Reader Incurian has given me permission to repost his writeup on the basics of artillery, originally written for DSL in the immediate aftermath of the Ukrainian war.

Introduction

Lately there has been a good deal of discussion and speculation on what sorts of things artillery ought to be able to do in different circumstances; I'm reluctant to provide object-level answers (guesses) regarding current events, but I think this may be a useful primer for thinking about the subject and might help our discussions to be more productive.

I was an artillery officer in the US Army for a few years in the 2010s. I deployed to Afghanistan in a fire support capacity a few times. The following will be based on my narrow experiences filtered through my stupid brain, but it mostly won't be conjecture. Read more...

While in Dallas recently, Lord Nelson and I toured Frontiers of Flight, an air museum at Love Field, the old airport near downtown Dallas that mostly plays host to Southwest these days.

The main collection, bunched up for an event

Website

Now, for the first thing: for reasons that are unclear, the Dallas-Fort Worth area is home to about half a dozen air museums of varying size and focus. I was only able to visit one (Lord Nelson has completely unreasonable expectations about the appropriate amount of time to spend on things that aren't military/air museums) and picked Frontiers of Flight on the basis that it looked to have the most impressive collection. Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you like, so long as it isn't Culture War.

Hope my American readers had a good Thanksgiving.

Overhauls are Iowa Part 4, Falklands Part 8, Missouri Part 3, The Navy and the Space Program, Falklands Part 19, Naval Bases from Space - San Diego, and for 2022, my review of Udvar-Hazy and The Case for the F-35.

The Naval Institute Press is the foremost naval and military history publisher in the United States, and every year, they run a major sale for the holidays. The standard offer, which they've done again this year, is 50% off everything that isn't on clearance and free shipping. Typically, I give this analysis in an open thread, but I decided to split it out this year.

First, a few words about USNI's IT, which has been bad this year even by the rather low standards they've set in previous years. Most, but not all, full-price books have an automatic holiday coupon when you put them in your cart that gives you 50% off. Stuff in the Clear the Decks Clearance and a some books coming out Spring 2024 don't have this coupon. And you only get free shipping if you put something with the coupon in your cart, but if you do have the coupon, it applies to everything in the cart. I've been in touch with them about this, and hope they get things fixed. Read more...

Netflix recently had Midway available, so I decided to give it a watch. Not the abomination from a few years ago, because I've already watched it once and don't hate myself enough to go through that again, but the 1976 version. It opens with a declaration that they're going to use as much combat footage as possible, which is I suppose the best way to handle this in that era. And, wonder of wonders, it skips Pearl Harbor, jumping straight to...the Doolittle Raid. Sort of out of the frying pan and into the fire there in terms of "things bean thinks are overdone", but points for originality and they don't feel the need to rub the whole thing in our faces, getting it over within the credits sequence. Oh, and the bombers aren't hitting Tokyo in formation for once.

Now, for the bad things. The effects aren't great, and the action sequences are made far worse by the fact that this was clearly not a production with a large budget, so a ton of footage was reused, either from previous films or color combat footage, which mostly appears to be from later in the war. This is occasionally amusing (the Kates on the way to Midway carry torpedoes, battleship masts appear at Midway and Hiryu launches her last strike at dawn) but mostly just serves to completely destroy any narrative to the action. It's lots of swooping planes (sometimes even the right type) intercut with closeups of the participants, but no sense of how the battle is going beyond the dialog. There's also wildly variable film quality, and lots of the real footage is very clearly wrong, ranging from 5"/38s appearing on the Japanese side to Yorktown sprouting Bofors as a defensive measure while under air attack. And while they don't slam you in the face the way Michael Bay does with the Spru-cans, there's a lot of 70s-era ships on screen in the new footage (all of which in fairness did serve in WWII) and Yorktown at one point grows a steel flight deck and deck-edge elevator. Read more...

It is time once again for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you like, so long as it isn't culture war.

Unfortunately, it looks like the USNI sale is currently down, but when it is back, it will be excellent.

Overhauls are Ballistics, Iowa Part 3, the Alaska class Parts One and Two and for 2022, Taranto and Museum Review - DC Redux.

Read more...

It is time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.

If you want more about what's been going on, see the Navy Day post from Friday.

Except the USNI holiday sale, which has already started. Look for a list of recommendations next week.

Overhauls are Iowa Part 1, Underbottom Explosions, The Last Days of the High Seas Fleet, JDAM, Submarines in the Falklands Part 1 and for 2022 my revised review of Midway and In Defense of Missile Defense

It is once again time to celebrate the US Navy, and the 6th anniversary of this blog.

Every year when I think about this, I grow more astonished that this has continued for so long. It's been a fairly quiet year, with the new stuff happening on the social side. There's the Discord, which I started early in the year and which currently has almost 100 members. It's been a lot of fun, and a good brain trust for everything from world events to blog posts. Second, we had the meetup in LA back in June, which was tremendous fun. So much fun, in fact, that I'm currently in early planning for the next one, which will be held in New England, probably in the first half of May. Attractions include Battleship Cove and the USS Massachusetts, the Submarine Force Museum in Groton and for those more interested in sailing ships, Mystic Seaport. Also expect great company and excellent food, courtesy of the same catering team that did the DSL meetup in DC two weeks ago. If you're interested in attending, please fill out this form so I can keep you appraised of progress. Read more...

The idea that every man¹ has a responsibility to fight for his country is ancient. But different societies have implemented this in different ways, and it's worth taking a deeper look at the system that was developed in the late 19th and early 20th century, and which continues in some countries to this day.

The most important fact to understand about modern conscription is that it is at core based on voluntary compliance, much as the tax system in the US is. I don't particularly like paying taxes, and if the government told me I didn't have to, I would be quite happy, but I (and almost everyone else) accepts the fundamental authority of the government to tax us and complies more or less willingly. Likewise, the sort of broad-based conscription that provided the manpower for the World Wars essentially rested on society as a whole being fundamentally behind the idea that demanding young men pay² in time and danger is normal and fine. Contrast this system, where people get a letter and generally show up, with (for instance) the impressment system, which was implemented by the government sending out a gang to grab people by force, and the gangs were often resisted by force, too. Read more...