RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2023/12/28/army-numbers-smallest-since-wwii-what-units-face-cuts-in-2024/

The new year will likely prove to be one of significant force structure changes for the Army, according to its senior leaders.

Although the service has maintained for years that embracing multidomain operations will require it to “transform” its force structure into one leaders believe is suited to tomorrow’s battlefield, back-to-back recruiting shortfalls led top officials to admit by mid-to-late 2023 that some pending cuts are influenced by a deepening numbers shortfall. The Army finished fiscal year 2023 with only 452,000 active duty soldiers, its smallest force since 1940.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told Army Times in June that the service will see reductions to “close-combat forces” that were purpose-built for the War on Terror, in addition to other organizations based on their purpose or other factors like deployment rates.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/02/xi-jinpings-goon-squads/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

At a ritzy gala at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco on November 15, a crowd that included America’s top business leaders twice gave Xi Jinping a standing ovation as he delivered a speech full of reassurances about his fine intentions and the state of the ailing Sino–U.S. relationship.

Next door, from the fourth floor of a parking garage, a group of masked thugs came close to killing five Tibetan activists. “Before the secret entities and the clearly pro-CCP — and what looked like a bunch of trained — men, before they came in and ambushed us and stole our banner from the fifth floor, they actually started from the fourth floor and started pulling on the banner,” said Chemi Lhamo, an activist with the group Students for a Free Tibet. She told me that she and others lost their balance and almost fell off the side of the garage. Fifteen masked men who “really marched like a unit” then came up to the fifth floor and attacked them.

That was not an isolated incident. Outside the hotel that night, and throughout the week, pro-Beijing gangs stalked and assaulted opponents of Xi, most of them pro-democracy Chinese, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, and Tibetans, who had flocked to the city to protest his attendance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. Estimates vary, but it appears that at least 1,000 pro-CCP demonstrators from across America were involved. The anti-Xi crowd was around 100 people, if that.

The harassment started upon Xi’s arrival at the airport on November 14 and didn’t let up until after his departure on November 17, Allen Chen, a lawyer and leader in the pro-democracy Chinese community, told me.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-u-s-military-is-not-woke-but-the-woke-threat-is-real/

I remember the day vividly, standing in formation in the hot Kentucky sun at Ft. Knox. “Look to your left and to your right,” the sergeant said. “You are all wearing the same uniform, you all bleed the same color blood. There is no color here other than green.” But by the end of my career, there were directives coming down from Washington D.C. telling us that some of our service members were somehow different, as was the case when we were told we should counsel some of our soldiers letting them know they can change the gender on their ID cards. I wasn’t about to single out a soldier, and I doubt very many did in any branch of the services.

But aside from causing a few eyerolls, woke policies in the military are more of a distraction at this point than anything else and are thankfully being largely ignored other than service members being ordered to sit through the regularly occurring death by PowerPoint. However, that in no way diminishes the very real threat it poses.

The United States military remains the most effective fighting force on the planet, and although wokeness has not yet significantly infected the military, the woke cancer continues to grow, threatening the cohesion of America’s fighting forces. Every hour that a service member wastes sitting through unnecessary woke briefings, is an hour lost that should have been spent on warfighter training, leaving us less prepared for the next war.

Woke policies, unnecessary political correctness at the expense of readiness or the success of a mission, have been and continue to be pushed at the behest of politicians inside the beltway. But the problem with their efforts to change the way our military operates is that it doesn’t need changing. The military is one place where true diversity has already been achieved.

https://pjmedia.com/miltharris/2023/12/18/woke-ways-shrink-us-military-to-smallest-fighting-force-in-8-decades-n4924846

It was bound to happen. Another unwanted side effect of woke culture is raising its ugly head. The U.S. military is now at its lowest levels in over 80 years, and the reason is not general disinterest, as some would have you believe. Military experts have sounded the alarm about the Biden administration’s “woke” policies within the Department of Defense as the U.S. military is poised to be the smallest it has been in eight decades, while facing emerging global threats.

Retired Navy SEAL Mike Sarraille accused the White House of treating U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East like “cannon fodder,” claiming that the Biden administration’s leadership has heavily impacted the recruitment crisis.

“The few in the military have always carried the burden for the many, but the alarming decrease in numbers not only poses a threat to our national security and defense strategy, but it also raises a question: can we confront the emerging global threats? This is not a recruitment issue. This is a leadership problem,” Sarraille told Carley Shimkus on “Fox & Friends First.”

Sarraille continued: “Talent begets talent, and quite frankly, why would this younger generation want to go work for an administration that uses their troops as cannon fodder in the Middle East like we’re seeing? The administration, instead of creating a lethal force in raising our technology capabilities, has decided to implement woke progressive policies like renaming bases and funding or providing additional funding for DEI programs.”

Mike Glover is an Army vet and a counterterrorism expert. He teaches a special operations prep course in Utah. Glover has seen the number of sign-ups for his course dwindle as the various military branches struggle to recruit new service members. He believes the crisis stems from low morale, which has ultimately been impacted by a progressive policy push within the DOD.

https://www.securityinfowatch.com/critical-infrastructure/article/53078430/todays-hyper-connected-network-systems-face-myriad-security-challenges

The current state of the cyber ecosystem is a precarious one. The perimeters have become blurred, and as the capabilities and connectivity of cyber devices have grown exponentially, so have cyber intrusions from sophisticated malware to both Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) Industrial Control Systems (ICS), and SCADA networks. The threat is even more amplified as those networks are converging.

