A-10s from the Idaho Air National Guard, and estimated 300 personnel from the 124th fighter wing were deployed to west Africa on March 29, 2025.

This is in addition to other A-10s, B-2 stealth bombers deployed to Diego Garcia air base in the indian Ocean, and a second U.S. navy aircraft carrier reinforcing the U.S.S. Harry Truman.

Additional air strikes have been reported attacking Houti positions in Yemen.

Reported by Air and Space Magazine.

The Houti insurgents apparently wanted more attention to be directed to their efforts.

Hopefully, they will get what they asked for.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Friday, April 04, 2025 - 10:40 pm: Edit

West Africa is a long way from Yemen.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Saturday, April 05, 2025 - 12:50 am: Edit

News says "Southwest Asia", "middle East". Or as I would think "God only knows where"...

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, April 05, 2025 - 08:57 am: Edit

Ryan Opel:

Agreed, it is a far way. But then , so is the Island Diego Garcia, and, if you want to argue the point… so is Idaho, USA.

There are now news reports that the Houti positions are being attacked by A-10, B-2, and F-18 aircraft.

I suggest that the important point is that a great number of military assets have been mobilized to attack an Iranian proxy terrorist group.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, April 05, 2025 - 09:37 am: Edit

Times Radio(a part of the Times London/Sunday Times media group) posted a video blog reporting that the Russian Economy has not recovered, and in fact does not have capacity to continue funding the current war operations in Ukraine beyond the end of 2025.

This reinforces what a number of people have posted here for several years, that Russia does not produce new munitions, tanks, vehicles etc. to match current losses. Report from a london think tank indicates that salvage/repair/modernization of reserve tanks to complement new production tanks may decline below current levels as one of Russias tank Depot s has consumed its original stockpile of old tanks.

(In plain english, that depot is now dependent on battlefield salvage.)

Not looking good for Putin’s Ukrainian War.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Saturday, April 05, 2025 - 09:52 am: Edit

The news sources I saw say that the A10s are headed to "the middle east" or "Southwest Asia" which probably means Turkey or the Arabian Penisula. Djibouti is conveniently close to the Houthis. Depends on whether we plan to zork Iran or the Houthis.

I any case, it is a Centcom deployment and not an Africom" one.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Saturday, April 05, 2025 - 05:46 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile,

I would love that to be true. But I think the Russian economy will need some "help" to be driven down to the point where the war could not be continued.

Examples might be a collapse in hydrocarbon prices, or Ukraine blowing up Russian hydrocarbon industry sites even more often than they already do.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, April 05, 2025 - 07:26 pm: Edit

Something new. Ukraine used remotely-operated stealth boats, which normally carry bombs, to carry drones to the coast of Crimea. The remotely-controlled drones (small quad copters) were thus able to reach places never before reached, and each of them found something worthwhile to hit, such as a SAM launcher or radar set.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, April 06, 2025 - 11:46 am: Edit

At some remove the problem is getting signals to and from the drones. IIRC the USV boats use starlink or the equivalent. Maybe they can patch through the Russian cell net for the FPV drones?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, April 06, 2025 - 01:55 pm: Edit

Something weird happening in Russia.

For the last 7 days or so, a number of black foreign luxury limousines have been catching fire… then exploding. (One would assume if the intent were to kill somebody, you would want it to explode, and the fire would be gratuitous.:

The result, has been a purge of high level Putin loyalists in defense, security and foreign sector government, every one being a longtime Putin loyalist.

Friday, an entire convoy of Limousines was stopped by fires an explosions, including the security vehicles (again, reported by times Radio video blog.)

I am not a security expert or military veteran, but the more of this kind of activity that happens, leads me to the conclusion that since Putin was insulated from direct attack, the next best option is to discredit Putins Security, and let Putin purge his remaining loyalists looking for spies and informants that are not there.

Robert Heinlein wrote about this kind of activity inside of a police state in his novel (“the Moon is a harsh mistress”) where the central computer controlled virtually all of earths lunar colony, that “woke up” becoming sentient, and a rebel working towards a successful revolution against the colonial government.

