I read an interesting report entitled "If NATO-Russia War Broke Out."

The bottom line is that Putin would be pushed very quickly to "surrender or nuke". (No one including Putin has any clue how many of his nuclear weapons would actually work.)

NATO forces today actually outnumber Russian forces in terms of tanks, planes, artillery, troops, brigades, and anything else you can count. The German+Polish Army could reach Moscow in six weeks, tops.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Wednesday, August 06, 2025 - 04:29 am: Edit

Pre-drone, that was obviously correct. But right now, NATO is behind Russia in drones. Add Ukraine to the mix, and it's a different story.

By Robert Russell Lender (Rusman) on Wednesday, August 06, 2025 - 10:15 am: Edit

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Quote:

By all rights, this war should have ended months ago with a Russian victory…

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By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, August 06, 2025 - 10:38 am: Edit

Robert, I know what you are saying is correct, but it isn’t the whole story.

On paper, Ukraine, even with help from NATO etc… should have fallen.

All of the talking heads on television news agreed.

Even most politicians in Washington and London agreed. If The Russian Army had done what it was supposed to, (i.e. over run all Ukraine defenses) in the first week, the war should have ended.

But Russia seems to have everything that could go wrong, did.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Wednesday, August 06, 2025 - 05:46 pm: Edit

The will to fight and die. Do I want to die invading another country? Would I die protecting my home my family?

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Wednesday, August 06, 2025 - 07:17 pm: Edit

The world has chronically under-estimated Ukrainians. It still does.

In retrospect, Russia had little chance of overruning Ukraine in the early weeks. It took them 3 months to take Mariupol. There, they had the advantage of control of the adjacent sea, and their forces started about 10 miles from the city. And Mariupol was far from Ukraine's main focus.

On the Kyiv front, Russia couldn't even take Chernihiv (population 300k), located roughly 30 miles from Belarus. Given that, their chances of taking Kyiv (population 3M) were slim to none.

They did get troops into the city on the fourth day. Ukrainians, many of them civilians, clobbered them in a battle near the Kyiv Zoo. That's as close as they ever got.

Over the first few months of Trump's administration, Rubio kept saying there was no military solution. Lately he has stopped saying that. Trump has in some respects wised up about the war. I don't know whether or not he has also figured out that Ukraine can and should win.

By James Cain (Jcain) on Thursday, August 07, 2025 - 07:57 pm: Edit

I seem to recall a quote from the 2003 movie "The Italian Job" about not messing with Ukrainians...

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, August 08, 2025 - 03:54 pm: Edit

Information Warfare: Pay For Slay Forever
August 8, 2025: Earlier this year the United States threatened to halt $336 million is aid to the Palestinian Authority/PA if the Palestinians did not halt their Pay for Slay program. Recent payments were substantial, with some Palestinian terrorists receiving over a million dollars. The most recent payment totaled $142 million for 738 Palestinian terrorists. That averages $193,000 per terrorist.
Last year the PA continued using its Pay For Slay program to reward Palestinian terrorists. Since October 2023, the PA declared nearly 10,000 imprisoned Palestinian and Hamas terrorists as eligible for Pay for Slay money. The PA also recognized an additional 39,000 families of dead terrorists as eligible for Pay for Slay payments. While the PA agreed to the American demands, it is believed that the PA would seek to find a way to make the payments anyway.
The Palestinians responded by establishing a foundation to handle the money. The foundation is still run by Palestinians who simply deny any involvement with the Pay for Slay effort. The foundation dispenses money to needy Palestinians, all of them just happen to be needy terrorists. The Americans have been through this before and this time the PA deceptions may not work.
The PA has long used foreign aid money to run their pay-for-slay program. Since the 1970s the PA has diverted nearly half a billion dollars in foreign aid to pay Palestinian terrorists for killing Israeli civilians and soldiers. There is an elaborate system for paying the families of dead Palestinian terrorists as well as lesser payments for those imprisoned for attacks on Israelis.
Foreign donors eventually learned of this program, which used money donated for the welfare of Palestinian civilians. Donors tried to enforce rules prohibiting use of cash for pay-for-slay programs. The PA keeps finding ways to circumvent these restrictions and continue making terrorism profitable for Palestinians. PA leaders take a portion of the aid for themselves as a reward for continuing to deceive foreign donors.
In 2019 the Palestinian Fatah government threatened to cause an economic catastrophe by refusing partial payments from Israel and donor nations unless everyone stopped deducting the money Fatah spends on supporting and encouraging terrorist activity. In 2018 Israel passed a law to deduct Pay For Slay payments from the $130 million a month it collects in taxes and fees for the Palestinians in the West Bank. Despite that Fatah paid over $20 million to Palestinian terrorists in prison or to their families for deceased terrorists. The U.S. had already enacted a similar law and was deducting a similar amount from the $300 million it currently gives to the West Bank Palestinians. Other foreign donors have taken similar measures.
Fatah complains that the U.S., Israel and other donors are being unfair. Yet it is no secret that many Palestinians become terrorists because they are attracted to the financial rewards, which are considerable for many impoverished Palestinians impoverished by Fatah corruption and incompetence. Palestinians who are jailed, injured or killed while trying to kill Israelis receive large payments from Fatah. For example families of dead terrorists get an immediate payment of $1,700 from Fatah plus monthly payments for the life of the immediate family. These monthly payments consist of $400 to over $1,000 depending on the number of wives and children and can make a family relatively affluent and open new opportunities, like enough cash to afford a people smuggler who can get one or more family members to the West. There is also a bonus of $86 a month if you are a legal resident of Israel and a similar monthly bonus if you were a resident of Jerusalem. Fatah currently pays about $200 million a year to the families
Monthly payments to jailed Palestinians vary according to how long they have been in jail, how many dependents they have and so on. There are also bonuses for how many Israelis the prisoner killed or injured. Some of these convicts get over $50,000 a year. Fatah currently spends nearly $200 million a year to reward over 6,000 jailed terrorists. Fatah considers this payment program a success even though hundreds of Palestinians have died in the Fatah-promoted violence. These attacks also left a growing number of Israelis dead and for Fatah that is political gold as far as Arab language media is concerned.
With this approach, Fatah and Hamas together currently spend over $400 million a year to make murder economically attractive to many young Palestinians. Most of it comes from Fatah although Hamas is trying to make more payments to Palestinians in the West Bank who support Hamas and attack Israelis in the name of Hamas. The Arab language media throughout the Middle East take for granted that these payments are just and necessary for the war against Israel.
In response to the current American and Israeli efforts to penalize Fatah for what is spent to encourage terror attacks, Fatah made it clear it would not halt payments to families for dead or jailed terrorists. Instead, it cut pay to Palestinians who worked for the West Bank government. But by refusing foreign aid money still being offered, Fatah caused shortages of food and other necessities in the West Bank. The ensuing Palestinian outrage and resulting damage were blamed on the efforts to halt pay for slay terrorism support.
Fatah is pleading with Russia and Arab oil states to help them out. Russia is broke and prefers to be on good terms with Israel. The Arab oil states are fed up with the Palestinian preference for self-destructive behavior. When the PA cannot obtain the needed Pay for Slay cash from the usual sources, it records missed payments as debts that must eventually be paid. Pay for Slay is an essential PA program because it brings in more Palestinian men willing to die for money. Families receiving the money honor their dead benefactors for a long time.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 03:42 pm: Edit

