Yes, the Winter War of 2022 was a wake-up call to the West: "The invasion of Ukraine revealed that the U.S. stockpile of 155 mm shells and those of European allies were unprepared to support a major and ongoing conventional land war, sending them scrambling to bolster production." China can thank Russia for giving that lesson to Western states before China can exploit that, as appropriate.
Democrats are celebrating the Dominion cash settlement against Fox. Democrats will regret this given what Democratic Party-friendly news outlets have reported and who they've had on air reporting their opinions. We should all regret that. I despise and mistrust our biased media. But things can always get worse.
Wonderful: "President Joe Biden will grade the U.S. military and all other government agencies on their 'efforts to advance environmental justice' through a new scorecard that tracks their work to fight climate change and deliver 'environmental and health benefits to disadvantaged communities.'" Another substitute for victory to drag down our military. It's disturbing that the first example given is from Pearl Harbor. Priorities, people!
Noooo! "The Russian Navy may retire the Cold War-era nuclear cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, despite previous plans to overhaul her and restore her to service." Keep that red sports car! Let the blue water fleet flow through you!
Gaza and the West Bank: "The obsession with destroying Israel and proliferation of armed terrorist or special-interest groups in the West Bank and Gaza sustains very corrupt and inefficient local governments."
I wonder where the American citizens need to gather to be pulled out? "The United States is positioning some naval assets in the Red Sea to assist any Americans leaving Sudan but no major U.S. evacuation is underway[.]" A UN convoy was set up to go to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
The Army is under the gun to improve artillery ammunition production. Again, Russia effed up by giving the West this lesson without having to face Russia directly and its ample ammunition supply. China can't be happy about this important lesson that Russia granted the West.
This says SEAL Team 6 and Army Third Special Forces Group were part of the rescue force in Khartoum. Surely not all were the most elite. I assume the bulk were Rangers or maybe even Marines or Army infantry to hold the outer perimeter.
"Science". Tip to Instapundit. Actual science requires scrutiny--not faith.
Long-distance seafaring in canoes! Impressive. What led them to set out to--let alone find--distant specks of land? And was the travel one-way migration? Or were there return voyages?
Huh: "The headline in Sunday’s Ottawa Citizen was strange: '"The ordeal" is not over for Hassan Diab after French court sentences him to life in prison.'" Someone should explain to Canadians that when you murder 4 and injure 46 others by bombing a synagogue, the "ordeal" is a feature and not a bug.
Good: "The Philippine Coast Guard has a new responsibility: providing public evidence of China’s unlawful maritime activities. What’s behind the shift?" I did advise that kind of information operation.
Stop hyperventilating. Russian nukes in Belarus add nothing to Russian nuclear threats. But there is an added small chance that Belarus could seize some of the nukes and claim a nuclear deterrent against Russian intervention in Belarus.
I don't rejoice when I read that Putin has fired commanders for failure. I worry he'll fire enough to finally find someone who can win.
Exit: "The U.S. is considering sending a contingent of troops to Port Sudan to coordinate the departure of American citizens seeking to leave Sudan, U.S. officials told CBS News Monday."
Biden announces re-election bid. I'm so old I remember when the debate was whether he would resign before or after the two-year mark to give Harris about ten years if the latter time.
Australia will build German armored recon vehicles for Germany.
Collusion about Russia to win an election with lies. Tip to Instapundit.
Abuse of power: administrative law quasi-judicial power in action. Tip to Instapundit.
And now for something completely different:
Green is the religion of the wealthy (and it further enriches them) and it is hurting the poor. Tip to Instapundit.
American soldiers and Marines practice on the Philippines' Basco island 100 miles south of Taiwan.
The dollar isn't as vulnerable to being replaced as you think. What replaces it? I'm old enough to remember similar talk in the 1970s. Will tomorrow be different than yesterday? Dunno. I'm not worried yet. I guess that depends on how stupid our leaders are.
