Here's a guy who has reason for supporting Ukraine that aren't stupid

 I mean, I don't personally know if the juice is worth the squeeze, but at least he's not parroting the usual talking points.  He's actually thought it through.

1. Historically countries that have surrendered without a fight, have been treated far more poorly than those that fought to an armistice. There are exceptions to this rule (WWI Germany, those that fought against Genghis Khan, and a couple of others,) but it’s still a good rule of thumb. 

2.  From NATO’s perspective, it sends two messages: 1) We will support any invaded nation in Europe against aggression. 2) Hey Russia, this was the C team, and they were a real pain in the ass for you, fighting with our gear that we were willing to give to someone not in our alliance, who used it with minimal training… just enough to not kill themselves with it.  Imagine what facing OUR troops, with years of training, and the gear we were NOT willing to share is going to look like.  Do you really want to go? Do you?

3. Every Russian soldier Ukraine kills, even if Ukraine loses, is one less that NATO will have to face. Every dead Russian troop, or wounded to the point that he can’t fight, takes with him to the grave, or to the begging bowl on some corner, the knowledge, training, and experience (if any) that he had.

The guy's a pragmatist, I'll give you that.

How can this not benefit an organization created to defend the west against Russian aggression?  Why would we NOT help Ukraine, with this consideration?  My personal biggest fear is having to fight a two-front war against Russian and PRC aggression simultaneously.  The longer Ukraine bleeds Russia into “White Russia” if you will pardon the historic reference, the happier I am.

I can see his point.  The problem that I have is that we're printing money we don't have in order to throw over a hundred billion dollars into a corrupt oligarchy with no oversight, and we're some how expected to believe that it's going to help defeat Russia.

I can't buy that, not when a bunch of Krains have already decamped to other countries where they hope to not get extradited.  Other than our equipment, which may or may not survive the first contact with the enemy, I'm willing to bet that the money we're sending is getting funneled into certain people's pockets and the troops on the ground aren't seeing much of it at all.

Why whould I think that?  Well, because that's what Ukraine did BEFORE the conflict, and I don't see any indication they're changed their ways.

I guess this is my "A pox on both their houses" kinda moment.

Jarheads, man.

A little sanity

 It'll go unheeded, of course, but still....

If that plan goes ahead, though, CDR J.H. Furman warns the results could conceivably be catastrophic.

“The forced vaccination of all military personnel with the present COVID-19 vaccines may compromise U.S. national security due to the unknown extent of serious vaccine complications,”writes Furman. “Further study is needed before committing the Total Force to one irreversible experimental group. Initial reports leave more concern for the COVID-19 vaccinations than the virus itself for the (at present) exceptionally healthy military population.”

SecDef Lloyd Austin, who was a pathetic piece of shit while he was in uniform, is even worse a pathetic piece of shit out of uniform, and he's pushing his political bullshit (to include mandatory vax) regardless of the facts on the ground.  What are those facts?  The grand total number of US military personnel who have died from the Kung Flu are....  (drumroll, please!)  24.  

Twenty.  Four.  Deaths.  Out of a population of 2.2 MILLION.  And since we're seeing breakthrough infections from the Delta variant, getting vaxxed ain't gonna do shit to really drop those already low numbers.

The military is not at a high risk from the Kung Flu.  But Lloyd Austin doesn't give a shit.  He's a political bitch, and this is a politically-motivated demand.  

I can't wait to see what happens when all those young troops come up with all kind of weird health issues in five to ten years.  I'm certain that the same government who swore on a stack of bibles that Agent Orange was perfectly safe will treat these new casualties with the same respect and gratitude they treated the Viet Nam vets who were exposed.

The F-35 needs to be scrapped

 Bring back production of the F-22 in the meantime while you go back to the drawing board.

In spite of its advanced technology and cutting-edge capabilities, the latest stealth fighter suffers from structural flaws and slew of challenges.

Most recent among them is a structural engine flaw and shortage in its production.

The F-35’s engine problem is partly based in not being able to deliver them for maintenance as fast as needed, in addition to a problem with the heat coating on its rotor blades which shortens engine lifespan considerably.

Defense News described it as a “serious readiness problem”, suggesting that as soon as 2022, nearly 5 to 6 per ent of the F-35 fleet could be effectively grounded as it waits for engine replacements.

