"But Aesop,...!" Basic training question

 

This was far too long to post in comments to this post, so here it is on the front page.

Dear Mark Matis,

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here. Whether you have sincere questions, or are simply trying to sharpshoot the post, the answers are the same.

Firstly, you've perhaps just tumbled into this series of posts, and are therefore wholly unaware of anything else prior to five minutes ago that I've previously covered or of which I'm well aware. I would gently suggest therefore that you go back, read what I've posted to date under the topic "Basic Training", going all the way back to the precepts enumerated here and then get back to me from a common frame of reference. Bearing well in mind that "basic training" has an actual English meaning to it, and wasn't chosen just because it was tacti-cool. I'm addressing those who need the fundamentals, with little if any prior explanation of things.

If anyone is planning on taking on First-World first-line forces at the height of their current capabilities and powers, walking fat, dumb, and happy into their AO, and then going toe-to-toe with them on a regular basis, they'll lead a short but interesting life, and they're probably not tall enough for this ride. If you're not planning that, then perhaps you might revise and extend your remarks with a better goal in mind.

There are also white phosphorous weapons available to potential foes.
So should we therefore require our side to deploy only in flameproof and shellproof suits?

They have cluster bombs.
Should we therefore disperse, and no one approach closer to his fellows than 500M?

They've had air forces for 104 years, and dedicated close air support for 95.
Yet somehow, unaccountably, we're still sending people on foot to take and hold ground, and all life on earth has not come to a screeching halt, nor has warfare itself.
Yet this is the approach you seem to be taking.

@1:04 "Albuquerque! See, I can do it too. Snorkel!"

I might also point out that despite your trenchant objections, the standard US military doctrine up to thirty seconds ago, when last I looked, is neither more nor less than what I've laid out, as far as it goes.

I would therefore humbly suggest that if you can run a better military, there are jobs for such going begging in the DoD, and consulting contracts let regularly, in the billions-of-dollars range.

Otherwise, provide a link to the magical TTPs that take into consideration all that you imagine to be such an overwhelming and world-beating problem, and we can discuss how that may or may not work out in reality.

Those technologies you mentioned are also completely defeatable with nothing more complicated than a camouflage-fabric retractable umbrella or simple poncho, with a mylar lining. Ask me how I know.

If, OTOH, you're worried about Terminator T-100s and HK drones, you probably need to run your own sci-fi combat blog.

Military-grade thermal detection systems have been in existence for going on forty-plus years, and workable IR systems for something approaching seventy years. Including by many forces of our potential opposition. But I have yet to note the abandonment of the concepts laid out in basic form here, at any level of US or other nations' infantry training program, and point out for your enlightenment yet again the four dead SF troops from last October in Niger, the nineteen dead SOF forces dead in Operation Red Wings, and any uncounted number of first-world forces regularly ambushed and killed from 2002-present in Iraq and Afghanistan by nothing more complicated than what I laid out here, essentially by conscripts and goatherders with Cold War arms, despite all the advantages that would seem to have you in quite the state.

If technology made ambushes obsolete, people wouldn't die in wars we fought, as our side is the acknowledged reigning master of technology.

Yet to date, we've sustained nearly 7000 KIAs in SWAsia, despite overwhelmingly one-sided possession of the exact capabilities you note, from B-2s to Predator drones to MRAPs to SAPI plates, with little lasting effect, no long-term success, and no end in sight until we abandon wholly the idea that people who will not be subdued can be, short of their total annihilation.

We've also had nuclear weapons for 72 years, so you may as well throw them into the stew as well, and we should therefore all simply give up any notions of fighting anyone, and simply burrow into the ground and learn to love living in caves.
Then start talking about how conventional combat itself is impossible, because those possessing them will simply nuke any opposition.

Like we've done never, anywhere, at any time, since dropping the first two, nor has anyone else, despite nuclear-capable forces having fought, by my count, some thirty to thirty-five wars since their invention.

Technology can be a useful force multiplier, from the point since someone discovered sharpened rocks worked better than blunt round ones.

It is not the dread Eye Of Sauron, nor a magic bullet that suddenly invalidates six millennia of recorded history on the subject of ground warfare.

And BTW, were the entire US military to be returned to the continental US, with all forces from active duty to national guard mustered and available, and 100% up-checks on every weapon system we deploy, they would be hard-pressed to control and dominate an area the size of Texas. Even less if they actually tried that in Texas. Leaving only 49 other states, or an area equal to it, wholly undefended, or at most, patrolled by the local constabulary, who with the same advantageous technology you're worried about, can barely keep up with the most serious crime in most cities on a day of relative peace and quiet.

(Recall that with roughly 10 times the divisions, 8 times the number of men in arms available now, and three times the navy, we could fight WWII in two theatres. Current forces were stretched to breaking in two 6th C. piss-ant countries, with little in reserve elsewhere, and we could only muster that at one time and place due to the collapse of one enemy, and the limited force-projection of the other. Then, imagine how well force projection works when your bases inside the US are suddenly subject to insurgent action, like they haven't been in this country since 1812. The dot Mil facing a home-grown insurgency would probably be hard-pressed just to feed themselves inside their own wire beyond two weeks' time, and protect their own families and dependents, let alone go hunting anywhere else. And they'd be getting sniped and ambushed on their own posts 24/7/365, in all likelihood. It gets a lot less fun to wage that kind of warfare, when you can get taken out while taking out the trash.)

Color me less than impressed by the opposition, most days and times, unless one is stupid enough to walk right up to Leviathan and poke it in the eye while wearing a clown suit and floppy shoes.

Cats see in the dark with exquisite clarity, and have since time out of mind, yet there are any number of their trophy mounts on walls worldwide.
Learn that military lesson from nature.

If not that, then at least learn another one from Predator:

"If it bleeds, we can kill it."

 

Who Could Have Predicted This?!?

Batshit crazy hispanic Democrat government union employee kills five with a shotgun.
Betting that the story goes away completely in 3,2,...

I Chortled

h/t GunFreeZone 

Steven "Louder With" Crowder wins the internetz for the day.

BFYTW

Since the White House Communist Press Corps has already (and predictably) outright blamed this shooting on President Trump, while the bodies of the slain have yet to cool to room temperature, I'll see your traitory, and raise you one "sideways, with a rusty chainsaw":


Still want to play kinetic games, Scarecrow?

