Jeff, they were Russian trucks. Ukraine hired the drivers to transport "modular homes" which contained the drones. The drivers were instructed to park at certain locations. After this was done, the "modular homes" were opened by remote control, and the drones flew out and did their thing. Then explosives hidden inside the "modular homes" were detonated.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, November 13, 2025 - 06:13 pm: Edit

Sweet.

Hope the Russian drivers were paid.

Might be the only satisfaction they get, assuming internal security arrests all of them for trial.

Can’t imagine any Russian in the government being sympathetic.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, November 13, 2025 - 11:10 pm: Edit

I'm waiting for the story where the Russians track down a pack of Drone Frig... Excuse me, Drone LAUNCHERS... "And Settle Their Hash"

(ducking now)

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, November 16, 2025 - 10:02 am: Edit

Update:

Some time ago, General Motors announced in 2024, that they were reducing the number of automobile parts, produced in China , and shipped to the United States for automobile manufacturing.

Rueters posted yesterday that GM (General Motors) has now ordered the end of all auto part production in China.

The explanation for this change was to simplify and streamline supply lines and increase security of GM’s world wide logistics systems.

This is yet another sign that not all is well with China’s economy.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:35 pm: Edit

Air Transportation: Black Hawk Helicopter Drone
November 17, 2025: There is now an unmanned version of the American UH-60 helicopter called the U-Hawk. Eliminating all flight personnel gives the U-Hawk 25 percent more cargo space and a clamshell front end to make loading and unloading easier. U-Hawk can self-deploy up to 2,800 kilometers empty, making it easier to get U-Hawks to where they are needed quickly.
The UH-60 entered service in 1979 and over 5,000 have been built since then. Most are still in service with the U.S. military and 40 other countries. The current model is the UH-60M. This is a 9-ton aircraft that normally carries a crew of four. That includes two pilots and two crew chiefs/gunners. Max speed is 294 kilometers an hour while the more economic cruise speed is 282. Eleven troops can be carried, or six wounded on stretchers and one or two medical personnel. Weapons capability includes two machine-guns. These can be 7.62mm or 12.7mm. Hellfire air-to-ground or Stinger air-to-air missiles can be carried or rocket pods for six or more APKWS 70mm laser-guided rockets.
Back in 2007 the U.S. Army finished testing the new version of the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter. This M model was the new standard for the UH-60. The UH-60M featured several improvements, including new rotor blades that are more reliable, and provide 227 kg of additional lift, an all-electronic cockpit putting all needed information on four full-color displays, an improved autopilot which will fly the helicopter if the pilot is injured and unable to, improved flight controls making flying easier, especially in stressful situations, a stronger fuselage, more efficient navigation system, better infrared suppression making it harder for heat seeking missiles to hit, and more powerful engines.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:36 pm: Edit

Surface Forces : Poland Creates A New Frigate
November 17, 2025: Poland has adopted the Arrowhead 140 frigate and modified it to meet the needs of the Polish Navy in the Baltic Sea. The British Type 31E frigates were the source of the Arrowhead design. In Europe it is common for basic warship designs to be modified by each nation to suit its needs.
Poland is initially building three of its Swordfish frigates based on the basic Arrowhead design. Each of these ships are 7,000-ton warships that are 139 meters long, have a crew of 100 and accommodations for 80 more personnel. Top speed is 52 kilometers an hour and enough fuel and other supplies are carried to remain at sea for 21 days.
Electronics include air and surface search radars as well a hull mounted sonar augmented by towed sonar. Weapons include 32 Vertical Launch Cells/VLS for antiaircraft missiles. There is one 76mm rapid fire gun, two 34mm autocannon close-in weapons systems, two 12.7mm remotely controlled machine-guns and two 12.7mm crew operated machine-guns. There are sixteen NSM anti-ship missiles and two triple launch tubes for 324mm anti-submarine torpedoes. There are four boat bays for 7.7 meter, 11 meter rigid hull inflatable boats or surface or underwater drones.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:40 pm: Edit

