Weekend Data Dump

Another reason why America is fed up with Pakistan.

While I think the chance of civil war after the election is very low, the chance of violence is high--because we've seen it for four years. And I do worry that some locations could become "Bleeding Kansas" cockpits of violence that could radicalize and polarize people in a way that could increase the chances of civil war at some point in the future. Let's calm down, people. Stop verbalizing your darkest thoughts in public.

The way social media platforms push even more radical information to each side of the political spectrum, pushing radicalization and polarization, is it time for a Butlerian Jihad against social media algorithms?

Yes, we have a credentialed idiot problem. And some of the idiots pursue awful or even evil goals for America. Tip to Instapundit.

I won't deny that having an arsenal plane concept, as the Air Force recently tested, would be a nice thing to have for flexibility. But air transport planes will be in short supply in case of major power war for their primary function.

The Eagle-eyed media fact checkers let this Biden claim go unchallenged. And if you remember how at the time the Obama administration was claiming that strong growth was a thing of the past, you already knew the claim was wrong.

France will increase defense spending despite the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic economic problems.

I can hardly believe that Ethiopia has closed air space above its GERD dam and claimed it would shoot down attackers. While striking a dam is in theory possible by Egypt with Sudan's basing rights and cooperation, that would not work for long. If Ethiopian hostility is to be generated like that, surely Ethiopia could contaminate the waters flowing out of Ethiopia to Sudan and Egypt and do serious harm to the downriver states and their people. I assume the announcement is for domestic consumption as the U.S. pressures Ethiopia to offer protections to Egypt and Sudan about water security more binding than "trust us."

Is the Asymmetric Warfare Group still needed as a stand-alone organization or did it serve its function during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, and can now see its functions housed elsewhere? I just don't know. I hate to see a needed group go; but I hate to see a body continue on inertia long after it is no longer needed. It's going away. So I hope it is not needed.

As the week starts, there is still violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but I can't really call it "war" yet unless you include spasms of violence in the definition. Although this analyst calls Azerbaijan's actions a "military offensive" I just don't see it. Perhaps I'm just not seeing the media reports that would justify such a description of scope and intensity.

Mali. At least it isn't a haven for jihadis to strike Europe.

Lie back and think of Chinese infrastructure?

The Crypto State for virtual citizenship? I'm skeptical that this is a natural progression beyond tribes which were replaced by nations and states. The massive but extremely thin "relationships" that social media creates globally can't match the loyalties of family, tribe, and nation. Before World War I, Communists thought the working class had transnational loyalties that would defeat national feelings. They were wrong. And since people live in the real world, how does a crypto state protect people or help the truly needy? Won't a crypto state just be an organization of the well off that leaves the sick and poor behind to be taken care of by those "obsolete" states? Nor am I convinced that the basis of such a system--the invulnerability of crypto-currency to theft--is realistic. Things of value will be stolen or counterfeit. Still, it is possible that virtual states could exist as a niche within--and enabled by--the traditional state system. Of course, come back to me and we can discuss this again when virtual reality relationships challenge real world relationships. Via Instapundit.

Let's just assume that a 404 error for an article on FSB dominance of Russia is just a quirky thing. Okay, a couple hours later the link works, so we can read that the FSB is "a quasi-criminal body that has taken on the functions of a 'second government' and invades all spheres of public and private life."

This is funny, but you can't deny that the Xi Jinping Flu covid19 virus let down the Democrats by failing to strike down Trump just like every BS charge they've leveled at Trump over the last four years. May this be symbolic on the eve of the election.

Hole videos popped up on my YouTube feed. Man, I was really attracted to Courtney Love back in the day. Yeah, that was healthy. But perhaps I've shared too much.

I don't understand Republicans who will vote for Biden even though they will grudgingly admit that Trump's policies are far more in line with their views than Biden can possibly be. You go to the election with the candidate you have and not the candidate you wish you had. And that is true for your opponents. I could not reward Democrats for their awful and seemingly criminal behavior the last four years by voting for any Democrat for any office.

Finally some voting integrity and sanity.

Oops. I'm sure Russians in the Far East won't mind potential poisoning at the wholesale--as opposed to the retail--level at all.

Trump returned to the White House and his removal of his mask for a photo op while on a balcony away from anybody else has triggered Democrats??!! Oh FFS.

Oh FFS, saying that the country needs to move on without debilitating levels of fear despite the pandemic does not deny the ordeal that the minority of people who got the virus endured before surviving (which the vast majority of people who get it do). Moving on does not mean we don't take precautions or that we don't take extra precautions for the vulnerable. Every day families send their adults off to work knowing that some of them won't make it due to work accidents, traffic accidents, or crime. It is what it is. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Enough information comes out of Russia to see their pandemic infections going up. But do we really know the extent of the pandemic there given Russia's backwardness and secrecy?

Our media is a joke. Political fluffers. 

Taiwan's military is under pressure reacting to Chinese probes.

So it is basically AirLand Battle 2.0 with separated sensors and shooters?

The Navy will test a small ship able to repair the LCS when forward deployed.

India is outgunned on the border with China where China is pressing its advantage. Will China push India to make foreign alliances? Perhaps the Russia-India relationship will be restored if Russia's recent bout of lucidity is any indication. Luckily nothing decisive can take place up there; and if things explode India can escalate to the sea where American naval power could potentially help. Sadly, India still hasn't made much progress in fixing their air force inadequacy.

I see that the British government in World War II made light of the survivors of the Blitz with this insensitive attitude:

Clearly the Brits should have stayed in the air raid shelters until the Nazis were defeated. Somehow.

The Saudis are telling the Palestinians to stop working with Arab enemies and to get a grip and cut a deal with the Israelis instead of continuing to be the most self-destructive people in the world (well, their leaders who profit from the situation anyway). Well, "most self-destructive people in the world" is my wording, but that's a good summary.

How are Obama administration and Clinton campaign officials not in prison for their collusion with Russia to undermine the Trump campaign and administration?!! "According to the declassified notes, Brennan and the U.S. intelligence community knew months prior to the 2016 election that the collusion smear was the result of a campaign operation hatched by the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton." And that is separate from Clinton's evasion of government communications security with her personal email server. If Biden wins, all that just goes away and there won't be any justice served. A normal press corps would be investigating rather than ignoring this.

I don't know whether Trump will win or not, but CNN and NBC polling registered voters is insane--or politically motivated. That method favors Democrats and always has. So no doubt they show a big Biden edge. Which is why I've mentioned that once the election starts, polling moves to figuring out just who likely voters will be and polling them. It's a bloody giveaway of political bias to poll registered voters now. The only purpose is to discourage Trump voters from voting. I'm not panicking. Apparently there are other ways some pollsters are using that I hadn't even considered. I can't count on the media to inform me about what is going on. But I worry that many of the reasons given not to worry about the polls--and they seem valid--are just a case of whistling past the graveyard. I don't want to conflate what I hope is true with what is true. Maybe there are valid reasons for structuring the polls the way they are. I just don't know because that is out of my lane. What I do know is that if the polls tighten significantly as the election gets closer I will certainly celebrate rather than dismiss them. So should I believe them now? We'll just have to wait and see what actual (and valid) voters do. Keep calm and carry on. And vote like the outcome hangs in the balance.

Again, the idea that Trump could have taken decisive action to shut down America early in the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic before there was a consensus that action was necessary is nonsense when you remember that Democrats would have accused Trump of finally revealing his true nature as a dictator and only interested in suppressing the latest "game changer" BS accusation. (And that's apart from whether it would have worked.) You think I'm wrong? Have you seen the media going nuts claiming that Trump leaving the hospital early is a symbolism of a dictator?

Yeah, what has free market capitalism done for people?

What are the lessons of Armenia's tank losses? Current tanks are surely too expensive to survive on a battlefield of cheap sensors and cheap anti-tank weapons. These high-end tanks surely will lose their dominance one day, perhaps soon. But could better combined arms integration degrade the sensors and suppress the weapons and extend the usefulness of current expensive tanks? What I am sure about is that mobile protected firepower is still needed if there is to be hope of having mobile warfare and avoiding stalemated attrition. And that's a lot of tanks lost for what seems more like skirmishing than a war, at this point. What am I missing?

A reminder that the 1619 Project is garbage history and nothing more than anti-American propaganda.

The "Quad" of India, Australia, Japan, and America is thickening up in response to Chinese power and assertiveness at the expense of China's neighbors.

Your Yemen clusterfuck update.

The top members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are self-quarantining because the Coast Guard second in command tested positive for the Xi Jinping Flu.  Note that the others have not tested positive.

The Chinese air force is modernizing, shedding obsolete planes, and training harder.

Recall what I wrote a couple weeks ago: "So ABC disguised Democratic partisans as 'uncommitted' voters for a Trump town hall. To be fair, ABC would do the same for Biden." Yeah, NBC did that for two pro-Biden voters. So I got the network wrong. So far. Tip to Instapundit.

Wow, the Russians are everywhere!

I say Portland deserves everything they get if this is what they choose. I mean, if their voters think the current mayor isn't pro-Antifa enough, WTF?

I ended my YouTube TV alternative to cable TV. It went from significantly cheaper than cable to marginally cheaper but with many more channels that I didn't want. I finally gave up on antennas for over-the-air TV. But I found Locast.org which offers streaming over-the-air channels. I pay just $5 per month for that. It is free and after I tested it out a bit, I figured it was worth supporting. Combined with YouTube and streaming services plus other Roku offerings, this will work out just fine.

