SWT – Page 2 – The Fifth Field

Red Dawn

Found a DVD in the value bin at Walmart – the classic 1984 version of Red Dawn, with Patrick Swayzy. A fictional story, set in the early 1980s, in the mountains of Colorado, a group of teenagers defend their town from occupying Soviet and Cuban forces that have invaded the US. The kids live in a village called Calumet; it could be almost anywhere, a small American township with deliberately vague landmarks. Maybe your town. The teens start a guerilla warfare movement, blowing up enemy equipment over a six-month period, but the movie has a dark side. Not all the citizens are in for the cause; the mayor is a collaborator. Occupying forces execute hostages in an attempt to quell the uprising; the teens shoot captured Russian prisoners. I won’t spoil the ending.

Wolverines!

Red Dawn got me thinking of a potential Civil War today, as a lot of pundits are saying that our country is headed for one; and a senior politician seemed to be goading his opposition into starting one. So I started re-reading on the Civil War – the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and the “Gettysburg Address” and all that, but there is another side of that war – when Americans were fighting other Americans – a very dark side, that Abraham Lincoln could see, and if we didn’t watch out, the country would never heal.

Both sides, North and South, killed captured prisoners on more than one occasion – maybe a lot more, because if 100 are killed, that becomes news, but if 1-2 are killed, it probably doesn’t even get reported up the line. One or two here, one or two there, and at some point they add up to real numbers – real bad numbers. Both sides, Union and Confederate, established terrible prisoner of war camps; an especially infamous one up north was Camp Douglas in Chicago – an equally infamous one down south was Andersonville in Georgia. Make no mistake; those two hellholes were concentration camps and the only things missing were gas chambers.

Andersonville Prison Camp

I recall reading that Union Generals Grant and Sherman were discussing how many Confederate soldiers would have to die before the south would give up. Grant reminded Sherman of all their southern classmates they had known at West Point, and how tough they were, and how many joined the Confederate Army – and then Grant reportedly said: “About a quarter million.” That was pretty accurate, as some historical studies have posited that 258,000 Confederates and 360,000 Union troops died – 618,000 total. Guerilla/criminal bands – Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson and others – slaughtered civilians; it wasn’t called “Bloody Kansas” for nothing. The material cost was monumental too. Sherman’s burn-it-to-the-ground March to the Sea hastened the end of the war, but it took Georgia decades to recover economically.

Civil War today? There is one characteristic, that bears watching, common to many on both sides. They view the other as evil. It used to be in America that one viewed political opponents, as mis-guided or stupid, and you worked by peaceful ways to convince them to change. But evil? There is no compromise with the devil. You exterminate evil or it will do the same to you.

If we have a Civil War, whether viewed as crushing an evil insurrection, or overthrowing an evil government, it will get ugly in a hurry. In Civil Wars, many folks present at its start, are dead before it ends. Whoever is in power, Democrats or Republicans, might suspend habeas corpus – Abe Lincoln did, and some would argue it has been suspended for participants in January 6. There will be targeted killings of folks supporting the other side; we’ve already had targeting of Supreme Court justices. Civil War looting will dwarf pillaging in 2020, and looters will be shot on sight by enraged citizens who feel their government won’t protect them.

In Civil Wars, border areas are especially vicious as both sides lack legitimacy to police them, so both push war matériel over borders to their supporters. That lawless situation already exists in northern Mexico and many areas inside the US. Both sides might well allow torture to gain information. It may not be William Wallace variety in Braveheart, but it easily could be Hank Voight and “the cage” in Chicago PD, as lots of people just “disappear” in Civil Wars. After many of these conflicts, bunches of people on the losing side get hanged by the neck until dead, while others have lifetime bans on voting, gun-ownership, military service, property ownership, or receiving social benefits.

War is subject to irrational factors, which gives each conflict a unique character. Typical of Civil Wars is that they don’t end until BOTH sides decide to stop. “When” is hard to predict, but it’s predicated on pain, lots and lots of pain. That’s why Red Dawn is such a great movie – it gets you to think about what could happen after the sun comes up.

Red DawnFrench MacLean2023-06-21T11:20:37-05:00

If You Are…You Need a Gun

The Supreme Court has spoken on the Second Amendment. The latest is the decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen. Bruen for short. It struck down as unconstitutional New York State’s concealed carry law that required an individual to prove “proper cause” existed before a license would be issued allowing that person to carry a concealed pistol or revolver in public.

Earlier decisions confirmed that you may have a firearm inside your home, and you may have one outside as well. Typically, several states are moving to define where outside your home you may have one, and of course that’s almost no place, which is why New York, Illinois, California and other anti-self-defense states are hemorrhaging thousands upon thousands of taxpayers to better-run other states. These obvious run-around limitations will be struck down as well, and are merely delaying actions — scorched earth in military parlance.

The “typical” gun owner is often characterized by non-gun-owners as a right-wing, red-neck, beer-guzzling, low-IQ Neanderthal (see below) who is just itchin’ to unleash his trigger finger. But times have changed, and now a whole lot of those non-gun-owners – who used to be dismissive of guns — truly need a firearm, whether you are a Pabst or an Armand de Brignac Brut kind of person.

Because now, it might be a matter of life or death. Recently in Decatur, Illinois — a state that allows violence in the streets on a daily basis (see below), a teen was arrested for allegedly breaking into his 60-year-old neighbor’s home and trying to kill him because that neighbor is gay. So if you identify as LGBTQ…you need a gun for protection. LGBTQ people are nearly four times more likely than non-LGBTQ people to be victims of violent crime. You may never actually have to shoot to defend your life, but then again, why take a chance?

If you identify as a woman…you need a gun for protection. 19.3 million women in the U.S. have been stalked in their lifetime. 1 in 4 have been victims of severe physical violence (e.g. beating, burning, strangling) by an intimate partner in their lifetime. 1 in 7 have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed. 1 in 5 have been raped in their lifetime. You may never actually have to shoot in self-defense, but then again, why take a chance?