Air Weapons: Chinese Flying Wing Drones
November 16, 2025: GJ-11 is the latest Chinese combat drone. It is a nine-ton tailless delta-shaped unmanned aircraft with a single engine and an internal weapons that can hold two tons of guided bombs, missiles or whatever new weapons the Chinese come up with. Top speed is subsonic, at about 900 kilometers an hour. This drone is still in the prototype stage, as is the GJ-11J carrier based version. Manned Chinese combat aircraft are being equipped to control two or more GJ-11 drones as Loyal Wingman. This is a concept the USAF has been working on for decades but only has two drones, the YFQ42A and the YFQ44A in development. Both have flown but both are years away from active duty. These two drones are competing and only one will be adopted by the U.S. Air Force.
Meanwhile back in 2018 China offered to export its GJ-2 combat drone. When this drone was first revealed in 2016 it was described as an upgraded version of the original Wing Loong which made its first flight in 2007 and in 2008 was offered for export as a much cheaper alternative to the American MQ-1 Predator that entered service in the late 1990s. But the shape of the Wing Loong was similar to the American MQ-9 Reaper, which entered service a decade after MQ-1, weighed nearly four times as much and was described as primarily a combat attack drone.
GJ-2 made its first flight in February 2017 and was described as capable of high altitude operations. That was demonstrated later in 2017 when a GJ-2 flew over the 8,848 meter high Mount Everest. GJ-2 specs give it a max altitude of 9,000 meters, top speed of 370 kilometers an hour and a payload of 400 kg of sensors or weapons. The production model GJ-2 only has two hard points under the wings to hang weapons from which is sufficient to carry four BA-7 missiles similar to the 50 kg Hellfire or four 60 kg GPS guided bombs similar to the U.S. SDB. As offered for export GJ-2 can carry a synthetic aperture radar, EW/Electronic Warfare, ELINT/Electronic Intelligence collection or communications relay equipment as well as a vidcam pod. Endurance is 20 hours and GJ-2 comes equipped with a satellite link and the drone can operate up to 1,500 kilometers from its base. GJ-2 has improved aerodynamics and a sturdier airframe that makes extensive use of lighter composite materials. This makes possible the high altitude performance which makes it useful for patrolling the Indian border, which is mostly with Tibet and over 4,000 meters high. There is improved flight control software and a more powerful and fuel-efficient turboprop engine. GJ-2 weighs over two tons; its exact weight has not made public yet and is closer in size and performance to the American 4.7 ton MQ-9.
While the Chinese military has received some production model GJ-2s, the main market is export customers. Pakistan and the UAE/United Arab Emirates have already ordered about a hundred and Saudi Arabia is negotiating a deal to obtain 300 GJ-2s. This alone would exceed production to date of the MQ-9. The GJ-2 is sold for less than half the price of the MQ-9 and there are no export restrictions on who can get it or what they do with it.
For several decades a growing number of Chinese commercial firms have been developing military drones and dual-use commercial drones. Unlike most Western nations, China will sell military drones to anyone who can pay and is not bothered about the use of bribes and other illegal, in the West, payments. If you can pay, you can have it. For that reason, China has a lot of unnamed customers for its armed drones and does not release as many details of weapons export sales as other nations like Russia.
The original Wing Loong 1 drone has been around for a while. In 2008 Chinese aircraft manufacturer AVIC began showing off photos and videos of a prototype for a clone of the American MQ-1 Predator drone that turned out to be Wing Loong. In 2012 one was first seen in flight, over the capital of Uzbekistan, which, along with UAE, were the first export customers. It was later revealed that development on Wing Loong began in 2005, first flight was in 2007 and Chinese troops got the first ones in 2008 for further testing.
While Wing Loong is similar in shape to the larger American MQ-9 Reaper, in size it's almost identical to the 1.2 ton Predator. Wing Loong weighs 1.1 tons, has a 14 meter wingspan, and is 9 meters long. It has a maximum altitude of 5,300 meters, max speed of 270 kilometers an hour and an endurance of over 20 hours. Wing Loong payload is 200 kg and can carry two BA-7 laser-guided missiles similar to the Hellfire or two 60 kg laser-guided bombs as well as a laser designator and vidcams. Wing Loong has been used frequently in Central Asia and the Middle East for reconnaissance and ground attack. For that reason, the original Wing Loong has been renamed GJ-1 and is still for sale.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:40 pm: Edit

Logistics: Ukraine A Major Weapons Manufacturer
November 15, 2025: Since Russia invaded in 2022, Ukrainian weapons manufacturers have grown nearly 400 percent. Ukraine will have produced 4.5 million drones by the end of 2025. In 2026 that is expected to be 20 million drones.
It’s more than the drones themselves. Ukraine has developed novel ways of using larger drones to attack key Russian industrial targets that are thousands of kilometers from the Ukrainian border. There are also applications of drone technology to ground combat. Ukrainian infantry are increasingly augmented with combat robots to carry out high risk attacks. In more than one instance, defending Russian soldiers surrendered to the robots.
These technologies are also being used in long range missiles, driverless ground vehicles to carry supplies in the combat zone and even bring back wounded soldiers. There is going to be wider use of ground combat robots and more effective ones using AI/Artificial Intelligence augmented software.
Ukrainian manufacturers also produce artillery, rocket launchers and most other types of weapons and military equipment. For over a century Ukraine has been a major producer of weapons, including aircraft and missiles. When Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, they had nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them. A 1994 agreement between Ukraine, Russia, Britain and the United States had Ukraine getting rid of its nuclear weapons in return for guarantees from Russia that they would never attack Ukraine and if they did Britain and the Americans were obliged to aid Ukraine in resisting the attack. This experience complicates any future Russian offers to settle the Ukraine war via a treaty. In short, Russia cannot be trusted. Vladimir Putin did not take control of Russia until 1999 and apparently feels he is not responsible for observing the 1994 agreement.
Putin has more serious problems with Ukraine. While Russia is suffering from over three years of increasingly stringent economic sanctions, the Ukrainian economy is rapidly growing. Ukrainian production of military equipment is rapidly expanding and attracting investments from NATO countries, especially the United States. Ukraine currently produces over 70 percent of the weapons it uses to fight the Russians. Since these weapons have proven themselves in combat, they are attractive choices for other nations looking for innovative and affordable weapons.
There are more than 500 defense related companies in Ukraine and most are looking for export customers or coproduction deals where other nations produce Ukrainian designed weapons. Ukraine regularly demonstrates that they can rapidly develop, produce and get into combat new systems. Any problems that develop, the Ukrainian manufacturer will quickly fix. Ukraine has become the gold standard for defense production and that has brought in over $100 billion in foreign investment.
By invading Ukraine, Russia has created a neighbor that became militarily and economically stronger and free to trade with NATO nations while Russia is crippled by economic sanctions.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:41 pm: Edit

