Up in the the New Siberian Islands located between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea in the Russian Arctic is Kotenly Island. Discovered in the 1770s, it was so remote that Jules Verne used it as a setting for his novel César Cascabel in 1890, as it had only been visited by the occasional seal hunter or polar explorer.
In 1933 the Soviets turned it into a military base in the Arctic, and maintained it throughout WWII and the Cold War, using it as a way point on the Northeast Passage and a haunt of the Red icebreaker fleet and the occasional passing SSBN looking for some desperate shore leave.
In 1993 the Russians largely pulled out, just leaving a Met station and decades of trash behind.
Then in late 2014 they came back, certifying the airfield again for long range bombers and transports– and building wild ass bunkers for ground defense troops out of rusty Stalin-era 55-gallon drums.
The Central American country of Panama, home to a large American expatriate community, is purchasing another 5,000 Glock 17s for their national police force.
The background of the PNP
Back in 1903, with a little help from President Teddy Roosevelt, Panama obtained independence from Colombia and the U.S. took over a failing French canal project to join the Atlantic Ocean (via the Caribbean Sea) to the Pacific. With the help of the U.S. military, the new country helped reform its inherited army units into the Policía Nacional de Panamá. This small force, numbering as low as 200 men under arms in the 1920s, kept the peace in the country (along with a significant American military presence), even engaging in a small-scale border war with Costa Rica.
When the Panamanian National Guard (Guardia Nacional de Panamá) was established in 1952, the PNP took a back seat to the larger military force until Manuel Noriega merged the two in the Fuerzas de Defensa de Panamá (Panama Defense Forces) in the 1980s. Backed by the U.S., the PDF received a lot of surplus Vietnam-era gear from the Pentagon.
U.S. Army M-113 near the destroyed Panamanian Defense Force headquarters Operation Just Cause, 21 December 1989
In 1990, with Noriega arrested on drug charges and the PDF dismantled after a brief but sharp invasion by 27,000 U.S. troops, the PNP was restructured and largely disarmed. Most of the military-grade weapons were impounded and the police force issued with a number of Smith and Wesson Model 10 .38s shipped in from U.S. military storage– mostly former USAF guns. These guns were augmented by additional Taurus-made K-frames in the mid-1990s and a few semi-autos (PT-99s).
Today the 22,000 officers of the PNP serve as the police, border control, and defense forces for the country of 3.8 million, which includes an estimated 25,000 Americans who live in the former U.S. Canal Zone.
Enter Glock
In 2011, the PNP looked to replace half of their armory with new guns and moved to do so by purchasing 13,000 Glock 17 9mms. The cost of these guns was $7.6 million, or about $580 a pop. Of course, it included two mags and a cleaning kit for each gun and marking each extensively with a national crest and PNP motto plus training, support and spare parts.
Now, the PNP is looking to bring more Glocks on board as cops are in many cases underarmed.
Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex, Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF). Admit it, it looks like a CG-47 on shore
It seems the best way to kill incoming ballistic missiles maybe, instead of the Army’s vaunted THAAD system, which is a beefed up Patriot, a shore-based version of the Navy’s Aegis. Using Raytheon’s AN/TPY-2 X-Band radar which it classifies as “A Bus-sized Radar That Rolls Like A Truck And Sees Like A Hawk,” a Standard Missile-3 Block IB fired from the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), Kauai, Hawaii, the system was able to destroy a target representing a medium-range ballistic missile launched from an U.S. Air Force C-17 on 9 December.
“Today’s test demonstrated that the same Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense capability that has been fielded at sea and operational for years, will soon be operational ashore as part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) Phase 2 capability in Romania,” MDA director Vice Adm. James Syring said in a statement.
The Aegis Ashore site in Romania is scheduled to lightoff on Dec. 31, Program Executive Officer for Integrated Warfare Systems Rear Adm. Jon Hill told USNI News last month. The second installation in Poland is scheduled to come online in 2018.
The two sites will share the BMD role with four BMD capable Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers forward deployed to Rota, Spain.
Tiny Estonia, who share a long and increasingly tense border with Russia, uses a force of volunteer unpaid citizens– equipped with their own military arms– to hold the line.
The Estonian Defense League, a militia independent from the government, is made up of over 15,000 members, making it several times larger than the 6,500-member official Estonian Defense Forces.
