The Battleship Lesson

Well, that was interesting.  Starting with the Zumwalt and the AGS, we managed to meander into the battleship issue!  So, with that background, here's a timely post about battleships but not the way you think.

After the LCS, one of the most contentious naval questions is the fate of the battleships.  Critics call them outdated dinosaurs that are too expensive to operate.  Proponents see them as mammothly powerful vessels, unmatched in today’s world.  Well, we’re not going to debate that.  The issue has been decided, for better or worse.  Instead, we’re going to look at what lessons can be gleaned from the battleship question and actions that were taken.

Once WWII began, it was fairly quickly realized that the heyday of the battleship was over.  Initial, fairly easy, sinkings of various battleships, both Axis and Allied, made clear that the battleship no longer ruled the waves.  Aircraft and the aircraft carrier were the new masters of naval combat with a strong nod to submarines.  Despite this early realization, the US continued to build battleships through the end of the war and had plans to evolve the type even further with the Montana class.  Why?  If the battleship was seen to be no longer supreme, why would we continue to build new ones and plan for even more powerful versions?  Why didn’t we simply stop building battleships when the ones that were already started were completed?  Wouldn’t that have been the logical thing to do?  This brings us to the first lesson.

The first lesson is that even if the battleship was no longer ruler of the waves, it still had immense combat capability.  In WWII, its guns absolutely pulverized enemy shore positions.  Just as impressively, its 20x 5” guns, 80x 40 mm Bofors guns, and 49x 20 mm Oerlikon guns constituted the Aegis AAW system of the time.  The battleship also possessed an anti-ship capability that could sink any opposing vessel.  All this capability was housed in a ship that was the most heavily protected and armored ever built.  To this day, battleships possess more destructive capability and better protection than anything now afloat.  The generalized lesson is that just because a platform or system may no longer be the foremost weapon system in one’s inventory, that is not a reason to discard it.  A secondary system can still provide immensely valuable service.  The Navy in WWII recognized this and not only continued to build battleships but had embarked on even newer designs when the war ended.

Contrast the Navy’s treatment of battleships in WWII with their treatment of the Spruance class.  Because the Spruance/NTU (New Threat Upgrade) was seen as an inferior technology (even though, arguably, it was superior to Aegis when the latter was first introduced), the Navy not only retired the Spruance class but, literally, sank them all.  Of course, the real reason they sank the Spruance class was because it represented a threat to the Navy’s desired funding of the Aegis program.  This leads us to the second lesson.

The second lesson is that no system is a threat to another’s funding if that other system is worthwhile.  The battleship was not a threat to carrier funding in WWII.  Quite the opposite.  We built as many as we could of both.  The battleship and the carrier complemented each other.  A carrier group with battleship support was a truly powerful group.  Today, with China and Russia building new submarine forces and lesser countries investing in SSK’s, we could sure use the Spruance class, couldn’t we, especially given the failings of the LCS which was supposed to provide ASW but is woefully inadequate for the role.

Let’s move on to the post-WWII treatment of the battleships.  Unlike so many ships that were summarily disposed of at the end of the war, the battleships were retained.  The Navy, remembering the value and combat power of the battleship made sure to keep the battleships in reserve.  What do we do today?  We’ve retired supercarriers, LHA’s, Perrys, Spruances, etc. with none of them kept in reserve.  As documented in a previous post, our reserve warship fleet is about a half dozen vessels.

What ultimately happened to the battleships?  They were brought back multiple times when war occurred, as it inevitably does.  This brings us to the third lesson. 

Lots To Teach Us

The third lesson is that war always comes and one can never have enough combat power when it does.  Ships (and aircraft) that can no longer serve on an active basis but still possess credible combat power need to be kept in reserve.  They will be needed.  It’s just a matter of when.  When both side’s first line assets are mutually destroyed, that second line asset will look awfully good.

How did the battleships perform when they were brought back from retirement and thrown into combat?  In a word, stunningly.  The battleship’s 16” guns provided devastating firepower wherever they were used.  This brings us to the fourth lesson.

The fourth lesson is that devastating firepower has a tactical and strategic value all its own.  Mammoth area explosives have a way of solving many tactical problems that would otherwise cost US lives.  This kind of firepower also has a strategic impact.  As the story goes, removal of the battleships from the firing line was a pre-condition from the North Vietnamese for peace talks during the Vietnam war.  Similarly, the Soviets were said to have feared our battleships more than our carriers.

