Monday Miscellaneous

A few little things today.

Remember all the Afghans who helped us over 20 years in Afghanistan before Biden cut and run  before we pulled out like a trucker from a 16 year old hooker  before we mostly peacefully evacuated our troops and equipment? Seems we are running out of visas…67,000 of them in the processing queue and multiple thousands more needed soonest.

Since its inception, the program has been beset by slow processing, exacerbated by low staffing at the State Department and shoddy record-keeping by the military or contractors, making it difficult for some Afghans to prove their work with U.S. troops.

As of September, more than 67,000 completed SIV applications were awaiting what’s known as chief of mission approval, according to the State Department’s most recent quarterly report on the program. Another nearly 11,000 had received that approval and were awaiting their visa interviews.

But the faster processing also means running out of visas more quickly. With about 7,000 visas remaining, lawmakers who support the program say the State Department expects to run out as soon as August.  Military.com

Makes you wonder how many folks are still left in Kabul? Not to mention why would anyone help us when this is how we treat them afterwards?

Big Navy’s been on a firing spree:

The commanding officer of the USS Ohio sub’s gold crew — Capt. Kurt Balagna — was relieved by Rear Adm. Nicholas Tilbrook, the commander of Submarine Group 9, “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command,” the Navy said.

Balagna appears to be the third Navy commander relieved this year. However, since last September, Navy leaders have fired the skippers of the USS Georgia and USS Alabama as well. Military.com II

Meanwhile the Marines at Pendleton have been getting hit as well.

Col. Seth “S.W.” MacCutcheon, the commander of the School of Infantry-West, and Maj. Nicholas Engle, the commander of the Reconnaissance Training Company, were both relieved on March 8 by Brig. Gen. Farrell Sullivan, the commanding general of the service’s training command.

Both units are based out of Camp Pendleton, California, and follow five other firings of leaders in charge of training programs in the Marine Corps in the last eight-plus months.  Military.com III

My initial reaction at all this was to wonder how future generations would look at this administration. Will they regard this as a purge of non-loyalist officers? Or will they look at it as a condemnation of our selection processes that so many apparent bozos are being promoted or selected for command?

And just when you thought you heard it all…seems there is a new type of theft going on. There is a difference in the background radiation of steel processed before August ’45 and after:

All the steel produced after World War II was irreversibly irradiated with radioactive cobalt isotopes during the process of mixing iron and carbon as an unexpected consequence of global atomic testing. As a result, nuclear fallout has been a part of all steel made after the Atomic Era. Steel made before World War II is now known as “low-background steel” and is usually found in old shipwrecks, artillery shells and other wartime materiel.

Its use in medicine and high-tech research, along with its limited supply, means low-background steel is exceptionally valuable — and like all things with such a high value, some aren’t too concerned about where they get it.

So as a result scrappers and salvagers are finding – and as much as possible disassembling – WWII shipwrecks in defiance of international agreements which regard these as the tombs of fallen warriors.

In the Pacific Ocean alone, there are an estimated 13 million tons of sunken warships, with potentially tens of thousands of war dead entombed inside. Analysts have discovered that at least 40 of these sunken vessels, which are also the graves of British, American, Australian, Dutch and Japanese troops, have been disturbed in the hunt for low-background steel.Military.com IV

One would think if reprocessed now that the higher background radiation after years of nuclear testing would contaminate it, right? Seems not.

Oh, and the government of Niger is basically severing military relations.

Niger or the Niger, officially the Republic of the Niger, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is a unitary state bordered by Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria to the south, Benin and Burkina Faso to the southwest, Mali to the west, and Algeria to the northwest. Wiki

According to the White House we have fewer than 700 military personnel there. Note that for western Africa, it is strategically located. But – the newly in power military government says they are offended by the US and that the agreement with the US was made without Niger’s permission (meaning the old government did it and the new junta doesn’t want it.)

Niger military spokesman Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane…also rejected what he said were allegations of a secret deal made between Niger, Russia, and Iran AOL

Which tells me that either they are sucking up to China, or to Iran and Russia and are lying. Your pick.

Category: Foreign Policy, Marines, Navy, WWII