Jeff, for the last month Iranian income is probably up. Some of the small portion of ships getting out of the gulf are carrying Iranian oil/gas bound for China/India or other Asian destinations. The first look I saw is they probably exported 75% of their normal volume, at double the price. Then they were collecting tolls (bribes) to allow other nations ships passage. Bloomberg was reporting that the tolls were being paid in Chinese Yuan through the Chinese banking system.

Now Iran may be choosing not to pay some of their troops. Or the damage in their country may be keeping all payments from being made. But their external oil income has increased since the bombing started.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:09 pm: Edit

Leadership: Russian Theoretical Victory Turns To Dust
April 9, 2026: Russian leader Vladimir Putin expected a quick victory over Ukraine in 2022. When that did not happen, NATO countries rushed to support Ukraine and supplied over $200 billion in weapons and equipment. Earlier European appeasement led Putin to expect minimal support for Ukraine. By 2026 the Putin strategy of waiting for Ukraine was revealed to be inadequate and misleading.
By early 2026 it was obvious that Russia had neither a strategy for winning nor a plan for ending its participation in the war. The flaw in Putin’s was that he expected to start a war and then see how it turns out.
Putin’s goals in Ukraine were to discourage the development of democracy within Russia. Then he wanted to begin rebuilding the Soviet empire that disappeared in 1991. Finally, Putin wanted to once more give Russia a veto over military developments in Western Europe while providing economic incentives to nations that would cooperate. Russia was surprised when the NATO nations, who controlled over half the global GDP, dismissed his offers of economic cooperation. Since the Ukraine war began in 2022, European nations have gradually replaced American military aid for Ukraine, paying the Americans for the weapons sent to Ukraine. This meant that Russia could not win in Ukraine and that Russia had no way to compensate for the economic sanctions imposed by the West and was stuck in a war it could not end and was unable to keep paying for.
Invading Ukraine in 2022 proved to be a disaster for the Russian economy. The expected quick win turned into a losing battle against determined Ukrainians armed with over $200 billion of weapons supplied by NATO nations, especially the United States, and at least equal amounts of economic aid. In addition to the unexpected resistance, the Russian economy was hit with substantial economic sanctions that reduced oil income and blocked Russia from receiving vital electronics and other items that could only be obtained from NATO countries.
At the same time Russia was trying to create a wartime economy that could support its efforts in Ukraine while also maintaining sufficient resources to keep more Russians from sliding into poverty. After four years of enormous personnel losses there were fewer men to recruit. A growing number of Russian men, and some soldiers and officers, were fleeing the country. This meant that Russian losses were not just the over 1.3 million dead and disabled soldiers, but millions of men who left Russia.
The government soon outlawed this migration. This slowed migration down but did not stop it. The government realized that most Russians were willing to fight to defend Russia, but many refused to support a Russian invasion of a neighboring country.
The Russian economy also took heavy losses because of the sanctions. The combination of rising personnel losses to combat and migration plus economic sanctions on a war economy proved disastrous for Russia. During the last few years Russian revenues from sanctioned oil and natural gas declined substantially while the percentage of the government devoted to the war increased dramatically.
It was obvious that Russia was having severe financial problems when Russia started to make large withdrawals from the National Welfare Fund, or NWF, rather than increasing contributions to the fund. The NWF exists to keep the economy stable and able to pay for pensions and maintain infrastructure and investment in essential Russian industries. By 2024 the NWF was no longer able to meet all those obligations. Because millions of Russian civilians had fled the country there was a labor shortage. The fall in government tax collections and profits from government-owned petroleum operations ended many infrastructure projects and payments to social welfare programs. When the majority of Russians feel the shortages, the government has a major political problem. Russian civilian morale has been sinking since mid-2023. Popular support for the war was declining. The government tried to resist this by devoting eight percent of the budget to payments for disabled soldiers or the families of dead soldiers. The cash shortages meant these payments were a one-time event during 2023. It could not be repeated because the government was broke.
The war appears to be continuing into 2026 despite Russia’s shortage of cash and soldiers. Russia has hired thousands of North Korean soldiers as a stopgap, but this is a limited resource. North Korea is demanding help with its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. This angered China, the last major ally Russia has. Not only is China reducing economic cooperation with Russia but is also raising the issue of extensive portions of Russia’s Far Eastern Pacific coastal provinces that are claimed by China. Over the last few centuries Russia did take many of these territories from China and now China sees an opportunity to get them back, or simply take them back. If this happens, Russia could lose up to twenty percent of its territory.
To keep the war going in Ukraine, Russia has sacrificed millions of personnel and the health and stability of its economy. To keep the war going, Russia may have to surrender its disputed territories in the Far East. All this has increased pressure on President Vladimir Putin. He has ruled or misruled Russia for 25 years and now faces internal opposition by his key allies. The major economic leaders of Russia, called oligarchs, see their business interests, employees and customers being hurt by Putin’s war. Will Putin risk civil unrest and economic collapse to keep the war going? These are questions that will have to be answered in 2026 when money, patience and military capabilities are all exhausted.


Morale: Russian Imperial Dreams Fade Away
April 9, 2026: when the Israelis and Americans recently attacked Iran, the Iranians asked Russia to fulfill its obligations of their mutual assistance in the event of a threat to sovereignty agreement. Russia did not respond. Then Iran asked Russia to activate its S-400 air defense and electronic warfare systems in Syria to disrupt Israeli air force attacks against Iran. Again, the Russians refused and shut down their S-400 and electronic warfare systems in Syria. Iran had supplied Russia with over four billion dollars’ worth of drones, missiles, ammunition and technology to build Shaheed drones. Yet Russia provided Iran with no assistance during the June 2025 Israeli American air strikes but did provide Iran with lots of the Russian version of Shaheed drones, intelligence information and other aid during the current US/Israeli war against Iran. Russia was defending itself by refusing to be drawn into a war that had nothing to do with Russia. Ukraine had a lot more to do with Russia and that war had destroyed the Russian ground forces and consumed over a half a trillion dollars in Russian cash. This money was desperately needed to rebuild the Russian economy and that process could not begin until the Ukraine war was over.
Russia cannot claim that all its current misfortunes were a surprise. These were self-inflicted wounds. The Russian operation to take the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine had a devastating effect on the other countries that, until 1991, were part of the ancient Russian Empire. The Crimean operation was the second such land grab Russia has undertaken in the last few years. The first was against tiny Georgia in 2008. Then it was Ukraine in 2022. Many of these former Russian subjects feel that the Russians are trying to get their empire back. Ask many Russians that question and most agree that it would be a nice thing. Some Russians are more outspoken and bluntly call for the empire to be reassembled no matter what.
In reaction to this, the fourteen nations that were part of the Soviet Union until 1991, as well as many East European states that were subject to Russian control from the end of World War II to 1989, have become very nervous. Poland is particularly agitated because large parts of Poland were part of the empire for most of the 18th and 19th centuries. Same deal with Finland, which broke away after World War I and had to fight off a Russian invasion in 1940 and many threats since then to stay independent. That makes the forlorn fourteen the scared sixteen. All of these nations have noted what happened to Georgia and Ukraine with great trepidation and are responding in expected and unexpected ways.
The fourteen former Russian imperial possessions that regained their independence are the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, separate countries Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and the five Stans of Central Asia; Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Poland, the Baltic States and Finland escaped from the empire after World War I but only Finland managed to stay free through World War II. The Baltic States were retaken during World War II and Poland remained nominally independent but was occupied by Russian troops and took orders from Russia until 1989.
Poland and the Baltic States joined NATO after the Cold War ended and are hoping that the mutual defense terms of the NATO alliance will dissuade Russia. Nevertheless, all four, plus Finland, have increased their military readiness this year and are seeking assurances from the West that they will have help against Russia. Poland increased its defense spending to the highest percentage of GDP (5 percent) in all of NATO, including the United States.
Many Finns called for Finland to join NATO, but a large minority opposed this because of the fear it would anger the Russians. There was a similar division in Sweden. Both Sweden and Finland did join NATO as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Stans of Central Asia have another option, China. The Stans have been very receptive to Chinese diplomatic and economic cooperation. This bothers Russia, but not to the extent that threats are being made, as was the case with the former imperial provinces to the west. The Stans also have a problem with never having been democracies. When the Russians conquered them in the 19th century, the local governments were monarchies or tribes. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, former Soviet officials held elections and manipulated the vote to get themselves elected president for life. But many people in the Stans wanted clean government and democracy, as well as continued independence from Russia. China is no help with that because the Chinese prefer dictators.
In the Caucasus Georgia still seeks closer ties with the West. Armenia, because of disputes with Azerbaijan and long-term fear of Turkey, remains a close ally of Russia. Azerbaijan maintains good relations with Russia mainly because Iran claims Azerbaijan as a lost province stolen by Russia in the 19th century.
Russia is quite open about wanting to rebuild the old Tsarist Empire that the communists managed to lose in 1991 when the Soviet Union came apart and half the population of that empire went off and formed 14 new countries or reconstituted old ones the Russians had conquered. Russia is proposing things like customs unions, military cooperation and rebuilding the old Soviet air defense system that used to defend everyone in the empire. There’s been some progress, but many nations want nothing to do with Russia.
Meanwhile Russia has to face the fact that when the Soviet Union broke up, half the population willingly went to the 14 new countries and most of those people were quite enthusiastic about ending the Soviet Union. Thus if you asked all citizens of the former Soviet Union what they thought of the breakup, you would find about 70 percent with no regrets. That’s because the Soviet Union was basically the Russian Empire cobbled together by the old czarist monarchy over more than two centuries of conquest and expansion. Thus in the Soviet Union half the population felt like conquered people, not part of any union. The Soviet Union dissolved quickly in 1990-91 because over half the population really wanted it to happen and had wanted it for a long time. Moreover many ethnic Russians were tired of supporting a lot of the less affluent conquered people and were fed up with the economic failures of communism. The former Soviet Union citizens who regret the breakup tend to be older people who were disillusioned at how corruption and bad leadership made post-Soviet life less wonderful than was expected. The younger people are more realistic, never having lived as adults in the Soviet Union and intimately familiar with the fact that freedom isn’t free and democracy is hard. For younger Russians there are more economic opportunities than under communism.
While Russia lost half its population when the Soviet Union broke up, it hung on to most of the valuable natural resources like oil and natural gas. While the post-Soviet government was initially reluctant to increase state supplied pensions, which were low during the Soviet period because there was little to spend it on and the state supplied housing and some health care, the pensions did eventually go up. But not as much as the economy grew and the working Russians were obviously doing better than the pensioners who had grown up under communism. In Soviet times that meant there was little economic opportunity and most everyone was equally poor. The old-timers never got used to the changes and most would prefer the communists to come back. That won’t happen and, as the generations that grew up under communism die off, so will any desire to return to the bad but familiar old days. Nevertheless, enough Russians favor rebuilding the empire to make the idea a popular talking point among major politicians and that may continue for decades.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:09 pm: Edit

