Every Russian Soldier

Welcome back to the Scuttlebutt. 



As usual, you know where the booze is, N/A drinks in the breeze way, along with the beer.


It was reported earlier this week that the US Army decided that they didn’t have to do what the congress told them to do. Source.


While the 2023 Defense Authorization act ordered the DOD to rescind the Memo requiring full COVID vaccination or face punitive discharge, the Army stated that “that doesn’t apply to National Guard or Reserves, because they were governed by a different Memo and we weren’t specifically told to rescind that one. “The FY 2023 NDAA does not address the Secretary of Defense’s directive regarding COVID-19 vaccination for members of the national guard and ready reserve (Annex AAAA),” according to FRAGO 35, an update to HQDA EXORD 225-21, which describes the Pentagon’s COVID-19 policy, that was obtained by the DCNF.


“Commands will continue to adhere to Annex AAAA and to paragraphs 3.D.21-3.D.23 unless and until Annex AAAA is superseded or rescinded by the Secretary of Defense,” the document stated. 


You can almost hear the tongue sticking out, and the “SO THERE! Meeh” like some little school boy, who thinks he found a way out of what daddy told him to do. 


Well, needless to say, the same congressmen who held up the nomination of the Speaker of the House, until they had some assurances that some of the special rules Nasty Nancy had put in place were GONE, took a dim view of this, and apparently made their feelings clear enough that Sec Def felt the heat. He came out on Monday with a new memo, making clear that ALL of the COVID memorandums were rescinded, and “The Secretaries of the Military Departments will update the records of requests, including letters of reprimand. The Secretaries of the Military Departments will further cease any ongoing reviews of current Service member religious, administrative, or medical accommodation requests solely for exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine or appeals of denials of such requests.”


SO, if you were kicked out, or got a Page 13 entry, or any other sort of BULLSHIT for refusing “the Jab” you have the right to petition the board of records to have your service jacket revised and all adverse actions removed.  What is NOT clear at this point, is if there’s going to be any avenue for reinstatement.  (If nothing else, having all of that removed, to include revising your Reenlistment code, would allow you to Enlist again, if such be your choice.) 


Remember last week when I predicted that someone would find a way to hack drones and use them against their originator… Well, here’s the first step: 

A company called Dedrone bought out another company called Aerial Armor. According to Politico’s National Security Daily, the combined systems, which are already in use in the US : “Dedrone covers nearly 50 percent of the U.S. population, while Aerial Armor’s radio frequency-based hardware helps solve lingering detection problems, MATT ALTMAN, co-founder and chief technology officer at Aerial Armor, tells our own LEE HUDSON. (quote is from Politico’s NatSec)

“Dedrone uses hardware and software to detect objects in the airspace, determine what is an enemy drone, break the communication link between an enemy drone and its pilot, and disrupt the GPS signal.”


In short, they hack your drone, make it lose its location, so it can’t come back, and keep you from controlling it. (many drones will RTB if signal is lost. This keeps that from happening.)  How far are they from actively taking it over and sending it back to blow your ass up? They aren’t sharing that, and even if they were, I wouldn’t.


Also from the US Military front, effective immediately, Service members will be able to take 12 weeks of parental leave, (Mother AND/OR Father) for your child’s birth, or adoption.  It’s not clear to me what the hell the Navy is going to do if you’re deployed when the wife finds out she’s preggers… It looks like they’re going to have to send you home, and while that’s great for you, and the fam, what that’s going to do to command readiness doesn’t bear thinking about.


In the “Oh, well that’s fun” department, it seems that the outgoing PRC ambassador to the US, One Qin Gang was snubbed for his entire time here. Now I can understand that China is not our friend, and DC is belatedly waking up to that little fact.  But, in China’s usual not-so-subtle way of “sending a message” Xi just promoted him to Foreign Minister (the equivalent of the Secretary of State.) Source. If you don’t think this was a giant “FUCK YOU” to the US in general, and Biden in particular, you aren’t paying attention.


I have some things I could bring up on the ongoing fight between those that want to control what you say, what you hear, and thus what you think, but I think I’ll save that for another day.  


Instead, I’ll leave you with a little Q&A that I just had with one of the many Russian Bots/Symps that inhabit Quora.


“Many military analysts predict that Russia will eventually defeat Ukraine not because of the competency of its armed forces but because of Russia’s overwhelming numbers. If that is so, why is NATO prolonging the inevitable?” Asks the Symp.  My answer:


Let’s break this thing down. If you had asked this question before the war started, you would at least have been accurate in that, before the start of the war, many military analysts, including me, would have said just that.  


However, even then the last part of my answer would be the same.


Now that the war has started, and has been running for about 11 months, we see that the only “military analysts predicting that Russia will eventually defeat Ukraine, not because of the competency of its armed forces but because of Russia’s overwhelming numbers” are Russian analysts with FSB guns to the heads of their children.  


Everyone else is pointing to the vast number of times in history that a nation with fewer troops but better equipment, supply lines, and morale has defeated an enemy with sheer numbers. 