Who knew unleashing our spies on other governments was just practice to penetrate our own? Tip to Instapundit.
Oh, FFS: "On 14 April 2023, the US Navy launched the USS Cleveland, the 4th ship to proudly bear that name. During the launch, the ship slid into the water and crashed into a tugboat, damaging the brand new ship that cost between $600M and $800M dollars." Momentum. What is it? There seems to be something wrong with our bloody Navy today.
The Air Force has permission to retire the A-10, but will create a power projection wing: "But just what a power projection wing is remains unclear. No other such wings exist today. Fiocco said it will be a 'special operations unit based in the U.S. that can be sent anywhere.'" At best it is only for special forces air support--not Army close air support. At worst it is a temporary ploy to realize the long obsession to kill A-10 dedicated close air support units. Not rebuilding trust.
I have no problem understanding Russia's nightmares even if they seem ridiculous to us. It is useful to appreciate the view of Russians to deal with Russia. I draw the line at accommodating Russia's demands in a mistaken belief that this is what understanding Russia requires. Twenty years ago in my advocacy of an Army corps in Europe (pp. 15-20) I was supportive of understanding Russia's fears and taking steps to lessen them. But 15 years of open Russian aggression in Europe under Putin's disastrous rule have eroded my spirit of making conciliatory gestures to Russia. Russia needs to accept the clue bat whack and focus on the real threat to Russia.
Death to heretics! I think conform, therefore I am. Tip to Instapundit.
Bespoke guts. Fascinating. Tip to Instapundit.
Despite the odd claims of and focus on rampant white supremacy in military ranks, "the prevalence of extremism within the ranks is considered low[.]" Deal with these individuals as individual problems without stigmatizing the overwhelming majority with this accusation. As I've observed:
I'm old enough to remember Nimitz entering the fleet and discussing her with friends: "The aircraft carrier Nimitz completed its 350,000th arrested landing on Saturday, marking a historic milestone for the oldest-serving U.S.-commissioned aircraft carrier in the world[.]" But I haven't recorded how many arrested landings I've had.
Problem: "Fires aboard Navy ships, especially those in maintenance, have cost the service billions of dollars since 2008 — yet the service hasn’t consistently implemented a system to collect and analyze lessons learned from these disasters, according to a Government Accountability Office report." Each fire not quickly contained is a long-term mission kill. Because of other problems.
I wonder if this is part of a NATO-wide effort to get Turkey to approve Sweden's NATO application: " The Romanian Ministry of National Defense has awarded the Turkish
defense firm Baykar a $321 million contract for the purchase of TB2
unmanned aerial vehicles[.]" Contracts can be canceled.
This seems like a weak argument for denying Ukraine F-16s. One, Russia has failed to knock out Ukraine's ability to fly old Soviet planes. Two, lots of other countries--often poor--manage to fly F-16s. Three, any Western country flying the plane would have the problem. Surely, we have an approach to keep the planes flying that Ukraine could use.
Pakistan's enduring relationship with the Fuck-Up Fairy. Pakistan has nukes. Have a super sparkly day.
Slovakia is rewarded for donating Mig-29s to Ukraine with AH-1Z attack helicopters.
The U.S. and South Korea agreed to sending an American SSBN to South Korea. Why? Making our SSBNs "visible" is the last thing they should be. And the range of our SLBMs is good enough to hit North Korea from far away. What's the point of moving close? I'd rather send a SSN to keep tabs on--and sink, if necessary--North Korea's new nuclear-armed subs being developed. This is stupid. It seems more like a move to persuade South Korea not to build nukes. Related thoughts.
Sure, Iran-Saudi Arabia detente will slow down momentum for Arab-Israeli reconciliation. But I doubt the Saudi motive is more than tactical than real love. And I doubt Iran is willing to scale back its regional ambitions once it can afford its mayhem again. So improved relations are an aberration. The question is will the two achieve their goals and how much collateral damage will be done until this shotgun wedding ends?
