Mr. Anchovy and Survival's Dirty Little Secret

 

Bourne/Bond Corollary:

Go to Zero's place. RTWT. Watch him crush all the Walter Mitty survivalist fap fantasies in a 20-ton shop press of Reality.

And then, watch the whole skit, for entertainment.

The fact that it's survival truth is just icing on the cupcake.

(Supermodel not included.)

Fundamentals, Not Magic



Drones: Still not wizard combat. Ever.

From comments to yesterday's post:

"Drones and AI can and most likely will be the deciding factor in the next WW. To ignore this fact puts us in the same position Poland was in when they met the advancing Nazi tanks while on horseback. I do think it would be easy to misunderstand drones and assume that they are super expensive and super susceptible to enemy fire and that is why they will fail and be useless in battle. Yes there are some drones like that. Now imagine a cheap tiny drone that can do only one thing and that is to search out and kill a single enemy soldier. Then imagine that China or Russia sends millions of these into battle. Or a small single purpose drone that simply hunts down and explodes ships, any ship it finds. And that the drone is used all over the world on day one minute one of WW 3 while the Russian or Chinese ships are all in port. Apply that same logic to drones designed to take down aircraft or land vehicles etc. In reality the problem of accurately understanding the possibilities drones bring to battle are only limited by your imagination and if you lack imagination you will correspondingly lack understanding of the potential threat." - Anonymous commenter 

Drones can be handy things. But at best, they are but a tool, not a magic wand.
This is why the military wants people in charge who can do mathematics in their head.
Not wizards and necromancers.

Drones work well when used against a disparate and unexpecting opposition. Against soft targets. Vulnerable and unsophisticated enemies. I've written at length about how much damage you can do to civilian targets with COTS drones, and year over year, the reality of that is proving the truth of the statements.

But most of our experience, or anyone else's, with drones, is against 19th (or 6th) century opponents, with no tech to speak of, and battle tactics from no more recently than 1900.

Peer-to-peer, not so much.

A drone that kills "any ship it finds" will wipe out your own fleet too. Even in port. Russia and China are totally dependent on imports and exports, whereas the U.S. is food and energy self-sufficient, and most of our trade goes on north and south, not east and west. Well-played.

You can use drones to assist in prosecuting the battle.
If you use more brains than most defense contractors have, and if they're built for the job right.
So that's two strikes of if against you before you start.

Try to remember that the best fiction is truer than most tech news stories.

Drones are not the Jedi Clone Army, nor ever will be in 10 lifetimes.
We're currently on the fifth or sixth generation of "fire-and-forget" weapons that still really aren't.
No one trusts them enough to depend on them as such, and when they try, they fail spectacularly. And that's before we have the Skynet discussion.

If a land droid was armed well enough to venture out on its own, it'd be a tank. Which you kill with AT weapons and defenses, or another tank. All of which have been around since 1917.

Putting a virtually unarmored machine out front with an MG and sensors just makes it, the weapons system, the data link, and the operator four points of failure. Add in the ordnance, parts, and fuel logistics, and you have three more points. Attacking all of them destroys that advantage; and at that point, if you don't have 5:1 or better advantage in the conventional attack, you're going to be eaten for lunch. Not metaphorically.

Intelligence from sky drones can be thwarted, spoofed, fooled, and avoided.
Keeping the enemy blind and confused while you execute your objectives is what war has been about since Sun Tzu. Drones can complicate that, but they also complicate the intelligence analysis problem for the other side. The only thing worse than too little intelligence is too much; ask the German Army how Patton's amphibious assault at the Pas De Calais worked out for them in 1944.

Drones alone or in concert will decide nothing.
What wins battles and wars is executing the fundamentals flawlessly.
Surprise, mass, economy of force, unity of command, secure interior lines, etc.

Cut off logistics, and disrupt command and communications, and you turn your enemy into Saddam and the Iraqi Army in 1991 and 2003.

Try to rule a hostile population through dependence on military power, and you end up like the U.S. Army in 1965-1973 and 2004-2019. (The dot-mil are slow learners, but not that slow; which is why I posit they'll either switch sides, or sit an internal conflict out ab initio, and wait to see who wins. If they don't do either, they'll cease to exist in about a month, and die on the vine from a death of ten thousand cuts.)

Try to rule a hostile well-armed civilian population, and you end up like the U.S. Army at the Little Big Horn in 1876.

I don't know about you, but if I ever have to grab a rifle and leave the house to take care of business, my death song has already been sung, and I'm not so worried about getting home to a wife and kids, and I'm going to make sure they don't get to do that either.

