Archive for the ‘Military’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The Cardboard Drone Dilemma

Monday, September 4th, 2023

As shown by Ukraine, cardboard drones are a very cost-effective way to destroy much more expensive military equipment.

And you know who has more expensive military equipment than anyone else in the world?

That’s right: Us.

Uncle Sam is the operator of billion dollar B-2s and fleet supercarriers. Enemies capable of getting cheap drones within striking distance of those assets could put a world of hurt on the Pentagon, as indicated by this cheap and crude YouTube satire:

Can U.S. military radar see cardboard drones? Either nobody knows, or only a small handful of U.S. military researchers know. Either way, I have to think they’re frantically researching that question right now.

Here’s a bit more on SYPAQ’s drones:

A low-cost “cardboard” drone that arrives flatpacked and is held together with rubber bands is giving Ukraine an unexpected edge on the battlefield.

It’s called the Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System, or PPDS for short, and is made by the Australian company SYPAQ.

It has been in Ukrainian hands since March, when the Australian government announced it would send at least 100 per month as part of a $20 million aid package, The Australian reported.

According to SYPAQ, the drone arrives in a package some two and a half feet long — and isn’t much more complicated than an IKEA product.

But the low-tech framework is packed with a military-grade guidance system.

SYPAQ says it’s quick to assemble the drone from its parts: a lightweight board frame, a propeller unit, and an avionics system which soldiers can program with a target location.

The drone can carry up to 6.6 pounds, making it useful for dropping off medicines or ammunition.

To adapt it for reconnaissance, soldiers simply “cut a hole” in the drone for a camera to see through, SYPAQ manager Michael Partridge told IT-focused news outlet The Register.

The finished build has a wingspan of around six and a half feet. It is so light it can be launched by catapult, or literally by being thrown like a giant paper plane, according to Australia’s 7News.

At a reported cost of around $3,500 each, they’re cheap by military standards.

That’s maybe not as cheap as the Flying Yeet of Death, but it has a much longer range.

Depending on its payload, it travels at around 37 miles per hour, and has a range of up to 75 miles. And when it arrives, soldiers can simply retrieve the cargo, detach the propeller and avionics module, and throw away the frame.

Although it’s known as the “cardboard drone,” there’s conflicting information as to what its main framework is actually made of.

Partridge told The Register that it’s made of waxed cardboard — a description repeated in nearly all media reporting so far. In a recent announcement the company coyly said it’s “known as the ‘cardboard plane.'”

But a product specification uploaded on the company’s website, likely in late August, describes it as being made from lightweight foldable foam board, which appears to match some images.

So the cardboard drone isn’t actually cardboard. C’est la guerre.

Cardboard is “transparent to radar, so harder to spot,” Oklahoma State University drone researcher Jamey Jacob told Popular Mechanics.

“The radar will pick up things such as electric motors, batteries, and propellers, but not the cardboard,” Jacob said.

That potential capacity for extra stealth gained media attention this week when Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia echoed claims by a prominent Russian military blogger that they were used to attack a Russian airfield.

Several details of the attack remain unconfirmed — including whether Corvo PPDSs were even involved — but the airfield was just within the drone’s reach from Ukraine.

Per the pro-Russian Telegram channel @fighter_bomber, Ukraine used a swarm-like formation of several unarmed Corvo PPDSs amidst drones packed with bombs, helping the swarm evade radar.

When you’re airframe only has to last 75 miles to hit a target, all sorts of cheap material possibilities open up: Foam, cardboard, wax-paper, Mylar.

Hell, maybe even that crappy hemp paper the potheads are always pushing will finally have a real use-case: Make war, not love.

In any case, the radar guys are going to be very, very busy over the next few months…

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Military, video | 19 Comments »

Fast, Cheap and Out of Control

Saturday, September 2nd, 2023

If you were worried that the United States military hadn’t picked up on the importance of drone warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War, it appears that someone in the Pentagon was indeed paying attention.

The Pentagon committed on Monday to fielding thousands of attritable, autonomous systems across multiple domains within the next two years as part of a new initiative to better compete with China.

