Yes we vetted Afghanis for the reasons that SVC mentioned. But, even with this vetting "Green-on-Blue" insider attacks occoured on a regular basis.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, December 02, 2025 - 02:37 pm: Edit

Winning: Chinese Wargamers Plan Their Future Conquests
December 2, 2025: For decades, China has been observing and copying Western wargaming activities. The latest example is The Coming Wave, or TCW, a commercial wargame, published by Kilovolt Studios. The money for all this was raised via a crowdfunding campaign that raised nearly $100,000 from 872 individuals and organizations. While a commercial product, TCW is extremely complex and not attractive to most customers from commercial board wargames. One valuable thing that TCW does provide is insights into how China would fight any future war. This is complicated by the fact that TCW assumes that China is always the defender against American, South Korean and Japanese aggression. Another key aspect of TCM is its emphasis in collecting information. Warships and combat vehicles are sensors first and fighters second. Whether or not this approach is viable or superior in actual combat won’t be verified or discarded until there is an actual war where one side uses methods spelled out in TCW.
This is not the first time China has developed a professional wargame . In 2009 China surprised Western military professionals when Chinese media ran stories, with photos, of Chinese developed professional wargames in action. The photos and text included enough detail for Western military wargamers to discern what was going on. The wargame shown was the TCCST/Tactical Command and Control Simulation Training System, and it was being used by members of the 6th Armored Division for a Training exercise. It's a typical Blue versus Red where Red is the friendlies and Blue is the enemy type game but few in the West expected China to be developing and producing stuff like this on their own. Over the next few years more Chinese wargames for media attention, if only because these were now widely used in the Chinese military and there was no point in trying to keep them secret.
The Chinese games looked comparable to simulations used by U.S. troops, and those of other Western nations. The United States has been the leader in this field, and since the late 1990s professional wargames have absorbed much of the graphics and realism commercial games, not just wargames, have developed. It's obvious that the Chinese have adopted much of the technology available in the West and innovations that commercial game companies have created. Since the late 1990s there have been a growing number of commercial wargames available that are useful for training battalion and brigade commanders, but designed mainly for a civilian gamer market. Some of these were designed by active duty and retired military personnel, and some are used by professionals, as well as civilians, interested in military affairs. The same thing was happening in China, where computers became enormously popular and increasingly common after 2000. China banned, until recently, game consoles so if Chinese wanted wargames they had to be written to run on PCs. The Internet spread even faster than PCs in China and young officers were soon in touch with their civilian peers discussing how to adapt civilian wargames for military use.
During all this China reinvented a lot of wargaming technology, largely because while wargames were an ancient Chinese military planning tool all that knowledge had been dismissed by the new communist government that took over in the late 1940s. During the Cultural Revolution from the mid-1960s t0 mid-1970s all professional military education was shut down, in part because it was considered counterrevolutionary. When China cast aside that revolution in the late 1970s and decided to adopt a market economy while keeping the communist police state, all resources were devoted to economic development and the military budget was cut. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that military education for officers and planners was resumed and at this point it was realized that the West had done great things with wargaming.
China had revived military staff analysis capabilities in the early 1990s and one of the first things studied was the 1991 Gulf War. The results of that study horrified Chinese military and political leaders. It was now obvious that the West had used modern technology, new training techniques and wargaming to create armed forces of unprecedented capabilities. From this point on China decided to reform their armed forces to be able to do what the Westerners did in 1991. One of the more obvious results of that are Chinese troops wearing combat uniforms similar to those of Western troops and Chinese made weapons that were also similar. What got little attention in Western media was the rapid development of effective wargames. In part this was because the Chinese began with nothing. The communists had eliminated their own wargaming past and the easiest examples of wargames to copy were from the West. The Chinese were helped by the fact that the U.S. Army had abandoned traditional wargames from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s and also had to start from scratch, using commercial wargames, which had become a hobby in the late 1950s, to revive their professional wargames program. Although the U.S. tried to prevent the Chinese from getting these wargames by declaring them munitions and thus illegal to export to China, there were plenty of other ways for China to send someone into a store and just buy them and get them shipped back to China one way or another.
The officers put in charge of developing Chinese wargames were smart and had a technology background. They had one major advantage in that traditional Chinese wargames were always heavily influenced by what the senior commanders wanted, not what the situation really was. The new Chinese wargames were developed by officers who were scientists and their games were based on reality. The senior officers respected that as did the senior political leaders. All this was kept secret because the higher level (strategic) games showed that China was weak and vulnerable. But Chinese leaders used their wargame results to more effectively rebuild Chinese military power. The main reason China has not become a military superpower by now is the long tradition of corruption in the military that continues to resist efforts to eliminate these bad habits.
Westerners were not surprised that the Chinese obtained, and adopted, Western wargames technology, but were unclear about what reality the Chinese were simulating. Put simply, that means how effective were Chinese and Western weapons, equipment and, most importantly, the subordinate leaders whose effectiveness is built into the game, portrayed. Some Western games allow the users to set these qualitative values at different levels. But Westerners knew that in East Asia in general free, let the chips fall where they may, play is not acceptable to most senior military commanders. There's more of a tendency for the generals to want their forces to be portrayed in a positive light. So there were suspicions that the Chinese forces are portrayed, in their wargames, as more powerful than they actually are. This would be consistent with the large-scale military exercises being organized, where the good, as in Chinese players, are programmed to win. It was only recently that it became known that the Chinese wargame developers had managed to avoid that trap.
Winning and losing is not the main goal of professional wargames, or military exercises. The Department of Defense has always insisted that wargames are not to be used, to validate courses of action or specific tactics and techniques. In other words, testing tactics or fighting to win is not allowed, or at least not encouraged. Despite the generally accepted idea that a wargame is a competitive exercise, this is not the way it works in the Pentagon. The higher level wargames tend to be driven by procedures, not a war of wits on a simulated battlefield. While this sounds absurd, it's a long used practice. There is a purpose to this approach, and that is to make sure the hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of officers involved in planning and carrying out a major operation, know the many procedures required to get such a large organization functioning smoothly. In effect, this kind of wargame is used to see if everyone can follow the same script. Winning or losing is measured by how well everyone communicates and executes administrative drills. Or, as the military puts it, the main objective is to perfect one's Tactical Decision Making Process/TDMP. Thus much Department of Defense wargaming results in showing our commanders and staffs how to lose neatly, rather than how to scrape and scramble to a victory. Real world battlefields favor the latter; peacetime perfectionists favor the former. Military training for officers concentrates on learning procedures, not investigating different, and perhaps better, tactics.
Thus it would appear that the Chinese wargames showing up in Chinese media were more about training staff officers to work together effectively. Other screen shots show games similar to Western wargames that operate more at a tactical level. No doubt Chinese troops, and junior officers, like their counterparts in the West, were using commercial wargames that showed what looked like battlefield video. These began showing up in the late 1990s giving the Chinese military plenty of time to incorporate them into official tactical training wargames.
The Chinese now use their wargames in much the same way Western armies do. A lot of wargaming is just to train staff and commanders to work together while at lower tactical levels officers and troops learn tactics and what to avoid in combat.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, December 02, 2025 - 02:38 pm: Edit