The Empire Strikes Back

After several (unaccountable) days' delay, fooligan Leftards blocking Portland ICE offices were rounded up by federal riot police today in about an hour, and carted off to federal custody.

Sadly, they went with batons and handcuffs instead of OC, rubber bullets, and water cannons, so one can but hope that in future the federal cops won't be so gentle.

Federal felony convictions (there are no federal misdemeanors, AFAIK) and permanent lifetime prison records for trespassing on federal property, interfering with federal agents, along with destruction of property, menacing, etc,. should await these snowflakes on their journey between the sidewalk and a year-plus in federal prison.

The sitting ducks were rapidly cleaned out, despite even the fair warning of several tweets from President Trump himself, promising once again "law and order". This concept, of the federal government actually enforcing written law, foreign to people for nearly a decade, is such a shock to Leftards since the administration of Obozo, they sit in place like stunned ducks and get rounded up like baby harp seals. And federal juries won't be likely to see things their way on this.

And now, an appropriate tune.

So much winning.

Basic Training - The Ambush

"All warfare is based on deception." - Sun Tzu

The ambush is the basic component of warfare for any infantry (or indeed every hunter, fisherman, or trapper) worthy of the name.
Master it, and live. Fail, and die.

ambush n.: a surprise attack by people lying in wait in a concealed position.

It combines most of the tactical principles of war into one simple lesson:

Objective
Offensive
Mass
Economy of force
Maneuver
Unity of command
Security
Surprise
Simplicity

A hunter in a deer stand or a duck blind is an ambush. Every trapper's trap ever placed, and every fish hook hiding in a worm is an ambush. As is every submerged submarine torpedo attack in history. So is a mugger in an alley.

And still, it's easy to get it wrong, if you're an amateur and you don't know what you're doing.

Conducting an ambush assumes several things:

There's someone you need to ambush.
You can identify them positively when you see them.
Your team leader can therefore control whether or not to fire by the members of the team if #1 and #2 are not the case.

I've lost friends in the real world to slob hunters who shot at unidentified movement in the brush; it's even less funny when we're talking about slob infantry. The common words for that is brigands and bandits, and they usually end up shot themselves, or swinging on a rope, neck-first. They are everyone's common enemy, which is a lot of opposition to bite off and chew for your little group, especially if you don't have to do so. Don't be those guys.
Learn the difference between enemies, and unknowns, and how to deal with each one.

So, assuming you can tell who's who, what next?

Determine the type/style of ambush. The classic forms are Linear, L-shaped, and Area/Dispersed.

Linear ambush

L-shaped

Area/Dispersed Ambush

Other ambush type variations

But the varieties are really limited only by imagination, provided you organize them properly.

1. Select the site.
Pick terrain favorable to you, and unfavorable to your intended target(s).
In A-stan, the mujahideen work with light arms, from mountains. Their kill zones are roads below. It works great, especially against road-bound enemies heavily-burdened and tied to vehicles. Ask the Soviet Army about that. (Against supporting arms like artillery and air, with no such mobility problems, and no means to counter it, not so much. Which was why we gave them Stinger MANPADS missiles. The Soviets got their clocks cleaned, and we did commensurately much better, because they didn't have missiles to shoot down our air cover.) Takeaway lesson, the terrain must be selected to take advantages away from your prey, and hand it to you.

Nota bene: The enemy gets a vote. They know about ambushes too, unless you're unnaturally lucky, and meet someone who's clueless, in a Darwin Award-winning manner.

So barring that stroke of fate, they'll naturally be warier and on higher alert when entering ambush terrain. You may have to use elaborate and problematic means to draw them into apparently open terrain in order to spring your surprise, as in the first vignette in this clip:

2. Secure the ambush site.
Nothing would be worse for you, than to be ambushed in your ambush site, while planning and setting yours up. You have to reconnoiter and clear the area, and do so without making your presence obvious, and keep it so until your trap is ready.

Your security element also serves as the gatekeepers on the ambush site, keeping watch for any target(s) approaching the trap.
They also need to know an ambush-worthy target, versus one you might want to let pass by. Think in terms of size. A patrol team or squad shouldn't bite off an ambush with a battalion of several hundred guys as a rule, unless they all have terminal cancer and nothing to lose.
But a lone platoon wandering around fat, dumb, and happy is another story altogether for that same squad. IOW, leveraging surprise and initiative into 3-to-1 casualties is reasonable, and perhaps necessary. Expecting to inflict 20-to-1 or 50-to-1 casualties is farcically foolhardy and futile.

3. Set up forces to conduct the ambush

The team leader on an ambush patrol, whether the ambush is hasty or deliberate, needs to individually place every person where he can see them, communicate with them, and control them, and they must be "in the loop" non-stop, with every person acting in concert, or else you risk premature inititiation, which could turn failed surprise into your funeral.
It is exactly like a symphony: the entire band has to be on the same sheet of music, and the conductor sets the timing.

Know also that your ambush may be conducted relatively near (i.e less that 100m away) or far (greater than 100m away). Those distances are arbitrary, but should give you an idea, for planning purposes. Near ambushes can expect a trained enemy to charge your forces. Plan appropriate disincentives to this response. Spikes, barbed wire, etc.
In far ambushes, the enemy may elect to remain in place, find nearby cover, and attempt to return effective fire. You may wish to do things to make taking cover nearby problematic for them as well. Nasty surprises in nearby ditches and behind boulders, etc., are long-standing procedure in ambushes, as Blaster will explain:

In planning, be aware that enemy columns put out security to the front and flanks, since forever. It's rather awkward to have their flank security wander right into your position, as they're designed to do, and then be yourself surrounded by the larger force now alert to your presence, and pummelled into hamburger by them, because you were inside the boundary of their flank security. Pay heed to that lesson.

4. Assign key tasks and targets
Someone may be designated to hit high-priority targets. These would include, in order, opposing command and control, radio carriers, and anyone operating crew-served weapons like machine guns, especially if your team lacks them. A machinegun against 10-15 men, even in cover and concealment, isn't a disparity of force, it's a turkey shoot. You're the turkeys on that cast list. If there's no command and control, no means of calling in supporting arms, and no force multipliers like automatic weapons or grenade launchers, it's down to your guys under cover vs. their guys, in the open. Shoot priority targets first, every time. Life is dear, and bullets are cheap; use more than one.