Today is the Feast of St Walther Gautier of Pontoise, Patron of Prisoners-of-War

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:10 pm: Edit

Morale: Ukrainian Civilians Feel Imprisoned
April 6, 2026: Last February Ukrainians realized that the four years of war with Russia was equal to the four years Russia, which Ukraine was then a part of, fought the Germans. For most of the war Ukraine was under German occupation. Because of that, after 1945 the Russians correctly suspected many Ukrainians of collaborating with the Germans and thousands of Ukrainians were hauled off to distant prison camps from which many did not return. With the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent nation. Twenty three years later Ukraine was once again attacked by the Russians, who seized Crimea and portions of provinces in eastern Ukraine. In 2022 the situation deteriorated as Russia invaded Ukraine and no one knows how or when this war will end. Through it all, Ukrainian civilians felt trapped by constant threats and decreasing living standards. In 2025 Russia began attacking infrastructure, including power plants. That meant no heat or running water for civilians, who felt they were prisoners of an endless war that could and did always find a way to get worse.
It wasn’t always this way. The Ukraine War has seen the frequent involvement of civilians and civilian groups supporting the war effort. This was a factor from the beginning when civilians used their cell phones to capture pictures, with locations, of Russian military activity, especially air attacks using drones. The Ukrainian government quickly created an organization to receive all these civilian reports and provide civil or military authorities with useful information on a timely basis.
Ukraine was also welcoming when it came to weapons or other military related items developed by individuals or groups of civilians. This was quite different from the situation in Russia, where the government expects civilians to take orders, not make suggestions.
In contrast Ukrainian civilians, most of whom were born or came of age after the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became an independent country, turned to the west for inspiration on how to live, govern and run the economy. When the Russians invaded in 2022, many officers and soldiers were surprised that Ukrainians were no longer culturally related to Russia but had become more like western Europeans.
An example of this was seen in 2023 when Ukraine announced that it was going to spend over half a billion dollars on drones. What was not revealed was the extent of efforts to add more capabilities to commercial drones as well, and the growing number being manufactured by Ukrainian companies. These developers and manufacturers are often small groups of civilian hobbyists that proved capable of creating new features for drones, both commercial and hobbyist-produced models. The Russian invasion spurred a lot of innovation, mainly among Ukrainian developers. Among the items available to commercial customers were a lot of miniature digital video cameras as well as lighter, miniaturized computer components that could be assembled and programmed by users to perform essential tasks, like using AI apps and data from onboard video cameras enemy forces, even if they are camouflaged or in underground bunkers. Constant combat use of these systems enables developers to address shortcomings and continually improves the hardware and software carried on these hunter killer drones. Earlier in the war two drones were needed for this but now all that tech and weapons can be carried and used by one drone.
Wartime developers are able to improve their tech and hardware more rapidly because there is continuous feedback from users. Ukraine had an edge here because many of these developers were hobbyists who knew little about peacetime development, its bureaucracy and counter-productive over-supervision. Ukrainian developers were often creating these new drone techs for friends or family members who were now in the military and eager for whatever help they could get. The Ukrainian military saw this entrepreneurial spirit as an advantage, not some form of insubordination or recklessness. Russians consider the entrepreneurial activities as unauthorized innovations. Despite that, some Russian innovations appeared, but the Russian innovations take longer to arrive and implement.
Most Russian commanders and civilian officials are less willing than their Ukrainian counterparts to encourage individual initiatives. Another problem was that economic sanctions made it more difficult for Russians to obtain the commercial tech that Ukrainians used.
This free access to Western and Chinese components meant Ukraine could build very capable and lethal drones that were designed to carry out one or a small number of missions. That is why Ukraine and Russia are each losing thousands of drones a month. Cheap, useful and expendable is now the rule with most battlefield drones.
Russia is at a disadvantage when it comes to its drone losses because Ukrainian civilians are quick to report to their military any useful information they witness about Russian drones, and military practices in general. Russia tried to shut down Ukrainian access to communications with the Ukrainian military. Initially this was handled by cellphone, but the Russians gradually replaced Ukrainian cell towers with Russian ones wherever they could. Ukrainian civilians found other ways to communicate with the Ukrainian military. One of these alternatives was the widespread use of SpaceX Starlink internet terminals that turned a Ukrainian cellphone, desktop computer or tablet into a communications device that could get past Russian jamming and efforts to eliminate the ability of civilians to communicate with the Ukrainian military or government. Civilians continued to take cellphone photos or videos of Russian activities and transmit this information back to the Ukrainian military. This provided lots of useful target information on Russian forces and facilities.
Many civilian photos and videos showed up on social media, which the Ukrainian military monitors for useful information. Throughout history civilians have often been useful informants for the military. With the appearance of cellphones, the internet and Starlink, civilian contributions have become more numerous, accurate and useful.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:10 pm: Edit

Air Weapons: Colombian Guerilla Drones Befuddle The Military
April 6, 2026: Over the last few years Colombian police and soldiers have had to deal with drug cartels using drones for surveillance and dropping explosives. The surveillance makes it difficult to carry out raids on cartel locations. If police or military vehicles are approaching a cartel location and drones are spotted, the raid is called off because the criminals can see what’s coming and are preparing an ambush. The soldiers and police also use drones but are prohibited from using them to drop explosives in populated areas. Civilians could be hurt. The cartels don’t mind civilian casualties, as they remind people what will happen to them if they cooperate with the security forces.
The cartels spend a lot more money on purchasing drones in large quantities and always seek and purchase new versions of drones. The cartels can also afford to hire technical experts to upgrade their drones with better surveillance, transportation or bomb dropping capabilities. This enables cartels to suppress military drone activity while cartel drones operate with impunity.
Long before Columbian cartels adopted the use of drones to move drugs, Mexican drug cartels used drones to fly drugs over the U.S. border. The drones transport high value drugs such as cocaine. Using drones to smuggle drugs is inevitable. Drones have a small radar signature. They are cheaper to acquire and use than other options, such as building a long tunnel. The drones can carry small payloads of 2-3 kg but have the endurance and range to fly over a hundred kilometers and land automatically at a specific location. All this is controlled by an onboard flight computer and GPS. Someone on the U.S. side can refuel and launch the drone on a return trip. Such drones can be bought for a few hundred dollars and used dozens of times.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:11 pm: Edit

