I wasn’t sure my post from yesterday would garner such a reaction, but I’d say the pros outweigh the cons 10:1.

Many of you mentioned that the last known bayonet charge might have been executed by a squad of Brit troops in Basra back in ’04.

Well, a little Googleing and low and behold it turns out that bunch of maniac Scots from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders got ambushed by about 100 Mahdi militiamen near Basra, fought it out, and when they ran low on ammunition, fixed bayonets and went to town.

Based on an after-action report found at this link, the intimidation factor of the bayonet and the surprise such a charge caused among the enemy used to engagements at a distance were pivotal.

The bayonet charge by British troops in Basra achieved tactical success primarily because of psychological and cultural factors. It also shows that superior firepower does not guarantee success by either side. In this case, the value of surprise, countering enemy expectations, and strict troop discipline were three deciding characteristics of the bayonet charge.

And, reading the report, you can’t help but come away from it thinking that while the insurgent is courageous in a sense that he’s willing to commit suicide in an attack on his enemy, and that he’s cunning in his building and implementation of weaponry, and that he’s agile in his ability to move quickly in tight spaces and mingle with the population — in the end their internal propoganda that the coalition are wusses just doesn’t make sense.

Propaganda by Sunni and Shiite jihadists regularly advertised the perception that American and British soldiers were cowards. Similar rhetoric increased after the battles of Fallujah in April2004, perhaps to steady the resolve of militia fighters in the face of aggressive coalition attacks.

In addition, British convoys did not engage significantly during previous ambushes, which probably validated the narrative for many Mahdi militiamen. Because many of the Mahdi fighters were teenagers, it is also likely that the Mahdi army used these ambushes for training and recruiting. The attacks were an opportunity for young fighters to use weapons in combat with little risk of serious reprisal.

Who would you pick in a hand-to-hand standoff — in a eyeball to eyeball fistfight? A Scot highlander or a pencil-necked Mahdi bomb clacker?

I pick the guy who eats haggis. Like this dude…

“I wanted to put the fear of God into the enemy. I could see some dead bodies and eight blokes, some scrambling for their weapons. I’ve never seen such a look of fear in anyone’s eyes before. I’m over six feet; I was covered in sweat, angry, red in the face, charging in with a bayonet and screaming my head off. You would be scared, too.”

Corporal Brian Wood
Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment

In the end, the Brit counterassault killed 35 bad guys and left three UK troops lightly wounded.

Keep the bayonets brother!

PS — And here’s another young Brit who had to resort to his rifle blade when the chips were really down:

– Christian

Thanks to several tipsters who alerted me to the public release of a test flight of the Russian 5th-generation fighter prototype: the so-called PAK-FA, or in English, “Future Air Complex for Tactical Air Forces.” Some observers also show it dubbed the T-50.

It looks as if the Russians are trying their hand at an F-22 knock off, with a v-tail, large monolithic wing surface and centerboard intakes. The thing literally looks like a Mig-29 cockpit bolted onto a hacked F-22 stern.

According to Global Security.org, the Sukhoi-built PAK-FA sports two giant AL-41F engines and has a crub weight of about 40,000 pounds — a bit less than the F-22.

Given the budgetary hassles surrounding the American F-22 program and the trajectory that tactical aviation is taking into the UAV world, it stands to reason that Russia slash Sukhoi may run into the same sticker shock LockMart is encountering with American taxpayers. I hear that India is playing some role in the development of the PAK-FA, so that may help defray the costs and justify continued development.

But wasn’t it Russia that developed the simple, reliable, cost-efficient Kalashnikov? Why are they always trying to play on the wiz-bang high-tech turf America has dominated for the last 50 years in high-end military hardware? I guess it’s more a question of what the big-money buyers want (China, India), rather than what’s worked best in the past.