5. Set up signals plan
You'll need a way to convey signals for shoot/no-shoot, initiation of ambush, and breaking contact, and actions afterwards. If it's an annihilation ambush, where you destroy the opposing force, you'll need a signal to enter the kill zone, and gather any material or intelligence items. You may even elect to bury the bodies, making discovery less likely, and preventing whatever larger force may have sent the targets into your area from knowing what happened to them.
Or, if things go wrong, the force isn't subdued/destroyed, or their QRF forces reinforce them before you break contact, you need to be able to tell everyone when to cheezit, and get outta Dodge, without it turning into a rout.
You'll need primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency signals for all the above situations.
Ideally, these should all be group-standardized, and part of your patrol SOP, so you only have to do a cursory reinforcement each time out, rather than re-inventing them wholesale, on the fly, time after time.

6. Actions afterwards
Prisoner details, search details, weapons recovery, material destruction, and who'll carry off what, for openers. Burial details possibly, as well. You'll also need medical and casualty evac people assigned; rounds going both ways make you getting off scot-free unlikely.

7. Establish after-action rally points
Everyone should know your primary and alternate places towards which to exfiltrate and fade away, in case enemy action or other eventualities require your team to split up and reconsolidate elsewhere afterwards. Everyone needs to know where, and for how long, each one is active.

8. Wait for a target

9. Initiate the ambush on command
This is the leader's job, based on the information from flank security.
The signal to open fire, if desired, must be foolproof, and immediately understood.
This is why signals that rely on a chain of intitiation, like explosives, need back-up. Things go wrong, and getting a fizzle or a click, when you wanted a bang, is never a good idea. Have redundant redundancies. E.g. "When I shoot, everyone opens fire. If my round misfires, I'll blow this whistle." are better than "When Enemy Squaddie X steps on this cleverly-placed boobytrap, we all start shooting." Squaddie X may not have read your script, and no one steps on the initiating device. This lesson has been written in blood. Don't add a new chapter.

10. Take care of business - rapidly.
Like a bank robbery, every minute you're ambushing someone, is another minute reinforcements may be setting up to ambush you. Do unto others, and get it over with ASAP.

11. Cease fire and enter the kill zone, or break contact and head to rally points.
Command and signals for each option.

Then either depart, or enter the target area, search and strip what's useful, or destroy it. Then split. Orderly, but in haste, once you've accomplished your objectives. Security watching outboard as well as towards the ambush is critical at this point. Police up all brass and anything else to minimize information and intel to enemy follow-up forces sent to look for the missing group. Even if you just haul it a distance away and bury it, make everything you can disappear.
Account for all your people, signal security to collapse back, and un@$$ the area.
The less trace you leave, the better. It confuses and demoralizes opposition to fight ghosts.
If, at some point you choose to leave things behind to point to another entity as being responsible, even a mythical one, this is the time to do that.

12. Patrol back to your next objective, or return to base with your casualties, prisoners, and spoils.

Although the typical examples posit the ambush in a rural setting, be well aware: there is nothing whatsoever that prevents everything in this lesson from being applied in an urban or suburban environment. Precisely as rival narco-cartel gangs, and occasionally government authorities in Mexico and other failed states find out on a regular basis, week after week.
Vehicles block targets in a kill zone, and the assault element opens fire. Done correctly, it's brutal and overwhelming. Something even Hollywood (with Tom Clancy's help) could get right.

The only way to learn this, as "fieldcraft" ought to make obvious, is by learning it and practicing the details in the field. By all means, practice it on paper, or even rehearse it as a group on a tabletop with Little Green Army Men (if it sounds stupid, but it works, it's not stupid! No points for guessing how many {that would be all of them} multimillion dollar stunt and driving scenes in movies you've watched are rehearsed by the stunt men with a lunchpail full of little green army men, and Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. Gospel serious.). But nothing is as good as actual training, out in the boondocks. This is why all military bases are sited in BFEgypt, by design. A number of the entities in the upper right column offer regular skills training out in the woods, and will likely put you in the position of ambusher and ambushee, to drive the points home. You are strongly and heartily advised to take advantage of those training opportunities, or similar, before you get a pop quiz on this information whilst out and about.

You can be the ambush master, or you can be its prey.
Your choice.

{ BTW, read the comments on this post.-A. }

PSA: Problem, Solved

 

"Don't be separated from your children. Stay home in Mexico!" 

 

UPDATE:  
Quisling Ryan's Amnesty v9.0 goes down to crushing defeat.
Boo frickin' hoo.

(You'd think after trying to slip one by the goalie nine times since 2000, and failing miserably each and every time, even the GOP idiots in the House would catch a cluebat after they've been hit in the head with it that hard and often. But you'd be wrong.)

Anybody Out There Tired Of Winning Yet...?

1) SCOTUS, in a breathtakingly surprising move, followed the actual Constitution, and decided the President gets to be the President, and his Travel Ban stands.

2) In a rabbit-punch one-two, they decreed that government employees' contributions to government unions is henceforth "optional", not mandatory. Death of government unions in 3, 2,...

3) The Army did the same thing with all the PC SJW Obozo-era b.s that was larded into training requirements, in favor of, y'know, training for fighting actual wars against America's enemies.

4) Meryl Streep's carpet-bagging liberal cousin had to step down as president of the local Lexington VA street association, and the restaurant she owns will remain closed for two weeks in the wake of the absolutely predictable backlash to first throwing the WH Press Secretary out of dinner there solely for the crime of working for the President, and then stalking her once she left to attempt to drum up a mob at the subsequent restaurant location to which she afterwards decamped. People who run restaurants know that this is essentially a restaurant closure, forever. My weather forecast is for Jewish lightning, any day now, and then they'll try to blame it on the Right. 

5) The President will get a greased-rails appointment to replace outgoing wobblewagon Justice Kennedy with one of the 20-30 conservatives he's already named and/or appointed to other federal judiciary posts (and the Leftards are in full meltdown over that blow to the march of socialism).

6) Peter (second-worst in history) Fonda was all but gang-tackled and gagged, and even her own party has howled down Mad Maxine Waters' latest incitements to criminal conduct, as bills to condemn, censure, and punish her have been introduced in the House.

7) The House is about to tell Dep AG Rosenswine to either turn over all subpoenaed FBI documents, unredacted, or stand the f**k by for getting impeached, followed by a certain referral for federal prosecution.

