The Navy, Drones & Pre-Sermonette

54 thoughts on “The Navy, Drones & Pre-Sermonette”

1. 1 is Westland Whirlwind the first cannon armed fighter for the RAF

2. Identify the Aircraft:
   1. Gloster Trent-Meteor, first aircraft with turboprop engines
   2. North American PBJ-1D or J operated by the USMC
   3. Vought F7U Cutlass
   4. Supermarine Attacker
   5. Westland Wyvern

   1. Correct!

3. IDA:
   1. Gloster Trent-Meteor, First aircraft with turboprop engines.
   2. North American PBJ-1D or B-25 USN/USMC
   3. Vought F-8H Crusader
   4. Supermarine Attacker
   5. Westland Wyvern

   1. 3 is a gutless

      1. Cutlass

4. Ahh yes, the next generation fighter. NGAD got someone promoted just for thinking of the name. When both the F-22 and F-35 were in initial development, we were told they would be able to communicate with other platforms automatically allowing the pilot to just fly the plane. The relays were to be to loyal wingman, drones, command and control, AWACS or ground stations to allow for real time information and targeting. That didn’t pan out very well. At any rate, the linked story was fun.

   When the AF started the unmanned programs the pilots had to be fighter qualified. They crashed multiple planes and only the relatively low cost of the airframe was mentioned, not the expensive electronics or weapons that were on it. I suggested that instead of using rated pilots, the AF should go to the RC fields and recruit the guys flying the large scale planes because they didn’t crash them as often as the fighter boys crashed expensive equipment. That was turned down. Also, I recommended using encrypted communications with the unmanned machines along with return home or return to specific safe landing zone software. Decades later we saw the result of saying the enemy can’t jam our comm link.

   Drones are really handy and are inexpensive. They would be even less expensive if the guys in procurement would stop insisting on fancy things that don’t enhance the ability to fly and survive in hostile areas.

   Let us remember Pearl Harbor. It is no longer taught in school history and many would like to forget WW II entirely. Not only the men who died there but also the events leading to the attack. The Japanese, British and US commanders all thought their fleets were top notch and that they were an unsinkable force. As a note, in late 1940 or 1941 the Navy ran cruiser and destroy sorties into and out of Japanese harbors. I attempted to research the actual logs but can’t access them and now personal reasons am restricted from following through. That’s a gem that really should be mined and maybe someone who enjoys researching the Navy will take up the search.

   1. Dave, I recall hearing of the same provocative actions that you mentioned, but they may have been scrubbed from modern history accounts. As I recall, they didn’t occur in Japanese ports but in Chinese ports occupied by the Japanese as a belligerent. Maybe somebody else on the blog can nail it down. Further, I think that the destroyers involved were the old US four-stackers.

      As I mentioned in reply to Al Kirk, we seem to revel in the Predator’s capacity to overly Mali or Togo and to target near-stone-age people plotting mischief below. We don’t do that to Russia, for example. Nor do they do it to us. Cruise missile tech, which started low, slow, and generally accurate, given generations and decades, is now quite accurate, with all sorts of special gizmos and whizbangs that make them more difficult to detect and shoot down. They don’t take instruction in flight. It’s pre-programmed (not unlike a V-1) and difficult to hack. As you allude, the electronic environment in a near-peer shooting war is very different when you’re trying to send commands to a drone (with a large encryption hash that creates lag). The great hope is smaller, smarter, quicker super computers and near human AI reasoning. And we’re nowhere near there.

      1. I know that you didn’t mention Fleet Problem 9 in 1929, where the US grappled with carrier operations in physical war games. It took a real shooting war to figure out how the parts worked and Japanese ships, submarines and aircraft that were significantly better than ours to shine light on the admirals and their old thinking with old ships that didn’t deliver.

5. Is it possible to have a private discussion via email? I would like to discuss autonomous missile systems.

   1. larrydotlambertatmacdotcom

6. Remember the sacrifices at Pearl Harbor and the war that followed.
   *
   Drones are a tactical weapon that at the moment has everyone’s attention as the new shiny thing. One can go back in military history and see points in time where new weapons made a huge difference tactically and sometimes strategic. In days of old the knights in armour on horseback vs pikes then early firearms. No more knights. Yet Calvary continued to be useful for hundreds of years. In Vietnam we lost hundreds of helicopters and crews, yet continued to use them, until the modern manpad. Now it’s drones. Then it’ll be done other weapon. That’s just how that goes, new weapons, counter tactics, new weapons, repeat. Still at this moment eventually it’s boots walking in the front door and staying, regardless of the efforts of those already there wanting you gone.
   *
   How goes the new book(s) for year end so I have some holiday reading? Thanks..
   *
   Observation… blog has been up and on line every day. Did you win?

   1. Most of my writing efforts resulted in the daily blog. I’m chipping away at other writing but haven’t had enough time to get it up for publication yet. I can say that I won, but “winning” in this environment is a counted in days and possibly weeks.
      –
      Unmanned or uncrewed systems have never been tested in a full blown WAR. Flying a Predator over a nation where the best they can do is mount a machine gun on a technical and terrorize other ignorant savages isn’t what the USAF (or the Navy) are getting the big bucks to do. Maybe one day. I doubt that I’ll live to see them work in an operational environment against a peer or near-peer adversary. There is a lot of vaporware peddled for billions.

