There is a "real world military" topic in which some purely military issues may get slightly into politics, and this is tolerated so long as no other rules (i.e., no insults) are broken. Those who have participated in this topic know that our non-US participants often have very different views than you are used to. It won't hurt you to hear another side of the issue and you may learn something. It should also be noted that some of those who post frequently in that topic simply have no idea what they're talking about; be polite in alerting them to this fact.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, February 04, 2026 - 02:56 pm: Edit |
Information Warfare: Turning Off the Internet
February 3, 2026: Last year the Islamic terrorist Taliban rulers of Afghanistan shut down the Afghan internet. The Taliban took this drastic action to deal with Afghans gaining access to immoral material. Internet shutdowns for political reasons have become more common in nations like India, Iran, Iraq, Senegal, and Syria. Sometimes the shutdowns are total, but many nations impose shutdowns on specific social media like X and Facebook. Most internet shutdowns are not nationwide but regional. Iran recently used a total internet shutdown to deal with nationwide riots and demonstrations in an attempt to overthrow the religious dictatorship that has misruled the country since the 1980s.
Internet shutdowns most frequently occur in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Russia is the only European nation to generally restrict internet access. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has long had a difficult relationship with the internet. Putin wants to create a sovereign, used in Russia only, internet. There are problems with this because the internet is essential for running the economy and the military. At the same time internet chatter is the primary source of criticism for the Ukraine War and the problems with the economic sanctions.
Internet chatter about what was going on in Ukraine made it more difficult for Russia to obtain soldiers. To avoid army service in Ukraine, several million Russians left the country, some for good. The government increased restrictions on who could leave but military-age men found ways to get past that, notably bribery. Those caught were forced to join the army, and their reluctance to fight resulted in officers receiving orders to shoot soldiers who refused to fight.
There were at least a hundred of these incidents, these soldiers and officers referred to as zeroing out a reluctant soldier by shooting him. The dead soldiers were called zeroes and the next of kin were simply told that their son died heroically in Ukraine. That explanation often failed when news of what actually happened arrived via the internet.
The internet made it easier to spread the bad news, even after the government made it illegal to say bad things about the war effort. A few complainers were prosecuted, but that backfired when online complaints and protests increased. There were not enough judicial resources available to handle all the complainers. Welcome to the internet paradox, too troublesome to tolerate, but too useful to lose.
But it’s not for lack of trying. Last year, Russia carried out a brief pre-dawn test of its ability to turn Internet access for Russians into a Sovereign Internet that is not connected to the worldwide internet. That means Russians could only use the internet within Russian and must use Russian based websites and network services, like search, messaging and social media. There are versions of all these services based in Russian as well as internationally popular versions like Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and Facebook.
The Sovereign Internet test revealed some problems, like interference with large scale internet-based communications systems created for the Nationwide Railroad Network and other nationwide communications systems that also require some access to international systems. A long-term implementation of Russia’s Sovereign Internet would disrupt some portions of the Russian economy that depend on constant communication with foreign firms.
The Sovereign Internet is meant to be used for short periods. There are other uses of the Sovereign Internet that include remaining connected to neighboring nations like Iran, which is trying to develop a Sovereign Internet and China, which already has one. Internet pioneers predicted that some countries would seek to develop a Sovereign Internet in order to exercise government control over the Internet. This was something that early Internet developers feared would happen because the international free exchange of information was a threat to the power of totalitarian government. The totalitarians were expected to eventually strike back and now they have.
FYEO
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 05, 2026 - 03:38 pm: Edit |
Sea Transportation: Seizing The Russian Shadow Fleet
February 5, 2026: Ukraine has asked European nations to cooperate in shutting down the Russian Shadow Fleet. About two-thirds of Russian oil smuggling shadow fleet ships move through the Baltic Sea. If Denmark and the three Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia cooperated effectively, Russian oil exports would be crippled. Despite the economic sanctions, Russia is still able to export most of its oil.
