War is a very nasty business and the glory that goes with it is largely manufactured after the fact.

- Tyler Rogoway

Nearly one year to the day after the Armada Argentina lost contact with their Santa Cruz class diesel-electric submarine ARA San Juan, they have announced that its broken hull has been finally discovered laying 2,620ft below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Although the big multi-national search for the submarine ended many months ago, a U.S. company named Ocean Infinity that specializes in mapping the seafloor has been contracted since late Summer to continue looking for submarine using its advanced side-scanning sonar and other technologies.

The hit it received from the seafloor was remarkably detailed, showing an elongated and broken object that measures roughly 60 meters in length—the submarine was 67 meters overall when it was intact—making it a very promising discovery. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) have been sent down to inspect the object of interest and the Argentine Navy has confirmed that it is indeed ARA San Juan.

The revelation is part amazing and part bittersweet. On one hand, finding the submarine on the seafloor—the proverbial needle in a haystack—a year after it went missing is an awesome accomplishment. On the other hand, although it will bring much-needed closure to the 44 sailors' families who have endured a nightmare of an ordeal over the past 12 months, it will also be an incredibly sad reality to face.

San Juan disappeared on November 15th, 2017 after reporting a short circuit issue with its batteries to its Argentine Navy masters while on a patrol in the south Atlantic.

Writing about warfare day-in and day-out for years hardens you to the avalanche of conflict-related imagery and video you see on a daily basis, which ranges from gruesome to heroic. This job literally makes you examine the worst and the best humanity has to offer on a daily basis, but once in a while, a piece of media will really move you by surprise. This happened today when @history1history posted a video of a TBM Avenger gunner being buried at sea with his battle damaged aircraft. Apparently, this is the only time this happened during the war.

In the clip, we see the Avenger, which was hit hard by flak, limping back to the carrier. Once it lands, the rear turret gunner's cockpit is covered up and the aircraft is ceremoniously rolled off the fantail of the ship in a unique burial at sea. You see, Aviation Machinist Mate 2nd Class Loyce Edward Deen's body was so badly mangled from the anti-aircraft shell that took his life that it couldn't be removed from the torpedo bomber's rear cockpit.

Deen was just 23 years old when he died on that fateful mission. The operation he was participating in at the time of his death was the Battle Of Manila. It was two hours into a sortie when his Avenger, which belonged to Torpedo Squadron 15 (VT-15) based aboard the USS Essex (CV-9), was hit by anti-aircraft artillery, killing him instantly.

The military has formally charged two Navy SEALs and two special-operations Marines in one of the most grisly murder cases in recent U.S. history, The Daily Beast has learned.

Two members of elite SEAL Team Six, Petty Officer Anthony E. DeDolph and Chief Petty Officer Adam C. Matthews, along with two Marine Raiders face charges that include felony murder, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, burglary, hazing, and involuntary manslaughter in the strangulation death of a Green Beret, Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar. All four were charged with felony murder and with lying to investigators.

The charges were proffered against the four on Wednesday, according to the Navy. A preliminary hearing in military court is scheduled for December 10.

Melgar, assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group, was killed in the West African nation of Mali in June 2017, as first reported by the New York Times.

The Marine Raiders’ names have not been made public. All four names are redacted to the public on the formal charge sheet.

According to the charges, the alleged conspirators “drove to the Marine quarters” in Bamako, Mali “to obtain duct tape,” then drove to the shared Army/Navy headquarters, “entered the bedroom of SSG Melgar by breaking through his locked door,” restrained him with the duct tape, and “strangled SSG Melgar by placing him in a chokehold.”

In May, NBC News reported that two Marine Raiders were under investigation in the now-concluded Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry into Melgar’s strangulation. Last week, the U.S. Naval Institute’s news division reported that the Navy had ordered a one-star admiral, Rear Adm. Charles Rock, to determine if the four would face charges.

“If these allegations of misconduct are substantiated, they represent a violation of the trust and standards required of all service members,” Navy Captain Jason Salata, the director of communications for the U.S. Special Operations Command, told The Daily Beast. “We trust our service members to safeguard our nation’s most sensitive interests and to do so with honor.”

The Daily Beast has learned new details of the grim prelude to Melgar’s death.

There was an ongoing disagreement between the Green Beret and DeDolph over the SEALs’ professionalism, a source familiar with the episode told The Daily Beast. Melgar was upset with lapses in operational security, according to a source familiar with the investigation’s findings. DeDolph and Matthews, both members of SEAL Team Six, were soliciting prostitutes and taking them back to the safe house in Bamako, Mali’s capital city. As The Daily Beast reported last year, Melgar had found the SEALs skimming cash from a fund to recruit informants about local Islamist activity.

“The place ran like a frat house,” the source said.

Melgar was part of a six-man intelligence operation in Mali supporting counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaeda’s local affiliate, known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Melgar reported the violation to his chain of command, drawing the ire of the SEALs and two Marine Raiders, who were also on the team assigned to assist with counterterrorism.

Then on June 4, 2017, Melgar was invited to an embassy party, and the rest of the team was not. While Melgar was gone, the two SEALs and two Marine Raiders plotted to haze Melgar for the slight, according to the source familiar with the investigation’s findings.

“They planned for hours,” the source familiar with the investigation report said.

DeDolph and Matthews, along with the two Marine Raiders, allegedly confronted Melgar at the safehouse around 5 a.m. DeDolph, a mixed-martial arts fighter, put Melgar in a chokehold. The attackers and Melgar fell onto the bed with Matthews on top of Melgar, according to a source familiar with the inquiry.

DeDolph realized Melgar wasn’t breathing, according to a preliminary investigation report first reported by NBC News. The SEALs tried to resuscitate Melgar with CPR and opened a hole in his throat. They then took Melgar, along with another Fort Bragg-based Green Beret, to a French medical facility, where he was pronounced dead.

