COFA
Where this is headed is a Compact Of Free Association, like the US has with three Pacific island groups.
Under this, Denmark is out, but the Greenlandics keep local control. The US has basing rights and veto over foreign bases. The US can develop the natural resources and block other nations from access. US subsidies are tied to mineral royalties. The US could set up US towns around mines and import temporary contract workers that would not be Greenlandic citizens. Greenlandics would be US nationals but not US citizens. Yeah, nobody understands that, but Pacific islanders get that status. Greenlandics could go to the US to work or get educated.

Things are going on backstage and deals are being negotiated.

Denmark actually wants to be rid of Greenland. They resent paying $800 million a year, don’t want any obligations toward Greenland or Greenlandics, and really really really do not want Inuit Greenlandics visiting Denmark for any reason. Inuits visiting Denmark are greeted by angry demonstrators wanting them to GO HOME.

Greenland wants independence BUT ONLY if some kind of financial subsidy keeps showing up from somewhere, preferably without any obligation on the part of Greenland. Pollsters have found it impossible to get any real idea what Greenlandics want, since what they really want is some kind of fantasy solution where the world somehow OWES them a subsidy without getting anything for it. If you have a chat with the average Greenlandic he will change his mind three times in ten minutes. This can result in polls showing a majority want to become part of the US, or independence, or Danish union.

Something is going to happen soon and “best of bad options” is likely to result, with a lot of vague language that leave all of us here asking WHAAAAAT just happened?

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 10:17 am: Edit

Alas I am guessing President Trump hasn't read the 'How to Win and influence Friends' book?

His comment "that the US would be there for its allies, but I'm not sure that they'd be there for us if we gave them the call" - absolutely is untrue of Denmark.

After 9/11, Denmark answered the call and lost 44 soldiers in Afghanistan, proportionately more than any other ally other than the US. They also lost men alongside US forces in Iraq.....

... how's that for a thank you?

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 12:38 pm: Edit

Pres. Trump has apparently ruled out military action to take Greenland, stating at Davos: "We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive force, we'd be unstoppable, but we won't do that." and "I don't have to use force, I don't want to use force, I won't use force."

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 01:07 pm: Edit

There was, years and years ago, a Doonesbury comic where a congressman was questioning a general about readiness. It went something like:

Congressman: "Are we prepared for a war with X?"
General: "No sir."
...
repeat for other contries
...
Congressman: "Well, who are we prepared to fight?"
General: "Belgium! We can invade Belgium and take them any time!"
Congressman: "General, they're our allies."
General: "The Russians get to invade their allies all the time! We can do it too."

I'm glad to know that this is still a spoof.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 01:11 pm: Edit

As I noted, Trump said last week and a week before that that he would not use military force.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 01:22 pm: Edit

>> some kind of fantasy solution where the world somehow OWES them a subsidy without getting anything for it

This sense of entitlement is, unfortunately, a natural psychological consequence of a long term culture of dependency.

This also leads into the Greenlander's contradictory mentality of wanting independence, but voting for restrictions on the industrial/economic development that would enable it.

Greenland has more than sufficient resources to enable a much higher and independent standard of living (and more life options) for their tiny population. They've simply voted against it repeatedly.

--Mike

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 01:58 pm: Edit

The US tried to buy Greenland many times, in 1867, 1910, 1946, among other times that were less formal. I know that Grant and a few other presidents made informal "would you be interested in an offer?" queries that were little more than cocktail party chat, but still happened.

Trump is at Davos. Denmark says "not interested in selling" which probably is polispeak for "how about a way to do this that isn't selling?"

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:15 pm: Edit

Morale: Russian Sloth Disease
January 21, 2026: Russian military and political leaders are growing increasingly concerned at the slow, or no, movement of Russian forces in Ukraine. So far, Russia has lost 1.2 million soldiers killed, disabled, missing or captured. Russian men eligible for military service are increasingly resistant to financial inducements to join. Those who are in Ukraine as soldiers have a good excuse for not moving around much. Russia has been on the offensive since the war began, but their speed of advance has slowed down each year of its current four year length. Pre-war Russian army planning documents, based on World War II experience, stipulated that Russian troops should be able to advance at between 1.5 and 3 kilometers a day. In Ukraine, the latest Russian offensive operations have been advancing at the rate of one or two kilometers a month.
There is a reason for this and it’s the drones. Both Russian and Ukrainian troops are using cheap drones controlled by soldiers a few kilometers distant who use First Person Viewing or FPV goggles to see what the video camera on the drone sees. Drones with night vision cameras are more common now so the war can go on round the clock. Surveillance drones are reused if they survive a mission in an increasingly dangerous battle space. Attack 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. Some of these drones just drop their explosives and return to the operator to be recharged and rearmed.
This form of 24 hour warfare is an awesome and debilitating form of combat, especially when used in large numbers over the combat zone. If a target isn’t moving from a bunker it fled to, the drone operator can call in more drones to try and get into the bunker. This is why you see so many military targets equipped with nets. Tanks have them, as do bunkers, trenches and any target that wants to avoid being overwhelmed by drones seeking to get at you. Drone operators will team together to take down a target by coming from every possible direction and taking turns demolishing nets. The only secure bunker is one with a blast door and an escape tunnel so the soldiers can get to another bunker that isn’t under siege by drones.
The front in Ukraine is a thousand kilometers long and soldiers are increasingly trapped in their bunkers and trenches. Bunkers are much safer from drone attacks than trenches. Going out in the open exposes you to the immediate attention of any FPV drones in the vicinity and a life cut short by deadly quadcopters that can see and kill you. Survival without a lot of drone and jamming support is unlikely. Both sides have videos of soldiers caught in the open and hunted down by FPV drones
Each operator has a copilot who stares at a tablet computer showing the situation in the area the FPV drone is operating. The operator works with a headset that covers his eyes. The copilot describes and comments on the big picture that the FPV camera does not see. Most drones are able to complete their mission, 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, including the armed ones, 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. Not having enough of these to match the number the enemy has in a portion of the front means you are at a serious disadvantage in that area. These drones are still evolving in terms of design and use and are becoming more effective and essential.
Ukrainians were particularly adept at modifying quadcopters to carry explosives. If the operator found an enemy tank or lighter armored vehicle with a top hatch open, the vehicle could be destroyed when an explosive was dropped through the open hatch. The explosives were often used against Russian troops in foxholes or open trenches. This capability is bad for Russian morale and the Ukrainians made the most of it. As a result, the four years of Russian offensive operations have slowed to a crawl.
It’s not really sloth, it’s self-preservation.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:15 pm: Edit

Submarines: Drone Sub Sinks Manned Sub
January 21, 2026: A month ago Ukraine used a new submarine version of their Sea Baby naval drone to attack a Russian Kilo Class submarine in the port of Novorossiisk on the east coast of the Black Sea. This was the first time a drone submarine attacked and crippled a manned submarine. The damaged Kilo will probably be written off because last February Russia shut down all ship repair activities in the Black Sea because of increasing Ukrainian drone and missile attacks. This includes the shipyards at Novorossiisk. The damaged Kilo cannot be taken to a submarine repair facility in northwest Russia because Turkey has a treaty allowing it to refuse warships in wartime access to Turkish-controlled waters that are the only exit from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. There is another damaged Kilo stranded in a Crimean shipyard. With its latest Kilo loss, Russia has no operational Kilos in the Black Sea.
The Black Sea Kilos were used to launch Kalibr cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine. Kalibrs launched from Russia are easier to detect and shoot down. The submerged Kilos launched Kalibrs from their torpedo tubes. The cruise missiles reached the surface, and their engines took the Kalibrs to targets anywhere along the Ukrainian Black Sea coast and hundreds of kilometers inland.
Meanwhile Ukraine continues to develop and build naval drones to enable Ukraine to make the Black Sea unusable by Russian commercial shipping as well as warships. The freighters and tankers can use the Turkish exit to the Mediterranean only if they survive Ukrainian naval and land-based drone attacks. In 2024 and most of 2025, Russia and Ukraine avoided attacking each other’s commercial shipping in the Black Sea. But with all the Kilos gone and surface warships withdrawn to Russian ports in the distant ports of the northeastern Black Sea, Ukraine is free to threaten Russian commercial shipping in the Black Sea. Ukraine already has armed commercial merchant raiders firing on Russian commercial shipping. The Russians can launch drones and missiles at Ukrainian Black Sea ports but cannot effectively attack commercial shipping in the Black Sea.
Ukraine continues to develop, build and use drones to continue their domination of the Black Sea. Last December Ukraine introduced its Magura V7 naval drone, 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.
Ukrainian naval drones have revolutionized naval warfare that takes place within a few hundred kilometers of a coastline. So far no other navy has shown much interest in duplicating the Ukrainian success with naval drones. The U.S. Coast Guard has used naval drones to assist in interdicting drug smuggling boats. The U.S. Navy has access to Ukrainian naval drone technology and is paying attention because the Chinese are doing a lot of work on naval drones, including a ship described as a drone carrier, equipped with aerial and naval drones.
It all began in 2022 when the Russian Black Sea fleet dominated the Black Sea and threatened Ukrainian grain exports, which accounted for 41 percent of its export income. Most of these grain products went to Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ukraine needed to deal with the Black Sea Fleet and do it quickly. The initial problem was that Ukraine did not have much of a navy. They had some patrol boats, which were a nuisance, not an obstacle, to continued Russian control of the Black Sea.
When the current war started in 2022, the Russians happily attacked Ukrainian-flagged cargo ships carrying Ukrainian grain for export from the Black Sea for more than a year. This stopped sometime in 2023 after Ukrainian cruise missiles sank or disabled the Russian warships doing that, and both sides then exported grain through the Black Sea, plus some oil for the Russians. Eventually the Ukrainians developed surface water drones and then underwater drones capable of attacking all Russian ships in the Black Sea. Things then got interesting.
Ukraine first developed a secret weapon, the Magura naval surface drone, used about a hundred of these drones to defeat Russia’s Black Sea fleet. When the war started, 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 contact fuses at the front of the boat
Most Magura missions are one-way, but those equipped with machine-guns and surface-to-air missiles are also used to attack Russian aircraft. In May a Magura V7 used those two missiles to shoot down two expensive 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.
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 varied 850 kg of explosives and inflicted enough damage to halt use of the bridge. The Mother drone carried 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.
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 sought a Western manufacturer to build and weaponize Ukrainian drones.
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 and even more in 2025 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.
This left Russian warships dependent on bases in the north, near the land border with Norway, and in the Far East, near Japanese and South Korean naval bases. In a post-Cold War development, the Japanese and South Korean fleets are now far larger than the Russian Far East fleet. Before the 1990s, the South Korea fleet was largely non-existent and the Japanese fleet tiny and purely defensive. Chinese naval power began to emerge by the late 1990s but took another decade to become a significant force. Then as now, the American western Pacific fleet was the major naval power in the region.
The lessons learned by American, Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Ukrainian and Russian naval commanders is that these drones have changed the rules for naval warfare. If China tries to invade Taiwan, they have to prepare countermeasures for numerous naval drones blocking the way. Everyone continues to observe Black Sea operations for details on what new tactics, techniques and drone’s designs appear. The U.S. has an edge because they are a major supporter of Ukraine and are seeking to make the most of their insider knowledge of the Ukrainian naval drone effort.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:16 pm: Edit

