Michael Malice On The Biden Chaos

February 21st, 2021

Michael Malice explains why the departure of Donald Trump from the White House will not result in less chaos, but in more:

The reason: It’s now become clear that not only our elites are thieves, but that they’re stupid thieves, manifestly stupider than the ordinary Americans they intend to rule, and without Trump in the White House, ordinary Americans no longer have a meaningful voice in the ruling class. “They are so up their own ass, and so not use to think strategically, all they know how to do is repeat what they said before.”

“I’m being told I’m a white supremacist, insurrectionist on a daily basis. If you regard me as a Nazi, if you’re going to read me out of the human race, then we can’t really go forward having a conversation.”

They’re completely oblivious, they’re always telling themselves they’re on the right side of history. You know, if someone comes up to me with a knife, telling them I’m on the right side of history is really going to be a very weak tool. And if it is a war, just saying ‘I’m the good guys’ is really not going to gain you anything.

I’m shocked by how quickly they’ve come to realize that “Wait a minute, we didn’t win!” Because they thought very sincerely “We got rid of Trump, everything can go back to normal. Unity!” And then it took a couple of weeks and they’re like, holy crap, none of these Trump people, who or who they described as Trump people like, they call Glenn Greenwald a Trump person, none of these people missed a beat. “They’re not going home they’re not going anywhere. They’ve become even more radicalized, they’ve become even more contemptuous of us, what do we do?”

On trying to silence anyone pointing out the 2020 Presidential election was stolen: “This is not the approach of an elite that feels secure and in control.”

Malice is an anarchist, and I believe his views on a complete flip in popular views on the police near the end are wrong. But there are some real disconnect between the systemic dishonesty of a corrupt elite that thinks it can continue to shove a radical leftwing agenda down the throats of the American people while expecting those same people to ignore their endemic incompetence and corruption are sadly mistaken.

(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

A Californian Moves To Texas…

February 20th, 2021

Hard left TV host and well-known all-around dick Cenk Uyger said Texas had the ice storm coming because…Joe Rogan moved here from California:

Today the Texas grid is back up and running normally and it’s getting up into the 50s today as the once-a-century Texas winter storm recedes. But I bet that come summer, California has to close down parts of its grid yet again because high winds took out another power line.

All that’s a handy hook to hang this amusing “Californian moves to Texas” video on:

And yes, it mentions Joe Rogan…

(Though if Calidude had moved to Austin rather than Houston, the homeless people would have been much easier to find…)

LinkSwarm for February 19, 2021

February 19th, 2021

It. Has. Been. A. Week!

Regular readers know that Austin has been climbing out of a once in a century winter storm that froze our roads and wrecked our power grid. Right now it’s still 19°F, but it’s supposed to warm up to a balmy 39°F this afternoon…

  • Could be worse: ERCOT says that their quick thinking to impose rotating blackouts prevented the physical destruction of the Texas Interconnect Grid. That may even be true, but it’s sort of like a teenager saying “Thanks to my quick thinking, I only managed to burn down the garage and not the entire house!”
  • A list of every lie Joe Biden has told as President.
  • The Democrats’ minimum wage hike will help kill off the restaurant industry:

    Passage of this bill this year would lead to job losses and higher use of labor-reducing equipment and technology,” said Sean Kennedy, executive vice president for public affairs for the National Restaurant Association. “Nearly all restaurant operators say they will increase menu prices. But what is clear is that raising prices for consumers will not be enough for restaurants to absorb higher labor costs.”

  • The entire impeachment charade was a distraction from the Biden Administration’s hard left turn, including rejoining the Paris Climate agreement and stopping construction on the border wall. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • China is eating Biden’s lunch:

    But for the fact that he’s president — given his track record of having been wrong on every defense and foreign policy issue for almost five decades — it would be easy to ignore his assessment of China. This is a man who said in 2019, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man.” He added, “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.” Despite the difficulty of being wrong on both occasions Biden managed it.

    Focus for a moment on what he said about the conversation with Xi. It is natural that China would be spending billions on transportation given the size of the country and the billions who inhabit it. Whether it is true that China is spending billions on climate change is another matter. It has, for decades, been spending billions on coal-fired electricity generation plants and has only recently made noises about reducing pollution.

