Information Warfare: Turning Off the Internet
February 3, 2026: Last year the Islamic terrorist Taliban rulers of Afghanistan shut down the Afghan internet. The Taliban took this drastic action to deal with Afghans gaining access to immoral material. Internet shutdowns for political reasons have become more common in nations like India, Iran, Iraq, Senegal, and Syria. Sometimes the shutdowns are total, but many nations impose shutdowns on specific social media like X and Facebook. Most internet shutdowns are not nationwide but regional. Iran recently used a total internet shutdown to deal with nationwide riots and demonstrations in an attempt to overthrow the religious dictatorship that has misruled the country since the 1980s.
Internet shutdowns most frequently occur in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Russia is the only European nation to generally restrict internet access. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has long had a difficult relationship with the internet. Putin wants to create a sovereign, used in Russia only, internet. There are problems with this because the internet is essential for running the economy and the military. At the same time internet chatter is the primary source of criticism for the Ukraine War and the problems with the economic sanctions.
Internet chatter about what was going on in Ukraine made it more difficult for Russia to obtain soldiers. To avoid army service in Ukraine, several million Russians left the country, some for good. The government increased restrictions on who could leave but military-age men found ways to get past that, notably bribery. Those caught were forced to join the army, and their reluctance to fight resulted in officers receiving orders to shoot soldiers who refused to fight.
There were at least a hundred of these incidents, these soldiers and officers referred to as zeroing out a reluctant soldier by shooting him. The dead soldiers were called zeroes and the next of kin were simply told that their son died heroically in Ukraine. That explanation often failed when news of what actually happened arrived via the internet.
The internet made it easier to spread the bad news, even after the government made it illegal to say bad things about the war effort. A few complainers were prosecuted, but that backfired when online complaints and protests increased. There were not enough judicial resources available to handle all the complainers. Welcome to the internet paradox, too troublesome to tolerate, but too useful to lose.
But it’s not for lack of trying. Last year, Russia carried out a brief pre-dawn test of its ability to turn Internet access for Russians into a Sovereign Internet that is not connected to the worldwide internet. That means Russians could only use the internet within Russian and must use Russian based websites and network services, like search, messaging and social media. There are versions of all these services based in Russian as well as internationally popular versions like Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and Facebook.
The Sovereign Internet test revealed some problems, like interference with large scale internet-based communications systems created for the Nationwide Railroad Network and other nationwide communications systems that also require some access to international systems. A long-term implementation of Russia’s Sovereign Internet would disrupt some portions of the Russian economy that depend on constant communication with foreign firms.
The Sovereign Internet is meant to be used for short periods. There are other uses of the Sovereign Internet that include remaining connected to neighboring nations like Iran, which is trying to develop a Sovereign Internet and China, which already has one. Internet pioneers predicted that some countries would seek to develop a Sovereign Internet in order to exercise government control over the Internet. This was something that early Internet developers feared would happen because the international free exchange of information was a threat to the power of totalitarian government. The totalitarians were expected to eventually strike back and now they have.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 05, 2026 - 03:38 pm: Edit