Information Warfare: Russia Escalates Efforts To Create A Sovereign Internet
December 2, 2025: Vladimir Putin, has long had a difficult relationship with the internet. Putin wants to create a Sovereign, used in Russia only, internet. There are problems with this because the internet is essential for running the economy and the military. At the same time internet chatter is the primary source of criticism for the Ukraine War and the problems with the economic sanctions.
Internet chatter about what was going on in Ukraine made it more difficult for Russia to obtain soldiers. To avoid army service in Ukraine, several million Russians left the country, some for good. The government increased restrictions on who could leave, 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.
Two years ago 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 can 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 also developing a Sovereign Internet and China, which already has one. Internet pioneers predicted that some countries would seek to develop a Sovereign Internet in order to exercise government control over the Internet. This was something that early Internet developers feared would happen because the international free exchange of information was a threat to the power of totalitarian government. The totalitarians were expected to eventually strike back and now they have.
FYEO

By Kurtistqz on Friday, December 05, 2025 - 02:14 am: Edit

Authentication Error

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Monday, December 08, 2025 - 09:26 am: Edit

The ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia has collapsed; there are skirmishes at multiple points along their mutual border, and Thailand has launched airstrikes into Cambodia.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 08, 2025 - 01:44 pm: Edit

The Ukraine deal seems to be collapsing. Putin is demanding that Ukraine hand over territory it still holds, and Ukraine is still demanding that Russia pull back from territory it captured.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 08, 2025 - 01:47 pm: Edit

Paramilitary: Ukraine War Threatens Russian Security
December 8, 2025: The Ukraine War has been a disaster for Russia. There is a labor shortage because over two million men have been removed from the workforce. Half of these are soldiers who were killed, disabled or missing in Ukraine. The other half are military age men who fled the country to avoid getting put into the army and killed in Ukraine. While it’s illegal for Russian men to leave the country to avoid military service, when it’s a matter of life or death, motivation overrides laws and rules.
Some events in the war revealed the extent of corruption in the government. When Ukrainian forces entered Russia in 2024 via Kursk province, local officials were revealed as unprepared and had stolen the money needed for border security. It was later revealed that other stretches of the Ukraine/Russia border were similarly undefended. When Russia brought in North Korea troops, their first job was to fight the Ukrainian troops inside Russia and push them out. That took several months and a third of the North Korea troops were killed or wounded.
Then there is Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov. During the 1990s Russia restored order in the Caucasus region of Chechnya by enticing, with cash and legal rule of Chechnya, Ramzan’s father to side with Russia. That was a major factor in ending the rebellion. Ramzan has led armed Chechens to fight for Russia in Ukraine. Russia gave Ramzan more money to remain a loyal supporter of the Russian war in Ukraine.
It will take more cash than Russia can afford to deal with the problems caused by returning veterans of the Ukraine War. This is especially true with the thousands of veterans who joined the army to get out of prison and earn a pardon. Many of those now back in Russia have returned to their old gangsters’ lifestyle, enhanced by the combat experience and other connections picked up while in Ukraine. This is made worse by the shortage of police all over Russia because so many policemen had joined the army to fight in Ukraine. The police were, and still are, poorly paid and the signing bonuses plus the monthly pay were more money than these policemen thought they’d ever see. Many of those policemen turned soldiers died in Ukraine and many of those who returned to Russia found better paying jobs because of a labor shortage and continued low pay for the police. This has led to a crime wave that has hit rural Russia particularly hard. In the major cities there is still some police and a lot of private security ava
And then there is an increase in Islamic terrorist attacks in Russia. The government blames this on the Americans and Ukraine. Few Russians believe that, because the threat of Islamic terrorism has been around long before the Ukraine War. The shortage of security personnel inside Russia makes it easier for the Islamic terrorists to plan and execute attacks or simply engage in profitable crimes.
The FSB, which is similar to the U.S. FBI or Britain’s MI5 concentrates on finding and punishing Russians who oppose the war in Ukraine. If they went after criminals, they might run into politicians with enough clout to make the FSB back off. Meanwhile the average Russian is feeling increasingly unsafe. Russian leaders shrug off such complaints because the war in Ukraine remains a higher priority undertaking.


