Objectivist meaning of liberty?
cbe...@worldnet.att.net
-=> Quoting Dd...@best.com <=-
Dd> One of the arguments that some Objectivists make against libertarians
Dd> and the Libertarian Party goes roughly as follows:
<cut>
The truth:
<Ayn Rand quote>
For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I
do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More
specifically, I diapprove of, disagree with, and have no connection
with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called
"hippies ofthe right," who attempt to snare the younger or more
careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be
followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone
offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand
either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion
ever spun by the concrete-bound, whim-worshipping fringe of the
collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.
<unquote>
Ayn Rand supported Goldwater, Nixon and Ford --- Republicans. She was
a friendly witness before McCarthy's HCUAA. She supported government
projects like NASA. Considered drug addiction an evil. She did not
consider "property rights" an out-of-context absolute but rather a
product of generalized human rights, the right to life and the use of
one's mind.
>> Slipstream Jet - The QWK solution for Usenets #UNREGISTERED
Jim Klein
In <5c52gv$k...@mtinsc05.worldnet.att.net> cbe...@worldnet.att.net
writes:
>Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion
>ever spun by the concrete-bound, whim-worshipping fringe of the
>collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.
Just for the record, many of today's supporters of anarchy and
anarcho-capitalism, have their philsophical base in Objectivism.
Also for the record, I'm not one of them. Me, I'm just hung up with
"individual consent". And while my philosophical underpinnings predate
my familiarity with Rand, they are totally consistent with Objectivism,
to the best of my knowledge.
jk
David Friedman
One of the arguments that some Objectivists make against libertarians and
the Libertarian Party goes roughly as follows:
1. Libertarianism does not require any particular philosophical basis for
its political conclusions, unlike Objectivism.
2. If people reach a conclusion from different philosophical bases, that is
a problem because:
They may use the same word, such as "liberty," to mean very different things.
Even if they mean the same thing today, someone who holds a correct
conclusion for a bad reason today cannot be trusted to hold the same
conclusion tomorrow.
---
As it happens, I think the argument is wrong. Most libertarians mean about
the same thing by "liberty," and there may be a variety of different good
arguments for the same conclusion, so the fact that I disagree with
someone's fundamental philosophical position does not imply that, when he
agrees with me about a conclusion, he does it for a bad reason. As Nero
Wolfe put it, "any spoke will lead an ant to the hub."
The purpose of this post, however, is to make a different point.
Objectivists who make the argument I have described take it for granted
that if people have reached their political conclusions from the same,
correct, philosophical position--i.e. Objectivism--then they will mean the
same thing by "liberty," "rights," "initiation of force," and similar
things, and they can be relied on to maintain their conclusions over time.
Looking at this news group in particular, and the Objectivist movement in
general, the evidence seems to be against that belief. I observe that,
among people who at least consider themselves objectivists, we have a range
of ideas of "liberty" from Charles Bell and James Prescott at one end to
objectivist anarchists at the other. The one Objectivist (Jimbo) who I have
seen face the problem of how a monopoly government can maintain its
position without initiating force solves it by defining initiation of force
and rights in a way that, right or wrong, is fundamentally inconsistent
with the way most Objectivists I have argued seem to understand those
ideas.
People on this group seem to be fairly stable in their views, with the main
exception being some of the more open minded Objectivists who have become
more sympathetic to the anarcho-capitalist position after seeing it
defended by people who believed in it, but that is over a fairly short time
period. The history of the Objectivist movement, viewed over a longer time
period, suggests that people may be well acquainted with, and consider
themselves in agreement with, Rand's views, yet end up either disagreeing
with her conclusions or interpreting her views in ways quite different from
the ways in which some other such people interpret them--with Kelly v
Peikoff one obvious example, and Branden another.
David Friedman
Tim Starr
In article <5c52gv$k...@mtinsc05.worldnet.att.net>,
<cbe...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>-=> Quoting Dd...@best.com <=-
>
> Dd> One of the arguments that some Objectivists make against libertarians
> Dd> and the Libertarian Party goes roughly as follows:
> <cut>
>
>The truth:
>
> <Ayn Rand quote>
>
> For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I
> do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More
> specifically, I diapprove of, disagree with, and have no connection
> with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called
> "hippies ofthe right," who attempt to snare the younger or more
> careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be
> followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone
> offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand
> ever spun by the concrete-bound, whim-worshipping fringe of the
> collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.
>
>
> Ayn Rand supported Goldwater, Nixon and Ford --- Republicans.
And Roosevelt, a Democrat.
> She was a friendly witness before McCarthy's HCUAA.
Which isn't necessarily to her credit, which goes for her support of Nixon &
Ford, too.
> She supported government projects like NASA.
Lie.
*******************************************************************************
"That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the
symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there!" - George
Orwell, 1940, in the democratic socialist weekly "Tribune," quoted in "Orwell:
The Authorized Biography," by Michael Shelden
"Yes, I am." - "Saint" Anne Pearston, organizer of the British "Snowdrop" Victim
Disarmament petition, when asked if she was in favor of making the UK into a
slave state on the Jim Hawkins BBC-radio show, 5/17/96, by Sean Gabb, editor of
Free Life, the journal of the libertarian Alliance.
*******************************************************************************
Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Think Universally, Act Selfishly
Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of The International
Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL), 1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; is...@isil.org, http://www.isil.org/
Liberty is the Best Policy - tims...@netcom.com
Charles Bell
Jim Klein <rum...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Also for the record, I'm not one of them. Me, I'm just hung up with
>"individual consent". And while my philosophical underpinnings predate
>my familiarity with Rand, they are totally consistent with Objectivism,
>to the best of my knowledge.
I don't believe Objectivists have properly solved the notion of the
voluntary "social contract" by voluntary taxation. I can beleive there's
plenty of room to add optional elements to the tax code [as, for example,
ticking off boxes for NASA, cure for cancer, aid to Somalia, etc.] if the
administrative nightmare could be held down to just a bad dream. Of
course, there's always the problem of the "free-rider" Do you withhold
cancer treatment from someone who did not pay taxes for the government's
role in research? Or maybe deny access to the Internet to someone whose
grandfather never contributed to ARPANET?
---------------------------------------------
Charles Bell
*** The College Board ***
561.364.9249
BBS
http://www.netcom.com/~cbell58/
charle...@3609-80.mx1.fidonet.org
McQ
>>Also for the record, I'm not one of them. Me, I'm just hung up with
>>"individual consent". And while my philosophical underpinnings predate
>>my familiarity with Rand, they are totally consistent with Objectivism,
>>to the best of my knowledge.
> I don't believe Objectivists have properly solved the notion of the
>voluntary "social contract" by voluntary taxation. I can beleive there's
>plenty of room to add optional elements to the tax code [as, for example,
>ticking off boxes for NASA, cure for cancer, aid to Somalia, etc.] if the
>administrative nightmare could be held down to just a bad dream. Of
>course, there's always the problem of the "free-rider" Do you withhold
>cancer treatment from someone who did not pay taxes for the government's
>role in research? Or maybe deny access to the Internet to someone whose
>grandfather never contributed to ARPANET?
I think the free-rider problem is more of a monopoly of force
problem.
In a minarchist state with voluntary payment, free-riders may become
problematic because of the insistance on monpoly force for
government...i.e. the government's JOB, per it's charter, is to
provide security. It MUST preform this job. And, since there are no
competitors for this job, and since everyone in the geographical area
is automatically included in this protection, there are some who will
be very happy to allow others to pay for their protection (BTW,
taxation can NEVER be "voluntary").
OTOH, if there is no monopoly of force, and security is a private
concern, a free-rider question would be moot. You pay for your own
security or you go without.
McQ
_____________________________
Pohl's Law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere will
not hate it.
Ken Fondots/John Kusch
McQ wrote:
>
> >Charles Bell <cbe...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >>Jim Klein <rum...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> >>Also for the record, I'm not one of them. Me, I'm just hung up with
> >>"individual consent". And while my philosophical underpinnings predate
> >>my familiarity with Rand, they are totally consistent with Objectivism,
> >>to the best of my knowledge.
>
> > I don't believe Objectivists have properly solved the notion of the
> >voluntary "social contract" by voluntary taxation. I can beleive there's
> >plenty of room to add optional elements to the tax code [as, for example,
> >ticking off boxes for NASA, cure for cancer, aid to Somalia, etc.] if the
> >administrative nightmare could be held down to just a bad dream.
The issue of the "free rider", or the individual that doesn't pay taxes,
is pretty hairy, and I'm not touching it. However, I believe that in
any free economy, those that benefit from the economy are those who
purchase, not necessarily those who earn. If I have a million dollars,
but I don't spend any of it, then how have I really benefited from the
system?
For this reason, I believe that the only reasonable method of taxation
by any government is the sales tax. When you earn, you may not be
taxed. However, when you spend, you are benefitting from the system
that government exists to protect from coercion. Therefore, if you
participate in the system, it is just to be charged for the governmental
services that serve that system.
Am I on the same planet here?
John Kusch
Robert J. Kolker
Charles Bell <cbe...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>Jim Klein <rum...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>Also for the record, I'm not one of them. Me, I'm just hung up with
>>"individual consent". And while my philosophical underpinnings predate
>>my familiarity with Rand, they are totally consistent with Objectivism,
>>to the best of my knowledge.
> I don't believe Objectivists have properly solved the notion of the
>voluntary "social contract" by voluntary taxation. I can beleive there's
>plenty of room to add optional elements to the tax code [as, for example,
>ticking off boxes for NASA, cure for cancer, aid to Somalia, etc.] if the
>administrative nightmare could be held down to just a bad dream. Of
>course, there's always the problem of the "free-rider" Do you withhold
>cancer treatment from someone who did not pay taxes for the government's
>role in research? Or maybe deny access to the Internet to someone whose
>grandfather never contributed to ARPANET?
If you value liberty get used to "free riders". Since you
are young and inexperiened I will spell it out for you
one syllable at a time.
1. A receives a benefit which he neither solicited nor paid for.
2. B who provides the benefit, says that sonufuvich A is robbing
him because he is not paying. B calls cop C
3. C arrests A and the courts decide that A must pay (that is
what taxes do). Thus force is initiated against A for
receiving an accidental side effect benefit (A has not
used either force or fraud to get the benefit).
4. A is therefore a victim on initated force.
5. A liberty is thereby dimished.
Got it? Can you spell Tax? Can you spell Theft? Sure you can.
Bob Kolker
--
"Taxation is Theft, Jury Duty and the Draft are servitude"
"Those who *would* govern us are enemies"
"An armed society is a polite society""
John Power
Robert J. Kolker wrote:
> Got it? Can you spell Tax? Can you spell Theft? Sure you can.
Let's see.... Tacks and tepht?
----John Power
David Friedman
In article <5c5bmm$5...@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com>, Jim Klein
<rum...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Just for the record, many of today's supporters of anarchy and
> anarcho-capitalism, have their philsophical base in Objectivism.
>
> Also for the record, I'm not one of them. Me, I'm just hung up with
> "individual consent". And while my philosophical underpinnings predate
> my familiarity with Rand, they are totally consistent with Objectivism,
> to the best of my knowledge.
>
> jk
Just for the record, I'm not one of them either. While I admire Rand, her
ideas did not play a significant role in the development of my political
ideas, and I belive that some of her fundamental philosophical ideas are
wrong, for reasons I have discussed in other threads.
David Friedman
David Friedman
> OTOH, if there is no monopoly of force, and security is a private
> concern, a free-rider question would be moot. You pay for your own
> security or you go without.
>
>
> McQ
That is correct, except to the very limited extent that in the process of
defending my rights I may make it a little easier for you to defend
yours--for instance by executing a murderer who would have targetted you
next (Brad's case--real but not, I think, very major). That is part of why
I entitled my _Economics and Philosophy_ article "Law as a Private Good."
But there still are other public goods, in the sense of goods for which it
is not practical for the producer to control who gets them. A radio
broadcast is one example--one for which an ingenious solution to the
problem of how to get paid for producing a public good is in place and
familiar to all of us. Defending against foreign nations that want to
conquer an anarchist territory is probably another, and perhaps a harder
one to solve privately.
David Friedman
James A. Donald
Ken Fondots/John Kusch <kenn...@primenet.com> wrote:
> For this reason, I believe that the only reasonable method of taxation
> by any government is the sales tax.
Out, heretic
As soon as we start debating what tax is better, we are debating what
kinds of chains are more endurable.
Who the hell cares what kind of chains are used to chain us to the
bench?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald jam...@echeque.com
McQ
Ken Fondots/John Kusch <kenn...@primenet.com> wrote:
>McQ wrote:
>> >Charles Bell <cbe...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> >>Jim Klein <rum...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>> >>Also for the record, I'm not one of them. Me, I'm just hung up with
>> >>"individual consent". And while my philosophical underpinnings predate
>> >>my familiarity with Rand, they are totally consistent with Objectivism,
>> >>to the best of my knowledge.
>>
>> > I don't believe Objectivists have properly solved the notion of the
>> >voluntary "social contract" by voluntary taxation. I can beleive there's
>> >plenty of room to add optional elements to the tax code [as, for example,
>> >ticking off boxes for NASA, cure for cancer, aid to Somalia, etc.] if the
>> >administrative nightmare could be held down to just a bad dream.