Attrition: Russian War on Ukrainian Recruiting
August 11, 2025: Two months ago Russia began an effort to disrupt Ukrainian recruiting by sending drones to destroy recruiting stations. This is an effort to disrupt recruiting efforts and destroy records of who prospects are and who has recently signed up. Attacks also caused casualties among recruiters, prospective recruits and nearby civilians. Only a few attacks have been made because the short range of the drones means that only recruiting stations near the Russian border are vulnerable. This effort does not appear to have had any impact on recruiting. Some Ukrainian recruits remarked about how the war came to them before they could get to the front and do any actual fighting.
These attacks are part of a Russian effort to demoralize Ukrainian civilians and reduce popular support for the war. While most Ukrainians are war weary by now, few want to abandon efforts to defend their homeland. Meanwhile the war has become one of attrition and the Russians are losing. So far Russia has suffered over a million losses in the form of dead, disabled, missing and deserters. There are also a growing number of Russian men who continue to evade army service or leave Russia. Ukrainian men were eager to volunteer initially, but after a year, news of the Ukrainian losses and relentless Russian attacks began to discourage Ukrainian men from serving. By the end of 2024, nearly 70,000 soldiers had died, with three times as many more wounded or missing.
Ukraine used a series of clever moves to maintain their troop numbers despite growing losses and increased reluctance of Ukrainian men to serve. Among the policies eventually implemented were months of training for new soldiers, tactics that minimized Ukrainian casualties and periodic rotation of experienced combat troops out of the front lines for weeks of rest and retraining. Soon news of these policies reached young men facing mobilization into the military. The new policies reduced resistance to serving. The policy was summed up as, “Ukrainian soldiers are not trained to die.” But a lot of them did anyway. War is like that.
The Ukrainians excelled at defensive tactics that took maximum advantage of Russian frontal assaults. Ukrainian drones had eliminated most Russian tanks by 2023, and by 2025 drones were responsible for over 70 percent of Russian casualties. Ukrainian losses soon followed a similar pattern, but with far fewer losses. When the Ukrainians went on the offensive the attacking troops were accompanied by intense and continuous use of drones and automated ground weapons. Currently Ukraine is often using just drones and remotely controlled robotic ground combat vehicles for attacks. In at least one instance, Russians surrendered to their robot attackers.
Ukraine also developed special operations forces. In 2016 Ukraine, as part of ongoing military reforms and reorganization, created a Jaeger light infantry brigade. This unit was part of Ukrainian Special Operations Forces. The Jager brigade uses an existing infantry brigade but replaces conscripts with upgraded volunteers. The Jaegers received upgraded equipment and intensive training. The Jagers were assigned to provide security, and timely intelligence, about what is happening along several hundred kilometers of the northern border with Belarus and Russia.
The Jagers gathered information that helped the Ukrainians win and the Russians endure more losses. The Ukrainian policy was to minimize casualties while the Russians were willing to endure heavy losses to advance. By the end of 2024 the Russians were running out of troops and bringing in North Korea mercenaries to keep their offensive forces up to strength. Ukraine was building four million drones a year.
Back in Russia questions are raised about the wisdom of continuing the war with less effective forces. It may not be wise, but it’s what leader Vladimir Putin wanted and, so far, there is no one to stop him from continuing the war. The Putin solution was to offer prospective recruits more money to join and their families' large payments after their sons died. This currently costs about ten percent of the government budget.
And then there is corruption. While Ukraine continues to catch, prosecute and punish corrupt recruiting officials, Russia eliminated anti-corruption laws to enable corrupt officials to evade detection and continue to profit from corrupt practices. This encouraged Ukrainians to keep fighting and Russians to resist getting mobilized into the military. It also encourages more Russians to sabotage the war effort via individual efforts. The Russian war effort is often disrupted by individual actions against railroad signal systems. This is easy to do and difficult to prevent. Russian mothers organize effective protests against the war, as they have been doing in the 1980s. Russia is increasingly at war with itself as well as Ukraine.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 03:42 pm: Edit