If you live in a rough neighborhood… you need a gun for protection. In 2021, 701 men and 90 women were murdered in the Windy City. 640 were black, 29 were white, 105 were Hispanic, and the major determinant was where they lived. The City of Chicago is installing 426 “Bleeding Control Kits” (see above) in 269 buildings across the city. Officials say the kits could help save lives in an emergency such as falls and penetrating injuries. Let’s get real; the kits are there to treat gunshot wounds, a tacit admission that the powers that be cannot prevent you from being shot; they have RETREATED to a position where they “hope” that you will not die from a gunshot wound inflicted by a criminal who will be armed regardless of the law.

If you live in a rich, safe neighborhood…you need a gun for protection. 875 South Bundy Drive, Brentwood, Los Angeles; case closed.

If you know one or more males in your neighborhood who have violent tempers… you need a gun for protection. Almost half of all male killers are younger than 25. Less than one-third of male killers rely on firearms as their weapon of choice. That means that two-thirds of male murderers use some other means of killing – not firearms. Why take a chance?

If you identify as male…you need a gun for protection. Almost 80% of all murder victims in the U.S. are male. You may never actually have to shoot in self-defense, but then again, why take a chance?

If you are an Asian-American…you need a gun for protection. Hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent in the U.S. have skyrocketed, especially in large urban areas, where the legal gun ownership process can be especially onerous. Determining motivation of a criminal – who is never apprehended – is almost impossible: did the perpetrator rob and kill a Chinese-American store owner because of race or because of the cash register? You may never actually have to shoot in self-defense, but then again, why take a chance?

If the proponents of gun control ever get their way, it will not be the rich political elites who are murdered; they talk a good game, but live in gated communities, in exclusive neighborhoods, and have personal security details, or flaunt the law and have their own firearms on the sly. By denying the means to defend for everyone else, the anti-2nd Amendment mob expose themselves as homophobes, anti-woman, racists of all stripes, and whatever fancy term applies to setting up elderly people living alone to be victimized.

A society, country and culture can be measured, in part, by how well it protects the most vulnerable among them, whether they are unborn babies, children, or people who look different, think differently, believe differently or come from different backgrounds. The right to life; the right to self-defense; all are inherent rights of every human being. No government can legitimately deny you that right.

But they try to. So if you own a firearm, great. Make sure you keep it secured. And help everyone you know learn how to shoot and how to legally obtain a firearm. Because: man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, Hispanic, Asian-American, atheist, religious, young adult or senior citizen …you need a gun for protection.

If You Are…You Need a GunFrench MacLean2023-06-21T13:52:15-05:00

The “88”

Every day self-proclaimed “experts” in the media spout off about the evils of semi-automatic rifles, termed “war guns”, “full automatics”, “Assault Rifles”, seeking to ban them once and for all. Then Congress gets involved and away we go. Neither group have any truly pure motives; mostly they just want to control every facet of everyone’s life, whether that violates the Constitution or not.

They are also swimming upstream against history. For example, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles by the victorious Allies after World War I (then called the Great War) placed sole blame for the war on Germany. It sounded like a good thing at the time (which is what many high school boys later claim was their reason for doing something stupid) but was such a monstrosity that almost single-handedly it ensured that the “War to End All Wars” was merely a prequel to an even more-destructive world war twenty years later – World War II.

A group called the IMKK, Inter-Allied Military Control Commission (sort of an international BATF) was established to enforce the provisions of the treaty on German soil. Among other things this commission ensured the following: the German Army could have no more than 100,000 personnel of which only 4,000 could be commissioned officers; the German Navy could have no submarines and no more than 36 surface ships (destroyers, cruisers, etc.); Germany could have no Air Force, could not import weapons of any kind; and have no tanks or heavy artillery.

88mm Flak Gun

So the Weimar Republic (the German democracy that replaced the Kaiser) came to the conclusion that when life deals you Zitronen (lemons), you start making Limonade (lemonade). And the boys from the Krupp company, who never saw a weapon they didn’t love, went to neutral Sweden and worked with Bofers, some Swedish arms-builders, and developed a dual purpose 88-mm cannon, which was permitted under the treaty. Actually it would have multiple purposes: anti-aircraft, anti-tank, general artillery, deck guns on naval vessels, and the main gun on deadly armored vehicles named after powerful animals – Tiger, Elephant, Rhinoceros and Hunting Panther.

Today, as in the past, adapt, be flexible, think out of the box. Defense of the 2^nd Amendment includes fighting to retain semi-automatic rifles, because banning those will just lead to banning semi-automatic shotguns and semi-automatic pistols. And if those are ever prohibited, next up, pump-style weapons – the list will go on and on until nothing remains.

So, we need to ask ourselves the following question: what will I do if I am unable to own a semi-auto rifle? You probably have already started your evaluation: almost no one I know has only semi-automatic rifles, because if all you have are these, and they are banned, you are now in the “Land of the Blind” with respect to self-defense. And we know that in any uncertain, difficult situation the “One-eyed Man is King”.

Let’s start with rifles for today. What could replace my semi-auto? The closest type of rifle in terms of capability is probably lever-action or pump. Bolt action often exceeds semi-auto in terms of accuracy and range, but is slow-firing in comparison. Pump and lever-actions have a tube on the underside that stores the ammunition. With either, you can probably fire several rounds quick enough to take down an animal during hunting, or a bad guy. Or two, maybe three. Situational awareness is a sense you can develop; it generally will keep you out of a situation where a pack of wolves, or bad guys, are simultaneously attacking you.

Lever Guns

A lever action is named appropriately enough, for a lever in front of the trigger guard. Rotating that lever about 90 degrees downward and then back up again, loads a new cartridge into the chamber. Downsides? Yes; it is harder to fire prone. It’s slower to reload (but some calibers hold 10 rounds) and tubular magazines don’t use spire point (sharp-pointed) bullets. You’ll be firing round-nose or flat-tipped. Few self-defense courses cover lever actions.

