sfoil blog

Cousin Joachim

On April 13, 2020

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, however great its merits, has hardly been much regarded by anyone as a war novel, much less a military novel, despite the role of the First World War as both subtext and conclusion. But it does offer a nuanced and even important portrayal of a soldier without a war or even an army, certainly without comrades. I am talking, of course, of Cousin Joachim.

The Magic Mountain is a long book, and a book that needs to be long, but I’ll give a brief summary of the plot and setting. In the early 20^th century, a young German man named Hans Castorp visits his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, at a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. His visit of three weeks becomes a stay of seven years. Hans is the novel’s protagonist, and since Joachim’s character exists largely in contrast to Hans, the latter needs some description.

Hans is a bourgeois German orphan, raised by his uncle. At the opening of the novel, Hans has recently become an accredited engineer, and has accepted an offer to start work at a shipbuilding firm when he returns from visiting his cousin. Hans, however, has no real purpose in his life. His inheritance, while not enough to live on respectably, insures him against the possibility of discomfort. He regards his coming assumption of the identity of Marine Engineer with indifference if not positive uninterest. His only passions are trivial vices, particularly his favorite brand of cigar. He feels ill by the end of his intended stay; the sanatorium’s doctor delivers a diagnosis; Hans makes the fateful calculation that the proceeds of his inheritance will fund his stay indefinitely. Hans really does have something, probably, although the doctor – who is also the director – is also running a business. But nothing draws Hans back to the “flatland”, and he falls complacently into the rhythms of the sanatorium.

Hans’s cousin, Joachim, has chosen a military rather than technical career. And his tuberculosis is an incontrovertible fact. Just as Hans has accepted an offer but has not worked a day for his company, Joachim has taken some steps towards becoming an officer but has never actually served. Both young men, it must be said, are “wanna-bes”. But they differ in their attitude towards this status.

Joachim is not completely immune to the lull of the Berghof sanatorium – he introduces Hans and the reader to the routine and subculture of the institution with the attitude of a veteran convalescent which he is – but he clearly identifies himself as a soldier and officer, and he with some aloofness refuses to allow himself to be totally submerged into the role of consumptive patient at the expense of this self-image.

Summaries of Joachim’s character speak of his sense of “duty”, and that is true, but the details of this sense are important. Joachim is not simply “dutiful”, but a subscriber to youthful idealizations of military service. He is, when we meet him, emphatically not an officer, not a real soldier, but he nevertheless maintains a military appearance and bearing which is repeatedly remarked upon not only the narrator but by other patients. When the excitable and pompous Italian, Settembrini, addresses Hans as “Engineer” he is making Hans’s position in the world out to be somewhat more than it is in order to exaggerate the level of society in which Settembrini himself resides (as he probably exaggerates his own position in the world somewhat). Hans complacently accepts this, as he does most everything else. But when Settembrini calls Joachim lieutenant…he is doing the exact same thing, but anyone who has known or has been a cadet cannot call Joachim’s blushing decision to let the title stand an innocent indulgence.

The brute fact is that Joachim is a wannabe, even a poseur. I want to be careful here, because antebellum Europe was a different world. Ernst Junger said that anyone who did not know Europe before the Great War cannot grasp what was lost. I am also reminded that the cadets at West Point started changing out of their uniforms to go into New York City during Vietnam; they have never resumed their old habits. Still, I do not think that Joachim’s soldierly aspirations were any less sincere or desperate than those of similarly situated young men today, but perhaps some of the outward signs of his desperate sincerity were more indulged by his society. Whatever the attitudes of others however, Joachim is pretending in both the archaic and modern sense of the word.

Many of the Berghof’s residents are professional patients, and while some – including Hans – are malingering from the healthy world, for others medical necessity really does require their indefinite claustration. Joachim resolves to return to the real world, the “flatlands” during the spring following Hans’s arrival, against the admittedly generally suspect advice of his doctor. In nine months he accedes to the rank of full lieutenant and participates in the early-1900s equivalent of a CTC rotation. And then his sickness returns.

Nine months he’s had his heart’s desire, and been living in a fool’s paradise. Well, it wasn’t a snakeless paradise—it was infected, more’s the pity…He’s got as far as lieutenant, anyhow, there’s that to say. But what’s the use of it? The good Lord sees your heart, not the braid on your jacket, before Him we are all in our birthday suits, generals and common men alike…

So says the Berghof doctor. Joachim himself returns to the sanatorium – implicitly as a terminal case. And he does die there, facing death like “a soldier, and brave” as the chapter is named.

I think that Joachim made the right decision, by the way, and I hope I would have acted the same way. The hospital patient is a sort of inverse of the soldier. I can think of abstract schema for thinking about this but ultimately the hospital is where the man who’s expected to bear arms ends up when he isn’t fit. The reasons may be honorable, or otherwise, and anyone who has been in a military hospital knows full well both the distinction and the temptation to move from the one category into another. (By the way, Catch-22 opens in a hospital for this reason.)

What impressed me about Joachim’s story is how he must have appeared to those fortunate enough to serve without concern for their health. An almost forgotten old classmate enters the unit behind the curve, serves well enough, but ultimately his health catches up to him and he leaves after a short period. I have known real people like this, and pitied them. But Joachim is not to be pitied. He lived and died as a soldier; that he never heard a shot fired in anger does not take away from this. There are others serving, now, who are in a similar position, who share their lot with soldiers in the past. Those called to service must make the best of their lot and not regret having missed the show during their allotted time.

Is there something about military service that promotes, or at least conduces, this sort of dedication? Why can’t Hans feel the same way about being an engineer as Joachim does about being a soldier? Hans is, obviously, not the same sort of man as Joachim but is that why he chose to become an engineer rather than an officer, or because of it? To answer all of these questions, it is quite obvious that to enter military service is to be initiated into a new state of being. If this sounds a little outré, consider for even a moment the importance placed on the “combatant-noncombatant distinction” in legal and moral conceptions of war.

Could engineers become an initiatory caste like professional soldiers? I don’t think it’s physically or socially impossible. In such a world I suspect Hans would have chosen a different area of study.