Warplanes: Chinese Pilot Combat Inexperience
August 11, 2025: China has a lot of impressive new warplanes entering service. The men, and a few women, who pilot these aircraft are a problem. Chinese pilots get plenty of flying time but have little or no combat experience. Intercepting and harassing American, Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese warplanes do not really qualify as effective training.
Meanwhile China alarmed Western governments three years ago by quietly hiring retired military pilots to help train Chinese pilots. The Chinese did this discreetly, using a South African firm that recruits retired pilots to work for the growing number of companies that provide various levels of training for military pilots. Many countries cannot afford the extensive training major nations, like the U.S. and larger NATO nations have long provided. Even those countries are now using some of these contractor-pilot operations to ease the load on their military pilot-training operations.
China used the South African recruiting firm to find Western military pilots China could approach with lucrative offers to work directly with the Chinese air force to improve pilot abilities. China offered attractive pay, often over a quarter million dollars a year for the most experienced candidates. Many potential candidates turned down the offer and some mentioned it to pilots who were still on active duty. Soon details of the Chinese recruiting reached senior air force leaders. This recruiting is not illegal, but when it was discovered that China was particularly interested in retired pilots with experience with the latest warplanes, especially the F-35, the legal Chinese recruiting morphed into another Chinese intelligence operation.
China often tries, with some success, to convince Western contractors to engage in espionage. Large cash payments are often used but in some cases the candidates are entrapped, usually with an attractive Chinese female operative, and blackmailed into cooperating. The British, or at least the British media, turned this around by pointing out that British intelligence could debrief the officers hired to obtain a better idea of what capabilities Chinese pilots already had and exactly what they were seeking to learn. This debrief procedure is not unusual but the suggestion that it was also a search for men willing to be double agents while pretending to spy for the Chinese, was a more serious matter for the Chinese. On the other hand, it offered former British pilots double pay and free access to smashing Chinese ladies.
The training effort only involved about 30 pilots who were recruited. None of them had any F-35 experience. Now that this Chinese operation has been exposed, more details emerged of what the Chinese were up to. The Chinese learn from their mistakes, as well as history.
The history angle is interesting because China adopted a practice Japan used successfully over a century ago to improve its armed forces. In the case of Japan, Western nations, especially Britain, did not see this as aiding the enemy but rather assisting a major customer and potential military ally.
This all began unexpectedly in 1868 when Japan, after centuries of isolationist and technologically backward policies, decided that to survive they must modernize and deal with the outside world. At the time Japan had a medieval economy and their plan was to rush through the industrial revolution to reform their economy and armed forces. China underwent a similar process a century later. The difference was that, until the 1920s, a modernized Japan was seen as an ally of the West. Then Japanese attitudes towards the West changed. Paranoia towards the West and armed aggression towards neighbors as well as the West led to Japan starting the East Asian/Pacific portion of World War II. That did not end well for Japan and China seemed headed in the same direction in the early 21st Century.
While China has not purchased as many weapons from the West as Japan did over a century ago, China used a lot of successful espionage to steal valuable Intellectual Property/IP from the West and tried to hire Western military advisors to improve their air forces. This is something the Japanese also did for decades until about a century ag0 when Japan was recognized as increasingly hostile towards the West and no longer an ally.
The main cause of this switch was the Japanese perception that the Western powers, especially the ones Japan assisted in fighting the Germans during World War I, did not sufficiently recognize or appreciate Japanese assistance. Japanese saw this as racist behavior and very insulting. At the same time Japanese, like most East Asians, always perceived Europeans as barbarians who developed and misused some interesting new technology. The Japanese were, and still, are especially fond of this attitude, which they also apply to their East Asian neighbors.
Most, but not all, Europeans were shocked and surprised at this Japanese change in attitude. So were some Japanese who had more experience in the West. Such individuals in Japan and the West were too few to change minds in their own homelands. History does repeat, or at least paraphrase, itself.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 03:46 pm: Edit

Armor: American and South Korean Next Generation Tanks
August 10, 2025: The new American M1E3 tanks are a significant improvement over the current M1 SepV3. In early 2024 the United States sent 31 M1 tanks to Ukraine. These tanks began arriving in September 2023 and were put to work and performed well. The M1E3 will begin arriving in two or three years. Its improvements over the M1 SepV3 include reducing the weight to under 60 tons so the tank can use more bridges. E3 has a modular design making it easier to replace broken components or install upgraded or new components. E3 has an improved fire control system, upgraded sensors and upgraded protection.
The new South Korean K3 tank is powered by a hybrid engine, a new type of armor, an unmanned turret, and a targeting system using Artificial Intelligence to increase the speed and accuracy of firing the smoothbore 130mm main gun. The K3 is not expected to enter service until 2040. The K3 is being developed by the manufacturer Hyundai Rotem and the South Korean Agency for Defense Development/ADD and the Defense Agency for Technology and Quality.
The new tank is designed to provide improved mobility and protection. The unmanned turret is featureless, lacking the various devices visible on and often protruding from the turret. All the 130mm gun ammunition is in the turret, providing more protection for the crew. TheK3 also carries reconnaissance/surveillance drones. These are launched and recovered from an aperture in the rear of the turret.
The three man crew works inside a capsule providing further protection if the tank is hit. Cameras and other sensors are mounted on the tank exterior, most of them flush with the hull. A wide range of sensors and cameras, incorporating virtual reality, will offer a 360-degree view of the tank’s surroundings and warnings of attacks and the source of threat location.
Initially the K3 will use a dual-mode hydrogen/diesel engine, but ultimately the K3’s engine will be powered by fuel cells which are quieter and generate less heat for enemy infrared sensors to detect. Most tanks use heat and sound detection to spot and identify enemy tanks. Fuel cell-powered engines are also easier to maintain and provide better performance while travelling offroad on difficult terrain. The tank has an has an adaptive suspension which enables road speeds of up to 80 kilometers an hour.
Artificial Intelligence can, if the tank commander chooses, operate the fire control system and its autonomous target tracking and engagement system. This enables the gun to aim and fire more quickly and accurately than when under crew control. The crew can take back control at any time, instead of just instructing the fire control what to do.
The unmanned turret has an autoloader for the 130mm gun, as well as Anti-Tank Guided Missile/ATGMs launcher that fires missiles with a range of nearly eight kilometers. That’s more than twice the range of the 130mm gun. The K3 has an improved Active Protection System/APS that deals with more threats and does it more efficiently. All this will be expensive and it's possible that the current list of K3 features and capabilities will be trimmed because they are too expensive or take too long to develop. The target delivery date of 2040 reflects this.
Meanwhile there’s the 56-ton K2. The experience developing and delivering this tank gave K3 developers some practical experience in what to expect while getting the K3 into service. In 2021 South Korea resumed production of its new K2 tank, after a year's delay because of problems with the engine. These problems were first discovered in 2008, but proved more difficult to fix than anticipated. The prototype began testing five years earlier, but there were lots of other problems, and delays. Three prototypes were built, and the numerous delays led to a reduction of the production order from 500 to 380.
The K2 replaced older American M-48 tanks, and completed the transformation of the South Korean tank force. Two decades ago, South Korea developed, and built, its own K1 tank. The 51 ton K1 was based on the American M1 design, but is somewhat smaller and equipped with the same 105mm gun used by the U.S. M60 tank. The K1 has a 1,200 horsepower diesel, instead of a 1,500 horsepower gas turbine engine in the M1. Production of the K1 ended in 1997, with about a thousand built. There have since been some upgrades to the fire control and communications systems, as well as the development of the K1A1, which has the same 120mm gun as the M1, along with other equipment used by the M1, but not the K1. The K1A1 is apparently part of the K2 development project, as only two K1A1 prototypes were built, and successfully tested.
So far South Korea has 250 K2s with another 150 on order. Another 18o are being built for Poland and all current K2 ten tanks a month production is going to Poland. Eventually Poland may have a thousand K2s, most of them built in Poland under license. The K2 which entered service in 2008 was superior to current North Korean, Japanese or Chinese tanks. The K2 had features that were upgraded for the proposed K3. This includes an improved electronic system and fire control system that can hit helicopters and other slow low flying aircraft. K2 was a substantial improvement over the 1,511 54-t0n K1 tanks built between 1984 and 2024.
Both the K1 and K2 found many export customers.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 03:46 pm: Edit

