MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 Peace on Earth and goodwill to men and women everywhere!

Take some time on this amazing day to think of the great change that entered the world 2025 years ago today. 

 

THAT DRONING SOUND

 As some contemplate the harm we are going to do by invading China, Russia, Venezuela I wonder how far along Maduro and his Russian friends have gotten in shaping the new VDF and equipping it with a zillion cheap expendable drones and some cool little clip on payloads in various sizes and interesting fuze settings. Now a true Marxist idiot would have every one of those zillion drones in a big warehouse near the port where they are carefully kept under lock and key and of course nobody except Regime Security Forces would be permitted within a mile of them because if there was ever a 2 edged weapon it is a weaponized drone in the hands of a patriot counterrevolutionary.

So that is said and the next question asked at the War College might be, so General, how did you deal with those once you found that they'd been distributed to over 500 Provincial Defense Battalions and each of them turned out to have 30,000 drones and 300 drone operators?

After that of course, how did you provide security when your columns were on the move and how effective were your drone countermeasures after dark?

Did you notice any special emphasis the drones used to target your broadcast C4I nodes or was it just general all-around mayhem, death and destruction?

What drone security measures did you implement to provide for flight safety over the Battle Area and how effective was it?

What did personnel and vehicles find was the most effective anti-drone weapon and did you have enough of them at the outset or did you find it all a terrible surprise when the zillions of drones started showing up and day 1 of the new conflict?

 These are exactly the kinds of questions I hope they are asking themselves right now and hopefully have managed to at least make progress on some of the answers. That would be my Christmas wish for our Armed Forces because right now factories all over Russia are making thousands of these every week and the Russians are always looking to boost exports this time of year.

REFLECT ON THIS

 I see we may be joined by another Defiant one. There’s always plenty of room for more but new guys have to buy a round when they sit down at the table. That said, is there any chance at all these things could be built at the honest shipbuilder’s yard in Bath? I don’t know if they have dry docks large enough now and every time I drive by it, the building sheds almost bulge with the size of the DDGs they’re building inside. We will see.

WEAPONS FREE

 A few more of the things I found truly amusing over the weekend.

One of the funniest things from That Period was how they would constantly talk about "dismantling" patriarchy, white supremacy, etc like they were bomb squad experts and not the absolute fucking dumbest academics in the history of schooling

— Doctor-Baron 17cShyteposter, DDS (@17cShyteposter) December 20, 2025

Latest Q poll has Democrats at a whopping 18% approval rating.

They are down to friends, family, illegals, & health insurance execs. pic.twitter.com/uICrg45o5y

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) December 18, 2025

 

Pax Americana is dead. Long live Pax Europaea. pic.twitter.com/qu7idU3QVP

— Frid 🇪🇺🦌 (@Frid45) December 20, 2025

EDUCATION MAKES WAR inevitable

 A number of people are agitating like mad to kick start a war in Europe and while I don't think that they will succeed I think it is instructive to point out that Europe started down the warpath long before America did and is much further removed from the roots it thinks it shares with its ancestors. Let me give an example.

"Resolved: we will not fight for king and country" refers to the famous 1933 Oxford Union debate where members voted (275 to 153) for the motion, "This House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country," a pacifist resolution that sparked international controversy, influenced later anti-war movements (like American pacifist pledges), and drew strong criticism from figures like Winston Churchill.

The moral police decoded all that to mean that of course they would fight if they were humbly beseeched by King and Country to fight. Of course we all know that this is nonsense. Those highly educated elites that voted almost all took a whiff and decided that it was not in their interests and so they didn't fight. Probably half of them turned into spies for the Soviet Union.

This is the weakness of turning 100% of the education of the young over to people who literally hate the State to death and want to see it fall in the most painful and horrible way possible. I very much doubt that any college/university educated/trained person in the EU would be willing to actually take up arms and head for the battlefield. It is much the same here and in the UK. All those smart brainy people are going to give the next war a miss.

You know, that's what they think every time and thanks to the likes of Jimmy Carter it is possible to believe that any coercion by the State to make men fight is doomed to failure. It really cannot be any other way in the modern State where a convicted criminal can hang up his deportation for years by involving liberals and what passes for the law courts in this country. Try to imagine impressing seamen or drafting unwilling men. All that case law that used to be on the side of the Government in this matter is now in limbo simply because none of the elite will rule in favor of the State.

So with all these smart highly educated people how does this make war more possible? It is simply because they have never learned even once in their lives that actions have consequences.  They have never been in a fight in their lives and very few of them have suffered from the gross misrule of the courts and the law or from the thugs left free to prey on society because those thugs rarely prey on them. They think they can get away with any vicious, unprincipled, dirty, sneaky, rotten thing they dream up to punish a State they perceive to be their enemy and the 'enemy' won't do anything about it.

That is changing as they import the 3rd world who see prey and recognize it and then look around and see that none of the prey is guarded or watched over by anybody. You see what is happening in Somaliland Norté and a whole entire society made up of thieves and rapists who banded together and prey upon the weak that still hasn't perceived the situation as it really is and probably never will because they are so educated they cannot see it and their tongues would blacken and fall out of their heads before they uttered even the least damning words about their Somali friends and neighbors.

And there above it all is still the Courts and the Media who simply ignore it or rule that is doesn't matter or lacks standing and that is it. They dismiss it and don't think about it. That is pretty much how war sneaks up on a country. How many countries knowing the cost of the Second World War would have undertaken to fight it? What about the First World War?