Another challenge is the plane’s software. Most modern fighter jets have between 1 to 2 million lines of code in their software. The F-35 averages 8 million lines of code in its software, and it’s suffering from a bug problem.

To fix this, the US Department of Defense is asking three American universities to help figure it out.

The fighter jet also suffers from a slightly embarrassing touchscreen problem. After making the switch from hard flipped switches to touch screens, pilots report that unlike a physical switch that you’re confident has been activated, touch screens in the plane don’t work 20 percent of the time says one F-35 pilot. 

One of my acquaintances happens to work on F-35s, and he was recently deployed to the ME with his squad.  To say the planes had issues would be an understatement.  The plane is a money suck that doesn't work.  It needs to be scrapped.

Truth

 

This is temporary

Soldiers in Basic Training won't have to pass the ACFT in order to graduate. 

The Army has suspended a rule requiring new enlisted soldiers and officers to pass the Army Combat Fitness Test to graduate initial military training through next year.

Army officials announced in June that all active-duty, National Guard and Reserve units would be cleared to take a lightly modified ACFT on Oct. 1, but their scores will be used for data collection only and will not count until 2022.

Since I'm in the thick of this, let me break it down for you.  For decades, the Army has used the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) as a measurement of fitness for Soldiers.  Did it work?  Well, yes and no.  It's push-ups, sit-ups, and a 2-mile run.  The APFT has its advantages:  It's simple.  You can conduct it anywhere you have a two-mile running course that's flat.  It doesn't take many people to conduct the test.  You can run a unit through an APFT pretty quickly if you have a team that knows what it is doing.

However, it has its drawbacks.  First, the Army got locked into a mentality that if you could do push-ups an run quickly, you were fit.  But combat isn't done in an APFT uniform, and a 120 lb stick that can run like the wind can't run with two ammo cans in his hand.  The APFT did the job, but it also got people stuck in a rut.  Most notably, commanders who thought that running a seven minute mile meant everything in the world.  Don't get me wrong, running a seven minute mile is a good thing, but it's not the ONLY thing.

In the past decade, the vast majority of injuries to Soldiers came during training.  And I'm not talking accidents, I'm talking Soldiers performing their tasks and drills and getting injured because they had never actually trained their lower back or their core to do the jobs that the Army needs them to do.  As in, pick up those ammo cans and haul ass to where they are needed.  Drag that casualty out of the fire zone.  Get your ass up and over that wall.  The Army actually learned a few things, one of those being that total fitness is more than push-ups, sit-ups and running.

The initiative behind the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) was based on the fitness programs that the Army developed for Special Forces quite a while ago.  It encompassed total body fitness, not just the three areas that commanders cared about because PT scores reflected on their OER.  That's Officer Evaluation Report, for those not in the military.  There's an NCOER for us non-coms.  

The ACFT is six events - First, we still have push-ups, but now they are hand-release push-ups.  Start in the push-up position.  Lower your chest to the ground.  While your chest is on the ground, extend your hands out to the side.  Bring your hands back in, and push your body off the ground.  Trust me, if you're used to normal push-ups, this variation will kick your ass.

Second, we have the three-repetition dead lift.  This event is what's causing somewhat of a problem for the Army, because it uses a hex bar instead of a plain barbell.  Getting the hex bar to units is taking time thanks to the Kung Flu panic.  Three reps with as much weight as you can lift.

Third, the power throw.  Take a ten-pound medicine ball, throw it behind you as far as you can.  Surprisingly difficult.

Fourth, the Sprint-Drag-Carry.  Here's where people are finding that their fitness regimens are failing them.  It's 25 meters out and back, five times.  Start with a flat out sprint, down and back.  Then carrying two 40 pound kettlebells, down and back.  Then laterals, down and back.  Then dragging a sled, down and back (this one just wipes out your quads.  Trust me on this).  Finished with a sprint down and back.  Total of 250 meters.  The drag portion of this event is harder than it looks.  By the by, the average weight for ammo cans for crew serve weapons?  Approximately 40 pounds.  Yeah.

Fifth, the leg tuck.  Grasp a pull up bar.  Lift your knees until they touch any portion of your arms.  Lower your body to the start position.  Do as many as you can.