    But “climate change” is probably the last priority for China while it is spending far greater sums on its military and cyberwar capabilities. Xi was clearly trying to gull Biden into some sort of race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so that we could strangle our economy while China doesn’t do the same to its own. China may well be trying to reduce pollution — Beijing is infamous for its barely breathable brown air — but how much it is really doing remains to be seen.

    Biden apparently wants to be known as the “climate change president.” If Xi can increase Biden’s desire to make climate change his top priority for legislation and regulation (which seems altogether likely in any event) China will be greatly advantaged by Biden’s concomitant reductions in spending on the U.S. military and intelligence communities.

    To say that Biden is soft on China only proves the speaker’s command of the obvious.

  • All the lies of Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev:

    What Tenev did not say, or explain, is why his company – which is merely a client-facing front of Citadel, which buys the bulk of Robinhood’s orderflow to use it perfectly legally in any way it sees fit – was so massively undercapitalized that the DTCC required several billion more in collateral to protect Robinhood’s own investors against the company’s predatory ways of seeking to capitalize on the gamification of investing making it nothing more (or less) than a trivial pursuit to millions of GenZ and millennial investors, a point which Michael Burry made so vividly.

    The #mainstreetrevolution is a myth. Zero commissions and gamified apps were designed to feed flows to the two most influential WS trading houses. A few HFs got hurt, but if retail is moving toward more trading and away from fundamentals, WS owns that game. #Stonks by design. https://t.co/Y4raF0jiM3
    — Cassandra (@michaeljburry) February 9, 2021

    Incidentally we know why Tenev did not mention it: it’s because Robinhood’s back office is a shambles of a shoestring operation, one which never anticipated either such a surge in trading not a multi-billion collateral requirement; had Robinhood been a true brokerage instead of pretending to be one, and run merely to open as many retail accounts as it could in the shortest amount of time, thus generating the most profit in the quickest amount of time to allow its sponsors a quick and profitable exit, it would actually have been on top of this.

  • “Why Russia Is Terrified of SpaceX — and Starlink”:

    SpaceX wants to bring fast satellite broadband internet to the world — and in particular, to internet users in far-flung, rural locations, where download speeds are low and prices are high.

    One of the first places in America to get SpaceX Starlink service was Alaska, the state with the lowest population density in the country — just one person per square mile. The company next extended service into Canada (population density: three people per square mile), followed last month by service in the UK — a big jump in concentration, with 650 people per square mile. (Even in the UK, there are plenty of isolated locations where internet service is expensive, slow — or both).

    SpaceX’s globe-spanning satellite constellation should be capable of providing 100 megabit-per-second internet service to anywhere by the end of this year. You can expect that a lot of countries, no matter how urbanized they are (or not), will be lining up to sign up for Starlink service. And the more countries Starlink signs up as customers, the better the prospects for the SpaceX subsidiary’s promised IPO.

    One country that most definitely does not want Starlink, however, is Russia.

    Snip.

    As Ars points out, “Russia is planning its own satellite Internet constellation, known as ‘Sphere.'” And in contrast to SpaceX’s Starlink, which is a privately funded and privately built communications system, the 600-satellite Sphere constellation will be a project built and run by the Russian state under the aegis of its Roscosmos space agency. And that could be a problem.

    Sphere, you see, is rumored to cost $20 billion to build, may not begin launching until 2024, and won’t be completed before 2030.

    Those numbers alone tell you Sphere will never be built, Starlink or no Starlink. Russia is a profoundly broke and profoundly broken country. Sphere is just the sort of prestige project Putin loves to announce to much fanfare, national greatness vaporware that either never gets built or else creeps out into the real world years (or even decades) late and in much-reduced form, like only ordering 100 T-14 Armata tanks.

  • Iranian fuel tanker convoy to Afghanistan goes boom.
  • After warning against “far right extremists” in the army, the FBI arrests…an ex-military left-wing radical.
  • Teacher’s unions have been letterbombing Virginia’s Democratic assembly delegates to keep schools closed.
  • Why does India have a so much lower rate of death from the Wuhan coronavirus?

