Sea Robbers Active in Singapore Strait

ReCAAP report here: (screenshots)

Today's Pandemic Song: "When Will I Be Free" Adam Holmes and the Embers

Today's Pandemic Song: "Five Little Ducks" Trout Fishing in America

Today's Pandemic Song: "Johnny Faa" Musica Pacifica

Unknown Iranian Humorist Has Fun with Words

Any illegal, provocative move to receive Iran's rigid, resolute response reads the headline from the Islamic Republic News Agency ot the Iranian General Staff (either way, propaganda units of the dictatorship by Mullah):

Cannon Fodder at Sea

Describing presence of the US Army in Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Sea of Oman as disrupting regional security, the statement said that Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz as main international waterways and lifeline of global economy have always been safe zones for oil and trade ships and Iran has tried to maintain the stability and peace at an acceptable level in cooperation with regional states.

Dangerous and disruptive measures against shipping security began when the adventurous and terrorist country of the United States and some of its allies appeared in this sensitive region, it said.

General Staff of the Armed Forces pointed out that the US has virtually become a source of lawlessness, wickedness and insecurity with its harmful commutation and setting up military bases, and Iran has repeatedly warned the world and international community of the destabilizing and disruptive regional security measures as well as US violation of international law.

The year 2019 can be considered the peak of evil and insecure US movements in the region, the statement said, noting that under the false pretext of shipping security in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of ​​Oman, it has formed multiple coalitions in the region and posed numerous threats by sending warships and increasing the buildup of the military forces in the region.

Well! how does it feel to have that kind of smack talked about the USA put out into the world media stream?

For me, I'm beginning to think somewhere in one of those propaganda units there's some guy with a wicked sense of humor who is managing to poke fun at the irrationality of the Iranian regime while ticking off boxes on some "list of charges to make against those Yankees" that is posted on a wall chart in a room where this stuff is prepared. 

Imagine you were the lackey charged with writing this gibberish and knowing certain keywords would be required to get it approved by the super-lackey you work for and on up the food chain. Thus, choose one word from column A and one from column B and one from column C and you end up with "lawlessness," "wickedness," and "insecurity" coupled with words from the "use these in case of emergency" pile. You then have:

lawlessness, wickedness and insecurity with its harmful commutation and setting up military bases

Oh my gosh, those horrible Americans and their nasty "commutation."

I mean, I haven't commutated today, but there's always tomorrow when I may just go around commutating everywhere. I don't know, it may all be part of being both "adventurous" and "terrorist" while disrupting that glorious form of "regional security" that would exist under the Mullahs, just as it does in Iran.

I found the highlighted words particularly awesome.

Nice job, unknown IRNA/Iranian General Staff of the Armed Forces writer, one of the better humor pieces I've read today. Well done!

Not quite as humorous, except for the last paragraph, from Mehr News:

Therefore, the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran considers the presence of the United States and its allies illegitimate and the source of evil and insecurity in the region. The Iranian Armed forces also urge them to comply with the regulations of the Islamic Republic as well as the International laws and refrain from any adventure and dangerous behavior in the region.

The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly believes that regional countries have the necessary capabilities to maintain the security of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Sea of ​​Oman. Fake coalitions led by the United States not only do not help maintain stability and security in the region but also disrupt regional order and peace. On the other hand, the only safe alternative to stabilize peace is the withdrawal of US troops and their allies from the region.

The Iranian Armed forces urge the US and their allies to stop the spread of tension and insecurity in this strategic region of the world and strongly warns them to comply with the International regulations while crossing the exclusive economic waters of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman as well as the airspace of these regions including FIR and ADIZ.

As has been repeatedly stated, the Islamic Republic of Iran has not and will not initiate any tensions and conflicts in the region, but it will always defend its territorial integrity with readiness, strength, and power, and it is obvious that any adventure and provocative actions will be responded strongly by the Iranian Armed Forces.

Today's Pandemic Song: "Child of Mine" Bill Staines

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 26 March -22 April 2020 and HORN OF AFRICA/GULF OF GUINEA/SOUTHEAST ASIA Weekly Piracy Update for 16 - 22 April 2020

Sea robbers have remained active. Attacks in the lower Gulf of Mexico involving armed men and hostage taking while robbery goes on. Gulf of Guinea kidnapping and violence.

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

On Midrats 26 April 2020 - Episode 538: End of April Free For All

Please join us at 5pm EDT on 26 April 2020 for Midrats Episode 538: End of April Free For All

Last week, we could have gone another hour, so we thought the easy thing would be to bring it forward to this Sunday.

We will cover the waterfront as the Navy continues to struggle to get past COVID-19's dominating Navy news, not just with the TR, but now the USS Kidd and everything from boot camp to the Naval Academy.

Throw in a pick up game presence missions in the South China Sea, and the Russians ditching their future surface fleet ... and there is more than enough to make a fast hour.