Leadership: American National Security Surprises
January 20, 2026: At the end of 2025, the United States revealed a new National Security Strategy/NSS document. This one was different in that it was more precise, political, decisive and differentiated than earlier efforts.
This NSS seeks to create a new era of unprecedented achievement for America. This includes using the President's unique deal-making skills to negotiate peace deals in more than a dozen ongoing conflicts around the world. In the first year of the current Presidency, most of these conflicts had been settled or peace efforts were making substantial progress.
The new NSS reveals a new diplomacy based on economic and military deal-making rather than American worldwide economic and military domination. Domestically, more emphasis is now placed on eliminating illegal migration. This will reduce migrant related crime, increase employment opportunities for U.S. citizens and lead to more cooperation with nations that supply the illegal migrants to find solutions that convince foreigners to seek legal migration to the United States.
There is also a new approach to American reactions to crises in the Western Hemisphere. The United States is more willing to use force to prevent countries in other parts of the world from interfering in our hemisphere. When there is an internal or multinational problem in our hemisphere, the situation will be addressed by the U.S. more quickly and forcefully than in the past.
Another new government policy is support for traditional family values where the family consists of a mother, father and children. Families are encouraged to raise children in an atmosphere that supports traditional American values of fairness, hard work and honest dealings with others. It’s also important to make Americans aware of how foreign policy problems often depend on different family, social, and political values found in foreign countries. This explains why U.S. and European attitudes towards supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia differ.
New American military proposals, like the Golden Dome ballistic missile shield, are also subject to financial and diplomatic issues. Can the U.S. defense budget sustain such a project and does it risk starting another arms race like the one between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the 1948-91 Cold War?
Another NSS issue is the extent to which the United States military is used to defend European NATO nations and allies in the Pacific region. NATO Europe nations collectively generate half the global GDP. Pacific allies like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia maintain armed forces, in cooperation with U.S. forces assigned to the Western Pacific, are hopefully an effective deterrent to any aggressive Chinese military plans.
The United States wants its allies, particularly the ones in Europe, to make more of an effort to defend themselves. That means spending at least 2 percent of GDP on defense and preferably 5 percent. Currently the U.S. spends 3.4 percent, which will come to a trillion dollars a year in 2027. The European average is 1.8 percent, and the growing Russian threat has all European nations’ increasing their defense spending. The countries closest to Russia, like Poland and the three Baltic States, are headed towards five percent. Poland is already over 4 percent, and the three Baltic States are at about 3.4 percent and rising.
The U.S. is also more aggressive in advising its allies to stop Islamic radicals from migrating to their nations and to expel the ones already there. European governments are downplaying the danger, but their constituents are alarmed. European elections over the next five or ten years will create governments that recognize the Islamic threat and deal with it. A growing number of Americans and politicians are backing laws that demand potential and existing voters to present valid photo ID to vote. This would eliminate all the current voting fraud committed by illegal migrants and corrupt politicians.
Another needed reform is the state of American industrial capacity. For three decades more manufacturing, and jobs, have been exported to China and other nations. The new policy seeks to bring the manufacturing and the jobs back to the United States. This is all part of a revived America First policy.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:17 pm: Edit

When Trump says that he isn't sure NATO would answer a call if the US was attacked, he means Russia and/or China (maybe Iran or North Korea) not a bunch of bandits in Afghanistan. He means war that would risk the existence of Denmark, not war that would risk a few dozen Danish soldiers.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:18 pm: Edit

Naval Air: US Carrier Calamity Examined
January 19, 2026: Between December 2024 and March 2025, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Truman/CVN-75 lost three F-18 aircraft and collided with a cargo ship near the Suez Canal. During this period, one of its escorts, the cruiser Gettysburg/Crisis Group-64 accidentally fired SM-2 antiaircraft missiles at two F-18s. One aircraft was lost, although the pilot ejected. The other F-18 managed to avoid the missile with some expert maneuvering and the last minute deactivation of the missile by the Gettysburg. The cause of this disaster was a malfunctioning IFF/Identify Friend or Foe system on the Gettysburg. The commander of the Truman was relieved; the captain of the Gettysburg was not.
During this period the Truman had far more problems than the Gettysburg. The captain of the Truman lost his job not just because he lost three aircraft and had a collision, but because it was found that key crew members were not adequately trained. This was also a problem with officers and sailors on duty often not being able to sleep much because of the tempo of operations. Lack of sleep has been the cause of many naval mishaps since World War II ended in 1945.
Another issue is the relatively high number of American warship commanders being relieved each year. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the U.S. Navy has been experiencing a larger number of warship captains getting relieved from command. It's currently over five percent of ship captains a year. At the end of the Cold War, in the late 1980s, the rate was about 3-4 percent a year. So why has the relief rate gone up? The navy thinks it knows why, but there appears to be a number of reasons, many of them having to do with changes in the rating system, where commanders evaluate their subordinates each year.
The navy has queried commanders for new ideas for the evaluation system. One of the more interesting ones is to hold commanders responsible for their evaluations. Thus, when a commander was up for promotion, one of the items considered would be the accuracy of their evaluations. After all, the higher your rank, the more important it is for you to pick the right people for promotion. The navy has also looked at how corporations handle this evaluation process and discovered that it was common to poll subordinates for evaluations as well. The navy was aware that some commanders consult senior NCOs/Chief Petty Officers on evaluations. Chiefs have a lot of experience and see officers a bit differently than more senior officers. Another problem was a major modification in these fitness reports, in which written comments on many aspects of an officer evaluation were changed to a 1-5 ranking system. The new method also forced raters to rank all their subordinates against each other. This was unfair to a bunch of high performing officers who happened to be serving together and being rated by the same commander.
But there are other problems as well. Only a small percentage of reliefs have to do with professional failings, like a collision or serious accident, failing a major inspection or just continued poor performance. Most reliefs were, and still are, for adultery, drunkenness or theft. With more women aboard warships, there have been more reliefs for, as sailors like to put it, zipper failure. There may have been more than are indicated, as sexual misconduct is often difficult to prove, and a captain who is having zipper control problems often has other shortcomings as well. Senior commanders traditionally act prudently and relieve a ship commander who demonstrates a pattern of minor problems and who they lack confidence in.
Most naval officers see the problem not of too many captains being relieved, but too many unqualified officers getting command of ships in the first place. Not every naval officer qualified for ship command, only a small percentage of commissioned officers, gets one. The competition for ship commands is pretty intense. This, despite the fact that officers know that whatever goes wrong on the ship, the captain is responsible.
It's a hard slog for a new ensign/officer rank O-1 to make it to a ship command. For every hundred ensigns entering service, about 90 will stay and make it to O-4/Lieutenant Commander, usually after about nine years of service. About 67 of those ensigns will eventually get to serve as XO/executive officer, the number two officer on a ship, after 10-12 years of service. Some 69 of those ensigns will make it to O-5/ Commander, where it first becomes possible to command a frigate or destroyer. About 38 of those hundred ensigns will get such a command, usually after 18-20 years of service, and for about 18 months. About 22 of those ensigns will make it to O-6/Captain after 20-21 years of service. But only 11 of those ensigns, now captains, will get a major seagoing command of a cruiser or destroyer squadron. Officers who do well commanding a ship will often get to do it two or three times before they retire after about 30 years of service.
But with all this screening and winnowing, why are more unqualified officers getting to command ships, and then getting relieved because they can't hack it? Some point to the growing popularity of mentoring by senior officers, that smaller percentage that makes it to admiral. While the navy uses a board of officers to decide which officers get ship commands, the enthusiastic recommendation of one or more admirals does count. Perhaps it counts too much. The navy is still quick to relieve any ship commander that screws up, one naval tradition that should never be tampered with. Up until that point, it is prudent not to offend any admirals by implying that their judgment of up and coming talent is faulty. In the aftermath of these reliefs, it often becomes known that the relieved captain had a long record of problems. But because he was blessed by one or more admirals, these infractions were overlooked. The golden boys tend to be very personable and, well, look good. The navy promotion system is organized to rise above such superficial characteristics, but apparently the power, and misuse, of mentoring, has increasingly corrupted the process.
In some respects, there have been fewer reliefs. It's now common to leave a captain in charge after a major incident. When the destroyer Cole was hit by a terrorist bomb in a Yemen harbor in 2000, the captain was not immediately relieved. This is part of a new pattern which makes many naval officers uneasy. Officers, and sailors, would be more disturbed if the rate of captains being relieved went down. No captain is perfect, and crew members feel more comfortable if they know that their boss will quickly get the axe if there is a major problem.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:19 pm: Edit