8) Most of President (Not My Guy) Trump's appeal in his Minnesota rally and elsewhere, is from crossover former Democrats, abandoning the Insane Criminal Posse Party in droves.

UPDATE!
9) Paul Ryan's Amnesty v9.0 got 112 Republican nay votes to go down to a crushing 301-121 defeat. So long Speaker Quisling, and I hope mid-terms take your 121 fellow cronies down in flames, too! Maybe you can get an appearance on Dancing With The Whores. Congratulations to the 112 Republican sh*tweasels who can read a poll of their own constituents.

And it's only Wednesday.
I can't even keep up with the weekly avalanche of bad news for our would-be communist overlords.

Bad news if you're a muslim terrorist, a criminal illegal alien, a union thug, a transgendered private soldier, a loudmouthed celebrity jackass, commie bitch Maxine Waters, or one of her insaniac psychopath followers or colleagues. Or soon-to-be-unemployed Speaker Ryan and the Quisling branch of the GOP.

The republic, OTOH, is humming like a Swiss watch.

Proof, if you needed it, that what's bad for Democrats ( and the Dem-Lite GOPe) is always good for the nation.

The Left Is Done Being Civil...?!

h/t Dianny and Mike 

Dianny, who usually just memes out some real corkers of visual snark, unleashed quite the essay t'other day. She begins:

Really?
When has the Left ever been civil?
Was I asleep for that fleeting nano-second?

And then continues with a full-throated smackdown of the silliness of the very oxymoronic idea of Leftist civility (cf. military intelligence, Vogon poetry, and jumbo shrimp).
RTWT.

 So, with that as the entreé, what's for dinner? Mike at Cold Fury gives you Kurt (May his tribe increase!) Schlichter FTW:

This does not leave much room for reasoned debate. In fact, it makes reasoned debate impossible. So, since they’ve taken reasoned debate off the table, there are not a lot of options left for resolving political and cultural differences. There are lies, intimidation, and violence. That’s about it. And the first two have stopped working.

And the media not only doesn’t care but actively and consciously supports lying to you to support its liberal allies. But no one cares anymore. They can lie and lie and lie, and do, and we just smile and buy more guns and ammo. 

So the leftists attempt to intimidate us into submission, showing up at people’s houses and screaming at them in restaurants. Take that, Sarah! The idea is since the leftists can’t convince Normals with the power of their ideas – because leftists’ ideas inevitably involve Normals ceding more of their rights and money to leftists – the left wants to make submission and obedience the price for being able to participate in the culture. But what’s inevitable is that us newly militant Normals, whose power is political rather than cultural, are going to respond pursuant to the New Rules and demand that leftists bake us a cake. 

That leaves them only violence. We’ve already seen it, and you can sense that it’s only a matter of time before the liberals openly embrace it. They have set the conditions for it. They have dehumanized the opposition, that is, us. Their lesser tactics aren’t working. The lies no longer resonate because we Normals are woke.
Intimidation isn’t working. It makes the libs quiver with joy, but it just makes us mad. Getting your opponent riled up is a poor strategy, especially at the ballot box. Mad people tend to retaliate. November is coming, and we all fully understand that every middle finger selfie, every vicious tweet, every assault on a conservative diner, is an attack on us.  

So, the left will embrace violence. It’s only a matter of time. They have to go there, because there’s nothing else left to try to undo our successful rebellion of 2016. The inertia of their hatred makes it inevitable. If we really are Nazi murderers who butcher children, don’t they kind of have to respond violently? Is violence against us justified? If what they are saying was true, it would be mandatory.  Do you think at Democrat gatherings, in fern bars and bus stations, they don’t giggle and whisper about how they hope the next time one of their own attacks a bunch of conservatives he, she, or xe runs up the body count? 

Do you hear a single prominent – or not prominent – liberal pleading with his, her, or xer fellow travelers to pull back from the brink? No. They can’t. 

The Democrat base won’t tolerate a retreat from extremism. They must push forward, get more extreme, pump up the volume, with each MSNBC chatterclown striving to top the previous doofus’s Hitler hyperbole. These Democrat idiots are going to talk themselves into a Second Civil War and then act surprised when it works out poorly again. 

I wish I had some suggestions about how to make this not happen. I’ve pulled the alarm about it highlighting the potential for the country to split apart and descend into chaos. But there is nothing we can do to stop this because we did not start it and we are not driving forward. This is a result of a liberal elite (supported by its Fredocon fellow travelers) enraged that it has been ejected from the positions of power in the government by the mass of Normals their own mismanagement and greed have turned resolutely militant. 

Only liberals can choose not to go down the road to widespread, systematic violence.  

But if they choose poorly, Normals are ready, willing, and able stop them. Last month, Normal Americans bought over two million new guns. They’ve got 400 million already. Normals are sitting on a towering mountain of lead-launching freedom. 

But we’d prefer the option the liberals have ignored – a return to a society where disputes are resolved via the processes outlined in the Constitution and the individual rights set forth within it are respected. {And, we'd like a pony, too. - A.}

Don’t go with violence, progressives. It will end badly.

And given their track record, I'm betting you don't have enough ammunition, or hard-hearted and like-minded friends, for which choice they'll likely make.

Per Remus, "Prepare. Stay away from crowds. Be alert."

Best be about a remedy to that lack, ASAP.
Tick Tock.

Kennedy, 81, Pulling The Pin; Trump Gets Another SCOTUS Appointment

h/t Kenny

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

(PRAVDA/NBC) Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced Wednesday he's retiring at the end of July, giving President Donald Trump another chance to fundamentally reshape the highest court in the land. 

In a statement, the Supreme Court said the 81-year-old Kennedy will step down effective July 31. He also sent a letter to Trump on Wednesday notifying the president of his decision. The court adjourned for the summer earlier in the day.

 

The president's first nominee to the court, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, has already had an enormous effect on U.S. policy. The president said his next choice would come from a previously released list of 25 candidates. 

Replacing Kennedy with a conservative could have a massive long-term effect on the highest U.S. court. His decision to leave will have huge implications for the midterm elections, as Democrats and Republicans battle for control of the Senate. The chamber confirms Supreme Court justices.

Senate Republicans will try to fill Kennedy's seat before November. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that "we will vote to confirm Justice Kennedy's successor this fall."

