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Tervell [he/him]

@ Tervell @hexbear.net

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from August 3rd to August 9th, 2026 - Trump Yet Again Pauses "Planned" Strikes On Iran / Ukraine Tries To Become Priority For US Again, Fails

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  • https://xcancel.com/policytensor/status/2084055981583908910

    I agree that the "save munitions for china" argument is silly--because it's very clear that the United States is totally unprepared for a major power war, can't fight a war with China in the near or medium term, & needs to radically rethink its defense strategy. The reason to stop wasting munitions in the ME is because it is just that, a waste. There's no clear strategy & the U.S. would be better off just leaving.

    This is correct. The Iran war exposed important limits to U.S. military power that should prompt American policymakers and military planners to rethink many of their long-held assumptions.

    Agreed. What long-held assumptions must be revised? Here is what we have learned since February:

    • A. The mature precision-strike regime is definitely here. The second missile age is strategically defense dominant in the sense that it is biased in favor of the situated power and against the power projection of the visiting world power. This is by definition a multipolar world.
    • B. The US command of the global commons is gone. There are now zones of denial near the great missile powers where the US does not enjoy unimpeded military access. These great missile powers are poles of the multipolar world.
    • C. The problem of base vulnerability has emerged as the paramount problem of US force posture. The US is in the process of closing down its bases within range of Iranian SRBMs because they are too vulnerable to Iranian precision strikes. The problem of base vulnerability is even more pronounced in the Western Pacific, given the scale of Chinese missile capabilities. Both the HAS solution advocated by the defense intellectuals and the air force's idea of agile combat employment (ACE) are mathematically challenged. All China needs to defeat HAS and ACE is field sufficient missiles and drones to neutralize both. I have shown how US bases in the region will not survive the first week of a Chinese counter-base campaign, even with their present limited missile order of battle. (https://hexbear.net/post/8408736/7149062)
    • D. Deterrence in Asia is dead. Not because the interceptor magazine is depleted, but because it was wildly insufficient to begin with. In the era of precision-mass, active base defense cannot work in the vicinity of the great missile powers.
    • E. The second missile age has ended the sanctuary era. Iran has proven that the US cannot count on in-theater rear-area sanctuaries. Given China's present and future conventional ICBM capabilities, there will be no sanctuary at all in a war with China. This means in particular that attacking launch sites on the Chinese mainland will almost certainly result in missile strikes on the US homeland.
    • F. Ultimately, all the foundations of the unipolar world have vanished. The US has a long way to go before the means and ends of US military policy and force posture are reconciled. The US needs to revert back to a grand-strategy of hemispheric defense. There is no recognition of this in the establishment although sane voices are beginning to emerge. But the imperial political culture means that the adjustment process will be long and painful.
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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from August 3rd to August 9th, 2026 - Trump Yet Again Pauses "Planned" Strikes On Iran / Ukraine Tries To Become Priority For US Again, Fails

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  • https://archive.ph/XxwV8

    Oman is cozying up to China as US throws Mideast into disarray

    The war in Iran is pushing smaller states to diversify their great power partnerships — if Washington will let them

    Earlier this month, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Miao Deyu met with Omani National Security Council Secretary-General Idris Abdulrahman Al Kindi. The pair reaffirmed support for each other’s core interests, discussed deepening cooperation between the Belt and Road Initiative and Oman Vision 2040, and talked about regional security issues. During the visit, Al Kindi also met with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official Jin Xin. Both sides expressed interest in expanding bilateral exchanges and cooperation, while Oman said it hopes to learn from the CCP’s governance experience and strengthen collaboration in trade, investment, industrial parks, and tourism. The meeting was notable for the level of representation. The participation of Oman’s National Security Council secretary-general suggested that bilateral engagement is expanding beyond trade toward political and strategic consultation. It also sent clear messages to Beijing that China is becoming a broader strategic partner, and to Washington that Muscat intends to preserve its foreign policy independence. “Oman survives by ensuring that no single relationship can hold its sovereignty hostage,” said Hamed S. Al Ghaithi, senior research associate at Country Risk Solutions, in an interview with RS, noting that diversification of partnerships is the “oldest instinct in modern Omani statecraft.” “What the war has done is convert a preference into a necessity,” he said.

    As tensions with Washington rise and the fallout from the Iran war reverberates across the Middle East, Oman is seeking greater strategic autonomy by diversifying its international partnerships. Its expanding relationship with China is a critical part of that agenda, as Muscat seeks to gain greater flexibility without abandoning its longstanding security ties with the United States. At stake is a fundamental question about the extent to which the U.S. will show flexibility to smaller states that seek to navigate among competing centers of power in an increasingly multipolar world rather than align exclusively with Washington. Oman, known for its independent foreign policy, has long balanced relations among regional states and global powers, embracing the role of a neutral mediator and partner. It is not seeking a grand pivot away from the West. But it is hoping to preserve strategic autonomy and strengthen its resilience in an increasingly multipolar world. Within this context, Oman’s relationship with China warrants particular attention.

    Diversifying without realignment

    Recent events have reinforced Omani concerns about excessive dependence on Washington. Particularly concerning from Oman’s point of view were the Trump administration’s decision to sabotage Omani-facilitated diplomacy with Tehran in late February by launching a reckless war on Iran, as well as Trump’s subsequent threat to “blow up” Oman amid reports that Muscat was in talks with Tehran about imposing a joint toll on the Strait of Hormuz. “From Muscat’s perspective, a country that has acted for decades as a reliable mediator and maintained constructive relations with Washington should not be publicly threatened merely because it refuses to surrender its independent foreign policy,” said an Omani geopolitical analyst who spoke to RS on the condition of anonymity. “Oman is therefore likely to deepen relations not only with China, but also with European powers, India, Russia, and other Asian states. The objective is not to replace one dependency with another. It is to create a wider network of economic, diplomatic, technological, and security partnerships that gives Oman greater room to maneuver,” he explained, adding that a “more openly multipolar Omani foreign policy” could become the outcome. “Oman’s neutrality and mediation role will remain central, but Muscat may become more assertive in defending its sovereignty and less willing to accommodate pressure to choose sides.” Oman generally avoids dramatic realignments. Instead, Muscat is seeking to expand relationships incrementally, preserving longstanding Western security ties while deepening diplomatic, economic and political engagement with China and other Asian partners. “Oman is not exchanging one patron for another,” said Al Ghaithi. “It is redistributing risk so that it never again faces a moment where a single capital can dictate its choices.”

    The broadening China-Oman partnership

    While energy remains the foundation of Sino-Omani relations, the partnership is likely to broaden into more investment and partnerships in logistics, manufacturing, renewable energy, and digital infrastructure, reflecting the alignment between Oman Vision 2040 and China’s connectivity ambitions. As a credible and effective intermediary in the Middle East, Oman pursues a diplomatic approach to regional security dilemmas that gives Beijing ample reason to view Muscat as a valuable partner. As China constantly works to build up its image as a champion of political dialogue and international law, as well as a constructive stakeholder in the Middle East, Beijing and Muscat’s cooperation stands to extend into new domains including crisis management, maritime governance, and the facilitation of post-conflict regional diplomacy. That both countries, along with Iraq, used their diplomatic leverage to help bring Saudi Arabia and Iran to renormalization of formal relations in March 2023 underscored such synergies between Oman and the Asian giant. “China and Oman share an interest in preventing the Strait of Hormuz from becoming either a battlefield or an instrument of political coercion. China requires uninterrupted energy flows, while Oman requires stability, freedom of navigation and respect for the sovereignty of the states bordering the Strait. This creates a strong basis for maritime and diplomatic coordination,” the Omani analyst told RS. “China may also find Oman useful as a diplomatic bridge. Oman maintains experience in mediation and communication with parties that often refuse to speak directly to one another. China, meanwhile, seeks to present itself as a supporter of diplomatic settlements and a significant political actor in the Middle East. Cooperation between the two countries could therefore extend into conflict de-escalation, maritime arrangements and post-war regional dialogue,” he added. Bilateral cooperation is also likely to expand in areas like maritime security coordination, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, military education, intelligence exchanges on non-traditional threats, and limited defense procurement in areas where Chinese systems offer practical advantages. However, such cooperation is likely to remain confined within clear boundaries. Muscat favors selective diversification on security issues rather than alliance commitments or permanent military basing.