Procurement: The Chinese Trap
January 19, 2026: In 2025 Russia and China conspired to block Ukrainian access to Chinese drones and drone components. It didn’t work. The Chinese firms that produced drones and drone components were not willing to lose one of their largest customers. While the media reported that Ukrainian troops were short of drones, the shortage was never real, and Ukraine had already made plans to deal with the possibility of China helping Russia by cutting off Ukrainian supplies of drones and components.
The reality was that dozens of Ukrainian drone manufacturers and thousands of individual Ukrainians continued to make drones by obtaining the needed components from other suppliers. The Chinese suppliers were also not willing to give up selling components, or even drones, to Ukraine. There were trading companies that, for a small fee, would buy goods from Chinese manufacturers and then quietly sell them to a sanctioned customer. The markup was small because there were many of these trading companies and they competed on price as well as service.
And then there was the network of drone components suppliers Ukraine organized in European, American and Asian suppliers. The components needed for drones are used in many other commercial products. In short, the Russian sponsored Chinese drone blockade failed and cost Chinese drone and component manufacturers a lot of business.
The Chinese drone industry, long the largest in the world, tried to cope. Chinese drone manufacturers quietly and carefully defied their own government and continued to supply Ukraine with drone components, as well as some drones. China lost market share to the new Ukrainian and other drone components manufacturers worldwide but did all they could legally or illegally to maintain their status as the largest supplier in the world.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:23 pm: Edit

Procurement: Mobilizing US Defense Industries
January 18, 2026: The United States spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on defense and currently that’s about 3.5 percent of GDP. American political and military leaders want to modify the way the industrial base of defense manufacturers and military planners work together. This will be done by improving flexibility, elasticity, and surge capacity. This means defense firms and military planners work together to develop and approve plans for increasing production of key weapons and munitions. Once completed, these plans would have pre-approved schedules and payments. These would be updated annually to deal with inflation and other factors that increase costs, develop production or otherwise disrupt the ability to get the military what they need when they need it. Then there is surge capability, the need to quickly provide more of an item after combat operations revealed such a need.
Supporting weapons and more complex munitions is another capability that depends on defense manufacturers and contractors. These firms and the military can cooperate in identifying the firms and key individuals who make this happen and how this category of personnel can be increased in wartime.
Another overlooked problem is the cost of maintaining adequate reserves of munitions and spare parts. This is often neglected in peacetime because these items are expensive to purchase and store in warehouses for decades. The risk is that these items will eventually become obsolete or expire. Munitions contain rocket motors, explosives, batteries and electronics that become unusable after a decade or more. Disposing of elderly and unreliable rocket motors and explosives is expensive, and that is often used as a reason not to stockpile a lot of these items that are essential to win the early battles of a war. Maintaining adequate stockpiles is a political as well as a logistical problem. Solve this problem and you save a lot of lives in the early stages of a war and win battles you might otherwise have lost.
Making all these adjustments will be expensive in terms of time, money and political resources. This is why it is rarely done. Nations that prepare, despite the costs and political opposition, win more of their first and subsequent battles in wartime. Many wars are avoided if a foe knows and understands how well prepared their opponent is.
A major problem with implementing these plans is the ability to pay for it. Peacetime military budgets are already a burden for many nations. For example, total worldwide defense spending for 2025 was $2.94 trillion. This was an 8 percent increase over 2024’s $2.72 trillion. Spending was up 7.4 percent in 2024, 6.5 percent in 2023 and 3.5 percent in 2022. These increases were the result of the Ukraine War and other European countries rearming and expanding their militaries to deal with increasing Russian aggression. This includes published Russian threats to attack NATO countries once Ukraine is subdued. Note that Ukraine is spending about 34 percent of their GDP yearly to fight the Russian invaders. Their prewar defense spending was less than a tenth of their wartime spending.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has had the largest defense budget. This is currently $997 billion and expected to reach a trillion dollars by 2027. This large budget supports 1.32 million military personnel and nearly a million civilians. Two other countries have more troops. China has two million military personnel on duty and spends $314 billion while India has 1.475 million troops and spends $86 billion. The United States accounts for over a third of the annual defense spending worldwide. Constant deployments of ships, aircraft and troops keeps everyone aware of what it costs and how long it takes to build equipment and train personnel. Domestic politics can often impede these efforts and unexpected conflicts can create problems that could have been avoided. Money alone will not solve problems; more effective and timely preparations will.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:23 pm: Edit

Logistics: Shadow Tankers And Icebreakers
January 17, 2026: Last December the Buran, a Russian ship carrying Liquid Natural Gas/LNG, found itself stuck in the ice. The Buran was travelling in the Arctic Ocean along the Northern Sea Route to the Utrenny terminal at the Gulf of Ob in northwestern Russia. The Buran was unable to move through the unusually thick ice in the Gulf of Ob. After a few weeks of Russian icebreakers breaking up the thick ice, the Buran was able to make its way to the port of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula.
Buran is one of four ships that carry LNG from LNG plants along the northern coast which liquefy natural gas, stores it and then transfers it to LNG tankers for shipment, mainly to China. This all takes place in Russian and Chinese territorial waters. This avoids interference by American warships looking to seize sanctioned ships and their cargoes.
The sanctions have made it nearly impossible for Russia to build more tankers. For example, a floating dock built in Turkey for Russia cannot be delivered because of the sanctions. Russia does have a fleet of nuclear powered icebreakers, which try to keep the northern route open. But the winter of 2025 saw ice so thick that even the icebreakers had a hard time keeping the northern route open.
Harsher sanctions against Russian oil exports and seizing tankers covertly carrying Russian oil have made it more difficult for Russia to export petroleum and LNG. Russia has the world's longest Arctic shoreline and has long been the largest producer and user of icebreaking ships. Currently there are 179 icebreakers in service worldwide, with 29 being built and 35 on order. This degree of activity not only replaces older icebreakers nearing retirement age but is also increasing the worldwide icebreaker fleet. Russia operates 85 icebreakers, the largest number of any nation.
While Russia is the largest builder and user of icebreakers, they owe much to Finland. Since World War II Finland has led the world in developing more efficient icebreaker designs. One icebreaker innovation Finland did not develop was the armed combat icebreaker. Russia has already built one armed icebreaker, the 9,000-ton Papanin, with two more under construction and another planned.
The Papanin began sea trials in July 2024 and joined the Northern Fleet, near the Arctic Circle in 2024. Construction of the Papanin began in 2017. Armament consists of a 76mm gun, four 12.7mm machine-guns and two 30mm multi barrel Close In Weapons/ CIWS for defense against missiles or small surface vessels. There is also space onboard for Uran anti-ship and Kalibr land attack missiles.
The Papanins have a top speed of 33 kilometers an hour and a max range of 19,000 kilometers at a speed of 19 kilometers an hour. These ships are designed to break through ice up to 1.7 meters thick. Maximum endurance on internal fuel and crew supplies is 70 days. The ship crew is 60 with accommodations for another 50 specialists and observers. A helicopter is carried with a hanger to shelter the helicopter from harsh Arctic weather. There are also two small Raptor class patrol boats that can carry 23 people or just the crew of three and over a ton of supplies or equipment. Some small drones are also carried. There is room for adding sonar and anti-submarine torpedoes. Papanin is similar to current unarmed Norwegian and Canadian icebreakers.
Papanin is armed to protect traffic on the 5,600 kilometer long Russian Northern Sea Route that links East Asia with Northern Europe. This Arctic sea lane passes along the exclusively Russian northern coast. Russia wants to maintain control of this corridor even though large parts of it are in international seas, outside Russian coastal waters. Russia also has several land bases along this route. These bases are controlled by the Russian Northern Fleet with over 10,000 troops, more than a hundred aircraft and several dozen warships and submarines to protect the Northern Sea Route.
As of 2025 the Northern Sea Route can accommodate over 500 merchant ships a year and that capacity is steadily increasing. Because of the ice and Arctic storms, this route can be treacherous. Safety is achieved if the Russians can maintain enough land bases and ports along the route to monitor weather and sea conditions and provide ports if commercial ships must seek temporary refuge. The Northern Sea Route cuts the time required by a third for ships carrying cargo between East Asia and Northern Europe. China and Russia are two major users of this route and Russia wants to increase the safety and security of this route to encourage heavier use. Russia does not charge a fee to use the Northern Sea Route even though Russia has spent billions of dollars to build and maintain this route.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:24 pm: Edit