Winning: Israel Does What It Has To Do
August 10, 2025: Even before Israel became a nation, Jews in the region had fought to exist. The World War II German effort to exterminate all European Jews failed, but did kill six million Jews and six million other Europeans. The Jewish response was to redouble their efforts to establish a Jewish state, which they did in 1948. But their neighbors continued attacking, as they have done for thousands of years. All the attackers got out of it was a respite from attacking each other. Currently the only ones still attacking Israel are Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, two Moslem terror groups, plus the Moslem Shia rebel Houtis of Yemen. Shia Iran continues to attack Sunni Moslems as well as Israelis. What frustrates Israel’s attackers the most is that tiny Israel continues to defeat far larger or far more desperate antagonists.
This includes Israeli treatment of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians proclaim that Israel has no right to exist, must be destroyed and all Jews expelled from the region. These attitudes are expressed in Palestinian newspapers, TV interviews and public meetings with Palestinian audiences. What is said at these meetings has been recorded and reported in some media worldwide. Nations hostile to Israel ignore these media events and pretend they never happened. Currently 143 nations support the currently non-existent Palestine becoming a full member of the UN. Fifteen nations, including non-Moslem China, South Africa and Venezuela support Palestine becoming a state and accuse Israel of war crimes for indiscriminate attacks on civilians despite the fact, that is rarely reported by eyewitnesses, that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields in an effort to get close enough to Israeli soldiers to attack them.
Meanwhile there is little criticism of attacks on Israelis, who are supposed to accept such violence as justified violence against Jews for being Jews. In short, many nations support the elimination of Israel and reject any criticism of this attitude. Meanwhile, the Israelis continue to stand by their Never Again policy and so far, have succeeded in defeating any attempts to destroy it.
The June 13th, 2005, Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military commanders, nuclear weapon scientists, uranium processing facilities and ballistic missile operations were essential to prevent Iran from completing its preparations to attack Israel. The Israeli attack force consisted of 200 aircraft. The Americans followed up with seven B2 stealth bombers using fourteen 13-ton ground penetrating bombs to destroy well protected Iranian nuclear weapons facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.
In response Iran launched nearly 1,500 drones and missiles at Israel in response to the devastating June 13th Israeli attack. The Iranian attack left 24 Israelis dead and thousands wounded. This attack was not surprising. The Iranian government has, since the 1980s, been a Shia Islamic theocracy. That means a Shia Islamic Supreme Leader, always a senior Shia cleric, assisted by a Guardian Council, makes the major decisions about domestic and foreign policy, and the parliament only decides those things the Supreme Leader permits.
The Guardian Council consists of senior Shia Islam religious leaders, called Ayatollahs, and six civilian judges or lawyers. The six Ayatollahs are appointed by the Supreme Leader while the six lawyers and judges are appointed by the chief judge of Iran. All twelve are appointed to The Council of Experts. The Council members are elected officials although the candidates seeking to be Council members must be approved by the Supreme Leader. This means the government isn’t a true democracy and the real power is the Supreme Leader supported by the Guardian Council and the Council of Experts. The government is protected by the 250,000 men of the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC. The organization exists to protect the Supreme Leader and his advisors from internal and external threats. One part of the IRGC is the Quds Force, which specializes in supporting foreign armed groups, usually Shia but sometimes Sunnis, that support Iranian foreign policy. The Quds is responsible for supporting, and s
In 2024 the seemingly formidable IRGC appeared to be a major threat. This illusion was demolished when Iran, or at least the IRGC, decided to launch a major attack on Israel using weapons launched from Iran. This attack involved over 400 missiles and slower armed drones. This attack was a major failure, with Israeli air defenses and Ballistic Missile Defense or BMD systems taking care of the threat. Neighboring Jordan shot down many of the UAVs passing over Jordan to reach Israel. The Israelis were also aided by Americans and British warplanes operating from airbases in the region, as well as two American warships off the Israeli coast. Only minor damage was done to an Israeli air base.
Five days later Israel launched several attacks on Iran that were not intercepted. To make interception even less likely in the future, the Israeli attacks concentrated on Iranian air defense, including surveillance and fire control radars as well as the missile launchers themselves. The Israelis used low-altitude drones to avoid Iranian radar and then destroy the radars. Israeli missiles finished off the now blinded Iranian air defense system. All this was a convincing demonstration of how effective the Israeli military was compared to their Iranian counterparts.
Iranian political and military leaders downplayed the extent of damage the Israelis had inflicted. News of what really happened spread quickly throughout Iran, where Iranian civilians were pleased with the failure of the attacks on Israel and delighted that the Israeli counterattack had demonstrated the uselessness of Iranian air defenses. The Iranian religious dictatorship has been increasingly unpopular with most Iranians. Despite all the oil wealth Iran produced, little of the oil income benefits the average Iranian. This makes it easier for foreign governments, including Israel and the United States, to find and hire Iranian spies or those willing to do something that will destroy assets that are valuable to the government. Or simply make the Iranian government look bad. These Iranian agents often have to be helped to flee Iran, often with their families, carrying out a particularly daring and destructive mission. This included the 2020 explosion in the underground Natanz nuclear material enrichment faci
Sometimes Iranians are willing to voice their hatred of their government openly, as happened on April 8th this year in a Tehran sports stadium. Stadium officials used the public address system to ask the thousands of spectators to observe a minute of silence in honor of seven IRGC officers, including a general, who were killed by a recent Israeli airstrike in Syria. Instead of silence, many spectators used air horns and other noise makers as well as shouting to show their hostility toward the Iranian government. Many Iranians are still angry about the more than 700 Iranian protestors killed by the IRGC because of a 2022 incident where Iranian religious police seized a Kurdish girl, who they accused of not having her hair covered. The girl was beaten to death while in police custody and that led to nationwide anti-government protests and faded by early 2023, mainly because the IRGC used lethal force against demonstrators, killing at least 700, wounding over a thousand and jailing even more. Iran's efforts to