Nobody knows that anymore because they simply stopped teaching history, ethics, government, civics, geography, reading, philosophy and religion. They don't teach any of it anymore. You can ask actual college students any question at all about the above and they don't know. They have very firm opinions on everything but they are also ignorant about everything. If you ask them they tell you they can get all the answers from their phones and people still roam around bleating about AI and not knowing that it must be in everyone else's phone because they're all so damned smart they have all the answers.

On that note, I thought the Navy ship wranglers were a dopey lot these days but did President Trump really announce that he was going to be part of designing and building a 30,000 ton battleship that was going to destroy everything it confronts? Well OK, I guess its true that those guys that pitched the Dreadnought to Jackie Fisher thought they had something huge that was going to change naval warfare forever.....as you know, something else crept in on little cat feet and actually changed naval warfare forever and nobody even noticed at the time.

Yes dear reader, you know our friends above and below that haven't changed all that much except for becoming infinitely more deadly and accurate when it comes to fighting ships. Still, it will be interesting to see what form this new nonpatriotic war takes when it suddenly leaps out of the shadows. Will it be another virus, banking failure, total economic collapse, open warfare? You know the modern guys think it will be something stupid and pointless like cyber warfare but for my money, they'll probably just go after the money. Some people still believe that it's real...

TINY PITTER PATTER OF THE POLICE STATE'S LITTLE FEET

 So another lunatic killed some innocents in a classroom at a formerly elite college and I could swear the sphere lit up with demands to know why the police were taking so long identifying the culprit because, and I quote, "THERE'S 800 CAMERAS AT THAT HELLHOLE!!!! WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG TO IDENTIFY THE SHOOTER?" and I'd just like to associate myself with the rest of us here who really don't want to live in a police state that uses facial recognition and license plate scanners 100% of the time all day, every day and every single night to keep a benevolent eye on us. 

Let's try to limit the powers of the state, hhhmmm? 

 

STRESS TESTING CIVILIZATION

Europe and Western Civilization had it so good and the Cold War was over and the war machines were being put aside and scrapped and all of a sudden almost all the Western Civilizations decided to import stressors that would/can destroy civil society. If you read enough history it certainly looks like this is what happens every time we could get to a Golden Age. Isn't it funny how civilization implodes every single time that happens?

You'll notice the total absence of flying pigs today a full 20 hours after the Department of Sleaze released 100% of the Epstein Flying Pigs as ordered by both a court and by order of some idiots in Congress. Wow! I didn't see that coming.....Not even one single flying pig....

If you like the idea of beating the world, I recommend Murray Leinster's wonderfully ridiculous book, The Pirates of Zan.  It will help get the taste of civilization out of your mouth and offer some amusement.  They don't write books like this anymore.

HURRAH! AT LAST !!!

 Tomorrow they promise to release the Epstein Files because that's the law baby! 

Flying Pigs Found in the Epstein Files!

 

UNCOMMON SENSE AND JUST CAUSE

 Do you get the sense that if the EU Leaders thought they could get away with it, they would attack Russia right now because they imagine that they could win such a war? They sound less and less attached to reality as time goes by. I admit I think they are just crazy enough to pull a Manuel Noriega and declare war on a country that they could not beat in a hundred years. I'll bet all their lawyers are mulling over all the ramifications of NATO launching a war of aggression against the Russians instead of doing right by the treaty. God knows they've been doing everything in their power to goad Russia into attacking them so they can start waving the bloody shirt and get on with distracting the peasants from all the awful horrible things they've been doing for the last 30 years.

I suppose they'll pat themselves firmly on the back and go forth because theirs' is a just cause. 

ON THE ACQUISITION HOLIDAY

The news is always filled with news about the Department of War's singular failure to acquire new weapon systems and this is generally perceived as some kind of dismal failure on the part of military men turned bureaucrat but I would like to take the position opposite and state for the record that this is a rare sign of uncommon intelligence (yes, yes, work with me here) on the part of a a metastasized bureaucracy completely overrun with idiots and other HR types. If shares a kind of instinctive cunning.

Back between the wars there were still those who pined for the biplane and swore off the monoplane for all their obvious flaws (not enough wings, doncha know) and they were the ones who bought hundreds of Brewster Buffaloes even as the war powers were building huge fleets of thoroughly capable modern fighters. The other bad fish in that setting though were the bomber types who bought into the insanity of Douhet and Billy Mitchell and the whole bomb them to oblivion types who thought the bomber was the only key to victory.

The beauty of a world war that last 6 years is it gives plenty of time to see the use of the follies that were permitted between the wars and the ones that actually worked. What were the follies?  The Treaty cruisers were worse than useless. The strategic bomber was a complete non-starter and wasted resources on a scale not seen until Somalis took up residence in Minnesota. The complete entire surface fleet that Doenitz and Hitler built was a complete waste of time, money and manpower.

How does this apply to us in the here and now who some pundits think are in dire need of building military hardware right now to take the place of existing battle tested and approved hardware? Excellent question. What set this off was reading last night that yet another ship type has slipped through the butter challenged fingers of the Naval Sea Systems Command and gone to wreck and ruin on the shores of Lake Superior and Mordor the Pentagon.

What was this ship that seemed so blindingly necessary to the surface ship partisans in the House of Navy? It was yet another cheapo flash European design that was going to sport a single little gun, a handful of little missiles, next to no range at all because that's the way the Mediterranean Sea works as do the Baltic and Black Seas, the Narrow Seas, and the North Sea. Home is just over the horizon, not 5,000 miles away. This was kind of like the Australian design for a ship that moves quickly but does nothing.