Lever-action calibers? There are dozens; from .22 long rifle to some humdinger called a 50-110 Winchester. Other upsides? They are proven, having been around a long time. Many calibers are also pistol calibers – easing supply. They often cost less than semi-autos. Henry is a great brand as are Marlin, Winchester and Browning. You can put a scope or red dot on most.

Reportedly Pat Garrett’s Rifle

Folks who swore by the lever-actions of their day? Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Pat Garrett, Butch Cassidy, William Bonney, and Wyatt Earp. So ask yourself. What did they know that I don’t? Make a lever action, maybe a .357 or .44, a flexible option in your gun safe. Make it your own “88” that can do many things well.

The “88”French MacLean2022-10-16T20:58:50-05:00

Henry U.S. Survival AR-7

In an iconic scene in From Russia with Love, James Bond assembles an ArmaLite AR-7 takedown rifle, removing the barrel and receiver from their storage slots in the weapon’s buttstock. Attaching a small scope, he scans for his quarry, the dastardly Krilencu, a Bulgarian assassin who works for SMERSH. Bond is about to take the shot when his ally, Kerim Bey, whom Krilencu had recently wounded in the shoulder, asks to pull the trigger, which he does with success. The scene ends with Kerim Bey remarking, “That pays many debts.”

Good enough for Bond, James Bond

Today, the Henry U.S. Survival AR-7 has replaced the older ArmaLite model, and while the .22 rifle may not repay the type of debts Kerim Bey was referring to, it will accomplish many tasks and just might keep you alive in the process. Henry says, “Don’t Leave Civilization Without One,” and while that is excellent advice, you may also need it when some elements in your day-to-day life become positively “uncivil.” It is a deadly rat gun.

Since 1959, when it was designed for U.S. Air Force flight crews that might have to bail out over rugged terrain, the AR-7’s reputation for portability, ease of operation and reliability has carried over to the civilian world, around the world. It is a favorite of bush pilots, backpackers and backcountry adventurers around the world who, like their Air Force counterparts, need a rifle that’s easy to carry, but also has the accuracy to reliably take down small game as food sources.

An eight-shot semi-automatic, it is lightweight (3.5 lbs.) and highly portable. At just 16.5″ long, when all the components are stowed, it easily fits into the cargo area of a plane, boat or in a backpack. Younger generations call some of these a “Bug Out Bag,”, but whatever your term, an AR-7 should really be in there. And stowed in your backpack, no one would ever have a clue that you are carrying a rifle. It’s almost as if you can make a rifle appear out of nowhere. Chambered in .22 LR, you can also carry a large quantity of ammunition without adding much weight to your gear.

When disassembled the pieces fit inside the impact-resistant, water resistant stock, which can float for a while, but get it out fairly quickly in case the back cap leaks; one reviewer tested that and the package remained waterproof for six minutes. Henry says, “Assembly is as easy as attaching the receiver to the stock, inserting the barrel, and screwing on the nut. In a few seconds, without any tools, the Henry AR-7 is ready for action.”

That’s not quite accurate. It is easy, but it will take at least a minute, not just a few seconds. But, remember, no tools are needed! The weapon comes with two 8-round magazines; order two more as the buttstock storage area will accommodate three loaded magazines.

To fire, you first attach the receiver to the stock by fitting it into the slot and turning a fixed little bolt until the two are tightly mated. This bolt is in the bottom of the handle and cannot come out when you unfasten the receiver, so it can’t get lost. Then you line up the barrel, and tighten the screw collar. Put in a magazine (and since you can store it with a magazine already in the receiver, you may want to consider that), pull the bolt back using the little charging handle, and release it; the bolt assembly slams forward, loading a round in the chamber. Unlike most other rifles, there is no bolt assembly stop to hold it to the rear, so after you fire your last round the bolt remains forward. You must pull the charging handle to the rear a bit to visually inspect the chamber to ensure there is no live round there, because it is blowback-operated. Fully assembled, it’s 35 inches long. With fifteen minutes of practice, maybe less, you can assemble it fully in the dark. The safety is a simple thumb lever that flips on and off easily.

The Henry AR-7 is available in three finishes; Black, True Timber Kanati Camo Pattern, and True Timber Viper Western Camo Pattern. There are two schools of thought on camo; one is you may want the rifle to hide along with you, but in the dark, if things go awry, you want to be able to find it quickly and easily. Either way, all models are equipped with an elevation-adjustable rear sight and a blade front sight that is windage-adjustable. The steel barrel covered in tough ABS plastic with a protective coating for complete corrosion resistance. Trigger pull is six-pounds and breaks cleanly. It’s made in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.

I’m 70 and wear bifocals. If I can do this at 50 feet, you can do even better!

MSRP is about $290; for one of the two camouflage models, add another $60. I have tested one in black. The receiver has a narrow 3/8-inch groove design for rimfire rings. So I got a small, 4-power scope and rings, thinking I could increase accuracy. I shouldn’t have bothered. Since a scope-mounted receiver will not fit inside the butt compartment, you have to removed the scope before packing, and mount it again later for firing. This causes you to have to confirm the zero, which is often needed. The rabbit, rat or other target will not simply sit there waiting while you reconfirm the zero with a few shots, so clearly that won’t do. However, at fifty feet the front sight blade is easy to see through as it is orange. And the rear aperture peep sight is remarkably accurate; you should be able to hit the head of a squirrel, rabbit, duck or goose on the ground, to put in the cook-pot. That’s what the weapon is designed to do.

