Air Defense: Ukrainian Patriot Replacement
July 8, 2026: Ukraine is developing a replacement for the American Patriot air defense system, the FP-7.x, that is cheaper, at $700,000, just as effective, and safer to use because Patriot radars, since their inception 44 years ago, have inadvertently broadcast their location to listening enemies. Each FP-7.x costs less than a fifth of a Patriot PAC-3 interceptor. FP-7.x also requires fewer personnel to maintain and operate a battery. For example, a Patriot battery is manned by about a hundred troops, and each contains a radar and four launchers. A battery can fire two types of Patriot missiles. The more expensive $3.8 million PAC 3 missile is smaller than the PAC 2 anti-aircraft version. Thus, a Patriot launcher can hold sixteen PAC 3 missiles, versus four PAC 2s. A PAC 2 missile weighs about a ton; a PAC 3 weighs about a third of that. The PAC 3 has a range of 20 kilometers versus 160 kilometers for the PAC 2 anti-aircraft version used against low-flying drones. Given this long range, one Patriot battery can cover more than 200 kilometers of land and coastal borders. Patriot can also take down cruise missiles as well, giving users some protection against just about everything the enemy can throw at them.
Meanwhile, FP-7.x was test-launched in February, and production is expected to begin within a month or so. While the current war with Russia is winding down, the Russians have already announced that they will eventually return. Ukraine wants to be ready for whenever Russia decides to invade them again.
Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022 to prevent it from joining NATO. What Russia thought would be a two-week war has lasted more than fifty months so far, and Russia admits failure to achieve any of its goals. As Russia threatens to attack again sometime, Ukraine offers NATO a new member that has defeated Russia and developed new ways to fight wars. Ukraine would be the only NATO member with extensive recent combat experience and eagerness to export these weapons and combat techniques to other nations. It’s obvious that Ukraine and NATO would both be better off with Ukraine as a member,
NATO was formed in 1949 to protect Western Europe from Russian aggression. Ukraine has met and defeated that aggression, and Russia is preparing to test NATO resolve by the end of the decade.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 08, 2026 - 02:25 pm: Edit

Israel: Hezbollah Fiber Optic Drones Alarm Israel
July 8, 2026: Iran-backed Hezbollah Islamic terrorists have been using FOG/Fiber Optics Guided drones. Last month the FOG drones made several successful attacks on Israeli targets. The only countermeasure used by Israeli troops was electronic jamming, which doesn't work against fiber-optic drones controlled by a thin fiber-optic cable connecting the drone with its operator. There is a solution for this. A year ago, Russian FOG drones were being used by the Ukrainians to reveal where the Russian drone operators were. This was done with Ukrainian FPV/First Person View drones equipped with a sensor that tracked the movement of the Russian drone and where it was launched from by its hidden operator. The sensor led Ukrainian drones to the location where the operator was killed and any additional drones with him destroyed. One vital task for the Ukrainian drones was attacking Russian truck traffic near the front line. Ukrainian drones could destroy trucks operating within ten kilometers of the front. Without the trucks, Russian troops have to carry supplies or pull carts full of material to the front line. This was manageable. But then the Ukrainians introduced a larger drone with a range of 40 kilometers. That distance was prohibitive for Russian supply movement. In other words, the Ukrainians starved the Russians out.
Ukrainian drone developers, operating under wartime pressure, have been very innovative. This increased innovation began with new countermeasures to counter attacks by remotely controlled drone swarms. The usual Russian defense was jamming the control signals. The new Ukrainian swarms have drones capable of operating independently when jammed and continuing the attack with less accuracy, but because it is a swarm with dozens of drones, some were still going to hit the target. This was used against the Russians, but the enemy quickly came up with their own new countermeasures. This is a common cycle in modern drone warfare.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 08, 2026 - 02:26 pm: Edit

This link reportedly goes to an article on fires on ships. I haven't read it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/bonhomme-richard-fire-safety-lapses

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 08, 2026 - 03:16 pm: Edit

Greenland Background

The Chinese are trying to make a move on Greenland, trying to contractually lock up strategic material resources. While Denmark is refusing to deal with China, Trump is concerned that China might get a foothold too darn close to the US.

Strategic position is import, but equally important are the valuable mineral resources made available by climate change.

Greenlanders want to keep their world as a pristine wild paradise. They don't want anyone strip-mining their island. Instead, they expect Denmark to keep writing checks, and Denmark is getting tired of writing checks and is gently pressuring Greenland to allow some mineral development so it can pay its own bills.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 08, 2026 - 09:22 pm: Edit

Ukraine’s campaign against the Russian oil industry is working. Ukraine hit eleven refineries during June. Depending on whose numbers you believe, Russia has lost at least 28% and maybe 42% of its refinery capacity. Russia needs 110 thousand tons of gasoline per day just to run the economy and military. It is producing only 85 thousand tons. Lines for available fuel are long in 50 of the 83 regional districts. Due to sanctions the spare parts to get factories on line are not available. Even Putin has been forced to publicly admit the problem and to acknowledge that Crimea is virtually out of fuel. Fuel exports have been stopped. Fuel imports, not seen since Ww2 have begun. Russia is selling Euro3 fuel marked as Euro5; Euro3 has 15 times the normal amount of sulfur. This damages engines and causes pollution. Russia police report violent fights at gas stations all over Russia.