Open topic and open mic.

If you can't catch the show live and you use Apple Podcasts, you can pick up the episode and others and add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the button at the main show page - or you can just click here. Or on Spreaker. The show also is reportedly on Spotify.

Today's Pandemic Song: The Fightin' Texas Aggie Band

In memory of my friend Virgil, who did love those Aggies:

Saturday Is Old Radio Day; Horatio Hornblower "Quarantined for the Plague"

Michael Redgrave as Hornblower, caught in a disease filled world.

Today's Pandemic Song: Edinburgh Military Tattoo Massed Pipes and Drums

Update: You may find the video won't play from my blog. But it will play on the YouTube link you might see.

Friday Films: Shipping Containers

Sure, these films present the same concept - shipping containers make modern logistics work better, faster, cheaper. From the perspective of a military planner, it also puts lots of important eggs in fewer baskets, as it were. Having so much valuable cargo on fewer ships will continue to pose challenges for protecting this shipping should major sea routes come under some sort of interdiction effort. It also requires thinking about what ships are the real "high value units" that need protection and what assets are available to do that escort work.

Today's Pandemic Song: "Wildflowers" Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Today's Pandemic Song: "Wild Mountain Thyme" - The Byrds

Today's Pandemic Song: "Going Home" ( Theme from Local Hero)

Bad Ideas: "In Seeking to Perfect Humans, We Must First Control Them"

I am reading a book, A King's Trade" by Dewey Lambdin. It's #13 in the Alan Lewrie series. In my reading,  I come across this:

... by Jeremy Bentham, himself, with his Vice Society and his damnable concept of Utilitarianism. If things didn't meet his strict and narrow key-holes of the most benefit for the most people, then damn it to Hell and do away with it ... whatever it was. Lt. Langlie had gotten a copy of Bentham's Panopticon, his view of an ideal England, and had been aghast, as had Lewrie, that it called for total surveillance of everyone's waking actions by a "morality police" as an infernal machine to "grind rogues honest"!

"Wait, what," I said to myself.

I vaguely remembered reading something about Bentham and "Utilitarianism" back in high school or college - but I certainly did not recall his concept that mirrored that which seems a precursor to Orwell's 1984 or of a Chinese style surveillance state, or even the 'hall monitor" society of the "politically correct police" with which we have become far too familiar. It even casts a sinister light on Star Trek's

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”

So I dug a little, and, of course, found a nice little guide in Ethics Explainer: The Panopticon , which confirmed Lambdin/Lewrie's rant:

The panopticon is a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central

observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells.
From the tower, a guard can see every cell and inmate but the inmates can’t see into the tower. Prisoners will never know whether or not they are being watched.

This was introduced by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. It was a manifestation of his belief that power should be visible and unverifiable. Through this seemingly constant surveillance, Bentham believed all groups of society could be altered. Morals would be reformed, health preserved, industry invigorated, and so on – they were all subject to observation.

Think of the last time you were at work and your boss walked in the room. Did you straighten up and work harder in their presence? Now imagine they were always in the room. They wouldn’t be watching you all the time, but you’d know they were there. This is the power of constant surveillance – and the power of the panopticon.

Nor did I know that the modern philosopher Michel Foucault was in on this line of thinking, too:

Michel Foucault, a French intellectual and critic, expanded the idea of the panopticon into a symbol of social control that extends into everyday life for all citizens, not just those in the prison system (Foucault 1970). He argues that social citizens always internalize authority, which is one source of power for prevailing norms and institutions. A driver, for example, might stop at a red light even when there are no other cars or police present. Even though there are not necessarily any repercussions, the police are an internalized authority- people tend to obey laws because those rules become self-imposed.

This is a profound and complicated idea, namely because the process entails a high degree of social intuition; the subject must be able to situate him or her self amidst a network of collective expectations. The crucial point is that the subject's specific role within the network is incorporated as a part of the body and mind, which then manifests as self-discipline.

Yeah, well, this heightens the level of intrusion into our daily lives, as noted in the UK Guardian piece on digital surveillance:

The looming interconnectivity between objects in our homes, cars and cities, generally referred to as the internet of things, will change digital surveillance substantially. With the advent of wider networked systems, heralded by the likes of Google’s Brillo and Apple’s HomeKit, everything from washing machines to sex toys will soon be able to communicate, creating a vast amount of data about our lives. And this deluge of data won’t only be passed back and forth between objects but will most likely wind its way towards corporate and government reservoirs.

With everything from heart-rate monitors in smartwatches to GPS footwear, a bright light is once again being thrown on our bodies. Will we feel exposed under the gaze of a central tower? Perhaps not, but with habits and physical stats charted against the norm, we will feel scrutinised nevertheless. Much of the justification of this is the alleged benefits to health and wellbeing. “Morals reformed – health preserved – industry invigorated” – not Apple marketing material but Bentham’s words on the panopticon.

