John T. Reed’s blog about military matters

A football coach analyzes U.S. military tactics and strategy by John T. Reed Copyright John T. Reed Many have noted that football and war seem similar in many ways. I have experience and training in both areas and I agree—although I cringe when I hear coaches use phrases like “Take no prisoners” or “football is war.” Not taking any prisoners is an atrocity known as murder. Football is a game. War is not. I also cringe when I hear that football coaches are trying to get better at coaching football by imitating the military and reading books like Sun Tzu’s...

Elite military units: snipers Copyright John T. Reed My previous two elite unit articles—ranger and airborne—put the word “Elite” in quotes to indicate it was bullshit to an extent to call them elite. Or at least it was relative meaning rangers and airborne are somewhat better than average Army, but that’s not saying much. Snipers appear to be another matter. I leave the quote marks off the word elite when I talk about military snipers. Perhaps I have been fooled. Please let me know if I have. But here’s my impression. I was airborne and ranger, but I was never...

John T. Reed’s comments on Killing Patton Copyright John T. Reed 2015 I finally broke down and bought one of O’Reilly’s Killing books. The reason was so many superlative comments by his readers—as selected by Bill, plus his record-setting rank and time on the best-seller lists. So I bought Killing Patton at Costco for $17.49. My salient conclusion is it’s really good to host the highest-rated cable news show if you want to sell books. I write, publish, and sell books, too. I wrote a book about how to do it. My fellow member of the Long Gray Line Patton...

The new Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley said recently that Russia is the only country that can destroy the U.S. That was a lie.What was his motive? I would have to guess scaring the American people into not cutting the Army budget.Russia reportedly has something like 4,000 to 7,000 nuclear warheads. The size of each is not known. Nor do we know how many delivery vehicles they have. A warhead in Russia is no danger to us unless they have a way to get it to the U.S. without being shot down enroute.I don’t think we can shoot down ICBMs,...

Copyright John T. Reed Regarding Trump’s comments about McCain not being a war hero for getting captured. McCain said essentially the same thing. I saw him introduced once on TV as a war hero and he responded sheepishly with, “How does getting shot down make you a hero?” When he ran for office I said he deserves our sympathy for what he endured when he got shot down and imprisoned, but I thought giving him medals and calling him a war hero was dubious. McCain said in his book he was trained to take evasive action when he heard a...