Mil Analyst, Georgetown SSP alum. Views do not represent those of my employer or any Gov/Military. "What do I know? My specialty is just strategic analysis."
@OSPyoutube
@medievaldaniel
The "knockout gas" trope is a fun one and similar. In reality the line between "doesn't knock you out" and "you are dead" is unbelievably fine, which is why anesthesiologists make huge salaries (and the Russians found this out in that terrorist incident in a theater)
Folks, if you think USVs will transform naval warfare and render surface ships obsolete, wait until underwater ships with people on them start shooting fast exploding UUVs at surface ships
About THAT article:
1) The PRC has an unbelievable array of highly advanced missiles that are part of an absurdly frequent test program and the vast majority appear to work really, really well.
2) The majority of their missiles use solid, not liquid fuel.
On Jan. 15 at approximately 4 p.m. (Sanaa time), Iranian-backed Houthi militants fired an anti-ship ballistic missile from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and struck the M/V Gibraltar Eagle, a Marshall Islands-flagged, U.S.-owned and operated container ship. The ship has
Really? Really!?
Shrubbery is to blame.
I would love it if we in the west did not borrow the Russian cope-train and instead had an honest discussion on the failures of Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Remember folks, the lesson of the Titan and MH370 is technology and computer processing are making the oceans transparent and submarines will soon be doomed.
Sometimes, what looks like the buildup to a massive invasion actually is….a buildup to a massive invasion.
People might be getting too clever by half in the punditry world.
One of the many reasons we need a "Red Storm Rising" movie updated to the PRC as the enemy so we can see a CGI US CSG dumping entire VLSes simultaneously against a massive ASM attack.
This is perfectly show how the SM-2 long range surface to air missile trajectory.
Salvo missile fire of the South Korean ROKN Sejong the Great class Aegis destroyer.
Should Ukraine have an "International Maintenance Legion" as # of complex Western systems increase?
I'd imagine some retired military maintainers with Bradley, Marder, etc. experience wouldn't want to man a Bakhmut trench line, but would risk working at a forward repair base
Wars basically never happen because of some accident that gets out of control. This actually is a dangerous myth based itself on a political shibboleth that simply having weapons and militaries that operate spontaneously causes wars.
China and the US say they do not want to go to war over Taiwan, but rising military activity around the territory risks an accidental exchange that escalates out of control.
Sky's
@haynesdeborah
's explains.
Watch the full report 👉
This raises the interesting question - if I'm Jeff Bezos and I want to spend $20B to completely re-create a fully functioning Yamato - is there any legal restriction on having ship with fully-functional 18.1" guns and shells in, say, US waters?
Iranian-backed Houthi small boats attack merchant vessel and U.S. Navy helicopters in Southern Red Sea
On Dec. 31 at 6:30am (Sanaa time) the container ship MAERSK HANGZHOU issued a second distress call in less than 24 hours reporting being under attack by four Iranian-backed
There also seems to be a burst of “Of course China will never invade Taiwan because that would be dumb.”
Did people not learn anything from early 2022.?
An operation consisting of piles of surface combatants milling about the Red Sea endlessly plinking UAVs and missiles without strikes on Houthi mainland is idiotic, unless goal is to deplete missile inventories so you have less to use vs. China or Russia later
Scoop:
@SECDEF
will announce Operation Prosperity Guardian next week, an international effort to protect Red Sea shipping, US military official tells me. Today, USS Carney downed 14 Houthi drones while HMS Diamond downed 1, all part of same wave.
Weird people have orgasmic excitement over Huthi UxVs that have dome next to nothing other than be slaughtered, but seem utterly uninterested in Mach 5 ASBMs that genuInely are a warfare first, and ASCMs which almost hit US warship, simply because latter two aren’t “drones”
Cue outrage from people who started caring about Naval warfare five minutes ago if it emerges that anything more expensive than a rock from a slingshot was used to shoot any of these down.
You can hate the Administration and hate that they pulled out from the JCPOA, and also believe Iran is behind essentially all of these attacks. They're not mutually exclusive.
I have thought this for a while - people are mentally attributing the Moskva ASCM hit, and the in-port cruise missile hits, to USVs.
UKR USVs haven't been particularly effective but desperation to declare "WARFARE TRANSFORMED" (though Germans fielded exploding USVs in WWI)
Putin dispatches defense minister to take charge of investigation of accident that cost lives of 14 crew members, 7 of them captains 1st rank and 2 Heroes of Russia.