   2. Cavalry charge in WWII:
      https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/26th-cavalry-regiment-charge-philippines.html

7. Voting for The Husk: Goes back to Mike_C’s comment yesterday that inspired my “brown substance at the bottom of a large volume of clear thinking. Aside from those voting purely for political power reasons (aka. The Placeholder aspect), those who voted for that “least likely to succeed” grifter…there is ZERO ability to have any conversation with that mindset, too far gone off the mental reservation to find any common ground. No fixing that level of self-delusion. So no, they aren’t ashamed to have voted “that way”, which includes this last round with Ms. Clearly Not A Mentalist. Boggles the mind.
   ***
   The Navy Expert Quote: I’m borrowing that…has broad use in many areas of life. It’s along the lines of Jesse Stone’s “If you don’t like the answers you’re getting, check your premises.” (h/t Robert B Parker)

   1. in re The Navy Expert Quote:
      seems to be another take off on/corollary to Ayn Rand’s “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

      1. Just saw Rand’s quote when wanting to be accurate on the JS quote…seems Parker read Rand. Everyone has their muse.

         1. “…check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
            or both.
            I’ve noticed a lot depends on definitions:
            e.g. in my lifetime, I’ve had three friends (define friend…someone I want guarding my back in a foxhole – and vice versa)
            definition of a contradiction can be very fuzzy at times

8. “Bumblebee Jasper”
   looks like fossilized American cheese (melted) on borodino

   1. If you plan to eat it — think again.

9. NATO member Turkey is busy aiding HTS, the AQ successor, in destruction of Syria. Regardless of your view on Assad this doesn’t bode well for stability in the region and certainly leaves our 1,000 guys in the desert out to dry. That being a probable goal of the deep state that seeks to entangle Trump in a quagmire before he even takes office.

   https://www.dni.gov/nctc/ftos/hts_fto.html

   1. They did that before to Pres. Trump. It didn’t work.

10. Here’s another reminder of Tora Tora Tora.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-regime-quietly-revokes-veterans-hiring-preference-civil-service-jobs

    OK, no surprise. Just democrats screwing veterans, again.

    1. He’s not long for this government or this earth.

       1. He’ll die hard. The other side will be difficult for Pedo Joe.

          1. One wonders if his type actually thinks about the consequences of such a life a it relates to the hereafter.

             1. He’s a narcissist and a fool. It’s a bad combination.

11. Having worked with a semi-autonomous vehicle that is recently coming into the DoD inventory, I don’t trust them. Period, full stop. Said test article didn’t work right from the start and didn’t the second iteration either. Follow-the-Leader concept.
    As for using a solo-manned aircraft to drive a bunch of drones, I think that there is a task-saturation point where the pilot is no longer able to both fight and defend his aircraft along with a myriad of drones on their missions. Otherwise, the fighter becomes a drone-truck. The F-35 is a giant expensive video game that goes well beyond the “stick and rudder” school. Multiply that effort and see how much info must be processed by the pilot.

    1. WN, they’re hoping/wishing that AI will assist the pilot (drone manager).

12. A day that will live in infamy, even when the left tries to downplay Dec. 7th. We lost family on the USS Arizona, and ‘we’ will never forget.

13. Pearl Harbor. I was most fortunate as a young lad when my maternal grandmother took the entire family (8 of us) to Hawaii. It was just after the 1964 Alaska earthquake.
    My uncle had done a Navy hitch, so we boarded a tour boat which sailed along the coast and then into Pearl Harbor, docking at the USS Arizona Memorial. I was 11 years old. I can still remember watching the oil drops rise to the surface.
    ——-
    Hickock 45. From a purely cinematic point of view, I can see his point. Not sure the M4 would be my choice either. I think most folks here tend to be more realists. That said, the 1986 FBI shootout in Miami inspired me to buy a Benelli Super 90 M1. Still have it, albeit now with a light attached.
    —–
    In the Super 90 M1, the firing pin retaining pin is held in place by a tiny rubber O-ring. A year or so back, said O-ring finally croaked. Manged to find an outfit on line that actually had them in stock. $5. Shipping, another $5. Right. ACE Hardware, 79 cents (yes, I bought two). So in a single stroke, I honored the blood of the Scotsman in my veins, and pissed off the Italians.

    1. I thought my AR-15 Pistol in 7.62×39 would be my go-to, but I’m loving the Escort Bull Tac bullpup 12gage I just bought. 6 rounds seems limited though, but with slugs, and being a pump, I’d probably turn to it.

    2. My visit to Pearl was the Summer of 1970 when I was almost 7 years old. A hot day, but cold at the Memorial. And I, too, watched the Arizona’s blood drip t the surface. And I tried to sound out the names of all the dead. Not enough time, never enough time to do that.
       –
       That day stuck to me. Still haunts me when I think about it (oh, only about once a week to once an hour or so.)
       –
       Drones are great, as long as you can control them. Do I trust a high-tech enemy to not have the ability to crack our systems, especially the same high-tech enemies that have been paying our politicians and bureaucrats (and too many of our high-level military leaders – looking at you, fat-ass Milley)? Nope.

