The First Unknown Soldier

 

The First Unknown Soldier

Mike Walker, Col. USMC (ret)

All,

Here are a couple facts about the first Unknown Soldier who was selected after World War I.

There actually were four unknown soldier candidates. 

A decorated veteran who had been wounded and still in France in 1919 was chosen to select one of the caskets by placing white roses on it.

He later stated he was consumed with other-worldly force which directed to the casket he selected.

The other three were interned in a US cemetery in France.

The selected soldier was sent with full honors by warship back to the United States.

The burial ceremony was held on 11 November 1919 (then Armistice - now Veterans - Day). 

The eight pallbearers (all World War I veterans) consisted of 5 soldiers, 2 sailors and 1 Marine.

The Marine and two of the soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor. One of the sailors had received the Navy Cross and two other soldiers the Distinguished Service Cross.

The most highly decorated amongst them was Corporal Thomas Saunders USA who had been decorated with the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, and Croix de Guerre. 

He was the war's most highly decorated soldier in the Army. 

He also was a Cheyenne even though Native Americans were not considered citizens at that time. What also is not well known is that a number of Native American tribes jointly declared war on Germany in 1917 and the US Army accepted their enlistments.

Also of note, the last person to honor the casket at the burial was Chief Plenty Coups, America's senior Crow chief.

It was a bit ironic as he too could not be a  US citizen and in his youth had fought many times against Corporal Saunder's Cheyenne.

The word "coup" also is important. Amongst the Crow (and other tribes) a coup was a battle staff and upon being recognized for an act of a valor, a white eagle feather was attached.  

As his name implies, Chief Plenty Coups was highly decorated and he placed his coup on the coffin in shared honor of the many Native Americans who had died in the war.

Additionally, Chief Plenty Coups also placed his war bonnet which also was full of white eagle feathers (it is estimated that the chief had received well over 50 feathers for feats of courage and valor).

By the way, Native Americans were given full citizenship rights in 1924. That was due to the  Snyder Act had been passed just a few months before the Unknown Solider ceremony in 1921 and the distinguished Native American role in World War I (as witnessed during the ceremony) played a part.

Today, Chief Plenty Coups' presentations are on display at the Arlington National Cemetery not far from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers.

One final note. there was a deeply felt understanding that the unknown also had forever forfeited their identity in the War -- known but to God.

That led to a special act awarding them a posthumous Medal of Honor as the totality of their sacrifice surely was above and beyond the call of duty.

The great unwokening at Davos

 

The great unwokening at Davos

 
A former corporate exec explains why the world’s CEOs are suddenly sucking up to Trump and ditching DEI.

Jennifer Set, Spiked Online 

 
Every January, world leaders and CEOs gather in the Swiss mountain town of Davos for the annual week-long meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF). There they discuss the big issues of the day and present themselves as global agenda setters.

But there was something very different about this year’s confab. All the reports from the WEF suggest that the attendees have started to warm to US president Donald Trump and many of his policies. Which has come as a shock to those accustomed to Davos bigwigs talking up workplace diversity, promising to fight climate change and denouncing the rise of ‘authoritarian’ populism.

As someone who was once part of corporate America, I wasn’t actually surprised in the least. Why? Because Davos attendees are not the green, woke zealots – determined to impose their vision on the world – that so many imagine them to be. They are followers of political fashion, not trendsetters. They just want to be in with the cool kids – and maintain their obscene wealth. Those two priorities trump any political concerns, including resistance to their old foe, Donald Trump.

Now that professional athletes are doing the ‘Trump dance’ on the playing field, and Snoop Dogg is performing at inauguration festivities, being for Trump confers more cool-kid status than being against him. This is why, despite all of the handwringing about Trump being a danger to democracy since his first election win in 2016, the globalists are now on board with his presidency. Or at least they want to appear to be in public.

Speaking at the 2017 WEF, Frans van Houten, the then CEO of Phillips, was concerned about Trump’s presidency. ‘I would worry about disruptive measures and new-found nationalism closing borders’, he warned. Fast forward eight years and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is wishing the new Trump administration all ‘the best’.

It’s quite a shift. Every year, since 1971, these unelected, self-appointed leaders have spent a week in the Alps discussing how the rest of us should live. They fly into the exclusive mountain resort on private jets to discuss the need for the rest of us to use LED lightbulbs, drive electric cars, stop using oil and eat bugs. These rich white guys tell us we need to disavow our white privilege. Or at least they did talk about these things, until Trump’s win.