More Russian Corruption In Ukraine
April 6, 2026: A Russian lieutenant-colonel is accused of a multi-million dollar scheme involving soldiers shooting themselves to collect benefits for battlefield injuries. The soldiers got most of the money, but their officers took some of the money for organizing and condoning the scam. Russia pays soldiers nearly $40,000 for severe injuries and about $12,000 for minor ones. The lieutenant colonel encouraged his soldiers to submit claims even if they were not wounded. He would approve the claim and take up to a third of the payments for his cooperation. The soldiers were eager to participate in this scheme. In addition to the money, the real or imagined wound got them out of combat for a while, or permission to return home for a while to recuperate.
When the scheme was discovered, the officers were prosecuted and the soldiers sent back to Ukraine and repaid the money. All this was just another example of the pervasive corruption persisting during Russian combat operations. It’s nothing new and has been around for a long time. While the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine failed as a military effort, it was successful at creating many new opportunities for corruption. This included Russians of all types. At the high end, senior officials at the Defense ministry were outrageously corrupt and did little to hide it. These men were safe in the knowledge that if any of them were prosecuted, they could bribe their way out and still have a lot of money left.
The last round of corruption scandals began in mid-2024 with the arrest of a Russian deputy defense minister. Then the head of the ministry’s personnel directorate was hauled into court. Within weeks more arrests were made. All those detained faced charges of corruption, which were usually denied. The arrests started shortly before President Vladimir Putin began his fifth term on May 7. 2024 as a longtime ally, longtime Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, was demoted.
This immediately raised questions about whether Putin was reasserting control over the Defense Ministry amid the war in Ukraine, whether a turf battle had broken out between the military and the security services, or whether some other scenario was playing out in Moscow. To many this seemed to be a return to the Russian government long described as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
Corruption scandals are not new and officials and top officials have been accused of profiting from their positions for decades. Corruption in Russia is used to encourage some officials, while prosecutions punish those who do not collaborate. Corruption is used to encourage officials to remain loyal to Vladimir Putin or one of Putin’s associates.
Then there is the blackmail technique. Putin prefers officials with embarrassing secrets. When selecting key officials in his government Putin selects the ones most vulnerable to blackmail. Putin wants subordinates who have a secret they want kept secret. The Russian government constantly searches for such secrets so it can threaten to publicize them if the officials do not do as they are told. This hidden secret policy and tolerance for corruption are the key elements in running the current Russian government.
Since 2022 the Ukraine War has led to much larger defense spending which increased graft opportunities. In 2021 the Russian defense budget was 2.7 percent of GDP but in 2024 it was six percent. Over the next few years, the government plans to spend 30 percent of the government budget on the military.
Earlier in 2024 the first official arrested for corruption was a former Deputy Defense Minister who presided over military-related construction projects that had high priority, access to lots of money and few financial controls. One of the projects was the reconstruction of the devastated Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. The Ukrainians held out for a long time and the Russians had to fight hard to capture a city of ruins and unusable factories and port facilities.
The recent arrests are not described as part of an anti-corruption campaign but rather ongoing activities throughout the Russian government. That’s another way of admitting that corruption was everywhere and ongoing as an essential element of making the government work.
Key officials make little effort to hide their new wealth. They do this through ostentatious displays ranging from hundred million dollar yachts to new wrist watches that cost several times their official annual salaries. These displays of stolen wealth by senior government and military officials and their family members were so extensive and obvious that it enraged Russians who were suffering economically because of the cost of the war.
There were more personal costs because nearly a million Russian soldiers have been killed, disabled or disappeared in Ukraine since early 2022. Their families and friends blame the Russian government because it was Russia that invaded Ukraine, not the other way around. During World War II, the last time Russia was invaded, there was little corruption in part because 13 percent of Russians died in that war. Most of them were killed by the Germans but many were killed by the Russian government in order to maintain loyalty.
After 1941 prompt obedience to orders was a matter of life or death for Russian soldiers and civilians because military officers and NKVD secret police personnel could kill any Russian displaying reluctance or refusal to carry out orders. The desperate situation during World War II limited opportunities for corruption. The war in Ukraine is different but as many corrupt officials are discovering, not different enough to keep them out of prison or an early grave.
The recent arrests, prosecutions and imprisonment of senior officials who were corrupt, or too obviously corrupt, has sent a message to all senior officials in jobs giving them access to the swollen defense budget that is now 6.7 percent of GDP. Before the invasion it was 2.7 percent. Putin thought the invasion would quickly overthrow the Ukrainian government. That did not happen and the costs of that war are more than Russia can afford. This is nothing new, it was decades of spending 15 percent of GDP on defense, and tolerating a lot of corruption by senior officials, that caused the Soviet Union to collapse in 1991. Many Russian economists and bankers believe another economic collapse, similar to what destroyed the Soviet Union, is possible unless the increased defense spending is restrained along with the growing corruption.

FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:13 pm: Edit

Yemen: April Update
April 6, 2026: Iran continued to smuggle weapons to the Houthi rebels in Yemen until these shipments were disrupted by the current Israeli American attacks on Iran. The Houthis still have enough missiles, rockets and small boats carrying explosives to send enough to the Red Sea to damage or sink commercial shipping. The Houthis have threatened to, but not resumed, their attacks. That could change at any moment.
In 2024 the Iran-backed Shia Houthi militia began hijacking passing merchant ships, as the Al Shabab militants in nearby Somalia have been doing for decades. CMF 151, the international maritime patrol off Somalia was created in 2009. For the last seven years CMF 151 hasn’t had much to do, but now the pirates are back, in Yemen and Somalia. The Houthis also fire some missiles at Israel, causing damage and casualties. The Israelis responded with air and naval attacks on the main Yemeni port of Hodeidah and the capital city Saana. The United States also launched a series of airstrikes across Yemen.
The Houthis are also accused of cutting underwater cables in the Red Sea, disrupting internet access in the Middle East and parts of Asia. Throughout all this refugees from Africa were crossing from Somalia or Ethiopia, though some of these boats don’t make it and hundreds of refugees have died this way in 2025,
At the end of the year the tribal militias of the Southern Transitional Council claims took control of eight provinces in southern Yemen, including Aden, the largest port in Yemen. This new entity will become another independent entity in Yemen.
The Houthi militia is losing but refuse to make peace out of fear of the consequences. They used their Iran-supplied rockets and missiles to fire at merchant ships heading up the Red Sea to the Suez Canal, and occasionally at Israel and Saudi Arabia. One of those missiles landed in Israel. Because of all this Houthi mischief both Israel and the United States launched air strikes on Houthi operations as well as economic targets in Yemen. Iran is no longer able to resupply the Houthis with missiles and UAVs because Israeli air strikes destroyed key elements of the Iranian missile production industry. It’s been a bad year for the Houthi militia, and several countries plan to make 2026 an even worse year.
A century ago, before oil income dominated Arabian politics, Yemen was the land of promise as it is the only portion of the Arabian Peninsula that receives enough rain for crops. Since World War II Iran has become wealthy and powerful because of oil wealth but made so much trouble that since 2015 economic sanctions have crippled the economy and military adventurism has brought devastating armed reprisals.
Yemen proved to be an embarrassment for Iran and the Saudi/UAE-backed Yemen government. The other Arabs are not willing to suffer the heavy casualties a quick victory would require over militant Yemen. The war dragged on into 2025 but is now faltering because Iran is no longer sending missiles to Yemen. Iranian withdrawal from Houthi support occurred this year because Iran was overwhelmed by sanctions and Israeli reprisals.
Yemen unrest evolved into a full-scale civil war in 2015. That was when Shia rebels (the Houthis) sought to take control of the entire country. Neighboring Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, quickly formed a military coalition to halt the Yemeni rebel advance. The Arab coalition succeeded and by 2016 pro-government forces were closing in on the rebel-held capital. The coalition did not go after the capital itself because of the expected heavy casualties and property damage in the city. The coalition concentrated on rebuilding the Yemeni armed forces, recruiting allies from the Sunni tribes in the south and eliminating al Qaeda and ISIL groups that had grown stronger as the Shia rebels gained more power. As the fighting intensified in early 2015 Iran admitted it had been quietly supporting the Shia rebels for a long time but now was doing so openly, and that support was increasing.
Many Yemenis trace the current crisis back to the civil war that ended, sort of, in 1994. That war was caused by the fact that, when the British left Yemen in 1967, their former colony in Aden became one of two countries called Yemen. The two Yemen’s finally united in 1990 but another civil war in 1994 was needed to seal the deal. That fix didn't really take and the north and south have been pulling apart ever since. This comes back to the fact that Yemen has always been a region, not a country. Like most of the rest of the Persian Gulf and Horn of Africa region, the normal form of government until the 20th century was wealthier coastal city states nervously coexisting with interior tribes that got by on herding or farming or a little of both plus smuggling and other illicit sidelines. This whole nation idea is still looked on with some suspicion by many in the region. This is why the most common forms of government are the more familiar ones of antiquity like kingdom, emirate or their modern variation in the form of a hereditary secular dictatorship.
For a long time, the most active Yemeni rebels were the Shia Islamic militants in the north. They have always wanted to restore local Shia rule in the traditional Shia tribal territories, led by the local imam religious leader. This arrangement, after surviving more than a thousand years, was ended by the central government in 1962. After 2007 Yemen became the new headquarters of AQAP/Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula when Saudi Arabia was no longer safe for the terrorists. Next was ISIL and an invading army composed of troops from oil-rich neighbors. By late 2017 the rebels were slowly losing ground to government forces who, despite Arab coalition air support and about five thousand ground troops, were still dependent on Yemeni Sunni tribal militias to fight the Shia tribesmen on the ground. While the Shia are only a third of the population, they are united while the Sunni tribes are divided over the issue of again splitting the country in two and with no agreement on who would get the few oil fields in central Yemen. Many of the Sunni tribes tolerated or even supported AQAP and ISIL. The Iranian smuggling pipeline continued to operate, and the Yemen rebels were able to buy additional weapons from other sources because they received cash from nations or groups hostile to the Arab Gulf state, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The Shia rebels live in northern Yemen and control the border with Saudi Arabia. Over the last decade the rebels launched more and more attacks on Saudi targets. The rebels obtained more powerful weapons as well, including Iranian ballistic missiles, which were disassembled so they could be smuggled from Iran to Yemen where Iranian technicians supervised the missiles being assembled and launched into Saudi Arabia. In the last few years, the rebels have received longer range ballistic missiles that could hit Saudi and UAE oil production facilities on the Persian Gulf coast.
The rebels also fired more missiles at targets passing the Yemen Red Sea coast controlled by the rebels. This has always been a potential threat to ships using the Red Sea to reach the Suez Canal in Egypt, at the north end of the Red Sea. Transit fees from ships using the canal are a major source for Egypt, bringing in nearly $10 billion a year. Egypt and Iran are enemies and reducing Suez Canal income is a win for Iran, which supported the Yemen rebels for more than a decade to make that success possible. At the end of 2023 Iran ordered the Yemen rebels to open fire on shipping in the Red Sea, which moves along the Yemen coast on its way to or from Saudi ports or the Suez Canal.
Ships unable to use the canal must take the longer route around the southern tip of Africa. This takes more time and increases costs for the shipping company and their customers. In 2024 Americans and Israeli airstrikes devastated ports on the west coast of Yemen and destroyed most of the missiles smuggled in from Iran. Meanwhile Iran was running out of missiles, and a tighter naval blockade reduced the number of weapons reaching the Shia Houthi militia in Yemen.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:14 pm: Edit

