Military

A British chip factory involved in sensitive military projects has been nationalised by the Ministry of Defence following warnings that it was at risk of closure.

The Government confirmed on Friday that it had purchased the site in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, from US company Coherent.

The deal is understood to be worth around £20m and will secure around 100 local jobs at the company, which is being renamed Octric Semiconductors UK.

A statement described the factory as the country’s only secure site capable of producing gallium arsenide semiconductors, making it “critical to the defence supply chain and major military programmes and exports”.

Ga/As, yes, OK. But one of the things about defence uses is that they’re always vastly behind the curve. Chips advance in 18 month or so cycles. Well, Si ones do, Ga/As might have its own cycle. Defence projects take 15 years to get going and last for decades. The electronics is always vastly behind that bleeding edge.

So, you know, maybe not as militarily important as all that. On the other hand it’s £20 million, in the current contecxt, pfft.

The Canadian military has admitted that new sleeping bags issued to troops last year were not suited to “typical Canadian winter conditions”.

Sigh.

The British Pacific Fleet, which included vessels from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, had been formed in late 1944 and was the biggest fleet ever assembled by the Royal Navy. It included six major aircraft carriers, four light carriers, two aircraft maintenance carriers and nine escort carriers, with a total of 750 aircraft, as well as five battleships, 11 cruisers, 35 destroyers, 14 frigates, 31 submarines and nearly 100 other warships and supply vessels.

Not sure even the Americans could produce that these days.

Yes, yes, obviously, modern carriers are larger etc. But do they have 6 at sea at one time?

The commander of a nuclear-armed submarine has been sacked after filming a sex video with a junior sailor.

The officer of the Vanguard-class submarine, who was awarded an OBE, had a relationship with a younger sailor while on patrol. The commander was also accused of sharing explicit photographs, The Sun first revealed.

It’s sex up or down the chain of command that’s the real problem.

Labour backs Greens’ call to end ‘emotionally harmful’ Edinburgh Tattoo flypasts

Whose emotions? When?

But now Edinburgh’s Labour council is considering calling for an end to the Royal Military Tattoo RAF flypasts.

The aerial displays have come under attack over claims they cause environmental damage and inflict “emotional harm” on residents.

Scottish Greens have won cross-party support to scrap the flypasts over Edinburgh Castle, with Cammy Day, the Labour council leader, writing to military chiefs to express “concerns” over hitting net zero targets.

Campaigners are now calling for this year’s flypast to be the last.

Oh, the emotions of the people on hte ground. Well, tough tittie really, no?

Not that any of these arguments are to be taken seriously. Just the usual ghaslty types wanting something to whinge about. If it wasn’t this it would be kids playing football in the close.

Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, has been killed in Tehran

Women struggling to survive in the war-torn Sudanese city of Omdurman say they are being forced to have sex with soldiers in exchange for food.

Depends onm your definition of the word “forced”

More than two dozen women who have been unable to flee fighting in Omdurman said that sexual intercourse with men from the Sudanese army was the only way they could access food or goods that they could sell to raise money to feed their families.

Now that is true.

To get something from the men with guns you’ve got to offer something the men with guns want. That this often is – the men with guns are often young men with guns – some poontang is just one of those things. But it is a transaction of varying levels of distaste, not a “forcing”.

Injured Russian soldiers are being sent back into the line of fire in “meat wave” assaults.

The Ukrainian army has reported capturing Russians already suffering from their wounds sustained in previous attacks.

They had been given minimal medical attention before being sent back to fight.

The tactics show an apparent disregard for foot soldiers as commanders throw thousands of men into the front lines in a slow and grinding summer offensive.

Some Russians have been captured re-entering the battlefield on crutches.

This particular war is not exactly free of the propagandistic arts. So, pinch of salt and all that.

On the other hand the basic Russian attitude toward recruits and troops is pretty vile, so could be. Which doesn;t get us very far, just tells us that if it’s propaganda then they’re using something that’s easy enough to believe.

Former heads of Bolivia’s army and navy arrested over failed coup

The current boats are on Lake Titicaca but they do have a Navy, Admiral and all. No coastline but a Navy.

Part of the argument is that Peru (I think? Maybe Chile?) nicked that coastline a century and more back. And maybe they’ll get it back one day so best be prepared.

BTW, yes, there is a Hungarian Navy. I think so at least – Lake Balaton needs defending after all (poss more important, the Danube).

Dotted among the 1,400 soldiers in the parade on Saturday were soldiers sporting a variety of beards beneath their bearskin hats.

However, the style of grooming differed very little as rules regarding facial hair remained strict.

All the beards had to be “full-set” – with a moustache – and be trimmed neatly off the cheekbone and neck. Bristles had to be thick – not patchy – and the length had to be between 2.5mm and 25.5mm, or between a Grade 1 and Grade 8.

Wonder how they’re going to do the other bit of it?

Traditionally, the Navy was fine with someone having a beard or not. Not so fine with someone growing a beard. So, the actual production of one was limited to either leave or a long cruise (note that this is a generation ago). At which point, “Permission to stop shaving, Sir” and the responsible officer would muse on whether he thought a full beard could be produced in the time to the next port. If yes, then OK. If not, then no.

So, what’s the Army’s equivalent of a cruise – and do they have to ask permission – which can be denied – to grow a beard?

Israeli special forces have freed four hostages held in Nuseirat, central Gaza, as Israeli attacks and airstrikes in the same area killed at least 93 Palestinians, including children, local medics said.

The way The Guardian has that it’s here’s the rescue, over here, then there’s this entirely other thing, over there but just close by, which is the massacre of innocents standing in the street.

Some other – possibly more balanced but who knows – reports have the rescue going on then armed men tuble out of nearby buildings to try to prevent it who then get shot and bombed and so on.

