15 thoughts on “Chicagoboyz Waiting Room Series: 37”

  1. How did this not get all over the internet? Banned from being shared? Did I miss it because I’m not on facebook?
    https://www.facebook.com/stuart.scheller/posts/614343656227929
    Maybe it’s because he takes a flamethrower to everyone….
    This especially made me laugh…
    “General Mattis. The warrior monk. We all know you became a monk because you are gay. To be clear, my generation don’t care about sexuality. We are better than that. But our generation does care about honesty. You brought to my Infantry Officer Course 1-06 what can only be described as a female prop. It was uncomfortable for all of us. As soon as you left, we all knew you were a liar. We were young, but not stupid. Back then Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still a policy. We understood why you lied. But as the policy was rescinded, and we continued to hear the rumors, it bothered us that you kept up the lie. You weren’t a monk. You were dishonest. And for all your talk about the 5-3-5 and counter-insurgency… can we go back and review the record? The academics loved you. You talked about reading books all the time. The only problem… you didn’t win any wars. Maybe you should have read different books.”

  2. Who is it who’s been asking about an American Caesar in the near future?
    You’re not going to find one from the Pentagon ranks, all you’ll find is idiot careerists there.
    Looking for the likes of an American Bolsonaro, or (shudder) Chavez, and you’ll see that this guy, or someone similar, fits the bill pretty well…

  3. Brian, thanks for that link from former, now jailed, Lt. Col. Scheller — useful for us non-FacePlant users:

    “To General Alford adjudicating my legal situation. When I briefed you in July you said, “We have an entire generation of LtCols who don’t know how to make decisions. They feel the need to ask permission.” Ask Tom and Sung, they were there. My generation is sick of being bullied. Maybe my generation knows a little bit more than you think. We’ve watched you play politics for 20 years. You thought we were too stupid to learn?

    Emphasis added. Is Lt. Col. Scheller, who does not have a kind word for President Trump or any other US politician or Flag Officer, the first swallow of a summer of military discontent? Or is he Horatio on the bridge?

  4. Yeah, I’ve reluctantly concluded that Mattis is and was a fraud; one of my Marine acquaintances intimated something like this “gay” thing to me, years ago, warning me off of my approval of Mattis. I think I said something to him along the lines of “Yeah, I wish more Army generals were like him…”, and his reaction was a bit…. Off. Normally, Marines will talk much trash about anything they can to pump “Marine” over “Army”, but in his case in talking about Mattis, all I got were pursed lips, a disapproving facial expression, and something about Mattis being super-political and very cliquish in his command climate. This particular Marine had worked in one of Mattis’s units when he was a commander, and then, later on, in a headquarters element when he’d made GO (General Officer) rank.

    Makes me think, looking back on it: If you’re a GO, and your former senior enlisted are not exactly enthusiastic about you and your works…? That’s kinda… Telling. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, because that particular Marine was not your average “Hoo-rah” type, very quiet, very self-effacing. Which, in and of itself, is pretty strange when encountered in a senior combat arms Marine… I kinda got the impression that he didn’t think it was OK for an outsider to approve or disapprove of a Marine officer, but maybe I was picking up the wrong things…?

    I had missed that Mattis had had anything to do with Theranos, at the time that was going on. Now, coupled with his rah-rah for Amazon with the Pentagon Cloud contract BS…? Kinda makes me wonder if he wasn’t looking to cash in, all along.

    I will note one damn thing I should have picked up on, earlier: I’ve never run into a senior officer who made a big deal about reading books that actually, y’know… Read them. Most of those types make a big show of having them on display, and discussing the Cliff’s Notes versions of what they think are the contents, but when you get down to actually talking about the books with them? You’ll usually see a distinct note of panic in their eyes, and they’ll rapidly shut down the discussion and move on to other topics. The few I know who actually have bedraggled, re-read copies of the various works that are on the reading lists…? Those guys never bring ’em up, ever. They don’t make a big deal of it, and you’ll never see them pedantically quoting them the way the ones who dramatically preface their various speeches and writings with sundry quotations from the ancients. The guys who I know actually read the stuff they had on their shelves? They’d always use stuff like that for a laugh; that supposed quote from Petronius Arbiter being a favorite for most of them, for some damn reason.