>The issue of the "free rider", or the individual that doesn't pay taxes,
>is pretty hairy, and I'm not touching it. However, I believe that in
>any free economy, those that benefit from the economy are those who
>purchase, not necessarily those who earn. If I have a million dollars,
>but I don't spend any of it, then how have I really benefited from the
>system?
My first question would by when did it become your job to pay for
"benefiting from the system?" The "system" exists naturally and is
called "the market". You pay for it when you particpate in it. What
you are getting ready to defend here isn't what's natural, i.e. the
market, but what's been artifically overlayed on the market --
government.
>For this reason, I believe that the only reasonable method of taxation
>by any government is the sales tax.
In my opinion, there is no reasonable method of taxation as ALL
taxation requires the use of force. IF the payment were truly
"voluntary", i.e. you had a CHOICE as to whether you paid a "tax" or
not, then it wouldn't be a true tax. Taxes are exactions and
exactions are always taken by force or the threat of force.
>When you earn, you may not be
>taxed. However, when you spend, you are benefitting from the system
>that government exists to protect from coercion.
But again, it is a nonconsensual government, which means it is a
government which is "protecting you from coercion" by coercing you.
Seem logical?
>Therefore, if you
>participate in the system, it is just to be charged for the governmental
>services that serve that system.
And how do I opt out if I'm not interested?
McQ
_________________________________
"The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black
teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest.
Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the
minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black
laws on the statute books." - Economics Nobel Lauraute Milton Friedman
McQ
David Friedman <DD...@Best.com> wrote:
>> OTOH, if there is no monopoly of force, and security is a private
>> concern, a free-rider question would be moot. You pay for your own
>> security or you go without.
>That is correct, except to the very limited extent that in the process of
>defending my rights I may make it a little easier for you to defend
>yours--for instance by executing a murderer who would have targetted you
>next (Brad's case--real but not, I think, very major). That is part of why
>I entitled my _Economics and Philosophy_ article "Law as a Private Good."
>But there still are other public goods, in the sense of goods for which it
>is not practical for the producer to control who gets them. A radio
>broadcast is one example--one for which an ingenious solution to the
>problem of how to get paid for producing a public good is in place and
>familiar to all of us. Defending against foreign nations that want to
>conquer an anarchist territory is probably another, and perhaps a harder
>one to solve privately.
A couple of points, and Tim touched on one of them in an earlier
article...defense doesn't take the amount of forces offense does, so I
would guess an anarchist territory would struture itself for defense
instead of offense (that means no carrier battle groups or a large
army, as those are needed to PROJECT force. And as the minimum
calculation for successful offensive action requires a 3:1 ratio which
means any army that would have its eyes on anarchist territory would
have to be at least three times larger of necessity before it could
ever contemplate a takeover.). So while we might typically spend, as a
nation, 250 billion in a year for our armed forces, if, for whatever
reason, the anarchist territory had the same geographical extent as
the present US, we'd be looking at a budget of about 1/3 our present
one or about 80 billion.
A consortium of defense agencies, could build a pretty formidable
defensive force for that amount. It would appear too that one of the
"strengths" of that particular type arrangement would be that it would
be unlikely that any one agency would be strong enough to impose
itself on the anarchist population by force (the others acting as a
check).
If the agencies saw it in their best interest to form an alliance
against possible outside force, wouldn't you suppose that (and payment
for that defense) would become a part of a standard contract of some
sort with their customers?
McQ
_________________________________
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
(and hence clamourous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless
series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
Billy Beck
David Friedman <DD...@Best.com> wrote:
>In article <5cjps2$a...@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com>, McQ
><mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>So while we might typically spend, as a
>> nation, 250 billion in a year for our armed forces, if, for whatever
>> reason, the anarchist territory had the same geographical extent as
>> the present US, we'd be looking at a budget of about 1/3 our present
>> one or about 80 billion.
>
>1. I suspect that is a high figure.
I agree, but I also suspect that Bruce is cutting the
opposition a break with a conservative estimate.
Anyway...
>My current favorite model would be a sizable reserve force, with the
>individual units either hobbyist volunteers (compare the Civil War
>reenactment people or the SCA) or small units fielded by firms for the good
>publicity--the Apple Volunteers marching in the annual parade celebrating
>the day we got rid of the last vestige of government. For one version, read
>Kipling's short story "The Army of a Dream." There might be a small
>professional cadre, employed by enforcement agencies or by privately funded
>foundations, to provide coordination in peace time, and offer leadership if
>a war happens. You may need some professionals--but a low ratio of
>professionals to amateurs is one way of keeping them honest.
Again, I would point out that the vast majority of fighter
pilots who went to war in the Gulf had "real" jobs outside the USANG.
(Anybody here know anything about aircraft tail-codes? In ANG units,
they designate the home state of the aircraft. Go have another look
at Gulf War films. "The Boys From Syracuse" are exactly that.) The
point of this is that "amateur[ism]" does not necessarily translate to
ineptitude. These people maintain proficiency in an extremely
demanding regime, and there is no reason why the entire support and
operations structure could not be privately erected.
Further, David's last sentence, above, hits an important
point. People whose real interests lie in the peaceful conduct of
their private affairs outside military operations are not prone to go
running about the world looking for a war. (Bruce hit this with his
reference to "projections of power".)
Billy
Anthology
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/essays.html
Tim Starr
In article <32eeb9fa...@news.mindspring.com>,
Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>> Again, I would point out that the vast majority of fighter
>>>pilots who went to war in the Gulf had "real" jobs outside the USANG.
>>>(Anybody here know anything about aircraft tail-codes? In ANG units,
>>>they designate the home state of the aircraft. Go have another look
>>>at Gulf War films. "The Boys From Syracuse" are exactly that.) The
>>>point of this is that "amateur[ism]" does not necessarily translate to
>>>ineptitude. These people maintain proficiency in an extremely
>>>demanding regime, and there is no reason why the entire support and
>>>operations structure could not be privately erected.
>>
>>of course, on the market already. Many American amateur pilots have them.
>>That's about the price of a luxury car - a Humvee goes for about $40,000,
>>I hear.
>
> Well, let's be careful. I've seen adverts in aviation
>magazines hawking surplus 19's and 21's for prices along those lines.
>I would point out that only someone terribly desperate would saddle-up
>either of those machines in a modern air-war environment, especially
>as they currently come to market. I cannot imagine bringing a
>battle-ready mount to the game for anything near that price, even
>though the MiG-21 is still very highly regarded in the fighter
>community (for damned good reason - some think it is the finest
>single-seat, single-engine fighter *ever* made, and there were more of
>them produced than any other jet type in history).
How much, then? Twice that amount? Ten times?
> (Hmm...although, I've never seen or even heard of any sort of
>"guerrilla air doctrine"... Food for thought.)
Why not? One of the main elements of guerilla warfare is mobility &
maneuverability - how much more of those can you get than with a MIG?
The other kind of plane that would be useful would be a small, long-
range transport plane that could drop men & supplies way behind enemy
lines. I seem to recall the Russians using one like that in WWII, but
can't recall the model right now.
I can just see it now:
"Sir, there's a problem with our upcoming attack on Anarchotopia."
"What's that?"
"Well, there's a SpecOps team from Anarchotopia that just parachuted in
from a DC-9 at the door. They want to talk us out of it."
>>My preferred model for a possible anarcho-capitalist military is the Swiss
>>military. Until recently, they could field 600,000 troops, out of a country
>>of about 8 million, giving them one of the largest military forces in Europe
>>even though they're one of the smallest countries. They've got many roads
>>reinforced to double as aircraft runways, bridges & tunnels wired to blow in
>>case of invasion, they allow private ownership of howitzers & anti-aircraft
>>guns, & every adult male's got an assault rifle in his house.
>>
>>I'm pretty sure that any anarcho-capitalist society wanting to be secure in
>>today's world would have to adopt pretty much the same policy, voluntarily,
>>of course. I'd like to see anyone try to occupy & pacify that kind of
>>population! :-)
>
> Right. Good bloody luck.
Yep. There's a story about one of the German High Command watching a Swiss
practice mobilization in the 1930s, asking one of the Swiss commanders what
he'd do if a German force invaded.
"Each of my men would go out, fire one shot, & go home."
"What? But we outnumber you, 2 to 1!"
"Then each of my men would fire 2 shots & go home."
>>> Further, David's last sentence, above, hits an important
>>>point. People whose real interests lie in the peaceful conduct of
>>>their private affairs outside military operations are not prone to go
>>>running about the world looking for a war. (Bruce hit this with his
>>>reference to "projections of power".)
>>
>>That's why I prefer Switzerland as a model to Israel. The Swiss are less
>>belligerent than the Israelis. Of course, they've been around longer. But
>>the Israelis are more involved in aggressive actions against their neighbors
>>than the Swiss, & thus have more capability for projecting force.
>
> Yeah, but which came first: the force, or the projections?
I dunno, ya got me.
> Aside:
>
> Right now, I'm watching a "Frontline" episode on the Gulf War,
>and I'll take this opportunity to pat Israel on the back over
>something that I thought I would never see: the Israeli SDF sitting
>still while SCUD missiles landed in Tel Aviv. God bless 'em; that was
>the right move, but it must have been hellish torment to keep their
>lads in check in that moment.
Why? So they could call his bluff? They're lucky those SCUDs weren't loaded
with Anthrax.
Billy Beck
Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
(Hmm...although, I've never seen or even heard of any sort of
"guerrilla air doctrine"... Food for thought.)
In any case, I think $30M for a front-line fighter is over the
top. Take a brief look at current procurement procedures, etc., and
you can see what I mean. (The Northrop F-5 Tigershark is a marvelous
example. Very few people even know what I'm talking about, because
that manifestly superior and *cheap* fighter was never contracted for
manufacture due to political considerations, even though it really was
the better mousetrap.) We don't need to spend that kind of money and,
even if we did, there is no reason on earth why private subscription
could not support the effort.
>My preferred model for a possible anarcho-capitalist military is the Swiss
>military. Until recently, they could field 600,000 troops, out of a country
>of about 8 million, giving them one of the largest military forces in Europe
>even though they're one of the smallest countries. They've got many roads
>reinforced to double as aircraft runways, bridges & tunnels wired to blow in
>case of invasion, they allow private ownership of howitzers & anti-aircraft
>guns, & every adult male's got an assault rifle in his house.
>
>I'm pretty sure that any anarcho-capitalist society wanting to be secure in
>today's world would have to adopt pretty much the same policy, voluntarily,
>of course. I'd like to see anyone try to occupy & pacify that kind of
>population! :-)
Right. Good bloody luck.
>> Further, David's last sentence, above, hits an important
>>point. People whose real interests lie in the peaceful conduct of
>>their private affairs outside military operations are not prone to go
>>running about the world looking for a war. (Bruce hit this with his
>>reference to "projections of power".)
>
>That's why I prefer Switzerland as a model to Israel. The Swiss are less
>belligerent than the Israelis. Of course, they've been around longer. But
>the Israelis are more involved in aggressive actions against their neighbors
>than the Swiss, & thus have more capability for projecting force.
Yeah, but which came first: the force, or the projections?
Aside:
Right now, I'm watching a "Frontline" episode on the Gulf War,
and I'll take this opportunity to pat Israel on the back over
something that I thought I would never see: the Israeli SDF sitting
still while SCUD missiles landed in Tel Aviv. God bless 'em; that was
the right move, but it must have been hellish torment to keep their
lads in check in that moment.
Billy
Anthology
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/essays.html
Billy Beck
Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Well, let's be careful. I've seen adverts in aviation
>>magazines hawking surplus 19's and 21's for prices along those lines.
>>I would point out that only someone terribly desperate would saddle-up
>>either of those machines in a modern air-war environment, especially
>>as they currently come to market. I cannot imagine bringing a
>>battle-ready mount to the game for anything near that price...
>How much, then? Twice that amount? Ten times?
That's a damned good question, Tim, and even the big boys are
struggling with it for a lot of reasons. Essentially, the problem is
that the Cold War is no longer the conflict paradigm driving design
and budgeting. Nobody knows who their enemies are going to be
anymore, or what sorts of mission capabilities they need to build (and
can afford). In a lot of ways, we've not seen such diversity in
aircraft design since before WWII.
The thing which holds my attention here is...
>> (Hmm...although, I've never seen or even heard of any sort of
>>"guerrilla air doctrine"... Food for thought.)
>
>Why not? One of the main elements of guerilla warfare is mobility &
>maneuverability - how much more of those can you get than with a MIG?
....things like this. There is a hell of a lot more to it
than that. For instance, anyone going up against the US without
advanced air battle control (AWACS, etc.) is in very serious trouble.
A nimble pipe like the '21 isn't much good if everybody on the other
side can see you far out enough that they can sling a missile at 40
miles or set up an intercept with no way out by the time you see
*them*. Now, I am not saying that tactics *cannot* be devised to deal
with things like this. What is true is that every battle will have
its tactical context, and it would be very interesting to see detailed
considerations of cheap air ops brought to bear on the problem.
IOW - I am not at all convinced, prima facie, that there
really is any such valid a thing as "air guerrilla war". Not at the
moment. But it is a *very* intriguing concept.
(Of course, none of this should be taken to mean that
everything we currently have in place could not be managed privately.)
>The other kind of plane that would be useful would be a small, long-
>range transport plane that could drop men & supplies way behind enemy
>lines. I seem to recall the Russians using one like that in WWII, but
>can't recall the model right now.