– Christian

The Marine Corps is shipping out the Bataan and two landing ship docks (the Carter Hall and McHenry) to help out in Haiti. About 2,000 Marines from the 22 MEU (which was on leave after a CENTCOM pump) are heading down there with a bunch of gear. Here’s a partial list: 

8 CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters 

4 UH-1N Hueys 

15 7-ton trucks 

1 fork lift 

81 humvees 

8 Light Armored Vehicles 

12 Medical Blocks 

1 Dental Block 

2 Tactical Water Purification Systems (can produce 60,000 gal per day of drinking water from any water source including sea water) 

9 assorted large and portable water containers 

6 large fuel containers 

16 generators 

20 tents 

Various HA care kits (these kits have basic need items in them) 

Notice that there aren’t any Ospreys headed down there. Not sure if that’s because the MEU’s ACE gave up her Ospreys to the 2nd MEB ACE in Afghanistan or what, but one wonders why they didn’t push a few medium lifters onto the Bataan. 

So far as I know, one company from the 82nd Airborne has been lifted there. The Coast Guard says it’s deploying: 

The Coast Guard Cutter Valiant, a 210-foot medium endurance cutter homeported in Miami, Fla. 

The Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk, a 270-foot medium endurance cutter homeported in Key West, Fla. 

The Coast Guard Cutter Tahoma, a 270-foot medium endurance cutter homeported in Portsmouth, N.H. 

The Coast Guard Cutter Forward, a 270-foot medium endurance cutter homeported in Portsmouth, Va. 

U.S. Coast Guard C-130, HU-25 and C-144 fixed-wing aircraft and HH-60 and HH-65 helicopters 

The Navy sent down the Vinson with 19 Helicopters. I’ve also seen a couple Navy C-2As from Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 40 out of Norfolk heading down there and some SH-60 Sea Hawks joining with the guided missile destroyer Normandy which is also on its way. 

Check out our latest story on the Haitian surge at Military.com. 

– Christian

Our boy Colin Clark at DoD Buzz participated in an interview this morning with the vice commander of the Air Force’s 480th ISR wing at Langley AFB.

Looks like they’re spooling up the Soviet missile snooping U-2 for some surveillance flights over Haiti. No, they’re not looking for Hugo Chavez’s secret stash of SS-3s. Instead the U-2 will use its SYERS-2 multispectrum imagery capability to detect damage to buried fuel lines, water mains and possible chemical spills.

But it also seems that Global Hawk has made some flybys as early as the 13th, one day after the horrific earthquake that killed an estimated 50,000.

The spy drone reportedly was sent to assess infrastructure for US military and relief deployments…

A story on the base’s web site quoted Lt. Col. Mark Lozier, operations officer with the 12th Reconnaissance Squadron: “In effect, you get to look at what we know is damaged, and what we know is still serviceable. We can take a look at airfields to assess, right now, whether or not we will be able to get airlift in there with aid. We don’t have to wait for a ground team to get in there and make on site decisions.”

Makes you wonder if being a SEAL or Recon Marine is getting to be a lonely job since GH is doing the eyeballing those guys used to do. Although the Air Force also sent a special tactics team to assess airfields and set up air traffic control for incoming US mil flights.

Anyway, we’re covering the relief operations and military deployments with the entire Military.com, DoD Buzz and DT team and will dispatch the latest in technology and policy-related information here.

PS — Our own Jamie McIntyre of Line of Departure is scheduled to do a flyover of Haiti in an Air Force OC-135 on Saturday. So be sure to check here and LOD for the latest on that mission.

– Christian

From Batu Kutelia, Georgian Ambassador to the USA, Canada and Mexico:

“The story is categorically false. There was no US arms shipment that was halted in transit for any reason. Furthermore, Georgia is not cooperating with Israel on potential military action against any country. Our military cooperation with our partners is designed to increase our self defense capabilities, our interoperability with NATO, and our ability to contribute to international stability operations.”

–Christian

We have a pretty dramatic story this afternoon on Military.com from our Associate Editor Bryant Jordan.