E-effing-gad. It's a big, weird, world. The Internet of Things is a bad idea and that made it an even worse idea. Tip to Insanity Wrap.

Somebody will entertain us. Let's hope it isn't Hollywood.

Hahahaha! To Senator Harris' right during the Wednesday debate, the words "while evil" hovered over her. Oops. Of course, it says "suffer" by Pence. What is worse? And I just don't get how Harris thinks that the American people won't notice that job losses are because of the Chinese Communist Party-enabled pandemic and subsequent shutdown--which the Democrats want to extend!--and not because of Trump policies that led to record low unemployment right before the pandemic shutdown was ordered. And wow, Harris just serial lied on military, defense, and racial matters. Thank goodness Pence did the job of finally correcting the longstanding "Fine people hoax" that ignores Trump's actual words condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis. There is no way it will be "fact checked." Oh, and a question. If Harris can go back to the Lincoln era for precedent on Supreme Court nominations--ignoring the intervening decades (and completely getting the history wrong)--can we go back to that era for Democratic views on slavery? Seriously, she seemed oddly pleased with herself for that bit of history that was not followed by precedent the next 150 years.

It looks like #metoo has evolved into celebrating the ability of women with power to abuse subordinates. Or am I missing something?

"I just think that COVID is God's gift to the Left." Seriously? But Trump saying not to excessively fear the Xi Jinping Flu disrespects survivors? Exit question: Is Covid19 better or worse than the Viet Cong? 

After reading that algorithms on social media push you to more extreme viewpoints based on your viewing/reading, I have started to keep logged into YouTube when I use it and block any channel that pops up with an author I don't know. I'm deflecting even the potential of sketchy to avoid getting extremist crap. I know it will be an endless battle but it seems worth it, all things considered. And that is the only thing I use that can be considered social media, I guess.

The United States is threatening to move its embassy in Iraq out of Baghdad--rather than simply withdrawing as I feared--if the Iraqis don't improve embassy safety against Iranian attacks.

How long before the feverish portions of Twitter (that's saying something) floats the idea that the fly on Pence's hair was actually a micro-drone that spied on Harris notes and was reporting back to him?

Yeah. At this point the real Resistance is composed of Trump supporters who dare not reveal their support for fear of retribution.

The lesson from the Democrats in the VP debate is that the first rule of Court Packing Club is don't talk about Court Packing Club.

It would be nice if Hezbollah is so weakened that the Lebanese government could reclaim sovereignty over all of Lebanon, including Hezbollah's rocket-launching belt along the Israeli border. But it may also be the best chance for Israel to really hammer Hezbollah.

The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict in the context of the Russia-Turkey rivalry. Strategypage confirms my assessment of the military balance between Russia and Turkey.

Note that a thousand Russian troops inside Belarus for exercises have not left the country after the exercises. They aren't enough to intervene in Belarus but they are enough to defend a receiving point for incoming Russian troops, much like Sevastopol was a base for Russia's take over of Crimea in 2014. Belarus is much larger of course. Would Belarus be in enough chaos to preclude effective resistance much as Ukraine faced in early 2014?

In practical usage, "mansplaining" is simply a conservative man inconveniently telling a liberal woman why she is wrong or lying. #believeallwomen, I guess.

If the Xi Jinping Flu causes a flight from cities that lasts for a while, it will be an interesting experiment on whether liberals move to cities or whether cities create liberals.

Well that isn't a stupid stunt at all. 

Mali's neighbors and partners got over the whole military coup thing. Sadly, what's the choice if you don't want to abandon the place to jihadis?

When the "foes" conspired to commit crimes, they should be in prison! And that is because they committed crimes and not because they are foes. Like these (alleged) criminals, if you want an example more to your liking. I'm glad they were stopped, although shamefully Biden blamed them on Trump ignoring that at least one seems to be an anarchist and that Trump's FBI stopped them. So remember that Trump isn't a free fire zone despite the wishes of the media and Democrats. Whitmer also shamefully blamed Trump. As if any Republican leader blamed Democrats for the gun attack on the Congressional Republican baseball team or the physical assault of Senator Rand Paul.

Please note that I, like pretty much every other taxpayer in my not-lofty bracket, received a tax cut from the Trump tax cuts contrary to the assertions by the Biden team.

This seems about right regarding the Xi Jinping Flu virus (via Instapundit). The safetyism fanatics need to be ignored. I've come to the conclusion that our first four weeks of lockdown were justified in our lack of knowledge and worry that the virus would overwhelm our medical care system. But it is now clear that we have overreacted by continuing lockdowns when the death rate is so low and especially rare among young, healthy people. Nobody is saying we should go back to the "five-second rule." We should focus on protecting the vulnerable and treating those who get sick even as we pursue a vaccine. Yes, wear a mask indoors among strangers and wash your hands a lot; and limit crowd sizes, especially indoors. And a lot of people won't be able to get on with a normal life yet. Me, for example. I have considerations that make me take extra care to avoid spreading the virus. But that's my responsibility and burden and shouldn't define what all people must do. Ultimately, we can't afford to cope with the pandemic if our economy doesn't generate the resources to do that. It seems apparent that the pandemic has been harnessed for political purposes to defeat Trump and Republicans.

I think it is an absolute mistake to withdraw all our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year. I assume the rest of the coalition will leave too. Will we continue to provide training and maintenance with contractors? Will we provide air support from outside the country? These things could reduce the risks but I don't think it is likely that we can reduce them enough to matter. We can't unilaterally end a war. All we can do is stop fighting and let enemies do what they will. But neither party as configured likes my policies on this issue, I'm afraid.

Speaker Pelosi wants to use the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office for the sin of not dying from Covid19. Actually, I think this is a dry run for using it on Biden if the Harris-Biden team wins. I'm not the only one thinking along those lines.

New American sanctions on Iran. Good.

Hahahaha!

The secretary of defense discussed Battle Force 2045 to meet China's rising fleet. Reduced reliance on big deck carriers seems to be an option by potentially reducing their number to 8. Although the big ships are still talked up in the strategy. It would be nice if our shipbuilding industry didn't ef up an expansion with poor quality control. If we go to war it would be nice if we didn't shockingly find out there is something wrong with our bloody ships that day.

How is this not science fiction rather than science. Interesting if true, naturally. 

The unarmored HMMWV was too vulnerable in counter-insurgency so the armored JLTV was designed. COIN is over and great power competition has returned, meaning the more expensive JLTV is less likely to need its protection in a required transport role. So now the military needs an unarmored cheap light transport.

China adopts the aviation brigade.

Trusting China is nuts. Via Instapundit.

Xi Jinping Flu cases are rising in Germany. Merkel has gotten a lot of credit for Germany's relatively low level of cases and deaths. I suspect we define covid deaths dramatically differently. It will be interesting to eventually find out what factors produced this. When this is all over, of course, and we know what each country endured. And establish uniform definitions. Who knows what determines each country's outcome?

This writer wants America to remain engaged in Belarus as protesters continue to demand democracy. Well, Belarus is probably the most important territory in Europe today.

What to do about Nagorno-Karabakh? Sometimes it seems like the Caucasus is the new Balkans for unresolved borders and self determination crises. The Soviet empire did not fragment as nicely as one would like there. And probably couldn't.

Space Force is foreseeing space 3D printing and space tow trucks. That's nice. Get back to me when it foresees Space Marines Orbital Detachments.

The British "infected" Hong Kong with the desire for freedom. Did China infect Britain with the desire for control?

United States Army Europe is now headed by a 4-star general and will merge with U.S. Army Africa.

Would the Democrats really eliminate our land-based nuclear deterrent?! When China is expanding its nuclear arsenal and Russia is reliant on nukes for territorial defense?

Honestly, that's a good sign that government help should skip the middle man of massive government bureaucracies that spend more to perpetuate themselves than on their clients. I've long said I'm in favor of such payments if they replace existing government welfare programs.

Democrats trying to turn this into an outrage are either stupid or too partisan for the good of our country. All the senator was saying is that pure democracy can result in a tyranny of the majority. Which is why America is a republic with rule-of-law and political-minority-protection constraints to prevent that kind of tyranny from happening. That is all. And it is a well known feature of our country and a long-known pitfall of pure democracy. This is Political Science 101. I guess pretending it is an outrage is Politics 101.

Thanks 2020! My mom had that as a child. She remembers being isolated in hospital until she recovered. We don't want it back in an evolved form.

What kind of awful city could produce a police force that killed a suspect?

Qatar should not get the F-35s it has requested to buy as long as Qatar has defense ties with Turkey--which we have blacklisted from the F-35 for its failure to be a good ally by forging ties with Russia.

I will never trust nor pay attention to Republican "Never Trumpers" for helping Biden win the election. I can understand opposing specific policies. I certainly have. I can understand despising the man and hoping his style goes away after he leaves office. I certainly want to leave his style behind. But you go to November with the candidates you have and not the candidates you wish (or pretend) you have. Trump denied the White House to Clinton and he must deny it to Biden-Harris. Helping the current iteration of insane Democrats is so destructive I can't fathom the logic that goes into that decision. These "Republicans" are as nuts as the Democrats they are supporting.