>
>I can just see it now:
>
>"Sir, there's a problem with our upcoming attack on Anarchotopia."
>
>"What's that?"
A smoking heap of rubble with a Big Eye-vectored two-ship
doing slow rolls over the hole in the ground. That's what. IOW - no
problem at all to integrated forces. This sort of thing is the very
reason why fighters were born in the first place, and they, and
everything that goes with them, have come a hell of a long way from
even Hanoi.
>> Aside:
>>
>> Right now, I'm watching a "Frontline" episode on the Gulf War,
>>and I'll take this opportunity to pat Israel on the back over
>>something that I thought I would never see: the Israeli SDF sitting
>>still while SCUD missiles landed in Tel Aviv. God bless 'em; that was
>>the right move, but it must have been hellish torment to keep their
>>lads in check in that moment.
>
>Why? So they could call his bluff?
Well, if I understand you properly, you have a point. There
really wasn't anything they could do about it with air assets except
get in the way of the Allied effort. In fact, they were warned that
if they didn't stay out of it, they would strictly be on their own in
a very busy air-space planned to the second.
>They're lucky those SCUDs weren't loaded with Anthrax.
I know, but that couldn't have made it any easier to take.
Billy
Anthology
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/essays.html
Tim Starr
In article <32ef0bff...@news.mindspring.com>,
Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>> Well, let's be careful. I've seen adverts in aviation
>>>magazines hawking surplus 19's and 21's for prices along those lines.
>>>I would point out that only someone terribly desperate would saddle-up
>>>either of those machines in a modern air-war environment, especially
>>>as they currently come to market. I cannot imagine bringing a
>
>>How much, then? Twice that amount? Ten times?
>
>struggling with it for a lot of reasons. Essentially, the problem is
>that the Cold War is no longer the conflict paradigm driving design
>and budgeting. Nobody knows who their enemies are going to be
>anymore, or what sorts of mission capabilities they need to build (and
>can afford). In a lot of ways, we've not seen such diversity in
>aircraft design since before WWII.
Well, as far as I can tell there's the school of thought that says we're
in for lots of guerilla/terrorist warfare, in which case air power ain't
all it's cracked up to be, or hi-tech warfare, in which case air power
might be useful, but no one really knows how. I think there's another
school of thought, but I can't think of it right now.
> The thing which holds my attention here is...
>
>>> (Hmm...although, I've never seen or even heard of any sort of
>>>"guerrilla air doctrine"... Food for thought.)
>>
>>Why not? One of the main elements of guerilla warfare is mobility &
>>maneuverability - how much more of those can you get than with a MIG?
>
> ....things like this. There is a hell of a lot more to it
>than that. For instance, anyone going up against the US without
>advanced air battle control (AWACS, etc.) is in very serious trouble.
>A nimble pipe like the '21 isn't much good if everybody on the other
>side can see you far out enough that they can sling a missile at 40
>miles or set up an intercept with no way out by the time you see
>*them*.
If they can see you. Can't planes fly under radar anymore? Or have the
surveillance techs come up with better stuff by now? I know the NSA's
satellites can read the serial numbers on the rifles being carried on
the ground (in the open), but can they do it in real time?
I haven't studied this stuff much, so I'm way out of my depth here.
>Now, I am not saying that tactics *cannot* be devised to deal
>with things like this. What is true is that every battle will have
>its tactical context, and it would be very interesting to see detailed
>considerations of cheap air ops brought to bear on the problem.
Yep.
> IOW - I am not at all convinced, prima facie, that there
>really is any such valid a thing as "air guerrilla war". Not at the
>moment. But it is a *very* intriguing concept.
Well, there's clearly lots of use of air power in counter-insurgency to deliver
assault forces on the spot. That's just the flip side of the COIN :-).
> (Of course, none of this should be taken to mean that
>everything we currently have in place could not be managed privately.)
Of course.
>>The other kind of plane that would be useful would be a small, long-
>>range transport plane that could drop men & supplies way behind enemy
>>lines. I seem to recall the Russians using one like that in WWII, but
>>can't recall the model right now.
>>
>>I can just see it now:
>>
>>"Sir, there's a problem with our upcoming attack on Anarchotopia."
>>
>>"What's that?"
>
> A smoking heap of rubble with a Big Eye-vectored two-ship
>doing slow rolls over the hole in the ground. That's what. IOW - no
>problem at all to integrated forces. This sort of thing is the very
>reason why fighters were born in the first place, and they, and
>everything that goes with them, have come a hell of a long way from
>even Hanoi.
IFF they can see it coming. There are all sorts of other ways of
delivering hit teams besides airlifts, anyways. Remember the German pilot
who landed a Cessna on Red Square? What was his name? Matthias Rusk?
>>> Aside:
>>>
>>> Right now, I'm watching a "Frontline" episode on the Gulf War,
>>>and I'll take this opportunity to pat Israel on the back over
>>>something that I thought I would never see: the Israeli SDF sitting
>>>still while SCUD missiles landed in Tel Aviv. God bless 'em; that was
>>>the right move, but it must have been hellish torment to keep their
>>>lads in check in that moment.
>>
>>Why? So they could call his bluff?
>
> Well, if I understand you properly, you have a point. There
>really wasn't anything they could do about it with air assets except
>get in the way of the Allied effort. In fact, they were warned that
>if they didn't stay out of it, they would strictly be on their own in
>a very busy air-space planned to the second.
I guess so. They didn't have any Patriots, did they? So, what else they
gonna do?
>>They're lucky those SCUDs weren't loaded with Anthrax.
>
> I know, but that couldn't have made it any easier to take.
I suppose not, but they still got damn lucky.
McQ
>Billy Beck <ain't...@tno.e-mail> wrote:
>>David Friedman <DD...@Best.com> wrote:
>>>McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>>>So while we might typically spend, as a
>>> nation, 250 billion in a year for our armed forces, if, for whatever
>>> reason, the anarchist territory had the same geographical extent as
>>> the present US, we'd be looking at a budget of about 1/3 our present
>>> one or about 80 billion.
>>
>>1. I suspect that is a high figure.
> I agree, but I also suspect that Bruce is cutting the
>opposition a break with a conservative estimate.
Actually what I was attempting to do was use real numbers to reflect
the difference between an offensive force and a defensive force. To
protect this country defensively, we'd easily spend 80 billion but our
priority would be detection equipment (passive and active), air
defense forces, defensively postured ground forces and most probably,
very sophisticated missle systems that would give us the opportunity
to attack any potential enemy in depth as he approached.
> Anyway...
>>My current favorite model would be a sizable reserve force, with the
>>individual units either hobbyist volunteers (compare the Civil War
>>reenactment people or the SCA) or small units fielded by firms for the good
>>publicity--the Apple Volunteers marching in the annual parade celebrating
>>the day we got rid of the last vestige of government. For one version, read
>>Kipling's short story "The Army of a Dream." There might be a small
>>professional cadre, employed by enforcement agencies or by privately funded
>>foundations, to provide coordination in peace time, and offer leadership if
>>a war happens. You may need some professionals--but a low ratio of
>>professionals to amateurs is one way of keeping them honest.
During Desert Storm, the Airforce, Marines and Navy did an excellent
job of integrating their reserve and guard units into the fight. The
Army did (and DOES) a LOUSY job. During DS, Marine reserve units were
right in the thick of it, and did a credible job. Of course, as you
point out, the Air Guard and reserve units were quite effective.
I see no reason why these sorts of guard units (or volunteer units)
couldn't be sponsored by a variety of entities (towns, corporations,
etc) much as they were in the Civil War.
Anyway, the point was that the amateurs can and do learn the craft
well enough to be effective (it requires much training, but that's
another story). With a small professional core, one could easily
build a very credible defensive force.
> Again, I would point out that the vast majority of fighter
>pilots who went to war in the Gulf had "real" jobs outside the USANG.
>(Anybody here know anything about aircraft tail-codes? In ANG units,
>they designate the home state of the aircraft. Go have another look
>at Gulf War films. "The Boys From Syracuse" are exactly that.) The
>point of this is that "amateur[ism]" does not necessarily translate to
>ineptitude. These people maintain proficiency in an extremely
>demanding regime, and there is no reason why the entire support and
>operations structure could not be privately erected.
I remember the SCANG (for whatever reason) tail-markings very well.
The boys from the Palmetto State did well. I took a tour and got a
briefing from an NG squadron who had just transitioned from F4's to
F16s. These guys all had regular jobs, but really LIVED to fly those
aircraft on weekends. Interestingly enough, NG units usually win all
the fighter and bombing (William Tell?) competitions because they stay
together and fly together as units longer than regular Airforce units.
It gives them an edge in those competitons which is WHY the regular
Airforce has no qualms about integrating them at the drop of a hat.
> Further, David's last sentence, above, hits an important
>point. People whose real interests lie in the peaceful conduct of
>their private affairs outside military operations are not prone to go
>running about the world looking for a war. (Bruce hit this with his
>reference to "projections of power".)
And that's the entire thrust of the 1/3 cost. You probably can't
project power at 80 billion, but you CAN project it for 250. The
purpose of "projecting power" is to have your way BY FORCE if
necessary. Why else have a carrier battle group?
McQ
_________________________________
If voting really changed anything, it'd be illegal.
Jim Klein
In <32efebf1...@news.mindspring.com> Billy Beck
<ain't...@tno.e-mail> writes:
>>>>They're lucky those SCUDs weren't loaded with Anthrax.
>>>
>>> I know, but that couldn't have made it any easier to take.
>>
>>I suppose not, but they still got damn lucky.
>
> No kidding. I expected the casualties to be a lot worse than
>they were.
The evidence is still mostly anecdotal, but it seems possible, if not
likely, that the final casualty counts WILL be "a lot worse than they
were."
jk
Tim Starr
In article <5cp7ls$d...@dfw-ixnews5.ix.netcom.com>,
McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>Billy Beck <ain't...@tno.e-mail> wrote:
>>>David Friedman <DD...@Best.com> wrote:
>>>>McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>So while we might typically spend, as a
>>>> nation, 250 billion in a year for our armed forces, if, for whatever
>>>> reason, the anarchist territory had the same geographical extent as
>>>> the present US, we'd be looking at a budget of about 1/3 our present
>>>> one or about 80 billion.
>>>
>>>1. I suspect that is a high figure.
>
>> I agree, but I also suspect that Bruce is cutting the
>>opposition a break with a conservative estimate.
>
> Actually what I was attempting to do was use real numbers to reflect
>the difference between an offensive force and a defensive force. To
>protect this country defensively, we'd easily spend 80 billion but our
>priority would be detection equipment (passive and active), air
>defense forces, defensively postured ground forces and most probably,
>very sophisticated missle systems that would give us the opportunity
>to attack any potential enemy in depth as he approached.
Sounds about right to me, based on what little I know about this subject.
>> Anyway...
>
>>>My current favorite model would be a sizable reserve force, with the
>>>individual units either hobbyist volunteers (compare the Civil War
>>>reenactment people or the SCA) or small units fielded by firms for the good
>>>publicity--the Apple Volunteers marching in the annual parade celebrating
>>>the day we got rid of the last vestige of government. For one version, read
>>>Kipling's short story "The Army of a Dream." There might be a small
>>>professional cadre, employed by enforcement agencies or by privately funded
>>>foundations, to provide coordination in peace time, and offer leadership if
>>>a war happens. You may need some professionals--but a low ratio of
>>>professionals to amateurs is one way of keeping them honest.
>
> During Desert Storm, the Airforce, Marines and Navy did an excellent
>job of integrating their reserve and guard units into the fight. The
>Army did (and DOES) a LOUSY job. During DS, Marine reserve units were
>right in the thick of it, and did a credible job. Of course, as you
>point out, the Air Guard and reserve units were quite effective.
Why's the Army so much worse at this?
> I see no reason why these sorts of guard units (or volunteer units)
>couldn't be sponsored by a variety of entities (towns, corporations,
>etc) much as they were in the Civil War.
Me, neither.
> Anyway, the point was that the amateurs can and do learn the craft
>well enough to be effective (it requires much training, but that's
>another story). With a small professional core, one could easily
>build a very credible defensive force.
This is what I've thought for a long time, now. That small professional
core would be cheap to support, & could sell lots of its services - at
least, it could sell its training services to the reservists.
>> Again, I would point out that the vast majority of fighter
>>pilots who went to war in the Gulf had "real" jobs outside the USANG.
>>(Anybody here know anything about aircraft tail-codes? In ANG units,
>>they designate the home state of the aircraft. Go have another look
>>at Gulf War films. "The Boys From Syracuse" are exactly that.) The
>>point of this is that "amateur[ism]" does not necessarily translate to
>>ineptitude. These people maintain proficiency in an extremely
>>demanding regime, and there is no reason why the entire support and
>>operations structure could not be privately erected.
>
> I remember the SCANG (for whatever reason) tail-markings very well.
>The boys from the Palmetto State did well. I took a tour and got a
>briefing from an NG squadron who had just transitioned from F4's to
>F16s. These guys all had regular jobs, but really LIVED to fly those
>aircraft on weekends. Interestingly enough, NG units usually win all
>the fighter and bombing (William Tell?) competitions because they stay
>together and fly together as units longer than regular Airforce units.
>It gives them an edge in those competitons which is WHY the regular
>Airforce has no qualms about integrating them at the drop of a hat.