ANALYSIS: Why did North Korea test new missiles so soon after its latest parade?
"There weren’t many [military components] featured in the parade, so showing the new missiles after successful tests would help boost morale," one researcher said.
@zkCheeb
Sarcasm; many very poorly informed think-tank types have a mistaken understanding of the trends in anti-submarine warfare and like to write pieces about how submarines are going to be easily found and destroyed (they tend to ignore the engagement piece, actually) in the future.
@ChristopherJM
@amnesty
Even the review seems like silliness almost as comically detached from military reality as Amnesty; the idea that a defending force against an overwhelming invasion by a nation-state needs to constantly avoid being in…buildings…is laughable.
So here is the bifurcation on RU/UKR on my timeline:
1) RU bluffing/eagerly agreeing with Zelensky: Journalists, think tankers that are politically focused
2) RU not bluffing: People with actual military expertise, journos, think tankers interested in people with mil expertise
@shashj
adding uncrewed vehicles generally increases personnel requirements.
Ukrainians have a massive requirement for FPV drone operators and maintainers, C2, comms and counter-UAV EW operators that simply is additive to all the infantry, armor, and arty personnel needed
If you want to provide comprehensive area air defense against UAVs, ASCMs, and ASBMs for ships other than yourself you need a big-ass radar and a shit-ton of missiles.
Aren’t really any lower cost work-arounds now or in the future.
I have a bit of a crazy idea but it is in the spirit of disruptive transformation we see here…
What if you took this launcher and actually installed it WITHIN THE SHIP when you designed and built it? more protected from attack, you could use the helo deck for hellos, etc.
Defense journalists and think-tankers, please stop simple-minded recommendations to replace all platforms of a military service with swarms of “small, cheap, drones”
1) They won’t be as cheap as you imagine
2) What you imagine will be militarily useless in may scenarios
@VictorK1862
@Iron_Man_Actual
The people that doubted the ASBMs work, and the people that believe every surface ship that enters a PRC ASBM range ring on a map are instantly vaporized are all idiots in different ways.
@DavidOAtkins
No, its because California has been very lucky on quake location for decades.
People were smugly prattling about Japanese quake preparation and building codes, as you are for California, before over 5,000 were killed in the Kobe earthquake.
What if I told you….navies have had DRONEZ that can fly hundreds of miles, reach speeds up to Mach 3, automatically do radical terminal weaves to evade defenses, can be launched in waves for simultaneous impact…and have had them for DECADES?
@Matt_Schrader_
The crazy thing is that it would appear that the Bhutanese government would really rather everyone ignore the whole thing; there are going to be fascinating cases where OSINT reveals aggression that victim governments would prefer to ignore.
The PH could not reach China when it tried to contact Beijing through the hotline established between the two countries when Chinese vessels fired water cannon and blocked PH boats at Ayungin Shoal in the West Philippine Sea last week, the DFA says.
There was an entire internet forum devoted to nukes being fake 15-20 years ago. Multiple sub-forums devoted to weapons, power, etc. Had an idiot sub shipyard worker (who obviously didn't work on back of boat) convinced reactors were fake because of the diesel auxiliary power.
Battleship New Jersey (BB-62) passing under the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia on the way to Philadelphia Naval Yard drydock - March 21, 2024
#ussnewjersey
#bb62
SRC: FB- Norm Kerr
@paulythegun
In Brooklyn they don't do any of this cellphone warning crap. An artisanal town cryer would run around ringing a handcrafted bell for a missile alert.
On December 18, at approximately 9:00 (Sanaa time), there were two Houthi militant attacks against commercial shipping in the Southern Red Sea.
The chemical/oil tanker motor vessel SWAN ATLANTIC was attacked by a one-way attack drone and an anti-ship ballistic missile launched
The time of the Model UN types is over.
The time of the wartime consiglieres has begun.
If you are a young person interested in foreign policy, get a broad basic understanding of all warfare domains, and military geography.
Couple thoughts
1) doing inside 12 mi limit deliberate; don’t want to declare open season on everything in International airspace
2) water still really shallow there good chance of getting sensor package parts which likely sink
This article emphasizes that many of the intercepted Huthi UAVs are large ISR ones, at long ranges from the firing ship; so many "cheap" ways to intercept people want to imagine won't work at those ranges.
