Liberal Success in Quest to Subvert the Best

Background

Women now comprise about 14 percent of the nation's 1.4 million active military personnel.  US President John F Kennedy announced the creation of a Navy special operations force in 1961. The Navy has a 75 percent dropout rate at the 21-week Coronado training course known as Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S.).

"Under the schedules military leaders delivered to [Defense Secretary Chuck] Hagel, the Army will develop standards by July 2015 to allow women to train and potentially serve as Rangers, and qualified women could begin training as Navy SEALs by March 2016 if senior leaders agree. Military leaders have suggested bringing senior women from the officer and enlisted ranks into special forces units first to ensure that younger, lower-ranking women have a support system to help them get through the transition."  source

Reactions

(pro)

“I would say with a lot of training a handful of women could do that,” Rowe said. Still, if she was interested in the military, “that’s where I’d want to go.”   Brittany Rowe, 27,
San Diego lifeguard

(con)

– First, the standards in place are combat-proven standards – there can be no slackening of standards. The run times and pull-up minimums are the same for all. On the 100-yard buddy-carry sprint–I carry you and your combat load and you carry me; it doesn’t matter if I’m a 150-pound SEAL (which I was) or a 220-pound SEAL, as many are today. Your life and mine depend on my ability to get you out of a kill zone and safely to cover. There can be no compromise.
    – Second, those women who can meet this standard have to do so in more than ones or twos. It is unreasonable to open training to 200 women to find two who can meet standard.
    – Third, and finally, there is the cultural issue. Do we as a nation, and an American culture, want our mothers, sisters, and daughters in the business of sustained, direct, mortal, combat?   - Dick Couch, former SEAL and a leading authority on U.S. military special-operations training. 

 *************

Coincidence or Scripted?

The US Navy Seal who went from Chris to Kristin

Chris Beck spent 20 years as an elite US Navy Seal, often operating in secret behind enemy lines.  After retiring from the US Navy as a highly decorated serviceman Chris Beck wrote "I am now taking off all my disguises and letting the world know my true identity as a woman." Chris had become Kristin Beck.

YouTube: Transgender Navy SEAL Chris Beck U.S. War Hero becomes Kristin Beck, Rated R

                                                            

 Submarines are always silent and strange.

Mothballing half our CVNs in Near Future

  
Background
WASHINGTON | Fri Jul 19, 2013
(Reuters) - Budget cuts have prompted the U.S. Navy to trim the number of warships deployed overseas and eroded the readiness of forces at home, undercutting its ability to respond rapidly to future crises around the globe, the top Navy officer said on Friday.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel toured bases across the Southeast this week, delivering the sobering news that the department next year will likely face a further $52 billion in sequestration cuts, which were not factored into the Pentagon's proposed $526.6 billion budget request for 2014. source

Now
The Navy has had to cut training and maintenance because of spending reductions to the point where many other ships and personnel are not fully certified for all the tasks they might ordinarily have to handle, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations, told a Pentagon briefing.

[T]he Navy has only one fully prepared carrier strike group and one amphibious assault group in reserve that it could rush to the scene. By comparison, the Navy a year ago had three of each that could have been used. "The rest of the fleet is not ready to deploy with all the capabilities that are needed that we would normally have in our fleet response plan," Greenert said.

With the deactivation of the USS Enterprise in December 2012 (decommissioning scheduled for 2013), the U.S. fleet comprises 10 supercarriers. The House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee on 24 July 2007, recommended seven or maybe eight new carriers (one every four years). However, the debate has deepened over budgeting for the $12–14.5 billion (plus $12 billion for development and research) for the 100,000 ton Gerald R. Ford-class carrier (estimated service 2015) compared to the smaller $2 billion 45,000 ton America-class amphibious assault ships able to deploy squadrons of F-35B of which two are already under construction and twelve are planned.  source

The US Department of Defense has stated that China has developed and reached initial operating capability of a conventionally armed, high hypersonic, land-based anti-ship ballistic missile based on the DF-21. This would be the world's first ASBM and the world's first weapons system capable of targeting a moving aircraft carrier strike group from long-range, land-based mobile launchers. source

Within "a few years" Years
Unmanned aircraft carrier that travels beneath the waves may be in the Navy's future - source

Imagine a big unmanned submarine designed to operate covertly for long periods, lurking silently off an enemy's shore. At a command from military leaders, this submersible mothership ejects pods that float to the surface and launch surveillance unmanned aircraft in all directions. At the same time, small unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) deploy from docks hidden in the big submarine's belly on secret reconnaissance missions of the enemy's submarine forces, shipping activity, and overall maritime readiness.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) envisions an unmanned submarine mothership able to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles supposedly for secret intelligence missions off sensitive coasts.

_  _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Really?  Yes.  But, consider the value a swarm of "big unmanned submarines" offers:

  ...the DoD

• potential to gain undetected proximity to adversary's shores (unlike CVNs)
• potential to launch various flight-capable, minituarized weapons (missiles). 
• leverages technological advantages (submarine design and building, etc) that adversaries will not be able to approach in the near future.

...Commanders in Chief (US Presidents)

• reduces need for 10 CVNs and attendant operating, maintenance, and training expenses (military spending).
• reduces political risk of US military casualties.
• expands capability to respond to international conflicts surprisingly fast.

A good idea, or not?   If the primary goal is reduced spending, the concept has merit. 
But, if national security is a primary goal, mothballing half our CVNs is hardly compelling.  Yet, some expect that is exactly what SecDef Chuck Hagel is preparing to recommend within the next year, or two. Why a bad idea?

The Chinese can render trillions of dollars worth of communications, positioning, targeting and aquisition satellites useless for pennies on the dollar.  While the U.S. military has been placing greater and greater reliance on such digital technology,  we have become relatively more ill-prepared for conducting military defense and offense as it had been decades earlier. That would require resources no longer readily available as higher numbers of combat troops, ships, etc. have been replaced by such technological advances.

Submarines are always silent and strange.