WSJ | Americans like to think their military is unbeatable if politicians
wouldn’t get in the way. The truth is that U.S. hard power isn’t what it
used to be. That’s the message of the Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength, which is reported here for the first time and describes a worrisome trend.
Heritage
rates the U.S. military as “weak” and “at growing risk of not being able
to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.”
The weak rating, down from “marginal” a year earlier, is the first in
the index’s nine-year history.
The
index measures the military’s ability to prevail in two major regional
conflicts at once—say, a conflict in the Middle East and a fight on the
Korean peninsula. Americans might wish “that the world be a simpler,
less threatening place,” as the report notes. But these commitments are
part of U.S. national-security strategy.
Heritage
says the U.S. military risks being unable to handle even “a single
major regional conflict” as it also tries to deter rogues elsewhere. The
Trump Administration’s one-time cash infusion has dried up. Pentagon
budgets aren’t keeping up with inflation, and the branches are having to
make trade-offs about whether to be modern, large, or ready to fight
tonight. The decline is especially acute in the Navy and Air Force.
The
Navy has been saying for years it needs to grow to at least 350 ships,
plus more unmanned platforms. Yet the Navy has shown a “persistent
inability to arrest and reverse the continued diminution of its fleet,”
the report says. By one analysis it has under-delivered on shipbuilding
plans by 10 ships a year on average over the past five years.
From
2005 to 2020, the U.S. fleet grew to 296 warships from 291, while
China’s navy grew to 360 from 216. War isn’t won on numbers alone, but
China is also narrowing the U.S. technological advantage in every area
from aircraft carrier catapults to long-range missiles.
Some will call all this alarmist and ask why the Pentagon can’t do
better on an $800 billion budget. The latter is a fair question and the
answer requires procurement and other changes. But the U.S. will also
have to spend more on defense if it wants to protect its interests and
the homeland. The U.S. is spending about 3% of GDP now compared to 5%-6%
in the 1980s. The Heritage report is a warning that you can’t deter
war, much less win one, on the cheap.
undark | century now, governments and their military forces have enlisted the
aid of scientists and engineers to invent weapons, devise defenses, and
advise on their use and deployment.
Unfortunately, scientific and technological realities don’t always
conform to the preferred policies of politicians and generals. Back in
the 1950s, some U.S. officials liked to proclaim that scientists should
be “on tap, not on top”: in other words, ready to provide handy advice
when needed, but not offering advice that contradicted the official
line. That attitude has persisted into the present, but scientists have
steadfastly refused to play along.
One of the best-known leaders of this resistance is Theodore “Ted”
Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security
policy at MIT. Trained as a physicist and nuclear engineer, Postol has
spent a career immersed in the details of military and defense
technology. He worked for Congress in the now-defunct Office of
Technology Assessment, then in the Pentagon as an adviser to the Chief
of Naval Operations before joining academia, first at Stanford
University and then returning to his alma mater, MIT.
Throughout, he has been an outspoken critic
of unworkable concepts, impractical ideas, and failed technological
fantasies, including Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” system, the vaunted
Patriot missile of the first Gulf War, and more recent intercontinental
ballistic missile defense concepts tested by the U.S. His investigations
and analyses have repeatedly revealed self-deception,
misrepresentation, flawed research, and outright fraud from the
Pentagon, academic and private laboratories, and Congress.
When we contacted him, we found that, far from being retired at age
70, he was preparing to travel to Germany to consult with the German
Foreign Ministry on European-Russian relations. His work exemplifies the
eternal verity that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually
is. In the exchange below, his responses have been edited for length
and clarity.
sonar21 | In the face of Western reports that Russia is on its heels and
retreating, the facts on the ground tell a different story. For
starters, Russian allies with embassies still operating in Kiev are
shutting down and ordering their personnel to leave Ukraine. This
includes China, Tajikistan, Krygyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkenistan,Serbia,
Belarus, India and Egypt. Note that these embassies have remained open
during the last seven months of the war with Russia. The decisions to
cutback or cease operations is one indicator that these countries expect
a major escalation in the war on the part of Russia in the near future.
Another piece of evidence that implies Russia is beefing up for a new
offensive comes via Belarus. Russia is moving a large number of trucks,
armored personnel carriers and tanks to Belarus.
While Russia is beefing up its forces in Belarus, the Supreme Russian
Commander for military operations in Ukraine, General Surovikin, made
the following comment in recent days:
I don’t want to sacrifice the lives of the Russian soldiers in a partisan war of hoards of fanatics armed by NATO.
We’ve got enough power and technical means to lead Ukraine to total capitulation.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses/11836
In other words, the General, knowing the capability of the forces
under his command and knowing the missions he and his staff are planning
for them, is confident he has the means to force the surrender of
Ukraine. No mention of negotiations. The word, “capitulation” is not
ambiguous in its meaning.
There is another possibility to entertain–this is an elaborate feint
by Russia designed to force Ukraine to deploy already weakened forces to
the northern border to defend against a possible invasion from the
north. This will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Ukraine to
send reinforcements to the south in a timely manner if Russia decides to
launch an offensive to clear out the Donetsk Republic or attack
Nikolayev.
All of this movement on the ground is taking place against developing
political chaso in the West. The United States, under the leadership of
the demented Joe Biden, has embarked on a foreign policy apparently
designed to anger and offend ostensible allies. The Saudis find
themselves being treated like lepers. According to Reuters:
US President Joe Biden will act
“methodically” in deciding how to respond to Saudi Arabia due to oil
production cuts, but options include changes in US security assistance,
reports Reuters the words of White House National Security Adviser Jake
Sullivan. . . .