Sea Transportation: Seizing The Russian Shadow Fleet
February 5, 2026: Ukraine has asked European nations to cooperate in shutting down the Russian Shadow Fleet. About two-thirds of Russian oil smuggling shadow fleet ships move through the Baltic Sea. If Denmark and the three Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia cooperated effectively, Russian oil exports would be crippled. Despite the economic sanctions, Russia is still able to export most of its oil.
Denmark and the Baltic States were unwilling to do anything that would effectively halt Russian use of the Baltics. The main reasons were fears that Russian retaliation via sabotaging ships or port facilities. Then there is the potential damage to shopping companies, especially Denmark’s Maersk, which controls one sixth of the global shipping market.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is actively going after the Russian shadow fleet of lawless tankers moving sanctioned oil to customers. In 2025 there were at least a dozen drone attacks and sabotage missions against shadow fleet tankers. These included using naval drones in the Black Sea to sink or disable Russian tankers. This happened while the tankers were trying to reach the Russian port of Novorossiysk, which is the primary port for loading tankers. Mediterranean Sea drone attacks from armed Ukrainian merchant ships have recently been made.
Russia’s economy and war effort against Ukraine is financed by oil and other energy exports. Russia is operating under severe economic sanctions imposed to reduce that income and create economic conditions for Russia that make it difficult to impossible to continue their war in Ukraine.
The key to Russian oil exports is the use of foreign tankers to covertly smuggle their petroleum and coal from Russia to overseas customers. Western sanctions block overt deliveries. Eighty percent of the oil for China goes by pipeline and cannot be disrupted. China accounts for nearly half of Russian petroleum and other energy exports. It’s the other half that is at risk because of a growing list of sanctions.
The economic sanctions were imposed on Russia because of its 2022 invasion, in an effort to reduce its hard currency income from exports of oil and natural gas. These are the main Russian exports and the major source of income for the Russian government and war effort. To evade these sanctions, Russia created a growing shadow fleet of oil tankers purchased and/or leased abroad and obtained unrestricted access to a Chinese smuggler haven maintained in Hong Kong.
Current estimates are that nearly 900 tankers are smuggling sanctioned Russian petroleum to customers in China, India, the European Union/EU, Turkey and Myanmar. Most refined petroleum products go to Turkey, China, Brazil, Singapore and India. The rest goes to nine countries, in the Middle East, Africa and Taiwan. China has been buying 47 percent of the crude oil while India takes 37 percent followed by Turkey and the EU with six percent each. China, India and Turkey account for about 90 percent of Russian income from the sale of oil, natural gas and coal. The U.S. is imposing additional tariffs on countries that import Russian oil. India is already subject to these tariffs, which increases what they have to pay for exports to the United States. The Americans are negotiating with China and Turkey over what tariffs will be imposed to discourage their Russian oil imports.
The nations enforcing the sanctions, particularly the United States, have tracked the routes of the Russian shadow fleet and noted the key role Hong Kong plays in arranging the movement of sanctioned Russian oil to its primary customers in China and India. Hong Kong is also a major source for supplying sanctioned nations with weapons and munitions. A current customer is Russia. Hong Kong does this by allowing Russian tankers and cargo ships, operating with fake credentials to disguise their Russian affiliation, to bring in Russian oil and other raw materials. The Russian ships then leave Hong Kong carrying weapons for their war in Ukraine.
Another major player in the Russian smuggling effort is North Korea. For years North Korea has been buying small, second-hand cargo and tanker ships and using them for smuggling. A favored evasion technique consists of taking on or transferring cargo at sea in its own territorial waters. The North Korean merchant fleet consists of about 150 ships, mostly purchased from Chinese firms.
North Korea is a notorious and persistent maritime smuggler. Because of North Korean smuggling, the United States expanded its maritime smuggling and sanctions enforcement program in 2018 when a new multi-national enforcement organization was created. Initial members were the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, France, South Korea, and Japan. This Enforcement Coordination Cell, or ECC, is enforcing the UN sanctions that curb North Korean smuggling related to items needed for their nuclear and ballistic missile programs. In addition, the ECC allows member nations to also enforce whatever other sanctions or naval missions their government puts a priority on. The U.S. has since invited India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines to join and assist with monitoring growing Chinese violation of offshore water rights, especially in the South China Sea and other areas of the West Pacific.
The ECC concentrates on the 2,000-kilometer-long shipping lane from the Indian Ocean, through the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea to North Korea. Along this route there are not only North Korean flagged ships participating in smuggling, but even more Chinese, Taiwanese, Liberian, Sri Lankan, and ships that are independent and fly whatever flag they believe will keep them from getting seized for smuggling. Earlier U.S. efforts had already identified many North Korean and Iranian owned tankers and cargo ships that were often engaged in smuggling. This led Iran and North Korea to use their own ships less and willing foreign ships instead. These third-party ships are the ones the ECC sought to identify. These ships can be identified, along with their owners and the owners can have banking and other sanctions placed on them. Many nations, not part of the ECC, but economic partners with ECC members, will cooperate if a smuggler ship visits one of their ports. At that point the captain can be arrested and the ship seized.
The ECC member warships do not depend on inspecting suspicious ships while at sea, but confirming who is where and when. This is especially useful for spotting smugglers who often turn off their location beacons and continue in running dark mode. These location beacons transmit current ID and location to any nearby ships and often, via satellite, to their owner and international shipping organizations. The location data, past and current, can be found on several public websites. The beacons exist mainly as a safety measure for ships operating at night or in bad weather in heavily used shipping lanes. Smugglers have learned how to turn off their beacons near a port where, it is assumed, they have docked or anchored off the coast waiting for an available dock.
Such games with location beacons, with ship ownership and with the nationality of a ship’s registration (flag of convenience) are unlawful under maritime law and entitle any nation with a navy to seize them, sell their contents and sell the ship itself. This is rarely done but the US has begun doing so consistently with ships carrying oil to or from Venezuela. Ship ownership and registration may only be lawfully changed while in a port, as Russia recently learned when one of their shadow tanker ships was seized by the US Navy when it headed towards Venezuela, then changed its ownership to Russia while at sea.
Some smugglers are using spoofing, a form of jamming that just modifies the beacon signal to present a false location. This is where warships and maritime aircraft come in as these can identify ships visually or using radar followed by visual inspection. This is more damaging to the smugglers because it provides more evidence that their ship was involved in smuggling, and with enough evidence, you can go after the ship owners and seize the ship whenever it enters coastal waters, within 22 kilometers of land belonging to a nation that will seize outlaw ships. It may also be illegal by itself and entitle countries with navies to seize those ships too.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 05, 2026 - 03:39 pm: Edit

