Priory_of_Sion

34 minutes ago, Scolopax said:

Didn't even notice that, was thinking it was the poster thing propped up on the side we were talking about.

Yeah that's my bad. 

The little poster thing seems too small to tell any details

Is that an Abrams silhouette on the skirt logo?

Big if

Hadi, president of the Saudi-backed govt in Aden, sacks an influential governor of Aden province and the minister of state.  

This came on the heels of a piece in the Economist which runs down how the UAE has backed a number of South Yemeni secessionists and how popular the South Yemeni movement is and how little control Hadi has over the south. 

Saudi authorities sentience man to death for apostasy

I'm thinking of a US carrier group operating in a hostile Persian Gulf. Iran has a plethora of anti-ship missiles, from the lowly Silkworm to cruise missiles to an anti-ship ballistic missile. Iran's IRGC Navy and the regular Iranian Navy also can deploy swarms of fast attack and torpedo boats that could attack a US carrier group. I'd be worried that a carrier's defenses couldn't keep track with all of the potential threats. Would be a waste of a could $ billion if a carrier gets sunk by some dinghies.

I think a similar scenario could play out around the Korean peninsula if things go sour and a carrier isn't too far from the coast. 

Besides from operating in a littoral zone, I don't think carriers are that vulnerable. I think the threat from that Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile, the DF-21D, is a little over hyped and that Russian and Chinese submarines might not be quite good enough to sneak up on a carrier group. Could be wrong here though, and if they are highly vulnerable to these threats then the days of carriers as a weapon of interstate war may be numbered. 

Most of the wars that seem to be fought though are against non-state actors in regions where its hard to get a good airfield, so carriers will be useful to give air support against guerrillas/insurgents for some time to come and those groups won't have the capabilities to threaten a carrier. Toxn's point about small carriers being useful can be applied here as well. 

The FBI is extremely good now

Turkey has launched airstrikes against the Iraqi Yazidi region of Sinjar, you know, the same place where ISIS massacred and enslaved the Yazidis and prompted US intervention. Its ok if the Turks do it though, its especially ok since its the anniversary of the Armenian genocide which they still deny and the US fails to call a genocide due to Turkish lobbyists. 

NATO doesn't allow ANA troops to carry weapons while on base(a precautionary measure against the very real threat of the occasional Afghan soldier attacking NATO troops) and the Taliban knew this and massacred the unarmed Afghan soldiers. 

Even if global warming isn't even real (it is fwiw), I'd still be for replacing fossil fuels with nuclear. The less money falling into the hands of the Saudis, the better. Fuck them. 

Snake bite on my finger 

I'm reading that UAE air defenses brought this Saudi helicopter down 

Just now, Collimatrix said:

 

They have everything there these days.

 

Is there a good guide out there on Middle Eastern military procurement policies?  They seem to operate a wider, more diverse range of materiel than is remotely sane.  I'm curious if the process is mainly bribery-driven or mainly politically-driven.

Its political, they use oil money to buy weapons from whoever in exchange for more geopolitical backing. 

The militaries in the Gulf States don't seem to be anything more than country clubs for the royalty & friends while they get proxies or mercenaries to actually fight their wars so it doesn't really matter what they buy because they don't plan on using most of it. 

By the looks of Libya, Yemen, and Syria, they'll return to authoritarian strongmen states if they aren't partitioned into smaller states.

The strongest military force in Libya is the Tobruk-based Council of Deputies which is led by a former general of Gaddafi's army, Haftar, who was later groomed by the CIA in the late 80s and 90s to help overthrow Gaddafi. Haftar is sorta the run-of-the-mill regional strongman and seems to have decent international support from the west(at least formerly), Egypt, the UAE, and Russia. It's likely only a matter of time until Haftar is made defacto dictator of Libya. 

Yemen's civil war is largely divided between the Shia north, led by the Houthis and the older Yemeni president Saleh, and the South which is backed by the Saudis and run by Yemen's old VP, Hadi. The likely outcome(if the Saudis ever run out of mercenaries to die in the highlands to Houthi snipers) is that Yemen is just split in two, like it was before 1990, with the same old strongmen in power. 

