The crew quickly realized the danger that extreme heat just on the other side of the inner hull might cause the torpedoes to explode. Since the hydraulic systems for torpedo removal were not functioning, they risked their lives to manually remove the torpedoes from the first compartment. According to Novaia Gazeta, three torpedoes were removed in this way. Had the torpedoes exploded, dozens of crew and firefighters would have been killed. Depending on the number of torpedoes affected, the authors of the Kommersant article raise the possibility that the explosion could have destroyed the floating dock and the Admiral Kulakov and might have led to radioactive contamination from the nuclear missiles or the two nuclear reactors onboard. I have no way of judging how serious that threat was, but whether or not it was real, a torpedo explosion would have certainly led to panic not just in Roslyakovo but also in the nearby cities of Severomorsk and Murmansk, which have a total population of almost 400,000 people.

Via Rob Farley at Information Dissemination.

For three consecutive years, since 2008, the city has recorded the highest murder rate in the world, rising to the level of 271.89 per 100,000 inhabitants during 2010. The decrease during 2011 has led to a “triumphalist” discourse on the part of the authorities and business leaders who are proclaiming a substantial reduction in violence in Juarez.

However, Mayor Hector Murguia was sent a clear indication of the obvious when, on Wednesday January 4, several “narco-banners” were displayed around the city with the anonymous message: “It is not because you have lowered the murder rate, rather it is that there are no longer so many people to kill … how many of us were here four years ago and how many inhabitants remain today?”

Coming off last year’s Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the special operations community has rarely ridden higher. But the resonance of the Somalia raid is, perhaps, singular. Somalia has a totemic significance for many in the special-operations community, thanks to the 1993 debacle — even as they’ve slowly grown more comfortable quietly operating in the country. The hostage rescue can’t avenge Black Hawk Down, of course. But it does help turn the page on that ugly chapter.

[Pentagon spokesman George] Little demurred on making any historical comparisons. “The bottom line is this was a hostage rescue mission that was ordered after an added sense of urgency and after the time was determined to be right,” Little said. “It was accomplished after careful planning by the United States military and it was executed very well.”

One Somali official told The Associated Press that during the fight for Deynile [neighborhood in Mogadishu, Burundi] lost between 30 and 50 soldiers in a single day.

Rep. McKeon, Secretary Panetta, and Admiral Mullen demonstrate their colossal failure to cope with the problem. They believe that spending levels are the key determinant of military viability. They fail to acknowledge that for the past decade — actually longer — more money has meant smaller, older, less ready forces. Their worship of the money flow means they cannot conceive how our forces might actually improve at lower levels of spending, and they quake in fear at the prospect of Pentagon spending being only thrice that of China. Indeed, they have no inkling how to reduce spending without reducing the viability of our forces. At lower budget levels, they will indeed decimate our forces. Before they are given a chance to do that, they should be replaced.

One flaw of current U.S.-Mexico strategy is the false presumption that international trafficking of drugs, guns, and cash can be effectively addressed through interdiction, particularly along the nearly two-thousand-mile U.S.-Mexican border. After a three-decade effort to beef up security, the U.S.-Mexico border is more heavily fortified than at any point since the U.S.-Mexico war of 1846–48. The United States has deployed more than twenty thousand border patrol agents and built hundreds of miles of fencing equipped with high-tech surveillance equipment, all at an annual cost of billions of dollars—with $3 billion per year spent on border control alone. While this massive security build-up at the border has achieved maximum attainable levels of operational control, the damage to Mexico’s drug cartels caused by border interdiction has been inconsequential.

Acronyms have long played a part in the language of a wide variety of human communities. Few other realms, however, can compete with the American defense establishment when it comes to the number, variety and pervasiveness of such synthetic words. Indeed, we have reached a point where there are communities within the defense establishment that use acronyms made up of other acronyms.

In terms of personnel the [U.S.] Coast Guard is now larger than the Royal Navy. In effect it is the [U.S.] Navy’s closest and most reliable ally. The economic advantages of close coordination are compelling.

The Canadians have also said that convoys have proven to be less likely to be ambushed if tanks are present. The Danes have had much the same experience with the Leopard II in Afghanistan, claiming that the tank’s 120mm gun is so accurate that it minimizes civilian casualties, and the RAND team reports that the Danes “noted that tanks can respond very quickly when contact is made with insurgents, and that it was clear the Taliban respects tank firepower. Indeed, it was stated that Taliban activity drops considerably when tanks are operating in an area.”

There is no doubt that a fully tooled up carrier battle group sends a clear message but whether that message is heeded is debatable. No doubt, there are examples where the deployment of a large carrier air package has de-escalated a situation but these are very few and far between and mostly from well before the last several decades. If even a U.S. carrier could not deter the Serbs, Saddam or the Taliban then what chance will a [Royal Navy] CVF?

Real life operational history is replete with examples where a carrier alone coerced precisely nobody; the only thing that has altered anyone’s intentions and actions is going ashore with land forces, in strength and in a sustained manner. The Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan all enjoyed carrier-borne fast air but the mission was not completed until land forces went ashore in depth and sustained for a period of time beyond a few weeks. This by the way is why the strategic raiding concept is deeply flawed …

I’m not waiting for a script. I’m going to do my homework. I’m going down to I think it’s Fallon, Nevada, down near New Mexico and it’s a whole different world now … These computer geeks — these kids play war games in a trailer in Fallon, Nevada, and if we ever went to war or were in the Middle East or the Far East or wherever it is, these guys can actually fly drones.  They are unmanned aircraft.  They operate them and then they party all night.

If Al Shabaab successfully attacked either a regional target like the July 11 Kampala bombings or a Western target, the result could be either the withdrawal of international actors from Somalia (such an attack could collapse support for the AMISOM mission in Uganda or Burundi) or a sudden determination by the West to intervene. The West has not in any way set conditions for a successful intervention, however, and a spasmodic reaction to an attack on the U.S. or Europe could have dire consequences.