Air Weapons: Ukraine Upgrades It’s Long Range Attacks
February 5, 2026: Four years of Ukrainian long range drone attacks on targets throughout western Russia have had a cumulative impact. It was obvious that Ukraine needed a locally produced drone that was free of any target restriction imposed by the United States on the use of long range missiles sent to Ukraine. Ukraine is now producing its own locally designed and manufactured Flamingo drone. This is a three-ton drone with a range of 3,000 kilometers, a speed of 900 kilometers an hour and a 1.1 ton warhead. Production began in mid-2025 and during 2026 monthly production will eventually reach 300-500. Each drone costs about $500,000.
Ukraine has lots of experience with long range drone attacks on targets inside Russia. Ukrainians maintain timely information on the deployment and capabilities of Russian air defense systems. Then there is BDA, or Battle Damage Assessment. This means obtaining accurate data about how effective your long range attacks are. Ukraine depends on the American surveillance satellite network and reports from Ukrainian operatives inside Russia to verify BDA, though the French have started helping too. Determining the targets of a long-range drone campaign had can be tricky. For example, the World War Two American/British strategic bombing campaign against Germany made a crucial mistake. When selecting which targets to hit and when, one critical target set was omitted. The Allied target planners ignored German electrical generating plants because they incorrectly assumed that the plants were interconnected in a system that was resistant to aerial bombing attacks. After the war it was discovered that power plants were the most vulnerable targets because key components could not be easily replaced and that Germany did not have an interconnected system. Bombing a few of these plants in a region would halt production for up to a year for much of that region. Adding power plants to the target list could have shortened the war in Europe by up to a year. The Ukrainians are still refining their target list to get the most economic damage out of each drone attack campaign.
With its extremely long range Flamingo can hit nearly 90 percent of the targets that produce weapons or export income for the Russian military effort. The Russian capital is 850 kilometers from northern Ukraine. It is 1,100 kilometers to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea and 2,000 kilometers to the bases of the Russian Northern Fleet in Murmansk, near the Arctic Circle.
Targets are usually industrial facilities that support the war effort. These include numerous oil refineries and oil fuel storage facilities plus facilities involving specialty steels for tube artillery, railroad car coil bearings and tanks. The drones came in low and slow to deceive Russian air defenses, which have a hard time detecting low and slow aerial targets, especially at night when most of these attacks take place. While the targets are up to three thousand kilometers from Ukraine, the drones can also move north across a corridor that is several hundred kilometers wide. Russian anti-aircraft defense systems cannot cover an area that wide and long, especially when the attackers are coming in low and slow in the dark.
Russia tries to play down the effectiveness of the Ukrainian drone attacks by describing rather obvious burning refineries and fuel storage depots as accidents. There have been a lot of such accidents and Russian troops in Ukraine have to closely monitor their fuel consumption because fuel deliveries are not as frequent and reliable as they used to be. The Russian fuel facilities also supply the commercial and civilian market. The commercial users are important because they supply the firms producing goods needed by the military as well as consumers.
The Ukrainian drone attacks also led to disruptions of flight operations at the three airports serving the Moscow region. Ukraine does not comment on details of their drone attacks. Ukraine believes the results speak for themselves. Targets in western Russia are increasingly under attack by Ukrainian drones and the Russian government has a hard time explaining why combustible targets in the region keep exploding or catching fire. Such events are contrary to the official government reports about the Russian war efforts in Ukraine. Russia has not experienced attacks like this on the homeland since World War II and that is something the Russian government does not want to discuss.
Ukrainian drone strikes have also hit Russian air bases where Russian MiG-31 fighter-bombers as well as bombers like the Tu-22M and Tu-95 are found. So far at least six of these aircraft have been damaged or destroyed by Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside Russia. The attack on the Savasleyka airbase highlights the vulnerability of military infrastructures to drone attacks. The attack drones come in low and slow at night. This made it difficult for airbase air defenses to detect and destroy many of the drones. These attacks demonstrated how much air warfare has changed because of the use of reconnaissance and attack drones by both sides.
Before Russia invaded, military analysts worldwide did not anticipate such a widespread use of drones and how it changed ground, air and naval warfare. Long range attacks by drones were terrifying because the attacker was not risking the lives of highly trained pilots. Pilot training costs over a million dollars per pilot. Skilled pilots lost in combat cannot be quickly replaced. Drones have no pilots and the men and women who build, program and in some cases operate drones are far from the combat zone. Ukrainian annual drone production is now about equal to annual Russian artillery shell production.
Because of the extensive use of drones, warfare has fundamentally changed. Ukraine and Russia are both competing to keep up with new drone designs and uses. The long range drone attacks on Russian munitions and fuel depots as well as air bases are examples of that. Russian missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure and population centers are the only response they can muster. Ukraine has hidden its stockpiles and combat aircraft more effectively than the Russian. Moreover Ukraine can quickly receive emergency resupplies of fuel and munitions from NATO allies. Russia has a more difficult time because they were subjected to severe economic and military sanctions after they invaded Ukraine.


FYEO

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, February 06, 2026 - 08:34 pm: Edit

We touched on a discussion of responsible journalism in the world, and it being rare…

Two days later, on February 4, 2026, the Washington Post media has laid off one third of its international work force, and of that number, over 300 employees in the news and editorial staff are now unemployed.

The management, in press interviews and posted comments indicated that, among other considerations, the corporation is not a non profit or a charity. The purpose of the layoff is to minimize costs and, it is hoped, improve the bottomline.

The owners of both CNN and MSNBC (currently rebranded as “MS Now.”) have been looking for a buyer to take both properties (and the associated cash subsidy both require as neither is profitable as currently operated.

CBS news has recently had a new manager appointed who is aggressively trying to reduce over staffing and over priced salaries.

Early, I know, but it looks as if the main stream media giants have been forced into reforming their work forces.

Time will tell, but unless they can attract both viewers/consumers of their news services, they may not be able to get the advertisers (and the advertising money they bring with them) back.

Funny how it all comes down to economics.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Saturday, February 07, 2026 - 12:16 pm: Edit

IMHO, the "left" media are all competing for the left demographic. And there are a ton of "left" media.

That is the brilliance of Murdoch/ Fox. They basically have little competition for the "right" demographic.

Lets say there are 30% left, 30% right and 40% in the middle of consumers.