Denmark and the Baltic States were unwilling to do anything that would effectively halt Russian use of the Baltics. The main reasons were fears that Russian retaliation via sabotaging ships or port facilities. Then there is the potential damage to shopping companies, especially Denmark’s Maersk, which controls one sixth of the global shipping market.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is actively going after the Russian shadow fleet of lawless tankers moving sanctioned oil to customers. In 2025 there were at least a dozen drone attacks and sabotage missions against shadow fleet tankers. These included using naval drones in the Black Sea to sink or disable Russian tankers. This happened while the tankers were trying to reach the Russian port of Novorossiysk, which is the primary port for loading tankers. Mediterranean Sea drone attacks from armed Ukrainian merchant ships have recently been made.
Russia’s economy and war effort against Ukraine is financed by oil and other energy exports. Russia is operating under severe economic sanctions imposed to reduce that income and create economic conditions for Russia that make it difficult to impossible to continue their war in Ukraine.
The key to Russian oil exports is the use of foreign tankers to covertly smuggle their petroleum and coal from Russia to overseas customers. Western sanctions block overt deliveries. Eighty percent of the oil for China goes by pipeline and cannot be disrupted. China accounts for nearly half of Russian petroleum and other energy exports. It’s the other half that is at risk because of a growing list of sanctions.
The economic sanctions were imposed on Russia because of its 2022 invasion, in an effort to reduce its hard currency income from exports of oil and natural gas. These are the main Russian exports and the major source of income for the Russian government and war effort. To evade these sanctions, Russia created a growing shadow fleet of oil tankers purchased and/or leased abroad and obtained unrestricted access to a Chinese smuggler haven maintained in Hong Kong.
Current estimates are that nearly 900 tankers are smuggling sanctioned Russian petroleum to customers in China, India, the European Union/EU, Turkey and Myanmar. Most refined petroleum products go to Turkey, China, Brazil, Singapore and India. The rest goes to nine countries, in the Middle East, Africa and Taiwan. China has been buying 47 percent of the crude oil while India takes 37 percent followed by Turkey and the EU with six percent each. China, India and Turkey account for about 90 percent of Russian income from the sale of oil, natural gas and coal. The U.S. is imposing additional tariffs on countries that import Russian oil. India is already subject to these tariffs, which increases what they have to pay for exports to the United States. The Americans are negotiating with China and Turkey over what tariffs will be imposed to discourage their Russian oil imports.
The nations enforcing the sanctions, particularly the United States, have tracked the routes of the Russian shadow fleet and noted the key role Hong Kong plays in arranging the movement of sanctioned Russian oil to its primary customers in China and India. Hong Kong is also a major source for supplying sanctioned nations with weapons and munitions. A current customer is Russia. Hong Kong does this by allowing Russian tankers and cargo ships, operating with fake credentials to disguise their Russian affiliation, to bring in Russian oil and other raw materials. The Russian ships then leave Hong Kong carrying weapons for their war in Ukraine.
Another major player in the Russian smuggling effort is North Korea. For years North Korea has been buying small, second-hand cargo and tanker ships and using them for smuggling. A favored evasion technique consists of taking on or transferring cargo at sea in its own territorial waters. The North Korean merchant fleet consists of about 150 ships, mostly purchased from Chinese firms.
North Korea is a notorious and persistent maritime smuggler. Because of North Korean smuggling, the United States expanded its maritime smuggling and sanctions enforcement program in 2018 when a new multi-national enforcement organization was created. Initial members were the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, France, South Korea, and Japan. This Enforcement Coordination Cell, or ECC, is enforcing the UN sanctions that curb North Korean smuggling related to items needed for their nuclear and ballistic missile programs. In addition, the ECC allows member nations to also enforce whatever other sanctions or naval missions their government puts a priority on. The U.S. has since invited India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines to join and assist with monitoring growing Chinese violation of offshore water rights, especially in the South China Sea and other areas of the West Pacific.