  • Democrats are so focused on unity they introduced a bill to punish Donald Trump after he’s dead. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The media want you to know that it’s Trump’s fault they couldn’t investigate such trivial scandals as Lincoln Project pedophiles, because how would they have time when Orange Man Bad?
  • Speaking of the Lincoln Project, founder Rick Wilson managed to pay off his mortgage early just as the John Weaver pedophilia scandal was breaking. How fortuitous!
  • Savage:

  • Back in The Before Time, The Long Long Ago, newspapers actually defended free speech.

    Back in 1977, the New York Times maintained that as long as Nazis did not engage in any illegality, they were “entitled” to the protection of the law, and then put the onus of maintaining peace on the Skokie residents:

    The argument that they will provoke violence simply by appearing on the streets of Skokie only emphasizes the obligation of the police to keep the peace—and gives an opportunity the people of Skokie to demonstrate their respect for the law.

    These days, the Times board will chase you out of the building for allowing anyone to voice an opinion that chafes against the brittle sensitivities of its writers. The paper employs full-time speech monitors to vet wrongthink.

  • The cancel mob comes for Baen Books. Book editors and writers kindly tell them to get stuffed.
  • Special for Black History Month:

  • Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg told employees they need to “inflict pain” on Apple because Apple won’t let Facebook steal every single bit of personal data from Apple devices.
  • “Bill Gates Bankrolling Educational Organization That Says Math is Racist.” “A conglomerate of 25 educational organizations called A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction asserts that asking students to find the correct answer is an ‘inherently racist practice.’ The organization’s website lists the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as its only donor.” How many fingers, Winston?
  • Who owns Jack Ryan?
  • “Sustainable”

  • If you have a warrant out for your arrest, maybe you shouldn’t apply for a gun carry permit. Especially not if you try to use the name “Barack Obama.”
  • “Secret Service Puts Finishing Touches On Biden’s Presidential Scooter, ‘Chair Force One.'”
  • “Democrats Vow To Follow The Science Of Whichever Union Donates The Most Money.”
  • “Journalists Cheer As Jen Psaki Announces The Gulags Will Be Run By A Woman Of Color.”
  • “Man Asks That You Respect His Preferred Adjectives.” “‘Here are the adjectives I identify with,’ Becker put on social media. ‘Cool, witty, handsome, innovative, fun.’ Please use one of these adjectives when describing me. It distresses me when people use adjectives I don’t identify as,’ Becker later explained. ‘Like “creepy,” “weird,” or “off-putting.” That’s basically denying my existence and trying to genocide me.'”
  • Dog on drums:

    (Hat tip: the Ace of Spades HQ pet thread.)

  • Austin Winter Storm Update for February 18, 2021: What’s Open?

    February 18th, 2021

    Update: I ventured out to the HEB at McNeil & 183 and the major roads are passable. HEB closes at 5, and the meat section was picked almost clean, but there was a lot of edible food available in various departments if you’re flexible.

    Things are slowly warming up, and the power situation seems to be improving:

    The Governor discussed the current power situation in Texas and what the state is doing to get more Texans back online. There still remains about 10,000 megawatts (MW) that are off the power grid in Texas. About 6,000 MW have been added to the Texas grid over the past day, which is equivalent to power for about 1.2 million households. In addition to the 6,000 MW restored to the grid, additional power generation from coal and other sources will continue to come online throughout tomorrow. Small natural gas generators should sporadically add megawatts over the next 24 hours to help bring electricity to thousands of Texans. There are still challenges with all sources of generation, resulting from mechanical difficulties, gas supply issues, and the effects of extreme winter weather conditions.

    Here’s the power outage map. Things seem to change very slowly on it…

    Those on City of Austin water are also on a boil notice, and some parts of the city evidently have no water.

    I thought I would focus on what’s open and what’s not:

  • First up HEB. There are reports of HEB shelves being picked clean, and the stores that are open are only open 12-5 PM. HEB will update the list of stores closed for the day at 10 AM.

    Update: Here’s the Austin-area HEB store closed list for today:

    #236 A7 – Wells Branch & 1825
    #045 A8 – Congress & Oltorf
    #225 A10 – Hwy 71 & 290
    #265 A14 – FM 1431 & 183
    #659 A16 – Hwy 183 & Lakeline
    #388 A20 – Parmer & McNeil
    #451 A24 – 620 & 2222
    #476 A25 – Parmer & I35
    #029 A29 – Bee Cave & 360
    #091 A12 – Riverside & S. Pleasant
    #183 A15 – Lamar & Rundberg
    Kyle
    Luling
    Leander
    Kingsland
    Elgin

    Very similar to yesterday’s list. Also, the Westgate Central Market is closed, but the North Lamar location is open from 10 AM to 6 PM.