India wants better relations with Iran. That's because India wants to end Pakistan's stranglehold on easy transportation links to the outside world. India has long wanted that. Heck, even I want a transportation link through Iran.

It is pretty amazing that 56% of people say they are better off now than four years ago when you consider the pandemic and related lockdowns, plus the summer of violence. Could that really be true and backed by statistical measures? But if people answering that question are using the question as a proxy for how they will vote, that's rather reassuring. But again, I don't know where my hopes and reality diverge on this issue. I always remember wise words from a fiction book I read when quite young in which a French diplomat in America was sending back nonsense to his superiors in Paris. He explained to the American who questioned him on reinforcing their wrong theories, "Nobody gets credit for being right when your boss is wrong. It is much better to be wrong in the same manner as your boss." I know that it seems unlikely that Biden can win over Trump voters from 2016 with superior policies. But will enough succumb to the Democratic blackmail that the insanity and violence won't end until Trump is defeated? Are pro-Trump writers soothing Trump supporters that all is well just interested (perhaps subconsciously) in being wrong in the same way as their readers? I don't know.

You send a fly? We send a racoon! Will PETA demand that CNN put disclaimers that "no racoons were harmed in the making of this broadcast" on their network?

Wait. What? Pelosi is unveiling a 25th Amendment bill this close to an election? Why isn't she "letting the voters decide" first? It's almost like her term of office goes to January, or something.

The University of Michigan is selling fan cutouts to put in the stadium for home football games. That actually kind of pisses me off. Students could have been spread out in the stadium, but no. What's next, pay $50 to have a cardboard hot dog and drink cup in your cardboard hands?

Germany will send troops to combat a resurgence of the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic. Why not? It's not like its military is fit to fight the Russians.

America and Russia may freeze nuclear warhead numbers until negotiations can get a new deal, hopefully expanded to include China.

For the same reason you go to the funeral of a bitter enemy, I'm staying up past midnight on New Year's Eve this year.

Russia is having problems policing its former empire. Maybe if Putin hadn't wasted money in peripheral adventures in Syria and Africa on top of waging war on Ukraine, Russia would have the money and threat of force to settle Belarus, the Caucasus, and now Kyrgyzstan.

Good. Wear out the equipment and use up the fuel. I doubt if the ICBM displayed represents a working weapon.

LOL!

To be accused is to be guilty. This will work out well, eh?

Calling in the global reserves.

I have to stop. There are too many good ones this week:

Okay, seriously LOL!

Venezuela hasn't gotten any better with the world distracted by the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic.

If Erdogan wants to rebuild the Ottoman Empire's sphere of influence, Erdogan has to expect Ottoman enemies will band together: "Russia and Egypt will conduct a joint naval exercise in the Black Sea for the first time, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Thursday." Egypt also settled its maritime border with Greece, in another sign that Erdogan is prompting the former enemies of the Ottoman Empire to band together.

Again, I hope this analysis of poll accuracy right now is true. Amazingly, the article notes a claim that some pollsters are looking at adult voters. Recall I mentioned that likely voters should be the universe rather than registered voters or--God forbid--all adults. I worry it is more hope than truth. 

Can Qatar get the F-35 they want? Honestly, Qatar doesn't need a stealth fighter given that the only target we'd like them to face--and Qatar is too friendly to Iran and Erdogan's Turkey--is Iran, whose air force is a joke.

What most impresses me about activist leftists is their compassion. Tip to Instapundit.

Is the Ford-class carrier a failure already? Is this an opportunity to phase out the big deck dominance of the Navy for sea control missions?  More and more I see carriers as mainly useful in the sea control mission as the "cavalry" that exploits the success of a network-centric force that breaks apart the cohesion of enemy fleet defenses and runs down the wounded on a large scale.

You know you love your child when you help her register to vote and get a ballot when you know she will vote for Biden. Failure on so many levels. 

An interesting aspect of the Xi Jinping Flu is that we discovered that we didn't actually know how many people die each year from the regular flu strains. Those were modeled estimates. And we thought it was data. The death toll from regular flu viruses was not as great as we believed despite thinking the science was settled.

Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Russia. Or maybe not.

Biden: You deserve to know what I decide you deserve to know. Know your place bloody peasants! Also, he seems unclear about what "news" means. It's not supposed to mean being his agent and publicist. Or maybe I'm unclear about the reality of 2020.

"Journalism" about "science."

Well, as of dawn on Sunday I made it through my 14-day self-imposed quarantine. I do not have the Xi Jinping Flu. I went to Las Vegas for four days. My luck held with a couple college friends and we drank, gambled, and dined at some nice restaurants. I lost money at half the expected rate. So, yay! You may recall my impression of the Atomic Saloon Show last year (scroll down to the video or search). No shows this year. I only recently discovered gambling--after covering the issue in the state legislature for a couple decades, and drafting the resolutions that allowed the initial tribal casinos--but once per year is more than enough for me. And outside of Vegas I don't know if it would have any appeal. There was hand sanitizer everywhere and temperature scans as you walked into any casino. But the masks available all over were crappy--I'm glad I brought my own. It wasn't nearly as weird as I feared it would be. Much fun. Anyway, it was a risk but damn it, life must be lived. I'm pretty careful otherwise--hence my quarantine just in case. Still, marrying the out-of-work stripper Tatiana at that chapel was possibly a mistake. But perhaps I've shared too much.

Well, Sweden's pandemic strategy worked for Sweden--assuming it isn't too early to judge results. But I don't assume Sweden's policy could have been implemented elsewhere without knowing the similarities and differences in conditions. Via Instapundit.

How to find and kill terrorists.

"The Clinton campaign dreamed up, paid for, and peddled the Trump-Russia collusion farce." And the campaign effort to distract from Clinton's State Department email security-avoidance scheme with a private server was turned by the Obama administration and its loyalists working with the media into a coup attempt. While it failed to deprive Trump of his first term, the lies that have been spread for four years may well deprive him of a second term. This is banana republic stuff and we're living in it. But the media that went all-in on the Trump collusion fantasy ignore the actual collusion. Will there be justice if Trump loses the election?

A Navy of One?

The first British carrier strike group reformed since Britain retired their smaller carriers is coming online:

HMS Queen Elizabeth will sail with HMS Kent, HMS Defender, HMS Diamond, HMS Northumberland, RFA Tideforce, RFA Fort Victoria, Dutch Frigate HNLMS Evertsen, American Destroyer USS The Sullivans and an unnamed British nuclear submarines.

The vessels will participate in the UK’s Carrier Strike Group exercise (GROUPEX) and Joint Warrior 20-2 (JW202).

I suppose that is good. It would have been great in the post-Cold War world of power projection missions against small powers.

But I have my doubts that putting nearly all of Britain's defense capabilities into one strike group in the era of great power competition is a good idea.

No Theater Nukes?

I find this narrow scope of analysis in an argument about why America doesn't need nuclear weapons in Europe to deter Russian use of nukes frightening:

In a series of RAND wargames held in 2014 and 2015, Russian conventional forces overran Estonia and Latvia in less than three days. In such a scenario, Sweeney asked, why would Moscow feel the need to order a nuclear strike?   

Obviously Russia would feel no need to conduct a nuclear strike when they have overwhelming ground superiority at the point of contact.

But Russia will face superior NATO forces in a counterattack if NATO will to mobilize and fight holds.

And that is where Russia's conventional weakness and reliance on nuclear weapons means America should have non-strategic nukes in Europe to deter a Russian first-use of nuclear weapons to hold their gains. If the Europeans (Britain and France) have to use their own nukes alone to deter Russian use of nukes, the Europeans will worry that America is trying to hide behind Europeans in an escalation to major nuclear attacks on cities. Europe wants America to share the nuclear risk.

How all that isn't obvious is astonishing to me. Maybe growing up during the Cold War when all that was routinely discussed gives me an edge.

Sure, I'll say--and have said--that our nukes should not be in Erdogan's Turkey where there is a risk Turkey could seize them to at least pretend to have an instant nuclear deterrent.

But until Russia openly faces the fact that China and not NATO is the threat to Russian territorial integrity--and there is some recent hope for that--America definitely needs nukes in Europe to prevent Russia from using nuclear blackmail on Europeans.

Freedom's Outpost

Taiwan is more important to the West than its size would indicate:

At the dawn of the 20th century, British geographer Halford MacKinder proposed that there was a “geographical pivot of history” in central Asia from which a nation such as Russia could potentially dominate all of Eurasia. ...

... There are some places in the world that are of such extraordinary military and economic importance that a change in their status might signal the end of an era, or the beginning of a new global order.

For this generation, Taiwan is such a place.

I agree and called Taiwan the new West Berlin:

The issue is more than a question about Taiwan's fate. ...

Will the free West (that now includes Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, to be sure) stand with Taiwan despite the odds as the free West once guarded West Berlin from the USSR despite the odds?

I think America has to consider how it will use ground forces to ensure Taiwan's freedom and not think that air and naval power alone can hold the line, which I recently addressed in Military Review.

UPDATE: I worry that the Taiwanese lack the will to fight to keep their freedom:

[The] Taiwanese government has struggled to instill the same sense of urgency found in countries with national service requirements such as South Korea, Israel and even Singapore, which faces no immediate threats. A recent poll suggested the Taiwanese public was split on their willingness to repel an invasion even as the island remains overwhelmingly in favor of keeping free of China.