This fits in which what I've read about the relative marksmanship of
amateurs vs. professional police & military shooters. There are some
good shooters in the police & military, but only because of their
strong amateur interest in shooting. There are LOTS of good shooters
amongst the American citizenry.
Ernest Brown
For anyone interested in rational analysis of military history, I
recommend COMMAND Magazine, published bimonthly by the XTR Corporation.
Unlike regular military history magazines, which confine themselves to
historical description, COMMAND does in-depth, yet highly readable
analysis of the factors which drive military affairs. The current issue
(JAN 1997) contains an article of interest to both sides in the current
"proper government" debate, "America's First Vietnam: The Seminole Wars"
by Norman J. Jones.
Ernie
Wisdom's Children: A Virtual Journal of Philosophy & Literature
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/billramey/wisdom.htm
Submissions welcomed.
Billy Beck
Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>How much, then? Twice that amount? Ten times?
>>
>> That's a damned good question, Tim, and even the big boys are
>>struggling with it for a lot of reasons. Essentially, the problem is
>>that the Cold War is no longer the conflict paradigm driving design
>>and budgeting. Nobody knows who their enemies are going to be
>>anymore, or what sorts of mission capabilities they need to build (and
>>can afford). In a lot of ways, we've not seen such diversity in
>>aircraft design since before WWII.
>
>Well, as far as I can tell there's the school of thought that says we're
>in for lots of guerilla/terrorist warfare, in which case air power ain't
>all it's cracked up to be, or hi-tech warfare, in which case air power
>might be useful, but no one really knows how. I think there's another
>school of thought, but I can't think of it right now.
There will always be a place for air power, simply because the
vacuum resulting from complete abandonment would be filled the very
next day. That much is principle, and I'll hit it again later on.
The particular roles are <heh> up in the air at the moment, and
everybody has their own take on it.
Synopsis:
The US is headed whole hog into high-tech: lots of stealth,
mission depth (multi-role applications), vectored thrust (with the
potential to out-fly the pilot), radical airframe design, etc. The
Russians seem to be hanging with fairly linear advances in airframe
and avionics design: no stealth (budgets, mostly), but very good
attack/targeting systems and dedicated mission application refined to
several decimal points. (e.g: SU-27 "Flanker" is possibly the very
best air-superiority fighter in the world today, while SU-25
"Frogfoot" is a similarly competitive ground-attack aircraft,
radically different in every way from SU-27.)
Western Europe (Panavia, Dassault, etc.) is picking the way
very carefully: limited stealth and control/avionics advances
integrated to linear design progressions (Dassault's "Mirage" series
of jets is now almost 40 years in lineage, but the 2000 is an
extremely competitive aircraft, in service today, and the "Rafale"
descendant, although currently hung up in budget hassles, features
canard control surfaces of a sort bound to appear in service soon) as
the mission dictates...but multi-role applications abound: they're
squeezing every penny. (e.g.: Panavia's "Tornado" occurs in two very
distinct variants - ground attack, and air superiority, with drastic
differences concealed in a common airframe. It is also an historic
anomaly in that the fighter variant was refined from its ground attack
cousin, in reverse of traditional development.)
One very interesting entrant is Saab's latest effort for
Sweden (and I cannot recall its designation). A descendent of the
outstanding "Viggen" series of fighters, the new one cannot stand in
the same class as Russia's SU-27 or US F-15 Eagle, but for not very
obvious reasons: the latter aircraft serve "power projection"
capability on global scale, with tremendous range and (in the case of
F-15) payload. The new Saab jet is designed for point-defense
air-superiority on the borders. It is small and relatively cheap, and
a serious contender on its chosen turf.
So...
"Terrorist" warfare is obviously immune to air-power.
Guerrilla war, however, while very challenging, nonetheless has
chinks. Air power, at the very least, can make guerrilla ops a lot
more difficult than they would be, otherwise. It's easy to see:
people running around under a ground attack umbrella must be very
careful about how they do it, and they will flat get their pee-pees
whacked when they get caught. (Air-to-ground ordnance is extremely
fearful stuff, these days.) Perhaps McQ has some thoughts here.
"Hi-tech" war may be loosely taken to mean matched integrated
forces using the latest advances in operation. (Within this context,
the Gulf War doesn't qualify because Saddam was never in the game.)
In this arena, you're right: everybody is guessing. "What *are* the
tactical implications of advanced air battle control?" Well, for one
example, search radars can actually be very dangerous to use. When
enemies see them, they tend to shoot them. "How do we use them?"
There is valuable experience to draw from, but many questions are
open, and they are the ones that weapons designers need answers for in
order to proceed.
However, certain principles remain. Air power has a soft
underbelly. The Cessna attack on Red Square illustrates the point.
(Essentially, the Russians simply were not looking for that guy. If
they *had* been, however, they would have seen him.) I was intrigued
with James Wesley Rawles' portrait ("Triple Ought") of ultra-light
aircraft fitted with racks of M-16 rifles and used in a light ground
attack role. That sort of thing fits very neatly in a narrow space
between air-superiority and surface counter-air. All this means that,
even in a "high-tech" war, the air role must reach all the way from
high-altitude intercept right down into the weeds.
It goes like this:
1) The enemy can be expected to fly. His purpose may be
logistics, intellegence, or attack, but he *will* fly, and he will
vigorously defend his ability to do so.
2) This must be stopped. The enemy cannot be permitted
un-restricted air space and only air-superiority achieves the goal.
This is bi-lateral to the combatants, but that's all there is
to it.
A $50,000 surplus MiG might very well have a place, but it
really cannot be laid in concrete a priori.
>>For instance, anyone going up against the US without
>>advanced air battle control (AWACS, etc.) is in very serious trouble.
>>A nimble pipe like the '21 isn't much good if everybody on the other
>>side can see you far out enough that they can sling a missile at 40
>>miles or set up an intercept with no way out by the time you see
>>*them*.
>
>If they can see you. Can't planes fly under radar anymore?
It depends on the radar. This is very deep shit. For
instance: pulse-doppler radars don't see targets heading straight on
very well, while continuous-wave radars can only be avoided by keeping
them on the target aircraft's wing. Acquisition radars, ideally, are
placed in order to compliment each others' abilities, but they are
also expensive: one doesn't salt the entire countryside with them.
Rather, they move with the battle. Good intel can reveal the
weaknesses.
All the above is far more pertinent to ground attack missions
rather than our surplus MiG-21 riding a high-altitude intercept.
Consider: Captain Scott O'Grady (Bosnia) was taken out with an
SA-6 "Gainful" SAM. This is a mobile SAM with its own C-W radar. He
was flying at 10,000 feet, right in the sweet-spot of that sort of
attack, in a jet with advanced threat warning avionics, and the first
time he knew was under attack, his jet was on fire. The SAM commander
knew his shit, and he played it just right. That is very difficult to
counter because it goes to one of the very First Things of *any* sort
of combat from hand-to-hand on up: "Get the drop on the other guy."
Good radar technique is essential. On the other hand, O'Grady's whole
trip was a bit sleepy that day, from NATO on down to his very cockpit.
One might expect it to tighten up in an active theater of war.
All is compromise and synthesis of elements in context, and
the complexity is simply staggering to the initiate. I haven't even
scratched the surface here.
Did you read Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising"? That thing is a
fairly good primer outline, and I emphasize "outline".
>Or have the surveillance techs come up with better stuff by now? I
>know the NSA's satellites can read the serial numbers on the rifles
>being carried on the ground (in the open), but can they do it in real time?
They don't have to. Consider digital data links from multiple
airborne and surface radars and other sensors (infrared, etc.),
feeding very rich targeting/attack data to aircraft in real time. Get
the picture? Who needs satellites?
Of course, the ECM ("electronic counter-measures") effort is
keeping up. It's the same hide & seek game that we played as kids:
everybody has the same tools, and they play them to the best advantage
for as long as it lasts, until the tactical situation changes pro or
con, at which point a way must be found to change the situation
*again*, if you're on the down side. The tools are horrendously
advanced and capable, however, and the game is coldly lethal in ways
never before seen in air war.
Essentially, air war is no fun anymore. It's all business.
>> IOW - I am not at all convinced, prima facie, that there
>>really is any such valid a thing as "air guerrilla war". Not at the
>>moment. But it is a *very* intriguing concept.
>
>Well, there's clearly lots of use of air power in counter-insurgency to deliver
>assault forces on the spot. That's just the flip side of the COIN :-).
(heh)
Yeah, but that's only valid on the COIN side. It doesn't work
that way in our above-defined "high-tech" war.
(In re: Israel & the Gulf War)
>>>Why? So they could call his bluff?
>>
>> Well, if I understand you properly, you have a point. There
>>really wasn't anything they could do about it with air assets except
>>get in the way of the Allied effort. In fact, they were warned that
>>if they didn't stay out of it, they would strictly be on their own in
>>a very busy air-space planned to the second.
>
>I guess so. They didn't have any Patriots, did they?
Hell...*we* didn't even have Patriots; certainly not as they
were depicted by Bush & Co. The damned things did *not* do what they
said they did. It is very much an open question whether a single SCUD
attack was more than blunted by a Patriot which merely managed to rain
lots of jagged wreckage all over the target area. (This was evident
in the real time video of those attacks.) This is not the fault of
the system - it was never designed to do that.
>So, what else they gonna do?
Well, they might have tried what we tried: go out and scour
50,000 square miles of desert in search of fourteen mobile SCUD
launchers. It didn't work for us, and there is no reason to think
they would have done any better. They might have mounted reprisal
raids, but there wasn't much of a pay-off: the Arabs in the coalition
would never have stood for it, and the operations would have been
*extremely* risky for Israeli air forces: working in a very busy air
environment without integrated IFF ("identification friend/foe")
coding and mission planning.
Not a very good idea.
>>>They're lucky those SCUDs weren't loaded with Anthrax.
>>
>> I know, but that couldn't have made it any easier to take.
>
>I suppose not, but they still got damn lucky.
No kidding. I expected the casualties to be a lot worse than
they were.
Billy
Anthology
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/essays.html
McQ
>>> "Hi-tech" war may be loosely taken to mean matched integrated
>>>forces using the latest advances in operation.
>>
>>Whaddaya mean by "integrated forces"?
> A command & control structure which can take advantage of
>things like real-time electronic intelligence and work peer-to-peer
>across service boundaries. AWACS talking to anti-aircraft artillery
>(AAA) radars on data links, for example, or tank commanders who can
>directly control close-air support, or mounted infantry feeding target
>data to ship-borne cruise missiles. (I'm sure there is a precisely
>worded technical definition of the term in military doctrine, but I
>cannot cite it for you.)
One of the most important things a military can do is integrate it's
firepower. There's no doubt that a B-52 strike is very powerful, but
it's effect is magnified if you're running artillery MLRS strikes on
other targes and a ground attack to take some objective in conjunction
with the strike. That's a form of force integration.
The military considers the ground combat unit (be it armored or
mech) to be the basic building block force. Anything you can add to
that force to make it more potent is called a "force multiplier".
Obviously, attack helicopters are a force multiplier as are CAS
missions, naval gunfire, etc. The trick, however, is to integrate
it's use. If a mech unit attacks and it hasn't planned and integrated
its fire support to support the attack, it probably isn't going to
succeed. The integration of force multipliers creates a synergy where
the whole is much more powerful than it's parts. A mech battalion
attacking another mech battalion will get it's butt waxed every time,
but if you add in a company of attack helicopters, a MLRS battery,
direct support 155 howitzers and 10 sorties of CAS and CAREFULLY
integrate that fire support to support your overall scheme of
maneuver, you've got one hell of a lot more power on that battlefield
than a single mech bn.
> Take that concept into the digital age. That is integration.
In the digital age we have such things as JSTARS which can and does
track any vehicle on the battlefield. It can be directly downlinked
to units in the field and provide realtime intelligence as to what's
out there. The "Highway of Death" was a JSTARS developed target.
We have Field Artillery systems now that are digital where an
observer can send firemission data directly to the guns and follow
that with digital corrections. Using GPS, that's a deadly system.
McQ
_________________________________
SIMPLISTIC: An argument you disagree with but can't answer.
POLICY RESEARCH: Looking for statistics to support a position you've already taken.
Tim Starr
In article <5cp94b$a...@dfw-ixnews6.ix.netcom.com>,
McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
> Look at what's going on now in fighter aircraft development. It's
>gone in two different directions. We're into stealth technology in a
>big way. Why? Because to INVADE someone else's airspace, one would
>LIKE to be stealthy...survivability is greatly enhanced. That stealth
>technology is VERY costly.
>
> Now look at the Swedes. They say "phah" to stealth technology.
>They don't need it. They have built a strictly defensive airforce, so
>intstead they build rather cheap, but effective single engine jet
>fighters that are deployed to airfields around the perimeter of
>Sweden. THAT is the sort of differences a defensive force would
>consider over someone building an offensive force. Offensive air
>forces HAVE to have stealth, a defensive force doesn't...it simply
>concentrates on defeating stealth technology (which I would bet is
>much less costly than being stealthy).
I can think of a few possible reasons to have a little bit of stealth
stuff:
1) Reprisals
2) One of my cousins was a mechanic on the Stealth Bomber, & is now back
on another stealth project, after a stint in the private sector. Or so
we hear. He's back at that vague Las Vegas military address he had when
he was on the Stealth Bomber, the one they use for the guys working on
the classified stuff at that airbase that's officially nonexistent.