The ship was a stupid design for a warship operating from our coasts. It had no credible weapon systems and no credible defense against drones and was in short nothing but a European version of the Little Crappy Ship that we already built scores of and then scrapped as fast as they came off the ways. We don't need warships right now and for those who bleat about fighting the next war with what you have when it starts there is great truth in that old saying but history shows that absent total maritime superiority there is no role in war for the United States overseas. This will save us countless lives and endless ships if some other country with a huge navy decides to invade us.

One of Biden's bashful attempts at exhibiting our Maritime Dominance was spending 4 months trying and failing to build ONE PIER on the far side of the Mediterranean and that was pointless, stupid, futile, a mankiller and a full blown demonstration of how low our estate has fallen. WE cannot reinforce Europe without spending even longer getting our act together and don't let the Phony War in Ukraine fool you. The Blitzkrieg is alive and well and makes its home in Russia and White Russia. OTGH I'm one of those who doesn't think even madmen would attack Europe today. Everybody knows not to bother an enemy when he is committing suicide and that describes what's left of Europe today.

The lame game of acquisition also gets plastered onto the Army for its repeated failures to launch replacements and follow-on major weapon systems upgrades to its existing M1, M2, and M3 fleets and I know why that is and I'm pretty sure that the savvier Army types also know. It boils down to a total lack of conviction that the Army and Defense industry could actually design, build and field better systems. Those 3 things for all the horrible things Air Force colonels said about them are about the peak of battlefield development in today's environment and probably not at all suited for a full drone war level of self defense. Nothing we can design, build and field will be able to cope with the full spectrum of drones until we move into messing around so heavily with the spectrum that it turns into the new weapon of mass destruction.

Nothing today is shielded against EMP. Who is out there designing truly devastating EMP weapons? Are coherent light weapons ever going to be effective in the war environment? How many modern drone weapons rely on electrical generation and how long do they last without it? How much would it cost to build a sensor package to sniff out unburned hydrocarbons and attack the source of every single one of them? Think of the market for new cars and tractors!

This looks like one of those times in history where the weapon shops take a pause to let the engineers catch up. It is much like the era that ended the castle's role in defense, the era that ended the entire art of siege warfare, the era that ended the notion of positional warfare, and the end of the mercenary era (condottieri).

Now is not the time to build the interim weapon systems that cost every bit as much as real weapons and prove useless when the real weapons come back on line. It's not like we are at war, likely to be at war or likely to be attacked. This will also give our sharper designers some time to watch others evolve the new weapons, their control systems and their tactics. This would be applicable to US and perhaps no others but we survived 150 years without getting involved in every single damned war around the planet and likely can go another 150 if we try. It's not like we care or we would have sent our armies to fight for peace in Africa or Central Asia. 

You will know the change is here when you do see coherent light weapons that work like weapons or when everything in the radius of an EMP burst fails or when something like the drones of the Diamond Age put in an appearance. 

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE

 In the flood tide of ruin and assimilation with the Caliphate it may soon be time for Central Europe to turn its face back to the East and renounce the West. It's hard to believe that the course of civilization would have reached such a dismal fork in the road in just 25 years. Poland and Hungary will soon find that they have less and less in common with France and Germany and nothing in common with the Low Countries or Scandinavia.

How in the world did a union of European countries come to the conclusion that they must fine and punish each other for failing to destroy themselves at the given time and speed agreed to by France and Germany? For the countries that were always caught in the middle it must seem like time always stands still and they are always faced with the German demands for control and submission or the Russian eagles of tyranny and despair.

People like to revise history and they all seem to think they can get away with it somehow and I'm not sure how that works. The history is written and the books were published and the history books will always be out there. It is true that those who own and control the internet can fake out and fool the stupid ones that get all their information from untrustworthy sources but the facts remain as they always have. Russia never sought to conquer and pillage the European powers to the extent that the Great Powers did. Russia largely wanted to be left alone and short of invading it Russia refrained from making any impacts at all on the main European stage and generally responded to attacks as and when attacked.

I look at the current idiocy in Ukraine and just wonder, who did they think was running Russia when they decided to just kill and displace Russians living in former parts of the Russian SSR? It would not have worked against Andropov, Gromyko, Stalin, Kruschev or even Yeltsin. What in the Hell made the idiots running Ukraine think it was safe to poke the bear under Putin?

If you play fast and loose with history now is the time when you look around for the distractions and the conspiracy theories to explain why a middling European country of no apparent resources, skills, or industry decided to attack Russia. Was it all a blind to see if a larger attack would succeed and thus just a test of Russia's arms and determination and if that is so, who in the world could exploit it because it wasn't America doing the poking. Who else is there?

Hello? Anyone out there? Who is stirring up pointless wars in Europe and why? In one light it looks like the self-induced/inflicted idiocy of the Argentine Junta trying to divert the mob's attention by making an easy conquest of the Malvinas. It was a done deal and that silly women in London could do nothing about it and it wasn't an attack on NATO so the US wouldn't intervene.....But again, who benefits from launching Ukraine at Russia's throat? If it's markets, commodities or banking, I'm not your guy. If it's a conspiracy theory, I enjoyed reading about the Phoenician Navy but I don't believe in them. 

You just know that scholars and pundits are going to go around suggesting that we add a CENTRO treaty to NATO and form a nice heavily armed collective polity aimed in perpetual enmity at Russia by States arming themselves to the hilt and with the backing of the United States right there on Russia's borders. You know who would think something like this is brilliant though, don't you.