Joachim’s death is not his last appearance in the novel; he makes an extraordinary postmortem appearance. To appreciate the effect of this without actually going through the trouble of reading the book, understand that Mann write in a completely realist manner except in this very specific scene. There is, it must be said, one other episode in which Hans, on the verge of perishing from hypothermia, hallucinates at some length, and this narratively prefigures the frankly supernatural event which occurs later.

The Berghof patients throughout the novel occupy themselves with various faddish distractions. After years of Hans’s residence, one such fad is spiritualism. After seven hundred pages of unrelenting realism, and after treating the newly arrived medium’s provenance with the same ambiguity as that of the doctor’s, Hans asks to see his cousin during a séance. And

“now followed the most extraordinary hours of our hero’s young life…we may assume them to have been the most extraordinary he ever spent.”

For, after much ceremony, the playing of Gounod’s Faust opera and appeals to God Almighty, he Joachim appears to both Hans and his companions:

“[Hans] did not look up. A bitter taste came in his mouth. He heard another voice, a deep, cold voice, saying: ‘I’ve seen him a long time.’

The record had run off, with a last accord of horns. But no one stopped the machine. The needle went on scratching in the silence, as the disk whirred round. Then Hans Castorp raised his head, and his eyes went, without searching, the right way.

There was one more person in the room than before. There in the background, where the red rays lost themselves in gloom, so that the eye scarcely reached thither, between writing desk and screen, in the doctor’s consulting chair, where in the intermission Elly had been sitting, Joachim sat. It was the Joachim of the last days, with hollow, shadowy cheeks, warrior’s beard, and full, curling lips. He sat leaning back, one leg crossed over the other. On his wasted face, shaded though it was by his head covering, was plainly seen the stamp of suffering, the expression of gravity and austerity which had beautified it. Two folds stood on his brow, between the eyes, that lay deep in their bony cavities; but there was no change in the mildness of the great dark orbs…That ancient grievance of the outstanding ears was still to be seen under the head covering, his extraordinary head covering, which they could not make out.

Cousin Joachim was not in mufti. His sabre seemed to be leaning against his leg, he held the handle, one thought to distinguish something like a pistol case on his belt. But that was no proper uniform he wore. No color, no decorations; it had a collar like a tunic jacket, and side pockets. Somewhere low down on the breast was a cross. His feet looked large, his legs very thin, they seemed to be bound or wound for the business of sport more than war. And what was it, this head-gear? It seemed as though Joachim had turned an army cook-pot upside down on his head, and fastened it under his chin with a band. Yet it looked quite properly warlike, like an old-fashioned foot soldier, perhaps.”

Joachim’s momentary resurrection does not include rejuvenation; the description given of his bodily appearance is identical to the earlier description of his corpse. And he has discarded his embroidered jacket for the uniform of the First World War: a drab pocketed tunic with an Iron Cross, puttees, steel helmet, and gas mask (“something like a pistol case on his belt”). Perhaps Joachim, denied the opportunity he sought – not entirely knowingly — to suffer in this panoply in life, is granted it in death.

When the Great War breaks out, in ten pages Hans goes from the Berghof to the battlefield. The book ends with his surviving an artillery bombardment; there will be others, and the Mann closes with the remark that his fate is not the subject of the novel – though “thy prospects are poor.” The seven years’ progression of Hans’s development puts him right where his cousin started off.

The Green Goblin

By sfoil

On April 4, 2020

In Mixology

Chartreuse is a green-tinted herbal liqueur made by the Carthusian Order (there is also a yellow variety of the liqueur available). The Carthusians arguably have the strictest monastic rule of any holy order in existence. The recipe for the liqueur is of course a secret, and one that has proven resistant to several attempts at emulation and that has survived several suppressions of the Order in France. The liqueur’s intense herbal flavor, which I would characterize in one word as “dank”, easily overpowers its strong 110 proof alcohol content. This is all well and good. But how can we use it to mix cocktails?

The most popular Chartreuse cocktails are variations on the Last Word. This is an excellent drink and rand I recommend it if you have the necessary ingredients on hand.

Chartreuse’s vegetable taste seemed a natural ingredient to a cream cocktail, which gives the drink a mouthfeel to match the complex blend of flavors in the liqueur. I found Chartreuse to be rather like vermouth — it’s easy to ruin a drink with too much of it, but you can always add a splash more if you skimped when mixing. If you’re only a postulant regarding the liqueur — likely given its exotic taste and price tag — keep this in mind when mixing these or any other recipes. You might only want to use half measures when starting out.

After failed attempts to alter Alexander cocktails or use amaretto as an ingredient, I hit upon the sweet, one-note taste of creme de menthe as a suitable companion to Chartreuse’s herbal bouquet.

The Green Goblin

1 part cream
1 part creme de menthe (green)
.75 part Chartreuse (green)
Shake and serve straight up

The taste of mint is heavy up front, but the Chartreuse strongly dominates both the aroma and aftertaste. In general, I found Chartreuse to be effective at creating a strong “undertone” to drinks, as a tincture, rather than as a main ingredient. Again, rather similar to the way I use vermouth.

The “Green Goblin” recipe above immediately brought to mind the question: what if I just add it to a grasshopper cocktail? After all, chocolate liqueur is a quite versatile ingredient. Sure enough, it worked.

The Locust

1 part creme de menthe
1 part creme de cacao
1 part Chartreuse
1 part cream
Shake and serve straight up

The extra ingredient added a definite subtle complexity to this unsophisticated dessert cocktail. Between the two, I think it might be the better recipe — I’m certainly more proud of it.

After trying a recommendation from elsewhere to use Chartreuse in place of vermouth in a martini, I then tried my hand at using it in an Old Fashioned cocktail. And of course it worked.

Old Rule

1 part rye whiskey
.25 parts Chartreuse
1 dash orange bitters
Stir and serve on the rocks

Chartreuse is slightly sweetened, and so eliminates the need to add sugar from elsewhere, though a dash of syrup might be required for a real sweet tooth (though full warning Chartreuse might not be the best purchase for you if you prefer very sweet drinks). Angostura bitters don’t go well with Chartreuse I think, but you can hardly call a drink an old fashioned without some sort of bitters. Orange bitters it is then, but don’t go overboard.