5 left media, 1 right and 5 in the middle... (to ovee simplify)

So 6% per left media, 30% for fox and 3% to each middle media (assuming no overlap of viewership). So Fox is crushing it

Part of the problem is monetizing reporting in the age of the internet. And the consolidation of news reporting. Used to be each "major" newspaper had a bunch of reporters. So the Louisville Courier Journal had Local reporters, Lexington reporters, DC political reporters, Kentucky State government Reporters in Frankfort, Financial reporters in NY, reporters covering all the "boonies" of Kentucky (ie multiple rural counties), etc.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, February 07, 2026 - 01:45 pm: Edit

Mike, your theme has been popular for years, but it appears that your estimate of left, middle and right shares are a little off.

A quick google inquiry shows the following…
quote:” Fox News dominates the U.S. cable news market, consistently holding over 60%–70% of the audience share in primetime and total day, outperforming rivals CNN and MSNBC. As of late 2025, Fox News secured roughly 64% of the cable news audience share, with higher shares during specific, high-viewership events.
Fox News Cable Audience Share & Market Position
Total Audience Share: Fox News Channel (FNC) holds approximately 63% to 69% of the total daily cable news audience.
Primetime Share: In 2025, Fox News commanded 64% to 72% of the cable news audience in the critical 8–11 p.m. time slot.
Consecutive Dominance: FNC has been the number one cable news network for over 23 years, with viewership growing in 2022 while competitors saw declines.
Market Reach: By late 2018, Fox News was available to approximately 87 million U.S. households, representing roughly 91% of television subscribers.
Compared to the total television market, Fox News is a leading network, often beating major broadcast networks like CBS and ABC in total viewers during specific periods in 2025. ”

Again, this was almost certainly generated AI response, and may have false information.

Y.M.M.V.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, February 07, 2026 - 07:30 pm: Edit

Just because 64% watch FOX doesn't mean 64% of Americans are conservative. Lots of business people and more than a few liberals know they will get more balanced news, and Fox has gathered most of the non-aligned moderates who prefer being told things to think about rather than what to think about things.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, February 07, 2026 - 08:08 pm: Edit

Steve, that was the point.

If you look at Mike G’s “analysis”, he assigned a 30% market share to fox, not the 64% you referred to.

Do not over think this.

Fox is not perfect, and sometimes they don’t report everything accurately, but there are still people in the world who want the hard data so they can make their own assessments.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Sunday, February 08, 2026 - 10:45 am: Edit

It's also worth remembering that cable news viewership skews toward those who qualify for an AARP membership (50 and older); the median age of the CNN, Fox and MSNBC audiences is, respectively, 67, 68 and 71.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Sunday, February 08, 2026 - 01:13 pm: Edit

Jessica, That is probably a good thing....
Fox shows too many "Man on the Street"
interviews....
Gen y and z would be horrified to see
how ignorant their peers are....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, February 08, 2026 - 09:20 pm: Edit

I am not skewed!

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, February 09, 2026 - 02:39 pm: Edit

Isn’t that a matter of opinion?

Still, better skewed than stewed!

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Monday, February 09, 2026 - 06:13 pm: Edit

I do not think that being Skewed or stewed would be good.

By Johnsonvjv on Tuesday, February 10, 2026 - 12:12 pm: Edit

Authentication Error

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, February 11, 2026 - 07:33 am: Edit

The US has closed all flights over El Paso for ten days for unspecified security reasons. This is VERY unusual.

By Matthew Lawson (Mglawson) on Wednesday, February 11, 2026 - 10:53 am: Edit

News says now it was closed to intercept Mexican drug cartel drones.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, February 11, 2026 - 02:01 pm: Edit

That makes sense.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 02:16 am: Edit

Potential for mid-air collisions with civilian air traffic (and possible loss of life), the drones are carrying narcotics, or does the War Department think these may be weaponized drones, similar to what're being used in Ukraine?

If it IS the third one, what does that say about the military capability of the Drug Cartels?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 08:42 am: Edit

Most anything can be weaponized.

911 terrorists used commercial passenger aircraft to attack the twin towers and the pentagon and an open field in Pennsylvania (originally intended to hit the White House, but for some heroic passengers…)

Even some of the drones used in the Ukraine/Russia war have been off the shelf civilian drones purchased in Europe.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 10:53 am: Edit

In this case, it was a party balloon mistaken for a drone. Yes, really.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 02:11 pm: Edit