THE LAST PLACE

 I see that some American soldiers were killed and wounded along with one interpreter while they were doing something in Syria with the current rulers of Syria's armed forces. I am sorry to see that. That said, Syria is just about the last place on the planet where we need to have any American soldiers at all. It is a famous dead zone much like Afghanistan and Pakistan where there is nothing worth preserving, nothing worth saving, nothing worth defending and nothing that is ours.

I believe that President Trump tried to order our forces out of Syria in his first term but the contemptible slime in the Pentagon and State Department fought that every inch of the way and left our troops there on a pointless and useless mission that served no benefit to anyone, least of all Americans. Every single soldier there needs to go. 

We have done the thing we do best to preserve the flow of oil and that is pretty much guaranteed one way or another and you all know that we simply don't need it. It used to serve our purpose to help the oils flow to Europe and the Far East but not so much anymore. In fact, I cannot think of any reason to worry about the flow of oil out of the Middle East. If they want to sell it, they have the means to guard it and we'll profit from selling them more weapons to do it with. In the meantime, suggest to your representatives that they should urge the total withdrawal of American forces from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and the rest of north Africa.

When the little Barbary pirates decide that the time is ripe to sneak back out and do their thing, we will still be there, just based and supported out of the northern north African bases in Italy and Greece. Who knows, perhaps the north Africans living in Marseilles would like to support an American battle group visit every month or two. With the French you never know and with the new pseudo-French it is impossible to know.

HUMDINGER OF A PROBLEM

 I was looking for a quote about there being insufficient manpower for a 3rd immediate generation of war and found this at the usual source of misinformation. I suspect it has a lot to do with why it is a source of misinformation.

 –In the first identified problem area, it appears that a person who cares enough to write about it may have a close connection to the problem (maybe knows a thing or two about it)

–In the second problem area they seem to say that it is dubious because the drafter relied too much on sources that reflected enormous interest in the subject (knew a thing or two about it)

–and having grown to know to much about it based on direct experience it potentially makes the information it contains unverifiable and neutral (Do these idiots not know they are talking about wikipedia?) 

–Gasp! It contains original research! (Seriously, what can I say, this sounds awful)

–Holy Cow! It relies on primary sources for its facts?@! The nerve!

It amazes me that anybody ever relied upon wikipedia for anything real or true. I think in my generation this was best expressed in the old usenet days on sci.mil.naval when all of the commenters would sneer at anybody who cited wiki as their source and didn't have one of the standard desk top references available to use as source for cites, claims and counterclaims. The facts were endlessly arguable but nobody was going to bother debating clowns who relied on wikipedia for the facts they 'knew' about anything.

The online encyclopedia was an amazing idea and invention and doomed by the natural inclination of trolls to be trolls and OCD types to take control and make it is as painful and pointless as possible. It has become the gold standard for the original sin of DEI  where you know that some of it is garbage you freely jump to the assumption that all the rest is also garbage.

Remember when GIGO was not said with resignation but with the conviction that you could eliminate the Garbage? I do.

THE DIFFERENCE

 I was just reading some more of Kurt Schlichter over at Townhall and was struck by the unbalanced nature of his disdain for the euroweenies. I don't disagree with him, in fact I'm fully onboard with his characterization of Europeans of the NATO flavor but that was the difference between the two of us otherwise near peers. He served our country in Europe where we imagined that the soldiers and staffs merely grazed from one decent posh restaurant to the next with long interludes spent drifting down the Rhine or Danube stopping for a sip of wine every 5 minutes and this was contrasted with our days and nights in the Desert or afloat in the most dangerous body of water in the world.

Where the real difference was though came after 1990 and Desert Storm. Everywhere we went we were greeted warmly and if we did find ourselves in a posh hotel at breakfast on our way to a conference at an embassy or headquarters any number of tables would send over free pots of delicious coffee and pick up the check for everything. We kind of stood out in our camouflage uniforms because despite my best efforts, OPNAV simply refused to adopt Hotel Camouflage patterns.

The people in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE liked us. To be honest I sensed more than tolerance for me when I was there even back in 1984, 1985, 1988 and 1989 but it was warmer and friendlier after we rolled back Saddam. If you contrast the Colonel's experience in NATO it was mostly with liberal dimwits with egos the size of planets that didn't like Americans on principle, hated soldiers; and that is our former allies. Our old enemies have elephant memories and let's not kid ourselves, they did not like us but tolerated us because we kept the Russians out. Then they dropped the act.

Europe is on a track they don't recognize now and they don't know it. They think they have some sort of hold on Americans that they really don't. The fossils that liked Europe are mostly dead and all are out of power now. Their kids were the Euro-explorers and they got their fill of a Europe much closer to the current form of Western Europe and none of them are interested in fighting and dying for it. The current war fighters fought alone in the sandbox and watched as their "allies" did nothing at all for year after year. I suppose I can't really fault them for that because it was all for nothing but still, it left marks that never go away. They didn't make any friends there. None. 

We can actually see what the Europeans have for a refined advanced military and found that almost none of it was fit for battle and certainly none of it came in large enough chunks to be useful for more than about 30 seconds of combat.

I don't suppose it's an altogether bad thing to raise your children to hate war and despise those that prepare for it but it sort of relies upon a solid iron core of disciplined warriors you can call your own to leap to your defense if and when the next war comes and Europe doesn't have that, hasn't had it for about 40 years and has really torqued the only people on the planet that had, up to this point, been prepared to fight and die for Europe.