Murphy's Law: Europeans Misinterpret Americans
January 17, 2026: Why do 600 million Europeans insist they need the help of 326 million Americans to deal with 144 million Russians? The American response is that Europe is unwilling to confront and deal with its own self-destructive policies. The Americans believe in confronting what the actual problems are, while the Europeans tend to make excuses for recent migrant misbehavior, especially if Moslems are involved. The Europeans cannot understand why the Americans now want Europe to defend itself and not depend so much on the United States. These differences are most apparent when it comes to Islamic terrorism and how little the Europeans have changed over time, and despite very visible evidence of what Moslem misbehavior in their midst meant.
For example, six years ago there was a sharp decline in Islamic terrorist attacks in the West, especially Europe, between 2015, when there were 211, and 2019 when there were twenty. This was the result of worldwide alarm and action against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, the most violent and determined form of Islamic terrorism so far. All nations, especially Moslem ones, cooperated to defeat ISIL. This brought about unusually high levels of cooperation in identifying ISIL members or potential members as well as going after ISIL media efforts, recruiters and fundraisers.
In the West, this exposed a pro-Islamic terrorist underground that was larger and more popular than anyone realized. Actually, there were police and military intelligence specialists who were not surprised. Until ISIL came along, few Western politicians believed so much support for Islamic terrorism existed inside their countries. Some of those politicians were still skeptical. But the problem was real and it was growing for several decades, along with support for Islamic terrorists in Moslem majority nations.
After September 11, 2001, there was a growing realization in the West that many of their Moslem citizens, or recent migrants, supported Islamic terrorism, including attacks that killed a lot of civilians. While survey results varied from country to country, there were two constants. First, the majority of Moslems opposed Islamic terrorism under any circumstances. Second, there was always a minority that either supported or understood the need for such violence and worst of all there was a small percentage who thought such violence was necessary to defend Islam. Many in the last group were willing to actively participate in Islamic terrorist activity.
For example, an opinion survey in 2006 showed that about three percent of German Moslems supported al Qaeda's objectives, which were mainly about Islam becoming the only religion on the planet, and using force to make it happen. Many of the Moslems who supported Islamic terrorism did not just support violence but would give aid to al Qaeda terrorists. More worrisome, the German intelligence experts believed that about 3,000 of their Moslem residents would commit terrorist acts to further the al Qaeda cause. The Germans also noted that there were 24 active Islamist groups in the country, with a combined membership of over 31,000. Many of those young al Qaeda enthusiasts lacked the leadership and technical knowledge to pull off a major attack. While these 3,000 men were all for terrorist actions, only a few are willing to kill themselves doing it. This shows the importance of the former al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. There, al Qaeda could select and train men who could whip a bunch of local enthusiasts into a team capable of carrying out an act of mass murder. The camps also trained people to make bombs and deal with the more mundane problems of avoiding detection and arrest by the police.
The problem in Europe was that radical Moslems sought, often with success, to establish religious schools/madrasas where elementary and high-school age children could be indoctrinated in the conservative forms of Islam, as mandated in Saudi Arabia and many other Moslem nations, that insisted Islam was under constant attack or threat of attack by infidels/non-Moslems. These madrassas called on young Moslems to actively defend Islam using violence against infidels and Moslems who did not share these extremist beliefs. The madrassas taught that economic failure is not the fault of unemployed Moslems but a deliberate policy of the infidel societies they now lived in.
Cultivating this culture of resentment and justifying blaming personal problems on others rather than yourself also worked in Moslem nations, where madrasa students often turned against their own government rather than infidel nations, who tended to be better off than Moslem majority countries. Most Moslems believe this sort of thing is nonsense, but Islamic radicals can find a lot of support for these extremist attitudes in Islamic scripture. This is a unique aspect of Islam, for no other major religion gives this much encouragement for and religious justification of violence against infidels or Moslems who don’t agree with you.
European politicians, in particular, are still prone to downplay the severity of this situation. For example, German politicians were under growing pressure from their constituents to reduce the flow of Moslem migrants and more carefully screen those that were let in. Most elected and unelected officials took the position that allowing large numbers of Moslem refugees from civil wars, rebellions and religious conflicts in Moslem majority nations was the humanitarian thing to do. Their constituents pointed out that many of the politicians were delusional because these officials did not live near the new arrivals. Nor did they experience the increasing crime and general hostility expressed by so many of the refugees towards non-Moslems and often each other. Voters pointed out that their political leaders tended to live in well-protected neighborhoods and had access to taxpayer-supplied personal security. To make matters worse, there were a growing number of instances where local or national officials deliberately concealed data on criminal activity by Moslem migrants.
Some data cannot be concealed and that is when there are deliberate terrorist attacks that kill or injure people in a public place. For example, in the four years after 2014, through the end of 2017, there were 32 Islamic terror attacks in Europe. These involved 44 Moslem refugees or recent asylum seekers. These attacks caused 996 casualties, 182 dead and 814 wounded. While these attacks occurred in twelve countries most of them took place in Germany, which had accepted the most, 1.4 million, Moslem refugees.
For the average European the most annoying thing about this was that the hostility and violence found among so many of these refugees was nothing new. Opinion polls and government data had detailed the problem for years. For example, in 2006 German counter-intelligence officials were openly dismayed at how passive German Moslems were towards the threat of Islamic terrorism. A tip line for Germans to call in information about suspected terrorist activity received little use by the 3.5 million Moslems living in Germany. The tip line had German, Arabic and Turkish speaking operators available. While there had not been any major al Qaeda terrorist attacks in Germany up to then, the police and intelligence agencies knew they had an Islamic terrorism problem. Even without tips from Moslem residents, the intelligence agencies had detected a growing number of suspected Islamic terrorists and many of these eventually proved those suspicions right, often in another country. That was because Germany was seen as something of a sanctuary for Islamic terrorists; a place where local Moslems would stay silent and local police might suspect your intentions, but unless you broke one of their laws, like displaying a flag with a swastika on it, you would not get arrested.
Despite a large number of American Moslems who were not happy with the war on terror, they did report anything that appeared to be terrorist activity. This program was so successful that the number of terrorist prosecutions was declining. This was due to several factors. First, the pro-al Qaeda crowd, at least the ones not sharp enough to keep their heads down, tended to get caught. Second, you have to assume that there are pro-al Qaeda American Moslems still out there, and smart enough to avoid being detected, but are proceeding with extreme caution, and taking their time. Europeans tend to leave terrorism suspects under observation for a long time, while the FBI tends to pick up suspects as soon as there seems to be enough evidence to get a conviction. The European method is necessary because the Moslem community is not providing information. So, the police have to observe the terrorists, see who they work with, and generate tips that way.
By 2014 the situation in Europe had gotten worse. That year a poll of European nations to discover support for ISIL resulted in some surprising results. In Germany, two percent of the adults supported ISIL, while in Britain it was seven percent and in France 15 percent. While many of these supporters are Moslems, only 4.6 percent of Germans, five percent of Britons and 7.5 percent of the French are Moslems. Thus, there was support from non-Moslems and a closer look at the data shows that ISIL support is higher among the young and falls sharply among older people. Many of the ISIL supporters are actually angry at their own government for various reasons. Still, the ISIL support was part of the overall support (or tolerance) for Islamic radicalism in the West and the recent rapid growth of European anti-Semitism.
European leaders were slow to accept the reality of what they are dealing with. Even by 2019, when ISIL was no longer a major threat, European nations were finding that local Moslem radicals they knew about, and were trying to monitor, were increasingly carrying out attacks despite the police knowing who they were. In several attacks, the perpetrators had been convicted of Islamic terrorism, sent to jail and once released went right back to their violent ways.
Since European nations are democracies, the rulers cannot continually ignore the complaints of voters who daily confront this culture clash and often live in constant fear of it. Actually, so do many of the Moslem refugees. These outbreaks of Islamic terrorism have, for centuries, only hurt other Moslems because the righteous rage of the Islamic purists was directed as fellow Moslems perceived to be heretics. There were often ethnic, nationalistic or political elements as well, but the basic motivator was religious and the efforts to impose True Islam on other Moslems. In the West, it was difficult to deal with this problem even though it had been well documented in the West for centuries. But it had become fashionable in the West to ignore all that. Worse and to the astonishment of many in the Moslem world, Westerners often deliberately and disastrously misinterpret what was actually going on.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:25 pm: Edit

Forces: Russia Switches From Brigades to Divisions
January 16, 2026: Last year Russia decided to abandon its brigade-based army organization and return to a division-based system. So far the Russian Pacific Fleet has upgraded its 155 th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade to a division size unit. The army is also converting its brigades to division size units. At the end of 2025 the army had 70 combat divisions. About half of those divisions were deployed in or near Ukraine. Most of these units were Motor Rifle divisions, consisting of a battalion size division command organization, two motor rifle regiments and one tank battalion. These were supported by a self-propelled artillery regiment, anti-tank and anti-aircraft units as well as a reconnaissance and engineer battalion. Support was provided by a communications battalion, a logistics battalion and a medical evacuation battalion.
In 1917 Russia modified a 2008 reorganization to reconstitute the famous, during World War II and the Cold War, 1st Guards Tank Army. This revived unit was stationed in western Russia, the better to frighten European countries that were invaded during World War II, or threatened by it during the Cold War by the original 1st Guards Tank Army. The latest version was a showcase unit and the first to receive new tanks and other weapons as well as the best troops available.
The new 1st Guards Tank Army was actually remarkably similar to its World War II counterpart. Back then mechanized tank or infantry forces were based on brigades organized into division-sized mechanized or tank corps. Thus the World War II 1st Guards Tank Army consisted of the 8th Guards Mechanized Corps with three motorized infantry brigades and one tank brigade. The 11th Guards Tank Corps of three tank brigades and one motorized infantry brigade. The 2015 version consisted of one tank division with two tank regiments. There was one mechanized infantry division with one tank regiment, three mechanized infantry regiments, one independent tank brigade and one independent mechanized infantry brigade. At full strength this unit had about 14,000 troops. Because of heavy casualties in Ukraine and difficulties recruiting additional troops, actual division strength is ten to twelve thousand personnel.
During the 1949-1991 Cold War the 1st Guards Tank Army consisted of two tank divisions and one mechanized infantry division. All three divisions of the 1st Guards Tank Army had about the same number of troops, some 35,000 troops and about 300 tanks. All three versions had supporting troops, artillery, anti-aircraft, engineers, supply and so on.
The World War II era brigades had few support units and depended on the corps and army for supply, maintenance, artillery and so on. In 2008 Russia reorganized its army by replacing divisions with more self-sufficient brigades. When that change was complete several years later the combat forces consisted of 57 combat brigades composed of 33 mechanized infantry, four tank and 22 Spetsnaz, airborne or air assault units. These brigades were about half the size of American combat brigades and about a third of the personnel were conscripts who served for one year. The skill levels of troops in these brigades were much lower than for comparable troops in American or British brigades and elite brigades in French, German and some other Western forces. There were also 28 combat support brigades, eight armed with multi-barrel rocket launchers like the U.S. MLRS, nine with short range ballistic missiles, ten with anti-aircraft missile systems and one engineer brigade.
Russia, like the United States, did not get rid of divisions as divisions, but they became a headquarters with some support units that could handle two or more combat brigades.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:25 pm: Edit

