Military

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?

But from next month, the MoD will change the rules across the Army, Navy and RAF so that for the first time houses are allocated on the basis of how many children a serviceman or woman has, not their rank.

Just insane:

“There has always been married quarters and soldiers quarters,” he said. “They work together but socialise separately and it’s the same for married accommodation. Officers should live amongst each other, and non-commissioned officers and soldiers should live together, to avoid the difficulties of your next-door neighbour being your boss or one of your subordinates.”

Now you can do it the other way. I’ve been on an American base in Germany that does.

Colonel’s rather grander house surrounded by those of slightly less grand Majors and so on, to a circular suburb of enlisted. Another way of enhancing, enforcing, that heirarchy if you like.

But having the widower Colonel, kids left home, in the one bed housette while the progenitive corporal has a 4 bedder right next door? No, that’s simply not going to work.

An MoD spokesman said: “Our Armed Forces personnel make extraordinary sacrifices to protect our nation, which is why our Modern Accommodation Offer puts fairness first.

Shoot the cunts.

Now.

A government minister has defended the military’s “woke” policies, as he said the Armed Forces must reflect today’s society.

Andrew Murrison, the minister for defence people and families, told MPs that he was “guilty as charged” if he believed in making the military a more inclusive and diverse workspace.

We don’t want the military to reflect society. We want them to defend it. This is different and it’s not a subtle difference either.

Still, fortunately this fool will be out of office within the year. But will the successor believe the same drivel?

The British Army wants to relax security checks for recruits from overseas to boost diversity and inclusion, The Telegraph can reveal.

Britain’s armed forces have consistently failed to hit recruitment targets and are looking overseas to boost ethnic minority representation, which currently stands at 14 per cent of the regular army.

A document leaked to this paper, titled The British Army’s Race Action Plan, notes that the Army “struggles to attract talent from ethnic minority backgrounds into the officer corps”.

Published in March 2023 and understood to be the latest guidance, it outlines a series of “actions” to boost representation and describes security clearance vetting as being “the primary barrier to non-UK personnel gaining a commission in the Army”.

I’ve been vetted a couple of times. Not sure how deep they went but I passed both times (over export licences for military/nuclear goods). It does take time. There are also different levels of vetting – I didn’t get the full going over. But the idea that you don;t want to check those who are going to become your own intelligence officers of the future – no, that doesn’t make sense, it really doesn’t.

In General Sanders’ words, “regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them”.

The last time we were successfully invaded by force of arms it was the professional Normans who beat the Saxon Fyrd.

The Royal Navy is redeploying marines and sailors to become diversity and inclusion officers to enhance the “lived experience” of personnel amid ongoing recruitment challenges in manning its ships.

Three internal Navy job advertisements, seen by The Telegraph, seek to attract serving sailors and marines to work on diversity policy. The roles are based in Navy Command HQ [NCHQ] in Portsmouth and are intended to “improve the lived experience of our people”.

In a networked world where fighting methodologies, communications circuits and recognised pictures are shared and homogenised between allies in an instant, there is seemingly little consensus on how to fight within the information battlespace.

That’s from an article complaining that the tweets from a British ship in the Red Sea aren’t very amusing.

Shoot the entire media class. All of them.

If the world’s powerful nations had not so brazenly shrugged off three-quarters of a million Palestinians being driven from their homes 76 years ago, accompanied by an estimated 15,000 suffering violent deaths, the seeds of today’s bitter harvest would not have been planted.

Because the invaders – all the Arab nations that could get troops to the area – told the Palestinians to leave so they could slaughter all the Jews. Who, unfortunately for the invaders, decided not to die and fought back.

Then, a piece of truly abject fuckwittery. Instead of that displaced population dispersing around the wrold so that the call for the river to the sea became as politically important at the 15 nutters who march each year for the return of the Sudeten (and I’ve been there and seen them doing so) it was maintained as a seething mass in Gaza.

But, you know, history doesn’t exist for polemecists, does it?

As to what’s really happening here. Hamas fucked about and now it’s finding out. Vile, terrible and awful though it is, that’s what’s happening.

Seem to be forgetting what the Royal Navy is for.

1) Control the seas

2) Put troops ashore exactly where needed then come and take them off again when necessary.

So:

Two amphibious assault ships are to be mothballed under government plans to make up for a severe sailor shortage in what critics have described as “the beginning of the end for the Royal Marines”.

Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, has put forward proposals to retire HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark from active service, The Times can reveal.

Bad, bad, idea.

The military is shunning heat pumps and instead warming soldiers’ homes with cutting-edge electric boilers that cost less to run.

Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials have been working on “Project Nixie” since 2020, The Telegraph can reveal, focusing on finding alternatives to heat pumps for barracks.

Much of the MoD’s domestic building stock is not suitable for heat pumps, which have only been fitted in a “very small proportion” of military homes.

An MoD spokesperson said that the project was launched to find a cheaper alternative to heat pumps, which require comprehensive and expensive work to a property before installation.

And, erm, are they cheaper for everyone? If so, why isn’t that being shouted from the rooftops?

The US government charged a former diplomat who served on the national security council in the 1990s with secretly serving as an agent of Cuba’s government for more than 40 years.

Victor Manuel Rocha was arrested on Friday, following a long-running FBI counterintelligence investigation. The US ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002, Rocha also worked on the national security council from 1994 to 1995. He is charged with committing multiple federal crimes.

Not wholly sure it’s that important. There’s little Cuba would find out this way that they didn;t already know. The US doesn;t like the commies. And?

#Anyway, we’ve the David Sirota piece to look forward to. How “internal diplomacy” or some such on behalf of peace loving socialists is a really good thing to be doing or some such.

On Thursday night, the Royal British Legion said Poppy Day – when the country remembers those who made the ultimate sacrifice – should be a time for remembrance, not political protest.

Pro-Palestine marches have taken place every Saturday for the past three weeks, with the numbers attending steadily growing.

Another rally is due to take place this weekend, with a further mass gathering, organised by six groups including the Stop the War Coalition, planned for Armistice Day on Nov 11.

If they cross one of the bridges (say, Westminster, which they probalby will) they’d be well within range of Bellie, no? Action that day as they used to say.

Egypt has been caught in a dilemma for weeks about opening the Rafah crossing into Gaza: wanting to help the most seriously injured Palestinians leave, but adamantly refusing to contemplate a surge of Palestinian refugees into the Sinai peninsula. “We are prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to ensure that no one encroaches upon our territory,” Egypt’s prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, said earlier this week.
#….#
Sisi said at the Cairo peace summit on 21 October that the world must never condone the use of human suffering to force people into displacement. “Egypt has affirmed, and is reiterating, its vehement rejection of the forced displacement of the Palestinians and their transfer to Egyptian lands in Sinai, as this will mark the last gasp in the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, shatter the dream of an independent Palestinian state, and squander the struggle of the Palestinian people and that of the Arab and Islamic peoples over the course of the Palestinian cause that has endured for 75 years,” he said.

For the same reason they’ve insisted they remain stuck in there this psat 75 years. Because if they did disperse then there wouldn;t be that pressure to destroy Israel. And the 2.5 million people are to remain cooped up in order to maintain that pressure to destroy Israel.

As I’ve pointed out the calls to retake Koenigsburg come from a very few lonely old men after that third or fourth beer. Because that former population is not still stuck in a camp in Pomerania. To be brutal about it the existence of Gaza itself is what keeps the problem festering.