I garnished all of these drinks with basil leaves as they go well with Chartreuse in appearance, aroma, and taste (undoubtedly they are one of the ingredients, though that’s not saying much).

Marine Force Design 2030

By sfoil

On March 31, 2020

In Current Affairs, Military Theory, Modern, Tanks

A few days ago, the Marine Corps released a progress report on their Force Design 2030 effort. The report describes itself as being “Phase II” of a four-phase plan, with Phase I being problem framing. This phase produced a number of recommendations which will be analyzed (Phase III) and then refined and implemented (Phase IV). Force Design 2030 describes how the USMC will organize and equip itself based on the US National Defense Strategy (NDS). The Commandant’s specific guidance is given on Page 3 of the linked document, but the general thrust of the redesign is de-prioritizing maneuver warfare and occupation (the defense establishment prefers the term “wide area security” for the latter, FYI) in favor of a littoral operations in support of maritime operations, especially in the “Indo-Pacific” i.e. against China.

The proposals in the document, while not final, are very sensible conclusions given the prioritization of littoral operations and the fact that

“We must acknowledge the impacts of proliferated precision long-range fires, mines, and other smart weapons, and seek innovative ways to overcome these threat capabilities.”
General David h. berger, commandant usmc

The overall major changes are a reduction in the number of infantry units with a concomitant reduction in support assets, the elimination of tanks and law enforcement battalions, and a drastic reduction of tube in favor of rocket artillery with anti-shipping missile apparently an important capability of the latter.

Infantry Reductions

The document calls for the elimination (“divestment”) of one regiment of three battalions of active duty infantry and the elimination of two battalions of reserve infantry (presumably one from each reserve regiment, and even more presumably the “24th Regiment” battalions). This resulted from removal of the requirement to field two Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) for joint forced entry i.e. a major conflict with a peer country. Infantry is, obviously, the core capability of the USMC and such reduction could not have been done lightly. Further, the size of current battalions might be shrunk somewhat.

If any of the proposed force reductions don’t stick through the analysis in Phase III, I would expect it to be this one. However, with focus moving away from maneuver warfare and occupation, and given the removal of the 2x MEU — the restoration of which would probably require an unforeseen budget increase — the most likely reason for needing more infantry that the Phase III analysis reveals higher than anticipated losses in likely scenarios. The document (correctly and appropriately) considers “attrition” inevitable in any serious conflict, so the planners have this problem in mind:

There is no avoiding attrition. In contingency operations against peer adversaries, we will lose aircraft, ships, ground tactical vehicles, and personnel. Force resilience – the ability of a force to absorb loss and continue to operate decisively – is critical.

This would probably affect the size rather than number of battalions, however. The current number of battalions is based on the 2x MEU requirement and won’t be kept without it.

Likewise, Force Design 2030 proposes a reduction in both lift aviation and assault amphibious units. Again, the current structure derives from the 2x MEU requirement, and eliminating it reduces the need for these assets.

Combat Aviation

Puzzling out the thinking behind FD2030 proposals regarding combat aviation is a little more difficult, which perhaps indicates that these proposals are more tentative. On the elimination of several attack helicopter squadrons it says that

While this capability has a certain amount of relevance
to crisis and contingency missions which we must still be
prepared to execute, it is operationally unsuitable for our
highest-priority maritime challenges and excess to our
needs with the divestment of three infantry battalions.

The AH-1Z’s limited range and station time, and vulnerability to low-altitude air defenses account for this “unsuitability”. Perhaps the USMC intends to replace its strike capability with more persistent (and expendable) UAS — FD2030 will double the number of Marine UAS squadrons — and less vulnerable surface fires, provided both by the Navy and by the greatly expanded rocket artillery capability.

And then there is the F-35. FD2030 proposes reducing the number of aircraft in each VMFA (fighter/attack squadron) to 10 without reducing the number of squadrons.

USMC F-35B lands vertically on USS America

Currently VMFAs operate either the F/A-18C, the F-35B, or the F-35C with 12, 16, or 10 aircraft each, respectively. FD2030 proposes that all of these squadrons operate 10 aircraft each. Why? The easy answer is money. But two other difficulties are mentioned. First,

I am not convinced that we have a clear understanding
yet of F-35 capacity requirements for the future
force. As a result, the Service will seek at least one external assessment of our Aviation Plan relative to NDS objectives and evolving naval and joint warfighting concepts.
usmc commandant

The F-35B is the most advanced STOVL aircraft in existence by a long shot, and has far greater capability than the AV-8 Harrier it replaces. The fleet carrier-based F-35C is probably a more incremental upgrade over the Super Hornet. Both aircraft are the expensive high-tech results of a lengthy development process, and the Marines are to some extent stuck with them whether they want them or not. Their capabilities and limitations compared to previous airframes are the most arcane input factors into FD2030, and the quoted section strongly suggests that the USMC planners simply could not determine (or at least agree) on how to use them without outside input.

The other problem, noted immediately afterward, is a shortage of pilots. This problem is not limited to the Marines. My understanding is that it is more an issue of retention than of recruitment (“FLY FIGHTER JETS” is not a hard sell to prospects, but reality of the lifestyle is apparently less attractive). Regardless, if the limiting factor is pilots rather than airframes — and, maybe, if the F-35 has a lower operational readiness rate than previous aircraft — it might make sense to lower the pilot:airframe ratio. This is assuming the USMC takes delivery of the same number of F-35Bs as currently planned, which I believe it will (must). On the other hand, is pilot retention really something that can’t be fixed in ten years?

Tanks & Howitzers (and cops)

FD2030 recommends a drastic reduction in Marine tube artillery, from 21 batteries to only five. The Marines use towed 155mm howitzers (M777 as far as I know). Increases in rocket artillery will compensate for this, as discussed below. I see this as a logical course of action for a service no longer concerned with maneuver warfare and occupation (no suppressing fires in support of maneuver, no “firebases”). The current structure of, more or less, one howitzer battery per infantry battalion is obviously being completely scrapped.