Does America have too many generals and admirals? I think so. Too many seem to have too much time to think about too many substitutes for victory. Too. Much. Time.
Is the Winter War of 2022 at a stalemate? Let's haul out Daniel Ellsberg to make the argument and compare the war to Vietnam--to seemingly undermine our support, of course and not Russia. The stalemate consists of Russia faltering in its invasion and Ukraine not yet carrying out a big counteroffensive. So it is asymmetrical. And about that Vietnam comparison.
Help: "Three evacuation flights rescuing UK nationals from conflict-hit Sudan have landed in Cyprus."
And now for something completely different:
Arab states are trying to bring Assad in from the cold. Is this American failure? Sure. But it was predictable once America refused to help Syrian rebels take down Assad when Assad was at his weakest. And it is more about weakening Iran by denying it a vassal state.
I think AOC just wants to date Tucker.
The European Union has been absent during the European scramble from Africa during the Sudan fighting. That author is correct but misses the point of an EU military: "Anything that undermines Nato is playing with fire. Even if enough troops can be robbed from existing Nato commitments or double-hatted, an EU force would be crippled at birth by the very nature of the EU. Agreement on its mission, its command and on actually deploying it would be Byzantine and unlikely to happen." Undermining NATO is a means to an end: the EU wants its own military for political purposes. Actual defense missions aren't required.
I'm so old I remember when this was reckless and racist Trump ravings that damaged our trans-Atlantic relations: "While much of the fear around Huawei in the West has focused on espionage and the risk of data leaking to Beijing, Germany's latest investigation — and the intelligence that triggered it — point to another risk: the potential of sabotage through critical components that could collapse telecoms networks." Tip to Instapundit.
If America refused to stay in Afghanistan where we have an interest in battling jihadis, why would America send troops to Haiti? "Gang violence in Haiti is spreading at "an alarming rate," the UN warned Wednesday, repeating its unanswered call for an international force to help restore order in the crisis-torn country."
Russia is apparently using some of its vaunted Armata tanks inside Ukraine--as artillery.
I hope Russian troops are this demoralized. But it will take a major Ukrainian offensive to find out.
Is Russia worried about a Kherson front counteroffensive? I'm not sure if that is evidence. But perhaps. The Soviets practiced building bridges that had the road surface just under the water to conceal them. Could Ukraine be quietly building such a structure across the Dneiper River in Kherson province shielded by their light infantry screen on the east bank? Just wondering.
And now for something completely different.
I love that scene.
Welp, I guess I'm off of Beefeater and Jameson for the duration.
Look, I think the "rigging" of the 2020 presidential election was mostly done through the media with a relentless propaganda campaign against Trump. I expected Trump to lose. But it is not true to say there is no evidence of election fraud in the process. One can say no court has ruled that widespread election fraud changed the election. But that's very different. I just want election transparency for future election integrity so both parties won't be able to blame fraud for their loss. Why oppose that? Tip to Instapundit.
Ending the SAT for determining college admission will harm blue collar kids. That was my ticket out of Detroit. I guarantee the SAT wasn't a proxy for wealth for me. What is a proxy for wealth are all the non-academic requirements like clubs and volunteer work. This is just wrong. Tip to Instapundit.
Ukraine is training nine+ new brigades with western equipment. There are at least three other (new?) Ukrainian brigades being prepared. I don't know if this is the limit of the core counteroffensive force. If each corps has six maneuver brigades, existing (or completed) Ukrainian brigades must add six more. I recently read that Ukraine's 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive was spearheaded by just four brigades. I assume reports of frontline shortages are due to accumulating ammunition and equipment reserves for the offensive.
I have mixed feelings about Biden visiting Papua New Guinea. It is important to keep these areas friendly and exclude China. So the symbolism is good. But I worry about regional leaders seeing our president up close.
A single point of failure in our ammunition domestic production isn't worrisome at all.
Army HIMARS missed their naval target. I assume it was stationary. We're at the crawl stage of using artillery as anti-ship weapons. But still, I'd like more dedicated anti-ship missiles in the Marine Littoral Regiments.
