Democrats: Farming Illegal Aliens For Votes And Profit

September 23rd, 2024

The storyline that’s come out of the Democratic Party’s decision to flood Springfield, Ohio with illegal aliens from Haiti is them eating people’s pets, but the real storyline should be how Democrats destroy neighborhoods and displace locals for financial and political gain all over the country.

Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani has published a shocking report that could soon change the national discussion from Haitians and other migrants eating cats or dogs in Springfield, Ohio, to one that is more sinister: The hub of a complex “hidden human trafficking network” in the tiny rust belt town.

“The story in this town is not about cats or dogs. It’s about mules. It’s a twin tragedy of migrant workers from Haiti exploited and locals from Springfield marginalized,” Nomani wrote in the Jewish Journal.

She said, “Just about every week since 2019, First Diversity Staffing Group Inc. has shuttled vulnerable Haitian migrants in unmarked white Ford and Chevy vans from Florida to Ohio, where they are allegedly exploited for cheap labor by companies like Dole Food Company Inc.,” adding, “It is a secretive and sinister operation that has gone unchecked for more than five years.”

Nomani provided an image of one of those vans owned by staffing companies that shuttles the migrants to factories.

The ex-WSJ journo said ‘George Ten’, the alleged mastermind behind this scheme, lives in a mansion in rural Ohio. She continued, “His nickname is “King George” because of his opulent lifestyle of luxury cars, cash handouts, and fast talk. For years, he has operated his reign of alleged exploitation.”

This is stunning, as Nomani noted:

One Haitian man I interviewed asked to be anonymous for fear of retaliation and recalled how he was picked up by a driver for one of Ten’s vans on a street corner near a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Immokalee, Florida. After the long journey to Springfield, he was dropped off at a rundown home on Rice Street, infested with cockroaches. He soon found work through First Diversity at Jefferson Industries Corporation, earning $12.50 an hour; he didn’t know how much George skimmed off his wages. The home he lived in had no working heat, and he bought an electric heater to survive the cold Ohio winter, the heater barely heating his room.

What essentially began as an unverified claim by Trump about migrants eating pets has led to the disturbing truth of alleged labor trafficking and modern-day slavery in Springfield. The Haitians, here legally, are being exploited by mega corporations…

And it’s not just Ohio.

What will also blow your mind is that this alleged labor trafficking network has possibly also surfaced in Charleroi, Pennsylvania.

We cited a resident of the town, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. In a video, the resident revealed the complex network of staffing vans in a town that is 50% Haitian. The vans shuttle migrants back and forth to several food packaging plants.

Funny how the Democratic Party, the supposed “friend of the working man” seems so intent on helping replace working Americans with illegal aliens.

It’s not just Pennsylvania or Ohio, it’s all over the country.

Bloomberg has unveiled one of the most detailed maps yet, showing where the 2023 migrant invasion has spread across the US, broken down on a county-by-county basis. The map, built on immigration court case data, highlights clusters of new migrant populations that primarily emerged across the eastern half of the nation. The question becomes if the federal government and a shadowy network of non-governmental organizations worked in unison to precision dump migrants in small towns and cities to replace native blue-collar workers.

The data plotted on the map includes immigration court data showing where the 1.8 million migrants landed in the US and have since taken up residence. Notice massive clusters of new migrants across the Mid-Alantic and Northeast metro areas, as well as the Midwest and Rust Belt regions.

“In the battleground states that will decide this November’s election, about 72% of migrants in 2023 went to Biden counties while less than a third went to Trump counties, the Bloomberg analysis found. Counties that voted for Biden four years ago are home to roughly 60% of the overall US population,” Bloomberg said. ‘

More on how illegal aliens were used in Charleroi, PA.

The story in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, should not be about goat sacrifices and migrants eating cats and dogs. It’s more sinister than that. It’s about a much darker reality of an alleged large-scale human trafficking and labor exploitation network operated by mysterious staffing companies with dozens and dozens of passenger vans in what some have called “modern-day slavery.” These migrants are shuttled around to factories, displacing native-born workers.

More:

It seems like the Biden Administration and their shadowy network of NGO’s imported some 10 million illegal aliens into the country to provide cheap labor for big business.

corporate interests have become deeply interconnected with immigration through a non-governmental organization called Tent Partnership for Refugees. This NGO comprises more than 400 major multinational companies committed to hiring “refugees.”