Sixth, the good old two-mile run.  Only this time, you're running after you've just used up all your energy with five physical events.  

Now this is a radical departure from what the Army used to do.  What the eggheads are trying to do, through application of a test, is force the Army to change what it considers to be "fitness".  If all you're doing is pushing, sitting-up and running, you will fail the ACFT.  You need some gym time in order to pass.  Granted, you don't need a whole lot, and quite frankly the only real equipment you need is a pull-up bar in order to practice the leg tucks.  If you do squats with a couple of sandbags in your hands, you'll pass the dead lift.  But the point is that you'll need to practice the dead lift, which heretofore the Army hasn't even thought about doing as an organization.  Core strength matters now, in a quantitative way, and the Army hasn't ever thought about it like that.

So, since this isn't just a change in how Soldiers are tested, but a change in the entire philosophy of what the Army considers fitness, the headshed is giving the Army time to change.  I should say "time to change",  Scare quotes and all.  Because what I think is really happening is that the Army is putting this change in place, and giving some time for all the old, crusty, refuse to change leadership to shift out of their leadership positions through retirement and attrition.  All the old ways of thinking about Army fitness need to be tossed in the garbage bin where they belong.

Yes, I'm a bit biased.  I will freely admit it.  I think the ACFT is a good thing.  I think forcing the Army to consider total fitness is a good thing.  I only became truly engaged with fitness after I left the strict, narrow confines of Army Fitness Training.  The best PT scores of my early years were when I was tasked away to a different group and didn't have to do PT with my unit in the mornings.  I did PT on my own.  And my PT score went up by 30 points in three months.  That was the real eye-opener for me.  I argued with my First Sergeant when I got pulled back into the unit.  I showed him my PT cards, and showed him what I was doing for training.  His response was "Well, Soldiers should be doing more PT on their own anyways."  Dude, between first formation, reveille, PT and all the other stuff, you have me occupied for a total of three hours every morning.  Exactly how much time do you want me to spend correcting your shitty training after I finally get home at 1800 hrs?

I've also had Soldiers who could score a 300 on the APFT but couldn't do a damn bit of what they needed to do, such as lifting ammo cans.  Yeah, sure you can do push-ups.  When you're 120 pounds soaking wet, your arms don't have to work hard.  Now lift that 75 pound ammo can?  No can do, eh?  

Anyways, all of that was said so I can say this:  The Army isn't punishing people for not passing the ACFT, in part because they got held up in implementing the test thanks to the Chinese Cooties, and in part because they're fighting against certain leadership elements who have to get kicked out of the rut they're in.  It's not just the kids in Basic who don't have to "pass" the test, it's EVERYBODY.  That's until they finally get things worked out, and then it will be mandatory for everybody.

Anyways, I think the headline for that article is a bunch of clickbait, and I don't think they're telling the whole story.  Everybody is getting a pause, while the Army gets the ACFT implemented.  And then, all the people who thought they were fit are going to find out that their PT programs are lacking.

On Trump moving Fifth Corps HQ to Poland

Well, good.

Listen, I like Germany.  Beautiful country.  Good beer, lots of cool things and places, nice people.

But Poland?  Ask our troops who've worked with the Poles what they think of them, and you'll hear quite a bit of gushing praise.  And Poland has the bonus of not inviting in millions upon millions of people from a 7th-century Satanic death cult of pedophilia.

My only regret is that I'll be retired long before I get a chance to be stationed there.

So, Rivrdog picked it.

The promotion board came out a little bit ago, and I got picked up.  But that's no longer a sure sign that you get promoted; the Army has moved away from instant promotions for NCOs, and that's a good thing.  It's now Select, Train, Educate and Promote.  STEP.  Which means that you get selected, but then you have to go to school and graduate from whatever level of NCO education before you actually pin on your new rank.  And trust me, there's a lot of people who get selected who won't make it.  There's always been people who you look at and wonder just how the hell they got promoted.  This helps weed them out.

So I just spent a couple of weeks at an un-named Army base going through my level of NCO education.  The higher up you go, the less important it is that you can run through a forest with a rucksack, and more important that you understand the operational processes and information preparation of the battlefield.  So this class was created, and implemented this fiscal year for the first time.