Information Warfare: Iranian Hackers Offer Cash Rewards
January 16, 2026: Iranian hackers, both independents and those employed by government agencies, are currently going after Israeli targets. The Iranian government was unable to carry out an effective military retribution for Israeli airstrikes last June. As part of that campaign, Iranian hackers recently offered a $30,000 reward for information on Israeli military systems as well as personnel who design them. Iran was particularly interested in air defense systems like Arrow and the David’s Sling clone of the American Patriot. The information on personnel will be used for further hacker attacks and harassment on social media like Facebook and X. There is always the assassination option, but Israeli internal security is difficult to infiltrate. While Israel has many operatives in Iran, there are few, if any Iranian operatives in Israel. The best the Iranians can do is hacking into Israeli school public address systems. After that the Iranians caused similar mischief at Israeli universities, mass media operations and manufacturers. Iran also went after Iranians living in the West, especially those running media operations for Iranians outside and inside Iran. This is all part of Iranian CyberWar operations that have been going on in the 21 st Century.
For the last quarter century, Iran has been waging a CyberWar against its enemies. Iran attempts to keep its victories unpublicized and other nations are glad to mention Iranian CyberWar defeats because it demonstrates that the Iranians are vulnerable. This was the case when Iran was unsuccessful in avenging the January 2020 death via an American UAV missile strike of their chief of foreign wars commander, Quds Force general Qassem Soleimani. The mass media tends to track Iranian vengeance efforts in terms of direct attacks on Americans in Syria and Iraq, which so far have been unsuccessful. The situation is different in a less visible war, waged by Iranian hackers, where there have been victories, but Iran keeps these victories quiet because continued success depends on the victim not being aware they were attacked or who did it.
Iran victories are often won due to the efforts of Iranian hacker organizations. Successful attacks are known as APTs/Advanced Persistent Threats, and for a decade one of the deadliest groups was one called APT 35. Internet security firms track these APT groups and use the APT label to identify those groups that have been around for a while, usually with the help of a national sponsor. APT35 is Iranian, has been active since 2014 and often works for the Iranian IRGC/Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Security firms are constantly looking for APT campaigns. One which APT35 favored used Facebook to establish dozens of fake recruiters of military personnel leaving the service and seeking civilian employment. APT35 used the social engineering approach to entice military personnel looking for a lucrative civilian job to supply useful information on their current jobs or download apps that did help them in their job search but also contained hidden malware/hacker software giving the hackers secret access to the user’s computer and sometimes military networks as well. This APT35 exploit was detected by security firms who alerted Facebook, which began finding and canceling hundreds of APT35 accounts used to operate this swindle. Facebook kept looking until it was certain that the illegal activity was gone, and it took many months to find and delete all the fake accounts.
The APT35 recruiter campaign was damaged and then destroyed. For APT35 it still counted as a win because much damage was done, and Facebook and the Department of Defense tried to measure the extent of the damage.
Avenging Soleimani was not the only reason for the Facebook campaign, which was expensive to create and sustain. While APT35 was compensated by Iran, which benefited from some of the hacks into the US military and defense contractors, APT35’s Facebook campaign was also payback for less visible defeats APT35 suffered since 2018, when the American government secretly authorized the CIA to engage in offensive CyberWar operations. This capability had long been sought, and one reason permission was finally granted was the increased defensive CyberWar capabilities Western companies had developed. This effort was market driven because the damage done via hacking Internet networks makes it more difficult to sell Internet based equipment and services.
One of the major developments since 2001 has been the creation and growth of Internet security operations. Initially these were firms that sold and supported their own Internet security software. Soon the major Internet companies got involved again because it was good business. Hackers were seen as pests in the Internet based computing ecosystem. One after another Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Amazon, and others got more involved in protecting their customers from hackers. These separate operations cooperated by sharing information, especially about hacking groups as well as the new tools and techniques hackers were using. The effectiveness of this cooperative effort enabled the CIA to make a case for offensive operations. There was now enough intelligence being obtained, which the U.S. government as the largest computer and network user in the world had access to so that the CIA could realistically plan and conduct offensive operations.
While details of offensive operations are usually kept secret, the same is not the case with many defensive operations. That is because information about hacker techniques and tools is best exploited by letting users know how they are vulnerable and how to avoid it or deal with the problem if they were a target.
One example of this came from the IBM X-Force IRIS/Incident Response and Intelligence Services security team. One of the many hacking groups X-Force was aware of, an Iranian mercenary hacker cooperative called ITG18, had been hacked and 40 GB of hacker how-to videos were obtained. These videos were created to upgrade the skills of Iranian hackers via the use of Bandicam, a video recorder which creates annotated videos of activities on a video screen. These vids showed how hackers used their tools and revealed new uses or more effective use of current techniques.
ITG18 was in it for the money, but the Bandicam videos showed that the victims were often military or government personnel who might have access to information that could be sold to any country interested in that sort of thing. The ITG18 hack also revealed many tools and techniques APT35 used, and all Iranian hackers saw the American effort that publicized their tools as a direct attack that must be avenged.
X-Force gained a lot of useful information from the Bandicam videos and passed on a lot of it to IBM customers and computer users in general. For example, the videos revealed some techniques that were not known while also revealing how effective some security techniques were. For example, banks and other Internet services have long urged their customers to use second-factor authentication when logging in. The second factor is usually a four-digit security code sent to the users’ cell phone. There have been several claims that second-factor schemes could be hacked, even though this took a lot of effort. The ITG18 videos revealed that hackers were advised to ignore accounts that used second factor because it consumed so much time to hack and there were so many accounts available that did not use second factor.
Israel is one of the two countries (the other is the United States) which participates in a perpetual CyberWar with Iran, one that receives little official publicity. Not even all the damage is publicized, as a lot of the damage is undetected, often for a long time, by the victim. While Iran has made the most noise about this CyberWar, Israel is doing the most destruction. Israel wants to keep it that way and keep it quiet. Partly this is to keep the Iranians confused, but it is also to keep Israeli government lawyers happy. A lot of the tactics and weapons used in CyberWar are of uncertain legality. The traditional Laws of War have not caught up with CyberWar. This process has been going on for some time, and some aspects of it do surface in the media. For example, Israel established the National Cybernetic Taskforce, with orders to devise and implement defensive measures to protect the economy and government from Internet based attacks. The task force consisted of about eighty people and was run by a retired general. Existing Internet security efforts, and military CyberWar organizations have discovered a growing number of vulnerabilities in the national Internet infrastructure. The only solution to this growing vulnerability is a large-scale effort to monitor the national network infrastructure for vulnerabilities and fix them as quickly as possible. You will never catch all the vulnerabilities, victory is not always a matter of who is better, but who is worse and more vulnerable to attack.
Israel makes no secret of what it thinks about its CyberWar capabilities. Israel eventually revealed that its cryptography operation, Unit 8200, has added computer hacking to its skill set. The head of Israeli Military Intelligence said that he believed Israel had become the leading practitioner of CyberWar. This came in the wake of suspicions that Israel rather than the US had created the Stuxnet worm, which got into Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment equipment and destroyed a lot of it. Iran also complained that a 2011 worm, called Star, caused them trouble.
Intelligence organizations usually keep quiet about their capabilities but, in this case, the Israelis felt it was more useful to scare the Iranians with the threat of more stuff like Stuxnet. But the Iranians have turned around and tried to attack Israel and are determined to keep at it for as long as it takes. This struggle between Israel and Iran is nothing new. At one point, Israel announced that Unit 8200 had cracked an Iranian communications code, an operation that allowed Israel to read messages concerning Iranian efforts to keep its nuclear weapons program going with Pakistani help, despite Iranian promises to UN weapons inspectors that the program was being shut down.
It has long been known that Unit 8200 of the Israeli army specialized in cracking codes for the government. This was known because so many men who had served in Unit 8200 went on to start companies specializing in cryptography, coding information so that no unauthorized personnel can know what the data is. But it is unusual for a code-cracking organization to admit to deciphering someone's code. The Iranians stopped using the code in question, or the Israelis just wanted to scare the Iranians. Israel is concerned about Iran getting nuclear weapons, mainly because the Islamic conservatives that control Iran have as one of their primary goals the destruction of Israel. In response to these Iranian threats, Israel has said that it will do whatever it takes to stop Iran from getting nukes. This includes doing the unthinkable, admitting that you had successfully taken apart an opponent's secret code. Israel keeps trying to convince Iran that a long-time superiority in codebreaking was now accompanied by similarly exceptional hacking skills. Whether it was true or not, it's got to have rattled the Iranians. The failure of their counterattacks can only have added to their unease.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:26 pm: Edit