Several NGO partnerships with mega corporations include RedRoof Inn, Royal Farms, Shopify, CSX, Delta Airlines, DoorDash, Etsy, and even Bloomberg.

The NGO’s relationships run deeper than mega-corporations, in fact, all the way up to the Biden administration.

In December of 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed a memorandum of understanding with Tent Partnership to “expand economic opportunity for refugees” in the private sector.

And what do Democrats get for letting all these illegal aliens in? Well, obviously they get to punish lots of blue collar workers for their “whiteness” and “clinging to their guns and religion.” And they get to rake off lots of NGO graft. And, of course, they expect illegal aliens to vote for Democrats, either illegally through voting fraud or legally via a mass amnesty.

Forestalling illegal alien voting was part of rational behind the SAVE Act.

The electorate is narrowly divided, and November’s presidential contest is likely to come down to the wire once again. Those in power are naturally tempted to secure an advantage — by any means necessary.

That became clear Monday when the White House threatened to veto legislation intended to close a loophole allowing illegal aliens to register to vote. The loophole was created by what is known as the motor voter law, which forced states to allow mail-in voter registration in 1993.

All one has to do is check a box that says “Are you a citizen of the United States of America?” on a federal form to be signed up. Though the form asks for more information, it’s optional.

“If you do not have a driver’s license or a state-issued identification or a Social Security number, please write ‘NONE’ on the form,” Colorado’s official instructions state. At the polling place, a utility bill or welfare check counts as acceptable identification.

House Republicans set up a vote Wednesday to close this loophole through the SAVE Act. Introduced by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, the proposal forces states to verify citizenship before adding someone to the voter rolls. It also enhances penalties against anyone intentionally registering noncitizens.

The White House blasted the effort. “It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections — it is a Federal crime punishable by prison and fines. … States already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters’ eligibility and maintain the accuracy of voter rolls,” the formal statement of administration policy explained.

While noncitizen voting is illegal, there’s no way to know when it happens. The Supreme Court blocked states from enforcing their own registration verification process in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. Writing for the majority in 2013, Justice Antonin Scalia said requiring proof of citizenship prior to registration clashed with federal law.

And that’s why Congress must exercise its authority to fix that broken law and restore trust in the system. Liberals will cry foul, but they’re not sincere. They have no problem forcing everyone to flash IDs and passports to handsy Transportation Security Administration agents before boarding an airplane.

“Many of the Democrats want all of these illegals to participate in our federal elections,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said at a news conference Tuesday. “They want them to vote. There’s no other conclusion you can draw.”

Mr. Johnson estimates the administration has allowed as many as 16 million illegal immigrants to enter the country, which is more than enough to swing a tight election.

Noncitizens aren’t supposed to participate in elections, but it’s also illegal for them to enter the country uninvited. Unlawful immigrants don’t even need to cast votes themselves. The loophole adds names and addresses to the system that ballot harvesters can then use with mail-in voting schemes.

Unverified checkboxes go hand in hand with unverified ballot drop boxes.

Sounds like the SAVE Act is important for election integrity. So why did the same Republican Speaker just give up on fighting for it?

House Republicans are moving forward with plans to vote on a clean stopgap spending bill that will extend government funding until mid-December, dropping a proof-of-citizenship voting measure backed by former President Donald Trump from their latest proposal.

The continuing resolution, released on Sunday, would continue current spending levels until Dec. 20, buying lawmakers time to continue negotiations for the federal budget for the 2025 fiscal year. The proposal comes after the House failed to pass its initial government funding proposal last week that would have extended current spending levels until the end of March 2025 and included a voting integrity measure known as the SAVE Act that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sought to attach as a policy win for Republicans.

That spending package was shot down after it failed to garner enough support from GOP lawmakers who vowed never to support a temporary government funding bill.

“Since we fell a bit short of the goal line, an alternative plan is now required,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wrote in a Dear Colleague letter to lawmakers on Sunday. “The feedback and ideas from everyone have been very helpful, and next week the House will take the initiative and pass a clean, three-month CR to prevent the Senate from jamming us with a bill loaded with billions in new spending and unrelated provisions. Our legislation will be a very narrow, bare-bones CR including only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”

But the absence of the SAVE Act could prompt several Republicans in both the House and Senate to reject the stopgap measure. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on Republicans to oppose any funding bill that does not include language of the SAVE Act, even at the risk of a shutdown.