And honestly, I worry if China believes that is true, regardless of the objective facts. 

UPDATE: The Taiwanese need to survive long enough for American intervention to matter:

The U.S. national security adviser warned China on Wednesday against any attempt to take Taiwan by force, saying amphibious landings were notoriously difficult and there was a lot of ambiguity about how the United States would respond. ...

"Part of [China's massive naval build up] is to give them the ability to push us back out of the Western Pacific, and allow them to engage in an amphibious landing in Taiwan," he said. ...

"You can't just spend 1% of your GDP, which the Taiwanese have been doing - 1.2% - on defense, and hope to deter a China that's been engaged in the most massive military build up in 70 years," [the U.S. national security adviser] said.

Taiwan is not doomed because of China's size. But the Taiwanese have to give a damn.

UPDATE: China publicized their exercise to invade Taiwan:

China staged a large-scale island invasion military exercise during Taiwan’s National Day as President Tsai Ing-wen called for “meaningful dialogue” with Beijing.  

The simulated night attack drill Saturday included drones, special forces and airborne troops moving from multiple locations, according to a report by state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV).  

It was the first time in recent years that Chinese media had disclosed the entire process of a staged military landing in Taiwan.  

Taiwan can't say that they haven't been warned.

The Siren Song of Urban Warfare

This discussion of the value of tank in a combined arms operation in an era of proliferating weapons that can destroy tanks notes this issue with fighting in cities:

Fighting in Mosul has shown that an insurgent force can maul and disrupt an organised opponent if given the space and time to prepare.

In this 1997 Land Warfare Paper about Iraq's 1980 invasion of Iran I wrote:

The demonstration that troops apparently hopelessly outclassed can make a good showing - even if they have to do nothing more complicated than die in place in their bunkers - is useful. Iran's ill-coordinated light infantry forces were stubborn obstacles to Iraq's ambitions when deployed in the cities of Khuzestan. Fighting a determined foe block by block and house by house as the Iraqis did in Khorramshahr would force our Army to play by our enemy's rules. Although it is possible that information dominance could extend our superiority in open warfare to urban areas, that breakthrough has not happened. We must not forget that urban conditions may limit our technological and training advantages, lest we experience our own Khorramshahr debacle one day. [emphasis added]

The battle for Mosul against fanatical jihadis took a tremendous amount of time and inflicted serious casualties on the best Iraqi troops sent in to dig out the ISIL forces despite massive amounts of Coalition surveillance and precision strike support. Urban conditions absolutely limited technological and training advantages nearly forty years after that Khorramshahr lesson.

And that leveling aspect of cities is one reason why I wanted the Army to try to "bounce" Baghdad on the run during Iraqi Freedom before Saddam could organize and mentally prepare for a defense of the city. In my post on Iraq on the very first day of my blog's existence, July 12, 2002, I wrote:

The only potential battlefield problems are city combat in Baghdad and chemical weapons. With his regime at stake, die hards may well pull a Berlin bunker strategy and Saddam may figure he has nothing to lose by going chemical. For the problem of city fighting, remember the 82nd Airborne should be on call to aid in this. Hopefully some defectors will aid too and lead their own Iraqi troops into the city. In any case, we will need to drive on and bounce the city rather than besiege it and give the defenders time to fortify their nerves and buildings. Better some losses early than a dragged out bloody fight in that sprawling city with the accompanying CNN risk of starvation and disease plaguing the civilians.

The Army and Marines in 2003 did what I hoped--hit Baghdad while the enemy was reeling. I had thought we would rapidly advance to the outskirts of the capital although I did not predict the bounce would work. I just said it was worth a try given the alternative of giving an enemy the time and space to prepare.

Cities can be taken without heavy losses, as America did in 2003 (although holding it through the Surge and Awakening successes was another matter, although successful, too). And sometimes you must take a city as Iraq had to liberate Mosul from ISIL in Iraq War 2.0. But in between you can have high-casualty operations to take cities you don't really need to occupy.

I remain concerned that the Army may be too eager to plunge into megacities. Capabilities to fight in cities don't mean we should fight in cities.

Russia's Imperial Exposure

China's push inland is good. It lessens pressure on our allies off the coast and adds pressure to Russia to recognize China as a threat.

Cue the ominous music in Moscow:

China possesses the capacity to become the dominant force setting the rules in Central Asian international affairs. The vast development projects of the Belt and Road Initiative are already reorienting the region’s economy to dependency on China. Russia’s dominance of regional trade has dropped from the 80 percent share it had in the 1990s to just two-thirds of Beijing’s current share.

Oh, the article says that China's cultural and economic penetration is no big deal and that China assures Russia that China has no designs on Russian political dominance.

But no matter what China says, China is eroding Russian political dominance that will--as I've long hoped--drag Chinese interest into Central Asia:

China's initiatives to expand economic influence to the interior of Asia is not, the Chinese assert, a strategy. Call it what you will, but it will suck Chinese military power in that direction to defend the economic influence they create. ...

The flag follows trade. Just as China's growing sea lines of communication give China an incentive to build a navy to protect those vulnerable trade routes, increased economic stakes in the interior of Asia will give China a reason to defend those assets.

So whatever you call this Chinese strategy, as we pivot to Asia and build up alliances to resist China, I call it good news[.]

China with vital inland economic interests will divert Chinese military power away from the sea where American interests are threatened.

And it will add threats to Russia that Russia will eventually have to respond to rather than appease China.

UPDATE: Oh, and there was a recent Russian decision to reinforce the Far East that might indicate Russia is beginning to face reality.

What If the Enemy Chooses War?

 This is a new operating concept?

[Chief of the Defence Staff General Nick] Carter also identified the nature of the growing threat driving Britain to rethink its strategy.

“Our authoritarian rivals see the strategic context as a continuous struggle in which nonmilitary and military instruments are used unconstrained by any distinction between peace and war. These regimes believe that they are already engaged in an intense form of conflict that is predominantly political rather than kinetic,” he said. “Their way of warfare is strategic, it is synchronized and systematic, and our response must be too.”

I don't mean to be rude, but what if an authoritarian rival chooses "industrial era" war to achieve their territorial objectives?

How does the ability to fight a long continuous struggle that reduces the distinction between peace and war do any good for a defense establishment?

Britain seems like it wants to restrict itself to supporting others and mere direct military spasms, and call that a defense strategy. At least the ten-year rule admitted that the holiday from war had an ending.

The Illusion of Omnipotence

China is not being directed by a central strategy that ruthlessly pursues dominance.

Do tell:

The common perception that China’s centralized state leadership is empowered to pursue Chinese dominance over international affairs is tempting, but illusory. Its actions abroad are better understood as a manifestation of the Chinese leadership’s responses to various, and occasionally conflicting, domestic political, economic, and social pressures. For example, President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative, enshrined in the Chinese Communist Party’s Constitution in 2017, signals China’s intent to be a major power, but the initiative is less coherent and centralized than it appears. Xi’s launch of his vision for the Belt and Road in 2013 is more accurately described as the rebranding of a host of disparate and pre-existing projects than the launch of a new strategic initiative.[3] Assuming China’s foreign policy is fundamentally driven by a grand strategy to engage and win great power competition may lead to ineffective responses from the United States and other international competitors.

Part of this common perception of China's relentless drive for power is the notion that the Chinese leaders think so far ahead of the Western democracies that we are at a grave disadvantage. 

Which I think is BS.

China is a threat because of their increased economic and military power plus their location near important American allies. 

But don't make the Chinese rulers to be a Yoda-class of people with unlimited wisdom, prescience, and focus.

Air Defense Drones

I worry that enemy drones swarms operating in the "brown skies" low over American ground units pose too much of a threat for those units to defend against. Air defense drones will be needed for that mission.

Fighting fire with fire in the air:

As the result of a joint American-Israeli effort an Israel firm has created a new quad-copter optimized to take down enemy quad-copters and small fixed-wing UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). Called Skylord it has been tested for over a year in southern Israel (Gaza) to bring down the kites and helium balloons and Hamas has been using from Gaza to transport incendiaries or small explosives into southern Israel. Skylord has brought down 2,500 of these devices so far. 

This is the kind of thing I advocated in this Army article discussing how to defeat drone swarms that can target forward American troops.

Small drones operating in swarms operate in the "brown skies" just over ground units and beneath the capabilities of friendly aircraft and missiles designed to knock down planes and missiles.

And making maneuver companies carry around equipment to shoot down those drone swarms is a major burden and distraction from fighting the enemies in front of them.

Ideally, most of the air defense burden for maneuver companies would be carried by units at higher levels that can extend combat air patrols with drones over those companies.

Companies and platoons should have some ground-based air defense systems for last-ditch point defense but the companies and platoons should not have to do it all.

Skylord essentially does the job by poking a stick into the spinning blades of drones. So this is a far cry from my hope for kinetically armed drone fighters. But it is a start on the concept.

The Beatings Could End Any Time Now, I Guess

Xi Jinping says that the beatings in Xinjiang will continue until Uighur morale improves:

Chinese President Xi Jinping said levels of happiness among all ethnic groups in the western region of Xinjiang are rising and that China plans to keep teaching its residents a "correct" outlook on China, Xinhua news agency reported late on Saturday.