Leadership: Defense Firms Tell The Military How To Do It
January 10, 2026: As more transformative technology became available to the military over the last fifty years, something strange happened. The technologies began to generate new capabilities faster than the military could adapt and absorb the new tech into their operations. These changes became obvious in the course of the Ukraine war, although the new tech is showing in many other wars, rebellions, Islamic terrorist operations, and criminal enterprises.
Governments are no longer obliged to get everything via long-term development and manufacturing contracts. A growing number of firms have something the military needs and deliver it unsolicited, with the option to pay for a long term use. One of the first examples of this was in 2022 when SpaceX provided their Starlink satellite communications services to Ukraine. This happened because the Ukrainian minister of digital transformation contacted SpaceX for help in dealing with Russian efforts to cut Ukrainian access to the Internet. SpaceX officials had already been negotiating with Ukraine to provide Starlink service locally. SpaceX founder Elon Musk agreed to help and within four days hundreds of Starlink satellites were moved into position to provide Ukraine with high-speed Internet service using hundreds of Starlink user kits Musk also sent to Ukraine. Musk ultimately supplied Ukraine with nearly 2,000 terminals and managed to persuade countries supplying military aid for Ukraine to include Ukrainian requests for more Starlink terminals, especially the more expensive, and capable commercial models. In this way Ukraine was able to obtain over 50,000 terminals so far. Most of these are used to keep the economy going and the ones used by the military are subject to combat losses. Civilian users face a similar but lesser risk and hundreds of terminals have been lost during Russian attacks. These have to be replaced and most, if not all, of the replacements are paid for by military aid for Ukraine.
Last year American military aid to Ukraine included shipping container size 3D-printing drone factories for Ukraine. A new American tech startup raised $12 million from corporate backers like Lockheed Martin to develop cheap miniature 3D-printing drone factories for battle zones like the Ukraine. A U.S. firm, Firestorm Labs, was founded after an American 3D printing engineer visited Ukraine in early 2024. The drone factory shipping containers come in two variants, one with a 6 meter long container and the other with a 12.2 meter container. Firestorm Lab claims these units should be able to produce around 50 UAVs a month. A feature of these 3D-printing factories is that they can be placed in remote areas and blend into the background. These operations are semi-automated manufacturing facilities that can be operated by only a few people. Power can be supplied by generators if local electric power is unavailable. Automated manufacturing makes it possible to quickly produce large numbers of UAVs.
The basic Firestorm Labs 3D-printed drone is the Tempest, which has a maximum takeoff weight of 25 kg, can carry a payload of 4.5 kg, and has a wingspan of 2.1 meters. It is 1.8 meters long and can be adapted to handle a range of ranges, loitering times, and cruise speeds. This drone can be broken down into portable cases that one soldier can carry for easy transport. There are swappable propulsion systems for different mission needs. There is also a quick connect/disconnect system that enables rapid reconfiguration.
There were many more examples like this in Ukraine, many of them involving the armed forces’ growing dependence on commercial datafication software and hardware. The war in Ukraine demonstrates a shift in the substance of combat operations. Armed forces are concurrently regionalizing distributed decision-making, so it is closer to the troops and centralizing command and control through dependence on commercial firms that provide key services like cloud computing; ISR/Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance analytics; and scalable machine learning platforms for AI/Artificial Intelligence.
Increasingly, military procurement officials no longer describe problems that are primarily responsible for defining the challenges of the modern battlespace and then producing tenders for technological fixes. Instead, private tech companies increasingly explain the ideal battlespace to militaries, offering software and hardware products needed to establish real-time data dominance.
Another important factor is the large number of civilians in or adjacent to the combat zone with cell phones. In the first year of the Ukraine War local app developers created the ePPO cellphone app to enable civilians to quickly report incoming Russian cruise missiles, especially the new Iranian Shahed 136 Russia obtained. This drone flies low, under 100 meters, slow at 180 kilometers an hour and is noisy. They are often sent in small swarms of 4 to 12 missiles and at night. With ePPO, all a user has to do is point the phone in the direction of the missile and press a large button on the phone display to transmit useful sound and location data to a special phone network. The information quickly arrived at the local air defense headquarters where numerous such reports are instantly combined on a computer display so the officer on duty can instantly send the data to nearby air defense units. With that kind of information, more and more of the Shahed 136s and even some larger, faster cruise missiles were detected and shot down. Civilians with a Take Cover app get an alert to do that if they are in the target area. Suppliers of this data are verified by another app, Diia, which contains user identification data.
Earlier the phones with Diia had a similar app to instantly report any enemy activity. For Ukrainians in Russian occupied territory, this often provided important target locations so Ukrainian guided missiles could destroy weapons storage sites as well as headquarters or troop concentrations. Technically, the use of this app in enemy territory makes the user a partisan and subject to being shot on sight. This did not discourage many Ukrainians, who noted that the Russians were already attacking civilians without any provocation.
As soon as the invasion began in February, civilians were using chat apps to quickly report where the enemy had been spotted. Ukraine’s cell phone services kept operating during the invasion because of access to the Starlink satellite system. The Russians had no such access and not many military radios. The Russians were moving and fighting blind compared Ukrainian troops and civilians with cell phones.
This persistent cell phone service enabled families to keep track of their men, and women, in the military. Apps for that had already been used in many other countries, as well as numerous navigation, first aid and fire-control apps that had been developed over the last decade. Many of these apps were also used by police, firemen and first-responders.
The military has had problems with some of these apps revealing troop locations to an enemy equipped to detect such use. This led to many apps being banned from use in combat zones until the flaws could be fixed. Although Russia also had some military apps, they had fewer of them and less opportunity to get cell phone service in Ukraine. The Russians were also unable to develop new apps to deal with new developments in the war. Ukraine always had a more robust and prolific app development community and that turned out to be a military superiority the Russians did not expect, much less deal with.
Another innovation was the use of commercial surveillance satellite photos to track your own troops and those of the enemy. Russia had fewer of these satellites in orbit and Western economic sanctions gradually reduced their ability to build and launch satellites. There is also the ability to store large quantities of data in server farms, otherwise known as the cloud. Technologies to specify and implement what can be done with this data using newly developed analytical tools were available before military procurement officers could even conceive of such things. That’s because this new tech was initially created for commercial users, with the military one of several possible secondary markets. The military gets publicity for issuing multi-million and billion dollar contracts for new items, but more important new capabilities show up unannounced. These commercial firms will offer this new tech to the military before defense officials realize what it can do for the armed forces.
In Ukraine local software and hardware engineers often surprised American tech personnel in the country maintaining or offering new tech. Ukraine had to keep much of their new tech secret from all foreigners. When NATO nation personnel in Ukraine found out about these new developments, their first reaction was to offer co-production deals and help in selling consumer grade versions to worldwide markets. There were a lot of American venture capital firms with tens of billion dollars to invest and the new tech market in wartime Ukraine was an attractive market.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:27 pm: Edit

Procurement: North Korea Delivers
January 10, 2026: In Ukraine Russia expected a quick victory and did not have sufficient munitions for a World War Two-length war. Unlike Ukraine, which had substantial military and economic support from NATO nations, all Russia had were Iran and North Korea. These two nations had long been under economic sanctions for misbehavior. This made them ideal allies for wartime Russia. Iran provided missiles and drones while North Korea supplied artillery and lots of 152mm and 122mm shells to feed the guns. The North Koreans 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.
North Korea also loaned the Russians two or three brigades of its own units. There were some Russian and North Korean bilingual officers and troops attached to the staffs of these brigades. That helped the brigade commanders to understand what the Russians wanted done, but there were problems getting that information to the North Korean soldiers in a timely and useful manner.
One thing the Russians did notice was that the North Koreans were far more professional than Russians. Their attack tactics were more disciplined, and, unlike the Russians, the North Koreans took their dead and wounded off the battlefield. Russians also discovered that North Korean battlefield medical care was superior to what Russia offered. North Korea had also agreed to treat seriously wounded Russian soldiers in North Korean hospitals. The Russian patients noted that the care was far superior to what they would encounter in a Russian hospital.
At the end of 2024 about 12,000 North Korean soldiers arrived in Russia and, after a short amount of additional training, were sent to fight along Russian troops in Ukraine. The North Koreans were first seen in combat during December. The Ukrainian forces facing them estimate that the North Koreans have suffered about 30 percent casualties so far because the Russians were using their Korean troops for frontal assaults. There were few Russian soldiers available for such costly attacks. Most remaining Russian troops were on the defensive. Ukraine had developed attack tactics that relied on self-propelled machine-guns and other close combat weapons as well as robotic vehicles to clear minefields. Russia urgently needed more soldiers and ammunition.
Russia agreed to treat any wounded North Koreans but, when hundreds of wounded North Korean soldiers were taken to Russian military hospitals, it was discovered there were few, if any interpreters who could translate for the medical personnel to treat wounds. This complicated treatment and led to many avoidable deaths. There were few translators in combat, which led to at least two incidents of North Korean and Russian troops firing on each other. To the North Koreans, the Russians and Ukrainians looked similar, spoke similar languages and wore similar combat uniforms. The lack of interpreters led to the North Korean troops becoming a liability to the Russians as well.
The Ukrainians captured two of the North Korean soldiers. This was not easy because the North Koreans had been ordered by their leaders back home to kill themselves rather than be captured. Many did so, to spare their families retribution from the North Korean government.
The Ukrainians told their North Korean prisoners that they would not be identified. This would keep their families safe. In return, the North Korean prisoners would submit to questioning about the North Korean military and life in North Korea. The two soldiers revealed that they were trained more thoroughly and intensively than the Russian soldiers they worked with in Ukraine.
The two prisoners knew little about the war before being sent to fight in it. They then discovered a new world outside the very confined and restricted lives they led in North Korea. There, young men are conscripted into the army at 18 and serve up to ten years. During that time most have little or no contact with their families. Home visits are allowed only when a parent dies.
Many North Korean soldiers in Ukraine were able to obtain cell phones, most likely by trading some of their equipment for cell phones with corrupt Russian supply sergeants, and enough understanding of Russian to use the phones. This was a shocking and revealing experience. The phones enabled them to find out about a world they didn’t know existed. They were shocked to find out how different life was in prosperous and democratic South Korea, although many North Koreans already knew this. Saying that out loud in North Korea was a criminal offense that often resulted in a long and often fatal time in a labor camp. It is likely that any of these North Korean troops who return to North Korea will be put in prison camps for the rest of their lives.
North Korea has worked with Russia in the past but never to the extent that North Korean soldiers were sent to fight for Russia in Ukraine. That was because Russia finally agreed to upgrade North Korean strategic missiles. In June 2024, Russian and North Korea signed a Strategic Partnership treaty that obliged each nation to assist the other in wartime. In peacetime the two nations will supply mutual aid in military matters. North Korea wants assistance in perfecting and upgrading their nuclear weapons and launch platforms, including a modern SSBN/nuclear submarine carrying ready to launch missiles with nuclear warheads. Russia has such submarines but North Korea does not, and has been trying to develop them on its own but those keep sinking.
The need for the North Korean treaty is because Russian troops in Ukraine have suffered such high losses since early 2022 that the Russian army has run out of soldiers. Russia has lost over a million killed, disabled or missing while fighting in Ukraine. Many of the wounded suffered further when they found that the Russian medical system was unable to adequately treat them. This led to many thousands of desertions and millions of military age men leaving the country.
The North Korean army, or Choson inmin gun, has benefited greatly from its participation in the Ukraine War. As a longtime ally of Russia, North Korea responded to calls from Russia to supply weapons, munitions and eventually troops for the Ukraine operation. North Korea currently has one of the world’s largest armies with around 1.3 million active-duty soldiers, who spend most of their service time as slave labor for senior military officers. North Korea has not been directly involved in any major wars for over 70 years. Lack of battlefield experience is a source of considerable concern for North Korea anxious to counter South Korea’s more technologically advanced military. Now North Korean soldiers are learning the realities of modern drone warfare first-hand. That included learning how to shoot down drones. These North Korean soldiers were young, motivated, disciplined, physically fit, brave, and good at using small arms. Russia pays North Korea $2000 per soldier each month.
For North Korea the real prize was access to advanced Russian military technology. North Korea received support in increasing its anti-aircraft, submarine, and missile capabilities. Ukraine was a valuable testing ground for North Korea to assess the effectiveness of the weapons it supplied to Russia. Now North Korea can improve the quality of its own domestic arms industry and adapt future output to the realities of the modern battlefield. Troops who survive their time on the Ukrainian front lines are nominally expected to return home and become instructors, sharing their knowledge of modern warfare with colleagues. More likely they will immediately be sent to prison camps for many years. At this point, North Korea’s participation in the Ukraine War looks to be less about supporting Russia's imperial ambitions and more about graft for North Korean senior officers and politicians.
In the short term, the presence of North Korean soldiers allowed Russia to overcome growing manpower shortages. At the time Russia was losing tens of thousands of troops each month. For the first time in decades, the North Korean army might be gaining real military experience which might conceivably make it more capable of waging war against South Korea or Japan.
North Korea continues to be a threat over 70 years since the Korean War ended in 1953. An armistice was signed and prisoners of war were exchanged, but troops remained lined up along a four kilometers wide DMZ/DeMilitarized Zone that stretched from coast to coast. There was a ceasefire agreement, not an end to the war. All attempts at negotiating an end to the war in the last half century have failed. The three years of fighting caused 325,000 American casualties, including 33,651 dead. South Korean troops suffered 415,000 killed, while other nations fighting North Korea suffered 15,000 casualties. The communist forces suffered 1.5 million killed, most of them Chinese because North Korea would have lost without massive reinforcements from China. There were several million civilian dead.
After the war, North Korea experienced a period of economic growth as its industrial facilities were rebuilt with Russian aid. From 1904 to 1945, Korea was a Japanese colony, and the north had mines, railroads and factories built by the Japanese. The south, which always had more farmland, was turned into a largely agricultural area to help feed Japan. During the Korean War, industrial and transportation facilities were heavily damaged, and reconstruction was slower in the south.
In the 1970s, foreign investment in the south began to grow, and local entrepreneurs began to start, or expand their businesses. By the 1980s, North Korea's centrally planned economy was falling apart because so much money was diverted to military spending, and lack of marketing resulted in products that could only be sold to other communist nations. When the Soviet empire fell apart in 1991, the markets for most North Korean goods disappeared. Corruption and lack of investment in agriculture resulted in food shortages, as well as the collapse of most industrial enterprises, except those that made weapons. Food aid from the Soviet Union ceased and that led to widespread hunger in North Korea during the 1990s when several million civilians starved to death.
Post-1991 documents from the Russian archives showed that Stalin appointed Kim Il Sung as ruler of North Korea and in 1950 ordered him to invade South Korea and unite Korea. When that did not work, Russia ordered China to rescue the North Koreans. China complied and told Russia that the Chinese debt was paid to Russia for assistance in the 1949 Chinese Communist Party victory during the 22 year long civil war.
In 2010, an article appeared in a Chinese magazine describing the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. What was unusual about the article, in a government approved publication, was the frank admission that North Korea had started it all, by invading South Korea. But once news of the article spread, and was posted on Internet sites, the Chinese government ordered the article withdrawn and denounced it as untrue. The unofficial reason was that China wished to avoid angering North Korea. This, despite the fact that Chinese participation in the war killed or wounded over a million Chinese soldiers. Even Chinese leader Mao Zedong lost a son in Korea.
Since 1950, it had been the official Chinese position that the war started with a South Korean invasion of the north, to which the north responded by moving into South Korea. For decades, all communist nations accepted this version, even though all evidence pointed towards the north invading first. Then, in the 1990s, the Russian government released telegrams sent before 1960, by Russian and North Korean leaders, making it clear that Russia wanted the invasion, and that North Korea duly carried it out.
Chinese troops entered North Korea in late 1950, to prevent American forces from occupying all of Korea, and that resulted in a two year stalemate along the current inter-Korean border which is now the DMZ Demilitarized Zone. To justify the Chinese losses, and maintain good relations with North Korea, China continued to insist that South Korea had started the war, even after everyone agreed that Russian leader Josef Stalin and North Korea had been the instigators.
What this incident really tells North Korea is that China has admitted the truth about who started the war by authorizing the article's publication in the first place but is so sorry for this accident and officially sticks by the earlier lie.
The Korean War lies and deceptions linger longer because China and North Korea want it that way.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:27 pm: Edit