The complete elimination of Marine tanks is significant but unsurprising, and the right decision. The heavy, fuel-guzzling Abrams tank is frankly something the Marines were saddled with by Army requirements. The Abrams’ inability to swim probably accounts in no small part for the existence of the USMC’s bridging assets (which FD2030 proposes to eliminate). For an amphibious force which needs to carefully consider every ton of materiel moved ashore, the weight to capability ratio of the Abrams was always dubious.

Marine M1A1 in Helmand Province, 2011. Only the Marines have ever sent Abrams to Afghanistan. Photo by Sgt. Jesse Johnson

In the littoral/maritime environment emphasized by the Commandant, the Abrams would be an extremely niche capability. There’s a certain economy of scale to running tanks, like with most other things: if you have even one tank, you need an M88, specially trained mechanics, crew training programs, replacement parts, etc. (The USMC have also run their own independent Abrams development program rather than piggybacking on the Army, for budget reasons.) In the Marines, this has been done in the tank battalions, which don’t fight independently as the Army’s armored battalions have in the past but instead parcel out their tanks to expeditionary units, usually at the platoon level. If the USMC needs tanks for some particular mission in the future, they can do the same thing that JSOC does and borrow them from the regular Army.

FD2030 also proposes getting rid of the Law Enforcement Battalions. Sure.

Rocket Artillery and Anti-Ship Missiles

FD2030 recommends adding 14 additional rocket artillery batteries. The document mentions the “finders and hiders” problem in the context of proliferated long-range precision munitions (roughly the same thing as what I think of as the “sensors and dispensers” mode of warfare). The maxim of this problem is: if it can be seen it can be hit; if it can be hit, it can be killed. So: don’t be seen. Rocket artillery, presumably using mostly guided munitions, offer superior range and single-munition payload to howitzers. However, there is another, more intriguing aspect to the USMC’s bet on rocket artillery: shore-launcher anti-ship missiles (ASM). Whatever the relative merits of cannon cockers vs rocket jockeys, it is the anti-ship capability that appears to drive this proposal:

This investment [rocket artillery] provides the basis, over time, for generating one of the fundamental requirements for deterrence, and ultimately successful naval campaigns – long-range, precision expeditionary anti-ship missile
fires. This requirement is based on one of the more well-supported conclusions from wargaming analysis conducted to date.

This is a very new direction for both the Marines and the US in general. The Navy, for instance, has resolutely held on to the aging Harpoon ASM even as competitors developed several iterations of more capable missiles. As far as I know, the US has never fielded shore-based anti-ship missiles outside of test ranges, although they have provided them to other countries.

AGM-158C LRASM next to an F/A-18E at a Navy test facility.

Clearly the Marines & Navy want shore-based missiles to defend forward bases without having to completely rely on seagoing vessels. Development of the AGM-158C LRASM and some other capabilities has made this clear for some time. More interesting is the idea of Marine detachments being quickly deployed onto coastlines and islands in order to contribute land-based ASM launches to naval surface warfare plans. FD2030 also recommends expanding air-defense capabilities, which would support both of these activities. I would expect to see future fleet exercise incorporate these tactics for evaluation, since FD2030 sounds very confident about the simulation/wargame results. Indeed there have already been some rapid deployment exercises of Marine HIMARS in the Pacific.

Army HIMARS firing during an exercise in Poland.

Unmanned Systems

As mentioned above, the FD2030 recommends doubling the number of UAS squadrons in the USMC. The document refers to these as being either for “collection” or “lethal” activities — intelligence and attack. However, Gen. Berger also wrote that

I am not confident that we have identified the additional structure required to provide the tactical maneuver and logistical sustainment needed to execute [operations] in contested littoral environments against our pacing threat [i.e. China]. While not an afterthought by any means, I do not believe our Phase I and II efforts gave logistics sufficient attention. Resolving these two areas must be a priority for Phase III.

I suspect, but it is only a suspicion, that the Marines may be looking into the possibility of using unmanned or at least heavily automated systems for at least some ship-to-shore logistics. This would be an even bigger innovation than developing a coastal ASM capability (which plenty of other militaries have already done). I do not think that land logistics will prove particularly amenable to this sort of automation (basically, there is a trend of lines of communication requiring more and more security) but this may not apply to amphibious movement.

Conclusions

Force Design 2030 indicates that the Marines have a coherent general vision of what sort of conflict they want to prepare for (Pacific, maritime/littoral) and are taking reasonable steps to restructure their force to fight for this conflict. They are eliminating redundant capacity with the Army, adding new capability suited to the intended fight, and modestly reducing the overall size of their force in expectation of only having to fight one major conflict at a time.

Need a Hit of Cyberpunk? Try Bubblegum Crisis

By sfoil

On March 26, 2020

In Anime, Robots

Bubblegum Crisis is a cyberpunk Super Robot-ish anime about a team of female “mercenaries” (the mercenary ethic is hardly on display here) called the Knight Sabers. The original anime ran a truncated 8 episodes from 1987 — yes, before the release of Akira — to 1991, with a three-episode OVA released in 1991. After watching it I believe it is underrated as an influence on cyberpunk aesthetics — neatly bridging the relentlessly gritty Blade Runner and Neuromancer with the more rounded views of 1990s-2000s “post-cyberpunk” like Islands in the Net or, of course, Ghost in the Shell. There was a full 26-episode reboot in 1998 which I haven’t seen and don’t intend to watch. Bubblegum Crisis consistently chooses style over substance, which I think suits the aesthetics-first cyberpunk subgenre well. I liked it better than Ghost in the Shell, especially the tedious Stand Alone Complex.

In the near future, society makes extensive use of so-called Boomers, human-seeming androids which are basically a combination of the replicants from Blade Runner and the Terminator. The shadowy cyberpunk megacorporation that manufactures Boomers plans to foment an uprising and usher in a posthuman, Boomers-only future. Our heroes must figure out what’s going on and stop it!

