Arrias: Cold War Redux

In case you’ve missed most of the last 2 years, there have been several excellent examples of Western Technology on display that really must leave the rest of the world both a little bit in awe and at the same time wanting to buy some.

I’m speaking of the capabilities of some of our radars and missiles which, in the form of the Patriot in Ukraine, and then the Standard Missile (SM-3 and SM-6) in the Red Sea, and then the Patriot, SM-3, SM-6 and the Arrow – Iron Dome system of systems in Israel, have demonstrated a remarkable ability to shoot down drones, and missiles, even in several cases apparently shooting down hypersonic missiles.

All in all, very impressive. And for those who thought they might readily defeat a carrier battle group at sea, this should, if they are thinking about it, at least give them pause… Things may not be quite as easy as all that.

All to the good, right? Conventional weapons with these amazing capabilities. Deterrence without nuclear weapons…

Well, no. As it turns out, it’s not quite that simple.

First, there’s the issue of cost. Using numbers from the DOD Comptroller’s last release (2022) on program acquisitions, reveals some interesting numbers. Patriot missiles, depending on the variant, cost from $2 million to $4 million each. The SM-3 has 2 variants, one that costs a bit over $10 million per missile, one that costs more than $30 million per missile.

But the cost isn’t the real problem, it’s the production numbers. If you’ve been following the war in Ukraine you’ll know that production numbers are a real issue. Raytheon is working overtime to increase production to 650 Patriot missiles per year, and they are back-ordered for well more than 1,000 as missiles keep being sent to Ukraine (and fired) and other countries worry about their now dwindling stockpiles, as donated missiles arrive in Kiev. The SM-3’s and SM-6s are even harder to produce, with production runs well under 100 per year.

And these aren’t the only production problems the US faces.

US aircraft carriers are, arguably, the envy of the world. But the current Ford class carrier is taking 7 years to build, compared to 4 years for Nimitz class carriers. USS Ford has been commissioned and has deployed once, the second hull is supposed to be commissioned next year (8 years after the keel was laid), and the 3rd hull will be commissioned no earlier than 2029, 3 hulls in 21 years.

US ship construction (and maintenance) is years behind where it should be, and we seem to be making no progress in solving this problem.

The US Air Force average age of airframes is down slightly since it peaked in 2020 at more than 30 years per airframe, but 8 different airframes have average ages over 50 years, and among fighters, F-15Cs average 36 years, F-15Es 28 years, F-16 30 years; the average fighter aircraft is over 28 years old, and the Air Force is buying fewer aircraft per year than it needs to reduce that average.

And while we’re 26 months into the war in Ukraine, with no end in sight, and fully 2 years after the realization that everyone needs to produce a good deal more ammunition than any of the major staffs had anticipated (which suggests another set of problems), yet we still haven’t managed to increase monthly ammunition production to the desired level, and public comments suggest those levels won’t be reached before the end of 2024 or early 2025 – 3 years after that war started.

The point is that any meaningful strategy of maintaining deterrence of both Russia and China, as well as regional “bad actors” such as Iran, with a preponderance of highly capable conventional forces – is something that we cannot sustain with our current industrial base. Whether in fact we can do it at all is open to debate, given the capability of Communist China, with its command economy and substantially lower labor costs, to out-produce US shipyards and US foundries, as well as a great deal of electronic components.

And while there might be ways to “catch up,” how much more can the US spend on national security in the current political environment, especially given the many problems the DOD procurement process continues to demonstrate?

Which leaves the US where?

First, we need to recognize that we’re in strategic competition with 4 countries who wish us ill: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. We may not want to call it war, but, as the Bard observed, a rose by any other name smells as sweet. They all see us in a Cold War like confrontation; only some in the US insist this isn’t so, though we seem to be waking to the idea vis-a-vis Russia.

Second, as to the suggestions that we need not be in a Cold War, or that this or that leader didn’t want this, that no longer matters. We’ve arrived at this position and we need to deal with it.

Third, as long as there are nuclear weapons, this is going to be so. Countries with substantially different world views are going to rub up against each other. If they are fairly large countries, that friction can lead to conflict. If they have nuclear weapons that friction can lead to nuclear brinksmanship. Henry Kissinger, in one of his clearest moments, observed that ‘nuclear weapons can’t be uninvented.’

Where this all leads is back to Eisenhower’s policy. In 1953, partly as a result of the Korean War, US defense spending was more than 14% of GDP. It was still at 9% in 1960. Eisenhower recognized that nuclear deterrence was needed to help reduce that huge level of spending. We need to recognize that fact again. It is time to put theater nuclear weapons back into our force structure until such time as our conventional forces have recovered to the point that, as a combination of technology and numbers, deterrence can be maintained without them.

In the meantime, we need to spend the money on research and development to improve the capabilities of our systems to defeat any drone, cruise missile, ballistic missile, or hypersonic missile, so that there is such poor probability of success that any attack would fail. Until that day arrives, we need to rebuild our nuclear umbrella, and embrace the fact that we’re in a Cold War with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com

Arrias: Ground Truth

The French Frigate Alsace is on its way home today; she is out of missiles.

It would almost seem a modern version of a Pyrrhic victory.

Plutarch relates that Pyrrhus was a descendant of fleet-footed Achilles, king of the Molossians, later king of Epirus, then Macedonia, and after that, tyrant of Syracuse. He was above all an extremely capable general. As you’ll recall from high school history, Pyrrhus won a 2 day battle over the Romans in 279 BC, but the battle was so bloody that afterwards he noted, to quote Plutarch, “that one other such victory would undo him.”