Air Weapons: Ukrainian Drone Innovation Workshops
November 15, 2025: Ukrainian drone proliferation began when many individual Ukrainians, or small teams of civilians, designed and built drones. The drones served as potential candidates for widespread use and mass production. This proliferation of designers and manufacturers led to rapid evolution of drone capabilities and uses. Those who could not keep up were less successful in combat and suffered higher losses. Each month nearly 400,000 drones are built in Ukrainian factories or home workshops. Most of these workshops are informal affairs, located in spare room, garages, barns, empty industrial space or anyplace protected from the weather and aerial surveillance. Russia will hit any drone manufacturing sites if they can identify them.
One result of the Ukraine War was the emergence of inexpensive drones as a decisive weapon as well as a reconnaissance and surveillance system. In 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Ukrainians were building their own drones, often at home or scattered workshops. By late 2024 Ukrainians were producing over 15o,000 drones a month. In 2025 Ukraine will produce 4.5 million drones. By purchasing components in bulk, thousands of Ukrainian men and women are building these drones for the armed forces or for someone they know in the military. Troops at the front also build and modify drones to fit their immediate situations. For the soldiers, designing better drones is often a matter of life or death.
This competitiveness led to First Person View/FPV drones as well as drones guided via Fiber Optic cable Guidance or FOG. Electronic jamming was useless against the FOG drones. The only limitation was the length of the cable. This meant the operator had to be at one end of the kilometers long cable. Operators could be further away if there was time lay another kilometer or two of cable further to the rear. Ukrainian drone operators often worked in drone workshops before entering the military and were accustomed to upgrading drone operator equipment while in the combat zone. Any successful innovations were made known to workshop operators throughout Ukraine.
This is how the Ukrainians maintain a lead over the Russians in drone technology and production. The Russian government discourages, or even outlaws, individuals building drones and centralizes drone production. This gives the Ukrainians an edge in drone quantity and quality. The Ukrainians are defending their homeland and Russia is having an increasingly difficult time justifying continued fighting and over a million Russians killed or disabled in Ukraine.
NATO countries are trying to adopt drone technology and use for their own armed forces. Ukraine has received over $200 billion in military and economic assistance from NATO countries and shares their drone experience and technology with their benefactors. Drones have revolutionized warfare and are causing 70 percent of casualties in Ukraine. The Ukraine War is a battle between industrialized countries employing modern weapons. It is the war of the future that has become what all armed forces in the world must adopt to remain competitive.
Even before the Ukraine War, drones were being used in irregular warfare in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa. Drug gangs have used drones to smuggle drugs into the United States or a prison to aid in an escape attempt. Drones are everywhere, despite laws in some countries restricting or prohibiting their use.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:42 pm: Edit

Electronic Weapons: Norway Versus the Shadow Tankers
November 14, 2025: Norway recently enacted harsher sanctions against Russian oil exports. This includes seizing tankers covertly carrying Russian oil. This year Norway noticed a number of sanctioned oil tankers moving past northern Norway towards the northwestern Russian ports on Kola Bay to take on cargoes of Russian oil. Russia has a growing network of Russian arctic oil fields off its northern coast and the oil is moved by special ice resistant oil tankers to Kola Bay where the oil is transferred to nondescript tankers for delivery to distant customers. These tankers are often identified as sanctioned vessels. The Russians try to change the visual and electronic appearance of these tankers by modifying the mandatory transponders or installing new ones. Russia can’t afford to lose oil export incomes. The new sanctions are seeking to halt up to $50 billion worth of Russian oil exports a year.
Norway is an enthusiastic enforcer of these sanctions because it has a growing list of complaints about Russian misbehavior. Over the last two years Norway has been subject to constant Russian GPS jamming. This has been happening, on and off, since 2018. The jamming increased after Russia invaded Ukraine and this year jamming takes place daily. Russia justifies the jamming to prevent Ukraine from using armed drones to attack Russian naval and air bases.
In 2018 Finland and Norway openly complained about Russia deliberately jamming GPS signals in northern Finland and Norway. The jamming was done from a Russian military base in the Kola Peninsula on the Barents Sea. The area is where Norway and Russia share a small border. The jamming took place in late 2018 as NATO held its largest training exercise since the Cold War ended in 1991. Russia denied any responsibility even though they are known to possess long-range jammers, for GPS and other signals. Norway said they had tracked the jammer to a specific location but when Russia refused to admit any involvement, Norway refused to explain how they tracked the signal because that would provide Russia with information on Norwegian electronic warfare/EW equipment that might be useful to them.
What was curious about this incident was that it had no impact on the NATO military exercises and even commercial airliners operating in the area which had backup Inertial Navigation Systems/INS in case GPS signals were not working properly. The potential victims were civilians with smaller aircraft or on the ground who depend on commercial navigation gear using GPS. Then again, that may have been the point because Russian firms have long been producing a wide variety of GPS jammers that are generally ineffective against military GPS users but would be useful for criminals, terrorists or anyone involved in irregular warfare as Russia did in Ukraine between 2014 and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As for the damage to diplomatic relations with Norway and Finland, these two nations need no reminders of what a bad neighbor Russia is and historically has been.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:43 pm: Edit

Information Warfare: Russia Punishes Internet Offenders
November 14, 2025: The Russian government, and especially its current leader Vladimir Putin, have long had a difficult relationship with the internet. 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, and 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.
North Korea also has a Sovereign internet as well as restrictions on who can use this internet. Only a small number of government, commercial, and military are allowed to use the internet to communicate with people outside the country.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:44 pm: Edit

