We all do IW!

Irregular Warfare is a hot buzzword these days, the kind of generic catch-all phrase that covers all those things the American military doesn’t do all that well but are actually a lot more “regular” than most would like to believe.

The Small Wars Journal linked to an Inside Defense piece (behind a paywall, which the NewsWire does not have the capital to tear down) reporting that the House subcommittee on unconventional threats agrees unanimously that there needs to be an “Executive Agent” for Irregular Warfare. As opposed as I normally am to creating yet another bureaucratic agency, there may be some value in
this. As the SWJ excerpt points out:

“There are a lot of different people that have concerns” with irregular
warfare operations, Smith said, adding an interagency approach would
ensure those concerns would be heard.

Damn straight. Just about everybody has some sort of capability to offer for IW fight. If there is anything my Special Operations class taught me, it is that Major Ray is right. SOCOM is not the beast for this. There’s too much going on.

This wide field is a key reason to assign an overall Executive Agent for this, but it’s also a major challenge. For such an agent to be effective, it’s going to need a few key qualities:

• A clear chain of command. One way of doing this might be to establish a SOCOM-like organization, with its own budget, and fit the civilian agencies into that command structure somehow. Regardless of how it works, if this agent doesn’t have some real power, they’re going to get the shaft. Big Green and Big Blue won’t want to send men or money to this mission, and if they can’t be forced to, they won’t. The same goes for the CIA, or the FBI. Somebody (by which I mean a person, not an agency) has got to be in charge, and they’ve got to be in charge all the way.
• Its own money. This goes along with the issues from above. If this agent can’t buy its own gear, it will get secondhand castoffs that nobody wants anymore. See Operation EAGLE CLAW’s helicopters for an example.
• A bunch of brains. Even though eventually one person (and therefore one agency) is going to be running the show, they can’t be an intellectual dictator. There has got to be a joint discussion going on with this thing. That should seem obvious, but if care isn’t taken to make sure it happens, it just won’t.

John Dvorak just posted about the fragility of online social networks. I think he missed the point.

He claims that “there is no such thing as a real community online.” There are only “pretend” communities.

I suppose it depends on your definition of community. Communities come together on the Internet all the time–see Wikimedia’s various projects, among others. People still meet, build relationships, and gain synergistic value from one another. I’m IMing a friend of mine right now that I met from an online community.

That specific community is now defunct, and perhaps this is Dvorak’s larger point–that individual social networks value is transitory at best. But he says himself that these things are generational and evolutionary–once there are too many people on Twitter, the early adopters will have moved on to the next big thing.

Someone in the comments pointed out that real communities are just as fragile. Yogi Berra once said it something like: “No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” This is true for electronic or meat networking locations–but the network abides. The location is fragile… the network is simply (and wonderfully) mobile.

In my Information Operations class today, someone started talking about net-centricity and the way it flattens command and control (although he didn’t quite call it that, more’s the pity–he took a fairly high-altitude view of the thing and didn’t even specifically reference Future Combat Systems or Land Warrior).

It got me thinking, though: could I cobble together a Do It Yourself Land Warrior system, like John Robb has started thinking about?

Answer: Yes.

Step 1: Get your team on Helio.
Helio’s Buddy Beacon service serves as the backbone for our DIY Land Warrior kit. A GPS receiver allows you to broadcast your position to track the position of up to 25 friends–five fire teams? Zoomed in far enough, this offers a major part of Land Warrior’s functionality, identification of friendly forces.

Step 2: Tweet and tag.
Sending up “digital chemical flares” is another advantage of the Land Warrior system. Geotagging Twitter tweets is one way to do this. Represented on a map using Twitter and Google Maps APIs, it might look something like this. Add photos to it to share intelligence, and you’ve got this (map example).

Is it that… simple? Well, no, not quite. This DIY system would be neither secure nor fault-proof. The Army system adds a Dead Reckoning module for when GPS just isn’t good enough. But you could track friends, share intel on enemies “instantly,” and, with your phone’s camera, peek around corners. Those seem to me to be the high points of the Land Warrior System, especially for someone operating in the States, where GPS coverage is generally pretty good.

Ahem.  We begin bombing in…

Well, I’m not quite sure.

Life occurs, and it has been way too long since I’ve taken a poke around in here, but that may or may not be changing soon.  As I focus my life, this blog will become more and more focused utnil it is a veritable laser.

Until such focus is attained, this will likely be a place for me to talk about things I’m learning and thinking about.  Things like a DIY Land Warrior system, how to avoid appointing an official American tongue, and how the DoD might be better organized.