Well guys, not anymore. Kurt isn't wrong and the truly sad thing is that now any country in NATO that even attempts to rearm for 21st century war is going to be destroyed by its own allies, the media and of course the Russians for being warmongers. It's going to look very much like what happened the last time lax Europeans tried to rearm before the obvious looming war that wasn't just on the horizon, it was right there. Of course, Europeans simply don't comprehend how pathetic their military situation is without the US.

The good news for Europe might be that nobody wants what they have other than hordes of the military age arab muslims they have let into their countries in overwhelming numbers. Well, them and all the African military age muslims they have let into their countries. Oh well, from here it looks like a real problem but I'm sure I'm wrong. Nothing to worry about, really.

Really. 

INTO THE VANISHING POINT

 We see a couple of bothersome and not so trivial conclusions being drawn from really pointless and idiotic ideas. The two that bug me the most are the idiots in the media and elsewhere who all seem to clamor that we are in a "space race" with China or somebody and need to spend more money to be better faster and damn the cost and second that we need to invest trillions of taxpayer money and natural resources into building a lot of AI data centers.

It isn't a race anymore. We raced to the moon and we 'won' for whatever that is worth. Nobody is 'racing' to get to Mars. We are trying to build an architecture that will push mankind into space to stay not to win some stupid pointless race against people who aren't even playing. 

What nobody asks is why do we need all this AI data center nonsense? Is it to make videos without paying actors? Is it to answer deep questions that nobody knows the answers to? Is it for some other reason like critical research questions that need answers before engineering can develop the technology? In each of these events the answer is the same, why not pay people to do it? People can make good movies and others can earn a living writing, directing, acting, lighting, mixing and even doing computer effects so why not let them? 

How many deep questions are there? Can't one AI answer them all and that's it, all done and you can shut down that AI data center?

How much Research do you think an AI can do using nothing but LLM? It's a scam just like global warming is a scam. There is no sign at all that any researchers are on the right track to develop a computer or program that is smarter than humans so why do we need all these data centers? 

If it was a national priority to build the first true AI there might be some reason to focus resources on outproducing everyone else but I'll just point out the obvious, ARPA, DARPA and the rest of the SciTech Government Research taps have not been turned on for this effort so it really doesn't appear to be in the national interest as any kind of priority or project. That being the case, why is everyone lining up to fork over money and resources to billionaires to get richer building useless data centers?

Does anybody know what they're really doing with all that money? Is anyone following the money?

On the economics of large scale production and in the interest of enhancing and increasing our shipbuilding capability has anyone considered sinking all those billionaire yachts that float around the world wide open to mysterious hull breaches and unexplained fires? If not, why not? You'd think General Dynamics would be all over a money making scheme like that....It's not like anybody cares about them, just look at the strange case of the capsized billionaire's yacht that for some reason decided to go full metacentric unstable for no reason at all and flipped over and sank one night taking the billionaire and his daughter to the bottom.

I don't mind people investing their own money but I hate when it turns into the sports stadium type investment where the billionaires get all the money to build it, own it and manage it and the taxpayers simply subsidize every single penny of construction and operation forever. Are we doing this again but for so-called data centers that will never make a penny of profit or return a penny on investment?

Ask questions. It's the only way to be sure.....you know, other than pulling back and nuking it from orbit.

SHAPING THE BATTLEFIELD

 Lost in the art of war is the simple reconsideration of war in all its aspects. What is the point of war is always the first question. What do you intend to achieve by waging war? Is it right to simply slip into a war because you don't know what you're doing or did not know that actions sometimes lead to war? The questions for the new war seem not to be asked and most certainly aren't getting answered anymore. One of the most irksome questions that seems most glossed over is, who wants war?

Let us assume that all the questions are answered and we are now faced with making war so lets get on with the strategy and the operational art for making war in the modern era. What are the goals and what are the desired outcomes and how best are they met by invoking violence taken to the max to achieve them? Let us say that our goal is ending the war in Ukraine by attacking Russia until Russia retaliates and then we jump straight into war with Russia, win that sucker and liberate Ukraine! It's a stupid certainty that this is almost bound to be what the EU gets up to out of its continued intent for making war on Russia, except for the winning that sucker and liberating Ukraine.

Let us say that Russia retaliates with a number of decapitation strikes aimed at taking out the warmongers in France, Germany, the Baltic States and always Poland. That's all. They stop shooting and now NATO is going to retaliate. I'm curious to see how that next Phony War works out as the generals and leaders all confess that without 100% backing from Donald Trump they are unable to do more than spit at Russians and there is no way in the world that they will have forces ready to line up and cross the line of departure and advance into Russia except mabye in Kaliningrad and there they are scared to because President Putin has said he will nuke the first invader to step foot into the territory.  

I would be curious to see what kind of aviation response they try to pull off because that is always the first response now to any situation that gets out of hand. I mean to say, I'm sure that our NATO allies have a dozen flavors of long range artillery missiles that they're prepared to unload on Russia that are similar to our ATACMS or ground launched cruise missiles, I've just never heard of them and given who we're talking about, I very much doubt that any such thing exists. At any rate, the European Air Forces are sure to be deadly after all the relentless practice they have had at precision air strikes over the last 50 years.