Thankfully, the French lost no sailors. But this defense… Last night the Israelis, US, RAF, French and Jordanian forces shot down a host of incoming drones and missiles. Accounts vary as to the final count, but initial reports (later reports will differ both as to numbers and success rates) suggest the attack was on the order of 200 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles. Of those, the current claims are that virtually all of the drones, 25 of 30 cruise missiles and virtually all of the ballistic missiles were shot down, and casualties on the ground in Israel totaled one teenage girl wounded.

Costs haven’t been released but one estimate placed the Israeli cost alone at $1.1 – 1.3 billion in air defense missiles. The most expensive missile in the Israeli system cost just under $4 million, which suggests that they fired in excess of 300 missiles. How many did the US and UK and French and Jordanian fire? More to the point, what is the time to replace those assets; not the cost, the time, that’s the real question. And how many more engagements can the Israeli, US coalition win before they’re out of missiles?

Which leads to a grander question, one that applies to Israel, Ukraine, and, in the end, Taiwan: what is ground truth?

In each of these three theaters the US needs to know what ground truth is.

Consider Taiwan. The US views keeping Taiwan free and independent as in its vital interests. The real goal here is to deter a war with Communist China over Taiwan while keeping Taiwan free. The US doesn’t want the war to go hot (note, we are in fact in a Cold War, whether we like it or not.)

We want to deter war with China. But do we have adequate conventional forces to safely assess that we can deter war with China over Taiwan, or for that matter, over the South China Sea? This is where the issue arises of Pyrrhic victories: the number of missiles and bombs and the readiness of our ships and aircraft and submarines – and all the other issues that make up an assessment of the readiness of our forces to meet a given threat. What is left? What do we need? How fast can we get it? Do we have enough combat-ready ships – with enough missiles – to sustain a presence in the South China Sea and East China Sea that will safely deter China? And do we have a plan to expand our conventional forces in the near future to ensure we maintain that deterrence?

And can the US reasonably deter China with conventional forces? Or do we need to deploy theater nuclear weapons again, however that might be done? And then how do we make certain China knows? And the US needs to remember that China sits at or near the center of each of these other problems.

Consider Ukraine. If you listen to the releases from the Russian Ministry of Defense – or the Ukrainian General Staff – their side is winning. To give one recent example (this happens to poke the Ukrainians in the eye, but both sides are doing it), the Russians have a 10 to 1 advantage in artillery fire and a 5 to 1 advantage in manpower and that is why they are advancing around the city of Avdiivka.

But, a review of available data showed the Russians had a 7 to 5 advantage in manpower, and a 3 to 1 advantage in artillery fire; hardly the overwhelming force one normally wants for an attack.

While both sides release fantastic statements on enemy casualties; reasonably objective assessments show those numbers to be more fantasy than reality. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians want to fight on, and the Russians do as well.

We need someone to take a very hard look at the real numbers; certainly our intelligence community has the real casualty figures, has the real ammunition stockpile figures, has the real production figures, has the available manpower figures, has the real force readiness figures.

And then answer some hard questions: What are the real manpower losses and what is the real, available manpower pool? What is the likely ammunition stockpile – given all the other requirements that the US faces – that Ukraine will be able to draw from? Given those real numbers, and other US commitments, can Ukraine win? Can Ukraine push the Russians out of Ukraine? Or is Ukraine involved in an effort that will in the end destroy Ukraine?

Freedom of navigation and the Red Sea: What is needed to end the Houthi regime? That the US Navy cannot defeat what in essence are shore batteries of a 4th rate power, and has no plan to do so, is unconscionable. Yemen needs to be blockaded – air and sea, and the Houthis need to be erased, and some admirals need to be fired.

Iran: The unraveling of 45 years of containment policy of the Iranian problem needs to be addressed before Iran has nuclear weapons. The US relations with the Arab States have decayed dramatically over the last two years. But the demonstration yesterday of the long-term threat posed by Iran should make recovering US Mid East policy at least a little easier. Iran needs to be contained, the Iranian nuclear weapons program needs to be destroyed. The US needs the Arab world to join it in this effort.

The US also needs to recognize that we have had three decades of poor-to-miserable decisions in defense policy – it’s time to fix that.

The US has some hard choices to make, but it needs to make them now, while there is still time to deter, based on ground truth, and not wait until the next round of missiles heads down range. We don’t want to wait until we run out of missiles.

Copyright 2024 Arrias

www.vicsocotra.com

Arrias: Will

Author’s Note: Everyone else is writing about what is going to happen, thought I’d throw in my two cents…
– Arrias

Will

Clausewitz summed it up nicely: “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”

Will is the only real “coin” in war. Everything else is a tool of one sort or another. But the will to fight, or the lack of the will to fight, is the central essence of all fighting, from two men fighting it out, hand to hand, up to two great empires struggling for dominance; in the end, will is what determines the outcome. Unless one side simply has the wherewithal to wipe out the other, the end will be decided by will.
With that said, consider the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine wants their lands back, and wants to live independent of Russia, as a European country. Russia wants back what it considers to be its land. As far as the outcome of the war, it no longer matters that Russia invaded, or even that Russia committed war crimes. Sanctions (which have mostly failed – and may actually help Russia in the long run) don’t matter. Previous treaties and agreements don’t matter. All of those things, and more, will probably be mentioned in some future protocol marking the end of the war, but they won’t actually matter in how the war ends.