Infantry: North Koreans Learn to Fight
November 13, 2025: Russia called on North Korea, an ally since the end of World War II in 1945, to help the Russian war effort in Ukraine. In addition to supplying about 40 percent of the artillery shells used by the Russians in Ukraine, North Korea also provided missiles and rockets
To encourage enthusiastic support, Russia offered cash, and help with North Koreas weapons development programs. Russia also received the services of 12,000 North Korean soldiers and several thousand support personnel. Russia paid the North Korean government thousands of dollars for each soldier. The government kept most of that money, as is the custom when North Koreans work in Russia, which they have been doing for decades. But enough of that cash went to the soldiers or their families to significantly improve their living standards. The soldiers were declared national heroes and those that died had their families receive additional payments.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un now has an army possibly containing thousands of combat veterans, men who learned how to survive the terrifying, at first, presence of thousands of drones. Every war generates unexpected weapons, techniques and tactics. In the Ukraine War, the unexpected development was the emergence of cheap, armed drones as a decisive weapon that replaced most air and artillery support while also causing about 70 percent of the casualties. Ukraine built 1.5 million drones in 2024 and in 2025 over 2.5 million drones were produced, most of them in at least thirty hidden factories. Drones were an unexpected development that had a huge impact on how battles in Ukraine are fought. Drones were successful because they were cheap, easily modified, and expendable.
Both Russian and Ukrainian forces are sending in quadcopter drones controlled by soldiers using FPV/First Person Viewing goggles to see what the day/night video camera on the drone can see. Most FPV drones carry half a kilogram of explosives, so it can instantly turn the drone into a flying bomb that can fly into a target and detonate. This is an awesome and debilitating weapon when used in large numbers over the combat zone.
Several FPV operators, each with two or more assistants, usually operate from a bunker or a partially rebuilt basement of a bombed out structure. Antenna for broadcasting drone control signals and receiving FPV video are placed in a camouflaged location some distance from the operations bunker. Both sides have missiles and bombs that can home in on the source of FPV drone control signals. Most operations teams have an alternate antenna ready to go if the one in use is destroyed.
These FPV drones are able to complete their missions most of the time, whether it is a one-way attack or a reconnaissance and surveillance mission. The recon missions are usually survivable and enable the drone to be reused. All these drones are constantly performing surveillance, which means that both sides commit enough drones to maintain constant surveillance over a portion of the front line to a depth into enemy territory of at least a few kilometers. This massive use of FPV-armed drones has revolutionized warfare in Ukraine and both sides are producing as many as they can.
Russia passed on the knowledge of drone warfare to North Korea, assuring them that this would be more valuable in any future war. For decades the northerners have threatened to attack South Korea. The southerners never took this threat seriously, until now. The northerners have drones. South Korea does not have drones and is currently paralyzed with shock and indecision at the prospect of dealing with a drone equipped, combat experienced North Korea army moving south.
North Korea obtained all this and more by aiding the Russian war in Ukraine. North Korea supplied artillery and lots of 152mm and 122mm shells to feed the guns. The North Koreas took advantage of Russian desperation and sold them older munitions. Some of those shells were past their use-by date and unreliable. The Russians were desperate and didn’t bother to check for this. That was a costly mistake because their artillerymen found that many of the shells did not work and some exploded when fired. This destroyed the gun and sometimes killed or injured some of the artillerymen.
It got worse when the Ukrainians began using drones for surveillance and attacks on any targets within ten, and then twenty, kilometers of the front line. Twenty kilometers was critical. This meant the Russian towed guns could not get close enough to the front to be effective. Kept twenty kilometers behind the troops, the 122mm artillery was useless because it only had a range of about fifteen kilometers. The 152mm could hit targets 25 kilometers but when moved closer than 20 kilometers from the front, the guns were subject to drone attacks. Eventually new drones with a range of 40 kilometers appeared and Russian artillery became target practice for the Ukrainian drones.
By then North Korea was providing newly manufactured shells for Russian guns that could not get close enough to the front to be useful. North Korea also provided ballistic missiles and troops, so the Russians took the good with the bad and soldiered on.
South Korea believes they will have worse problems with their antagonistic and suddenly more deadly northern neighbor.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:44 pm: Edit

Forces: Taiwan Upgrades Defenses
November 13, 2025: Taiwan has been threatened with Chinese attack for over 70 years. Spending three percent of GDP on defense led the current American president to suggest ten percent. The Americans depend on strong Taiwanese defenses because the U.S. is obliged by treaty to send military forces to augment Taiwanese efforts to block a Chinese attack.
Taiwan has been continually upgrading its defenses. Some of the more recent upgrades include SEAD/ Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses capabilities. This includes purchasing the HARM High Speed Anti-Radiation missile, the AGM-88E. Taiwan also has some of its F-16s upgraded to the latest F-16V version, which includes the ability to use the AGM-88E. Taiwan also upgraded its F-16s to this F-16V Block 52 standard.
Taiwan has developed a new SEAD Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses loitering munition called Chien Hsiang/Rising Sword. This is a compact 1.2 x 2 meter propeller-driven drone weighing 6 kg. Cruise speed is 185 kilometers an hour, endurance is five hours and max range is 900 kilometers. Its guidance system consists mostly of electronic sensors that can identify signals for specific radars or any other system that emits an electronic signal on a continuous basis. In addition there is a video system that uses a library of images to spot a specific system to be attacked. This is done by Chien Hsiang going into a dive and hitting the target at speeds of up to 600 kilometers an hour. This is sufficient to destroy or disable antennas or radars.
Chien Hsiang is stored and launched from a box shaped container that is part of a 3x4 configuration mounted on a trailer, a fixed location or a ship. The drones can be launched individually or in rapid succession to form a swarm. The guidance system takes care of swarm management and coordination. This enables multiple drones to search an area and, when a target is found, several or all members of the swarm will attack. Mass production of Chien Hsiang won’t begin until 2024 because of the time required to perfect the guidance system software. While Chien Hsiang is relatively slow, it is small and emits little noise and no electronic signals. That makes it jamming proof and difficult to spot and shoot Also purchased were 135 SLAM-ER Standoff Land Attack Missiles, eleven HIMARS High Mobility Artillery Rocket System rocket launcher vehicles and six MS-110 reconnaissance pods.
The AGM-84K SLAM-ER entered service in 2000. It is a 675 kg cruise missile with a range of 270 kilometers, a speed of 855 kilometers an hour and a GPS/shape recognition guidance system that has proved very accurate. The target can be changed or mission aborted remotely by the pilot at any time. SLAM-ER costs nearly a million dollars each and has a 220 kg 500 pound warhead based on the one used on the Tomahawk cruise missile. SLAM-ER is actually a scaled-up Harpoon anti-ship missile.
HIMARS rocket launcher vehicles fire GPS guided rockets at targets nearly a hundred kilometers distant. Half of the new order HIMARS are heavier trucks with armor added. These heavy trucks are normally used as wreckers for retrieving vehicles that get stuck. HIMARS can also fire larger, longer 300 kilometers range ATACMS rockets. Each of these takes up an entire pod and each ATACMS carries 300 smaller bombs that can destroy armored vehicles or personnel. Also on order are 65 pods each with six GMLRS rockers and 90 pods with shorter range and cheaper practice rockets. The order also includes spares, maintenance equipment and technical support and training.
HIMARS is a cheaper and lighter version of the original MLRS Multiple Launch Rocket System. HIMARS is a truck mounted launcher, with each vehicle carrying only one six rocket pod instead of two in the original MLRS. The 12-ton truck can fit into a C-130 transport unlike the 22-ton tracked MLRS vehicle. The first of the initial 900 HIMARS vehicles were issued to American combat units in 2004. The U.S. Army is using most of the HIMARS, with the marines getting the rest. A growing number of American allies have become export customers for HIMARS. The key to the combat success of HIMARS is its use of the 227mm diameter 309 kg 680 pound GMLRS guided multiple launch rocket system GPS guided rocket.
GMLRS was first used in 2004. It currently has a range of 85 kilometers and the ability to land within meters of its intended target at any range.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 02:45 pm: Edit

