Peter Hegseth has long been an advocate for U.S. troops, however he has to be one of the least qualified Secretary of Defenses we have ever had. With that said anything considered “woke” in the military is likely to be gone considering his past statements:
– U.S. President-elect Donald Trump tapped Fox News Channel host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary on Tuesday, describing him as a “warrior for the troops and for the country.”
Trump issued a statement on the designation of Hegseth, an Army veteran with tours in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan, as America’s next defense secretary is tasked with handling a series of tough security challenges, including North Korea’s military threats, Russia’s war in Ukraine and instability in the Middle East.
The Pentagon chief post requires Senate confirmation.
Drones are now clearly the present and future of warfare:
An Air Force F-22 Raptor takes off during a demonstration at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia. Mysterious drones have been spotted flying around one of the U.S.’s most sensitive military areas, leaving defense
U.S. military personnel reported drones appearing in restricted airspace over Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, shortly after sunset during a period of more than two weeks, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The drones appeared in December last year, according to the report, pulling in officials across the Pentagon, FBI and the Defense Department’s specialized office for investigating unidentified aerial phenomena.
One senior official based at Langley told The Journal that multiple drones headed across Chesapeake Bay and further south toward the city of Norfolk. They reportedly traveled across Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port and the main base for the Navy’s vaunted SEAL Team Six. Unless the drones are an imminent threat, by law they cannot by shot down near military bases.
You can read more at the link, but the drone provocations over Langley went on for 17 straight days and DOD could do nothing about it. These low cost drones if outfitted with munitions could have taken out all the over-priced F-22’s that were stationed at Langley.
With the proliferation of ballistic and cruise missiles by North Korea and China it only makes sense for the U.S. Army to respond by deploying systems in response. What is interesting about this is that the Army is using U.S. Navy missiles on their own land-based systems:
The United States will deploy ground-based launchers capable of firing SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles in the Indo-Pacific region soon to address rising security threats, the Army Pacific commander has said.
During his visit to South Korea, Gen. Charles Flynn said the U.S. Army has developed “long-range precision fires,” listing the SM-6 interceptor and the maritime-strike Tomahawk as missiles that could be launched from the new launch system.
It marks his first confirmation of the types of weapons systems to be fielded in the region this year.
“That system will be deploying into the region soon. Where and when it’s going to go, I’m not going to talk about that now,” Flynn said during the interview with Yonhap News Agency at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, 60 kilometers south of Seoul, on Saturday.
You can read more at the link, but imagine how systems like this would rethink calcuations from the Chinese if deployed in some place like the Philippines or Okinawa.
This Sergeant Major in Korea faced a real nightmare upon trying to retire:
Retired Sgt. Major Eriq Brown first learned of his criminal record in 2021 during a screening for veteran disability benefits as part of his retirement from the Army. He met with a civilian psychologist in South Korea as part of a post-traumatic stress disorder screening. The psychologist asked him whether his pending criminal charge was causing him emotional distress. Brown, who spent 28 years doing human resources work in the Army, said he looked at the doctor perplexed.
Two years prior, a fellow soldier in Korea accused him of assault. She told military police that Brown in a period of three months had hit her on the back of the neck, bumped her in an on-post store at Camp Humphreys and then grabbed her arm after an event. No charges came of the accusations, according to Brown’s service record and documentation that he would later present to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.
An officer in Brown’s chain of command with 8th Army conducted an internal investigation and found no evidence it happened — even discovering Brown wasn’t on post the day that he supposedly bumped the woman at a store, according to correction board documents. He was never arrested or detained or read his rights. There was no court-martial or nonjudicial punishment. Instead, Brown received a reprimand in his personnel file for unprofessional behavior. The letter scolded Brown for touching the woman’s neck and then reaching for her arm after she had told him that she did not want to be touched.
“You have exhibited poor judgment,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Donahoe wrote in the reprimand dated Aug. 21, 2019. Nowhere in the letter does he write Brown was arrested or committed a crime. Sitting in that doctor’s office, Brown realized none of this was behind him. The ordeal had left him with a criminal arrest listed on his background check with no resolution — as if he is still waiting to face judgment for a misdemeanor assault charge. “Think about the embarrassment of that,” said Brown, now 47. “I definitely wouldn’t let my children go in the military after this.”
You can read much more at the link, but what is going on is that Soldiers accused of crimes are entered into an FBI data base. Later when it is found that no crime occurred their alleged crime is still showing in the FBI database as if it did occur and it is very difficult to get it removed.
Of course this is not something done in the civilian sector, but in the military this policy was enacted as an over correction from a mass shooting committed by an Air Force veteran in 2007. That veteran had a domestic violence conviction during his time in the Air Force that was not entered into the FBI database which allowed him to buy a gun. Why doesn’t the military just enter people into the database that are actually convicted of a crime?
If China, Russia, and North Korea did try and launch simultaneous conflicts this is what would be called World War III:
Growing military cooperation among North Korea, Russia, China and Iran raises the possibility of “simultaneous conflicts with multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” a top U.S. general warned Thursday.
Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, made the remarks during a session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stressing that his command will “always” be “ready to fight tonight.”
“We are confronting not one, but two nuclear peers — the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. This reality, combined by missile developments in North Korea, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the growing relationships amongst those nations, adds new layers of complexity to our strategic calculus,” he said.
“It also raises the possibility of simultaneous conflicts with multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” he added.
It took war in Ukraine to for the Pentagon to understand that the future of warfare is drones when most everybody else could easily see it coming. However, there is not as much money building drones as overpriced manned aircraft for defense contractors:
The war in Ukraine has shown the value of low-cost drone swarms in modern warfare. Now the Pentagon is planning to build an army of thousands of small, cheap drones in hopes of spurring U.S. drone production and cutting China’s dominance of that market.
American drone makers are hoping the Pentagon’s “Replicator” program will give a shot in the arm to U.S. manufacturing. Defense experts say there is a need for Washington to build a drone supply chain that doesn’t run through China, due to the small but real risk of a future war between the two rivals.
This is a tough spot the Pentagon is in because is they relent on the paid TDY for abortions this will signal to every other Senator that they can get what they want by following this same playbook:
President Biden is sharply escalating his criticism of Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, highlighting his blockade of military nominations and using him to criticize other right-wing Republicans he characterizes as extreme, obstructionist and willing to jeopardize the country’s national security.
Biden, who has often cited Republicans outside the congressional leadership as emblematic of what he calls their party’s radicalism, warned in harsher tones and with more specificity this week that Tuberville is undermining the servicemen and women who are putting their lives at risk.
“Something dangerous is happening,” Biden said Thursday night, speaking at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium. “The Republican Party used to always support the military, but today, they are undermining the military. The senior senator from Alabama, who claims to support our troops, is now blocking more than 300 military [nominations] with his extreme political agenda.”
For months, Tuberville has refused to let the Senate approve any senior military nominations by unanimous consent unless the Defense Department changes its policy of providing travel expenses for service women seeking an abortion. The policy is a backdoor way for the Pentagon to facilitate even late-term abortions, Tuberville argues, saying last week on the Senate floor that “anyone who calls themselves pro-life needs to stand up and be counted right now.”
Marine leaders say they will make their recruiting goal this year, while the active-duty Army, Navy and Air Force all expect to fall short.https://t.co/v80PyrzDVO
— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) July 29, 2023
Here is what we know about Travis King, the U.S. Soldier who ran across the DMZ to North Korea laughing earlier this week:
Officials say Pvt. 2nd Class King has been a cavalry scout with the U.S. Army since January 2021.
The 23-year-old had been stationed in South Korea, but had recently served two months in a prison there on charges of assault, the Associated Press reported.
Several South Korean media outlets report that King had punched a South Korean national in a club last September. He had also been fined 5 million won ($3,942) for causing public damage and being uncooperative with police during his arrest.
According to an accountfrom the Chosun Ilbo newspaper,citing legal sources, King yelled obscenities at South Korean police as he kicked the doors and interior of a police vehicle.
Before bolting into North Korea, King was being escorted to an airport outside of Seoul where he was expected to board a plane bound for Fort Bliss, Texas, to face military disciplinary action.
Officials escorted him through airport security, but King somehow managed to ditch the escort and make his way out of the terminal and back to the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
That is where officials said King, who was dressed in civilian clothes, joined a tour of the Korean border village of Panmunjom.
You can read more at the link, but King had to have planned this out because here are the rules for going on a tour of Panmunjom on the DMZ:
According to the UNC rules the roster of the tourists to Panmunjum should be reported 48 hours (2 days) prior to the tour briefing time (13:45) in the camp Bonifas on the tour day. So person who is interested in this tour should send your name, passport number and nationality to us at least 3 days before.
The fact he claimed that he lost his passport to not board his flight is further evidence of how planned this was:
On Monday, the American solider was escorted by military police from Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, to Incheon International Airport. The solider then went through a security checkpoint alone because the military police officers were not allowed to accompany him.
King arrived at the boarding gate, but did not board the plane.
“At the gate, he approached an American Airlines official and reported that his passport was missing, and was able to return out of the departure gate under the escort of an airline employee,” an official at Incheon International Airport told The Korea Times, adding that King appears to have lied about his missing passport.
Once a passenger goes through the customs and immigration checkpoint at Incheon airport, he or she cannot go back to the terminal without a valid reason approved by an authorized personnel.
So this was clearly not a drunken spur of the moment type of defection like we saw decades ago with Charles Robert Jenkins. King had this planned out at least three days in advance. The closest defection to this I can think of is PFC Joseph White who defected in 1982 likely because he was forbidden by his unit leadership from meeting his Korean girlfriend. So he got pissed off and crossed the DMZ into North Korea. In 1985 North Korea reported that White died in a river drowning. Will a similar fate await King?