The sharp-eared gumshoe picked up a throw away line during a panel discussion yesterday that had giant implications. Here’s a taste:

According to an expert on the Middle East, Israel may soon no longer be alone in possessing nuclear weapons in that volatile region of the globe.

But the other power with “the bomb” may not necessarily be Iran. While some countries claim Tehran is bent on becoming a nuclear-armed power – a claim Iran denies – an Arab country already is taking steps to go nuclear, says Jim Hoagland, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist, who spoke Thursday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“As a senior Arab political official who was in town recently said to a small group of us, [that] it’s clear there is already activity underway on the Arab side on the development of nuclear weapons,” Hoagland told a packed room at the institute’s offices. Hoagland did not identify the Arab official or others in the “small group,” and hastened to add that there were “no details to provide.”

Bryant tried to reach Hoagland but to no avail. He got some comments from a nuke watchdog group and some analysts, but he’s still digging into who Hoagland might have been talking about.

Read the entire story HERE.

– Christian

I couldn’t resist folks. I penned an op-ed piece for Military.com yesterday based on the Obama administration’s reaction to the Great Christmas Day Underwear Bombing Caper.

Bottom line is that everyone discussing this attempted terrorist attack and the responses to it are talking about defense, and we hear nothing about offense.

I use the analogy of the MRAP scurry to describe the automatic reaction to pile more concrete into America’s TSA Maginot Line.

All the after-action testimony, recommendations and takeaways resulting from the attempted Christmas Day bombing by Nigerian jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab will not get us one inch closer to preventing these kinds of attacks on our countrymen in the future. Everyone is conspicuously ignoring the simple fact that the only way to prevent such a plan from ever evolving into action is to detain or kill the people plotting it before they even get to the airport. But no one’s talking about any of that, and you surely won’t see it in any official mea culpa…

…But what the MRAP did not do was prevent an IED from exploding. The MRAP did not kill one single IED emplacer, nor did it destroy a single IED-making plant, fabricator or planner. Instead, what eventually stopped the IEDs from going off was killing and capturing the people financing, sheltering, building and putting the IEDs into the ground and drying up support for those who might follow. It was an aggressive offensive strategy that stopped the IEDs, not hunkering down inside a bank vault on wheels — snipers, not cold-rolled steel, proved the decisive factor.

In the piece, I tell Military.com readers not to bother reading the White House report or the list of changes mandated by the administration. But here, we gotta take a look at a few of them and try to contain our laughter.
Potus Directive Corrective Actions 1–7-10
More gadgets and gizmos for overworked (or voyeuristic) TSA screeners to see through our clothes:

Agressively pursue advanced screening technology, protocols and procedures, especially in regard to aviation and other transportation sectors…

Hey State Department, let’s just think about whether we should be issuing visas to dudes who we’re warned might be terrorists…?

Review visa issuance and revocation criteria and processes, with a special emphasis on counterterrorism concerns…

Time to reorganize an already reorganized (new) organization:

[DNI shall] immediately reaffirm and clarify roles and responsibilities of the counterterrorism analytic components of the Intelligence Community in syncronizing, correlating and analyzing all sources of intelligence related to terrorism.

…huh? Have you ever heard more bureaucratic drivel? All it’s missing is “synergize across platforms to increase revenue streams to facilitate top leveling and skill rebalancing.”

And this last one is my favorite:

[The NSA will] develop and begin implementation of a training course to enhance analysts’ awareness of watchlisting processes and procedures in partnership with the National Counterterrorism Terrorist Center and the Terrorist Screening Center.

Great, now the code breakers and cell phone signal listeners get to spend a Thursday and a Friday in “workshops” to “enhance awareness” of watchlists. I would love to have been in the meeting where this little morsel of “reform” was hashed out. How about a course on how to send a signal through AQ in the AP’s cell phones so their heads will explode when they’re coordinating an attack…oh, yeah, sorry — they’re “suspects.”

