The List 6025 TGB
Good Sunday Morning March 6
I hope that you are all having a great weekend
A couple of long articles and a very interesting video on the British monarchy
Regards,
Skip
This day in Naval and Marine Corps History
March 6
1822—The schooner Enterprise captures four pirate ships in the Gulf of Mexico. During her time in the Gulf, Enterprise takes 13 vessels while suppressing pirates, smugglers, and slaves.
1943—Task Force 68, commanded by Rear Adm. Aaron S. Merrill, bombards Vila and Munda, Solomons and sinks Japanese destroyers Minegumo and Murasame in the Kula Gulf. For his leadership, Adm. Merrill earned both the Legion of Merit and the Navy Cross.
1944—USS Nautilus (SS 168) attacks a Japanese convoy approximately 240 miles north-north west of Saipan and sinks transport (ex-hospital ship) America Maru.
1960—USS Kearsarge (CVS 33) rescues four Russian soldiers from their landing craft 1,000 miles from Midway Island, which had been drifting several weeks after their engine failed off Kamchatka Peninsula.
1991—President George H. W. Bush addresses a joint session of Congress and states, "I can report to the nation: Aggression is defeated. The war is over."
2010—USS Dewey (DDG 105) is commissioned at Seal Beach, CA. The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer is named after former Adm. of the Navy George Dewey, hero of the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War of 1899.
On this day in World history
March 6
1521 Ferdinand Magellan discovers Guam.
1820 The Missouri Compromise is enacted by Congress and signed by President James Monroe, providing for the admission of Missouri into the Union as a slave state, but prohibits slavery in the rest of the northern Louisiana Purchase territory.
1836 After fighting for 13 days, the Alamo falls.
1853 Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata premieres in Venice.
1857 The Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision holds that blacks cannot be citizens.
1860 While campaigning for the presidency, Abraham Lincoln makes a speech defending the right to strike.
1862 The USS Monitor left New York with a crew of 63, seven officers and 56 seamen.
1884 Over 100 suffragists, led by Susan B. Anthony, present President Chester A. Arthur with a demand that he voice support for female suffrage.
1888 Louisa May Alcott dies just hours after the burial of her father.
1899 Aspirin is patented following Felix Hoffman's discoveries about the properties of acetylsalicylic acid.
1901 A would-be assassin tries to kill Wilhelm II of Germany in Bremen.
1914 German Prince Wilhelm de Wied is crowned as King of Albania.
1916 The Allies recapture Fort Douaumont in France during the Battle of Verdun.
1928 A Communist attack on Beijing results in 3,000 dead and 50,000 fleeing to Swatow.
1939 In Spain, Jose Miaja takes over Madrid government after a military coup and vows to seek "peace with honor."
1943 British RAF fliers bomb Essen and the Krupp arms works in the Ruhr, Germany.
1945 Cologne, Germany, falls to General Courtney Hodges' First Army.
1947 Winston Churchill opposes the withdrawal of troops from India.
1948 During talks in Berlin, the Western powers agree to internationalize the Ruhr region.
1953 Upon Josef Stalin's death, Georgi Malenkov is named Soviet premier.
1960 The Swiss grant women the right to vote in municipal elections.
1965 The United States announces that it will send 3,500 troops to Vietnam.
1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson announces his plan to establish a draft lottery.
1973 President Richard Nixon imposes price controls on oil and gas.
1975 Iran and Iraq announce that they have settled the border dispute.
1980 Islamic militants in Tehran say that they will turn over the American hostages to the Revolutionary Council.
1981 President Reagan announces plans to cut 37,000 federal jobs.
1987 The British ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes in the Channel off the coast of Belgium. At least 26 are dead.
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Thanks to Mike
Wrecking Putin's Army
Ukraine's Defense Ministry estimates that 102 tanks and 536 armored vehicles had been destroyed as of February 26th.
Here is the story:
The Javelin Is Wrecking Putin's Army. Here's How the Anti-Tank Weapon Works.
Ross Pomeroy 2/27/2022
Ukraine is a highly devout country – about 87% of its 41 million citizens practice Christianity. So it's notable that, to many Ukrainians, Mary Magdalene now has a new moniker: St. Javelin.