The program, dubbed Replicator, was announced by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies conference here.

“Replicator will galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap and many,” Hicks said.

Hicks and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady will oversee the program, with support from Doug Beck, director of the Defense Innovation Unit. Further details, Hicks said, will be released in the coming weeks.

Replicator rests on two assumptions. The first is that China’s core advantage is mass — “more ships, more missiles, more people,” as Hicks said — and that the United States’ best response is to innovate, rather than match that pound for pound.

The second is that attritable, autonomous systems are the right form of innovation. Hicks pointed to the war in Ukraine, in which cheap, often commercial drones have proven indispensable on the battlefield for reconaissance, targeting, and attacks. Russia too, she said, appeared to have a similar mass before launching its invasion last February.

However, this program is squarely focused on China. Hicks called this moment a “generational challenge to American society.”

”We’ll counter the [People’s Liberation Army’s] mass with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat,” she said.

Even so, Hicks noted the Pentagon will remain focused on its core systems. “America still benefits from platforms that are large, exquisite, expensive, and few,” she said. Instead, she said, Replicator is particularly focused on accelerating DoD’s recent investments in autonomous systems.

Replicator’s goal of fielding small drones in high numbers and on a rapid timeline echoes calls from former DIU director Mike Brown for the Pentagon to better leverage commercial innovation to deliver capability at scale — an approach he called a “hedge strategy.”

House appropriators have backed that idea in their fiscal 2025 defense spending bill. The legislation would allocate $1 billion toward establishing a DIU-managed hedge portfolio made up of low-cost drones, agile communication and computing modes and AI capabilities.

The Department of Defense requested $1.8 billion for artificial intelligence for fiscal 2024 and was overseeing more than 685 related projects as of 2021. Replicator is intended to pull those investments together and further scale production, Hicks said.

Insert your own hedge funds and Skynet jokes here.

The strategy makes a good deal of sense…up to a point. The fast and cheap portion makes a lot of sense, given Ukraine’s use of dirt cheap flatpack cardboard drones we talked about earlier this week.

It’s the out of control/autonomous portion of description, combined with the aggressive timeline, that I question. As far as I can tell, all of Ukraine’s drones have been human guided rather than autonomous.

Lots of work on AI has been done over the last few years, and its entirely possible that AI drone tech is farther along than we know, but having been involved in numerous large software projects for multiple companies, I can tell you things always seem to take longer than they should even when the federal government isn’t involved. Long term, having autonomous or semi-autonomous drone will give you a lot of extra capabilities, but I’m very skeptical about that two year timeline.

Also, unless we plan to launch those drones from Taiwan itself, I’m skeptical that we’ll have suitable naval launch platforms ready. Flying a few drones off the deck of destroyer is easy, flying thousands for a real drone swarm is probably impossible. You don’t want to try running drone and manned planes off fleet carriers at the same time.

Can you run them off an amphibious assault ship? Probably, as a temporary expedient, but that’s going to limit your helicopter and F-35B takeoff and landing windows. Longer term, you’re probably going to need to construct ships designed with specialized launchers to send a whole lot of drones in a short space of time.

I’ve been talking about the inevitability of drone swarms in combat for some time. The goal is entirely feasible, I just question the “two years to fight China” timeline.

I sure hope the Pentagon powers that be have a manned drone swarm program backup on hand…

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Military | 19 Comments »

LinkSwarm for September 1, 2023

Friday, September 1st, 2023

A whole lot more Biden Recession hits the economy—unexpectedly! The poor go hungry, the fired Ukrainian prosecutor confirms Biden corruption, people keep flocking to Texas and Florida, McConell’s brain blows up (again), and a whole lot of Texas laws take effect. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Unemployment rate surges (unexpectedly!) as every single monthly payroll estimate this year has been revised downward. Those who assured us that federal government economic data would never be altered simply to help boost Democrats were lying to us.
    