Rather, it will be simply a matter of will.

For Ukraine, the will to be free and independent is at risk, as it always is, from a host of factors, (fear of death, love of ease, apathy to the cause, etc.) but there is one major negative factor: there is someplace to readily escape to. Some 8.4 million Ukrainians have left the country since the war started, about 1.2 million fleeing into Russia and 7.2 million fleeing westward into the EU.

But, before going any further, there are several data points of note: Ukraine’s population, which was 52 million in 1991, had already dropped – officially – to 43 million by 2022, and unofficially several million less than that, meaning that – including the migration after the war started – there are perhaps 30 to 33 million people remaining in Ukraine. Second, propaganda aside, the war is not fantastically supported. Estimates vary as to how many men of draft age have left Ukraine (they aren’t supposed to), but estimates run between 650,000 to well over 1 million. Third, Ukraine’s fertility rate is among the lowest anywhere – #202 world wide, at 1.1 births per female. Polls suggest that most women who want to raise a family do not want to return to Ukraine to do so.

Russia has its own demographic issues, with a fertility rate of 1.5 births per female. Russia has also suffered from young men fleeing the country, an estimate of 500,000 to 700,000 having left since the war started. Of course, Russia has a population of almost 150 million, so this is not as dire a problem as Ukraine.
Be that as it may, both countries appear to be solidly supporting their leadership, though what the real support is, is well masked behind a steady stream of propaganda and official press releases from both capitals.

And while there are anecdotal stories from each capital about horrible morale amongst the enemy, there is little to actually support that; there are very few soldiers surrendering – most that do, do so after being isolated and vastly outnumbered. In recent cases small units (less than 20 men) were overrun and found themselves without adequate weapons and nowhere to run. The reporting in the various news releases made it sound like the surrender of the British army in Singapore, but in fact the larger unit had 18 guys and the smaller had perhaps a dozen.

Under what can only be called miserable conditions the troops on both sides continue to simply fight it out. And while there are stories of drone operators living in bombed-out basements and moving about, the infantry are living in bunkers not substantially different than those of Verdun more than a century ago, sharing the quarters with what one soldier described in his blog as “lots of giant rats.”
Still, they fight.

So, as long as there is the will to fight in Kyiv and Moscow, the armies will continue to fight.
So, will Kyiv and Moscow both continue to fight?

It seems inconceivable that Moscow will stop at this point. As was emphasized by SecState Blinken this past week, Ukraine is going to be admitted to NATO. While it’s always possible that all the NATO members could vote to admit Ukraine while Ukraine is at war, that isn’t likely, and it would seem that the Kremlin would understand that simply remaining at war with Ukraine is necessary and sufficient to keep the country out of NATO; for Moscow there’s every reason to not end this war.

As for Ukraine, President Zelenskyy has built his strategy, and his peace plan, around a goal of complete victory: Russia out of all of Ukraine, to include Crimea, and the Russian government is changed, that is, not Putin. And, by law they are not to negotiate with the Putin government.

And, because of Ukrainian law, the President and the current Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) are in place for the duration – no election until martial law ends – and there is little prospect for martial law to end prior to the end of the war.

Which means this war is going to go on, certainly through the end of this year and into next year, and it may well continue for a number of years into the future. The only way this war ends sooner than some time in late 2025, if then, is either a fracture of one of the armies or a coup. As for a coup, who knows what is going on behind closed doors in either of these cities, but right now I don’t think either government is at risk of a coup, but that is a true wild card.

As for the armies, my sense is that the Russian army is not going to collapse; Putin has found a pace that his army can sustain and it appears to be fairly “comfortable” with this level of effort.
It is doubtful that the Ukrainians will be able to establish anything that looks like true air control over the battlefield with a squadron or two of F-16s, and even if they did, they still might no be able to push through the Russians defenses.

The one thing that might cause the Ukrainian army to collapse would be if the manpower problem is as severe as some reporting streams suggest and the Ukrainians simply were unable to replace casualties.
So, short of that one possibility, the war will go on.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com

Arrias and His Muse: Good Morning and Weather

Rain is Falling
Rain is falling, a constant tapping,
A flash of lightning splits the dark,
Thunder rumbles, shakes our house,
The dogs uneasy, answer with a single bark.
Holy Thursday in the Dismal Swamp,
A good friend and true under the knife,
Bypass surgery never routine,
A prayer – Dear God, safeguard his life.
Still the rain comes down, a soggy earth,
The sky is dark and drear,
Green giants out back all wrapped in mist,
In the darkness runs another deer.
Another flash, another rumble,
The rain has eased a bit,
A few minutes quiet, the dogs still alert,
Ere the next squall does hit.
And so we sit in the dark and worry,
Another prayer for a friend,
Guide the surgeon Lord, steady hand and eye,
But in the end on thee we depend.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com

Arrias and his Muse: My Muse is in a dark mood…

We See

Money for your missiles,

A billion for another floating beauty,

Billions for bombers and AI,

But none for corporals on duty.

Politicians take their pictures

With some PFC who lost an arm,

Spread that picture around,

The voters for to charm.

But the PFC still has no arm,

And his buddies are still in the fight,

And money gets spent on stupid things,

On the fighting they shine no light.

Politicians all have brilliant ideas

What new wars to wage,

At all sorts of new injustices

They can stand up and rage.