There may not be a central tower, but there will be communicating sensors in our most intimate objects.

Well, it was a simple reading of a book about a fictional rakish Royal Navy Captain, but it did lead me off on a look at the human condition and those who would seek to perfect us all, if only we would give up to them control of our lives.

Like Lewrie and his Lieutenant, I am appalled. "It's for your own good" sucks as an excuse to restrict freedoms, whether by force of law or by the "all-seeing eye." That China adds to this system by "grading" its citizens and rewarding the most compliant really, really sucks.

For them it was a partially realized theory. For us it seem to have become a reality.

If you are interested in reading more about Bentham, you can head here. All emphasis above was added by me.

Today's Pandemic Song "It's Gonna Be Alright" Gerry and the Pacemakers

Today's Pandemic Song "Mansions of the Lord" from We Were Soldiers - performed by West Point Band and Glee Club

Lyrics:

To fallen soldiers let us sing,
Where no rockets fly nor bullets wing,
Our broken brothers let us bring
To the Mansions of the Lord

No more weeping,
No more fight,
No friends bleeding through the night,
Just Divine embrace,
Eternal light,
In the Mansions of the Lord

Where no mothers cry
And no children weep,
We shall stand and guard
Though the angels sleep,
Oh, through the ages let us keep
The Mansions of the Lord

"Trump Opens Outer Space for Business "

WSJ headline Trump Opens Outer Space for Business

As a follow up to the executive order, the administration has been quietly preparing the Artemis Accords, which it plans to present first to America’s partners on the International Space Station—Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia—and later to other nations. Parties would “affirm that the extraction and utilization of space resources does not constitute national appropriation under Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty.” That would enable NASA’s planned moon base to proceed and protect private companies that hope to build and operate facilities there or elsewhere. It would ensure that the U.S. and other nations, as well as firms under their jurisdiction, can build settlements and commercial operations throughout the solar system.

There’s a lot of wealth in space. A 79-foot-wide asteroid could hold 33.000 tons of extractable material, including $50 million worth of platinum. The 2-mile-wide asteroid 1986 DA could be worth $7 trillion. But that will require massive investment in new technology, and investors need assurance that they won’t pour billions into capturing an asteroid or mining the moon only to be told the resulting product isn’t theirs.

In some ways the administration’s policy is a logical continuation of the Obama-era drive for space commercialization. In 2015 President Obama signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which provides that “a U.S. citizen engaged in the commercial recovery of an asteroid or space resource . . . shall be entitled to . . . possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States.” Mr. Trump’s order ensures that international obligations will be supportive and not destructive of such efforts.

Discussed space mining before here. You might note that there is room for a lot of innovation - including using aircraft to tote "spacecraft" up to a launch height or the reusable booster rockets now being used. Making the ventures profitable will make things happen a whole lot faster.

From that earlier post of mine:

Credit: Bigelow Aerospace

"Inflatable Habitat Ready for Space Station Trip:

According to Bigelow Aerospace, the demonstration of expandable space habitat technology supports NASA's plans in the realm of human spaceflight, which ultimately lead to putting boots on Mars. Developing a deep-space habitat is an important step along the path to the Red Planet, agency officials say.

Founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, Bigelow Aerospace has as a goal the creation of a new paradigm in space commerce and exploration via the development and use of expandable habitat technology. Expandable habitats are viewed as offering dramatically larger volumes than rigid, metallic structures as well as enhanced protection against both radiation and physical debris.

Hmmm. Inflatable spacecraft.

Seems I read something about this concept in The Planet Strappers by Raymond Z. Gallun:

Nelsen didn't listen anymore. His and Paul's attention had wandered to the largest color photo thumbtacked to the wall, above the TV set, and the shelf of dog-eared technical books. It showed a fragile, pearly ring, almost diaphanous, hanging tilted against spatial blackness and pinpoint stars. Its hub was a cylindrical spindle, with radial guys of fine, stainless steel wire. It was like the earliest ideas about a space station, yet it was also different. To many—Frank Nelsen and Paul Hendricks certainly included—such devices had as much beauty as a yacht under full sail had ever had for anybody.

Old Paul smirked with pleasure. "It's a shame, ain't it, Frank—calling a pretty thing like that a 'bubb'—it's an ugly word. Or even a 'space bubble.' Technical talk gets kind of cheap."

"I don't mind," Frank Nelsen answered. "Our first one, here, could look just as nice—inflated, and riding free against the stars."

He touched the crinkly material, draped across its wooden support.

"It will," the old man promised. "Funny—not so long ago people thought that space ships would have to be really rigid—all metal. So how did they turn out? Made of stellene, mostly—an improved form of polyethylene—almost the same stuff as a weather balloon."