    I do not have the respect for Mattis I once had. I have never considered Milley anything other than a tool; his bullshit “overmatch” and “lethality” reasonings behind his espousal of the whole NGSW program strike me as being really trite and essentially meaningless. I really think that whole thing exists so he can leverage a good post-military career with one of the big defense contractors. I also doubt that anything from that program will ever see the light of day…

    Which is sad, because I kinda suspect, but cannot prove, that the 5.56mm/7.62mm NATO rounds are at least somewhat wrong, and that we should have gone with something in about 6.5mm from the beginning. Can’t prove it to my own satisfaction, though; that’s just my “feel” for the issue, and I could not possibly justify the expense of switching over at this point, without actual validated numbers to back that up. You don’t spend billions on “feelings”.

    Then again, that’s probably why I didn’t make a career as an officer, something I am profoundly grateful for, right about now. I can’t imagine what Scheller is going through, or any of the other decent officers that somehow missed the purge. If I were involved in the whole Afghanistan withdrawal debacle as one of the senior officers? At this point, I’d have either done what Scheller did, or eaten the muzzle of a handgun if I’d chickened out and gone along with it all.

    Either that, or I’d have gone postal in some staff meeting filled with sycophants.

    Here’s the thing that I don’t see highlighted in the media: When Trump wanted out of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan…? All of them, Mattis, Milley, the State Department? They slow-walked and deliberately did everything they could to prevent him from actually making it happen. And, when Trump was told “No, we can’t do it right away…”, he listened.

    And, when Biden said “Go…”, all these same assholes jumped through hoops to make it happen, apparently without issue or even making the slightest attempt to hinder the process. So, what was the difference, here? Was it Democrat/Republican, or do the Democrats have blackmail material on them that they used to force them into disobeying Trump and doing exactly what Biden said, without the slightest attempt to even slow the process?

    That point, right there, is the elephant in the room. Why did that happen?

    Any way you look at it, the entire Pentagon needs to be purged. From those facts I just laid out, they cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

  5. A key issue from the recent hearings which was apparently NOT addressed — Who (which human being) made the decision to abandon Bagram air base? Who failed to alert the allies and the Afghans?

    Someone made that very bad decision.

    Lots of other people “followed orders”, although that was not accepted as an excuse after WWII. But the key is — Who ordered it? Biden the Buffon? Milley the Magnificent? Someone else? Whoever it was should be identified and driven out of any position of responsibility. We all make mistakes — and we have to pay for them.

  6. One does wonder, Kirk – one does wonder at how the whole command structure karked up the exit from Afghanistan in just about every way that a project could be karked up…

    Meanwhile, I’m wondering how the “get vaxxed or dishonorable discharge” ukase is going to work out for the DOD. The PTB in the Pentagon insist that most of the force is obeying … but still. I wonder how many wings are going to be grounded, how many ships kept in port, how many areas of bases like Pendleton and Hood are going to be shuttered because the manpower to keep them functioning just isn’t there.

    PS – I like the sitting room! Nice fish!

  8. I spent years examining kids for the military. I enjoyed talking to them, which is why I kept at it for about 7 years. I think I got a feel for why they were joining. I don’t know how this thing is going to affect recruiting. I had quit before the Covid thing came along and don’t know what is going on lately but I do wonder. I was still doing it when the transgender thing began and the whole MEPS staff heaved a sigh of relief when Trump stopped it.

  9. Question–can a discharge be modified after the fact? Could a future president (or Congress?) order that anyone who gets a dishonorable discharge purely for refusing this jab be instead given an honorable discharge?

  10. @Brian,

    The idea that they’d give dishonorables for vaccine refusal is patently ridiculous–I could not get them to give a dishonorable discharge for people I was having thrown out of the Army for actual and literal misconduct that was so egregious as to have actually warranted court martial. Hell, it’s usually a “Less than Honorable” for just about anything up to and including drunk driving that included vehicular manslaughter… I’ve seen the assholes argue whether an alleged child molester and actual rapist warranted the dishonorable.