Fair enough: "The commander of U.S. troops in Europe expressed confidence Wednesday in an upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive but said Russia remains a formidable military force that has grown since invading Ukraine last year." And the army will be repaired. And maybe correct problems.
I've mentioned this before: "Russian GRU (military intelligence) operatives were found to be responsible for over a decade of mysterious explosions in storage sites holding Bulgarian-made weapons awaiting shipment to Ukraine or, in 2010, to Georgia."
The Block 5 version of the Tomahawk cruise missile enters the Australian and Japanese fleets.
Why is the Biden administration going out of its way to enable China to continue operating its campus Confucius Institute spy and propaganda nests? The British have problems with China at home, too.
Ah, sending a SSBN to a South Korean port was just the scenery for a more important Washington Declaration that reinforces America's extended nuclear deterrence against North Korea. Reassurances have expiration dates, it seems. Still, it is a reminder that American extended deterrence has so far blunted nuclear proliferation. But it can't last if we only blunt our allies.
The Philippines made sure journalists saw this bullying at Second Thomas Shoal: "A Chinese coast guard ship blocked a Philippine patrol vessel steaming into a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, causing a frightening near-collision in the latest act of Beijing’s aggression in the strategic waterway."
While Americans on the left argue America wrecked Iraq by liberating it from Saddam and protecting it from Iranian and jihadi terrorists, Iraqi literature has a lot more than just the Iraq War to discuss. Americans are too focused on thinking other people have no agency and are just flotsam in an American-made tide.
Our real littoral combat ship is gone: "The U.S. Navy decommissioned the last two Cyclone-class patrol ship at Naval Support Activity Bahrain last month[.]"
Brexit has become the all-purpose explanation for everything that goes wrong in Britain as the result of policies that have nothing to do with Brexit. And worse, this kind of blame game makes problems more likely by interfering with adjusting to Brexit by bringing up a potential return to the EU. Even if Brexit is sub-optimal--and I don't think it is, especially when you factor in freedom rather than only economics--it is true that vigorously carrying out an adequate plan is superior to dithering and refusing to carry out any plan.
The processing point of the black box of effects has arrived: "TITAN is the service’s ground station meant to process data from space- and land-based “sensors” using artificial intelligence, which will then be sent off to the right 'shooter,' the core concept for the Pentagon’s Joint All Domain Command and Control initiative." And related thoughts.
I remain perplexed that while people argued the Iraq War was "breaking" the United States Army, the damage inflicted on Russia's ground forces will have no effect on Russia's inevitable victory over Ukraine.
Russia: "The Russian economy has not collapsed because of Western sanctions, but those have crippled production of tanks, war planes and all weapons and munitions in general. Russian GDP shrank by about five percent while the number of Russians living below the poverty line reached 60 percent." Russia is hiding the decline. But corruption rises. It isn't clear why Putin thinks he can outlast Ukraine backed by the West.
Finally: "Without any publicity, Ukraine has been using its locally developed Grom (Thunder) short range (500 kilometers) ballistic missile with a half-ton warhead and GPS/INS guidance as well as an optional terminal guidance system to hit small or moving targets." I wondered why we weren't seeing Ukrainian missiles like this.
The Air Force finally adapted the A-10 for stand-off close air support. Thanks guys. Just in the nick of too late.
What's Iran up to? "Iranian forces on Thursday seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker that was bound for Texas, according to the U.S. Navy." China's "peace" deal doesn't seem to have legs.
To be fair, I think the new standard is that anything can identify as a "vaccine".
The Dominion lawsuit against Fox News that Democrats are celebrating is a standard that will find a far more target-rich environment in pro-Democrat news organizations. Enjoy. And note that this lawsuit worked despite the fact that it was Democrats prior to the 2020 election who spread charges that the voting machines could be rigged by Trump. How many Democrats still believe the Russians hacked voting machines for Trump in 2016? And don't forget 2004 when Democrats claimed Ohio voting machines were rigged. Let's not pretend this thinking is one-way stuff. Maybe transparent voting procedures would benefit everyone.