Take my word for it, it's no joke.  This class was like getting raped by an entire library of doctrine and regulation until you could repeat it verbatim.  We started with twenty-nine students.  We finished with twenty-four.  And these guys weren't some slack-jawed privates, they were serious troops with plenty of experience.  They had all the scare badges.  About one-third of my classroom worked for SF, or a Ranger battalion, or they taught at one of the various schools.  Multiple deployments.  And five of them got dropped.

This school is going to re-shape the senior NCO levels in a few years.  And I think a lot of dead weight is going to be trimmed.

So anyways, I graduated.  Which means that I will eventually get promoted, once a few things shake out.  It won't happen immediately, but it's guaranteed to happen now.  It was a great day.

Partnerships only work if everybody pulls together

And in the same direction.

So the Germans have 95 operable tanks at any given time and less than 200 working Armored Personnel Carriers. Their Air Force is in serious trouble. They have roughly forty operable fighter jets, a good portion of which are already committed to operations around Turkey and Syria. 

And then there’s the Navy. Shall we talk about the German submarine force? It’s going to be a short discussion. Coming into this winter they had one (!) operable submarine. Sadly, that one grounded on the rocks a few months ago so their total fleet of subs currently stands at… zero. 

How did things get to this point? A recent interview with the German Defense Minister included some choice quotes. One of them was the explanation that Germany hasn’t paid as much attention to the military because “we are surrounded by friends.” The alternate and somewhat more dismal explanation is, “because we just don’t care.”

In my very short time in Kabul, I saw lots of flags at the main airport.  French and Belgium and Australian and Greek and so on and so forth.

Out at Camp Phoenix, it was Armenians and Bulgarians.

Out in FOBs away from the comforts and political safety of the main base in Kabul, it was....  just Americans.

The only real reason we have our NATO allies helping us out in Afghanistan is to use them as a political fig leaf.  "See, what we're doing is right and good and just!  Look at all the people we have helping us!"  Except we don't really have people helping us, do we?  We have "allies" that can't field a force.  We have allies that cannot actually get their troops from one theater to another, and moreover, they do not care that they lack this ability, because the US of A has always been doing the heavy lifting so why should they bother?

I remember when NATO intervened in Kosovo, and the French had to hire civilian ferries to move it's troops because they didn't actually possess the watercraft needed to move troops and supplies up a river.  Or up anywhere.

After the tsunami in Indonesia, it was a US carrier group that every other country in the world used as a floating HQ.  Of course, they all wanted to rub elbows with the political figures that would allow them the most opportunity for graft, because that's what the rest of the world does while America busts its ass trying to fix shit.

If Germany cannot field a military, then they are worthless as a NATO ally.  They should either do their damn job, or we should dump them.

Not a good look for the Coasties

But I'm not heckling them, because I'm pretty sure the Army has pulled this crap as well.

The nation’s highest military court has thrown out the 2012 rape conviction of a Coast Guard enlisted man because admirals and prosecutors packed the seven-member jury with five women, four of whom held jobs as advocates for victims of sexual assault.  

In a 5-0 ruling that could change how the military conducts sex abuse trials, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces unleashed caustic criticism of all involved.

Please keep in mind that during the Obama junta, as in all Marxist governments, competence and experience were not a real requirement to attain flag-officer rank.  The correct politics were what got you in.  Which leads us to...

 The opinion, delivered by Judge Margaret A. Ryan, said the four admirals who played a role in assembling the officer and enlisted jury pool produced an illegal “gender-based court stacking.” She suggested that the admirals’ role amounted to unlawful command influence, which military law analysts see as the enemy of fair trials for service members. 

The court ruling said the trial judge “failed to conduct even a rudimentary investigation” into defense attorneys’ complaints of an unfair jury.
It also said the Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals failed in its duty to protect against unlawful command influence as it “rationalized the error away as a benign effort to seek inclusiveness.”

My emphasis up there.  "Seek inclusiveness".  That's verbiage straight out of the SJW handbook right there.

One of the admirals involved in jury selection is Coast Guard Commandant Paul F. Zukunft. He was the last of four convening authorities of the rape trial. 

Adm. Zukunft told a hearing judge that he was unaware of jury stacking. The appeals court rejected his excuse.