So… WNW v2.5, coming up.  If a blog is posted and nobody is pinged, does it make a sound?

As you read this, I’m off the computer and on the road, heading out to the Coast Guard Academy.  It’s the first of two trips in as many weeks, both to compete in a debate-like academic event called Mock Trial.  The site isn’t very well designed, but the basic gist is that I’ll be pretending to be a lawyer in a few trial simulations this weekend and a few more next weekend.  Any of you collegiate-like folks out there, take a look at it.  It’s fun stuff.

Anyway, that’s why posts have been sparse and will continue to be for the next two weeks- I’ve been getting ahead on coursework and prepping for the tournaments.  I’ll be back on Monday.  Until then, I leave you with this:

From xkcd.

I like flying commercial.

It gets frustrating sometimes. Long lines, too short transfer times and the fact that airplanes eat my cell phones all put a damper on my fun quotient. For some reason, though, I still like it. I like the expensive crappy food. I like the feeling of takeoff. And I sleep like a baby in those narrow, cramped seats.

There’s another reason for me to like to fly. Since I fly out of Denver International Airport, the more I fly, the better the chances that I’ll be under those huge white pavilions when the world ends. When the Illuminati who really control the world take their refuge in the sixth underground level of the caverns beneath the Airport, I’ll just knock on their door. How could they refuse a guy with my disarming smile?

That’s right folks, it’s Way-out Wednesday, and today’s expose is a doozy. Before we take one more step, refresh your memory of this disclaimer:

DISCLAIMER: I make no guarantees about the accuracy (or lack thereof) of any of these posts, but true believers (or virulent skeptics) are welcome to discuss politely in the comments. Below statements do not represent my beliefs (necessarily), nor are they meant as an endorsement of any sort by Wingman NewsWire (unless I specifically say so).

It’s legally binding.

So what on earth am I talking about? Just this.

If you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing, here’s an overview:

Denver International Airport may or may not be run by the Illuminati, child-eating reptile-resembling aliens or a more sinister organization.

Why? Because it’s:

A: The largest airport in the United States (bigger than San Francisco proper).
B: The site of a mural which shows three dead minority women: a Native American, an African American woman, and a Jewish woman.
C: Has a network of fiber optic (not counting plain copper wire) cable that is longer than the Nile River.
D: The inside is supposedly invisible to infrared and RADAR detection.
E: Reportedly has 8 subbasements (who needs EIGHT basements?)
F: Is “the most inconvenient airport in America”, ranked by its distance from Denver proper.

And the Big One….

That’s a MASONIC SYMBOL that you see there, folks, with what looks like a KEYPAD above it! The entrance to the super secret catacombs?

One can only hope. Here’s a closer image.

Note the title beneath the date: New World Airport Commission. I rest my case.

That’s it for this week, folks! Here’s a compendium of links for further information:

“An Open Letter to the New World Order Denver Airport”
An article from Westword on the subject.
An almost reasonable account of the conspiracy.

Keep digging, and always- if you come across a conspiracy that you think needs airing, you can send it to me.

Send a congressman into space.  There.  It’s solved.  So why do we need this?

From the site:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will conduct the largest and most comprehensive counterterrorism exercise to date from Oct. 15-19 in Arizona and Oregon, and the U.S. territory of Guam. Top Officials 4 (TOPOFF 4) is the fourth in a series of congressionally-mandated exercises and involves various federal agencies as well as the governments of Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom…

TOPOFF 4 will involve more than 15,000 participants from all levels of government, international partners and the private sector in a full-scale, simulated response to radiological dispersal device attacks.

Our “premier terrorism preparedness exercise” is based on a dirty bomb threat?  And has been based on a dirty bomb threat for the last 8 years?

I’m only halfway kidding.  The United States has a lot of problems that, while they might not look as big as a “dirty bomb” going off, are a bit more pressing.  Case in point: 11 September was not a radiological, chemical or biological attack.

Future devastating attacks will be “black swans” (as John Robb calls them in Brave New War), attacks coming out of left field that are cheap and unexpected and targeted at infrastructure.  Why were the attacks of 11 September genius?  Hijackings had been around for decades by that point.  Dealing with them had become fairly old hat.

They were brilliant because they connected two things that people hadn’t connected before.  Who thinks of turning an airplane into a guided missile?  No one- until someone with great synthesis skills started turning over airplanes in their head.