@cgberube
@iAmTheWarax
I keep suggesting promotion by single hand-to-hand combat to the death in every organization I'm in but strangely it never goes anywhere.
I GUARANTEE a many thousand-word essay on how the Russian nuclear ASAT 1) is no big deal and 2) is somehow the fault of the US, is coming from an author or journal that was in a panic over the US fielding a few low-yield warheads or an upgraded gravity bomb.
It's a bit weird that one nation state launching a massive cruise missile attack on another nation state causing billions of dollars of economic damage isn't a bigger deal.
I propose
@mgerrydoyle
and
@BDHerzinger
write a Clancy-esque techno-thriller based on the Hong Kong floating restaurant not being what it appeared to be.
@UAWeapons
Actually MANPADS survival is pretty common for anything not a helicopter (which are incredibly fragile) I think the single engine fighter/attack survival rate is 50% or so. The warhead is pretty small.
If you actively want to have less knowledge of US nuclear deterrence and weapons programs after you are done than when you started, please read all this worthless drivel.
The U.S. is beginning an ambitious, controversial reinvention of its nuclear arsenal. The project comes with incalculable costs and unfathomable risks.
Read our Special Report to learn more
You will get lots of highly effective weapons through spending vast amounts of money developing highly effective weapons and then buying lots of them.
There are no “disruptive” Silicon Valley Tech bro workarounds.
@shashj
Basically none of these shootdowns are OWA UAVs attacking the ship shooting it down; either they are heading to attack something else or more commonly they are ISR UAVs providing ASBM or ASCM targeting…you thus can’t get around using missiles for such longer range engagements
@UKDefJournal
@Gareth1958
Can the female personnel on HMS Queen Elizabeth defend the ship if attacked by a determined boarding party? Hand-to-hand fighting against fully fit trained invaders requires serious fighting skills. Deeply embarrassing if Russian sailors commandeer HMS Queen Elizabeth.
@cdrsalamander
I think the most important datapoint of the war is the 200+ ASW weapons used by the RN task force with no Argentinian subs sunk (and very few of the weapons likely actually fired at a genuine sub).
Basically it's whether you've sat and watched a Tik Tok of tanks and SAM launchers on a train from Russia's Pacific coast to Belarus and either already knew or bothered to find out what they were, instead of just reading diplomatic statements
Credit to NYT authors to drawing attention to the Russian Black Sea Fleet sub force. Basically nothing the Ukrainians can do about those (unless they can manage to hit them in port) and I could easily see scenarios where they torpedo grain ships and try to pin blame on UKR mines
Chalk one more victory for sea denial. By definition, denial means one may prevent others from using a certain geographical area for military ops while being unable to use it either. Snake Island is likely going to be "no man's land" for a while.
Actually the main lesson, I believe, is to NOT believe that warfare is suddenly being revolutionized by magic-tech.
155mm shell production rates in dark satanic mills of molten steel are more critical to the war than every UAV and cyberweapon combined.
Peter Singer's lessons from
#Ukraine
: "New technology points the way to the future of war... once it has been introduced, there is no going back."
via
@DefenseOne
I now am estimating $30 Billion given the need to build new foundries for the guns, armor, etc. and a training facility for the crew.
I probably wimp out and go with diesel or diesel/gas turbine propulsion instead of an exact copy.
@copesint
@wartranslated
Yep. All the Russian turrets catastrophically blowing off notwithstanding, most of the time a tank is disabled or destroyed some or all of the crew survives, historically. And tanks simply break down a lot as well.
1/6 Big drone news coming out of Saudi Arabia this morning!
Houthi
#drones
have allegedly targeted the Aramco oil processing plant near Dammam causing substantial fires. This is no easy feat and if confirmed marks a sea-change in non-state drone capabilities.
Here’s why-
1) US converts few warheads to low yield: Panic, highly destabilizing
2) US replacing early 70s ICBMs: Panic, highly destabilizing
3) China builds zillion ICBM silos: “In this essay I will explain this both isn’t a big deal and is US fault anyway”
1) Given all delivery platforms from Cold War need replacement, at some point some budget was going to spend more than any other year since 1990
2) Quite confident a Clinton 2021 nuclear platforms and weapons budget would have looked far more like this than many would admit
Donald Trump is on a nuclear weapons-spending binge using your money. His new budget calls for nearly $50,000,000,000 for nuclear weapons in fiscal 2021, which is more in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any time since 1990 and the end of the Cold War.