Attrition: War Losses In Murmansk
January 9, 2026: Murmansk is a city in northwest Russia with a peacetime population of 270,000. Murmansk is also the capital of Murmansk province, which has a population, including the city, of 725,000. Nearly four years of war in Ukraine have had an impact on the region. Since 2022 the province has lost 73,000 people. In late 2025 there were only 650,000 people left in Murmansk province. Some of the many villages’ dotting the province have lost up to 30 percent of their pre-war population. Only about one percent of those losses were due to the Ukraine fighting. The rest are due to an aging population that cannot replace natural deaths plus younger people leaving for less frozen areas further south. Many of the military age men left the country because of the war. The government would welcome them back because, even without the war, the Russian population is shrinking. The heavy war losses just accelerated. Not everyone will leave because Murmansk contains military facilities and industrial enterprises, as well as commercial establishments, including clinics and hospitals, serving the population.
The war has had some impact. A year ago, the air defenses of the Murmansk were upgraded to deal with possible Ukrainian drone attacks. Now that Russia was attacking Ukrainian power supplies and heat supplies, officials in Murmansk feared the Ukrainians would do the same to them. So the Murmansk government ordered all facilities related to keeping Murmansk warm be fortified and protected in other ways. In a place like Murmansk, loss of heat during the coldest part of the year can be fatal.
In mid-2024 Russia announced that it was reinforcing air defenses at their Olenya air base in Murmansk province. This came after Ukrainian long-range drones attacked and damaged two of the Tu-22M3s used to attack Ukrainian targets 1,800 kilometers to the south. With the Ukrainians reciprocating, Russia is trying to upgrade air defenses before the Ukrainians strike again.
Ukrainian drone developers and manufacturers have an advantage in that entrepreneurial developers and manufacturers are encouraged. In Russia such intellectual and manufacturing freedom is discouraged. The Russian state must control everything because that is how Russia became mighty and remains so. That’s the official explanation. Russians consider the Ukrainians seduced by, and addicted to, heretical Western ideas and concepts like innovating without official permission. Ukrainians see those Russian attitudes as an asset for the Ukrainian war effort. This gives Ukraine an edge in the development and use of new drone technology. Ukraine encourages individuals and small groups of entrepreneurs to develop, manufacture and share new drone designs and technologies. The government or wealthy individuals will often finance effective new concepts so that production can be rapidly expanded before the new tech becomes obsolete or be simply replaced by a more effective version.
Russia adapted to their disadvantage in drone development by concentrating on electronic jammers. By rapidly upgrading their jammer technology, Russians can disrupt a lot of new Ukrainian drone tech for a while. This disruption is becoming more important for the Russians because Ukraine has developed several generations of long-range drones that can reach targets over 1,000 kilometers distant. In 2023 this meant attacks near Moscow and St Petersburg as well as nearby factories and industrial operations. Ukrainian drones are increasingly reaching their targets deep inside Russia. That means Russian economic and military facilities far from Ukraine are suddenly under attack. These targets include refineries and fuel storage sites as well as weapons development, manufacturing, and storage facilities. In 2023 these attacks destroyed about fifteen percent of Russian refining capacity, reducing the amount of vehicle fuel available for commercial and military users.
Ukrainian air strikes are not the only danger in the far north. Winters are much worse in Murmansk, which is the only city in the world north of the Arctic Circle. Winters aren’t as bad as you might think because Murmansk weather is moderated by the warm Gulf Stream current which also warms up Britain and much of northwest Europe. The Gulf Stream originates in the Gulf of Mexico between the southern United States and east coast Mexico.
Murmansk has other problems to deal with. For example, a significant Russian nuclear accident took place at the Andreyeva Bay Soviet naval base 569 in February 1982. Andreyeva Bay is a radioactive waste repository 55 km northwest of Murmansk and 60 km from the Norwegian border, on the western shore of the Kola Peninsula. The repository entered service in 1961. In February 1982 a nuclear accident occurred in which about 700,000 tons of highly radioactive water was released into the Barents Sea from a pool in Building 5 of the repository over the next few years. Cleanup of the accident took place from 1983 to 1989. About 1,000 people took part in the cleanup effort.
The nuclear power plant fuel repository, constructed in the early 1960s, was a naval base on the shore of the Zapadnaya Litsa bay. It consisted of two piers, a stationary mooring bay, a sanitation facility, spent fuel pools in Building 5 that have been unused since the cleanup ended in 1989, three 1,000 cubic meter dry storage containers, a 40,000-ton crane, an open-air field for storing spent nuclear fuel containers, a security checkpoint, and other technical facilities. In 1982 the area contained spent nuclear fuel in storage facility Building 5 consisting of about 22,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies, solid radioactive waste in storage facility Building 7, and liquid radioactive waste in storage facility Building 6.
Building 5 contained two pools for storing spent fuel assemblies, encased in steel drums. Each drum contained 5-7 spent fuel assemblies, weighing 350 kg fully loaded. Each of the pools was 60 meters long, 3 meters wide, 6 meters deep, and had a volume of 1,000 cubic meters. Each was designed for about 2,000 drums. The drums were suspended underwater from massive chains, which were attached to anchor points a certain distance from each other to hopefully avoid an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction from starting. The water served as a radiation shield for people on the deck around the pools. The drums were placed underwater using the chains and a crane cart, but due to the construction's unreliability, drums often fell to the bottom of the pool. As a result, spent nuclear fuel drums dangerously piled up at the bottom which defeated the water protection from uncontrolled nuclear reactions by the chains and anchor points.
Someone who worked there remarked that the first time they saw all this they were shocked. The facility seemed like a nightmare. The facility was an enormous black windowless building atop a cliff. The entrance to building 5 was decorated with deformed trucks previously used for carrying nuclear fuel and half-torn-down heavy gates. Inside, the building was dilapidated, and deteriorating electrical equipment was another hazard. Building 5 was completely radioactive.
The right-hand pool in building 5 started leaking in February 1982. Finding cracks in the drums’ metal coatings required diving into the pool, which was out of the question due to the gamma radiation levels in the vicinity of the nuclear waste drums. An attempt to eliminate the leak was made by pouring in 20 sacks of flour, thus filling the cracks with dough. That did not last and the leak continued. Later it was found there was ice on the right side of the building. This indicated that earlier containment efforts were ineffective.
In April 1982, the basement part of the building was filled with 600 cubic meters of concrete but this was ineffective. There was a risk of contamination of nearby Zapadnaya Litsa bay. In order to safeguard against radioactive leaks, iron-lead-concrete covers, weighing thousands of tons, were built over the pool. In fact it was later discovered that it was only good fortune that prevented the collapse of the whole structure.
In early 1983 government officials confirmed the closing of the repository, except for work related to the cleanup of the accident. No more spent nuclear fuel was loaded in Building 5. March 1983 through September 1987 saw spent fuel unloaded from the left-hand pool. All of the fuel was unloaded and sent to the Mayak nuclear facility. As of December 1989, all 1,500 drums of nuclear waste from Building 5 were declared dealt with.
This was not the case. Poor welding seam quality in the pools' coating led to more leaks. The left pool sprouted a leak due to the building sagging under the weight of the iron-lead-concrete covers over the right pool. Specialists believed that temperature changes in the pool's water stressed welding seams, tearing them. When Building 5's repository was designed, it was assumed that the water would be kept at a constant temperature by heat from the nuclear assemblies suspended under the surface. A separate water heating system was thus deemed unnecessary. That did not work because the extreme Arctic climate created a thick layer of ice in winter. In order to solve this problem, the ice was melted using steam from the boiler. This was a violation of radiation safety guidelines. Radioactive air spread through the building and leaked into the outside atmosphere.
Several workers were killed during the cleanup efforts due to accidents, inadequate protective equipment and the generally dangerous state of the facility.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:27 pm: Edit

