Flit

CANADIAN TROOPS TRY TO KILL

CANADIAN TROOPS TRY TO KILL MINELAYERS -- AMERICANS OVERRULE THEM

Interesting CP story in the National Post from Kandahar. Canadian soldiers asked for permission to kill two Afghans laying anti-tank mines around the base that they had under observation, but the American commander wanted them captured instead, and they ended up getting away. A little later two pro-American Afghan soldiers were killed when their truck disintegrated, and a second explosion killed three children:

Sources told The Canadian Press that [Canadian commander Pat] Stogran in fact wanted to kill the two outright but was overruled by his American bosses. There was some grumbling among troops around the base on Sunday about the decision.

UPDATE: The navy's having some fun, too.

THE WHOLE "POLICE" THING IS

THE WHOLE "POLICE" THING IS JUST SO ANTIQUATED, TOO

Speaking of Naomi "No Logo" Klein, one of her disciples has this amusing plea for legal defense funds on her site:

The three OCAP [Ontario Coalition Against Poverty] activists facing a jury trial later in the year on the antiquated and reactionary charges of 'participating in a riot' and 'counselling' others to do so, are looking at the prospect of two years if convicted.

Such an antiquated concept isn't it? Just for the record, I saw that "protest" and it WAS a violent riot, which saw an angry mob throwing bricks, rocks, and anything that wasn't nailed down at a thin police line that was keeping them from storming the legislature. Only remarkable cop restraint (and I can't always say that's been the case in my experience) kept the number of serious injuries on both sides from soaring. I don't actually mind political protesters resorting to even violent means to make their point, if they feel all other options are closed to them, you know. There have been times in history where that was necessary. What I do mind is them refusing to accept legal consequences, or as in this case, denying they were ever violent at all, even though they know that's a lie. But to OCAP, you see, violence is only violence when the police do it.

THERE'S UGLY, AND THEN THERE'S

THERE'S UGLY, AND THEN THERE'S BUTT-UGLY

I must agree with Heather Mallick's skepticism concerning the flamboyant Bill Thorsell's plans to create another Bilbao Guggenheim out of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum (my provincial tax dollars at work), all exhaustively covered by Thorsell's former newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Admittedly, the ROM had all kinds of problems, which Thorsell clearly identified... it's too small, the north side is a disgrace, etc, etc. But my hopes his plans to reshape it by turning it into the Crystalline Entity quavered when I read this line in James' Adams' pre-selection piece:

Toronto has not been entirely architecturally and culturally impoverished over the past decade. One could cite KPMB's designs of Woodsworth College and the Fields Institute at the University of Toronto, Santiago Calatrava's BCE Place Galleria, the graduate residence centre (sic) by Morphosis-Teeple at the U of T, the McKinsey & Co. centre on Charles Street West, all built in the past 10 years.

You have to understand. I work at U of T, and the Graduate Centre residence so cheerfully cited as the ROM's precedent here is quite possibly the ugliest building created by man. With its bare gray metal walls and castle-slit style windows, it is an excrescence, nothing more, nothing less. There are lots of buildings that are plain, or boring, and hence ugly by extension. But very few are deliberately ugly, an intentional insult to all who view it and are forced to live or work in it. The Graduate Centre is such. If you told me the architectural malpractitioners behind it had been shot for their sight-crime, I wouldn't have shed a tear.

Still, I'm glad they went through the trouble of a million-dollar international search for architects for the new building. Otherwise how could they ever have found out well-off Canadian leftist Naomi Klein's uncle was able to do the work for them? One hopes for her sake that the new building has no logos...

OH HELP ME, RHONDA The

OH HELP ME, RHONDA

The Defence Department routinely dispatches low-flying jets to chase animals from its giant air-weapons range in Labrador to prevent "random blinding" when laser-guided weaponry is tested at the remote site.
--"Animals shielded from laser weapons," Michael Macdonald, Canadian Press

You know, call me crazy, but my feeling would be if you're a caribou and you're being painted by a designator designed to bring a laser-guided bomb down to your location, a risk of random blinding isn't the biggest problem you're facing at the moment.

