"Will We Reactivate the Draft If We go to War Again?"

 I was a product of the "All Volunteer Army" My Dad was a volunteer in a Draftee Army,  Back then everyone was expected to "Do a Hitch" it was a rite of passage in American Society, this was before Vietnam changed everything.  I personally believed that an All Volunteer Force is superior to a all draftee force, you tend to get a superior soldier, someone that wants to be there, they willingly signed the dotted line.  I had discussed "Fragging" and other issues that were a problem and I was aware of only one incident of "Fragging" in the recent war and that was a soldier that suffered sudden Jihad syndrome in 2003.

     I snagged this off an email, both myself and a friend of mine did deal with some of these soldiers that were brought in by McNamara's project 100,000.  A lot of them got chewed up in the war, but a few of them made it in the NCO ranks and what they didn't have in brains, they had in animal cunning and they were as dumb as a bag of hammers. 

 

If you served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War draft years, did you ever hear of McNamara's Project 100,000? It was expected to beef up the military, but did it really help? Read on and leave your opinion in the comment section.

By Preston Ingalls

We were barely able to source the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq by requiring multiple deployments from individuals and units.  The average deployments per individual were 1.6 for the Army and Marines and 2.1 for the Air Force.  In Vietnam, Army and Air Force deployment was one year while the Marines were thirteen months.  A second or third individual deployment was most often voluntary for career soldiers or Marines.   Also, it was rare to activate a National Guard or Reserve unit for action in Vietnam whereas many National Guard and Reserve units had multiple deployments during Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, during Vietnam, joining the guard was a popular method to avoid the draft; during America's recent wars, the National Guard and Reserve made up nearly half the forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. No doubt we have spread ourselves thin as the largest military in the world.

With the Chinese rapidly expanding their military (according to SIPRI data, China has increased its military expenditure by almost 800 percent since 1992), and a long list of known adversaries like North Korea, Russia, and Iran always threatening action, could we see a time when the US military could outstrip its all-volunteer military and resort to the draft to provide necessary recruits?

Yes and No?  

When running for reelection, Richard Nixon stated he would eliminate the draft to secure more votes from the Baby Boomers. It worked. He was re-elected and the draft went away.

The origins of his actions were the serious resistance to the draft during the Vietnam Conflict.  In fact, of my generation, the Baby Boomers, 9% served during Vietnam while 91% didn’t.  For those who didn’t serve…. someone had to go in their place. The US was staffing numerous bases, forces in South Korea, Europe as part of the Cold War, and, of course, in South Vietnam, with up to half a million at one time requiring rotating the majority out after a year.  This required over 10 million servicemen during the Vietnam Era.  During that Era, 26 million American males were eligible to serve; however, half or 13 million sought and successfully acquired deferments to avoid military service. 

So, if few wanted to serve, what did we do?

In 1967, I enlisted in the US Army, following a tradition that went back to the Civil War in my family. When I was being tested at the AFEES station in Charlotte, a sergeant jumped up on the platform in the large room of over a hundred recruits.   He then asked for a show of hands of all those who could not read or write.  I thought he was kidding…after all, it was the 20^th Century…who couldn’t read or write?  I looked around and was stunned to see about 25 hold up their hands.  Now, half appeared to be Hispanic, but the other half didn’t appear to have English as a second language.  These guys were ushered into a separate room for oral testing. 

Certainly, the Army wouldn't accept illiterates, but they were because they were part of Project 100,000; Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's effort to lower the standards to meet recruitment needs.   The resistance to the draft was creating a major shortfall with conscription and recruitment efforts.  The program would later be referred to as McNamara's Morons. I trained with several in my Basic Training platoon at Ft Bragg. Several were literally called ‘mouth-breathing dimwits.’ This picture shows me in the third week of Basic Training at Fort Bragg in September 1967.

Unlike Forest Gump (who was a fictional part of that same group in the novel and movie), many didn't survive because of their mental challenges…think more like Forrest’s buddy, Bubba, instead of Forest, but both would have been part of Project 100,000.

If you ever watched Stanley Kubrick’s movie, Full Metal Jacket, you would recall the sad portrayal of the dim-witted Private Lawrence (nickname “Private Pyle’) who was brutally tormented by Gunnery Sergeant Hartman because of his inabilities.  He was a classic Project 100,000 recruit.

For those old enough to remember, Gomer Pyle, USMC, was a comedy that portrayed the antics of a slow-witted Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, California.  It played during the mid to late 60s while Vietnam was in force.  Ever wonder why Gomer, as a Marine, was never sent to Vietnam?  The producers found it would be difficult to maintain a comedy in a war and did not want the American public to believe we would ever send mentally challenged men to fight…but we did. 

Here is an extraction from Wikipedia on Project 100,000:

It was a 1960s US military program to enlist persons who were in lower military mental or medical standards.   Project 100,000 (also McNamara's 100,000), also known as McNamara's Folly, McNamara's Morons and McNamara's Misfits, was a controversial program by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to recruit soldiers who would previously have been below military mental or medical standards. Project 100,000 was initiated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in October 1966 to meet the escalating manpower requirements of the American government's involvement in the Vietnam War. According to Hamilton Gregory, author of the book McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War, inductees of the project died at higher rates than other Americans serving in Vietnam and following their service had lower incomes and higher rates of divorce and suicide than their non-veteran counterparts. The project was ended in December 1971 and has been the subject of controversy, especially during the manpower shortages of the Iraq War. McNamara thought he could turn below average soldiers into above average soldiers through use of technology and learning by use of video tapes.