By Kosta Michalopoulos (Kosmic) on Wednesday, July 08, 2026 - 09:31 pm: Edit

So is there sufficient tanker capacity on the Caspian Sea to import fuel from Iran? Can Iran even refine enough fuel anymore? And can it ship it via the Caspian Sea, or is the Persian Gulf its only outlet?

The Russia-Ukraine and Iran-US/Israel wars seem to be converging.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, July 08, 2026 - 10:28 pm: Edit

Iran has been importing gas for years, claims that there is not enough refining capacity given the condition of the plant infrastructure.

Of course, that was before the current unpleasantness started…

Iran has been using trucks to distribute gas, not sure about any pipelines, and I haven’t seen any rail traffic estimates on what percentage of fuels, oil or other petroleum products move by rail.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 08, 2026 - 10:46 pm: Edit

Please use the terms "gasoline" and "natural gas" as "gas" might be either.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, July 09, 2026 - 12:51 pm: Edit

Ukraine would be "the only NATO member with extensive recent combat experience"

Umm, the USA and Great Britain would disagree.

Or are they talking about "near peer" opponents?

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, July 09, 2026 - 01:02 pm: Edit

According to TWZ Pres. Trump is threatening Spain & withdrawal?

Rota and Moron both would go away as US facilities?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 09, 2026 - 02:06 pm: Edit

Trump is master of the deal that that includes being master of the threat.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO. (yet)

Britain and the USA have combat experience but not necessarily mechanized field army level armored experience more recent than the Gulf War. That was 1991. A 21-year-old lieutenant in that war is now a 56-year-old retired colonel.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 09, 2026 - 02:09 pm: Edit

Air Defense: Northern Fleet Submarines Use Anti-Drone Netting
June 7, 2026: Murmansk in northwestern Russia houses the website of the Nakhimov Naval School, which posted an online photo of two submarines protected by netting. Military officials quickly removed it from the school's website. By then, however, the photograph had already been republished on various social media sites, showing how futile government censorship efforts were.
Ukrainian drones have repeatedly and regularly attacked Russian warships, Black Sea ports and the area surrounding the Crimean Peninsula. More recently, Ukrainian drones have hit the Kronstadt Island naval base near St Petersburg. Further north, near the Arctic Circle, no drone attacks have been reported against warships stationed as far north as the Kola Peninsula.
Netting on Northern and Far East Fleet submarines would not provide any protection from long-range drones with warheads containing over ten kg of explosives. But the netting would protect from Ukrainian FPV/First Person View quadcopter drones. Last year, the Ukrainian Spiderweb operation arranged to have Russian truck drivers transport cargo crates containing fully assembled and ready-to-launch drones to locations near Russian airbases and leave them there. The crates were controlled by operators back in Ukraine, who had the crates opened and then guided the drones to damage or destroy most of Russia’s heavy bomber fleet. Paranoid Russian naval commanders thought Ukraine was going to make a similar attack on their SSBNs/nuclear subs carrying ballistic missiles. Currently, all Russian SSBNs, including those based in the Far East near Vladivostok, are vulnerable to Ukrainian drone attacks
The SSBN hulls are 20 to 40mm thick and resistant to FPV drone attacks, except for drone shaped-charge warheads. The Russians believe the Ukrainian drones will attack some undiscovered vulnerability. Ukrainian cleverness when carrying out drone attacks is much feared by Russian naval personnel. This is one group of Russians who would be glad to see the war with Ukraine end, which appears to be underway right now.


Information Warfare: Drone Video Used For Training
July 9, 2026: The American firm Enabled Intelligence was assigned the task of turning video from over 500,000 hours of Ukraine War drone operations into formats that enable the training of AI systems as well as drone operators and officers who command units armed with drones.
Full-motion drone video footage is increasingly important as drones dominate modern warfare and commercial uses. The American National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency contracted Enabled Intelligence in 2025 for a $100 million per annum over seven years. The Sequoia data-labeling-as-a-service contract encompasses work to train computer vision algorithms for use in ISR/Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, or ISR missions.
The Ukraine footage is valuable because it shows what actually happened in hundreds of thousands of drone operations. This includes the weather, terrain, and enemy countermeasures.
America-based, data-labeling and AI startup Enabled Intelligence is increasing its database of refined datasets that government and commercial firms use for model training and other tasks that make use of the half-billion hours of Ukraine War drone videos. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Ukrainian military has captured a huge volume of combat videos capturing actual combat activities.
The steadily growing visual record is creating vast amounts of training data that’s enabling military observers and defense contractors to innovate weapons capabilities based on modern tactical lessons at rapid rates, including AI models that allow drones to autonomously recognize and strike targets. This includes separate datasets of numerous sensor types, including electro-optical, synthetic aperture radar, infrared, and foreign-language audio.
FYEO