NBC Weapons: China Resumes Testing Nuclear Weapons
February 12, 2026: For at least six years, China has been testing 4th Generation nuclear weapons.
First Generation was fission atomic bombs using uranium-235 or plutonium-239. These were the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, compelling Japan to surrender.
Second Generation was Thermonuclear hydrogen bombs using a small fission explosive to detonate a much larger explosion through the fusion of hydrogen isotopes.
Third Generation consisted of ERW/Enhanced Radiation Weapons, or neutron bombs designed to produce a lot of lethal radiation with minimal blast effects.
Fourth Generation: The Chinese are ahead in this area, with very low-radiation explosives using metal nitrogen/total nitrogen anion salt. These devices could weigh 100-200 grams and be carried by a drone weighing less than ten kilograms. There would be ongoing arguments over whether these weapons were really nuclear or not. That sort of debate is oft all a country needed to declare the 4th Generation nukes non-nuclear and use them in whatever conflicts they were involved in.
The 4th Generation nuclear device is another project in the decades-old Chinese efforts to upgrade their nuclear weapons and delivery systems. For example, two years ago China decided to reform and upgrade their Rocket Force, the military organization which operates all Chinese ballistic missiles. The problems were numerous and usually ignored. For example, in 2021 some of these missiles were moved to a new silo field in northern China. Here there are three new missile silo fields, containing a total of 320 missile silos. China planned to put missiles in only in some of the silos and thus force the United States to attack all the silos in a first strike. Such a first strike is unlikely because China already had dozens of missiles being moved around on truck mounted launchers. These trucks constantly moved between hiding places and were meant to keep an enemy unsure of where all the Chinese nuclear missiles were. This was a fortunate move by China as most or all of the newly built, and quite expensive, missile silos were inoperable. Their lids couldn’t be opened due to China’s constant corruption. China had several thousand ballistic missiles, most of them known to be armed only with a variety of conventional/non-nuclear warheads. It turns out China had a lot more of these than earlier believed. Another revelation is that China purportedly considers nuclear warheads much less important than previously believed.
A recent effort to calculate how many nuclear warheads China had concluded that they had not been producing enough plutonium for an expansion of their nuclear warhead inventory and apparently configure their longer range ICBM and IRBM missiles with several types of conventional warheads and keep a small number of nuclear warheads in a separate location. This meant that even ICBMs were seen as primarily non-nuclear missiles, which is surprising as the cost of ICBMs far exceeds all other ballistic missiles while the damage done by conventional warheads is only the same at best.
Reports of new missile silos being built inland were apparently not for nuclear missiles, but long-range missiles armed with conventional warheads. This strategy had long been suspected because for decades China openly threatened Taiwan with over a thousand short range ballistic missiles armed with several types of conventional warheads and standing by for a surprise attack that would be able to overwhelm any BMD/Ballistic Missile Defense capability Taiwan had, even if reinforced by American or Japanese Aegis BMD destroyers. The hundreds of new silos in central China would be more difficult to disable by airstrikes and provide longer range ballistic missiles with conventional warheads to assist attacks on Taiwan, as well as South Korean, Japanese and American bases in the Pacific. This use of non-nuclear ballistic missiles is more in line with published Chinese strategy, which emphasizes avoiding the use of nukes at all costs while also using all ballistic missiles as artillery equipped with non-nuclear warheads.
To maintain this large force of ballistic missiles requires regularly using some of them to test new guidance systems and conventional warhead designs. This means China carries out far more test launches than anyone else. In 2019 China was noted to have carried out more missile launches, for testing and development, than the rest of the world combined. China is a nuclear power that is not particularly concerned about boasting of how many nukes and delivery systems it has. China is also better able to keep secret most of its missile tests. Rather than firing missiles out to sea, where they have to issue a warning to ships to avoid the area where the warheads will land, China conducts most of its missile tests at an inland test site near the Gobi Desert. Plenty of open space and far from prying eyes.
The only nation with a good idea of how many Chinese missile tests there are each year is the United States, which has a worldwide network of early-warning satellites that can spot the heat generated from a ballistic missile launch anywhere on the planet. For a long time, the U.S. did not disclose how many Chinese missile launches they spotted each year but in a 2018 speech an American official commented that China launched more missiles each year than the rest of the world combined. Similar comments since then indicate that China is currently launching more than a hundred missiles a year, most of them aimed at the remote inland test site in the northwest. The Americans also have a network of electronic monitoring satellites that can collect telemetry data. This is what the test warhead transmits back to earth about how the missile is performing. This data is encrypted, and the U.S. says even less about how many of these signals it captures and decrypts.
A growing number of American analysts, including the more senior ones that specialize in ballistic missile and nuclear weapons trends, have maintained that the large Chinese missile force, including the ones the West classifies as nuclear only, exist mainly to support surprise attacks by missiles carrying non-nuclear warheads. Chinese military journals describe over a dozen types of non-nuclear warheads, but little is said about any nuclear warheads except basic models.
The U.S. is very interested in finding out details of new Chinese missiles because some will have capabilities that the U.S. and Russia gave up for several decades because of the INF/Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces disarmament treaty signed near the end of the Cold War. The U.S. did admit that the main reason for not renewing the INF Treaty with Russia in 2019 was not just Russian cheating, but also because China never signed the INF treaty and was free to develop ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers forbidden by the INF. China had openly developed lots of such ballistic missiles. Originally INF was created to reduce the proliferation of shorter-range missiles with nuclear warheads. The Chinese preference for non-nuclear missiles was ignored or played down for a long time.