At the same time, the tension between the
countries is growing strongly. Biden no longer intends to meet with
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud on the sidelines of the
G20 summit in November.
tribuneindia | Russia’s retaliation against Ukraine’s
‘critical infrastructure’, something Moscow refrained from so far, has
serious implications. Since October 9, Russia has begun systematically
targeting Ukraine’s power system and railways. Noted Russian military
expert Vladislav Shurygin told Izvestia that if this tempo was kept up
for a week or so, it ‘will disrupt the entire logistics of the Ukrainian
military — system for transporting personnel, military equipment,
ammunition, related cargo, as well as the functioning of military and
repair plants.’
The Americans are cocooned in a surreal
world of their self-serving narrative that Russia ‘lost’ the war. In the
real world, though, Ivan Tertel, KGB chief in Belarus, who has an
insider view of Moscow, said last Tuesday that with Russia boosting its
troop strength in the war zone — 3 lakh troops who have been mobilised
plus 70,000 volunteers — and the deployment of advanced weaponry, ‘the
military operation will enter a key phase. According to our estimates, a
turning point will come in the period from November of this year to
February of next year.’
Policy-makers and strategists in Delhi
should make a careful note of the timeline. The bottom line is, Russia
is looking for an all-out victory and will not settle for anything less
than a friendly government in Kiev. Western politicians, including
Biden, understand that there is nothing stopping the Russians now. The
US’ weapon kitty is running dry as Kiev keeps asking for more.
When asked whether he’d meet Biden at the
G20 in Bali, Putin derisively remarked on Friday, ‘He (Biden) should be
asked whether he is ready to hold such negotiations with me or not. To
be honest, I don’t see any need, by and large. There is no platform for
any negotiations for the time being.’
However, Washington has not yet thrown in
the towel and the Biden administration remains obsessed with exhausting
the Russian military — even at the cost of Ukraine’s destruction. And,
for the Russians too, there is still much to be worked out on the
battlefield: the oppressed Russian populations in Odessa (which suffered
unspeakable atrocities from the neo-Nazis), Mykolaiv, Zaporizhya,
Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkov are expecting ‘liberation’. It’s a highly
emotive issue for Russia. Again, the overarching agenda of
‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’ of Ukraine must be taken to its
logical conclusion.
When all that is over, Putin knows Biden
will not even want to meet him. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said last
week, ‘Anyone who seriously believes that the war can be ended through
Russian-Ukrainian negotiations lives in another world. Reality looks
different. In reality, such issues can only be discussed between
Washington and Moscow. Today, Ukraine is able to fight only because it
receives military assistance from the United States…
‘At the same time, I do not see President
Biden as the person who would really be suitable for such serious
negotiations. President Biden has gone too far. Suffice it to recall his
statements to Russian President Putin.’
India should expect the defeat of the US and
NATO, which completes the transition to a multipolar world order.
Sadly, Indian elites are yet to purge their ‘unipolar predicament’.
Europe, including Britain, is devastated and there is palpable
discontent over the US’s ‘transatlantic leadership’. Indo-Pacific
strategy is hopelessly adrift. New power centres are emerging in India’s
extended neighbourhood, as the OPEC’s rebuff to Washington shows. A
profound adjustment is needed in the Indian strategic calculus.
What used to be called BDA . . . Bomb Damage
Assessment, is now satellite reconnaissance imagery review. Based on
what is seen, targets are identified as finished or in need of being hit again. This is why last weeks cruise missile attacks
have been followed up with subsequent attacks at regular intervals. It takes only minutes to reload launchers. But it
takes some hours to collect satellite imagery reflecting recent damage - and have those images reviewed for selecting the next targets.
Low Earth Orbit spacecraft have some memory aboard, but not
very much. These are polar orbiting vehicles and the areas over the
poles have higher radiation exposure, with memory being notoriously
vulnerable to radiation. So, frequent and even perpetual downlinks for Russian assets, is the order of the day.
Russian spacecraft traversing Ukraine sky north to south or south to north will
have Russian receive stations line-of-sight for downlinks of imagery.
Ground based jammers aren't heard by dishes
pointed upwards from within Russia.
It is clear that in-orbit assets have determined Russian tactics and strategy. Why Sergei Surovikin, commander of Russian Aerospace forces is now supreme commander of the mobilization to bring about Ukrainian capitulation.
Normal drones have a controller, since they are
either surveillance drones or attack drones hunting particular targets.The so-called kamikaze drones do not have a controller and are subsequently immune to jamming. They are instead like low and slow miniature ballistic missiles. Flight path fixed at time of launch so as
to hit a particular static target.
They evade detection till they can be
seen near the target because they are small, slow, and very low to the ground. They emit very little
infrared so they can’t be detected that way. They don’t talk to the
mother ship so they can’t be seen sending signals nor can they be
signal jammed. They thus also take way less in the
way of chips (simpler and fewer) and so can be made cheaply and quickly
in large quantities.
Kamikaze drones are far cheaper than but just as effective as
high-cost precision missiles Best bit is that they follow one of the
principles of war – economy of force – and they certainly get a
lot of bang for the buck.
The kamikaze drone will bring old fashioned
antiaircraft guns back. The ones Russia is using don’t produce enough
heat for a MANPAD to lock to, small arms aren’t going to bring them down
in most cases, and it sounds like they don’t show
up very well on modern missile anti-air systems which is combined with
the ridiculous cost of bringing down a $20K drone with a $100K+ missile.
