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Phil Ewing Profile picture
Phil Ewing
@philewing
Seapower & aerospace enthusiast. Aircraft carrier poet. Ex-Space Shuttle door gunner.
Sep 19, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
What we would have done with anecdote like this at the Military Crimes newspapers back in the day -- whew! A guaranteed cover for Air Force Crimes and the right hack could have written it into a cover for the rest of the papers too: taskandpurpose.com/news/space-for… It's got everything: hard-working enlisted SF airman doing his job with courtesy and professionalism, a stodgy, let's say, light colonel throwing a hissy fit at being stopped and then into full on ADDRESS ME AS SIR WHEN YOU SPEAK TO ME MAGGOT -- all promulgated by a general!
Sep 19, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
What an astonishing, atavistic and irresponsible bit of game playing -- perhaps not surprising from the Official Show of Old People, where it's always Sweeps Week 1979 -- but still inexcusable in this day and age and in this horrible information environment All journalists can do, especially on TV is show things or tell things. And what the olds think they're doing in situations like this 👆is saying 'look how crazy this person is'! But the evidence of our time has shown over and over that ppl don't walk away saying, 'great job'
Aug 8, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
This is not a strike against Glasser and Baker's exceptional reportage -- Big Umlaut imposes word limits even on them -- but their story leaves out Milley's extraordinary mediation with China in the quasi-crisis of 2020 newyorker.com/magazine/2022/… To the implicit question people are asking: could Milley or anyone really militate against the then-POTUS' worst instincts by staying rather than quitting and keeping this all secret, the answer is yes -- and CJCS apparently did when he ran interference with the PLA
Sep 9, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Excellent analysis & also underscores that the facts don't matter when they're being used as tokens for in-faction/out-faction identification. They didn't then and they don't today -- it's about validating group dynamics What was the stereotype-bumper sticker anti-vax cohort before the present crisis? West Coast tricycle stroller moms with sufficient education to know better than to distrust childhood (pre-covid!) vaccines ... yet they derived validation and identity from that
Sep 9, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is critical 👇 and so far all the Casting Forward From A'stan takes have been too polite to take it on. But take it on we must because the real danger is a force that cannot or will not be honest within itself + leadership -- *especially* re You Know Who in WestPac Some of the takes have been like, "when will the brass be held accountable for its lies" -- which have merit on their own, but the true issue is (to quote, maybe, Stephen Colbert) it's not a lie if you believe it. And if these guys believed what they said, that is bad too
Sep 8, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
No. Too cosmic. Our present crisis has nothing to do with Foucault. It derives from intra-cultural factionalism in which factional identity, which derives as much from exclusion as inclusion, requires acceptance or rejection of X, Y or Z americanpurpose.com/blog/fukuyama/… The vaccine holdouts (for example) don't not use electricity. They don't not use mobile telephones or computers because they don't believe in binary code. But they do glean cohesiveness from rejecting the same thing an out-group is telling them to accept
Sep 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
More from the CJCS Fox interview. So in the AU in which the US builds an ANSF that isn't a rib from your United States Army, but something more Talib-like, what ALSO makes the Kabul institutions succeed? Image With the costly and painful benefit of hindsight, could the United States (widely opposed & frequently indistinguishable to many Afghans from the Soviets) ever have built anything that not only functioned operationally but was, ref Milley's point ☝️ politically legitimate?
May 13, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
The selective credibility needed to entertain some propositions in this take is as interesting as its thought experiments -- a gubbment that couldn't keep its torture, overseas prisons, tech-exploitation or other IC functions secret could hide aliens?nytimes.com/2021/05/13/opi… The US gubbment could not successfully build a moderate Syrian opposition, build a secular civil Afghan state, create a viable nation in post-democratic Iraq, buy a small naval combatant or even a new scout helicopter or armored vehicle for the Army among 10 million other things
May 12, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Not gonna tag them b/c I legit feel sorry for them. "45th Space Wing" is a great name for a unit. A proud name, obviously. "Space Launch Delta 45," the new designation -- that's embarrassing. Poor guys Can you imagine if you were in the crew of USS Lake Erie or USS Ramage and they renamed your ship "Large Radar-Missile BMD Shooty Surface Combatant 70" or "Slightly Less Capable Radar-Missile Shooty Combatant 61" out from under you?
May 11, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I see all this commentary about China's public messaging and propagandizing, and without disputing the consequences of disinformation in general terms, question how actually effective it is based simply on its qualitative suckiness, tin-earedness and overall hamhandedness It's one thing for a sophisticated foreign actor to shape the info environment by making it appear real Americans (who actually are fake) are saying things they aren't about internal U.S. matters with no reference to any foreign power. But all China does is talk about itself
May 10, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Great story and what a fantastic chart here too. 👇 You can see clearly how the diversion to offload that poor sick bubblehead took the ship away from its transit course Prolly a better voyage to contemplate academically, historically and technologically than it was to actually sail for the crew, tho -- possible to imagine that sailing the whole world dived might be a little tedious ... although who knows
Jan 15, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Most important data point on this fabulous NAVSEA slide 👇 78 MW worth of installed power. On Earth 2, the Navy can use that to pivot DDG 1000 and its peers into energy weapons such as lasers or rail guns.

Can it be done on Earth Prime? Shrug emoji ... on a normal warship, one set of engines yields whirly-spinny effects to spin propellers and push the ship thru the water. Another set of generators provides the hotel power for the ship's Playstations, iPads and other vital systems. But DDGs 1000-1002 are different.
Oct 28, 2019 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Recent events bring a reminder that some of the most high-speed, low-drag operators in your Joint Force go into action not on two feet but four -- these U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps dogs at Camp Pendleton, for example, as captured by Lance Cpl. Nickels ... or your United States Army dogs such as Jeta, seen here back in 14 in A'stan in support of special operations forces. Photo by Sgt. St. Clair.