Posts Tagged ‘F-16’

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Indo-Pakistani Conflict: Day Three

Thursday, February 28th, 2019

Quick roundup on the Indo-Pakistani conflict:

  • Facing a quick, widespread Indian military mobilization in Kashmir, Pakistan is saying they’re just going to hand the captured Indian pilot over as a gesture of goodwill. (Pakistan’s earlier airing footage of the captured pilot on TV was, in fact, a violation of the Geneva Convention.)
  • Another reason war may be averted in Kashmir is due to bad weather.
  • India supposedly shot down an Pakistani F-16, the pilot of which is MIA.
  • Reports of Pakistan shelling Indian positions. Indian news source, so take it with a grain or two of salt.
  • Evidently the Indian Air Force staged several mock runs to stress Pakistan’s air force before the actual strike.
  • Not buying all the points here, but the analysis of differing Pakistani and Indian nuclear strategy is interesting:

    The Pakistani military’s fear is that the Indian army has an overwhelming advantage, in terms of men and tanks, so may mount a “Cold Start” conventional attack that quickly could seize the major Pakistani city of Lahore and effectively win a war without employing nuclear weapons. As a consequence, whereas India, initially at least, developed strategic nuclear weapons designed to reach all of Pakistan, the latter’s military switched to tactical nuclear weapons to stop dead any Cold Start Doctrine adventure.

    But how easy would it be to halt Indian tank divisions pouring across the desert in the flat border region south of the mountainous terrain of Kashmir, where the current action is taking place? It may sound that I have strange friends, but I know people who have “run the numbers” on this. The answer is that it would take more than 20 Pakistani nuclear weapons to blunt an Indian attack.

    The conventional wisdom is, or certainly was, that nuclear weapons create a balance of terror between rivals. That logic may have applied in the days of the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union, but it no longer is valid — at least between India and Pakistan.

  • “Britain, US and France ask UN to blacklist Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Masood Azhar.”
  • “Jaish-e-Mohammad head Masood Azhar, the real architect of the deadly Pulwama attack, receives the same military protection in Pakistan’s Punjab province as Osama bin Laden did in the military town of Abbottabad, India Today’s open-source investigation shows…India Today’s open-source intelligence team has pin-pointed the Jaish den in Bahawalpur, the 12th largest city of Pakistan’s Punjab.”
  • In both India and Pakistan, people are asking the important questions: Will the war interfere with the Cricket World Cup? In fact, Pakistan’s president Imran Khan is a former cricketer.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 2 Comments »

    Indian Planes Hits Pakistan

    Tuesday, February 26th, 2019

    India and Pakistan’s on-again/off-again conflict over Kashmir is on again:

    Pakistan says India launched an airstrike on its territory early Tuesday that caused no casualties, while India said it targeted a terrorist training camp in a pre-emptive strike that killed a “very large number” of militants.

    The overnight raid was the latest escalation between the nuclear-armed rivals since a deadly militant attack in the disputed Kashmir region earlier this month killed more than 40 Indian soldiers. Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack but has vowed to respond to any Indian military operation against it.

    The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility. The bomber, who made a video before the attack, was a resident of Indian Kashmir.

    Pakistan’s military spokesman, Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor, said the Indian “aircrafts” crossed into the Muzafarabad sector of Kashmir, which is split between the two countries but claimed by each in its entirety. He said Pakistan scrambled fighters and the Indian jets “released payload in haste” near Balakot, on the edge of Pakistani-ruled Kashmir.

    India’s foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, told reporters in New Delhi that Indian fighter aircraft targeted Jaish-e-Mohammad camps in a pre-emptive strike after intelligence indicated another attack was being planned.

    “Acting on intelligence, India early today stuck the biggest training camp of Jaish-e-Mohammed in Balakot,” he said. “In this operation a very large number of Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and Jehadis being trained were eliminated.”

    The best working assumption here is that everyone involved is lying, which is to assume that Pakistan is backing and funding Jaish-e-Mohammad (probably, like the Taliban, through the ISI), and that Indian planes did hit their targets, but have no way of knowing how much damage they actually inflicted.

    The Indian Air Force used Sukhoi-30MKIs and Mirage 2000s with laser-guided bombs in the strike. Neither of those is state-of-the-art. Sukhoi-30MKI is a local build of a Russian F-15 clone introduced in the 1990s. The French Mirage 2000 was first introduced in the 1970s, though the Indian version has been considerably upgraded. None of those are remotely close to state-of-the-art. Fortunately for Indian, Pakistan’s air force is not much more modern, with American F-16s and the Pakistani/Chinese co-built F-17 Thunder being their top of the line.

    Three of India and Pakistan’s four wars have been fought over Kashmir, mostly recently in the Kargil War of 1999, when Pakistani troops infiltrated into Kashmir over the “line of control” and got their asses kicked. The biggest difference between 1999 and now, of course, is that both India and Pakistan have considerably expanded their nuclear arsenals, both thought to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 nukes each.