The viral meme (shown above) recasting the "Apostle of the apostles" is in reverence to a device that knows no religion: the FGM-148 Javelin portable fire-and-forget anti-tank missile. Since the start of Putin's dastardly invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian freedom fighters have extensively utilized the American-made weapon system – co-produced by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon – to rain destruction down upon the Russian military's armored vehicles. Ukraine's Defense Ministry estimates that 102 tanks and 536 armored vehicles had been destroyed as of February 26th. The Javelin likely factored heavily into that rousing combat success.
"This weapon allows a single soldier to target and destroy even the most heavily armored main battle tank with an almost guaranteed kill rate, at great range and with minimal risk," Army Capt. Vincent Delany wrote of the Javelin for West Point's Modern War Institute.
So how does this 'holy' piece of military machinery work? Laypersons might be envisioning a bazooka-like operation, but anti-tank weapons have evolved considerably since that quintessential rocket launcher was deployed in World War II. With the Javelin, a soldier using the portable, reusable Command Launch Unit (CLU) looks through an infrared sight to locate a target up to an incredible 2.5 miles away. When the user spots a target, he operates a cursor to set a square around it, almost like cropping an image. This is then sent to the onboard guidance computer on the missile itself, which has a sophisticated algorithmic tracking system coupled with an infrared imaging device. When the missile locks on to the target, the operator can launch the self-guided weapon and quickly relocate or reload to fire another missile at a different target.
The Javelin originally debuted in 1996, bearing a couple remarkable innovations. For one, it offers a "soft launch." David Qi Zhang of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute explained what that means in his Master of Engineering thesis on the Javelin.
"The first motor... produces enough thrust to launch the missile out of the tube and a safe distance away, but is completely burned before the nozzle left the tube, leaving no exhaust to hit the operator. The flight motor then ignites to propel the [missile] along its attack path.
A second innovation of the Javelin is that it strikes from above. The missile rises high into the air, up to 490 feet, then blasts down on its target from a steep angle, striking the top of an armored vehicle or tank, where the armor is typically weakest.
Russian tanks are not helpless against the Javelin. Most are equipped with explosive reactive armor. When struck by a penetrating weapon like a missile, the armor detonates, blasting a metal plate outwards to damage the missile's penetrator and prevent it from piercing the tank's main armor. The Javelin overcomes this by having tandem warheads, one to deal with the reactive armor plate, and the second to impact the tank's armor itself. Modern Russian tanks are also equipped with a radar system called Arena, which detects incoming missiles and automatically fires a wide burst of projectiles to destroy or redirect them. But here, again, the Javelin reigns supreme, Delany says.
"The Javelin can defeat Arena while in top-attack mode, due to the missile descending from too steep an angle for the system to engage properly," he wrote.
Ukraine had been shipped roughly 77 launchers and 740 missiles before Putin invaded. Many, many more of each are now on the way courtesy of the U.S. and European allies. May the Ukrainians put them to good use. Slava Ukraini!
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ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED Thanks to the Bear … Bear🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER (1965-1968)…
From the archives of rollingthunderremembered.com post
… For The List for Sunday, 6 March 2022… Bear🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER (1965-1968)…
From the archives or rollingthunderremembered.com post for 6 March 1967… Major Merlyn Hans Dethlefsen's March 1967 Medal of Honor flight and the epic tale of Captain J. Robert Pardo, USAF…
This following work accounts for every fixed wing loss of the Vietnam War and you can use it to read more about the losses in The Bear's Daily account. Even better it allows you to add your updated information to the work to update for history…skip
Vietnam Air Losses
Access Chris Hobson and Dave Lovelady's work at: https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com.
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Thanks to Tom
View the Latest Edition of "This Week @NASA" (published Feb. 25, 2022)
Folks –
Not a particularly exciting week, but….
NG-17 resupply – always good to have needed stuff on the ISS…lose a re-supply mission and all HELL breaks loose….