They make sure that some special group

Gets special help and special pay,

Easy jobs in garrison,

Can’t deploy, at home they stay.

But when it all hits the fan,

They call us heroes and such,

Give each a medal,

Pretend to thank us very much.

But they’re terrible careful

Who’s fightin’ and getting dead,

Isn’t their kids, their friends,

They’re still home in their own bed.

Billions for folks who don’t do nuthin’,

Folks who never risk their blood,

Never lost a friend in the night,

What about grunt corporals caked in mud?

Caked in mud and dog tired,

Or still at sea – for another month or three

Deployments that never seem to end,

While their kids are working on some worthless degree.

Fights that have no real name,

While politicians for pet projects beg,

No one in Washington gives a damn ‘bout us,

But a good friend just lost his leg.

They’ll call him a hero,

Take a picture, shake his hand,

Then forget about him and move on,

After claiming they understand.

But no one cares about the Sailors,

Or the Soldiers and Marines and all,

The guys who are actually doing the work.

The guys who are manning the wall.

‘Cause out there, there are bad folks,

And someone needs to be on guard,

But someone who mans the parapet

Shouldn’t be so easy to discard.

He sees folks living in hotels for free,

Rooms he couldn’t afford on private’s pay,

Politicians defending folks who loot,

While he lies in the mud all day.

Missiles being shot at his ship,

While admirals and generals sip white wine,

The big brains don’t know how to end these messes,

But give us another month on the line.

They like to call us all sorts of names,

Call us racists, part of some fascist machine,

But we’re the ones fighting for freedom,

And the only color in a foxhole is green.

So you can talk all your big talk,

Vote billions more for each bad idea,

But someday this may all catch up,

We won’t be willing to go to Korea.

We love our country and our families,

From all across this great land,

And we were willing to sacrifice,

Even if it meant dying in the sand.

We love all our brothers in arms,

Never much cared about their religion or race,

But somehow we’re the bad guys

Because we all the flag embrace.

They keep saying we should be free to love,

Whoever or whatever we please,

But they don’t like what the Grunts love,

Treat them like they got some disease.

Whatever it is the politicians love,

And the jocks and stars and wags,

It isn’t the same country that we cherish,

It isn’t our history or our flag.

It is true that we are gullible,

And we let them do with us as they please,

But that is going to end some day,

You bet that we can see.

We will do what we do,

For family, for friends, for the nation,

But ain’t gonna do a damned thing for them,

They have become a stain upon creation.

You keep expecting us to fight and die,

As you and yours do what you please,

And you keep saying we’re in the wrong,
Well, you bet that we can see.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com

Arrias: Evacuation Day

The story really begins yesterday, on June 17th, 1775.

But my real grasp of it began nearly 200 years later, on an early March day, while I was in high school. My mom was having a big party as a fund raiser for the hospital where my dad worked. We had a large, mostly unused room on one end of the house and it had been decorated and tables set up and all that. And we needed to get the fire going in the fireplace. My uncle Bill (everybody in the extended family seemed to be involved doing something) was responsible for fires, and the house had a bunch of fireplaces. So we needed a lot of kindling. Bill looked at me and said: “Let’s go.”

So, off we went. The kindling was at his house, less than 2 miles away. We took a detour… about a 2 hour detour. We ended up on Dorchester Heights, and Bill pointed out where the gun emplacements had been; as an old artilleryman, he knew the exact spot of each battery.

So, back to June 17th, 1775. Actually, a few days before that the “Committee on Safety” had received word that the British were going to occupy Charlestown. To those familiar with Boston today, Charlestown (and Boston) looks nothing like it did then, as a result of a great deal of landfill in the intervening years. At the time it was almost an island, connected by a narrow neck of land. Charlestown itself was shaped somewhat like a triangle, and two hills dominated it, Breed’s Hill in the center, and Bunker Hill a bit to the west, just east of the narrow neck that led to Charlestown.

General Israel Putnam was ordered to prepare to defend against the British attack. Putnam set up the defenses on Bunker and Breed’s Hills. Colonel William Prescott’s regiment was the main force on the hills, and to make a long story short, despite the relative lack of experience of the “rebels” (the Americans) and the experience of the British, the fight that followed was hard-fought and bloody. Three times the Briths attacked and the third attack carried the day, but the Rebels withdrew in fairly good order and made it over the neck and back into Boston.

One of the disconcerting issues for the attacking British is that the “Rebels” held their fire until the British were fairly close; this is where the – probably apocryphal – order was given. reportedly by Putnam: “Don’t fire until you can see the white’s of their eyes.”

Though probably a myth, the American’s held fire until the British were very close and there was a very high number of casualties for an engagement of this size.

British losses were quite high, with more than 1,000 killed and wounded out of a force of 3,000. This included more than 80 officers. The Rebels, who were outnumbered (there were only 2,400) suffered some 450 killed and wounded, and most of them escaped. A recent review of diaries and letters from both the rebels on the hill and the British Army troopers trying to get top the hill has allowed a fairly detailed count of how much ammunition those pesky farmers had, and how many wounds were suffered by the British.

The material suggests that more than 1% of the rounds fired actually hit home, a success rate that has been matched or bettered by only a handful of batters in history. The British Army won, but they had been badly blooded, had developed a very healthy respect for the “embattled farmers,” and the rag-tag rebels had managed to withdraw in fairly good order.

