough. Russia may claim to have been provoked by threats of Ukraine joining NATO, but that's symmetric: Ukraine looked to join NATO because it was threatened by Russia. In any event, Russia did the invading. Cheer for David, hope Goliath gets his comeupance.

Except that Golaith, though getting badly battered, seems to be winning the slog. If they're willing to spend the men and materiel, it looks like Russia can win.

Ukraine seems to be losing, and there's not a whale of a lot more we can do about that without starting a war between us and Russia. Some of our wonderful tech is already looking a bit obsolete, too.

Can the Europeans save them? Unless they've been building up the armaments and armies while I wasn't looking, then no.

(Is China helping the Russians with materiel? Yes. Are they helping them with deniable harrassment of the European nations by cutting undersea cables? Sure looks like it. When they get their pound of flesh out of Russia for their assistance, will China be stronger?)

Even if we stipulate that Zelensky is on the side of the angels (he certainly has guts!), the Ukrainians are probably best served by cutting their losses. That doesn't mean we wish Putin any good, or Zelensky any bad. It's just bowing to the inevitable.

It doesn't mean a peace treaty would be just. I gather it's a bit clever, though, putting in a kind of indirect guarantee; though not a very firm one.

Perhaps it sticks in people's craws to try to force an unjust peace treaty on a nation, and so they come up with reasons to blame the victim. Or try to look the other way.

The 10,000

I like reading original sources when I can, and Grim reminded me of a very old one, written about 400 BC. I'd read a condensed version (for children) of Xenophon's story back in 4'th grade or thereabouts, but not the original. Thanks for the suggestion, Grim! He already has much more extensive (and apropos, since he was there) comments than I.

Some things stood out for me. One is how important sacrifices and studying omens was in their activity. At one point they delay action for an almost disastrously long time because the omens weren't favorable. The recorded speeches emphasize how important it is to be honest, because the gods hated evil oathbreakers. I don't know how much to rely on that professed attitude, since it is all filtered through Xenophon--and also because one of the recurring themes of the book is betrayal. Nobody trusts the Hellenes--and not altogether without reason. They don't entirely trust each other either.

Of course the biggest problem they face is food(*), and having 10,000 hungry soldiers and associated slaves and whatnot show up in your valley is a disaster for the locals. The soldiers won't be happy paying the higher prices that supply and demand considerations require, so either you get shafted financially or physically as they just take the goods. Either way, your valley goes hungry.

And, the Hellenes are mercenaries. Except for a few of the leaders, who hope for a bit of glory or power, they're in it for money, and sooner or later there'd better be some. Or portable valuables, or slaves.

As they get closer to home, the prospect of stopping to found a city gets more attractive to those without a family at home. How would they acquire the women? Slaves, or by having enough money for local doweries?

When such a large army shows up, local militia don't quite suffice, though they have some use in slowing or discouraging too-distant foraging.

They adjust their fighting configuration as they go--Grim explains that well. Major decisions have to be voted on by the soldiers, not just the generals--who can be similarly gotten rid of. I don't mean to disparage Xenophon, but that brought to mind the not entirely dissimilar democracy on pirate ships. (I don't know if privateers, who'd be more like mercenaries, were run along lines similar to pirates.)

Another theme that jumps out at you is just how different the attitudes were compared to modern Western military ideals. If you weren't defending your home turf directly, you wanted loot. I'm not claiming that modern army rules inherit much from the Templar oaths, or their rules (some of those look like what you'd expect if you wanted to maintain discipline in a standing army), but there seem to be similarities.

Read it yourself, and follow along with Grim.

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(*) If not for the lack of food along the way, they could have just retraced their steps and avoided almost all the fighting they had to do on the way back.

China preparations

I read that the largest military command center in the world.

That's not encouraging--or on the other hand, perhaps it is after all. I hoped to get an idea of bloat by looking at the number of Chinese high naval officers divided by the number of ships, as a function of time, but apparently those numbers aren't easy to obtain (and therefore may be dubious). On the third hand, if you've got a facility, its denizens may want to justify their existence.

JFK files

So the JFK files will finally be completely visible. Some years ago I wondered why several different administrations kept part of the proceedings secret, even after everybody was dead and no careers could be ruined. I came up with a possible reason.