The hell you say

Girls’ Room

All of the principal characters are women, with male characters firmly relegated to various supporting roles. What I found interesting was that this didn’t involve female characters taking on “masculine” roles or vice versa. For instance the “mama bear” character, Sylia, has her own womens’ fashion line, which presumably provided the startup capital for the Knight Sabers. Meanwhile the hyper-macho cop Leon, who acts the Commissioner Gordon to the Knight Sabers’ Batman, does what he can and isn’t bothered at all when the obviously-feminine Knights save the day.

A cyberpunk powersuit-mecha series obviously isn’t targeted at a female audience, and there is some fan service (which thankfully gets toned down as the series progresses). Sylia, who is in her late 20s, is in typical Japanese fashion portrayed as practically an old maid.

When you’ve put your career first and find yourself single past 25

I do prefer the straightforward portrayal of the girls in Bubblegum Crisis to, in particular, Motoko Kusanagi, the protagonist of Ghost in the Shell. Kusanagi is a cyborg — her physical appearance is, in theory, a deliberate choice on her part. The original Ghost in the Shell movie plays a little bit with the idea that Kusanagi isn’t a proper female, but this is abandoned in the Stand Alone Complex series. So why did she decide to slap such a big ol’ pair on her custom-built body, which at least in the movie is actually government-issued equipment? Does she keep something important in there? Are they purely recreational? Public relations? These rather interesting questions are ignored and in all likelihood the studio thought it would look good to their audience. While I’m sure this was also the case in Bubblegum Crisis, the characters are just normal attractive young women whose existence doesn’t raise any awkward questions of the nature of their own embodied existence.

Rushed Production

As often happens with anime, the series’ production was a seat-of-the-pants operation and the studio clearly had only a general idea of what was going to happen when the first frame was drawn. Several episodes intended for plot and character development are obviously missing between the 8-episode initial run and the 3-episode conclusion OVA. The anime never quite figures out which of two characters (Sylia & Priss) is the protagonist and doesn’t have enough room to give both stories full treatment. Still, this was never going to be a series that required or rewarded careful thinking about what’s going on.

Style over Substance

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is the main influence on Bubblegum Crisis with several explicit references, although the Boomers who feature so prominently in the series are obviously based on The Terminator and Crisis straightforwardly adopts a contemporary 1980s style by default rather than attempting to construct every detail of the future from scratch.

Because of the series’ length, we get a more top-to-bottom tour of 2033 Tokyo than we do of Blade Runner‘s Los Angeles, seeing both the grime and the glister. The overall impression is of a somewhat more realistic environment than Blade Runner or Neuromancer’s relentlessly downbeat view of the future. There are good parts of the city as well as bad parts — and things could get better or worse.

While there’s a certain lack of coherence over the arc of the series, the individual episodes are well-directed.

Bubblegum Crisis is pretty much pure entertainment with some nice-to-look at scenery. If you liked Ghost in the Shell‘s setting but not its pretensions (or you could do without them), this one is worth looking at.

Update

By sfoil

On March 26, 2020

In Meta

I’ve migrated both sfoil and mfoil over from wordpress.com to a self-hosted site, sfoil.net. I haven’t updated either blog since October 2019. I needed to complete a major project in my waking life which is now accomplished, and when I did have time to write it was fiction for a real-life writing group. Although I don’t consider the pseudonym I use here to be much more than a form plausible deniability, I still wouldn’t have and don’t now want to post anything which could be too easily cross-referenced to my real identity, as that material would have been had I published it here. I won’t commit myself to any serious schedule but I am still alive and in need of at least an occasional outlet.

As for the decision to merge the two blogs, I would like to say it was financial, but in reality the cost of maintaining a separate domain name is rather trivial. When I set out, I wanted to keep my thoughts about military matters (srs bsnss) at least slightly separate from my “personal” thoughts, in order to preserve the respectability of the former. Well, aside from my relatively low post frequency, on examination I think that sort of respectability is rather a spook, as the kids say, quoting Max Stirner at third hand. My writing here is intended to be first and foremost a sketchpad of my thoughts which are incidentally available to others, and if those others have to put up with my pondering about the future of the Main Battle Tank being interspersed with cocktail recipes and anime reviews, well, how do you think I feel? At any rate I usually remember to set tags and categories on my posts.

I obviously reserve the right to change my mind about maintaining a separate page (though hypothetical apologies in advance to subscribers), although I don’t think that is too likely.

Chocolate Lemonade

By sfoil

On October 12, 2019

In Drinks

Summer’s over here so I wanted to relay a success on the mixology front. My cocktail posts get the fewest reads but, nevertheless, I have a duty to share this information with the world.

This is a simple recipe:

Juice of One Lemon

Equal Parts Creme de Cacao (white, preferably)

Pour over rocks in highball glass and top with soda water

To my great surprise, this is quite a pleasant drink. In each sip, the more pungent lemon hits first, then you taste the chocolate as an afternote, and the two tastes merge quite well.

That being said, this is definitely a “weird” drink with a lot going on outside the recipe. The most important is to make sure that you don’t use a “weak” lemon with little sourness. Just taste the inside of the rind after you juice it to make sure it’s as sour as expected.

The other is that creme de cacao formulations vary quite a bit. I use the DeKuyper’s White Creme de Cacao, which is 48 proof and pretty balanced between chocolate taste and sweetness. I prefer and encourage in others a taste for less sweet lemonade, but if you want something closer to the typical store-bought sweetness you might want to add a little simple syrup. 48 proof also means that each glass is about a quarter to half of a standard drink, something like a low-alcohol beer at most. You might want to test this recipe out with whatever specific brand of creme de cacao you’re using to make sure it tastes right before producing it en masse — I think the drink, while simple, requires a pretty narrow range of sweet:sour:chocolate to be palatable.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

By sfoil

On September 10, 2019

In Anime, Science Fiction

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a Japanese science fiction media franchise originally based on a series of novels by Yoshiki Tanaka. I have never read the novels, which have received only a partial and recent English translation. This post is about the anime, which ran for 110 episodes (plus a two hour prequel movie, “My Conquest is the Sea of Stars”) over a nearly ten-year period from 1988-1997 — partly a review, partly a way for prospective viewers to decide whether they want to take the plunge.

