Huge Supreme Court win, Ukraine switches from Wildberries to Ozon warehouses, yes, DSA are damn dirty commies, more Second Amendment progress, Ted Cruz’s book on Clarence Thomas is out, Aussie gets 15 years for shooting a carnival air gun, remembering Dolly, and the NFL finally takes the Pro-Bowl to a farm in the country.
The Supreme Court just handed President Trump a massive victory in the fight to secure America’s elections. The justices cleared the way for his executive order restricting mail-in voting to move forward, and after months of Democrat officials trying to bury the policy in court, the administration finally has room to breathe.
This is a big deal.
The SAVE America Act is still stalled in the Senate, blocked by Democrats who aren’t even hiding the fact they have zero interest in verifying that voters are who they say they are. Trump’s executive order just got a green light from the nation’s highest court anyway. Election integrity doesn’t have to die in the legislative graveyard to make progress.
Trump signed the executive order, called “Ensuring Citizenship Verification And Integrity In Federal Elections,” in March 2026. It directs his administration to build lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. The Postal Service laid out its implementation plan last week, but the clock is ticking. Some states start sending mail ballots in just a few weeks, leaving the administration little time to get this right before the midterms. More court challenges remain possible.
The victory is real, but it’s not the finish line.
Mail balloting has been a target of Trump’s for years, and for good reason. The Heritage Foundation has long argued that mail-in ballots are more susceptible to fraud, coercion, and chain-of-custody problems than in-person voting. Anyone who lived through the 2020 presidential election, one of the most disputed elections in history, watched that vulnerability play out in real time.
It’s official: California just criminalized publicly exposing fraud.
our tax dollars are paying for fraud, and if someone like Nick Shirley exposes this fraud he, not the fraudster, could get in trouble.
More from Nick:
These politicians need the fraud to continue and they sadly use immigrants to do so often. They fund nonprofits and NGOs with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year for immigration services, including free healthcare, and have now made ‘immigration support service providers’ essentially a protected class in California.
For example, if I film a hospice or a ‘learning center’ with no patients receiving millions through Medicaid and the owner gives me a paper saying I cannot publish the video, I cannot publish it. If I publish it to expose them and they claim it caused them ‘fear’ or a third party threatens them, I face a minimum $4,000 civil fine plus the legal fees of the individual or group suing me.
This bill was created by the Attorney General’s wife and co-sponsored by CHIRLA, a nonprofit that has received over $80,000,000 in taxpayer dollars for ‘immigrant support services.’ Do you understand how this works yet? When the fraud is exposed, they create new laws to protect the fraudsters and penalize those who expose it.
By signing this bill, the Governor and California politicians expose themselves as the corrupt politicians they are. This is not the end; the fight has just begun. More to come soon; this is far from over.
An unconstitutional prior restraint First Amendment violation that will be struck down instantly the first time California tries to enforce it.
If it weren’t for voter fraud, welfare state fraud, crazy trannies, violent criminals and pandering to radical Islamic anti-Semites, the Democrat Party wouldn’t have any business model at all…
“Our goal is Communism,” David Jenkins, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, said in 2023.
DSA member Cea Weaver is New York City’s tenant tsarina. She posted via X in December 2017, “Elect more communists.” The next year, she demanded: “Seize private property.”
Weaver’s boss is Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In his Jan. 1 inaugural address, he stated: “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.” He told a DSA Zoom call in 2021: The “end goal” should be “seizing the means of production.” Mamdani also said, “The abolition of private property … is preferable to what is going on right now.” These comments loudly echo Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ cornerstone collectivist text “The Communist Manifesto.”
The magnificently named Darializa Avila Chevalier rode Mamdani’s endorsement all the way to the Democrat nomination for New York’s 13th Congressional District.
“I’m a democratic socialist,” she boasted June 29 on MS Now. She also wants to “seize the means of production,” as she advised in a not-quite-deleted September 2019 X post. She confessed that December: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag.” In April 2020, she wrote: “Most of the theory I have read is communism but the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me.” The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine preserved 3,657 such messages that Chevalier thought she had erased.
For months, the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz was Tehran’s ultimate card dominated commentary on the war.
As a narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and a substantial share of liquefied natural gas had historically passed, it appeared to be a chokepoint Iran could close or severely disrupt at will. It did not need to destroy every tanker. Hitting a small percentage with drones, cruise missiles, speedboats, or mines would spike insurance rates, deter crews and companies, and effectively shut the strait without continuous physical control.
This idea was not new for 2026. It had long been a feature of the Iranian strategic posture, treated as both a military instrument and a political myth-proof that even under pressure Tehran retained a decisive lever over the global energy system. Parts of the Western media and independent analysts amplified the same narrative.
Relying on incomplete open-source shipping data, especially once vessels began sailing dark, many concluded that the United States had been caught unprepared and lacked a realistic path to reopen the waterway. Hormuz, they argued, was effectively closed or closable at Iran’s discretion. That framing was powerful, but also incomplete.
The assumption that Iran’s detection and targeting system could not be dismantled without dramatic escalation proved wrong. Under the U.S. Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, and with significant involvement from the Fifth Fleet and Air Force components, the United States ran a sustained effort to degrade the sensors Iran needed to find and hit ships.
Iran relied on mobile truck-mounted radars, drones, cruise missiles, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats, and naval mines. Inside the narrow strait, ships move in relatively predictable lanes. Iran combined active radars with passive electro-optical and infrared cameras on elevated terrain and islands such as Qeshm, Larak, and Abu Musa.
Mobile radars would radiate briefly to locate shipping, then shut down and move before anti-radiation missiles could arrive. Once a ship’s approximate position was known, strike systems could be sent to search.
The vulnerability was that every radar emission could be detected. American aircraft responded systematically with anti-radiation missiles while visual and intelligence efforts located the passive sensors. This was the core of what some involved called “draining the swamp.”
Iran had redundancy, but the number of sensors was finite. Hundreds of precision strikes gradually reduced Iran’s ability to see traffic in the strait. As the detection layer thinned, the effectiveness of the strike systems declined with it.
Parallel efforts neutralized mines with unmanned vessels and declared the southern lane near Oman largely clear. Convoys moved under escort, often at night with the automated information system (AIS) off. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with Aegis radars and standard missile (SM)-family interceptors formed the backbone; drones and Apache helicopters armed with laser-guided rockets provided additional cover. American ships also engaged IRGC speedboats that closed on the convoys.
On the commercial side, the United States addressed insurance barriers. In early March, President Donald Trump directed the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide political risk insurance and guarantees for maritime trade.
The DFC, working with the Treasury and CENTCOM, established a revolving reinsurance facility of roughly $20 billion-later expanded with private partners including Chubb-focused on hull, machinery, and cargo cover. Early uptake was limited. As Iranian success rates fell, more vessels joined.
Results have been significant. CENTCOM has reported assisting well over a thousand commercial vessels and moving hundreds of millions of barrels since the spring. Independent trackers often showed lower numbers because much of the traffic sailed dark. Pre-war throughput was 20 million to 21 million barrels per day.
Flows through Hormuz remain below that, but combined with the Abu Dhabi-Fujairah pipeline and Saudi Arabia’s pipeline to Yanbu in the Red Sea, volumes recovered enough to keep oil prices in the $85 to $95 range-elevated, but far from the predicted catastrophe.
Followup: “Satellite Imagery of Multiple Ozon Warehouses Destroyed by Ukraine.”
“Big Blast as Drone Storage is Hit By Drone & Project 05060 Patrol Boat Destroyed in Crimea.”
“Ukraine Destroys Rare Su-33 (First Destroyed), MiG-29 and Orion Attack Drone At Anapa Airport.” This was just the other side of the Kerch Straight Bridge. The Su-33 is normally a carrier based aircraft, but since Russia’s only aircraft carrier has been out of service since 2017, they’re doing much desk landing these days.
The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.
The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.
U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice conceded that Americans are allowed to carry in Postal Service buildings.
Snip.
On August 18, a federal judge ruled against Biden’s “ghost gun” ban, saying it violates multiple parts of the Constitution….Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Biden’s “Ghost Gun” rule violates the 2nd and 5th Amendments,
Decision by decision, the Second Amendment is being upheld and gun rights expanded.
More progress: “CDC restores info showing how many good guys with guns stop bad guys after Biden removed it.”
Concerning: “Maryland felony cases against Zizian trans death cult members abruptly suspended. After 18 months of prosecution, Maryland abruptly put its cases against three Zizian trans cult members on indefinite hold. Officials have not publicly explained why.”
The cases against cult leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota and subordinates Michelle “Jamie” “Alex” Zajko and Daniel “Hastur” Blank were made inactive on Aug. 14; All scheduled future trial dates were canceled.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested together following a national manhunt on Feb. 16, 2025 in rural western Maryland. They were found with a cache of weapons in their two box trucks. They had spent years moving around the country as members of the Zizians, a radical transgender cult who has been linked to at least eight violent deaths.
The three initially faced only misdemeanor trespassing, firearms and obstruction charges after an elderly Frostburg-area property owner reported that they had arrived in box trucks and asked to camp on his property.
Authorities later added charges involving the alleged illegal possession and carrying of concealed and loaded firearms.
LaSota, a biological male who identifies as a woman and uses the name “Ziz,” is the founder and ideological leader of the Zizians. The group is made up of transgender vegan extremists, several of whom have elite educational backgrounds in science and mathematics. Members embraced an esoteric ideology combining leftist transgender politics, anarchism, rationalism and veganism.
Snip.
Though the state charges have been suspended, LaSota is being held on a federal detainer request on a federal indictment of being a fugitive from justice in possession of firearms and ammunition. On Tuesday, he was transferred into federal custody at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.
Zajko, meanwhile, is awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania. She was charged in June with murdering her adoptive parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, on New Year’s Eve 2022. The case had gone cold for years before the surprise announcement by prosecutors in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Authorities allege Zajko traveled from Vermont to her childhood home in Chester Heights on the night of her 30th birthday and participated in the execution-style killings.
Bad news for justice in Colorado: “Former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA analyst Yvonne Missy Woods pleaded guilty to four felonies — cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public official, and forgery, after facing 102 felony charges tied to misconduct in 58 cases dating back to 2008. Woods worked at CBI for 29 years, from January 1994 to November 2023, and was qualified as an expert witness more than 500 times. A routine audit in late 2023 uncovered anomalies in her work; an internal investigation found she purposefully deleted DNA data to skip required testing steps. Retesting of roughly 3,000 affected cases cost the state an estimated $11 million. Among the high-profile cases she handled was the 2003 Kobe Bryant sexual assault investigation. ”
“ICE Arrests 1,328 Illegal Aliens in DC, Virginia, Maryland in 14 Days. Of those arrested, almost 400 illegal immigrants had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, including a Salvadoran national wanted in Richmond, Virginia, on a murder warrant.”
“Other crimes included rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, DUI, robbery and attempted murder.” Also: “They also arrested members of MS-13, 18th Street Gang, and Tren de Aragua gangs.” MS-13 and Tren de Aragua we’ve covered here before. According to Wikipedia, “The 18th Street Gang, also known as Eighteen St, Barrio 18, Mara 18, or simply 18 in North America, is a multi-ethnic (largely Mexican and Central American), street gang from Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest street gangs in Los Angeles, with 30,000–50,000 members between the United States, Mexico, and Central America.” Evidently they’re enemies with MS-13.
“Lottery Boss Appears in Court over $95 Million Scandal. Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity tied to the controversial 2023 jackpot.”
Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief appeared in a Travis County courtroom Friday morning as the criminal case stemming from the controversial 2023 Lotto Texas jackpot moves forward.
Grief appeared alongside his attorney before District Judge Dayna Blazey in the 167th District Court. Prosecutors and attorneys representing the entity formerly known as the Texas Lottery Commission were also present.
Court records show Grief waived formal magistration Friday. Another hearing concerning his personal-recognizance bond was set for October 16.
Shortly after Friday’s proceedings, Travis County District Attorney José Garza formally announced that a grand jury had indicted both Grief and the now-defunct Texas Lottery Commission for abuse of official capacity.
The indictments were handed down April 21.
According to Garza’s office, the charges stem from the April 22, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing and allege that the commission, along with high-level management officials Ed Rogers and Clay Kidd, intentionally and knowingly misused government resources.
The DA’s office alleges the conduct was authorized by Grief, who was serving as the commission’s executive director at the time.
The indictment concerns the drawing in which a New Jersey-based lottery purchasing operation acquired nearly every possible number combination and won a $95 million jackpot.
Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity involving $300,000 or more.
The whole affair stinks to high heaven, and I have to think at least some Lotto Commission employees were in on it.
“Judges Recommend Regulators Reject Proposed 765-kV Line. The Public Utility Commission must now decide whether to accept the judges’ recommendation to reject the proposed multibillion-dollar transmission line projects.” “The judges concluded the utilities [Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation] did not establish that the projects are necessary and failed to comply with notice requirements designed to give affected landowners a chance to participate before the application was filed.”
The plot thickens. “Iowa Attorney General Says She’s Taking California to the Supreme Court Over Paramount-Warner Bros.”
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wrote in an op-ed for The Daily Wire that she is suing California for leading the charge in the lawsuit against the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger.
“California is once again trying to be the country’s regulator. And once again California is defying common sense to raise costs around the country,” Bird wrote. “That makes this a dispute between states, and the Constitution says those can only be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“Australian man faces 15 years in prison for using toy gun to win carnival prize for daughter.” He was an ex-felony prohibited from using guns, but getting busted for a carnival air rifle seems way, way excessive.