The Ukrainian tactic of putting serious air defense
systems inside populated areas is almost as kamikaze as the drones
themselves. Having them on the White House or similar makes some sense,
having them heavily used inside a city does not.
At the moment, the Ukrainian police, soldiers,
militia, etc. are trying to shoot those drones down with rifles, pistols
or anything else that shoots a bullet and the streets of Kiev are
sounding like a firing range. Best to be inside or
you might get hit by a falling bullet-the more real danger is a populated area getting
hit by an exploding shot down drone rather than the drone hitting its
energy infrastructure target. Except it’s not just bullets flying willy
nilly.
Ukraine has S300 and Buk missiles curving
down trying to hit the drones and plowing into apartment blocks. The
S300 packs 150kg of explosive to the Geran-2’s 50kg.
And on top of that, keen troopers with
western-supplied ATGMs are trying to hit drones in the air. Often with
unguided ATGMs. Even with guided ones they’ve got a snowballs
chance. All of those come down too.
Russia has begun flooding* Donbass with
old, reliable S-60 anti-aircraft guns. They shoot 57mm shells with
proximity fuses, and are mgreat against small drones – as per
experience in Syria. They can also penetrate 90mm
of steel, so work well also against an enemy largely down to APCs and
civilian vehicles for mobility.
And being from the old Soviet stock, they can be
easily integrated with the existing air-defense systems, like
battalion/divisional radars for targeting information or even automatic
targeting.
Designed in the late 40s, considered obsolete in
the mid-60s, reinstated after Vietnamese experience in early 70s,
finally removed from service to storage in 1990s only find a niche for
use again today.
Anyway, once you do see the drone, the latest
wisdom is that 57 mm ammo has longer reach (6000 m vs 4000 m), doesn’t
rely on hitting the target directly (proximity fuse) and packs way more
punch (3-4 times heavier shell) than a regular
30 mm (like Pantsir, Tunguska or BMP-2/3).
Which all apparently translate to a higher kill
probability against drone type targets. Come to think of it, S-60 was
designed 80 years ago to protect the troops against relatively low and
slow flying, propeller driven aerial vehicles.
thecradle | A senior Israeli official revealed to the New York Times (NYT) on 12 October that Tel Aviv is providing Ukraine with “basic intelligence” on Iranian drones used by Russia on the battlefield.
The unnamed official also revealed that a private Israeli firm was giving Ukraine satellite imagery of Russian troop positions.
In September, western media reported that Kiev had asked Israel to share intelligence
on “any support” Iran has been giving to Russia. “The Israelis gave us
some intelligence, but we need much more,” a senior Ukrainian official
who spoke with Axios was quoted as saying.
Hebrew media revealed earlier that an Israeli defense contractor is supplying
anti-drone systems to the Ukrainian military by way of Poland, in order
to circumvent Israel’s official stance of not selling advanced arms to
Kiev.
The unofficial sales are likely a stopgap measure to make up for the
refusal of Israeli officials to sell Ukraine their Iron Dome missile
defense system, reportedly in a bid to maintain strategic relations with
Russia in Syria.
The Israeli defense and foreign ministries on Wednesday declined to
comment on long-standing requests from the government in Kiev and its
western backers to acquire the Iron Dome system, including pleas made
since this week’s Russian missile barrage.
“Israel has great experience with air defense and Iron Dome, and we
need exactly the same system in our city,” Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko
said in an interview 11 October. “We have been talking with them a long
time about it. Those discussions have not been successful,” he added.
The reluctance
by Tel Aviv to aid its US-sponsored analogue has not changed much since
the war erupted in February, drawing the ire of Ukrainian officials.
“Everybody knows that your missile defense systems are the best,”
President Volodomyr Zelensky said while pleading with the Israeli
parliament in the spring.
“I don’t know what happened to Israel,” he said in an interview with
French TV5 channel on 23 September. “I am in shock, because I don’t
understand why they couldn’t give us air defenses.”
DefenseNews | Israel
said its Iron Dome defense system has been a great success, with a 90%
interception rate against incoming rocket fire. But officials say the
system is expensive to deploy. Bennett has said someone in Gaza can fire
a rocket toward Israel for a few hundred dollars, but it costs tens of
thousands of dollars for the Iron Dome to intercept it.
The
Defense Ministry released a short video showing what it said were the
new system’s successful interceptions of rockets, mortars and an
unmanned aerial vehicle. The video, which was highly edited and set to
music, appeared to show a laser beam coming out of a ground station,
hitting the targets and smashing them into small pieces.
Bennett said in February that Israel would begin using the system within a year.
Israel
has already developed or deployed a series of systems meant to
intercept everything from long-range missiles to rockets launched from
just a few kilometers (miles) away. It has also outfitted its tanks with
a missile-defense system.
Talks
on restoring Iran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers have
stalled. Israel opposes the deal, saying it does not do enough to curb
Iran’s nuclear program or its military activities across the region, and
Israeli officials have said they will unilaterally do what’s necessary
to protect the country.
wikipedia | Although Iron Dome has proven its effectiveness against rocket attacks, Defense Ministry
officials are concerned it will not be able to handle more massive
arsenals possessed by Hezbollah in Lebanon should a conflict arise.