Electronic Weapons: Russian Cyber War Against Germany
November 2, 2025: Earlier this year, Russia hired or simply encouraged German based criminal hackers to engage in activities that hampered or just discouraged German support for Ukraine in its battles against Russian invaders. NATO officially and financially supports Ukraine. The German military/Bundeswehr
Western intelligence agencies believe Russia recently tried, and failed to take control of Romanian security cameras. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, its Cyber War unit 26165 has been hard at work all over Europe. NATO investigators have discovered more than 10,000 hacked internet addresses. The goal was to tap into surveillance cameras so that NATO movement of troops and supplies could be monitored. Romania has a 650 kilometers border with Ukraine and its ports use Chinese surveillance cameras. These have been banned by the U.S and European countries because of security concerns. The Romanian government pointed out that it played no role in the deployment of such security cameras. Nevertheless, the Romanians are checking into this.
Western nations have had similar problems for over a decade. In 2014 a new team of hackers was identified. This one had been concentrating on finding and taking political, diplomatic and military data from NATO nations involved in opposing Russian aggression in Ukraine. This group, called APT28, was identified as Russian by numerous patterns in their code, some of which was left behind or otherwise captured. This made it clear that the creators were Russian speakers, were working somewhere in the same time zone as Moscow and using software techniques known to come from Russia. That means hacker tools that are for sale on the black market. Moreover the data being sought would mainly benefit the Russian government. This sort of attack was showing up with increasing frequency and accuracy.
Over the last decade Internet security firms, especially Kaspersky Labs, FireEye and Symantec have developed better tools for identifying the hacker organizations responsible for some of the large-scale hacker attacks on business and government networks. For example in 2013 there was a group from China identified called Hidden Lynx. This group appeared to contain 50-100 hackers, each identified by their coding style and other clues. This group was believed largely responsible for a large-scale espionage campaign called Operation Aurora that was still active. The APT28 campaign, on the other hand, was quite recent and coincided with Western efforts to halt Russian attacks on Ukraine.
Internet security firms also support their clients by identifying and describing major malware. This is software created by hackers for penetrating and stealing from target systems. For example in 2013 Kaspersky Labs discovered a stealthy espionage program called NetTraveler. This bit of malware had been secretly planted in PCs used by diplomats and government officials in over 40 countries. Also hit were oil companies and political activists opposed to China. Dissection of NetTraveler indicated it was created by about fifty different people, most of them Chinese speakers who knew how to program in English.
Kaspersky also discovered a similar bit of malware called Red October, because it appeared to have been created by Russian speaking programmers. Red October was a very elaborate and versatile malware system. Hundreds of different modules have been discovered and Red October has been customized for a larger number of specific targets. Red October was found to be in the PCs and smartphones of key military personnel in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and dozens of other nations like the U.S., Australia, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Brazil, Spain, South Africa, Japan, and the UAE. The Red October Internet campaign had been going on at least since 2008 seeking military and diplomatic secrets. As a result of this discovery Internet operators worldwide shut down the addresses Red October depended on.
Red October does not appear to be the product of some government intelligence agency and may be from one of several shadowy private hacker groups that specialize in seeking out military secrets and then selling them to the highest bidder. The buyers of this material prefer to remain quiet about obtaining secrets this way. In response to this publicity, the operators of Red October apparently shut down the network. The Russian government ordered the security services to find out if Russians were involved with Red October and, if so, to arrest and prosecute them. Russia has long been a sanctuary for Internet criminals, largely because of poor policing and corruption. It may well turn out that the Red October crew is in Russia and has paid off a lot of Russian cops in order to avoid detection and prosecution. To date, the operators of Red October have not been found.
South Korea has been subjected to a growing number of Cyber War attacks and some of them were quite damaging. In the last year South Korean security researchers concluded that nearly all these attacks were the work of one group from North Korea, which has threatened Cyber War attacks but not taken credit for them. This is typical of most North Korean attacks, both conventional and now over the Internet.
What most of these large scale attacks have in common is the exploitation of human error. Case in point is the continued success of attacks via the Internet against specific civilian, military, and government individuals using psychology, rather than just technology. This sort of thing is often carried out in the form of an official looking email, with a file attached, sent to people at a specific military or government organization. It is usually an email they weren't expecting but from someone they recognize. This is known in the trade as spear fishing or phishing.
This is a Cyber War technique that sends official looking email to specific individuals with an attachment which, if opened, secretly installs a program that sends files and information from the email recipient's PC to the spear fisher's computer. Since 2012 an increasing number of military, government, and contractor personnel have received these official-looking emails with a PDF document attached and asking for prompt attention.