How Simon Whistler runs his YouTube channels. He outsources everything except direction and presentation, expands his winners and ruthlessly culls his losers. It’s smart business, but largely antithetical to what I watch YouTube for. (Previously.)
Weirdly enough, the animated film Lesbian Space Princess seems to be hated by everyone. See, a film with that title could be highly profitable in porn…
“Smart rifle” technology seems to have finally arrived in the form of an “AI” enhanced scope that still requires you to pull the trigger, but picks the optimal time to actually fire to take out drones.
“High-tech, often AI powered scopes are something every major military has been working on for the past few years with more failures than successes. The [Smash] 2000L is arguably the most developed such system in existence. However, given the laughably poor records high-tech scopes have, it’s valid to ask if this new system currently in the process of testing and adoption with the US Marine Corps, the UK, Australia, and other countries, is actually worth the hype.”
It only works against small drones because, you know, rifle. “The drones of the Smash 2000L system are designed to take out a roughly the size of a DJI Mavic drone, a system used by both Ukraine and Russia before DJI blocked all exports to both countries, after which both sides continue to produce very similar drones domestically. This drone and other comparable designs are actually among the most used drones in the war, with either side launching around 10,000 of them every single month. That makes them the exact type of threat the Smash 2000L was designed to counter.”
“The Mavic E3 drone measures [roughly] 14 by 11 inches with a height of barely [4] inches. This makes it roughly the size of a large Domino’s pizza.”
“They’re capable of reaching and exceeding speeds of roughly 50 [miles] an hour. Some of them are even capable of doubling that.”
“Drones rarely operate individually. Swarm attacks are most effective as they guarantee results.”
“From February 2022 to today, Ukraine went from domestically producing a total of about 3,000 drones per year to being capable of producing 5 million of them. Russian figures are similar at around 3 and a half million drones a year.” I would like to know where these figures are coming from.
“The obvious solution is just jamming the living shit out of everything. Although autonomous drones are gaining ground in warfare nowadays, most drones are still operated in real time by an operator. That operator communicates with the drone via a radio link and by jamming that link, essentially flooding it with radio frequency, the drone is cut off from its operator. The jammers themselves exist in the form of rifles. One of which famously made an appearance at the funeral of Pope Francis in 2025, the
very first time such a weapon was fielded at a papal funeral.”
Skipping over the jamming/fiber optic drone arms race we’ve covered before.
“Large and small surface-to-air missiles were launched, depending on the size of the approaching drone, and even other drones were used to take down drones.”
“However, the last ditch option for a soldier to use is their own primary firearm. And this is exceptionally difficult for a number of reasons. To take down a drone with their own assault rifle, a soldier who is high on adrenaline and reasonably afraid for their safety, has to hit a target roughly the size of a volleyball at a distance of between 50 and 200 meters as it buzzes around erratically at highway speeds. And they have to do that with a projectile that’s 5.56 or 7.62 mm in diameter.
“Because of this, both Russian and Ukrainian infantry squads have adopted shotguns as their go-to last ditch anti-drone firearm.”
“Shotguns have proven to be much more effective against drones as a last resort, which is why some manufacturers like Benelli have developed anti-drone shotguns with special ammunition.”
“Ukraine has also developed a special 5.56 anti-drone rounds that fires several sub projectiles instead of a solid bullet. The soldier still needs to fire five or six rounds while tracking the target, but the round is far more effective than standard ammunition because of its shotgun principle.”
The main problem is that shooting at drones that are trying to kill you is highly stressful, and accuracy suffers. “Aiming perfectly in such a stressful scenario is just borderline impossible, no matter how accurate you are. And this, of course, is where the Smash 2000L comes in.”
“The idea behind Smash is very simple. Turn every soldier into a sharpshooter. Smash is essentially a very advanced scope that can be installed on most firearms, and it’s allegedly capable of hitting targets, even very small moving targets like drones, with a 95% hit probability. For comparison, experienced shooters using red dot sites at a distance of about 100 m average a 20% hit rate.”
“With a Smash 2000L, even trainees average an 80% hit rate, with experienced shooters reaching the aforementioned 95%. Which is really pretty impressive.”
“Smash consists of a digital camera with an attached display that’s seen by the shooter, a trigger guard, and most importantly, a computer. That computer does all the work. It locks onto a target, analyzes its speed, heading, distance, and environmental conditions such as wind and humidity to estimate the best time for a soldier to take a shot. When it locks onto a target, Smash tracks it until it calculates the best time to shoot.”
“As long as the computer estimates that the hit probability is low, it will block the trigger using the trigger guard. The shooter presses their finger against the trigger, even though it’s blocked. And when the shooter takes aim at the very specific spot on the target, which the computer deems the highest hit probability spot, the computer unlocks the trigger guard, the trigger is pulled and a drone is shot out of the sky.”
“The shooter can also wait for the computer to unblock the trigger before pulling it. But the high hit probability time window is of course very short when it comes to fast flying drones. That’s why it’s easier for the shooter to keep pressing the trigger the whole time and simply wait for the computer to unblock it at the appropriate moment.”
“When testing in the United States, Smash took down loitering drones surprisingly casually. Fast moving drones are likely going to be more difficult, but certainly not impossible and certainly much easier to hit with Smash than without it.”
“The system can also be used to eliminate ground targets such as other infantry troops, and even more easily at that. In that mode, it’s accurate up to 300 m or close to 1,000 ft during the day, while the small drone elimination mode is accurate up to 100 m or around 300 ft in both day and night.”
“Aside from just destroying small drones, Smash is also marketed as being capable of destroying micro drones. These drones are usually used for reconnaissance, not direct attacks, and they’re sometimes so small that they can fit in the palm of your hand.” Like the super-tiny, super-expensive Black Hornet drone.
“The Smash system itself can also fit in the palm of your hand. It weighs 740 g or 26 oz and is smaller than most magnification scopes, with a battery capable of running for 72 hours before needing recharging.”
“Smash is a line of sight system, which means that you have to be able to see the enemy for it to track the enemy. That means a couple of things. For one, you need to expose yourself at least a little bit for Smash to do its job. And secondly, Smash can’t track an enemy behind cover. It can’t see through walls. This also means it’s impossible for the shooter to aim from thick brush, for example, as there’s no way for Smash to get around that.”
“With this in mind, Smart Shooter came up with an addition to the Smash 2000L in the shape of the Smash Hopper 5000, a remote control weapon station, and another thing with a fantastic, very 1990scoded name. A soldier who prefers not to expose themselves to the enemy can mount their rifle with its 2000L system attached on the Hopper 5000 and control it from the safety of cover.”
“The system weighs a substantial 25 kilos or 55 lbs. It’s clunky, takes a while to set up, and it can never have the maneuverability of a soldier.”
“Does the Smash 2000L completely solve the drone problem? No, absolutely not. But it is a step in the right direction, isn’t it? Accuracy and speed of aiming are the biggest hurdles an infantryman has to tackle when shooting down a drone with their firearm. And Smash is essentially just a
system that does that job much more accurately and almost instantly.”
The IDF tried it with only one rifleman per squad. First problem? “Blue-on-blue incidents.”
“At the time of its introduction, the system could not tell the difference between friendly and enemy combatants.”
“Aside from the IDF, the Smash 2000L was purchased by the US primarily to be used by the Marine Corps, as well as the Netherlands, India, Germany, and the United Kingdom.”
“The Israeli manufacturer has since secured a $10.7 million contract with the US Army, making it the second service branch to join the program.
All well and good, but there were many previous “smart” scopes that didn’t work out.”
“Another one of those optic systems that came out of Israel is Arcus, an acronym for Assault Rifle Combat Application, developed by Elbert Systems. The system consists of an eyepiece that the operator attaches to their helmet and wears at all times. The second part is installed on the rifle, essentially acting as an extension of the operator’s eye, providing a live feed from the gun’s point of view.”
“Arcus is capable of recognizing the human body shape and marking the target on the operator’s eyepiece. It can easily detect motion. It provides the operator with a range estimation, and the feed is transmitted to command headquarters at the same time, allowing everyone to see what the operator sees.” Shades of “network-centric warfare.”
“The system also controls fire in a similar way to the Smash 2000L and improves accuracy in the field. It even provides the operator with a built-in compass that essentially allows them to navigate without having to constantly check a map or GPS. The two modes of operation, thermal or electrooptic, allow the operator to use the system in both daytime and nighttime. I mean, it even has a shot counter to let the operator know when they’re low on ammo, which is very video game-esque. It is an absolutely perfect solution for a lot of real problems that infantrymen truly do face, and it could change the way the wars are fought.”
“And yet, nobody’s using it. Not even Israel is using it, let alone any other military. Five years after presenting Arcus and no one has even tried adopting it, with its biggest accomplishment so far being just reminding everyone of the target tracking system from Aliens.”
“The story is not much more positive with the United States’s next generation squad weapon program, which includes the XM157 fire control system.”
“When it comes to the XM157, the test results are disappointing. During testing in 2024, the fire control system received negative reviews from soldiers who used it. To be more specific, the 2024 report says that quote, “The XM7 with mounted XM157 demonstrated a low probability of completing one 72-hour wartime mission without incurring a critical failure.” Is it Windows based?
“It seems like after years of hyping up the next fire control system, the scope has simply gone missing and we’re not going to see it fielded anytime soon because it’s simply not reliable.”
Skipping over the Russian example, since they can’t even get their SAM systems to work right.
“So when we draw the line under AI assisted high-tech scopes,the result is not proportional to the hype surrounding them. Russia’s not using them. The US Army’s not using them, in spite of really really wanting to spend a ton of money promoting them in the news. And even Israel, which has been developing several types of these scopes, is only kind of using them, nowhere close to issuing them across the board to the entirety of the IDF. And this brings us the most obvious question that we’ve been building to this entire video. Are these devices, which are hailed in the media as the next big thing that’s going to revolutionize the way wars are fought, just an endless money pit?”
“Even if scopes such as the XM157 on the Smash 2000L were perfected tomorrow and all their software glitches and battery issues were ironed out, there are still three main issues regarding high-tech optics that are keeping them from becoming the norm.”
“The first two problems relate to doctrine. Over-reliance on technology can only take a soldier or a unit a certain distance before achieving the adverse effect and nullifying their fighting capabilities with old school equipment. At the same time, decision-making tools cannot be blindly trusted. Taking the Smash 2000 as a direct example, what happens if infantrymen start relying on AI to do the aiming and trigger pulling jobs for them too much? Well, the result is that a soldier is demoted from a shooting combatant to somebody who just broadly handles a weapon and points it in roughly the right direction, with the most important part of the job being carried out by the fire control system.” Given current U.S./NATO/Israeli doctrine, I don’t see this as a problem anytime soon.
I’m cutting out a lot of Whistler’s “whatbouts,” as I assume a competent system will allow switchback to manual targeting. Indeed, he reaches much the same conclusion. “Using traditional scopes or iron sights will remain the norm in doctrine, and AI powered scopes will be used sparingly, mostly for specialized tasks such as taking down drones or targets that are particularly difficult for a traditional optic to get an angle on.”
His next point is that sea-based automatic systems still make mistakes as well, and still produce friendly fire incidents.
His conclusion: “It is easy to see why high-tech optics will never fully replace the Mark1 eyeball. They will, mind you, be introduced in huge numbers, and military forces will most definitely find use for them, such as taking down anti-infantry drones, for example, but it’s extremely unlikely that they will become the standard infantry fire control system anytime soon.”
He may be right, but possibly not for the reasons he thinks, namely that ground-based drones will probably take over more and more (but not all) infantry-based functions as those are further developed, though I doubt they will entirely replace infantry (AKA, the Queen of Battle) any time soon.
I just want to note that these wonderscopes are not really AI as we’ve come to understand it, they are merely souped-up, shrunk-down targeting computers that we’ve had for a while. There’s no theoretical reason they can’t, it’s a question of when the system crosses the threshold of cost-effectiveness.
Simon Whistler takes a look at why BUFF is eternal. That longevity is amazing, considering how many times the Air Force tried to cancel the B-52 project before it ever saw the light of day.
“Even though it’s the longest serving strategic bomber in the world with more than 70 years of service behind it, and despite the coming introduction of the brand new B-21 Raider, which will retire both the B-2 Spirit and the B-1B Lancer, the Stratofortress is nowhere near finished. The now ancient airframe was simply built to last. Thanks to its incredible capacity of modifications and upgrades, its impressive range, and its obscene weapons payload, the Stratofortress has outlived a dozen newer and technologically more advanced bombers.”
The plane’s legendary longevity is surprising because “the Air Force tried to cancel it about a dozen times before the first design was ever even drawn.”
“Fun fact that sounds insane today: The number of planes destroyed in World War II is bigger than the number of planes in existence today. German, British, and American bomber losses amounted to almost 40,000 aircraft. And that is only the bombers.”
“The Air Force wanted to replenish the numbers and improve capability because it really needed to be able to deliver the power of the sun to Soviet homes if it ever came down to that. This is where the B-52 Stratofortress came in. In November of 1945, the Air Force submitted a design request for a longrange bomber that could have an operating radius of 5,000 mi or 8,000 km at a speed of 300 mi or 480 km an hour and with a payload capacity of 10,000 lb or 4 1/2 tons.”