Not all the 350,000 of Project 100,000 participants were mentally handicapped or on the Autism spectrum like Bubba and Forest.  Some were functionally illiterate while some had physical restrictions like childhood asthma, bone spurs, hernias, vision restrictions, as well. In fact, as a 117-pound high school dropout, I might have been classified as one. The minimum weight for Army entry was 128 pounds for my height.  Fortunately, I scored high with my General Technical (GT) at 121 (AFQT Testing) but lack of high school education and the scrawny frame may have qualified me as part of the ‘New Standards Classification’. Somehow, knowing the standards were lowered to accommodate folks like me isn’t appealing, just realistic.

As DOD studies showed, Project 100,000 recruits were five times more likely to die in Vietnam than their counterparts and 3–4 times more likely to suffer from substance abuse, divorce, homelessness, and suicide on their return.

Remember, many of us who served were against the war as well, but as citizens, we still had to honor our nation’s request to serve.  I had a close friend, Mike, a friend since the third grade, who refused to serve and would use the feeble excuse of,” Well I am against this war” to weasel out of his obligation to our nation. It was like saying, “I will wait until a war comes along that I believe in.” Right!  Funny—he never found one that met his requirements.  When faced with a high-risk circumstance, the choice is fight or flight.  Mike’s choice was flight.

I saw most of the war resistance as purely draft resistance, perpetrated by the left-leaning academia and press. It seemed to be a weak argument to not assist the defense of a country (South Vietnam) against the invasion of a one-party totalitarian regime intending subjugation.  But we are a nation that supports war when we, as individuals, don’t have to go. After all, we have been at war 93% of our existence. No other nation has that distinction. 

Remember, 25% of the Greatest Generation had to be drafted to fight in WW2 and that was after our nation was attacked by a foreign power. Previously, despite our nation being assaulted internally and states being invaded and turning on each other; in the North, 86,700 men paid a $300 fee, while 73,600 provided substitutes to get out of the draft during the Civil War. But the most common form of draft evasion was failing to report during the Civil War. More than 161,000 of the 777,000 draftees simply did not show up for service. There were even anti-draft riots in the North where hundreds were killed. We did not have an ‘opt-out’ ability in the South which is why my great-great-grandfather, a migrant dirt farmer from Maine, was conscripted to fight for the Confederacy.  

I recall telling my buddy Mike many of us who went were also unsupportive of the war, in general, BUT we still served because we fought for our nation—not a questionable cause or a foreign country. 

To prove the point the opposition to the war was primarily oriented toward draft resistance, I NEVER recall seeing that same level of resistance or opposition to the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan. Do you recall any major protest marches?  Outside of the one held on February 15, 2003; do you recall any? Of course not.  The reason is simple: it is because we had an all-volunteer military by then. Look at how weak the justification argument was to invade Iraq (WMD—give me a break). Where were the mass riots to protest that event by those same experienced folks who protested our involvement back in the ’60s? Where were they when we invaded Afghanistan to take down their government and stay twenty years? I mean we had some seasoned protesters who knew how to garner public support. My contention is they were no longer personally threatened with conscription, so it didn’t matter, in their eyes. The anti-war movement appears to be what most felt it was; an anti-draft movement every way you look at it.

Our nation does not hold elections or referendums to see how many support the varied military ventures we assume (102 major ones since our founding) …and we shouldn’t. Our nation provides us with all the freedoms we appreciate but often take for granted. I didn’t go to fight for South Vietnam; heck, I didn’t even know geographically where it was.  I went because my nation called for able-bodied men and I was a citizen. I didn’t join to get a college education either. As stated earlier, I was a high school dropout—college was an impossibility at the time. However, I did use my GI Bill later to help toward my two undergraduate and one master’s degree—I guess you can say I saw the light.

We didn’t have a crystal ball with the ability to forecast the inevitable outcome of the Fall of Vietnam back then, so the rationale Mike eloquently fabricated to justify why he didn’t serve his nation in the time of its need replayed over and over in his mind. He would defend it repeatedly and adamantly with statements like…  “I knew we would lose,” or “I was against it and that is why I didn’t want to serve” or “It was a civil war that we had no business in.”  I think that was a cop-out and used to soften his guilt for not serving his nation in need. The fear of loss of life or limb or the inconvenience of disrupting an early career certainly was the answer to “Fight or Flight” decision.

Fortunately, others went in his place as a proxy…unfortunately many are no longer here or have suffered lasting damage for being there instead of Mike. The majority of the 354,000 men in Project 100,000 went to Vietnam, and about half of those in Vietnam were assigned to combat units. Their death toll was appalling. A total of 5,478 of these men died in action. Their fatality rate was several times that of other GIs. DOD estimated around 20,000 were wounded. Some of the wounded were permanently disabled, including an estimated 500 amputees.

Mike would occasionally write me while I was there and say he attended this protest or that one with the feeble “trying to getcha outta there.” I am sure his argument and opposition were persuasive, back in the ’60s and early ’70s.  He sent me a picture once wearing khaki chinos with creases, deck shoes with no socks, long hair loosely flowing over the collar of his plaid shirt while sipping on a glass of Pinot Noir at the coffee shop near the campus.  I still cringe when I see that picture, knowing the day I received it was the height of the monsoon in September 1969 and I was serving as a radio operator for an infantry unit, mired deeply in the mud of local rice patties. 

In his letter, he was complaining about the government’s choices and presented the logic—I will go when there is a war I believe in! But sir, you are no different than the 25% of the Greatest Generation who had to be conscripted and forced to fight to protect our shores. They had ‘sound arguments’ for their cowardness as well.

I could never bring myself to tell Mike I fought for our nation while he made a choice not to, he knew.  Although we have stayed lightly acquainted on Facebook, I no longer respect him enough to befriend him.   

Society ostracized the Vietnam Vet because left-leaning Hollywood portrayed us as off-balanced and drugged-up losers. However, my favorite sad portrayal was Rambo, a disheveled and tormented Vet who used his military skills to wreak havoc on law enforcement in a small Washington State town.  Ironically, the chief protagonist, John Rambo, was played by Sylvester Stallone, who, in real life, fled to Switzerland to avoid the draft.  