Having already sabotaged the Constitution and the republic numerous times in his vacillating career (if you want to see how much the Left regarded him as one of "their guys", you have only to peruse the Leftard meltdown over his retirement announcement), Kennedy's giving President Trump the benefit of the doubt on replacing him, so he doesn't have to worry about dying from an unfortunate boating accident or wayward pillow while sleeping, in his declining years of dottitude.

McConjob and the Senate better not screw this one up. And the confirmation should be done before the Court sits again, the first Monday in October, or the GOP and GOPe will pay the price in the mid-terms.

Now we just need ancient crone Bader-Ginsburg to bail out as well. At 85, every day she wakes up is a roll of the actuarial dice (ducking pancreatic cancer some years back may have been a roulette wheel 00 stroke of good fortune), and she isn't likely to make it to 2021, let alone 2025.

Breyer is 79, making him ripe for stepping down one way or another as well, before the end of the Trump administration.

That's two hardcore liberals on the bubble, if you're keeping score at home. Thomas, at 70, is next-eldest, and barring bad fortune should look forward to another decade on the court.

A 7-2 conservative Court undoes the Left relentlessly for another decade, minimum, and possibly two or three.

This is something to cheer about.

Courtesy of Wikipedia, here is the consolidated list of potential SCOTUS appointees from the two lists released by then-candidate Trump prior to the election:

United States Courts of Appeals

• Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
  • Brett Kavanaugh (born 1965)
• Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit
  • Thomas Hardiman (born 1965)
• Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit
  • Don Willett (born 1966)(appointed by Trump)
• Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit
  • Raymond Kethledge (born 1966)
  • Joan Larsen (born 1968)(appointed by Trump)
  • Amul Thapar (born 1969) (elevated by Trump)
• Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit
  • Amy Coney Barrett (born 1972) (appointed by Trump)
  • Diane Sykes (born 1957)
• Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit
  • Steven Colloton (born 1963)
  • Raymond Gruender (born 1963)
  • David Stras (born 1974) (appointed by Trump)
• Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit
• Allison Eid (born 1965) (appointed by Trump)
• Timothy Tymkovich (born 1956)
• Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit
  • Kevin Newsom (born 1972) (appointed by Trump)
  • Bill Pryor (born 1962)
• Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces
  • Meg Ryan (born 1964)

United States District Courts

• Federico A. Moreno (born 1952) – District Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida

State Supreme Courts

• Keith Blackwell (born 1975) – Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia
• Charles Canady (born 1954) – Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Florida
• Britt Grant (born 1978) – Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia (nominated to the Eleventh Circuit)
• Thomas Rex Lee (born 1964) – Associate Justice, Utah Supreme Court (possible candidate for a Circuit Court vacancy)
• Edward Mansfield (born 1957) – Associate Justice, Iowa Supreme Court
• Patrick Wyrick (born 1981) – Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma (nominated to the Western District of Oklahoma)
• Robert Young Jr. (born 1951) – Former Chief Justice, Michigan Supreme Court

United States Senators

• Mike Lee (born 1971) – Senator from Utah

Nota bene: They have all mostly been appointed to federal judgeships by President Trump before now, and passed the vetting process already, making opposition problematic and knee-jerk, and almost every one of them is under the age of 60 years, giving any one of them a probably 20-25 year term on SCOTUS if appointed.

Given the Senate's condition, Sen. Lee would be rather a longshot, given that he's one of the five most conservative-libertarian votes in that body of corpulent feline establishment pork-barrellers. If one of the two SCOTUS liberals, above, die or step down towards the waning years of Trump's administration, he might be someone to send through as a hearty F.U. to the Left. And he's only 47, so there's still time to put him on the Court another day.

Be Careful What You Wish For

From comments to 18 U.S.C. 875c, Paul Scott in NZ writes:

do you think there will be any downside to the Immigration problem at the south border? An interesting interview by Stefan Molyneux with David Horowitz {found on YouTube here - A.} where Horowitz says that the activist judiciary are literally creating the law , and refusing Presidential orders should be an offence. eg.Arrest these bastards on the ninth circuit with the army, try and then jail for disobedience of legal orders.

After observing that the immigration problems at the border have already been nothing but downside since at least 1965, and an annual hundreds-of-$BILLION problem in associated and ancillary costs ever since, we reply.

 If federal judges continue to unconstitutionally interfere with the enforcement of standing law, there are three remedies:

1) Send U.S. Marshals to arrest them for violating the law
2) Prosecute them in federal court, and refer them to the Senate for impeachment

One is easy, two takes time.
Also, having had functionally no actual Attorney General serving at any point in time from 2009-five minutes ago, and no functioning Senate since 1986 (if not 1932), also makes 1 and 2 problematic, and highly improbable.

Three is simplest of all.

3) Declare a suitable sector at the border (say 5 miles wide, from the Gulf of Mexico to San Ysidro CA, inclusive) as henceforth under federal martial law, due to unmitigated lawlessness and the attendant national security crisis of letting thousands of terrorists and criminals into the country, and send in military troops (active duty, and not the effing Notional Guard), subjecting all detainees to military justice, and removing the federal judiciary from any say in the process entirely.
If, at any point, they attempt to intervene, they are subject to arrest by military authorities wheresoever found, trial via courts martial, and incommunicado detention at military facilities TBD, up to and including Gitmo or Diego Garcia.

What happens in the Indian Ocean, stays in the Indian Ocean.
"What happened to Judge Commie Busybody?
"Disappeared last Sunday about 3AM in a vanload of black-clad ninjas, hasn't been seen nor heard from since..."
Lesson learned.

The upside of number three is it's both effective, and rapid at a relative lightspeed. When attempting a border crossing subjects you to incoming fire from miniguns at 10,000' from AC-130s, or mortar fire from our side of the border, it rather takes the fun out of that particular game. It will also make everything in Mexico within the range of small arms a no-go zone, and drive several millions of new Mexican refugees into the interior of that failed state. That's a State Department problem, as Mexico's entire army is hard-pressed to defend its own bases and government facilities, let alone go looking for trouble with us.

The downside is it delivers the exact military dictatorship everyone in this country has tried vehemently to prevent for 240+ years, to all of us, on a silver platter.
The only real prior example was the illegal roundup of nisei Americans in 1942, which mature hindsight from all sides regards as an abomination and a serious black blot on our national history.

But those are the cards in the deck.

One or all of them will be played if this continues.