China has been a major user of spear fishing and apparently the Chinese government and independent Chinese hackers have been a major force in coming up with new spearfishing payloads. The methods, and source, of many spear phishing attacks have been traced back to China. Cyber War hackers there have become easier to identify because they have been getting cocky and careless. Internet security researchers have found identical bits of code, which is readable text that programmers create and then turn into smaller binary code for computers to use. Techniques for using it in hacking software used against Tibetan independence groups, and commercial software sold by some firms in China who are known to work for the Chinese military. Similar patterns have been found in hacker code left behind during attacks on American military and corporate networks. The best hackers hide their tracks better than this.
It's also been noted that Chinese behavior is distinctly different from that encountered among East European hacking operations. The East European hackers are more disciplined and go in like commandos and get out quickly once they have what they were looking for. The Chinese go after more targets with less skillful attacks and stick around longer than they should. That's how so many hackers are traced back to China, often to specific servers known to be owned by the Chinese military or government research institutes.
The East Europeans have been at this longer and most of the hackers work for criminal gangs, who enforce discipline, select targets, and protect their hackers from local and foreign police. The East European hacker groups are harder to detect when they are breaking in and much more difficult to track down. Thus the East Europeans go after more difficult and lucrative targets. The Chinese hackers are a more diverse group. Some work for the government, many more are contractors, and even more are independents who often slip over to the dark side and scam Chinese. This is forbidden by the government and these hackers are sometimes caught and punished, or simply disappear. The Chinese hackers are, compared to the East Europeans, less skilled and disciplined. There are some very, very good Chinese hackers but they often lack adult supervision or some Ukrainian gangster ready to put a bullet in their head if they don't follow orders exactly.
For Chinese hackers that behave and don't do cybercrimes against Chinese targets, the rewards are great. Large bounties are paid for sensitive military and government data taken from the West. This encourages some unqualified hackers to take on targets they can't handle. This was seen when a group of hackers was caught trying to get into a high-security network in the White House. This was the network dealing with emergency communications with the military and nuclear forces. These amateurs are often caught and prosecuted. But the pros tend to leave nothing behind but hints that can be teased out of heavy use of data mining and pattern analysis.
The U.S. Department of Defense tries to keep track of countries that have established Cyber War organizations, or just capabilities. Germany joined the ranks of countries with a formal Cyber War organization. Germany put together a Cyber War unit. It is small, with less than a hundred personnel, but Germany has a large number of Internet technology experts, and many civilian resources for a Cyber War unit to draw on.
Many of these Cyber War capable nations are trying to develop tools and techniques for attacking American military and civilian targets, via the Internet, in the future. In some respects, these Cyber Wars have already begun. In the last few years, the number of intrusion attempts on Department of Defense computers has grown to over 500 a day. The actual increase may be less than that, because as the Department of Defense increases its Internet defenses, it becomes better able to detect intrusion attacks. The number of intrusions that succeed, or at least the ones that were discovered, has been going down. But even a few successful intrusions can result in the loss of enormous amounts of valuable data.
A lot of information on the Cyber War against the United States is kept secret, since if the attackers know which of their operations are being observed, or even known about, they will take steps to get their work back into the shadows. Half the battle in Cyber War is knowing you are being attacked. The best attacks, especially to steal information, or set up monitoring programs, work best, if at all, if they are undetected.
In the United States, the U.S. Air Force has taken the lead in developing Cyber War weapons. Air force hackers are usually the first to spot new enemy intrusion techniques, and are believed to have created powerful intrusion tools and techniques themselves. It's telling that intrusions of Department of Defense computers get publicized, while you hear little about such attacks made on other countries. It could be that the United States is not making as many intrusion attempts as known Cyber War users like Russia and China. Then again, most of these intrusion attempts go undetected whether they succeed or not.
Another reason for the large number of detectable attempts on Department of Defense computers is that the United States is the highest profile target for such attacks. The detectable attacks are often by amateurs, although some of these have been tracked back to government computer systems in Russia and China.
The U.S. Air Force has many electronic warfare aircraft, and access to U.S. electronic warfare satellites. The plan is to use all these resources in any future Cyber War, finding enemy vulnerabilities wherever and whenever, and exploit them as quickly as possible. With so much of the world's electronic communications going wireless, this gives the air force lots of opportunities. But until there's a war, the public won't know how extensive the American Cyber War arsenal is, and how effective it can be.
An air force attempt to take overall control of American Cyber War efforts, by establishing a large, 40,000 personnel, Air Force Cyberspace Command/AFCYBER, did not succeed. This effort sought to combine Internet operations organizations with some of the older electronic warfare ones. All this upset the other services, who had their own Cyber War activities, and this opposition, and resistance to overall air force management by the Department of Defense, led to AFCYBER's ambitions being sharply curtailed. AFCYBER is still out there, waiting for an opportunity to show the Department of Defense, and the rest of the world, what they are capable of.
FYEO

