Video: Firefight on Hero-Cam

Here's a firefight as captured by the machine-gunners helmet-cam By: Brant

Weekend Humor: Fail, and Fail Some More

There's some actual 'fail' in here, but the segment starting at 2:20, while canned, is a freakin' riot.




By: Brant

Video Footage From Free Syrian Army

Free Syrian Army ambush that nets them a pair of captured T72s.



h/t Rex

By: Brant

Anniversary: D-Day

By: Brant

How To Start A Tiger Tank

By: Brant

This Is Awesome

A homecoming those kids will never forget




By: Brant

No Ghost-Riding for You!

Remember our old ghost-riding montage from the Monday video series? Danger Room is reporting that the Army isn't particularly fond of the videos being posted to their internal video-sharing site.

By: Brant

Russian Army Full of Hot Air

No really, they have a corps of inflatable vehicles.

Easy to transport and even easier to deploy, the Russian military is sure looking good. But get too close and you'll see its little secret: it's inflatable.

The Russian military has been investing in inflatable decoys vastly cheaper than actual military equipment, blow-up plastics that offer the illusion of anything ranging from pretend tanks to complete radio stations.

The weapons deceptively start as large plastic sheets, shipped in a black duffel bag. With the assistance of little other than an air pump, a tank can take form in a matter of seconds, ready to roll out -- with a push from a few soldiers, of course.

These decoys lack any actual fire-power defense, of course, though they are made of special material that tricks enemy radar and thermal imaging into thinking they are real. According to an article in the Russian Times, Rusbal, a private Russian company, makes inflatable S-300 missiles, T-80 and T-72 tanks, and Su-27 and MiG-31 fighter jets -- all life-size and, the company says, extremely difficult to distinguish from the real thing when viewed by radar or satellite.

By: Brant

Video Bonus: WWII Footage From North Africa

Silent, with interspersed title cards.

By:

Video: Afghanistan's Female Army Officers

By: Brant

Footage of Chinese J-15 Carrier-based Fighter

China’s J-15 carrier-based fighter closely resembles a Sukhoi Su-33, on which the next generation jet fighter is based. China apparently reverse engineered the J-15 from a Ukrainian Su-33 that they acquired earlier this decade.

By: Shelldrake

Video: Russians Capture and Investigate Solami Pirate Ship

h/t Jarhead0331

It's got some bloody moments in it, and a Russian questioning a Somali is movie-accent English. But it shows in detail what a sham the Somali "fishing boats' are that are out on the seas.




By: Brant

Video: Daily Show Poking Fun At PowerPoint

It's like shooting fish in a barrel... But what's really funny are the examples of PowerPoint thru history at the end of the clip. They're worth watching the obvious jokes during main part of the clip.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Afghanistan Stability Chart
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

By: Brant

Monday Video: Special Edition - WikiLeaks Video Deconstructed

This week's "bang" is a bit different. The WikiLeaks "Collateral Murder" video caused a huge stir. However, the video doesn't tell the whole story. There is a second version of the video includes footage edited out of the original by the WikiLeaks folks. It also includes significant new subtitling that explain the action rather differently than the WikiLeaks guys did.

Here are both videos, side-by-side.
The rebuttal is from the posting on LiveLeak, as YouTube kept dicking around the posting of the rebuttal.
From MountainRunner:

The "rebuttal" video was removed from YouTube for "violation of the YouTube Community Guidelines." The cause of action: "graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed in YouTube videos." The "rejection notice" at right was sent by someone close to the "rebuttal". Neither Collateral Murder nor the unedited video have been removed from YouTube. It appears the "rebuttal" video is a clear victim of manipulation by supporters of Collateral Murder or its cause. The method was social media's "democratic" ability to suppress or silence opposing viewpoints by flagging content as inappropriate, a feature in YouTube that is often used by insurgent and terrorist propagandists. Conversely, content can be promoted and rise to the top of search results with a "thumbs up." Jillian York has documented the same silencing technique on Facebook.

YouTube finally put it back up, but fuck'em - if you're not going to play fair, I don't have to play with you. How this affects future Monday Videos remains to be seen.
edit: LiveLeak's embed doesn't work right now, so we're stuck with YouTube's version and hoping it doesn't get shanked again

Original WikiLeaks video:


Rebuttal video (this time from YouTube, b/c LiveLeak's won't embed properly)



Sorry to pull you from your usual Monday morning fun, but this was too important to ignore.

By: Brant

Congresscritters Again Lacking in Clue

Whoooooooo!

Check out the question at the 1:20 mark. Wow.




Seriously... who the hell could possibly ask this?!

By: Brant

Great Video Feed on YouTube

The British military has a very good YouTube channel with a lot of videos from all over the world. Certainly worth looking around a bit. But not quite as cool as our Monday videos! ;)

By: Brant

BUB: Afghanistan

This afternoon's Battle Update Briefing focuses on Afghanistan


In case you get the hankering to watch official video from Afghanistan, ISAF has their own channel
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The US military is looking to build a modern-day foreign-area service specialist, and it's not really catching on with the troops. After all, why sideline your career in a new, untested field, when you know the current paths to promotion are already laid out before you if you follow the right dance steps?