    Balancing great powers without choosing sides

    Oman’s longstanding defense relationships with the U.K. and U.S. make it highly unlikely that China will replace Western partners as Muscat’s principal security guarantor. Instead, recent regional instability has reinforced Oman’s preference for balanced partnerships that preserve strategic autonomy while expanding its diplomatic and economic options. Muscat will take necessary steps to avoid too much economic dependence on China, which could undermine the Sultanate’s sovereignty. This balancing strategy reflects a broader Omani view that strategic autonomy depends not on choosing one external partner over another, but on maintaining the flexibility to work with multiple powers while protecting national interests. “Oman is the test case for whether small states can preserve multi-alignment in a bifurcating order and whether the United States can tolerate partners rather than merely clients,” Al Ghaithi said. “If the current pressure succeeds in forcing Oman to choose, Washington will not gain a more obedient ally; it will lose the region’s most useful diplomatic instrument, and China will inherit, at no cost, a partnership Americans spent two centuries building.” “The question worth asking is not whether Oman is drifting toward China, but why American policy is doing so much of the pushing.”

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from August 3rd to August 9th, 2026 - Trump Yet Again Pauses "Planned" Strikes On Iran / Ukraine Tries To Become Priority For US Again, Fails

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  • https://archive.ph/aXEhw

    Navy retiring USS Fort Worth halfway through lifespan

    The $400 million littoral combat ship only entered service in 2012, but suffered from myriad operational problems and had less than two years at sea

    This week, the Navy retired a littoral combat ship only halfway through its lifespan. The USS Fort Worth, a surface combatant ship which cost $400 million to build, entered service in 2012. It was originally meant to serve until the late 2030s, but was retired early due to chronic repair issues and related costs, and longstanding concerns regarding its overall viability. A major issue for the USS Fort Worth was its combining gear, which connects its gas turbine and engines to its water jet shafts. The combining gear took critical damage back in 2016 when crew members failed to follow proper procedures while testing its engines, rendering the boat functionally unusable. The Navy initially scheduled the USS Fort Worth’s retirement for 2022, after only ten years of service. However, the Navy repurposed the ship instead, using it to test new technologies at a port in San Diego. “By retiring early-hull test platforms like Fort Worth, the Navy redirects investments toward upgrading the remaining LCS inventory with enhanced capabilities,” the Navy said in a statement this week. Its retirement helps ensure “the active ships remain relevant, combat-credible, and reliable throughout their service lives.”

    But, as Dan Grazier, the director of the Stimson Center’s National Security reform program, tells RS: “The whole Littoral Combat Ship concept has failed.” “It's a poorly designed ship that [has an] excessive maintenance burden,” Grazier said. To Grazier’s point, a 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found the Navy “hasn’t demonstrated that this type of ship can perform its intended missions,” and that it was less likely than its counterparts to withstand combat. The USS Fort Worth’s untimely demise is representative of a broader procurement crisis, where the Navy has repeatedly failed to deploy reliable ships that can perform their intended function. Rather, as Grazier tells RS, the Navy has often opted to build elaborately designed ships with unproven technologies, which often do not work as planned. “The Navy's now feeling the real consequences of years of bad policy,” Grazier said. “The size of the fleet is shrinking.” The Navy originally planned to buy 55 littoral combat ships; it cut back to 32 in 2014 as questions mounted about the program’s viability. It now has 27.

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  • https://archive.ph/T7eU2

    Key B-52 upgrades face cost, schedule risks: GAO

    A new audit from the Government Accountability Office found concerns with the Air Force’s modernization of the B-52 Stratofortress, which is planned to fly through the middle of the century.

    A host of upgrades meant to extend the life of the aging B-52 Stratofortress bombers face a number of cost and schedule risks, and officials aren’t properly using all tools at their disposal to shape the aircraft’s modernization, according to a new watchdog report. Collectively, the Air Force plans to spend roughly $21 billion on 13 different upgrades for the B-52, which will keep the Eisenhower-era bomber flying through the 2050s. But two key, expensive efforts — one to replace the aircraft’s eight engines, and another to swap out its radar — are “at risk for additional cost, schedule, and performance challenges,” the Government Accountability Office said in a report published today. The report found that the propulsion overhaul dubbed the Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP), which will switch out aging TF33 powerplants manufactured by Pratt & Whitney with modern Rolls-Royce F130 engines, is expected in 2033. That schedule is in line with previous estimates, but its expected cost has now swelled to $15.4 billion, approximately $400 million over the $15 billion projection previously shared by program officials. GAO notes that the cost growth for the CERP effort reflects an over 38 percent jump since 2018, which would normally have triggered a congressionally mandated notification known as Nunn-McCurdy — but didn’t in this case, because the program’s development has been delayed by nearly three years.

    GAO found development is now slated to kick off in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, which ended in June. (In May, the Air Force announced CERP passed a critical design review, which typically comes after the start of development known in Pentagon parlance as Milestone B.) But GAO warned that CERP’s overall schedule is still at risk, especially as both engine production and developmental flight testing are set to begin in FY29. Doing both concurrently, the watchdog warned, could mean that unwelcome discoveries spur costly and time-intensive rework. The hasty schedule is largely driven by the need to replace the aircraft’s TF33 engines that will become increasingly difficult to sustain as years pass. Any further delays for the engine overhaul could have cascading effects, GAO noted. While the Air Force is expanding depot capacity, the service has not planned for CERP delays beyond 2031, which risks disrupting the careful choreography of regular maintenance work and various modernization efforts for the in-demand B-52 fleet. Additional CERP schedule slips could render the Air Force “unable to effectively sustain the current B-52 engines and could result in too few B-52s to support operational requirements,” GAO found.

    Like with engines, the radar upgrade, dubbed the Radar Modernization Program (RMP) that will integrate an RTX sensor, has seen its own cost and schedule challenges. That program’s budget has ballooned 30 percent to over $2.9 billion — a number lower than a $3.3 billion estimate previously shared by officials, but still enough to previously trigger its own Nunn-McCurdy breach. Similar to prior schedule estimates, the Air Force anticipates RMP will be operational in the third quarter of FY30, three-and-a-half years later than originally expected. And it will come with its own risk of concurrency since production is planned to start with only two months of flight testing completed, out of 18 total planned. While the Air Force has implemented some cost and savings control measures, the service has also removed some unspecified performance requirements. GAO notes that “in this case, after contract award, the Air Force will receive less capability while paying more for the program.” The RMP effort also suffered a tragic setback in June when one of two flight test aircraft for the program crashed shortly after takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base in California, killing all eight crew on board. An Air Force official on Monday said that the program is focusing on supporting the mishap investigation, and will make schedule adjustments as necessary. Elsewhere, GAO noted that while some digital engineering is being used for the CERP program, the other 12 B-52 modernization efforts are not utilizing digital design tools in line with best practices. The dearth of digital engineering, GAO found, means “the Air Force may be missing opportunities to take advantage of efficiencies that digital engineering can provide, including avoiding future sustainment and supportability challenges.”