Who to believe, eh?

Man ‘caught with explosives and cyanide in makeshift lab in shed’
Neighbours reported loud bangs and smoke coming from the garden over many years

They do not, in fact, work together. Bang and useful poison are choices, not complements.

Commander ‘Sharkey’ Ward obituary: pilot who played a decisive role in Falklands
A pugnacious fighter known as Mr Sea Harrier who fought the war his own way and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross

My father would have known of him, probably not known him. But the son of someone who served with my father was someone I worked with for a time. And that son had been RN and was one of the fighter controllers in the Falklands. And, well coincidence, right?

But that smallness of British military life:

He only started to thrive after spending three years in Pakistan, after his father was posted to RAF Mauripur in Karachi, where his health improved in the dry climate.

Where the father would have known my grandfather. Quite a number of serving and immediately post-retirement were sent out to set up the varied armed forces of the newly independent nations…..

No grand point to this, other than to point out how small British service life can be. Generations of the same families intertwining perhaps. Which does lead to a thought – if a generation leaves, or doesn’t join, then that’s that whole subsequent family that doesn’t. Something to think about over terms, conditions and the attraction of recruits. Historically, it’s not been going fishing in the general population at all.

Machines may replace crew on Royal Navy’s warships of future
The proposed multi-role support ships could need a crew of about 100, a quarter of the total on today’s vessels

We do, after all, use guns these days rather than boarding and fisticuffs.

Machines replacing human labour is normal.

Israel hits Iran with retaliatory strike

Umm, not good, eh?

On the one hand, too many young people are out of work. On the other, the Western world is gradually realising its armed forces are inadequate in the face of threats from Russia and other aggressive dictatorships.

In a dire moment, a dire solution comes to mind: conscription.

The idea has some appeal. Drill sergeants have long experience at giving work to idle hands.

The Army’s had three periods of conscription in which to build up the knowledge of how to do it.

1916-18, 1939-45 and 1948 (?) 1960(?)

If the first two there was an actual and bloody war on and the requirement was for infantry with a couple of months training. That can be done with compulsion and, it’s fair to say, the general agreement that the job was worth doing of those being conscripted.

In the third episode, peacetime, the Navy took no conscripts, the RAF few, the Army took near all. And, if we’re honest about it, it was a disaster. Past the early 50s no one actually did anything after basic. Or near nothing at least.

All the other 400 years of the Army’s existence it has been training up people who wanted to be there. This is inherently different from trying to gain a decent response out of the sullen who have been conscripted.

Conscription simply won’t give us armed forces worth having – as with the Navy not taking any last time around. But rather more than that, unless the Army starts shooting people for telling Sergeant Majors to fuck off I don’t see it working at all. There really would have to be serious and significant punishment of a large number of people to get today’s youth buckling down. And I really don;t think modern society would be willing to put up with the bill for that – the bill I insist would actually be necessary.

BTW, the people most against conscription are likely the officers.

Vladimir Putin said Russia had arrested all four gunmen responsible for the shooting that killed 133 people at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, claiming that the perpetrators of one of the worst terror attacks in the country’s history planned to flee to Ukraine.

In his first public comments on the terrorist attacks that shocked the nation, the Russian president made no mention of Islamic State’s claim to have carried out the attack.

Instead, Putin suggested without evidence that Ukraine may have been involved in Friday’s attack at the Crocus City Hall just outside Moscow, saying that “the Ukrainian side” had “prepared a window” for the terrorists to cross the border from Russia into Ukraine before they were apprehended.

“They tried to hide and move towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them from the Ukrainian side to cross the state border,” Putin said in a televised address.

A “window” eh? Someone sut the wire in preparation for them being able to get through?

Imagine – no, just go on – imagine that the FSB had that level of data. Then why didn’t they have the data about their coming the other way?

Tractor statistics stuff.

A senior Ukrainian army official who allegedly embezzled more than £1 million meant to buy rations for the military has been detained.

The suspect, named locally as Oleksandr Kozlovsky, was working as the head of a military department that procured food for soldiers before his arrest.

Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation claimed he had used the funds to buy an apartment in Kyiv, a dozen plots of land and a car instead of spending the money on supplies for the military.

Both Russia and Ukraine are grossly corrupt by our or any reasonable standard.

From gossip – and yes, gossip with those who would if not know at least have a very clear idea – the Russian military is grossly more corrupt than the Ukrainian, even if at more general government level that was the other way around a few years back.

That Ukie food supply is bent is therefore not a game changer. Either on the ground – is it more or less bent than the Russian matters – not in any support level outsiders might want to give. Note “any support level”. Whatever conclusion we have already is not to be changed by this detail is what is meant.

One of the UK’s most senior military figures in Afghanistan was sent home in disgrace after drinking champagne with colleagues, The Telegraph can reveal.

Maj Gen Charlie Herbert OBE took up a post in June 2017 in Kabul as deputy advisor to the ministry of the interior, the government department responsible for law enforcement, civil order and fighting crime.

No, nothing to do with Afghans, Muslims or anything:

in breach of a US rule on the consumption of alcohol.”

The American armed forces can get very anal puckered about booze. It’s not just that the Navy is dry.

Just as an example, USN is clean shaven. Pops was RN and so could continue to wear his beard as he had done all his adult life. But one posting had him, RN Captain, under USN Admiral. So, off the beard came. While feasible to insist upon RN rules, line of command and all that, be polite etc.

US military really can be very anal.

A Ministry of Defence plan to change the way Army accommodation is allocated has been shelved amid a backlash from military wives, The Telegraph can reveal.

Military wives? Tchah. It was this ‘ere blog wot won it.

Which Fuckin’ Idiot Decided This?

See?