 You get my point. Here’s my walkoff, now let the pile-on begin!

President Obama said in his Jan. 7 remarks after the release of the White House report on the Christmas Day attack that “of course, there is no fool proof solution” to preventing such an attack. Well, actually, there is. Leave a smoking hole from a Reaper drone where the next Abdulmutallab sets foot instead of relying on some overworked TSA screener to interpret what’s in someone’s underwear at an airport security stop.

– Christian

Reliable sources are telling me the US recently shut down a massive arms shipment to the Republic of Georgia because the country was working with the Israelis on a strike against Iran.

My weapons and private security sources tell me that Georgian officials were stunned when the Obama administration halted the flight of a planeload (or several) of weapons, including small arms, helicopters and “heavy weapons.” Apparently, the shipment of US-made equipment was stopped by the White House, going around DoD and State, my sources tell me.

The reasons are twofold and admittedly speculative, since my sources are talking to the Georgian side who are perplexed. One, the Russians may have pressured the administration to halt the deal, preferring to sell the arms to the Georgians themselves — or NOT have the US sell the weapons to them. Second, and more controversial, apparently the Israelis have been in close negotiations with the Georgians to use airfields around Tbilisi as a hopping point for a strike against Iran’s nuclear capability. My sources say 3,000 Israeli advisors and military people are in Georgia right now.

If you look at a map, it’s a long route, but Israeli planes would have to fly over Turkey (which is a very close ally) and Georgia and a very small sliver of Russia to reach the Caspian, where it can fly unencombered to points in Iran. My back of the napkin/Google Earth calculation is that the trip would be a little over 2,000 miles from Jerusalem to Esfahan. How would Russian let Israeli planes fly over its territory on a trip to blow up Iranian reactors which Moscow has helped build? My sources aren’t sure, but maybe the diplomatic hassle of doing business with Iran is outweighed by an under the table agreement to buy Georgia’s arsenal through Russian companies and transport, thereby handing more control of Tbilisi’s affairs to Moscow.

More as it unfolds.

– Christian

Brown said the latest increase takes London’s contribution to more than 10,000 personnel, if the U.K.‘s Special Forces are included. The ministry has previously said that the additional troops would raise the number of British forces deployed to 9,500, though it now appears this figure did not include the Special Forces.

The additional British forces will be deployed to Helmand in southern Afghanistan in December. Brown declined to identify which partner nations had already indicated they would be willing to provide more personnel.

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to unveil a revised Afghanistan strategy during a speech Dec. 1, including a substantial increase in U.S. forces.

Brown, with United Nations Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon, announced Nov. 28 that the U.K. is to host a conference on Afghanistan at the end of January 2010. Brown said: “The conference will cover both our military and our political strategies, but concentrate on the political strategy for Afghanistan.

“We will need further troop and training commitments from partners. I expect to see 5,000 further troops committed by other nations, and the London conference will be also an opportunity for some to make new commitments,” he added.

The British and U.S. governments face growing opposition to the war in Afghanistan, and the emphasis on ‘Afghanization’ – in which the Afghan military and security forces increasingly take over from the International Stabilization and Assistance Force – is an effort to address such concerns, and to provide an exit strategy.

“I hope we will see this process of Afghanization happening in a way that people can feel more secure, that side by side with the British troops, the Afghans are taking responsibility for themselves,” said Brown, “so we can look forward to a time in the future, for which there is no timetable at the moment, when Afghan forces can take responsibility in new areas and British forces are able to come home.”

One of the criteria Brown had set to provide additional British troops was that all members of the U.K. deployed force would be “fully equipped for the operations they are asked to undertake.”

Read the rest of this story, see yet another Russian stealth frigate, check out Ivan’s landing on a Frog carrier and tick off JSF’s December goals from our friends at Aviation Week, exclusively on Military.com.

– Christian

And why 10K less than McChrystal asked for? Anyone wonder why 30K is a better number than 40K?

Military.com|by Christian Lowe