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes anime (henceforth LotGH) has a small cult following, and is currently being remade by the well-known Production I.G in an abbreviated form (I haven’t watched the twelve released episodes, and don’t particularly care to do so as a veteran of the 110-episode original series). It is occasionally recommended to those interested in “space opera” because of its epic scope and character focus. It’s also a huge time commitment for a subtitled animation series with generally solid but sometimes sketchy production quality. But what’s it all about? Why does anyone like it? Might you, the reader, like it? Read on. I will keep it spoiler free.

Go Tell the Spartans

By sfoil

On August 9, 2019

In Military History

In Defense of the Spartans

Sparta is synonymous with discipline and militarism, and has been since at least the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. Some people have a problem with this. Sparta’s reputation exists and promotes certain forms of virtue; it’s also simply a description of the way the United States currently handles war.

I’m going to link several articles disparaging the Spartans, their reputation, or their admirers, and I was specifically motivated to write this in response to Myke Cole’s article in The New Republic. However, this isn’t just about these links, but also what I’ve observed in reactions and comments to these writings, often from people I respect, and some private and/or offline discussions and conversations I’ve had in the past few years.

The Spartan Mythos

In brief, the Spartan mythos: warfare is the most important of human endeavors, and excellence in warfare is thus the highest form of human excellence. The foundation of excellence in warfare is discipline and training. War and the preparation for war being the most important individual or collective effort, they should be emphasized and prioritized at the expense of all other fields – commercial, artistic, philosophical, romantic, religious, etc. Sparta is the exemplar of all these things. I would add that even in the meanest conceptions this mythos is readily scaled – it can apply and be applied anywhere from the individual to the national level.

There are some other important secondary attributes of this mythos. In short these are elitism, austerity, and the primacy of human over other factors in performance. The Spartan mythos is also highly masculine, historically sometimes to the point of homoeroticism.

Modern complaints about this mythos amount to three things: that it’s factually incorrect, that it’s immoral, or that it inspires bad people.

The Myth as History

The focused study of anything will reveal previously unknown knowledge to the student. This sounds obvious, but if the student subscribes – even implicitly – to critical theory, then even trivial revelations on hoary topics like Athens & Sparta can produce a sensation of toppling temples of narrative oppression. My eighth grade teacher LIED! In reality this is little more than a variation on the strawman. Yes, there is more to the history and legend of Sparta than what’s in the head of a bro who just watched 300. No, this doesn’t mean that you’ve “deconstructed” said history.

Just as a particularly egregious example, take this article. The most charitable explanation for what’s written at that link is that the author – probably angry about seeing someone he didn’t like sporting a molon labe and/or 300 helmet symbol (this is a common irritant) – typed “Sparta” into Wikipedia, and combined it with some unexamined conceptions about Ancient Greece. For instance, we learn that “The Spartans were Morons” because they used terrain to their advantage and, besides, “they lost”. The battle, that is, not the war.

I know this might seem like cherrypicking a bad example, but the link above is only meant to illustrate the tendency of certain acquaintances to “well acktually” about various details whenever Spartan Ideals are brought up.

The facts are this: the Spartans had a distinctive constitution distinguished as much from other Greek states by communalism as by militarism dating back to some indeterminate period after the Greek Dark Ages. By the time of the fifth century BC, Sparta was clearly one of the major, successful poleis. The Spartans cemented a reputation for military prowess at Thermopylae in 480 BC, and continually proved their predominance until they were decisively defeated by the Thebans at Leuctra in 371 BC. Yes, they had a hard time of it during the Peloponnesian War and some Spartans surrendered at Sphacteria, just as a far larger body of US Marines surrendered on Corregidor. Sure, Thermopylae was a loss and the numbers involved were somewhat exaggerated for propaganda purposes. But it was indeed a very heroic act of uncommon valor, had a significant if not decisive effect on the invading Medes, and inaugurated several generations of Spartan success.

So, a hundred-year run of markedly superior performance if not outright supremacy in war. And that, without the benefit of any real edge in either armament or numbers. Sparta instead relied on a “Spartiate” warrior class who trained a little harder than their competitors by driving their slaves a little harder to pick up the slack. At the same time, this period happened to coincide with the Athenian Golden Age, supplying the historical record with several immortal philosophers and historians praising not merely the combat record of Sparta but also its national character, and by which we receive most of the details of the Spartan mythos: discipline, quasi-ascetic restraint, laconic wisdom. While war and training for war enjoyed primacy in Spartan society, it did not come at the total exclusion of other functions: the Spartans held festivals, composed and recited poetry, constructed public buildings and monuments, etc. The Spartans were rather insular and secretive compared to other Greek states and Athens in particular – “xenophobic” might be an appropriate modern term — something that subsequently got rolled into a general perception of “elitism”. Nevertheless they were not a hermit kingdom, and conducted foreign relations in a more or less typical manner.

While it’s quite true that Sparta’s time in the sun didn’t last forever, it did in fact take place. Yes, Sparta declined and eventually became a tourist attraction before fading into more or less complete irrelevance. So have other great states, and on the subject of longevity I very rarely hear the same mouths mock the Spartan failure to maintain a three-thousand-year polity praise the millennial longevity of the Roman church. There is certainly a degree of historical contingency as to why Sparta rather than, say, Thebes, or Switzerland, or Qin China epitomizes the militarized state in the Western mind. But it is not a bad example of such a state; there is real history behind the legend.

The Moral Status of the Spartan Mythos

A more intelligent objection to the Spartan is that while it has a real basis in historical fact, it is morally wrong or just plain contradicts other values like republican democracy. King Alfred may have been a great guy but that’s not how we roll.

I think it’s important to draw a distinction between Sparta as an object of national mythology or even emulation, and of individual inspiration.

Myke Cole’s article cites several historical examples (Machiavelli, John Adams, the Kibbutzniks, the Nazis, Brexiteers) of people or groups who aspired to some variant of the Spartan mythos. I’d like to point out that none of these examples – even including the later, racist people who are Cole’s ultimate subject – wholesale adopted the constitution and social organization of a fifth-century BC Greek polis, what the kids today refer to as “LARPing”. Indeed the very diversity of Cole’s examples shows that details matter and in reality even those who buy pretty heavily into Spartan mythology as an organizational principle can and do pick and choose what aspects of the mythos to incorporate without much danger of accidentally adopting Lycurgus the Lawgiver’s views on slavery. This is something that I’m sure Cole has little trouble seeing when looking at e.g. ISIS vs the Islamic Republic of Egypt.