A usually-unacknowledged fourth one is to either investigate troublesome judges for ethical and criminal conduct, and at that point, given that such is a near-certainty after sufficient scrutiny, either arrest and replace them, or coerce them in place, as essentially "double" agents. That latter was the J. Edgar Hoover policy, but as noted recently, the FBI is already a rogue agent in the game, from head to tail, and wholly unresponsive to the needs of the republic. The less the part they play in things, and the sooner they are disbanded completely as precisely the NKVD/KGB they have become, the better for the nation.

Obozofication Of Army To Be Officially Cornholed

And another acre of the swamp is drained, filled in, and re-seeded to productive use:

Eighteen months into this administration SecDef and SecArmy are sending all the happy horsesh...err, fertilizer shoved down troops' throats (you should forgive the pun) regarding gender-confused Nancy boys, and other assorted screw-ups who don't belong in the military.

(MORDOR ON THE POTOMAC) Fighting will now take precedence over dealing with transitioning transgender troops, drug abuse and other issues as the Army seeks to overhaul its training regimen to hone its soldiers’ battlefield skills. 

In a series of servicewide memorandums approved by Army Secretary Mark Esper and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and obtained by The Washington Times, service leaders are making optional previously mandatory training on issues such as transgender transition and drug abuse. The move, Army leaders argue, is designed to relieve stress on the overburdened troop training regimen and refocus on soldiers’ ability to fight in combat. 

“The Army’s regulations and policies that deal with training were pretty settled, and there were not a lot of detractors to it. … It was all the other [training] requirements that we levied on ourselves, or we had levied from other places” that led to the increasingly cumbersome approach to combat readiness, said Col. John O’Grady, chief of the Army’s collective training division. 

Those mandated training requirements “served as barriers to maximizing time … to build readiness and lethality” within combat units, he said in an interview. Aside from ending mandatory training programs on transgender troops and drug abuse, courses on media awareness and human trafficking have been eliminated from the mandatory curriculum, the service memorandums state. 

Army officials are codifying the new marching orders into servicewide training guidelines and doctrine, which will bring the Army more in line with the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy, Col. O’Grady said. 

Along with scaling back noncombat training mandates, service leaders are also extending the time soldiers spend in infantry training. Soldiers graduating from the nine-week basic training course will now spend an additional two months in “advanced individual training” before heading to their first duty stations. 

New soldiers currently spend about six weeks in advanced individual training before deploying. Courses based at Fort Benning, Georgia — dubbed “Home of the Infantry” — will be the first to implement extended training, Military.com reported.

What a concept. Command training time can now focus on combat skills, like killing the enemy and destroying his stuff, rather than coordinating makeup and wardrobe for the psychologically damaged Special Snowflakes.

Next should be the order to prosecute for negligence any recruiter who sends a transgender poolee to basic training in the first place, followed by the decision to separate the gender-dysphoric who opt for that nonsense subsequently under a general discharge for the good of the service. Cpl. Klinger is a fictional character, and needs to stay there.

Hopefully this program of focusing on mission rather than SJW b.s. catches on at the other services. (I'm looking at you, SecNav.)

I wish someone would live-televise Obozo's reaction every time another steaming chunk of his mischief in office is set aflame by this administration, and his dubious "legacy" continues to circle the bowl.

18 USC 875c

18 US Code §875(c):

Whoever transmits ...any communication...containing any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

We note that US AG Jeffie Sessions is still M.I.A., and have heard of no federal arrest of Communist Bitch Maxine Waters yet, but we do note that even Chuck U. Schumer has scaldingly castigated her remarks.

When the Leftards begin eating each other, this is very near a breaking point, and I don't think November mid-term elections are going to go the way their push-polls are hoping.

You Say You Want A Revolution

Someone over at SiG's has thrown up the hoary specter of the early Seventies as proof that things now aren't that big a deal.

Au contraire, mes amis.

Calling up the specter of The Seventies without noting that we were amidst a grossly unpopular war, taking thousands of casualties per annum and doling them out in the tens of thousands, by dropping metric fucktons of bombs on a Turd-world country the approximate size of Georgia, kind of misses the point.

It also overlooks entirely the rather salient point that at the time, airline security was mainly provided by asking you to fasten your seatbelt, and the whole of America was one monstrous soft target to everything from malicious mischief to outright terrorism, from sea to shining sea.

Had we simply sent forth the hue and cry, and declared open season on the miscreants at the time, they wouldn't have been around in 2008 as college professors to cheer on their protégé to become the first foreign communist president of this republic.

These two old communist pigs should either be hiding in exile in Cuba,
or dead like Che. EXACTLY like Che.

We are, by any objective standard, at relative peace with the world at this point in time compared to 1972, and even the paltry protest movements against what we have done and are doing militarily would fit inside a phone booth at most places and times, from 2001 to present.

The current violence is expressly directed at actually overthrowing the elected government, and specifically attempting to undermine the whole of society, not protest of a foreign war, and the simple fact is that even amidst the Sixties and Seventies, no one sane (note that fact recurs then and now) was even remotely advocating burning everything down because of self-hatred and loathing.

The current violence is unprecedented in scope because such self-destruction is the entire point, not to correct a perceived wrong, but to purge a perceived evil, root and branch.

That's the sort of thing that begets bloodshed on a scale approved of and witnessed previously only by the likes of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Robbespierre.

It's never been tried AFAIK in world history against a well-armed opposition, and previous experience hereabouts suggests days like Antietam may be on the rosy side of what's to come.

Compared to the last two years, 1972 was laughably irrelevant hijinks.
Back then, cultural icons on the Left openly mocked the lunatic fringe, and brilliantly.

Nowadays, the Left's cultural icons ARE the Lunatic Fringe, because that whole side of the political aisle has become the Lunatard Mainstream, and their certifiably bat-shit crazy icons are leading the charge. Every damned day.

If John Lennon and George Harrison were alive today, and the boys got together to sing something ridiculing the Leftist apparatchiks that pointedly, today's Leftards would put them all up against a wall and shoot them, for cause. For their cause, in fact.

The current Leftard madness isn't a movement to change your mind; it's a fervent wish to blow out your brains.

That is going to end in nothing short of blood and tears, mark my words.

Basic Training - Range Cards

So, when we left off, you'd gotten yourself into a nice fighting position, but that's just the beginning.