    The watchdog identified organizational issues as well, including that the B-52 fleet is lacking one-third of the unique support equipment it needs. Compounding the problem, it said the Air Force lacks clear guidance on who exactly is responsible for the life cycle management of that equipment. Without that clarity, GAO warned “the Air Force will likely face additional maintenance challenges, which may, in turn, negatively affect the availability of B-52 for operational deployment.” Owing to woes like a lack of spare parts, the report notes that the B-52’s mission capable rates “have not improved” since a November 2022 assessment that found the aircraft was failing to meet benchmarks. However, GAO said in its report today that mission capable rates, schedules and availability for the B-52 were withheld since those details were deemed “sensitive” by the Defense Department. Today the Air Force did not respond by press time when asked for updates on the modernization schedule for the B-52. Both the CERP and RMP efforts are led by prime contractor Boeing, which also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. GAO issued a total of six recommendations, ranging from implementing digital engineering to figuring out who’s responsible for the B-52’s support equipment. The Air Force fully concurred with five, but only partially concurred with a recommendation to delay the CERP’s production decision until the service analyzes the impact of recent cost increases and schedule delays.

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  • But there are reasons to think this problem is solvable. Here we step from the realm of the unconfirmed to the purely speculative. The Chinese have devoted enormous resources to plasma research, and Chinese scientists have claimed major breakthroughs in passing signals through plasma. Advancements here would go a long way towards resolving the fundamental constraints in ASBM design. The first is constant, external guidance at hypersonic speeds. We’ve already covered that a military actor like China can track the real-time position of a moving naval target using its ISR network. If that network can provide constant updates to a hypersonic missile during its flight, the pressure on the missile’s onboard seeker is greatly decreased because the search space shrinks massively. The Chinese have also possibly found solutions for seeking through the plasma sheath. It’s plausible that the Chinese possess a reliable, operational carrier killer today, and that they’re the only nation to ever have one. But this should be regarded as a holistic system, rather than just a particular missile. All the components in a highly sophisticated and staggeringly expensive chain reaching from the launcher on the ground to ISR satellites in space must work together.

    So where does this leave the Iranians? First, none of this proves Iran hasn't chosen restraint. What it does establish is that restraint is a more logical choice than it may at first appear. The Iranians don’t have the resources to create an integrated space-based ISR system like the Chinese have. Their coastal radars have suffered attrition. They’ve made massive leaps in missile technology, but this is just one link in a lengthy chain. Their best bet for the moment is attriting American naval defenses with cruise missiles and drones, but this is a tall and expensive order. A single CSG has hundreds of interceptors capable of shooting down slower aerial threats. Its radars, unlike the terrestrial ones the Iranians have already destroyed, are mobile. And American naval forces are intentionally operating at the edge of Iranian cruise missile range. The Iranians could expend hundreds of cruise missiles without much to show for it. Perhaps the most realistic possibility for the Iranians to get an edge on American naval forces would be getting a little help from their friends. Chinese and Russian ISR could greatly diminish Iran’s disadvantages in targeting, but it remains to be seen if either state would be willing to take that risk.

    A quick addendum on the Shahed because I've gotten this question several times both here and on Twitter. The reason a large wave of drones isn't a silver bullet to this problem is that they're slow. A Shahed 136 launched from a location 30 km from the Iranian coast against a carrier 270 km away will have an hour and a half of flight time. If its target is moving at a constant rate of 30 knots, it can travel around 83 km during that period. The Shahed will have to search for the carrier within a space of around 22,000 square kilometers, about the size of Slovenia. This is why I focus so much on real-time ISR in the piece. A wave of drones becomes viable only if the position of the target is known while they're in flight, and sent to the drones reliably so they can adjust their course. If this problem is solved, the drones then have to contend with the CSG's layers of air defenses. The radar coverage of a CSG is dense enough that we can presume the drone's location will be constantly known from a great distance. First, the carrier can sortie its air wing (~44 aircraft), and they can engage the drones long before they pose any danger to naval vessels. If this fails, they'll have to penetrate the CSG's electronic warfare suite and identify and track the target despite decoys and jammers. If this is possible, they then have to contend with the following, in rough order of range:

    • SM-2 medium-range interceptor missiles
    • ESSM short-range interceptor missiles
    • RAM short-range interceptor missiles
    • Mk 45 5-inch deck guns
    • Mk 38 25mm machine guns
    • Phalanx CIWS
    • .50 caliber machine guns

    Hopefully it's clear why even a large drone swarm might have trouble scoring a kill in this scenario.

    4/4

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  • USS Abraham Lincoln in the Iran War

    Despite all these layers of defenses, the American CSGs in the theater have been extremely cautious. The CSGs themselves loiter cautiously behind an invisible barrier 150 nautical miles (278 km) from the Iranian coast, rarely venturing beyond it. The distance is telling. Allow perhaps 30 kilometers between the coast and a plausible launcher position, and the CSGs sit just beyond the reach of most Iranian ASCMs. This shows they take the threat seriously, but it allows them to continue to sortie aircraft to strike Iran.

    (there's a map of the Lincoln's coordinates here that I can't really embed since it's not just a plain image file, so you might want to open up the article to check it)

    Iran's Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles

    Astute readers will be asking, “Ok, but what about Iranian anti-ship ballistic missiles?” Because, indeed, Iran has fielded ASBMs, and Ansar Allah has verifiably used them in combat. The most well-known of these systems is what Ansar Allah refers to as the Asef, which is believed to be based on the Iranian Khalij Fars (literally “Persian Gulf”). This missile supposedly has a 500 kg warhead, a 400 km range, and satellite-supplemented inertial guidance with an electro-optical terminal seeker. Ansar Allah used the Asef, or a similar system, to target at least 19 commercial shipping vessels from 2023 to the present. The track record is mixed, with several hits, many misses, and perhaps one vessel sunk, though it isn’t clear if an ASBM was used in that case. Based on the heritage of these systems, there’s little reason to expect them to enjoy the same advantages as Iran’s most advanced medium-range missiles, and they don’t present evidence that Iran has solved the fundamental problems in ASBM design. The publicly stated range of these systems suggests they have the profile of a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), and the accordingly lower speeds of short-range ballistic systems. There’s no evidence they can perform complex evasive maneuvers while still hitting their target, which is itself moving.** The profile of their trajectory is unknown. They may have trouble dealing with the evasive maneuvers that satellite imagery shows American ships performing.

    Recipe for Success

    The winning recipe for defeating modern air defense systems, based on the performance of Iranian MRBMs, looks something like this: The missile should be fast. Ideally, it would have a high impact speed, or a terminal boost capability like the Fattah-1, allowing it to accelerate (over Mach 5 at least) during the terminal phase to offset aerodynamic drag. It should be capable of performing evasive maneuvers and have a quasi-ballistic trajectory. And it should have a long range to put opposing naval forces within reach. The trick is designing a system with this profile that’s also capable of hitting a moving target, and the specific moving target intended. But the constraints here appear near-insurmountable. Electro-optical seekers fail within a plasma sheath. A projectile traveling at high-hypersonic speeds has almost no time to adjust its trajectory to track a target that may have moved kilometers during flight.

    Legenda

    One of the key answers to solving this problem is continuous, real-time, external ISR. The Soviets understood this as early as the 1960s, and began developing the Legenda satellite constellation in response. Legenda was extraordinarily ambitious. It would comprise a constellation of dozens of nuclear-powered radar and SIGINT satellites. The nuclear-powered component was necessary so the radar satellites could maintain an exceptionally low orbit—necessary for active radars in space—with regular reboosts. The satellites would provide worldwide coverage for tracking the exact position of naval targets. They would interface with the launch systems of the P-700 Granit (NATO: “Shipwreck”), the most massive (7,000 kg) anti-ship cruise missile ever fielded, which would be capable of ramjet-powered supersonic speeds exceeding Mach 2.5. The Granit would be launched in large swarms of dozens of missiles, with a lead missile with an active radar seeker flying above the rest and communicating the live position of the target via datalink. If that missile were shot down, another would take over.