No quarter will be asked nor given, and there will be zero POW camps (or at least, not for very long) in the coming unpleasantness. It's going to become an unaffordable luxury.

Maybe folks will even be starting by taking out their opponents' homes and everything they take for granted first, to give them something else to think about before they suit up for work that morning.

80-90% of both sides in any war don't want to be there.
What's left is who gets it done.
And our 10% outnumbers their 10% about 100:1, and outguns them 24/7/365/ever.

Drone that.



Anonymous: Take off the hat, and lay off the egg nog.

 




Bonus comedy: If you've never seen someone get his foot stuck in a running wood chipper, then reach in with both hands to try and pull himself out, then fall head first into it, read the comments to this post, below, presumably by the same original Anonymous commenter. It's like playing poker with your sister's kids, combined with clubbing baby Harp seals.

 

 

For John Wilder

Be careful what you wish for.

"At some point,  the post I wanna see over at your place is Aesop’s Health Solution, bonus points for including Medicare."

I'll see your Double Dog Dare, and raise you to a Triple Dog Dare (such faux pas has precedent, you'll recall):

Aesop's Health Solution is a one-day problem.

It's the same as Aesop's Car Insurance Solution: Buy your own damned coverage!
Medicare is phased out, with a 5% coverage decrease for each year group over each of the next 20 years.

If you're 45 or under, start saving. When you hit 65, it'll be entirely gone, except for the few folks 65 or older now, who live beyond 85. In 30-40 years, even they won't be around to quibble over. The pittance they'll cost won't even be a hiccup in the federal budget.

You want Mercedes insurance, you'll pay Mercedes prices.
You want Yugo prices, you'll get Yugo coverage.
And government is free to offer their own plan(s), at whatever rate it costs, and whatever they chose to cover, provided it's not subsidized even $1 worth. It's sold at straight cost, the government is free to jack rates or trim back coverage until they make ends meet, but if they suck compared to private business, as they likely will, they'll have zero clients in short order, and that problem goes away forever.

People that bitch about old farts going bankrupt for medical treatment may then freely observe :

"Maybe Grandpa Dumbass should've tried doing table push-ups, stopped drinking like a fish, and quit smoking three packs a day, about 30 years earlier."

No one gets out of here alive.

Insurance should take care of unfortunate circumstances, at appropriate rates.
And any company making more than 10% profit pays the excess in taxes, so there's no incentive to gouge, or scrimp.

Individual taxpayers, OTOH, are allowed to put up to 10% of their annual pre-tax income into medical savings accounts, to cover small expenses and deductibles for catastrophic care. No maximum limit. Anything in the kitty more than 10 years may be withdrawn any time afterwards, tax-free, as a reward for being healthy.

Bonus: Do the same thing for retirement.
Social Security is phased out the same way, over 20 years, and deductions stop this minute for anyone 45 or under.
Up to 3X that amount may be set aside by anyone out of pre-tax income for retirement, provided it's untouched until then.

The only people that would be hurt by any of this are government workers, but if you phase 5% of those administering those programs out each year too, the whining and howls will decrease commensurately as well, and the unfunded deficit year over year shrinks to interest on principal, which would become manageable without the burgeoning tsunami of entitlement payments forever.

That's it.

Kill it all, via slow but inexorable strangulation.
Anyone proposing any renewal or reversal is shot on sight, and their goods and estates, in total, forfeit to the budgets of those dwindling programs.

That would be Day One of the short and happy reign of Emperor Aesop.

On Tuesday, we drop all college loans for anything but medical professions and STEM (which will be based 100% on academic merit, alone), and we completely defund public education over four years, starting with the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades, advancing backwards one year every year. 5% of the savings is allocated to vocational training. 10% is allocated to poor but academically gifted student scholarships. The rest is a straight refund to those who pay taxes.

On Wednesday, we end all corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. Everybody plays, and everybody pays. We also obliterate and renounce the meddling in what kind of toilet you install, what light bulbs are okay, etc. ad infinitum. If you can make it, you can sell it, as long as robbery, fraud, deliberate endangerment, or coercion are not part of your business plan, but you also own all liability for it if it's used properly and lawfully. Liability for illegal behavior ends at the lawbreaker's feet. It does not travel across town, and include the item's seller, wholesaler, maker or raw materials creator.
Business is business, and the only function of government in that respect is keeping the playing field level, and calling the fouls, not inventing yards of bookshelves of new ones year after year.