At the clinic, DeDolph admitted to an embassy official he choked Melgar, according to NBC News and subsequent reports.

After the SEALs returned to the safehouse, they engaged in a cover-up, according to several witnesses—including cleaning up evidence and coaching witnesses. The charge sheet accuses the members of the conspiracy with “providing a false timeline of events to the Navy chain of command,” and “purposefully” left out the duct tape when making their statements on Melgar’s death. They as well allegedly “disposed of the alcohol” they kept in the shared Army-Navy quarters, and lied to investigators.

A source told The Daily Beast last year that the SEALs filed at least one operational report about the incident and possibly two. At least one of the reports included an account that Melgar was drunk. But Melgar did not drink alcohol, and a toxicology report showed no alcohol in his system.

U.S. Special Operations Command’s Salata said the command honored Melgar’s memory and kept his loved ones in its thoughts. He pledged unity among the U.S.’ elite forces amid an episode that has sent shock waves through the special-operations world.

“We will not allow allegations or substantiated incidents of misconduct to erode decades of honorable accomplishments by the members of U.S. Special Operations Command. Ours is a culture of professionalism and accountability, which prides itself in being a learning organization that uses critical self-examination in a relentless dedication to improvement,” Salata said.

The standards expected of special operations are high in every aspect of life. Trust and accountability are the foundational requirements of all service members when conducting our nation’s most complex, sensitive, and high risk operations. We hold ourselves and each other accountable on a daily basis because we know that lives are on the line.”

Logan Melgar’s wife, Michelle, was briefed on the case earlier this month in Norfolk, Virginia, and again this week at Fort Bragg, according to sources. She declined to discuss the case in detail with The Daily Beast, but said she supports the prosecutor and that her goal was to not allow the incident to cause a rift between the Special Forces and SEALs and Marine Raiders.

“While I have faith that the military court will handle this situation in the best possible way, I also understand that the mission continues,” she said. “Our men must work well together, and we need to support them in doing so.”

Starting with this one - I'm definitely no fans of the Argentines, or of their icky nationalism & non-stop bleating about the Falkland Islands. That being said I can't think of anything else except how terrifying and horrible it must have been for the crew of that Argentinian submarine that was lost last year as it sank to the bottom of the southern Atlantic Ocean.

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24 ... been-found

Starting with this one - I'm definitely no fans of the Argentines, or of their icky nationalism & non-stop bleating about the Falkland Islands. That being said I can't think of anything else except how terrifying and horrible it must have been for the crew of that Argentinian submarine that was lost last year as it sank to the bottom of the southern Atlantic Ocean.

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24 ... been-found

I remember seeing pictures of this boat last year and the damned thing had fucking barnacles on it.

Canada’s top parliamentary watchdog has released a scathing report regarding the purchase of second-hand F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets from Australia and broader plans to modernize the country’s air combat capabilities. The core complaints are that the new aircraft will still be obsolete after costly upgrades and that the service doesn’t have the manpower to fly and maintain the CF-18 Hornets it already has in service anyway. This, in turn, means that the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) will still almost certainly lack the necessary resources to adequately meet its North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commitments simultaneously for years to come.

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada, which reports directly to the country’s House of Commons and is analogous to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), released its report on Oct. 20, 2019. This comes less than three months after the U.S. government signed off on Australia’s sale of 25 F/A-18A/B aircraft to the Canadians. Of these, the RCAF will induct 18 aircraft into its fighter force and use the remaining seven as non-flying sources of spare parts.

“We found that Canada’s [existing] fighter force could not meet the government’s new operational requirement, which is to have enough aircraft ready each day to meet the highest NORAD alert level and Canada’s NATO commitment at the same time,” the Auditor General report bluntly states in its introduction. “The fighter force could not meet the requirement because National Defense was already experiencing a shortage in personnel, and the CF-18 was old and increasingly hard to maintain.”

Canada has upgraded its jets over the years, but the last major update to the fleet occurred a decade ago. By 2032, when the RCAF hopes to have retired the last examples, any remaining jets will have been flying for more than two decades beyond their original planned out of service date.

I highly recommend this website here - Tyler Rogoway is a great journalist who keeps his stories as non-political and non-ideological as he possible can:

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone

Ray Chavez, the oldest surviving veteran of Pearl Harbor, died Wednesday in California at the age of 106.

“Ray was the epitome of the greatest generation,” said Richard Rovsek, a trustee of the nonprofit Spirit of Liberty Foundation in Rancho Santa Fe, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. “He was always proud to be an American and proud of the military.”

Kathleen Chavez, who had been her father’s live-in caregiver for more than 20 years, said Ray who'd been in hospice care, asked to be buried at Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego.

He was born in San Bernardino in 1911 and grew up in San Diego’s Old Town and Logan Heights communities; his large family ran a wholesale flower business, the news outlet said.

At 27, in 1938, he joined the Navy and was stationed with the minesweeper Condor at Pearl Harbor. On Dec. 7, 1941, he was a seaman first class; after the attack, he spent the next nine days on continuous duty in and around Pearl Harbor, the paper said.

He once said the horrors he saw at Pearl Harbor left deep trauma.

His daughter, who was adopted in a San Diego orphanage in 1957, added that "he never saw himself as any different from the other men he served with. He’d always say, ‘I’m no hero. I just did my job.’”

She told The Union-Tribune her father was the child of Mexican immigrants, and although he experienced racism and discrimination in childhood and in the Navy, he remained a proud American.

Chavez, who loved nonfiction books and was into travel, spent 30 years as a groundskeeper at the University of California, San Diego, and then ran his own landscaping and grounds keeping business in the Poway area until he retired at 96.