The attacks on the Trade Center probably caused less casualties than a radiological attack would.  Why was that message chosen then?  Because it made people afraid to fly.  Because no one was thinking about defending against that kind of attack.  We’ve been preparing to respond to radiological emergencies for better than thirty years.

Wargaming programs like TOPOFF would be better off confronting “top officials” and first responders with something that they’ve never seen before.  Hit them with something like an attack on a power plant, or an oil refinery, or a bridge.  Attack the infrastructure.  This isn’t a new idea- it’s been around since John Warden’s The Air Campaign and we used it to toss Iraq in DESERT STORM.  Why do we assume that our enemies won’t be that smart?

Good news! The senate has taken a vote that delays any real decision in the forced withdrawal from Iraq until at least Memorial Day. I’ll be the first to admit that all the political mumbo-jumbo is bloody confusing, but at least business will continue as usual for a few months.

It’s good Congress is stepping up and trying to take back the reins of the war- the Authorization for Use of Military Force is one of the worst documents written in the history of politics, I’m pretty sure. Congress dropped the ball when it abdicated its constitutionally stated war powers. The American government needs to find the balance between giving our Commander-in-Chief the freedom he needs to do his job and leaving him alone like a kid in a candy shop. I’ve hyped Brian Orend before, but I’m going to do it again. His just post bellum ideas would be a good start for a series of benchmarks on the road to Iraqi autonomy.

((As a counterpoint, check out this post from the Pidge discussing this article. It suggests that America’s circumstances were perfect for our rise to federalized democracy and that Iraq’s… aren’t. The full article is on my reading list.))

Senator Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee has it exactly right: whatever happens, it’s a bad thing if the troops overseas feel that Congress- or the American public- has deserted them. I think Mike Shinoda says it best:

“Get some, I know you boys got some work to do.”

UPDATE: ABC just updated their article, and I thought I had to share this priceless quote: “How many more thousands of innocent Iraqis have to die before we finally accept our responsibility to bring this war to an end?”

Senator Durbin needs to realize that our presence is the only thing keeping many innocent Iraqis alive. If we pull out before both we and the Iraqi security forces are ready, the area will be a carnage-fest faster than you can say “Mogadishu.”

Circling the wagons around Wolfowitz is an interesting move. I can understand the political subtext- don’t leave the planner of Iraq out to dry- but Wolfy’s going down, methinks. With almost all the other shareholding nations pushing to give him the boot, I’m not sure how much of a chance he’s got. We’ll see what happens. Frankly, I wish my girlfriend could give me a sixty thousand dollar pay raise. That’d be sick. Heck, I’d take a six thousand one.

The White House seems to be making a pattern of backing doomed causes lately, though. Take a look at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. His Number Two just announced his upcoming resignation, he’s under fire from all sides (except the White House’s, at least in public) and yet in the midst of Congressional hearings he finds time to back more draconian copyright laws. I especially like this phrase from a memo to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi regarding the proposed changes: “subject to forfeiture any property that constituted or was derived from any proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of… infringement offenses.” That means (if this passes) anything that ever touched that mp3 you got off of myTunes is up for them to grab. Start running now.

Anyway, loyalty to the people who got you there is great, but I think there’s a time when you’ve got to cut your losses. I think that time is now. The administration has been taking some pretty heavy hits lately. Props for sticking to your guns, Mr. President, but when your approval rating is one third of our nation, there might be something a little wrong.

I’m torn. On the one hand, I can understand the need for secrecy regarding military operations. Not everyone needs to know everything and supposedly the Tamil Tigers are using programs like Google Earth to plot out attack plans for their new air force. I have to agree with Threat Level’s Mr. Singel, though, when he says that the government can’t keep a lid on information forever. “Can’t stop the signal,” as some might say. And here’s the real question: do you even want to?

So what if we did this: put a moratorium on the satellite footage that goes out of these “sensitive areas.” Make it six months or so. The tactical situation will be unrecognizable in six months and there’s a good chance the operational will be too. You can have all the resolution you want of those areas, it’ll just be six months old. The government can’t keep the lid on ALL the information ALL the time, but it might be able to keep SOME of it for SOME of the time.

It might require our operational plans to be a little more flexible, changing H.Q. locations periodically for instance. How big is that price really? Besides, if we ever get into another semi-conventional war, we won’t just have to worry about our citizens’ satellites. We’ll have to worry about the other guys’, too.

Look here for an interesting overview on the Tamil Air Tigers and the way they serve as a guerrilla “think tank.”