Democrats are importing millions of illegal aliens to replace Americans and congressional Republicans are evidently too scared of losing a press cycle to try and stop it.

A Few More Thoughts On Operation Grim Beeper

September 22nd, 2024

A third but brief post on Israel’s exploding pager attack against Hezbollah. Several people have expressed incredulity that Israel would go to the trouble of setting up “their own factory” to manufacture the exploding pages against Hezbollah. I suspect people are envisioning something the size of a Foxconn iPhone line, but for smaller runs of less cutting-edge products, modern contract manufacturing can usually do things in much smaller footprints. Pagers are old 1980s tech, most probably use off-the-shelf commodity parts you can find anywhere, and I suspect Israel set up something much smaller.

You don’t need a line of assembly workers, you need a pick-and-place machine to attach the surface-mount components to your circuit board. Pick-and-place machines are also old technology that have gone through many iterations, but you can literally run a circuit board a assembly line in your garage. Here’s a guy that uses a very old pick-and-place machine to make amusement park controllers using equipment in his own shed.

Note that his boards are roughly the same size as a pager (probably slightly bigger). His is a low-tech approach that allows him to do all the steps himself and requires hand-soldering for some components. With a few more machines and a few more people, I suspect Israel could easily have run their exploding pager line out of space of 1,000 square feet or less. Everything save the explosive batteries probably used commodity pager parts, and even the special command sequence to trigger the explosion was probably programmed into a commodity controller chip.

Israel also has a modern, sophisticated electronics sector, so it’s possible they contract with one of their existing military electronics contractors to do a run, but I’m not sure anyone had an assembly line suitable for turning out old-tech pagers, as you wouldn’t want to alert Hezbollah agents with a circuit board that looked too modern.

There were a lot of sophisticated aspects to Israel’s supply chain attack, especially how they used human intelligence to insinuate themselves into Hezbollah’s procurement system to be in a position to provide the pagers. And producing batteries that actually held explosives was not a trivial task. But setting up an assembly line for the pagers once they had done all the upfront espionage work to get in a position to provide them was probably among the least difficult aspects of the operation.

Abbott Declares Tren de Aragua A Terrorist Organization

September 21st, 2024

Remember Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that took over an El Paso hotel and an Aurora apartment complex? Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared them a foreign terrorist organization this week.

ov. Greg Abbott signed a proclamation declaring the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TDA) a foreign terrorist organization during a press conference in Houston on Monday.

“Today, I am officially declaring TDA a foreign terrorist organization,” Abbott said.

“We will bring the full weight of the government against TDA. By declaring TDA a foreign terrorist organization, Texas will use force to halt their operations, use civil asset forfeiture to take their property, use enhanced criminal penalties to keep them in jail behind bars for longer periods of time.”

He then signed a formal proclamation officially marking TDA as a foreign terrorist organization.

Abbott continued, “TDA is notorious for their brutal violence and murder, their kidnapping, extortions, bribery, and trafficking of drugs, weapons, and even humans. They’ve been linked to more than 100 law enforcement investigations. They were involved in the brutal attack and assault upon the New York Police Department.”

Abbott signed a similar order in September 2022, after writing a letter to the Biden administration which declared any criminal cartels that traffic fentanyl into Texas as terrorist organizations.

About a year later, Abbott signed a number of bills and security measures specifically targeting illegal immigration, and increasing funding for federal border patrol agents, stating “Washington D.C. has failed to do its job to secure our border.”

“TDA has also been linked to the murder of Laken Riley,” Abbott said in reference to the murder of 22-year-old Augusta University student in February, allegedly committed by Venezuelan national Jose Ibarra, who was in the country illegally.

“Intelligence reports show that TDA has been given the green light to shoot law enforcement officers in the United States,” Abbott said.

The governor then described the alleged typical order of operations for Venezuelan gangs such as TDA when establishing control in a certain area.

“History has shown they first flood the country with military-age Venezuelan men and then they begin to establish a base of operations. Finally, TDA begins a spree of violent and bloody activity.”

“We’ve now seen the beginnings of this operation in the state of Texas,” Abbott said.

He shared that since 2021, “more than 3,000 illegal immigrants” from Venezuela have been arrested in Texas and “more than 200” are wanted.