Yeah, I'd trust that polling data. Excuse me Uighur sir--and your detention and abuse depends on your answer--are you happy?

UPDATE: Don't think the Tibetans are being left out of this (tip to Instapundit):

More than 500,000 Tibetans have been transferred to Chinese training centers since the beginning of 2020, as an existing mass labor initiative expanded in the region. The figure accounts for roughly 15 percent of Tibet's total population. According to a new Reuters report, published Tuesday, the militaristic recruitment program primarily targets rural farmers who are then trained to support Chinese industries.

The industrial training is all part of China's plan to put people in more easily controlled urban areas. 

And note that the Chinese were way ahead of me in extending state control to individuals despite my speculation on a potential surveillance weakness.

Interesting Times in the Eastern Mediterranean

Yes, Turkey is free to project power now. But Erdogan's Islamist government makes that power projection a problem more than an asset for the West.

This is accurate:

Turkey’s successful military intervention to preserve Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) marks a turning point for the security architecture of the Middle East and North Africa. Turkey’s new capability to project military power far beyond its coastal borders—a paradigm shift enabled by the rise of its defense industry—has made Turkey’s strategic orientation one of the most significant determinants of the region’s geopolitics. How Turkey calibrates the congruence between its hard power instruments and its strategic orientation now constitutes a factor of the utmost consequence for the strategic calculus of the entire Mediterranean basin.

Yes, the eastern Mediterranean Sea is now a point of competition.

The reason Turkey can do this is the complete collapse of the Soviet ground threat to Turkey:

Without the Soviet ground threat looming over Turkey from Bulgaria, Georgia, and Armenia, the Turks can focus on their Ottoman restoration strategy and push to dominate the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

And Turkey is making plays for influence east (and south) of Suez.

I guess the scale of Turkish militarization of their ambitions and how much they step on former allies' toes will determine whether NATO ejects Turkey from that defensive alliance. Or whether Turkey withdraws on its own.

And then it gets interesting. With Turkey in opposition to NATO, Russia, Israel, the bulk of the Arab world, and Iran, too, Turkey will need to align itself with China just for the nuclear umbrella until Turkey can get their own.

Israel's new "Saar 6" corvettes will improve Israel's ability to protect their offshore gas platforms offers another complication to Turkish ambitions. Supported by Israel's air power, Israel is a factor. The article mentions Hezbollah threats but with Turkey's hostility to Israel and new offshore ambitions, Turkey is a much bigger threat to Israel in scale if not in day-to-day security concerns.

Do read all of the initial article which has quite a lot of information.

Shooting Technology Will Eventually Reach Militias and Insurgents

DARPA is working on a bullet that is guided. This will make snipers much more powerful. Eventually it will help all American troops. And after that, it will reach enemy forces--even ill-trained rabble. What then?

A sniper can reliably overcome the effects of distance, though the act of collecting needed data (distance, wind speed, humidity) to determine course corrections delays the shot. One method of simplifying this is to use a ballistic computer that automatically collects the data and projects an adjusted aiming point onto a sniper scope display. Another is to make the bullet itself a guided weapon.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has taken the latter approach. EXACTO, or Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance bullets turns .50 caliber bullets into guided rounds capable of zeroing in on a target. Although DARPA is mum on how it does this, other sites report that the technology involves optical sensors in the nose of the bullet and fins capable of adjusting the bullet’s flight path in the tail. The optical sensor apparently homes in on a spot illuminated by a laser designator. The guidance system is similar to laser-guided weapons such as the Maverick and Hellfire laser-guided missiles. The bullet is even capable of making some remarkably sharp course corrections.

Initially, given the increased American emphasis on snipers in infantry units, this will be great, as this quoted part of a Strategypage post describes:

In Afghanistan and Iraq the locals quickly got to know when American troops were fighting in the area. They were the ones firing single shots. The other guys fired their AK-47s on full auto. But it was the sparser American firepower that dominated. Better training, and high tech sights, made the U.S. troops very accurate. This led to wider use of snipers, with up to ten percent of American troops qualified and equipped for this kind of shooting. Snipers alone have greatly changed American infantry tactics.

And when it reaches all American infantry, this long trend of pushing precision down the military echelons will be astounding.

But when the enemy has it--even ill-trained militias and insurgents--it will require a massive change in how America prepares infantry for combat, replacing shooting training time with tactical training time for troops and lower level leaders, as I wrote in the USNI Blog a couple years ago:

The May 1972 “Battle of the Bridges” in which U.S. aircraft destroyed targets that had long resisted dumb munitions announced the arrival of a new precision method of waging war that promised “If you can see it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can destroy it.” That was described as the first phase of a revolutionary change in the nature of warfare.[22] That battle won with expensive but effective “remotely piloted munitions” fired from expensive planes by expensively and extensively trained air crews has filtered down to the level of rifles carried by even ill-trained individual fighters. Will U.S. Marines be prepared to win on such a battlefield of tomorrow?

Yes, technology will still give U.S. Marines a competitive shooting advantage if Marines have expensive guided rounds while enemy combatants have cheaper DBC[*] rifles. But the relative edge based on technology will be smaller than the current advantage produced by trained soldiers firing single aimed shots versus ill-trained enemies firing full auto with little thought to aiming. Just as air crews, ship captains, and tankers have adapted to precision fire capabilities, Marine infantry must now adapt to the same challenges to ensure battlefield dominance.

We're reaching the point when American tactical superiority based on individual marksmanship will need to be realigned and based on superior tactical training and expertise.

*I called rifles with high-tech aiming equipment but not using guided shells as the DARPA story describes "dumb but controlled" rifles, or DBC rifles.

UPDATE: Oops. I mistakenly wrote that my article was in Proceedings. I originally submitted it there and just brainlocked when I typed it.

Weekend Data Dump

This author argues that deploying U.S. Army heavy forces to Taiwan would help deter China. The author rightly notes that China would consider this an escalation. If the Chinese are to be believed, it might actually trigger a Chinese invasion. This complements my essay in that Military Review issue on deploying heavy counter-attack forces to Taiwan.

Is China putting Mongolia on the hit list to recover? If so, that puts Russia's Far East holding further east in great danger of being interdicted by Chinese forces. Which might be important if the Chinese decide that they would get more bang for the buck by hammering Russia.

So who is violating norms?

So who was colluding with the Russians in the 2016 election? "Useful idiots" doesn't begin to describe the relationship. The Resistance can be so proud of their record. Let's hope that the record includes a criminal record before this is over.

Huh, the New York Times finds no hidden Trump-Russian financial ties and oddly doesn't highlight that. Honestly, I thought that the idea that Trump's taxes would show crimes was ridiculous given that the hidden records were controlled by the IRS. Wouldn't crimes have already been prosecuted or leaked? So we're told that the long-awaited evidence of crimes is actually just evidence that Trump followed IRS rules that would benefit Trump. The horror. As I've said, we're going down the scandal curve so fast that by the time we hit November, Democrats will be outraged that Trump ends sentences with a preposition.

Libya continues to be a mess with implications for NATO divisions, Erdogan's Ottoman ambitions. and Turkish-Russian conflict. When do Turkish-backed forces attack LNA-held Sirte?

Saluting and carrying out their instructions, it seems. Pay no attention to the party behind the curtain! Although I suppose you can't rule out the possibility that mediocre partisan minds think alike.

I find it amazing that white people as a group are capable of achieving any nefarious or world-destroying objective--but it would be "problematic" to credit them for any good things. I hate race-based ideology. Everyone should.

For the proto-imperial European Union, state control is a feature and not a bug: "In her first annual “state of the union” address this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed that the European Union, with its Green Deal, has committed itself to a new and pervasive form of government intervention in the economy. Apparently, the bureaucrats in Brussels think that they – and only they – know which technological pathways are best for building a sustainable future." Sure, pervasive state control over your life is for a good green cause. No worries! But that power won't be limited to the environment--even if it was a good idea to do so. Eventually the EU will knock off that prefix and become a true multi-ethnic empire that crushes freedom for all people in Europe. Once national governments are mere imperial provinces, direct control of every individual from the imperial capital will be routine.

So ... Biden did not in fact attend a historically Black college. I'm beginning to think that rather than representing lying or forgetting that these Biden incidents represent desperate Democratic efforts to bring in replacement Bidens from alternative timelines to substitute for our timeline's Biden who is completely out of it. Sadly, no alternate timeline is exactly the same as ours and anomalies creep in. Just be glad we don't live in the "bleeding eye" timeline.

I don't understand how liberals can be claiming they must leave America if Trump wins reelection. Didn't they all leave after his 2016 election to avoid being rounded up by the Trumptatorship?

Hahahaha! Well, the images of the Kavanaugh hearing have faded from most people's memories. Not mine, mind you. But for others a reminder of the depths to which Democrats will violate norms will be useful.

So ... voter fraud on a significant scale, it seems.

In related news--and how often this needs to be said for people to understand, I don't know--absentee voting is not the same as mass mailing by the government of mail-in ballots. The former have to be requested by registered voters and may require a valid reason. The latter are just sent out and Lord knows who gets them, fills them out, and returns them. People are pretending they don't understand the difference for political advantage, right? I really don't want to believe people can't understand the difference.

I'm not sure what to make of the context of Biden's apparent insult, but it sounds stupid and he's no Patton. But is this issue--real or not--hiding the real issue of whether Biden's claim to have been in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan that many times is true?