But the AR-7 can do much more. There is almost no recoil. You can fire all eight rounds in under four seconds and keep all eight on target. Sure, that won’t stop a bear, but it will drop or deter most mean-ass dogs. And in a pinch, my guess is that a two-legged predator isn’t going to like a face-full, or neck-full of CCI Stinger 32-grain hollow points. The advertised velocity is 1640 fps, but the AR-7, with its 16.125″ barrel gets 1496 fps, which is about 159 foot-pounds of energy. That’s not much as self-defense rounds go, but remember, the average shooter will be far more accurate with the AR-7 at fifty feet than they are with almost any pistol. At least that’s true in my case. And with that extra magazine you can stow, you’ve got 24 rounds for the fight. The AR-7 magazine release is located along the trigger guard, on the left side of the weapon. The shooter can use their trigger finger to push it forward to release the magazine, or your non-firing-hand thumb.

Mean-ass dog

Even without a silencer, the AR-7 doesn’t make that much noise, and sometimes you don’t want every Tom, Dick or Harry to know you’re around, or blowing out your eardrums if you fire an emergency shot without hearing protection (although if at all possible, have some protection.) The Henry AR-7 isn’t a death ray. However, does a lot of things well-enough to get you by, and that’s exactly what this rifle is intended to do; get you by, until you are back home to safety.

Henry U.S. Survival AR-7French MacLean2023-06-21T13:58:48-05:00

Maskirovka

For centuries, the Russian empire, especially her military, have brought deception to a fine art. The Russian word maskirovka, translating to “masking something”, is designed to manipulate the enemy’s decision-making process so it does, or doesn’t, take actions, which therefore enhance the likelihood of Russian success. These actions might be reinforcing a certain sector of the front, thinking the Russians will attack there, when the Russians all along were going to attack somewhere else – and where the Russians really do attack, now has few enemy troops. Effective deception – maskirovka – often results in achieving surprise, one of the key principles of war.

Soviet reinforcements

It is not enough to just fool the enemy; there must be actual actions that the enemy takes in response to that deception. At Stalingrad in 1942, the Russians portrayed the situation in the Soviet city as on the edge of falling for several months, by only bringing in relatively small reinforcements across the Volga River from Soviet positions east. The Germans, in turn, pulled additional German units in from the flanks north and south of Stalingrad for a final push, and let Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian units take over those flank defensive sectors. Then in mid-November 1942 – wham, the Russians attacked those flanks, surrounding Stalingrad, where the German Sixth Army died on the vine over the next 75 days, a major turning point in the war.

Inflatable “jet aircraft”

The first precept of maskirovka is to “give the enemy the smell that he likes,” an Israeli army colonel once told me. Every enemy has a preconceived notion of how the battle is probably going to unfold; identify that and use that as the deception story – the false scenario and how it will play out. The enemy wants to believe that they guessed right, so all deception measures should reinforce those enemy’s biases. In World War II, the Germans believed the Western Allies would invade France from England at the Pas-de-Calais area of France. First, because the English Channel is at its narrowest at this point, but more importantly, because it was from Pas-de-Calais that Germany intended to invade England in 1940. Therefore, all Allied deception measures were designed to “sell” a Pas-de-Calais invasion, hiding the real invasion at Normandy, where the distance across the Channel was five times that of Pas-de-Calais, and in German minds you’d have to be crazy to try that.

Conceal the real; portray the unreal is the second guide. Not only does good maskirovka depict false operations, but includes tight operational security to hide what is really going on, because if the enemy obtains evidence of your legitimate plan, they may not fall for the deception to hide it. Disseminating battle plans on a strict “need to know” reduces the possibility that those plans get “leaked.” Anything that is leaked, should only be the false battle plans – and then disclosed only in a believable manner. That is sometimes done by double agents – an enemy agent that has been apprehended, threatened with death, and “turned”, so the agent, in addition to feeding inconsequential true intelligence to keep credibility with his original clients, is fed elements of the deception story: “Joe has always given us good information, so this must be good too.”

It isn’t just human intelligence (spies) that is necessary to execute maskirovka effectively; you have to “fool” all the battlefield sensors of the enemy. This includes radar and other electronic detection devices, and aerial photography – and in World War II there were no satellites to fool; now there may be 8,000 in orbit. Audio sensors listen for certain sounds; sensors on the Internet monitor everything from what kind of mouthwash you buy online, to actions that indicate you are probably a firearms’ owner. Motion sensors can measure the movements of deer, or movements of military tanks. If you attempt to shoot down every enemy drone in an area, your opponent may believe correctly that you are up to something in that area. But if make no attempt to shoot down any drones over an area, because you want them to pick up indicators of activity, the enemy might ask themselves why you are allowing those drones to operate.

How do you know what to look for concerning maskirovka? An enemy can portray tank columns moving in certain directions that have nothing to do with the real attack. They can drop leaflets warning citizens to evacuate a certain area when no attack is actually going there. What are difficult to hide are logistical functions. Show us where the fuel points are, and we can determine how many armored vehicles that supports and the area they will operate. Sure, the enemy could deploy empty 55-gallon drums of ‘fuel” at a fake fuel depot as deception, but an empty drum will have a different thermal signature from one filled with diesel.

Follow the Money

For discovering maskirovka operations in the field of political tricks remember the old adage: “follow the money.” But with money now measured by electrons (there are no actual greenbacks in what your bank calls your checking account), that can be difficult, and of course hacked and an account made to look larger or smaller with a couple of keystrokes. But there’s always some idiot that drops off a damaged MacBook laptop at a Delaware computer store to be repaired, and on that computer are various trails of money paid for nefarious deeds, with money trails up to the highest levels possible. Maskirovka? Or real? Constructing fake dossiers (portray the unreal) is another element of maskirovka, and one that was done successfully by the Germans against the Russians, providing Stalin’s intelligence services with fake “evidence” that his generals were about to overthrow him. Stalin bit, and had hundreds of loyal generals shot.

Deception plans of maskirovka are some of the most sensitive, tightest “need to know” restrictions of all. Even knowing that some type of deception is going on is tightly controlled to the point that often high-level decision-makers are in the dark. While it was not part of the deception plan, Vice President Harry Truman was not told about the Manhattan Project – the development of the atomic bomb – until hours after he became President after FDR’s death.