    This was the first true end-to-end aircraft carrier kill chain, with every component designed from the ground up to destroy an American CSG specifically. The Soviets were the only power on earth with the resources and motivation to deploy the world’s first (nuclear powered!) dedicated naval ISR satellite constellation. But the Granit wasn’t fielded until 1983, and the full Legenda constellation wasn’t deployed until 1988. The program faced massive technical challenges and multiple major setbacks, which is unsurprising considering its complexity and ambition. Gorbachev cancelled it the same year the last satellite in the constellation was launched, and Legenda was already heavily degraded by the time the USSR collapsed in 1991. Legenda also lacked what we’ve already identified as the silver bullet for overcoming air defenses: an extremely fast, highly accurate anti-ship ballistic missile.

    East Wind

    The only nation that can make a plausible claim (emphasis on claim here) to having solved all the problems outlined above is China, which is unsurprising given that, just like the Soviets, they have both the resources and the motivation to push the state of the art forward in this area. Studying Chinese ASBM development can inform our analysis of Iranian efforts. The Chinese have launched hundreds of ISR satellites into orbit, with their total in orbit increasing by a factor of six from 2018 to 2026. These include what are speculated to be dedicated constellations just for tracking American aircraft carriers. The scale of these constellations dwarfs Legenda’s, which could only provide short windows of active radar tracking. And crucially, the Chinese claim to have developed geostationary synthetic-aperture radar ISR satellites that allow uninterrupted tracking of an individual target, which is otherwise impossible given the narrow viewing window of SAR. Combined with over-the-horizon radar, ship-based radar, and AWACS, it’s plausible to say that the Chinese are capable of knowing the precise location of an American aircraft carrier in the Pacific for lengthy, uninterrupted periods, or perhaps at all times. This is the first major problem to solve in developing a true carrier killer.

    The Chinese fielded the first operational ASBM in history, the DF-21D, in 2010. Because the DF-21D has never been used in combat, and its specifications are classified, we can only speculate on how closely its claimed capabilities match reality. But its general profile is thought to be a maneuvering MRBM with a very low (estimates are 20 m) CEP, a terminal phase active radar seeker, and a 1500 km range. The DF-21D is commonly cited as having a Mach 10 “terminal phase,” though this is likely its speed at atmospheric re-entry. In order for the active radar seeker to function, it probably slows down significantly, to around Mach 2, before impact. This is how the American Pershing II IRBM worked, engaging in a “pull up” maneuver so its active radar seeker could compare the ground below it against preloaded terrain maps. The Chinese have developed a succession of more advanced anti-ship systems since the DF-21D was introduced in 2010 (be warned, the following information is highly speculative). The DF-26 is an IRBM that builds on the DF-21D with nuclear capability and increased range. The Chinese have tested it against full-scale (non-moving) mockups of Gerald R. Ford-class carriers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. The YJ-20, a naval-launched, hypersonic ASBM, appeared in 2025. Its biconic design should theoretically allow much higher terminal speeds and greater maneuverability than a traditional blunt cone reentry vehicle. Also of note are Chinese hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), of which it has fielded at least three. An HGV moves in a flat trajectory while skipping along the atmosphere. They trade raw speed at impact for maneuverability, and various militaries claim they’re capable of extreme maneuvers that would never be possible with a traditional missile design. Their trajectory makes them immune to high altitude defense systems like the THAAD and Arrow-3. The open question is whether any of these is truly capable of active terminal guidance against a moving target. There’s no real evidence they are, and even so, an HGV doesn’t necessarily impact its target at high Mach, making it theoretically possible for it to actively seek a target, but also feasible to intercept.

    While it’s reasonable to assume that HGVs will defeat high-altitude naval defenses like the SM-3, which has a minimum intercept altitude around 100 km, lower-tier interceptors may still pose a threat to them. The high terminal speed/maneuverability combination that’s made Iranian missiles so deadly may not have an ASM equivalent due to the complexities involved in designing an active seeker that can function at high Mach. There’s little public information on the state of the art in high-Mach seekers. The Iranians themselves appear to be pushing the envelope here and claim the Qassem Bassir, arguably the most advanced Iranian MRBM, is equipped with an infrared electro-optical seeker that functions at speeds greater than Mach 5, giving the system “meter-level” accuracy. But this is supposedly a scene-matching system designed for use against static land targets, freeing it from the constraints that make ASBMs so challenging to design. And there’s no evidence yet of the Mach 5 impact claim.

    cont'd in response, 3/4

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  • The drawbacks of this exo-atmospheric passive radar guidance system are severe. Because the R-27K was unguided in its terminal phase, it was inaccurate. Passive radar guidance didn’t allow fine-grained target discrimination, i.e., the missile could detect an emitting target, but couldn’t identify precisely what that target was. The system still had potential utility because it was armed with a nuclear warhead. Even with poor target discrimination and a CEP measured in hundreds of meters, it could still potentially deal damage to its target. But the Achilles’ heel of the R-27K was EMCON, or emissions control. If the naval force it was targeting stopped emitting during its targeting phase, it would have nothing to lock on to. Because of the enormous speed of ballistic missile systems, and the short window for detection and navigation, even a brief interruption in emissions from the target would be enough to severely degrade the missile’s accuracy. As anti-radiation missile technology developed, naval forces increasingly began to practice EMCON.

    The Case for Going Slow

    By the time the R-27K entered its testing phase, Soviet engineers had already resolved most of the drawbacks of ASBMs by developing and fielding an alternative: the anti-ship cruise missile. Cruise missiles bypass many of the constraints of ballistic missile platforms simply by virtue of being slower. There is no plasma sheath, allowing constant guidance all the way up to the moment of impact with the target, and the transmission and reception of external signals. Lower velocity facilitates maneuvering, increasing accuracy. The entire problem space shrunk to one that’s much easier to solve, and the cruise missile became the standard platform for anti-ship operations. The Soviets introduced the P-15 Termit (NATO reporting name: Styx) anti-ship cruise missile in 1960. The P-15 demonstrates clearly the advantages of a slower platform in anti-ship operations. An active radar seeker allowed it to hone in on a target in the absence of radar emissions. It had a short range (40 km in the initial variant). While this may seem like a disadvantage, it’s important to detail how much easier this made its job. A P-15 seeking a target 40 km away would have a flight time of 130 seconds at Mach 0.9. A target moving at 30 knots could travel only 2 km during this period, a small enough search area for the active radar seeker on the P-15 to stand a good chance of finding it once the missile exited its midcourse. In contrast, an ASBM launched from 1,500 km away has 12 minutes of flight time, and the target could travel as much as 11 km during that period. If a passive-seeking ASBM like the R-27K were lucky enough to get a good signal during its midcourse, it could have as much as five minutes of flight time remaining. During its terminal phase, it has no information about the target’s true present location within an enormous search space.

    Eilat and After

    Within seven years of its introduction, the P-15 had sunk a major surface vessel: the Israeli destroyer Eilat. The Eilat was effectively defenseless against this new category of weapon. It had no missile interceptors, no chaff, and no electronic countermeasures. Its sinking in 1967 by three P-15 hits (out of four fired by the Egyptian Navy) triggered a revolution in naval warfare. Navies scrambled to introduce defensive measures against this new threat. The Pakistani Navy was too slow to adapt, and lost multiple ships to Indian operated Soviet Osa-class missile boats armed with the P-15 in 1971. The first real test of naval defenses against anti-ship cruise missiles occurred in 1973. Unlike the Pakistanis, the Israelis had adapted quickly, and they were able to weather a massive attack from Syrian and Egyptian P-15s using chaff and active jamming. Dozens of P-15s were fired, but none hit the Sa’ar-class missile boats equipped with countermeasures. The record of the anti-ship cruise missile has been decidedly mixed since then. The famous sinking of the HMS Sheffield by an Exocet anti-ship cruise missile during the Falklands War has been justifiably categorized as a fluke. The Sheffield’s ESM was temporarily degraded while it was transmitting over satellite, and airborne early warning wasn’t active. Iraqi Exocets killed 37 American sailors aboard the USS Stark in 1987, but the Americans had no reason to think they were at risk of attack by a loose ally. Hezbollah successfully struck the INS Hanit with a cruise missile in 2006, but the Israelis claim they hadn’t turned on any defensive systems because they were totally unaware Hezbollah even possessed anti-ship missiles. Recent events may provide examples of external defenses failing. American naval vessels have been unable to protect commercial ships that may or may not be within their defense envelope, but it isn’t outrageous to claim that no unambiguous examples of an ASCM striking a critical blow on a well-prepared and defended military vessel exist.