  • Poor people are buying less food because they can’t afford it. “Among households using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s boosted pandemic benefits, 42% skipped meals in August and 55% ate less because they couldn’t afford food, more than double last year’s share, according to a Wednesday report from Propel Inc., a benefits software developer.”(Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)
  • Prosecutor confirms that it was indeed Biden corruption in Ukraine.

    Victor Shokin, the fired Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Biden family corruption (that Donald Trump was impeached for asking about) has spoken out for the first time since 2019 – and says the Bidens did it.

    To review – Shokin had an active and ongoing investigation into Ukrainian energy company Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, according to a 2020 US Senate Committee report.

    Zlochevsky, who hired Hunter Biden to sit on his board, granted his own company (Burisma) permits to drill for oil and gas in Ukraine while he was Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources. Shokin stated in a 2019 deposition that there were five criminal cases against Zlochevesky, including money laundering, corruption, illegal funds transfers, and profiteering through shell corporations while he was a sitting minister.

    Now, Shokin tells Fox News that be believes the Bidens were taking bribes.

    “I do not want to deal in unproven facts. But my firm personal conviction is that yes, this was the case. They were being bribed,” Shokin told the outlet. “The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal – my firing – isn’t that alone a case of corruption?” he asks in another clip.

  • “Young High Income Earners Are Flocking To Florida And Texas, New Study Shows…”To the surprise of likely no one, Florida and Texas are once again No. 1 and No. 2. Florida gained a total of 2,175 high earners aged 26 to 35 after accounting for both inflows and outflows, while Texas gained a net 1,909. Despite the losses, New York (-5,062) and California (-4,495) still have the highest count of young high earners of any state by a wide margin.
  • China tried to seize another island in the South China Sea. It didn’t go well for them. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Mitch McConnell’s brain is broken, as he freezes up the second time in two months.
  • Dispatches from the groomer menace: “Woman Says Her Daughter Was Sex Trafficked After School Hid Gender Transition.”
  • Katy ISD rejects the radical social justice agenda. “The agenda item included policy updates in regard to requiring sex-specific spaces to be ‘safeguarded,’ which include bathrooms and locker rooms. Policies were also updated on pronoun usage as teachers and staff will not be required to use student “preferred pronouns” and content prohibiting ‘gender fluidity’ instruction.”
  • By contrast, Richardson ISD won a grant to support the gay agenda in schools.
  • Texas laws that take effect today, including a ban on child sexual mutilation (AKA “gender affirming care”), banning men from college women’s athletics, and banning DEI from public universities.
  • Also, Texas voters will get a chance to vote on a right to farm constitutional amendment in November.

  • Remember flash mobs of people rampaging through stores looting and beating random people? One just happened again in California.
  • Relations between the coup junta in Niger (which observers want you to know is pronounced knee–J) and France gets spicier. The junta is trying to expel the French ambassador and he’s not going. The tiff might very well turn kinetic, and I doubt the Wagner Group mercs are up to taking on French regulars.
  • Ecolooneys protest Burning Man by blocking roads, promptly get beatdown from tribal police.
  • “Disney Stock Plunges To 9 Year Lows After Multiple Woke Box Office Failures.”
  • Also, investors are suing them over “Alleged Chapek Era “Cost-Shifting Scheme” to Hide Streaming Losses.” Maybe everyone lost the streaming wars. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Colin Furze offers up a bunch of helpful shop tips.
  • “Texas Governor Signs Legislation Making It Legal To Make Climate Protestors Dance By Firing Six-Shooters At Their Feet.”

    • Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Military, Regulation, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Ukraine Now Using Dirt Cheap Kit Drones Made Out Of Cardboard

    Monday, August 28th, 2023

    If you thought the Flying Yeet of Death was cheap, the Ukrainians have announced they just used a drone that looks even cheaper to hit a Russian airbase:

    (A follow-up video suggests they may not have hit much, if anything, but I’m more interested in the drone than the strike.)

    The Australian SYPAQ Corvo UAV is the drone reportedly used. “These drones are made out of cardboard, making them almost invisible to radar. They can carry a four to five kilogram payload have a range of between 40 to 120 kilometers, and a flight time of one to three hours. These are dirt cheap and can be made in the thousands.” It ships in a flatpack kit.