Evidence of the concern, shortly after the after action report came out, and General Gage, the British “tactical commander,” was relieved.

An uneasy standoff now developed, but, still, the British held Boston.

On July 2nd a new commander arrived, George Washington, with the goal of forcing the British out of Boston. This wouldn’t be easy, as the Royal Navy had obvious control of the sea, and the Americans had no means to strike the British positions in Boston. All they could do was hold the perimeter and try to counter a British attack if it occurred. Washington wanted to attack, but there were no plans that any of his staff could develop that looked like it would succeed.

And there was one problem, a problem Washington noted as soon as he had arrived: the Americans had no cannons.

Until Henry Knox came up with an idea (it’s not crystal clear in the records that Knox came up with the idea, some suggest Benedict Arnold. But Washington gave it to Knox to execute the plan, so it would seem to be a good bet that it was Knox’s idea.)

Knox was a local Bostonian who owned a book store; he was a large, friendly man, very well read, particularly in military science, engineering and history, he was wicked smart and he had the heart of lion; he was 25 years old.

At the south end of Lake Champlain lay Ft. Ticonderoga, overlooking the Narrows that, just a few miles further north, open up into the Lake itself. In May of 1775 the fort had been taken by Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, and this included more than 60 cannons.

Knox plan was simple stated: take the cannons from Ft Ticonderoga and bring them to Boston. On November 15th, 1775, Knox left Washington’s camp in Cambridge with orders to bring the cannons to Boston.

By December 10th they had arrived at FT Ticonderoga, surveyed the cannons, picked 59 that they wished to move and had moved them the three miles to the northern tip of Lake George. The plan was to move them by boat the length of the lake, then put them on sleds and move the cannon south to Glen Falls, then roughly follow the Hudson River to just south of Albany. Then they would follow the roads that, over the next two centuries, evolved into the Massachusetts Turnpike (Interstate 90). It involved 42 large sleds (sleds rather than wagons as it was winter), covering a distance of 300 miles.

The move down Lake George started out well, then the temperature dropped and they finished the 2nd day on the lake – and reached Ft George at the south end. Then they hacked their way through new ice on the lake.

Heading further south they had to cross and recross the Hudson River four times. In early January they still had one more crossing of the Hudson to acieve. In the effort, the ice broke and they lost one cannon. After getting all the sleds across, they went back to the river, back into the river, and recovered the cannon.

Further progress was slowed by, at first, a lack of snow, making the pulling of sleds hard work for the oxen. In the case of moving downhill onto hills and mountains of western Massachusetts, the difficulty in controlling the sleds was a challenge, since they tended to move faster than the oxen pulling them.

But they reached Cambridge on January 25th – with all 59 cannons.

Now, what to do?

If you look at a map of Boston today, look at South Boston and find West 2nd Street. That would be the beach at low tide, and the shore turned at the south-east end of the road where it runs into Emerson. Then it arced up a little to the north as it headed east, all the way out to Farragut Road. Behind that lien rose Dorchester Heights; north and east of that line was Boston Harbor (all the other land was filled in after 1880).

At this point Washington had riflemen moving about on Dorchester Heights, but he was aware that if the British saw the Americans starting to build fortifications and firing positions on the Heights, they would attack and there was little he could do to stop them. He needed to get the guns in position, behind real barricades, and he needed to give the British no time to react.

At this point Rufus Putnam of Braintree came on the scene. He was a 38-year-old cousin of Washington’s general, Israel Putnam and had served as an engineer with the British army during the French and Indian War and had a little experience building fortifications. Washington asked Putnam to offer a solution. Putnam, at a bit of a loss for ideas, asked General William Heath of Roxbury – who had given Putnam’s instruction to name it Washington – if he had any answers. What Heath had was a book: “Attack and Defense of Fortified Places.”

After begging Heath to let him borrow the book, Putnam started reading and developed the answer: What are known as “chandeliers,” a wooden barricade designed to sit on hard ground. Washington took note; what followed was, as the British later said, nearly magical. The Americans built a series of chandeliers, and a host of other parts to make not only a series of barricaded barriers, but also ways to mask the movement of the guns to the heights, to include moving hundreds of huge bales of hay into positions where they could be used to block the British line of sight as they arrayed the cannons.

Washington picked March 4th to begin the operation, knowing that if the British were to attack when they discovered the American effort, the attack would take place on March 5th, the 6th anniversary of the Boston Massacre.

On March 4th, as night fell (sunset was 5:35), hundreds of bales of hay were moved along the side of the road from Roxbury into Boston, obstructing the British view of the road from Boston, and then they began to move the chandeliers, and barrels full of of gravel and cannons and all the other parts to the fortifications. It was 350 carts in all, with 3,000 soldiers acting as laborers, plus two battalions riflemen of 400 men each for security – all headed to Dorchester Heights. By 10PM, two forts had been set up.

British sentries in Boston noted “work on Dorchester Heights,” but no action was taken.

The next morning the British woke to find the two forts on Dorchester Heights. As one officer noted: “They were all raised during the night with an expedition equal to that of the Genii belonging to Aladdin’s wonderful lamp.”

In fact, the Americans had inadequate amounts of gunpowder or shot and shell. But what began the fight was regular shelling at relatively low rates of fire. The first day was of little note. The second day caused some damage and some casualties. The British high command met, and on the 7th decided that an attack up the heights, as with Bunker Hill, but this time facing cannon as well as the American riflemen, would be catastrophic. On the 8th they sent over a request to Washington under a white flag: they would depart and not burn the city if the Americans would let them evacuate.