  • Next up: Walmart. The situation here seems to have improved a bit. The Sam’s at 183 and Lakeline Mall Drive is open, as is the Walmart at Northcross, and the Sam’s at 290 West and Mopac, plus the Walmarts in Manor, Elgin and Buda. All other locations appear to be closed.(The Round Rock locations of both Walmart and Sam’s showed open yesterday, but closed today.)

    Update: The 183/Lakeline Mall and 290 West/Mopac Sam’s appears to be closed, but the ones at 183 at 360 and on South I-35 now appear to be open. The Palm Valley Walmart in Round Rock also appears to be open.

  • Supposedly Randall’s and Fiesta are open.
  • I heard reports that Dollar General is open, but can’t verify it.
  • A couple of lists of open Austin restaurants.
  • Update: A crowdsource list of what’s open or closed and what they have.
  • Update: The Big Lots at McNeil at 183 was open and had a pretty good selection of snacks, plus some staples and canned goods.
  • Friday it’s supposed to get into the 40s.

    Update: Good news!

    Rush Limbaugh, RIP

    February 17th, 2021

    Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has died of cancer at age 70.

    Rush Limbaugh died Wednesday after a year-long battle with cancer.

    Limbaugh’s death at age 70 was announced Wednesday on his influential conservative radio program, by his wife, Kathryn.

    Limbaugh announced last February that he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer.

    Although the cancer was expected to quickly kill Limbaugh, he received treatment and continued to host his radio program over the year.

    Shortly after his diagnosis, then-President Donald Trump surprised Limbaugh at last year’s State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress by awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    Then-first lady Melania Trump put the medal around Limbaugh’s neck.

    “The Rush Limbaugh Show” premiered in 1988, airing for 33 years.

    Limbaugh’s program went on the air at a time when conservative media outlets were few and far between. Liberal opinion dominated all the broadcast networks, Time, Newsweek, NPR and most newspapers. He was a breath of fresh air, and became notably more conservative after Desert Storm. Straight from the git-go, liberals hated him for daring to bust up their media monopoly, and liberal Twitter is reacting to his death with exactly the sort of grace and tact you’d expect.

    (With a side helping of wishing Henry Kissinger dead as well.)

    Limbaugh always opened his show with the quote “…with talent on loan from God,” and now he gets to give it back.

    A few tributes:

    Interview with TPPF’s Katie Tahuahua On The Texas Winter Storm Energy Crisis

    February 17th, 2021

    I reached out to the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s energy expert Katie Tahuahua about the dire energy problems brought about by the huge winter storm, here are her answers:


    1. The Texas Interconnect Grid is a separate grid from the U.S. Eastern and Western Interconnect grids. What advantages and disadvantages does this provide for Texas energy consumers?

    KT: The advantage of Texas having its own electric grid is that our communities aren’t affected by poor policy choices in other states we have no control or accountability over. However, it also means we must bear the full costs of our choices and feel the full brunt of crises like the blackouts across the state this week.

    2. What role does ERCOT serve in managing the Texas Interconnect grid?

    KT: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the Texas Interconnection Grid — although, unfortunately, the “Reliability” in its name has now been called into question.

    3. The current wave of extreme cold was forecast in advance. Why were so many electricity-producing entities caught off-guard?

    KT: There are two problems here. The first is that ERCOT waited too long to initiate conservation measures to meet increased demand as the weather turned colder. However, this delay wouldn’t have been a problem at all had Texas not put so many eggs in the renewable basket. Instead of adding more reliable fossil fuel generation to the grid over the last few years to keep up with our growing population and electricity demand, we’ve closed over 3,000MW in natural gas and clean coal and instead added 20,000MW of unreliable wind and solar to the grid. Unfortunately, all that wind and solar was barely generating when Texans needed it most. By Monday morning, half of Texas’ wind turbines were frozen solid and total wind generation bottomed out at 2% capacity by Monday night. Because of this massive gap in wind production and ERCOT’s delay, what should have been a series of brief rolling blackouts — inconvenient but manageable — instead turned into millions of Texans left in the cold and without answers.