    So… Vaccine refusal? Most I could see that going would be a “Less than Honorable”. And, any discharge can be modified afterwards by the Board for the Correction of Military Records, and I’ve seen those morons sign off on turning a dishonorable for criminal conduct into an Honorable Discharge.

    TBH, an Honorable Discharge ain’t worth what it used to be, but I suppose it could be used as a tool after the services and the Board were politicized.

  11. This is all depressing as hell.

    If the last few decades have shown us anything, it is that the PTB can do whatever the hell they like and change anything they want, retroactively.

    It’s becoming like the old joke about the Great Soviet Encyclopedia–issued in 3-ring binder form to keep up with the rapidly changing events of the past.

  12. Kirk,
    I think there’s a good case to be made for a bullet heavier than can be fired accurately from a 5.65. Really, the 7.62 with a 155 gr. boat tail is probably one of the most accurate military rounds ever, out to around 1,000 yards outside of the various special purpose magnums. The main drawbacks are that it is heavy, bulky and high recoil. The 6.5’s have about 40% more cross sectional area than the 5.65 and will accurately handle bullets more than twice as heavy at comparable muzzle velocities. They also have generally superior ballistic coefficients that translate to less drop and more energy down range. It’s a very popular caliber for hunting up to elk where 5.56 mm’s aren’t even legal for deer a lot of places.

    That said, the the wet ware pulling the trigger is more important than what the trigger is attached to. I don’t think the difference in being shot by one would be decisively different over the other and I, at least, would duck just as fast for either.

    After nearly 60 years, we have a lot of the kinks worked out of the 5.65’s. A realist would presume that there would be a similar curve for any radically new rifle. There have been any number of near disastrous new rifle introductions different places.

    If the defense establishment were a baseball player with the same batting average as they have for successful weapon system development, they wouldn’t make it to AAA. Whatever problems we have won’t be solved by bigger bullets

  13. @MCS,

    Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. I think we should have gone with a 6.5mm from the beginning, just like the Swedes did. Ballistically, that’s the sweet spot for an individual weapon.

    Now, if it was me? I’d have plumped down for the .280 British or its earlier version, for the individual weapon role, and something like the 8mm Swedish MG round they issued back in the 1930s for the crew-served weapons. Practical experience has shown a couple of things–one, the 7.62mm NATO round is compromised for MG use, having been biased too far towards trying to make an individual weapons cartridge out of it, and that there’s no getting away from the “two-caliber solution” down at the squad and platoon level. Every time they try doing one of those “one size fits all” cartridges that actually work for individual weapons, like the 7.62X39 or the 5.56X45, they wind up having to supplement it with something heavier for the squad-level support weapon. Individual weapon and the Automatic Rifle role, those cartridges work fine, but when you need the authority of the bigger cartridge to get through cover and take out light vehicles, well… Yeah.

    The way I see it, the 5.56X45 is a little too light and weak for its uses today, and the same goes for the 7.62X51. I’d go heavier in each role, but not so heavy you can’t fire the individual weapon on full-auto from the shoulder and hit anything, and the support role shouldn’t be so heavy you can’t support it logistically on foot.

    However, comma… I have no numbers to verify that or justify spending the money to replace the fleet we have right now. It’s all just “feels”, and I could be entirely mistaken. The 5.56X45 has been “just good enough”, since Vietnam. I really don’t see them having done the work to invalidate that, at all.

    Tactics and operational intent, first… Then, weapons design to support that. If the current tactics are meant to remain unchanged, why are they suddenly needing new cartridges and weapons…?

    I’ll note that there is a proclivity on the part of the US and NATO in general to design the new toy first, then figure out how to use it. That’s kinda OK-ish when the technology in question is new and not well-understood, but for a mature technology like we have in small arms today? You design to meet the needs of what you’re intending to do, tactically and operationally. Doing things the other way round is quite literally putting the cart before the horse.

  15. The reason they went with smaller rounds was that studies indicated that most of the kills they got, in the larger sense of this, were accidental. So more lead downrange even if it was a bit smaller, was not a bad idea, The fact that they can carry a lot more ammo, to this end, is why they did make the change.

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