Misunderstood Myths Of The Ukraine War
April 5, 2026: NATO countries have sent Ukraine half a trillion dollars to assist in defeating the Russian invaders. This resulted in Russia suffering 1.3 million casualties, a third of them dead and the loss of over 20,000 tanks and armored vehicles. The Russian armored force was wiped out, and Russia is having a hard time rebuilding their armor units. It will be years after the war is over before that force can be reconstituted. Meanwhile, NATO nations continue to supply Ukraine with cash for reconstruction and military aid to push the Russians out of Ukraine. NATO countries also want Russia to provide security guarantees if there is peace.
Another surprising event was the Ukrainian development of drone warfare. The Russians responded with their own drones, but Ukraine remains ahead in the drone race for battlefield superiority. During a NATO exercise last year, Ukrainian drone operators operated the Russian side in a mock battle against a NATO opponent and quickly destroyed two battalions of NATO troops. This led a NATO observer who witnessed the event to observe that “were screwed if we go up against a drone-equipped foe.”
Meanwhile, Russian forces are demonstrating how this works, their forces having taken 1.5 percent of Ukrainian territory in the last two years. The Ukrainians are now on the offensive while the Russians have to hire foreigners to replace Russian losses. Russia is now losing more men each month than they can replace. The Russians are also learning that, by not losing, the Ukrainians are winning.
This is not the first time the Russians discovered they had miscalculated their military ability. When the Cold War ended in 1991 and Russian archives were opened for a while, a lot of mysteries were revealed. Some revelations still cause problems, not because so many myths were disproved but because about the same time the Internet came along and made it much more difficult to keep secrets or create false realities and maintain them in the future. Thus, Russia and China, as well as traditionally the more open societies in the West, could not revive the useful, for all governments, secrecy and control of information that reached a peak in the 20th century. It was the reach and control of pre-Internet mass media that made so many corrupt and murderous dictatorships possible. A few are still trying to hang on, but that proves difficult in an age of instant worldwide communications.
The opening of the Soviet archives documented how crucial it was for a tyrant to declare any military information a state secret and enforce those rules. This was especially true when it came to revealing how ineffective their armed forces actually were, past and present and future. Thus, until the Cold War ended, the true extent of the World War II casualties Russia suffered, nearly 30 million dead, was considered a state secret and the number admitted to was less than half the real one. The extent to which corruption and government incompetence played a major role in causing Russian economic failure and military defeats also became known in excruciating detail. For example, the archives revealed that the Russians, not the Chinese, ordered and enabled North Korea to invade the South in 1950. Chinese sources confirmed this once the Internet and mass access reached China. It made it clear the Chinese had always resented being dragged into a costly Russian war.
This version of the Korean War undermines the authority of the current Kim dynasty that has ruled the north since 1945 and desperately clings to power in an age where tyrants can’t hide their misdeeds. The Kims tried to keep cell phones and the Internet out and were relatively successful. But like a small breach in a massive dam the details of their misdeeds got in and caused the police state to crumble from top to bottom. For example, by 2016 more and more North Korean university students were bribing their way out of mandatory participation in major patriotic holiday celebrations. This came as a shock to the government because eventually these university students would run the police state but, if they don’t believe in the Kim version of history, will the Kims still be in charge? China doubts it and most Chinese have already made clear to their own communist, but no longer socialist, rulers that this applies to everyone. The current Chinese rulers are trying to deal with reality while the Kims are trying to ignore it. And anyone with access to the Internet, which the world population now has, can follow the drama in real time.
Other revelations from the Moscow archives revealed that the Soviets had already created schemes that were indeed stranger than fiction. These included a plan to move saboteurs from Nicaragua across the Mexican border and into the U.S. disguised as illegal aliens. Radar stations, pipelines and power towers were all targeted in great detail as were port facilities in places like New York City. Other archive documents, available to researchers for a few years in the early 1990s. when a fistful of hundred dollar bills could work wonders, delivered all manner of disturbing and now well documented proofs. The Rosenbergs were indeed Russian spies, Alger Hiss was mixed up in Russian espionage efforts, and the American Communist Party was in the pay of the Soviet Union and served as a tool for espionage, subversion and propaganda. Many left wing writers and politicians were either on the Soviet payroll, or eager to assist Soviet espionage activities.
With all this information it became possible to more accurately assess the nature, extent and effectiveness of communist era espionage. The Soviets didn’t really invent anything new, but they energetically improved upon ancient techniques and thus made the 20th century a golden age for spying. Basically, the Russians realized that successful spying was all about developing a lot of personal relationships and then exploiting as many as possible. Early on, in the 1920s and 30s, the Soviets had a lot of capable and eager agents. And there were many communist sympathizers worldwide. Thousands of these pro-Communists were turned into valuable Soviet agents. Those that got caught were declared martyrs or, if possible, persecuted patriots of their home countries. Nothing was wasted.
Also revealed was proof that Stalin’s purges in the late 1930s brought this golden age to an end. Most of the excellent Soviet agents were executed. Many of the foreign spies began to have second thoughts about working for the Soviet Union. But then World War II came along and made recruiting spies easier for a time. This continued for a while after World War II. But without the large number of skilled and loyal true believers, some new enticements were used. The most frequently used ploy was to threaten the safety of relatives behind the Iron Curtain. Western counterintelligence soon caught on to this, and having relatives back in the old country kept a lot of people from getting security clearances or sensitive jobs.
But the Soviets had many more techniques they could use. Sex and blackmail, often used together, were very successful. Attractive men and women were recruited, trained and sent forth to be romantic for the revolution. This worked particularly well in West Germany, where East German spy studs recruited a number of key female staff in NATO and West German organizations. By the 1970s, the Soviets were frequently using the most basic of all enticements, money. This worked quite well, and until the end of the Cold War Western nations refused to realize how successful this approach could be. We also underestimated how many secrets could be uncovered by simply collecting all the information freely available in a democracy. In the last two decades of the Soviet Union its spies were increasingly successful in obtaining valuable information this way, but telling their bosses it was really from well-placed spies. The spymasters in Moscow never caught on to this little deception or didn’t care as long as the good stuff kept coming back to Moscow.
Other nations have since developed new angles that are, in some ways, superior to the Soviet innovations and refinements. China, for example, has had large overseas populations for centuries. These overseas Chinese usually did not assimilate completely and retained considerable loyalty, and family connections, with the homeland. For many decades after World War II, most overseas Chinese were either anti-communist or reluctant to get involved with Chinese politics. But once China began economic reforms in the 1970s this changed. It was OK to visit China, and to receive Chinese officials in America. This was Chinas espionage opportunity.
While the Russians had few agents who could pass for Americans, and operate freely in the U.S., Chinas spies could get away with just being Chinese. They used the soft sell, realizing that by collecting small bits of information from many people, most of whom did not even consider themselves spies, it would be very difficult to stop. From time to time, the Chinese received large, and obviously illegal, amounts of information. But the most important aspect of this technique is that it is difficult to stop, and you don’t even have many indictable spies to catch. Picking up small pieces of information from many sources is an ancient technique. The Chinese also make good use of the old Soviet open source opportunities. But combining this with the many minor bits of data gleaned from unsuspecting overseas Chinese scientists and engineers provided a constant supply of useful foreign secrets.