Stationed in every part of the country the League is ready at a moment’s notice to sally out and repel possible invasion from unnamed neighbors. It’s the largest military force in the region and members vow to put up more of a fight than they did when the Soviet Union took over the county in 1940 and remained for decades.
Earlier this summer Vice News spent some time in-depth with not only the minutemen of the League but also those on both sides of Estonian politics and the above video shows some interesting footage of their training and doctrine.
The firepower shown is impressive, showing some sweet shots of donated German HK G3s and MG3s, old-school Chevy K5s that likely came from the U.S., a sweet 1950s-era Bofors Pvpj 1110 90 mm recoilless rifle, a smoking hot M240/FN Mag, some IMI Galils, a sprinkling of 84mm Carl Gustavs and at least one BTR-80 armored personnel carrier.
It seems Estonia is very down with the concept of civilian use of military-style arms.
Sure, Estonia has no illusions about stopping an all-out Russian incursion, but they just have to slow it down enough to allow fellow NATO members to apply action or rush reinforcements to the region and they plan to do so by putting a rifle behind every blade of grass.
“If Russia knows that attacking Estonia is not a walk in the park, maybe Russia will think twice,” says a commander.
Speaking of which, check out a recent NATO exercise with the League as part of Operation Hurricane in the video below.
With so much firepower at the hands of your everyday civilian, its hard to sell the prospect of being a member of the League because you want to hunt ducks.
But then again, back here in the states we know that Washington didn’t cross the Delaware to get to a duck blind.
Sgt. Christopher Babas, a Maintenance NCO and Reno Nevada native from the 1st Support Battalion, Task Force Sinai, serves as a rifleman during the Multinational Force and Observer’s annual Remembrance Day ceremony, Nov. 11, on North Camp in Sinai, Egypt. Babas and the Soldiers deployed to the Sinai Peninsula, joined their multinational counterparts to celebrate the national holiday which is commonly observed by members of the UK. (U.S. Army Photos by: Sgt. Thomas Duval, Task Force Sinai Public Affairs)
When the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) took to the Sinai Peninsula in 1979 after the Camp David Accords between Israel’s Begin and Egypt’s Sadat, brokered by Jimmy Carter, it seems like bad duty. Over the years, as the two countries became less tense, and the U.S. increasingly grew closer to Egypt post-Sadat, while a shitty time in the desert, was at least tolerable.
By 1995 in fact the U.S. battalion serving as Task Force Sinai became increasingly staffed by reservists drawn from the National Guard and ARES.
Now, although taking losses and things getting hotter since Egypt went to crap in the past few years, it seems the Army’s bean counters are moving to hit some Joes right in the breadbasket over a tax exemption.
Thanks at least in part to increased security concerns brought about by threats from groups connected to the Islamic State group, they do so at camps with blast-proof bunkers, HESCO barriers and fencing designed to repel rocket-propelled grenades.
Multiple attacks have been launched against service members in the region in recent months; a convoy leaving the MFO’s North Camp in September hit two improvised explosive devices, injuring four soldiers
Despite these dangers, Egypt is not considered a combat zone, a designation set by presidential executive order. Until recently, many soldiers with the task force still received the combat-zone tax exemption by participating every month in combat water survival tests held in the Red Sea at the MFO’s South Camp. The Red Sea is covered by the exemption.
A review of pay policy for soldiers in the task force requested by U.S. Army Central did not address added security concerns. Instead, it found that the swim training “is being conducted as a personal convenience merely to entitle a Soldier to CZTE” and that its participants should not be eligible for the exemption, according to a Nov. 13 memo from the Army’s G-1 to the headquarters of 1st Theater Sustainment Command, the Fort Bragg, North Carolina-based parent unit of the task force.
The MR-64 submachine gun was designed by a Peruvian, Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe, with some assistance from Gordon Ingram. It took design cues from the STEN and shared the same magazines. Not a lot is known about the MR-64, other than about 1000 were made during the mid-60’s at the Erquiaga Arms Company, California. The designer had to flee the USA shortly afterwards because he was suspected of supplying weapons to the Cuban government.
In the end some 373 of these guns and 100,000 rounds of ammunition were seized in 1965 by authorities at the California factory. In the end most of those, as they were unserialized, were destroyed although 2 are in the ATF’s vault. One is believed to be in a private collection in Georgia.