       1. I served across the street from the Arizona Memorial at Fleet Intelligence Center Pacific (FICPAC) for a while. It has had different command names over the years, as is the Navy’s way. It’s the five-story windowless building you’ll see if you look west. Sometimes, at lunch, I’d walk across the street (in uniform), get on the boat with the tourists, and take the ride. The coxswains didn’t balk at some of us doing that. It clarified for me why I did what I did.

14. “…pretty yellow Bumble Bee Jasper”, the water hemlock of the rock world. Thanks for the heads up. Me, I still look for gold when seeing a vein of quartz in some granite outcropping, but figure the boys who came before did a good job scouring the landscape as they didn’t have Smartphones bugging them every 2 minutes. Now if I could only locate the stolen stageline strongbox somewhere on Table Mountain, aka Robbers Roost, I’d be in fat city.

    1. That strongbox is rumored to be somewhere in or near Irish Canyon.
       My Dad and uncles spent their teen years searching.

       1. Over the years I kidded my one legacy rancher, “So how is it your great great grandfather bought the ranch?
          –
          The ranchers at the foot of Table Mountain been here 53 years, have yet to find it on the known access points. A lot of folks tramped about for years, never located it despite some clues (like Fenn’s treasure, which was eventually located up in Yellowstone by cracking the poem)…I’ll see what they think of your lead.

       2. Banner could find it (being a superhero dog) if he wanted to.

15. That’s a really interesting rock formation – hadn’t heard of it before! If I see it at a spring, I will officially disbelieve any assurances of “C’mon in, the water’s fine.”
    .
    I walked into the Museum of the Pacific War down in Fredericksburg armed with little more than standard American education supplemented with side reading on aviation, geology, and the odd novel in the area and era. Walking through the labyrinth that pulls all the disparate political, economic, and cultural bits together from the Opium wars on… It was one giant slow-motion trainwreck barreling inevitably to war, accelerated by politicians in all their arrogance, ignorance, greed, and incompetence. I understand now why that generation said, “Oh, everybody knew it was coming.”
    .
    May God grant eternal rest grant to the poor souls of Pearl Harbor, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

    1. X2

16. My neighbor in East San Diego County was Medal of Honor Recipient John Finn. He lived to be 100 years old.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Finn

    I salute his heroism every December 7th.

    1. Excellent 👍

17. In regard EdB’s radio show today on WAAM and CDR SAL’s comments on the folly of “limited nuclear war”, I agree with what he said – There is no such thing as a limited nuclear war. Once a nuclear exchange begins, it will end when we run out. All of the hopeful novels to to the contrary. It underscores the need to put the Chinese in a position where they don’t feel there is an advantage in starting things. Sailing container ships into US ports and taking out ALL of our ports in a New York Minute is a plausible scenario. I don’t think that it’s likely – today – but from a naval strategy point of view, it has merit. Of course, the submarines will remain as will ICBMs and they’ll start nuking the enemy and good night, Irene.

    1. Larry posed the question here:
       https://open.spotify.com/episode/3xkGDqtizUklzgCGBxbxlG?si=f7a65b29696e443d
       Lotta Pearl talk also.

       1. Great show today (well, they are all great)…a lot of depth to unpack, plus we got to hear from our inimitable VM Blog Host. And Ed…don’t know how you do it…but major h/t.

          1. Thanks brother.

18. My spouse’s given name is Barbara, ‘Bee’ to the grandkids. She has a pendant and also a multi-stone necklace of bumble bee jasper and yes, looks absolutely killer when wearing them.

19. Hickock is always awesome.

    Drones? Great asset even though they can’t take and hold ground, at least not yet, and I’m glad my eldest doesn’t fly one.

    Ukraine war? Putin seems to have figured on a speedy solution, foiled in part by BOJO, who I used to like and enjoy dinks with when he was writing for the Spectator, back in the day. That said, bellicose UK can’t even keep its carriers afloat, much less fight an industrial scale war against Russia, to say nothing of the emasculated state of the EU militaries. Could we? Surely yes, but what about China, with it’s >30% of the world’s manufacturing power as opposed to our 15%. With that equation in mind, things grind on.

    Does 47 need to LIBERATE the UK? Yes. Make it great again.

    1. I don’t want my taxes going to the UK to make them great again (the Sun doesn’t set on them, etc.). Does that make me Islamophobic?

20. Being a total lightweight on drone technology, I wonder how vulnerable they are to EMP pulses?

    1. It drops them, but not all drones (uncrewed) aircraft were created equally. Some are the size of a dragonfly, and others are the size of a commercial passenger jet. EMP pulses are not created equally either. Some are generated by a nuclear detonation.

21. Sad to think that this year the Arizona’s crew is finally complete. If ghosts exist and things can have spirits (like Japanese kami) then that section of Pearl is mighty crowded by the afterlife. Hope she’s all gussied up and sailing on good seas up in Heaven.

    1. sic transit gloria mundi

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