We were often called ‘baby killers’ due to the unfortunate massacre of 109 villagers, led by Army Lieutenant William Calley, at My Lai.  As Seymour Hersh reported in his report, My Lai: A Report on The Massacre and Its Aftermath, ‘Lieutenant William Calley Jr. was a reflection of the type of soldier recruited during the Project 100,000 initiative.’ Calley was a community college drop-out and his men said he struggled with reading the map and compass. 

Our nation felt a sense of distress from having failed to fight the war to a successful conclusion. We were embarrassed about the anti-war movement’s sheer scale was a new experience to the US. We had a sense of shared guilt for deserting our allies, the South Vietnamese, in their time of need, while Congress voted against further financial aid, leaving them to fend for themselves without funds. The Vietnam Vet, or Shunned Warriors, was an embarrassing reminder of an experience we wanted to put behind us, an unpleasant period.  Our image, as a nation, was tarnished by our inability to save a small Southeast Asian nation from the perils of Communism. I believe the Vietnam Vet was an icon of our collective guilt.

I only started wearing my Vet cap in the last year, when I retired, to signal other Vets in my community for the customary “Welcome Home Bro” knuckle bump. The comment ‘welcome home’ is our make-up effort to receive what most of us never did—respect and acknowledgment from those who sent us so they wouldn’t have to go.

According to the Army Times, only 136,000 out of 33 million would join today.  The DOD says only 29% of the 33 million would be eligible for the draft if needed, which is a much smaller pool than in the 60s.  The US has a strong legacy of avoiding military service. Unfortunately, a draft today would have similar dismal outcomes.   But lowering the standards and recreating a new Project 100,000 is not a real alternative.

We need to let those politicians, who never served, know we need to stay within the parameters of current staffing levels. Let your sense of dread prevent a sense of distress, so, no wars can be allowed. 

+Preston Ingalls is a retired consulting firm CEO and served as an RTO and then battalion TOC radio operator for the 1/50^th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, assigned to the 173^rd Airborne Brigade and then First Field Force-Task Force South a part of his five-year Army service.  He has authored three books and has written over 90 magazine articles and currently serves as a feature writer for his local newspaper.

 

3 dangerous weapons from the Ancient World

 I shamelessly clipped this from an article I ran across in my email.  I have heard of these studying ancient history and tactics, and from I have read, the formula for "Greek Fire" has been lost to the mist of time.  They can make the close approximation for it but the exact stuff has been forgotten. Like when Rome fell, and the dark ages hit, a lot of knowledge was lost.

                           "Greek Fire being deployed against the enemies of  Eastern Rome"

Tanks and rifles sure are scary and lethal, so is mustard or chlorine gas. When it comes to creating weapons to annihilate adversaries, we sure can count on how the ancient people effectively forged some of the most formidable and fearsome weapons they had used. Some of them even became the foundation of how our munitions and equipment were developed. With that, here are some of history’s feared and hottest weapons during their time.

                                                                                           Greek Fire

Grenades filled with liquid fire and caltrops from the fortress of Chania 10th and 12th centuries.

Don’t you just hate it when you accidentally burn yourself by touching hot surfaces? Then you’ll despise the incendiary weapon used by the Eastern Roman Empire in ca. 672. Called the Greek fire, this flame-throwing weapon was what the Byzantine navy typically used during naval battles to burn down enemy ships and effectively provided them with advantages that resulted in military victories. What was truly remarkable about this Greek fire was that it could be ignited even in contact with water, and the victims would continue to burn even while on water.

The Byzantines, later on, developed this weapon by using pressurized nozzles to project the liquid onto the enemy ships, much more like an ancient version of our flamethrower. The formula for this formidable weapon was unsurprisingly a closely guarded state secret, although there were speculations and debate on what it was. The proposal included a mixture of pine resin, naphtha, quicklime, calcium phosphide, sulfur, and or niter.

Greek fire was no doubt a concoction of destruction, but that did not make the Byzantine navy untouchable. Soon, the Muslim navies found ways to defend themselves from it, either by staying out and away from its effective range or by shielding themselves with felt or hides soaked in vinegar.

                                                                        The Man Catcher

The man catcher. (Royal Armoury,

What’s left to do when your castle was in the middle of being besieged by horse-riding enemy forces? For the people of 18th century Europe, they could snare these attackers by catching them like fishes while they were on their horses. The weapon used was the man catcher, also known as catchpole, which consisted of a pole that was mounted with a two-pronged head. The prongs were both semi-circular in shape and had a spring-loaded “door” on the front that allowed the ring to pass around a man-sized cylinder and the victim’s head trapped. And so they would use this man catcher to fish a person from horseback and then drag him to the ground where he could be pinned to either be turned into a prisoner or helplessly killed. On some occasions, it was also used to pin down and contain violent prisoners.

Other countries like Japan also had their own version called sodegarami, tsukubo, and sasumata that were used during law enforcement in Edo-era. The difference was that the sasumata, for instance, had its forked head used to trap down the victim’s neck, legs, arms, or joints.

                                                                     Morning Star

Morning star at the torture museum in Freiburg im Breisgau.

A popular one, the morning star, was like the more evil brother of the mace. Its design was crude and simple: a stick made of either metal or wood topped with a metal ball laced with spikes and blades. This weapon became popularly used by soldiers in the 14th century, particularly in Germany, where it was popularly called Morgenstern. It was used typically by aiming at the heads and faces of foes, which didn’t sound much, but imagine being hit with a heavy ball of spikes on the nose and on your whole face. It could also be used to take enemies down by aiming it at the legs and knees instead. It is sometimes confused with mace, but the main differentiating factor between the two was that the spikes of the morning star, at most, had flanges or small knobs.