    Now there are reports of both countries mobilizing, of sporadic gunfire across the border, and Pakistan stating it will strike back “at a time of its choosing.

    Making things even more unpredictable is that both Pakistan and India are ruled by weird religious-ethnoationalist populist parties, Imran Khan’s Islamist Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and Narendra Modi’s Hindu Bharatiya Janata. It’s hard to know just how far either will take things if push comes to shove. Probably well short of letting the nukes fly, but who knows?

    It would be nice if our media would focus on things like “possible nuclear war” rather than, say, the beliefs of Trump’s pastry chef, but that’s not the media we have…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 1 Comment »

    LinkSwarm for June 23, 2017

    Friday, June 23rd, 2017

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! There’s so much news I’m going to punt “The Pelosi Question” to the weekend:

  • In case you hadn’t noticed, illinois is going bankrupt.
  • John Podesta to testify before the House Intelligence committee. Hopefully they’ll ask him about the allegations in Shattered that he and Robby Mook cooked up the entire “Russia hacked the election” fantasy within 24 hours of Hillary’s loss. And also about his and his brother’s documented financial ties to Russia.
  • Former state Department/CIA employee charged with espionage for China:

    A former State Department employee was arrested Thursday and charged with espionage for allegedly transmitting Top Secret and Secret documents to a Chinese government agent, according to an affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA.

    Kevin Mallory, 60, of Leesburg is a self-employed consultant who speaks fluent Chinese. Court filings show that Mallory was an Army veteran who worked as a special agent for U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service from 1987 to 1990. Since then, Mallory has worked for various government agencies and defense contractors, maintaining a Top Secret security clearance. The Washington Post reports that Mallory was also an employee of the CIA.

  • A lot of hardcore Democrats are becoming increasingly uneasy about the way that Trump Derangement Syndrome has warped their party:

    We do know that Wednesday’s congressional attacker, James Hodgkinson, shared a conspiracy-tinged Change.org link on March 22, accompanied by the caption, “Trump is a traitor.” Once again, it has to be stressed that this information is woefully insufficient to conclude that the perpetrator was motivated by Russia-oriented conspiracy theories. Motivations are multifaceted, and often political beliefs “intersect” with mental distress, causing people to act violently. But the sharing of the link does indicate that Hodgkinson has been affected by the frenzied climate Democrats have stoked around the Russia issue.

    Once again, for extra emphasis: calling attention to the link Hodgkinson shared is not to say that Democrats are directly culpable for this shooting. That would be ridiculous. But the shared link does show that he was to some extent enmeshed in the conspiratorial paranoia that Democrats have knowingly fostered, at full-blast, for approaching an entire year. One ancillary consequence of fostering conspiratorial paranoia for a full year is that certain people with unstable mental predispositions may latch on and commit violent acts. But Democrats and liberals, in their self-assuredness, have been reticent to acknowledge this byproduct of their current political strategy. Proclaiming that the president engaged in treason — as many members of Congress and media figures have — is going to have an influence on the broader public, and included in that broader public are people who might be deranged and/or have violent inclinations.

    If you deny that the kind of overblown rhetoric that Democrats have specialized in over the past months — warning about traitorous subterfuge and foreign infiltration — can have any trickle-down effect on regular people, you’re deluding yourself.

  • It looks like Democrats are learning all the wrong lessons from Jon Ossoff’s loss:

    Democrats want a resistance. They want to impeach the President. They want full-blown socialism. They want to go further to the left than the tea party wanted to go right. A lot of activist Democrats are already interpreting Jon Ossoff’s loss as him not being aggressively anti-Trump enough.

    The Democrat base has moved way further left than where the American public is and at a time we seem to be in a pendulum swing back to the right, that could hurt them. As they start challenging Democrat incumbents with more liberal activists and start winning primaries in swing seats with radical progressives, they risk their ability to win.

    What makes this fun to watch is knowing they reject that idea and think the more radical and more militant the more likely their candidates will win. I cannot wait to watch their slate of moonbat crazy challengers.

  • All those “Ossoff’s loss was a moral victory” excuses? Vox says don’t believe it: “Don’t sugarcoat it — Ossoff’s loss is a big disappointment, and a bad sign, for Democrats. Democrats need to outperform Hillary Clinton to take back the House. Ossoff did worse than her.”
  • As bad as political violence is now, the 1960s and early 1970s were much worse.
  • Phil Montag, technology chairman for the Nebraska Democratic Party, was caught on audio saying he was glad Rep> Steve Scalise (R-LA) was shot and wishing he had died. Make that the ex-technology chairman for the Nebraska Democratic Party. Good. Pink slips seem to be the only thing these people pay attention to. (Hat tip: Gabriel Malor’s Twitter feed.)
  • “A professor at a Connecticut college said he was forced to flee the state after he received death threats for appearing to endorse the idea that first responders to last week’s congressional shooting should have let the victims ‘f**king die’ instead of treating them.” Step right up, Trinity College Professor Johnny Eric Williams! You’re the next contestant on “Trump Derangement Syndrome Ruined My Life!”
  • And speaking of Democrats losing it, “Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused ex-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson of lying under oath when he said the DNC refused the help of the DHS in their hacking scandal.”
  • “This May was the Democratic National Committee’s worst May of fundraising since 2003. The DNC raised $4.29 million in May of this year, according to data recently released by the Federal Election Commission. It is the weakest take for national Democrats since May of 2003, when the party raised a paltry $2.7 million.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Did 5.7 million illegal aliens vote in 2008? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • President Trump follows through on his campaign promise to kill deferred action for illegal alien parents, AKA DAPA.
  • TPPF’s Chris Jacobs is not impressed with the Republican Senate ObamaCare replacement bill. TPPF’s Chip Roy said:

