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How a preventable disaster killed six marines

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Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#121

Post by JoeAltmaier »

arkades wrote: post #80
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our blood rarely carries all the oxygen it can. If its suddenly saturated, that means more oxygen throughout the body for metabolic purposes.

Uh, incorrect. Resting o2 sat is 99% in most young healthy people - like aviators. In older people, or the unhealthy, you may see it start to drop due to diffusion or ventilation defects - but barring serious lung disease, neuromuscular defects, severe, severe obesity, etc. that still gives you a resting sat in the mid 90s. There is also oxygen dissolved directly in blood rather than saturating hemoglobin, but that c…

Sorry, meant to have a question mark on the end of that. Thanks for clarifying!

Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#122

Post by jonstewart »

mcguire wrote: post #90
jonstewart wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt air craft carriers were very effective in WWII, when neither side had high precision radar let alone real-time satellite imagery. They won’t be effective in future wars. Air craft carriers are sitting ducks and will also prove to be a terrible waste of blood and treasure. The Navy is hugely important, and I think there’s even a good argument to be made in favor of the USMC continuing to exist in a quasi-spec…

The Air Force doesn't do close air support. (They barely want to do air superiority. No, really, check out the history of the AAF going into WWII and B-36 in Korea.) The Navy can do close air support, but likes to keep its planes on its ships rather than forward deployed where the Marines need them. The Army uses helicopters for close air support to get around the Air Force, but those have the problem of loiter time.…

Our services could use some bludgeoning to work better together. There’s no question that CAS is an important mission. Providing it with F-18s and F-35s through an underresourced mini-air force within the USMC seems kind of dumb. Give the USMC drones to handle some basic missions, make USAF provide CAS, and use a more diverse, cheaper, and specialized set of platforms.

Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#123

Post by ip26 »

js8 wrote: post #118
ip26 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of the public electing the President who appoints generals etc, the military elects its own leaders? Not to be difficult, but I think history teaches us that's how you get a military coup.

No, military could elect its own leaders regarding matters that concern the military. Citizens would still elect normal government, to which the military would be subjected.

The point is when the military picks all its own leaders, it winds up with the sort of leaders & develops the sort of culture that leads to the military conducting a coup against the normal government which it was supposed to be subject to.

Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#124

Post by js8 »

ip26 wrote: post #123
js8 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, military could elect its own leaders regarding matters that concern the military. Citizens would still elect normal government, to which the military would be subjected.

The point is when the military picks all its own leaders, it winds up with the sort of leaders & develops the sort of culture that leads to the military conducting a coup against the normal government which it was supposed to be subject to.

I don't see why it should be the case at all, and I would like to see the evidence that it is more likely. It sure is a possibility, but realistically you have to compare it with the possibility of a military coup with traditional autocratic military.

The only plausible explanation for that phenomenon is that democratic group (military in this case) is more efficient/willing at asserting its own status as a group than an autocratic (hierarchical) one.

And that is, in fact, internally contradictory. If intent of the military as a democratically-controlled social group was to overthrow the democracy in the state as a social group, then it would be acting against the very existence of ts own democratic process.

Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#125

Post by goatinaboat »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #108
dmos62 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the Japanese Navy showed up, the US Navy weighed anchor and left I'm not even an amateur pacific theater historian, but I know that this story is more nuanced than that, and your implication that the Navy didn't cooperate sounds naive. It's true that the US armed forces suffer from high division. My canonical example is the retirement of A-10 in favor of F-35.

The A-10 needs to be retired regardless because the airframe cannot be upgraded to survive in a modern air defense environment.

This argument doesn’t make sense. You might as well say rifles need to be retired regardless because they cannot be upgraded to kill tanks. What you actually need is a full spectrum of capabilities so you can use the right tool for the job each time.

Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#126

Post by goatinaboat »

pjc50 wrote: post #19
useful wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a proposal a long time ago on TEDx or something on how the military should be split between people who fight wars and the people who support wars. The premise was that the supply and support mission should be handled by the department of state in times of peace and the department of war in war. Things like supply ships, bases, hospital ships, aircraft carriers, merchant marine, peace corps, etc all go to provid…

> how the military should be split between people who fight wars and the people who support wars. Logistics win or lose wars. The support is the most important part. Arguably the people "fighting" wars (or at least vulnerable to incoming fire) should be reduced to as close to zero as possible, replaced by drones of various sorts. Strategic bombing has never recognised this distinction, anyway. Both sides in WW2 spent…

Logistics win or lose wars. The support is the most important part.

Stormin’ Norman once said that logistics is not the army’s tail, but its spine.

Another thing to consider is that supply lines are a target too; in recent conflicts logistics soldiers have very much been at the sharp end.

Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#127

Post by jandrewrogers »

goatinaboat wrote: post #125
jandrewrogers wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The A-10 needs to be retired regardless because the airframe cannot be upgraded to survive in a modern air defense environment.

This argument doesn’t make sense. You might as well say rifles need to be retired regardless because they cannot be upgraded to kill tanks. What you actually need is a full spectrum of capabilities so you can use the right tool for the job each time.

The A-10 cannot fulfill its primary role (CAS) in most modern environments nor can it be upgraded to do so, which raises the question of what it is actually useful for. This is primarily due to lack of space in the airframe to dramatically expand the onboard electrical and power generation systems, which are needed to power modern defensive capabilities. In the last half century since it was designed, most of its passive survivability has also been obsoleted by more modern air defense systems specifically engineered to reliably kill planes like the A-10. Lack of effective active and passive defensive capabilities greatly limit what you can do with it if you care about pilot safety.

It has become so limited in the CAS role due to poor survivability that we can't deploy it for most CAS missions. And for the environments where it can survive, the US has many other platforms that will work for CAS in the absence of effective air defense. The A-10 was designed for a very different battlefield that increasingly no longer exists.

Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#128

Post by goatinaboat »

arkades wrote: post #82
csours wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's more nuanced than that, but imagine you are a Marine on the beach. Do you care about the nuance, or do you care about seeing the ships leave with your supplies. When I read history, I try to imagine it with at least 3 points of view - the individual soldier, the commander, and the whole conflict. It is possible to take someone's lived experience seriously while still realizing that they don't have all…

The marine on the beach isn’t the one designing our armed forces. So I don’t particularly see why an un-nuanced perception on the part of ground troops is particularly relevant to the question of “why are our armed services designed in this manner?”

I don’t particularly see why an un-nuanced perception on the part of ground troops is particularly relevant

This is peak HN right here. Obvious the highly nuanced perceptions of startup techbros is the only thing that’s “relevant”.

Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#129

Post by goatinaboat »

ceejayoz wrote: post #72
greedo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing. Those F-35Bs fly off Navy ships. Marines have always relied on the Navy.

Initially, sure, just like they rely on the ships to get them to the beach. Early priority is often to seize an airfield, though. F-35Bs can happily fly off a land field.

They can but why sacrifice fuel and weapons capacity for a VTOL engine you don’t need in that case? Once the airfield is captured you would want to immediately swap out those B’s for A’s. They are the wrong tool for operating from an airfield.

Re: How a preventable disaster killed six marines

#130

Post by ethbro »

js8 wrote: post #113
icegreentea2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, if you need an organization to work efficiently as an hierarchical organization at a moments notice (because that's how you have to plan), is it possible for the organization to operate the majority of the time not as an hierarchical organization.

I don't see why it would be a problem. As someone already mentioned here, the members of the U.S. military are also voters. So people have no trouble doing both.

That doesn't seem very related: they're parallel structures.

The existence of other, non-hierarchical structures participated in by the military does not negate their efficacy in the military.

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