3) The Stealth Bomber's really cool-looking! They had one in a recent
military airshow here in the Bay Area, & I saw one circling just a few
hundred yards above the rooftops in Berkeley, vapor trailing from the
edges of its wings, barely making any noise at all. I WANT one! :-)
'Course, I wanna Blackbird, too.
> Offensive forces need main battle tanks in large numbers. Defensive
>forces need Anti-tank weapons in large numbers. Guess which are
>cheaper to produce?
RPGs, especially if you can capture them from the Russian armories that
got left behind when the Red Army pulled out, like the Chechens did.
>In every area, one can see where if a group of
>people concentrated strictly on defense, they could build a VERY
>formidable defensive capability for much less money than what is spent
>on "defense" today.
Yep. At least half.
McQ
> In any case, I think $30M for a front-line fighter is over the
>top. Take a brief look at current procurement procedures, etc., and
>you can see what I mean. (The Northrop F-5 Tigershark is a marvelous
>example. Very few people even know what I'm talking about, because
>that manifestly superior and *cheap* fighter was never contracted for
>manufacture due to political considerations, even though it really was
>the better mousetrap.) We don't need to spend that kind of money and,
>even if we did, there is no reason on earth why private subscription
>could not support the effort.
As I recall, the F5 was our "export" model and served (serves?) in
many an allied airforce.
Anyway, F16's go for about 12M. It's as modular an aircraft as one
can get (engine is held in on two rails and can be pulled in a jif and
replace, most avionic componenets are "black boxes" that can be pulled
and replaced in nothing flat). The FA 18 goes for about 23M and has
about the same mission capabilites as the F16. Why the price tag
difference? Defensive vs. offensive mission. One is more of a
defensive weapon (F16) and the other is an offensive weapon that must
be deployed over water from a carrier. So that means two engines
instead of one (can't get a single engine fighter back to the carrier
if the engine quits), beefed up landing gear, etc. So if you're
building a defensive force, you're into F16s NOT FA 18s and that means
almost 2 for 1 in cost.
Look at what's going on now in fighter aircraft development. It's
gone in two different directions. We're into stealth technology in a
big way. Why? Because to INVADE someone else's airspace, one would
LIKE to be stealthy...survivability is greatly enhanced. That stealth
technology is VERY costly.
Now look at the Swedes. They say "phah" to stealth technology.
They don't need it. They have built a strictly defensive airforce, so
intstead they build rather cheap, but effective single engine jet
fighters that are deployed to airfields around the perimeter of
Sweden. THAT is the sort of differences a defensive force would
consider over someone building an offensive force. Offensive air
forces HAVE to have stealth, a defensive force doesn't...it simply
concentrates on defeating stealth technology (which I would bet is
much less costly than being stealthy).
Offensive forces need main battle tanks in large numbers. Defensive
forces need Anti-tank weapons in large numbers. Guess which are
cheaper to produce? In every area, one can see where if a group of
people concentrated strictly on defense, they could build a VERY
formidable defensive capability for much less money than what is spent
on "defense" today.
McQ
_________________________________
"The flush toilet is the basis of western civilization" - Alan Coult
Tim Starr
In article <32efebf1...@news.mindspring.com>,
Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>>>How much, then? Twice that amount? Ten times?
>>>
>>> That's a damned good question, Tim, and even the big boys are
>>>struggling with it for a lot of reasons. Essentially, the problem is
>>>that the Cold War is no longer the conflict paradigm driving design
>>>and budgeting. Nobody knows who their enemies are going to be
>>>anymore, or what sorts of mission capabilities they need to build (and
>>>can afford). In a lot of ways, we've not seen such diversity in
>>>aircraft design since before WWII.
>>
>>Well, as far as I can tell there's the school of thought that says we're
>>in for lots of guerilla/terrorist warfare, in which case air power ain't
>>all it's cracked up to be, or hi-tech warfare, in which case air power
>>might be useful, but no one really knows how. I think there's another
>>school of thought, but I can't think of it right now.
>
> There will always be a place for air power, simply because the
>vacuum resulting from complete abandonment would be filled the very
>next day.
I didn't mean to suggest there wouldn't be any place for it at all. After
all, the 3rd stage of guerilla warfare is conventional anyways, & that would
presumably include air power.
That much is principle, and I'll hit it again later on.
>The particular roles are <heh> up in the air at the moment, and
>everybody has their own take on it.
>
> Synopsis:
<Snipped for brevity; very interesting>
> So...
>
> "Terrorist" warfare is obviously immune to air-power.
>Guerrilla war, however, while very challenging, nonetheless has
>chinks. Air power, at the very least, can make guerrilla ops a lot
>more difficult than they would be, otherwise. It's easy to see:
>people running around under a ground attack umbrella must be very
>careful about how they do it, and they will flat get their pee-pees
>whacked when they get caught. (Air-to-ground ordnance is extremely
>fearful stuff, these days.) Perhaps McQ has some thoughts here.
>
> "Hi-tech" war may be loosely taken to mean matched integrated
>forces using the latest advances in operation.
Whaddaya mean by "integrated forces"?
The way I think about it is how I read forces classified in a paper by an
ex-Naval Intelligence guy, who used 2 axes: high-tech & low-tech, brutes &
"seers". The way he put it is that conventional forces are high-tech
brutes, best at fighting other high-tech brutes. Guerillas would be low-
tech brutes, led by low-tech seers. High-tech seers seem to be a bit of a
wild card.
<SNIP>
> However, certain principles remain. Air power has a soft
>underbelly. The Cessna attack on Red Square illustrates the point.
>(Essentially, the Russians simply were not looking for that guy. If
>they *had* been, however, they would have seen him.) I was intrigued
>with James Wesley Rawles' portrait ("Triple Ought") of ultra-light
>aircraft fitted with racks of M-16 rifles and used in a light ground
>attack role.
Sounds a lot like the gyrocopter pilot in ROAD WARRIOR. :-)
<SNIP>
>>>For instance, anyone going up against the US without
>>>advanced air battle control (AWACS, etc.) is in very serious trouble.
>>>A nimble pipe like the '21 isn't much good if everybody on the other
>>>side can see you far out enough that they can sling a missile at 40
>>>miles or set up an intercept with no way out by the time you see
>>>*them*.
>>
>>If they can see you. Can't planes fly under radar anymore?
>
> It depends on the radar. This is very deep shit. For
>instance: pulse-doppler radars don't see targets heading straight on
>very well, while continuous-wave radars can only be avoided by keeping
>them on the target aircraft's wing. Acquisition radars, ideally, are
>placed in order to compliment each others' abilities, but they are
>also expensive: one doesn't salt the entire countryside with them.
>Rather, they move with the battle. Good intel can reveal the
>weaknesses.
If you can get good intel. No one has any business going into a guerilla
war in the first place if they don't have good counter-intel.
> All the above is far more pertinent to ground attack missions
>rather than our surplus MiG-21 riding a high-altitude intercept.
Ah. I get it. I've been thinking of "ground attack missions" all along,
while you've been thinking of high-altitude operations.
> Consider: Captain Scott O'Grady (Bosnia) was taken out with an
>SA-6 "Gainful" SAM. This is a mobile SAM with its own C-W radar. He
>was flying at 10,000 feet, right in the sweet-spot of that sort of
>attack, in a jet with advanced threat warning avionics, and the first
>time he knew was under attack, his jet was on fire. The SAM commander
>knew his shit, and he played it just right. That is very difficult to
>counter because it goes to one of the very First Things of *any* sort
>of combat from hand-to-hand on up: "Get the drop on the other guy."
>Good radar technique is essential. On the other hand, O'Grady's whole
>trip was a bit sleepy that day, from NATO on down to his very cockpit.
>One might expect it to tighten up in an active theater of war.
The effectiveness of SAMs, especially hand-held, is one of the things
that's led me to guess that the ground-attack role of air power may be
on its way out for a while. Except for high-altitude bombing, of course,
which means smart bombs & saturation bombing. Which doesn't do much
good against enemies that can dig tunnels like the Vietnamese did or the
Mujaheddin. Apparently the Muj dug tunnels through the mountains into
Pakistan so they could transport supplies & other stuff without being
exposed to Russian aircraft.
> All is compromise and synthesis of elements in context, and
>the complexity is simply staggering to the initiate. I haven't even
>scratched the surface here.
>
> Did you read Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising"? That thing is a
>fairly good primer outline, and I emphasize "outline".
Nope. Never read anything of Clancy's. Guess I probably should read
that, along with HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, which comes highly reccomended.
>>Or have the surveillance techs come up with better stuff by now? I
>>know the NSA's satellites can read the serial numbers on the rifles
>>being carried on the ground (in the open), but can they do it in real time?
>
> They don't have to. Consider digital data links from multiple
>airborne and surface radars and other sensors (infrared, etc.),
>feeding very rich targeting/attack data to aircraft in real time. Get
>the picture? Who needs satellites?
>
> Of course, the ECM ("electronic counter-measures") effort is
>keeping up. It's the same hide & seek game that we played as kids:
>everybody has the same tools, and they play them to the best advantage
>for as long as it lasts, until the tactical situation changes pro or
>con, at which point a way must be found to change the situation
>*again*, if you're on the down side. The tools are horrendously
>advanced and capable, however, and the game is coldly lethal in ways
>never before seen in air war.
Is all that stuff EMP-shielded?
McQ
Ernest Brown <c50...@showme.missouri.edu> wrote:
>For anyone interested in rational analysis of military history, I
>recommend COMMAND Magazine, published bimonthly by the XTR Corporation.
>Unlike regular military history magazines, which confine themselves to
>historical description, COMMAND does in-depth, yet highly readable
>analysis of the factors which drive military affairs. The current issue
>(JAN 1997) contains an article of interest to both sides in the current
>"proper government" debate, "America's First Vietnam: The Seminole Wars"
>by Norman J. Jones.
I agree. I've been getting COMMAND from almost their first issue. I
can't say enough about the job they do. Most of the time the writing
is excellent and as complete as you'll find anywhere.
McQ
_________________________________
"To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed,
law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at,
controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by
creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue
to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every
transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured,
numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented,
forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext
of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be
placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized,
extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then at the slightest
resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined,
vilified, harrassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound,
choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed,
sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged,
dishonored. That is government; that is it's justice; that is its
morality."
P.J. Proudhon
McQ
David Friedman <DD...@Best.com> wrote:
>In article <5cjps2$a...@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com>, McQ
><mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>So while we might typically spend, as a
>> nation, 250 billion in a year for our armed forces, if, for whatever
>> reason, the anarchist territory had the same geographical extent as
>> the present US, we'd be looking at a budget of about 1/3 our present
>> one or about 80 billion.
>1. I suspect that is a high figure.
Probably. I'd simply make the point whatever was spent defensively
would require any entity considering offensive action against an AC
territory to spend 2 to 3 times more than that to have a credible
offensive force capable of winning.
>2. Also, consider that after a while an anarcho-capitalist society (if we
>are right about how it would work) is going to be a lot richer than the
>surrounding states, making it easier to raise enough money. If the present
>territory of the U.S. were under anarcho-capitalism, I don't think Mexico
>would be a serious threat.
Agreed. All the AC society would have to do is spend about a
billion more than the potential enemy's capability and relax. In
Mexico's case, that wouldn't be much.
>> A consortium of defense agencies, could build a pretty formidable
>> defensive force for that amount.
>The problem is that a defense agency that doesn't join can free ride on the
>ones that do--and undercut their prices. And in order for
>anarcho-capitalism to work well, you want quite a lot of
>agencies--otherwise there is a serious risk that they will decide theft is
>more profitable than production, combine, and become a government.
Absolutely. One approach may be allowing the "association" they
form offer as inducements services only available if the defense
agency is a member of the "association". Perhaps free legal aid to a
certain dollar amount or particular forms of arbitration guaranteed
through it's membership or other such inducements. The obvious hope
would be to entice customers to "association" members rather than
those attempting a "free ride". It might also entice the "rogue"
agency to consider joining the "association" so it too can offer the
association benefits to potential customers.
>Consider, as an alternative approach, charity of one sort or another. In a
>well functioning society, people want to keep things going, defend their
>system, etc. During war, lots of people volunteer for the army, or buy war
>bonds they know are a bad deal--essentially donating their money or labor
>to what they consider a good cause.
I saw a model for this sort of a defense that included selling off
all the assets now held by government, putting them in a "defense
trust" and using that defense trust to fund a defensive force in
perpetuity. Since the US government holds 12 trillion in assets, I
think that would be quite workable.
>My current favorite model would be a sizable reserve force, with the
>individual units either hobbyist volunteers (compare the Civil War
>reenactment people or the SCA) or small units fielded by firms for the good
>publicity--the Apple Volunteers marching in the annual parade celebrating
>the day we got rid of the last vestige of government. For one version, read
>Kipling's short story "The Army of a Dream." There might be a small
>professional cadre, employed by enforcement agencies or by privately funded
>foundations, to provide coordination in peace time, and offer leadership if
>a war happens. You may need some professionals--but a low ratio of
>professionals to amateurs is one way of keeping them honest.