    Simply put, the bill doubles down on the fundamentally flawed architecture of Obamacare and if implemented, will neither increase the actual care available to the people nor drive down the cost of care or insurance. It maintains Obamacare’s subsidy regime, retains almost the entirety of the regulatory architecture driving up people’s premiums and deductibles, continues the previous Administration’s unconstitutional bailouts to insurers, and maintains the Medicaid expansion for five more years before slowly attempting to reform the program.

  • More on the same subject: “Top Ten Ways Senate Obamacare Bill Is #FakeRepeal.”
  • ObamaCare tweet:

  • Liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz states that Presidnet Trump’s tape bluff is perfectly legal. “What President Trump did was no different from what prosecutors, defense attorneys, policemen, FBI agents and others do every day in an effort to elicit truthful testimony from mendacious witnesses.” Also: “We must declare an armistice against using our criminal justice system as a political weapon in what has become a zero-sum bloodsport.”
  • Saudi king replaces crown prince with his own son.
  • Saudis foil Iranian sabotage attack on their offshore oilfields.
  • “Trump Imposes New Sanctions on Russia Over Ukraine.” Insert record scratch sound over derailment of the “Trump is Putin’s stooge” narrative here. Oh, also, New York Times: When you invade, occupy and annex territory, it’s not an “incursion,” it’s an “invasion.”
  • Helmut Kohl, the chancellor who oversaw German reunification, dead at age 87. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Remember all those “refugees” Angela Merkel invited in? “Up to three quarters of Germany’s refugees will still be unemployed in five years’ time.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Trump Administration Begins to Dismantle Obama Campus Rape Tribunals.” Good.
  • “CENTCOM confirms Islamic State’s ‘Grand Mufti’ killed in airstrike…Turki al-Bin’ali was killed in a May 31 airstrike in Mayadin, Syria.”
  • Amazon buying Whole Foods ties into their overall strategy of high fixed costs and returns to scale.
  • Alternate view: Amazon buying Whole Foods is this cycle’s AOL/Time Warner merger.
  • East Lansing, Michigan punishes man for daring to express pro-Christian thoughtcrime on Facebook.
  • “The amount of labor that once bought 54 minutes of light now buys 52 years of light. The cost has fallen by a factor of 500,000 and the quality of that light has transformed from unstable and risky to clean, safe, and controllable.”
  • The year-by-year descent into airline hell. But: More people are flying than ever before, and airlines are actually profitable. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Man almost dies after getting swept away by a river while hiking, learns important survival lessons. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Harvard introduces segregated commencement ceremony for black students. next up: Their own water fountains.
  • “A mentally ill homeless woman in Florida is accused of vandalizing a policeman’s patrol car and smearing feces on a church where she left the walls defaced with nonsensical writings against ‘patriarchy.'”
  • F-35 puts on an impressive demonstration at the Paris Air Show. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • F-16 catches fire at Houston airport.
  • The meaning of Bill Cosby’s hung jury:

    The extraordinarily high prosecutorial burden of proof in any criminal trial is intentionally designed to heavily favor defendants, because we long ago embraced as a society Blackstone’s principle. Formulated in the seventeen-sixties by the English jurist William Blackstone, the presumption is that it is better to have ten guilty people go free than that one innocent person suffer. Hard as it is to stomach today, embracing that calculus means that we should even want ten rapists (not to mention terrorists and murderers) to go free in order to protect the one falsely accused. Unfortunately, Cosby is one of those to escape criminal punishment. And, to put a fine point on the over-all gendered impact of requiring proof “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the inevitable effect of the heavy tilt toward defendants is that in sexual-assault trials, which involve mostly male defendants and mostly female accusers, men are favored over women.

    What works in Bill Cosby’s favor also works in Bill Clinton’s favor… (Hat tip: Christina Hoff Summers’ Twitter feed.)

  • 15 companies that made great games that still went bust. Spoiler: The phrase “bought by EA” appears a lot.
  • Colin Kaepernick seems to have decided that his career is indeed over. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Whipped cream fatality.
  • And that gives me the thinnest of possible justifications to post this classic:

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, ObamaCare, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »

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