We have forgotten this lesson in our quest for zero-casualty combat and the subsequent movement towards smaller, more precise firepower.  There’s certainly a place for small, precision weapons but, equally, or more, there’s a place for massive, devastating firepower.  Once high end war comes and US soldiers begin dying in large numbers, we’re going to quickly stop worrying about chipping the paint off someone’s shrine that a sniper is hiding behind and we’re going to frantically start looking for area-wide, high explosive firepower.  We’ll relearn how to wage war and then we’ll remember why the battleship existed.

Did the battleship’s contributions go beyond war?  Yes.  Throughout their service lives, our allies constantly requested the presence of a US battleship to help settle unstable regions.  There is no better deterrence than a battleship sitting off some potential hotspot.  This brings us to the fifth lesson.

The fifth lesson is that deterrence does not work because of good wishes, peaceful gestures, or appeasement.  It works because there is an implied threat of force – the greater the potential force, the greater the degree of deterrence.  Further, the threat has to be visible and present.  The theoretical threat of a strike by a bomber based in the continental US is not effective.  The threat has to be up close and personal and there is nothing more intimidating than a battleship.  History has shown that.  Let’s face it, the LCS is not going to deter anyone from anything.  A battleship, however, offers a huge degree of deterrence due to the huge degree of force and visibility it represents.

The battleship, though gone, still has much to teach us and, in that respect, is still a valuable asset.  Now, we just need to be open to the lessons.

Long Range Naval Guns

Just as a point of interest to supplement the Zumwalt ammunition post, had the Navy not opted to go down the path of the Zumwalt and AGS, we might well have attained our goal of long range bombardment capability with conventional naval guns by using sub-caliber rounds.  Here’s some examples listed on the NavWeaps site (1).

Improved HC Mark 147? (Planned)
During the battleship reactivations during the 1980s, the Navy developed a new HC [High Capacity] design that was the same length as the AP [Armor Piercing] Mark 8 (4.5 calibers) and weighed 2,240 lbs. (1,015 kg). Several of these were test-fired from USS Iowa and at Dahlgren, achieving ranges over 51,000 yards (46,600 m) with a new gun muzzle velocity of 2,825 fps (861 mps). 

Range = 51,000 yds = 29 miles

HE-ER Mark 148 (Planned)
13.65 in (34.7 cm) diameter, extended-range (ER), sub-caliber projectile with sabot. Length was approximately 72 in (183 cm). Projectile was to be ET-fuzed with a payload of about 300 M48 grenade submunitions. Experiments with this projectile were conducted during the 1980s, but development was cancelled in FY91 when the battleships were decommissioned. Projectile weight without the sabot was about 1,300 lbs. (590 kg) and range was to be in excess of 70,000 yards (64,000 m) at a muzzle velocity of 3,600 fps (1,097 mps).

Range = 70,000+ yds = 40+ miles

HE-ER Mark ? (Planned)
Advanced Gun Weapon Systems Technology Program 16/11-Inch Long Range GPS Concept with Sabot.  Another sub-caliber projectile with sabot, this one 11 inches (28 cm) in diameter. This project was also cancelled about FY91.

    Range: 100 nm
    Launch Weight: 650 lbs. (295 kg)
    Fly Away Weight: 525 lbs. (238 kg)
    Launch Length: 69 in (175 cm)
    Payload: 248 M46 Submunitions, total weight of 175.2 lbs. (79.5 kg)
    Guidance Modes: GPS and INS

Range = 100 nm

On a relative basis, these would have been very cheap to develop and yet the Navy refuses to look to conventional weapons, instead always preferring to go down the path of new, highly risky technology and astronomical costs.

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(1)http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.php

A Ship With No Ammunition

Regular readers know that ComNavOps is highly critical of Navy leadership and their decision making.  I’d like to give them credit from time to time but, good grief, it’s very difficult to do so.  Every time I think they’ve hit rock bottom, they surprise me with yet another stunningly incompetent effort.  Honestly, if I was writing a fictional book and included all the things that Navy leadership has done wrong before they did them, no one would believe me and the book would be ridiculed as utterly unrealistic.  In other words, you can’t make this stuff up!

• Would anyone have believed that a professional, competent Navy would build a class of small warship before the vessel’s modular equipment, its main armament, was ready – resulting in a third or more of the ships sailing with no functional capability?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would build a bigger aircraft carrier while the air wing it would carry was shrinking to half the design size?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would commission an aircraft carrier with damaged main turbines and non-functional arresting gear?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would literally sink an entire class of the best ASW destroyer ever made?