China and Russia were also quick to take advantage of espionage via the Internet. The West had more to steal and was more vulnerable, especially military and government organizations that could not afford to recruit the best internet security talent to protect their networks. Corporations were another matter although it may be years before we discover just how vulnerable the defense firms actually were. In any event the Russians soon learned that having the tech was not as important as being able to build it, which they still could not do. Moreover the Russian economy never reformed like the Chinese did. When Russia got involved in places like Ukraine and Syria and used the best tech they had they discovered that not only was their new stuff exposed to Western scrutiny but that smaller, but Internet savvy nations like Ukraine and the Baltic States were able to scrutinize and weaken the Russian electronic weapons using a combination of some unclassified Western tech and their own local internet talent. Syria was particularly embarrassing because the Russians found themselves watched carefully by an adversary, Israel, they had long known to be formidable. Allies like Iran, Syria and Turkey proved to be more liability than asset.
China found it could build a lot of the new military tech, because of several decades of economic, market economy, reform. But China was still hobbled by its lack of a Western style professional military and long traditions of military corruption.
The revelations of the Russian archives proved disturbing and disruptive in China as well. The Internet made it impossible to simply suppress all this. To their credit the Chinese leaders tried to use this to their advantage. For example, in 2015 the Chinese government allowed some retired generals to publish articles pointing out that most of Chinas past military defeats had been because of corrupt officers. All this has been recognized since the 1990s, but the problem persists and the Chinese rulers were admitting the obvious; that this ancient practice was still thriving in 21st century China. New laws had been passed to deal with it and some were energetically enforced, for a while at least, but the rot survived.
The biggest problem for many senior officials was not the corruption but the inability to keep it quiet. Thanks to the spread of cell phone and Internet use since the 1990s there were ample opportunities for Chinese, in or out of the military, to get more incidences of corruption recorded and exposed. Eventually most senior government officials realized that all their ambitious plans for regaining lost, over the last two centuries, territory meant little if the military was crippled by corruption. Now many more Chinese and foreigners were reconsidering actual Chinese military capabilities. This made it clear that the critics, Chinese and foreign and historians were right and that the traditional corruption in the Chinese military was very much alive, very difficult to control and not likely to be eliminated without extraordinary efforts. The Russians also recognized these historical facts and the role it played in weakening the former communist hold on power. The archives showed how despite that awareness the Soviet empire died for lack of a solution to known problems.
Recent Chinese investigations, including many interviews with old soldiers, discovered that the Chinese corruption didn’t even disappear, as many were led to believe, in the early years, late 1940s to 1960s of communist rule in China. This was particularly demoralizing, as it was thought that there was some kind of Mao Magic in the 1950s when the leading founder of communist China, Mao seemed capable of doing anything. That included, it was later revealed, crippling the Chinese economy in a major way and causing a massive famine that killed over ten million Chinese. For the current corruption problem, passing more laws doesn’t seem to help much. For example, in 2010 China enacted new laws that put additional pressure on the military to maintain quality standards in the construction and use of military equipment. At the time many were alarmed at why something like this was thought necessary. Its all because many Chinese people assumed that if you got a government job, you had a license to steal. In the military, this meant weapons were built in substandard ways and equipment was not properly maintained. Military corruption is an ancient Chinese custom and accounts for most of the poor military performance in the past.
A more recent problem involves building a seagoing fleet, something China had never bothered with in the past. The details of how difficult this is are eagerly sought by many Chinese and publicized with cell phone videos and illegal Internet postings. The government still punishes some of these illegal journalists but has learned to make the most of it by using these truths to encourage Chinese who agree that a new Chinese empire is a good thing. Many Chinese do to play their part and keep the heat on corrupt military commanders. This sort of peacetime reality check for officers is something new, but it is making it possible for the Chinese to actually make some progress in training competent crews and maintaining warships far from China, something never done before. This sort of thing is essential if their new aircraft carrier force is to succeed and the government has to admit the obvious; that it will take decades to match Western levels of expertise.
Early in the now non-communist Russia, the new government tried various forms of democracy. By 1999 the country was run by former KGB secret police officers who admitted some of the past mistakes but have been unable to create anything which solved a lot of the old problems. The current Russian participation in the Syrian war and efforts to regain parts of the lost empire in the Caucasus and Ukraine are carried out by people who know of past errors but feel helpless to avoid repeating them. For example, by now many Russians know about how Russia got into a messy war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. At the time Russian military staff proved they were quite good at calculating the correlation of forces for an operation and predicting the probability of success. That math did not look good when it comes to invading Ukraine. The old Soviet Stavka general staff famously warned against going into Afghanistan in 1979 on the grounds that the lack of roads and railroads there prevented Russia from putting enough forces into Afghanistan to quickly crush opposition. Russian political leaders ignored this and less than a decade later withdrew from Afghanistan because the general staff had been right.
But there is one aspect of the new Cold War that is very déjà vu. That is the way American military commanders are responding to all the military theatrics by solemnly declaring that the enemy Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Iranian military threat may be more than the United States can handle. This sort of thing is reminiscent of the Cold War exaggerations of Soviet Russian military power. Even during the Cold War, many civilian analysts pointed out the tendency to overestimate the effectiveness of Soviet weapons, equipment, leadership and training. This distortion became pretty obvious after the Cold War, when much was revealed.
The puffery is back now with regard to China and Russia. Its no secret that China and Russia have long found it impossible to create effective military forces in peacetime. Not to underestimate them, but both nations have a long history of spectacular failure in this area. The Soviets proved that the historical lessons still apply and the Chinese make some serious efforts to deal with it openly.
But there were still a lot of military secrets and untried weapons and troops that make it an easy matter to report the other sides weapons as being, if only potentially, more lethal than they actually are. This culture of exaggeration, even during the Cold War, was often just called professional courtesy. The Russian intelligence agencies also exaggerated the capabilities of American weapons. Thus, the generals on both sides of the Iron Curtain had a better chance of getting more money out of their respective governments. Now its become clear that post-Cold War Russian and Chinese military capabilities are not as fearsome as Cold War era puffery would have it.
Despite that we have the Cold War attitudes returning and with that the return of professional courtesy when it comes to evaluating the state of the Chinese and Russian armed forces. North Korea and Iran suffer from the same form of self-deception. The goal of this self-serving spin to get a larger defense budget and less criticism over corruption appears to be the same as it always was, and as resistant to change.