I was wondering earlier about the Fleet-in-Being and while some say it exists, I tend to doubt it. More to the point, it would be a fleet without much purpose given all the sanctions on Moscow which have no doubt already disposed of almost 100% of its seaborne trade and the Russian Navy never really had any strategic or operational relevance outside its ballistic missile fleet and vast flocks of SSNs that would have proven a tough nut if we could still even dream of pulling off a REFORGER (return of forces to Germany). I kind of laugh at the idea of NATO Surface Action Groups and Carrier Battle Groups built around French and British carriers taking the war against Russia into the Baltic or the Black Sea.....

For all the posturing and verbal bellicosity I'm not seeing much war here. I don't think anybody else is either which really only leaves us with blundering into war and the neocons behind that kind of idiocy are fairly well contained on this continent and never much in favor in Europe so that spares us all that. So the real question remains, why beggar ourselves to position ourselves to fight Europe's wars for them?  

Next up, Rolling Thunder II. 

SNUB NO MORE

 I like reading Zerohedge. It is always informative and interesting. I did think of a few subtitles for the photos in the article attached. Here you go:

The Scourge and Flail of Moscow

 

Where's the leader?

This is the EU. Not shown is their Leader for Animal Welfare.

Oh for Heaven's sake, just look at the titles they give themselves in the EU. They are clearly missing an essential element of any self-proclaimed sovereign and that it obviously the military arm.

When you realize that the EU is simply the European Coal and Steel Community that was established in 1951 to ensure that coal and steel were used in Europe for peaceful purposes and that as a result of the enlargement of that insignificant institution into the colossus known as the EU, it is easy to see how they simply did away with most of their production of coal and steel. I don't think there are any blast furnaces in the United Kingdom and God only knows what is left in Germany, France and the Netherlands. 

Job titles:

What is a a Clean Just and Competitive Transition? Is this where you dismiss the popular votes and referendums that rejected the EU but which were nonetheless set aside and imposed by fiat? Or is this where most of the countries involved had so little faith in their arguments for the EU that they refused to submit them to referendums and approval by the actual people of Europe? 

This overlaps that amazing office known as Technical Sovereignty, Security and Democracy whose stated purpose is at odds with all of its actions. There simply isn't much if any tech in Europe and the way they interpret security and democracy is one vote, one time and maximum enforcement of government directed censorship and jailing of the any and all opposition. Doesn't sound very clean, just, secure or democratic to me.

Prosperity and Industrial Strategy sounds nice but it appears to have led Europe to completely destroy its energy generation, nuclear power, steel, coal and most other energy intensive industries which invites the question, what kind of stupid industrial strategy is that? Where is the productivity in any of that?

High Rep for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy doesn't really sound like 'Office devoted to kicking America's ass out of Europe and making war on Russia using any and every flimsy excuse or casus belli we can dig up and shove up Putin's nose.' I mean, that's apparently what that means in European but I'm not a native speaker fluent in European.

My favorite one other than the Animal Welfare dude has got to be, Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness. Just how this title conforms with the EU DEMANDS that the member nations let in every single African and muslim on the planet and give them all the native's money, housing, education, medical and dental plus unlimited free housing, free transportation etc, is a complete mystery to me. It seems to mean, in European, 'Screw the whities, take all their money, schools, houses, freedoms and give them to people with zero skills, no understanding of civilized behavior and who do not know, follow or understand the concept of rules.' Again, as I said, not a fluent speaker of European but it does sound like a devilishly complex language.

We come finally to Cohesion and Reforms. This sounds almost too evil to be true. I mean it sounds like once you voted yourself into the sick twisted 4th Reich that there is no getting out because it is really very sticky and you cannot reform it because why would anyone reform perfection?

I studied the ECSC, BENELUX, the Western Union and of course the European Economic Community in school a long time ago and never dreamed that Europeans would vote themselves into the worst aspects of a combined Holy Roman Empire and 4th Reich....but they did. To say that this thing is 10 times worse than its idiot predecessor is not wrong and like that and all the rest, the only way out is war on a new scale not seen 1648.

When you look at the history of the place it is inevitable:

The 30 Years War and the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648

The Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna and Concert of Europe in 1815

The First World War and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919

The Second World War and the United Nations.  

When you think about it, each of the institutions created out of the wars that preceded them became instantly corrupt and the corruption has grown far worse in each iteration of the World Peace Enforcement Nirvana created by idealists after the last 2 world wars. There were no idealists at Westphalia or Vienna in 1815. 

I really don't understand why Europe's leaders and rulers are so intent on irritating Russia but as noted, not a fluent European am I. That there is money to be made I don't doubt but I don't see how they need to keep killing men in the mud in Ukraine to make that money since historically the real thieving and stealing begins when the peace breaks out and beaks get dipped so frantically in reconstruction money that people are blinded by flying $. On the other hand, there is also endless corruption in European military spending.

CONSIDER THE MAN WHO RULES

 Grok did its thing for me when I typed in "Vladimir Putin" and it was pretty interesting and informative. It is worth keeping in mind as you hear and read about what a dangerous lunatic he is that he has actually been running things in Russia for 26 years now and doesn't seem to be doing at all badly. YMMV. For those who think war and special military operations define both the man and the country, consider that this country waged war on the far side of the planet for 18 years against countries so far beneath us as to be unnoticeable while also apparently warring in 18 or 19 African countries at the same time under Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden.