Although in Operation Protective Edge
it had a 90 percent hit rate against only rockets determined to be
headed for populated areas, 735 intercepts were made at a cost of
$70,000–100,000 per interceptor; with an estimated 100,000 rockets
possessed by Hezbollah, Iron Dome systems could be fiscally and
physically overwhelmed by dozens of incoming salvos. In 2014 Directed-energy weapons were being investigated as a complement to Iron Dome, with lower system cost and lower cost per shot. Solid-state lasers
worldwide have power levels ranging from 10–40 kW; to destroy a rocket
safely from 15–20 km (9.3–12.4 mi) away, several low-power beams could
coordinate and converge on one spot to burn through its outer shell and
destroy it. Because laser beams become distorted and ineffective in
foggy or heavy cloud conditions, any laser weapon would need to be
complemented by Iron Dome.[67]
In 1996, the Israelis developed the Nautilus
prototype and later deployed it in Kiryat Shmona, Israel's northernmost
city along the Lebanese border. It used a collection of components from
other systems and succeeded in keeping a beam on the same point for two
continuous seconds using an early prototype of the Green Pine radar.
Nautilus succeeded in its goal to prove the concept was feasible, but
it was never deployed operationally, as the government believed that
sending in ground troops to stop rocket fire at source was more
cost-effective.[67]
At the 2014 Singapore Air Show, Rafael unveiled its Iron Beamlaser air-defense system. Iron Beam is a directed-energy weapon
made to complement the Iron Dome system by using a high-energy laser to
destroy rockets, mortar bombs, and other airborne threats.[68] Development of the system began some time after the joint United States and Israel Nautilus laser development program ended.[3]
In December 2014, former Israeli Air Force chief and head of Boeing Israel David Ivry showed interest in the American Laser Weapon System (LaWS). Earlier that month, the U.S. Navy had revealed that the LaWS had been mounted on the USS Ponce and locked onto and destroyed designated targets with near-instantaneous lethality, with each laser shot costing less than $1.[67]
In February 2022, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett
announced that a ground-based laser system would begin deployment
within a year, first as a trial and then operationally. The system will
first be deployed to the south of the country to areas most under threat
from rockets fired from the Gaza Strip; the ultimate goal is for Israel
to be surrounded by a "laser wall" to protect from rockets, missiles,
and UAVs.[69]
While lasers are cheaper to fire per shot, they can be impacted by
weather, have a slow rate of fire, and have less range. Therefore they
will be used in conjunction with Iron Dome in situations where they can
reduce overall interception costs.[70]
A procurement contract for the Iron Beam system was signed the next
month, however the schedule for fielding was revealed to be delayed for
several years.[71]
wikipedia | The MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, the primary of its kind used by the United States Army and several allied states. It is manufactured by the U.S. defense contractor Raytheon and derives its name from the radar component of the weapon system. The AN/MPQ-53 at the heart of the system is known as the "Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target" which is a backronym for PATRIOT. The Patriot system replaced the Nike Hercules system as the U.S. Army's primary High to Medium Air Defense (HIMAD) system and replaced the MIM-23 Hawk
system as the U.S. Army's medium tactical air defense system. In
addition to these roles, Patriot has been given the function of the U.S.
Army's anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, which is now Patriot's primary mission. The system is expected to stay fielded until at least 2040.[5]
Patriot systems have been sold to the armed forces of the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Taiwan, Greece, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Romania and Sweden. South Korea purchased several second-hand Patriot systems from Germany after North Korea test-launched ballistic missiles to the Sea of Japan and proceeded with underground nuclear testing in 2006.[6]Jordan also purchased several second-hand Patriot systems from Germany.
Poland hosts training rotations of a battery of U.S. Patriot launchers. This started in the town of Morąg in May 2010, but was later moved further from the Russian border to Toruń and Ustka due to Russian objections.[7]
On December 4, 2012, NATO authorized the deployment of Patriot missile launchers in Turkey to protect the country from missiles fired in the civil war in neighboring Syria.[8] Patriot was one of the first tactical systems in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to employ lethal autonomy in combat.[9]
The Patriot system gained prestige during the Persian Gulf War of 1991 with the claimed engagement of over 40 Iraqi Scud missiles. The system was successfully used against Iraqi missiles in 2003 Iraq War, and has also been used by Saudi and Emirati forces in the Yemen conflict against Houthi missile attacks. The Patriot system achieved its first undisputed shootdowns of enemy aircraft in the service of the Israeli Air Defense Command. Israeli MIM-104D batteries shot down two HamasUAVs during Operation Protective Edge on August 31, 2014, and later, on September 23, 2014, an Israeli Patriot battery shot down a Syrian Air ForceSukhoi Su-24 which had penetrated the airspace of the Golan Heights, achieving the system's first shootdown of a manned enemy aircraft.[10]
moonofalabama | The Americans are now crying ‘uncle’ about Russia’s hypersonic
weapons. After the most recent flight test of the scramjet-powered
Zircon cruise missile, the Washington Post on July 11 carried a Nato statement of complaint:
"Russia’s new hypersonic missiles are highly destabilizing
and pose significant risks to security and stability across the
Euro-Atlantic area," the statement said.
At the same time, talks have begun on the ‘strategic dialog’
between the US and Russia, as agreed at the June 16 Geneva Summit of
the two presidents. The two sides had already agreed to extend the START
treaty on strategic weapons that has been in effect for a decade, but,
notably, it was the US side that initiated the summit—perhaps spurred by
the deployment of the hypersonic, intercontinental-range Avangard
missile back in 2019, when US weapons inspectors were present, as per
START, to inspect the Avangard as it was lowered into its missile silos.
But what exactly is a hypersonic missile—and why is it suddenly such a big deal?
We all remember when Vladimir Putin announced these wonder weapons
in his March 2018 address to his nation [and the world]. The response
from the US media was loud guffaws about ‘CGI’ cartoons and Russian
‘wishcasting.’ Well, neither Nato nor the Biden team are guffawing now.