The re-boost – what is that? ISS is subjected to atmospheric drag from the earth's VERY THIN atmosphere 200 miles up – but it's there…think of balancing a broom on your finger and someone opens the door and wind blows in…not much of a force but it tips the broom. Same in space…little perturbations are huge in effect. And we must not forget solar drag – the suns photons – that make solar sails work – also affects station. So….to keep it from falling to earth, it requires small DSELTA V (thrust) to raise the orbit. HUGE advantage if you can use the disposable Cygnus for that.
Another Artemis hot fire (yawn!). the SLS system will eventually be completed but be WAY too expensive to operate Look for lunar missions (if they happen at all!) to be Space-X boosted. We'll see if Artemis ! REALLY happens in May this year….
The GOES-T, or GOES-18 or GOES –WEST is a geosynchronous satellite that will park23,000 miles above the earth and orbit WITH the rotation of the earth, so in effect …remaining stationary over the WEST coast (ergo, name) . Since we have no way of servicing satellites at that altitude, they DO "wear out" and require replacement. In addition, think about a 10 year old satellite technology today is SO far beyond it, junk it and start fresh (sorta like a 3 year old computer).
John Glenn….THAT is an officer and gentleman. I had the pleasure of spending an evening with him and his wife Annie. I SO miss being able to talk with real heroes, real, humble and spiritual men like him, John Young, Steve Nagel….the list goes on of these astronauts that are several cuts above the rest. Yes, I feel very blessed to have known them and despite the silliness of many aspects of my career, these experiences MORE than compensate ….
Enjoy & stay healthy!!
Tom
AGENCYWIDE MESSAGE TO ALL NASA EMPLOYEES
Points of Contact: Brittany Brown, brittany.a.brown@nasa.gov and Andre Valentine, andre.valentine-1@nasa.gov, Office of Communications, NASA Headquarters
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View the Latest Edition of "This Week @NASA" (published Feb. 25, 2022)
View the latest "This Week @NASA," produced by NASA Television, for features on agency news and activities. Stories in this program include:
Update on Preparations for Artemis I Moon Mission
Artemis Rocket Engine Test Series Continues
Commercial Mission Delivers Cargo to Space Station
The Next GOES Series Earth-Observing Satellite
60th Anniversary of Glenn's Historic Flight on Friendship 7
To watch this episode, click on the image below:
Watch the Video
To access this edition of "This Week @NASA," you may also visit:
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This notice is being sent agencywide to all employees by NASA INC in the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters.
Thomas E. Diegelman
"Safe Space Exploration for Life"
"The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Audiens sapiens sapientior erit et intellegens gubernacula possidebit
"A wise man shall hear, and shall be wiser; and he that understands, shall possess the government."
"The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself."
― Plato, The Republic
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Thanks to Mud
Not So Humorous
I have enjoyed working here these past several years. You have paid me very well and given me benefits beyond belief. I have 3 to 4 months off per year, and a pension plan that will pay my salary till the day I die and then pay my estate one year's salary death bonus and then continue to pay my spouse my salary with increases until she or he dies along with a health plan that most people can only dream of having.
Despite this, I plan to take the next 12 to 18 months to find a new position. During this time I will show up for work when it is convenient for me. In addition, I fully expect to draw my full salary and all the other perks associated with my current job. Oh yes, if my search for this new job proves fruitless, I will be coming back with no loss in pay or status. Before you say anything, remember that you have no choice in this matter. I can, and I will do this.
Sincerely,
Every Member of Congress running for Re-Election
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Thanks to TR
Holodomor Ukraine History
Here is a bit of Ukraine history that I'm sure very few people know about. Stalin was obviously just as bad a tyrant as Hitler.
🇺🇦🌾At the entrance to the memorial park in Kyiv, there is a sculpture of an extremely thin girl with a very sad look holding a handful of wheat ears in her hands. Behind her back is the Candle of Remembrance, a monument with details reminiscent of authentic embroidery that can be found on traditional Ukrainian costumes. This is a monument that commemorates a historical event known as the Holodomor.
What is the Holodomor?
☭ After the end of the First World War, Ukraine was an independent state, but in 1919 the Soviet Union "sucked" it into the community of Soviet states. The Ukrainians, who even then considered themselves a Central European people like the Poles and not an Eastern European like the Russians, tried to restore Ukraine's independence.