Traditionally, it was used by cavalry and infantry units, with the horsemen being given a version that had a shorter shaft. All in all, there were three types of this weapon that varied in terms of workmanship quality. The first one was well-crafted for military use and was given to professional soldiers. The second was simpler and was hand-cut by peasant militiamen, and the spikes were sometimes made from nails. The third was short shafted and made of metal and ornamented with gold and silver for decorative purposes.

 

What's in a Name: the Problem with "Warfighter"

 I returned from my adventures in another state, but I caught "The Crud", I have absolutely no energy, and no appetite.  Still had a blast and am planning on going again next year.  I will blog about it in a day or two.

      I shamelessly cribbed this from "Angry Staff Officer", I have used his material before on my blog, my friend Mack twigged me on to him years ago.

Back in the late 1990s, when the Army was being all that it could be, the Army began leaning into the concept that soldiers should think of themselves as “warriors” in order to increase the fighting spirit of the force. I’ve already said my rant, er, I mean, my piece on this, which you can find here. But that same thought process of the time gave rise to another monstrosity: warfighter.

Now, not only is this an assault on the English language in general – “I’m not a teacher, I’m a smartsgiver” – it is also patently and dangerously misleading. Why? Because it assumes that the sole role of the Army – and the military in general – is to only fight wars. The Army has gone one step further and made sure that no one escape just what the Army’s mission is, by giving itself its own mission: “To deploy, fight and win our nation’s wars by providing ready, prompt and sustained land dominance by Army forces across the full spectrum of conflict as part of the joint force.” Pretty convenient when you get to issue your own mission statement, huh?

Now, you might be saying, “What’s the big deal? Shouldn’t we always want the Army to think about winning wars?” Sure, yes, absolutely. Only, see, the problem is, the Army spends most of its time not fighting actual wars. Throughout the history of the Army’s conflicts, “war” – the political act of nations trying to impose their will on each other via violence – takes a very back seat role. Conflict, yes. There’s plenty of that. Irregular, always messy, few clearly defined rules, shifting objectives, politically fraught, sometimes ethnically or racially charged, fought with either little fanfare or with intense media interest. These conflicts have happened anywhere from North America to Africa, from the Pacific to the Middle East, from Siberia to Latin America.

There are also plenty of the Army’s missions that have nothing whatsoever to do with conflict: since 1787, the Army has engaged in public relief missions, infrastructure construction, labor disputes, management of federal lands or national parks, natural disaster relief, or dealing with public unrest. All told, these types of combat missions and non-combat missions make up the majority of what the U.S. Army does.

So, why does this happen? Why does the Army mostly do things that don’t sound like killing people and breaking stuff? Because as much as the AGSU-wearing folks in the five-sided puzzle palace would like you to believe that the Army is actually the master of its fate and the captain of its soul, it is not. The Army receives its missions from the executive branch of the U.S. and its funding from the legislative branch. So while the Army would love to focus on nothing but fighting conventional wars, sometimes the political will of the nation requires it to do something else. Most of the time, the nation’s political and public wills are in unison. Oftentimes, however, the political will diverges from the public will and the Army can find itself fighting a confusing conflict without the support of the people it serves. Obviously, this is not something the Army is excited about.

And so, we turn to the concept of the warfighter. This concept that says that our nation’s military force will only be used for achieving overwhelming military superiority over our nation’s enemies. This concept is troubling for two main reasons.

One, that we have decided as an article of faith that establishing military dominance wins wars. This is all the more amazing since this is the Army that can’t stop quoting Clausewitz’s dictum about war as a continuation of politics. Somewhere along the way, we stopped actually thinking about what that meant. We began to believe that war and politics could be separated from each other, as if they did not go hand-in-hand.

The consequence of this has been to separate the political from the military ends in conflict. John Shy and Thomas Collier put it best in their chapter on “Revolutionary War since 1945” in Makers of Modern Strategy, when talking about the U.S. military’s response to Vietnam: “The senior American military commanders never took seriously the idea that the political effort, presumably going on behind the security screen provided by large-scale combat operations, should have equal or greater priority.” ​(page 856)

This sort of assumption about combat dominance leading to victory also has played a hand in the overall tactical focus of the modern-day U.S. Army. Nearly all leaders with combat experience have had it only at the tactical level rather than the operational or strategic, where things other than firepower dominance come into play. This, in turn, leads to a generation of leaders who only know how to apply tactical solutions to strategic problems.

The second reason that the concept of a “warfighter” is troubling goes back my first point surrounding the Army’s missions. If our leaders only expect to be warfighters, what happens when they’re presented with a situation short of war? And as a reminder, that has been the vast majority of the Army’s experience since the nation was founded. Are we properly building leaders who are capable of handling a diverse range of tactical, operational, and strategic problems if we maintain a myopic focus on the concept of a warfighter?

While it is true that winning wars against the nation’s existential threats is a no-fail mission, failing in other conflicts can severely damage the military’s credibility. Building generations of leaders who only see their role as “managers of violence” does little to help the U.S. navigate the complex waters of geopolitics in the 21st century.

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Hitting the Road

 I am grabbing a flight out of town and will be back in a few days, 

Will post tonight

Boeing and Airbus

 I snagged this from my work email from a 3rd party source.  I am now on vacation, and I don't return to work until next week.

 

 

The fates of Airbus and Boeing could not have diverged more sharply over the past three years. Airbus has a winning product and a commanding lead in the single-aisle segment and a strong A350 widebody program. Boeing is reeling from the multiyear hangover of the 737 MAX grounding, a lengthy pause in 787 deliveries driven by supplier quality issues, production issues with the KC-46 tanker and extensive certification delays to the 777X program. But Boeing’s situation is not as dire as it may appear. A closer look at the fundamentals of the OEMs’ respective product offerings and financial positions reveals a more optimistic picture for Boeing.