“Boeing initially submitted a straight wing design that weighed a fantastic 360,000 pounds or 160 tons, which checked all of the boxes except for the range, which was limited to 3,110 mi or just over 5,000 km. Nevertheless, it was the closest thing to what the Air Force was looking for. So, Boeing won the contract in 1946. Unbeknownst to Boeing, by signing that contract, the company was boarding a roller coaster of rejections and design changes.”
“Firstly, the Air Force didn’t like the size of the bomber. So, Boeing cut it down to 230,000 pounds, or 100 tons, and cut the number of engines from the original six to four. Just two months later, the Air Force said that a cruising speed of 400 m or 640 km an hour was imperative, which prompted Boeing to once again enlarge the design, now returning with a third 300,000 pound, 140 ton model.”
“A month after that, the Air Force was actively looking to give Boeing’s engineers design whiplash when it requested a ridiculous range of 12,000 mi or 19,000 km. This was an insane request at the time because no other bomber in the world could boast that kind of endurance or anything even close to it. The closest rival would only arrive in the mid-1950s in the shape of the Tupalev Tu-95, which is essentially the Soviet equivalent of the Stratofortress. Boeing, unsurprisingly, couldn’t meet such a requirement, but it could deliver a heavy bomber with extended range, one capable of using both conventional and nuclear weapons.”
“By the time Boeing agreed on this with the Air Force, however, it was already 1947 and almost two years had passed since the original request was submitted. The Air Force was now very close to introducing the Convair Peacemaker into its ranks. The general feeling was that if the Stratofortress couldn’t blow the leadership away with its range, it wouldn’t be useful at all, and it would most likely be obsolete and inferior to the Peacemaker before it was ever completed. Boeing was given a six-month grace period to figure out how to improve the Stratofortress, and the company returned with an improved design with an operating radius of 5,000 mi or 8,000 km, notably better than the Peacemakers.”
“Believe it or not, not even that redesign would satisfy the Air Force. While Boeing’s engineers were ripping their hair out, thinking it was all just a very elaborate prank, the Air Force gained independence from the Army and held its first heavy bombardment committee, where it evaluated all its programs. The committee concluded that speed was now as important as range. And the Air Force changed the characteristics for the millionth time, asking for a special purpose bomber with a range of 8,000 mi or almost 13,000 km, and capable of a cruise speed of 500 mi or just over 800 km an hour. The Air Force then tried to cancel Boeing’s contract, something that was only prevented because Boeing’s president personally protested to the Secretary of the Air Force, who caved in and didn’t rip up the contract.”
“Following that, the Air Force looked into alternatives such as a medium-sized bomber that would rely on mid-air refueling or flying wing designs. But it was ultimately decided that these avenues weren’t explored enough and therefore weren’t as reliable as a conventional bomber, extremely begrudgingly and to the disappointment of many within the Air Force. In March of 1948, two and a half years after the initial design request for a heavy bomber and seemingly a billion rejections later, Boeing was finally allowed to move into the second phase of development, which would include design, construction of two prototypes, and testing.”
“With that green light, the Air Force delivered its final set of demands. The gross weight of the bomber would not exceed 280,000 lb or 127 tons. The bomber should have a range of 6,900 mi or 11,000 km. and it should be able to carry 10,000 pounds of bombs*. Little did they know that the Stratofortress would not only fulfill but exceed all of those requirements.”
“The biggest design issue outside of the scope of the range, speed, and will it be made on time conversation was the engines. When the initial design request was first issued in 1945, the instruction was not to use jet engines because their high fuel consumption, much less efficient than that of modern jet engines, would limit the bombers’s range dramatically. However, since the Air Force decided to play ping pong with Boeing’s designs for almost 3 years, the technology had matured by 1948, and the thinking was now different. The Air Force asked Boeing’s engineers, who had submitted their last design without even thinking about jet engines, to now find a way to fit jet engines into their design.”
“The decision to use turbo jet engines and the process of figuring out how to fit them aboard happened over a weekend. Boeing’s representatives and engineers met with the Air Force’s representatives on Thursday, October the 21st, 1948 to hold one last meeting and agree on some specifications surrounding the Stratofortress when the Air Force dropped the turbo jet bomb on them. Boeing’s representatives retired to a hotel room for the weekend, and by Monday, they had a brand new bomber model and a 33-page report on the use of turbo jet engines. This would seal the B-52’s fate, as the report convinced the Air Force to greenlight the use of jet engines. The very first Stratofortress would have eight Pratt and Whitney J57 turbo jet engines propelling them forward. The first iteration of these engines, the J57P1W, provided the Stratofortress with 10,000 lb force each for a total of 80,000 lb force or 392 tons.”
“Aside from just powering the Stratofortress, the engines act as wing fences. Wing fences are objects fixed on the leading edge of wings, usually seen on swept wing aircraft such as the Stratofortress, which act as devices to prevent stall-related issues.”
” Aside from acting as wing fences, it was believed that the new jet engines could improve altitude and speed performance, eliminate some unresolved issues with propeller aerodynamics and control, and likely extend the Stratofortress’s operational life. And that last part, as it turns out, was right on the money, wasn’t it?”
“In 1949, it seemed like eight turbo jet engines would only give the Stratofortress a combat range of about 3100 mi or 5,000 km, which is less than half of what was promised. Because of that, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, General Fairchild, seriously considered cancelling the program while the first two prototypes were being built. Incredibly, the Air Force was now looking to cancel the Stratofortress for the nth time.”
“Boeing responded with yet another model of the aircraft. This one weighing 390,000 lb and with a range of almost 4,400 mi while promising that with coming upgrades of both the engines and the airframe, it would exceed 4,800 mi or 7,700 km. The Air Force accepted this proposition and this was, believe it or not, the very last attempt at cancelling the Stratofortress.”
Skipping over early production variants.
“When it comes to armament, Stratofortress can be configured for different mission sets. There are cruise missile carriers which can carry 12 missiles, with both conventional and thermonuclear warheads, with Boeing’s AGM86 air launch cruise missile being the go-to weapon of choice during the Stratofortresss’s glory days. Some bombers were modified to carry anti-ship missiles. Others carried air-to-ground missiles while more than 80 of the latest Stratofortress, the H variants, were modified to carry missiles in the bomb bay and release them from a rotary launcher. This is a technology that the USAF has since taken full advantage of and is currently introducing for transport plane.”
“When the last of the older variants was retired in the 1990s, the H variant of the Stratofortress went through a modification program to widen its weapons capabilities by adding modified underwing pylons. The B-52H could also carry anti-ship missiles and new generation weapons such as the JDAM equipped bombs, joint standoff glide bombs, and the joint air-to-surface standoff missile.”
“With time, however, the Stratofortress was removed from the list of aircraft capable of delivering nuclear gravity bombs due to its lack of stealth. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a big airplane and it wasn’t exactly built to hide. Gravity bombs require a bomber to penetrate enemy airspace, ideally without being detected, and drop them from above. This would be a suicide mission for a Stratofortress in a modern combat environment, given that it sticks out like a sore thumb. Nevertheless, the Stratofortress is still very valuable because of its payload capacity. Although it can theoretically carry 70,000 or 32 tons of bombs, the realistic total is around 62,000 or 28 tons, which is on par with the B-2 Spirit. The only American bomber that seriously outperforms it is the B-1B Lancer, which can in theory by you, carry a payload of 125,000 pound. This has, however, never happened, as the aircraft would be extremely slow and difficult to maneuver with the Lancer more realistically maxing out at around 75,000 pounds.”
“Older variants carried the .50 caliber M3, but that was later changed for the 20mm M61 Vulcan rotary cannon.”
“A grand total of 744 Stratofortress were produced over the course of no more than 10 years, with the G variant being the most numerous, and only 72 H variant Stratofortress staying in service until this day. The reason they were produced in such huge numbers hides in the bombers’s performance and ease of maintenance.”
Skipping over most of the plane’s operational history, though I was surprised to learn that “15 Stratofortresses were shot down during Operation Linebacker 2” in the Vietnam War.
“During the aforementioned operation, two Stratofortresses were engaged by two MiG-21s which were a gift from the Soviet Union. Both MiGs were shot down by four .50 caliber machine guns located at the tail of the Stratofortresses, which makes the B-52 the largest aircraft to ever accomplish an air-to-air kill.”
“The G&H variants were modified to carry supersonic short-range nuclear missiles which replaced gravity bombs, as they simply weren’t an option any longer due to the aforementioned lack of stealth. This allowed them to attack targets without penetrating behind their defenses.”
“A new electro-optical viewing system was installed to make low altitude operations easier and safer for the pilots, with a new electronic countermeasure system improving the B-52’s self-defense capabilities. As Desert Storm started, B-52Gs flew from Louisiana to Iraq, destroyed around 90% of their targets, and returned home within a 35-hour window, which was the longest combat mission ever flown at the time. The B-52’s role was instrumental in the Gulf War, as it quite literally turned the lights out in Baghdad, and Iraqi troops have on several occasions surrendered after the strike, with the B-52 seen as a bringer of doom.”
“About 40% of all weapons dropped by coalition forces were dropped by American B-52s.”
“Later on, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the H variant would be the only one left standing as the G variant had to be destroyed in accordance with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with a total of 365 remaining B-52s being torn into pieces.”
“The B-52 will stay until at least the 2040s, although many believe that it will reach the 100-year milestone before officially retiring. And now, after all this talk, we get to the core question of this video. How the hell is the Stratofortress, a bomber older than the Cuban Revolution, NASA, and the Civil Rights Movement, not only still in service, but actually about to become more important than ever, as it will be a one of the two bombers in the Air Force’s possession?”
The B-1 and B-2 are being replaced by the B-21 due to the former’s expensive operating costs. “The B-2 is notorious for how difficult it is to keep in its operational state. Its bleeding edge stealth technology is extremely demanding, and it requires environmentally controlled hangers, not to mention a trained team to take care of it all the time. Because of this, it can’t be deployed from forward airfields. And if an upgrade or a fix is needed, you can count on it being out of commission for several months, if not longer. The B-2 requires 60 maintenance hour per 1 hour of flight time, which is why its readiness rate in the early 2000s averaged a mere 30%. The B-52 averaged 80%.”
“The [B-1] Lancer story is similar. The development and production of this bomber was obscenely expensive to start with, and even the newest, most streamlined variants of the B-1B require about 48 maintenance hours per 1 hour of flight time. Not as bad as the B-2, but not much better either. The Lancer is also extremely expensive to operate, as a 12-hour mission sets the American taxpayer back about a million dollars, not including weapons costs. This is, believe it or not, about 14% cheaper than the B-2 flight costs.” Plus early B-1s had reliability issues, like “a cutting-edge radar jammer that, uh, jammed its own radar.”
“The reason the B-52 will survive the initial phase of the Air Force’s bomber fleet modernization is because it too is relatively inexpensive in comparison to its ability. It can carry anything from gravity bombs to hypersonic missiles, which makes the constant upgrades worth it. These upgrades and the fact that the Stratofortress is so modifiable are perhaps the most important reason the legendary bomber is still alive. This is a thread that you can trace all the way back to the beginning of the video and the story of the Stratofortress. Even before the first prototype was built, the B-52 was extremely modifiable, and this flexibility allows it to live on in a modern combat environment.”
“The airframe may be old, yes, but that’s the only old thing about it. Modern B-52s are equipped with modern electronic countermeasure systems and top-of-the-line communications technologies, which transmit and receive data the same way any other modern combat aircraft does. The Stratofortress has weapons capabilities that are also in line with new technology. The modern H variants was upgraded with a 66% increase in weapons payload, and it can carry eight 2,000lb JDAM bombs, cruise missiles, or decoy missiles internally.”
He also mentions the forthcoming engine upgrade, which I covered here. “Once these engines are installed, the new fleet will be designated the B-52J, which means [they are] nowhere close to retirement.”
“More than 700 Stratofortress were built over time, and there are only around 70 in active service today. This means that the Air Force’s engineers have access to a massive boneyard of spare parts, which they can use to keep the active B-52s flying for a very long time.”
The B-52 “has to fill a strategic hole in the Air Force’s plans. The B-21 Raider’s range and payload are incomparable with the B-52 at around 6,500 mi and a payload of around 30,000 lb. Sure, the newer bomber may be equipped with technology that was only imaginable in the realm of science fiction when the first Stratofortress was built, but the B-52 can deploy weapons from a standoff range without needing to penetrate enemy defenses. It can loiter for quite a long time, and it can deliver a massive munitions unimaginable to the new Raider.”
“Of course, with time, the Stratofortress will age out. That’s an inevitable certainty, because time beats everyone. For the foreseeable future though, the longest serving bomber of all time will keep flying because of just how efficient, powerful, modifiable, flexible, and above all enduring the design has proven to be over the last three-quarters of a century.”
*In one of the best transcription errors ever, YouTube’s automatic transcription rendered this as “£10,000 of bonds.”
Thermoclines of truth, where valid information can’t make it to the top of organizations because telling unpleasant truths is discouraged, has been an ongoing concern of the blog. Simon Whistler and his crew have taken a look at the Russian military, and it appears that it’s thermoclines of truth (and endemic corruption) all the way down.
He starts out with a discussion of the current state of the war:
“Once upon a time, the Russian military was supposed to be the second most powerful on Earth. Today, the Russian military isn’t even the most powerful military in Ukraine.”
“From the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the nation’s armed forces have been subjected to a strange humiliation ritual, partly because of the cunning and innovation of their Ukrainian rivals, but partly because of the sheer bumbling idiocy of their own commanding officers.”