Given who Oswald was, and what kind of life he'd led, the obvious suspicion is that the Soviets had directed him. Maybe they did, maybe not -- it would be hard to prove, especially this late. But what should have been the US reaction if they had? Would we risk nuclear war for revenge (and some kind of retaliation would certainly have been on everybody's mind)?

The discussions of how much injury we'd be willing to take without pulling the trigger would be useful information for modern enemies, and I can see multiple presidents saying "Let's not talk about this," and keeping any historical conversations under wraps.

I wonder if I was right.

A modern Great Game

Grim has a nice summary of who and what in Syria right now. Will Assad stay in Moscow? Will it matter?

I have no idea how many observers we can rely on there, but Trent Telenko says he's heard that the Turkish backed forces have been using drones heavily, presumably inspired by Ukrainian tactics. It would be interesting to know how that's working -- and maybe learn a few lessons ourselves.

Assuming Erdogen's proxies win, I wonder if he will turn his sights on "Greater Syria" (aka Lebanon) or the Kurds first. If Lebanon, he might find it convenient to try to wrest Hezbollah out of the Iranian orbit -- it would give him tremendous leverage in Lebanon, and street cred with his Islamist allies, given Hezbollah's fight against the "Little Satan."

The enemy of my enemy is my Best Friend for a Few turns.

Benghazi

I remember wondering what was going on in Benghazi--what was Stevens doing in this out of the way post? Somebody pointed out that some connected Saudis were in the area, getting out of Dodge as fast as they could, and that there was a rumor about weapons going to Syrian rebels. And what had just been opened up? Gaddaffi's arms stash--he had weapons to provide for one of the largest armies in the world at the time. (I didn't say one of the strongest, notice.) (I assume some of those arms wound up spread among Islamist groups in Africa.)

Hmm. Buying up loose gear and having Saudi's deniably ship it to Syrian rebels? It seemed plausible--the first part of it laudable.

Close but no cigar. Apparently they were trying to buy back weapons they'd given to Libyan rebels. Alarming stupidity at every turn...

Drone defense

Some of the video from Ukraine suggests that drones are getting to be quite effective weapons. If they were quieter, I suspect the criminal cartels would be using them for assassinations already--loiter and attack the witness/judge/competitor.

Some of the videos show them capable of entering shelters through windows or passages. And, of course, they're good at watching for things, whether they have offensive capacity or not.

OK, how do you stop them? You're with your buddies in a truck and hear/spot something headed your way. Shooting won't do much unless you're super-super-accurate. Net guns... they look nice, but I wonder how practical those are in the field. Hide behind trees...

Pros and amateurs try their hands at downing drones in this video (which has a very annoying long commercial in the middle). Some of the methods are more amusing than useful.

One of the methods tried is the vortex ring cannon, which can pack more of a punch than you might expect. For sufficiently large vortex cannons, of course. Of course, you could also try using guns adapted (with blanks) for the purpose. The article cited talks about "knock-down effect" on humans (mediocre), but it might be suitable for trying to knock down lighter flying objects.

Copter-type drones are somewhat at risk for vortex ring state, where instead of pushing the air down the propellers push air down and around and up and back through the blades again, in a "circle" that doesn't provide lift. The article explains how designers have been mitigating this. However, if a strong vortex ring hits a quadcopter, it should provide some impact, some twisting, and maybe cause one or more of the propellers to get into VortexRingState.

If the equipment is just an adapter on the end of your rifle (and maybe blank rounds, maybe not), it might be easy to carry, cheap(*), and relatively quick to field. The vortex ring is a lot bigger than a rifle bullet, so your chances of hitting are better.

There are obvious possible issues--would it destabilize the drone enough with an average hit? would the ring move fast enough to reliably hit a moving target (80 m/sec??? with my sloppy estimates for vorticity)? and can soldiers/civilians aim well enough, especially at night? Oh, and is the effective range good enough?

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(*) "Cheap" would probably be the kiss of death, unfortunately.

