CARL GUSTAV IN ACTION: U.S. Army photo taken in Grafenwoehr, Germany.

ARRIVAL AT JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM: A B-2 returns from a routine training mission.

SWARM BOAT TARGET: A U.S. Navy amphibious ship fires on a swerving –and small– target boat. The live fire exercise simulates an attack by a small boat. In the Persian Gulf Iran has threatened U.S. warships with “swarming” small boat attacks. In the Red Sea, Iranian proxies based in Yemen have used “robot” (unmanned) small boats to attack U.S. and coalition ships.

SEGWAY PERSONAL TRANSPORTER GOES COMMANDO: The two-wheeled Segway PT hit the market in 2001. It is still a cool vehicle. Now SOCOM is interested in the EZ Raider HD4 tactical electric manned vehicle. The name’s a great pun on Easy Rider. The EZ Raider is essentially a Segway PT with four wheels.

Why is SOCOM interested? From the StrategyPage post:

Motorized stealth in modern combat has been a long sought, but rarely achieved goal.

More:

For Special Operations troops EZ RAIDER enables a raiding party to be landed by helicopter far enough from the target to avoid being heard or seen. Then, using their EZ RAIDERs, the troops can silently approach the target, carry out the raid and travel on their EZ RAIDERs for pickup by helicopter.
The Israelis have been using EZ RAIDER for stealthy border patrol, to catch infiltrators who believe they have not been spotted (until it is too late). EZ RAIDER can also be used for outer security at high value facilities. SOCOM will only say that it has purchased several EZ RAIDERs for field testing and is so far satisfied with their performance.

The vehicle has a range of 40 to 80 kilometers. The entire post is worth the read and has some commentary on recent military experience with ATVs and motorcycles. The video at special-ops.org is worth watching.

WOMEN WHO WENT TO WAR IN THE GREAT WAR: Scroll down to the long post on women at war during World War One– below the long post on World War One’s “assumptions” that made August 1914 an optimal time to go to war (a good read, too).

From the “Women Who Went to War” in the Great War post:

Lyubov A. Golanchikova (d. 1961), a stage actress and vaudeville dancer known as “Milly More”, received a flying certificate in 1911 from a Tsarist military aviation school. In 1913 she set a women’s altitude record of 7,218 feet in a Fokker Eindecker, gaining considerable attention and apparently helping convince the German Army to adopted the Eindecker for their air service. Early in the war she performed reconnaissance missions for the Russian Army using her own plane. She later flew for the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, but eventually fled Russia. Golanchikova eventually settled in New York, where she worked as cab driver.

Read the whole thing.

BUFF OVER THE PACIFIC: A B-52H on a training mission over the Pacific Ocean.

DECISIVE BATTLES IN CHINESE HISTORY: The book does not address the South China Sea battle with the U.S. — yet. Just “…the Warring States Period in the fourth century B.C. through the Second World War.” As Dr. Nofi notes, the book has limitations. But it’s useful background, as Dr. Nofi writes “an introduction to the subject for the general reader…” As for the South China Sea and the Himalayas versus India? Stay tuned.

SIMULATED MECHANIZED RAID: A Marine training exercise at Camp Pendleton.

THE POPULATION THREAT TO CHINA’S PROSPERITY.

TWO CARRIER STRIKE GROUPS: The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group and the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group transit the Atlantic Ocean in formation.

LIGHTNINGS ALIGNED: Four USMC F-35B Lightning IIs fly in formation. The planes are “somewhere in the Pacific” with the Essex Amphibious Ready Group (ARG).

T-BIRD AT AN AIR SHOW: T-33 Shooting Star banks over the crowd at a Missouri air show. The T-33 is the trainer version of the F-80 Shooting Star, America’s first operational jet fighter (initially called the P-80).

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Will Venezuela explode before it implodes? My latest Creators Syndicate column. (It’s gpnna pode, one way or another.)

STRIKE EAGLE OVER RAF LAKENHEATH: The USAF F-15E is participating in a Royal Air Force air combat training exercise.

WILL VENEZUELA EXPLODE BEFORE IT IMPLODES?

HOSPITAL BLACKHAWKS: Two HH-60M Hospital Blackhawk helicopters participate in a medical evacuation exercise.

THE NEW U.S.-MEXICO TRADE DEAL: Bloomberg text and video report. In the first video Trump gives his views on the deal.

REFUELING THE BLUE ANGELS: Good day for a photo.

IRAN CLAIMS IT HAS CONTROL OF THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ AND THE U.S. NAVY SHOULD STAY AWAY: The Iranians are conducting a military exercise that amounts to a strait-closing operation. Stay tuned.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: My latest Creators Syndicate column. Defending NATO’s Eastern Rim.

INSIDE THE WELL DECK: Cool photo of Marines and their assault amphibious vehicles in the well deck of an assault ship. It’s also an informative photo. You get a feel for the size of an assault ship and how much equipment you can cram into them.

DEFENDING NATO’S EASTERN RIM: Rapid reinforcement or forward deployment? Or both?

GLOBEMASTER FROM ABOVE: A photo of a C-17 above the clouds — the photographer was aboard a KC-135 tanker that had just refueled the transport.

CARRIER ON THE MOVE: An aerial photo of the USS Stennis “conducting routine operations in the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of operations.”

HUMAN SPEECH IS SPECIAL:

Humans have a unique anatomy that supports our ability to produce complex language. The elastic recoil of the lungs provides the necessary acoustic energy, while the diaphragm, intercostal muscles, and abdominal muscles manipulate how that air is released through the larynx, a complex structure that houses the vocal cords, and the supralaryngeal vocal tract (SVT), which includes the oral cavity and the pharynx, the cavity behind the mouth and above the larynx.

When air from the lungs rushes against and through the muscles, cartilages, and other tissue of the vocal cords, they rapidly open and close to produce what’s known as the fundamental frequency of phonation (F0), or the pitch of a speaker’s voice. The principal sounds that form words—known as formant frequencies—are produced by changes to the positions of the lips, tongue, and larynx.

In addition to the anatomy of the SVT, humans have evolved increased synaptic connectivity and malleability in certain neural circuits in the brain important for producing and understanding speech. Specifically, circuits linking cortical regions and the subcortical basal ganglia appear critical to support human language.

The article’s a good read.