Bottom line, why worry about the police if you can get the political leadership to purge his own people .

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Sunday, April 06, 2025 - 06:07 pm: Edit

The news I've seen refers to *a* limo fire. I'd love for you to be right that there are multiple. I just haven't seen it on the news.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, April 06, 2025 - 09:01 pm: Edit

I can find multiple stories in the media about one limo exploding; nothing in the media that I can find about several of these exploding.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, April 06, 2025 - 09:41 pm: Edit

My mistake, i saw multiple stories referring to car fires dating back two years (2022) and some how jumped to the conclusion that “ Putins motorcade” fire was a different incident from the original report 7 days ago.

The Purge was reported by Sky news, Australia, and ABC (Australia Broadcasting Corp) also had a report.

It is somewhat of a conjecture that the events might be connected.

It is entirely possible that some of the car fires are actually chinese electric vehicles. Russia has imported Chinese products in spite of public concerns of product safety.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 04:19 am: Edit

"The Brent/barrel price fell from $75 to $65 in the space of 36 hours. According to Russian news feeds Russian Ural oil is now below $55/bbl and still retreating. I’ve read predictions that Brent is going to at least $60 and maybe lower, meaning Ural must dive below $50.

Oil and gas income is usually accounted to pay about 30–50 percent of the entire Russian state budget. Russia’s 2025 budget is built on the assumption Russia will export oil over the year at an average price of $69/bbl or higher. You do the math."

Stefan Korshak, Kyiv Post, on Substack.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 07:37 am: Edit

I checked and there were reports one year ago that Russia could not afford to continue the war past Sept 2024. Now it's six months past that drop dead date and we're told Russia cannot afford to continue the war more than another nine months. When that date arrives, what will be the new date?

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 08:09 am: Edit

On Russia 'running out of money'.

My bet is it will run out at precisely the same time as the advert 'Free Beer...Tomorrow' - comes true.

One attemped non-political question - will the Global Trade War cause some of the planned Military budget increaes (Germany and the UK for example), to be cancelled/postponed?

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 08:12 am: Edit

Note that cars rarely "explode." I've looked at a video and it didn't.

They can burn very fast at times, or the fuel tank has a very low order BLEVE which can seem like a detonation to the layman.

In a bleve a relatively sealed tank has a mechanical failure due to heat (the contents boiled and increase the inside pressure), ruptures, and then the contents burn really fast until the pressure equalizes. With something like propane this is a real explosion.

An more common kind of fire is one that melts/ disrupts the fuel tank (commonly this is an accident where something rips it open) and it goes from a small fire to a fairly large one in a couple seconds. It may seem odd, but MANY vehicles have plastic fuel tanks.

Most common is a minor fire compromises a fuel line while the battery still is intact and powering the fuel pump. So the fuel sprays at a decent rate and it gets exciting.

Detonation vs Deflagration?

The difference is whether the ignition front moves at greater than the speed of sound.

I have never seen a vehicle explosion that wasn't the result of using high explosives. SVBIED/ VBIED and such. And I was a fireman for many years.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 08:36 am: Edit

>> It may seem odd, but MANY vehicles have plastic fuel tanks

Indeed. Plastic fuel tanks can be lighter, and a thicker, better grade of plastic is quite durable and won't rust out and leak over time.

--Mike

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 09:02 am: Edit

As said above, you need something that's supersonic in the local undisturbed medium to generate a shockwave, and an explosion pretty much by definition needs to be something that generates a shockwave. This can be the ignition front itself being supersonic as in a high explosive (detonation).

You can also get an explosion from a fast burning substance being contained until pressure shatters its containment and the initial expansion outside the containment being supersonic in undisturbed air (while still neccessarily being subsonic in the hotter gasses from the fire), this is how low explosives like black-powder work and why they need containment if you want them to explode rather than just burning very very fast.

I would have assummed gasoline tanks could provide containment, but will accept that the tank isn't typically strong enough. (On reflection, the manufacturer has little incentive to build a strong enough tank.)