    4. What, if any, role has ERCOT’s demand pricing policies played in helping create the current crisis?

    KT: ERCOT does not currently have demand pricing policies. While voluntary demand pricing programs could help prevent situations like this, any regulatory solution should place the cost of ensuring reliable electricity on the generators where it belongs, not on the customers.

    5. A great number of Austin households are without power right now. Has Austin energy performed notably worse than other government power entities, and what policies have contributed to making the situation worse?

    KT: Anecdotally, we know that there are communities in several areas of the state still without power. It does not appear that the blackouts are worse in Austin than anywhere else. However, Austin’s boisterous promotion of unreliable renewable energy — and their expensive failed efforts to use it — have reduced reliability for their customers and for the broader Texas grid. Unfortunately, San Antonio and CPS Energy are going down the same path that will put their ratepayers on the hook for $1 billion and further jeopardize the security of our grid.

    6. How much, if any, has the push for “renewable” energy courses like wind and solar contributed to the current energy difficulties in Texas?

    KT: It’s clear that policy decisions favoring unreliable wind and solar energy made blackouts such as this inevitable at some point. The severity of this blackout could have been reduced had ERCOT acted more swiftly — but it never would have been an issue had our grid not been so deeply penetrated by unreliable energy sources that contribute the least when they are needed the most, yet are propped up by billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies every year.

    The Texas Legislature should end these subsidies and require all electric generators to guarantee a certain amount of “dispatchable,” or readily available, power to the grid at all times. The Texas Public Policy Foundation and our Life:Powered initiative will be working closely with the legislature to preserve Texans’ access to affordable, reliable electricity no matter the weather.


    Thanks to Katie Tahuahua for taking the time to answer these questions.

    Today is the first time in almost a week that the temperature is going to get above freezing…

    TPPF’s Chuck DeVore on Reasons Behind The Texas Blackouts

    February 16th, 2021

    Some brief background on why so many Texas households suddenly seem to be without power:

    Expect more on this subject in the near future.

    Minneapolis Refunds The Police

    February 16th, 2021

    Remember when antifa and #BlackLivesMatter looted or burned more than 700 buildings in Minneapolis? And how the hard-left City Council’s first instinct was to call for defunding the police?

    Well, reality has a way of intruding, and now Minneapolis is going to spend $6.4M recruiting more officers following a sharp rise in crime and some 200 cops quitting after the riots and $8 million in budget cuts.

    Minneapolis is planning to spend $6.4million to hire dozens of police officers, at a time when some City Council members and activist groups have been advocating to replace the police department following the death of George Floyd.

    The City Council voted unanimously Friday to approve the additional funding that police requested.

    According to the Minneapolis Police Department, there are only 638 officers available to work, which is roughly 200 fewer than usual.

    An unprecedented number of officers quit or went on extended medical leave after Floyd’s death and the unrest that followed, which included the burning of a police precinct.

    Funny how that works.

    With new recruit classes, the city anticipates it will have 674 officers available at the end of the year, with another 28 in the hiring process, according to the Star Tribune.

    Now if only Austin’s foolish City Council would also reverse course on their asinine decision to cut the police budget…

    It’s a Freaking Winter Wonderland in Austin This Morning

    February 15th, 2021

    7°F and a good four inches of snow on the ground (which probably feels like a foot to us).

    There’s an official disaster declaration and the city has pretty much shut down:

    The University of Texas at Austin is closed through 8 a.m. Wednesday.

    Austin Energy is performing rolling blackouts to conserve power. The electricity provider, which has more than 500,000 customers, instituted the measure as a “last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,” the city said in a statement. The outages typically last 10 to 40 minutes but were lasting longer than expected as of early morning Dec. 15, Austin Energy tweeted. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has asked utilities around the state to use rotating outages to lessen the strain on the state’s power grid.

    Many flights are canceled. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport officials urged travelers to confirm their flight status if flying in the next 48 hours. The airport also announced that Security Checkpoint 1 is closed and all passengers will be screened through Security Checkpoint 2. According to FlightAware, 138 flights into or out of ABIA had been canceled as of 8 a.m. Feb. 15. In addition, many roads around the airport have been closed because of ice.

    The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the Texas Interconnect Grid, reports that the grid is near capacity and rolling blackouts may last some time. My power hasn’t gone out here since it was restored Friday morning.