There’s also the fact that “Spartan” works just as well as an individual ideal as a national or organizational mindset. It’s perfectly common for anyone who pursues excellence in some specific field to do so without any expectation that his goals have some universal applicability, and if this causes the practitioner to come across as or even actually be somewhat elitist in outlook this is not some great moral crime. There is a very real and recent history of tremendous evil committed in the name of workers’ rights, but this isn’t automatically grounds to discredit OSHA, or the SEIU.

Besides, the Legend of Sparta isn’t even some key ingredient in actual militarized states! North Korea, particularly under Kim Jong Il’s “military first” program, is at least a candidate for the closest extant analogue to the literal Spartan polis, and yet while I’m sure that some of their founders and leadership have at least heard of Sparta, Classical Greece Laconic or otherwise has no real historical influence on Korea.

(The other strong candidates for a modern Sparta are Switzerland and Israel. Notice that all three are substantially different.)

Even other states that have to some degree deliberately adopted Spartan mythology have done so only partially, and the relationship is typically one of convenience rather than causation, the way interventionists prefer the philosophy of Wilson to Washington. Neither Frederick II nor Jefferson Davis would have acted any differently had Sparta never existed.

This is particularly relevant to Myke Cole’s article – which is after all entitled “The Sparta Fetish is a Cultural Cancer”. Cole notes, as I have, that a large and diverse array of people and peoples have expressed some admiration of the semi-mythical Spartan ideal, repeatedly and often with considerable fervor, since the establishment of the Spartan constitution sometime around 900 BC. While this includes such benign entities as Medici Florence, it also includes people whom Cole doesn’t like (Trump supporters), and people whom nobody likes (Hitler). Well, so what? The very ubiquity of Sparta’s appeal across time, space, and ideology suggests that Cole’s “concern” about the appropriation of Spartan imagery by his political opponents means very little.

The Spartan Ideal as Descriptive

I think there is something else going on here too. The Angry Staff Officer gets at it in this post. “Stop Calling Us Warriors”, he pleads, singling out the Spartans among a few others. I agree, but there’s a problem, which you might have noticed in the section above. The Spartan mythos isn’t merely aspirational. It can also be descriptive. And the description is basically accurate in an important way.

The United States is openly engaged in combat in 14 different countries as of January 2019, not to mention dozens of other “training and assistance” missions in which combat is at least a prospect. Virtually all of this is conducted by special operations forces, who employ only the most rigorously selected and intensely trained troops in actual combat while maintaining a comparatively high ratio of support personnel and “enablers”. If SOCOM thinks of itself as “Spartan”, as both Cole and Angry Staff Officer rightly point out they quite often do, then where’s the lie? They are what they are, a feted warrior elite, and when they reach into the big bag of signifiers describing what they do all day, that helmet is going to be in there somewhere near the top.

This also, by the way, applies to law enforcement, which is afforded all sorts of privileges over the citizenry which bear more than a passing resemblance to those exercised by the Spartiate over the helot even as the origins of “law enforcement officers” as militia officers becomes ever less relevant.

The role of Spartan imagery in the above is completely irrelevant to any objections about the professionalization of military and law enforcement.

In conclusion, the legend of Sparta’s military prowess has a real historical basis, the legend itself has a long and varied history, and is a legitimate if rather amoral source of inspiration for both movements and individuals.

Future Tank Capabilities

By sfoil

On June 6, 2019

In Military Theory, Tactics, Tanks

In the previous post, I took at look at whether tanks will continue to exist for the foreseeable future (yes) despite improvements in weaponry. In this post I’ll take a look at what sort of capabilities I think such a vehicle will have — onboard UAS, defilade engagement munitions, and closing the standoff gap with ATGMs. I’m not sure whether active protection systems will eliminate the need for heavy armor, but I lean towards “no”. These increased capabilities will make four-man crews ideal even with an autoloaded main gun.

Note on Autonomy

The ability to operate in a degraded or contested EW/low-altitude air environment will probably be a defining characteristic of a future tank, because in a completely permissive environment it will always be safer and more cost effective to fire a networked standoff munition. So while a future tank will be integrated into battlefield networks just as they are today, it should never rely on this to kill the enemy or deny terrain. In this way it is the inverse of an artillery piece which attacks from standoff under direction from a third party but has a non-central direct fire capability.

In a completely permissive environment, a battle tank will also be a less cost-effective sensor than something stripped of a tank’s protection and firepower.

Protection

The biggest question about protection of the future tank is whether it should dump its ultra-heavy armor. This could happen because new munitions make armor useless, because of the availability of more effective alternatives to heavy armor, or some combination.

img[1]

M1A2C / SEPv3. Visible: Standard side-skirt ERA, more turret front armor, Trophy APS.

I assume that APS is the replacement for heavy armor. Even if some breakthrough in materials science occurs that allows a drastic increase in the protection:weight ratio of armor, which I don’t think likely, there is the perennial problem of lightweight equipment: when the weight of something decreases, you usually just carry more of it.

Reliable APS being a relatively new technology, no one appears ready to strip the armor off their tanks in favor of it. Even an ideal APS will require much more attention from the crew than armor does now and will sometimes not be working. Will future commanders allow their tanks to go into battle with an inoperable APS? If tank armor continues to provide the level of protection against likely threats that it does today (pretty good), then probably yes. If a vehicle is in little better shape than a jeep without its APS system, then probably not.

If antiarmor munitions continue to improve and proliferate, this decision could eventually become pointless, but I don’t think that we will get there. The HEAT warhead has probably reached its maximum penetration-to-size ratio, so further improvements will probably be in guidance and, eventually, counter-countermeasures. Regarding the latter, as APS systems improve, more of a munition’s payload will be dedicated to counteracting active defenses, which could actually make armor more effective in combination with active defense. The current situation of a protection spectrum with battle tanks at the top will then continue.