Today, the Russians are still at it with respect to maskirovka, whether that is in the Ukraine, or whether that is interfering with foreign economies and politics by injecting false stories into news cycle, or even potentially manipulating U.S. election results. Can’t happen here? Nobody’s that smart. If you think the Russian aren’t good at maskirovka, ask the roughly 250,000 Germans at Stalingrad who never came home.

Or just watch Operation Mincemeat on Netflix to see the depths of details that have to be accomplished to sell a deception effort.

MaskirovkaFrench MacLean2023-06-21T14:04:18-05:00

Losers Fight the Last War Late; Winners Fight the Next War Early

You may be wondering why the pundits in the media always seem to get it wrong predicting winners and losers in wars, or how long these wars will last. It’s because they only look at the rational factors in war, like how many aircraft each side has, the strength of their armies, levels of technology and so forth that can be measured. These “armchair admirals” and “barstool brigadiers” wouldn’t understand Clausewitz if the old boy came back from the dead and personally instructed them. Most probably never read Sun-Tzu, and Mao Zedong, and probably think that Ardant du Picq is a men’s cologne. But you can get a National War College education right here and right now.

Carl Clausewitz

“Dead Carl” Clausewitz, his nickname at the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), knew that wars are influenced by rational factors, and also by irrational and even arational factors. Irrational factors are emotional. Had Santa Anna not killed all the defenders at The Alamo, maybe the rest of Texas wouldn’t have gotten so mad that they unified and kicked his butt. After the Japanese did their sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, and compounded that later at the Bataan Death March, the U.S. became so driven by emotion that we ended up nuking them. So irrational emotions have to factor in, but what weight do you give them? Can you even measure them?

Arational factors can be all kinds of chance events, like aspects of the weather, or the sudden natural death of an enemy leader. You can predict general weather trends, but you never get the details completely correct. Typhoon Cobra in December 1944 in the Pacific killed 790 US sailors, sank three destroyers, and heavily damaged nine other US warships. In 1762, Frederick the Great of Prussia was about to get whipped by the Austrians and Russians, when Russian Empress Elizabeth suddenly died and her successor not only ended the war with Prussia, but also offered Frederick the use of a Russian corps for the remainder of his war against Austria! Predict that!

Grant (left) and Lee (right)

Then there is the nature versus the character and conduct of war. The nature – that wars are bloody and governed by rational, irrational and arational factors – is constant. But weapons, tactics and strategies are always changing. Those that anticipate these changes have a better chance of winning, hence “Losers Fight the Last War Late; Winners Fight the Next War Early.” Bobby Lee fought the Civil War the way Napoleon would have fifty years before – concentrating on out-maneuvering the Union Army and being tactically superior in every battle.

That worked — until Abe Lincoln brought Sam Grant and his sidekick Uncle Billy Sherman on board to “fight the next war early”; ironclads replaced sailing warships, railroads allowed for rapid troop movement, arms-producing factories in the North became more important than horse-raising farms in the South, and the new battlefield lethality meant that through attrition Grant might indeed lose more men than Lee, but he and “War is Hell” Sherman would not only bleed the South dry in the process, but also conduct a scorched-earth campaign through Georgia destroying the South’s ability to produce weapons.

Finally, pundits often fail to understand the Law of Unintended Consequences – those results of an action that aren’t anticipated. Sometimes unintended consequences can be avoided by more rigorous analysis; others are truly random or unpredictable.

Take the British Royal Navy before World War I when battleships and battlecruisers were king. Battleship admirals insisted that gun crews on these ships concentrate on shooting faster than their potential rivals, the Germans. Fast gun crews were rewarded; slow-pokes were punished.

So wise old Chief Petty Officers, many of whom had been in the Royal Navy over ten years, decided to cut a corner here and there to be faster. Shells and highly-combustible cordite propellent were usually stored deep in a ship’s armored magazines and brought up to the turret on hoists through fireproof doors closed until the moment of transfer. These CPOs figured they could shave valuable seconds off their times by keeping those doors open. And then, another other old seadog thought if you stored the cordite inside the turret, you wouldn’t waste time hauling it up. So they did.

Jutland 1916

Then came the 1916 Battle of Jutland, and despite having twice as many ships, the British lost a whole bunch of them, when – after they had been hit in the turrets by enemy shells – the fires spread down to the magazine causing catastrophic explosions, in some cases killing everyone aboard. I wonder why that happened?

So the next time some retired old general, who commonly relied on smart majors and lieutenant colonels to conceive his battle plans (General Norm Schwarzkopf had four recent graduates of SAMS assigned to devise the winning battle plan — none higher than a colonel), or a Harvard geek, tells you what’s going to happen in a war, bet the “over” on the anticipated duration, and that it won’t likely unfold the way they prognosticate.

But SAMS graduates? Ever since Desert Storm they are called “Jedi Knights.”

Losers Fight the Last War Late; Winners Fight the Next War EarlyFrench MacLean2023-06-21T13:43:17-05:00

What Happened to the Moskva?

Talking heads and “experts” on television drive me crazy. Many have no true experience or subject matter expertise; they also demonstrate no system to assess accuracy of their conclusions. You can do better in assessing accuracy by assigning levels of certainty to it. The highest category of accuracy is one with a “100% certainty” to it. The sun comes up in the East is one of them, most events aren’t this certain. A little less certainty, but still a great deal, is “beyond a reasonable doubt” used in criminal trials. While I’ve never seen a judge assign a numerical value to that, it seems that “beyond a reasonable doubt” is in the 85% to 99% category of certainty. It does not mean there is no doubt, only that it is so small as to be unreasonable.

The lowest category of certainty is “more likely than not” to be accurate, the standard used in many civil trials, and for military Inspector General investigations. Think 51% or more certainty and it is “more likely than not” it occurred. On the other end, if you assess a 50% chance something happened, you’re flipping a coin; the further less than 50%, the more likely it is to be inaccurate.