And so, on Sunday, March 17th, 1776, at 9AM, the last British troops left Boston.

And that is why March 17th in Boston is known as Evacuation Day as well as St. Patrick’s Day.
And we still got home in time to start the fires.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com

Arrias and His Muse: Pi Day (Or Pie Day?)

My Muse poked me again this morning, but light-hearted…

Archimedes wasn’t the very first,

But he did get pretty near,

And Ptolemy was very handy

In addressing a sphere.

The Chinese also chipped in,

And Liu Hui shaved it even closer,

Though to the average schoolboy

It is still a poser.

Aryabhata of Pataliputra,

A physics and mathematics hero,

Helped to get it even closer,

But was he thinking zero?

But still every high school student

From Alaska to Tanzania,

Will at first be confused,

And struggles with the idea.

Because it’s right in front of them,

As everyone is aware,

Look around the kitchen when eating ribs,
Pie are round, cornbread are square.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com

Arrias: Marshall, Ike and Ukraine

On January 25th, 1942, USS Sargo (SS-186 (under the command of LtCmdr Tyrell Jacobs)) pulled into Surabaya, Indonesia after finishing a short war patrol, offloaded her remaining torpedoes, loaded 1 million rounds of small-arms ammunition, and headed to Mindanao, the Philippines to provide some ammunition to the US and the Philippine Armies. She then picked up 24 maintenance specialists from the B-17 wing and evacuated them from the Philippines. Jacobs, after three patrols in which he fired a great many torpedoes but sank no ships, turned over command, and ended the war working on, and significantly improving, US torpedoes.

As for his mission, Sargo was carrying ammunition as a consequence of the actions of one Army officer, Brigadier General Dwight Eisenhower.

In June 1941 Col. Eisenhower had been appointed as the Chief of Staff to the Third Army and he was in that post when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 12th now Brigadier General Eisenhower received a call from Gen. George Marshall’s office to come to Washington, the General wanted to see him; Eisenhower headed to Washington; he never returned to Third Army.

When he arrived in Washington on the 14th (by train, his flight having been grounded) he went directly to the War Department building on Constitution Ave. Marshall met him and immediately began to talk about the situation in the Pacific and then, after giving Eisenhower a thorough rundown, he asked Eisenhower: What should be done?

Eisenhower asked for a few hours to think about it and Marshall agreed. Eisenhower went and sat a desk and began to chew on what he had just been told.

Marshall, of course, had already arrived at an answer; this was, in part, a test. When Eisenhower returned to Marshall’s office as the sun was going down, he handed him some typed up thoughts. The answer was, in a sense, two sided: on the one hand, Eisenhower said that it was impossible to get reinforcements to the Philippines in time to save US forces or Philippine allies. The Navy, the nation, did not have the combat power to fight through to the Philippines, we didn’t have the ships, nor did we have long range aircraft in an adequate numbers, or airfields, or a long list of men and supplies and ammunition.

At the same time, there was a need to make an effort because would-be allies, and the people of Asia – the Chinese, the people of the Philippines and Indonesia, would all be watching the US response.

As Eisenhower noted: “They may excuse failure but they will not excuse abandonment.”

Marshall had already arrived at the same conclusion. Every effort was made to get aid to the Philippines, but Marshall and Eisenhower knew what was going to happen. At the same time, Gen. MacArthur accused Washington and the War Department of sacrificing the army on Bataan. As historian Steven Ambrose noted, that was basically correct. Eisenhower’s effort was to draw out the fight as long as possible, but he and Marshall knew it was only going to end one way.

Indeed, his main focus became not the resupply of the Army but the building of US bases in Australia for the future offensives in the western Pacific. Bataan and Corregidor must be held to last as long as possible, but the real effort would take time to develop. (In one of the more curious footnotes, Eisenhower spot promoted a reserve Army Colonel, Patrick Hurley, to Major General, and sent him to Australia with $10 million in cash, to do what he could to get aid to the Philippines, as well as start to buy up land in Australia to build US Army bases. Interestingly, Hurley has previously been the Secretary of War under President Hoover.)

What has that got to do with today?

The key point is that key decision-makers need to be hard realists. Years after this event, Eisenhower said of Marshall that he had “an eye that seemed to me awfully cold.”

We need such an eye.

Consider where we now stand: a 2 year old stalemated war in Ukraine, a war in the Mid East that is over 4 months old, and worries that it will spread into Lebanon, a recidivist Iran fueling the Houthi army, and behind it all a power-hungry Chinese leadership with a China that is showing signs of economic strain that may undermine their global dreams just as they seem within reach, and this may make them more willing to gamble. Meanwhile, US power is stretched thin, our weapons lockers are almost empty and there is reason to doubt that we can both refill them to the appropriate level, while at the same time provide aid to Ukraine; though it would seem that Europe, with a collective GDP 10 times that of Russia should be able to provide the bulk of the aid to Ukraine. But the real troublemaker here is China. And it would seem that the only one who can deter China is the US. And isn’t that what we want to do: deter China?

Interestingly, Eisenhower also described what we need, at least in a general sense: “Ships! Ships! All we need is ships!… Also ammunition, anti-aircraft guns, tanks, airplanes…”

But to get there it would seem we need to make some hard choices. As Marshall and Eisenhower knew, those choices can be unpleasant. The problem of course is that failure to make hard choices early results in the need to make even harder choices later.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
Www,vicsocotra.com

Arrias: A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a truly great nation, a nation that tried to bring peace around the world, that tried to improve everyone’s life, that worked very hard as a nation, and the people become fabulously rich.