    This is because ASCMs suffer from shortcomings of their own. Active radar seekers announce themselves, allowing ECM systems to detect them consistently, and often before the missile detects its target. Chaff is highly effective against active radar seekers. Other seeker types avoid these problems while introducing others. Infrared seekers are passive, but have limited range and suffer in certain weather and environmental conditions. They can be defeated with IR decoys. Active TV guidance requires a constant datalink, which limits range and makes the system susceptible to jamming. Combining these seeker types can make a system more robust to countermeasures, but this does nothing to mitigate the most severe drawback of cruise missiles compared to ballistic systems: their slow speed makes them comparatively trivial to shoot down. The war in Ukraine has provided all the evidence one could want of this fundamental reality. Videos of cheap MANPADS shooting down Russian cruise missiles are plentiful. Even advanced, stealthy cruise missiles like the Storm Shadow are routinely shot down by Russian air defenses.

    What Iran Has

    The Iranians possess a dizzying array of ASCM systems. We won’t cover them in great detail here, both because they’re so numerous and we mostly only have unconfirmed information about their capabilities. What information the Iranians have released suggests they operate a few broad classes of ASCMs. The first are very short-range (<40km) subsonic systems possibly related to the Chinese YJ-7. These are fired by small, agile missile boats, and may have TV or active radar guidance. The Noor and Qadar (or Qader/Ghader) families are inertial and active radar-guided sea-skimming missiles with 300 km range possibly related to the Chinese YJ-82. The most intriguing class are entirely domestically produced, very long range (1000 km) and fast ASCMs like the Abu Mahdi and Talaeiyeh systems. However, there is so little information about these systems it would be incorrect to index too heavily on the vague claims on their capabilities. While Iranian medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) enjoy an impressive penetration rate against US and Israeli air defense systems, there’s no reason to expect this to carry over to the performance of Iranian cruise missiles against American naval systems. The difference in speed between the two types of projectiles is enormous. Some combination of raw speed and maneuvering capability makes Iran’s most sophisticated ballistic missiles a clear overmatch for the most advanced American and Israeli air defense systems. Based on the information we can verify, no cruise missile system fielded by any military enjoys this overmatch. Hypersonic cruise missiles like the Russian Zircon have yet to be used against a naval target in combat.

    The Wall at 150 Miles

    Even if the Iranians possessed the world’s most advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, the Americans have made sure they can only be used in the most unfavorable conditions. During active hostilities, American carriers have rarely entered the range of most Iranian ASCMs, generally keeping a >200 km buffer between themselves and plausible launch sites in Iran. This increases the efficacy of evasive maneuvers by American ships, makes them harder to detect, and greatly expands the search window for Iranian ASMs and drones. The Americans have heavily concentrated on destroying Iranian coastal radars, which are relatively easy targets compared to ones in Iran’s interior, which are risky for manned aircraft to pursue. The defensive systems the Iranians are up against in the Arabian Sea are extensive. Two Carrier Strike Groups contain over 700 VLS cells, with a generous portion of those committed to the SM-6 missile interceptor, which was specifically designed to intercept ASCMs. Each carrier can launch multiple E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, which help negate low-altitude sea-skimming ASCMs by detecting them much earlier than a surface vessel could. Radar systems in a CSG are integrated, allowing vessels to launch interceptors against targets only another vessel can detect. Incoming ASCMs must first get past the SM-6, then RIM-162 interceptors, followed by RIM-116, and then finally the last-ditch Phalanx CIWS. The AN/SLQ-32 EW suite detects and jams guidance radars. The Australian Nulka system deploys active decoys designed to draw the guidance systems of ASCMs off target, and the BAE Mark 36 SRBOC deploys chaff and infrared decoys. A carrier’s air wing can take down drones.

    cont'd in response, 2/4

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  • https://archive.ph/ub3DX

    Why Hasn't Iran Sunk an American Aircraft Carrier?

    And what's up with anti-ship ballistic missiles?

    The Iran War has so far unfolded in a way that could be described as “predictable,” or obvious. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz was predicted by many, as were Iranian attacks on Gulf oil infrastructure. The asymmetry between modern ballistic missiles and ballistic missile defense was also known and predictable based on the performance of the Patriot in the war in Ukraine. Iranian ballistic missile performance specifically—and especially their ability to penetrate Israeli and American air defenses—was well known to anyone who closely observed Operation True Promise I in April 2024. The shortage of American standoff munitions and missile interceptors was publicly known before the war. The vulnerability of MALE drones could be predicted from observing the Red Sea Crisis. Even casual observers are well aware of the battlefield revolution Iranian drone designs have triggered in Ukraine. That American and Israeli air forces would fail to establish long-term, constant, and total control over Iranian skies could have been predicted by anyone who dug closely into Israeli air attacks on Iran in 2024, or, again, the war in Ukraine. There is, however, one glaring exception to this rule: that the Iranians have, apparently, failed to seriously damage an American naval vessel, and an aircraft carrier in particular. Given the impressive showing by Iranian missiles and the comparatively poor performance of American air defenses, this seems counterintuitive. If Iranian ballistic missiles have the capability to strike targets from hundreds of miles away with pinpoint accuracy, if they’re able to maneuver in flight, attain hypersonic terminal velocities, and penetrate the most modern and sophisticated air defenses in the world, why are American carrier strike groups able to loiter a few hundred kilometers from Iranian shores?

    Before getting into the meat of this question, let’s get some caveats out of the way. The only thing we truly know, because it’s been confirmed in official statements by both sides, is that the Iranians have targeted US Navy assets. We don’t know if they’ve managed to hit an American ship, and there’s no strong evidence that they have, but we can be certain they haven’t sunk one. We don’t know how many anti-ship missiles and drones the Iranians have expended in their targeting efforts. We’ll avoid speculating on the possibility of American cover-ups of damage to naval vessels in this piece. We can't rule out that the Iranians are deliberately withholding a catastrophic strike. In this view, they could be limiting themselves to what are effectively warning shots to keep the American naval force in the Arabian Sea at a distance. This could make sense from a strategic perspective, as it would control the rate of escalation. Striking American bases in Jordan, for example, could plausibly be construed as lower on the Iranian escalation ladder than striking an American aircraft carrier, which is the enduring symbol of American military power. It’s long been speculated that the American government would be forced to respond to the sinking of an aircraft carrier with a retaliatory nuclear strike, though there is no evidence this is US military doctrine. What we’ll do in this piece is focus narrowly on why Iran might have a hard time hitting an American aircraft carrier, provided they were determined to do so. This is an important question, because a surface-level analysis might assume Iran’s startling ability to precisely hit static ground targets would translate to anti-ship operations. But this is not necessarily the case. To understand why, we’ll trace the history of anti-ship missile (ASM, sometimes AShM) development and the constraints of ballistic missile design.