UPDATE: I found an Army report. The Wikipedia image of the vortex ring was out of a 40mm barrel, and they developed 100kpsi in their chamber, using a "rupture disk" to get the cleanest possible flow. They did not design the test system for rapid fire. So this probably wouldn't be a snap-on, but a separate (hopefully light) blunderbuss. They found that C4 wasn't great--the ring momentum was low--so they converged on "exotic" explosives like Red Dot and Bulls Eye (up to 30g). They were getting about 160'/sec.

Their aim, so to speak, was attacking humans, who are typically less fragile than drones in flight. The idea might work. I assume that with lower pressures the final velocity would be proportionately lower, but fluid dynamics is messy.

Naval militia

A recent squirrel chase through the net found me looking up naval militia, and then the naval militia(*) in Wisconsin. Wisconsin had one up until a bit after WWI, and recently proposed reviving it with centers in Milwaukee and Madison. (The proposal failed.)

Milwaukee is logical, but Madison? It has some lakes and the little Yahara River.

New York has one, and they used to assist in cargo loading when retrieving Flight 800 bodies and wreckage, and after 9/11 helped with evacuations, did logistical/clerical work, security, and first aid support. Their SeaBees put up a tent city for the emergency workers--there are a couple pages of bullet points. Now we're all grown-ups, and know the need to maximize the number of categories in a report (Assisted the Security Chief in moving his desk), but clearly there were ways to help out in a disaster that don't require that you be in a boat.

OTOH, I'm not sure what this would bring to the table that the Army National Guard wouldn't, except in oddball situations where the Reserve is stripped of one kind of skills and the Guard of another.

But we might still yet have our own naval militia.

(*) Not the same as privateers.

Grim future

From Real Clear History, an essay on confronting another Axis, looking at historical parallels to the budding and active conflicts now, and possible directions. It isn't pretty. In WWII, none of the Axis powers (including USSR) had a reasonable hope of dealing serious damage to the US homeland. That's not so true anymore with our current set of adversaries, and we're badly exposed overseas as well.

He's pretty sure China will use air and sea border controls to try to control Taiwan--not a blockade or an invasion. That puts us over a barrel.

Never Mind, We'll Do It Ourselves

The Inside Story of How a Team of Renegades Broke Rules, Shattered Barriers, and Launched a Drone Warfare Revolution by Alec Bierbauer and Col. Mark Cooter, USAF (ret) with Michael Marks.

The subtitle is a bit misleading--they weren't renegades, and the only rules broken were bureaucratic ones, and they got top cover for that. It's the story of how the Predator was modified and implemented for use in Afghanistan, first for observation and then armed.

It's a pretty upbeat tale on the whole. Just having a drone with a camera is only the start--where do you base it, how do you control it, and how do you get information to and between mutually hostile departments of the government (CIA and DoD)? And what do you do when you've found your target, but nobody wants to take responsibility for pulling the trigger? And it sounds obvious and easy to stick a rocket on the drone--but it's harder than it seems. The book's a book of problem-solving.

Of course the technology and tactics are all quite obsolete by now--the Ukraine war is a drone/counter-drone control/jamming arms race. Trent Telenko has been complaining that the US isn't taking drones or communications warfare seriously. If the book's any hint, he's probably right.

UPDATE: A man in our Bible study flew fighters in Afghanistan. He said that the initial default for a Predator was that if it lost communications signal, it should fly higher. This caused some near misses when circling fighters found an unmanned drone suddenly start climbing in front of them. The default programming got addressed, but the details had to be reviewed for each mission. "Just keep going straight" is OK for some situations, but not if Iran is a few miles over the border.

For Memorial Day

see this post on poetry and the aftermath of the Civil War. (Ambrose Bierce would have had crisp words for some Madisonians.)

While Bierce, as a veteran, urges the nation to honor all of the American dead, North and South, Melville the civilian promotes a larger reconciliation between the former antagonists, with the goal of preserving the Union.

Kill switch

"ASML and TSMC Can Disable Chip Machines If China Invades Taiwan" "Firms can remotely shut off advanced EUV chip-making machines"

Oh joy. I assume that mainland Chinese industrial espionage made those firms a target years ago, if only to be able to duplicate the work themselves sometime. I think I'm safe in further assuming that they were largely successful. If so, what are the odds that the mainland Chinese now have the ability to shut off those machines themselves?