Electronic Weapons: Chinese Hackers And Anthropic
January 8, 2026: Anthropic, an American AI/Artificial Intelligence company was recently attacked by Chinese hackers using Anthropic AI technology. Anthropic believes this hack was ordered by the Chinese government. The September attack, GTG-1002, was highly automated with the AI doing more than 80 percent of the work. Anthropic's AI coding tool, Claude Code, was configured by the hackers to use the Model Context Protocol/MCP tools to carry out the numerous technical tasks. MCP was one of several Claude Code components used to penetrate and document the target site's security and organization. This included finding and using permissions documents, which are often encrypted. Defeating the encryption is another task that is automated and orchestrated by the AI. What once took hours or days a decade ago can now be done in minutes or seconds. The lack of a human controller occasionally caused problems, as AI systems have a tendency to occasionally and unexpectedly hallucinate irrelevant data or tasks. Current AI systems are equipped to detect this aberrant behavior and recover from it.
The victims are not revealing what was copied and sent back to China. In most cases it’s difficult to measure the extent of the data stolen. The length of the attack, if that could be measured, provides a general estimate of how much data was stolen, but not what data. The AI powered hacks go into the victims server, which can hold up to 100 terabytes/TB, while the average server holds 10 TB. Data can be moved off the hacked server at speeds of up several gigabytes a second. Transfers are also subject to restrictions and verification. Hackers have to carefully map the server configuration to determine the security systems and how they regulate data leaving the server.
Anthropic revealed that there have been at least 30 other attacks and that Anthropic products are being modified accordingly. All AI products suffer from this criminal misuse. One of the new security measures will be to identify where Anthropic systems used by criminals are and disable them remotely, or at least release data of who is misbehaving where and to what end.
China denied any responsibility, which is what they usually do when caught. This is nothing new, nineteen years ago, because of new laws in the United States, Internet criminals were forced to move many of their operations from the United States to China. That puts a lot more hacking activity in China, a country that is more inclined to get cooperation, rather than convictions, from computer criminals.
The most visible form of Internet crime is spam/unsolicited email. In the previous two years, the amount of spam coming from PCs in the United States fell from nearly fifty percent, to 24.5 percent. This was the result of anti-spam laws, and prosecutions that were putting spammers in jail. The United States was still the prime target for spam, because the U.S. had the largest number of affluent PC users that could be scammed. Chinese, however, still got hit with lots of viruses and worms, mainly because few Chinese PCs had any defenses against these nasties.
Chinese governments, long before the communists came along, were willing to do business with criminal gangs. This was a cheap and discreet way of getting dirty work done. These relationships were usually with local governments, but in the case of Cyber War assets, the government showed an interest in hacking clubs and informal organizations of Internet criminals. Because the Chinese government exercise such tight control over the Internet in China, it was believed that the computer criminals had to cooperate, or get nailed. The extent of that cooperation was unknown, but the criminal hackers were a large repository of knowledge and expertise on how to break things on the Internet.
Over the last two decades Chinese Cyber War efforts have been betrayed by increased professionalism. What? In the past, Chinese hacking efforts were typically numerous, and often sloppy. Being able to trace some of the attackers back to Chinese neighborhoods known to contain military or government bureaucracies, made it pretty clear who the intruders probably were. The Chinese denied everything, although they admitted that there were Chinese students who might do that sort of thing, and, of course, there were criminal elements out there as well. But more recently, a lot of the attacks from China have been much better organized, possessing a, shall we say, military precision. These hackers were not trainees, bored students or inept criminals. The latest batch of Chinese hackers are going after American military servers, and are trying to plant Trojan Horse type software that will enable them to return, at will, to grab data from the infected PC, or quickly shut it down. A Trojan Horse can also be used to monitor what goes on in the infected PC, but that requires sending stuff back to China, which makes it more likely that the PC infection will be discovered. Many of the infections are being discovered, although it's a secret how many, and how. The big question was how many of the infections were not detected. The Chinese are also going after American defense contractors, and U.S. government systems in general. Many of these attacks appear to be to collect secret information.
Cyber War begins in peacetime, as you constantly scout enemy networks, trying to get a good idea of how vulnerable they are to infection. When the real war comes, whoever can do the most damage, the quickest, wins. While the rest of the Chinese army may not train a lot, the same cannot be said for the Cyber War troops. They are training hard, and doing it on the networks they would attack in wartime.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 02:28 pm: Edit

Procurement: What A Missile Really Costs
January 9, 2026: Since World War II, missiles have become increasingly prevalent in war, especially for air-to-air combat, ground attack and anti-aircraft systems. The per unit prices are not impressive. The US Sidewinder heat seeking air-to-air missiles goes for over $400,000 each. The more complex and effective AMRAAM costs about three times as much as a Sidewinder. The Patriot Air Defense system uses two different missiles, the $4 million PAC-2 GEM-T/Guidance Enhanced Missile and PAC-3 MSE/Missile Segment Enhancement for intercepting missiles. It costs twice as much as anti-aircraft PAC-3. U.S. Navy ships use the $2.5 million SM-2/Standard Missile 2 for aircraft while the $4.5 million SM-6/Standard Missile 6 can take down high speed missiles and low orbit satellites. For ground attack there is the lightweight 50 kg Hellfire missile. About 200,000 of these have been built so far, at an average cost of $140,000.
While those prices seem reasonable for what you get, the true price is a lot higher when you include the costs for a launcher. These additional launcher costs include what it takes to operate the aircraft or ship carrying the missile. Not so much the cost of the aircraft or ship, but the sorties cost for aircraft and the warships. A sortie can cost up to $300,000 for most current fighters and fighter bombers. The cost per flight hour may be $40-60,000 an hour, but modern aircraft can fly longer and often do that due to aerial refueling. Now you have to have the cost of each multi-engine and larger crew cost for aerial refueling aircraft. And then there is the cost of half a dozen or so maintainers who prepare a warplane for a sortie/mission and check out the aircraft when it returns and make quick fixes and refuel and rearm the aircraft.
You can see how all these cascading costs mean each warplane costs several, often more than five million dollars to operate. These aircraft remain in service for 20 years or more. During that time aircraft can undergo one or two refurbishments. These can cost a third or more of what the aircraft cost brand new. These costs don’t include the millions spent on maintenance of airbases and aircraft carriers, which also have large operating costs.
Individual missiles have similar costs. There are also the periodic costs for each missile as it accounts for some of the per-sortie aircraft costs. Most missiles are never used and are eventually scrapped via dismantling and safely disposing of solid fuel rocket motors, batteries, electronic components and explosives. A missile may remain available for use over a 20-30 year period. That means two or three refurbishments/upgrades plus retirement costs which triple, quadruple or quintuple the original purchase cost. There are also the periodic costs for each missile as it accounts for some of the per-sortie aircraft costs.
This is not just an American problem. Fifteen years ago, the Russian Air Force realized that all but a few dozen of their 300 military air transports would have to be retired over the next seven years. These An-12, An-72, An-124 and Il-76 aircraft entered service in the 1960s and 70s. The Russian government had to decide to either put these aircraft through expensive refurbishment or buy new aircraft. The An-124s and Il-76s were the most likely to get rebuilt, and the revival of the An-70 project would provide new aircraft to replace elderly An-12s, and expensive-to-operate An-72s. But refurbishment would only extend the life of elderly aircraft by about ten years. New ones are good for up to 30 years. The Russian transport fleet was getting old even when the Cold War ended. Lack of use during the 1990s helped some of those old birds survive a little longer. But now, with rebuilding the military a top priority, the transports will have more to do.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 03:54 pm: Edit

The Russian Sloth disease post above, is very interesting… if not for what the content included, but for what the implications may mean.

Russia and Ukraine are engaged in a classic war of attrition, that neither can win directly.

Russia, it has been assumed, can not or will not use nuclear weapons for the reason that fall out radiation will drift into Russian territory as much as killing the civilian population and rendering the land unusable for a long time period (depending on the half life of the nuclear weapons, could be thousands of years).

Any non nuclear weapon using rogue nation that finds itself facing a Ukrainian type opponent could find that they might end up in the same mess Russia is in.

The same cannot be said of a nuclear power nation with recourse to a variety of nuclear weapons (ballistic missiles, nuclear armed intermediate range missiles, manned bombers etc…)

If such a nation finds itself at war with a Ukrainian style enemy, it just might be faster simpler and easier to use weapons of mass destruction to end the enemies ability to wage asymmetrical warfare.

In other words, use of drones (flying, ground or waterborne) might make nuclear war more likely.

Frightening thought.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, January 21, 2026 - 03:59 pm: Edit

I have, at this point, little reason to doubt that Democrats, when they next take the Majority in the senate, will rescind the filibuster, then approve statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington DC.