“Russia’s consistent ability to find its way into new and catastrophic blunders also definitely doesn’t hurt. As painful as the last several years have been for the Russian military, the situation has deteriorated even further in 2026. Russia is losing troops at an unprecedented rate, expending more lives, more munitions, and more state wealth. Even as they capture less and less territory each month, his battlefield commanders are making increasingly poor decisions, and they’re openly lying to their higher-ups when their attacks inevitably fall apart.”
“In the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin and his inner circle are being fed a constant stream of false victories when on the front lines, Russia’s spring and summer offensive has fallen flat on its face.”
“But however incompetent the Russian military might seem, the reality is even worse. Because underneath Ukrainian victories and underneath obvious blunders by Moscow, the Russian military has built a hidden corrupt machine where every battlefield catastrophe puts rubles into Russian pockets.”
“As the time of writing, Russian forward progress on the battlefield has basically halted in an overall sense. But Russia is still pushing forward in some areas just as it is being pushed back in others.”
“The graft and exploitation we’re going to describe today isn’t an accident. It exists because of the war in Ukraine. It feeds off the war in Ukraine. And the people who benefit most from the exploitation are the same people with the greatest incentives to ensure that the war continues even after any honest outside appraisal would suggest that Russian gains aren’t even close to being worth the cost.”
“Just a few short months ago, Russia was moving assets into position for what was intended to be a major push centered on the city of Sloviansk in the partially occupied Donetsk oblast. Taking Sloviansk wasn’t going to be easy for the Russians.”
“But even before there was time for the spring offensive to get underway, Ukraine revealed what’s turned out to be a decisive advantage. a new arsenal of mid-range drones, including an American-made model called the Hornet, plus the tactical advances to use those drones effectively. Dubbed the Martian 2 by Russian soldiers, the Hornet is piloted partially by artificial intelligence, and it’s completely impervious to Russian jamming because it navigates by using that AI to read the terrain visually instead of relying on GPS or remote control. The onboard AI can identify targets and even handle the final kill process all by itself. Flying at a range of over a 100 km, they’re practically silent until just before impact.”
“They’re extremely cheap, and they’ve been used by Ukraine less to target Russian troops at the front, and more to target the staging operations that would have created the foundation of a successful offensive. Russian forces have been unable to protect their ammunition stockpiles, their fuel trucks, or their encampments and training grounds away from the front lines.” More on how Ukraine is hammering Russian logistics here.
“Nor is the Hornet the only drone in Ukraine’s arsenal. Recently, Ukraine’s 412th Nemesis Brigade unveiled the Morrigan, another mid-range strike drone that’s optimized to operate significantly behind enemy lines. Those drones have allowed Ukraine to completely diffuse the spring offensive before it ever really got going.”
“Even more important, Ukraine has achieved those results without putting its soldiers at greater risk. Ukraine’s forces are chronically undermanned and perpetually exhausted. And Kiev does not have the ability to go head-to-head with the full strength of a Russian offensive in any one area, but instead it’s completely destroyed the infrastructure Russia needed to create an offensive that wouldn’t collapse under its own weight.”
“As a result, Russian forces near the front are badly isolated, cut off from easy reinforcement and resupply, while the bulk of the killing takes place away from the front lines where Russian troops naturally have their guard down. Ukraine has even expanded its strikes to target the highway network leading across occupied territory and into Crimea where the impact of Ukraine’s bombardment has gotten so bad that the entire region is on the brink of economic collapse. Fuel trucks, trains, and even ferries are unable to reach Crimea. The existing fuel storage infrastructure there has been destroyed and the problem’s only getting worse with fuel shortages now starting to spread across the Donbas.”
“According to the latest frontline reports, mobile drone defense teams are now at risk of running out of fuel. A crisis that would clear the way for even deeper Ukrainian strikes.”
“Better yet for Ukraine, targeting efficiency is improving constantly, to the point that it now takes only a few minutes for Ukrainian forces to spot a new moving target, get a drone on site, and destroy it.”
“Over the last several years, Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a cycle of mutual innovation, with one side working out new solutions to battlefield problems and gaining a temporary advantage until the other side counters with innovations of their own. This time, however, Russia hasn’t been able to innovate a solution to the new problems that Ukraine has posed.”
“Russian troops are overextended and they have no choice but to hold their positions on the front when really their manpower is needed to defend the territory that Russia has already captured.”
“In the air, Russia still hasn’t found a way to meaningfully engage its air force in the conflict. Besides the use of strategic bombers and MiG-31 fighters to launch long-range cruise missiles, Russia can’t risk using some of its most valuable reconnaissance and command aircraft after Ukraine proved able to use American-made Patriot missiles to bring them down. And the supposedly world-class Su-57 fighter jet is still almost completely absent from contested airspace.”
“Russia’s aerial problem is expected to get even worse by early 2027, when Ukraine will take possession of its first Swedish-made Gripen fighter jets along with a long-range missile, the Meteor, that will have the range to strike Russian strategic bombers as they conduct those missile launches over the water.”
Snipping discussion of the poor state of Russia’s Black Sea fleet and the most recent St. Petersburg strike that we’ve covered in various LinkSwarms.
“Russian air defenses on the home front appear to be on the verge of complete collapse. Ukrainian long-range drones now regularly impact targets that were once unthinkable. From the Baltic Sea oil terminals at Primorsk and Luga to sensitive or highly specialized defense industrial centers located deep in the Russian heartland. Even Moscow has been targeted successfully.
“According to the chief designer at Ukraine’s leading missile innovator Firepoint, a new line of ballistic missiles will soon be operational and capable of hitting Moscow directly.”
“Russia hasn’t been able to meaningfully address the [air defense] problem.”
“As for its attempts to prevent Ukrainian long-range strikes, Russia seems to be unable to hit the command and control centers or the drone stockpiles that enable the campaign. So instead, Russia tries to deter Ukraine by launching long-range strikes of its own, often targeting population centers, energy infrastructure, or dual use facilities instead of going after the Ukrainian military.”
“Just as important [as Ukraine’s strikes], if not even more so, is the incredible consistency with which Russia manages to shoot itself in the foot. Moscow’s original sin, so to speak, is one that the rest of the world has gotten very familiar with. A supreme overconfidence that’s been helping Russia defeat itself from the very beginning. Despite the alternative storylines pushed out by Russian bot farms and repeated, no doubt, in this very comment section [aside: “Hello there, robots”], the idea that Kiev would fall in three days was very much a Russian invention.”
“But much more important than Russia’s original mistake was the fact that Moscow still hasn’t learned its lesson. Military planners and strategists all up and down the Russian military, from the unit level on the battlefield to Vladimir Putin himself, still base their decisions and expectations on an aggrandized version of the Russian military that simply does not exist.”
“Over time that problem is fused with another one. The fact that Russian leaders, again from the unit level all the way to the top, simply refuse to give each other honest assessments of what’s happening. At a certain point, those leaders realized that they could get away with reporting advances, victories, and other good news that didn’t actually exist.”
“The problem often starts small on the front lines. A Russian army captain sends a small unit to plant a flag and takes a few selfies in a contested area before that unit is annihilated in drone strikes. And then the captain sends those selfies to his major, claiming that today his forces took the territory in the picture. That same day, the major gets several similar reports from other captains. So he reports to his colonel that the front line has moved up by a few hundred meters when in reality most of the forces under his command have not moved at all.”
“That’s a throwaway example, of course, but you get the idea. And that news then travels up the chain until it reaches somebody like chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov. We put the spotlight on Gerasimov in particular, because this is how you get statements like the one he made this past April, when he claims that Russia had captured a total of 80 settlements and over 1700 square kilometers since the start of the year. According to independent war monitors, Gerasimov tripled the amount of territory that Russia had actually taken. And of course, he failed to measure the territory that Russia had lost.”
“Don’t just take it from us, though. Even Russia’s milblogger class was calling bullshit in the aftermath.”
“But those institutional miscommunications, combined with the Russian military’s inflated perception of itself, combine to form a third problem, a demand for forward progress at all costs.”
“At this point in the war, commanders and higher-ups have gotten very used to the idea that their troops are consistently moving forward, consistently taking territory, and consistently getting Russia closer to victory. But now that lie has become too big to fail. And if individual Russian commanders were to report results that don’t align with that lie in places Russia wasn’t expecting, then they are at risk of being demoted, relieved of duty, or even worse.”
“As a result, each level of Russian leadership places immense pressure on the next level below them, all the way down to the frontline soldiers. Because their commanders need to deliver forward progress. And because their commanders won’t get into any real trouble if they sacrifice more lives in exchange, those frontline troops are at immense risk of being ordered forward into incredibly risky assaults.”
“Of course, it’s not unusual that a soldier on the front line of a major war would face some risk. But there’s a difference between being asked to advance as part of a coordinated push on a well-defined, well-scouted target and being told to sneak into a zone where there’s been no prior scouting and where Ukrainian surveillance and kamikaze drone coverage is expected to be overwhelming. Those are the kinds of situations that Russian soldiers are being ordered into. Not because there’s any expectation that they would succeed, but because their attempt gives their commanders enough plausible deniability to report success.”
Sometimes it works. “But the costs of munitions, funds, supplies, and especially human life are so much greater than the value of what Russia’s actually capturing.”
“Nor does Russia particularly care which soldiers get sent to the meat grinder. More and more sources from within the Russian military report the troops are sent into assault units regardless of their other qualifications, including skilled recruits who could make meaningful contributions to enhance Russia’s overall situation. Soldiers with experience in electrical work, logistics management, and even the medical field, have been reassigned against their will to assault brigades, often without explanation. At times, those reassignments come after they were recruited into the military on the promise that they’d be working with their advanced skill set.”
“Sometimes the reassignments appear to be random, but at other times they’re used as punishment. Soldiers who disobey orders, try to desert, or otherwise anger their commanders are highly likely to be reassigned to units where they’ll be used as cannon-fodder.”
“But let’s circle back to Ukraine’s mid-range drone campaign, because that makes this problem even worse. At the best of times, Russian troops were being sent forward into these high-risk assaults with at least a few things going for them: A little bit of training and prep time, a decently well supplied sustainment infrastructure to keep them alive, a possibility of MedEvac if they’re wounded, and a possibility that reinforcements would soon join them if they survive.”
“Today, though, that entire support infrastructure has been torn to shreds. Yet, the expectation of forward progress still remains. So, these soldiers are still ordered forward, but they’re overexposed, under-supplied, and isolated compared to what was already a bad situation. When they’re wounded, they aren’t evacuated. They die slow, horrific, predictable deaths. To the point that instead of the usual ratio of killed to wounded in modern war, one killed for every three wounded, Ukrainian assessment suggests that Russia’s balance looks more like two soldiers killed for every one wounded.”
“Even worse, the soldiers who are wounded will often be sent back to combat. Every so often, video footage emerges from the front lines depicting soldiers on crutches or in wheelchairs bearing visible shrapnel wounds or dealing with limbs that won’t work like they’re supposed to, forced back into assault units where their death is all but certain.”
“And all of that would be bad enough if Russia wasn’t so insistent on hobbling its soldiers even further. Take the example of frontline drone equipment. According to Russian milblogger sources, the Kremlin recently ordered most combat units to start giving up drones of various models, sending them back to be reassigned to Russia’s dedicated drone forces. That’s despite the fact that the Russian drone forces are not properly dispersed along the front line, and they’re not part of any efficient decision-making infrastructure that would allow them to support Russian troops in real time. So where a Russian platoon might once have been able to use small FPV drones to scout their surroundings or strike Ukrainian targets, they now have nothing. They’re operationally blind and beholden to another branch of the military for support.”
“On paper, Russia has started to fix the issue. Officials in Moscow say that Russia is now producing record numbers of FPV drones. According to the milbloggers, however, these replacement drones are unreliable, ineffective, and of a dangerously low construction quality. Similarly, Russian troops are still reeling from the decision to cut off access to Telegram a couple of months ago, demanding that Telegram be replaced with the state-run Max app, despite the fact that it is insecure, incomplete, and extremely buggy. Maybe Vladimir Putin vibe coded it. The same could be said for the loss of Starlink, a western controlled connectivity service that Russia chose to remain dependent on instead of dedicating the appropriate resources to build its own alternative.”
“If we were to end this episode right now, the situation we’ve described would already be bad enough. A Russian military that’s completely failed to address Ukrainian combat innovations and one that’s consistently made decisions that puts its troops at extreme unnecessary risk. But all too often, when a country or a fighting force seems to suffer from issues so comprehensive and so obviously stupid, that they seem to resist understanding, it’s important to ask another question. Who’s getting paid?”
“If Russia’s obvious incentives are to increase the combat potency of its troops, make legitimate gains on the battlefield, and eventually win the war, then who benefits inside Russia from making sure that that doesn’t happen? To answer that question, we’re going to invite you to think about the war a bit differently for just a minute.”
“Take away the people, the guns, the tanks, the drones, and the territory, and think about Russia’s invasion as a flow of money. That money is being sent from within Russia and funneled into Ukraine. Sent in the form of military equipment, fuel supplies, and direct payments made to Russian soldiers. Then some of that money flows back into Russia as those soldiers paychecks travel to bank accounts or are sent to their families.”
“That flow of funds is partially regulated, but it’s happening in and around an active combat zone, which means monitoring is difficult, and financial transfers have to happen with limited internal oversight or anti-corruption protections. Not to mention that the Russian state isn’t exactly the best at internal oversight.”
“Transactions happen on the aggregate scale of tens of billions of rubles, meaning that even relatively large amounts of missing cash can easily be dismissed as just a rounding error.”