In the late 1950s, Gordon Ingram (designer of the MAC-10) visited Peru for a year on business terms, setting up manufacture for his Model 6 submachine gun. He met Juan Erquiaga Azicorbe, a Peruvian army officer, who was very interested in Ingram’s work. Ingram specialized in designing cheap submachine guns and Erquiaga wanted to capitalize on this by selling such weapons to guerrilla paramilitaries.
Some years later, Erquiaga went to the United States and collaborated with Ingram in designing the MR-64. It was not a particularly special design; it was more or less a copy of the STEN gun with modified aesthetics. But it was extremely simple to manufacture, as well as cheap. Erquiaga set up the Erquiaga Arms Company in the City of Industry in California. From there, the MR-64 was manufactured in the thousands, and sold to Cuban anti-Castro guerrillas.
Understandably, when the FBI learned of Erquiaga’s actions, they feared it would threaten already poor US-Cuban relations and raided Erquiaga’s factory, confiscating the weapons being manufactured there. Erquiaga himself managed to flee the country and avoid arrest.
MoD photo. Note the comparison in size to the 25,000-ton San Antonio-class LPD in the distance. Also big up and drink in the Apaches.
So the Royal Navy is moving to scrap the helicopter carrier and assault ship HMS Ocean (L12), their current fleet flagship. Britain’s largest warship is currently deployed in the Mediterranean on Cougar 15, an annual NATO exercise, and underwent a £65m upgrade just last year.
“HMS Ocean will not decommission early and will continue in service as planned well into this Parliament. As part of the SDSR process, the decision was taken not to extend her and to decommission her in 2018, in line with her 20-year life span,” the MoD said in a statement as reported by the BBC.
The 23,000-ton/667-foot long LPH was commissioned 30 September 1998 and is based at HMNB Devonport, Plymouth. and can carry a full 830-man reinforced RM Commando unit and a mix of 20~ helicopters.
In the past 17 years she has saved the Crown’s bacon repeatedly, deploying as part of Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone in 2000; Operation Telic, the UK contribution to the 2003 Iraq War; supported EU/NATO ops off Libya in 2011 where her Apaches made mincemeat of lots of random shit; and served as a staging spot for the security efforts during the London 2012 Olympic Games in addition to waving the White Ensign from Brazil to Nicaragua to the Malay Peninsula and all spots in between.
Worse, the new carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth will not take to the sea untl 2020.
Yup, she not only floats, but moves too. We give you the $3.5 Billion (with a B), 15,000-ton battleship, err cruiser, err arsenal ship, err sea control ship, err guided missile destroyer PCS Zumwalt.
The future USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) is underway for the first time conducting at-sea trials in the Atlantic Ocean, Dec. 7. The multi-mission ship will provide independent forward presence and deterrence, support special operations forces, and operate as an integral part of joint and combined expeditionary forces
SAN DIEGO (Nov. 23, 2015) Aviation Ordnanceman Airman Noe Mendoza, from Harlingen, Texas, raises the American flag aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). Theodore Roosevelt arrived at its new homeport of San Diego after completing an eight-month around-the-world deployment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Anthony N. Hilkowski/Released)
As noted in an editorial in Sea Power, according to Bryan Clark and Jesse Sloman of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the Navy/Marine Corps team is at a tipping point, with a 272-ship fleet still tasked like its the old school Lehman 600-ship Navy of the Cold War, of possibly not being able to meet commitments.
The fix, instead of either just pulling a Royal Navy post-Suez drawback or moving to 9-month+ deployments, is to keep more ships overseas and use civilian-manned vessels more. You know, how like we moved the fleet from California to Pearl Harbor in 1940.
One alternative is to “increase further the portion for the fleet that is forward deployed,” the report notes. The advantage of forward-deployed ships is that fewer ships are required to maintain a given level of presence. The adaptation of some Military Sealift Command ships as expeditionary ships in relatively permissive environments, with rotational crews, also could reduce the burden on warships. Maintaining forward-deployed ships is more costly, however.
Clark said the forward deployment of a second aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific would enable the Navy to meet the requirement for a carrier strike group year-round using only forward-deployed forces. This would allow the Navy to get by with a total of nine carriers or, with 11 carriers, it would allow the Navy to keep an East Coast-based carrier deployed to the European area of operations, leaving the Persian Gulf to West Coast-based carriers and the Western Pacific to the two forward-deployed carriers.