Right now, a sizeable portion of our "force" is made up of
"amateurs"...reservists and National Guard. We rely on our reserve
forces quite a lot more than we once did (in fact, my reserve unit
just had 5 people mobilized this last week for duty in Bosnia). While
the US cannot survive as a superpower (superpowers must, of necessity,
be "force projectors") under your model, a defensive force most
certaily could. With that small core of professionals aimed mostly at
training the amateurs and keeping them at a particular level of
training, mobilization could be rapid, mobilization training would be
fairly quick and deployment rather responsive to a defensive
situation.
McQ
__________________________________
Compassion: The use of tax money to buy votes.
Insensitivity: Objections to the use of tax money to buy votes.
Billy Beck
McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>David Friedman <DD...@Best.com> wrote:
>>My current favorite model would be a sizable reserve force, with the
>>individual units either hobbyist volunteers (compare the Civil War
>>reenactment people or the SCA) or small units fielded by firms for the good
>>publicity--the Apple Volunteers marching in the annual parade celebrating
>>the day we got rid of the last vestige of government. For one version, read
>>Kipling's short story "The Army of a Dream." There might be a small
>>professional cadre, employed by enforcement agencies or by privately funded
>>foundations, to provide coordination in peace time, and offer leadership if
>>a war happens. You may need some professionals--but a low ratio of
>>professionals to amateurs is one way of keeping them honest.
>
> Right now, a sizeable portion of our "force" is made up of
>"amateurs"...reservists and National Guard. We rely on our reserve
>forces quite a lot more than we once did (in fact, my reserve unit
>just had 5 people mobilized this last week for duty in Bosnia). While
>the US cannot survive as a superpower (superpowers must, of necessity,
>be "force projectors")...
(bite)
Consider the implications of this in light of George
Washington's warning about "entangl[ing] foreign alliances".
What sorts of terrorist threats have we *manufactured* in the
past 40 years or so?
What are the implications for domestic politics?
Billy
Anthology
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/essays.html
Billy Beck
McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>Billy Beck <ain't...@tno.e-mail> wrote:
>> Again, I would point out that the vast majority of fighter
>>pilots who went to war in the Gulf had "real" jobs outside the USANG.
>>(Anybody here know anything about aircraft tail-codes? In ANG units,
>>they designate the home state of the aircraft. Go have another look
>>at Gulf War films. "The Boys From Syracuse" are exactly that.) The
>>point of this is that "amateur[ism]" does not necessarily translate to
>>ineptitude. These people maintain proficiency in an extremely
>>demanding regime, and there is no reason why the entire support and
>>operations structure could not be privately erected.
>
> I remember the SCANG (for whatever reason) tail-markings very well.
>The boys from the Palmetto State did well. I took a tour and got a
>briefing from an NG squadron who had just transitioned from F4's to
>F16s.
Heh. Were they, like, excited?
>These guys all had regular jobs, but really LIVED to fly those
>aircraft on weekends. Interestingly enough, NG units usually win all
>the fighter and bombing (William Tell?)...
Right. That's the name of the Air Force intramural
competition. In 1990, the SCANG was the best bombing unit in the
world (but I can't recall the name of the competition). Not bad for a
bunch of airline pilots, accountants, and other assorted "amateurs"
going up against NATO pros.
>...competitions because they stay
>together and fly together as units longer than regular Airforce units.
>It gives them an edge in those competitons which is WHY the regular
>Airforce has no qualms about integrating them at the drop of a hat.
Correct. There is no sort of nepotism involved. Those guys
wade in with the regulars and hang tough. That's why they get to work
the big time gigs.
Billy
Anthology
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/essays.html
McQ
>>Ah. I get it. I've been thinking of "ground attack missions" all along,
>>while you've been thinking of high-altitude operations.
> Well, I'm trying to think of the whole gamut.
>>> Consider: Captain Scott O'Grady (Bosnia)...
>>The effectiveness of SAMs, especially hand-held, is one of the things
>>that's led me to guess that the ground-attack role of air power may be
>>on its way out for a while.
I wouldn't judge the effectiveness of all man-launched ADA or the
ineffectiveness of air power by what happened to O'Grady. We aren't
exactly prosecuting a war there.
> I don't think so at all, and niether do current strategists
>and tacticians. They're determined to meet the challenge because
>close-air support is simply too valuable to give up. It does
>something that artillery cannot always do. For one thing, it's the
>911 of ground pounders. (Bruce?) The SAM threat can be dealt with
>with the proper resources and tactics.
The Airforce and Naval combat air have three basic missions. Air
superiority, Battlefield Air Interdiction and Close Air Support.
Two of those are ground support missions. Neither is going away
anytime soon. And although the Army can do both with attack
helicopters, it does BAI to a very limited degree as it's not
particularly smart to send assets like attack helicopters on
cross-FLOT operations. Anyway, BAI is what you saw happen in Iraq
when our birds went after bridges, reserves, etc. The intent of BAI is
to deny an enemy the ability to reinforce and exploit any success he
may be enjoying in the "close battle." BAI is an element of what is
known doctrinely as "deep battle."
CAS of course is support rendered to ground combat units in contact
and is an element of what is known as the "close battle".
Both missions require techniques to suppress enemy air defenses.
For BAI, they rely mostly on the Wild Weasles and their HAARM missles
and ECM birds with radar jamming equipment. The WW's can blast a heck
of a hole in an ADA setup. Their missles are radar beam followers.
When they que up the radar, the missle locks on to the radar beam and
even if they turn the radar off, the missle has computed the radar
location and destroys it. In the meantime the ECM guys are putting a
blizzard of snow on the screens of those radars still functioning. In
both cases, no radar, no air defense. If the BAI mission is close
enough to our FLOT, we'll also attempt to help with any artillery that
can range the targets, but this is rare.
In CAS missions, we do what is called JSEAD (Joint Suppression of
Enemy Air Defense). The Airforce and Army get together, plot the air
defense targets to be suppressed, give the Army the targets that are
appropriate to them (those within artillery range) and the Airforce
takes those that are appropriate for it to attack (out of artillery
range but still able to effect the CAS mission). When CAS is ordered
up, the missions are run in order to "suppress" enemy air defenses. In
RVN we even ran naval gunfire as a part of JSEAD (quite successfully I
might add). JSEAD is also done to ensure the successful execution of
air assault and airborne operations.
A final active measure taken by the ground attack birds during the
actual execution of the CAS mission is the deployment of flares as
they ingress and egress. The flares, if deployed properly, will spoof
heat-seeker heads on hand held launchers most of the time.
>>Except for high-altitude bombing, of course, which means smart
>>bombs & saturation bombing.
> This is true, and we know the problems, as well. Smart bombs
>are bloody expensive, and carpet bombing doesn't offer the greatest
>ROI.
Unless you have an enemy dumb enough to dig in in a desert.
McQ
_________________________________
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to
control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things
that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow a the very
principles upon which our government was founded." - Abraham Lincoln
Billy Beck
McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>Billy Beck <ain't...@tno.e-mail> wrote:
> I wouldn't judge the effectiveness of all man-launched ADA or the
>ineffectiveness of air power by what happened to O'Grady. We aren't
>exactly prosecuting a war there.
Exactly. That flight was a walk in the park..studded with air
defence.
(on air defence suppression...)
> Both missions require techniques to suppress enemy air defenses.
>For BAI, they rely mostly on the Wild Weasles and their HAARM missles
>and ECM birds with radar jamming equipment. The WW's can blast a heck
>of a hole in an ADA setup. Their missles are radar beam followers.
>When they que up the radar, the missle locks on to the radar beam and
>even if they turn the radar off, the missle has computed the radar
>location and destroys it. In the meantime the ECM guys are putting a
>blizzard of snow on the screens of those radars still functioning. In
>both cases, no radar, no air defense. If the BAI mission is close
>enough to our FLOT, we'll also attempt to help with any artillery that
>can range the targets, but this is rare.
Tim: this stuff is amazingly complex. I've read about Wild
Weasel crews who took real-time notes on NVA air defence performance
(under fire), came home, and sat around smoking cigarettes while
writing Tech Orders for modification of their radar receivers, in
order to go back out and successfully beat up SAM sites...who were
busy modifying *their* gear in order to break ECM and spoof
anti-radiation fire. The deep-tech of it is fascinating. (How many
harmonics can you count in a given bandwidth in a given fraction of a
second? How would you do it?) As an aspect of active war, it reads
like a very personal sort of thing. In Vietnam, it was a deadly duel
between specialists, and they came to know each other. Col. Broughton
wrote about SAM commanders who were characteristic in their radar
styles.
In the passage above, Bruce is referring to "pop-up" radar
technique. The search radar is on-line only very briefly, because
everybody with a receiver can see it as soon as it lights up. The
logical progression is to develop a missile which can compute the
emitter location after it's switched off.
On & on, round and round. It never stops.
> In CAS missions, we do what is called JSEAD (Joint Suppression of
>Enemy Air Defense). The Airforce and Army get together, plot the air
>defense targets to be suppressed, give the Army the targets that are
>appropriate to them (those within artillery range) and the Airforce
>takes those that are appropriate for it to attack (out of artillery
>range but still able to effect the CAS mission).
And that is elementary "force integration". Again, Tim: bring
the concept forward to a digital environment. (I don't know what
sorts of hardware Bruce & Co. are working with.)
>>Smart bombs are bloody expensive, and carpet bombing doesn't
>>offer the greatest ROI.
>
> Unless you have an enemy dumb enough to dig in in a desert.
Yeah, but...how often will you get *that* lucky?
Billy
Anthology
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/essays.html
Paul Zrimsek
>There's a story about one of the German High Command watching a Swiss
>practice mobilization in the 1930s, asking one of the Swiss commanders what
>he'd do if a German force invaded.
>
>"Each of my men would go out, fire one shot, & go home."
>
>"What? But we outnumber you, 2 to 1!"
>
>"Then each of my men would fire 2 shots & go home."
In the version I heard, it was Kaiser Bill watching the Swiss exercise. But I
like your version better, because it reminds us of an interesting fact: the
Third Reich had the Swiss outnumbered by a lot more than 2:1, and would
certainly have beaten them had they tried. But they *never tried*-- despite
the fact that their payoff would have included not only the plunder from
a small but wealthy country, but also (if done in late 1939 or early 1940) the
chance to flank the Maginot Line from both ends.
This demonstrates a truth which I've also tried to raise in the debate over
Chris Sandvick's scare scenario: You can be strong enough to deter without
necessarily being strong enough to win.
McQ
>Billy Beck <ain't...@tno.e-mail> wrote:
>McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>>Billy Beck <ain't...@tno.e-mail> wrote:
>
>>The boys from the Palmetto State did well. I took a tour and got a
>>briefing from an NG squadron who had just transitioned from F4's to
>>F16s.
> Heh. Were they, like, excited?
Oh man...I remember this one captain describing how it was to fly
one. He said, "you don't FLY this airplane, you WEAR it. You think
it and it's done". They were some fired up aviators, and LOVED
they're new toy.
>>These guys all had regular jobs, but really LIVED to fly those
>>aircraft on weekends. Interestingly enough, NG units usually win all
>>the fighter and bombing (William Tell?)...
> Right. That's the name of the Air Force intramural
>competition. In 1990, the SCANG was the best bombing unit in the
>world (but I can't recall the name of the competition). Not bad for a
>bunch of airline pilots, accountants, and other assorted "amateurs"
>going up against NATO pros.
There is no one who works harder at maintaining that proficiency
either...and on their own time if necessary. That's one of the
interesting thing about the so-called amateurs. The do it because
they LOVE the job. Many times the pros do it because it IS a job.
>>...competitions because they stay
>>together and fly together as units longer than regular Airforce units.
>>It gives them an edge in those competitons which is WHY the regular
>>Airforce has no qualms about integrating them at the drop of a hat.
> Correct. There is no sort of nepotism involved. Those guys
>wade in with the regulars and hang tough. That's why they get to work
>the big time gigs.
Well the Airforce has had a problem that the Army is just now
facing. They've ALWAYS had a real-world defense mission of the
continental US. The planes that used to go out and meet the Bears
when they'd probe our air defenses were oft times as not National
Guard birds. So these guys were a defacto part of the Airforce
because of that mission. Additionally the regular Airforce has always
known it didn't have enough assets in its regular wings to do its
mission, and has ALWAYS relied on the reserve to fill those holes.
McQ
_________________________________
"No generalization is wholly true, not even this one." - Oliver Wendell Holems
McQ
>Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>> During Desert Storm, the Airforce, Marines and Navy did an excellent
>>job of integrating their reserve and guard units into the fight. The
>>Army did (and DOES) a LOUSY job. During DS, Marine reserve units were
>>right in the thick of it, and did a credible job. Of course, as you
>>point out, the Air Guard and reserve units were quite effective.
>Why's the Army so much worse at this?
Some of it is politics, some is tradition, some is arrogance with a
dash of stupidity.
In the past, the regular army never had to rely much on it's
reserves in time of war...only the world wars required any extensive
call up of reserve forces. In addition, the National Guard is a sort
of empire in and of itself, and is constantly fighting the regular
army for assets, training dollars, etc. It see's itself as a "combat"
organization but not answerable to the regular army in any significant
way (they're viewed more as the "governor's private army"). This, of
course breeds animosity, and the regular army seems to go out of it's
way to denigrate the abilities of the NG. The Army Reserve (National
Guard are "state" troops, the Army Reserve are reserve FEDERAL troops)
are caught in the middle.