Let’s apply that to the Russian cruiser Moskva, flagship of their Black Sea Fleet, that sank in the Black Sea off the coast of the Ukraine (at 45°10’43.39″N, 30°55’30.54″E.) on Thursday, April 14, 2022. Ukraine says it hit the Moskva with anti-ship cruise missiles which sparked a fire that detonated the ship’s ammunition. On the other side, Russia’s Defense Ministry says a fire of unknown origin detonated the ship’s stored ammunition; the resulting explosions left the Moskva with structural damage; and then the warship sank amid rough seas as it was being towed to a nearby port.

Is this the Moskva after the missile attack, burning and seriously damaged?

So the central question to analyze is this. Was it poor air defenses on the Moskva that allowed Ukrainian anti-ship missiles to hit, and cause a fire and/or explosion which was made fatal in scope by inefficient damage control? If so, we can rule out an accidental fire caused by lax safety procedures.

I am not a naval expert, but I know a lot of people who are, including some who served on U.S. destroyers and cruisers similar in some degree to the Moskva, others who were submariners who were trained to hunt ships like the Moskva, and even one who was actually on a Russian ship very similar to the Moskva. Here is an educated take.

Russian ship defense systems have major inadequacies. While they do have a varied number of anti-missile systems, and they do have a battle center in the ship to control these weapons, they have never achieved the degree of systems-integration that US Navy ships have in a fast-response system such as a Combat Information Center (CIC), which collates thousands of pieces of information, using really sophisticated tracking and info-processing, and determines the best solution to neutralize any threat at the most advantageous distance from the ship, with backups in case of a miss, and not allowing a threat to slip through because it had not been tracked.

Combat Information Center of the “Battlestar Galactica”. CIC on today’s US Navy ships put this one to shame

If the Ukrainians fired multiple missiles, maybe up to four or so, and used decoys or electronic warfare to confuse the Russian defenders, and given that these missiles fly really low (9 to 30 feet above the water), have a cross-section of about 16 inches (and a radar cross-section of even less with stealth “paint” when seen from the front), and all that makes it really hard to detect and then hit them, given Russian inadequacies in this area, it is “more likely than not” that at least one missile struck the Moskva.

If so, now the Russians have problems. The warhead weighs 350 pounds; add in some of the fuel left in the 1900-pound missile and you are going to get “beyond a reasonable doubt” that a large explosion occurred per missile strike. Both accounts conclude “100% certainty” a number of volatile and flammable explosives were nearby such as anti-ship missiles below. But a lot of warships in history have had explosions or large fires and have not sunk.

Nearby sources for more fire and secondary explosions (Vulkan missiles, with their 750-pound warheads, in their firing containers; unless the missiles were armed with nuclear warheads!)

Except the Russians have major problems in damage control. US Navy ships have many watertight compartments to limit the spread of toxic gases, fire and flooding in case of accident or attack. Officers touring the Moskva saw no such extensive compartmentalization. There were few watertight hatches between compartments. Unless watertight hatches later were installed, it is “beyond a reasonable doubt”, probably approaching “100% certainty”, that the Moskva did not have adequate watertight integrity.

But it gets worse. On many warships, painted areas on which sailors walk have special grip surfaces to prevent slipping. That’s an added expense and Russian ships like the Moskva substituted tar for special “rough” paint. Tar is highly flammable, and is easily tracked to other areas of the ship, so instead of trying to limit the spread of flame damage, it is “more likely than not” that cutting corners on Russian ship design made their warships even more susceptible to spreading fire damage.

Moskva heavily damaged; note two sprays of water; one pointing left is to put out fires; one pointing right toward the rear is getting water off , so the ship does not take on too much and capsize

However, a ship is only as good as its crew. The Russian navy, and its ships, are run by commissioned officers. They have very few non-commissioned officers (like petty officers). US warship skippers swear by the professionalism, bravery and common sense of the corps of non-commissioned officers. What if you didn’t have many on a ship? Could just the officers have saved the ship, racing around and conducting necessary damage control? What about the junior enlisted men?

Well, the crew size should have been about 510. Because of a lack of non-commissioned officers, about 20% of the crew are officers, so about 100. The enlisted sailors are conscripts, not volunteers. How many who want to be there is unknowable. What is known is that their military service is 12 months. It is “more likely than not” that the majority of the enlisted men can only accomplish basic damage control tasks, because 12 months is not enough time to get trained up and develop experience. It is at least “more likely than not” that the 100 officers — assuming none had been killed in the attack and none were strap-hanger staff officers just along for the ride to get “combat time” and not part of the team — would have been an insufficient strength to save the ship.

Finally there is the bravery factor. Every American Navy veteran I have ever met says that from the first day in service they have drilled into them, “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” the dying words of Commander James Lawrence during the War of 1812. It takes a ton of bravery to run toward raging fires on a badly-damaged warship. I do not know the Russian translation of “Don’t Give Up the Ship.” But I do know that if a great number of conscripts on the Moskva did not want to be there, they may have known the translation, but it is “more likely than not” they wouldn’t have followed its meaning, because 12 months is not enough time to overcome a fear of fire.

Access to classified information would increase our certainty one way of the other, but using good, old-fashioned logic and observation, and you can reach a better solution than a talking head – or an “expert” with an agenda.

The Moskva — in all her Motherland Glory

What Happened to the Moskva?French MacLean2022-05-12T12:34:54-05:00

Versatility – A Jack for All Trades

Glock 40 MOS 10mm

You’ve heard the phrase: “A Jack of All Trades, Master of None.” However, in the world of firearms, versatility – the quality of being useful for or easily adapted to various tasks, styles, and fields of endeavor – often means that a single weapon can be a Master for All Situations.