China also insists it is unconcerned about who the target for nuclear armed missiles is. In 2009, China announced that its nuclear-armed ballistic missiles were not aimed at anyone and that was probably true. Like most countries, China had long refused to say who its nuclear-armed missiles are aimed at. Most of those missiles only have enough range to hit Russia, or India, or other nearby nations. For a long time, most were very definitely aimed at Russia, which had rocky relations with China from the 1960s to the 1990s. But after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the new, much smaller, Russia became much friendlier with the wealthier, more capitalist, but still run by communists, China. Relations between China and India also warmed up then went into a deep freeze as China claimed more and more Indian territory.
Currently China is believed to have over 500 nuclear warheads but only about half of them are purportedly ready for use and most of them are the new standard 400kt type, which is smaller and lighter than the megaton/1,000kt warheads China originally produced. Fewer than a hundred Chinese ballistic missiles could reach the United States. These include the older, and about to be retired, DF-5, plus the newer DF-31A and DF-41. Now it turns out that these missiles normally carry a non-nuclear warhead, but with nuclear warheads stored somewhere else. Some are stored near ICBMs but even those long-range missiles are kept ready to fire with non-nuclear warheads.
Few Chinese ballistic missiles lacking intercontinental range are armed with nuclear warheads, or apparently even equipped to handle nuclear warheads. Chinese strategy had long been to use lots of ballistic missiles armed with various kinds of high-explosive warheads. China was long believed to have about 2,000 ballistic missiles, most of them short, under a thousand kilometers, range plus over 300 cruise missiles. It turns out that China actually had about 50 percent more ballistic missiles, assigned to local theater commands that have these missile brigades as a form of long-range artillery. China is also developing more cruise missiles concentrating, as is the United States, on stealth and additional capabilities. In recognition of all this China created a fourth branch of the military, the Rocket Force, in 2016. At the time this was assumed to signal a major expansion of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. That didn’t happen.
China is also developing and deploying many new missiles. In fact, China had more types of ballistic missiles, at least 40, than any other nation. What was long overlooked was how many of these shorter-range ballistic missiles China had built. China also invests heavily in its new missile technologies, like its hypersonic glide missile, the DF-ZF.
China’s current ballistic missile inventory apparently includes about 90 DF-41, range of 14,000 kilometers, about 60 DF-31 – 50, 8,000 kilometers, 70 DF-5 - 14,000 kilometers, 100 DF-26 4,000 kilometers, an unknown number, perhaps none of DF-21D and DF-2. The only cruise missile is the CJ-10A 1,500 kilometers. There are several hundred other short-range ballistic missiles as well, some of them still in development.
Since the 1990s China had always had a few active DF-5 ICBMs. For a long time, these were their only missiles that could reach the United States. The U.S. had since installed 18 ICBM interceptor missile systems in Alaska. There are to deal with North Korean missiles but could also destroy most Chinese missiles headed for the western United States. It makes sense for China to simply say that it is not aiming nuclear missiles at anyone. Modern guidance systems can be quickly, in minutes, programmed for a new target, so it doesn't really matter that, normally, the missiles have no target information in them. The DF-5s, moreover, are liquid-fueled, and the considerable activity required to ready them for launch can be detected by spy satellites.
The DF-5s have been largely replaced by 84 solid fuel DF-41s. These missiles can be moved, erected, and launched from a special truck. With a 15,000-kilometer range, they can reach all of the United States. The third stage contains multiple warheads, each with an explosive yield of about 400 KT.
India is of growing concern to China, but there are shorter range ballistic missiles, like the DF-21, to deal with that threat. The Chinese introduced the DF-21 in 1999 and now had nearly a thousand in service or on order. Most have non-nuclear warheads. This missile had a range of over 1,800 kilometers and was designed to use the new 400 kiloton nuclear warhead. It's a two-stage, 15 ton, solid-fuel rocket. Launched from Tibet, the DF-21 can reach most major targets in India.
Back in 2006 China put the larger DF-31 into service. Sort of. There are few in service now. This was China's first solid-fuel ICBM with a range of over 8,000 kilometers and roughly equivalent to the U.S. Minuteman I of the 1960s. The DF-31 weighs about 46 tons and is 20 meters long and 2.25 meters in diameter. It was designed for use on submarines, land silos and mobile launchers which would halt at those parking lots in the middle of nowhere visible in satellite pictures of Qinghai province. The DF-31 had been shown stored in a TEL transporter, erector & launcher vehicle. Driving these vehicles along special highways in remote areas provides more protection from counterattacks than using a reinforced silo. Later, the improved DF-13A appeared, with multiple warheads and more range up to 12,000 kilometers, which could cover all the United States. No DF-13As are currently in service.
The DF-31 was in development for over twenty years and only had its first successful launch in 1999. It's now believed to have a reliable and accurate guidance system, as well as a third stage that carries at least one 400 kiloton warhead. DF-31s are in service, along with DF-31As and most of these appear to be aimed at European Russia.
Then there is a submarine-launched missile, the JL Julang 2 SLBM Sea Launched Ballistic Missile. This missile had had a lot of problems as had the SSBNs ballistic missile carrying nuclear subs that carry them. The 42-ton JL-2 had a range of 8,000 kilometers and would enable China to aim missiles at any target in the United States from a 094 class SSBN cruising off Hawaii or Alaska. Each 094 boat can carry twelve of these missiles, which are naval versions of the existing land based 42-ton DF-31 ICBM. The JL-2 was supposed to have entered service in 2015 but kept failing test launches. China decided that JL-2 was reliable enough and ordered 72 built and some were installed in four SLBMs. A few Chinese SSBNs have gone on a combat cruise, but not too far from China. These are used to threaten India because these boats, as well as the SLBMs, have been very unreliable. It always seemed strange to foreigners that China was not putting more resources into making its SSBNs capable of regular service. Now we know; China does not value or fear nukes as much as other nations. This is not really novel, as China continues to use classic Chinese strategies and tactics. China does not try to hide this as most of their foreign foes do that for them.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 02:11 pm: Edit