• Would anyone have believed that a Navy would early retire the most powerful AAW ship class ever built?

The list is endless and I won’t bother continuing to list examples.  Suffice it to say that if you made this stuff up before it happened, no one would believe it.

Well, here’s the latest.  Would you believe that a professional, competent Navy would build a class (albeit a small, 3-ship class) of ship that was totally conceptualized and designed around the ship’s gun system, commission the ship, and then announce that they had no ammunition for the gun and were canceling acquisition of the ammunition?  That’s exactly what the Navy has just done! 

The Zumwalt’s AGS (Advanced Gun System) exclusively uses the LRLAP (Long Range Land Attack Projectile).  This is the only ammunition that can be fired from the gun.  The Navy has just announced that it is canceling procurement of the LRLAP due to escalating costs (1).

“Barely two weeks after the US Navy commissioned its newest and most futuristic warship, armed with two huge guns that can hit targets 80 miles away, the service is moving to cancel the projectiles for the guns, citing excessive costs that run up to $800,000 per round or more. “

“Even at $800,000 a copy, the LRLAP’s price could go higher. “That’s probably low,” the Navy official said. “That’s what the acquisition community wanted to get it down to.” The official added that there was no sense the contractor was “overcharging or anything.” 

The decision to accept the LRLAP cancellation is part of the Program Objective Memorandum 2018 (POM18) effort, the Pentagon’s annual budget process. “

So, we’re looking at a round that would likely cost around $1M each if the program were continued.

Because the acquisition program is going to be cancelled, we’ve got a commissioned ship, supposedly ready for war, that has no ammunition it can shoot.

The Navy is now scrambling to find some other munition to use.  The problem is that there is no other existing munition that can fit the gun, as is.  Whatever option is chosen, a new developmental effort will have to be initiated to fit the round to a system that was not designed to handle it.

One also has to wonder what this will do to the range of the system.  Recall that the LRLAP is not actually a traditional shell.  It is a rocket propelled warhead.  Where are we going to find another rocket propelled warhead that can fit in the AGS?  We’re not – not without a massive development effort – and what’s that going to do to the cost of whatever we opt for?

We can always take a smaller shell and fire it with a sabot but the range will be nothing more than a standard gun, presumably, in which case, what is the benefit of the Zumwalt?

“…the Navy is evaluating industry projectile solutions (including conventional and hyper-velocity projectiles) that can also meet the DDG 1000 deployment schedule and could potentially be used as an alternative to LRLAP for DDG 1000.” 

“We are looking at multiple different rounds for that gun,” the Navy official said, adding that “three or four different rounds” have been looked at, including the Army’s Excalibur munition from Raytheon, and the Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP), a project under development by the Office of Naval Research and BAE Systems. 

“There are multiple companies that have looked at alternatives to get the cost down and use that delivery system,” the Navy official said.”

You’ll note that the mentioned alternatives are, themselves, developmental efforts and are not ready for their own use let alone having to undergo further development to be used in the AGS.

There is one more aspect to this story that is interesting.  ComNavOps is on record as stating that the entire Zumwalt gun support concept is flawed and that the gun cannot provide effective gunfire support.  The LRLAP is a guided round and without active guidance is useless.  The likelihood of being able to provide active guidance deep inland is poor.  Unfortunately, the fallback position of blind area bombardment defeats the stated intent of precision fire and is prohibitively costly at $1M per round.  Add to that the small caliber of the round, the limited explosive power, the limitation of only two guns per ship (compared to 9 guns per ship on a WWII cruiser or battleship) and the entire concept is questionable, at best.

With all that in mind, the article offers this tantalizing tidbit.

“While the Navy is stressing that high costs are directly behind the decision to eliminate LRLAP, it is not clear if there are deeper issues at play. The AGS/LRLAP combination was originally developed to provide Marines with a “persistent, precision fire support” capability, able to strike targets far inland with a high degree of accuracy. 

But as the Zumwalt moved from shipyard to sea and to the fleet, the Navy has notably downplayed that attribute, and while the technical achievement of the cutting-edge DDG 1000 has been widely trumpeted this year, its ability to directly support Marines ashore has not.”

What does that mean?  The article offers nothing to substantiate their suspicion but it is exactly in line with ComNavOps thoughts.  Could the Navy be realizing that the entire concept was flawed?