The Democratic Party has decided to actively aid importing illegal aliens into America for political and financial gain, and seems more than fine with importing foreign criminal organizations in the process, abrogating their constitutional duty to protect the live, liberty and property of American citizens. As long as a Democrat sits in the White House, it will be up to the states to protect their citizens from foreign criminal gangs.

Or up to armed citizens themselves.

LinkSwarm For September 20, 2024

September 20th, 2024

More Trump assassination details emerge, the Israel-Hezbollah front remains spicy, a huge Russian ammo dump blew up real good, more open borders shenanigans from the Biden-Harris junta, more woke Tolkien garbage, and China tries to pass off the most adorable fake pandas.

it’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Hawley Releases Damning Report on Security Failures Leading Up to First Attempt on Trump’s Life.”

    Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) released a whistleblower report Monday on the law-enforcement failures leading up to the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump two months ago. The report was released one day after a suspect was apprehended in Florida for trying to kill Trump on his golf course in Florida.

    The Secret Service’s failures to secure Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13 were extensive and constituted one of the most consequential security debacles in U.S. history. Chief among them was law enforcement’s apparent choice to leave the rooftop of the American Glass Research (AGR) building unguarded, allegedly because of heat, before gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed atop the building to carry out the attack, Hawley’s report states.

    The report is based on whistleblower allegations brought to his office in the wake of Crooks’s rampage. Before the report was published, Hawley sent multiple letters to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, questioning him about the most shocking details from the whistleblowers who contacted his office.

    Overseeing the Secret Service’s security operations at the rally was an unnamed lead agent who apparently has a history of incompetence and who directed the placement of certain items around the stage of the Trump rally that impaired visibility. The individual is allegedly known to be a low-quality agent and failed an examination on the way to becoming a Secret Service agent.
    More onSecret Service
    Why the Secrecy around the Foreign Source of the Springfield Hoax Bomb Threats?
    Lawsuit Alleges DHS, Secret Service Concealed Records Regarding Attempted Assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania
    The Feds Can Charge Ryan Routh with Attempted Murder of a Major-Party Candidate and a Former President

    Secret Service intelligence units were not at the Butler rally. If they had been there, they could have prevented or mitigated the communication breakdown between federal and local law enforcement, Hawley’s report says, a major allegation that he has not previously publicized.

    Ahead of the rally, the Secret Service’s counter-surveillance division did not conduct its typical inspection of the site and did not have a presence at the Butler campaign rally. A whistleblower told Hawley’s office that the counter-surveillance division would have arrested Crooks for carrying a rangefinder. The same whistleblower alleges that acting director Ron Rowe personally requested cuts to the counter-surveillance division, a claim Rowe has denied.

    At a congressional hearing in July, Rowe admitted to the Secret Service’s mistakes on the day of the Trump rally, including a decision to reject an offer from local law enforcement for drone support after the Secret Service was unable to fly its own. Hours before the shooting, Crooks flew a drone around the perimeter of the Trump rally for roughly 11 minutes, the FBI has determined.

    According to the report, a whistleblower with direct knowledge of the Butler planning process said that the rally was not slated to receive any additional security because Trump is not a sitting president or vice president. These additional resources would have included counter-snipers and counter-surveillance personnel.

    The Trump rally was considered to be a “loose” security environment, meaning that Department of Homeland Security personnel failed to police the area immediately surrounding the stage and were not placed at intervals around the perimeter, Hawley’s report asserts. Extra DHS personnel without the necessary training to work campaigns were pulled away from the department’s investigative team and reassigned to the Trump rally, a whistleblower told Hawley’s office.

    Up to this point, Hawley says, the Secret Service and DHS have not answered questions about the lead agent overseeing the Trump campaign rally, resources allocated to the Trump campaign, and the Secret Service’s lack of counter-sniper coverage on the AGR building.

    I think we need to know the name of this unnamed lead agent, and how many ties he has to the Obama regime…

  • What we know about the latest would-be Trump assassin.

    On Sunday, September 15th, 58-year-old Ryan Routh of Hawaii showed up to Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where former President Donald Trump was golfing.

    Routh reportedly shoved the barrel of a scoped polymer SKS-style rifle through the fence with the intent to fire at President Trump, who was several hundred yards away.

    Nothing says “accuracy” quite like an old Soviet design they dropped for the AK-47.

    Authorities say Routh also had a GoPro camera, as well as two backpacks containing ceramic tile that he had hung on the fence (a type of ballistics armor is made of ceramic tile).