Iran: Iran Before and After
February 12, 2026: Since the Israeli and American airstrikes on Iran last June, the country has slid into chaos and endless protests. The unrest was slow to escalate into nationwide protests but that finally happened on December 28. Soon it was clear that these protests were the largest since the 1979 ones that overthrew the monarchy and led to the current religious dictatorship. While at least 80 percent of Iranians want a new government and are willing to use violence to get it, the other 20 percent have the guns and understand if the revolution wins, they will be dead, imprisoned or exiled. There is also a religious factor. Many, if not most Iranians want to eliminate Islam, which is seen as a source of repression and corruption. The 20 percent embrace Islam because it justifies any atrocities committed to suppress the rebellion. There are many other incentives for the 20 percent. They have access to food, a regular income and relative safety for their families.
The cost of these benefits is one reason while the rest of the population suffers from poverty, unemployment, rising inflation and the negative impact of the growing water shortage. Despite these incentives, the government had to import several thousand mercenaries to kill Iranians. Government forces, even the IRGC/Islamic Republican Guard Corps were increasingly hesitant about killing enough Iranians to stop the protests. The foreigners, most of them from government supported groups like Hezbollah and similar groups throughout the region, had no problems with killing Iranian civilians. Besides, this job paid well.
The government made a substantial effort to disrupt the ability of irate Iranians from communicating with each other. On January 8th internet and cellphone access was shut down, except for some government agencies. As internet savvy protestors found ways around this shut down, the government managed to counter these efforts. The government also went after the many Iranian uses of Starlink. China helped with this, as they want to restrict Chinese access to Starlink. Some Iranians had shortwave radios, but they were hunted down and, unless they moved their equipment frequently, were eventually found, their equipment seized or destroyed and the users imprisoned.
As of early February, nearly 35,000 demonstrators have been killed and nearly as many arrested or classified by their families as missing. So far, no more than six million Iranians have participated in the protests and in about a third of Iran there have been few, if any protests. For both sides, victory is a matter of life or death. The 20 percenters number about 12 million Iranians, while the protesters have about 40 million, of a total population of about 90 million. The government forces are well organized, equipped and ruthless. The protestors are disorganized, largely unarmed and desperate. If the uprising is suppressed, Iran will still be in bad shape economically, diplomatically and facing an uncertain future. This means the protests or an armed uprising will eventually take place, and continue to happen as long as Iran is mismanaged by religious rulers who are willing to persecute and kill as many Iranians as it takes to keep the religious dictatorship in power. The religious leaders realize that their own 1979 revolution against the monarchy could have failed. To remain in power they must constantly develop new methods to ensure that future rebellions fail.
And then there are some older problems. Last year’s June 13th Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military commanders, nuclear weapon scientists, uranium processing facilities and ballistic missile operations were essential to prevent Iran from completing its preparations to attack Israel. The Israeli attack force consisted of 200 aircraft. The Americans followed up with seven B2 stealth bombers using fourteen 13 ton ground penetrating bombs to destroy well protected Iranian nuclear weapons facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. In response Iran launched nearly 1,500 drones and missiles at Israel. This attack left 24 Israelis dead and thousands wounded. Iran later executed several Iranians who were believed to be working for Israel. There were also several violent incidents involving Kurds and Iranians angry at their government.
In 2024 Iran launched over 300 hundred UAVs and ballistic missiles at Israel on April 13th. This was in retaliation for an April 1 Israeli air strike on an Iranian consulate in Syria that killed two senior IRGC/Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders. Iran retaliated with an unprecedented direct attack on Israel using missiles and UAVs launched from Iran rather than just using the usual Iran-backed proxies of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shia Houthi movement in Yemen.
Israeli air defenses, American aircraft and warships, British aircraft and Jordanian aircraft and air defenses offshore destroyed all of the Iranian UAVs and missiles headed for inhabited areas in Israel. The Jordanians took down Iranian drones violating Jordanian airspace. British jet fighters operated from a base Britain has long maintained on the island of Cyprus. It only takes 40 minutes for an aircraft to fly from the Cyprus base to Israel. Despite the hundreds of UAVs and missiles launched at Israel, the only damage done occurred at an Israeli air force base in southern Israel. The damage was described as minor and there were a few civilian casualties, mainly from the debris of intercepted UAVs and missiles falling to the ground.
After their attack was concluded, Iran said that their retaliation was over. The implication was that if Israel retaliated it would be an unjustified act of war. Iran might just appeal to the UN and world opinion to declare Israel the aggressor. Israel retaliated and destroyed most of Iranian air defense systems as well as the factories that produced key components for rockets and missiles. Iran was unable to detect or resist this attack, which was humiliating.
Meanwhile Iran-supported groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and various other terror groups like ISIL/Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were ordered to attack Israel. Iran was so desperate to destroy or weaken Israel that it cooperated with extremist Arab Sunni Moslems, who rarely cooperate with each other and often attack members of the minority Shia Islam factions like Iran.
Iran is unique in that it is a nation of Indo-European people living in a region dominated by Arabs and a relatively small number of Israeli Indo-European and Semitic Jews. Hatred of Jews and Christians is an old custom in the region. This is changing as more affluent Gulf Arabs seek to do business with the even more affluent Jews of Israel and Christians of Lebanon. These new attempts to establish cooperation were disrupted by Hamas, a Sunni Palestinian group that has been around since the 1980s and recently sought to drive Israelis out of Gaza, an area that Hamas ruled for nearly two decades and, until October 2023, only occasionally attacked Israel. Hamas radicals convinced many Hamas Gaza Palestinians to attack Israel and seek to replace Israel with a Palestinian State.
Since late 2017 there have been continuing nationwide outbursts against the religious dictatorship running Iran. There was similar activity in 2009 to protest the lack of fair elections. The 2009 protests were put down with force as were the recent ones, with over a thousand dead in 2019 and several hundred since then.
What started in late 2017 was different, with the protestors calling for the corrupt religious rulers to be removed. Some called for a return of the constitutional monarchy the religious leaders replaced in the 1980s after first promising true democracy. Even more disturbing were protests calling for Islam to be banned and replaced with something else, like Zoroastrianism, the ancient Persian religion that Islam replaced violently and sometimes incompletely in the 7th and 8th centuries. Right before the 2017 unrest the religious rulers saw Iran on the way to some major victories in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. The optimism turned out to be premature. The good times were supposed to begin in the wake of a July 2015 treaty that lifted the many sanctions Iran had collected for bad behavior since the 1990s. That did not, as many financial experts pointed out, solve the immediate cash crises because oil prices were still low. This was because of continued use of fracking in North America which triggered a massive, more than 70 percent, drop in the price of oil in 2013.
Iran made their situation worse by trying to avoid complying with the 2015 treaty while still getting most of the sanctions lifted and for a while that seemed to be working. That strategy backfired when the U.S. accused Iran of violating the 2015 deal and, by the terms of that agreement, the Americans could and did withdraw. That meant many of the sanctions returned in 2018. Even before this American action, foreign economists believed the Iranian economy wouldn’t get moving again until the 2020s. Now it is going to take even longer and might not happen at all, so most Iranians are angry about that. The senior clerics are worried and openly seeking a solution that does not include them losing power. Few Iranians are willing to accept that kind of compromise. The religious dictatorship is not only hated, but also seen as corrupt, incompetent, and untrustworthy.
This has led to some odd acts of resistance. For example, in late 2022 a young Kurdish woman was arrested by the lifestyle police and accused of not covering her hair properly with her hijab. While in custody the girl died, apparently from beatings. This led to months of protests. The government refused to change its hijab policy and the protests faded away in early 2023.
There are some more complications. Half the population consists of ethnic minorities, mainly Azeris, Kurds, and Arabs, and some of these groups, including Arabs, Kurds and Baluchis are getting more restive and violent, for different reasons. Yet the Islamic conservatives are determined to support terrorism overseas and build nuclear weapons at home, rather than concentrating on improving the economy and living standards and addressing the corruption within their ranks. The corruption has gotten so bad that the government has warned that its entire capital of Tehran (nine million people with 15 million in its metropolitan area) may have to be moved someplace else due to drought. There is a drought but the real cause is the incompetence and corruption of the ruling religious elite.
Expensive efforts to aid pro-Iran groups in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon made some progress and were presented as examples of the ancient Iranian empire being reborn. The government saw these foreign adventures as a way to distract an unhappy population. This ultimately had the opposite effect as Iranians did the math and realized their poverty was the result of all the billions spent on these overseas adventures. Worse, the destruction of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the pro-Iranian Assad regime in Syria in November and December 2024 made the Iranian money spent there complete losses.
At home the nukes are still important because Iranian religious leaders have been increasingly vocal about how Iran should be the leader of the Islamic world and the guardian of the major Islamic shrines of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Iranians believe having nuclear weapons would motivate the Arabs, and many others, to bend the knee. The potential victims are not cooperating and can retaliate. The Arabs have been kicked around by the Iranians for thousands of years and take this latest threat very seriously. That has led to a major reform effort in Saudi Arabia with a new generation of leaders willing to take on corruption and go with alliances that benefit the Saudis. This includes openly working with Israel to deal with the Iranian threat. This was demonstrated when Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of missiles and drones in 2023. The attack failed and Israel retaliated by destroying Iranian air defenses and radars as well as the Iranian ability to manufacture missiles or nuclear weapons. Iran was left blind, defenseless and still able to sell its oil and improve their lives, if that’s what the religious dictatorship wanted. It’s what the Iranian people wanted.
FYEO

