Military Ring Info

You know I recently posted an article about how a crew of Somali pirates actually tried to jack a US Navy warship. This is the second time that this type of event has happened tha I know about. I talked about how boneheaded that these pirates were but now I’m all confused.

A fereral judge threw out the piracy charges but allowed the other chagres to stand. Now excuse me if maybe I’m the boneheaded one here but let me put it to you like I understand it in my simple military mind. They are called pirates because they commit acts of piracy, right? If they jacked cars they would be called carjackers, right? If they robbed banks you would call them bank robbers, right?

When you sneak up on a ship at night and then shoot it during the day what do you call that? I thought that it was piracy. I mean they weren’t playing paintball. They were actually shooting the ship with real bullets. If they didn’t recognize it as a warship loaded down with our navy ring customers then that’s their problem. I guess that since they couldn’t take it over they were not committing an act of piracy according to the judge. If it had been a merchant ship they would have so whats the difference?

The ones who survived the attack on the ship got to go sit and chill out in a comfortable American jail, play spades all day, eat hot meals, and take hot showers. At the end of the day they may get to go back and rob some more people. If they happen to get caught they get another vacation here in the US compliments of the US taxpayers.

Meanwhile I get to work like a dog, hope that I can pay my water bill this month, and call pirates boneheads who make more money than I do. I’m not quite sure who is the bonehead in this case. It seems to me that I’m the wrong profession.

The Department of Defense has released their report on China’s military modernization. The report states the obvious and I’m sure that the version that we get to see is the sanitized version. It doesn’t really tell much that we don’t already know but it does put some things in perspective.

This is a summary of the report, but let me emphasize it’s in my own words and you all know that the military ring man doesn’t talk much at all like ordinary people. The bottom line is that China’s aim is naval domination and much of its buildup is done with the purpose of intimidating Taiwan and the other countries in the region.

Many of it’s new naval weapons are designed to keep our aircraft carrier ring customers and their carriers at bay. They know that they can’t match the carrier fleet of the US in a force on force engagement so they have concentrated on precision weapons which can take out our carriers at long range. They could effectively inhibit our carrier movement with their long range missiles thus hindering the amount of help that we would be able to provide in the region.

They know that they can’t revamp every piece of equipment in their arsenal so they are revamping the weapons systems which have proven to be dependable in the past. The new technology that they are acquiring is designed to exploit the weaknesses of the proven technology that we have on hand.

Now grasshopper think about what I have just written. The Chinese are countering US technology so in my mind they consider us to be their adversary. Is that the way it looks to you too?

The US is going on record as opposing the use of military force in the South China Sea. There are many nations there who contest the use of much of the territory. Since China claims the entire region for itself you can see that herein is the problem. None of the other countries have the cahunas to challenge the Chinese so what the US is really saying is China play fair. You can’t just go in and take what you want.

The Chinese understand force. They don’t give a flip about diplomacy. You would get better results if you accidentally blew several of their warships out of the water and then blamed it on a computer error. They are aggressive in their actions now so I really hate to see what they become when they really get their military up to snuff.

They want to get to the point where they can easily neutralize our navy ring customers who may have to operate in that area in case of a conflict.

The US kept their allegations vanilla by not taking sides in the situation (officially) I say that we will get nowhere by cow towing to the Chinese. Forget them. Who died and made them king?

Our top man in Afghanistan has conceded that we will need to come to some sort of peace agreement with the Taliban before we can end the war. He is not saying anything here that he has not said in the past but the best time to make this announcement is now.

Part of the strategy of the troop surge was to let our custom military ring customers put a fair amount of heat on the backsides of the insurgents to make them realize that they don’t want to fight forever. Once this was accomplished the next step was to open the door for negotiations to end the war. I believe that negotiations have been ongoing for a while between President Karzai and some factions of the Taliban.

According to Petraeus there are some factions of the Taliban who are ready to lay down their arms and pledge alleigance to the new government. it is good that we are fracturing the Taliban from within as well as bombing them.

We have probably gotten farther along in this endeaver than the world realizes. We can allow the Taliban to save face by negotiating with them for victory but they need to have no doubt in their minds that we have the power and the resolve to beat them.

The US and South Korea are conducting another joint exercise in the wake of the North Korean sinking of the Cheonan. The North Koreans are pooping off at the mouth as usual but they have sense enough to know how far to go.

This exercise is an annual exercise called Ulchi Freedom Guardian. It is a computerized exercise so it doesn’t require units to go to the field en masse. Of course the North Koreans say they will retaliate but thats just talk. If they do they will do something sneaky that they can easily deny. Their latest gimmick has been to allow mines to float down the river where they threaten South Korean shipping. Of course its an accident and they deny all knowledge.

South Korea is still 0 for 1 with this deal. They still have not been effectively able to counter the sinking of the Cheonan. From the way things are looking that won’t be anytime soon. If they remain vigilant the North Koreans will be themselves and the opportunity will come. South Korea needs to be vigilant and seize the moment to strike back quickly when it occurs. As far as I’m concerned our navy ring customers need to execute any such opportunity with extreme violence of action.