Another consideration for protection is the increasing importance of urban warfare. Urban environments and restrictive terrain in general counterintuitively favor a very heavily armored tank because the canalization and restricted fields of fire inherent to such environments imply that a tank will ceteris paribus be less able to survive through maneuver or standoff firepower. Antiarmor attacks there will occur at shorter ranges (including “zero-range” emplaced explosives, and implying a greater angular range) and will be harder to simply avoid. Because urban warfare will only become more common in the future, there will still be a use for heavily armored tanks, and nations that prefer a more-or-less one-size-fits-all approach to tanks will continue to use heavily armored tanks.

My guess would be that a lightly-armored, APS-protected tank could be useful for a mechanized force oriented towards maneuver warfare, but less so for urban combat for the reasons stated above — anyone who decided to build an APS-protected medium tank would still probably keep a few of their older, heavily armored vehicles as infantry-supporting urban combat specialists.

Another aspect of protection that I want to mention is CBRN defense. Armored vehicles with CBRN overpressure systems are just better (can operate for longer with fewer casualties) in a contaminated environment than light infantry wearing protective suits. Also, ultradense tank armor provides excellent protection against radiation.

Armament

The tank’s basic suite of weapons: a cannon, a coaxial machine gun, and a heavy machine gun — won’t see a serious change. The only major disruption I can see is the installation of an autocannon basically designed to saturate or otherwise disable an enemy’s APS system (a heavy machine gun doesn’t have the range and might not have the power for this). I don’t think this will happen — more likely a single antiarmor round will carry counter-countermeasures with the goal of maintaining one hit/one kill — but I think it is possible.

A larger gun is unlikely because of the resulting decrease in ammunition load. The decreasing ammo load of tanks with increasing gun size has not been too serious a problem because it has been accompanied by greater accuracy and greater lethality — an Abrams may only carry half as many rounds as a Sherman, but more of those rounds hit their target and more of those targets are destroyed. A 140mm or larger gun will only be adopted if new protection schemes prove insurmountable by advanced 120mm ammunition, which I doubt. For instance, while installation of an ammunition data link on the M1A2C is nominally to allow use of a programmable airburst round, it could also work with a selectable top-attack munition, maybe based on the canceled XM943 STAFF.

The future tank will be able to match the range of, at least, any ground-launched line-of-sight ATGM. Entire battalions are wiped out at NTC at standoff by tank destroyers armed with simulated Konkurs and Kornet missiles, and the performance has been repeated several times in combat albeit not against Americans.

48BD1B4600000578-5332247-image-a-42_1517403165742[1] This can happen to you.

This is obviously absurd, unacceptable, and unnecessary. Extended-range guided shells will be available for every tank in the future. For 120mm guns, the LAHAT/Nimrod is already available, although it’s probably worth developing a high pressure/high velocity missile.

In addition to increased range, the future tank will have some non line-of-sight (NLOS) or “anti-defilade” capability. The guided munition mentioned above will have the capability to be directed onto a target by a third platform. This could be a separately deployed sensor but in keeping with the importance of autonomy mentioned above will include an onboard small UAS with a short-range, high-bandwidth data link.

While the UAS’s video output will need to be visible to the vehicle commander, its actual operation will be the responsibility of the fourth crew member (“loader”). Task load on the other three members of the crew is already too high. Three-man crews will be only be found on limited-purpose support vehicles like the Stryker MGS. Yes, this means that Eastern tanks with three-man crews are headed down the wrong path. Most likely, operators of T-72s and derivative designs will make ineffective attempts to reduce crew load by automation or introduce a second platform, increasing vulnerability to EM disruption.

Other Considerations

All of these new capabilities will require yet more electrical power. This is a well-known fact, just about every upgrade to every armored vehicle currently in service includes increases in onboard electrical generation, but I wanted to point it out anyway.

Aside from the integrated small UAS mentioned above, non-targeting “situational awareness” cameras will be common with the goal of making the vehicle “transparent” as with the F-35’s helmet display, and minimizing the need to fight with hatches open. My experience with experimental cameras of this sort makes me doubt this goal will ever be completely realized — mud and other terrain hazards will frequently obscure the sensors, which will probably have rather small apertures. Still, it will continue the long trend of improved awareness inside armored vehicles.

Electronic warfare equipment will become more common if not standard, although this may be considered an extension of a vehicle’s active protection system. Disrupting an adversary’s tactical datalinks in order to avoid succumbing to the logic of “sensors and dispensers” will become so important that even the most trivial employment of combat power won’t be done without it. And based on the logic of autonomy as a defining characteristic of a future tank, they will probably need an onboard EW suite including a more powerful jammer than the very short range counter-IED systems that have been deployed in recent wars, rather than completely relying on separate platforms. Tankers already need to reacquaint themselves with passive measures like EM signature reduction anyway, so management of a 3kW jammer wouldn’t be out of the question. I don’t think that a tank chassis will be used as a dedicated EW platform since such a vehicle wouldn’t need the same level of protection as a tank.

Crew training standards will increase, and may approach those of flight crew although I don’t think they will ever actually reach that level — flight is inherently less fault tolerant than ground movement. Standardized schools and qualifications not just for initial entry but for each crew position might become a reality. Unit leaders now can get ahead of the curve by instituting stricter crew qualification standards on their own initiative.

Do Tanks Have a Future?

By sfoil

On May 22, 2019

In Military Theory

tl;dr: yes

What is a Tank, Anyway?

In three words: Mobile Protected Firepower. Implicitly, it is also ground-based. This discussion will involve three other somewhat related but important qualities — autonomy, responsiveness, and availability — which will be covered in more detail later. However, Mobile Protected Firepower is the fundamental nature of the tank.

A tank is mobile because it moves faster than a man on foot; also, practically, it moves faster over certain terrain types than motor transport vehicles. It is protected likewise because it requires more firepower to kill than a man on foot. And it itself has more firepower than a man on foot. The comparison to the infantryman is not only for historical reasons but because he is the fundamental component of warfare.