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 12, 2025 - 03:46 pm: Edit

Information Warfare: American Analysis of How Russia Fights
August 12, 2025: The analysis in the How Russia Fights project began when General Christopher Cavoli, commander of American army operations in Europe and Africa, realized something. U.S. Army Foreign Area Officers/FAOs assigned to the European theater lacked a detailed understanding of the Russian Armed Forces/RAF and were unable to adequately advise him and other senior officers. Between 1991 to 2014, the United States considered Russia to be a strategic partner. As a result, FAO training shifted its focus away from Russian military capabilities to areas like China and the Pacific. To address this training gap, Cavoli assembled a team of retired Russian speaking Army FAOs. These men had more than 200 years’ experience working on aspects of the Russian military and how they operated. This group called themselves the Troika, the Russian word for three. The Troika was asked to create a training course for FAOs focused on the RAF at the operational and tactical levels. This course became the Russian Way of War/
After a successful pilot course in 2021, Cavoli told the Troika to create a one-day version of RWOW for senior leaders. There was a weeklong version for staff officers, NCOs, and civilians. When Russia launched its Special Military Operation/SMO against Ukraine in early 2022, the Troika watched attentively. They had just completed the primary course, and FAO students planned a hypothetical Russian invasion of Ukraine as part of the course. The curriculum was based on Russian taktika doctrine, theory, professional military journals, exercises, and case studies of recent Russian operations in Chechnya, Ukraine, and Syria. The Troika wanted to see how well their curriculum held up in a real Russian large-scale combat operation. It held up and many Troika assumptions turned out to be quite accurate. There were some surprises, and a few items that were overlooked. The Troika commenced to update the curriculum in real time. On the second day of the SMO, The Troika consolidated and organized 24 hours of hasty Troika internal texts and emails summarizing their observations and sent them to Cavoli. He responded with comments and enough questions to generate another set of Troika Observations. He realized the daily Russian Way of War curriculum updates he was receiving could be useful to his staff, and combat unit leader’s army wide. This led to the Troika Observations, being distributed to nearly 4,000 email addresses, three items a week.
Before the Troika came along the Russian military was desperately seeking to avoid fading away. During the two decades before the Ukraine War, there was increasing popular opposition to military service. This made it difficult to obtain enough recruits at all, let alone competent ones, and troop quality sharply declined. Draft dodging reached epidemic proportions and efforts to attract more highly paid volunteers failed. Thirteen years ago the military had 220,000 officers and 200,000 contract personnel. These were well paid volunteers encouraged to be non-commissioned officers otherwise known as NCOs or sergeants. Most of the troops were conscripts and it was becoming more difficult to find men willing to become well-paid contract soldiers and eventually sergeants. Most of the missing troops were young men who were conscripted but never showed up. The barracks were thinly populated and the situation became a national scandal.
Russia's military leaders came to understand that the key problem was the lack of adequate troop supervision. In other words, Russia did not have enough NCOS and too few good ones. This was because during the 1921-91 Soviet Union period the communists gave NCO responsibilities and duties to junior officers. The communists considered these men more trustworthy. There was one major flaw in that plan. Without NCOs no one was maintaining order and discipline in the barracks. The young lieutenants normally assigned to run a platoon had no experience handling troops and were often intimidated by bullies in the ranks. There were not enough experienced, but higher ranking, officers to come and back the lieutenants up. While the threat of arrest and prison/labor camps prevented mutiny or complete anarchy, there were still serious problems. The stronger troops picked on the weaker ones, making military service extremely unpopular for all the wrong reasons. The conscripts didn't mind serving their country but they did not like being bullied and exploited by gangs of young soldiers.
For over a decade the generals have tried to break this cycle of hazing. Taking advice from their Western counterparts they sought to develop NCOs who could take charge of the barracks. They discovered that building an effective NCO corps from scratch is not easy. For one thing, the culture of hazing is very hard to extinguish. Many of the first professional Russian NCOs gave up and got out of the military. Facing down the gangs of bullies was more trouble than it was worth.
The Russians could not afford to stop trying, because without a solution to the bullying they will be stuck with a less effective military. They had to find a way to make all their troops act like professionals. One proposed solution was to increase the number of contract troops to 425,000 over four years and use a six week training and selection program, to make sure the right people are selected for NCO training. The six week course was a series of training and testing sessions that determined if candidates could handle the stress of military life and possessed enough maturity to avoid hazing and stop those who were still bullying soldiers. These new contract soldiers were expected to be seeking a military career and willing to take on more responsibilities, like becoming NCOs or technical specialists. To meet the goal of 425,000 contract soldiers the military had to bring in 50,000 new contract soldiers a year. If that goal was achieved most of the enlisted troops would be contract troops and professional