The military’s effort to build a seasoned corps of expert officers for the Afghan war, one of the highest priorities of top commanders, is off to a slow start, with too few volunteers and a high-level warning to the armed services to steer better candidates into the program, according to some senior officers and participants.

The point of it is admirable, as it addresses a key problem: continuity in theater.

The groundbreaking program is meant to address concerns that the fight in Afghanistan has been hampered by a lack of continuity and expertise in the region among military personnel. But some officers have been reluctant to sign up for an unconventional career path because they fear it will hurt their advancement — a perception that top military leaders are trying to dispel as they tailor new policies for the complex task of taking on resilient insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Each military branch has established career paths, and the type of focus envisioned by the program would take people off those routes.

The difficulties with the program came to light when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, in an unusual rebuke within the Pentagon’s uppermost circle, chided the chiefs of the four armed services three weeks ago for not always providing the best people.

The program — which is expected to create a 912-member corps of mostly officers and enlisted service members who will work on Afghanistan and Pakistan issues for up to five years — was announced with much fanfare last fall. So far, 172 have signed up, and Admiral Mullen has questioned whether all of them are right for such a critical job.

The initiative was championed by Admiral Mullen and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior commander in Afghanistan. It is intended not only to bolster the war effort, but also to signal a long-term strategic partnership with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

+++


There are challenges in Afghanistan with implementing GEN McChrystal's guidance on how to fight the war, as the soldiers of 5-2 SBCT will attest.

Soldiers in 1-17 say that while the battalion’s junior leaders have embraced these principles, Neumann and Tunnell — whose brigade’s motto is “Strike — Destroy” — have not. “There’s definitely a disconnect between the platoon and company level and the battalion and brigade level,” said a Charlie Company soldier in a leadership position, who requested he remain anonymous.

“McChrystal’s guidance is very clear on its population focus,” said another junior leader.

But 1-17 soldiers thought that focus was missing from their operations. “When we first started operations, we were told we were going to stay enemy-focused,” said Capt. Jon Burton, an assistant fire support officer who is also 1-17’s civil-military and information operations officer co-located with Charlie Company. “That came from brigade.”

“That has absolutely been the message that’s been delivered from higher,” agreed Turnblom, the Charlie Company fire support officer.

In fact, it seems as though the brigade leadership make be outright ignoring the guidance from on high.

”We have done absolutely nothing as a company to improve the quality of life for the average Afghan living in the central Arghandab Valley,” Sanders said. “What we’re doing is not working, and we need to go on a different tack.” Asked what that tack should be, Sanders replied: “Basic counter-insurgency — give them a better option than Islamic extremism.”

That is the prevalent view in Charlie Company.

“The ‘clear, hold, build’ thing that we’re supposed to be doing ... we’re not doing that,” Hughes said. “If any commander in this brigade goes to sleep at night thinking after we’ve walked through that orchard over there that it’s clear, he’s a f------ idiot.”

Hughes added a comment that could have been taken straight from McChrystal’s guidance: “The non-kinetic side of the house is what wins counterinsurgency, not attrition.”

It'll be interesting to see how much retribution the soldiers in this article suffer as a result of allowing themselves to be quoted. I've corresponded with the author a few times, and he's a solid, quality, experienced military journalist who is not chasing headlines by trying to manufacture controversy.
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And all those civilian casualties in Afghanistan? Maybe someone should start protesting AQ blowing their own people to the great beyond.

Few would deny that Muslims too are victims of Islamist terror. But a new study by the Combating Terrorism Center in the US has shown that an overwhelming majority of al-Qaida victims are, in fact, co-religionists.

In the battle against unbelievers, can one also kill Muslims? Even the terror network al-Qaida is troubled by this question.

A leading al-Qaida ideologue for the terror network, Abu Yahya al-Libi, has developed his own theologically-based theory of collateral damage that allows militants to kill Muslims when it is unavoidable.
Even the Iraqi affiliates of Osama bin Laden's terror group, who are known to be particularly bloodthirsty, claim that they too consider this question. For instance, in a message claiming responsibility for an August attack in Baghdad, the group wished those Sunnis injured in the "operation" a speedy recovery and expressed their hope that those killed would be accepted by God as "martyrs."

But even as such apologetic communiqués from al-Qaida show the terror network stylizing itself as a defender of the true faith wrestling with religious concepts, they also make it look as though any dead Muslims are regretful but isolated cases. The facts, though, tell a different story.

Between 2004 and 2008, for example, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for 313 attacks, resulting in the deaths of 3,010 people. And even though these attacks include terrorist incidents in the West -- in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 -- only 12 percent of those killed (371 deaths) were Westerners.

By: Brant

Wednesday Wargaming Bonus: Harken back to Wargaming's Golden Days

SPI once produced a video clip to explain wargaming to those who don't know. Man, this can make you feel old... just look at the 1970s fashion!



As an FYI, the guy who posted this video is a pretty talented wargame artist:
John Cooper's wargame art
Agincourt counters


Starship Troopers counters


By: Brant

Video: Thunder Run

This isn't quite a Monday Video, since there's no real good music soundtrack under it. But it's still a great video of a turret camera on a TF 1-64 AR Thunder Run through Baghdad in 2003. Enjoy.





By: Brant

COIN Video Archive

The CAC has an archive of COIN videos posted where you can view a variety of presentation from the U.S. Army and Marine Corps


By: Brant