The Cost of War

The older brother of a US Marine killed in the Kabul bombing last August due to Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal committed suicide at the memorial for the fallen soldier.

You’ll recall that 13 US service members were killed and many more were wounded last August in a suicide blast in Kabul because of Joe Biden’s corruption and incompetence.

The end of a conflict doesn’t signal the end of pain and suffering for those who participated or the families of those who participated or died.

 

From LindaG

 

Bullet Points

* Catholics, give up your rosaries. Atlantic Monthly contributor Daniel Panneton declared that the Catholic rosary has become a “symbol” of religious radicalism. How much more woke can you be? Will you listen to your betters and destroy this symbol of prayer and devotion to Jesus Christ?

* It Wasn’t Us! The White House panics as the Mar-a-Lago raid backfires – Brandon is throwing Garland, DOJ, and the creeps at FBI under the bus. The Brandon regime denies all knowledge that it knew that the raid would take place while Creepy Joe and his family were on vacation.

* Michelle Obama, is waiting for her shot at the presidency, which would be Barack’s fourth term.

* Two months before an FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, one of his lawyers certified that no classified documents were at the estate, according to Fox News.

* Requiem for a near stranger (RIP). It’s odd when you are invited to speak at a funeral and you barely knew the deceased. “But you’re such a good public speaker!”

I don’t know what they wanted me to say. I always valued the way he didn’t steal my lunch. That he died in a scientifically interesting way? Wait…is dying the most interesting thing that he ever did? It’s one hell of an epitaph and benediction.

* The cowboy hat has been declared to be a symbol of racism, homophobia, and possibly even Islamophobia. This leads me to conclude that Barack was either engaging in cultural appropriation or he’s a racist – but since he’s queer, can he also be a homophobe? He’s a closeted Muslim so can he be Islamophobic? Irrespective of what the Half-Blood Prince did, the only way to be safe from accusations from the woke would be to destroy your cowboy hats. If one is found in your closet when the FBI is executing a search warrant, it would make your affiliation clear and you don’t want THAT to happen.

 

Ramjet Artillery Shells vs AGS

There are two links to this. First this one, and second this one. There are two ways to look at this new concept in tube artillery. The first is that it will price the ammunition out of the market and we’ll be back to standard rounds. The second has to do with precision, making each round count.

A little over a year ago, Norwegian ammunition company Nammo rolled out an “extreme range” artillery concept using ramjet propulsion, but that was just the beginning.

You can do a great deal with tube artillery but eventually as the barrels get longer and the rounds fly faster, the rifling will suffer from physics because materials and friction experience that cause and effect. That’s why rail guns have been such popular concepts. The magnetic acceleration is not wearing out metal barrels and the projectiles go about as fast as they can go without melting in flight.

The Navy toyed (big time) with the 155 mm/62 (6.1″) Mark 51 Advanced Gun System (AGS) – formerly VGAS – and put them on the DDG-1000 class (Zumwalt) ships. In June 2005, a Northrop Grumman press release stated that “The LRLAP Guided Flight-four (GF-04) gun test marked the longest successful guided-projectile test in history. The barrels of these guns use polygonal rifling instead of conventional rifling. Polygonal rifling is shaped like an arc, whereas conventional rifling is squared off at the edges. Polygonal rifling seals in the gasses slightly better than conventional rifling, as there are no sharp corners in the rifling for gas to escape through ahead of the projectile. However, this means that the driving bands for the projectiles must be specially made to work with this type of rifling. The drawback was that EACH ROUND cost around $1 million.

The Navy was accustomed to paying a lot to Beltway Bandits for everything, but even they recoiled at the price of shore bombardment. The Zumwalt Class is being refitted to fire Navy Standard Missiles now.

Can Nammo produce cost-effective ramjet artillery shells? That’s the question.

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39 COMMENTS

  1. * Requiem for a near stranger (RIP). It’s odd when you are invited to speak at a funeral and you barely knew the deceased. “But you’re such a good public speaker!”