    You don’t even need to tell Austin drivers to stay out of this stuff. If you look at the traffic cams, the roads are empty.

    Yesterday HEB reported that it was running out of items and closing early, and even if it’s open today, it’s on a reduced schedule. The local HEB phone number just rings, so I wouldn’t count on any of them being open.

    I imagine that almost all restaurants are closed (here’s an outdated list). No answer at the Jim’s and Denny’s locations I called. I even tried calling all three local Waffle Houses to see if any were open, and all three calls went to voicemail.

    Truly the end times are upon us.

    I’ll give you more first hand info when I walk the dogs later.

    Stay warm…

    Update: There are reportedly almost 2 million people without power across Texas this morning.

    Update 2: A whole lot of power outages all across Austin. This isn’t an outage map, it’s a bad Picasso painting:

    Update 3: Firefighters close East Parmer at Dessau due to too many stuck vehicles. (Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)

    Update 4: No Capital metro today.

    Update 5: It’s not just Austin. Houston-area households are suffering from a huge number of power outages.

    Update 6: A commenter asked about Dallas, so here’s Oncor’s outage map. But it’s even less useful than the Houston or Austin maps…

    Update 7: 4.4 million without power?

    Update 8: Pflugerville is under a boil water notice:

    Update 9: Lists of which Austin restaurants are open or closed.

    Tank News Roundup for February 14, 2021

    February 14th, 2021

    A few bits of tank-related news have been caught in the hopper, so let’s do a quick roundup:

  • The M1A2 Abrams gets a new tank round:

    The US Army’s main battle tank, the M1 Abrams, is about to receive a new multipurpose super tank round that can breach concrete walls, pulverize obstacles, and destroy bunkers, according to Forbes.

    The Advanced Multi-Purpose, or AMP, is specially designed for the M1 Abrams to replace the rapidly aging inventory of tank munitions.

    The new round is long overdue as tank crews on the modern battlefields in the Middle East have been confronted by new evolving threats.

    Unlike the M829 depleted uranium round, which can punch through almost anything – it tends to have difficulties blowing up vehicles or houses, as it just zips right through those types of targets. The new AMP can destroy everything the M829 cannot.

    Well, duh. The M829 is an APFSDS round, a kinetic kill anti-tank munition that does its damage via spawling and hydrodynamic shock effects. It’s not designed to breach buildings. For that you’d probably fire a M830A1 HEAT round. But that too is designed for maximum effect vs. armor rather than concrete.

    “The AMP adds an important new capability. The existing canister round is only for short-range use with a maximum reach of about 500 meters. This makes it useless for dealing with one of the biggest threats to tanks, infantry equipped with anti-tank guided missiles like the Russian-made AT-14 Kornet, used in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. When used in airburst mode, the AMP can target groups of personnel at ranges of up to 2,000 meters: even if it does not disable a missile team, the round is likely to distract them enough so that they are not able to keep a missile on course.”

    Another important new capability is breaching walls. Currently, making a breach an infantry assault requires engineers to get next to the wall and emplace explosives. Three rounds of AMP will create a thirty-by-fifty-inch hole clean through a double-thickness reinforced concrete wall, big enough for troops to advance through. This includes cutting through the steel reinforcement bars, and breaching can be carried out from several hundred meters away,” said Forbes.

    Forbes described the new round has “three different fusing options” for blowing up different targets.

    “With Point Detonation, the round explodes on contact with the target — this mode will make it effective against targets like light armored vehicles. Set to Point Detonation-Delay, the round does not explode immediately on contact – this is the mode used against obstacles and bunkers, as it gives enough time to penetrate deeply into concrete or other material before exploding. In the Airburst mode, the round explodes at a pre-set height above the ground, spraying the area below with tungsten shrapnel – this is the antipersonnel mode,” said Forbes.

    Here’s video of it in action:

  • China has deployed a new light tank:

    On Jan. 30, China North Industries Group Corporation announced on state-owned television that Type 15 (also known as ZTQ-15) lightweight battle tank entered service with the Xinjiang Military Command of the People’s Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF).

    China Central Television (CCTV) said an undisclosed number of Type 15s were delivered to a PLAGF regiment in Xinjiang. CCTV broadcaster said it was “the first lightweight tank to join the military command.”

