Shorter Recommended Reading
What exactly is asymmetrical about submarines, smaller missile boats, mines, aircraft, and/or land-based missile systems? Swarm tactics with small boats does not represent an asymmetrical military capability, rather it represents a symmetrical naval tactic that is well chronicled as far back as Themistocles.
The way this Office of Naval Intelligence report describes Iranian capabilities as “asymmetrical” does not encourage me, because it essentially groups equipment and tactics that are common among small nations – littoral submarines, missile boats, mines, shore based anti-ship missiles – as an asymmetric military capability. That is fundamentally inaccurate, these capabilities are symmetrical even as these capabilities specifically target what is seen as a weakness in US Navy Fleet forces.
All of these naval capabilities – littoral submarines, missile boats, mines, shore based anti-ship missiles – are simply exploiting the absence of a single naval element of combat in the US Navy:
Normally, I do not like to weigh in on maritime matters, there’s a lot to know there and it is not my area of expertise or more than a passing interest but I think Galrahn has hit on a stubborn lacuna among the flag officers. Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper more or less kicked the Navy’s collective ass so badly in that infamous wargame years ago, that the need for smaller, screening, combat vessels should be a problem en route to being solved by now. Calling attacks from small vessels and missiles “asymmetreic” seems to mean in Navyspeak “If we call it this an ‘asymmetric threat’ then we don’t have to buy those goddamn little brown water boats like Martin Sheen was riding in Apocalypse Now!“.
Adam Elkus and Lt. John Sullivan on borders and 3rd Generation gangs ramping up security threats.
Fun with dinosaurs.
Eide Neurolearning Blog – Orchid Kids: The Positives of Intense and Demanding Children
Shepherd’s Pi – A-Space Past and Future
For IC and Social Media -philes.
In Harmonium –Some thoughts on Anthropology as a “Science”
That’s it!
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