Currently conscripts are inducted twice a year, in April and October. Last year the April intake was 220,000 but fewer than that actually made it into uniform. Last October only 135,000 were expected and only about 100,000 were actually put into service. The military is willing to accept the fact that they will not be able to obtain more than 270,000 conscripts a year, if that. That means there will never be a million man force. At the moment there are too many constant casualties, too many officers and not enough contract soldiers and NCOs, and about the right amount of conscripts, if the conscription goals can be reached. So far, this does not seem realistic.
The basic recruiting problem was two-fold. First, military service is very unpopular and potential conscripts are increasingly successful at dodging the draft. But the biggest problem is that the number of 18 year olds is rapidly declining each year. The latest crop of draftees was born after the Soviet Union dissolved. That was when the birth rate went south. Not so much because the Soviet Union was gone but more because of the economic collapse, caused by decades of communist misrule that precipitated the collapse of the communist government. The number of available draftees went from 1.5 million a year in the early 1990s, to 800,000 today. Less than half those potential conscripts are showing up and many have criminal records or tendencies that help sustain the abuse of new recruits that has made military service so unsavory.
With conscripts now in for only a year, rather than two, the military is forced to take a lot of marginal sickly, overweight, bad attitude and drug-user recruits in order to keep the military and Ministry of Interior units up to strength. But this means that even elite airborne and commando units are using a lot of conscripts. Most of these young guys take a year to master the skills needed to be useful and then they are discharged. Few choose to remain in uniform and become career soldiers. That's primarily because the Russian military is seen as a crippled institution and one not likely to get better any time soon. With so many of the troops now one year conscripts and too few contract soldiers surviving their first year in service, an increasing number of the best officers and NCOs get tired of coping with all the alcoholics, drug users, and petty criminals that are taken in just to make quotas. With the exodus of the best leaders, and growing number of ill-trained and unreliable conscripts, the Russian m
The government found that, even among the contract soldiers, the old abuses lived on and that most of the best contract soldiers left when their contract was up. It was because of the brutality and lack of discipline in the barracks. The hazing is most frequently committed by troops who have been in six months or so against the new recruits. But this extends to a pattern of abuse and brutality by all senior enlisted troops against junior ones. It’s long been out of control. The abuse continues to increase because of the growing animosity against troops who are not ethnic Russians.
Conscription and the prospect of being exposed to the hazing led to a massive increase in draft dodging. Bribes and document fraud are freely used. Few parents, or potential conscripts, consider this a crime. Avoiding the draft is seen as a form of self-preservation.
The Russian lack of sergeants or praporshchiki was difficult to fix. Just promoting more troops to that rank, paying them some more, and telling them to take charge did not work. So going back to look at how Western armies did it, the Russians noted that those foreign armies provided a lot of professional training for new NCOs and more of it as the NCOs advanced in rank. But this is a long term process and it will be years before benefits will be felt.
All this is in sharp contrast to the old days. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, it had five million troops in its armed forces. By the early 21st Century it was less than one million in just Russia, which had about half the population of the Soviet Union but most of the territory. Although the Russian armed forces lost over 80 percent of its strength between 1991 and 2008, a disproportionate number of officers remained. At the beginning of the post-Soviet round of reforms the Russian military had about 1.2 million personnel. While 400,000 were in the army, the rest were in paramilitary units that were largely uniformed and armed like soldiers. But there were 355,000 officers in this force. That's more than one in three. With all that some 40,000 officer positions were still vacant. The reorganization eliminated nearly half of them.
Russia has tried to change public attitudes towards the armed forces by publicizing all the new changes and programs. But word got around that most of these efforts failed. Blame that on the Internet. Polls consistently show that most military age men do not want to serve in the military and the main reason is the hazing and prison-like conditions in the barracks. The new generation of NCOs and better troop living conditions are meant to provide an atmosphere that will not scare away conscripts and volunteers.
Just about every reform effort failed and that explains the often ineffective performance of Russian officers and troops in Ukraine.
The full report can be downloaded at How Russia Fights: A Compendium of Troika Observations on Russia's Special Military Operations .
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 13, 2025 - 05:18 pm: Edit