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 09, 2026 - 04:14 pm: Edit

The Secret Service told Trump to take the backup Air Force One jet home from Turkey instead of using the fancy jet given him as a gift by Qatar. Rumor has it that some kind of tracker was on the plane, built into the deep structure, and would have allowed some kind of attack. Benefit of the doubt would be an Iranian spy in Qatar rather than the Qatari government is responsible, but in the Middle East, finding someone in a given country with loyalt to a different country isn't hard.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 09, 2026 - 04:19 pm: Edit

At the end of the NATO summit, Turkish President Erdogan gave each of the other leaders a gift, a rare 357 revolver made in 1990 as an example of how swell the Turkish arms industry is. The pistol was in a gift box including live ammunition. Some NATO leaders discovered on returning home that they had actually violated local firearms laws bringing it into the country.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 09, 2026 - 09:49 pm: Edit

Ukrainian drones hit 35 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov, most of them were tankers. THE SUN

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Friday, July 10, 2026 - 04:01 am: Edit

svc, the first ten ships was an unescorted convoy sent to replenish the Crimea. The Russian commentators on Telegram was much upset that the ships were totally undefended. Not even soldiers with small arms.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, July 11, 2026 - 04:05 am: Edit

Russia has reassigned many sailors from the Black Sea fleet to Army drone units. The ships cannot leave port due to Ukrainian drones, and the valuable manpower was wasted. The sailors have general technology skills applicable to drones, and assigning the to infantry units would be a waste. THE MILITARY SHOW

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, July 11, 2026 - 12:32 pm: Edit

Russian parliamentary elections are 18-20 September. After that date, Putin is expected to declare total mobilization, drafting a million men for combat.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, July 11, 2026 - 06:23 pm: Edit

In other news, the Central Bank of China has continued its efforts to buy gold.

They now hold the 5th highest amount of gold (following France by just over 100 tons of gold).

Per Google:

Quote:” Global central banks and governments hold roughly 40,000 metric tons of gold in their reserves. This accounts for about one-fifth of all the gold ever mined in human history. The estimated total value of these reserves exceeds $4 trillion.Gold

The United States holds the largest official reserve at 8,133.5 metric tons.

Other top holders include
Germany (3,350 tons),
Italy (2,452 tons), and
France (2,437 tons).

China holds roughly 2,313 metric tons in its official reserves.Gold has recently overtaken U.S. Treasuries to become the world's second-largest official reserve asset.

Because central banks no longer back paper money with physical gold, they store this bullion as a safe, highly liquid financial asset to protect against hyperinflation and economic shocks.”

Private holdings of gold is more difficult to track, but unofficially households in India are estimated to have 25,000 tones (mostly in Jewelry).

I post this because China has been buying gold very aggressively since 2015, and the amount they buy has increased this year as the record price of gold had a reduction in the troy ounce of gold price in 2026.

Note: this is happening during a period when China’s population growth is declining, exports are seriously impacted with western factories leaving China, and the Chinese Governments crackdown on wealth transfers out of the country.

None of this are signs of a healthy, stable or prosperous nation.

Not a perfect example, but similar to Argentina in the 1980’s troubles and the political leaders of the time decided that they needed a “Short and Victorious War” to unite the nation.

Prime Minister Thatcher disagreed.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Saturday, July 11, 2026 - 07:36 pm: Edit

Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed again.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, July 11, 2026 - 09:47 pm: Edit

Housecat by the tail.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, July 11, 2026 - 11:00 pm: Edit

More like an anemic kitten…

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Sunday, July 12, 2026 - 08:09 am: Edit

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chair of the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Subcommittee, has died after a brief illness at age 71.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Sunday, July 12, 2026 - 08:19 am: Edit

I wondered to what extent the daily crossings of the strait of Hormuz had resumed. Google found me this article with graphs for both the corridors.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c621k5r8764o
At best it was half of what it was before the war.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, July 12, 2026 - 09:45 am: Edit

Per google,

“ After dipping to a low of $68.55 in early July, prices climbed significantly before settling at $71.34 per barrel. This recent movement highlights normal market fluctuations driven by global supply and demand shifts.”

Looks like the world market is doing what it is supposed to do.

Adjust for world conditions, and it at least appears to be dropping the spot price of oil.