“If you were a person interested in taking money that you could reasonably obtain somewhere within the Russian economy, then the war is the perfect place to do it. You’ve just got to figure out where you can get in the way of the regular flow of funds, whether those funds are headed into the conflict zone or traveling out.”
“Take another look at the problems the Russian military is dealing with and the specter of internal corruption is everywhere.”
“We’ll start with a few examples at the top from people who exert immense power within the Russian armed forces. Take Roman Demurchiev, a major general who serves as deputy commander of Russia’s 20th Combined Arms Army. Over the span of several years, he engaged in regular shakedowns of his subordinates worth the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of US dollars, some of which he passed up to his superiors who expected additional payouts. As he once texted to one of his subordinates, quote, “War is war, but don’t forget about the cash. Get yours. Delete this message later.'”
“Or take the former deputy defense minister Ruslan Tsalikov, who was brought up on bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy charges that alleged he created a gang to steal from the Russian state budget. He was brought down during a wave of prosecutions that surrounded former defense minister Sergey Shoygu.”
“But even though Russia does occasionally prosecute corrupt officials, the Kremlin’s track record dovetails in a very troubling way with the problem we’ve already mentioned. Commanders only tend to come under real scrutiny when they’ve already failed in some way that requires their removal, usually due to battlefield setbacks. From Vladimir Putin’s perspective, the nice thing about everybody in the Russian leadership being so corrupt, is that when it’s time to remove them, it usually doesn’t take very long to dig into their finances and bring legitimate, damning charges against them.”
“But if these commanders understand that they’ll only be scrutinized after they’ve been found to have committed battlefield screw-ups, then they’re heavily incentivized to ensure that their screw-ups don’t become common knowledge. So they push their subordinates harder and they push their subordinates harder still until frontline soldiers are fighting and dying to create an illusion of frontline progress so their commanders can save their skins.”
“Or take another problem we’ve already mentioned, the cheapy and ineffective FPP drones that are being flooded toward the Russian front lines. That decision was the work of Yuri Vaganov, the commander of the Russian unmanned systems forces who was appointed in late 2025. But here’s the thing about Vaganov. He has got zero military experience, zero military education, despite now holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Instead, he owns a very large drone company, the same drone company that’s now guzzling down rubles from state contracts and mass-producing the FPV drones that Russian soldiers are expected to use. Interesting, isn’t it? In essence, this single aspiring oligarch has worked out a way to position himself within both the Russian military itself and the Russian defense industrial complex so that he could give himself a monopoly over drone procurement in the biggest drone war that the world has ever seen.”
“For Russian soldiers, his appointment is a life-threatening catastrophe. But for Vaganov himself, the incentives will be to cut corners, inflate costs, and otherwise pillage as much of Russia’s drone budget as possible.”
“But let’s talk about the other way that money flows through the Russian side of this war, into soldiers pockets, and then ideally back to their bank accounts or to their families. That’s where lower level commanders get their opportunity, because they wield the power to decide who lives and who dies. Take an article published this April by The Economist, where a dozen Russian contract soldiers describe a system where low-level infantrymen will bribe their commanders for a position away from the front and then spend a high share of their remaining wages financing their commander’s lifestyle while carrying out unpaid labor on the side.”
“As one soldier in that article described, troops often start giving up a portion of their paychecks to buy decent drones or body armor or other assets that might, you know, keep them alive. But then also, quote, ‘You’ll pay forever so they don’t send you to the meat grinder.’ Other Russian commanders have purportedly forced troops to pay exorbitant sums to stay alive and sometimes just to avoid being shot on the spot.”
“According to recent reports by exiled Russian journalists, low-level commanders operate more like gang leaders than actual military personnel, in increasingly sophisticated structures that are informed by the high proportion of ex-convicts that now swell the Russian ranks. Often when new troops arrive, commanders confiscate their bank cards and ping codes and threaten violence against those who don’t comply. And when those soldiers are killed, they’re formally reported by their commanders as missing. A change that ensures that money will continue flowing to their accounts.”
“Think of frontline soldiers as a pure revenue stream, and even some of Russia’s most asinine decisions start to make sense. When a soldier is wounded in combat, that soldier still receives a paycheck. And if they can be kept on the front lines, then the process of extortion can continue.”
“When a higher skill Russian recruit shows up in one of those units, commanders know that they’re likely to have more money, partly because they’re going to be paid on a better contract, and partly because they probably have some form of savings squirreled away from their civilian life. Trap those soldiers in an assault unit, and there’s no limit to what they might be willing to pay in order to avoid the meat grinder. But if they seem as if they’ll cause trouble, then the meat grinder is right there for their commanders to use.”
“Those incentives also help explain increasing reports of physical torture of Russian soldiers by their own commanders on or near the front lines, including soldiers who’ve already been wounded. Our own Warfronts team has encountered footage of Russian troops who’ve had multiple limbs amputated due to combat wounds who were then cling-wrapped onto trees and extorted further. Videos like that can be sent to a soldier’s family who will then ends up paying even more to spare the life of a person who’s locked into conscription or contract by the Russian state.” The Western tradition of military service demands leaders who will do just about anything for the men serving under them, while Russian officers torture their subordinates for money.
“Quoting researcher Alexandra Arapova [Russian families] are saying that literally we paid everything to have our father, brother, husband not to be killed. In many cases, superiors, they use torture to take money from the soldiers.”
“As for the scale of the brutality, we can’t know for sure, but judging by the available information, this kind of treatment is everywhere. One Russian exile outlet, Radio Echo, obtained accounts from soldiers like these, and over a 6-month period in 2025, Radio Echo indicated that they had received almost 12,000 complaints of corruption and violence by Russian commanders against their own men.”
“It’s here that we find the real root of Russia’s ongoing military incompetence. Where Ukraine has spent the last four years learning, adapting, and innovating on the battlefield, Russian generals, defense industrial elites, and low-level battlefield commanders have been building a deeply corrupt machine at every level of the Russian armed forces. That machine exists to extract wealth for the direct and personal benefit of people lucky enough to wield power at the expense of frontline soldiers who aren’t so fortunate.”
“In a system like that, where officials aren’t just personally corrupt, but can safely assume that corruption is all around them, reform just isn’t a goal, even if it saves lives. Reform, there is a danger, even an enemy. Because if Russia were to ever fix the incompetence that runs through its armed forces, then it would destroy the machine that Russian incompetence is built to serve.”
“Right now, that status quo demands constant reports of forward progress, by any means necessary. And the Kremlin is willing to pay every ruble in Russia in order to make that happen.”
“But Vladimir Putin’s military is overrun with people who don’t particularly care about conquering Ukraine as long as they know they’ll be set for life in the post-war Russia that comes next. Russian incompetence is getting worse because it’s becoming streamlined and because the Russian leadership has proved that corruption will go unchecked as long as forward progress continues.”
“The incompetence is the point because the longer this situation lasts, the longer this vast corrupt machine can go on making a profit.”
Thermoclines of truth and endemic corruption are the horrifying reality for Russian soldiers, and also a big reason why Ukraine has a real chance to win.
We previous touched on Putin’s thermocline of truth here.
More California fraud! More Minnesota fraud! Ukraine continues pounding Russia! Murder still illegal!
Personally, this week has been an exercise in frustration, mainly due to trying to replace an old, cracked car keyfob where the results were my car refusing to turn on. Which means I’m behind on all my errands. Solved now, but it was a pain. Also, for some reason Bluehost has crapped out 429 errors more than usual today.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
“New House Oversight Report Claims Walz, Ellison Were Aware of Fraud in 2019. “These fraudulently obtained funds likely funded international terrorist networks among other bad actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined, and retaliated against.”
Following a months-long investigation, the House Oversight Committee released a report Monday accusing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison of knowing about rampant fraud in the state’s federally funded social services programs as far back as 2019, and turning a blind eye.
The investigation also draws on testimony Walz and Ellison provided during a March hearing before the committee.
The 205-page report, titled “The Cost of Doing Nothing: How Tim Walz and Keith Ellison Fueled Minnesota’s Fraud Explosion,” states that Walz and Ellison:
Possessed the legal and procedural authority to stop payments and ban fraudulent providers from participating in these programs, but repeatedly failed to act. As a result, billions of American taxpayer dollars were potentially paid to fraudulent actors. These fraudulently obtained funds likely funded international terrorist networks among other bad actors, while vulnerable populations were harmed and whistleblowers were ignored, sidelined, and retaliated against.
Testimony and documents obtained to date establish a consistent pattern: fraud warnings were elevated to the most senior levels of the Minnesota state government, meaningful corrective action was delayed or avoided, and payments continued long after credible signs of fraud emerged.
Senior officials in Governor Walz’s office and Attorney General Ellison’s office were aware of credible, systemic fraud concerns in social services programs as early as 2019 within the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) and by April 2020 within the state Department of Education (MDE), despite later public statements by Governor Walz suggesting otherwise.
The committee concluded that Minnesota officials had ample authority to suspend payments to providers suspected of fraud but repeatedly failed to do so. Investigators found that state agencies continued funding Feeding Our Future even after identifying serious deficiencies, allowing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to flow to fraudsters until federal authorities intervened.
Of course they were aware. It was a major conduit for lining the pockets of the left!
California is home to the lion’s share of illegal immigrant families in the United States with children who received federal welfare assistance in 2024, according to a federal report published on June 10.
More than 80 percent of all nationwide cash assistance allocated to such households was spent in California. The report tracked $759 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) spent in 2024 on families headed by a parent living in the country illegally.
In those cases, the child qualified for federal welfare, even though the parent was excluded from the federal program because of immigration status.
“These cases receive relatively little public attention, yet … data show that they are far from a negligible part of the program,” wrote authors David Swegle, director of the Office of Family Assistance at the Administration for Children and Families under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Alex J. Adams, assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, in the report.
Nationally, the federal government paid 85,000 households with qualifying children receiving assistance who were living with their illegal immigrant parents in the U.S. in 2024.
“Although the benefit is formally paid on behalf of the child, it still supports a household that includes an immigration-status-ineligible parent,” the authors stated. “The significance of these cases therefore cannot be judged solely by the fact that the adult is not the formal recipient.”
The cases are also significant because they don’t have to adhere to the TANF rules requiring work expectations, such as regularly applying for jobs, and the payments aren’t limited to the federal 60-month lifetime limit, according to the report. The illegal immigrant families, therefore, can receive federal welfare until the child turns 18 years old.
Low-income American families are held to the federal welfare restrictions that require work participation and are restricted to a 60-month lifetime limit, the authors said.
The number of TANF cases involving an illegal immigrant parent reached nearly 850,000—or 10 percent of all cases—in 2024, up from nearly 6 percent in 2001.
Of those, nearly 78,000 households—or about 91 percent—also received federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the report revealed.
Most of the illegal immigrant parents—over 106,000—identified as Hispanic, while 5.3 percent were White, 4.3 percent were Black, and 2 percent were Asian, the report stated.
Here’s an idea: California doesn’t get any more cash for illegal aliens, period, until they repeal all the sanctuary city declarations, allow federal auditing of all their welfare programs, and implement SAVE Act compliant measures to ensure only citizens vote.
More Cali fraud: “Federal Government Pauses Funding To Los Angeles Homeless Agency Citing Fraud Allegations.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on June 11 suspended federal funding to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), cutting off millions of dollars to the L.A. region, over allegations of fraud and widespread mismanagement.
It’s superbly managed to line the pockets of leftists.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development about his department’s proposed FY2026 budget in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 14, 2026. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
HUD action to suspend federal funding comes in the wake of an investigation into LAHSA, Secretary Scott Turner announced Thursday, adding that the agency has “uncovered evidence of LAHSA’s false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures,” including a lack of financial management and lack of safeguards against conflicts of interest.
The Los Angeles Continuum of Care (CoC), led by LAHSA, has received nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars over the last five years. Despite federal assistance, L.A. remains the epicenter of the nation’s “drug-fueled” homeless crisis, according to Turner.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, HUD will fund results, not corrupt failure or the homeless-industrial complex,” Turner said in a statement. “Year after year, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were funneled to LAHSA with little accountability. Meanwhile, homelessness skyrocketed. Taxpayers will no longer bankroll an organization that puts its own self-interests ahead of the Americans it was created to serve.”
HUD stated in a letter to LAHSA that suspension of funding will be final if the agency does not contest the notice by requesting a hearing. LAHSA must file a written hearing request within 30 days of receipt of the notice.
The Homeless Industrial Complex maw is insatiable.
A possible reason for my continued unemployment? “Of the 369,000 jobs the Labor Department says were created since the start of Trump’s second term, nearly all — 348,000 of them — went to women, with only 21,000 going to men.” I wonder if Kurt Schlichter would be interested in filing a class action lawsuit on behalf of myself and other men…
One year after Frisco high school student Karmelo Anthony was indicted on murder charges over the fatal stabbing of [Austin Metcalf], his trial concluded with the jury’s verdict that Anthony is guilty of murder.
During their sentencing deliberations, the jury considered a “sudden passion” claim, but eventually rejected it and decided that Anthony would face a 35-year prison sentence.
He will be eligible for parole after 17 and a half years.
Like Kyle Rittenhouse’s not guilty verdict, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who doesn’t view the world through social justice-tinted glasses.
“Whistleblower vindicated: Biden officials invented loophole to impose gender identity, flout court. Leaders ‘actively engaged in efforts to thwart at least one regional office from following the plain and unambiguous meaning’ of the injunction against their gender identity reading of Title IX, Department of Education concludes.”