    The Xinjiang mention is interesting. I’ve long wondered if China’s brutal treatment of the Uighers would provoke an indigenous revolt. Maybe it already has?

    The broadcaster said the Type 15s are outfitted with special oxygen equipment to allow the tanks to operate at high altitudes.

    Janes said no confirmation on how many Type 15s were deployed, but it appears these new tanks will significantly increase PLAGF’s combat capabilities in the region.

    The Type 15 was announced in 2018, but now they’re making it out into the field. It evidently has a 105mm rifled main gun.

  • The U.S. is also testing two light tank prototypes:

    The Army recently started its light tank prototype assessment, according to Jane’s. Part of the vehicle assessment phase will rely on solider input, and tanker crews will be able to put the MPF prototypes through their paces themselves, as well as contribute feedback in order to improve platform characteristics.

    The Army is specific in what it wants the Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle to accomplish, specifying that the MPF must be able to “neutralize enemy prepared positions and bunkers and defeat heavy machine guns and armored vehicle threats during offensive operations or when conducting defensive operations against attacking enemies.”

    Though the Army’s light tank project would be a radical departure from steadily increasing main battle tank weight, it would not be the first time Army leadership opted for a smaller, more mobile armored platform. In the mid-1960s and early 1970s, the United States developed the M551 Sheridan light tank, a dedicated armored reconnaissance/airborne assault vehicle.

    Snip.

    Two companies have submitted prototypes to the Army: BAE Systems, and General Dynamics Land Systems division.

    BAE Systems has the advantage of drawing upon and updating their M8 Armored Gun System, a mid-1990s project that attempted to serve as an air-mobile light tank for American airborne troops. BAE’s bid appears to carry over some features of the M8 project, including a 105mm main gun, possibly with an autoloader, and with more modern armor features that the company claims offers equal protection as their “highly survivable” Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle.

    On the other hand, General Dynamics benefits from extensive tank design and manufacture experience, as the company builds the venerable M1 Abrams main battle tank. Their bid is based on GD’s AJAX armored fighting vehicle and features a modified version of the Abrams turret. This could indicate a desire to retain the Abrams’ larger 120mm main gun, despite housing it on the smaller MPF platform. Lastly, GD claims that their light tank would benefit from a high-performance diesel engine that would afford a high power to weight ratio.

    The return of the light tank is an interesting development, since most nations have opted for infantry fighting vehicles (remember, Bradleys were able to take out T-72s in Desert Storm) or wheeled combat vehicles like the Stryker or Mowag Piranha for similar roles. But if you were looking for a good use case for light tanks, a guerilla war in Xinjiang or the Chinese-Indian border probably fits the bill.

  • Speaking of which, China and India have evidently agreed to pull their troops back from the disputed border region. (Previously.)
  • Speaking of India, the MK-1A Arjun Main Battle Tank just entered service:

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday handed over the indigenously developed Arjun Main Battle Tank (MK-1A) to the Indian Army at a ceremony in Chennai. The army will get 118 units of the Main Battle Tank, indigenously designed, developed and manufactured by CVRDE and DRDO along with 15 academic institutions, eight labs and several MSMEs.

    The Arjun Main Battle Tank project was initiated by DRDO in 1972 with the Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE) as its lead laboratory. The objective was to create a “state-of-the-art tank with superior fire power, high mobility, and excellent protection”. During the development, the CVRDE achieved breakthroughs in the engine, transmission, hydropneumatic suspension, hull and turret as well as the gun control system. Mass production began in 1996 at the Indian Ordnance Factory’s production facility in Avadi, Tamil Nadu.

    The Arjun tanks stand out for their ‘Fin Stabilised Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot (FSAPDS)’ ammunition and 120-mm calibre rifled gun. It also has a computer-controlled integrated fire control system with stabilised sighting that works in all lighting conditions. The secondary weapons include a co-axial 7.62-mm machine gun for anti-personnel and a 12.7-mm machine gun for anti-aircraft and ground targets.

    The MK-1A is about ten tons heavier than its predecessor, which probably indicates upgraded Kanchan composite armor, the exact thickness of which seems to be classified. It also appears to have some new sloped armor panels (possibly reactive) to the front of the turret:

    Which is probably a good thing, since its predecessor had a really boxy turret: