From Maps of War, a Flash presentation that tracks what “empires” controlled what territory in “the Old World.”

I can’t get it to play nice here, just like I still can’t get YouTube embeded objects to not mess up my layout, so go there and enjoy the history lesson in a few short moments.

Nothing like a dose of history to open your eyes…

Just a bit of humor for the day:

Definition of Fictoid:

A fictoid is a bit of fictional history, making a statement or telling a story in one sentence. A typical fictoid tells who did what, when and where. A fictoid may even be partially true, but is never entirely true, or it would be a factoid. In fact, a fictoid is just a fictional factoid.

I may have to buy the book to find out if I’m right, but for many years, I have long told the story of the farms out West where they breed small, slick skinned creatures named “naugas”…..

Welcome to another Wednesday. Link up your work so others may read it. Not saying I’m some powerhouse blog in readership, just another junction in the cyber-hiway, and it may get you another reader of three.

Yesterday I was discussing the absense of Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missiles (TASMs) from the surface and sub platforms. During the recounting, I mentioned a story about Adm Harry Harris, now the Commander of that lovely garden spot, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with the thankless job of supervising the “detainees” captured terrorists (I can say it, he can’t). Here is it:

So, there we were in late November ’85, freshly arrived in the North Arabian Sea with the SARATOGA Battle Group, lead by Adm David Jerimiah of CRUDESGRU EIGHT. It was a deployment to make sure the bad guys of the region knew we were hanging around, with things that go “BOOM!” and a way to get them to their doorstep. One of the threats that was normally faced in that region went TU and was out of play. We sent the USS CAPODANNO (FF-1095) down south of Yemen to put some eyeballs on it, as it was being towed out of theater, just to make sure the intel was correct. It was. This act of the enemy’s misfortune had the added benefit of freeing up one of our own platforms, which gave us someone to exercise with regularly.

As Adm Jerimiah sat at lunch, scanning a message, with Capt Wes Jordan sitting next to him, he commented his staff couldn’t get the tasking done in 48 hours. Commodore Jordan “graciously” offered to peruse the comminique from CTF 74 and offer his assistance. He read it, then looked at the Admiral and said “My staff can plan this in 48 minutes!”

He gets up, and walks from the Flag Mess up to the O-7 level, where we have the watch station (they wouldn’t let us set up in CDC). He walks in, tosses the meesage on the chart table between LCDR Steve Nerheim and I and says: “I told the Admiral you could plan this in 48 minutes. That was five minutes ago. You’ve got 43 minutes.”

Tasking: Plan a joint TASM attack with surface and submarine assests. CTF 74 mentioned the subs don’t get a chance often to practice that type of coordination, or even receiving the LINK 11 data for Over the Horizon Targeting (OTH-T). Note the salient points: Surface and sub attacking a surface target together. Purpose is to get the sub some experience using surface supplied info. extra salinet info: Our staff is assigned as “AX” (the anti-submarine warfare commander) duty for the battle group. SARATOGA is “AS” (anti-surface warfare commander).

Yes, you’re now wondering why we are doing this, as the lowly sub guys, and having the junior 4 stripper as the boss. It’s because the Commodore is really, really (and I mean really) good at “volunteering” his staff for, well, anything that needs to get done. You get my drift, I’m sure. That’s how this happened.

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Ralph Peters has an editorial in the New York Post today, titled “SECRETS FOR SALE – CHEAP AND BY BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES.”

In the piece, he wonders if there is such a thing as honor:

After more than two decades in the intelligence world, I know a few secrets. Some would merit brief, trumped-up headlines. But keeping those secrets is a matter of honor.
[…]
What happened to honor? Among our elected and appointed officials? A sense of honor still prevails within our military and among hundreds of thousands of government employees. Honor still prevails in much of our community life. Many Americans beyond the Beltway maintain a strong sense of personal and professional honor.

But honor’s dead in Washington. And at “leading” universities (where patriotism, too, is beneath contempt). And in the media. Honor isn’t hip. It’s as pathetic as a powder-blue, polyester leisure suit.

He makes an interesting point: It’s politics, politics, and oh, yeah, politics. (Side note: and the ACLU wants to wipe the display or teaching of the Ten Commandments off the face of the planet…Why?)

A few months back, I was given a speech by William Bennett named “Does Honor Have a Future?” He gave it to the Naval Academy Mmidshipmen in Nov, 1997.

I think it’s worth your time to read those fine words, and consider where society and the practice of “honor” are headed.

Fun from the poster generator:

Yeah, it gives me a headache, too, even after all these years…

Ah, the Terminator Babe….

1781 – French Fleet defeats the Britsh Navy at Yorktown, VA.

Thanks to Comte de Grasse. later honored by the naming of the USS COMTE DE GRASSE (DD-974), was an integral player.

Capt Lex, enroute a permanent appointment with CIVPAC/LANT/Wherever, is up to his eyeballs in real world work (building resume entries).

He issues this tasking:

Insanely busy. Irrationally so. Firing on all synapses. Every sinew a-twitch.

Busy.

So. Talk amongst yourselves. As though you needed any encouragement from me.

Suggested topic: Close Air Support. How very hard it can be to deliver warheads on foreheads when those forehead are in close proximity to other foreheads whom you are actually trying to protect. And who need it bad, or else they wouldn’t be asking for you to drop 500 pound bombs over the top of them, because really, who needs the stress?

But only they’re locked in mortal combat, like. In the beatin’ zone, but with the roles of beater and beatee not yet clearly defined. But whose situation is not improved if in fact you mid-ID the target or otherwise drop short.

It made me connect two stories of my life from 20 years ago and almost 20 years ago now. Lots of details, but at the end of the real world operations in 86 off Libya, and as a result of playing out tactics later the same year, we (my staff) forwarded our report up the chain in early ’87. I know now, in the aftermath of all of that, the Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile (TASM) began a fairly quick exit from bag of weaponry for the Surface Warfare community.

It revolved around the same points as Lex asked us to discuss in his moment of high focus regarding Close Air Support during a “Danger Close” (more like “Danger ‘Coz We’re Grappling with Each Other”).

If you need to catch up, I talked about the operations in the vicinity of Libya (an how I never got to have a beer on DGAR) back in “A Journey Into History” series. Part I is here, and it has links to walk you to the end of the posts on the subject.

That group of posts highlighted a particular incident in March ’86, which was the outcome of the volumes of civilian (“White”) shipping that cluttered our surface picture. We didn’t have any TASM equipped units in any of the three battle groups that made up Battle Force “Z,” but we often talked among ourselves in the staff watch space, of how wonderful it would be to have the new “wonder weapon” at our disposal, how more mighty we would be on the bounding main….

This, too, was at the time I first met Adm Harry Harris, now of Guantanamo Bay and Detainee fame. I came to know LCDR Harry Harris, of the USS SARATOGA (CV-60) Operations Department, when he stopped a briefing to Adm David Jerimiah I was giving and said: “We can’t do that!” Me: Why not? Him: “We can’t have aircraft flying on an alerted target!” Me:… That, readers, is fodder for tomorrow’s Ropeyarn Sunday “Sea Stories” and Open Trackbacks. Now, back to my regularly scheduled ramblings:

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