Any analysis of Boeing and Airbus should start with the dichotomy between the 737 MAX and the A320neo. The A320neo was introduced in 2010 to offer customers significant fuel savings with a fraction of the nonrecurring expense of a clean-sheet program. Boeing followed with the 737 MAX, and it has been playing catch-up ever since.

Comparing the performance of the model variants, the MAX 8 is a strong performer, and Boeing maintains a slight market-share lead over the A320neo in this size category. Boeing’s struggles have primarily been in the larger single-aisle segment, where the A321neo has captured most of the market. The A321neo outperforms the 737 MAX 9 in both passenger count and range. Boeing’s forthcoming 737 MAX 10 addresses the passenger count gap, but it is still at a range disadvantage.

The prevailing wisdom is that continued route fragmentation will provide a tailwind for the longer-range A321 and A321XLR. However, in a post-COVID-19 airline environment, the higher cost per available seat mile of long-haul narrowbodies compared to widebodies will prevent a wholesale shift toward narrowbodies for medium-haul travel. The range of the MAX 10 is sufficient for most operators, and the MAX is well positioned for the post-pandemic demand environment.

The 737 MAX has endured three terrible years with the lengthy grounding, the impact of COVID-19 and the slow production ramp-up. Yet through this crisis, it has surprisingly maintained more than a 44% share of the backlog, compared to 56% for the A320neo family excluding ASC606 accounting rule adjustments (a share that has increased since 2015). While we should be careful not to extrapolate Boeing’s 2021 sales success, Boeing is gaining some momentum. Airlines and lessors had every incentive to cancel MAX orders, and indeed Boeing has been hit with thousands of order cancellations since 2019. While Boeing will never reach market-share parity with the A320neo, continued momentum will allow it to remain within a 45-55 or 40-60 range and justify continued rate increases (see chart).

 

 

 

Some fear that Airbus will leverage higher rates to extract concessions from suppliers and produce aircraft at a lower price. This could lead to a market-share “death spiral” for the 737 MAX. However, Airbus’ rate increases are constrained by the supply chain rather than by customer demand. Many suppliers have expressed skepticism about the ability of the supply chain to raise rates to 65 per month by mid-2023. These constraints give suppliers some leverage to resist price decreases and keep Airbus from fully realizing these savings.

In fact, Boeing has historically been significantly better at generating cash than its rival. In 2018, the last year unaffected by either the 737 MAX grounding or COVID-19-induced delivery issues, Boeing generated $13.5 billion in free cash flow. In contrast, Airbus has generated less than $4 billion in free cash flow in its best years (2019 and 2021). While the dynamic has certainly changed in the last few years, Boeing can quickly generate positive cash flow as MAX and 787 deliveries resume.

Turning to widebodies, although demand has been severely affected due to COVID-19, Boeing maintains a market-share lead, with 59% of the backlog. The extended 787 delivery pause is concerning, but when deliveries resume this year, Boeing’s results should receive a boost. Despite lower production rates, the consolidation of the production line in North Charleston, South Carolina, should allow Boeing to avoid too great a margin hit.

While Boeing still has existential questions to answer, including when to launch a clean-sheet program, fears of a “death spiral” are overblown. Boeing needs to work to regain the trust of suppliers, customers, employees and the flying public while executing on steady rate increases and meeting its commitments. This will be difficult, but there are plenty of reasons for optimism about Boeing in the years ahead.

 

Been Super Busy..

 I'm sorry y'all, I have been super busy at work, they have been pouring the coals at work and I have been working massive amounts of overtime as a chemtrail Technician to keep my employers planes flying. I work, come home, take a shower, eat then go to bed, rinse and repeat.

 I will post in a couple of days, then I will be going out of town to visit friends in another state.

Three Legendary American Battleships

 I shamelessly snagged this from "SOFREP"  I have been working the Overtime and my off time is limited compared to normal.

Battleships were not just some boats amidst the vast ocean. During conflicts, they were the stronghold of the soldiers who were fighting alongside and onboard these ships.

In the United States, particularly in the US Navy, the construction of its first-ever battleship happened in 1892 with the making of USS Texas, although the first battleship under that designation was the USS Indiana. By the 20th century, the US Navy made the United States the world’s fifth strongest power at sea which rose from its 12th rank in 1870. Also, no American battleship has been lost at sea, although there were four that sank during the Pearl Harbor attack. The last decommissioned battleship for the US Navy was in 1992. With that, let’s have a look at some of the legendary ships that the US built:

The USS Texas

USS Texas, photochrom print c. 1898 (Wikipedia)

As mentioned above, the USS Texas was the first battleship of the United States, just before the USS Maine. In the Spring of 1898, the USS Maine (ACR-1) was destroyed by an explosion after losing a war in Havana Harbor. The United States, at that moment, declared war on Spain. USS Texas was one of the ships sent against the Spanish in the Atlantic Ocean. Together with one other ship, Texas destroyed the Spanish fort located at Cayo del Tore in a span of 75 minutes. The Spanish ships tried to run the American blockade, but Texas worked and attacked four of their ships simultaneously, inflicting heavy damages on each of them and giving them no choice but to run on the ground. After that, USS Texas also assisted against the rest of the Spanish fleet. This helped towards the end of the war.

USS Iowa (BB-61) in WWII, Korean War, and the Persian Gulf War

The USS Iowa entered the scene of World War II in 1943 when she carried President Franklin Roosevelt across the Atlantic to North Algeria to attend a conference with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union. This battleship class comprising Iowa, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Missouri were “Post Treaty” ships made after the restrictions of the Washington Naval Conference treaty were discarded when Japan attacked the U.S. in December 1942.  These were the fastest battleships ever built and arguably the most lethal in terms of their armaments and targeting systems.  The record for the biggest battleships ever built belongs to the Japanese, who built the Yamato and Musashi in secret and in violation of the treaty terms. Size is not everything and if you want to read how the Iowa class ships probably would have trounced the Yamato class battleships in a fight, you can read that here.