    Falling With Precision

    First, it’s important to understand how the most basic form of ballistic missile functions. Ballistic missiles begin their trajectory with the “boost phase,” a powered phase that delivers all the kinetic energy the missile requires to reach its target. This is the phase in which guidance traditionally occurs, meaning the missile spends the majority of its ballistic arc falling unguided to its target. The missile’s guidance system contains accelerometers and gyroscopes. The guidance computer takes these inputs and compares them against the missile’s launch position and a predetermined, static target, finding the missile’s deviation from its desired track and correcting it using control surfaces like exhaust vanes, fins, and engine gimbals. This is called inertial navigation, and it dates all the way back to the German V-2 rocket, which used an analog computer. Inertial guidance systems are entirely self-contained. It emits nothing and receives no external signals. Therefore, it’s impossible to jam or spoof. It doesn’t require a complex seeker, and the basic technology it relies on has existed for nearly a century. But inertial guidance has drawbacks. The sensors involved are not perfect. Gyroscopes have drift, and accelerometers have bias. There are limits to how precisely a rocket motor can be switched off, and variance in the atmosphere and even gravity across the earth’s surface can introduce error. Decades of ballistic missile development have progressively reduced the error rate of inertial guidance systems. Missile accuracy is measured in “circular error probable,” or CEP, which is the radius of a circle drawn around the target in which 50% of the projectiles will land. The V-2 rocket had a CEP of around 15 kilometers, meaning that if the Germans fired 100 V-2s at a given target, 50 of them would land within a 15 km radius of it. This made it useful only for random terror bombings. Engineers attacked the weak points of inertial navigation systematically after the introduction of the V-2. Gyroscope quality has been improved, systems now account for the variation of gravity across the earth’s surface, launch points are surveyed with extreme precision (inertially guided submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or SLBMs, have never been as accurate because they’re launched from a mobile platform), and guidance computers are massively more sophisticated than the analog computers of the 1940s. By the 1960s, inertial guidance was more than sufficient to produce acceptable CEP for missiles used in countervalue strikes, with the massive damage radius of nuclear warheads. Modern inertial guidance systems are capable of achieving a CEP measured in the tens of meters, or even less. Radio-inertial, GPS, and stellar-inertial systems have been developed to supplement purely inertial guidance to improve accuracy.

    The Problem With a Moving Target

    But inertial guidance is wholly insufficient for striking a moving target. To demonstrate why, we can plot out a series of circles representing the distance an aircraft carrier can travel within a given timeframe while moving at 30 knots:

    This diagram is deliberately simplified, and doesn’t account for the target’s heading, wind, the constraints of carrier operations, and so on, but it gives us a rough sense of the problem. Within five minutes of launch, the target could be potentially anywhere within an area the size of Manhattan. Within ten minutes, that area exceeds four Manhattans. By the time 20 minutes have passed, it’s 18 Manhattans, or a circle with the approximate width of the Strait of Hormuz’s narrowest point. A Nimitz-class aircraft carrier has a deck area of 0.02 square kilometers, or 0.027% of the 5-minute target area. Even with a missile capable of hitting a postage-stamp-sized target with consistency, it would be like trying to thrust one’s hand into a haystack and find a needle by sheer luck.

    The First Attempt

    The solution, then, is to introduce a seeker. The first serious attempt at this was Soviet, because the Soviets recognized the need to create a counter to American aircraft carriers. In the mid-1960s, the Soviets took the existing R-27 SLBM and developed a new terminal guidance system driven by a passive radar seeker. The resulting platform was dubbed the R-27K. And while the missile was successfully tested against a mobile target barge, it had severe limitations that would have prevented its operational use even if it weren’t constrained by the SALT treaty. These limitations elucidate the extreme complexity involved in designing an ASBM. The Soviet selection of a passive radar seeker for the R-27K was logical. A passive seeker simply detects a radar emission—it doesn’t have to generate its own radar signal, fire it off into the target area, and wait for it to return. The round trip of an active seeker imposes power and time constraints, and requires a complex transmitter (keep in mind all of these components have to fit inside the missile itself). The R-27K likely activated its passive seeker during the midcourse phase of flight, while it was outside the atmosphere. This bypassed the need to design a seeker capable of either transmitting or receiving through the plasma sheath that surrounds a ballistic missile during atmospheric re-entry, its terminal phase.

    cont'd in response, 1/4

  • Featured

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from August 3rd to August 9th, 2026 - Trump Yet Again Pauses "Planned" Strikes On Iran / Ukraine Tries To Become Priority For US Again, Fails

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  • https://xcancel.com/EventsUkraine/status/2083611773815632375

    WESTERN MEDIA CULPABILITY IN UKRAINIAN MASS CASUALTIES

    Ukraine's assault units have lost thousands and thousands of men in largely pointless offensive operations. They routinely executed deserters and tortured subordinates to death. Who is to blame?

    Some Ukrainian media blames commander-in-chief Syrsky. But he was just following orders from the political leadership. Zelensky gave the award Hero of Ukraine to all the most infamous commanders of the assault units. In fact, the assault units exist due to western desires. The western press and political class is always eager for 'Ukrainian advances'. The assault units have been able to deliver on this - they were the only units that enthusiastically participated in the 2024 Kursk invasion, which so titillated western audiences. 'Ukraine has shattered Russian military might through a genius operation'. And the assault units were able to retake a few villages this year, which gave rise to all sorts of claims about a 'southern counteroffensive' which has 'turned the tides of the war'. Kursk ended in a rout, with untold casualties. The southern counterattacks, according to Ukrainian military analysts and soldiers, also involve massive losses, all just to retake miniscule villages with pre-war population of under 10. But western audiences love it. And Zelensky knows he needs their attention. And only through torture and the real threat of death is it possible to force violently mobilized civilians to participate in such suicide missions. So even if the assault units are disbanded, I doubt their practices will go anywhere. Now will there be any punishment for those really responsible. The military commanders were just following orders, fulfilling the desires of western consumers.

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  • This may just be a feature of Iran's particular dual system of traditional armed forces coexisting with the IRGC - most of the Iranian military operations until now have been the work of the IRGC (who are presumably already in a state of high readiness given they keep lobbing missiles) but I guess now with more talk of a ground incursion and Trump's incessant Khargposting the regular army may be upping its readiness.

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  • https://xcancel.com/bonzerbarry/status/2083229124756115961

    Trump: Iran is doing very poorly, just in case you read incorrect stories, they're doing very very poorly-they're having a hard time. Their missiles have been largely-they have some left, they have some, but they have far fewer than they had four or five months ago. Their manufacturing capacity is... almost gone. The drone capacity is almost gone, they have very few. But they have some. We're in there 5 months, I know people like to say-because we're doing a much bigger job, a much more important job than we originally anticipated. We're in for 5 months and we have obliterated their military capacity. Again they've got some left, but soon they won't have some left.

    Reporter: You said that they do have some capabilities left, should Americans be prepared for these back and forth attacks until Iran is simply unable to strike back?

    Trump: They'll get weaker, they'll get weaker, they'll get stronger maybe...now, but they'll get weaker, and then they peter out-uhhhhh yeah sure, I think so.

    https://xcancel.com/Midnight_Dasher/status/2083236752655876415

    Special Uhhhhhh They'll Peter Out I Think Operation. The SUTPOITO

    Operation They'll Get Stronger Maybe

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  • https://archive.ph/1pytZ

    US nears full withdrawal from Iraq as bases in Kurdistan region face attacks from Iran, proxies

    Patriot air defense systems that detect and shoot down incoming missiles, drones and other airborne enemy equipment have already been removed, sources told Al-Monitor.

    The United States military has started to draw down its last remaining forces from Iraq stationed in the vicinity of Erbil airport in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, well-placed sources with close knowledge of the process confirmed to Al-Monitor. Patriot mobile air to surface air defense systems that detect and shoot down incoming missiles, drones and other airborne enemy equipment have already been removed from the military compound, the sources said, without providing further details. The pullout started last week and is ongoing, with the bulk of the US forces and their heavy equipment out, the sources said. “All” of the Patriot anti-missile batteries had been redeployed to an undisclosed destination, the sources said, adding that other defensive weapons systems remained in place as of the time of publication of this article. Regional officials described the pullout as “routine” and in line with the US commitment to withdraw all its forces from Iraq by a Sept. 30 deadline that was agreed with Baghdad.