According to PMMI Business Intelligence’s “2021 Cybersecurity: Assess Your Risk,” report from, Information Technology (IT) attacks “specifically target the enterprise IT systems at a manufacturer, seeking to gain entry through vectors such as email, a CRM system, or an ERP program, which can span across an operation.” Operational Technology (OT) attacks “are designed to exploit the systems that are directly on the plant floor. An OT attack can originate through vectors such as individual sensors on the production line, SCADA/HMI panels, or even unsecured PLCs.” Cybersecurity 101: The Difference Between IT and OT Attacks | OEM Magazine

But in our increasingly hyper-connected internet environments, most physical security systems have become tethered to IT networks and evolving cloud infrastructure. The trend of integration of Industrial hardware and software combined with growing networked IT sensors is redefining the surface attack opportunities for hackers across all digital infrastructures.

The IT OT Convergence Supply Chain

Protecting the fusion of IT/OT networks from cyber-attacks is an urgent challenge that requires orchestration. They all have unique operational frameworks, access points, and a variety of legacy systems and are intertwined with varying regulation and compliance protocols. And a lack of trained skilled workforce is a continual issue in IT, OT and ISC cybersecurity.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/12/05/the_navy_dead_in_the_water_996793.html

“Mission: The United States is a maritime nation, and the U.S. Navy protects America at sea. Alongside our allies and partners, we defend freedom, preserve economic prosperity, and keep the seas open and free. Our nation is engaged in long-term competition. To defend American interests around the globe, the U.S. Navy must remain prepared to execute our timeless role, as directed by Congress and the President.” The preceding statement is from the U. S. Navy’s website.

There are many indicators that the Navy is at increasing risk of mission failure.

Missing recruiting goals by thousands for two years in a row, missing its goal for FY 2023 by over 7000 new recruits. The impact of missing recruiting goals is cumulative. Its impact does not subside if in subsequent years deficits are not made up. Lack of manpower adds to the strain of a Navy struggling to meet its national priorities overseas. Failing to recruit enough people to man the Navy is a result of many factors. Since the Afghanistan debacle, the public’s faith in the military has plummeted to new lows. With relatively low unemployment, the competition for young people is high. American youth are less fit, less capable of serving in the military than at any time in our history. Fewer young people want to serve as the political left teaches them to hate our country, academia promotes socialism, and race hustlers malign our country for its supposed racism and white supremacy. Divisive ideologies like Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are now promoted vigorously up and down the chain of command in the Navy. These ideologies alienate the youth of what for generations was the most fertile recruiting grounds, white, southern, Christian Americans. This demographic is now increasingly averse to serving in our new politically correct Navy of DEI, Pride month, correct pronouns, drag queens, and transgender people. If the Navy cannot recruit now for the existing numbers of ships we have, we have no hope whatsoever of filling out the ranks of a Navy with much higher numbers of ships.

Recently, due to the international wars simultaneously in Ukraine and Israel, and high tension in the Taiwan strait/South China Sea, the U.S. Navy had an almost unprecedented 8 Carriers at sea at the same time. The only three not at sea were unavailable due to long-term maintenance. Normally, the Navy might have three or four carriers at sea at one time. Navy ships and crews continually operating wear out rapidly. Typical deployments last 6 months. The USS Ford has been deployed for 7 months and SECDEF just extended its deployment in the eastern Med for the second time. The longer the deployment the more worn out the crew and the higher rates of equipment failures become. As deployments go on for longer and longer, the size of the crew shrinks due to illness, pregnancy, injury, and suicides. Typically ships returning to home port after a lengthy deployment are missing a substantial number of the deploying crew. This puts much more stress and strain on the remaining crewmen. The international situation with multiple wars demanding our attention simultaneously is eroding our Navy’s readiness at a high rate. When the ships and their crews wear out, there will be no alternative but to return them to port for re-fit and rest for the crews regardless of whatever pressing mission the ship is on. That the Navy does not have enough ships is now obvious to even the most casual observer when multiple hot spots in distant seas occur. When the proverbial stuff hits the fan, the very first question everyone, including the President asks is, “Where is the nearest carrier?”
The Navy’s high suicide rate over a lengthy period demonstrates the leadership’s tragically being unable to ameliorate the problem.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/04/pentagon-says-that-american-arms-industry-is-struggling-to-keep-up-with-china/

Despite historically being the most technologically advanced military in the world, the Department of Defense (DOD) admitted recently that the American military is now struggling to keep up the pace with China when it comes to the current high-tech arms race.

According to Politico, the Pentagon is set to release its first-ever “National Defense Industrial Strategy,” compiled by the Pentagon’s acquisition chief William LaPlante. The study is set to be a comprehensive observation of what the DOD needs to catch up with China in the development of new military technology, including the possibility of cooperation with smaller tech firms and traditional companies.

At this time, the American military “does not possess the capacity, capability, responsiveness, or resilience required to satisfy the full range of military production needs at speed and scale,” the report’s draft, dated November 28th, reads in part.

“Just as significantly,” the report continues, “the traditional defense contractors in the [defense industrial base] would be challenged to respond to modern conflict at the velocity, scale, and flexibility necessary to meet the dynamic requirements of a major modern conflict.”

The main problem, according to the report, is not that America cannot build the most advanced weapons in the world, but rather, it is incapable of producing them fast enough.

“This mismatch presents a growing strategic risk as the United States confronts the imperatives of supporting active combat operations…while deterring the larger and more technically advanced pacing threat looming in the Indo-Pacific,” the study states.