    That has actually happened to me. It was weird.

  2. DDG 1000. Goodness what a money sink. Now they are talking about adding hypersonic missiles to go along with the Standard Missiles. If it doesn’t work they will regroup and try again.

    Cost of War. What a tremendous tragedy. For whatever reason the older brother couldn’t/didn’t seek out help that worked to resolve his pain. God have mercy on their souls and their surviving friends and relatives.

    It Wasn”t Us. Yeah sure it wasn’t. Of course they knew. If the current president truly did not know that the FBI was staging a raid on his predecessor than the AG and the head of the FBI should be canned for incompetence. While they may be incompetent as law enforcement heads of agencies they are both loyal democrats that know who butters there bread. That is why they are taking the heat now.

  3. Well THAT didn’t take long, the “pass the buck” cul-de-sac is in full redline mode. Rats eating each other.

    Really with the cowboy hats? I mean, c’mon man!…most everybody looks good in a properly styled cowboy hat…well…except that one, he still looks like a grifter creep. DJango No Go.

    We have a dozen western hats in the house, my favorite is MrsPaulM’s Black Cherry (from Colorado Hats, Estes Park – great folks)…looks black until it hits the sunlight. Stunning on her. If the FBI ever tried to take any one of them there’d be hell to pay…you DON’T mess with peoples hats (or take a better one after church service).

    • Cowboy hats are an obvious symbol of the oppression of indigenous people. They have to go if we’re to be woke. Cattle have to go to complete the green new deal, so it all is linked.

      • LL – I never fought a Native tribal person (altho my 1982 stint in NOLS in Lander showcased the gals were not to be messed with, but that was a bar down from the hotel), so like reparations, I never owned slaves and knew ZERO black folks who ever worked as a slave.

        So my hat wearing is merely to keep the sun and rain off my head.

        As for cattle, Harry Bum Reid tried a land grift to undermine the local cattle rancher and his son. Didn’t go so well. And here, the landscape offers a lot of hides, and cattle guys know every inch. Brown New Deal is dead on arrival…at least here.

      • Except on Brokeback Mountain…..then cowboy hats are Ok. Head em up, move em out. Rawhide takes on a whole new meaning.

  5. Gee, why couldn’t the Navy just use an extended barrel 155mm gun that could fire all NATO ammo and that nice Army precision guided round? Oh, that’s right, because some retiring admiral couldn’t increase his cheddar supply. How silly me.

    If we spent 1/10th the resources on vets and their families that we spend on illegal aliens, the nation would be a much better place.

    FYI for amusement – Gov. DeSantis signed a law saying that veterans can teach in K-12 without a degree and without kowtowing to the teaching degree people. Bwahahahahaha.

    • I’m channeling that scene between Rodney Daingerfield and Sam Kinnison in Back to School here, big time. Sign me up. Keep the pay if you let me teach history. I’m salivating here.

  6. * Catholics, give up your rosaries. Atlantic Monthly contributor Daniel Panneton
    We need to loudly proclaim to people like him, “Opinions are like ass**** and your stink”.

    • I think that prayer offends the sensibilities of our betters. The elite would prefer if you prayed to THEM.

  7. going after our God? they must think they have us where they want us, for the final push to get us on the trains. good luck with that. happiness is a target rich environment, with stacks of ammo ready.

    • I don’t think that snacks and drinks are served in the box cars. You’d have to bring your own cooler… and leave the rosary at home.

  8. From Patrick McManus “How I Got This Way”

    “Nothing improves character so much as death. I once knew a man, Pete by name, who abused his family unmercifully, stole, robbed, lied, cheated, and was suspected of at least one murder. Pete himself came to a violent end at the hands of an unknown assailant who may have been of the opinion he was performing a public service. Others thought so. Within a day of Pete’s demise, however, somebody recalled a good deed the deceased had once performed, possibly an incident in which he had met a stranger on a lonely road and hadn’t robbed him. Soon, even his victims were concluding that he hadn’t been such a bad sort after all, merely misunderstood. Then someone recalled that the fellow had been a good worker on occasion, and someone else remembered his actually having repaid a debt. By the time of the funeral, the man’s character had improved so much that he had become one of our town’s leading citizens, widely revered for his acts of charity, courage, honesty, and kindness, and if he had a fun-loving tendency to pull the occasional prank, why that was to be forgiven on the grounds that nobody’s perfect.”

    I have left instructions that this be read at my services, if any. I’ve also left instructions that the Sky Pilot, if any, gets 5 minutes max and then his microphone gets cut off.

    • (sensing a business opportunity) – for a significant fee, first-class airfare, etc, I’m available to eulogize. Having had some recent experience, I think I’m qualified. I will also invite LSP to join me and possibly other paid mourners from among this blog’s readership/participants.

      You think that St. George was lauded. Wait until I arrive at the final resting place in a limo with PaulM, WSF, LSP, maybe Mike_C if he can get the time off and half a dozen local strippers/mourners in black — in tow. People will cry and tear their clothes in remembrance of the client. The wake following the event will be talked about for years. Participants may be blind for three days because of alcohol poisoning. I’ll stage manage the whole production (and you thought that Wag the Dog was a pageant. I’ll give you a real pageant). It will be a testimonial to the client’s greatness that will match the marble likeness that will be installed in front of the courthouse.

      • PS – for an even bigger fee, I’ll also book DRJIM and Pebbles the Wonder Dog. Local taggers will spray-paint the client’s likeness throughout the ghetto in remembrance of all he did for the inner city trash.

        We could even fly in a professional black band from the New Orleans funeral district.

      • Okay, watch Get Low with Duvall…that’ll give you some planner pointers. And LSP and I can haggle over the actual Memorial Officiating part, I’d leave retirement and spot the fee.

        • BUT…I’m not doing any memorial services this year so you gonna hafta stick around for a while longer (as God pleases).

          • Tell your friends, family and neighbors that a first rate funeral to rival that of the ancient Pharos is available

          • Maybe Jules can make up artistically tasteful brochures? We can fly her over for the Wake. Maybe she could also bring her wolves to howl mournfully

          • Going out in epic fashion is righteous. Make sure you include the Funeral Pyre, and add bagpipes to the plaintive wolf howls. Very moving.

            Thinking you’re gonna need to rent out one of those unused woke sports team stadiums to hold the funeral insurrection crowd, we’ll just tell the security detail that you invited us in…so we don’t get arrested and sent to the WWM for hard labor.

            Again…NOT this year please.

      • I’m up for it but need to bring Banner. He can Romba the fallen snacks and is already in proper attire.

  9. “Requiem for a near stranger (RIP).”
    BTDT

    Don’t mess with people’s hats:
    re. The Saddle Club in Chickasha, OK
    BYOB
    “NO HATS” sign at front door.
    There is a reason for that…

  10. What an awesome photo of the Magic O in a cowboy hat. Then there’s rosaries.

    My call? Be very, very, very careful about going against that. Sayn.

    • As I wrote, I think that it disturbs the elites that we don’t pray to THEM. The rosary ban comes from one moron reporter/writer but he speaks for the Atlantic and with that likely WAPO and NYT. It’s simply how they feel, but you know how much they hate us.

      “And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.” We need more bears. A lot more bears.

  11. I am not Catholic, though I worked for the local diocese for a number of years, but I think I’ll start carrying a Rosary. I might hang one on my rearview mirror alongside my Futhark and Mjolnir. That should make some heads explode.
    Confusion unto our enemies.

    I am a hat man and have always been one. Cowboy hats have never worked for me through. I am primarily a fedora man. During the summer heat I switch over to Tilley’s.

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