Like the five stages of grief, the initial denial phase has slowly given
way to acceptance of reality—as Russia continues deploying already
operational missiles, like the Avangard and the air-launched Kinzhal,
now in Syria, as well as finishing up successful state trials of the
Zircon, which is to be operationally deployed aboard surface ships and
submarines, starting in early 2022. And in fact, there are a whole slew
of new Russian hypersonic missiles in the pipeline, some of them much
smaller and able to be carried by ordinary fighter jets, like the Gremlin aka GZUR.
The word hypersonic itself means a flight regime above the speed of Mach 5. That is simple enough, but it is not only about speed.
More important is the ability to MANEUVER at those high speeds, in
order to avoid being shot down by the opponent’s air defenses. A
ballistic missile can go much faster—an ICBM flies at about 6 to 7
km/s, which is about 15,000 mph, about M 25 high in the atmosphere.
[Mach number varies with temperature, so it is not an absolute
measure of speed. The same 15,000 mph would only equal M 20 at sea
level, where the temperature is higher and the speed of sound is also
higher.]
But a ballistic missile flies on a straightforward
trajectory, just like a bullet fired from a barrel of a gun—it cannot
change direction at all, hence the word ballistic.
This means that ballistic missiles can, in theory, be
tracked by radar and shot down with an interceptor missile. It should be
noted here that even this is a very tough task, despite the
straight-line ballistic trajectory. Such an interception has never been
demonstrated in combat, not even with intermediate-range ballistic
missiles [IRBMs], of the kind that the DPRK fired off numerous times,
sailing above the heads of the US Pacific Fleet in the Sea of Japan,
consisting of over a dozen Aegis-class Ballistic Missile Defense ships, designed specifically for the very purpose of shooting down IRBMs.
Such an interception would have been a historic demonstration
of military technology—on the level of the shock and awe of Hiroshima!
But no interception was ever attempted by those ‘ballistic missile
defense’ ships, spectating as they were, right under the flight paths of
the North Korean rockets!
The bottom line is that hitting even a straight-line ballistic
missile has never been successfully demonstrated in actual practice. It
is a very hard thing to do.
But let’s lower our sights a little from ICBMs and IRBMs [and even
subsonic cruise missiles] to a quite ancient missile technology, the
Soviet-era Scud, first introduced into service in 1957! A recent case
with a Houthi Scud missile fired at Saudi Arabia in December 2017 shows
just how difficult missile interception really is:
At around 9 p.m…a loud bang shook the domestic terminal at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport.
‘There was an explosion at the airport,’ a man said in a video taken
moments after the bang. He and others rushed to the windows as emergency
vehicles streamed onto the runway.
Another video, taken from the tarmac, shows the emergency vehicles at
the end of the runway. Just beyond them is a plume of smoke, confirming the blast and indicating a likely point of impact.
The Houthi missile, identified as an Iranian-made Burqan-2 [a copy of
a North Korean Scud, itself a copy of a Chinese copy of the original
Russian Scud from the 1960s], flew over 600 miles before hitting the Riyadh international airport. The US-made Patriot missile defense system fired FIVE interceptor shots at the missile—all of them missed!
Laura Grego, a missile expert at the Union of Concerned
Scientists, expressed alarm that Saudi defense batteries had fired five
times at the incoming missile.
‘You shoot five times at this missile and they all miss?
That's shocking,’ she said. ‘That's shocking because this system is
supposed to work.’
Ms Grego knows what she’s talking about—she holds a physics doctorate
from Caltech and has worked in missile technology for many years. Not
surprisingly, American officials first claimed the Patriot missiles had
done their job and shot the Scud down. This was convincingly debunked in
the extensive expert analysis that ran in the NYT: Did American Missile Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia?
This was not the first time that Patriot ‘missile defense’ against this supposedly obsolete missile failed spectacularly:
On February 25, 1991, an Iraqi Scud hit the barracks in
Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers from the U.S. Army's 14’th
Quartermaster Detachment.
A government investigation revealed that the failed intercept at
Dhahran had been caused by a software error in the system's handling of
timestamps. The Patriot missile battery at Dhahran had been in operation
for 100 hours, by which time the system's internal clock had drifted by
one-third of a second. Due to the missile's speed this was equivalent
to a miss distance of 600 meters.
Whether this explanation is factual or not, the Americans’ initial
claims of wild success in downing nearly all of the 80 Iraqi Scuds
launched, was debunked by MIT physicist Theodore Postol, who concluded that no missiles were in fact intercepted!
NYTimes | The official story was clear: Saudi forces shot down
a ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebel group last month at
Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh. It was a victory for the Saudis and for
the United States, which supplied the Patriot missile defense system.
“Our system knocked the missile out of the air,”
President Trump said the next day from Air Force One en route to Japan,
one of the 14 countries that use the system. “That’s how good we are.
Nobody makes what we make, and now we’re selling it all over the world.”
But an analysis of photos and videos of the strike posted to social media suggests that story may be wrong.
Instead, evidence analyzed by a research team of
missile experts appears to show the missile’s warhead flew unimpeded
over Saudi defenses and nearly hit its target, Riyadh’s airport. The
warhead detonated so close to the domestic terminal that customers
jumped out of their seats.
Saudi officials did not respond to a request for
comment. Some U.S. officials cast doubt on whether the Saudis hit any
part of the incoming missile, saying there was no evidence that it had.
Instead, they said, the incoming missile body and warhead may have come
apart because of its sheer speed and force.