Anyway, I'd be curious what your Grok has to say about Vladimir Putin. Mine says this at the outset:

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer serving as President of Russia since 7 May 2012, having previously held the office from 31 December 1999 to 7 May 2008 and the position of Prime Minister from 8 May 2008 to 7 May 2012.[1][2] Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) to working-class parents, Putin graduated from Leningrad State University with a law degree in 1975 before joining the KGB, where he served for 16 years, including as a foreign intelligence officer in Dresden, East Germany, from 1985 to 1990. Following the Soviet Union's dissolution, he entered politics in Saint Petersburg as deputy mayor, then relocated to Moscow, ascending to director of the Federal Security Service in 1998, Prime Minister in August 1999 under Boris Yeltsin, and acting president later that year. 

Putin's leadership has focused on Russia's economic recovery from the 1990s crises, consolidation of central authority through federal reforms and oversight of key economic sectors, and assertive foreign policies aimed at safeguarding national interests amid shifting post-Soviet geopolitics and Western institutional expansions. Re-elected in 2024 for a term extending to 2030 following constitutional amendments, his tenure emphasizes sovereignty, strategic partnerships with non-Western powers, and resistance to perceived external pressures.

He has already headed up the Soviet Union Russia for more than twice as long as FDR ruled the United States. The entire story at Grok is worth reading. It shows just how his life and times defined the man who defines Russia in this century. He swims in the most dangerous seas in modern times and is clearly a very large shark when compared to all the tadpoles flailing around in Europe demanding his head for being naughty. It really is a wonder that he takes any of them at all seriously. Well, OK. No. I don't take any of them seriously so I very much doubt that Putin does. 

ON TYRANNY AND ULTIMA RATIO REGIS

 You know I used to admire Great Britain. It was something I picked up from my father and other relatives and it did seem like quite a nice place when I started visiting it in 1988 but it is now no less than it always was and it always was a First Class Tyranny. There's a reason we split away from those demons and as I watch them caper and dance in like lunatic zombies trying to shed head lice I can see why our Founders were so willing to fight them and to make damned sure that this nation and its peoples would always retain the right to fight the reptiles using all the weapons that come to hand when nations get to fighting among themselves. As I recall, it is still quite legal to own personal artillery in this country.

As one of the Cavaliers quipped in one of those BBC shows about their Civil War, “this house needs a cannon.” It’s a pity they allowed themselves to be gelded and turned back into peasants and serfs.

Not us, of course. 

 

In fact, I just saw this today while driving down to Wooster to pick up some replacement windows from an Amish guy for my 100 year old house.

TO THE BREAKERS

 What will it take for America to be able to build warships again? There are several answers but each is merely a reflection of the underlying basis for building ships. Is there a compelling need for warships today or tomorrow?

Up in the Great Lakes they were building a new Constellation class frigate. It was to an Italian design that Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and the dedicated work force of 80,000 people all of whom worship at the alter of NotInventedHere made every effort to sink before it even left the building ways in Marinette, Wisconsin. The trolls of NAVSEA are a well known hazard to navigation but the real downfall is probably one that can be laid at the feet of the shipyard selected as the Prime to build the damned things. They failed across the board.

In the real world of accomplishments, builders are forced to pay for what they need and they don't get to whinge about having to pay too dearly for things that are absolute requirements. For instance, when building the Alaska Pipeline there was a need for skilled welders and other trades all along the route and you don't hire a workforce like that from the leavings at the 7/11 employment line. You pay enormous wages and benefits to attract the workers you need. It is obvious that Fincantieri Marinette simply declined to follow this path. 

The problems as I see it are:

– There is no compelling need to build surface force warships given the nature of the threat and the paralyzed infantile state of national will and leadership. The business of a Navy is to control the seas and the only reason to control the seas is to deny them to others and permit your trade to pass freely. We don't have much outgoing seaborne trade and our leadership thinks it is against some law to order the death or destruction of our enemies. Navies cannot survive in that kind of environment yet that is what the US is like today.

– The modern threat environment militates rather heavily against surface warships and projecting into the future, their survival on the surface is one that looks pretty bleak. In the littoral seas they can be tracked and attacked at will from drones launched from the shore. It is easy to say that drones can be suppressed as easily as ever we talked about suppressing shore batteries of anti-ship missiles but then we NEVER went up against dozens of shore batteries of anti-ship missiles in a drone environment and people have literally no conception of how cheap and easy it is to mass manufacture long range attack drones and fire them off in waves of hundreds.

– I used to laugh at the idea of our modern navy enforcing EMCON. I still laugh at it. Home on Jam was easy, Home on ELINT signals was even easier and you know why of course.....NAVSEA probably doesn't but I'll share it with you. Drones do not shift into Terminal Homing and a final course to target the way that an ASCM does. A drone, unless jammed, can also furnish the operator with video of the target in final acquisition and the operator knows if it is being spoofed.

The massive battles of WWII that saw our Navy essentially ward off attacks by thousands of manned drones reflect something not seen since the late days of the Cold War; redundancy and layers of it applied over a real Battle Group. Long Range Naval aviation is long gone. The layers of frigates and destroyers providing anti-missile and anti-aircraft defenses are now just one or two ships close in and the fleets combat logistics train of endless resupplies of missiles and ammo are long gone.

The doctrine is now so outdated as to be almost useless. The tactics and methods are astonishingly weak and probably completely ineffective against a real bad guy. You can look around now and you'll hear everyone in the trade whining about China and what a terrible threat China is because it has a big navy and once again I would be asking, why? It was our biggest trading partner and shipped us millions of tons of goods in thousands of its own commercial ships. Are they going to attack their own ships to deny us the trade? Are we going to attack China for some reason?