FYEO

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:15 pm: Edit

Jeff, I of course agree that Iran is having money problems. But it remains true that they have some income. If they get an oil tanker out, which they are doing some of, that will afford a lot of $30k drones.

Those $30k Shaheds don't need a radio connection either. They program in the coordinates then it flies without a tether.

My biggest annoyance on drones is that the US is way behind the curve. We used up hundreds of $3 million Patriot interceptors to shoot down $30k Shaheds. This could have instead been done with inexpensive Ukrainian tech.

Offensively, we could and should have used drones way more for attacks on the IRGC. We could have been doing this at per-shot prices ranging from $1000 or so up to $35k for a LUCAS. This would have been more sustainable than the current campaign. I suspect a reason for the ceasefire is that the US is running low on certain expendables.

Drones also avoid the risk of getting pilots shot down over Iran.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:18 pm: Edit

Procurement: NATO Fails To Deliver In Ukraine
April 5, 2026: Ukraine is disappointed with its NATO supporters for consistently being too late in delivering essential weapons and money. In hindsight, it is obvious that vigorous and massive NATO support immediately after the 2022 Russian invasion could have halted the Russians within a year. By 2026 Russia was still in Ukraine and over 10 million Ukrainians were freezing during a winter marked by Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure. The problem is that NATO countries never fully admitted that they needed Ukraine to prevent Russian forces from moving east. NATO nations delay imposing more economic sanctions on Russia or energetically going after the Russian shadow fleet transporting sanctions Russian oil exports. Ukraine went ahead and destroyed Russian shadow tankers. Ukraine wants an end to the war on Ukrainian terms because without such a peace, Europe will be the next target.
Two years ago, NATO analysts believed that Russia would continue to be a threat even after the Ukraine War was over. The invasion of Ukraine proved that the post-World War II creators of NATO were correct. While Russia was threatening from 1947 to 2021, that 74 year Cold War turned hot in 2022 when Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine. Vladimir Putin, a former secret police officer, gained control of Russia in 1999 and made no secret of his desire to reassemble the Soviet Union. This would involve persuading or conquering the other fourteen nations that came to life in 1991 when the Soviet Union was disbanded.
The largest of the fifteen states was the Russian Federation. The next largest was Ukraine and that made Ukraine the first nation Russia needed to subjugate and absorb. The 1991 Soviet Union had 300 million people. By 2022 Russia had 142 million and Ukraine 46 million. None of the other post-Soviet states wanted to rejoin the Soviet Union.
Other NATO members may join the U.S. and Britain, if only to ensure that the NATO ability to retaliate involves more than two of the 32 NATO members. By providing massive support for Ukraine, and NATO membership after the war, NATO serves a warning to China that threatening NATO members is risky. China needs trade with NATO nations more than a military stalemate or war. China disagreed with the Russian decision to invade Ukraine and has been circumspect and stingy in providing economic aid for its neighbor and economic partner.
While NATO didn’t want to fight Russia, it was willing to supply Ukraine with weapons, munitions and economic aid to defeat the Russian invaders. NATO also backed international sanctions on Russia which crippled the Russian economy and made it difficult for Russian to continue its war against Ukraine.
Russia, frustrated that its conventional forces could not conquer Ukraine, threatened to use its nuclear weapons. That was not a real threat because three NATO nations had nuclear weapons. In addition to the United States, France and Britain had nuclear weapons that could be delivered by aircraft or missiles fired from submarines. The nuclear threat was a phantom, and Russia insisted its conventional forces would keep fighting in Ukraine until NATO got tired of the expense of supporting Ukraine. NATO nations believed Russia would give up first because the war was making life difficult for the Russian people, who were increasingly hostile to the war.
Some NATO members are suggesting that NATO members be allowed to send troops to assist the Ukrainians in expelling the Russian forces. It is pointed out that the NATO coalition has a population of nearly a billion people. Adding Ukraine would make it a billion. Russia does not want Ukraine in NATO, but Ukraine sees NATO membership as its only long term protection from Russia. A 1994 treaty had Ukraine give up its nuclear weapons in return for Russian promises to forever respect Ukrainian independence. Britain and the U.S. pledged to assist Ukraine if Russia violated the treaty. This is why the NATO threat to send troops to aid Ukraine is frightening. Russia reneged on the 1994 promises and the Americans and British agreed to support Ukraine if that happened. It happened and Russia faces war with the largest economic coalition on the planet.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:19 pm: Edit

Surface Forces : French Intervention Frigates
April 4, 2026: Later this year France will put into service the first of five French 4,500-ton Amiral Ronarc'h intervention frigates. These 122 meter-long ships have a top speed of 50 kilometers an hour and a range of 9,300 kilometers while cruising at 28 kilometers an hour. Endurance is 45 days. The ships are operated by a crew of 125 that operate AESA air and surface search radar, fire control and hull and towed radar. Weapons include a 76mm cannon, two 20mm remotely controlled autocannon for anti-missile and small boat threats. There are eight Exocet anti-ship missiles. There are two eight cell VLS/Vertical Launch System cells for anti-aircraft missiles. There are four tubes loaded with MU90 anti-submarine torpedoes. Also carried are one surveillance drone and a NH90 helicopter.
France has a long history of developing new warships. One notable example was seen eleven years ago when France developed the FREMM/Frigate European Multi-mission. These ships cost about a billion dollars each. The 6,000 ton FREMMs are 142 meters long, with a top speed of 50 kilometers an hour and range of 11,000 kilometers. The ships are highly automated, with a crew of only 108 sailors. Equipment and weapons vary a bit as each nation prefers to arm the vessels with locally produced weapons and equipment. The most common armament is half a dozen Mu-90 torpedoes, eight Otomat Mk2A anti-ship missiles or Exocet MM40 anti-ship missiles. All FREMMs use Aster 15 and 30 anti-aircraft missiles with a max range 30 kilometers for model 15 and 100 kilometers for model 30. There are two 25mm autocannon and two helicopters. The Italian FREMMs are equipped with towed sonar, so that they can specialize in anti-submarine operations. France produced FREMM optimized for air defense. France also equipped its FREMMs so that some of the Aster missiles can be replaced with Scalp cruise missiles that have a range of over 1,000 kilometers.
All FREMMs have the Eurotorp MU90 Impact torpedo. MU90 has a directed energy warhead and a range of 12 kilometers at maximum speed and 25 kilometers at minimum speed. French FREMMs use one OTO Melara 76mm Super Rapid gun while Italian FREMMs have two OTO Melara 127mm that use guided shells.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:19 pm: Edit

Iran: Iranian Drones in the March Campaign
April 4, 2026: In response to Israeli and American air strikes, Iran retaliated against the Arab Persian Gulf countries. The attacks began during the first week of March. The UAE/United Arab Emirates were hit by 1,688 systems, including 1,422 drones and 246 missiles during March 1- 8. This was the largest attack launched on any state. Bahrain and Kuwait received heavy attacks because of their proximity to Iran and the presence of American military facilities.
Iran extended its drone attacks to port facilities in Oman and commercial shipping using the Strait of Hormuz, the vital passage in and out of the Persian Gulf. This was a deliberate effort to halt oil exports and commercial ships delivering cargoes to the Gulf States. After March 1st, daily drone strikes averaged about 250 a day. Drones used were Shahed-136, Shahed-107, and Shahed-238 models. The Gulf Arab states have not retaliated themselves for these Iranian attacks.
Aircraft from Israel and the United States continued to attack Iranian drone launching sites and the remaining Iranian warships in the Gulf but have not yet allowed ships to once more use the Strait of Hormuz freely.
This campaign confirmed the importance of drone warfare, something that Iran was an early exponent of. Iran developed its delta-wing 200 kg propeller driven Shahed 136 drone a decade ago and it was first used by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen during 2019. After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Iran provided Russia with Shahed 136s. By the end of 2022 Iran agreed to assist Russia in building a factory in Russia that would produce a Russian version of the Shahed 136 called Geran. Until late 2024, when the Geran factory in Russia was operational, Iran manufactured the Geran and received help from Russia in upgrading the Shaheed drones. Since 2022, Russia has used about 50,000 Shaheds and Gerans against Ukraine. During 2025 that meant Ukraine had to deal with five to six thousand Gerans a month. Ukrainian interception methods were quite effective, and only about ten percent of the drones reached their targets. Each of these drones’ costs Russia about $20,000.
Russia is now producing over 5,000 Gerans a month. These 200 kg drones travel at a speed of 180 kilometers an hour at an altitude of about 100 meters. They carry a 50 kg warhead. GPS navigation is jammable when close to the target while the unjammable, but less accurate INS backup is not affected.
Russia has continually upgraded its Gerans with improved electronics. That means guidance systems that are resistant to jamming and use more effective and flexible guidance systems. The first Gerans only had inertial guidance systems and a CRPA/Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna. This arrangement soon failed as the Ukrainians used more powerful jamming and misdirection/spoofing techniques. To deal with this, in early 2025 improved CRPAs and a video camera were added to keep the Gerans effective. After that, Ukrainian SIMs were added so the Gerans could use cell phone signals for navigation. At this point Gerans were able to communicate with each other and operate in preplanned clusters and cooperate with each other in a mesh network to limit the impact of Ukrainian jamming and other electronic warfare techniques. That soon led to use of Chinese MESH communication systems that enabled Russian ground based operators to control groups of Gerans. The operators could change targets or have the Gerans fly higher or lower to deal with Ukrainian countermeasures. A more recent addition was an infrared/night vision camera that was supplied with images of targets to improve accuracy as the Gerans came within visual range of a target.
By 2025 there was a larger variety of Geran warheads available including thermobaric/fuel-air explosive, incendiary-fragmentation, high-explosive, high-explosive airburst, and submunitions. In 2024 a 90kg warhead was introduced that combined a penetrator-shaped charge with a layer of steel balls to pierce fortified infrastructure and inflict maximum casualties.
The most recent Geran-3 is a jet powered model that weighs 370 kg with a top speed of nearly 600 kilometers an hour. This is three times faster than the prop driven models and much more difficult for Ukrainian air defenses to deal with. Ukraine soon came up with a $3,000 interceptor drone called Wild Hornets’ Sting. Russia will probably respond with rear-facing video cameras on the Germans to alert operators to the presence of Ukrainian interceptors. The Gerans can take evasive maneuvers to avoid getting shot down. The Russians also experimented with a Geran equipped with a heat-seeking air-to-air missile.
Like most western militaries, Russia has become dependent on the use of missiles and drones instead of artillery and airstrikes. Ukraine reports that, from late 2022 through late 2024, Russia used 4,800 missiles and nearly 150,000 attack drones. The missiles are expensive, most costing one or two million dollars each, while some of the drones cost $20,000. More recent battlefield drone designs cost only a few hundred dollars each. It was thought that the inexpensive drones would replace the use of 155mm artillery. The range and cost of artillery shells vary from $3,000 to $100,000 depending on version and purpose. The basic 155mm shell weighs 43 kg and contains about seven kg of explosives. The standard Russian equivalent is the 152mm shell.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 02:21 pm: Edit