The WEF has been scorned by populists and conspiracy theorists alike. They all believe that this unelected body works overtime to hijack democratic processes around the world, setting its own agenda on climate change, DEI and anything else it deems of the highest importance.

Of course, democracy should and must decide how our nations are run, rather than corporate kings and their diktats. But to say the WEF actually rules the world is to misunderstand what it is really about.

An invite to Davos is the hot ticket for any CEO. It is invitation-only and is the ultimate signifier of insider status. When I was in corporate America (I was chief marketing officer at Levi’s until she resigned in 2022), there would always be a flurry of activity each year in the late autumn when the invitations were handed out. The CEOs act like hordes of freshman girls awaiting their acceptance into the popular sorority. There’s angling and jockeying by corporate-communications leads to get their bosses a coveted invite.

Davos signifies ‘you’ve made it’ status. If you’re the CEO of Fortune 500 Company No498, and you’re invited to sit next to WEF chairman Klaus Schwab or Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff, or Justin Trudeau or Jacinda Ardern, you have surely reached the big time. Even if you don’t get to speak during the forum, you can still be in the room where it happens.

Make no mistake, these CEOs are obsessed with status. For all their talk about woke causes, they really don’t care about the details. All of that was just PR for their companies and for themselves.

Their concern with being seen to be woke largely stemmed from the fact that being rich and powerful ceased to be deemed admirable. It instead became the ultimate mark of ‘privilege’ – a slur in a DEI-dominated world. So the CEOs had to do something to make sure people still liked them and their companies. The solution? Market how social justice-y you are! Suddenly, they could remain rich and still be liked by their woke kids and young employees. Woke capitalism was more a bulwark against cancellation than a firm ideology.

But with the most powerful leader in the world now disavowing DEI, executive-ordering it out of the federal government within hours of taking office, the tables are turning.

I have long argued that these CEOs would abandon wokeness at the first sign of it having a detrimental effect on their brand and profitability. Bud Light’s ‘hiccup’ with trans TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney, and the brand’s subsequent loss of share and stock value, was early evidence of that. Today, Bud Light is back to bro marketing, with not a transwoman in sight.

Conspiracy theorists would argue with me. ‘The WEF is pulling the strings’, they say. ‘There are dark forces at play that have nothing to do with money!’ But they’re wrong. CEOs care mostly about money and status. If they have to abandon wokeness because it turns out to be a money loser, they will. They aren’t giving up their millions or private jets.

Now these titans of industry are listening to Donald Trump and others like him. Speaking at the WEF last week, Argentinian president Javier Milei denounced ‘the mental virus of woke ideology’ as the ‘great epidemic of our time that must be cured’. ‘This ideology has colonised the world’s most important institutions’, he said. ‘It is essential to break these ideological chains if we want to usher in a new golden age.’

When Trump was livestreamed into Davos, he broke WEF protocol by declaring fossil fuels a priority and diversity initiatives ‘absolute nonsense’. Yet the CEOs just nodded along.

It makes for an incredible about-face on the part of the global leadership class. The views previously held by the insiders are out, and they are now pretending they never enthusiastically advocated for censorship or hated Donald Trump. They would have you believe they are pro-merit, anti-DEI devotees, and always have been.

The great unwokening of the corporate elites has begun.

Jennifer Sey is founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics. She was formerly the chief marketing officer of Levi Strauss and Co.

DRONE WARFARE BASICS

DRONE WARFARE BASICS

Mike Walker, Col USMC (ret)

OVERVIEW:

Drone Warfare in the Russo-Ukraine War has jumpstarted a new Revolution in Military Affairs.

I write with confidence that one thousand US Marines with ten thousand drones and appropriate logistical support can single-handedly defeat one-on-one the large majority of the world’s militaries.

It is a stunning turn of events as we stare deeply at new battlefields which are changing faster than onlookers can keep up. It truly is dizzying in it advances.

The changes also are incredibly dynamic. It is not simply a matter of fielding new and better drones – which is indeed happening. But simply upgrading software or electronics or avionics or batteries or sensors or payload or any combination on existing tactical drones, allows the old weapons to be reinvented – to make an immediate quantum leap in battlefield lethality.

And just to pile on, the emerging power of AI in drone warfare is just beginning to be felt and it too looks to be game-changing.

What to do? To lay a foundation we will take a snapshot mostly centered on United States drone capabilities. Hopefully that will get you into the game but remember, at best this discussion will only enable you to ask better questions.