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 04:52 pm: Edit

A Mainstream Media site has posted a report that the United States has reactivated its Naval base at Ceiba, Puerto Rico.

Currently housing 12,000 sailors, and five ships are based there supporting ongoing operations directed at curtailing drug smuggling from south America.

Elsewhere, it has been reported that the U.S.S. Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, has been deployed to the Caribbean to participate in ongoing anti drug smuggling operations.

The scale of operations is unprecedented, you would have to go back to the Cuban Missile crisis or the Spanish American War of 1898 given the size of forces or ships involved in operations.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 05:17 pm: Edit

We all wonder if Trump is about to bomb drug labs in Venezuela. I don't really fear a shooting war with Venezuela but on general principle such things make me nervous. I would tell the fleet commander to remember where Cuba is and WATCH HIS BACK.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 06:59 pm: Edit

That may be one of the reasons to reactivate the Naval Base in Puerto Rico.

It is about 1,000 miles from Miami Florida, east of Cuba, and North of the coast of South America.

Should be very nearly at a central position to support operations for controlling Drug Smuggling Network.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Monday, November 17, 2025 - 11:20 pm: Edit

Don't know what the status is now, but PR used to be a jump point for drug smugglers....
With the US has a more direct role on the island since the hurricane, it may have slowed, doubt it stopped.....

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 05:03 am: Edit

The major operations seem to be taking place further south than Puerto Rico, much nearer to the northern coast of South America.

The seizures and sinking of the boats and subs as reported by the MSM .

I have not heard of any alternative tactics used by the cartels, but sooner or later, they will likely try something else.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 08:59 am: Edit

Pres. Trump has announced that the U.S. will sell F-35 fighters to Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon has expressed considerable reservations regarding this plan, given that Saudi Arabia has a security partnership with China; there is concern that China will gain access to technical details of the F-35.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 01:19 pm: Edit

Air Weapons: American Soldiers Adapt To Drones
November 18, 2025: When the U.S. Army first experimented with 150 Ukrainian type drones, the first thing they noticed was the overview of terrain it provided. This enabled army units to see more of what was in front of them. With this they could more quickly open fire with artillery and destroy enemy vehicles and troops. Then a Ukrainian officer arrived and revealed that the enemy would have drones as well. That means both sides could see what the other side was up to. The Ukrainian visitor pointed out that everyone was constantly in danger of a drone attack in Ukraine. The Americans would have to work harder to prepare themselves for that.
What was happening in Ukraine has already led the army to cancel or modify orders for new weapons and equipment. Orders for the M-10 Booker, a tank-like vehicle described as an assault gun, were cancelled. Same situation with the JLTV or Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. This was a seven ton armored vehicle that could protect the troops it was carrying from mines and roadside bombs. JLTV was very vulnerable to drone attacks. The army had 50,000 JLTVs on order but has cut that to 18,000. This is the number that have already been produced or are in the process of being built.
Instead the army has ordered more of the new Infantry Squad Vehicle. This is similar to a dune buggy and consists of nine seats, some roll bars and an engine. This vehicle depends on speed and maneuverability to keep the troops safe.
Many American soldiers have purchased consumer grade quadcopters and adapted them for combat use. The troops practice with these quadcopters and acquire skills and experiences similar to what their Ukrainian counterparts are undergoing in combat. Some U.S. soldiers have friends or family in Ukraine and can communicate with them via the internet and discuss the realities of drone warfare. Only about 27 percent of Ukrainians understand some English and less than two percent are fluent. More are acquiring English language skills. Ukrainian president Volodomir Zelensky speaks English, but then he was a lawyer, actor and TV producer before being elected president in 2019.
Zelensky has been a big proponent of foreign investment in Ukraine, despite the war. Foreign investors were eager to take advantage of investment opportunities in Ukraine. One of these was adapting Ukrainian drone manufacturing methods for export to other nations. Ukrainians are considered the foremost designers, developers and manufacturers of drones.
As the old saying goes; if you got it, you can sell it.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 19, 2025 - 01:18 pm: Edit