My emphasis once again.  Paul F. Zukunft, the flaming twatwaffle who wants more trannies in the Coast Guard, helped stack a jury to convict a Sailor of a crime, based on evidence so flimsy and weak that even the original prosecutor wanted the charges thrown out.

The case against this Sailor was so pathetic that the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces has dismissed all charges with prejudice, meaning the Coast Guard cannot bring these charges up again.  In a just world, political officers like Paul F. Zukunft would be turning in their resignation immediately.  The military does not need political parasites like Paul F. Zukunft leading anything more than latrine duty. 

Let's hope that this political slimeball Paul F. Zukunft retires soon, or that Trump tells him to clear out his desk, so that we can get someone who actually cares about the military service in charge rather than a political leech who cares more about the approval of politicians than doing his job correctly.

Cut Slingload, you morons!

Oh, I'm sorry, that's an Army term so the Air Force probably won't get it.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive, and possible the most error ridden, project in the history of the United States military. But DOD has sunk so much money into the F-35 — which is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the 55-year life of the program — that the Pentagon deemed it "too big to fail" in 2010.

Now, I'm not going to claim to be a strategic expert, but from my foxhole, it seems as if the top brass of the Air Force has been fucking up one thing after another in a string of fuck-ups that goes back for a while now.

I understand the lure of the "do anything" fighter, I really do.  But it doesn't exist.  It never has.  It never will.  The Air Force keeps wanting to kill the A-10 Thunderbolt (aka The Warthog), despite the fact that there is not one single other plane in the Air Force inventory that can perform the mission that the A-10 does.  The F-35 can't do it.  The F-22 Raptor, the best fighter jet we have for air-to-air combat, can't touch what the A-10 does.  So what's the AF's response?  Kill the A-10.

Hell, at this point the F-35 is not an actual program to build and develop a superior plane.  It is a program built and developed to transfer trillions of dollars from the US people to businesses that have connections with Washington D.C. politicians.

More than anything, the shift in strategy is an indictment of the way that the Air Force and the rest of DOD have been doing business for years. The F-35 has come to symbolize all that's wrong with American defense spending: uncontrolled bloat, unaccountable manufacturers (in this case, Lockheed Martin), and an internal Pentagon culture that cannot adequately track taxpayer dollars.

This has been such a cock-up that I would fire anyone and anything associated with the program, cut all ties, and start from scratch.  Re-start the F-22 production in the meantime to cover ourselves while we develop something new.  Realize that in the future, the chances of fighting one super-power's planes with our planes is roughly about the same chance as sending our Infantry division out of fight another super-power's Infantry division:  Those days are long gone.  They're so far gone that we don't even keep a traditional Infantry Division around any more.

We're still fucking around with 2nd Generation warfare concepts while the enemies we're facing are past 3rd Generation and into 4th generation.  Having a plane that blows a Mig out of the sky is nice.  We have those.  They're called the F-22 Raptor, which has been shit-canned in favor of the absolute failure of the F-35.  But we also need planes to support missions much like we currently are fighting.  And I'll take the decades-old Warthog over the new, expensive shiny toy that doesn't work like the F-35.

Bah.  This is all pissing in the wind while that Stuttering Clusterfuck of a Miserable Failure Obama is still infecting the Oval Office.

OK, so I love snow

The rest of Virginia, not so much.  House hunting gets a whole lot harder when real-estate folks are huddled up in their houses as if driving in the snow might cause them to first break out in hives and then burst into flames.  They didn't even bother showing up to the offices, if the complete and total lack of phone communication can be believed.  We did manage to get one or two folks to respond to text messages.

We actually had one person give us the code to the key box and say "Let us know what you think of the inside!"  So we went and checked it out.  It was the only house we could look at today.

Maybe they're all suffering from PTSD after the wholloping they got a few weeks ago?

Ah well.  I managed to get my hair cut.  And I was the only customer the poor lady had all day.

Military overspending

Hey, I wonder who many more troops we could have in the force if we eliminated some of the BILLIONS of dollars of fraud and waste?

Waste at the Pentagon is nothing new. But recent revelations suggest that it may be reaching historic levels. 

The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction has uncovered scandal after scandal involving U.S. aid to that country, including the creation of private villas for a small number of personnel working for a Pentagon economic development initiative and a series of costly facilities that were never or barely used. An analysis by ProPublica puts the price tag for wasteful and misguided expenditures in Afghanistan at $17 billion, a figure that is higher than the GDP of 80 nations.