    Here’s a closer look at them:

    I suspect that SYPAQ represents a goodly portion of the future of drone warfare: Numerous and ultra-cheap, but capable of taking out much more expensive enemy vehicles and equipment.

    High tech and low cost is a very cyberpunk approach to warfare.

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Military, video | 11 Comments »

    Is It Finally Time To Retire The A-10?

    Sunday, August 27th, 2023

    If you’ve been following the A-10 Thunderbolt II (AKA Warthog) saga here, you’ll remember that the Air Force tried to kill the A-10 back in 2015, going so far as to accuse airmen who opposed retiring the A-10 of treason. Then in 2016 the Air Force appeared to give up on the idea, possibly due to congressional opposition to the idea.

    Well, the Air Force is back to wanting to kill the A-10, and this time they may succeed.

  • “The US Air Force is charging ahead with plans to retire the old A-10 Warthog attack jet within the next five years, but there’s only one problem: there’s no dedicated close air support platform to replace it.”
  • “In the 2023 version of the National Defense Authorization Act, congress approved the Air Force requests to begin divestment of the current A-10 fleet, citing the aircraft is too old, too slow and too expensive to maintain.”
  • “The Air Force seems to be getting its way this time, with a set timetable to replace the 54 A-10s from Moody Air Force base with F-35a by 2028, and plans to retire the rest of the fleet soon to come.” As Jerry Pournelle once said, “USAF will always retire hundreds of Warthog to buy another F-35. Always, so long as it exists. And it will never give up a mission.” The F-35 is certainly a more modern, capable and flexible aircraft than the A-10, but it also costs about $79 million each, which makes me think that the Air Force is going to be very leery about letting it be used for close air support. By contrast, the lifetime cost of the A-10 is about $14 million per plane.
  • Back when the A-10 was first proposed, opponents argued that the role of close support could be handled by the F4 Phantom II, which brings home just how old the A-10 is, since the Phantom was retired from combat use in 1996.
  • Back when the GAU-8 30mm Gatling gun was developed, guided missile technology was new and finicky tech. That’s no longer the case. “When a laser-guided Maverick can hit a tank more accurately from 22km away, the 1.2 km range of the G8 looks a lot less impressive.”
  • The A-10 is easy to fly but slow, with a max speed of 439MPH.
  • Thick titanium armor provides solid protection to proximity explosions, less to direct hits. (Remember, in 2003 an A-10 managed to make it back to base even though it was missing most of a wing.)
  • The A-10 kicked ass in Desert Storm. “Final tally for the A10 in the first Gulf War was an impressive 987 tanks and 1,355 combat vehicles for only 6 planes lost. Another 14 A-10s were damaged but able to fly back to base, suggesting that the A-10 survivability was keeping pilots alive in that conflict.” Caveats: A lot of those kills were with Maverick missiles, and Desert Storm was 32 years ago.
  • In Iraq and Afghanistan, the A-10 was praised for how well it performed close air support, but also criticized for friendly fire and civilian casualties.
  • “Emphasis on keeping the A-10 and rugged and cheap delayed major upgrades to the plane sensor and fire control systems until the mid-2000s. The $2.2 billion A-10C upgrade program finally updated the
    Warthog’s cockpit from the 1970s era tech it had first flown with.”

  • “The Warthog is almost 50 years old at this point, meaning that aircraft are having to undergo more and more maintenance each year. These costs are adding up, to the point where newer platforms are becoming cheaper to operate per flight hour.”

  • As new technology enables new means of war-fighting, the Air Force appears to have finally convinced congress that other aircraft can do the same job but better. A big part of the argument for retiring the A-10 is a mirror of the original survivability argument from the 1960s: There doesn’t seem to be much room for a big aircraft that flies low and slow in a near-peer conflict, and likely hasn’t been for some time the A-10 has been effective as long as it has thanks to the low intensity of counterinsurgency warfare that U.S. has been fighting for 20 years. Besides a few man-portable launchers, the Taliban and ISIS didn’t have much air defense that could threaten the A-10, and so the Warthog thrived in the asymmetric warfare conditions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts say that won’t be the case against a potential enemy like China.