From Xerces defeat at the hands of the Greek Republics, through the Colonial Forces’ victory during the American revolution, to Russia’s defeat of the Turks in the Russo-Turkish war, to the victories of Israel against the Muslim forces in the 6-day war, the Yom Kippur War, and so on, Through the Afghan victories against both the Soviet Union and the USA, history has taught us again and again that sheer numbers don’t tell the tale.


Further, the number of troops under arms on both sides does not show an overwhelming superiority.  Sorry, but they don’t. Many of the troops “on the payroll” in Russia turned out to be empty uniforms that allowed the officers to skim off money paid to people that didn’t exist.


Don’t feel bad though, that’s another event that has happened again and again throughout history.  Mother Russia isn’t the first country to have this issue; she won’t be the last.  The problem goes back to Rome, and the British Army was once notorious for it.


Finally, even if what you said was true, and Ukraine’s defeat was inevitable, (which it’s not, right now I would say it’s more likely the other way around, and Russia’s defeat is inevitable) The US and NATO would still be right, and wise, to back Ukraine, and Ukraine would be right and wise to fight.


Yes, I can hear your anguished cry “BUT WHY??? WHY would you fight if you know you will lose in the end? Why kill our soldiers and make us work for it, if you know you are going to lose???”


Poor little Russian, I feel your pain, (to me it feels like a good back scratch.  It’s not quite orgasmic, but close.) Let me explain the real world to you:

1. Historically countries that have surrendered without a fight, have been treated far more poorly than those that fought to an armistice. There are exceptions to this rule (WWI Germany, those that fought against Genghis Khan, and a couple of others,) but it’s still a good rule of thumb. 

2.  From NATO’s perspective, it sends two messages: 1) We will support any invaded nation in Europe against aggression. 2) Hey Russia, this was the C team, and they were a real pain in the ass for you, fighting with our gear that we were willing to give to someone not in our alliance, who used it with minimal training… just enough to not kill themselves with it.  Imagine what facing OUR troops, with years of training, and the gear we were NOT willing to share is going to look like.  Do you really want to go? Do you?

3. Every Russian soldier Ukraine kills, even if Ukraine loses, is one less that NATO will have to face. Every dead Russian troop, or wounded to the point that he can’t fight, takes with him to the grave, or to the begging bowl on some corner, the knowledge, training, and experience (if any) that he had.


Let’s look at WWII for a second, as a study of the different methods of fighting.  Specifically, Let’s look at the air war: There were two main schools of thought on pilots and pilot training. Germany, Japan, and Russia shared a philosophy of pilot management, while the US, and to a lesser extent Great Britain had a different philosophy.


Germany and the rest of that school believed in keeping their very best ‘in the war’.  “After all, this guy has an amazing knowledge of how to defeat the enemy, we have to keep him going!  Look at his success rate! Why would you take him off the front?”  As a result, the top 200 aces were all German, except for a couple Fins, a couple Russians, and a Japanese pilot or two. 


The American way of war though, pulled a pilot off the line, when he had racked up a double or triple ace, except in very few circumstances. Both our allies and our enemies were confused by this approach.  Here’s the thing though, Americans, even though they were in the war for two years less (four if you count the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese invasion of China) than the rest of the combatants (with a couple of notable exceptions, like the Eagle squadrons, and the Flying Tigers) racked up more TOTAL aces than anyone else. 


Why? because we pulled them offline to TEACH!  


Here’s a guy that has a proven track record of shooting down the enemy. He knows that Zeros have a problem with rolling to the right, so they will normally roll left, and he’s waiting for that. He knows the ME 109 has huge issues in maneuverability at high speed and is vulnerable during takeoff, as well as having range issues. 


By teaching this at the final set of schools before the new pilots go overseas, not only do we preserve the knowledge hard gained, but instead of Newbs and Heroes, we have a bunch of guys that have the equivalent of a couple months’ combat time when they hit the combat arena.  Statistics will tell you that most pilots were lost in their first two or three missions, for the Axis side.  Hell, statistics throughout history tell us that surviving your first couple battles was the difference between coming home at the end of the war and being left for the vultures.


When this philosophy was applied to sports, in the 80s it was called “money ball.” You can have all the “heroes.” I’ll take the guys that regularly produce at a fairly high level, but are not “heroes.” And I’ll defeat you every time.


Russia is losing, well in truth HAS LOST, their senior noncom corps, and the vast majority of their field commanders with any sort of clue. This is the same problem that losers in every war experience. As the war goes on, attrition due to snipers, (Ukraine has some excellent snipers, trained by the best, and they seem to be specializing in high-ranking officers) artillery, and just bad luck, (along with the guys that Putin has ordered to have ‘accidents’ due to failing) your strategic depth of experience is falling off. The number of guys that are raw recruits with a couple of weeks of training in each unit is climbing dramatically.  It’s estimated that if the war ended today, you would need ten years to rebuild your professional noncom and officer base to where it was a year ago.


How can this not benefit an organization created to defend the west against Russian aggression?  Why would we NOT help Ukraine, with this consideration?  My personal biggest fear is having to fight a two-front war against Russian and PRC aggression simultaneously.  The longer Ukraine bleeds Russia into “White Russia” if you will pardon the historic reference, the happier I am.


Until next time I remain,

Yours in service.

William Lehman.

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