Lets chalk up another boneheaded move for the Somali pirates who roam the Gulf of Aden. This is the second time that I remember that they have erroneously attacked a US Navy ship thinking it to be a defenseless merchant ship. The pirates who did were severely dealt with and I bet the ones who lived won’t make that mistake again.

They trailed they USS Ashland and attacked it in the predawn hours which is their usual method of operation. Since the Ashland is not an attack ship they had to mistake it for a merchant vessel in the dark. When they opened fire they were fired upon which set their kiff on fire. The Ashland had to quickly rescue them after the incident. They were transported back to the United States where they will stand trial.

Their story is that they were ferrying refugees to Yemen and got lost in the Sea. Get this one here. They claim that they opened fire on our navy ring customers in order to get their attention.

I guess I’ll tell them the same thing that any defense lawyer would which is to stick to that story. Do you know what scares me? It’s possible that they will be acquitted of piracy charges and allowed to return to Somalia. With some of the decisions that I have heard of in our courts by judges and jury alike it is possible that they will get off. The last pirate’s lawyer argued that he couldn’t be accused of piracy since he didn’t complete the act.

The Chinese continue to surprise me with the way that they are modernizing their military. They are acquiring new technology by leaps and bounds in their effort to match ours. They continue to have stories which contradict what they are really doing but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that they are building up for offensive military operations. They are building up their space program and their navy in expectation of a future confrontation with our custom navy ring customers.

The new satellite is called the Yaogan Weixing -10. The Chinese claim that they will use them for crop surveillance and scientific experiments but the real purpose is for their surveillance capabilities. When I look at the different weapons systems that they are deploying I see that they are looking to fight a naval war. They don’t have a viable carrier force so they know that in order to win they will have to neutralize ours. They will atack from space as evidenced by the satellite coverage that they are establishing, on the surface of the sea as evidenced by the missiles aircraft and ships that they are developing, and under the sea as evidenced by the new submarines that they are developing.

Make no mistake about it folks. I don’t care how the Chinese try to lie their way out of it, they are gearing up for a war with the United States.

Despite protests from the North Korean government South Korea has just completed a five day naval exercise close to the disputed waters where the North Koreans sank the Cheonan recently. The North Koreans called the exercise a provocation as they did the recent exercises which were conducted recently with our custom navy ring customers but they didn’t do any thing despite of all of the rhetoric and diarrhea of the mouth. It seems that they are a whole lot smarter than they seem to be.

The exercise lasted five days and it was an obvious action conducted to provoke a North Korean reaction but they were smart enough not to bite on the bait which was presented to them.

The South Koreans owe the North Koreans some type of retaliation because of the sinking of the Cheonan. Their hands have been tied by the Chinese refusal to assign blame for the incident and the United Nations lack of cahunas in refusing to declare the North Koreans responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan. This puts the South Korean government in a very sticky situation because there is no international support for them which would justify a military response. They can’t bait the North Koreans into a military reaction so their hands are tied. The problem with dealing with the North Koreans is that they only respect force, which it doesn’t seem that the South Koreans will be able to find an excuse to use.

The Iranian government has acquired four new Ghadir class submarines to go along with the three Russian made submarines that they have already. They say that they have acquired the submarines to build up their defense capabilities. The subs are small and able to operate close to shore in relatively shallow water. The Iranians claim that they are able to fire submrines and missiles simultaneously. This is good I guess and I guess it is a big thing for them but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.

Maybe their submarine force would be a deterrent force for some small countries but it wouldn’t cause much of a problem for any of the larger navies in the world.

Any future war with Iran would probably result in a blocade of the gulf in an effort to enforce sanctions against them but their access to the gulf is just a minor part of any war equation.

We have posted a previous article about this piece of equipment which is still in the developmental stage. It seems to have our military planners worried and particularily our navy ring customers. More specifically it has our Aircraft Carrier ring customers keeping their eyes open. Not nervous but they know that it is definitely the thing for them to have to watch.

The DF-21 will supposedly be able to track and kill a carrier which is still far out to sea. This would definitely put a crimp in the style of our carrier tactics. It would severely limit the range and flexibility of their operation.

The extended range of this new missile will limit the offensive power that the carrier would be able to project because it would have to stay out of the range where it could successfully attack in order to survive.

One thing that is of particular interest is that the Chinese are reportedly developing a missile which would burst above the deck of the carrier and riddle it with thousands of flechettes. For those of you who don’t know, the flechette is a piece of metal which resembles a dart. Our army Field Artillery ring and Infantry ring customers are familier with these darts because they are used in artillery rounds. This missile would pose so much danger to the carrier because in addition to killing many of the crew who do their jobs on the deck of the carrier the flechettes would render the deck of the carrier inoperable. They would cause just enough damage so that the aircraft carrier would not be able to launch of land any aircraft.