A 70 second video of fighting in western Mosul, courtesy of CNN: http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2017/03/09/west-mosul-iraq-forces-battle-isis-sje-mobile-orig.cnn
The Dupuy Institute
Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
The Dupuy Institute
Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Mystics & Statistics
A blog on quantitative historical analysis hosted by The Dupuy Institute
New U.S. Boots On The Ground In Syria
Following recent reports on social media that combat vehicles associated with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment were spotted moving from Iraqi Kurdistan toward the Syrian village of Manbij last weekend, The Washington Post is saying that U.S. Marine forces have now been deployed to Syria. The Marines are reportedly establishing a firebase from which they can support U.S.-sponsored Syrian Kurdish forces poised to attack the Daesh-held city of Raqaa.
Bloomberg is reporting that the U.S. forces deployed to Manbij are part of a coordinated effort with Russia to thwart a possible offensive by Turkish forces to take the town, which is held by Syrian Kurds. The Russians brokered a deal with the Syrian forces to establish a buffer zone around Manbij, which U.S. Army Rangers will help man. Turkish forces launched an attack in conjunction with the Free Syrian Army on Daesh fighters in northern Syria last August. The U.S.-Russian move is perceived as an attempt to prevent the Turks from attacking the Syrian Kurds, who the Turks believe are aligned with Turkish Kurdish groups waging an insurgency against the Turkish government.
U.S. Special Operations Forces elements have been operating on the ground in support of Syrian rebels since October 2015; these have been quietly supplemented by conventional U.S. Army and Marine detachments, according to previous reports The new U.S. ground force deployments have come with no public debate or forewarning by the Trump administration.
F-22 vs F-15
Hard to pass by this article: http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-one-f-22-five-f-15s-2017-3
This video at the end shows one F-22 in a simulated exercise in 2003 against five F-15s. Spoiler alert: The F-22 wins. Apparently the F-15s could not see or get a lock on the Raptor, effectively allowing it to freely shot them without receiving any return fire (meaning missiles).
This has also been the case in the past, like in the 1980s when U.S. F-14s engaged Libyan MIGs over the Gulf of Sirte.
Fighting in Mosul
The fighting continues in Mosul as the Iraqi coalition slowly advances: iraqi-forces-see-off-counter-attack-mosul
On Tuesday they recaptured the provincial government headquarters, the central bank branch and a museum. The museum was completely empty of all artifacts according to an Iraqi Major General.
The general also noted that most of the fighters that fought around the governorate building were local. He stated that an order was issued for foreign fighters to withdraw.
Makes you wonder if we are nearing the end of this campaign.
Blog post update (around 11 AM EST this morning): leader-baghdadi-abandons-mosul-fight
Mustard Gas
ISIL appears to be using Mustard Gas filled mortar rounds: Iraqi-families-devastated-by-chemical-attacks-in-mosul
Early in the Syrian Civil War, the government of Syria used chemical weapons on its own population. I am one of these people who felt the U.S. and international community should have intervened in the first year of the war in response to Asad’s use of chemical weapons. We chose not to…..
Churchill on Alien Life
Again, totally unrelated to anything we usually blog about (and I am not quite ready to create an “alien life” category for the blog), but in 1939 Winston Churchill wrote a never published essay on intelligent life in the universe. Winston-Churchills-aliens-essay
At the time, the accepted theory in science was that planets formed when two stars passed closely to each other, creating a stream of gas that then formed the Solar System. The interesting argument Churchill presents is: “But this speculation depends upon the hypothesis that planets were formed in this way. Perhaps they were not,” wrote Churchill. “We know there are millions of double stars, and if they could be formed, why not planetary systems?”
and
“I, for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we are making of our civilization here that I am prepared to think we are the only spot in this immense universe which contains living, thinking creatures, or that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever appeared in the vast compass of space and time,” he wrote.