Previously, there were Army Reserve (AR) combat units (the regular
army, for the most part finds difficulty in differentiating between
the AR and the NG, so they mostly just lump 'em all together and treat
everyone who isn't a "regular" like dog meat). Recently, all of the
combat assets in the AR were shifted to the NG and all of the combat
service (CS) and combat service support (CSS) assets were shifted from
the NG to the AR. Additionally, many active CS and CSS units were
deactivated as regular units and reactivated as AR units.
Both the active and NG guys sorta snickered when this happened
because they had retained the "macho" combat jobs and sluffed the CS
and CSS on the AR. Lo and behold, it suddenly became obvious to both
that they couldn't sustain their combat operations without CS and CSS
support, and the MAJORITY of it belonged to the Army Reserve. Viola,
leverage. Suddenly both the active army AND the NG had to begin
earnest dialogue with the AR as it was the reserve folks who would be
deploying WITH THEM and in support of them if THEY deployed.
As it is structured now, any significant troop deployment by the
active army would not and could not deploy without a significant
deployment of reserve forces. So NOW they HAVE to integrate the AR
into their thinking and training. One of the best kept secrets of
Desert Storm is the "award winning" logistics system was basically
manned and run by reservists and reserve units.
As for the NG, you recall the wailing the army did about the two NG
combat brigades not being ready for deployment during DS, correct?
Interestingly, one of them, the 48th Bde is from right here in
Georgia. They were supposed to be a "round-out" brigade for the 24th
ID (mech) out of Ft. Stewart GA. IOW, they were to be that division's
third combat brigade in time of war. The regular army never even
ACTIVATED the 48th when the 24th deployed, instead opting for a
regular army TRAINING brigade at Ft. Benning (the 197th) instead. So
there sat the brigade who had TRAINED to deploy with them while the
24th headed to Saudi. Months later the 48th was activated and sent
out for mobilization training. Their training STANDARD was to be
combat-ready in time of war for deployment in 90 days. The army never
told the press this was their mobilization standard, but instead told
the press how BAD these guys were (they had to justify their taking an
active brigade in their place somehow) and how miserably they
preformed in training. In reality the brigade was pronounced
combat-ready by the active army in EXACTLY 90 days, meaning they'd
passed all of their objective standards satisfactorily and in the
time-frame required.
Now here's the interesting part. The person who was in charge of
ensuring this brigade was up to standard for deployment PRIOR to
Desert Storm was none other than the commanding general of the 24th
ID...one Barry McCaffery, now ensconsed as our resident "drug czar" in
DC. Personally, if ANYONE should have answered for the supposed sorry
condition of this unit's training (as portrayed by the army and the
press) it should have been HIM. IF what was claimed were true, the
man should have been relieved of his command because one of his combat
brigades couldn't, according to the army, deploy. He wasn't of
course...he wasn't even mentioned in all of this, as a matter of fact.
In essence what you saw was the regular army reminding the NG who got
to call the shots. Some sorry stuff in my estimation. Had the 48th
brigade been activated when the 24th deployed and gone through it's
training as it expected to, it would have joined the 24th in the
desert full up and ready to go MONTHS before Desert Storm actually
kicked off.
A little inside skinny as to the reason the army is so lousy at this
stuff. Heh...but times are changing, and the drawdown in FORCING it
to become better. Of course that has done little for the attitudes
the "amateurs" are subjected too by the "pros".
Sorry for the length of the rant, but in case you can't tell, this
stuff PISSES me off.
McQ
Billy Beck <ain't...@tno.e-mail> wrote:
>McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>David Friedman <DD...@Best.com> wrote:
>> Right now, a sizeable portion of our "force" is made up of
>>"amateurs"...reservists and National Guard. We rely on our reserve
>>forces quite a lot more than we once did (in fact, my reserve unit
>>just had 5 people mobilized this last week for duty in Bosnia). While
>>the US cannot survive as a superpower (superpowers must, of necessity,
>>be "force projectors")...
> (bite)
> Consider the implications of this in light of George
>Washington's warning about "entangl[ing] foreign alliances".
> What sorts of terrorist threats have we *manufactured* in the
>past 40 years or so?
Can you say "Gulf of Tonkin?"
Bosnia anyone? Lybia? Somolia?
> What are the implications for domestic politics?
It's a pretty reliable jobs program, isn't it?
McQ
Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>>So while we might typically spend, as a
>>>> nation, 250 billion in a year for our armed forces, if, for whatever
>>>> reason, the anarchist territory had the same geographical extent as
>>>> the present US, we'd be looking at a budget of about 1/3 our present
>>>> one or about 80 billion.
>>
>>>1. I suspect that is a high figure.
>>
>> Probably. I'd simply make the point whatever was spent defensively
>>would require any entity considering offensive action against an AC
>>territory to spend 2 to 3 times more than that to have a credible
>>offensive force capable of winning.
>It just occurred to me to do the math on what this would cost on a per-person
>basis. If I'm right, $80 billion shared equally between 250 million people
>comes out to about $320 per person, per year.
>That's pretty damn low! That's less than what a good pistol costs these days,
>less than an ounce of gold. Amazing.
And I agree with David that it PROBABLY is a high figure...it could
definitely be done for less. 80 billion a year would bring a pretty
formidable defensive scheme for the area encompassing the US. So
we're not talking big bucks under AC to be able to ably defend that
society, EVEN if it covered an area of the size of the US.
Tim Starr
In article <5cqv7l$9...@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com>,
McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>Billy Beck <ain't...@tno.e-mail> wrote:
>>>Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>>Ah. I get it. I've been thinking of "ground attack missions" all along,
>>>while you've been thinking of high-altitude operations.
>
>
>
>>>The effectiveness of SAMs, especially hand-held, is one of the things
>>>that's led me to guess that the ground-attack role of air power may be
>>>on its way out for a while.
>
>ineffectiveness of air power by what happened to O'Grady. We aren't
>exactly prosecuting a war there.
>
>>and tacticians. They're determined to meet the challenge because
>>close-air support is simply too valuable to give up. It does
>>something that artillery cannot always do. For one thing, it's the
>>911 of ground pounders. (Bruce?) The SAM threat can be dealt with
>>with the proper resources and tactics.
>
> The Airforce and Naval combat air have three basic missions. Air
>superiority, Battlefield Air Interdiction and Close Air Support.
>
> Two of those are ground support missions. Neither is going away
>anytime soon. And although the Army can do both with attack
>helicopters, it does BAI to a very limited degree as it's not
>particularly smart to send assets like attack helicopters on
>cross-FLOT operations. Anyway, BAI is what you saw happen in Iraq
>when our birds went after bridges, reserves, etc. The intent of BAI is
>to deny an enemy the ability to reinforce and exploit any success he
>may be enjoying in the "close battle." BAI is an element of what is
>known doctrinely as "deep battle."
What's "FLOT"?
> CAS of course is support rendered to ground combat units in contact
>and is an element of what is known as the "close battle".
>
> Both missions require techniques to suppress enemy air defenses.
>For BAI, they rely mostly on the Wild Weasles and their HAARM missles
>and ECM birds with radar jamming equipment. The WW's can blast a heck
>of a hole in an ADA setup. Their missles are radar beam followers.
>When they que up the radar, the missle locks on to the radar beam and
>even if they turn the radar off, the missle has computed the radar
>location and destroys it. In the meantime the ECM guys are putting a
>blizzard of snow on the screens of those radars still functioning. In
>both cases, no radar, no air defense. If the BAI mission is close
>enough to our FLOT, we'll also attempt to help with any artillery that
>can range the targets, but this is rare.
>
> In CAS missions, we do what is called JSEAD (Joint Suppression of
>Enemy Air Defense). The Airforce and Army get together, plot the air
>defense targets to be suppressed, give the Army the targets that are
>appropriate to them (those within artillery range) and the Airforce
>takes those that are appropriate for it to attack (out of artillery
>range but still able to effect the CAS mission). When CAS is ordered
>up, the missions are run in order to "suppress" enemy air defenses. In
>RVN we even ran naval gunfire as a part of JSEAD (quite successfully I
>might add). JSEAD is also done to ensure the successful execution of
>air assault and airborne operations.
>
> A final active measure taken by the ground attack birds during the
>actual execution of the CAS mission is the deployment of flares as
>they ingress and egress. The flares, if deployed properly, will spoof
>heat-seeker heads on hand held launchers most of the time.
Can flares also be used to spoof air-to-air or air-to-ground missiles?
How 'bout radar decoys?
>>>Except for high-altitude bombing, of course, which means smart
>>>bombs & saturation bombing.
>
>> This is true, and we know the problems, as well. Smart bombs
>>are bloody expensive, and carpet bombing doesn't offer the greatest
>>ROI.
>
> Unless you have an enemy dumb enough to dig in in a desert.
In fairly shallow trenches.
Tim Starr
In article <5cteb5$j...@news-central.tiac.net>,
Paul Zrimsek <pzri...@tiac.net> wrote:
>In <timstarrE...@netcom.com>, Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> writes:
>
>>practice mobilization in the 1930s, asking one of the Swiss commanders what
>>he'd do if a German force invaded.
>>
>>"Each of my men would go out, fire one shot, & go home."
>>
>>"What? But we outnumber you, 2 to 1!"
>>
>>"Then each of my men would fire 2 shots & go home."
>
It very well could've been. I've never been able to track down the source of
this story. For all I know, it may be apocryphal.
>But I
>like your version better, because it reminds us of an interesting fact: the
>Third Reich had the Swiss outnumbered by a lot more than 2:1, and would
>certainly have beaten them had they tried. But they *never tried*-- despite
>the fact that their payoff would have included not only the plunder from
>a small but wealthy country, but also (if done in late 1939 or early 1940) the
>chance to flank the Maginot Line from both ends.
>
>This demonstrates a truth which I've also tried to raise in the debate over
>Chris Sandvick's scare scenario: You can be strong enough to deter without
>necessarily being strong enough to win.
Exactly. Offense costs 2-3 more times as much as defense, & 1 good guerilla
can tie up about half a dozen or so occupational troops.
Add in an entire population trained in sabotage, improvised explosives, etc.,
& armed with all sorts of weapons up to and including RPGs & hand-held SAMs,
& you've got one hell of a tough place to conquer.
Ernest Brown
On 31 Jan 1997, McQ wrote:
>
> Sorry for the length of the rant, but in case you can't tell, this
> stuff PISSES me off.
>
>
How about the navy and RORO's? (g,d,r)
McQ
Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>> I don't think so at all, and niether do current strategists
>>and tacticians. They're determined to meet the challenge because
>>close-air support is simply too valuable to give up. It does
>>something that artillery cannot always do. For one thing, it's the
>>911 of ground pounders. (Bruce?) The SAM threat can be dealt with
>>with the proper resources and tactics.
>Such as?
Well covered ingress and egress routes (JSEAD). Fly in
nap-of-the-earth (NOE), pop-up, fire and duck down NOE again. Limits
the line of sight of the gunner and doesn't give him enough time to
engage (there's a specific minimum time a Stinger must have to
engage).
If you go wandering in at high altitude, BOOM you're an involuntary
airplane parts distributor and you deserve to ride the seat into the
ground.
>The Russians didn't seem to do too well against the Stingers we gave
>the Muj.
That's because the Russians a) rarely ran effective SEAD missions
and b) didn't always bring their planes in like I described.
Tim Starr
In article <32f0eabe...@news.mindspring.com>,
Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
<Stuff I go along with SNIPPED>
>>The way I think about it is how I read forces classified in a paper by an
>>ex-Naval Intelligence guy, who used 2 axes: high-tech & low-tech, brutes &
>>"seers". The way he put it is that conventional forces are high-tech
>>brutes, best at fighting other high-tech brutes. Guerillas would be low-
>>tech brutes, led by low-tech seers.
>
> Pretty good. That sounds like an interesting paper, and the
>word "seer" is aptly chosen.
The author's got a consulting company called "Open Source Solutions," I recall.
Forget what his name was, but yes, it was an interesting paper. One of the
things he pointed out was that hi-tech brutes have a real tough time with the
combo of some low-tech brutes being led by low-tech seers.
For one thing, all that gear designed to detect enemy machines & destroy the
infrastructure's pretty much useless if the enemy doesn't HAVE any machines &
doesn't rely upon any infrastructure to support it. Back in Vietnam, the
French would destroy a road then conclude that the Viet Minh couldn't transport
anything through the area, which was nonsense since they were 'porting it by
bike & coolie through the jungle instead. In Chechnya, one of the first things
the Russians did was bomb the Grozny airport, but that didn't do them much good
since the Chechens didn't rely much upon air power anyways. UNOSOM had the
same problem - no enemy infrastructure to destroy, no 3C to disrupt, etc.
>>High-tech seers seem to be a bit of a wild card.
>
> Why?
Let's put it this way: what happens to all that fancy force-integration com
gear if it gets EMPed?
>>The effectiveness of SAMs, especially hand-held, is one of the things
>>that's led me to guess that the ground-attack role of air power may be
>>on its way out for a while.
>
> I don't think so at all, and niether do current strategists
>and tacticians. They're determined to meet the challenge because
>close-air support is simply too valuable to give up. It does
>something that artillery cannot always do. For one thing, it's the
>911 of ground pounders. (Bruce?) The SAM threat can be dealt with
>with the proper resources and tactics.