High-ranking Biden administration officials conspired to violate a 2022 court order against their interpretation of Title IX as covering “gender identity” within the definition of “sex,” and may have also tried to conceal those efforts through coercion and intimidation, according to a Department of Education report made public Wednesday after lengthy outside review.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel told President Trump the department “fully substantiated the allegations” by whistleblower Timothy Mattson, who now leads the department’s Office for Civil Rights’ regional office in Kansas City, recommending sanctions against current and former officials and compensation for Mattson for the risk he took coming forward.
You know the giant Democrat tantrum over ICE funding? We won.
Democrats put everything they had in their effort to shut down President Donald Trump’s border control plans. And what exactly have they achieved for their often-infantile antics?
Well, let’s see. This week, the House passed a bill that funds ICE for three years. Deportations are near all-time highs. Oh, and it looks like Trump’s border wall will be completed next year.
On Tuesday, the House passed a “budget reconciliation” bill that provides enough money ($38 billion) to fund ICE for the rest of Trump’s term, plus $28 billion for the Border Patrol, and another $5 billion for border security technology and screening.
And what did Democrats get for shutting down all or part of the government for nearly four months?
Bupkus. Zilch. Nada. Nichts. Niente. 没有什么.This has to be one of the most embarrassing political defeats in history.
If Border Czar Tom Homan is intimidated by the Left’s endless anti-ICE rhetoric and threats, he’s not showing it. In fact, on Monday, he announced he’s doubling down on illegal immigrant operations in New York City and plans a surge in the very near future. This is a direct “in your face” move to counter Gov. Kathy Hochul’s efforts to kneecap federal enforcement in the Empire State.
He spoke as ongoing violent anti-ICE protests continued throughout the weekend at Delaney Hall, a detention facility in nearby Newark, New Jersey.
It’s coming, he told Fox & Friends:
Trump border czar Tom Homan revealed Monday that the administration has already drawn up an operational plan and warned Hochul before she signed legislation late last month restricting ICE activities and banning masked immigration agents in New York.
“You’re going to see more ICE than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” Homan said, according to Bloomberg. “I just reviewed an operational plan. I’m not going to tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s coming.”
Maine Democrats obeyed The Will of The Party and lined up yo vote for the Nazi.”
Graham Platner, the scandal-plagued progressive veteran, will win the Democratic primary for the Maine Senate race, according to a projection by the Associated Press.
Maine Governor Janet Mills suspended her own Senate primary campaign on April 30, effectively handing the nomination to Platner.
Platner has painted himself as an outsider to the Democratic establishment since his fiery campaign launch last fall. In line with those of other progressive and populist candidates, Platner’s political bid has focused on working-class issues, including affordability, universal health care, and labor union relations.
He will advance to face Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins in November. Collins is seen as a moderate Republican, often crossing party lines to vote with Democrats. However, because Collins appeals to a more moderate, centrist bloc of voters, she has received backlash from her supporters on several occasions for voting with her own party, including her vote to advance the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018.
The Senate campaign has been rocked by controversies since last year. In October, CNN and several other outlets uncovered Platner’s past Reddit posts and comments, which included offensive comments about police and sexual assault survivors. He’s since been ensnared in a number of other scandals, including those involving his Nazi tattoo, his marital infidelity, and his past treatment of women.
Remember all that self-serving “when they go low, we go high” blather Democrats mouthed to further the laughable illusion of their moral superiority? They never meant it.
“Trump ally Nikol Pashinyan wins Armenian election, paving way for US-backed peace deal.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party won a majority in the country’s parliamentary elections, marking a victory for Donald Trump after the president endorsed him.
Pashinyan first took power in 2018 in the so-called Velvet Revolution, then won again in the 2021 snap elections triggered by his crushing loss of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War against Azerbaijan. Armenia held its first regular election since he first took power in 2018 on Sunday, during which he won reelection with a vote total far above his closest rival.
The latest preliminary results on Monday gave Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party 49.82% of the vote, the Associated Press reported, with the pro-Russian Samvel Karapetyan’s Strong Armenia bloc coming in second with 23.28% of the vote. The Armenia Alliance bloc led by former President Robert Kocharyan is hovering around 10%, while the rest of the splintered opposition remained in the mid to low single digits.
He beat three pro-Russian parties, another black eye for Putin.
Two independent candidates for U.S. Senate have fundraising profiles on ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s key fundraising platform, raising questions about the candidates’ true political independence as they look to capture two long-held Republican seats this fall.
ActBlue allows independent candidates to fundraise on its platforms on a “case-by-case basis,” based on whether a Democrat is in the race, the candidate has an endorsement from the Democratic Party, or the candidate has demonstrated alignment with the Democratic Party’s ideals and policy goals.
But both independent candidates — Seth Bodnar in Montana and Dan Osborn in Nebraska — are running against Democrats, as well as Republicans. While the Nebraska Democratic Party has endorsed Osborn, Bodnar has not received an official Democratic endorsement.
Speaking of ActBlue shenanigans: “Clinton-Appointed Federal Judge Bars Texas AG Paxton’s Lawsuit Against ActBlue.”
A federal judge has barred Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from pursuing his state court lawsuit against ActBlue, a major Democratic online fundraising platform.
President Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ruled Thursday that the case represented no more than a retaliation campaign for ActBlue’s political activities supporting Paxton’s opponent in the 2026 U.S. Senate race.
Stearns issued a preliminary injunction preventing Paxton from pursuing the Texas case. The judge found the lawsuit attempted to undermine protected political speech and therefore violated the First Amendment.
“The truth is plain and captured in Paxton’s own declarations: The lawsuit was filed in retaliation for (and in an attempt to suppress) ActBlue’s efforts to fund Talarico’s campaign,” Stearns wrote in the ruling.
Neither Paxton’s office nor ActBlue immediately returned a request for comment.
Paxton filed the initial lawsuit in April in Texas state court as he campaigned as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat.
The suit singled out ActBlue, a Massachusetts-based fundraising platform that claims to have raised billions for Democratic candidates and causes since its founding in 2004. It sought civil penalties and an order blocking ActBlue from accepting certain gift card donations.
The Texas attorney general alleged that ActBlue employed deceptive practices after the fundraising platform resumed gift card and foreign prepaid debit card donations after informing Congress that it had ceased conducting the transactions. Paxton alleged the practices could empower foreign nationals to hide their identities while making political contributions, potentially in violation of state law.
Under Sterns logic, no Republican could ever sue ActBlue for breaking the law because they ran against Democrats using the platform to raise money.
SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk a trillionaire. Maybe he could give me a million to run an anti-Social justice Warrior center here in Austin…
“Basic Health Fixes Doctors Know Work But Can’t Make Money From.” I do own dogs and cook at home for all but one meal a week, but only do strength training once a week.
“How Japan Finally Made It Impossible to Make Babies.” Women in the workforce + culture of overwork + high Tokyo prices = shrinking population. And the rest of the west faces similar (if less currently less severe) demographic problems.
Occasionally when wasting time on YouTube searching for content to post here, I come across videos that make an obvious pairing. Today’s topic: Death Rays!
First up: Simon Whistler on the U.S. military’s Songbow Laser Cannon:
“Lasers are not just a sci-fi prop anymore. They are at the heart of a global race to develop the most powerful and precise directed energy weapons. China, Russia, Israel, and the UK are all in on the game. But with Songbow, the US Navy’s new laser cannon, America probably thinks it’s won.”
“Songbow will feature a 400 kilowatt laser. That is a major step up from its older sibling, the 60 kilowatt Helios. This extra energy will allow it to hit bigger, tougher targets faster and from further away. As modern warfare evolves, it’s the weapons surface vessels need to counter serious aerial threats like drone swarms and incoming missiles. And where traditional interceptors can cost millions, a shot from a song bow could be as cheap as a dollar.”
“There’s been mounting concern in recent years about the survivability of the US Navy’s vessels. Countries like China are now armed with large numbers of drones and anti-ship missiles. The modernizing of China’s navy has been steadily underway for decades with the result that it’s now a formidable foe.” Sort of. They have a lot of ships, but they still don’t have a deep water navy, and none of their current aircraft carriers are nuclear powered.
“There’s been debate over whether America’s surface vessels might need to stay beyond the range of these weapons in future conflicts. And of course, China is no longer the only threat.”
“Up until now, there have been two key limitations affecting the US Navy in this arena. First, there’s the finite depth of its magazines. In response to airborne threats, surface ships are limited to how many surface-to-air missiles they can carry. And secondly, there’s the wildly disproportionate cost to kill. An unmanned aerial vehicle, also known as a drone, can be made very little, but it can cost literally a fortune to take it down.”
“Needless to say, these problems are not unique to the US Navy, and the solution to them isn’t either. It’s the same solution being explored by governments the world over: Lasers. Or to give them their full designation, high-powered directed energy weapons.”
“The US Navy has been investing in laser technology for a while now. Its interest goes right back to the days of Ronald Reagan’s strategic defense initiative. Publicly launched in 1983, this was the plan to pioneer a space-based missile defense system which would include a network of lasers to protect America from nuclear attack. The press nicknamed it Star Wars.”
“It was the start of a long flirtation with the possibilities of laser weapons. In the late 1990s, the US and Israel came up with the tactical high energy laser for military use, also known as Nautilus. This used a chemical laser, one that takes its energy from a chemical reaction.” That didn’t work.
“A much better solution seemed to lie in electricity. A beam would instead be generated and amplified through thin glass fibers. As an alternative to chemicals, fiber lasers are smaller, safer, and better suited to mobile applications. They might not have the raw power of chemical lasers, but in theory, they’re much easier to deploy. Think less death ray, and more laser pointer kind of. The main challenge was generating enough power with a fiber laser. So, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, researchers began creating combined beams and array systems using the collective power of several smaller lasers.”
“And this is where the technological leaps are now being made. But whatever has gone before, Songbow has the potential to eclipse its predecessors. It’s been designed in direct response to increasing aerial threats like drones, projectiles, and hypersonic missiles. It follows on from the Navy’s Helios, a high energy laser weapon that’s now been deployed on the Arleigh Burke class destroyer. But where Helios can fire at around 60 kW, Songbow will pack a much stronger punch at around 400 KW. It does this by combining multiple 50 kW fiber laser modules to form one beam.”
“It’s hoped that the power density of a 400 kW class beam will be able to do this to bigger targets at longer ranges. Songbow’s key function will be as a drone and missile defense system, but its pulseed fiber lasers will also assist with remote sensing and target illumination.”
“It’s expected to be installed on naval surface vessels, but could also be deployed on land, making it really rather versatile.”
“The Pentagon is directing billions of dollars into directed energy weapons. The US Navy, Army, Air Force, and Missile Defense Agency are all channeling money into high energy lasers, microwave systems, and battlefield power systems. In April this year, the Department of Defense unveiled a $ 1.5 trillion budget proposal for the fiscal year 2027, described as the most expensive military outlay in modern history. Because as more and more US adversaries and potential adversaries invest in their own capabilities, maintaining dominance is now a spending priority. Jules Hurst III, President Trump’s Under Secretary for War and chief financial officer, has hailed it as a generational investment in the United States military.”
“The US Navy has invested almost $30 million into the [Songbow] project, with funding coming from the US Office of Naval Research. In June 2025, it announced that the contract had been awarded to Coherent Aerospace and Defense in Moretta, California. Not long after, the division was sold to the private investor Advent International. Now renamed Atalon, the company is focused on this growing industry, precision optics and laser systems for aerospace and defense.”
“Beyond all the marketing speak, there are some real advantages to Songbow compared to other solutions. Let’s look at what makes the list of pros. We’ve already talked about that 400 kW beam. Achieving this higher power would mean a drastically increased range and destructive capability. It could even have the ability to eliminate threats that other systems can’t. These might include hypersonic glide vehicles, which move too quickly for traditional interceptors, and hardened cruise missiles, which can’t be beaten by less powerful lasers. It’s estimated that at least 300 kW are needed to burn through the structure of a cruise missile in flight, making a Songbow laser comfortably capable. Now, this is yet to be proved. It’s all aspirational, but it’s what we’ve got to go on.”
“Next up, there’s its cost effectiveness. Wars are cripplingly expensive, as you probably know…The Navy spent an estimated $2 billion in munitions while countering Houthi missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aiden. Most galling of all of this is that the threats they’re countering can be really cheap. In the Russia Ukraine war, drones costing a few hundred dollars have successfully taken out multi-million dollar combat systems. Even the more expensive drone options require a huge spend to neutralize. An Iranian one-way attack drone like the Shahead can cost between $20,000 and $50,000. But the interceptor missiles needed to take it down will set the US back millions. And it’s here that the Songbow and other laser weapons could make all the difference. Directed energy is much much cheaper per shot compared to traditional interceptors. Songbow costs somewhere between $1 and $10 for every shot because it’s only ammo is electricity.”
“This energy source also lends it another advantage. As long as a ship’s power supply lasts, it can keep going. With an unlimited magazine depth, there’s no fear of missile stocks running low. Logistically, it’s a lot easier. In contrast, a Patriot missile battery, for instance, typically contains between six and eight launching stations, each capable of holding 16 PAC3 missiles or four PAC2s. At most, it’s got 128 missiles ready to fire, depending on its configuration.”