I'm so old I remember when the Biden administration argued that losing Afghanistan was no big deal because Taliban 2.0 would be kind of awesome: "The decision to ban Afghan women from working for the United Nations was an 'internal social matter', the country's Taliban authorities said Friday, a day after the UN Security Council demanded they overturn the ruling." Remember?
The Russian army has more troops in Ukraine now than at the start of the invasion. That would be shocking if it wasn't true, given Russian recruiting and mobilization. I assume that means all ground forces. But the troops are clearly inferior to the already inadequate initially committed troops who died in large numbers since then. And Ukraine has a much larger ground force component now than at the beginning of the war.
Exactly (via Instapundit): "Mortification at the developed West’s historical misdeeds has produced a utopian narrative of indigenous worlds typified by matriarchy, cooperation, pacifism, and gender fluidity. That no such world ever existed is beside the point; much of history is narrated to suit the proclivities of the audience, not to tell the truth about what actually happened." This narrative denies indigenous people agency and denies them their basic humanity. As I noted about the long clash in the Americas, "the tribes and empires in the Americas in 1492 were the winners of past wars between Native American entities. The Europeans of 1492 were the victors over past Europeans and were the people who beat the past victors in the Americas. That's how the world worked, and still does all too often."
Western science dies. Well, it's a murder-suicide pact. First they came for their shirts. Now problematic ideas are verboten. But what are the odds an abandonment of scientific inquiry could have bad real world effects (tip to Instapundit)?
A land SINKEX for a captured Russian T-90 (a BOOMEX?). Russian tanks are perfectly adequate. If manned by good crews. Which Russia hasn't had so far. And this is why I have held that Western tanks aren't as important as so many analysts claim. Good Ukrainian crews with mostly Soviet-era tanks will have to do most of the heavy lifting to win the war.
North Korean Mega-Karen: "The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader says her country would stage
more provocative displays of its military might in response to a new U.S.-South Korean agreement to intensify nuclear deterrence to counter the North’s nuclear threat, which she insists shows their 'extreme' hostility toward Pyongyang." Uh oh:
Ukrainian drones strike a Russian oil depot in Russian-occupied Crimea.
LOL: "A United Europe Can Stand Up to China". A united Europe--under the EU naturally--only wants to power to stand up to China. As French ambitions under Macron have demonstrated already, standing up to China won't happen after that.
America defended international airspace: "The P-8A flew over the Taiwan Strait in international airspace early Friday local time, according to a U.S. Navy news release."
If the rhetoric is pressure to get either Mexico or America to take securing their common border, it's fine. But literally? Not a good idea.
Are Western sanctions hitting their limit on Russia? I doubt it. But so what? I've heard that the IMF takes Putin's word on the statistics Russia releases, making this kind of conclusion grossly wrong. But sanctions aren't a silver bullet solution. They do make things harder for Russia to wage war. Which is good enough.
This article notes that Ukraine has yet to encounter a tough Russian defensive effort. Russia has retreated when pressed at Kiev, Kharkiv, and then Kherson. So Ukraine could get hurt when the Russians stand their ground in the looming Ukrainian counteroffensive. That's possible. It is also possible that Russia has retreated every time because whatever their shortcomings, the Russian leaders know their troops can't hold the line. We'll see.
The American A-10 bomb truck squadron sent to CENTCOM has an eye on Iran in Syria. Indeed. And the article notes the plane would work against small Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf. And in bonus territory, the A-10 will be tested as an anti-drone weapon.
States suing oil companies seek a source of revenue that doesn't directly target taxpayer voters. Via Instapundit. This is why I really didn't like the tobacco settlement that apparently set the pattern. Taxing companies and their customers directly isn't enough, I guess. More collateral damage from the government's insatiable demand for money to sustain spending.