Peace Time: The NGO Threat
August 13, 2025: The current American president ordered audits organizations many had long suspected of diverting the money to recipients that would support anti American groups, lavish salaries for pro-government officials as well as foreign nation officials who responded to large bribes to see things the American way or just to oblige the recipients to one day return or carry out tasks requested by the current president.
Over 250 NGOs received most of this money and distributed according to what the current American president wanted. The recent U.S. government audits of most of these activities continued into 2025 because the NGOs and their government handlers believed they were immune to fraud claims because their activities served the wishes of whatever Presidential administration was in power. They were wrong and audits named names, and suggested cutting the money off and prosecuting those responsible. Those investigations and prosecutions continue.
The current government wants to destroy these practices. This does not surprise a lot of Americans who already knew that something like this was suspected because there had been rumors and stories in the news detailing some of this malpractice. These accusations were always ignored or denied.
For example, the UN, and non-governmental organizations/NGOs in general, have had to deal with the harmful side effects of their good works. The worst side effect is how rebels and bandits sustain themselves by stealing food and other aid supplies, as well as robbing the NGO workers themselves. Initially, the main UN complaint was the increasing attacks on aid workers. At one point, about twenty aid workers a year were killed, and hundreds assaulted and even more robbed. This is a trend that has been on the march upward for several years. Islamic radicals have been particularly active in terrorizing and killing the foreigners who are there to help them. About half of the recent incidents take place in Sudan, where UN aid workers are caught between pro-government militias, bandits and anti-government rebels. All see the UN, and other, aid workers as a source of income and supplies. In Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, there are also problems with Islamic radicals keen on chasing out all non-Moslem foreigners.
At the core of this problem is not the UN, but the concept of NGOs in general. A good example of how this works occurred when the Afghan government threatened to expel all NGOs. The NGOs were accused of failing to get aid programs moving, and spending aid money to further their own ends. The NGOs in Afghanistan controlled over a billion dollars in foreign aid each year, and the government was simply joining many Afghans in complaining about the NGOs being more concerned about their own safety and comfort, than in making the lives of Afghans better. It's not as simple as that.
NGOs are, for the most part, charitable organizations that take money from individuals, organizations and governments, and use it for charitable work in foreign countries. Founded in 1863, the Red Cross is one of the oldest, and best known NGOs, although the Catholic church had been doing similar work for centuries. In the mid-20th century, the UN and its many aid agencies became the largest NGO. In the late 20th century, the number of NGOs grew explosively. Now there are thousands of them, providing work for hundreds of thousands of people. The NGO elite are well educated people from Western countries that solicit donations, or go off to disaster areas and apply money, equipment and supplies to alleviate some natural or man-made disaster. Governments have been so impressed by the efficiency of NGOs that they have contracted them to perform foreign aid and disaster relief work that was once done by government employees.
Problems, however, have developed. The Western employees of NGOs, while not highly paid, and infused with a certain degree of idealism, do bring to disaster areas a bunch of outsiders who have a higher standard of living and different ideas. Several decades ago, the main thing these outsiders brought with them was food and medical care. The people on the receiving end were pretty desperate, and grateful for the help.
But NGOs eventually moved into development and social programs. This caused unexpected problems with the local leadership. Development programs disrupt the existing economic, and political, relations. The local leaders are often not happy with this, as the NGOs are not always willing to work closely with the existing power structure. While the local politicians may be exploitative, and even corrupt, they are local, and they do know more about popular attitudes and ideals than the foreigners. NGOs with social programs like education, especially educating women, plus new lifestyle choices and more power for people who don't usually have much), often run into conflict with the local leadership. Naturally, the local politicians and traditional leaders have resisted, or even fought back. Thus the Afghan government officials called for all NGOs in the country to be shut down. That included Afghan NGOs, who were doing some of the same work as the foreign ones. The government officials were responding to complaints from numerous old school Afghan tribal and religious leaders who were unhappy with all these foreigners, or urban Afghans with funny ideas, upsetting the ancient ways in the countryside.
NGOs are not military organizations, but they can fight back. They do this mainly through the media, because they also use favorable media coverage to propel their fund raising efforts. NGOs will also ask, or demand, that the UN or other foreign governments send in peacekeeping troops to protect the NGOs from hostile locals. This had disastrous effects in Somalia during the early 1990s. Some NGOs remained, or came back, to Somalia after the peacekeepers left. These NGOs learned how to cope on their own. They hired local muscle for protection, as well as cutting deals with the local warlords. But eventually the local Islamic radicals became upset at the alien ideas these Western do-gooders brought with them, and began to chase all NGOs out.
In eastern Congo, aid workers have found themselves the primary target of the local bandits and militias that had created the problems that attracted the foreign aid in the first place. NGOs have learned to raise mini-armies when they want to. But in areas where there are peacekeepers, and the NGOs believe they are not being well served, the NGOs will often simply depart, amid a flurry of press releases, to show their displeasure at the security arrangements, or the political goals of the peacekeepers.
But then came Afghanistan and Iraq, two places where many local leaders thought it served their interests best if there were no NGOs at all. Throughout the world, NGOs are finding that the world has changed. NGOs will never be the same after what's happened during the last decade.
NGOs have formal legal recognition in many countries, and internationally they, as a group, have some standing. NGOs have become a player in international affairs, even though individual NGOs each have their own, independent, outlook on world affairs. But as a group, they are a power to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, there is no leader of all the NGOs you can negotiate with. Each one has to be dealt with separately. Since NGOs also come from many different countries and have members that speak English, peacekeepers can also run into language and cultural customs problems. NGOs have turned out to be another good idea that, well, got complicated in unexpected ways.
This move from delivering aid, to delivering often unwelcome ideas, has put all NGOs at risk. The NGOs have become players in a worldwide civil war between local traditional ideas, and the more transnational concepts that trigger violent reactions in many parts of the world. Now, concerned about doing more harm than good, NGOs are discussing among themselves how to deal with some of the dangerous conditions their presence creates.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 13, 2025 - 05:19 pm: Edit