“And of course, at sea, space is at a premium. A surface vessel can only carry so many interceptors. Running low on ammunition is also known as ‘going Winchester.’ Ships equipped with the Aegis combat system, the US Navy’s long-standing shield of the fleet, typically carry up to 96 missiles. This might sound like a lot, but it’s a known limitation. When they’re gone, they’re gone.”
“And there’s another thing in Songbow’s favor, too. In the face of threats, laser weapons are fast. Where missiles or bullets take seconds to reach their targets, the Songbow is instantaneous. As soon as it’s fired, it’s arrived. And unlike conventional weapons, you can go again and again. No reloading, no waiting around. This is obviously very handy if you’ve got multiple incoming projectiles and want to move straight onto the next one.”
“Modern warfare is often dictated by quantity rather than quality. Launching a large swarm of drones, decoys, or projectiles is an effective way of completely overwhelming defenses. These are what strategists call saturation attacks. There are just too many targets to handle all at once. There’s not enough time to reload and refocus, and missile stocks simply run out. But in theory, as long as electrical power lasts, directed energy weapons could keep going.”
“We need to be very wary of overhyping this, though. A high energy laser still needs time to disable a target and move on. So, there’s still a limit to what could be achieved in a large enough saturation attack. But with more than one laser weapon, the advantage would be pretty sizable.”
“Directed energy weapons can also stay on target continuously. They can follow a threat and maintain their beam while it’s maneuvering.”
“It’s even rumored that Songbow will be able to defeat hypersonic missiles. These, you see, are a real fly in the ointment for defenders like the US. Hypersonic missiles are able to fly at speeds exceeding Mach 5 and change course unpredictably, making them notoriously tricky to take down. Contrast this with an inbound ballistic missile. In this case, conventional air defense systems can track it and calculate its future flight path. It tends to be fairly predictable. They’ll then launch an interceptor to meet it where it’s likely to end up. Hypersonic missiles, though, don’t play by these rules. They’re faster and they change course mid-flight, making it much harder to calculate their flight path. In theory, Songbow’s winning combination of high power, speed of light engagement, and capacity for continuous firing could see it win the day.” Set aside for a moment that Russia and China’s “hypersonic” missiles are more hype than sonic.
“However cool and futuristic it sounds, Songbow still has its limitations and its critics.”
“One of the main obstacles to any laser weapon is nature herself. Atmospheric conditions like mist, fog, and rain can all absorb and scatter light, diffusing a laser’s beam. And the same goes for things like smoke, salt particles, and if it’s used on land, dust and sand. So, this is not an all-weather solution. And in time, seaborne enemy craft could even be fitted with devices that create smoke or other obscurants to protect themselves. This would be a very easy way to counter a laser. Extreme sea conditions will also pose a problem. Lasers follow a straight line of sight, which isn’t always possible on a constantly shifting terrain like water. Rough seas and swells can easily disrupt a beam, especially over longer distances.” With modern gyro-stabilization, I suspect this is largely a solved problem.
“Even a ship’s vibration can cause difficulties. High energy lasers rely on precision, but the general operation of a ship is pretty unstable. As well as waves and the motion of the ocean, you’ve got the vibrations from engines and onboard machinery. Maintaining a stable lock while taking all of these things into account is going to be really quite hard.”
“And in practical terms, the sky, or rather the horizon line, is the limit here. A laser is clever, but it can’t magically arc over the horizon. It’s a definite physical limitation compared to a combat system like Aegis.”
“Another downside to high-energy laser systems comes in the form of thermal blooming. This is basically when a continuously firing laser beam heats up the air around it, causing it to defocus and become less effective. It’s a bigger issue when the targets are coming head-on in a straight line, known as a down-throat shot. At times like this, the beam has to sustain itself in one direction for a long time. The more powerful a laser weapon, the more troublesome this is. So, it could be a real problem for the 400 kW Songbow.”
“Operationally, all that power is something of a double-edged sword. We talked about the advantages of a weapon that can run from a ship’s electrical supply. Said earlier, as long as a ship’s power supply lasts, it can keep going. High power lasers, you see, need a hefty electrical supply and advanced cooling capabilities. A large amount of the energy they generate is just lost as heat, which needs to be dissipated. If it isn’t, the weapon will ultimately become damaged and will stop working.”
“Managing the temperature of a directed energy weapon is crucial. This means a specialized cooling system, and this is asking a lot of shipboard power systems, especially when they’re already prioritizing output for things like radar and propulsion. As journalist Charles Mitchell has written, quote, ‘The challenge is to cause a warship to act as a stable power plant and a heatsink at the same time as it is operating high demand sensors, combat systems, hotel loads, and other auxiliaries.” End quote. He argues that the laser fight won’t so much be limited by a ship’s fuel tank, but by its electrical and thermal headroom. If a laser is continuously being shot, its effectiveness is going to come down to how quickly its ongoing heat buildup can be carried off. But according to one naval industry report, even the Navy believes the Arleigh Burke class fleet of destroyers has quote reached the limits of its growth capacity. This raises serious questions about how easily older ships like these would be able to take on the Songbow’s enormous electrical and cooling demands. And this seems to be a challenge the US Navy is well aware of.”
“Already next generation surface vessels are in the works with designs for expanded power generation that will accommodate directed energy weapons. In December 2025, Donald Trump announced the Navy’s plan to develop a new class of ‘largest we have ever built’ battleships. It’s hoped that the first, the USS Defiant, will be ready in the early 2030s. According to plans, the Defiant will be nuclear powered to provide the Navy’s fleet with quote a significant increase in combat power by longer endurance, higher speed, and advanced weapon systems required for modern wars.” This is also the reason the Gerald R. Ford class of aircraft carriers is powered by two nuclear reactors.
“Among these same plans, the Trump class battleship seems to include two 300 or 600 kW shipborne lasers and other laser systems for optical dazzling and sensor disruption.”
“Commentators have described directed energy weapons as central to the Trump class ship’s design, but this form of weaponry has always had its hurdles. Hurdles that have plagued the development of laser weapons since the 1980s. Even a Congressional Research Service report acknowledges the old saying, quoting again, “Lasers are X years in the future and always will be.”
“Only last year, one of the Navy’s top fleet commanders, Admiral Daryl Caudle, said the service should be embarrassed by its slow progress with the technology. Because although the theory behind their application carries weight, he believes the US still isn’t ready for prime time. Lasers might promise a lot, but they’re not yet a viable way to take out a missile. And at a symposium in 2024, Rear Admiral Fred Pyle told attendees the Navy had quote a tendency to overpromise and underdeliver.”
Skipping over the failure of the Army’s 300 kW Valkyrie laser system, which seemingly couldn’t hit milestones and was mothballed. “The Army decided the prototype would not be fielded to units. Instead, it’ll be used to inform the new joint laser weapon system. This laser initiative is a collaboration between the US Army and the US Navy. In theory, it’ll allow them to pull their research from past efforts to create a 150 kW system that could potentially be scaled up.”
“Similarly, in 2024, the US Air Force shut down its much vaunted SHIELD program, which had set out to introduce pod-mounted high energy lasers to fighter aircraft.”
“SHIELD had apparently been hit by many of these issues that we’ve already talked about. Technical difficulties, heat generation, harsh environments, all leading to claims that the technology still wasn’t developed enough for real world use. Of course, this doesn’t mean the whole concept of laser weaponry is being scrapped.”
“Despite the troublesome quirks of laser weapons, they’re in motion all over the world. The United States definitely isn’t the only global power taking part in this futuristic race.”
“You might remember our video about the UK’s Dragonfire laser. Like Songbow, Dragonfire has been designed to counter drones, missiles, and projectiles. And also like Songbow, it uses solid state fiber laser technology. The development of Dragonfire has been funded to the tune of million pounds.”
“In 2024, it successfully engaged an airborne target during an exercise. There at the Hebrides range in Scotland, the weapon took drones flying at 650 km/h down. Dragonfire is due to be fitted to a Royal Navy type 45 destroyer in 2027. Because of this, its exact range is still classified, but we do know that according to the official descriptions, the level of precision it offers is the equivalent of hitting a one pound coin that’s about the same size as a euro or a US quarter from a kilometer away. It’s capable of manifesting 50 kW of power.”
“And it’s a similar story with Israel’s Iron Beam, otherwise known as the laser dome, pioneered by the defense technology company Raphael. This is a 100 kilowatt high energy laser system. In Raphael’s glossy marketing, it claims that Iron Beam redefines modern warfare. And I mean, yeah, maybe it does. Reportedly, the Iron Beam is able to overcome the atmospheric challenges faced by other laser weapons. With lasers, the larger the beam, the more atmospheric interference you’re likely to face. The Iron Beam gets around this by shooting hundreds of small coinsized beams instead of one. These all converge on a target until it’s damaged or destroyed. It claims almost zero cost per interception, whatever that is. And significantly, it’s now up and running. In December 2025, the Iron Beam was officially deployed to the IDF after more than a decade in development. And in March 2026, social media footage seemed to show it in action intercepting a Hezbollah drone.”
“Israel may be the first, but it won’t be the last. Also hot on their heels are South Korea, Russia, Ukraine, India, and Japan. All are developing variations on the theme. And last year, China unveiled its own shipbourne weapon, the LY-1, a high energy laser weapon said to be an advanced testing.” China’s weapon systems seem to be long on hype and short on performance.
“Reading about high energy lasers, the term layered defense comes up a lot. At least for the time being, and probably for a long time to come, laser weaponry can’t be a one-stop shop solution. There’s simply too much to it and too many limitations to consider. And so, it will literally become just one weapon in a country’s arsenal. Systems like Songbow will sit alongside more proven interceptors so that if, for instance, sea conditions become rough, there’s still something a crew can do to deal with that pesky incoming drone.”
“Traditional projectiles might be fishily expensive, but they’re probably here to stay in some capacity.”
“As well as working alongside other defensive weapons, Songbow will also sit within the Navy’s laser family. If it’s successfully deployed, it’ll act as the big gun. But there are other smaller siblings there, too. Take ODIN, for example. It stands for Optical Dazzling Interdictor Navy. And at the time we’re writing this, there are seven ODIN systems on Navy ships. They’re there specifically to emit an infrared light that will scramble the optical sensors of a drone. Rather than shooting it down, they can effectively make it lose its way and crash.”
Helios, another laser defense system already deployed on the Arleigh Burke-class USS Prebel, successfully shot down Iranian drones this year.
“The global race to field directed energy systems is well and truly on, leading some to call this the age of laser weapons. It echoes past scrambles around stealth aircraft and precision missiles. Now, the question isn’t so much whether lasers will reach the maritime sphere, but how quickly countries can overcome the many hurdles to making this a success.”
Now the second death ray video. In my Black Friday/Prepper roundups, I’ve been including links for the IMALENT MS18, an insanely powerful flashlight that I don’t have a use case for, but which some people (say, ranchers or security guards for large complexes) might. Well, someone took its big brother, the IMALENT MS32, put a magnifier on it, and turned it into a death ray.
Now, as a death ray it’s inferior to a gun as a self-defense weapon, and about 1/100th as cost effective for lighting a fire than a cheap electric lighter. But it’s still pretty cool. Err, pretty hot, that is…
Something a little different than the usual Iran roundup: Two videos about Kharg Island, one an after-action report on a U.S. attack run, the other a description of what makes taking the island difficult.
The caveat for the after-action video, a recreation of an actual U.S. attack run, is that it’s done a breathless, overly-dramatic fashion, like something from Most Shocking. But the detailed, blow-by-blow account suggests it was taken from actual after-action reports.
Three B-1B Lancers carrying precision-guided bombs attempted the most surgically demanding strike of Operation Epic Fury — destroying Iranian military targets on Kharg Island without touching the crude oil infrastructure sitting meters away. Then the GPS jamming started, and the mission nearly came apart.
This video reconstructs the full tactical breakdown of the Kharg Island strike: how an Iranian GPS jammer degraded bomb accuracy toward the oil, how the F/A-18 Super Hornets sent to destroy it nearly got hit by friendly JDAMs when a deconfliction failure put them directly in the bomb fall line, and how one Mersad air defense commander’s final radio transmission turned inaccurate anti-aircraft fire into precision-guided shrapnel that bracketed B-1Bs mid-bombing run. We cover the AGM-158 JASSM cruise missile shot that eliminated the SAM battery, the burning missile propellant creeping toward thirty million barrels of crude oil, the IRGC patrol boat sprint toward the supertanker loading channel, and the F/A-18 pilots who descended into accurate anti-aircraft fire from guns they couldn’t suppress to stop a mining operation with laser-guided GBU-54 JDAMs.
The breathless nature of the narration makes me suspect that certain aspects have been embellished for dramatic effect.
Next up: Simon Whistler discusses how difficult it will be for the American military to take and hold Kharg Island. Consider it the pessimist case against the operation.
“The value of Kharg Island is obvious. Control the island, and you could throttle Iran’s oil dependent economy. Capture the island intact, and another nation could make Iran do anything to get it back. Destroy it outright and Iran would transform from a powerful rogue nation into an economic afterthought. And that’s if we’re being generous.”
“The export facilities on Kharg Island are the most important site in one of Iran’s most important regions, meaning that the region is especially important to the Iranian military. This is a region with a well-developed civilian infrastructure, a large presence from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC, and most likely the hidden weapons stockp match. Then there’s the island itself, a low-lying coral crop with an elevation of just 70m at its highest point. With a land area of roughly 20 square km, Kharg Island is basically flat, basically triangular in shape and surrounded by deep waters to enable the transit of oil tankers.”