It may not be a function of caliber, nor the capacity of the magazine, or the optic on top. It is a function of ammunition. And there are two weapons that stand head and shoulders above most others in this respect – the shotgun and the 10mm pistol.

The ubiquitous shotgun; it has been around for over 400 years and is often called a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece. Calibers have been many; for this discussion we will stick with the always-popular 12 gauge and what a variety of ammunition we have!

Birdshot is probably the most common type of 12-gauge shotgun load, comes in at least 12 sizes, and allows hunters to target small to medium game (or skeet and trap shooters to hit clay “birds.”) For birdshot, the larger the number, the smaller the pellet (size 8 has more, but smaller diameters of pellets than a size 6, for example.)

But wait! Many 12 gauge shotguns now come with the ability to fire three chamber sizes – 2.75-inch, 3-inch and 3.5-inch. The longer the size, the more pellets there are inside, plus the velocity is often higher which extends the range a bit. Then there is BB shot that comes in at least 3 sizes, used for larger birds like ducks and geese.

Leaving the search for aerial targets and going to the ground gets us into buckshot and there are five rounds in that (#4 buck, #1 buck, 0 buck, 00 buck and 000 buck.) For example, #00 buckshot throws eight or nine balls (some magnum loads contain 12-15 balls!), #1 buckshot holds 16 and #4 buckshot has 24 to 27 balls. Then there are the “tweeners” like T-shot that I put in the category of hunting large waterfowl like geese.

Finally are the slugs that are used for deer, and really any other large game; some hunting guides even opine that a 12-gauge slug is the best antidote for an attacking bear. Almost every 12 gauge round can kill a man; there are tragic hunting accidents every year involving even very small size birdshot rounds. For the intentional dispatching of an armed criminal trying to kill you, buckshot is probably the best way to go. The versatility comes in when analyzing the environment of the shot. Inside the home or outside? Is the attacker on foot on in a motor vehicle? Behind a barrier? What is the expected distance between you and your would-be killer? More than one assailant? There will be an optimum-size shotgun round for every situation. That is what gives it the ultimate in versatility.

But you know that already. The second weapon with immense versatility is the 10mm pistol – which you may not be familiar with – and it also centers on the large variety of ammunition available for it. MidwayUSA lists sixty-six 10mm rounds (unfortunately most have to be back-ordered, but that’s a different issue.) By my count, 10mm rounds range in weight from 100 grains to 220 grains, which is close to a .380 auto round weight on the small end, to a .44 Magnum on the large end.

10mm rounds come in various bullet shapes, each with a different purpose in mind: hard-cast-flat-nose and lead-round-nose for large game hunting; jacketed-hollow-point, full-metal-jacket, “fluted”; bonded-jacketed-hollow-point; and fragmenting-hollow-point; full-metal-jacket-flat-nose.

Just a few 10mm options

But it is velocity that provides even more versatility. Muzzle velocities range from about 1030 feet-per-second to 1875 feet-per-second. There is one type of round, an RBCD Performance Plus out of San Antonio, that advertises a 10mm 77 grain total-fragmenting-soft-point that comes out of the muzzle at 2420 feet-per-second, but I can’t find any for sale, which might be a good thing.

What versatility does velocity provide you? Well, in potentially crowded urban areas, in a self-defense situation where you don’t want your bullet going through your erstwhile killer – and subsequently killing an innocent person, you can do your homework and pick the round type and velocity to ensure it doesn’t “over-penetrate.” In rural areas, you can use heavier and faster rounds, because you are not concerned with bystanders, but are concerned about dangerous four-legged animals, as well as two-legged ones.

I wish I had figured out the versatility of a 10mm years ago. I have been firing a 12-gauge shotgun for four decades and a 10mm (with 18 different ammunition types and speeds) for just four weeks. But who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?

Versatility – A Jack for All TradesFrench MacLean2023-10-08T14:50:18-05:00

Bonnie and Clyde

Lately I have been reading a lot about the days of Bonnie and Clyde, and what we can learn from back then.

The country was a mess. This “Public Enemy Era” spanned from 1931 through 1935, during the depths of the Great Depression that crushed the economy, and the Dust Bowl – a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the agricultural output of the American and Canadian prairies – that caused mass hunger. 10,000 banks went out of business, taking $3 billion of depositor’s life savings with them, leaving account holders penniless. With 80% unemployment in some areas, those unfortunates would remain destitute, unless they took matters into their own hands, and some turned to crime.

Today, rampant government spending is out of control, leading to increasing inflation that steals buying power. We have some wealthy people, but as I travel around the U.S. – my latest trek a 1,081-mile drive from Decatur, Illinois to Worcester, Massachusetts, I’ve seen a lot of help-wanted signs; undocumented illegal aliens working for far less than minimum wage; obscenely-high gas prices; rental cars that have over 40,000 miles on them and are in constant need of maintenance yet sometimes costing $100 a day; and infrastructure problems (read bad roads, run-down bridges) that will remain poor, because these big spending programs always end up targeting pet projects of the rich and voting constituencies of the lazy.

For the first two years – 1931-1933 – it was a stupid era. Prohibition in the United States, beginning in 1920 and ending in 1933, was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. While some people regarded the attack on alcohol as a noble cause, an overwhelming number did not, and Prohibition single-handedly caused tens of millions of Americans to view the law as lacking any moral obligation to follow it; they became felons overnight and they felt no remorse at doing so. This disregard for law and order became a cancer in society; one day citizens refused to follow Prohibition; the next they began to support organized crime to provide the illegal goods they wanted.

Today’s version of Prohibition aims at stripping Americans of their right to bear arms, another stupid idea. Were it to get close to happening, tens of millions of us – maybe more – will become felons overnight, because we will not comply, and organized crime will start a shipping tsunami of firearms into the country, just like it did booze.

