Category Archives: Military Strategy

This makes perfect sense in a time while we are trying to fight two wars, secure our southern border, help with the natural disaster in Japan, carry out an illegal incursion into Libya. Why wouldn’t we draw down our forces in this time of the Global War on Terror when we have no idea when the next attack on our homefront will come. It is almost like Bill Clinton is back being President again.

During the Association of the United States Army’s Winter Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, FL, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Vice Chief of Staff stated on 23 February discussed Army plans to begin drawing down next year by taking about a third of the Soldiers from the temporary 22,000-Soldier increase to support the Afghanistan troop surge of 2010.  The reductions will be limited to enlisted ranks, largely. Reductions to eliminate the thousands of soldiers will begin next spring; an additional, larger drawdown of Soldiers is scheduled to begin in 2015.  Under a strategy proclaimed by Secretary of Defense Gates in January, the long-term goal is to reduce the numbers of the Army down to an end strength of 520,000 soldiers, provided the drawdown of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan proceeds as planned, and no new contingencies arise which require a major commitment of soldiers.  To read more on this subject, please go to: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/03/army-to-cut-7000-jobs-in-2012-030511w/

 

I guess it is good they are learning their mistakes but it am surprised it has taken this long. I mean after 10 years of war you would think that with all the force protection officers we have trained and all the deploying soldiers who have to take Anti-Terrorism Level 1 classes that someone would have seen we were placing our warfighters at an unnecessary risk by doing this?

Following the attack on Airmen at the Frankfurt Airport there will now be separate drive-in access for buses carrying U.S. military personnel.  The secluded bus stop means that Servicemembers no longer have to alight from and board buses on the forecourt in front of the terminal.  To learn more, please go to: http://www.military.com/news/article/frankfurt-airport-to-shield-us-troops-after-killings.html

 

John Perlin has a piece up on the Miller-McCune website titled “Greener Battlefields Would Be Safer For Troops.” I somewhat disagree and I’ll explain.

In places like Afghanistan, it would tend to make sense that solar powered energy could easily replace petroleum in powering equipment and vehicles. Depending on the location of the unit, the sun shines virtually every single day. However, in the valleys, the sun is can frequently be obscured by cloud cover and fog. Storms roll in as well, blocking much needed sunlight.

Unfortunately, future wars won’t always be fought in hot, sunny deserts (I hope!). There will come a time when we are thrust into another Vietnam-style combat environment in which the sun is hidden behind thick clouds and deep rain for weeks. If our logistics acquisitions focus solely on these technologies that rely on weather to function, we stand to put even MORE troops in danger.

There are some great technologies out there for powering our equipment. At a recent AUSA Winter Symposium, I got to test some solar-powered panels that can be rolled up and easily stored. They are big enough to power all the computers and even a coffee pot in a medium-sized tent provided they get ample sunlight. This would eliminate at least the fulltime use of generators.

Wind turbines are expensive and difficult to transport. They are affected by sand and dust, two things that practically define our current area of operations. And what happens if they are blown up or destroyed by the enemy. A wind turbine is easy to identify from long distances and, knowing these items are responsible for the energy needed to operate, would be quite obvious targets.

Solar panels are highly reflective and would not work efficiently under camouflage. They would also expose nerve centers to the enemy capable of looking down on our camps from places like mountains! In conventional warfare, enemy fighters would have no trouble identifying power centers.

The military will be dependent upon fuel as long as there is no other technology out there that creates energy constantly without regard to location and weather. While we can always augment our reliance on fossil fuels to complete our missions and minimize putting troops in danger in risky convoys, we simply can’t walk away from it.

Then you need to try and make an AUSA convention in the future. As I said last night on You Served Radio, this convention is huge, if not overwhelming. Just about every company that works in the defense industry is represented here, along with many units and commands in the Army. The technolgies and capabalities being demonstrated here are some of what you will see in the Army inventory in the coming years. There are so many advancements being made in optics, armor, weapons, etc. that it is pretty numbing. Attendance at the AUSA summer convention is free, so if you are in the Washington DC area next year around this time, you should stop by.

Even the most harnded and experienced combat vets are amazed to see technology and solutions that were once only thought to exist in video games like HALO actually come to reality and exist.

There is a winter conference also, that takes places in Florida. Even thought it is not as big, the vendors are still there and you can get much more one on one time with them to see where their engineers and scientists are taking the warfighting industry into the next generation.

The U.S. armed services are issuing internal messages to all personnel barring them from visiting the WikiLeaks website, which recently posted 77,000 classified diplomatic and military messages on the long war in Afghanistan. The orders seem to be the most far-reaching effort by the Pentagon in its ongoing effort to stop the release of classified information. The military is telling the troops they cannot even view what is publicly available, even though the WikiLeaks documents are on hundreds of websites. In addition, the Pentagon is demanding that WikiLeaks return the classified documents it posted on the Internet, as the whistleblower website apparently is preparing another huge document dump. To read this article in its entirety, please go to:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/6/pentagon-bars-staff-from-visiting-wikileaks-site/