Space: Russian Satellites Steal NATO Secrets
April 3, 2026: Two new Russian satellites Luch-1 and Luch-2 have been behaving in a suspicious manner. It was eventually discovered that these satellites were intercepting information flowing through these geostationary satellites to several European countries. This means that Russia now has access to many NATO secrets, including plans to aid Ukraine and disrupt Russian sabotage missions in Europe and intelligence efforts throughout the world. This is surprising because, since 2024, the Russian GLONASS satellite system has been in trouble. The problem is a familiar one, too many GLONASS satellites are ending their service lives, usually seven years, and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, does not have the money to replace all of the GLONASS satellites. The cash shortage means the program to build improved GLONASS satellites, like GLONASS-K, which is the first GLONASS satellite that is unpressurized and weighs much less at 750 kg while also having a longer service life of ten years. The current GLONASS-M weighs 1,450 kg and has a service life of seven years.
Currently most of the 20 or so GLONASS satellites in service are past their seven year service lives and as expected, operating erratically and starting to fail. Maintaining the worldwide GLONASS satellite network does not have a high priority because Russian personal, commercial, and military satellite navigation users have long used satellite navigation equipment that contained GLONASS and American GPS receivers. This combination provides more accurate location information and a more reliable system because the two satellite systems contain about fifty satellites.
Keeping GLONASS active with a full constellation of 24 satellites with the latest technology is expensive and used to depend on a steady supply of high-tech components only available from the United States and its allies. Imports of those are blocked by Western sanctions for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Recently China has also become a major supplier of electronics needed for navigation satellites. Russia has the option to buy the components it used to obtain from Western countries. Depending on China for components does not solve the fundamental problem that Russia does not have the money to maintain GLONASS. Since the American GPS system began operating in 1993, several other similar systems have appeared. GLONASS went online in 2011 and the Chinese Beidou came online in 2020, at the same time as the European Galileo system. Creating and maintaining these global systems is expensive and only the United States and China have been able to finance continuous operation and upgrades. Galileo, which is paid for by a coalition of nations, has had problems getting coalition members to provide the needed funds. Russia tried to compete but ran out of money.
Multiple global positioning satellite systems increase the accuracy and reliability of the signals, as well as provide redundancy and interoperability in case of disruption of service. Multiple systems can also create problems involving spectrum congestion, signal interference, and coordination complications.
By 2020 it was believed that current anti-jamming efforts were sufficient to keep American military GPS use viable for a while. That was optimistic because improvements in GPS jamming and spoofing technology were introduced more rapidly than expected. Since GPS disruption it has become increasingly obvious that Russia has been regularly jamming or spoofing GPS signals, mainly to hide the exact location equipment that allows GPS tracking. In the last five years there have been thousands of incidents where Russia has been jamming or spoofing satellite navigation signals used by the American GPS, Chinese Beidou, Europe’s Galileo and Russian GLONASS when used by foreigners. Most of this activity was not obvious jamming but the more difficult to detect spoofing. Russia used this to conceal the true location of key Russian government officials and Russian military units. The spoofing was particularly common for Russian military forces in Ukraine and Syria. Spoofing replaced the actual satellite signal with a false one that rendered smart bombs or planned attacks on targets inaccurate. Spoofing can introduce false signals gradually and sometimes delay a navigation system's realization that it is being deceived. That’s one function of the INS Inertial Navigation System, to act as a monitor for GPS as well as a backup.
Current INS tech relies on receiving an accurate GPS location initially, and periodically thereafter, to keep both GPS and INS location data in sync. GPS depends on continuous satellite signals to operate and the INS is only used to step in and replace GPS when its satellite signal becomes temporarily too weak, or absent. When an accurate GPS signal is achieved, INS goes back into standby mode. Spoofing can now mimic these momentary disruptions and evade detection as a false signal by the INS, which is completely self-contained. This is sometimes a problem for American guided weapons sent to Ukraine that do not have the latest anti-jamming tech installed.
American INS researchers are not the only ones seeking an INS that is accurate and persistent enough to replace GPS for extended periods. INS has long suffered from the inability to provide as accurate a location as satellite navigation systems as the gyroscope and acceleration capabilities now performed by microelectronics of the chip-based INS cannot maintain as continuously precise location as the space satellite-based system can. This is no longer seen as an insurmountable problem, nor is the large cost-difference between GPS and INS tech. Israel apparently feels it is closer to a solution than anyone else.
Meanwhile, spoofing satellite navigation systems has become more popular and practical because they do not require expensive or high-tech equipment. While American weapons and military navigation systems have a backup in the form of unjammable INS systems, these are useless if the spoofing is not detected. American systems are supposed to detect spoofing and revert to INS, but the Americans do not disclose details of how these systems work in order to make it difficult for spoofing systems to be modified to be less detectable. That is one reason why the U.S. has not released detailed information on spoofing incidents because some of them may have evaded the INS spoofing detection tech.
To further complicate the issue there have also been instances where mandatory AIS Automatic Identification System transponders that all large ships must carry are more frequently reporting instances of getting no GPS signal at all. Large ships usually carry two AIS units, in case one malfunctions so AIS failure can be ruled out as a cause. Something outside the ship is manipulating the GPS signal. This demonstrates how it is possible to deceive the unjammable INS and new INS systems are sought that will eliminate that risk by replacing GPS most of the time.
The new INS technology has attracted a lot of attention in the military where backups are always appreciated because, when equipment fails in combat or for commercial transport users like aircraft or ships, it’s literally a matter of life or death. Meanwhile, the U.S. is building and testing more compact GPS anti-jamming systems for smaller 200 kg UAVs. This is part of a program to equip all American UAVs, even the smallest ones, with more secure GPS. While all UAVs can be flown by the operator, the GPS makes it a lot easier for the operator to keep track of exactly where his UAV is at all times, and sometimes the UAV is programmed to simply patrol between a series of GPS coordinates. If the GPS jams or fails, the operator can usually use the video feed to find landmarks on the ground and bring the UAV back to where it can be seen and landed. Other UAVs have a failsafe system for the GPS. When it is no longer available the UAV turns around and heads back in the general direction of the operator. This is better than just allowing the GPS-less UAV keep flying until it runs out of fuel and crashes somewhere,
GPS reliability threats are coming from a few suppliers like Russia, China, and North Korea. These nations have developed all manner of GPS jamming technology, and over the last decade it has become increasingly obvious that these nations were using new GPS spoofing technology to conceal the true location of senior personnel and mobile combat units.
Developers and users of GPS jamming gear tend to keep quiet about what they do because this sort of thing is illegal in peacetime, especially when civilians experience GPS disruptions themselves. When the United States tests military GPS jamming, it does so at sea or in remote areas and warns nearby civilians who might encounter GPS problems to be aware of the tests and act accordingly. This warning policy has been in use for decades because of the growing number of new electronic equipment designs that could cause problems for civilians if the disruptive effect extended farther than expected.
Other nations are not as secretive in complaining and often the culprit is Russia. In 2018 Finland and Norway went public with their accusations that Russia deliberately jammed GPS signals in northern Finland and Norway from a location near the Russian military bases in the Kola Peninsula on the Barents Sea. The jamming took place as NATO held its largest training exercise since the Cold War ended in 1991. Russia denied any responsibility even though they are known to possess long-range jammers for GPS and other signals. Norway said they had tracked the jammer to a specific location but, when Russia refused to admit any involvement, Norway refused to explain how they tracked the signal because that would provide Russia with information on Norwegian EW Electronic Warfare equipment that might be useful to them.
China is seeking to monetize its Beidou satellite navigation system. Beidou is the Chinese version of American GPS. Beidou finally became fully operational, providing worldwide coverage, in January 2020. There are three competing systems: GPS, GLONASS and Galileo. The full Beidou network was open for business as a world-wide service in early 2020. The American GPS has been operational since 1978 while the Russian GLONASS achieved that status in 1995. Unfortunately, Russia had problems, mostly financial, in keeping GLONASS operational. The European Galileo became operational worldwide in 2020. Each of these systems cost about $10 billion to create and get into service. The American GPS cost $12 billion, mainly because it has been around for so long.
China is determined to do what none of the other three satnav systems have done; become profitable. China has not revealed how they expect to do that and the other three major satnav providers remain silent on the profitability issue. Currently the main reason for building a satnav system is national prestige and an alternative to dependence on the Americans, or any single satnav provider.
China has also invested heavily in trying to obtain favorable press coverage for Beidou and somehow establish it as a preferred satnav service. That has cost over half a billion dollars but has not created any acceptance of Beidou as a superior satnav provider. China has a long-range plan for Beidou that includes adding new features and somehow achieving market dominance by 2040. China likes to announce long range goals like this, then quietly forget about it when the promised future never arrives.
Meanwhile, Chinese state-controlled media have provided a global audience with unprecedented details of this Chinese technological effort. People got their first experience with Beidou in late 2012 when the first few satellites were made available to anyone with a Beidou receiver. China expected Beidou to become a major competitor for the existing global navigation systems, at least with civilian users. China made it clear its initial goal was to grab a major share of the satnav market from the original U.S GPS system and do it by 2030. Progress has been slow so far.
The reality is that China has had a difficult time getting Beidou fully operational. By 2020 worldwide Beidou service was available and the rest of the world was not impressed. Beidou incorporates the best features of the GLONASS and Galileo systems, as well as items planned for the next generation American GPS satellites. With all that, no one has found a way to make a profit, at least not directly. There are plenty of ideas but no one has yet turned any of those ideas into cash. Moreover, there are disputes between the Beidou, Galileo, and GLONASS organizations over who should use what frequencies. Since GPS got into service first no one is contesting the frequencies GPS uses, but the three other players have some problems.
The success of the original GPS satnav system has generated all this competition. But so far these other efforts have found the work much more difficult than expected. A European consortium went forward with Galileo despite growing costs and technical problems. Initially Galileo was to be funded with private money. But the costs climbed beyond the most optimistic estimates of future income, so now Galileo is being paid for with tax dollars, as was GPS and the competing Russian and Chinese systems.
Galileo came about because the Europeans didn't like being dependent on an American system and didn't believe the Russians would be able to keep their GLONASS system viable. Galileo became operational because the European nations were willing to pay for a system that anyone could use without charge. Dual GPS and Galileo receivers cost about 20 percent more than GPS only receivers. Having two separate sets of signals makes for more reliable and accurate receivers. Also, the way Galileo is being set up will provide improved reliability in higher latitudes and in built-up areas.
GLONASS was at full strength in 1996, shortly after the Cold War ended. But the end of the Cold War in 1991 meant the end of the regular financing for GLONASS. Maintaining the system required launching replacement satellites every 5-7 years. By the end of 2002, only seven GLONASS satellites were still operational. However, the Russian economy recovered and provided funds for a series of launches in 2003 that increased the number of active satellites to twelve. That went to 18 by the end of 2007 and Russia had 24 GLONASS satellites in orbit by 2011 with the system again fully operational by 2012. As a result, GLONASS was the first real competitor for GPS. However, GLONASS was not completely functional until 2016 because of delays in building all the ground control stations.
The money for GLONASS is coming from a Russian government that does not want to be dependent on the American controlled GPS system. But the money was only there because of high oil prices. Most GLONASS receivers in use are actually combined GPS/GLONASS receivers. Russia will have to put billions of dollars into GLONASS over the next few years to keep the system fully operational and then spend even more money to maintain the satellite network. The costs of the Ukraine war are consuming the investment capital needed to maintain Russia’s civilian infrastructure, including GLONASS, its railroad system and oil production. GLONASS is widely used in conjunction with GPS. In other words, many systems, including cell phones that already used GPS added GLONASS and Galileo to provide better coverage and fewer instances where the GPS signal was unavailable.
Beidou is a more restricted system. Services available to anyone are less accurate than other systems though Beidou also has a more accurate military messaging mode that is only available to the Chinese and Pakistani military. China continues trying to monetize its GPS service, which really would make it unique compared to the others, but few nations are willing to pay for a military grade sat nav service provided by China. It will take more than a multi-billion dollar propaganda effort to change global suspicion of Chinese motives and reliability in such matters.
One of the reasons why there are so many global positioning satellite systems is that they have both civilian and military applications. GPS was originally developed by the US Department of Defense to provide precise navigation and timing for its armed forces and allies. GPS also became widely used by civilians for various purposes, such as mapping, geocaching, tracking, and recreation. Similarly, GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo have dual-use capabilities that can enhance the economic, scientific, and security interests of their respective countries or regions. For example, GLONASS can support Russian oil and gas exploration, Beidou can facilitate China's Belt and Road Initiative, and Galileo can improve European autonomy and resilience in the face of external threats or disruptions.
Use of multiple global positioning satellite systems can also increase the accuracy and reliability of the signals, as well as provide redundancy and interoperability in case of failures or attacks. Having too many systems can also pose challenges, such as spectrum congestion, signal interference, and coordination difficulties. Moreover, some countries may use their systems for strategic or political purposes, such as denying access to rivals or asserting territorial claims. Therefore, it is important to establish international norms and regulations for the peaceful and responsible use of global positioning satellite systems.