Up until recently it looked as if Assad would retake most of the country and thus a return to the status quo. Yet there seems to be a lot of international interests in Syria so it may be a while until Assad takes Idlib or clears out the resistance in the suburbs of Damascus for good, but barring a large scale invasion to topple the Assad regime by the US or Turkey, it seems that this is inevitable. If the rebels "win", you'd probably be looking at a government similar to the pre-2001 Taliban. 

The one "success" of the Arab Spring is Tunisia where civil war didn't break out and they implemented a good deal of liberal reforms. Yet, I'd be concerned about the stability of Tunisia as Tunisia has the highest ISIS volunteers per capita anywhere in the world. 

So the Arab Spring has been essentially a culling of the moderate Arabs that were supposedly behind it. 

Iran "tests" the Qaher-313, which means they have it roll around on the tarmac for 2 minutes for propaganda purposes. 

1 minute ago, T___A said:

Somehow I doubt that USA today:

 

http://www.wfaa.com/news/us-drops-largest-non-nuclear-bomb-in-afghanistan-to-fight-isis-reports/431024781

Yep 

I believe it's the combat debut. 

2 minutes ago, Collimatrix said:

 

It's a hell of a thing for a country to have a foreign policy that was written by Azathoth.

This is wrong, the Deep Ones run the Deep State

Rich Anderson already roasted this fool

Quote

The bona fides of the author are somewhat suspect. The comments of his thesis advisors and others who encountered him pretty much tell it all...as does the bio he wrote himself. 

"Christian M. DeJohn is a military historian, former U.S. Cavalry Sergeant, and United States Army veteran of overseas service in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Egypt, Korea, and Germany. Called to active duty after September 11 attacks, while a member of the famous First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry, his Army duties included gunning and driving an M1 Abrams tank, and serving as a dismounted Cavalry scout in Bosnia. His professional writing experience has taken him on adventures as diverse as flying in a World War Two B-17 bomber, climbing through the coal bunkers of the USS Olympia, recreating Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, reminiscing with the greatest American fighter ace of all time, and enjoying champagne with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Andrew. 

DeJohn's articles on military and American history have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and books including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Times, Main Line Magazine, Philadelphia Style, METRO, and The Dictionary of American History. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from the American University in Washington, D.C., completed all required credits towards a Master of Arts degree in Military and American History from Temple University, and has worked for the US Army Military History Institute and US Department of Veterans Affairs. He resides in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and is a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, and the US Cavalry Association."

The reason he only has completed credits towrads his MA is because Temple never conferred it, resulting in DeJohn's suing Temple. Ken Estes at Tank-Net covered the reason pretty thoroughly.

"Now I remember, this guy was disruptive in class and antagonistic toward the prof, resisting any advice on his master's thesis. Greg Urwin told me a little about him and I was amazed, because Greg is a very patient and effective prof, was recently President of the Society for Military History and has great student reviews from Temple. He does know his American Military History, we can be assured."

Urwin himself commented "that the thesis was "agonizing" and that DeJohn must suffer from "Alzheimer’s disease." Urwin also wrote notes in the margins of DeJohn’s thesis. He wrote that DeJohn sounds like a "crackpot," that his arguments are "absurd," that the thesis read like "a comic book for 5-year olds," that it was "amateurish," that it was "exaggerated melodrama," "juvenile melodrama," and "juvenile rhetoric," "monotonous agony," "juvenile argumentation," a "hissy fit in print." https://www.thefire.org/as-lawsuit-come ... -stranded/ ,which oddly enough is in an article "defending" DeJohn's lawsuit, which eventually resulted in an award of $1 in damages to him.

I'd personally like to see Rich and Kenny over here, they seem to be goodboys who are also hated by Luigi which is a good sign

Lockheed's Archangel whitepaper

We're already in Syria

Since the Holocaust is an essential part of WWII, its really pedantic to say that the gas chambers aren't part of the war that Nazi Germany waged against Europe. 

America has been involved with funding Syrian opposition groups since 2005. 

The 2011 prisoner release was Assad going along with a rebel demand, which the rebels called "too little, too late" and most of the core of the ISIS and Tahrir al-Sham are not Syrians, but you have a lot of Saudis though. 

Rumors are a buzzin'