On Thursday we repeal every law relating to firearms. All of them. The federal judiciary is limited to 10 years at the district level, 15 if they make it to the appellate circus courts, and 20, and not a minute longer, if they get to SCOTUS, after which they must live under the rulings they issue, just like everyone else. Sovereign immunity for any public office is revoked other than for the President, the cabinet, the congress, and the federal judiciary. That means every federal official and LEO is civilly liable for capricious jackassery, on the spot. And we restrict firearms and arrest powers to the FBI, the US Marshalls, the Secret Service, Customs and Immigration, and the Coast Guard. Prison and nuclear plant guards get to carry only on duty. No one else gets any guns, badges, or SWAT teams. Just citation books, and a pencil. Somebody wants to make an arrest, they have to ask one of the remaining agencies with that power to tag along.

By Friday, the federal government is projected to be so small, we plan the imminent return to a federal government funded entirely by excise taxes and tariffs, as originally intended, and make plans to repeal the XVIth Amendment, or at worst, amend it in perpetuity to no more than 1% of income, on everyone, starting with an income of $1. Everybody now has skin in the game, to exactly the same degree. (If we agree to exempt anyone with an annual income under $40, on the grounds the stamp is more expensive than the tax, I might relent, just that little bit. But they still have to file.)

Saturday, we explain the facts of life to Mexico: 1 bbl. of crude for every illegal found here, per year. We'll be generous, and start the levy at 40M in Year One. They also cede Baja California to our designated territorial governor's rule for the next 199 years. It's still part of Mexico, but it now runs under U.S. law. The U.S. agrees to assume military defense responsibility for it. It becomes bilingual. Any felons found therein are exiled from Baja for life either to Mexican prison, or for execution. The Western half of the peninsula is developed as the longest luxury Riviera on the planet, and puts Monaco and Vegas into permanent second-class status. The employment is 100% Mexican nationals, earning market wages. The eastern side of the peninsula, and the waters contiguous, becomes the longest nature preserve in the world, and a mecca for divers, whale watchers, and general tree huggers the world over. All profits from both accrue 50-50 to each country. The U.S. profits build a wall from Tijuana to Brownsville, and fund the Coast Guard and Border Patrol. We end birthright US citizenship, including retroactively, and anyone found in the U.S. illegally after 90 days from that date is banned from immigrating here for life. After working for five years on a chain gang, building the wall.
The line of cars headed south is 1000 miles long within a week, mainly to apply for jobs building and working at the resorts going up from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas.

Sunday being a day of rest, we simply abolish the female PT standards for all military services.
Women deserve equal treatment, so we want to give it to them, good and hard.
Everyone performs to the male standards in place, or they're kicked out that day.
That removes all but about 10 women, total, from the entire military by about 12 noon, Pacific Standard Time.
And after the physical standards for their MOS are applied, those 10 are pretty much back to being clerk/typists or stateside medical personnel in about an hour.
If the military comes up short because of that, we re-establish the draft. And with all those college dreams for mid-level D-students going up in flames, we have a healthy pool of candidates to choose from.
Let's make it easy: universal service for everyone for 18-24 months after high school. If you don't want to do it in the military, no problem: the Forest Service needs firefighters, the national parks need trash haulers and trail builders, and we put the rest into the FEMA Corps, to shovel snow after blizzards, shovel sandbags during floods, and clear roads, pick up debris, and generally help people out after hurricanes and tornadoes. You might even learn a skill, like being an EMT, driving trucks, or operating heavy equipment, that you can use to get a job after your 2 years service are completed.
Refuse? No problem: two years as a federal prisoner filling potholes in the summer, shoveling snow in the winter, filling the same sandbags in rain and flood, and picking up trash the rest of the time.
If you want anything to eat while you're in prison.

"Ask not what your country can do for you... "

That's it.
At that point, I can retire, or devolve to merely a wartime emperor, which would be mostly titular only, as anyone who gave us cause to declare war would be deselected from further planetary status in a Darwinian fashion, with a methodology last witnessed during the Third Punic War. Including salting their fields, throwing corpses into their wells, and either selling the unslaughtered survivors into slavery elsewhere (like making them build roads and drain swamps in Africa or South America, or something equally worthwhile and unpleasant) , or using them as agricultural supplements.

I Want To Be A Lion Tamer!

Then there are the people who think they're going to rule the world, because they've got a hoodie, a ski mask, and an Airsoft BB gun:

Best wishes with that plan, Team Fucktard, and thanks for the comedy relief.

Cuz those shells aren't going to test themselves.