Air Weapons: The Mighty Ukrainian Toloka Drone
December 8, 2025: Toloka, a two year-old Ukrainian manufacturing operation, recently revealed its latest and most powerful naval drones, the TLK-1000, with a range of 2,000 kilometers and a five ton payload, and the TLK-400 with a range of 1,200 kilometers and a half ton payload.
Ukraine has been developing subsurface drones and in early 2023 the first one, the Toloka2 TK-150 was introduced. This drone was 2.5 meters long and equipped with a sensor mast that remained above the surface for navigation and to identify targets. Toloka2 can also carry a small explosive warhead. Later, Ukraine developed the larger Marichka drone that is six meters long and one meter in diameter. Ukraine plans for a Western manufacturer to build and weaponize Ukrainian drones.
The TLK-150 was not intended for attacks but for reconnaissance. To do this it has a long mast that operates like a periscope but contains a digital video camera with night vision to record what is nearby. TLK-150 can be remotely controlled or operate autonomously using GPS. At night the small mast is nearly invisible as it leaves a small wake when moving and no wake at all when it is stationary.
There are three models of the battery powered TLK. The TLK-150 is 2.5 meters long, has a range of up to 100 kilometers and top speed of 20 kilometers an hour. Payload size is 20-50 kg depending on battery size. A larger battery provides more range. The TLK -150 can be used for reconnaissance, for enemy targets or to lay underwater minefields. In attack mode the TLK will approach slowly, usually at night when the small periscope containing the video camera and communications antenna is nearly invisible to enemy eyes or surface radars. Sonars would also have a hard time detecting the TLK-150 because only silent electric motors power two propellers, one on each “wing” of the TLK.
Ukraine is testing the TLK-150 and may build a lot more of them if it performs as expected in the Black Sea. If an armed TLK-150 is able to attack Russian warships, that will further change the naval balance in the Black Sea. The Ukrainian use of armed aerial and surface drones against Russian ships has been a mixed success because the Russians can spot these and use autocannon and heavy 12.7mm or 14.5mm machine-guns to destroy the attackers, even during night attacks.
Ukraine also has a government owned and operated manufacturing operation that builds naval drones, like the Magura naval surface drone. About a hundred of these drones defeated Russia’s Black Sea fleet. When the war started in 2022, the Magura V5 was just a concept, a preliminary design for a one ton 5.5 meter long naval drone. Magura initially used a fishing boat that had a solid waterproof cover added, along with batteries for propulsion. There were sensors and a compartment for 300 kg of explosives or weapons. These include a machine-gun protruding above the drone top while two Sidewinder anti-aircraft missiles were in launch tubes, ready to be fired at Russian aircraft or helicopters. Magura has a substantial number of electronic components, including several day/night video cameras that give the remote operator a view of what is around the drone. There is also an autopilot, so the remote operator does not have to personally maneuver the drone over long stretches of open water. Magura is equipped with co
Most Magura missions are one-way, but those equipped with machine-guns and surface to air missiles are also used to attack Russian aircraft. Three months ago a Magura V7 used those two missiles to shoot down two Russian SU-30 jet fighters. This was the first time a naval drone had shot down warplanes. Earlier a Magura had used Ukrainian R-73 heat-seeking missiles to take down one Mi-8 helicopter and damage another.
In 2025 Ukraine introduced the Magura V7, which weighs about 1.2 tons and can carry 650 kg of weapons. Its operational range is a thousand kilometers. The V7 can also be equipped with an electricity generator, enabling it to stay at sea for up to seven days. This model can move at speeds of up to 72 kilometers an hour. Cruising speed is 43 kilometers an hour.
The Ukrainian experience using naval drones to defeat the Russian Black Sea Fleet was unique. Ukraine had only surface-to-ship missiles when the war started, but eventually shifted to three new naval drones, Sea Baby, Mother, and MAGURA, or Maritime Autonomous Guard Unmanned Robotic Apparatus.
Some of these naval drones were used for a mid-2023 Kerch Bridge attack. One of the drones carried 850 kg of explosives and inflicted enough damage to halt use of the bridge. The Mother drone carries 450 kg and MAGURA 320 kg. In addition to attacking targets, these drones can also be used for reconnaissance and surveillance using video cameras that broadcast what they see back to the drone operator. Some drones have been armed with small rocket launchers. The Mother drone has a range of over 700 kilometers and can operate on the high seas. Endurance is about 60 hours, and top speed is over 70 kilometers an hour. Mother was used for an attack on the Russian naval base at Novorossiysk, which is a thousand kilometers from Crimea.
Ukrainian drones have been quite successful in attacking and sinking or disabling Russian navy ships. So far there have been over a dozen attacks which resulted in sinking or damaging about twenty ships.
Ukrainian drone operations in the Black Sea forced the Russian Black Sea Fleet to withdraw to the eastern shore of the Black Sea. Sevastopol was no longer a safe place to be, and Russian ships could no longer launch their Kalibr cruise missiles without risking attack by Ukrainian drones. The presence and aggressive use of the drones meant that Ukraine’s grain corridor was kept open despite Russia’s threats to interfere. Beyond symbolic significance, the corridor holds critical economic importance for Ukraine and is expected to contribute up to seven percent to GDP growth in 2024 because of the grain shipments.
Russian countermeasures to Ukrainian naval drones included using aircraft and helicopters to destroy slow-moving drones before they attack, and expanding use of jamming to disrupt drone control signals. These changes made it much more difficult for Ukrainian naval drones to reach and destroy targets. But by 2025 the Russians had already lost control of the Black Sea and were not getting it back.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 08, 2025 - 01:47 pm: Edit

Counter-Terrorism: Hamas Survived in Gaza
December 7, 2025: Hamas, a militant and aggressive Palestinian terrorist militia, has been around since the 1980s. Hamas is a perennial loser in its battles with Israel. One exception was the October 2023 surprise attack that had three thousand armed Hamas members leave their Gaza hiding places and attack unprepared Israelis. Over a thousand Israelis and foreigners in the area for a music festival were killed. This was the largest number of Jews killed in a single incident since the World War II Nazi German efforts to eradicate all Jews.
Hamas in Gaza and Fatah, an older Palestinian terrorist organization, in the West Bank, were long-time rivals for Palestinian leadership. Neither was able to overcome the other and form a united Palestinian government. That changed with the October 2023 attack where Hamas took the initiative but failed to overcome Fatah’s nominal government in the West Bank.
The recent fighting in Gaza, a region south of Israel, has left thousands of Hama fighters dead, destroyed most of their weapons stockpiles and tunnels used for hiding fighters and munitions. Currently Hamas is fighting a guerrilla war with groups of Hamas fighters entrenching themselves while staging ambushes of any Israeli soldiers to come near. Hamas fighters will move at night or whenever there are no Israeli soldiers present. Hamas only attacks when they have a numerical or surprise advantage, placing remotely detonated explosives on roadsides or abandoned buildings. If possible, they place small explosive devices on top of Israeli military vehicles and hope they are not noticed before they are detonated remotely or via a timer. So far this year about 70 Israeli soldiers have been killed and several hundred wounded.
Hamas forces dress as civilians and some will approach Israeli soldiers and then pull out a pistol or grenade and try to kill as many Israelis as they can before they are shot dead. Hamas survives by extorting food and other supplies from Palestinian civilians and persuading young men to join them and kill Israelis and become a martyr to the cause of Palestinian statehood. That goal is difficult to achieve because a Palestinian State implies the elimination of Israel.
Most Palestinians see Hamas as more of a threat than a liberator. The threats and extortion Palestinian civilians endure from Hamas are made worse by Hamas recruiting Palestinians to fight a die for the cause. Several hundred thousand Palestinian civilians remain in Gaza, believing they have nowhere else to go. At the same time they are victimized by Hamas which steals food aid and hides among them. This makes Hamas unpopular with Palestinians as well as Israelis.
Peace talks last August between Israel and Islamic terrorist group Hamas continue to not happen. Hamas has been interfering with Israeli and foreign efforts to bring food to the starving Gazans. Because of this the hungry Palestinians turned on Hamas, accusing them of prolonging the hunger. Israeli troops continue to fight Hamas while attempting to get more food into Gaza. Over a hundred Palestinians have been killed or wounded, along with some aid workers and Israeli troops.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 08, 2025 - 01:48 pm: Edit