Explosions in movies and TV shows (i.e. what most of us are familiar with) tend to be fast gasoline fires with little or no shock wave (deliberately, shockwaves are destructive but not very visible, fast burning fires are much more visual but not as destructive).

My understanding is that gasoline at the right fuel-air mixture does detonate (Mythbusters was fond of mentioning how sensative this is to the actual ratio of fuel to air), so presumably you could get an actual explosion from a car going up, but I'll accept Mike Grafton's expertise in saying that this simply doesn't happen often enough to notice in reality.

By Mike Curtis (Nashvillen) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 09:24 am: Edit

As a retired fire chief with fifteen years front line firefighting experience, I concur with everything Mike Grafton has said.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 09:29 am: Edit

Final report on the grounding/sinking of the New Zealand ship ManaWanui last year was posted to YouTube this week.

Just to recap, the Royal New Zealand survey ship HMNZS Manawanui grounded near Samoa island. The ship sank the following day, but fortunately all of the 75 crew were safely rescued.

Much of the report was redacted , but Witness #1 (the Captain of the Ship) testimony in the first paragraph stated that both she and the helmsman on duty attempted to use the bow thrusters to turn the ship away from the shore.

The problem appears to be, that neither the captain or the helmsman thought to disconnect the ships auto pilot first.

It being also stated, that the manual control of the bow thrusters is not available while the ship is actively controlled by the automatic pilot system.

Oh my.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 03:52 pm: Edit

Running out of money is one reason the USSR collapsed. It can happen to Russia. Ukraine needs to be allowed and helped to degrade Russia's fossil fuel industries to a much greater degree than they already have.

Right now, one holdup is the "partial ceasefire". That said, back when the Democrats were in power, there were also issues, such as not allowing strikes into Russia for fear of "provoking" Putin.

According to Russia Fossil Tracker, based on a 14-day running average from before the tariffs hit, Russia was collecting approximately 600M Euros per day from fossil fuel exports.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, April 07, 2025 - 05:46 pm: Edit

William is making an excellent case point.

But for those not aware of the context, in March 2022, Russian revenue per day was just shy of 1,250 million Euros.

The trend has generally been declining between January 2022 and February 2025 to the 600 million eros mentioned, or half what the daily revenue was more than two years ago.

Estimates vary, the goal posts always seem to move with each decline.

There is a person who could conceivably take steps that, if successful, could lower the per barrel price of oil down. If that price declines enough to bankrupt Russia, it would effectively end the War in Ukraine.

What that price point is, is an open question. $35.00/per Barrel is one suggestion that has over the years been suggested. The problem is, $35 is below the point where it is economically feasible for shale oil recovery. Fracking, it has been stated, has a lower price point (according to published reports) but it varies with location.

Should we start a lottery? Successful prediction of the world spot price of a barrel of oil that breaks the Russian economy wins a prize to be awarded by ADB.

Has to be something Star Fleet Battles players value: perhaps the winner gets to choose the name of the Federation Off map Star base for fiction writers, or something equally symbolic.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Tuesday, April 08, 2025 - 03:15 am: Edit

To follow on from Jeff's point..... I can't find anyt recent $ prodiuction costs, but the 2015 data shows basically the Middle East and Russia in general being able to produce oil for less than $20 - if we assume a low cost is now $30 (taking into account global inflation costs) - the Middle East stll is the only main producer below that level.

The UK might well be over $70 and US $55....

Not sure how long Western Oil Companies will last at say $50 per barrel?

(The above ignores any changes from higher cost historical production to lower cost new prodution - but the initial short term cost would need to incldue the new infrastucture etc, so the long term cost might be lower).

Based on the same data - Russia would now be around $25 - so add 10% due to increases in other costs and less efficient producton due to the 2022 invasion, your around $28 per barrel.... probably not enough to keep the Ukraine War going - but probably just above total collapse level?

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Tuesday, April 08, 2025 - 08:07 am: Edit

If Russia is unable to export much oil, the price won't matter.

If Russia is forced to become an importer of gasoline and other oil products, high prices will actually help.