The ECC concentrates on the 2,000-kilometer-long shipping lane from the Indian Ocean, through the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea to North Korea. Along this route there are not only North Korean flagged ships participating in smuggling, but even more Chinese, Taiwanese, Liberian, Sri Lankan, and ships that are independent and fly whatever flag they believe will keep them from getting seized for smuggling. Earlier U.S. efforts had already identified many North Korean and Iranian owned tankers and cargo ships that were often engaged in smuggling. This led Iran and North Korea to use their own ships less and willing foreign ships instead. These third-party ships are the ones the ECC sought to identify. These ships can be identified, along with their owners and the owners can have banking and other sanctions placed on them. Many nations, not part of the ECC, but economic partners with ECC members, will cooperate if a smuggler ship visits one of their ports. At that point the captain can be arrested and the ship seized.
The ECC member warships do not depend on inspecting suspicious ships while at sea, but confirming who is where and when. This is especially useful for spotting smugglers who often turn off their location beacons and continue in running dark mode. These location beacons transmit current ID and location to any nearby ships and often, via satellite, to their owner and international shipping organizations. The location data, past and current, can be found on several public websites. The beacons exist mainly as a safety measure for ships operating at night or in bad weather in heavily used shipping lanes. Smugglers have learned how to turn off their beacons near a port where, it is assumed, they have docked or anchored off the coast waiting for an available dock.
Such games with location beacons, with ship ownership and with the nationality of a ship’s registration (flag of convenience) are unlawful under maritime law and entitle any nation with a navy to seize them, sell their contents and sell the ship itself. This is rarely done but the US has begun doing so consistently with ships carrying oil to or from Venezuela. Ship ownership and registration may only be lawfully changed while in a port, as Russia recently learned when one of their shadow tanker ships was seized by the US Navy when it headed towards Venezuela, then changed its ownership to Russia while at sea.
Some smugglers are using spoofing, a form of jamming that just modifies the beacon signal to present a false location. This is where warships and maritime aircraft come in as these can identify ships visually or using radar followed by visual inspection. This is more damaging to the smugglers because it provides more evidence that their ship was involved in smuggling, and with enough evidence, you can go after the ship owners and seize the ship whenever it enters coastal waters, within 22 kilometers of land belonging to a nation that will seize outlaw ships. It may also be illegal by itself and entitle countries with navies to seize those ships too.
FYEO
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 05, 2026 - 03:39 pm: Edit |
Air Weapons: Ukraine Upgrades It’s Long Range Attacks
February 5, 2026: Four years of Ukrainian long range drone attacks on targets throughout western Russia have had a cumulative impact. It was obvious that Ukraine needed a locally produced drone that was free of any target restriction imposed by the United States on the use of long range missiles sent to Ukraine. Ukraine is now producing its own locally designed and manufactured Flamingo drone. This is a three-ton drone with a range of 3,000 kilometers, a speed of 900 kilometers an hour and a 1.1 ton warhead. Production began in mid-2025 and during 2026 monthly production will eventually reach 300-500. Each drone costs about $500,000.
Ukraine has lots of experience with long range drone attacks on targets inside Russia. Ukrainians maintain timely information on the deployment and capabilities of Russian air defense systems. Then there is BDA, or Battle Damage Assessment. This means obtaining accurate data about how effective your long range attacks are. Ukraine depends on the American surveillance satellite network and reports from Ukrainian operatives inside Russia to verify BDA, though the French have started helping too. Determining the targets of a long-range drone campaign had can be tricky. For example, the World War Two American/British strategic bombing campaign against Germany made a crucial mistake. When selecting which targets to hit and when, one critical target set was omitted. The Allied target planners ignored German electrical generating plants because they incorrectly assumed that the plants were interconnected in a system that was resistant to aerial bombing attacks. After the war it was discovered that power plants were the most vulnerable targets because key components could not be easily replaced and that Germany did not have an interconnected system. Bombing a few of these plants in a region would halt production for up to a year for much of that region. Adding power plants to the target list could have shortened the war in Europe by up to a year. The Ukrainians are still refining their target list to get the most economic damage out of each drone attack campaign.