FULCRUM ASSETS, part 3: BACK

FULCRUM ASSETS, part 3: BACK TO AIRCRAFT CARRIERS

Unlike the strategic bomb wings (see below), which have taken on a new utility with the advent of GPS munitions, naval carrier battle groups have been recognized as the Queen-pieces of the naval realm since the 1940s. The U.S Navy's 12 fleet carrier groups each carrying up to 50 interceptors and attack craft, and surrounded by missile cruiser and destroyer escorts, rule any space they're in, surface, subsurface and sky... while they proved less useful than the strategic bombers in Afghanistan, it should really be seen as amazing that they were useful at all, given that it was a landlocked country. So, who else has anything close?

As I mentioned, the competition is a little closer than with strategic bombers. Three nations (France, Brazil and Russia) still have a full-sized carrier each. Five others (Britain, Italy, India, Spain and Thailand) have mini-carriers flying some version of the Sea Harrier.

As the Falklands proved, Sea Harriers can be dangerous combatants. A battle group with Sea Harriers is likely to kill any surface naval group without them before it can get in range with surface-to-surface missiles or guns: if only because the threat of Sidewinder-armed Sea Harrier patrols is likely to prevent any maritime patrol aircraft from fixing the Harrier group's location with accuracy, guaranteeing the Harriers get first strike. (The Argentines lost in the Falklands largely because they never had any idea where the British carriers were.) On the other hand, a full-sized carrier will make short work of a "Harrier carrier" in the same seaspace. Harrier carriers are more akin to the U.S.'s 12 LHA/LHD ships, each of which supports one of the Americans' 12 ship-borne Marine Expeditionary Units, and which also carry Harriers. While slightly more all-round capable (the U.S. Harriers are optimized for strike missions, not naval interceptions), their impact on a hypothetical sea battle would be about the same.

So, if you wanted to rank the world's navies based on their carrier assets (which, in deep-water circumstances, is going to be pretty much the only rank that would count), you'd end up with a score sheet more or less like this (Based on the scoring system: modern naval fighter = 0.02; Harrier/obsolescent naval fighter = 0.01; only ship-borne naval air squadrons counted):

U.S carrier battle group (1 of 12): 1.0
French navy: 0.6
Russian navy: 0.4
Royal Navy (3 Harrier carriers): 0.3
Brazilian navy: 0.2
Italy, India, Spain: 0.1
Thailand: 0.05
U.S. Marine LHA/LHD (1 of 12): 0.05

In other words, if every other navy in the world decided to combine to take a run at 2 U.S. carrier battle groups, they'd have a fair chance. If one of the Americans' other 10 carrier groups heaved over the horizon in the meantime, however, it'd be game over. That's the extent of American naval superiority. Although the lead in "fulcrum assets," the Queen-pieces of battle, isn't quite as extensive as it is with the bombers (where it's 5-0 as opposed to 10-1), the Americans still have a overwhelming lead that will not be surpassed at least in our lifetimes.

The big question: what about the land? If we accept the definition of fulcrum assets, what's the army equivalent to the carrier group or the bomb wing, and how does the U.S. compare in those? I'll address that, and the interesting position that tactical air assets hold, in the next posting.

EARLIER ROYAL ATTEMPTS TO CREATE

EARLIER ROYAL ATTEMPTS TO CREATE A MARDENER BY MATING THE MAID AND GARDENER WERE APPARENTLY UNSUCCESSFUL:

From yesterday's London Telegraph:

The Queen is as interested in pedigree corgis as she is in thoroughbred horses, and from a young age both she and Princess Margaret were fascinated by breeding their dogs. Their early experimentation resulted in the dorgi, the issue of a coupling between one of her corgis, and one of Princess Margaret's dachshunds.