Intelligence: Iranian Retaliation FYEO
November 19, 2025: The June 13 Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear development facilities and personnel did more than just kill essential technical personnel. These scientists and administrative officials were difficult to replace. It required decades of training and work experience to create qualified personnel. It will take even longer to replace them. That assumes any qualified Iranians are willing to join the nuclear weapons project.
Iran has another problem. It was obvious that the Israeli Mossad foreign intelligence service has hundreds of operatives, nearly all of them Iranians, working for Israel in Iran. On June 25 Iranian intelligence forces arrested over 700 Iranians and accused them of being Israeli intelligence agents. Earlier two Iranians were executed after be accused of meeting with Israeli Mossad agents. This year Iran executed at least a thousand men, most of them on suspicion of working for Israel. This has created a culture of fear and paranoia among Iranian nuclear scientists and the military personnel that work with them. Iran is desperate to discover how much Mossad has penetrated their nuclear development program as well as the Iranian military. Several key scientific and military personnel were believed to be working for Mossad. Before restarting its nuclear weapons program, Iran has to find out who can be trusted. This will take years and it might not be until the 2030s that the nuclear program can be resumed in ear
Iran has had these trust issues before. That’s because there are still many descendants of Iranian Jews in Israel. When Israel was founded in 1948, Jews living in Muslim countries throughout the region became unwelcome. They fled to Israel, where they found safety and greater prosperity than in their former homelands. This migration also provided the Israeli secret service, Mossad, with qualified recruits for espionage and intelligence analysis, enabling them to monitor neighboring countries. Over time, Israel secured peace and trade agreements with its neighbors, starting with Egypt and Jordan. Eventually, the Gulf Arab states recognized Israel as a valuable ally against Iran. Before Iran’s religious revolution in the 1980s, Israel and the Iranian monarchy maintained good relations. Many Iranians today wish to restore that relationship.
Israel and Iran have been adversaries since 1979, when Iran’s monarchy was replaced by a religious dictatorship masquerading as a democracy. The new government held elections, with nominally elected officials running the state, but senior religious leaders, or Ayatollahs, retained the power to approve candidates. The senior Ayatollah’s role involves more politics than religion. A key distinction between Iranian religious leaders and those in Arab countries is that Iranians are Shia Muslims, while over 80 percent of Muslims worldwide are Sunni. Shia and Sunni Muslims generally coexist, though disagreements persist over which branch represents the more legitimate form of Islam.
Israel exploits these differences, often aligning with Sunni Arabs against the Persians, as some in the region still refer to Iranians. The term Iranian began replacing Persian about a century ago, but Persian persists. Historically, Shia Iranians and Sunni Arabs have clashed. Until oil was discovered and exported a century ago, these tensions were inconsequential. Oil wealth transformed the dynamic between Iranians and Arabs. The Arabs possessed far more oil, but Iran leveraged its oil revenue to bolster its military. Iran’s advantages of abundant agriculture and natural resources gave it a military edge over the Gulf Arabs, whose Arabian Peninsula offered little arable land. They survived through coastal towns and cities, importing goods to trade with interior tribes. Only Yemen, in the far south of the peninsula, had sufficient rainfall to support agriculture, but the region lacked oil.
In religious terms, the Gulf Arabs and Iranians viewed Israelis as enemies of Islam, a group to be eradicated from the region. Yet Israel proved remarkably resilient against these threats. Over recent decades, the Gulf Arabs have come to see the prosperous and militarily formidable Israel as a useful ally, particularly as Iran edged closer to developing nuclear weapons, a prospect no one in the region, nor the nations purchasing Persian Gulf oil, supported.
This context set the stage for the massive June Israeli-American airstrikes on Iran, which destroyed most of Iran’s nuclear weapons development and production facilities. Israel’s informant network in Iran identified key military, intelligence, and security officials for targeted elimination during the attack.
Israeli military planners exploited Iranian leaders’ miscalculations. The Iranians believed Israel would refrain from action before the next round of nuclear weapons negotiations, dismissing Israeli moves as mere propaganda to extract concessions. This misjudgment proved fatal, as Iran failed to implement safety protocols, such as restricting leadership meetings to secure locations. Instead, leaders convened at a military base, a fact noted and reported by Israeli operatives inside Iran.
Israel maintains hundreds of operatives within Iran, mostly Iranians disillusioned with the religious dictatorship mismanaging the country. Iranian leaders largely dismiss the possibility that Israel could recruit and deploy such operatives. This arrogance has repeatedly proven costly. In 2018, these operatives enabled Israel to extract half a ton of Iranian nuclear weapons program documents. Iranian underestimation of Israeli capabilities remains a recurring flaw.
Israel’s exploitation of Iranian errors has succeeded multiple times because Iranian leaders refuse to accept that Israel operates this way, or that their own people harbor such deep resentment as to collaborate with Israeli intelligence, or that Israel has infiltrated Iran’s regime security forces. During the June 13 Israeli attack, Iran made further costly miscalculations. Israel, with American assistance, killed several senior military leaders, destroyed most Iranian air defense systems and ballistic missile operations, and crippled underground nuclear material processing facilities.
The June 13 attacks enraged Iran’s leaders, prompting retaliation with roughly a hundred missiles and drones that survived the Israeli assault. Some struck their targets, causing about two dozen Israeli casualties and damaging buildings. Iran launched subsequent attacks, inflicting further damage.
Meanwhile, Iran’s challenges are mounting. A new program aims to cripple Iranian oil exports by imposing severe financial penalties on nations purchasing Iranian oil. This won’t halt sales entirely but will reduce them, limiting Iran’s funds for regional mischief.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei survived because the American B-2 bombers that struck Iran’s underground nuclear facilities were not deployed to target him. Israel and the U.S. agreed to leave Khamenei in place, viewing him as a known quantity, whereas his successor could be worse.
Ultimately, this brief Iran-Israel war left over 5,000 Iranians dead or wounded, while Israel suffered 29 deaths and nearly 3,500 injuries. Iranian errors, coupled with Israeli ingenuity and swift action, secured victory once again. The war persists, but Iran received another stark reminder not to underestimate Israel. The Iranians, however, never stop trying.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, November 21, 2025 - 07:38 am: Edit

A 28-point "peace plan" for Ukraine has been formulated by U.S. and Russian officials. I've read the thing three times, and remain surprised at just how ham-fisted it is. Aside from the abysmal writing of the thing (I've full faith that Petrick would rip it apart as "rules writing so poor that one could pilot a dreadnought through the holes" while Jean would apply enough purple pen to it to keep Bic in business for years), every concession proposed comes from Ukraine, none from Russia. Those concessions are major - all of Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea awarded to Russia, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, strict caps on the size of Ukraine's military, etc. - and are frankly non-starters for Ukraine.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Friday, November 21, 2025 - 11:45 am: Edit

I had a quick look at the Peace Plan - partially agree with Jessica - Russia certainly gets alot.

Ukraine does get two major things though

1) Protection from the US
2) Massive aid (some of it from the Frozen Russian Billions) to rebuild.

I don't think either nation will be happy (Russia no doubt will not like paying to rebuild their protected enemy...and Ukraine doesn't get to be in NATO and does give up more land)- which probably does make for a better peace deal where one side is happy?

Cost of the War to both sides has been staggering - and what could the Russians have 'bought' with probably $1 trillion (or more) dollars I bet it has cost them?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, November 21, 2025 - 06:47 pm: Edit

Poland got security promises, so did the Czechs.

A certain British Prime Minister of England famously waved a piece of paper and proclaimed “Peace In Our Time!”

The war that followed would have been wildly different if Germany had not had all of the tanks, trucks and guns they acquired from their assorted victims.

Hard to believe Anyone in Ukraine will willing to go along with this monstrous proposal.

Trump is correct about one thing, without western support, (ammunition, tanks, aircraft etc…) Ukraine will find it more difficult to resist Russia.

This whole thing reminds me a little bit of the old nursery tale of the mice voting to hang a bell on the cat.

The catch being, no one wanted to be the one to hang the bell on the offensive feline.

The one ray of hope, is, even if Trump and the Western democracies were to push this thru, there is absolutely no guarantee that Putin (and whats left of Russian military forces) would be able to defeat Ukraine with the forces left in the Russian arsenal.