But there were those inside the country who didn’t like things this way, they wanted more money, and especially more power. The nation spent too much time trying to make sure that power was spread out. This didn’t sit well with these few people, and they worked hard to undermine the country. And eventually, after several generations, their efforts bore fruit. Suddenly, odd things started to happen, truth seemed to stand on its head, what was obvious was denounced as a lie and even a crime. And what was false was enshrined.

Along with all this came greater and great concentration of power in the hands of a relatively small number of people, both inside the government and in a few key business. Things progressed so far that they were able to start to rig elections. They were so successful at both rigging elections and in control of certain pieces of the government that to challenge an election was said to commit treason.

But the people fought back. True, there were men and women who were elected to office who vowed to fight the concentration of power but when they ended up in the Capital, they found two things: the first, much of the real power had been taken from the elected officials and put in the hands of large bureaucracies that were overwhelmingly staffed by people who liked things that way: power in their hands, not the hands of elected officials who might change things. And the second thing they found was that being in the middle of things, being a key elected official in the Capital came with a lot of benefits: lots of connections, lots of praise, lots of honors, and lots and lots of money. All you needed to do was play along… And, for those who didn’t play along, there was a lot of the other stuff: disrespect, slander, lies, frivolous lawsuits that left you impoverished, and you could never get anything done.

One day this one fellow, who wasn’t a politician but a business man, ran for office. He was a loud, brash man, who had made a lot of money in real estate and real estate development. Like many folks in that trade, he was loud and very rough around the edges. He ran for President against the ultimate insider, one who knew she was entitled to the job. One who in a previous administration had, just to show how powerful she was, started a war that left a smaller country devastated. She was very proud of that fact. She also oversaw the sale of the control of a great deal of uranium deposits to one of the nation’s enemies. She was hailed as “very smart” for this.

Anyway, they both ran for office. Everyone knew she was going to win. After all, they ran the system. But somehow, she lost. The Brash Man became President.

And there was wailing and cursing and gnashing of teeth.

The media, the once labeled “free press,” long since compromised by those in power, informed one and all that this Brash Man would destroy the country, that he would start wars, that he was beholden to other countries. And so, he cut taxes, cut government regulations, and kept the nation out of war. He was labeled as a traitor for this.

After 4 years it was time for another election. This time there would be no chances taken; after a great deal of chicanery, and the manipulation of a lab experiment to cripple much of the planet’s economies, steps were taken to ensure that there would never again be any question as to the outcome of any important election.

And there wasn’t. The Brash Man lost his re-election bid. He lost it to a man who had never been terribly smart, and never been terribly well liked nationally, and was known as someone, according to a previous boss, with an ability to take any situation and “foul it up.” The Brash Man had held campaign rallies with 50,000 people, the old man held rallies with less than 100; the old man won. If you questioned the results you were pilloried.

So now the old man was President.

And things started to go sideways. The economy immediately having problems. He tried to strangle the energy industry. He messed up overseas and the great nation looked incompetent trying to get its own people out of a far distant place. Just 13 months into his presidency one of the great nations that was an enemy, started a war by invading another country because it was no longer deterred. Then came another war. And rumors of a third war.

Meanwhile, because they hated the Brash Man, they pursued him in court, and brought all sorts of charges against him. To the rest of the world the once great nation looked like it was being run by a tin-pot dictator. But the people in charge didn’t care. They pursued the Brash Man.

But the Brash Man, he fought back. And he ran for office again. So, they came up with charges that would economically cripple him. And rigged the court proceedings so that he would be fiscally strapped by the court orders. Many in power were delighted, almost giddy with joy.

But, meanwhile, the sitting President was having problems – lots of them. He was old, and he was acting older than he was. True, he had never really been in charge, there were always people behind him pulling the strings. But even that was getting too hard. What to do, what to do?

And, at the same time there was someone else running for office, a woman who had been a very good governor of a conservative state. Now, interestingly, she had changed. She had turned into what was known as a real NeoCon. The NeoCons of the previous half decade had gone through metamorphoses and had fallen in love with the idea that the great country should be intervening overseas sort of “everywhere, all the time,” even as these same NeoCons mainly stopped worrying about what was happening at home in the Great Country; that domestic stuff was too hard and no fun. Let’s start a war!

And yet… The thing was, behind the old man who was President, behind all the media outlets and Hollywood producers, behind those certain big business and the politicians and the bureaucrats, behind all the people who liked the huge, ever growing, ever more hungry for power government, there were older academicians, politicians and businessmen who, in a manner akin to a large beehive, tried to run things. They were the ones who found young politicians to groom, academicians to promote and give tenure, lawyers to insert into state and city attorney offices. They were the ones who worked with certain unions and various civil action groups to protest this or that and cause trouble.

And they were the ones who really ran the elections, who made sure the vote count came out the way it was supposed to.

And they saw a problem with the old man – he really was incompetent, and his Vice President was worse. The thought of the VP being President even made them ill. What to do?

And then they saw a plan:

First, they knew they could not get the President to resign. He must lose. So, they began to place stories in their various media about how forgetful the President was, all his failings, all his problems. And they continued to attack the Brash Man.