Special Operations: Ukrainian Commandos Raid Russian Territory
December 7, 2025: Ukrainian special operations forces have been busy this year. Details of most operations remain secret, t0 prevent the Russians from obtaining a more accurate picture of whatever the Ukrainian commandos did to them. Details of some attacks can be revealed. Last September, Ukrainian operators, as special operations troops are known, ventured into Russia. There they destroyed supply and ammunition storage sites as well as unoccupied weapons emplacements and unattended military equipment. Another group infiltrated Russia with trucks secretly carrying UAVs, then launched those to destroy about half of Russia’s heavy bombers. Ukraine has created a tradition of spectacularly successful special operations undertakings.
For example, the Ukrainian special forces has a unit called Shaman led by an officer known by his call sign of Shaman. This unit has been active for ten years and is still carrying out attacks on the Russians. Eleven years ago Shaman worked with the Cyborg group to defend the Donetsk airport from the Russians. The Cyborgs earned their nickname with their stalwart defense of the Donetsk airport for eight months. The Cyborgs were a motley force consisting of Ukrainian soldiers, Territorial Defense troops, and volunteers from various paramilitary organizations. The Cyborg numbers varied between 100 and 200 throughout their battle. They were periodically supported, resupplied and reinforced by nearby Ukrainian Army units, the closest of which were located two kilometers away from the airport terminal building. The support included lots of artillery fire, which was very effective thanks to the Cyborg's forward position and excellent observation posts, especially the airfield's air traffic control tower. In additi
This setup has functioned reasonably well for the defenders, creating the Cyborg's legend, which in turn provided a great symbol, example and morale boost for all the Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine made serious efforts to preserve the international support it enjoyed, while the Russian “rebels”, since late 2014, began ignoring any ceasefire terms. That meant more rebel artillery fire on the Cyborgs in addition to moving tanks and regular army troops directly from Russia into this battle. This allowed the rebels to launch an offensive that surrounded the airport while also hitting the Cyborgs with continuous artillery and rocket fire. This advance made resupply and reinforcement efforts extremely risky, as the Ukrainian armored vehicles risked being fired on by the tanks and antitank missiles the rebels had moved forward in violation of the ceasefire.
Noticing the rapidly deteriorating situation of the airport defenders, the Ukrainian Army attempted a desperate, poorly organized counterattack against the rebel positions. The Russian troops and their local allies expected this and the attack failed with significant Ukrainian losses. The attack might have succeeded had senior Ukrainian generals, far from Donetsk, not gotten involved with directing the operation. The main problem was that the counter attacking force was too small and the interference by senior commanders led to poor coordination and communication between the attacking units and bad tactical decisions that doomed the relief effort.
Another key element in this was the Russian communities in the east Ukrainian Donbas region that supplied the armed rebels to fight the Cyborgs. This was a key element in defeating a Cyborg counterattack. Cut off from friendly forces, and the territory they held was pretty much limited to the terminal building, which itself was not the greatest defensive position. Recently built, it had a modern, light structure, which limited the cover provided by it, forcing the defenders to rely on improvised fortifications. The only truly effective cover from artillery fire was provided by the Soviet era tunnels beneath the airfield, which also had to be defended from separatist infiltration attempts.
The Ukrainian Russian rebels used tanks to attack the terminal building. This succeeded in part because of some unexpected fog. After taking parts of the terminal, the local Russians used demolition charges to collapse parts of the terminal's first floor ceiling, peppering many defenders with a rain of debris which killed and wounded many of them. By the end of the day both sides claimed control of the airfield. But two days later Ukraine admitted that the rebels had overrun the area. The rebels claimed to have taken 44 of the defenders alive.
What the rebels won was nothing more than a ruin. There was barely a metal skeleton left where the terminal, built for the Euro 2012 Games at the cost of almost a billion dollars, once stood. Other buildings were also heavily damaged by the shelling, and the runways are full of craters created by constant artillery bombardment. This kind of economic damage took years to repair, which was difficult because Ukraine had little cash to spare.
In 2022 the Shaman commandos were determined to defeat a Russian attack on Hostomel Airport outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. The Russians sought to quickly seize the airport with a surprise attack and fly in reinforcements to take Kyiv. The Shaman commandos were sent to thwart the Russian plan. The Shaman counterattack succeeded and two months later a Shaman force attacked a Russian oil refinery. This was similar to the August 2024 Ukrainian attack in Russia’s Kursk province.
The Shaman force is still standing by to carry out whatever task it is given to preserve Ukrainian independence.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 08, 2025 - 01:48 pm: Edit