USS Iowa 1952. (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

During the Korean War, Iowa was decommissioned into the US Navy reserve fleets known as the “mothball fleet” after becoming involved in raids conducted on the North Korean coast. She was reactivated in 1984 and operated in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets as part of the 600-ship Navy plan.

In the Gulf war, USS Iowa was part of Operation Earnest Will. She set sail across the Suez Canal and towards the Persian Gulf, which was one of the battlefields of the Gulf War. She carried a number of Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles and escorted oil tankers of Kuwaiti towards the international waters.

She was decommissioned in 1990 and is now a museum ship that can be visited in Los Angeles, California.  It is a testament to the utility and quality of this battleship class that they enjoyed a service lifespan of almost half a century.

USS Jersey (BB-16) The Original

The USS New Jersey (BB-16) in camouflage coat. (DoD/Navy Dept. (War Dept.), Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

USS Jersey (B-16) was part of the Second Occupation of Cuba, as well as the Jamestown Exposition in 1907. At the end of 1907, she joined the Great White Fleet and sailed more than 50,000 miles around the world in 1909. She then spent the next five years training officers in gunnery. In 1914, USS Jersey took part in the occupation of Veracruz within the gates of the Mexican Revolution. In World War I, she was considered obsolete and unsuited to take on more modern battleships and was utilized as a training ship and then transported American soldiers back when the war ceased. USS Jersey was decommissioned in 1920.

She was then slated to be used as a target in aerial bombing practice, which was a very new thing.  Aircraft dropped a variety of bombs on her ranging from 600 lbs up to 2,000 lbs.  The battleship considered too old for combat surprised everyone when she absorbed four 600 lb bombs, a hit from a 1,000 lb bomb, and numerous near misses to crack her hull before she finally sank.

 

Monday Music "Kryptonite" By 3 Doors Down

 This was supposed to drop on Monday, but somehow I got the days mixed on my scheduler thingie so instead of "Monday Music" we have "Tuesday Music".   Eh it happens.   I heard this song on my Sirius/XM on another channel and I figured it would be a good candidate for a "Monday Music Bugaloo Theme", basically that we are Kryptonite to the evils of an overbearing state kinda bringing down superman, but in this case the "SuperState".

           Saw this meme and *rescued it from farcebook*, why? because I am a humanitarian, that's why.

I am continuing my string of "bugaloo" songs.  This discussion was started in the "Monster Hunter Nation, Hunters Unite", back in November of 2019? it is a Facebook group with enthusiast of the ILOH "International Lord of Hate" A.K.A Larry Correia.  We were talking about what song would we use if we looked out of our window or glanced at our security camera and saw this.....

One of the alphabet bois lining up to take down your house...What would be your "Valhalla" song and you would set it up to play as you load up magazines set up the Tannerite Rover, turn on the water irrigation system and fill it with gasoline instead of water and prepare yourself.

 I figured it would scar the alphabet boys if they come busting in and hearing a song about people having a good time and standing up for themselves and having the best music from the best decade and  playing  it Loud will scar the Alphabet Boi's as they force the stack through the door, because they will be exposed to good music for the first time unlike the crap they listen to now sipping their soi latte's and comparing notes on the latest soyburger recipes and who wears the best manbuns in the team.

 

"Kryptonite" is the debut single of American rock band 3 Doors Down. It was originally released as a demo for local play by 97.9 WCPR-FM in Biloxi, Mississippi, then was picked up by several radio stations during November and December 1999  and was officially serviced to radio on January 18, 2000. The song first charted on the US Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, reaching number one for nine weeks, then hit number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart for 11 weeks. It also reached number one on the Mainstream Top 40 chart for five non-consecutive weeks, number four on the Adult Top 40 chart, and number three on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's highest-charting single on the listing.  

The song was written by the band's vocalist and drummer, Brad Arnold, in a mathematics class when he was fifteen and was one of the first songs he ever wrote.

About the song's meaning, Arnold has said:

"That song seems like it's really just kind of like asking a question. Its question is kind of a strange one. It's not just asking, "If I fall down, will you be there for me?", because it's easy to be there for someone when they're down. But it's not always easy to be there for somebody when they're doing good. And that's the question it's asking. It's like, "If I go crazy, will you still call me Superman?" It's asking, "If I'm down, will you still be there for me?" but at the same time, "If I'm alive and well, will you be there holding my hand?" That's kind of asking, "If I'm doing good, will you be there for me? Will you not be jealous of me?" That's the basic question that song's asking, and maybe throughout the years of singing that song, I might have come up with more meanings for it than it actually might have originally had."

The band gave their demo tape to local Mississippi radio station WCPR-FM who started playing the EP version of "Kryptonite" and it became the No. 1 requested song on the station for over 15 weeks.^[5] The station's program director sent the song to manager Phin Daly who in turn showed it to Bill McGathy, his employer at In De Goot Entertainment. The band was booked in New York to perform a showcase at the CBGB music club. Daly told HitQuarters: "Once they got on stage and started playing it was apparent the magic was in the music. So we moved to sign them."

 

 

 

Directed by Dean Karr and filmed in March, the music video presents an old man who was a big-time action hero on 1950s TV. The scene cuts between the band hanging around on the roof of the apartments where the old man lives, spying on a man harassing a woman. When the man drags her away, the old man dons his superhero suit and follows. In between shots of the old hero chasing the bad guy and failing to protect himself against a group of goths, the band is shown playing in a club (the Cowboy Palace Saloon in LA) with several other elderly people dressed as caricatures of comic villains. Several of these people are seen riding a mechanical bull during the final chorus. The video comes to a close when the old man dives through the skylight and catches the bad guy off guard, possibly knocking him out by falling on top of him. The video ends with the old man smiling, giving a thumbs up to the camera, having successfully completed his mission. 