Battle of Mosul: Update
Nice summary article from BBC. Basically, nothing new to report for the last week, but this article has great maps: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37702442
They are still talking about taking several more months to take the surrounded city. They are reporting 1,096 and 694 injured in Nineveh province since the start of October.
New WWII German Maps At The National Archives
The Special Media Archives Services Division of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C. announced on it’s blog, The Unwritten Record, the recent opening of two new series in Record Group 242: National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized. The new series are German Situation Maps of the Western Front, 1944-1945 (NAID 40432392) and Various German World War II Maps, 1939-1945 (NAID 40480105).
The collections contain photographic reproductions of a full map of Germany including how many states in Germany existed at the time, as well as reproductions of various daily situation report maps created by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command) and Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Command) to brief Adolph Hitler and senior German leaders. They show friendly (blue) and enemy (red) forces down to the division and detachment level. The original maps were captured by U.S. forces, which were later duplicated and then returned to the Germans.
Maps. Beautiful Maps
The NARA blog post includes several wonderful, high-quality digital scans in JPG format, although a quick check of the online NARA catalogue shows that these digital maps have yet to be posted online. As the existence of the images in the post show, however, this cannot be too far behind.
The maps themselves are priceless historical records containing truly amazing amounts of information. A portion of the Lage Ost (Situation East) map for 6 December 1941, above, is particularly notable. It depicts the military situation at what can be argued as the high tide of German fortunes in World War II, with its forces closing in on Moscow. However, 6 December was also the beginning of the great Soviet winter counteroffensive that would drive the German Army permanently away from Moscow.
A Map Is Worth At Least A Thousand Words
Several details immediately jump out. The northern prong of the German offensive, led by the Third Panzer Group and Forth Panzer Group, and the southern thrust by the Second Panzer Army can be clearly seen. While Second Panzer Army’s divisions are concentrated for the push from Tula northward, the army’s eastern flank is merely screened by elements of the 10th and 25th Motorized Infantry divisions, the 112th Infantry Division, and a detachment of the 18th Panzer Division. Large-scale, abstract maps of the war on the Eastern Front often depict the battle lines as solid, when in fact, they were thinly-held or gapped.
This is significant because of what this map does not depict: the several dozen divisions the Soviets had amassed around Moscow for their counter-offensive. In fact, the first Red Army counterattacks had started on 5 December, against the LVI Panzer Corps, north of Moscow (at the top of image above). Soviet maskirovka, or military deception efforts, had successfully hidden the build-up from German intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets. Soviet troops infiltrated these gaps, forcing the Germans to halt their attack and then withdraw to avoid encirclement.
This is only a fraction of the story contained in these maps. Hopefully, NARA is diligently digitizing the rest of the collection and will get them online as soon as possible,
Life is at least 3.8 billion years old
This post is totally unrelated to any legitimate national security concerns, but I think it is damn interesting anyway. In Canada they found a fossil of bacteria that is 3.77 to 4.30 billion years old. Now the earth is 4.54 +/- 0.05 billion years. So this would indicate that life, at least in the form of bacteria and being created around hot jets in water, formed within hundreds of thousands years after the earth formed. Added to that we have found dozens of planets within the habitable zones of many stars out there, including three new ones last week around one star less than 40 light-years away. Pretty hard to imagine that there is not life out there, at least in the form of bacteria.
A few links:
worlds-oldest-fossils-discovered-Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth
earth-size-planets-found-orbiting-star-could-hold-life
10% or 3% ?
Apparently the proposed defense increase by the Trump administration is a 3% increase, vice a 10% increase. The FY2017 Defense Budget is around $582.7 billion. The Trump administration’s proposed budget for FY2018 is $603 billion. This is a 3% increase. It certainly won’t pay for a 540,000-man army or a 355-ship fleet. Senator John McCain is not too impressed by this. McCain is looking for a $640 billion dollar budget for defense for 2018.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/321374-mccain-trump-defense-budget-not-enough-for-world-on-fire
I guess this blog post is my penance for making the mistake of talking about the issue of the day. Maybe I should just go back to blogging about history.