Air Defense: Lasers Aegis And Drones
December 6, 2025: The Aegis Combat Control system has been around since the 1970s, the first ships had it installed for testing. By the 1990s Aegis was the standard radar, fire control system on new ships and installed in many then existing warships. Currently Aegis is used by over 110 warships, Most of them are American, but the Australian, Canadian, German, Japanese, South Korean, Norwegian and Spanish have also adopted it or are in the process of doing so.
One of the recent Aegis enhancements is the ability to direct the use of laser weapons against aircraft, missiles, drones or small boats. American naval weapons development officials are considering the adoption of the Israeli Iron Beam system for use aboard American warships. How soon it will turn into Iron Beam systems installed on American warships is unknown.
Laser systems like Iron Beam were in development elsewhere for a long time, and until Iron Beam no one was able to develop a laser with the range and destructive power to perform like the new Israeli system. This new weapon was already being called Laser Dome until it was decided that calling it Iron Beam was more appropriate. Iron Beam complemented the existing Iron Dome system using missiles and an innovative radar/software system that ignores ballistic, rockets or mortar shells whose trajectory would mean hitting unoccupied land where there will be no injuries or serious damage. Most objects fired at Israel end up landing in unoccupied areas and the few objects that are dangerous are intercepted by missiles. This has proved very effective.
Iron Beam complemented by quickly eliminating drones within a few kilometers while Laser Dome used a solid-state electric laser out to more than 5,000 meters. This costs several dollars’ worth of electricity per shot. A diesel generator capacitor system could fire once every few seconds for as long as power was available. Laser Dome combines multiple laser beams to obtain a useful amount of laser power at longer ranges. Fire control systems for quickly, accurately and repeatedly aiming a laser have already been developed.
Britain has developed a directed energy weapon that works. The full name is Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon or RFDEW. With a one kilometer range, this system also uses Electronic Warfare or EW to try and jam drone control signals. For the roves that get past that, REDEW uses electronic beams that disable the drone’s electronics, causing it to crash.
Laser systems like this have been in development elsewhere for a long time, but so far no one has been able to develop a laser with the range and destructive power to perform like the new Israeli system. This new weapon was Light Shield and complements the existing Iron Dome system that uses missiles and an innovative radar/software system that ignores ballistic, rockets or mortar shells whose trajectory would mean hitting unoccupied land where there will be no injuries or serious damage. Most objects fired at Israel end up landing in unoccupied areas and the few objects that are dangerous are intercepted by missiles. This has proved very effective.
Some of the tech Light Shield uses has already been used in other laser weapons. The best example of this is the U.S. Army Compact Laser Weapon System/CLWS which is capable of handling drones. CLWS is a 2.2 ton laser weapon light enough to mount on helicopters or hummers and can destroy small drones up to 2,000 meters away, while it can disable or destroy the video camera sensors on a drone up to 7,000 meters away. The CLWS fire control system will automatically track and keep the laser firing on a selected target. It can take up to 15 seconds of laser fire to bring down a drone or destroy its camera. This is the tech that Laser Dome has improved enough to destroy drones with both one shot and at longer ranges.
Another example is a U.S. Navy system already installed on a growing number of warships. In 2013 the navy announced that it had developed a laser technology capable of being useful in combat. This was not a sudden development but has been going on for most of the previous decade. In 2010 the navy successfully tested this new laser weapon, which is actually six solid-state lasers acting in unison, to destroy a small drone. That was the seventh time the navy laser had destroyed a drone. But the Laser Weapon System/LaWS was not yet powerful enough to do this at the range, and power level, required to cripple the most dangerous targets, which are missiles and small boats. The manufacturer convinced the navy that it was just a matter of tweaking the technology to get the needed effectiveness. In 2013 another test was run, under more realistic conditions. LaWS worked, knocking down a larger drone at a longer range. At that point, the navy said it planned to install the system in a warship within the year for even more realistic testing. Those tests took place in 2014 and were successful enough to install LaWS on warships to be used to deliver warnings at low power rather than its full strength.
The LaWS laser cannon was mounted on a KINETO Tracking Mount, which is similar, but larger and more accurate, than the mount used by the Phalanx Close-In Weapons System/CIWS. The navy laser weapon tests used the radar and tracking system of the CIWS. Back in 2009 CIWS was upgraded so that its sensors could detect speedboats, small aircraft, and naval mines. This was crucial because knocking down drones is not something that the navy needs help with. But the ability to do enough damage to disable boats or missiles that are over two kilometers distant meant the LaWS was worth mounting on a warship.
LaWS was able to disable a ScanEagle drone, destroy an RPG rocket and burn out the outboard engine of a speed boat. LaWS also proved useful in detecting small boats or aerial objects at night and in bad weather. LaWS worked despite mist and light sandstorms. But in heavier sandstorms performance was much reduced. LaWS uses less than a dollars’ worth of power use and is supplied by a diesel generator separate from the ship power supply. LaWS was never deployed fleet-wide, in part because of a more effective High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance/HELIOS system. This weapon can destroy or disable drones and small boats at ranges of up to eight kilometers. HELIOS is being installed on a growing number of American warships.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 08, 2025 - 01:48 pm: Edit

Attrition: Hidden Russian Costs Of The Ukraine War
December 6, 2025: Russian leaders know that if a lot of men from Russia’s major cities, particularly Moscow and St. Petersburg, were in the army and killed or disabled in Ukraine, the war would rapidly become very unpopular and that could lead to unrest. The Russian solution for this was to obtain soldiers who lived in remote areas, especially those living in 26 national republics. Only 82 percent of Russians are ethnic Slavic Russians. The other 18 percent are where Russia obtained most of the troops sent to Ukraine during the first two years of the war. Men in these minority communities were offered large amounts of money, often $20,000 or more to join. Larger sums were paid to their families if they were killed in Ukraine. All this cash coming into these small rural communities revolutionized lifestyles. People could upgrade their housing, clothing and buy a car or pickup truck. Many families purchased more elaborate headstones for the lost son, with a picture of him etched into the stone. These are very
The people in these peoples noted that their cemeteries were filling up with these expensive headstones and that caused some unrest. This was especially true when it was discovered, via the internet or social media, that few young men from the major cities were dying. It then became clear that the government was obtaining most of its soldiers for Ukraine from the rural areas, while the wealthier families in the big cities were spared the risks of fighting in Ukraine.
Generally, the government in Moscow doesn’t care how the people in the rural areas felt about the war, or anything else. But at the same time these protests began appearing, the military was forced to start recruiting men from the cities to keep the war in Ukraine going. While over 15,000 North Koreans and more than twenty thousand Cubans and other foreigners were recruited with large signing bonuses, it wasn’t enough. It also brought a growing number of complaints from the families about their sons not getting paid and families of dead soldiers not receiving the promised death benefits.
Over three years of fighting in Ukraine have left Russia with few sources of new recruits for the army. In addition, its combat losses are over a million killed, severely wounded, captured or deserters. At least as many military age men have fled Russia to avoid military service and the high probability of being sent to Ukraine. Worse, Russia has recently stopped paying enlistment bonuses and family death benefits because it apparently has run out of money.
Although Russia has a population four times that of Ukraine, declining birth rates since the 1980s have reduced the number of military age men even more. Ukraine has similar problems but to less of an extent. After all, Russia was the invader and the Ukrainians were defending their homeland with lots of material assistance from Western Europe and the United States. The only allies Russia has are Iran and North Korea. China will help Russia overcome economic sanctions, for a price. In practical terms, Russia is on its own and can no longer depend on Russian male civilians to make themselves available for military service. Russia instead entices a growing number of foreign workers in Russia, as well non-Slavic minorities, into enlisting for the money. There is also a critical shortage of junior officers and sergeants to train new recruits. As a result, Russian soldiers currently sent to Ukraine are poorly trained and well aware of how dangerous it is for Russian soldiers in Ukraine. That’s because Russia was t
Among the many costs of the war for Russia, soured relations with their few allies can be added to the list.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 08, 2025 - 02:16 pm: Edit