The findings show that the Iranian-backed
Houthis, once a ragtag group of rebels, have grown powerful enough to
strike major targets in Saudi Arabia, possibly shifting the balance of
their years-long war. And they underscore longstanding doubts about
missile defense technology, a centerpiece of American and allied
national defense strategies, particularly against Iran and North Korea.
“Governments lie about the effectiveness of
these systems. Or they’re misinformed,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an analyst
who led the research team, which shared its findings with The New York
Times. “And that should worry the hell out of us.”
SCMP | When US President Joe Biden released his national security strategy
on Wednesday, the report did not mention Africa much – one brief
discussion near the end on building “US-Africa partnerships” and a
handful of other mentions scattered across the document’s 48 pages.
However,
military analysts say the continent is not only on the US radar but is a
major arena of competition with China and Russia.
The
main thrust of the strategy continues a theme Biden has sounded since
taking office last year: the US will focus on competing with China and
containing Russia.
In Africa, Beijing has become the single largest trading partner and built mega infrastructure projects through its Belt and Road Initiative,
while Moscow is the largest military arms supplier and its companies
have invested heavily in the continent’s extractive industries.
“China
and Russia understand very well Africa’s strategic significance,” Major
General Todd Wasmund, commander of the US Southern European Task Force,
Africa, told a discussion at the Association of the US Army’s annual
conference on Monday.
“As
the Army refocuses on China – our pacing challenge – as well as the
acute threat posed by Russia, it’s important to recognise that both
countries are actively competing in Africa.”
The
US says it will outcompete China and Russia by investing at home,
building a coalition of like-minded states, and modernising its
military. According to the strategy, the US will “counter democratic
backsliding by imposing costs for coups and pressing for progress on
civilian transitions” and “push back on the destabilising impact of the
Russia-backed Wagner Group”, the Moscow-based mercenary network.
“These are sensible priorities, but they’re also not surprising given
Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which delayed the strategy for months, and
America’s rising tensions with China, which date from well before Joe
Biden became president,” Christopher S. Chivvis, the director of the
American Statecraft programme at the Carnegie Endowment, said.
Wasmund
discussed how the army used its training of African militaries through
its 2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade to ward off the growing
Chinese and Russian influence on the continent.
“They
are seeking to influence events on the continent in their favour using
political influence, disinformation, economic leverage and malign
military activity. We also know that violent extremist organisations are
a persistent threat,” Wasmund said.
eeas.europa |Here, Bruges is a good example of the European
garden. Yes, Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything
works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic
prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build
- the three things together. And here, Bruges is maybe a good
representation of beautiful things, intellectual life, wellbeing.
#Opinion by Maria Zakharova@JosepBorrellF compared Europe to a garden, the rest of the world to a jungle.
☝️Europe built that “garden” through plundering. World’s most prosperous system, created in Europe, was nurtured by “roots” in colonies.
The rest of the world – and you know this very
well, Federica – is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world
is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden. The gardeners
should take care of it, but they will not protect the garden by building
walls. A nice small garden surrounded by high walls in order to prevent
the jungle from coming in is not going to be a solution. Because the
jungle has a strong growth capacity, and the wall will never be high
enough in order to protect the garden.
The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans
have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the
rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.
Yes, this is my most important message: we have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world.
We are privileged people. We built a combination of
these three things – political freedom, economic prosperity, social
cohesion – and we cannot pretend to survive as an exception. It has to
be a way of supporting the others facing the big challenges of our time.
So, thank you, Federica, for hosting this experience, this pilot programme of the [European] Diplomatic Academy.
As the diplomats say, one told me: “In diplomacy,
you have to say the truth. You cannot lie – well, formally, you cannot
lie. You have to say the truth. You have to say only the truth but not
all the truth.” But if we want to engage frankly and honestly, to
discuss about the real problems and looking for solutions, then you have
to tell all the truth – but we will do it later.
Today, just let me tell you that I am happy to
participate in what can be said - and you said that - a “moment of
creation”, to be “present at the creation”. To be “present at the
creation” are some words that were said many years ago by one of the
most famous diplomats, George Kennan - in George Kennan’s memoirs. And
these memoirs are still considered the best insider account of the
framing of the United States policy in the post-war – with post war, I
mean post-World War II.
Now, we are definitely out of the Cold War and the
post-Cold War. The post-Cold War has ended with the Ukrainian war, with
the Russian aggression against Ukraine. And we are certainly living also
a “moment of creation” of a new world. Because this war is changing a
lot of things, and certainly it is changing the European Union. This war
will create a different European Union, from different perspectives.
middleastmonitor | Twenty-five years before Israel was
established on the ruins of historic Palestine, a Russian Jewish Zionist
leader, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, argued
that a Jewish state in Palestine could only survive if it exists
"behind an iron wall" of defence. Jabotinsky was speaking figuratively,
but Zionist leaders after him who embraced his teachings eventually
turned the principle of the iron wall into a tangible reality. Israel
and Palestine are now disfigured by endless walls, made of concrete and
iron, which zigzag in and around a land that was meant to represent
inclusion, spiritual harmony and coexistence.
Gradually, new ideas regarding Israel's "security" emerged, such as "fortress Israel" and "villa in the jungle",
an obviously racist metaphor used repeatedly by former Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Barak, which depicts Israel falsely as an oasis of harmony
and democracy amid Middle Eastern chaos and violence. For the Israeli
"villa" to remain prosperous and peaceful, according to Barak, the state
needed to do more than merely maintain its military edge; it had to
ensure that the "chaos" does not breach the perimeters of Israel's
perfect existence.