 

We need to quit making ethanol

 

 I had snagged this off "SSG" the next generation Think Tank, I thing converting corn to fuel was an idiotic idea anyway, but the corn lobby loves it because of the huge subsidies they get from the government.  Ethanol mixed fuel is crap for engines, it tends to foul the vehicles and plays havoc with the fuel systems of the vehicles, but if you say anything bad, then you are against our energy independence, my truck runs so much better on straight gas.  Now there is the threat of food shortages to the Russians trying to add the "Breadbasket" A.K.A to Mother Russia and food production is disrupted there because of that country fighting for her existence.

 

The war in Ukraine means that fields are not getting planted, and Ukraine supplies much of the world’s grains. According to Eric Hansotia, the CEO of Agco, approximately 13% of the world’s total calories —  not just grains — are offline this year because of the war. That raises the specter of famine.

We are able to take steps to buffer global food supplies against this risk, most notably suspending corn-based ethanol production. These steps need to be taken now, so that the crops being planted are secured to global food supplies instead of energy production. The amount of corn that we devote to ethanol production is huge: up to 25% of American corn cropland produces crops for ethanol use. By shifting that corn to food production instead, we could reduce the amount of starvation that is likely to occur from the war. In addition to saving many lives, this policy would also reduce Russia’s capacity to use the stoppage of food production in Ukraine as a lever for obtaining its will.

This proposal will be unpopular with the present administration because it runs counter to their Green agenda. Nevertheless, they should adopt the policy anyway for moral reasons. A similar devotion to a political agenda worsened the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s: because the ruling British government was wedded to a Free Trade agenda, they shipped thousands of tons of grain out of Ireland while the people starved. Given the scale of the famine, there is debate about whether the grain would have been sufficient to completely prevent starvation in Ireland during that period. Nevertheless, it is beyond question that the grain could have buffered the harm.

We are in the same situation today. This proposal will have some second order effects, such as potentially further increasing gasoline prices as part of the fuel production — most American gas is 10% ethanol — will no longer be available, and the missing volume of ethanol would have to be supplemented with extra gasoline instead. Swallowing increased gasoline production, and therefore oil production, would be a second bitter pill for the administration’s Green agenda.

Yet the alternative is to accept potentially widespread starvation, especially in Africa and the Middle East, in order to pursue a favored political agenda at home. The British government of the late 1840s is still held in infamy for its decisions during the potato famine. The Biden administration should make the moral and wise choice, with support from Congress.

Russia may resort to Cannibalization to keep her fleet flying.

 Another report that popped in my email discussing the aviation situation and the ongoing Russia/Ukraine conflict.

With Russia blocked from receiving spare parts from the West, continued operations of its airline fleets will soon require cannibalization of parts from other aircraft.

Credit: Joe Pries

Earlier this month brought news of a second ex-Copa Boeing 737NG acquired for teardown by Aventure Aviation.

The aircraft is already undergoing teardown in Roswell, New Mexico, with Aventure noting that it was talking to other aircraft owners about performing similar work on their idle aircraft, and adding that “talks have increased due to the amount of early lease returns from Russia and conflict zones.”

However, the pictures of the 22-year-old, part-dismantled 737NG may also stir unease among lessors with much newer aircraft still in Russia.

This is due to growing concern that Russian airlines will not cooperate with requests to repossess the aircraft following the lease terminations required by sanctions on Russia.

And with Russia also blocked from receiving spare parts from the West, continued operations of its airline fleets will soon require cannibalization of parts from other aircraft.

As bad as that would be, an even worse possibility is that Russia orders its state-owned airlines to confiscate their leased aircraft. In both cases, lessors should be protected from damage to, or loss of aircraft by war insurance policies, but, even so, an almighty tussle with their insurers appears likely if timely repossession cannot be achieved.

Risk analyst Russell Group estimates that 589 Western-built aircraft with an aircraft market value of $13 billion (£9 billion) are currently on the ground in Russian airports. While the number linked to U.S. and European lessors is less than that, the potential market value of claims would still dwarf any previous event, including claims linked to the 9/11 attacks.

“There is a large concern in the aviation war market at the moment; clients are all trying to understand the number and value of planes on the ground in Russia, as there are concerns that these aircraft could be confiscated by the Russian government,” said Suki Basi, Russell Group’s managing director.

One early observation is that around 76% of the Russian fleet is leased with foreign lessors, according to Aviation Week Network’s Fleet Discovery data, and the prospects for repossessing any significant portion of these approximately 600 aircraft are essentially nil. The Russian government, which oversees 11 time zones, can’t afford for its aviation network to collapse, so it is on a path to effectively nationalize the fleet by re-registering aircraft in the country. With Russian airlines also suspending international flights, the window to seize aircraft while they are abroad has closed.

On top of this, western OEMs have cut off technical support and spare parts sales to Russian operators. With no spares or technical support, lapsed insurance coverage and airworthiness certificates being revoked by regulators outside of Russia, this must mean that the Russian fleet has essentially become very expensive paperweights, right?

Not quite. While these sanctions will surely squeeze Russian operators, it will not entirely stop these aircraft from flying all together—the faucet is not completely off and will still drip. Russia has several tools at its disposal to weather these aviation sanctions, at least for a limited period.