Leadership: Future Combatants and Competitors
December 5, 2025: There is a new hostile alliance, or Axis of Evil as some politicians like to call it. The new axis consists of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
The World War II Axis was a loose military alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan. The three were not equal. Germany did most of the fighting in Europe, with brief and often ineffective assistance from Italy. Japan was alone in East Asia and the Western Pacific. After an amazingly successful offensive in late 1941, Japan found itself on the defensive after its catastrophic defeat at Midway, where its brief aircraft carrier superiority was demolished. The U.S. atomic bombs, originally designed with Germany in mind, were eventually used against Japan because the Germans succumbed to the combined might of Russia and the allies sooner than expected. The atomic bombs were needed to persuade the Japanese military government that Japan had indeed been defeated, something that had never happened to Japan before.
The new Axis includes two countries that are at war, Russia in Ukraine and Iran against Israel. In both wars the Axis powers are losing. The non-belligerent nations of China and North Korea are assisting Russia and Iran, but not to the point that this assistance would drag China and North Korea into a formal war. Both East Asian powers prefer more discreet and less risky forms of warfare. There are practical reasons for this: all four Axis powers are ruled by unelected governments. Russia is technically a democracy, but Vladimir Putin has miraculously won every election since 1999, no matter how badly he has performed or how much Russians have suffered. The other three Axis powers are dictatorships. Iran is ruled by senior Shia Islamic clergy, which uses their ruthless IRGC/Islamic Republican Guard Corps to keep a poverty-stricken, angry and potentially rebellious population in line. North Korea is ruled by the third generation of the founding Kim dynasty, the world’s first and, so far, only Communist monarchy. The first Kim, Kim Il Sung was put into power by his Russian benefactors after Japan was defeated in World War II. Russia and North Korea have been close ever since. Meanwhile, democratic, free market South Korea has a GDP per capita that is more than fifty times larger than North Korea’s. South Korea is the fourteenth largest economy in the world while North Korea is at the bottom of the list of 180 nations. Officially, there is no data on the North Korean economy, but China, South Korea and the United States know otherwise and the Americans and South Koreans cooperate on keeping track of the North Korean economy.
Only one of the axis powers, Iran, does not have nuclear weapons. The Free world, and especially Israel, are doing all they can to prevent Iran from getting such weapons. Iran openly declares that its nuclear weapons are meant for the destruction of Israel. That might not work out in Iran’s favor. Israel has long had nuclear weapons, and several ways to deliver them. More importantly, Israel has proven defense systems to intercept any Iranian missile or airstrike that includes nuclear warheads. Attempting to use nuclear weapons against Israel might be something the Iranian religious dictatorship would consider a folly too far. We may never know and most of the world wants to keep it that way.
When it comes to going to war with anyone, none of the Axis members is particularly keen on firing the first shot. North Korea, currently dealing with an unexpected outbreak of suicidal activity among their poor and hungry subjects, has sent over 15,000 soldiers and support personnel to help Russia conquer Ukraine. These troops have spent nearly a year in combat and a third of them are dead, disabled or missing.
Iran has sent missiles and drones towards Israel, almost all of which were shot down or missed. There were some Israeli casualties, but nothing to match what last June’s air raid on Iran did. Most of Iran’s air defense system, weapons production facilities and nuclear material for bombs were destroyed. Over a hundred key scientists, officials and senior military officers running the nuclear weapons program were killed. As much as Iranian leaders disparage Israelis as being evil toadies to the United States, the Israelis are never described as incompetent.
China is not looking to attack anyone immediately. The Chinese prefer to maneuver an opponent or victim into attacking China. At that point the Chinese will smite the attacker with righteous fury and devastation. Sounds almost biblical, but the Chinese were doing it before the bible was written. No one is prepared to attack China, mainly because China is the second largest, after the U.S., exporting nation on the planet. Attack China and then live with all the shortages and higher prices for shabby substitute goods. For industrialized nations an attack on China is an attack on your population's standard of living.

FYEO

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Tuesday, December 09, 2025 - 12:42 am: Edit

The New US National Security Strategy has not passed without notice under the radar. Even the Swedish National Radio discussed it yesterday.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, December 10, 2025 - 01:25 pm: Edit

Winning: Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb Update
December 10, 2025: New details have been released about the Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb. This was the daring June 2024 Ukrainian attack on Russian airfields deep inside the country. SBU/Ukrainian Security Service recently revealed more details on this operation but withheld some details involving items that might be used again. Spiderweb was mostly about solving logistical problems. The drivers of the trucks were Russians who never knew they were working for the Ukrainians. The drivers simply delivered the crates containing the drones to specified locations and left. The operation was delayed a month because the drivers went on binge over Easter and were unavailable for the original operation dates. The Russian FSB/secret police eventually discovered where the Russian drivers lived, arrested them and tortured the drivers for information the drivers never had. In fact, the drivers did nothing illegal. They drove cargoes of sealed crates to specified locations and left them there. The drivers didn’t learn wh
The final staging area for the truck drivers was in Chelyabinsk, which is 2,100 kilometers from Ukraine. The trucks were stored in a garage one block from the FSB headquarters in Chelyabinsk. Since the trucks were Russian, as were the drivers, and the cargo was just wooden crates, the FSB never suspected a thing.
Another detail the Ukrainians revealed was that the warheads of those drones were armed with Shaped Charge devices. Normally these are used to penetrate armor. These shaped charges were used to penetrate the bomber's metal skin and penetrate deeply enough to hit a fuel line or tank and ignite whatever fuel was in the aircraft. This way the bombers supplied the flammable liquids needed to destroy or seriously damage them. Another revelation was that the SBU had made plans to keep the drones in the crates warm if the attacks were made during the winter.
The SBU spent nearly two years planning Spiderweb and it worked. Ukraine was able to launch a surprise drone attack on five Russian air bases located all over Russia. The farthest target was about 9,600 kilometers from Ukraine. One base was at Murmansk in northwestern Russia while another was in Amur Oblast near the Pacific coast. Two more, Ryazan and Ivanovo were near Ukraine while Irkutsk was in central Siberia near the Mongolian border.
The attacks destroyed 41 aircraft, nearly 35 percent of the Russian long-range bomber fleet. Several other bombers were damaged but repairable. Most were Tu-95 and Tu-22M strategic bombers.
Ukraine estimated the destroyed aircraft were worth $7 billion. Actually, these bombers are priceless because none of the destroyed bombers are manufactured anymore. Even making repairs is difficult because few of the aircraft components are still being made.
Ukraine called this operation Spider's Web because it involved smuggling 117 drones worth about half a million dollars. The drones were transported on several tractor-trailer trucks hauling standard cargo containers. These containers were modified so that the tops would be raised by remote control and the drones inside launched. The drones were First Person View/FPV models and the controllers were in Ukraine. There was not a lot of control to do because the drones had targeting systems that sought images of specific aircraft and landed on or near the aircraft fuel tanks before detonating. The remaining fuel in those tanks did most of the damage. Two or three drones were assigned to each target,
The Russian heavy bombers carried up to eight Kh-101 missiles each. These missiles are like the 1983 American Tomahawk but did not enter service until 2010. Tomahawks have a range of up to 2,500 kilometers while the Kh-101 can travel as far as 5,500 kilometers. For the Ukraine War most of these missiles carried less fuel and larger 800 kg warheads. The missiles were usually launched about a thousand kilometers from the Ukrainian border to avoid being shot down by Ukrainian aircraft or Patriot missiles.
While somewhat stealthy, they travel at subsonic speed and Ukrainian air defenses soon became quite proficient at shooting them down, usually with Patriot or other missiles. Ukrainian aircraft carrying long-range anti-aircraft missiles have also accounted for a lot of Kh-101s. In response Russia is using more inexpensive drones while developing high-speed Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. Kinzhal is more likely to reach its target but costs five times as much as Kh-101 and entered service in 2018. Ukrainians air defense experts found ways to intercept Kinzhal, but not as frequently as Kh-101s.