With its extremely long range Flamingo can hit nearly 90 percent of the targets that produce weapons or export income for the Russian military effort. The Russian capital is 850 kilometers from northern Ukraine. It is 1,100 kilometers to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea and 2,000 kilometers to the bases of the Russian Northern Fleet in Murmansk, near the Arctic Circle.
Targets are usually industrial facilities that support the war effort. These include numerous oil refineries and oil fuel storage facilities plus facilities involving specialty steels for tube artillery, railroad car coil bearings and tanks. The drones came in low and slow to deceive Russian air defenses, which have a hard time detecting low and slow aerial targets, especially at night when most of these attacks take place. While the targets are up to three thousand kilometers from Ukraine, the drones can also move north across a corridor that is several hundred kilometers wide. Russian anti-aircraft defense systems cannot cover an area that wide and long, especially when the attackers are coming in low and slow in the dark.
Russia tries to play down the effectiveness of the Ukrainian drone attacks by describing rather obvious burning refineries and fuel storage depots as accidents. There have been a lot of such accidents and Russian troops in Ukraine have to closely monitor their fuel consumption because fuel deliveries are not as frequent and reliable as they used to be. The Russian fuel facilities also supply the commercial and civilian market. The commercial users are important because they supply the firms producing goods needed by the military as well as consumers.
The Ukrainian drone attacks also led to disruptions of flight operations at the three airports serving the Moscow region. Ukraine does not comment on details of their drone attacks. Ukraine believes the results speak for themselves. Targets in western Russia are increasingly under attack by Ukrainian drones and the Russian government has a hard time explaining why combustible targets in the region keep exploding or catching fire. Such events are contrary to the official government reports about the Russian war efforts in Ukraine. Russia has not experienced attacks like this on the homeland since World War II and that is something the Russian government does not want to discuss.
Ukrainian drone strikes have also hit Russian air bases where Russian MiG-31 fighter-bombers as well as bombers like the Tu-22M and Tu-95 are found. So far at least six of these aircraft have been damaged or destroyed by Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside Russia. The attack on the Savasleyka airbase highlights the vulnerability of military infrastructures to drone attacks. The attack drones come in low and slow at night. This made it difficult for airbase air defenses to detect and destroy many of the drones. These attacks demonstrated how much air warfare has changed because of the use of reconnaissance and attack drones by both sides.
Before Russia invaded, military analysts worldwide did not anticipate such a widespread use of drones and how it changed ground, air and naval warfare. Long range attacks by drones were terrifying because the attacker was not risking the lives of highly trained pilots. Pilot training costs over a million dollars per pilot. Skilled pilots lost in combat cannot be quickly replaced. Drones have no pilots and the men and women who build, program and in some cases operate drones are far from the combat zone. Ukrainian annual drone production is now about equal to annual Russian artillery shell production.
Because of the extensive use of drones, warfare has fundamentally changed. Ukraine and Russia are both competing to keep up with new drone designs and uses. The long range drone attacks on Russian munitions and fuel depots as well as air bases are examples of that. Russian missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure and population centers are the only response they can muster. Ukraine has hidden its stockpiles and combat aircraft more effectively than the Russian. Moreover Ukraine can quickly receive emergency resupplies of fuel and munitions from NATO allies. Russia has a more difficult time because they were subjected to severe economic and military sanctions after they invaded Ukraine.
FYEO
| By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, February 06, 2026 - 08:34 pm: Edit |
We touched on a discussion of responsible journalism in the world, and it being rare…
Two days later, on February 4, 2026, the Washington Post media has laid off one third of its international work force, and of that number, over 300 employees in the news and editorial staff are now unemployed.
The management, in press interviews and posted comments indicated that, among other considerations, the corporation is not a non profit or a charity. The purpose of the layoff is to minimize costs and, it is hoped, improve the bottomline.
The owners of both CNN and MSNBC (currently rebranded as “MS Now.”) have been looking for a buyer to take both properties (and the associated cash subsidy both require as neither is profitable as currently operated.