Finally, the article notes the other inherent bit of stupidity about the AGS – it can’t shoot at another ship.  That’s right, the Navy built a ship with a gun that can’t shoot enemy ships!  The LRLAP is a guided round and there is no guidance mechanism for designating enemy ships and linking that guidance to the munition.  The firing software could be modified, as stated, to allow ballistic firing at a ship but that’s a return to WWII salvo accuracy and we can’t afford to be salvo firing $1M projectiles and hoping for a hit.

As I said, if I were to have written this yesterday as fiction, you’d have scoffed at me and, yet, here it is today, as reality.  Navy leadership has added yet another massive screw up to their collective resume.

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(1)Defense News website, “New Warship’s Big Guns Have No Bullets”, Christopher P. Cavas, 6-Nov-2016,

http://www.defensenews.com/articles/new-warships-big-guns-have-no-bullets

Damaged LCS, Damaged Again, Damaged Yet Again !!!

You recall the recent post about the damaged LCS (two engineering failures within 24 hours), USS Montgomery, LCS-8, being damaged again (hull crack from banging into a tug - see, "Damaged LCS Damaged Again")?  Well, astoundingly, it’s been damaged yet again.  The ship ran into a wall in the Panama Canal and suffered a foot and half long hull crack.

My concern with these events is the flimsy strength of the hull being exhibited by the LCS-2 variant.  The ship bumps into a tug (isn’t that what tugs do?) and suffers a hull crack.  The ship bumps into a lock wall (not the first ship to do that!) and suffers a hull crack.  What does this say about the class’ ability to absorb battle damage?  I could understand dented hull plating but actual hull cracks from nothing more than “routine” bumps?  What’s going to happen when the ship bumps into an anti-ship missile?

How's that aluminum construction working out?

If the Montgomery doesn't stop bumping into things it's going to fall apart from all the cracks.

I’ve received consistent, though officially unverifiable, reports of the lightness of construction of these ships and every incident like this just serves to confirm those reports.

This is what we consider a "warship"?

This does not bode well.

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“USNI News website, “Littoral Combat Ship USS Montgomery Damaged Transiting Panama Canal”, Sam LaGrone, 31-Oct-2016,

https://news.usni.org/2016/10/31/uss-montgomery-damaged-transiting

ATACMS and Geo-Strategic Reality

Once upon a time, the US military engaged in geo-strategic military planning.  This meant that we identified our potential enemies, studied the geography of the expected battlefield, identified weaknesses of our own associated with the geography, sought advantages we could gain from the geography, and planned and equipped for that geo-specific battle.  Thus, our forces and capabilities were closely aligned with the anticipated battle and battlefield location.  Simple and wise.

The classic example of this type of strategy was the Air-Land Battle strategy designed to counter a Russian invasion of Europe.  We understood the geography.  We understood how the geography would dictate the operational planning of both sides, how it would impact operational execution, and we developed plans and equipment designed specifically to take advantage of, and work within, that geography.

Now, however, the US military has abandoned geo-strategic planning in favor of techno-strategic planning.  Rather than develop strategies to counter specific enemies (heck, we won’t even name our enemies!), we now develop strategies to counter generic technologies – technologies that any given enemy might or might not have.  We have abandoned planning for the geographic realities associated with any specific enemy and, instead, are planning generically for opposing technologies.  Thus, our planning overlooks or ignores geographic considerations and cedes geographic advantages to the enemy.

For example, a fight with Russia will occur in a completely different geographical setting than a fight with China and yet we’re treating both the same from a strategic perspective.  We’re attempting to counter their technologies rather than the geo-military realities. 

Let’s look at a specific example.

The Army has announced that it is adding a seeker to its land based ATACMS (MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System) missile in order to be able to hit moving ships at sea at a range of 100 miles or so (1).  The Army is reviving its coastal artillery concept in order to remain a relevant player in the Pacific Pivot.

Two obvious, related points jump out.

• This is clearly an attempt to remain budget-relevant in a Pacific theater that allows for little use of Army ground forces.  Is a ship-attack ATACMS really useful or even viable?  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is that it can be used to strengthen the Army’s budget position.

• This is clearly a niche capability that has little usefulness in any geo-specific battlefield that we are likely to find ourselves fighting on.

An anti-ship ATACMS suffers from the same challenge that every long range missile system does which is the difficulty in targeting at long range.  The 100+ mile ATACMS needs a target and the land based Army has no ready means of providing that targeting.  UAVs could be used although they suffer from the same susceptibility to destruction and susceptibility to communications disruption that all UAVs do.  Land based radar, unless sited on a significant elevation, can’t detect surface targets at that range due to the limited radar horizon.  Targeting data can be provided by Navy or Air Force patrol assets but that not only requires dependence on networking, which we’ve already noted is likely to be degraded and only sporadically available, but it requires dependence on cross-service networking.  Intra-service networking (within a single service) is unreliable.  Inter-service networking (across services) is a fantasy.  We’re still working to get all the services to use the same communications protocols – we’re not going to get cross-service networking to function!