Bonnie and Clyde

For the first years of Bonnie and Clyde, most regular folks hated the police and were on the side of the renegades, even though they were a far cry from modern day Robin Hoods portrayed in movies. It was only after several murders of police, including one trooper on his first day of the job and another scheduled to be married in three weeks before he was cut down by Clyde in cold blood – the bride-to-be wore her wedding dress to her fiancée’s funeral – that attitudes toward the police changed.

Today, police are equally disrespected – mostly in big cities from Portland to Atlanta. I’d like to think that Champaign Police Department Officer Chris Oberheim didn’t die in vain, and it seems like many folks in central Illinois know that too, but this country is in a whole lot of trouble right now with its negative view of the “thin blue line”. What doesn’t help is when senior FBI personnel start helping one political party against another, though. That convinces many people that the law is unfairly enforced; today citizens may just mistrust high-level leaders of the FBI. Tomorrow that mistrust, which often evolves to not cooperating with career FBI agents, can lead to the bureau being ineffective. Lots of folks knew where Bonnie and Clyde were hiding out and operating, yet the stayed quiet.

There’s another takeaway from Bonnie and Clyde. In our era of concealed carry and the ubiquitous Glock-this and Glock-that, maybe we put too much emphasis on pistolcraft – not that we shouldn’t be proficient with these weapons. But Clyde Barrow didn’t terrorize people with a pistol; he did it with Browning Automatic Rifles, BARs, whose .30-06 rounds would go through one side of a car and out the other, killing anyone in between. And when the law finally did catch-up with Bonnie and Clyde one morning on a Louisiana dusty dirt road, what put finis to the two marauders were a couple of Remington Model 8s, a BAR, a Colt Monitor, and some Remington Model 11 semi-automatic 12-gauge “riot guns”.

Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (played by Kevin Costner in the excellent movie The Highway Men), who led the posse that nailed Bonnie and Clyde, was a big believer in the old phrase, “A handgun is for fighting your way to a long gun you shouldn’t have left behind.” While he was an excellent shot with a .45 Colt and a .44 Special, mostly it was a long gun that got Frank’s bacon out of the fire. We might want to consider that today. And the FBI may want to consider the public’s perception of them.

Bonnie and ClydeFrench MacLean2023-10-08T14:47:35-05:00

The Battle of Algiers

Movie poster for The Battle of Algiers

What if I were to tell you that a movie, with a budget of only $800,000 made in 1966, was so profound that it significantly influenced revolutionaries throughout the world like Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Fidel Castro, the Black Panthers (as a training manual for violent uprising,) the Provisional Irish Republic Army, and the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front to such an extent that the 120-minute film was banned in France for five years, that the Israeli government banned the film until 1975 for fear that the emerging Palestine Liberation Organization would use it as an inspiration for attacks on Israelis, but on the other hand, the movie was even screened at the Pentagon by the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict in 2003/2004 with respect to the insurgency in Iraq?

Director Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is a guidebook for how to build a secret organization (in this case the Algerian independence movement, National Liberation Front, Front de Libération Nationale, FLN) as the most lethal means of striking civilian targets, which often leads to a successful revolution. Pontecorvo greatly details the methods of indoctrination in these groups – techniques that if most Chicago street gangs do not acknowledge where they learned them, they should be sued for plagiarism.

Scene from The Battle of Algiers

The classic film is based on events that actually took place during the 1954-1962 Algerian struggle for independence from France. The action follows a small group of FLN rebels, and their charismatic leader, Ali La Pointe, who use all means at their disposal to induce the French to leave their country. A petty criminal serving a two-year prison sentence in Algeria in 1954, Ali was recruited in the infamous Barberousse prison (US prisons are also hotbeds for terrorist recruitment) by FLN militants, and became one of the FLN’s most trusted lieutenants in Algiers, the capital of Algeria – until French security forces killed him there on October 8, 1957 in the Casbah.

The FLN, created in March 1954, merged numerous, separate opposing factions of the nationalist movement so as to better wage war against French colonial presence in Algeria. A modern comparison would be if some overarching anarchist group in the U.S. formed and was able to subsequently unify: Antifa, Communist Party USA, Earth Liberation Front, La Raza, Youth Liberation Front, and so forth. Add in American cells of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, Hezbollah – all anti-American with a bloody history. And what if they also united with basic criminal street gangs, super gangs like Los Zetas, Aryan Brotherhood, and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and elements of Central and South American drug cartels?

You might say, “That couldn’t happen here,” but the FLN started small, initially with just twenty-two members, and an “exterior delegation” in Cairo, Egypt to solicit foreign support, including funding (there were George Soros’ back then too.) They divided Algeria into five zones and placed a colonel in charge of each. Their primary mission was to provide “ideological awareness” backed by violence, so for each Algerian killed by the security forces, a French citizen would be killed by the FLN. The FLN organized as a cell-based pyramid structure, so a member only knew a maximum number of three other insurgents. Thus, if an insurgent were captured and tortured, he could only give up a few fellow terrorists. You’ll also see in the movie that the FLN followed the motto of “snitches get stitches.”

Through the use of terror, the FLN was able to persuade regular, non-violent Algerians, that not only were they NOT French, but that France had to renege on its core values. Sound familiar? Today’s anti-American anarchists stress hyphenated-Americans instead of American unity. They spit on American core values such as the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and trample American history at every turn – attempting to stifle freedom of speech that defends American values. Disagree with the mob and Facebook, Twitter or other social-disease media platforms ban you. The Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del never had it so good.

The novel, The Centurions, written in 1960 by Jean Larteguy, presents much of the same subject. The story, centering on some French Legionnaires, begins with the fall of the French fortress Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, and subsequently leads to Algeria. It’s central theme is: how is war waged in a new global order, when the “age of heroics is over.” I first read this book at West Point for a Revolutionary Warfare elective, and if you like to curl up with a good read, here’s one.

You can get both the movie and the book online. Organize a Watch Party! You can – and should – see this movie because America’s enemies, both foreign and domestic, almost certainly already have.

The Battle of AlgiersFrench MacLean2022-09-12T07:30:54-05:00