Israelis want to be able to kill, without being killed in return; subdue
and occupy Palestinians militarily without the least degree of
resistance, armed or otherwise. They want to imprison thousands of
Palestinians without the slightest protest or even the most basic
questioning of Israel's military judicial system. And yet these colonial
fantasies, which have satisfied and guided the thinking of successive
Zionist and Israeli leaders since Jabotinsky, work only in theory.
Even the Iron Dome missile defence system —
an "iron wall" of a different kind — has been a failure in terms of its
ability to intercept crudely-made Palestinian rockets. Professor
Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has argued that the success rate of the system is "drastically lower" than what the Israeli government and army have reported.
Even the Israeli "villa" was compromised from within when the popular Palestinian uprising of May 2021 demonstrated that Israel's native Palestinian Arab citizens remain
an organic part of the wider Palestinian community. The violence meted
out by police and right-wing militants, that many Arab communities
inside Israel had to endure for taking a moral stance in support of
their brethren in occupied Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, showed
that the supposed "harmony" within Barak's "villa" was a fragile
construct that shattered within a few days.
Nonetheless, Israel still refuses to
accept what is both obvious and obviously inevitable: a country which
exists solely due to "iron walls" and military force will never be able
to find true peace, and will always suffer the consequences of the
violence it inflicts upon others.
TCH | On February 24, 2022, Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, Daleep Singh, told the world what to expect about the U.S. and allied response to the war in Ukraine. We called the white house strategy “World War Reddit.” Here’s what Deputy NSA Singh said:
…”Strategic success in the 21st
century is not about a physical land grab of territory; that’s what
Putin has done. In this century, strategic power is increasingly measured and exercised by economic strength, by technological sophistication and your story –
who you are, what your values are; can you attract ideas and talent and
goodwill? And on each of those measures, this will be a failure for
Russia.” ~ Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh
Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh boiled down geopolitical power to a cultural issue of social likeability. Realize that what he said is the White House strategy leading our foreign policy. That strategy is why the White House enlisted TikTok influencers for their Ukraine effort [link]. Remember, the State Dept is also leading this effort.
TCH |THIS video from the White House briefing today, you
absolutely must watch to gain a fulsome understanding of how the modern
political left views the world of geopolitical contests in 2022.
Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy Director of the National
Economic Council, Daleep Singh, was presented at the podium today to
explain the strategic policy of the Biden administration toward Russia.
Singh’s remarks outlining the view of the ‘west’ toward defeating
Russia are eloquent yet batshit crazy in their ideological context.
Daleep Singh sounds like the senior head of a Google Human Resources
operation telling the department heads how they need to convey their
feelings in order to hire the talent for continued growth in the
industry. This is a direct quote:
…”Ultimately, the goal of our
sanctions is to make this a strategic failure for Russia; and let’s
define a little bit of what that means. Strategic success in the 21st
century is not about a physical land grab of territory; that’s what
Putin has done. In this century, strategic power is increasingly measured and exercised by economic strength, by technological sophistication and your story
– who you are, what your values are; can you attract ideas and talent
and goodwill? And on each of those measures, this will be a failure for
Russia.”
It’s almost Friday! Who am I kidding ... Weekends haven’t been a thing for me for a while. Congress isn’t back in session til Nov 16th so doing some great Army Civil Affairs Officer training! Grateful to be in Hawai’i. Sending you all aloha & best wishes wherever you are! #ALOHApic.twitter.com/EXxU8klhjD
armytimes | Congresswoman and former presidential candidate
Tulsi Gabbard has left the Hawaii Army National Guard for a new
assignment with a California-based Army Reserve unit, military officials
said.
Gabbard’s new part-time assignment as an Army Reserve civil affairs officer follows 17 years with the Hawaii National Guard, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Sunday.
The
Hawaii National Guard confirmed Gabbard, who holds the rank of major,
made the switch in June, but the transfer to an out-of-state unit was
not formally announced, even to the state’s National Guard personnel.
Gabbard’s
new posting, the 351st Civil Affairs Command, is based in Mountain
View, California, but has subordinate units in other Western states.
The Army Reserve supports the active-duty Army and has more commands and
promotion opportunities. Like the National Guard, most Army reservists
serve part-time.
“The
House in Congress isn’t scheduled to be back in session til Nov. 16th
so I’m taking advantage of the time to do some great Army Civil Affairs
training! I’m grateful to be able to do it in Hawaii,” the 39-year-old
Democrat said in a social media message posted Thursday.
Gabbard’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gabbard served in the Hawaii Legislature and Honolulu City Council before being elected to the U.S. House in 2012.
wikipedia | The Information Operations
(IO) is the Unit specifically and officially tasked with deployment of
‘information related capabilities’ (IRCs), which is euphemistic U.S. Military jargon
for rapidly developing a broad range of propaganda, disinformation and
any other tools of political subterfuge available in order to influence,
disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision making processes of foreign
governments, such as through creating propaganda, suppressing foreign
news outlets and communications systems with ‘media blackouts’
particularly during operations also involving significant traditional
military combat or other activities likely to result in imagery not
beneficial to the United States, stirring up civil unrest, supporting
false flag operations with false reporting in support of the U.S.
narrative, bribery, blackmail etc. but officially not through any
supportive role in political assassination support due to the Church Committee
controversy. Generally, foreign assassinations and most other actual
use of force operations are done in collaboration with classified
elements of the U.S. military & intelligence communities such as
the CIA and not within IO Units themselves unless absolutely necessary, such as if ambushed unexpectedly.
Equivalent foreign military intelligence programs are officially under the purview of FBI Counter-Intelligence (COINTEL].
The 151st Theater Information Operations is Group (151st TIOG) was realigned under the command of USACAPOC(A) in October 2015.