Look at who talks about attacking China or needing a Navy to fight China and ask yourself, what do they get out of such a silly posture? Why do they want this thing? Who benefits from such a war? Who loses the most in such a war?

So the Soviet Union is no more and Europe is the most pathetic excrescence ever and the question being asked again, why do we need this large and powerful Navy? We have raised a third generation now since Vietnam that does not believe that we should police the world and make it safe for Soros and Bill Gates. A lot of them would not fight for the USA so why does anyone think they would fight to the death for Ukraine?

The Pentagon has carefully selected the very worst people to be admirals and generals for 25 years now and there is no real way to stop that except to send all of the current ones home and convene a board of terminal Captains to select the next future leaders of the Navy and only select the best without any resort whatsoever to the DIE and sex of the future admirals. One helpful aspect to this would be the final understanding and realization that we only need a couple of dozen admirals since that is about all the Navy we have and/or need. We might also begin to accept that we don't need perfect angels at the top of the pyramid. A few personal foibles and an interest in pretty women should not be disqualifying.

You know what else we don't need? Yeah, we don't need 80,000 people whose job it is to tell industry how to build ships. Not one of them ever built a ship, the vast majority never served at sea and probably fewer than 100 have sailed off a lee shore in a storm. 

I read a story in the Surface Forces Pacific Maintenance Quarterly about one of our Missile Patrol Hydrofoils that had run into a difficulty getting up on its foils. The Fleet engineers had investigated and researched and delved into the reason for some time before they concluded that everything was working exactly according to spec and design but the ship would not come up on its foils and reach anywhere near full speed......until they removed 11 tons of unnecessary paperwork, manuals and files from the ship. That pretty much describes NAVSEA at this point and most of the Navy. 

NOW we have hardly scratched the surface and that is the point that the Navy would make. Drones attacking ships can really only scratch the hulls and superstructure they will claim but warships are no stronger now than merchant ship hulls are and we have seen just how flimsy merchant ships can be when attacked. The not invented here also applies to our naval architects and specifiers who simply decline to believe that we have made giant strides in strength of materials and that other forces can contribute to a real modern lethal warship design other than EM cannons and lasers that seemingly never work at sea for some damned reason. Oh yeah, salt air and humidity. Maybe if we had the deck force paint them....

 

WAR CRIMES ALL THE WAY DOWN NOW

 Well, it didn't take long did it? Every single officer involved in killing our enemies is now accused of war crimes and there will be investigations. Nothing will gut a military faster than breaking faith with your soldiers that they will not be used as political pawns in pointless games played by politicians. When Judge Napolitano comes out and declares a reattack on an enemy vessel is a war crime there is a social failure on a massive and damned near unfixable level.

Right off the bat it calls into question the deterrent patrols. It opens the door to endless post facto prosecutions of every single shot fired in the last 80 years and it must be crushed right now at the outset or there is no defense. This is not a time for pussyfooting around and narrowly edging or trimming to appease stupid people. 

The problem is that right now there are zero men of the stature necessary to knock this on the head and put it away. There is no George Washington, Eisenhower or MacArthur and there is zero credibility in the legal profession as a whole or in part and the Church pissed away every scrap of moral authority it ever had over the last 30 years.

If soldiers fear that they will only meet endless legal retribution and attacks for their actions, we have lost. This is the goal sought for all these decades by the left and the liberal machine. The military was the last crutch propping up the idea of a State and if falls there is nothing left. 

A HARD BLOW AT NASA

 I was reading this article and it seems to have left out the most important bit of pseudo news. It suggests that the Russian launch pad for its Soyuz program took a devastating and severe hit during the last manned launch to the International Space Station and that it looks like this could end Soviet Russian cooperation in the boondoggle. It seems that the damaged structure must be replaced if any further Soyuz are to launch and there is some doubt that Russia still feels the need for ISS games.

The article does mention that Russia will have difficulty replacing the launch complex and fixing it up since the country is so heavily sanctioned for waging war on its frontiers and has, as a consequence got every stupid dolt in NATO talking about launching preemptive strikes on Russia and cutting off all trade and technical support and exchanges. This is amusing on several fronts.

Why is anyone wasting time in orbit now? LEO is not even the back yard in space exploration and development and the tricky bits all now happen much further out and sadly, NASA is not really playing any kind of meaningful role in any of it. The only people that seem interested in getting to the moon and to Mars are working at Space X and they don't seem to feel any need to spend time messing around in orbit. They plan to play much further out and it shows.

NASA has been building a replacement space suit for something like 25 years and is no further along then when they started the whole process 25 years ago. Think about it, 25 years is a long time to screw up something as simple as making a modern space suit out of modern materials and processors and yet this is simply the margarine on NASA's cold toast. NASA does nothing well and it shows.

OK, the slings and arrows are well deserved but if Roscosmos and the Russians simply terminate their share of the missions in support of the ISS, is NASA going to pick them up? The Russians have already cut their investment by 25% and with a war that is costing them far more than they anticipated once they realized that every tinhorn dictator in the EU and EU Commission got involved in furthering the war to the bitterest end and the death of every Ukrainian, it looks like they need to trim their expenditures at no cost to their own enterprises. What better thing to cut than the ISS?

Can NASA and Boeing take up the 'slack'? It's an interesting question.

Oh, and do you believe a mission critical structure that survived dozens of Soyuz launches just happens to have failed catastrophically when the need for it went away in the minds of those who work in the Kremlin? Yeah, me neither.