Snowflakes in Hell

Check out this link w/photo of an iPod that saved a soldiers life:

My wife’s uncle works in a military hospital and told me about this. Its pretty amazing. Kevin Garrad (3rd Infantry Division) was on a street patrol in Iraq (Tikrit I believe) and as he rounded the corner of a building an armed (AK-47) insurgent came from the other side.

The two of them were within just a few feet of each other when they opened fire. The insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest where his IPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound.

Pretty cool.  Apparently Apple got wind of this and is replacing his iPod for him.

The Times of London is reporting that the kidnapped British soldiers are going to be tried for espionage by Iran.  Witnesses claim the British vessel was in Iraqi waters when it was attacked by the Iranians.

This is an act of war under any interpretation of international law.  What I want to know is, why haven’t the British responded along the lines of

“You have 1 hour to return our soldiers.  If they are not returned by then the Royal Navy will be executing a blockade of your ports.   If they are not returned in 24 hours, the Royal Air Force will begin bombing military targets inside Iran itself.”

I don’t get why we’ve been pussy footing around with these people.  I can understand invasion would be difficult, but we could destroy most of Iran’s combat power within a matter of days.

From Leaning Towards the Dark Side, we learn that the last World War I combat veteran died on February 22nd, 2007.

The last American combat veteran of World War I recently passed away, on February 22nd. Howard V. Ramsey was 109 years old and lived in Oregon. He was corporal, and arrived in France two months before the war ended in 1918. Ramsey drove trucks and cars, which brought him under enemy artillery fire as he delivered supplies to the front lines, or drove an ambulance up to retrieve wounded troops. After the war ended on November 11, 1918, Ramsey spent seven months recovering the bodies of dead American soldiers. Ramsey was born in Colorado, and volunteered for service, as he was too young for the draft. There are still seven American World War I veterans, but none of them went overseas.

A sad milestone, for sure. But there are currently hundreds of thousands of folks out there following in Mr. Ramsey’s footsteps, of whom we should be justly proud.

Conservative Scalawag has an interesting post about making your own MREs. I’m not a huge canned tuna fan, but it can’t be any worse than Country Captain “chicken” (it might be chicken, the jury is still out). Personally, I always like the beef enchilada.

But I think his choices here are great! I’d estimate the calories in his packet to be close to 800 calories, and probably pretty good on weight too. For backpackers, weight is a pretty big issue, so you tend to favor foods that are really calorie dense in terms of weight. Nuts are a great choice, so chocolate coated nuts are even better. One other thing to consider is the lowly pop tart. While not entirely durable, the 8oz package packs 400 calories of yummy frosted goodness.

Bitter has the skinny on something that will make the hippies go mad:

The Energy Department will announce today a contract to develop the nation’s first new hydrogen bomb in two decades, involving a collaboration between three national weapons laboratories, The Times has learned.

The interesting thing about this new warhead is that it will be the first time any nation has deployed a nuclear weapon into the field that has never been tested anywhere except inside a supercomputer.  I work in the field of high performance computing, and we run a rather large one here at my place of business, doing molecular simulations.  Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia have supercomputer setups that make mine look like a toy.  Anyone familiar with what goes on inside a thermonuclear warhead understands what an impressive feat it is to be able to model things things thoroughly enough to have faith enough to stick it on the end of a missile and bet the country’s nuclear detterence on it.

These warheads will not be adding to our arsenal, that will still continue to shrink.  But a lot has changed technologically since we last put a new device into the field.  These new devices will replace old ones, that are wearing out, and getting more and more difficult and expensive to keep in operational order.  New technology should make these new warheads cheaper to maintain and more reliable.

Dave Hardy posts about an Army Times news article that talks about Delta Force’s new rifle, the H&K 416, and highlights the army’s reluctance to replace the M16.  For a while there was a lot of talk in the military about replacing the standard small arm, but that appears to be off the table for now.

It seemed the M16/M4 would be around a bit longer when they killed the H&K XM8, largely because they included a proprietary optics mount that would have also necessitated that the military switch out all its optics.  I think SOCOM has  adopted the FN SCAR for special forces, and I guess Delta is using the HK416 now.

The problem I have with H&K building our next generation rifle is that they have basically said there will be no semi-auto versions of them for civilians.  FN is working on a civilianized version of the SCAR.

It’s bad enough I can’t get an M16/M4 inexpensively.  It would be a real shame, if for the first time in American history, civilians can’t shoot the same type of rifle our soldiers do.

High powered lasers have the potential to completely change the nature of the battlefield.  A few years ago I read about the MTHEL - Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser, and later Northrop-Grumman’s SkyGuard.  This is a system meant to shoot down rockets and artillery shells on the battlefield before they have a chance to reach their targets.  The problem with the current systems is that they are powered by a chemical reaction, and are difficult and expensive to operate in the field.  They can also not maintain a very high rate of fire.

That’s why it was very interesting to read a few days ago that they’ve developed a 67kW solid state laser at Lawrence Livermore.  Solid state lasers would have the potential for more rapid and sustained fire, and would be vastly more practical to use on the battlefield.

This kind of thing is a transformational technology though.  If you can deploy it in sufficient numbers, it has the power to make conventional ballistic ordnance obsolete on the battlefield.

The court martial for Ehren Watada, who refused orders to ship out to Iraq, begins today, and it seems the judge isn’t allowing testimony about the legality of the war:

1st Lt. Ehren Watada, 28, of Honolulu is charged with missing movement for refusing to ship out with his unit, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. He also faces charges of conduct unbecoming an officer for accusing the Army of war crimes and denouncing the administration for conducting an “illegal war” founded on “lies.”

As his court-martial got under way, military judge Lt. Col. John Head refused to allow almost all defense witnesses to take the stand. Head previously ruled that Watada’s attorney, Eric Seitz, could not debate the legality of the Iraq war in court.

It seems to me this is appropriate, since this war was approved by Congress, it is constitutional and the orders to ship out lawful.  Watada’s attorney seems to be unhappy so far:

“If you are going to tie my hands and you are going to script these proceedings, then in my view we’re all wasting our time,” Seitz said.

This will definitely get me kicked out of the Libertarian Club to say this, but Watada is lucky he’s only facing prison time and a dishonorable discharge.  In wars past, he would have been lined up in front of a firing squad and shot.  When you join the military, you don’t get to pick and choose when you fight, or refuse orders to make political statements about the war.  It would be one thing if he refused orders to machine gun down a crowd of women and children, but sorry Ehren, you’re not a hero for refusing deployment orders because you don’t like the war, you’re a worm.

“He betrayed his fellow soldiers who are now serving in Iraq,” Capt. Dan Kuecker said at one hearing.

Yup!

Head over to Unc’s site and watch the video of people who’s job I would love to have.  Blowing up a dwelling-like structure with everything from an M9 pistol to a 30mm chain gun.  Great stuff!

From around the blogosphere, we’re hearing reports again that Israel plans to strike Iran first with nuclear weapons. I have my doubts that Israel would do this, and I suspect this was leaked as a way to bolster the diplomatic effort underway to get Iran to give up it’s nuclear program. If you view it along side plans to move a second carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf, I think that’s the most likely scenario. Diplomacy without a real threat of military force is just a bunch of talk, and without it, the Iranians have no reason to concede anything to us.

But there are numerous tactical problems involved with an attack by Israel on Iran. Israel lacks the in-flight refueling capability to project power that far away from the Levant, and no Arab country would allow Israel basing rights to use for the attack. So I would be very surprised if these leaked plans are for real.