Huh. Votes for Trump from overseas military personnel were found dumped in the trash in Pennsylvania. To be fair, just 9 were found. But we don't know how many more undiscovered there were. I'm sure that isn't something that could happen much more this election.

Huh, the EU helped Taiwan get a win in Communist China's cancel culture war against Taiwan. Well, good. I'm shocked. But good.

The Marines are right that the American ground force focus on the Korean peninsula must give way to a broader horizon across INDOPACOM. I explicitly argued for that change for the Army in Military Review and my suggestion for distributed and disaggregated Marine Corps amphibious warfare role in Proceedings matches that.

The Chinese carried out naval exercises across wide swathes of seas for the second time in a couple months. 

The final words on the liberal-rage Trump tax story: "As a former accountant, please allow me to explain why all of today’s newly formed tax experts are fucking morons, and we should metaphorically put a brick in a sock and beat them over the head with it until they shut up." People are not required to refrain from taking advantage of tax-reduction provisions in the tax code that Congress passed and presidents signed over the years. Note that the latest "bombshell" report was known in 2016. So just stop. Via Instapundit. 

Oh FFS! Seriously? Really?  I reported on that satire in the last data dump. People are just stupid.

This is good news. Really. Via Instapundit. 

Saudi Arabia isn't a very good place--yet there is hope--but Iran-inspired chaos would make it worse. So it is good that the Saudis arrested those men.

The EU says Britain is part of an "arc of instability" around the EU. Which is pretty rich coming from the EU which has spent four years trying to destabilize Britain by punishing it for daring to want to leave the EU.

This aside is a good point on the now-ancient Trump "crime" of playing down the pandemic in the spring: “'Is Trump trying to play it down?' she asks. 'Yeah. But when this first started, the news media was saying that millions of people were going to die. And look at it: 200,000, compared to the population.'” I'd kind of forgotten that angle. Trump took many concrete actions that showed he took the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic seriously. But given the media near-panic (after their own downplaying very early) over millions of dead Americans based on BS models, America needed some "playing down" of the virus if we were to avoid needless and counterproductive national panic.

"North Korea and Iran have been exchanging tech and components for missiles and nuclear weapons for decades and that trade continues despite both nations subject to trade sanctions." I've long said that North Korea is a gaping hole in any effort--whether diplomatic or military--to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Even if Iran is hammered to set back their nuclear program, North Korea could represent a nuclear "restore point" for Iran.

Over one million voters have cast ballots already. I'll ask again, at what point do these already-cast votes make it impossible for Democrats to successfully replace Biden before the election? I assume that most of those votes are for Biden. But if Biden is replaced, those voters might as well have written in "Mickey Mouse" for president for all the good it will do, right?

Liquid salt water under the Martian south pole?

Hahahahaha! One doesn't often get such comedy gold responses to stupidity from federal agencies. 

China's helicopter fleet lags in numbers and technology.

India took a step toward importing weapons more easily. This is good but reforming their dysfunctional and corrupt domestic arms industry would be better in the long run. Perhaps competition will help with that problem.

China is aggressively pressuring Taiwan at their aerial "border."

Are you, or have you ever been, a Trump supporter?

Armenia and Azerbaijan have renewed their hostilities:

And here is more. Could Russia and Turkey wage a proxy war there?

Did Turkey shoot down an Armenian jet? 

That allegation of Democratic voter fraud that is horrible if true. We'll see if the man releases his claimed evidence.

I won't say that a warming climate hasn't had an effect on California's fires. I will say that climate effects are minor compared to how badly California's forests have been mismanaged. Although you can understand the appeal of blaming a BS reason when their hands are dirty from their own stupidity.

Good Lord, how deeply involved in the Russia collusion "coup" was Hillary Clinton?  We'll see, I suppose. I'll need more.

So like Obama, Biden was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his presumed potential. Tip to Instapundit.

I stand corrected that Biden would not show for the first debate. He was adequate. I don't know what they pumped him full of to improve on so many of his recent public appearances, but I'm reasonably sure it is illegal in at least 39 states. Or, those early end of his September campaign days (calling a "lid") leading up to the debate were all about adjusting Biden's sleep schedule so that the debate would begin not long after he wakes up rather than being a late-night event. That alone would make a big difference in his performance. Do Democrats risk another debate after getting through the first one? Maybe. Trump was adequate. His behavior was ... distressing. Although as an aside, a format that allows for no responses--incentivizing interruptions--was odd. I'm no more happy about that kind of style than I was with Biden's in 2012. Oddly the media celebrated that style of debate then. (Question: Is Biden mentally incapable of that kind of aggressiveness now?) But it is quite possible that without Trump's behavior Biden would have looked a lot better than adequate given how the debate was tilted to Biden. If this was the worst moderator for Biden, God help Trump in the next two.

Wow, anything at all can be racist and problematic. The professor's groveling apology is Cultural Revolution struggle session humiliation stuff that won't end until professors refuse to buckle to the woke mobs. This is revolting. Tip to Instapundit.

China is leveraging its pandemic aid to the Philippines to get Manila to shut up about Chinese encroachment on Filipino territory. Talk about chutzpah! The Xi Jinping Flu came from China, escaped because of Chinese Communist Party secrecy and denial, and now China pressures the Philippines to survive the virus. Nice guys, eh?

Another thought on the debate. It really is tiring to have Trump as our president. But most  of the drama (and violence) is caused by the Democrats and their unrelenting and unhinged turn-it-to-eleven Resistance. And the antics and likely crimes of Democrats in undermining Trump's legitimacy must be punished by reelecting Trump rather than rewarding Democratic obstruction. IMO.

Interesting that having Neanderthal gene cluster is a risk factor for a severe form of the Xi Jinping Flu virus.

Ethiopia is unwilling to offer binding assurances to Egypt and Sudan that Ethiopia's massive GERD Nile River dam won't harm the downriver states that rely on the river for water. Egypt especially is vulnerable for its very existence and life of its people on the Nile providing sufficient water.

We have met the enemy and they is us. Even if there isn't anything dangerously wrong with our surface Navy, it is certainly giving the Chinese the impression there is.

Are the Turks sending Syrian mercenaries to support Azerbaijan in the fighting with Armenia? Russia supports Armenia and has troops there. Turkey and Russia are already on opposite sides in Syria and Libya where Turkish-paid Syrians fight. Turkey is in a confrontation with fellow NATO member Greece at sea, And Turkey has pushed away once-ally Israel as well as alienating America enough to lose the F-35. Just how much foreign trouble does Erdogan want?  And can Erdogan cover the checks he is writing?

What "riots?" I trust the media to be truly awful and biased. Does that count?

Afghanistan is still quite the clusterfuck and progress is slow: "Since 2001 the economy continues to grow and corruption slowly declines. The reality is that getting Afghanistan into the 20^th century, much less the 21^st, will take several decades of effort and since 2001 there have been barely two decades of changes." I'm only aiming for getting Afghanistan to 19th century levels. The progress is obscured by the distance Afghanistan needs to go. Whatever the level Afghanistan can achieve, I'd rather have an Afghanistan that kills jihadis every day rather than a nominal country that hosts jihadis who launch terror attacks on America. My objectives have never been very high.

It's only bad when Trump does legal things with his tax liabilities. Via Instapundit. The tax code is way too complicated. Complication favors the wealthy who can hire attorneys and accountants to exploit those tax provisions. The same is true for any laws, including campaign finance laws. Simplification should be the first thing you do if you want fairness.

The Treaty of Versailles wasn't nearly as bad as people think. Hell, I think it wasn't harsh enough.

Trump has condemned white supremacists before and did during the debate although he made a mistake by not using the exact words that simple minds require to comprehend meaning: "After he said 'sure' I think he should have expanded on the answer. But you cannot change the definition of 'sure.' Chris Wallace asked Trump if he was willing to condemn white supremacy. Trump said 'sure.' Then Trump said, 'Yes, I am willing to do it.' Trump said 'sure' and 'yes.' Therefore he answered the question. Should he have gone further? Yes. But do not misinform people about his answer. Saying 'willing' does not mean Trump 'refused' to condemn white supremacy. The left's and the media’s interpretation of Trump’s 'stand back and stand by' comment about the Proud Boys is not a fact. I can see how they could interpret his statement as an encouragement to the Proud Boys. Trump probably should have stopped at 'stand back' but he did not. But again, their perception is not fact." I'll add that given that Proud Boys--who are not white supremacists--are facing off against rioting communist Antifa who are not standing back one bit, why shouldn't Trump add "stand by" when some Democratic leaders are refusing to let their police control Antifa? [Note that I eliminated paragraph formatting in the above quote to fit in the data dump format.]

Well, yeah, the threat to democracy and rule of law comes from the left and not from Trump.

Stamping out the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic is hard. Europe has not done it any more than America has done it. Wait until this is over to compare. And make sure the definitions of who has gotten the virus and who has died from the virus are corrected and national factors addressed (for example, America has a lot of overweight people) to make a proper comparison. As long as I'm wishing, it would be nice to address deaths and problems caused by the lockdowns, which would help adjust for how much different countries shut down their economies and induced artificial poverty, lost medical care, and suicides.

Don't forget the logistics tail to sustain the F-35 in extended campaigns.

The long Marine move from Okinawa to Guam is finally getting real.