And then they added the twist: they would provide stories that promoted the woman who had been governor, the NeoCon from the other party. It was true that they controlled the vote, anyone they wanted was going to win the election. But even in North Korea they made an effort to make the vote look right. It’s a balm for the masses, they have to think their vote means something. So, let the other party win – as long as they could get the Brash Man off the ticket and a new candidate who would not really challenge the inner power structure. Force the Brash man off the ticket, slide the former Governor in, then let her win. It would be “proof” the election system was still fair!

And they knew she would be unable – and would not be disposed anyway – to fight to unseat their tremendous hold on the reins of power inside the bureaucracy. She would be a foreign policy president and they would giver her the money to build a huge Navy and Army and a major slice of the country would be happy.

Meanwhile, they would bury the Brash Man under more law suits, and they would extend their real control into the various offices of the government, deeper and deeper.

And they would trumpet how the loss of the Old Man to the NeoCon governor was proof everything was still fair and okay.

And their power would grow…

Of course, this is just a fairy tale…

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Arrias: Putin, Xi, and the Pirate King

In the news this week, Alexei Navalny, the dissident Russian politician who was serving 30 years in an Arctic Gulag, died. Navalny was a longtime rival of Tsar Vlad, had campaigned against corruption – Putin’s corruption – and after returning to Russia in 2021, had been found guilty of “extremism” and “fraud” – what were clearly nonsense charges, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Navalny had been in Germany, where he had been taken for treatment after being poisoned (August 2020). It was later determined that he had been exposed to “novichok,” a nerve agent. The FSB (former KGB) was implicated in the attack, which probably consisted of putting the nerve again on his underwear, where it would be absorbed through the skin. He returned to Russia in January 2021 and was immediately arrested, brought to trial and convicted.

He had recently been moved to IK-3 penal colony (Polyarnyi Volk (Polar Wolf)) in Kharp, about 1,000 miles north-east of Moscow. He was 47. His death was, sadly in this troubled world, not a surprise, though his official cause of death has yet to be established. As Inspector Reynault would observe, they are probably working out whether he was shot trying to escape or it was suicide. Navalny was 47.

That Tsar Vlad would kill one of his opposition should surprise no one. He has a long history of such actions.

Some folks are using this as proof we must not deal with Russia, we must fight on, etc. He is evil and can’t be trusted.

Well, yes, he is evil and no, he can’t be trusted.

But let’s take a deep breath. Let’s list those leaders of nations who we can’t trust. Start with everybody’s favorite panda, Emperor Xi. How many people in concentration camps in China? At least a million, probably substantially more. How many have been through re-education camps in the last 10 years or so? Estimates vary, but multiple millions, some estimates run as high as 8 million.

China continues to grind down and destroy Tibet, a country that has been going through a slow, steady – literal – genocide for decades.

Hong Kong’s freedoms have been suppressed, standard freedoms of speech and press and religion don’t exist. Chinese companies, with the full knowledge of Beijing, push out fentanyl that killed nearly 100,000 Americans last year. Between 1979 and 2015, under Chinese government direction, there were an estimated 400 million forced abortions. The list is incomplete, but this is what Emperor Xi capable of.
Yet, we’re told we need to talk to Beijing, compromise, work with Beijing.

Iran feeds weapons into the Houthis and Hezbollah, while denying basic rights in their own country, under the direct supervision of the Ayatollah. Iran is in the process of becoming a nuclear power – if it hasn’t already. And is trying to throttle world trade.

And again, we have folks in communication with Tehran. Last summer we sent $6 billion to Tehran for the release of 5 Americans.

The point in all this is that, as much of a thug as Tsar Vlad is, and he is, we are dealing with other thugs around the world; it’s the nature of leaders of many countries from time immemorial. Which is not to say that we are necessarily doing a good job in our dealings, only that we are dealing.

But it also means we need to recognize that the first criteria that we should have for such actions is a clear understanding of US interests and whether dealing with various evil regimes is necessary to further our interests.

There are only two other practical options: one, we shut out everything and every one, button up the country, and talk to no one ever again. Obviously, that won’t work – for a whole host of reasons, buttoning up the border being high on the list of why we can’t…

The other option is to go to war with everyone we think is bad…

That isn’t going to work either.

We are left with the simple reality, one not commonly addressed by Washington in the last 33 years, that we need to understand our – US – interests and at the same time recognize that we are surrounded by many evil characters around the world. We don’t need to be their friends, but in many cases we need to deal with them.

It’s also a warning. As Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirate King noted:

But many a king on a first class throne,

If he wants to call his crown his own,

Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than e’er I do.

Just so. Gilbert and Sullivan were able to make light of it but they touch a truth: the workings of many, indeed most, governments in history have been marked with all sorts of crimes against humanity in general and often their own people in particular. And under increasing stress the veneer of civilization is revealed to be quite thin; any government can find itself shedding civilization and embracing evil. The only thing that keeps a government from stripping away that veneer is a strict adherence to the law and to morals, to an understanding of duties and behaviors that come before the law. For the US, that means a strict adherence to the Constitution and to the Bill of Rights.

We need to deal with Putin, and Xi, and the Ayatollah and a host of other figures. But we need to first understand what US interests are, and we need to both maintain our morals and our Constitution, while remembering that the men we are dealing with have been, are, and will remain, evil; men who wish us ill, and they will contour to do so, no matter what nice words they say. We must deal with them from time to time; we must not become like them.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com