Some pre-situated weapons and supply caches will likely survive any American bombardment.
“There’s no telling what the US will destroy and what it’ll fail to pick up on, but some of those mines and air defenses will survive, raising the possibility that they could claim the lives of US troops or shoot down vulnerable non-stalthy low-flying aircraft. That said, Kharg will not be an easy place to defend once US ground forces have established a foothold. Iranians on the island will either be left exposed or be forced to use refinery infrastructure as cover unless they allow themselves to be pushed into the island town where most residents live.”
“Iran’s objective is not victory in any conventional sense. Iran is able to accept the deaths of its political and military leaders and the destruction of its cities and mass casualties among its soldiers, paramilitaries, and civilian supporters. Iran’s focus is on regime survival, not the survival of the people who make up the regime, but the survival of the regime itself.” No, that’s the regime‘s goal. Most ordinary Iranians hate the regime’s guts.
He notes the difficulty of getting amphibious landing ships through the Strait of Hormuz. But America will likely have a screening force of destroyers and frigates in addition to overwhelming air superiority, and Iran probably has very little in the way of missiles that can reach across the strait, at night, without real air assets to spot and paint the target, in the face of American air and naval superiority. Given America and Israel’s attacks on their sensor and communication infrastructure, I also doubt the Iranian military is capable of efficient coordination and dissemination of any real-time information they may be receiving from Russian or Chinese satellites.
He’s still right that amphibious and aerial invasions are exceptionally difficult and fraught with peril.
But I believe there are multiple places where Whistler is unduly pessimistic about such an operation.
First and foremost, the military assets discussed in the media are not necessarily the assets such an operation would be limited to. Remember how the very public news of B-2s in route to Diego Garcia was a ruse to cover the fact that the real B-2 force was already headed to the target in the June strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It’s entirely possible (even probable) that America already has assault assets in theater that media outlets don’t know about.
Some debatable assertions: “Iranian forces are nothing if not creative, and they are highly motivated to accept risk to their own lives in order to deliver damage to an adversary.” And “The first problem that the US would have to account for is the Iranian ground forces. Combination of roughly 350,000 soldiers in the Iranian army, about 150,000 soldiers across the ground forces of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and another several hundred thousand paramilitary fighters of the Basij Resistance Force.” Whistler suggests virtues not necessarily in evidence for Iran’s forces. The IRCG has certainly shown itself highly motivated when it comes to launching terror rockets, supporting insurgencies, or slaughtering civilians, but not so much when it comes to an actual toe-to-toe fight against a real military, a domain in which they have zero experience or demonstrated competency. Likewise, there’s little evidence that Iranian military regulars are all that keen to die for the regime. They also did not notably distinguish themselves in the long, bloody slog of the Iran-Iraq War, a stalemate against an Iraqi military that the United States-led coalition would quickly and comprehensively dismantle in the Gulf War a few years later. And back then, Iran had some relatively modern air power. Likewise the Basij seem well equipped to beat defenseless women for immodesty, but I rather strongly suspect the overwhelming majority will cut and run when faced with trained soldiers who can fire back.
If America successfully takes Kharg Island, it will be impossible for Iranian forces to get ships across from the mainland to retake it in the teeth of overwhelming American air power, even if they try crossing at night.
Likewise, the difficulty in taking the island without damaging the critical oil infrastructure that makes it worth taking may cause Iran to avoid their usual inaccurate missile barrages. And Iranian forces will likely find it difficult to set up missile, artillery and drone systems on the coastline under withering American and Israeli attack.
“The American public is not willing to accept the loss of American troops, and it is not willing to accept long-term or severe economic pain just to see the Islamic Republic overthrown.” This assertion is not necessarily true. The American public can certainly be fickle, but thus far Astroturf protests against the war have modest and populated with the usual foreign-funded, elderly white lefty idiots. Americans over a certain age remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and may feel eliminating one of they key sources of jihad terror worldwide for good worth the cost. Also, unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, U.S. military and civilian leadership seems 100% dedicated to absolute victory.
Whistler seems to think that all of Iran’s military forces will fight with the same fanaticism of Imperial Japanese troops on Iwo Jima. Given how badly the regular armies of Muslim nations have fought against first world armies in standup fights, as opposed to fanatical insurgencies running year-long campaigns of attrition, I rather strongly suspect he’s mistaken.
Lots of interesting military news not specific to Iran or Ukraine pops up on YouTube that doesn’t quite rise to the level of a separate post. So here’s a tab-clearing video roundup.
Simon Whistler rounds up 2025 conflicts that we’re not paying much attention to.
In order covered, they are:
The Sahel’s Growing Islamist Insurgency (which I have covered off and on since 2019)
Latin America’s Organized Crime Crisis
Failure of Colombia’s ‘Total Peace’ Leads to Widespread Conflict
Nigeria’s Overlapping Conflicts
The Anglophone Crisis In Cameroon
Cabo Delgado’s Islamic State Insurgency (in Mozambique)
Haiti’s Meltdown
The Congo’s Proxy War
The Amhara Insurgency (in Ethiopia)
The Papua Conflict is the Deadliest War You’ve Never Heard Of (in Indonesia)
Sudan Suffers in Silence
Some of these I’ve covered, but several are new to me as well…
Habitual Linecrosser explains how modern jamming actually works.
He goes into a great deal of detail on different systems, ranges, wavelengths, radar locks, etc. Plus a look at Venezuela operation. If you’re interested, watch the whole thing.
Lots of people (myself included) have criticized the Pentagon over not doing enough to prepare for a possible war with China. One thing they are doing that’s flown under the radar: Spending $10 billion to refurbish long abandoned World War II airbases on the “second island chain.”
Those islands are:
Guam
Tinian
Yap
Palau
Kwajalein
Those familiar with the Pacific theater in World War II will remember the battles against Imperial Japan for control of those islands (save Yap, which was bypassed). The battle for Palau was an especially deadly and bitter struggle for American troops that produced eight Medal of Honor recipients.
China, of course, isn’t taking this lying down, and Chinese “businessmen” have been leasing land next to American installations of many of the islands, while China refurbishes airbases on islands like Kiribati.
There are multiple rumors floating around about Schrodinger’s Ayatollah, who still hasn’t been seen in public since the initial strikes. The first is that he shuffled off his mortal aba in the airstrike that killed his father Ayatollah Senior and most of Iran’s ruling council.
“We know the new so-called not-so-supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured,” Hegseth said in a press briefing on Friday, March 13. “He put out a statement yesterday. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement.”
“Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders,” Hegseth added. “Why a written statement? I think you know why. … He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run and he lacks legitimacy.”
Here’s the obligatory Simon Whistler video to sort through the possibilities.
“According to Iranian leaders, he’s alive and well. According to US defense leaders, he’s quote wounded and likefully disfigured. And as regional experts and conflict observers have recently pointed out, he might already be in a coma or even dead.”
“One week after he was elevated to rule Iran, the younger Khamenei hasn’t been seen and he hasn’t been heard, raising the distinct possibility that the world and even the people of Iran don’t actually know who’s in charge of Iran’s war effort.”
“A longtime adviser and money man who had assisted his father for decades, Motjaba was already rumored not to be on his father’s short list for succession even before the current war with the US and Israel began. Instead, Motjaba was an avatar of some of Iran’s most hardline fighting factions. The internal repression forces known as the Basij, which Motjaba essentially controlled himself, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, where he’d been close with the deceased General Qasem Soleimani and his successor Hossein Taeb.”
“Motjaba was widely understood to be much more extreme than his father, even in his open support of Iranian nuclear weapons, which his father had always publicly denied pursuing. Motjaba had spent years in Iran building a loyal support network, angling to take over despite his father’s wishes, and along with his father, Motjaba’s wife, his mother, and one of his sons were all reported killed in the early waves of US and Israeli bombing.”
“Claims from Israeli intelligence as well as anonymous Iranian officials speaking to the global press confirmed that Motjaba is in significantly worse shape than the Iranian regime will acknowledge.”
Trump: “I hear he’s not alive.”
Back to Whistler: “We can observe a convergence of analysis from the US, Israel, purported Iranian insiders, Iranian opposition sources, and others on the out-abouts. What’s probably true here? While it’s more likely than not that Motjaba Khamenei is alive in some form, most accounts on his whereabouts and status have converged on the idea that he’s in bad shape, isolated, and even if he is alert, he probably isn’t the person calling the shots in Iran on a daily basis.”
“If Motjaba isn’t calling the shots, then who is?”
“The answer may be a facet of the groups that helped elevate him to the leadership. The Revolutionary Guard, the Basij Paramilitaries, and Iran’s hardline factions.”
“It’s not clear that those leaders can exert direct control over the Iranian military. Iran has already shifted into a wartime strategy called mosaic defense. An approach that’s meant to make the country more resilient to decapitation strikes and command and control destruction than it otherwise would be.”
“In a mosaic defense, Iran essentially fractures into decentralized individually controlled military units, each given control of certain regions, certain paramilitary allies, and certain warfighting assets. Those units have their broad instructions from the top. But after that, they’re essentially on their own.” A mosaic defense can be effective in running a decentralized insurgency, but is a lot less useful when you’re trying to defend your country against two of the world’s most powerful and technologically sophisticated militaries.
“On the one hand, that’s helpful in ensuring that Iran’s military can still function when people like the Supreme Leader are killed. But on the other hand, it’s very difficult to reign those mosaic forces back in once they’ve been given the order to decentralize.”
“Already, Iranian leaders have suggested that some of Iran’s actions, like the pervasive strikes on Gulf Energy infrastructure, may have been due to mosaic forces making their own decisions about how to handle the war. With a hardline supreme leader legitimizing the commands and the power of Iran’s revolutionary guard and Basij, there’s a real risk that those forces will only become less responsive to more moderate civil leaders.” Yeah, “moderate civil leaders” isn’t exactly what anyone thinks of when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Kharg Islands/Marines/Hormuz stuff snipped.
I think the Babylon Bee nicely captures the consensus about Mojtaba: “‘It’s Just A Flesh Wound!‘ Says Legless Torso Of Iranian Ayatollah.”
But beyond dead, coma, and crippled, another possibility about MiniMe Khamenei has recently surfaced, namely that he might be a prancing Nancy Boy.
President Trump was stunned to learn last week that US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay — and that his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, feared his suitability to rule the Islamic Republic for that reason, The Post can reveal.
Trump couldn’t contain his surprise and laughed aloud when he was briefed on the intel, according to sources.
Others in the room also found it “hilarious” and joined the president’s reaction, while one senior intelligence official “has not stopped laughing about it for days,” said one person familiar with the briefing.
The shocking claim was described to The Post by two intelligence community officials and a third person close to the White House.
Of course, all this could merely be scurrilous rumor or psychological warfare aimed at the regime. The idea that Mojtaba enjoys having burly men pound his poop-chute would obviously radically reduce his support among the notoriously anti-gay power circles of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Supreme Leader doing the same things that get others hung from cranes might make regime figures less likely to follow his orders, especially if they start suspecting they’re being issued from inside a strapless lavender evening gown.
There is another possibility: Like Liberace and Oscar Wilde, Mojtaba Khamenei could be both gay and dead…
The more the Islamic Republic of Iran lashes out at other countries in the region, the more obvious it is that eliminating the regime and its nuclear ambitions was the right call. I once read a quote that if Hitler had possessed nuclear weapons in the in his bunker as the end drew near, he surely would have used him. That’s the sort of nihilistic death-spasm we’re seeing from the Iranian regime.
Some news:
U.S. submarine torpedoes Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off Sri Lanka:
Note that secretary of defense Pete Hegseth stated that we sunk the IRIS Shahid Soleimani, but the video he showed was that Suchomimus posted, which is clearly not a Soleimani-class ship with its distinctive duel prow. There’s obviously some confusion here. But maybe Hegseth just mixed up the videos, as this CENTCOM tweet des seem to show stills from a strike on a Soleimani-class ship.
U.S. forces have struck or sunk to the bottom of the ocean more than 20 ships from the Iranian regime. Last night, CENTCOM added a Soleimani-class warship to the list. pic.twitter.com/KgW8cS726P
With complete American/Israeli air superiority over Iran, the B-52 has joined the fight:
Also, F-22 Raptors have been stationed in Israel, possibly setting the stage for the greatest Habitual Linecrosser video ever.
There are conflicting reports on whether Kurdish rebel forces have launched a ground invasion into Iran or not. Kurdish sources seem to be denying it. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re infiltrating units.
“A citizen sent a video to IranWire, reporting several consecutive explosions in the city of Baneh. The United States and Israel extensively targeted some positions of the Islamic Republic in the city of Baneh today.” Location of Baneh? Kurdistan province.
Simon Whistler explains how Russia and China are going to do “jack” and “squat” to Iran. Or, more specifically, all the moral support you can pack into a roadside IED.
Russia is too busy with its quagmire in Ukraine, and China gets more oil from the Persian Gulf states Iran has been drone and missile attacking than from Iran.
“In a way, Russia and China have delivered Iran the ultimate geopolitical insult. They don’t hate Iran. They aren’t condemning Iran, but at the end of the day, they just don’t really care that much. After decades of loyal partnership, and recent years where Iran has clearly believed that its relationships with China and Russia were growing far deeper, Iran has been discarded. It’s too inconvenient to defend. It isn’t valuable enough to save. And for Moscow and for Beijing, it’ll be easy enough to forget.”
OK, that’s the news I’ve scraped today. If there’s something significant you think I’ve missed, feel free to share it in the comments.