  • “The gun’s tank busting abilities aren’t sufficient against modern tank armor. The 30 mm API rounds used by the cannon can penetrate around 69mm of steel armor at 500 meters, but modern Russian tanks like T72-B3 have 80mm or more on the hull and sides and way more protection on the front.”

    • As much as I hate to admit it, these arguments are probably correct. The Russo-Ukrainian War has shown that the threat environment is deadlier than ever, with Russia’s air force unable to achieve air superiority over Ukraine, and Russia has reportedly limited sorties to it’s own airspace due to Ukrainian air defenses. Ukraine has shot down at least 30 Russian Su-25s, the Soviet close air support plane most broadly comparable in role and age to the A-10, which is more than they’ve shot down of any other aircraft type. And the Su-25 is over 100 MPH faster than the A-10.

    Also the rise in combat drone number, capability and variety means that the A-10’s close air support role is increasingly being taken over by cheaper, more flexible unmanned vehicles. A-10s would have been perfect for taking out those long convoys strung out on the road to Kiev, but a small swarm of drones with multiple missiles could have done the same thing if they were available, probably at lower cost and without losing pilots. (Some will point to the B-52 as example of older aircraft that are still useful on the modern battlefield, but their mission (high altitude and/or far away using standoff missiles) is the exact opposite of the A-10’s close air support mission.)

    Technology marches on, and there’s no reason you couldn’t have drones half the size and one-tenth the cost of an A-10 armed with 10-12 smart missiles replacing most of the A-10’s mission capabilities. Whether the Air Force will let that happen is another question, as the Sky Warden shows the Air Force never wants to give up a mission, but drones have proven too valuable in Ukraine to shove that genie back inside the bottle.

    Finally, note that when asked about obtaining A-10s, Ukraine’s own defense minister said they weren’t the right aircraft for the role.

    I have to reluctantly conclude that the time for the A-10 may indeed be drawing to a close.

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Budget, Military, video | 17 Comments »

    Wagner Head Prigozhin Reported Dead In Plane Crash

    Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023

    There are few less surprising stories than when someone who has clashed with Vladimir Putin dies in a mysterious accident. So it is with Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin:

    The internet has exploded with an avalanche breaking reports that Wagner chief Yvgeny Prigozhin’s business jet has crashed over Russia’s Tver region, northwest of Moscow.

    Unconfirmed reports say anywhere from seven to ten people were on board, all presumed dead – but it was initially unclear if Prigozhin himself was on board at the time. Russian media sources are now confirming that he was on board the downed plane, and is presumed dead.

    This has led to immediate speculation that the private plane could have been shot down upon Putin’s orders.

    Snip.

    A private jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed on Wednesday in Russia’s Tver Region. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said all 10 people on board had died. Rosaviation has since said that Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Private Military Company, was listed among the passengers.

    Suchomimus has video of the plane going down:

    I’m not sure we need any more complex explanation than “Man angers Putin, man dies.” The aborted coup certainly gave Putin enough reason to off Prigozhin.

    As far as what effect this has on Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine, who knows? Wagner forces were reportedly the most competent military element in Russia’s forces over the last year, but they lost a lot of troops in the fight for Bakhmut, and it’s unclear just how engaged Wagner was in the war following the abortive coup. But if Wagner were indeed “fiercely loyal” to Prigozhin, his assassination/death could have serious repercussions in various spots around the world where Wagner does heavy lifting for the Russians (like the coup in Niger).

    I imagine there will be an effort to incorporate Wagner troops into regular ussian units, but whether they’re willing to do that is anyone’s guess…

    Tags:, , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 16 Comments »

    Nuclear Weapons Expert Rates Movie Nukes

    Wednesday, August 16th, 2023

    As I did with tanks, here’s another “expert analyses the realism of Hollywood movies,” this time with nuclear weapons physicist Greg Spriggs on the realism of movie nuke scenes.

