Having done more media in the last two weeks than I've ever done in my career, I wanted to put together some thoughts on why it's so hard to be a US military analyst right now.
There is nothing to analyse.
Before we can look at operations, we draw on plans, strategies, rationales.
Nope.
A GREAT QUESTION
I just gave a brief to a room full of people from across the command of the threats to their home stations, so I'm not some babe in the woods when it comes to CONUS not being a sanctuary, but I think the MSS is competent enough to turn off the lights on their unstoppable droneswarm
Someday in this life I hope to equal the exquisite vengeance I wrought against Comcast when we cancelled all that garbage service a couple years ago. As I put it to one of their reps on the phone, "No, I've hurt you ... and I'm going to keep on ... hurting you"
oh man I used to love Killer Drone Recon when my mom would give me a quarter to play it
Is the potential threat real? Ten million times yes. Are precautious and countermeasures needed? Twenty million times yes. Is your United States Square Force and are the other services doing some stuff on this? We all sure as hell hope so! But, like, c'mooooon, maaaaaaaan
... the idea that there are Quds Force bois or GRU gorillas or similar bumping around the United States with sophisticated equipment that can hurt Americans or cause damage and they're, like, "testing it out," or "doing recon" -- when each time they operate, they get detected! -- makes no sense
Even the irresponsible scaremongers don't even take a second to think about their irresponsible scaremongering: if bad men were outside the wire with little bomb drones that could zip over and blow up a B-52 parked on the ramp why ... wouldn't they? You can see the base and the jets on Google Maps
💯👇barring additional reporting which so far isn't in evidence. The problem today is that getting control of this hysteria is like trying to put out a forest fire with a water pistol
Alfie Nickerson in a bright yellow zip-up jacket and blue shorts, along with beaten brown Blundstones. They are carrying flowers and a dog.
Monty Don wearing a weathered French chore coat, blue shirt, and weathered French work pants. He's holding a tool in the garden.
Ashley Edwards wearing a blue sweater, gray neck warmer, and gray beanie. He's sitting in the garden.
A spring style suggestion: dress like Peter Rabbit. I wrote something for Mr. Porter about why I think gardening clothes look great. The clothes look better with age and reference a lifestyle that's been considered romantic for centuries.
www.mrporter.com/en-us/journa...
We're mad they're there but we're not mad at *them*
All the dangerous, violent Georgetown college kids, and GW hospital nurses, and State Department FSOs, and Euro diplomats and other neighborhood corner bois who get off the Metro went back to nodding at our troopers like, "oh hey, still here, huh? Poor guys"
We didn't have our Natty Guard troopers for a couple of days and I thought to myself, huh, they must have turned all that off when ppl were distracted (not unlike the ICE crackdown in the Twin Cities) but, nope, then we had 'em back again after all. The forgotten montage!
They're there to be in TV quick-cut montages and create the appearance of :: waves arms :: whatever this is ... just like the poor bored Natty Guardsmen who are still in the Metro here in DC or patrolling around yawning their heads off.
Government by montage
Only those of us Understanders of Tactical Matters appreciate that if a bunch of guys are shooting at you, and you are on a special black USASOC motorcycle, the right course of action is to pop a wheelie because then they cannot hit you www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rP4...
For those of us who lived thru the “a movie violated OPSEC” wars back in the day, this “maybe a MEU … maybe a brigade of the 82nd?” trial ballooning today is an unusually cray lowlight of a cray cray time
Illustration of a schoolboy at a desk with a map of Europe behind him. On the right, a bit murkier, is the same boy riding a bicycle. On the bottom right is a space with a jar and the text: Veritable Extrait de viande Liebig.
The Schoolboy's Dream (riding a bicycle to get genuine meat extract)
ca. 1900
photo of a black Jamis road bike standing next to a wall that is panted turquoise with white trim. towards the left of the photo the wall changes to deep blue. towards the right of the photo the wall changes to pink. there is a blue lamppost on the sidewalk next to the bike
photo of a black Jamis road bike standing at the entrance of a rusty red stone arch with a metal gate on it. at the top of the arch are the words “the castle”. there is a lamp on either side of the arch
photo of a black Jamis road bike standing up against a retaining wall. beyond the retaining wall is a body of bright blue water. on the other side of the body of water are some hotels under a cloudy sky
riding bikes every day until i can’t for some reason, day 2032
#Cycling #Photography
Photo of Bill Cunningham riding his bicycle on a Manhattan street in 2010. Photo by Mark Lennihan.
As a photographer for the New York Times Fashion page, Bill Cunningham spent his days riding his bicycle around Manhattan, looking for the next eye-catching trend.
Happy #BicycleBirthday, Bill!
March 13 (1929-2016)
An oil tanker approaches the strait of Hormuz, collects a gold star and passes through while safely invulnerable
I think I may have cracked it
One of the smaller but still important civ-mil crises we face is that a lot of people are told "The US military is the strongest in the world" and hear "The US military is literally invincible"
children you must beat the uncanny valley false elmo to death with sticks so that you may gorge yourselves upon his innards
My daughter was ambivalent about the on-field action but she LOVED the shouting -- seeing the grown-ups model it, doing it, participating in it with others. From the positive, e.g. "GIVE IT A RIIIIIDE" to the standard "COME AAWWWWN" and of course the eternal "YER MISSIN A GREAT BALLGAME, BLUE!"
Validated 👇Kid-won library ticket baseball game attender here.
It sure would 👇And the double tragedy is that even though hindsight may show that the navies of those eras might have wanted the "wrong" ships given how events played out, they might at least have actually built them and have them to put to use today. Instead y'got almost nothing
"Ooooh," I hear you saying -- what if they put little mines to mine our mine mine mine mines? The only answer is we've got to cut ahead of them with mine mine mine mine mines
I, for one, am concerned about a gap between our mine mines and the mine mine mines that they'll deploy as a countermeasure. We need mine mine mine mine YESTERDAY