The EastMed Gas Forum of Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus, Greece and Italy will be a mechanism to block Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. More on the gas field maneuvering in the eastern Mediterranean.

Is India preparing for war with China? I don't think so. I think that India is preparing to block China's strategy of grabbing small chunks of unguarded disputed territory and then counting on local military superiority to hold the gains. A "war" requires India to expand to a naval war in the Indian Ocean, I think.

How California became the lavatory of democracy. Via Instapundit.

Even Governor Cuomo can see how badly Mayor De Blasio is running New York City.

Just be grateful that the Woke Supremacists don't--yet--have the power to erase your non-approved movie or series disc in your player.

As the Trump administration pulls back from Germany, Iraq, and Afghanistan I'll repeat my hope that America doesn't pull back so much that we risk defeats. As I warned early in the Obama administration, if you retreat from enemies you can mistake the subsequent period of relative quiet as "peace" when in reality it is just a pause during the time it takes a pursuing enemy to catch up.

In 2012 the media and Democrats praised Biden's debate rudeness and interruptions.

If white people wearing hoods were destroying Black neighborhoods we'd rightly condemn them and fight the KKK attackers. But since the attackers are white Antifa it's apparently okay as far as liberals are concerned.

China has rebooted their J-20 frontal-stealth-only fighter.

A power supply for a true Space Navy?

Uh oh. Luckily Xi Jinping Flu therapeutics are much better now, so best wishes to the president and first lady. Assuming Trump recovers, this could benefit him because the Twitterverse Left will not be able to resist demonstrating their glee that he and his wife have come down with this, repulsing many people on the fence. To her credit, Rachel Maddow rejected the worst instincts of some of the vile Twitterverse.

No New York Woke Times reporters staged a revolt over this op-ed defending China's control of Hong Kong and repression of freedom protesters. China tolerates no dissent.

Are people convinced that a civil war is brewing in America? Honestly, I think the worry is overblown and reliant on over-estimating the influence of the relatively few but high-profile Twitter fanatics and the numbers of Antifa a-holes. I assume there will be post-election localized violence in areas that have already proven friendly to "mostly peaceful" riots and arson. Still, I don't blame people for worrying that their own local area could be a site of such violence. Also note that the polling data is more complicated than first glance would indicate. A lot of people are preparing for disruptions from a second wave of the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic. Less than a quarter are preparing for unrest because of fear of post-election violence. So calm down. 

An MSNBC panel advocates for a commission to screen presidential candidates to keep candidates they don't like from being nominated. I suppose we could call it the Guardian Council. The Democrats have gone nuts.

Trump's covid19 infection could provide an interesting experiment on whether Trump's appeal would go up if he remained out of sight for a while. Assuming he turns out fine, of course. May he and the First Lady--and others around them--get better soon.

About the 1957 and 1968 pandemics: "Why were things so different back then? Was it because we had no ­fear-reinforcing 24/7 cable news, no Twitter, and no incessant and instant case-and-death tickers on all our electronic screens? Or is it we ourselves who have changed, by valuing recurrent but infrequent risks differently?" Tip to Instapundit.

The United States secretary of defense signed a 10-year military cooperation agreement with long-time ally Morocco; and after that visited Algeria with an eye to fighting jihadis south of Algeria.

For the eighth consecutive year Japan will set a record for defense spending. 

"Rona Destroyer."

Well I didn't see that take coming.

The Russian threat prompted Norway to roll out the welcome mat for American submarines. 

Aside from the really vile hatred that followed Trump's (and his wife's) diagnosis of having the Xi Jinping Flu virus, the reaction of the media is sad. No, Trump's illness is not the result of his "cavalier" treatment of the pandemic. He shut down our economy and mobilized industry to deal with it. That speaks to taking it seriously. Just because he wants to open up the economy in recognition that we have to afford our reaction to the plague and because lockdown harms people, too, does not mean he has a cavalier attitude toward Covid19. It means he is modeling his position that we need to get on with our lives while coping with reality of the virus. He got the virus while doing his job. He took a risk, yes. But life is risk. We all can't figuratively stay in our basements and expect the world around us to work. That extreme remedy should be reserved for those most at risk.

Hahaha!

As inconceivable as it is to me that people might support Biden, I worry that Trump supporters have too much invested in the idea that the polls are wrong. I thought that in 2012. Perhaps the polls are wrong today because it makes sense in the current hate-filled environment of demonizing Trump supporters for Trump supporters to lie to pollsters. I hope a decisive number of voters are preparing a giant FU to the media-Democratic Borg. But I thought I had reasons in 2012 to believe the polls were wrong. We'll see. It is possible that the horrible Democratic campaign to sow chaos and violence to blackmail Americans into voting for them to get peace will work. Which is shameful. But it doesn't mean the effort will fail.

I wish this was funny:

Hahahaha!

If Trump took a needless risk with his campaigning, does that mean that Biden's recent decision to leave his basement to campaign in public a needless risk, too?

I will say that during the lockdown I've managed to reach my target weight (again--after doing that about a decade ago and then slowly losing a bit of ground) and I have not drank more than my weekly allotment. I managed a number of home improvement projects and kind of restarted writing. I have better furnace filters for coping with the Xi Jinping Flu over the winter and now I'm building an actual bar collection of liquor and tools. So all good. Hope all is good with you, too.

More peace in Sudan is good. But it isn't all of it. And what about the genocidal efforts over decades to murder people in Darfur?

Four years after the Brexit vote the European Union still tries to treat Britain like a mere province. Well, that's kind of like the War of 1812, a.k.a. the Second War of (American) Independence. Keep fighting, Britain! You aren't fully out yet. Don't go wobbly.

What is baffling about it? AOC sides with their enemies.

I don't pretend to understand how this is possible, but ... good.

Mistakes, death, and deception in New York.

I'm pretty confident that Trump will recover from the Xi Jinping Flu just fine. It's not like he caught the man cold:

Unhinged and frankly evil Resistance types who inhabit Twitter are wishing death on Trump after he was infected with the Xi Jinping Flu virus. Will this view into leftist thoughts remind people of how unfairly Trump has been treated for four years? The so-called "Melania tapes" that liberals think are game-changing bombshells but actually just show a decent woman betrayed by a "friend" and exploited by a partisan and mean media empire are likely to add to that sense, no? Via Instapundit.

Are Turkey and Russia presiding over a new age of mercenary warfare? Could be. America hired lots of mercenaries for support roles at the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, and that trend went back to the 1990s--perhaps more properly called "contractors" in that context. This is an issue I've been on here at TDR, and I collected a number of posts with additional commentary in this publication available on Amazon for just 99 cents! I intended this to be the first of a series but it was way more work than I thought it would be. And even if I wanted to, Blogger's internal search function limits severely how far back I can search. So, that glorious experiment ended at number one. Anyway, the Russians and Turks are pushing this reborn trend even further by using mercenaries as the primary ground forces for foreign interventions. Of course, the supply of fighters for hire has exploded over the last decade.

Just where is the white supremacists street violence taking place which Democrats bizarrely claim is the real threat rather than the Antifa/BLM revolutionaries we've seen on the streets for years? Remember, of course Black lives matter. But BLM the organization is a Marxist threat that should be shunned.

I'm not sure what to make of the "average of polls" approach these days. Originally when polls could suffer from randomness or errors in methodology, the averaging approach was useful to cut out the extremes of honest problems in polling and get closer to the reality. But when partisans know that their deliberately skewed polling results will be lumped into the polling averages as if the partisan poll is just one more real poll with expected types of errors, doesn't that spoil the average of polls approach? Don't partisans know that they can game the system for political advantage?

Is Sweden in the clear from the pandemic after front-loading their suffering? I wouldn't say America should have followed that example. Our circumstances are too different, I imagine. But it will be an interesting case to study in contrast to other approaches. Tip to Instapundit.

At least the Xi Jinping Flu lockdowns will spare lots of Americans from enduring their insufferable woke relatives who arrive at Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings with their talking points about why the rest of the family is evil. I really am an optimist, aren't I?

Did our early lockdowns have negligible effect on the spread of the Xi Jinping Flu virus?  I suppose it is possible that a 100% and harshly enforce lockdown in certain areas could have worked. But were we willing to take measures that Communist China could take to contain the spread in China?

Saudi Arabia ordered a slight easing of Xi Jinping Flu pandemic restrictions on letting Moslems visit the holy sites in Mecca.

So herd immunity isn't even possible?? How long does post-infection immunity have to last to achieve that? Via Instapundit.

Trump seems more active with Covid-19 than Biden is healthy.

I don't care how much math they know. When you divide it all by "woke" you get zero. Via Instapundit.

Will subsidized city recycling programs fall to budget realities or will virtue signaling save them? The suspense is killing me. Via Instapundit.

Base AFRICOM on Crete

America should base AFRICOM on Crete island, which was once hosted significant American military forces.

AFRICOM headquarters will be moving out of Germany. It is unclear whether it could move elsewhere in Europe or maybe to Africa. Moving back to the United States is an option. 

While CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM are based in the continental United States, this ship decision should affect the basing decision:

The U.S. Navy muscled up in the eastern Mediterranean Sea this week, announcing that it will homeport a major vessel at Souda Bay in Greece for the first time in at least 40 years.