Once you've dug in and improved your position somewhat, you need to begin a Range Card. It's basically a mini-map of your sector of responsibility (and sector of fire, should it come to that) with particular emphasis on obvious landmarks, dead space, and ranges from you to everything you can see.

It's your team leader's job to tell you three things when you're digging in:

1) Principle Direction Of Fire
The PDF is where you should be looking, alerting anyone else of anything notable that happens into view, and shooting at it if anything worth shooting at appears, consistent with your team's ROE (Rules Of Engagement). Your hole should be sited to cover that.

2) Your Sector Limits
How far to the left and right of your PDF you should be paying attention to, and/or shooting at, with suitable landmarks or compass bearings for both.

3) Your Final Protective Fire line
The bearing along which, if everything goes to hell, you should be shooting to put a curtain of screaming lead to prevent your team's position being overrun.

Your responsibility is to put in limit stakes (or rocks) at your end, to that you can point your weapon alongside them to the limits of your sector to either side, along with similar arrangements for your PDF and FPF, so that, even in the dark and absent NODs, you could fire a line along either and hit anything from 0-72 inches above the ground along that bearing.

Then to walk you sector, or have someone else do it, to see if there are any spots where a person could successfully hide from your fire. This is called dead space, not because they'll be dead outside it, but because you can't put any live fire into it.

If any of that is within hand grenade-throwing range (25m or so), you'll want to find ways to put something there to make it less attractive to occupy, whether that something is just noisy (to alert you), or actually painful or hazardous (to penalize attempts to occupy it without you shooting at it). Ideally, both, and in such a way that it's not obvious that whatever is put there has been deliberately placed, but rather appears natural to casual observation. Jumbled piles of sharp rocks and old brush, with jagged points and edges, are better for this than obvious human-constructed spikes, and accomplish roughly the same effect.

But mainly, you want to visually identify obvious landmarks and your sector lines, and range the distance from you to them, out to the limit of your own weapon's effectiveness or the limit of your vision, so that you know at what range any target(s) at those landmarks are at, or what ranges they're between, to use all that rifle marksmanship you learned, and deliver accurate fire on them if necessary.

Assuming your rifle is BZO'ed, everything from 0-300m will be hit on a man-sized target with the same sight setting for you, so your primary concern is the 300-600m range, where correct range settings are more important to hit accurately.

You can pace it off, or have your battle buddy do that while walking the area looking for dead space, but a modern expedient that's probably easier and more accurate would be a simple laser rangefinder available from dozens of websites, hunting suppliers, etc. If someone has a dedicated rifle for marksmanship beyond 500m, get a rangefinder that will accommodate all such possibilities.

Otherwise, one that'll handle 600m or less will suffice for 7.62mm and 5.56mm modern battle rifles at all probably ranges.

In heavier cover, 100m may be all the distance you've got, but ideally, you're somewhere inside the edge of that heavy cover, looking out at open ground. Second choice, everything's open, but your position is camouflaged and has sufficient cover.

In any event, once your hole is basically prepared, learn the ground outwards from where you are, unless you want your fighting hole to become your burial hole.

It isn't necessary to reproduce an exhaustive detailed survey map of everything you can see. What you're going for is something that will allow you, and your buddy in a shared hole, to know everything they need to know about what's out there with a quick glance, in order to land hits on target. Less may very well be more. This most everything you need to know:

You could print up a few hundred examples of any or all of the range card(s) illustrated.
Better idea: make up a dozen or two. 5"x8", if you please. They'll fit in a leg cargo pocket, or the top flap of a pack, where they belong.
(You can put the cheat sheet order of completion on the back, if you're clever.)
Print them on the heaviest card stock you can, short of actual poster board.
Laminate those suckers so they're waterproof.
Write your data on them with your grease pencil (you're carrying at least one apiece, right?), and then when you move, wipe it off for the next position. make enough for everyone on the team, plus spares, and keep them in waterproof bags as well.

Yes, you could try and memorize all this every time, but you may have to change holes for various reasons, or you may have been the guy asleep when Mr. Murphy comes calling, and are a bit hazy on details despite the adrenaline dump of waking up to fires exchanged on a two-way range. Also, recall that first standing order of Robert Rogers to the original Rangers was "Don't forget nothing." That is why we write things down.

This embiggens. Words to live by for 250 years, and counting.

And BTW, range cards work great at your ultimate retreat as well, for the same reasons. And even in your current home. You don't have to put them in plexiglass holders under the windows in the living room (the wife would probably freak, right?). But there's nothing that says you can't have a pre-made set that detailed, ready and sitting in a handy envelope in the gun safe or filing cabinet. Nothing wrong with that, in case the Free Shit Army comes calling after the next disaster, is there? ;)

It also could be that someone (what? who?) might see some value in placing a rock or ten, painted white on one side out in the distance at either regular ranges (say 100m distances), with a number in hundreds of meters facing back towards their position, for long-term occupied positions. Like a home, or whatnot. A more surreptitious approach might be to put rocks in a line outwards, with 1 rock for 100m, two together for 200m, and so on, particularly aimed at obvious avenues of approach, out to the limit of your effective fire. (Whether you seal a wad of Tannerite facing inboard towards you, for future warning purposes at the property line terminus, is between you and your conscience. So is appropriate signage, to preserve the sporting purposes of the endeavor. Just saying.)

Now you know why all the original graduates of the service academies were trained surveyors and engineers (which experience seems to have helped out Geo. Washington too), and why Sun Tzu and von Clauswitz spent a lot of time talking about the ground you fight on.

Some principles of warfare never, ever change.
So learn the job, before you have to do the job.

Thought For The Day

Women In The Military, Part V

h/t KDT

Turns out the biggest clowns in the Navy aren't on the flight deck, they're over
 in surface warfare: running the bridge, in CIC, and over in Flag Quarters.

Remember all those Navy ships that couldn't keep from hitting everything on the ocean, putting at risk everything in the seven seas, including dolphins and whales?

Well, color us shocked, but it turns out women drivers of ships don't do any better at that than they do when driving while applying eye liner in the fast lane on the freeway. And of course, everyone from CNO and SecNav down has been covering up the identities of the culprits, because Diversity Is Our Strength. Even if it kills us. In our sleep.




Diversity Is Our Strength. But it turns out two female navy lieutenants
can rack up a body count as big as the Lost Convoy during Blackhawk Down.