🥖 In 1932, not wanting to lose control of Europe's main granary, Stalin resorted to one of the most heinous forms of terror against one nation. In the process of nationalization, he took away the grain-producing land from the Ukrainian peasants, but also all its offerings, thus creating an artificial famine. The goal was to "teach Ukrainians to be smart" so that they would no longer oppose official Moscow. Thus the people who produced the most grain in Europe were left without a crumb of bread. The peak of the Holodomor was in the spring of 1933. In Ukraine at that time, 17 people died of hunger every minute, more than 1,000 every hour, and almost 24,500 every day! People were literally starving to death in the streets.
🇷🇺 Stalin settled the Russian population in the emptied Ukrainian villages. During the next census, there was a large shortage of population. Therefore, the Soviet government annulled the census, destroyed the census documents, and the enumerators were shot or sent to the gulag, in order to completely hide the truth. world war. Their poison gas was hunger. Their Hitler was Stalin. Their Holocaust was the Holodomor. For them, fascist Berlin was Soviet Moscow, and their concentration camp was the Soviet Union. Today, 28 countries around the world present the Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainians, which you could not learn about in school, because almost all evidence was destroyed and victims were covered up for decades, survivors were forcibly silenced by not having the right to vote until recently.
The Holodomor at that time broke the Ukrainian resistance, but it made the desire for Ukraine's independence from Russia eternal.
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|Thanks to CAP
Is This Australian Man The Real King Of England? | Britain's Real Monarch | Timeline - YouTube
Fascinating! Set speed to 1.25
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Thanks to Carl
Experts break down why the Russian air force might be hiding
Where is the Russian Air Force? Experts break down why they might be hiding
"It is clear to us that Russia is losing aircraft and helicopters at a damaging rate."
BY DAVID ROZA | PUBLISHED MAR 3, 2022 8:57 AM
If the past 80 years of warfare have taught us anything, it's that air supremacy, the term for making an enemy air force incapable of resistance, is essential for winning a conventional war. That's why experts are scratching their heads trying to figure out why the Russian combat air force, despite being 15 times the size of its Ukrainian foe, has not achieved anything close to air supremacy.
"The modernized and massive Russian military force that currently surrounds Ukraine on three sides can muster air and missile strikes that would likely overwhelm Ukrainian airpower and air defenses and severely damage military and other facilities," wrote RAND senior policy researcher Dara Massicot in an op-ed for Defense One on January 19, about five weeks before Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24.
According to Flight Global's 2022 World Air Forces directory, Russia has 1,511 combat aircraft, while Ukraine has a mere 98. But a week into the war, the Russian air force is yet to steamroll Ukraine's the way Massicot and others thought.
"[T]he roughly 300 modern combat aircraft which the [Russian air force] positioned within easy range of the main contact zones in northern, eastern and southern Ukraine appear to have largely stayed on the ground throughout the first four days of fighting," wrote airpower expert Justin Bronk.
The absence of Russian combat aircraft has allowed the Ukrainian Air Force to fly low-level counter-air and ground attack sorties, Bronk wrote in an essay on Monday for the United Kingdom defense think tank, Royal United Services Institute.
"The fact that Ukrainian troops and civilians have been able to see (and rapidly mythologise) their own pilots continuing to fly sorties above major cities has also been a major morale-boosting factor that has helped solidify the extraordinary spirit of unified resistance shown across the country," Bronk said.
Morale is not the only way Ukraine has benefited from Russia's shy air force. Ukrainian troops wielding surface-to-air missiles and man-portable air defense systems have shot down helicopter gunships with much less risk of retaliation, Bronk said, hampering Russian air assaults. Additionally, Russian ground troops don't seem to be coordinating with their air defense systems, leaving convoys open to air attacks from the Turkish-made TB-2 drones used by Ukraine.
Other experts took a similarly critical view of Russia's performance in the air. Members of the U.S. think tank the Atlantic Council wrote in an assessment on Wednesday that, while exact numbers are vague, "it is clear to us that Russia is losing aircraft and helicopters at a damaging rate. We believe that a root cause of these Russian losses is the Kremlin's failure to secure even localized air superiority over Kyiv."