Information Operations Soldiers are integral to U.S. missions across Northwest Africa, East Africa, Europe, Middle East, and various other locations. If you see something, say something.
zerohedge | Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was confronted by anti-war
protesters during a Wednesday town hall event she hosted in the Bronx.
The crowd at the sparsely attended event was dominated by her own
progressive constituency, but who loudly voiced their anger and
frustration over selling out on foreign policy, especially when it comes to her positions and votes
on the Ukraine war, which has seen the US hand over an unprecedented
tens of billions of dollars in weapons and aid. This has made her
indistinguishable from her establishment colleagues on both sides of the
aisle, including neocon Republicans and hawkish Dems.
One protester loudly denounced her for policy positions that will lead to a "nuclear war" with Russia as seen in a now viral clip. Indeed an article in Unherd observed starting last Spring: The Squad nowhere to be seenas Ukraine package sails through- a
trend which has only continued. Though AOC and Democratic party
leadership under her friend and "mentor" Nancy Pelosi have worked hard
to protect her image as a leading young Progressive, she stood helpless
on the stage as the crowd turned against her, calling her out as a
fraud.
While discussing ongoing escalation among nuclear-armed powers over Ukraine, a protester had enough, yelling back at AOC: "None of this matters unless there’s a nuclear war, which you voted to send arms and weapons to Ukraine."
He
then called her out for her initial "outsider" views on the campaign
trail, which are now anything but. She was accused of "playing with
lives of American citizens" by stoking proxy war in Ukraine, leading to
nuclear showdown with Russia:
"You ran as an outsider, yet you’ve been voting to start this war in Ukraine. You’re voting to start a third nuclear war with Russia and China. Why are you playing with the lives of American citizens?"
Previously
after the New York Democrat voted in favor of sending $40 billion in
military and humanitarian aid in May, she's made multiple statements in
favor of ramping up aid to the Ukrainians amid the Russian invasion. "As
Ukraine fights against the Russian invasion, we have a moral obligation
to assist any way we can," Ocasio-Cortez had said.
Ironically
this is the very week former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has come
under mainstream media fire and an avalanche of online denunciations and
attacks for her stance on Russia-Ukraine which runs deeply counter to
Washington orthodoxy. She announced this week she'll be leaving the
Democratic Pary, "an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness" - as she described in her own blistering video commentary.
In
the viral AOC town hall clip, a second protester can be seen loudly
asking why she can't be more like Gabbard. "Tulsi Gabbard, she's left
the Democratic Party because they are war hawks," he began.
"Tulsi Gabbard has shown guts where you’ve shown cowardice," the second protester said. "I believed in you, and you became the very thing you sought to fight against."
"That what you've become, you are the establishment! And you are the reason why everybody will end up in a nuclear war..."
Damascus
had rejected the – American – plan for a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline, to
the benefit of Iran-Iraq-Syria (for which a memorandum of understanding
was signed).
What
followed was a vicious, concerted “Assad must go” campaign: proxy war as
the road to regime change. The toxic dial went exponentially up with
the instrumentalization of ISIS – yet another chapter of the war of terror
(italics mine). Russia blocked ISIS, thus preventing regime change in
Damascus. The Empire of Chaos-favored pipeline bit the dust.
Now
the Empire finally exacted payback, blowing up existing pipelines – Nord
Stream (NS) and Nord Steam 2 (NS2) – carrying or about to carry Russian
gas to a key imperial economic competitor: the EU.
We
all know by now that Line B of NS2 has not been bombed, or even
punctured, and it’s ready to go. Repairing the other three – punctured –
lines would not be a problem: a matter of two months, according to
naval engineers. Steel on the Nord Streams is thicker than on modern
ships. Gazprom has offered to repair them – as long as Europeans behave
like grown-ups and accept strict security conditions.
We
all know that’s not going to happen. None of the above is discussed
across NATOsan media. That means that Plan A by the usual suspects
remains in place: creating a contrived natural gas shortage, leading to
the de-industrialization of Europe, all part of the Great Reset,
rebranded “The Great Narrative”.
Meanwhile,
the EU Muppet Show is discussing the ninth sanction package against
Russia. Sweden refuses to share with Russia the results of the dodgy
intra-NATO “investigation” of itself on who blew up the Nord Streams.
At Russian Energy Week, President Putin summarized the stark facts.
Europe
blames Russia for the reliability of its energy supplies even though it
was receiving the entire volume it bought under fixed contracts.
The “orchestrators of the Nord Stream terrorist attacks are those who profit from them”.
Repairing Nord Stream strings “would only make sense in the event of continued operation and security”.
Buying gas on the spot market will cause a €300 billion loss for Europe.
The rise in energy prices is not due to the Special Military Operation (SMO), but to the West’s own policies.
Yet
the Dead Can Dance show must go on. As the EU forbids itself to buy
Russian energy, the Brussels Eurocracy skyrockets their debt to the
financial casino. The imperial masters laugh all the way to the bank
with this form of collectivism – as they continue to profit from using
financial markets to pillage and plunder whole nations.
Which
bring us to the clincher: the Straussian/neo-con psychos controlling
Washington’s foreign policy eventually might – and the operative word is
“might” – stop weaponizing Kiev and start negotiations with Moscow only
after their main industrial competitors in Europe go bankrupt.
But
even that would not be enough – because one of NATO’s key “invisible”
mandates is to capitalize, whatever means necessary, on food resources
across the Pontic-Caspian steppe: we’re talking about 1 million km2 of
food production from Bulgaria all the way to Russia.
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