Excerpted in toto from The Other McCain blog:

"During the early weeks after the USS Fitzgerald was speared by a lumbering Philippine container ship, it was noteworthy that the captain and a couple of admirals were publically named, but not the actual officer in charge, the officer of the deck. (OOD) The other person who should have kept the Fitz out of trouble is the person in charge of the combat information center, the Tactical Action Officer. That individual is supposed to be monitoring the combat radar, which can detect a swimmer at a distance of two miles.
Not until a year later, when the final reports are made public and the guilty parties have been court-martialed, does the truth come out. The OOD was named Sarah, and the Tactical Action Officer was named Natalie, and they weren’t speaking to each other!!! The Tactical Action Officer would normally be in near constant communication with the OOD, but there is no record of any communication between them that entire shift!
Another fun fact: In the Navy that won WWII, the damage control officers were usually some of the biggest and strongest men aboard, able to close hatches, shore up damaged areas with timbers, etc. The Fitz’s damage control officer was also a woman, and she never left the bridge. She handled the aftermath of the accident remotely, without lifting a finger herself!
Look it up: The OOD was Sarah Coppock, Tactical Action Officer was Natalie Combs. . . .
When I noticed last year that they were doing all they could to keep the OOD’s name out of the headlines, I speculated to my son that it was a she. Turns out all the key people (except one officer in the CIC) were female!Indeed, I did some searching, and Lt. Coppock pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty. Lt. Combs faced a hearing last month:

In an 11-hour hearing, prosecutors painted a picture of Lt. Irian Woodley, the ship’s surface warfare coordinator, and Lt. Natalie Combs, the tactical action officer, as failing at their jobs, not using the tools at their disposal properly and not communicating adequately. They became complacent with faulty equipment and did not seek to get it fixed, and they failed to communicate with the bridge, the prosecution argued. Had they done those things, the government contended, they would have been able to avert the collision.

That two of the officers — Coppock and Combs — involved in this fatal incident were female suggests that discipline and training standards have been lowered for the sake of “gender integration,” which was a major policy push at the Pentagon during the Obama administration. It could be that senior officers, knowing their promotions may hinge on enthusiastic support for “gender integration,” are reluctant to enforce standards for the women under their command.
This was the story of Kara Hultgreen, the Navy pilot who died in a 1994 F-14 crash. Investigation showed that Hultgreen had been allowed to proceed in her training after errors that would have meant a washout for any male pilot. But the Clinton administration was pushing for female fighter pilots, which resulted in a competition between the Navy and Air Force to put women into these combat roles. It is not necessary to believe that (a) women shouldn’t be fighter pilots, in order to believe (b) lowering standards for the sake of quotas is a bad idea. Of course, you may believe both (a) and (b), but it is (b) that gets people killed.
It seems obvious that the Pentagon (and the liberal media) sought to suppress full knowledge of what happened to the Fitzgerald in the immediate aftermath of the June 2017 incident that killed seven sailors, in the same way the details of Kara Hultgreen’s death were suppressed. It took investigative reporters like Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times a lot of hard work to find out what actually happened to Hultgreen. Let’s hope other reporters will dig into what’s happening in our military with the “gender integration” agenda at the Pentagon now."

We dun tol' you a time or four, as the title might suggest, that someday, American caskets would be filled by troops because we put women in places in the military they don't belong, and would lower standards of conduct and proficiency to get them there.

The men filling seven caskets from USS Fitzgerald are but the opening fulfillment of that tragic prophecy.

 
FCC Gary Rehm Jr., 37,
GM1 Noe Hernandez, 26,
YN2 Shingo Douglass, 25
ST2 Ngoc T. Truong Huynh, 25,
PSC Xavier Martin, 24,
FC1 Carlos Sibayan, 23,
GM3 Dakota Rigsby, 19.

You can read about them from a year ago, here.

They didn't die for freedom, they died because a bunch of idiots, in Congress, the White House, and at the Pentagon, thought pushing unqualified women into job slots so a few loudmouthed dykes could get admiral stripes someday was a better idea than having qualified officers aboard who could conn a ship without hitting everything else floating in the same time zone. 

(In the ultimate cost-free meaningless gesture, the Navy promoted all seven casualties one grade apiece, posthumously. Which means jack and squat, and costs them right around $0. No word on when the Navy will start automatically awarding hazardous duty pay to every sailor serving under unqualified women officers, which would seem to be a no-brainer until proven otherwise, and would cost them actual money.)

Cheerleaders for this jackassical policy will retort that the guilty were suitably punished, and all is right with the world. We respond that sailors oughtn't be used as expendable Human Incompetency Detectors for purse-waving deck officers.

To all the Natalies and Sarahs in the Navy, walk tall. The sisterhood killed your shipmates.
But hey, WGAF, right? They were just a bunch of toxicly masculine men, serving-their-country-at-bargain-wages Neanderthals, and who needs 'em?

And to every Navy douchebag from prior SecDefs and SecNavs down to so much as a PO3 who passed those unqualified @$$clowns along the pipeline, and suffered them in positions of trust and leadership for which they were dreadfully unqualified,
F### Y##!
The blood of American servicemen is on your hands.

The highest body count of US naval casualties in 2017 wasn't racked up by any nominal threat force navy, it was tallied by the perfumed princes in the Pentagon, particularly those put there by the last presidency. Well played. Can we put them all on the Terrorist Watch List now, please?!? (Waterboarding them in Gitmo optional, but also highly recommended.)

If the policy that enabled this, from the most incompetent and anti-military administration in the republic's history, could pass muster, the watchstanders could too, and they wouldn't have worked so long and so hard to smother the truth about this incident. But they can't, it doesn't, so TPTB have to slide and hide, long after the departure of Fabulous Mabus, and the incompetent flag-deck disasters he inflicted on the Navy, because those clowns are still working towards retirement.

Which is why SecDef Mattis should immediately stand down everyone in all the services promoted to O-7 and above from 20 JAN 2009-20 JAN 2017, inclusive, pending a full review, with a view towards permanently retiring the lot. Most of them are suitable only for melting down for fish sinkers. He would do more to save the nation going forward than if he fought a war and won it.

After all those collisions, the entire Seventh Fleet was docked for a review of the problem.
We have yet to hear that they solved it as they should by returning all combatant ships to male-only domains, because fighting a warship isn't a job for Disney princesses, Combat Barbie, or G.I. Jane.

Remember that the next ten times this happens. As it will.