Archive for August 26, 2023

But nobody was fired…

Posted: August 26, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
Tags: , , , ,

If you’re not already familiar with it, the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship is…a floating pile of garbage.

Not literally…or maybe, littorally? The Littoral Combat Ship was seen as a new, sleek, fast ship to replace the old minesweepers and patrol crafts. It could drive super fast and would be able to change out mission modules, meaning one day it could be oriented towards minesweeping, and the next day it could hunt down submarines. Even better, it would have a small crew, so the Navy would save on manpower.

If that all sounds too good to be true…it was. Many people pointed this out at the time, but were called naysayers for doing so. Yet here we are today watching the Navy retire a Littoral Combat Ship after only five years of service (compared to the 20+ years we get from Destroyers, Cruisers, and basically any other ship).

USS SIOUX CITY, decommissioned after only 5 years.

Crying about this fact gets us nowhere. What I want to do is point out the hypocrisy in the Navy in how it treats it’s flag officers. With the LCS as a raging dumpster fire, at least one of the manufacturers, Austal USA, had the good sense to make its CEO resign. Would the Navy do this? Let’s look at some of the LCS programs past leadership:

  • Rear Admiral John Neagley took over the program around 2016. He apparently wrote many of the requirements for LCS back in the day, so you’d think he could turn it around. Nope! He wasn’t fired either, instead, he retired and now works at ICI Services.
  • In 2012, Rear Admiral John Murdoch said “I am not concerned at all about any of the deficiencies…in terms of my ability to correct them before the ship leaves the Great Lakes,” concerning serious problems onboard USS FORT WORTH while it was in Lake Michigan. The FORT WORTH commissioned in 2012 and was retired in 2022 after only 10 years in service. John Murdoch retired without issue and now works at Lockheed Martin.
  • Rear Admiral Robert Nowakowski took over in 2020, and after two years…the Navy cancelled the anti-submarine mission package on LCS due to overspending. Rear Admiral Nowakowski is still in the Navy and hasn’t had anything negative happen to his career.

So the Navy has a massively failing program that wastes millions of taxpayer dollars on ships that cannot fight or even stay afloat after only a few years. Its leadership gets punished…nope. It’s leaders, because they wear stars on their shoulders, get to retire to fat pensions with no repercussions whatsoever.

None. Zip. Zilch.

Meanwhile, Sailors work themselves to death trying to maintain vessels they can’t get training on and aren’t properly sourced.

These Admirals should be ashamed of themselves and the pain they caused these Sailors, their families and the impact to our Naval Power.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency, because those agencies want you to keep thinking that everything is fine and you should just keep handing over your tax dollars like the good little sheep you are without asking hard questions.

A Reminder to the A-Bomb breast beaters and China

Posted: August 26, 2023 by datechguy in war
Tags: , ,

This week I watched 30 Seconds Over Tokyo (1943) and I was reminded of a very important reality.

The same people who cry “genocide” over the A-Bomb never seem to remember that in the aftermath of the Doolittle raid which did very little actual damage, the Japanese decided to teach Chinese civilians a rather nasty lesson. (via Encyclopedia Britannica):

In early June 1942 the Japanese launched an offensive into Chekiang and Kiangsi (Jiangxi), and the brutality directed at the civilian population drew comparisons to the Nanjing Massacre. Trinkets and souvenirs left by grateful Americans—parachutes, cigarettes, pieces of military kit—doomed entire villages, as the Japanese would judge all the residents as having been complicit. Japanese bombers devastated Chuchow, and Kiangsi’s provincial capital of Nancheng (Nanchang) was razed, its population annihilated. It was estimated that some 250,000 civilians were killed during the three-month reprisal campaign.

250,000 civilians killed and whole villages slaughtered. That’s pretty bad but it didn’t stop there:

As the Japanese army prepared to withdraw from Chekiang and Kiangsi, members of its infamous germ warfare program, Unit 731, moved in. They seeded the area with dysentery, typhoid, and cholera, and disease ravaged those who had survived the initial Japanese attacks.

Yes you read that right, chemical warfare left to take care of any civilians who were spared the tender mercies of the Japanese army.

Somehow this just doesn’t seem to spark the outrage among the self righteous.

But there is one more thing that needs to be remembered, not only by the self righteous left who have forgotten the slaughter in china but by the Chinese who haven’t.

The only reason why the Japanese today are not the same people who did these things is because there have been American soldiers by the tens of thousands sitting on that Island for over 75 years.

China should ask itself what would happen if the US decided that 75 or 80 years are enough and that it’s time for Japan to defend Japan and leave.

Well I can’t say that the Japanese culture would return to the bad old days but I can tell you this. As one of the most if not THE most technologically advanced countries in the world Japan could have the bomb if they wanted it in a week and in six months they could have a whole lot more.

With what happened in all those cities still in living memory I’m sure China would just be tickled pink to think about a rearmed Japan just sitting there and believe me Japan would be rearmed fast because they know China hasn’t forgotten and despite 3/4 of a century passing since what happened they’d love the chance to return the favor.

Oh an anyone who thinks that Japan or Germany for that matter might not harken back to the days of yore once American troops are gone take a look at just how fast things have changed here in the us only three years.