    However, coming amid sustained attacks by Iran and its Shiite proxy militias, and on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in particular, the withdrawal, especially of the Patriots, has left the Kurds feeling badly exposed.

    Centcom spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins declined to comment on any ongoing troop movements. Kurdistan Regional Government officials did not respond to Al-Monitor’s request for comment. While the systems were deployed to protect US forces, the Kurds have benefited immensely from the security umbrella as well. Erbil airport has come under constant attack from Iran and Iran-backed militias since the start of the Iran conflict in February, including this week. US interceptors successfully deterred at least 95% of those attacks, the sources said. The bulk of Iranian and militia attacks have targeted armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan region. However, the Erbil compound has also been targeted multiple times. The Patriots have an operational range of between 60 to 100 miles. Removing the Patriots is a double edged sword. One the one hand they defend ground troops, on the other they have become targets themselves, Michael Knights, head of research at Horizon Engage, a New York-based consultancy, told Al-Monitor.

    The US pull out will not necessarily spell an end to US Iraqi military cooperation with US Special Forces deployed at discrete low profile locations, Knights added. US forces in Iraq are particularly vulnerable due to Iraq’s shared border with Iran and the continued aggression of the Iran-backed groups that are actively engaged in the conflict hitting “enemy” targets in Iraq and in the Gulf. Iraq’s new prime minister, Ali Al Zaidi, despite robust pledges to rein in the Iran-backed militias and disarm and demobilize them by Sept. 30 has so far failed to do so, as witnessed by their recent attacks against Saudi oil fields, prompting Saudi Arabia to overtly team up with US forces to carry out retaliatory strikes across Iraq this week.

    The removal of the Patriots in advance of a near full withdrawal of US troops on the ground has raised further questions about US stockpiles of interceptors and how the US military is now prioritizing their deployment to protect troops elsewhere in the region. “The Kurdistan region is not a priority, the Gulf and Jordan clearly are,” one of the sources, speaking on strict condition of anonymity, said.

    overstretched empire hours

    A study published by the Center for International and Strategic Studies based in Washington shed light on the diminishing resources amid the breakdown of the US Iranian ceasefire and of the ensuing memorandum of understanding that was struck between the sides in May. Building on an earlier study that was issued in April when the ceasefire was reached showing that 55% of the Patriot stockpile had been lost, this week’s report noted that their numbers had gone down by a further 10%. The United States produces 183 of the interceptors per year.

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  • https://archive.ph/1NOyc

    Assault regiment commander ordered troops to fire on retreating comrades, media investigation alleges

    Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of Ukraine's 225th Assault Regiment, allegedly ordered troops to open fire on retreating fellow soldiers, according to an investigation by the Ukrainian investigative outlet Texty.

    Ukrainian journalist Anna Kaliuzhna's investigation, published on July 30 in both text and video form, includes a voice message allegedly from Shyriaiev that was sent to one of the unit's chats while the regiment was fighting in Russia's Kursk Oblast from late 2024 to early 2025. "A reminder to those referring to 'our own' — there are no 'our own,'" the voice, allegedly belonging to Shyriaiev, says. "There is only a specific request over the radio: ‘permission to move.' Everything else is the enemy. Anything that’s moving is the enemy. Anyone fleeing their positions is a deserter — and they’re the enemy too. Stick to this rule."

    The voice note, sent to Kaliuzhna by multiple sources within the unit, is one example of the alleged use of "blocking forces," in which soldiers who retreat without orders are shot or systematically threatened with being shot, though the vast majority of such cases occur in the Russian army.

    uh huh

    love how even if this expose about how fucked up their fascist military is they still have to go "uh, but the Russians have it worse!"

    Over the course of Russia's war against Ukraine, the practice, sometimes called "nullifying," first became notorious through its use by Russia's Wagner mercenary group during the battles for Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast and has since become widespread across much of the Russian army. In addition to the voice message from Shyriaiev, the investigation includes accounts from several soldiers — some named and some speaking anonymously — who had served in the regiment. They described soldiers being threatened before assaults with being shot if they turned back. Soldiers quoted in the story, many of whom came from the regiment's Shkval prisoner battalion, also described systemic beatings, and the holding of soldiers against their will in makeshift basement prisons, in testimonies that resemble those in a similar investigation into the 425th Assault Regiment, better known as Skelia. Asked by the Kyiv Independent to comment on the specific allegations in this story, the 225th Regiment declined.

    The 225th Assault Regiment — which fought as a battalion in Chasiv Yar before helping lead the lightning incursion into Kursk Oblast in 2024 — is one of the largest units of the Ukrainian military, having been expanded to at least 15 battalions. In autumn 2025, after also conducting cross-border raids into Russia's Belgorod Oblast, the unit was moved to the southern front line, where Russian forces were making rapid gains around the city of Huliaipole in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The Ukrainian defenses in this area, held by undermanned and often unmotivated Territorial Defense brigades, were in a state of relative chaos when then-Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi sent in the 225th to stabilize the situation. Although reports emerged that an entire Territorial Defense brigade had retreated chaotically and that soldiers from the 225th had kidnapped Territorial Defense service members who had apparently been transferred to the regiment without their knowledge, the defense of the area around Huliaipole was successfully stabilized over the winter. In a preemptive Facebook post the day before Kaliuzhna's investigation was published, the regiment denied allegations that it had used blocking forces while fighting in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The post acknowledged an incident involving a beating in the Shkval battalion, adding that an internal investigation was underway.

    In the investigation itself, Shyriaiev is cited as claiming that his voice message from Kursk Oblast was referring to the practice of Russian soldiers of dressing in Ukrainian uniform to infiltrate through the front line, which is why any movement not warned of in advance would be treated as made by the enemy. Shyriaiev served in the Ukrainian nationalist formation East Corps at the onset of Russia's war in 2014. From 2018 to 2019, he was also a close associate of pro-Russian politician Illia Kyva, who fled to Russia a month before the full-scale invasion and was later assassinated in Moscow in 2023. The Texty investigation is the latest in a series of revelations about conditions inside some of Ukraine's assault regiments, which were expanded into some of the country's largest units on Syrskyi's orders throughout 2025. On July 29, the General Staff under new Commander-in-Chief Mykhailo Drapatyi announced an audit into the staffing of combat units and the distribution of manpower between them, an effort likely intended to reverse the disproportionate prioritization of units such as the 425th and 225th regiments.

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  • There's probably some degree of graft, but air defense is genuinely a very complex problem, and the US MIC, for all its faults, is actually ahead in that field (and the fact that this current conflict is demonstrating that even this most sophisticated air defense can't manage should be an indication for how viable it is on a base conceptual level). The simpler PAC-2 interceptors could perhaps be manageable, but the PAC-3 MSE is pretty fancy.

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  • just capeshit propaganda, that production isn't starting up any time soon: https://hexbear.net/post/8953778/7295975

    Trump's Patriot plan "will do little to fix Ukraine’s urgent air defense problems" because "it will take many months for Ukraine to get a production facility built," and that facility will quickly become a major Russian target

    A production facility is an interesting way to put it. In the US, there are over a dozen different production facilities for Patriot interceptors alone (each producing only a subset of components or handling final assembly), with hundreds of suppliers involved in the production chain. The major components of a PAC-3 MSE interceptor are: radar seeker, guidance electronics, attitude control section, solid rocket motor, lethality enhancer (fragmentation ring), airframe, control surfaces, launch canister, and missile uplink. Someone's going to have to make each of these things. If it's going to be Ukraine, and if they want to bypass the glacial rate of interceptor production elsewhere, they'll need production lines for all of them, and those don't exist right now. They would never dream of building one giant facility to handle all of this because it would immediately be destroyed.