Information Warfare: Ukraine Has No Monopoly On Innovation
December 10, 2025: Ukraine has been fighting the Russian invaders for three years now. The expensive Russian failure to conquer Ukraine is largely due to Ukrainian ingenuity and innovations. Ukraine concentrated on increasing drone production and effectiveness any way it could. For most of the last three years the Russians responded but rarely got ahead. One area where Russia fell behind was drones. Ukraine revolutionized warfare with its many drone-based innovations. Initially Russia tried to keep up but economic sanctions and continuous new drone developments from Ukraine got in the way.
Over the last year Russia has effectively reformed its drone development and production efforts through its new Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies. Rubicon streamlined development and concentrated on a few drone models. Russia also maintained its lead in electronic countermeasures to disable or disrupt the operations of Ukrainian drones. The new Rubicon organization develops and tests advanced robotic systems and AI/Artificial Intelligence. It was because of Rubicon that Russia pioneered the use of fiber-optic drones which have had a significant impact on the battlefield. These are controlled via a fiber-optic cable, providing a secure video feed in real time which cannot be jammed. Actually, the US military DARPA research agency developed the fiber optic control system twenty years ago, but the Russians, followed by the Ukrainians, first used them in combat.
Meanwhile Ukraine is falling behind in drone development. Ukraine is still trying to recover from the 2022-24 period of chaotic development and production. This was when individuals or small groups of enthusiasts built drones at home or improvised workshops in basements, garages or any available space. Ukraine has since established factories to mass produce drones and is getting more drones from manufacturers in NATO nations.
By late 2024 Ukraine had come up with another gaggle of drone ideas. The most visually obvious one is the remotely controlled drone swarm. The usual Russian defense is jamming the control signals. The Ukrainian swarm has drones capable of operating independently when jammed and continuing the attack with less accuracy but, because it is a swarm with dozens of drones, some are still going to hit the target. The swarm concept has been tested successfully and the next step was using it against the Russians. When that happened, the Russians quickly adapted electronic drone defenses to disrupt the impact of swarm tactics.
Ukrainians are able to modify their tactics and technology quickly, often in hours if all that is involved is a software modification. One new concept that has already been used is First Person View/FPV drones to plant magnetic mines on the edge of a road or trail Russian armored vehicles are headed for. When the armored vehicles show up, all that moving metal activates the magnetic mines, blowing the tracks or wheels off the armored vehicles. Thus immobilized, the crews usually bail out and run before another FPV drone with more explosives arrives to finish off the motionless vehicles.
Yet the Russian Rubicon effort is closing the innovation gap and doing it in a more disciplined and lasting manner. Rubicon is upgrading every aspect of Russian drone use, including rapidly implementing suggestions or solutions to user problems. Russia may still lose this war, but it won’t be blamed on Russian inability to keep up in drone development and use.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, December 10, 2025 - 01:35 pm: Edit

Sea Transportation: Finland Cracks Down On Underwater Cable Cutting
December 9, 2025: In August Finnish prosecutors charged the captain and two senior officers of the tanker Eagle S with aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with communications by dragging the ship’s anchor for 90 kilometers along the subsurface terrain. This ruptured the Estlink 2 undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia as well as four internet lines. Prompt repairs to restore service cost $70 million, with complete restoration of power and internet service costing even more. Nations bordering the Baltic Sea have been nervously anticipating and preparing for sabotage after a string of outages of power cables, gas pipelines and telecoms, although subsea infrastructure is also subject to technical malfunctions and outages caused by accidents. The Eagle S disruption caused serious risks to energy supply and telecommunications in Finland
The year began with a fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden being damaged by parties unknown. Over the last few years more than a dozen Baltic Sea underwater cables have been damaged or cut. These cables can be repaired in a few weeks, but local Coast Guard officials consider most of these incidents deliberate and that makes them criminal.
Over the last year there have been several underwater cables cut in the Baltic Sea. The damage was done using anchors dragged across the seabed. The common factor in all this was Russia and its oil smuggling operation. The economic sanctions on Russia because of the Ukraine War have made Russia desperate. Russia has a fleet of tankers that operate in the shadows to smuggle Russian oil. The more the Russians carry out these acts, the more the sanctions are increased. Countries bordering the Baltic formed a force of patrol boats that patrolled areas where underwater cables were. If a Russian ship moved into the area anyway, local navies would send out a warship and board the Russian vessel for a chat.
Russia is not the first nation to attack the hundreds of underwater cable networks around the world. In 2009 the U.S. Navy found itself defending underwater Internet cables. That's where most of the planet's Internet traffic spends most of its time, as it travels from continent to continent via fiber-optic cables. The navy proposed to undertake more aggressive operations to prevent terrorists, or hostile nations, from trying to cut these cables.
FYEO

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, December 10, 2025 - 02:43 pm: Edit