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 04:00 pm: Edit

I am thinking that with the resources of a drug cartel behind the capability to launch drones, that it it possible to swarm an airport. Can you say extortion? You pay or we some random day swarm your airport. Airlines would lose millions if the airport were shutdown, just look how much Congress cost them by shutting down (which led the airports to shut down). Drones are cheap and the U.S. military cannot right now defend against a swarm attack suddenly launched at civilian airports.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, February 12, 2026 - 06:04 pm: Edit

AI warning:

You tube had posted a clickbait video claiming an “unidentified” American Air Force B-52 bomber out of Thule air base in 1968 was lost without a trace, located in 15,000 feet under the polar ice cap this week.


Sadly, I fell for it thinking there would be SOME factual information.

Sadly, no. Among the more obvious errors,

1. Narrator talking about a”lost” B-52, the image shown was of the Russian submarine Kursk.
2. The mainstream Media site supposedly reporting the find was clearly labeled as CNN, but the anchor was ABC reporter David Muir, on the set of ABC World News Tonite”.
3. Later, under water video of an aircraft turned out to be a WW2 DC-3 twin engined radial propeller cargo airplane.
4. If you listen to the narration, the AI mispronounced “Mediterranean “ and then explained the aircraft was lost just off the southern coast of Spain in 1972.

It was so bad, I couldn’t take anymore of it.

You have been warned.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Friday, February 13, 2026 - 08:53 am: Edit

I am thinking that with the resources of a drug cartel behind the capability to launch drones, that it it possible to swarm an airport.

That's a great way to get a U.S. response, that we all know the Mexican Government wouldn't be happy with.....
Though afterwards, they might actually make an effort to exterminate the cartels, with U.S. support....

Unintended/Unforeseen Consequences.....