"A few millimeters thick, light, perfectly flexible when deflated," Nelsen added. "Cut out and cement your bubb together in any shape you choose. Fold it up firmly, like a parachute—it makes a small package that can be carried up into orbit in a blastoff rocket with the best efficiency. There, attached flasks of breathable atmosphere fill it out in a minute. Eight pounds pressure makes it fairly solid in a vacuum. So, behold—you've got breathing and living room, inside. There's nylon cording for increased strength—as in an automobile tire—though not nearly as much. There's a silicone gum between the thin double layers, to seal possible meteor punctures. A darkening lead-salt impregnation in the otherwise transparent stellene cuts radiation entry below the danger level, and filters the glare and the hard ultra-violet out of the sunshine. So there you are, all set up."

"Rig your hub and guy wires," old Paul carried on, cheerfully. "Attach your sun-powered ionic drive, set up your air-restorer, spin your vehicle for centrifuge-gravity, and you're ready to move—out of orbit."

They laughed, because getting into space wasn't as easy as they made it sound. The bubbs, one of the basic inventions that made interplanetary travel possible, were, for all their almost vagabondish simplicity, still a concession in lightness and compactness for atmospheric transit, to that first and greatest problem—breaking the terrific initial grip of Earth's gravity from the ground upward, and gaining stable orbital speed. Only a tremendously costly rocket, with a thrust greater than its own weight when fully loaded, could do that. Buying a blastoff passage had to be expensive.

Of course, Gallun wrote in 1961, so we all know that his idea of a space craft made of cheap materials and dependent on recycled air (or air produced by plants grown on board) was . . . ahead of its time?

Credit: Bigelow Aerospace

Bigelow Aerospace seems to believe in the concept. Here's info about its B330:

B330 will have 330 cubic meters (12,000 cu ft) of internal space, hence its numeric designation. The craft will support zero-gravity research including scientific missions and manufacturing processes. Beyond its industrial and scientific purposes, however, it has potential as a destination for space tourism and a craft for missions destined for the Moon and Mars.

Flexible, expandable? Check. Self-sealing? Check. Solar power? Check. Ion Thruster power? Possible. Affordable? Umm. Still face that cost of getting the package to space. Perhaps a space elevator could help.

But, you might ask, why? Asteroid mining? It seems, in addition to mining rare earth elements from the ocean floor (see here), there is a movement afoot to explore asteroid mining for rare earth elements(and gold and other valuable metals). There are start ups looking into making this work, e.g. Planetary Resources. Most of these efforts seem to be directed at robot mining, but why not allow individuals driven by profit motive to get out there and try their hand at space mining?

Asteroid Mining:

Early evidence suggests that there are trillions of dollars' worth of minerals and metals buried in asteroids that come close to the Earth. Asteroids are so close that many scientists think an asteroid mining mission is easily feasible.

Plus, you know, freedom."

Of course, if there's that much wealth involved, we need a "Space Navy" to protect these "space lines of commerce" from those dreaded "space pirates." Sen. Ted Cruz is way ahead on this idea:

Cruz, a Republican from Texas, alluded to space pirates in opening remarks on Tuesday for a hearing on "The Emerging Space Environment: Operational, Technical, and Policy Challenges" before the Senate Subcommittee on Aviation and Space.

Cruz referenced how the ancient Greeks and subsequent nations have called on naval forces to "protect water-borne travel and commerce from bad actors."

"Pirates threaten the open seas, and the same is possible in space," Cruz said. "In this same way, I believe we, too, must now recognize the necessity of a Space Force to defend the nation and to protect space commerce and civil space exploration."

So the new "Space Force" may have real jobs out there.

Cool.

On Midrats 19 April 2010 - Episode 537: Midrats in the Time of COVID-19 Melee

Please join us at 5pm EDT on 19 April 2020 for Midrats Episode 537: Midrats in the Time of COVID-19 Melee

Take a break from trying to find a way to socially distance yourself from the people you are non-self-isolating with this week by joining us LIVE for a free for all Midrats. We have a lot in the maritime domain to discuss from the response to the outbreaks on the carries Theodore Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle, PCS, the budget, upcoming FFG(X) selection, Iran, China and more. As we always do, we will keep the phone and chat room open if you have questions or a topic you would like us to discuss.

Open mind; open topic.

Come join us!

If you can't catch the show live and you use Apple Podcasts, you can pick up the episode and others and add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the button at the main show page - or you can just click here. Or on Spreaker. The show also is reportedly on Spotify.


Photo credit: U.S. Navy photo by MC1 Julio Rivera - 

NAVAL BASE GUAM (April 16, 2020) Equipment Operator 3rd Class Tyler Dowling, assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 5, speaks with Capt. Eric Correll, commander of Task Force 75, during expeditionary medical facility (EMF) site preparations.