Warplanes: India Retires Its MiG-21 Jets
August 13, 2025: Next month India will retire the last of its Russian-designed MiG-21 fighters. India is the last major country to abandon MiG-21s. This aircraft entered service in 1959. In 1986 MiG-21 production ceased, with 11,500 built. Most were built in Russia. Because of imports and locally manufactured ones, India ended up with 1,200 MiG-21s. Over the last 50 years India has lost at least 400 MiG-21s to accidents and a few more in combat. That earned the India MiG-s the Flying Coffin nickname. MiG-21 were rarely successful at shooting down enemy fighters, with fewer than a dozen kills, while American F-16’s have shot down 76 aircraft with only one loss.
FYEO

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Wednesday, August 13, 2025 - 08:04 pm: Edit

The US Air Force is the largest distributor of MiG parts all over the world...

By Steve Stewart (Stevestewart) on Thursday, August 14, 2025 - 08:19 am: Edit

"On the other hand, it offered former British pilots double pay and free access to smashing Chinese ladies."

Wonderfully written Steve, as a retired RAF officer I don't think I could have written anything more RAF-sounding that that!

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 14, 2025 - 08:26 am: Edit

Quoted from FYEO, not something I wrote.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 14, 2025 - 02:47 pm: Edit

Intelligence: The American AI Gap
August 14, 2025: The American military is seeking to upgrade its AI activities to levels China, and perhaps Russia, operate at. The United States must develop Artificial Intelligence /AI technology its military can use for propaganda and influence operations against enemy troops and populations. Current AI technology makes it possible to mimic the voice of enemy officers and then send radio confusing messages to their subordinates. The enemy forces move in the wrong direction and fire artillery at the wrong targets, including their own troops.
AI can also be used to help commanders make decisions more quickly. Any new technology does not reach wide acceptance and use until it establishes its usefulness and trustworthiness to the user population. Such was the case with the telegraph in the late 1800s, broadcast radio in the 1920s and television three decades later. Actually the development of more effective telegraph systems coincided with work to develop commercial radio and television services. In the 1970s personal computers were developed. The idea seemed absurd at first, but as tinkerers and hobbyist developers produced the first PC that actually worked, a new industry was born. By the late 1970s Apple, Radio Shack and a few other firms were selling PCs to what turned out to be a very enthusiastic and rather large audience. Decades of American government and military work on the internet became commercially available in 1995. That made the maturing PC industry a must-have product.
In the 21st century AI became a usable product and as it reached more users, there were more useful and marketable ideas on what AI could be used for. Some of the new uses were illegal, dividing the programmer and user community between good, or White Hat and bad, or Black Hat. Hacking soon became a military and intelligence asset. Many Black Hat programmers turned out to be a national asset once they were hired to protect American commercial and government networks from foreign Black Hats. Programmers who performed both Black and White Hat tasks were sometimes called Grey Hats. The color palette grew as programmers came up with new tools and ways to use them. This was especially true with AI software, which was produced by several firms as well as individuals or small groups that modified commercial AI software and offered it on a black market. Those malicious offerings evolved into marketable products and quickly moved from the black market to legitimate, but sometimes restricted markets because of its use against military and intelligence networks.
AI products like ChatGPT and related items made it easy to create and modify this new malware, as malicious hacker software came to be known. ChatGPT also became the major source of antidotes for the malware. The fact that the lights are still on and bank accounts have not been plundered is an indication that the While Hats have the upper hand. Some less visible damage does escape public notice. There are several hacks that stole billions of dollars from banks or individual firms. Most of these hacks were carried out by countries at odds with the United States, like North Korea and Iran. These two nations survive under several rounds of increasingly crippling economic sanctions by using the Black Hats to keep their governments well-funded. Their Black Hat hackers are recognized as a national asset and are paid well for their work. In North Korea, where few citizens can travel abroad, successful Black Hats live in relative luxury and can travel outside the country whenever they wish.
Sometimes the North Korean Black Hats need to examine what Western hackers are up to. There are software trade shows with special sections for malware and antidotes for malware. The malware is traded under the table. No one can legally sell malware openly. Malware can be transported on a thumb drive or an even smaller SIMM chip used in cell phones. These thumb drives and SIMM chips are easily concealed and transferred to new owners. Payment can be quickly made to and from bank accounts using smart phone, tablet or laptop computer apps. Trade shows are the scene of many such transactions, but these transfers can be done anywhere by prearrangement. Trade shows are preferred because there are more people to do business with and many unexpected opportunities.
There are some new developments that are best discovered at trade shows. Hackers working in China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and several other nations have been using OpenAI Systems. Microsoft and OpenAI believe that these nations used A.I. to help with routine tasks. That quickly escalated to using OpenAI’s systems for cyberattacks. Some hackers with ties to foreign governments are using generative artificial intelligence in their attacks. Instead of using A.I. to generate exotic attacks, as some in the tech industry feared, the hackers have used it in mundane ways, like drafting emails, translating documents, and debugging computer code, the companies said. The countries using AI do so to be more productive.
Microsoft committed nearly $23 billion to, and is a close partner with, OpenAI. For example, they share threat information to document how five hacking groups with ties to China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran used OpenAI’s technology. The companies did not say which OpenAI technology was used. The start-up said it had shut down their access after learning about the misuse of their AI technology.
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, there have been concerns that hackers might weaponize these more powerful tools to discover new and creative ways to exploit vulnerabilities. Like anything else, AI could be used for illegal and disruptive tasks.
OpenAI requires customers to sign up for accounts, but some new users evade detection through various techniques, like masking their location. This enables these AI users to develop illegal or harmful uses for AI technology. For example, a hacking group connected to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps/IRGC used the AI to research ways to avoid antivirus scanners and to generate phishing emails used by hackers. One of the phishing emails pretended to come from an international development agency and another attempted to lure prominent feminists to an attacker-built website on feminism. In another case, a Russian-affiliated group tried to influence the war in Ukraine by using OpenAI’s systems to conduct research on satellite communication protocols and radar imaging technology. Russia has long used a large propaganda organization to attack and weaken enemies. AI is now another tool for the Russians to use.
Microsoft tracks over 300 hacker organizations, including independent cybercriminals as well as AI operations carried out by several nations. OpenAI’s proprietary systems make it easier to track and disrupt their use, the executives said. They said that, while there were ways to identify if hackers were using open-source A.I. technology, a proliferation of open systems made the task harder.
When the work is open sourced, then you don’t know who is using the AI technology and whether their policies are for responsible use of AI. Microsoft did not uncover any use of generative AI in a recent Russian hack of top Microsoft executives.
In combat situations AI has been used increasingly over the last decade. As AI improves, it is used more effectively and frequently in combat situations. For example, a Ukrainian firm developed an AI system that can, with great accuracy, determine if a group of soldiers in the distance are Ukrainian or Russian. This reduces the instances of friendly fire. That is when you accidently fire on your own troops and cause friendly casualties. This is an unfortunate aspect of modern war that no one wants to talk about but continues to occur on a regular basis. Targeting using AI makes it less likely for friendly fire incidents to occur.
A final note. This article was written, corrected and edited with the help of AI software. This is a great benefit to writers who now have an easy way to detect and correct problems with style, format, grammar and spelling.
FYEO

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, August 14, 2025 - 05:16 pm: Edit

My concern with military A.I. is whether they're fitted with Asimov Laws. Would any of the "International Bad Actor Governments" put them in? I doubt it...

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Thursday, August 14, 2025 - 06:41 pm: Edit

@Jeff: I guarantee not.

As a patent attorney I work with AI patents every day and I have extensive technical knowledge regarding how they work.

Asimov's laws? What's that?

(Note: I know what they are - I'm being sarcastic...)

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Thursday, August 14, 2025 - 08:06 pm: Edit

Don't recall if I mentioned it before:

Meme went around months ago, regarding DOGE...

Guy laying in bed, Tesla Robot standing at side of bed...
Caption, "Waking up in 2030 and realizing your robot servant, knows you were burning Tesla Cars in 2025"

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, August 15, 2025 - 12:16 am: Edit

The revenge of Tesla!

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Friday, August 15, 2025 - 12:39 am: Edit

Sounds like a variant of Roko's basilisk.

--Mike

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, August 15, 2025 - 10:29 pm: Edit

Actual photos from the Alaska summit: Trump & Putin engage in a "arms race". Trish Reagan looks on.




The race changes when the banquet is announced...