FYEO

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 03:19 pm: Edit

Reports from multiple sources are that Iran has once again closed the Strait of Hormuz, this in response to Israel's continue attacks in Lebanon.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that media reports that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed are "false," but then called for the strait to be reopened "immediately."

As a note: MarineTraffic's global tracker backs up the "closed" version of events; the only commercial vessels near the Strait are moving away from it (either out into the Gulf of Oman or back into the Persian Gulf).

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 04:16 pm: Edit

Oil futures also back Jessica up. They were way down this morning but have almost fully recovered.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 05:56 pm: Edit

Nobody thinks this ceasefire is going to work, right?

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 06:19 pm: Edit

Heck, nobody can even agree what and where this ceasefire is supposed to be, let alone that it will work.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 07:21 pm: Edit

Terrorism works really well on a small scale. Go into a village or town. Kill some people, rape and take food and whatever. Then tell them we will be back next month You had better have what we want or more people will die. The village/town caves in.

Iran is trying to do that to nations. The problem it only scares part of the population. The Government just shrugs it off and goes on. Are does as trump did attack.

The same as any bully. Pick pick, pick.. until retaliation. Then call fowl. He hit me waa.

Terrorist's attack, retaliation. They scream genocide and all kinds of war crimes. And just like the teacher and adults in the playground they yell at the kid who retaliated. The one who hits back is wrong.

There is no way to win vs that kind of logic.

Iran has been doing this for a very long time.

When have You heard about a terrorist attack in China? Wonder why not? China would wipe them off the map and not care what the world thinks about it. They know this.

Trump started it He has to finish it. The world court and all.

The native Americans lost the war. We did not win that war by hunting down the braves, We won by destroying their food source and killing Women and children. when we found the villages.

War is not this cool/fun game that we play. Real people die.

The only way to win this. Is to destroy the ports. Not allow anything in are out (except refuges running away) Airfields power plants. The oil fields as well. Find where the weapons caches are stored and send in the troops and dig them out of their bunkers and destroy them. You must destroy their ability to build weapons of any kind.

People will die innocent people. The world will be outraged.

The other answer is do as they ask. Pull out are toys. Let them have everything. No sanctions no us involvement.

When the go yeah and attack the US again. with their terror attacks and they will do so. Fly over there with a fleet of bombers and flatten a city.

Truthfully, I hope that Iran gets a NUKE. I hope they use it. Then the world might just wake up and do somthing but I doubt it.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 08:09 pm: Edit

You might get your wish, Vandar. If the IRGC is now really the outfit calling the shots, and the clerics have been sidelined into a symbolic role, that would be the most likely avenue for Iran gaining nuclear capability.

While a lot of people really don't want to admit it, the international intelligence community is in agreement that the clerics have been the ones holding Iran back from obtaining nuclear weapons. It's for reasons spanning from theological (Ali Khamenei deemed WMDs to be contrary to Sharia law) to cultural (Iran was the target of WMDs in the form of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, losing tens of thousands to those weapons).

The IRGC has no such qualms, giving not a single ripe fart for anything theological or ethical that gets in their way. And of course, now that Iran has been attacked twice in the space of a year by a U.S.-Israeli team, the IRGC will do everything in their power to get their hands on nuclear weaponry to forestall any further attacks.

All I can say is this: be careful what you wish for.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, April 08, 2026 - 09:24 pm: Edit

What part of don't respond to Jessica do you not understand?

Jean
WebMpm

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, April 09, 2026 - 08:11 am: Edit

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 09, 2026 - 09:00 am: Edit

The ceasefire is not working because Iran wants it to include Lebanon (where Hezbollah is close to collapse) and Israel says no (and the US agrees). This is a classic case of “that was always part of the deal” vs “we never said a word about that”. Iran has closed Hormuz again.

The White House has confirmed that te Iranian 10 point deal was never accepted by the US which (as I said) was never more than a list of general subjects to discuss.

As for the futures, interesting but not conclusive, barely compelling. People bet on the futures market all the time.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Thursday, April 09, 2026 - 09:26 am: Edit

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, April 09, 2026 - 11:15 am: Edit

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Thursday, April 09, 2026 - 12:45 pm: Edit