Russia’s first likely move is to burn through any inventory available in-country and potentially cannibalize its own fleet. With Russia’s economy expected to contract around 10% this year and the suspension of international flights, air travel demand in Russia will correspondingly suffer, meaning there are already excess aircraft relative to needs. This leaves room to park aircraft and harvest them as required, which is not dissimilar to what the industry witnessed at the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, this can’t last forever as a skeleton fleet eventually emerges, at which point Russia will begin relying on its next tool.

In contrast with other countries that have faced aviation sanctions, Russia has a sizeable domestic aerospace industry and talent pool to leverage. In 2018, AeroDynamic Advisory estimated that Russia has the sixth-largest aerospace industry with approximately $27 billion in output, or around 3% of the global total. Employment is on the order of hundreds of thousands between the factories, design bureaus and other supporting functions.

Say what you will about the commercial success of programs like Ilyushin, Tupolev, Irkut and Sukhoi—the important point is that there is a history of designing and building aircraft, engines and components. The engineering base will suddenly have nothing to do with dismal export prospects and can thus focus its efforts on reverse engineering and establishing alternative sources of supply. Some aircraft equipment, especially those more reliant on software or highly proprietary processes, will of course be difficult or impossible to reverse engineer. However, some electro-mechanical products, consumables/expendables and non-flight critical items could be vulnerable.

The difficulty will also likely vary by aircraft generation. Developing alternative solutions for a new generation Boeing 787 or Airbus A350 will be far harder than an aircraft program that has been around for decades, such as the A320ceo or 737NG.

Russia’s third option is to employ the tools used by another country subject to sanctions—Iran. Civil aviation in Iran has been subject to sanctions ever since the 1979 hostage crisis, and the sanctions regime expanded in 2007. Despite these restrictions, Iranian operators were able to continue operating aging Airbus, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Fokker jets with an average age of around 23 years and no deterioration in their safety record, according to The Washington Institute. Iranian operators have survived using intermediaries and front companies to procure spare parts—the aerospace black market so to speak. It is difficult and expensive, but Iran has nevertheless shown that it is possible to maintain some semblance of a civil aviation network.  

None of these options are particularly easy, and even if Russia is successful, the active fleet will be a shell of its pre-invasion self. The world is also more united in sanctions against Russia compared to Iran, and the fleet in Russia is far larger, so perhaps preventing the development of an aerospace black market is easier this time around.

Regardless of what tactics Russia employs to keep its fleet flying, there is a daunting implication to consider: If relations do normalize and lessors gain access to their assets again, records could be a mess. This means longer periods to prove that sufficient maintenance was completed and correct any deficiencies before remarketing the assets. This assumes, of course, that these aircraft ever re-emerge from the new iron curtain at all

 

 

The Russian will be trying to keep their commercial airframes "Airworthy" despite the sanctions.

 I have blogged before the saga about the commercial airplanes that the Russians have leased from outside Russia but will not pay for and the sanctions and restrictions will start cutting off the spare part supply to keep those airframes "Airworthy".  They are going to try to reverse engineer what they need, and it is possible, remember they reverse engineered a B29  from WWII and they called it a "TU-4", and it flew during a "May Day" parade stunning the American observers.  The plane was a "Hero" project under the direct orders of Joseph Stalin.  So the Russians do have the capabilities to reverse engineer so this will be interesting.

Russian airlines are looking for ways to continue airworthiness of their foreign-made aircraft now that access to European spare parts and MRO services has closed due to the EU sanctions. 

Speaking at the MRO Russia 2022 conference held in Moscow March 10, Igor Poddubny, technical director of Russia’s Ural Airlines, said the carrier had already found other “civilized” sources for spare parts on the global market. “I mean that consumables and spare parts that will be offered to us, [which] meet both the European and Russian airworthiness standards,” he explained.

The EU decided to ban the supplies of aircraft space parts and technical services to the Russian companies starting March 28 in response to the conflict in Ukraine. 

Ural Airlines is Russia’s fifth largest carrier; it operates 54 Airbus A320 family aircraft including a dozen A320neo and A321neo types. The airline has its own maintenance center, certified under EASA, Bermuda and Turkish aviation authorities, in its home airport of Yekaterinburg.

Poddubny recalled that during the first day of the Russian invasion, the airline faced a cyberattack that cut it from the Swiss-AS AMOS aviation maintenance management system. It took five days to restore the access, while the airline continued its maintenance activities using paper-based documentation. The airline has already taken into account all its material, human, document and information resources to keep its aircraft flying despite the current difficulties. “The Ural Airlines’ fleet can fly safely, without grounding or cannibalization, for two to three months,” Poddubny said. 

Vladmir Burtzev, the head of TS Technik, an MRO subsidiary of Russia’s Utair airline, agreed that local carriers had up to four months to settle the problem with spare parts supplies. The Russian Transport Ministry has recently suggested prolonging the validity of current maintenance documentation until September and allowing locally certified MRO providers to maintain foreign-made aircraft without OEM support. 

According to Marat Tereshchenko, deputy head of Russia’s largest MRO provider S7 Technics, this is possible as the Russian operational and maintenance standards had already been harmonized with EASA and BAA requirements. “We have no difference in approach [to maintenance of foreign-made aircraft],” Tereshchenko said.

Russian carriers operate almost 900 Western-made commercial aircraft, most of which are registered in Bermuda and operate in Russia under the Chicago Convention Article 83 bis. The Russian media cited sources saying that the government discussed various options to keep them operating inside the country despite the sanctions. However, the final decision has not been made yet, Burtzev said. The shortage of spare parts is likely to affect Russian-made Superjet regional jets too as the type has many foreign-made subsystems including avionics and engines. 

Almost all local operators are looking to ensure spare part supplies from the third countries, confirmed Ignatiy Vakorin, head of maintenance at another Russian MRO provider SkyTechnics. Vakorin hopes that most of the needed consumables can be produced in Russia while some imported spare parts can be reverse-engineered by the local industry.