Army ATACMS - Impressive But Useless

So, we’re left with a theoretical capability that sounds good on paper but has little likelihood of usage or success.

Now, let’s look at the geo-specific considerations which the military has chosen to ignore, as we’ve noted.

The Pacific-Chinese theater has very little land accessible by the US military within a 100-200 mile range of any likely battlespace.  China already controls the first island chain and is beginning to eye the second.  Japan is a possibility for siting ATACMS units but 100-200 miles from mainland Japan is not where the main battles are going to occur. 

Well, can’t we seize the first chain islands and then place ATACMS on them?  Sure, but if we have the power to seize the islands then the likelihood that we can’t totally control a 100 mile range around the islands is miniscule.  Look at a map.  The first chain islands are generally not within a hundred miles of likely battles.  If we’ve seized the islands, there won’t be any Chinese ships remaining within range.  They’ll have been destroyed or pulled back to defend the mainland.  Thus, there won’t be any use for anti-ship ATACMS.

Now consider a war with Russia.  It will be a European land war.  Russia simply doesn’t have a significant Navy that is going to operate near land.  Their few ships will be destroyed at the outset by airpower.  There will be no use for an anti-ship ATACMS in a war with Russia.

Similarly, Iran and NKorea possess no relevant navies for an anti-ship ATACMS to defend against.

This is nothing more than recognizing the geo-strategic realities and the enemy order of battle.  When we consider the potential for use of an anti-ship ATACMS, it quickly becomes obvious that there is no practical use.  If there is no practical use then that only leaves its use as a budget leverage gimmick.

Well, why would supposedly intelligent Army leaders want to pursue this if it’s nothing more than a budget leverage gimmick?  They pursue it because it does provide budget leverage.  Remember, the goal of current military leaders is not the defense of our country; their goal is enhancement of their service’s budget slice.  Additionally, this is another symptom of a military that is techno-strategic rather than geo-strategic.  The few military leaders that are not blatantly political and bureaucratic have forgotten what geo-military analysis is and know only how to match technologies.  An anti-ship ATACMS is cool technology, when considered in isolation from any geo-military reality.  The fact that it has no practical use is lost on leaders who have never known any other way to analyze a military problem than by focusing on technology match ups.

Our military leaders have been educated in business management, systems analysis, politics, budgets, accounting, and civilian business practices.  They no longer know how to formulate a coherent military strategy.  Consider the hundreds of poor military management decisions we’ve highlighted on this blog.  They were poor decisions because they were based on factors other than a guiding military strategy.  This anti-ship ATACMS is a symptom of a military that has forgotten how to formulate a strategy.

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(1)Breaking Defense website, “Carter, Roper Unveil Army’s New Ship-Killer Missile: ATACMS Upgrade”, Sydney J. Freedburg Jr., 28-Oct-2016,

http://breakingdefense.com/2016/10/army-atacms-missile-will-kill-ships-secdef-carter/

You'll Do It Because We Said So

Well, this is just fascinating.  We’ve seen how many different types of procurement contracts there are (it’s mind boggling) and that none of them really mean what they seem to say but here’s yet another new one I had no idea existed – a unilateral contract whereby the government simply dictates the price. Yeah, we’re talking about the F-35 program.  The government apparently got tired of negotiating with Lockheed and has simply issued a contract with the price they want (1).

“In an extraordinary action, the F-35 Joint Program Office decided 14 or 18 months of negotiations was enough and has issued a “unilateral contract” for the latest Low Rate Initial Production contract to defense giant Lockheed Martin.

In simple terms, the Pentagon got sick and tired of talking with Lockheed and told them, here’s how much we’re willing to pay you. Take it or leave it. All terms had been agreed to by both sides except one — the price.”

So what does Lockheed think of the imposed contract?

“The definitized contract for LRIP 9 announced today was not a mutually agreed upon contract, it was a unilateral contract action, which obligates us to perform under standard terms and conditions, and previously agreed-to items,” Lockheed’s F-35 spokesman Mike Rein said in an emailed statement. “We are disappointed with the decision by the Government to issue a unilateral contract action on the F-35 LRIP 9 contract.”