MISSIONS:  

Combat

Surveillance- Reconnaissance

Logistical

Covert/Clandestine Intelligence

Subsurface

Anti-Drone Defenses

 

Combat

Strategic-Operational Level

MQ-20 Avenger (Predator C) – King of the Combat Drones 

Speed: 400/460mph (cruise/max speed)       Endurance: 18 hours

Range: +15,000 miles (aerial refueling)

Payload: 3,500lbs with internal weapons bay and up to six (6) external hardpoints carrying precision guided munitions (from 250 to 2,000 lbs)

Extra: Uses stealth and reduced signature technology

MQ-9 Reaper (Predator B) – Hunter-Killer UAV

Tactical Level

Switchblade Loitering Attack [Kamikaze] Munition (AKA Low-altitude Stalking & Strike Ordnance/LASSO)

    Model 300 antipersonnel

Speed: 100mph           Endurance: 10-20 minutes

Range: 15 miles 

Payload: 40mm grenade 5m casualty radius

Extra: Uses stealth and reduced signature technology

    Model 600 antitank

Speed: 400/460mph   Endurance: 18 hours

Range: +15,000 miles 

Payload: 3,500lbs with internal weapons bay and up to six (6) external hardpoints carrying precision guided munitions (from 250 to 2,000 lbs)

Extra: Uses stealth and reduced signature technology

Endnote 

The major on-going evolution in tactical combat drones is the transition from human-guided kamikaze drones to fully robotic killer drones that reduces and ideally will eliminate the need for trained and skilled drone operators.

But drones are not perfect. They can malfunction and – like any airborne platform – suffer from the vagaries of the environment. Wind, rain, snow, mist and fog effect drones. Operation at night is challenging and terrain can matter. Urban areas present obstacles to drone flight, triple-canopy jungle can be impenetrable, and flying inside wooded areas a nightmare.

 

Surveillance-Reconnaissance 

Tactical Level

RQ-7 Shadow

Speed: 81/130mph 

Endurance: 7.5 hours

Range: 70 miles 

Payload: Stabilized electro-optical/infrared tracking cameras

Logistical

When it comes to logistical drones, payload is everything. And by everything we mean small. Logistical resupply by drone at this time is limited by payload to urgently needed supplies in small amounts. That means either some uniquely critical item(s) or more generally, support for small teams in the reconnaissance-intelligence gathering/ unconventional warfare/special operations realm.

Covert/Clandestine Intelligence

In addition to military surveillance and reconnaissance missions, a whole host of drones are specifically designed for intelligence gathering and to achieve their mission, many of these are extremely small. So small that the next generation of clandestine operators might will be AI-driven drones that pass as horse flies.

Subsurface (Unmanned Undersea Vehicles or UUVs)    

Subsurface drones have been around a long time but many were limited by cable connections. That is no longer an issue as you will note below.

Ghost Shark (Australia)

Herne (UK) Payload: surveillance/reconnaissance sensors

Endurance:  3 days 

(working on a next-generation 45-day endurance/3,000-mile cruising range version)

Manta Ray (US) 

Long endurance and range as it can both swim and hibernate for extended periods on the sea floor.

Wide range of missions with classified hunter-killer capabilities

Marichka (Ukraine) Payload: “kamikaze” combat/attack munition

Orca (US Extra Large UUV (XLUUV))

In essence, an unmanned conventional submarine with hunter-killer, minelaying, and reconnaissance-surveillance-intelligence gathering missions

Endurance: Months

Cruising Range: 7,500 miles (nearing the capability of World War II U-boats)

                        

Anti-Drone Defense

For now, detection and RF jamming remain the primary components of anti-drone defenses. Tactically, the Marine Corps is fielding a portable Anti-Drone System that uses RF detection and audio sensors that cross reference a changeable library. Ideally future libraries can be updated/improved using AI to work with limited data and Id the target. The Marine operator wears a “touch” haptic device on his body (akin to a smart phone vibrator) to discretely alert the Marine. That at provides critical warning time to take cover and disperse.

At that point, integrated Radio Frequency (RF) jamming (broadband, spot, and barrage) takes over. Unsurprisingly, there is a full range of pretty effective off-the-shelf drone jammers ranging in price from $2,000 to $18,000 (and some really impressive stuff if you have deep pockets).

Therein lies the rub. To counter the detection-jamming defenses, the drone radio networks are employing smart frequency hopping technology to avoid jammers. That makes them even harder to find and attack and another counter-drone hurdle is IFF. Identify-Friend-or-Foe systems prevent friendly fire but there is nothing out there even remotely similar to the highly effective IFF systems used in conventional air war operations. Finally, under current conditions with its overcrowded frequency bands, autonomous jammers are as likely to jam friend as foe. Finally, drones are employing vastly more capable microprocessors and expanded data storage. As a result, drone flight control is getting away from jammable GPS (an advanced throwback to terrain navigating systems developed in the 1980s).