CBS news has recently had a new manager appointed who is aggressively trying to reduce over staffing and over priced salaries.
Early, I know, but it looks as if the main stream media giants have been forced into reforming their work forces.
Time will tell, but unless they can attract both viewers/consumers of their news services, they may not be able to get the advertisers (and the advertising money they bring with them) back.
Funny how it all comes down to economics.
| By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Saturday, February 07, 2026 - 12:16 pm: Edit |
IMHO, the "left" media are all competing for the left demographic. And there are a ton of "left" media.
That is the brilliance of Murdoch/ Fox. They basically have little competition for the "right" demographic.
Lets say there are 30% left, 30% right and 40% in the middle of consumers.
5 left media, 1 right and 5 in the middle... (to ovee simplify)
So 6% per left media, 30% for fox and 3% to each middle media (assuming no overlap of viewership). So Fox is crushing it
Part of the problem is monetizing reporting in the age of the internet. And the consolidation of news reporting. Used to be each "major" newspaper had a bunch of reporters. So the Louisville Courier Journal had Local reporters, Lexington reporters, DC political reporters, Kentucky State government Reporters in Frankfort, Financial reporters in NY, reporters covering all the "boonies" of Kentucky (ie multiple rural counties), etc.
| By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, February 07, 2026 - 01:45 pm: Edit |
Mike, your theme has been popular for years, but it appears that your estimate of left, middle and right shares are a little off.
A quick google inquiry shows the following…
quote:” Fox News dominates the U.S. cable news market, consistently holding over 60%–70% of the audience share in primetime and total day, outperforming rivals CNN and MSNBC. As of late 2025, Fox News secured roughly 64% of the cable news audience share, with higher shares during specific, high-viewership events.
Fox News Cable Audience Share & Market Position
Total Audience Share: Fox News Channel (FNC) holds approximately 63% to 69% of the total daily cable news audience.
Primetime Share: In 2025, Fox News commanded 64% to 72% of the cable news audience in the critical 8–11 p.m. time slot.
Consecutive Dominance: FNC has been the number one cable news network for over 23 years, with viewership growing in 2022 while competitors saw declines.
Market Reach: By late 2018, Fox News was available to approximately 87 million U.S. households, representing roughly 91% of television subscribers.
Compared to the total television market, Fox News is a leading network, often beating major broadcast networks like CBS and ABC in total viewers during specific periods in 2025. ”
Again, this was almost certainly generated AI response, and may have false information.
Y.M.M.V.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, February 07, 2026 - 07:30 pm: Edit |
Just because 64% watch FOX doesn't mean 64% of Americans are conservative. Lots of business people and more than a few liberals know they will get more balanced news, and Fox has gathered most of the non-aligned moderates who prefer being told things to think about rather than what to think about things.
| By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, February 07, 2026 - 08:08 pm: Edit |
Steve, that was the point.
If you look at Mike G’s “analysis”, he assigned a 30% market share to fox, not the 64% you referred to.
Do not over think this.
Fox is not perfect, and sometimes they don’t report everything accurately, but there are still people in the world who want the hard data so they can make their own assessments.
| By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Sunday, February 08, 2026 - 10:45 am: Edit |
It's also worth remembering that cable news viewership skews toward those who qualify for an AARP membership (50 and older); the median age of the CNN, Fox and MSNBC audiences is, respectively, 67, 68 and 71.
| By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Sunday, February 08, 2026 - 01:13 pm: Edit |
Jessica, That is probably a good thing....
Fox shows too many "Man on the Street"
interviews....
Gen y and z would be horrified to see
how ignorant their peers are....
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, February 08, 2026 - 09:20 pm: Edit |
I am not skewed!
| By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, February 09, 2026 - 02:39 pm: Edit |
Isn’t that a matter of opinion?
Still, better skewed than stewed!
| By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Monday, February 09, 2026 - 06:13 pm: Edit |
I do not think that being Skewed or stewed would be good.
| By Johnsonvjv on Tuesday, February 10, 2026 - 12:12 pm: Edit |
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