I'm one of the first people who will jump up and defend military spending, but that means I have to be one of the first to jump up and demand that the money being spend in the military gets spent properly.  I've been in several positions where I had financial liability for several projects, and if there were a discrepancy, the Army would hunt me down and take it out of my paycheck.  So I made damn sure I knew where every single penny went.  There was no fraud.  There were no discrepancies.  I think that if we started hitting the people committing the fraud in their pocketbook (as well as some jail time) that fraud would end rather quickly.

But that would mean that when people commit fraud, they get punished.  And since the VA can't even stick to the punishment for the people who jacked $400k from them, I don't see that happening any time soon.

Although Kimberly Graves and Diana Rubens are excellent reasons why the VA needs to be dismantled and turned over to a private company.

Thank God

Reality prevails.

The U.S. Air Force has decided to indefinitely postpone the retirement of the legendary A-10 Thunderbolt II ground attack plane. The venerable Warthog's increased role in the air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was the Pentagon's main reason for the postponement.

There is no other aircraft in the US inventory that can do what the A-10 does, period.  And what it does is save the ass of the US military man on the ground, time and time again, getting in low and slow before pounding the ever-loving shit out of the bad guys.

I posted a video on the A-10 back in 2008.  Seems like a good time to link to it.  I tried to repost the vid here, but that didn't work too well for me, although the video works in the original post.

"You see that blinking light in the sky?  That is the HAND OF GOD!"

This will continue

Until military members are allowed to shoot back.

The Mississippi National Guard says soldiers reported shots fired during a training exercise at Camp Shelby, but no service members were hurt. 

The Guard said in a news release Tuesday that the Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center is secure and all personnel accounted for. The news release says the shots were fired from a road near Camp Shelby, but not on the military post’s property.

Give the troops guns.  Let them fight back.  It's what they are TRAINED TO DO ANYWAYS!

Because I needed a laugh

Setting up for failure

on the Air Power side of the house.

The test pilot flying the F-35 makes it very clear that the new jet, even in its ideal configuration without any external stores, was no match against a Block-40 F-16C in a less-than-ideal configuration with a pair of under-wing fuel tanks:

The F-35 needs to be scrapped.  It'll be a money loss, I know.  But it would be a bigger loss of both money, men and power to have our new shiny toy getting shot down in droves by the ChiComs or Ruskies.  This bird is going to be an albatross strung about the neck of the military for decades to come.  This plane can barely hold it's own against an airframe that came out decades ago.  The F-22 would slaughter the F-35.  And the F-35 cannot perform the functions of the airplanes it's supposed to replace.

This is getting flat out ridiculous.

Kill the F-35, keep the A-10, bring back the F-22

And find the worthless bastards who OK'd this crap, cover them with tar and feathers, and run them out of town on a rail.

Additionally, the first F-35s are still plagued with communications deficiencies. First, the aircraft has a difficult time distinguishing friendly forces from hostile ones, and second, it can’t verify the GPS ground coordinates. 

Tests indicate that 80 percent of the F-35’s information system alerts constitute false positives. The first F-35s ready to deploy in July, according to the Marine Corps, cannot use night vision technology.

So this MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR AIRCRAFT cannot do the things that an aircraft built in 1975 can?

Nope, nope, nope.  This is such an epic failure that people need to be jailed.

Bowe Bergdahl being charged with desertion?

Wouldn't that just be the turd topping on this shit sundae for Obama?  He trades five of his allies terrorist leaders for Bergdahl thinking it'll make him popular, but the shitbag he traded for is a freaking deserter who should have been left there.

Had Obama listened to word one from any of his actual military people, this never would have happened.  But the narcissistic fucking douche-nozzle hates the military, so he ignored them and went on doing what he does - making things worse.

Of course, I was saying Bergdahl was either a deserter or just a nutcase back in June.  I was right back then too.

Exhale

Did anyone else just breathe a sigh of relief as North Korea blinked at the ROK?

Having spent a year in Korea, I have no desire to go back and fight there in the winter time.  Or the summer time for that matter.  It's a hellish place to fight.  Casualties would make Iraq and Afghanistan look like a walk in the park.