Given how much Russian forces have suffered from the lack of air cover makes it difficult to understand why so much Russian airpower remains on the sidelines. However, Bronk had a few guesses: a limited number of precision-guided munitions; poor coordination with ground-based air defenses; low number of flying hours; and perhaps a hesitancy not to disabuse notions of foreign observers that the Russian air force has modernized and professionalized in recent years.
The first explanation, a shortage of air-delivered precision-guided munitions, means that Russia has a limited ability to carry out accurate airstrikes in support of ground troops. During Russia's participation in the Syrian Civil War, only one of its aircraft, the Su-34 fighter-bomber, regularly used precision-guided munitions, Bronk explained, and even that aircraft often used unguided bombs and rockets.
"This not only indicates a very limited familiarity with PGMs among most Russian fighter crews, but also reinforces the widely accepted theory that the Russian air-delivered PGM stockpile is very limited," Bronk wrote.
Another analyst agreed with this assessment.
"The simplest explanation for the relative lack of RuAF's involvement in the invasion so far is the distinct lack of PGM stockpiles," wrote security analyst Oliver Alexander on Twitter. "With this deficiency, they are forced to use dumb munitions to operate at scale," which forces them into the crosshairs of short-range air defense systems.
An addendum to the lack of PGMs could be the fact that stand-off weapons such as cruise and ballistic missiles are proving ineffective against Ukrainian targets, the Atlantic Council noted.
"Though they appeared to score some hits, we do not see devastating effects" of stand-off weapons, the council wrote. "The failure to concentrate fires has allowed Ukraine to weather the SOW strikes."
Ukraine's embassy in Turkey shares footage appearing to show a Turkish TB2 drone pulverizing a Russian column.
Incidentally, today is the second anniversary of a Russian airstrike that killed at least 34 Turkish soldiers in Syria.
https://twitter.com/p_zalewski/status/1497891989739737090?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1497891989739737090%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftaskandpurpose.com%2Fnews%2Fhow-big-is-the-russian-air-force%2F (More Tweet videos on this link.)
Russian aircraft also lack targeting pods for finding and identifying far-off targets, Bronk said. Still, the avionics on Russian jets should make them capable of using unguided ordnance to destroy Ukrainian aircraft at their airbases, Bronk said, so why haven't they? Russia also flies Sukhoi Su-35 fighters, which specialize in dogfights, and multirole Su-30 fighters, so why haven't they achieved air supremacy in Ukraine?
One possible explanation could be that the Russians are worried about shooting down their own planes. Russian forces writ large have put on what Michael Kofman, CNA's director of Russian studies, called a "ridiculous and incompetent" display of poor coordination, logistics, and tactics. It stands to reason that Russian leaders would not want to risk expensive aircraft and pilots in that mess of miscommunication. But still, Bronk asked, couldn't the Russian military issue a blanket order for their surface-to-air missiles to hold fire while Russian aircraft flew large-scale bombing missions?
Perhaps the answer is that Russian pilots are not up to the task, Bronk proposed. Official Russian military statements suggest that Russian pilots fly a bit under 100 hours a year, compared to U.S. Air Force pilots who fly around 180-240 hours a year, Bronk said. Without enough training, pilots might struggle to master the hundreds of new jets Russia has acquired in recent years.
"Leadership may be hesitant to commit to large-scale combat operations which would show up the gap between external perceptions and the reality of their capabilities," Bronk noted.
Russia's cyber attacks also have not shown up to help secure air superiority, the Atlantic Council wrote. Russia could have cut off chains of command or communication links to make Ukraine's air defense uncoordinated, but so far, there has been no reporting of such large-scale disruption, thereby "allowing Ukrainian air and air defenses to communicate, navigate, and build an intelligence picture of the battlespace," the council wrote.
Still, the conflict is barely a week old, and the coming days may see Russia bring the full might of its air force to bear against its small Ukrainian foe.
"The fact that there have only been a few confirmed sightings of Russian fixed-wing sorties over Ukraine should not obscure the fact that the … fighter fleets remain a potentially highly destructive force," wrote Bronk, "and one that could be unleashed against aerial and fixed ground targets at short notice over the coming days."
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This Day in U S Military History
March 6
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