    It's hard to convey how difficult it would be to spin up full production of Patriot interceptors, so here are some concrete examples. It took seven years for Poland to construct a production facility responsible for making only attitude control motors for the PAC-3 MSE. It took three years just to expand the final assembly facility in Camden even though that facility already existed and was actively in use. Boeing's seeker production line expansion in Huntsville is also projected to complete its expansion after three years. Japan's PAC-3 facility only took two, but it produces 20 interceptors a year and relies heavily on imported components from the US.

    This idea is so unrealistic that even skeptics like Responsible Statecraft are failing to understand or express its absurdity

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  • https://xcancel.com/MenchOsint/status/2082496676640530700

    A US-owned LNG carrier was hit by a Drone in the Egyptian port of Damietta in the Mediterranean Sea. Possibly the "ENERGOS WINTER" operated by "WILHELMSEN SHIP MGMT LTD-USA" that have left the port following the reported attack, and is now anchored off the coast.

    the crank map... it's growing...

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  • https://archive.ph/n8NjB

    French wildfires threaten nuclear deterrence industry, Rafale assembly

    Wildfires raging west of the French city of Bordeaux are threatening a number of France’s key defense-industrial sites, including an ArianeGroup facility that produces propulsion components for the M51 submarine-launched ballistic missile, Dassault Aviation’s final assembly line for the Rafale fighter jet, and one of Roxel’s main manufacturing sites for solid rocket motors used in MBDA missiles.

    Dassault Aviation said it was moving sensitive equipment from a site closest to the wildfires to one nearer Bordeaux, with most workers staying home in line with instructions issued by the authorities. ArianeGroup had evacuated its affected sites, while the French Atomic Energy Commission CEA closed its military nuclear research site near Bordeaux as the wildfires approached. The Gironde department of southwest France has been battling one of the country’s largest wildfires on record, with over 100,000 acres burned — an area roughly four times the size of Paris. The fires in recent days approached the cluster of defense and aerospace sites west of Bordeaux that represents one of France’s most important concentrations of missile, propulsion, combat aircraft, and military electronics production. Dassault Aviation had to move “a certain number of sensitive equipment” from its site in Martignas and a logistics center in Cestas to its site in Mérignac and the local Air Base 106, working in close cooperation with France’s Directorate General for Armament and local authorities, the aircraft maker said in an emailed statement late Monday. Satellite data on Tuesday morning showed wildfires remained active less than 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) west of Dassault’s Martignas site, which is the wing assembly plant for the Rafale jet, before final assembly of the aircraft in Mérignac. NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System showed fires and hot spots west of Bordeaux were significantly reduced as of 9 o’clock in the morning local time, though authorities have warned that a new wave of hot weather with a peak on Wednesday, combined with near-record drought conditions, could cause fire activity to pick up again.

    Employees at the Mérignac and Martignas plants are staying home, in line with instructions issued by authorities, unless they’ve been evacuated, Dassault Aviation said. Those still working are the teams necessary for the transfer of equipment and those in charge of protecting the site to help with fire-fighting efforts, the company said. ArianeGroup is working in close cooperation with local and national authorities, and the company’s sites west of Bordeaux “have been evacuated, and all necessary measures have been taken to secure them,” the space-launch company said in an emailed reply to questions. The firm said it’s not commenting on security measures around its sites. Satellite data as of Tuesday morning showed active wildfires around 12 kilometers west of ArianeGroup’s Candale site, where the propulsion units of the M51 missile stages are integrated and assembled, around 13 kilometers from the site of Saint-Médard-en-Jalles where the missile is fueled, and some 16 kilometers of the Le Haillan site that produces the company’s solid-propulsion systems.

    “Whilst the unprecedented forest fires in Gironde are above all an environmental and humanitarian disaster, they also threaten sites that are of vital strategic importance to our nuclear deterrent,” said Etienne Marcuz, an associate fellow at the Foundation pour la Recherche Stratégique, in a post on the social media network X on Sunday. Emergency services aided by local construction companies worked during the night of Friday to Saturday and throughout the day to clear vegetation and create firebreaks around a number of sensitive sites, Gironde department Prefect Sophie Brocas said in a press conference on Saturday. Marc Vermeulen, the head of the Gironde department fire and emergency service, said that after protecting lives, the next priority is protecting at-risk strategic sites. The DGA has a missile testing site just west of Saint-Médard. Thales said its site at Mérignac has been closed since Monday as a precautionary measure, in accordance with guidelines from the authorities. The company said it’s doing everything possible to safeguard its strategic equipment at the site and ensure continuity of its commitments to customers. The Thales site sits across from the Dassault Aviation campus in the Bordeaux suburb, and supplies equipment including avionics systems for the Rafale as well as military helicopters.

    MBDA’s Roxel unit has one of its main production locations in Saint-Médard, where it produces propellant, solid rocket motors and carries out integration work for rockets and drones, on a site shared with ArianeGroup. Roxel produces the motors for a number of MBDA missiles, including the Aster range of air-defense interceptors. “Roxel is managing the situation and the necessary measures have been taken to ensure the safety of our staff and our operations, with the support of the relevant authorities and emergency services,” MBDA said in an emailed statement, declining further comment. The CEA said its site in Le Barp southwest of Bordeaux has been closed due to the wildfire situation. After wildfires in 2022, the center put in place new procedures, provided additional fire-fighting equipment to the in-house fire brigade, and created firebreaks around the center, the government organization said in an emailed reply to questions. The CEA Cesta site houses the organization’s megajoule laser, a research instrument used to create conditions of extreme heat and pressure similar to those produced by nuclear weapons, and part of France’s efforts to maintain the credibility of its nuclear deterrent without live nuclear testing. As of Tuesday morning, satellite data showed active wildfires around 7 kilometers from the site, after the fire front got to around 4 kilometers from the CEA site over the weekend.

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  • https://archive.ph/PACQc

    Pentagon Suppliers Warn U.S. Won't Have Magnet Capacity By 2027

    • U.S. producers told Reuters they can't build enough processing and magnet capacity before the January 1, 2027 deadline to cut off Chinese rare earth materials.
    • China still controls the overwhelming majority of global rare earth refining and magnet production, giving Beijing leverage over EV, wind, robotics and defense supply chains.
    • MP Materials, Lynas, USA Rare Earth and others are ramping up domestic production with Pentagon and EXIM backing, but executives say full replacement of Chinese supply won't happen by early 2027.

    The Trump administration is weighing whether to extend access to some Chinese rare earth materials beyond the January 1, 2027 cutoff after U.S. producers acknowledged they cannot build sufficient domestic processing and magnet capacity before the deadline, Reuters reported on Monday. Industry executives and Pentagon suppliers told Reuters that U.S. processing and magnet manufacturing capacity remains insufficient to meet despite billions of dollars in federal support for new mines, separation facilities and downstream manufacturing. The gap threatens not only military procurement but also supply chains serving electric vehicles, offshore wind, robotics, data centers and other energy-intensive industries that depend on high-performance permanent magnets.

    The shortage centers on neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) and samarium-cobalt magnets, which rely on rare earth supply chains that China continues to dominate. Beijing still controls the overwhelming majority of global rare earth refining and permanent magnet production, giving it enormous leverage over downstream manufacturing even as Western governments accelerate efforts to diversify supply. While the United States has made meaningful progress expanding domestic mining, processing, alloy production and magnet manufacturing require specialized infrastructure that has taken China decades to develop. Companies including MP Materials, USA Rare Earth, Lynas Rare Earths, Energy Fuels and REalloys are investing heavily to establish domestic production capacity, while Washington has backed the sector through Department of Defense contracts, EXIM financing and strategic stockpiling initiatives. Several projects are expected to begin commercial production over the next 18 months, but executives say they will not be capable of completely replacing Chinese supply by early 2027. Beijing's tighter export controls and expanded rare earth traceability regime have further strengthened its grip on global magnet feedstocks, limiting the ability of Western manufacturers to source critical materials outside China.

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