The USS Hershel “Woody” Williams “provides a new capability in the theater,” U.S. 6th Fleet commander, Vice Adm. Gene Black, said in a statement Friday.

The ship, an expeditionary sea base designed to carry Marines and special operations troops to hot spots or train with partners, is assigned to U.S. Africa Command but will also be available to support other commands.

That ship is earmarked for AFRICOM missions:

This power projection platform will allow for missions along the vast African littorals. I assume Army forces could deploy in the vessel as well during its extended deployment.

I'm honestly shocked the Navy allocated an actual purpose-build hull to AFRICOM. My worries about AFRICOM's priority led me to advocate in Military Review for a modularized auxiliary cruiser that I dubbed The AFRICOM Queen.

But I wanted the capability and not my suggested means to be the priority. So I celebrate the capability. I can only hope that my proposal shamed the Navy into allocating a purpose-built hull. But I of course cannot know that.

If the deployment is a success but the Navy wants its ESB for a higher priority theater, AFRICOM could justify building The AFRICOM Queen.

Given that she has been assigned to a Greek home port, it seems to me that Crete would be a good home for the AFRICOM headquarters. 

It is also nice indirect support for Greece against Turkey without putting a thumb in Turkey's eye because the ship is dedicated to Africa missions.

Predicting Future War in INDOPACOM

The Marines are looking at the Guadalcanal campaign as a template for a future Pacific war:

Victory on Guadalcanal and the rest of the Pacific came “at the cost of capital ships and thousands of lives,” Olson noted. Another speaker at the conference, Major Gen. Paul Rock, director of Marine Corps  Strategies and Plans, said high casualties could be likely again. “Attrition is going to be a factor in a future fight,” Rock said.

While that may prove true, the Marines are not resigned to taking the same heavy casualties they suffered in the Pacific island-hopping campaign of World War II, Gen. David Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, insisted a day later.

I too looked to Guadalcanal as a model--in this short ILW Land Warfare Paper--for how each service winning in its own domain can create synergy to win the battles in and under the seas, in the air, and on the ground.

And of course, we won't need to endure the casualties of an island-hopping campaign. Because we and our allies pretty much control the islands all the way up to the coast of China--except for the artificial ones the Chinese built in the South China Sea. 

But yeah, attrition will be a factor in any such fight. Let's try to avoid that war even as we prepare to win it if necessary.

Navy Guns Return

The Navy's work on hyper-velocity shells will be a great weapon for a networked fleet. It will doom the carrier for wartime roles short of having total naval dominance.

This has great promise:

The navy is eager to use an accurate HVP on its ships because the 5-inch gun can fire up to 15 shells a minute. If the ship fire control system can find targets fast enough for the HVP this is a much cheaper ($90,000 per shell) way to defeat missile attacks. The existing ESSM missiles used for this cost a million dollars each.

I wrote about that missile defense options, which is awesome. And if the ships' defenses are networked, many fire control systems working together may be able to efficiently shoot down the incoming missiles.

Of course, as I wrote fifteen years ago, precision long-range shells will be a great improvement on missiles for offensive tasks in a networked fleet. The extended range of the rocket-assisted hyper-velocity rounds is an improvement but I'm still waiting for the ultimate gun--the rail gun--as I wrote in that post. The implications spell doom for the sea-control carrier:

In the long run, given networked and very long range cannons, large aircraft carriers will add little to most offensive missions and will absorb scarce resources and assets simply evading attack rather than striking the enemy and contributing to victory. The concentrated power of the carrier platform's air wing will simply be one element of the massed effect of dispersed attack platforms such as DD (X) achievable in network-centric warfare. An enemy will face massed firepower from all directions launched by U.S. forces wielding a plethora of weapons deployed on surface ships, submarines, and aircraft. This attack capability will be potent whether carriers are part of the network or not.

The DD(X)--the truncated Zumwalt-class of super destroyers--won't be the backbone of that fleet. But the implications of this trend will strike aircraft carriers hard:

To exploit the network, the capable surface ships we will build must be cut loose and dispersed in accordance with the logic of network-centric warfare. Aircraft carriers will not add a bang commensurate with the billions of bucks they cost. Writing just after the Kosovo War, I asked did the Theodore Roosevelt really help in Kosovo? In my opinion, no. A couple score of shooters was irrelevant in NATO's thousand-plane force.

The worst part of carriers, even if we accept that carrier-launched planes are not the most efficient or effective manner of attack in the future, is that they will grow increasingly vulnerable. Eventually, an enemy will develop a network even if it only covers their immediate area or is limited in scope. The problem of defending in a networked environment will be brutally apparent to the Navy if it fights an enemy possessing a similar attack network which will seek the high value target of an aircraft carrier. If the Navy's carriers enter an enemy grid to come within striking range, they will no longer have the safety of getting lost in the vastness of the oceans. Nor can large carriers be made stealthy enough to remain obscured within an enemy grid. They will need to dash to striking range, strike, and get out before being struck themselves.

When the Navy faces such an enemy, the carriers will be a tremendously important "something" to America, and the loss of even one will shock the American public and might well stop the war if fighting for anything short of a vital American interest. Setting a carrier afire will make excellent CNN footage.

A network does not need a high value asset. Certainly, it is true that network-centric warfare defenses can bring dispersed air defenses together to defend the carrier (if they have sufficiently long range) but why expend that effort? In a developed networked force, the aircraft carrier adds little that numerous smaller platforms cannot provide and only represents a potential loss of great propaganda value.

Heck, maybe a nuclear-powered carrier with a greatly reduced crew will simply have rail guns packed on its deck, leaving only a small deck space around an elevator for some VTOL aircraft. The ships will have a lot of life left in them, after all, even if they are too vulnerable to risk close to the fight.

FYI, in that post I noted an unpublished article that I regained the rights to and I published it as this post.

What Will the Navy LAW Look Like?

Nobody can define what the proposed light amphibious warship (LAW) for the Marines will look like.

This is a problem:

The idea behind the ship is to take a commercial design or adapt a historic design to make a vessel capable of accommodating up to 40 sailors and at least 75 Marines to transport Marine kit over a range of about 3,500 nautical miles, according to a recent industry day presentation.

While the presentation noted that the ship should have few tailored Navy requirements, that also creates a problem: If the Navy is going to pay tens of millions to develop, build, crew and operate them, should it not provide some additional value to the fleet?

The Marines are organizing a new type of Marine unit--the Littoral Regiment--that would need these smaller transports:

The Marine Corps is moving quickly to develop a new kind of infantry unit to challenge Chinese claims on small islands in the Pacific, while the Navy is developing new and smaller ships to move and supply them once they deploy.

The new Littoral Regiments won’t be fully fleshed out for several years, but Marine Corps leaders said today they will be bolstered by logistics and air defense battalions once they’re ready to go.

The Marines want two in Japan (Okinawa, I assume) and one on Guam.

As I wrote recently, the Marine idea for the LAW seems like it subtracts value from the fleet by requiring a Navy warship escort:

The Marines are supposed to disperse across islands and coastal areas to detect and sink Chinese warships. Yet the Navy will need to detach warships to escort these small amphibs?

That makes no sense. The ships could be quite inexpensive yet require the escort of expensive warships? How is that saving money or promoting the mission?

My vision in Proceedings (membership required) was for smaller ships with some limited offensive and defensive capabilities to deploy company-sized Marine units. I wanted to experiment with replicating the old converted destroyer escorts used in World War II in large numbers by converting retired Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates.

The link works now actually. I had hoped that retired Perry frigate hulls could be converted to test the concept. But I think they are gone now, as I noted in this post.

Somebody needs to define what this ship will be.

Is Russia's State of Denial Eroding?

Russia has announced a troop build up in the Far East. Reality is catching up with Russia.

It's about time under the circumstances:

Russia is increasing its military presence in the Far East in response to rising tensions in the wider region, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Thursday.

In remarks cited on the defence ministry website, Shoigu said reinforcements were being sent because of tensions in the “eastern strategic direction”, referring to an area encompassing Russia’s eastern border with China and the wider Asia-Pacific.

Shoigu did not specify what the new threats were, or where the additional troops would go. He promised 500 units of new and modernised equipment for the region, as well as some improvements to the navy’s Northern Fleet.

Russia owns a lot of land that it took from China.

Russia is pretending that NATO is a threat while it appeases China, lest China lunge for that territory.

And next year could be interesting given that a 20-year agreement to suspend border disputes is expiring. 

Perhaps Russia thinks Chinese power has peaked. And if so, Russia might be the easiest target around China to signal China's higher status.

Of course, there is some internal unrest out there, too, to justify Russian reinforcements.

UPDATE: The Russians are also building up in Central Asia:

On June 12, the Kyrgyz parliament ratified an agreement that enables Russia to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to its local foreign military base in Kant. During the course of the year, at least two Orlan-10 multipurpose drones will arrive in Kyrgyzstan. The base will also receive two modernized Mi-8MTV5-1 helicopters, and a commitment was made to upgrade and strengthen its air and missile defense systems as well. The Russian military base in Dushanbe, in neighboring Tajikistan, has already received S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems last autumn, and, based on the declared aims of Russia in Central Asia, further improvements can be expected. Furthermore, the readiness of the Russian forces in Tajikistan is being tested by continuous military drills. What explains this military buildup?

"What explains this military buildup?" "A message without an address?" Seriously?!