    And yes, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is included.

    One thing, though: He dings Oppenheimer for Edward Teller slathering on sunscreen, saying it wouldn’t help. Thing is, that’s straight out of the historical record.

    Tags:, , , ,
    Posted in Military, video | 7 Comments »

    F16s = Fatigue For Soviet Aircraft?

    Tuesday, August 15th, 2023

    Ukraine is expected to receive some F-16 fighter planes…sometime. Like the M1A1 Abrams tanks we’re sending them, the Biden Administration can be frustratingly vague about when they’ll actually get major weapons systems.

    But Michael Bohnert at Defense News makes an interesting point: There mere presence of F-16s will force Russian planes to fly more missions. And the old Soviet planes that make up the bulk of Russia’s air forces have much shorter operational lifetimes than Western aircraft.

    With F-16 fighter jets expected to be provided to Ukraine over the coming months, opinions of their usefulness spans from a gamechanger in the war with Russia to a total waste of resources. But there is one way that these aircraft will harm Russia even if they never shoot down a missile, fighter jet or helicopter: They will cost the Russian Aerospace Forces precious aircraft life.

    The Russian Aerospace Forces, or VKS, possessed roughly 900 tactical aircraft before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. These included fighter, attack and fighter-bomber aircraft. Since the invasion, it has lost between 84 and 130 of those to air defenses, fighter aircraft and crashes. That’s only a portion of total losses, however. Overuse of these aircraft is also costing Russia as the war drags on.

    In a conflict’s early stages, what matters is total combat power from all active platforms; that represents the maximum firepower that can be directed at the opposition from the onset. In a protracted war, where one force tries to exhaust the other, it’s the total longevity of the military force that matters. And that’s where the VKS finds itself now.

    By my calculations, the extra hours that it’s pressed its aircraft into service since February 2022 have effectively cost it an additional 27 to 57 aircraft in imputed losses.

    Aircraft have a life span. They are designed with a total number of expected flight hours, which are used roughly evenly over the life of the aircraft and segmented with periodic maintenance and inspection. For example, if an aircraft is designed for 3,000 flight hours with an expected use of 30 years, the aircraft will fly roughly 100 hours per year. If, during an inspection, wear on the plane is found to be more or less than expected, the projected remaining hours are adjusted accordingly. These numbers dictate all sorts of planning, from fuel procurement to ground maintenance to pilot training.

    Imputed losses mean that the Russians have burned through more of the expected life span of their aircraft more quickly than anticipated. To make up for it, they’ll have to procure more aircraft, increase maintenance, reduce operations, or accept a smaller force — or some combination of those.

    The VKS is still in the process of transitioning from Soviet-era aircraft to more modern platforms, and an estimated 18 to 36 of these newer tactical aircraft join the force every year. Almost half of the VKS force is still upgraded Soviet-era airframes.

    While newer Russian aircraft are designed for between 3,500 and 4,500 flight hours, with some as high as 6,000, those Soviet-era aircraft were designed to be in the air only 2,000 to 3,500 hours. Although several platforms, such as the MiG-31, have been upgraded to extend their service life, many of these older planes (Su-24, Su-25, Su-27, MiG-29) are nearing the end of their service lives. These have, at best, 500 to 1,000 hours remaining.

    In the first few months of the war in Ukraine, the VKS was flying as many as 150 to 300 sorties per day — compared with the peacetime rate of roughly 60 per day. Even dropping to 100 sorties a day since, the VKS has basically flown double its normal annual hours since the beginning of the war.

    This extra use is, by commonly used measures, equivalent to losing roughly 34 aircraft since the start of the invasion. However, this only captures the losses relative to the life span of newer airframes. Because the older airframes have so few remaining hours, it’s actually equivalent to losing about 57 VKS airframes.

    Add to that the Russian reputation for corruption and lousy maintenance, and you can see how F-16s (and other western planes) could overstress Russia’s air force even without racking up air-to-air kills.

    Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Elections, Military, Obama Scandals | 5 Comments »

    M1A1 Abrams Tanks Finally Heading To Ukraine

    Thursday, August 10th, 2023

    Remember all the fanfare over the U.S. sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine? Supposedly in time for the much vaunted Spring Offensive?

    That didn’t happen. Evidently the usual Biden Administration competency was in play. But now the allotment of M1A1 Abrams tanks (not the M1A2s previously discussed) are finally ready to be shipped over.

    The first batch of Abrams tanks that the U.S. is providing to Ukraine was approved for shipment over the weekend, and the tanks remain on track to arrive in Ukraine by early Fall, Army Acquisition Chief Doug Bush told reporters on Monday.

    “The last of the set was officially accepted by the U.S. government or the production facility over the weekend. So they are done,” said Bush. The 31 Abrams tanks destined for Ukraine – older M1A1 variants – had been undergoing refurbishment and preparation for shipment for months.

    Though the tanks are ready, they still have to be shipped overseas and sent to Ukraine, “along with all of the things that go with them – ammunition, spare parts, fuel equipment, repair facilities,” Bush said. “So it’s not just the tanks.”

    The goal, said Bush, remains to get the Abrams tanks to the unit level by “early Fall.” He did not give a specific date or even month. Last month, Politico reported that the tanks would arrive on the battlefield in September.

    Helping Ukraine repel Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression has frequently been cited as a top priority by members of the Biden Administration,a cause in whose over $46 billion in military aid has been sent. Given that the UK’s Challenger 2 tanks arrived in Ukraine in March, it would seem like the Biden Administration hasn’t treated their pledge of Abrams tanks with any urgency.

    To be sure, several U.S. weapon systems (HIMARS, Patriot, Excalibur and various drones) have proven absolutely vital in letting Ukraine resist the Russian invasion. But for something the U.S. defense establishment, and just about all our NATO allies, view as a top priority, the Pentagon as been quite sluggish at getting them tanks. A cynic might wonder if it’s because, being drawn from existing stocks, sending them M1A1s doesn’t grease enough Beltway Bandit palms.

    Given how long it will take to train Ukrainians on them, maybe they’ll be available for the 2024 Spring Offensive…

    Tags:, , , , , ,
    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military | 15 Comments »

    Russian Optics Factory Goes Boom

    Wednesday, August 9th, 2023

    No indication yet that this was a Ukrainian rocket attack, drone attack, or even partisan sabotage. But it sounds militarily significant.

    Local officials in Russia say an explosion at an optical plant in the city of Sergiyev Posad, about 70 kilometers outside Moscow, killed one person and injured at least 43 people on August 9.

    Five of the injured are in intensive care with serious burns or head injuries, according to the city administration’s Telegram account. Some of the 43 people admitted to a regional hospital have shrapnel injuries, it said.

    Officials at the city’s central hospital said that a woman had succumbed to wounds sustained in the blast.

    Independent Telegram channel Baza shared images of a tall cloud of smoke and identified the site as the Zagorsk Optical and Mechanical Plant, which produces night-vision and other optical devices for the military.

    Russian officials later confirmed the location.

    Russian news agency TASS has quoted the emergency services as rejecting assertions on social media that the cause of the blast was a drone attack.

    That speculation has been fueled by months of remote attacks in Russia that Moscow blames on Kyiv along with Russian reports it “thwarted” two fresh drone attacks near Moscow overnight.

    TASS said the blast happened where pyrotechnics were being kept and destroyed a 1,600-square-meter warehouse.

    An unexplained fire damaged the same Zagorsk plant in June 2022.

    Seemed to blow up real good:

    You can’t trust TASS, and it’s entirely possible that it’s your standard negligent Russian military industrial accident. But why would you store pyrotechnics next to an optics factory?

    Other news notes that the plant makes optics for Russian security forces. Keep in mind that obtaining optical sights for their tanks has been an ongoing concern for Russia.

    Developing…

    Tags:, , , , , ,
    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 7 Comments »

    « Older Entries
    Newer Entries »