The Congo-Rwanda peace deal has collapsed, with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels entering the strategic town of Uvira.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, December 10, 2025 - 08:48 pm: Edit

Collapsed? Or just a local group getting off the reservation? I would not be so quick to judge.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 02:28 pm: Edit

Leadership: Russian Rubicon Renaissance
December 11, 2025: Desperate to overcome the Ukrainian drone advantage against Russian forces in Ukraine, Russia did something different. In mid-2024 they created Rubicon. The full name is Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies. Rubicon was given access to the best technical, manufacturing and military assets they needed to develop and produce new drones that could overwhelm Ukrainian drone forces. This included the addition of AI/Artificial Intelligence capabilities to Russian drones and counter-drone systems.
Rubicon got all the resources it wanted to turn the tide in the drone wars inside Ukraine. Ukrainian forces soon noted that the Russian drones were becoming more capable, as were the Russian electronic warfare operations used to disrupt Ukrainian drones. Rubicon developed technologies and tactics that enabled Russian drone operators to find and destroy more Ukrainian drone controllers. The Ukrainians found that Russian electronic warfare against Ukrainian drones was becoming more effective.
By mid-2025 the Rubicon initiative was turning the tide in the drone wars. Now it is up to Ukraine to come up with effective countermeasures in terms of new drones and improved electronic warfare.
Russian drones currently have the initiative and it’s increasingly difficult for Ukrainian forces to operate within 30 kilometers of the front line. As quickly as the Ukrainians move to upgrade their drone operations, Rubicon finds ways to keep Russian forces in the lead. That’s because Rubicon was designed to carefully observe changes in Ukrainian equipment and tactics and quickly match and surpass it. If the Ukrainians cannot match and surpass Rubicon their chances of winning their war with the Russian invaders will fade to insignificance and defeat.

FYEO

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 02:59 pm: Edit

Collapsed. Both sides are accusing each other of violating the agreement, and both sides are now taking "retaliatory actions" against each other in response.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 03:10 pm: Edit

In other news, the administration has cleared sales of NVIDIA H200 chips - their second-most powerful AI processor - to China. Such sales were blocked by previous administrations (including the first Trump administration) on concerns over their applications for both cyberwarfare and tech espionage purposes.

By Vincent Solfronk (Vsolfronk) on Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 03:43 pm: Edit

Should read the latest NYT.com article about the collapse of American shipbuilding ability, through the collapse of the Constellation class. Pretty depressing.:

"America can’t make what the Military needs"

"America needs to reinvest in building military hardware. The United States spends about 3.4 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, down from nearly 5 percent in 2010 and 9.4 percent in 1967. Half a percent more, or around $150 billion, spent on manufacturing capacity would represent a major effort to rebuild our industrial base.

More important, though, is whom the Department of Defense is buying weapons from.

This is an installment of Overmatched,
a series from the Editorial Board on why the
U.S. military needs to reinvent itself.

The defense industry has consolidated from 51 major players in the early 1990s to five today: Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Boeing. Partly as a result, the U.S. domestic supply chain has withered as smaller machine shops that make key components for ships, submarines and aircraft have gone out of business.

Those big five contractors, known as the primes, have built their businesses around government contracts. They have become masters of the bureaucracy but are incapable of churning out weapons quickly, a fundamental requirement in modern warfare. As we have seen in Ukraine, the mass production of off-the-shelf drones has countered high-priced weapons like tanks and helicopters. Ukraine immobilized Russia’s formidable Black Sea Fleet in part with remote-controlled speedboats laden with explosives."

"America had more than 300 commercial shipyards in 1980 and produced dozens of ships every year. That production depended on federal subsidies, allowing the industry to compete with shipyards in countries with lower manufacturing costs. President Ronald Reagan, trying to shrink government, canceled the subsidies in the early 1980s, and American shipyards lost many of their private sector customers. Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs as foreign competitors picked up the business. American shipbuilding collapsed.

Forty years later, the Constellation project ran into that reality. Initially, the Navy’s approach seemed smart. Rather than building a new ship from scratch, it would use a proven design for a frigate already in service with the French and Italian navies. To build it, the Pentagon chose Marinette Marine, a Wisconsin-based shipyard owned by the Italian company Fincantieri. What began as a quick and low-risk way to get what the Navy needs, however, soon turned into another sad example of American industrial dysfunction.

The Pentagon ordered new weapons and equipment for the ship, including a different electric propulsion motor, propeller and diesel generator. The ever-growing list of changes required work-force and supply-chain flexibility. A shortage of machinists, welders, pipe fitters, electricians and other skilled tradesmen needed to make the parts and adjust the ship’s ever-changing design meant added costs and delays. With no end in sight, the Navy canceled the program in November. It says it will buy the two ships that are in the initial phases of being built, if they’re ever finished; delivery remains at least three years away. A week after the Navy’s announcement, Fincantieri Marinette Marine laid off 93 workers."

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 05:51 pm: Edit

Vincent

Ship building - alas what has happened to the US is not new.

The Dutch lost it to GB.... who lost it briefly to Germany who lost it to the US.... who lost it in effect to South Korea??

(Most ships built are Commercial rather than Miltiary).

No doubt South Korea will lose it to China.... who will probably lose it it to India or the Phillipines?

Once the Commerical Builds move on - maintaining a modest Miltiary Ship Yard system gets even more difficult.

Cheap will find somewhere cheaper to build it....

By Vincent Solfronk (Vsolfronk) on Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 09:59 pm: Edit

Didn't help when Reagan got rid of subsidies to US shipbuilding companies who were then crushed by overseas competition. Also, monopolies are terrible for the taxpayer and the consumer.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 10:21 pm: Edit

But I thought free trade was the way to Utopia?

--Mike

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, December 12, 2025 - 12:01 am: Edit

Free trade has to be fair trade. If a country is subsidizing exports, that isn’t fair, or free.

It also tends to be a way to export manufacturing jobs to lower-class countries with lower standards of living and hence lower labor costs. Good for consumers, not so good for people who need jobs.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, December 12, 2025 - 12:05 am: Edit

Trump: If the Rwandans who violated the treaty are executed, will Congo be satisfied and go bck to the peace deal where I steal your strategic minerals?

Congo: yes!

Trump: If no Congolese harms a Rwandan, will Rwanda go back to the peace deal where I steal your strategic minerals?

Rwanda: sure!

Trump: Marco, tell Pete I need to borrow a carbine, just for a minute. And notify the Nobel Peace Prize committee that I'm still the front runner.