Does Lockheed have any recourse?  Apparently, little.

“…Lockheed either accepts the government contract for 57 F-35s for roughly $6.1 billion or it goes to court to protest the government’s action.”

I am not a lawyer but how on Earth is this legal?  An imposed contract?  Wow. 

We all scoffed at the government’s claim that the price of the F-35 would be $80M but I guess if you can just dictate the price then $80M is perfectly doable.  Why not $70M or $10M or simply force the manufacturer to build them for free?  Wait, I know – charge the manufacturer for the privilege of building them and the F-35 program can be a profit maker for the government!

If Lockheed is forced to accept this, it can’t bode well for their quality control enthusiasm!  I wouldn’t want to be a pilot in one of these disgruntled builds.

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(1)Breaking Defense website, “JPO To Lockheed: No More Talkie, Here’s LRIP 9 Deal”, Colin Clark, 2-Nov-2016,

http://breakingdefense.com/2016/11/jpo-to-lockheed-no-more-talkie-heres-lrip-9-deal/

Drug Users Welcome

Secretary of Defense Carter is a joke and here’s his latest folly.  He wants to lower the standards for recruitment into the military (1).  What a great idea because that’s what we need – less qualified soldiers.  Specifically, Carter wants to relax standards on physical fitness and pot use.  Here it is,

“Among the benchmarks that will get new scrutiny: fitness standards, marijuana use, tattoo regulations and the military’s longtime reluctance to allow single parents to start military careers.”

“As thousands of prospective recruits are now living in states where medical and recreational marijuana is now legal, Carter is instructing top personnel officials to consider pilot programs to “assess the feasibility and impact of updated standards” on the issue of “past marijuana use,”

“Defense Secretary Ash Carter has launched a sweeping review of the military's recruiting standards, saying current rules for screening new entrants may be “overly restrictive” and preventing America's most talented young people from joining the ranks.”

So, according to Carter, our most talented young people are overweight, pot users?  Wow!  An Army of overweight, pot users should scare the Russians and Chinese into submission.

What’s Carter’s fear?  What’s prompting his idiotic decision?

“Carter’s announcement Tuesday marked the latest round of his “Force of the Future” personnel reforms, which are driven by his concerns that the military today is ill-equipped to recruit and retain the top talent needed for future missions.”

So, Carter’s solution to being unable to attract top talent into the military is to lower the standards?  Now there’s some top notch logic.  Carter’s an idiot.  No wonder our military is in the shape it’s in.  I can’t wait until those overweight, pot users move up the ranks and become the generals of tomorrow.  That should be interesting.

Alright let me try to turn from mocking to a slightly serious tone.

Does anyone seriously believe that drug users are going to join the military and stop using drugs?  Of course not.  Drug users will continue to use drugs and drug use will become rampant.  How do military leaders say no to it after allowing acknowledged drug users to join in the first place?  This is going to be the 1960’s and ‘70’s all over again.

Just a reminder, pot is still a federal crime despite the unconstitutional laws passed at some state and local levels.  Marijuana is a Schedule 1 controlled substance under the Federal Controlled Substances Act.  Thus, accepting a recruit who acknowledges using pot is accepting a criminal who has violated a Federal statute.

Is lowering standards the way to attract top talent?  No, that’s idiotic.  The Marine Corps had this figured out long ago.  Their means of recruiting top talent was to market themselves as too good for you to join.  Their ads basically said that they didn’t think you had what it takes and they didn’t want you.  That approach ensured that only the best sought to join.  Of course, the Marines are no longer elite and now will accept anyone but once upon a time they knew better.

Every time I think the military has hit bottom, they literally lower the bar.  I weep for my country.

Now, having said all that, I’ll offer a partial solution.  I’m utterly against women and unqualified men in combat.  However, not all jobs in the military are combat.  In modern times there are many jobs that do not require any great degree of physical fitness at all.  I’m talking mainly about administrative and computing jobs.  I would have no problem with creating a separate branch or sub-section of the military that had no physical fitness standards.  Computer geeks and women can work these jobs to their heart’s content.  Of course, they would not be considered “soldiers” – that would be an insult to real soldiers.  They would be part of a support corps.  They would be valuable, often extremely so, but would not be entitled to be called soldiers.

America was built with the sweat and blood of tough men.  Lowering our standards is not the way to ensure that America remains great.

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(1)Military Times website, “The military may relax recruiting standards for fitness and pot use“, Andrew Tilghman, 1-Nov-2016,

http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/recruiting-standards-may-change-secdef-says