Such as? The Russians didn't seem to do too well against the Stingers we gave
the Muj.
>>Except for high-altitude bombing, of course, which means smart
>>bombs & saturation bombing.
>
> This is true, and we know the problems, as well. Smart bombs
>are bloody expensive, and carpet bombing doesn't offer the greatest
>ROI.
Smart bombs aren't all they're cracked up to be, either. They're not nearly as
accurate as Stormin' Norman made out.
>>> Of course, the ECM ("electronic counter-measures") effort is
>>>keeping up.
>
>>Is all that stuff EMP-shielded?
>
> Not unless something really important has happened while I
>wasn't looking. How would we do that?
My understanding's that there are chip materials that can be used to make 'em
EMP-proof. But I dunno the details.
Tim Starr
In article <32f1365...@news.mindspring.com>,
Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>McQ <mcq...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>>Billy Beck <ain't...@tno.e-mail> wrote:
>
>> I wouldn't judge the effectiveness of all man-launched ADA or the
>>ineffectiveness of air power by what happened to O'Grady. We aren't
>>exactly prosecuting a war there.
>
>defence.
>
> (on air defence suppression...)
>
>>For BAI, they rely mostly on the Wild Weasles and their HAARM missles
>>and ECM birds with radar jamming equipment. The WW's can blast a heck
>>of a hole in an ADA setup. Their missles are radar beam followers.
>>When they que up the radar, the missle locks on to the radar beam and
>>even if they turn the radar off, the missle has computed the radar
>>location and destroys it. In the meantime the ECM guys are putting a
>>blizzard of snow on the screens of those radars still functioning. In
>>both cases, no radar, no air defense. If the BAI mission is close
>>enough to our FLOT, we'll also attempt to help with any artillery that
>>can range the targets, but this is rare.
>
>Weasel crews who took real-time notes on NVA air defence performance
>(under fire), came home, and sat around smoking cigarettes while
>writing Tech Orders for modification of their radar receivers, in
>order to go back out and successfully beat up SAM sites...who were
>busy modifying *their* gear in order to break ECM and spoof
>anti-radiation fire. The deep-tech of it is fascinating. (How many
>harmonics can you count in a given bandwidth in a given fraction of a
>second? How would you do it?) As an aspect of active war, it reads
>like a very personal sort of thing. In Vietnam, it was a deadly duel
>between specialists, and they came to know each other. Col. Broughton
>wrote about SAM commanders who were characteristic in their radar
>styles.
>
> In the passage above, Bruce is referring to "pop-up" radar
>technique. The search radar is on-line only very briefly, because
>everybody with a receiver can see it as soon as it lights up. The
>logical progression is to develop a missile which can compute the
>emitter location after it's switched off.
>
> On & on, round and round. It never stops.
I wonder how hard it'd be to flood that stuff with an overload of input.
Say, a few thousand radars get turned on all at once around the target,
lots of 'em decoys, only a few actually rigged to any weapons.
McQ
Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>> Two of those are ground support missions. Neither is going away
>>anytime soon. And although the Army can do both with attack
>>helicopters, it does BAI to a very limited degree as it's not
>>particularly smart to send assets like attack helicopters on
>>cross-FLOT operations. Anyway, BAI is what you saw happen in Iraq
>>when our birds went after bridges, reserves, etc. The intent of BAI is
>>to deny an enemy the ability to reinforce and exploit any success he
>>may be enjoying in the "close battle." BAI is an element of what is
>>known doctrinely as "deep battle."
>What's "FLOT"?
Variously defined as "Front Line Of Troops" and "Forward Line Of
Troops". In reality it is the line on the ground which defines the
most forward edge of your troop deployment. Anything past the FLOT is
"Indian Country". So what I was saying above is it's not to smart to
commit your most maneuverable tank killers across the Forward Line Of
Troops and get them shot down over Indian Country. Ain't this stuff
great?
>> A final active measure taken by the ground attack birds during the
>>actual execution of the CAS mission is the deployment of flares as
>>they ingress and egress. The flares, if deployed properly, will spoof
>>heat-seeker heads on hand held launchers most of the time.
>Can flares also be used to spoof air-to-air or air-to-ground missiles?
>How 'bout radar decoys?
Flares can be used to spoof any missile with a heat-seeking head.
If it's radar controlled, it's going to ignore the flares. Chaff
usually is used for radar decoying. Chaff is simply strips of
tin-foil that are released if radar-type missiles are expected. It's
not quite as effective a spoof as flares against heat-seekers.
>>>>Except for high-altitude bombing, of course, which means smart
>>>>bombs & saturation bombing.
>>
>>> This is true, and we know the problems, as well. Smart bombs
>>>are bloody expensive, and carpet bombing doesn't offer the greatest
>>>ROI.
>>
>> Unless you have an enemy dumb enough to dig in in a desert.
>In fairly shallow trenches.
Heh...got a kick out of some people protesting when it was released
that our ground guys in Desert Storm had actually bulldozed over some
Iraqi's and "buried them alive" to get our tanks over the sand berm
the Iraqi's had built. These people cried "that's INHUMANE", like war
is ever HUMANE. But when confronted with the fact that we'd probably
buried 50,000 of 'em alive with boxes of Buffs, they were actuall
stunned into silence. I mean, what did they think those B-52 were
doing for 30 days over Iraq...aerobatics shows?...amazing how some
minds work, eh?
Brad Aisa
>Charles Bell <cbe...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
> I don't believe Objectivists have properly solved the notion of the
>voluntary "social contract" by voluntary taxation.
Perhaps because Objectivists (or at least this one) reject such an absurd
notion as a "social contract".
Objectivists advocate the straightforward and fully consistent position
that individuals should pursue their own interests through their own
actions, seeking the voluntary cooperation and association of others
wherever this is to their benefit, and respecting the rights of others, as
they expect others to respect their own rights.
Government is an association, albeit of a unique kind. I hold (and I think
this is consistent with Objectivist moral and political philosophy) that
even the government is only comprised of those individuals who are its
citizens, and even here, the contract is one of agreeing to uphold the
principles on which the government is based (such as in voting, holding any
public office or trust, etc.). The contract, is not one of the individual
with "society", but merely with those others who comprise the government,
and only with respect of operating that government, not with respect of
their other actions towards each other.
A *contract* implies voluntary choice and the logical alternative of
refusal. Something which is obligatory cannot be contractual. And as Ayn
Rand points out in an essay on rights, it is *reality* that imposes the
obligation of respecting the rights of others upon men (the obligation of
being consistent).
>I can beleive there's plenty of room to add optional elements to the tax
>code [as, for example, ticking off boxes for NASA, cure for cancer, aid to
>Somalia, etc.] if the administrative nightmare could be held down to just
>a bad dream.
Yikes. Er, certainly NOT according to Objectivism. Objectivism holds that
government exists to serve a specific function, and ONLY that function. It
exists to protect men's rights and bring the use of force under objective
control. *Because* it is an agency of force, it is therefore imperative
that its functions extend only to the issues in which force is relevant,
and no others. (The reason is because of the Objectivist view of mind
and force as being incommensurable and mutually exclusive.)
Objectivism says government for protecting rights and ONLY for protecting
rights. These two positions are inseparable. You can't just tack on NASA,
the Post Office, etc., without denying the entire Objectivist defense of
government. Ayn Rand states this herself in her Playboy interview, where
she emphatically disavows all such government departments.
I shouldn't have to point out that if the question of making contributions
to such things as space research and cancer research are *voluntary*, then
they can certainly be conducted under the auspices of private organizations
not associated with the government.
>Of course, there's always the problem of the "free-rider".
Such as the entire viewership of broadcast television, who are
"free-riders" on the backs of the advertisers?
The "free-rider" "problem" is worse than a myth -- it is a denial of the
benevolent universe principle, and in my experience, the stock-in-trade of
those who attack such schemes as voluntary financing and individual
liberty.
--
Brad Aisa <ba...@tor.hookup.net> http://www.hookup.net/~baisa/
"The highest responsibility of philosophers is to serve as the
guardians and integrators of human knowledge." -- Ayn Rand
Billy Beck
A reply to Tim, evolved to a more general note on this
subject, to the group:
Tim Starr <tims...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Billy Beck <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> In the passage above, Bruce is referring to "pop-up" radar
>>technique. The search radar is on-line only very briefly, because
>>everybody with a receiver can see it as soon as it lights up. The
>>logical progression is to develop a missile which can compute the
>>emitter location after it's switched off.
>>
>> On & on, round and round. It never stops.
>
>I wonder how hard it'd be to flood that stuff with an overload of input.
>Say, a few thousand radars get turned on all at once around the target,
>lots of 'em decoys, only a few actually rigged to any weapons.
That would not be very difficult at all.
It would merely be very expensive.
After the first Wild Weasel (Air Force) and Iron Hand (Navy)
SAM suppression flights appeared over the North, the NVA found it
rather difficult to find people brave enough to fill seats in the
radar vans.
Here are a couple of references if you're interested in
reading about this stuff:
"On Yankee Station - The Naval Air War Over Vietnam" (Cdr.
John B. Nichols, USN (Ret.) and Barrett Tillman, 1987, United States
Naval Institute Press, Annapolis. 179 pages.)
This book explores the experiences of the air war from the
naval perspective with an emphasis on evolution of doctrine, which had
been seriously neglected in the years between Korea and Vietnam.
Nichols sets forth an interesting thesis that it was the F-8 Crusader
community which "kept the faith" of ACM ("air combat maneuvering")
doctrine between those two conflicts, while technical advances geared
toward Warsaw Pact bomber intercepts had stripped contemporary air of
weapons and tactics which are the immutable essentials of air combat
handed down from its very earliest days. ("Find the enemy and shoot
him down. All else is nonsense." - Manfred von Richthofen. "A bullet
may be 'dumb', but it cannot be deceived." - Nichols.) Air power
employed in Vietnam suffered seriously as a result of the lapse, and
the "Gunfighters" in their F-8's were responsible for the renaissance
of ACM, and subsequent institution of the Naval Fighter Weapons School
(aka - "Top Gun"). This in a time when both Navy and USAF F-4
Phantoms had forgotten how to work in *vertical* axes because they had
been trained to intercept Soviet Bear bombers. In the meantime, the
MiG-17's were kicking their asses with elementary tactics and guns.
Nichols finishes the book with "Recommendations" for future
development of weapons, doctrine, and preservation of "institutional
memory" through detailed after-action reporting and doctrinal
dissemination. Along the way, he offers good technical outlines of
naval air ops in every aspect including attack, air superiority, ECM,
and SAR ("search and rescue"), all in a very direct manner accessible
to readers of any background. He does not wallow in, "There I was,
surrounded by MiGs..." anecdotes, although they are present when
called for to illustrate principles.
"Linebacker - The Untold Story of the Air Raids Over North
Vietnam" (Lt. Col. Karl J. Eschmann, USAF (Ret.), 1989,
Ivy/Ballantine Books, 273 pages.)
The author is a techie, and this book reflects it. Eschmann
served as an F-4E maintenance officer in the period covered by this
book: "the Christmas War" of 1972 - a twelve day period of
unprecedented tactical air strikes against North Vietnam designed to
force the enemy to return to the peace talks in Paris. His research
is equally unprecedented. Declassified documents expose their history
in this book for the first time ever, to show us these events from
perspectives both human and hardware. Aircrews detail individual
battles, flights, shootdowns, and emergencies. Eschmann illuminates
things like the rapid evolution of tactics (this is only *twelve
days*, mind you) against specific enemy equipment and performance.
For instance: days Eight through Twelve saw fine-tuning of area chaff
dispersal by EB-66 and F-4 aircraft in support of B-52 formations in
order to degrade target acquisition by Soviet T-8209 I-band ranging
radars. Meanwhile, SAM suppression teams learned that they needed
fewer different seeker heads for AGM-78C anti-radiation missiles
(difficult to choose from among five different models before the
mission), but, rather, a single seeker head with wide-band
selectability from the cockpits during battle.
Early chapters set the context of this battle in tactical and
political terms of history, referring to preparations on both sides
before the events. Appendices run to such details as sortie
breakdowns including the number of bombs dropped. (F-111's flew 139
sorties and dropped 1424 bombs on 26 targets. They are listed by
name. SAM site VN-549 received 12 bombs on one sortie.)
The detail of this book is about as deep as any casual reader
could ever care to indulge, and there is enough here for professionals
to chew on to satisfaction.
As always, I also heartily recommend Col. Jack Broughton's
excellent "Thud Ridge".
The historic interest of this period is that the air
experience in Vietnam, taken together with the Isreali experience in
1967, sets the foundations of everything we have since practiced which
can be defined as "modern" air war. These were watershed events -
everyone was in school, in real time. The reasons have to do with
technical advances which separate WWII and Korea, from this period and
everything which follows. During intervening years, air doctrine had
taken a course which was found to have not very much to do with the
way that these battles were eventually fought. In essence, people
woke up from their various dreams and nightmares of the Cold War, and
the experience has set the type and tone of air war down to this day.
The larger reason for presentation of this sort of material in
this group is simple:
It is often beneficial to understand matters such as these
when forming conclusions on issues such as national defense,
especially as radically as we sometimes consider them.
The former volume, above, offers excellent broad-stroke
perspective on air combat. The latter volume may be satisfying to the
more deeply inquiring student.
Billy
Anthology
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