Then there is the future. A tactical counter-drone idea being explored is to deploy swarms of loitering “hornets” that will seek out and kill hapless drones before they become a threat.

CONCLUSIONS

It is hoped this short treatise has given both a useful overview of drone warfare and blunt insight into its complexities. Most of all, it should shock you into understanding that 21st century warfare is changing dramatically and if you think you have mastered it then you don’t understand it at all. But if you think this is something you MUST get smarter about then you are on the right course.

 

Gavin Newsom has failed California

 

 Gavin Newsom has failed California

How Gavin Newsom has failed California and set fire to his own political prospects

Kirsten Fleming, New York Post 

The emperor has no clothes — and no empathy.

It’s likely, though, he still does have a standing reservation at the French Laundry.

Of course, it’s Gavin Newsom, of whom I write.

The smug and ambitious progressive California Governor whose political aspirations went up in flames as Los Angeles continues to burn to the ground, leaving a shocking number of residents’ lives in tatters.

And it’s Newsom, who has become the arsonist, setting the fire to his political fortunes with a series of unforced errors — putting a cap on years of mismanagement and abandoning crucial infrastructure in favor of useless far left policies that made social justice and climate warriors feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Since the inferno broke out, Newsom has shown that he’s ill prepared and shameless: shifting blame to others and trying to ditch one of his devastated constituents.

It’s like he and the epically feckless Karen “I’d rather be in Ghana” Bass had made a political suicide pact for 2025.

As Pacific Palisades was ablaze, Anderson Cooper asked Newsom about the dry hydrant situation there. Instead of owning any failure, he passed the buck.

“Look, the local folks are trying to figure that out,” he told Cooper.

Actually, Gov., you should have ensured the local folks had it sorted as risks were well known.

This all stops with the top, even if it was a “local” issue. This apocalyptic inferno wasn’t some freak accident in a backwater that no one could find on the map. This was Los Angeles, home to millions, and a city that remains under constant threat of wildfires.

Then he cowardly tried to use a fake phone connection to brush off an anguished mother sifting through the rubble of her community.

“Governor! Governor! I live here, Governor! That was my daughter’s school!” said Pacific Palisades resident Rachel Dervish, running after Newsom as he tried to hightail it back into his SUV.

“I’m literally talking to the president right now to specifically answer the question, of what we can do for you and your daughter,” he said with all the blessed chutzpah of Jan Brady speaking on the phone with George Glass.

When Dervish asked to hear the call, “because I don’t believe it,” Newsom, who was clearly not on a line with anyone, then switched tactics. He said he was trying to get ol’ Joe on the horn but he had no service. He explained that he had tried five times and was walking around looking for a signal.

She continued to press him on the lack of water in the hydrants.

“Why was there no water in the hydrants, Governor? Is it going to be different next time?” she asked.

“It has to be, it has to be, of course,” he said when she told him he was doing nothing.

She was desperate and grief stricken. She was also – like so many in her neighborhood – angry.

There were red flag warnings and yet, Bass was in Africa and Newsom was out to lunch. Why wasn’t he micromanaging their preparedness and their water supply.

Natural disasters are a fact of life in the Golden State and it’s impossible to guess mother nature – but there are also ways to prepare for battle and mitigate the damage from her wrath.

Take Ron DeSantis, who every year is faced with a destructive hurricane season. He is an extremely competent crisis manager who prepares for the worst, marshals all resources and communicates extremely effectively with Floridians.

He seems to revel in the details, in the foresight and in the aftermath, helping residents return to normalcy as soon as possible.

The act of governing is not sexy. Just look at the Florida Governor’s terribly unflattering white rain boots. Karl Lagerfeld he is not.

Newsom, on the other hand, is slick and handsome. But he is empty and incompetent. He is skilled in delivering platitudes about diversity and inclusion, hyper-focusing on “marginalized communities,” including the endangered Delta smelt, according to Trump.

And for all his talk about tolerance, he was cold and dismissive to Dervish. Sometimes being a leader means listening and being a soft place to land. Expressing both confidence and humanity.

It’s what George W. Bush understood when he stood on the pile at Ground Zero and said, “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.”

Newsom, who was very high in the dem’s presidential depth chart, spectacularly failed this moment on both a political and a human level.

Voters will not forget.