    Secret Service agents saw Routh and fired at him. He escaped in a black Nissan before getting arrested by local police on I-95 thanks to a photograph taken by a bystander.

    USA Today says Routh has a “complex history,” which is code for “the man was foaming at the mouth for leftist causes.”

    A profile for Ryan Routh on X dates to January 2020, where he posted a range of passionate opinions on issues including Black Lives Matter, Taiwanese sovereignty and supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia.

    Obviously he supported Palestinians and hated Israel.

    According to Fox News, Routh spent the majority of his life in North Carolina, where he owned a company called United Roofing.

    You won’t be surprised that Routh was in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) in the 2020 election.

    In 2020, during the presidential primary, the X account said: ‘I was not supporting Bernie, but now I am; as sleepy Joe stands for nothing; no plans, no ideas, just as limp as hillary. Bernie…….give them hell…..fight to the death…’

    Routh reportedly donated to ActBlue, a major Democratic campaign fund, at least 19 times.

  • A lot of reports said would-be Trump assassin Routh fought for Ukraine and against Russia. Ukraine says they rejected him as a “Call of Duty Warrior.”

    Ukrainian military recruiters appear to have spotted almost immediately that Mr Routh, who had a long criminal record, was not promising material.

    According to an interview that he later gave to the Financial Times, he was rejected for service when he first reported to a Legion office on the Polish border at the war’s outset.

    “They said: ‘You’re 56, you’re old and you have no experience’,” he told the paper. “So why don’t you recruit and coordinate?”

    If that is what they told him, they probably intended him doing so having returned himself safely back to the US. Undeterred, however, Mr Routh continued on to Kyiv, where he became a familiar – if less than welcome – face on the Legion’s fringes.

    There were many such cranks in Kyiv at the time, latching on to the war to pose as international men of action and boasting of high-level contacts in the Pentagon or CIA.

    Regular Legionnaires did their best to avoid them, referring to them variously as “Call of Duty Warriors”, “Volun-tourists” and “Screamers” – the latter a reference to their reaction if coming under fire.

    But there was little to stop them promoting themselves on social media, as Mr Routh did prolifically, claiming to be an active recruiter for the Legion ranks.

    “Any gender, any age, any skill level to no skill level,” he claimed to Newsweek in 2022. “Yeah, if you wanna fight, come and see me and I’ll put you in a unit so you can go fight.”

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Kamala Harris: “As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world for the first time this century.” U.S. active duty soldiers in a combat zone: “Say what?
  • CBS polls restaurant patrons in Nevada and finds precisely one Harris supporter. Everyone else was for Trump. Presumably illegal aliens don’t eat out much…
  • “Oregon DMV admits that they’ve registered hundreds of illegal immigrants to vote since 2021.”
  • “PA Supreme Court rules that misdated ballots must not be counted.”

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has determined that the two biggest counties in the state do not have to count mail-in ballots that have either the wrong date or no date where indicated on the outer envelope. The ruling was 4 to 3, with those 3 justices writing a dissent in the case.

    The order from the court found that the lower court, which had ruled that those ballots must be counted even with the errors, lacked jurisdiction in the case because only Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties were mentioned in the case and not all of the state’s 67 counties.

    The order reads: “AND NOW, this 13th day of September, 2024, the order of the Commonwealth Court is VACATED. The Commonwealth Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to review the matter given the failure to name the county boards of elections of all 67 counties, and because the joinder of Al Schmidt, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Commonwealth, did not suffice to invoke the Commonwealth Court’s original jurisdiction.”

    In practice, this means that in the coming presidential election, officials will not count any ballots that are either misdated or undated ballots. The jurisdiction issue could be addressed by the plaintiffs in the case before the election. The plaintiffs are listed as Black Political Empowerment Project, Power Interfaith, Make the Road Pennsylvania, OnePA Activists, New PA Project Education Fund, Casa San Jose, Pittsburgh United, League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and Common Cause Pennsylvania.

    But don’t think for a minute this will keep Pennsylvania Democrats from trying to steal the election just like they did in 2020, as they won’t start “counting” absentee ballots until election day.

  • And speaking of Pennsylvania voting fraud: “Pennsylvania[‘s Luzerne County] bans drop boxes after woman caught with multiple ballots.”
  • “Ex-Border Patrol Chief Says He Was Instructed By Biden-Harris Admin To Hide Terrorist Encounters.”

    In a scathing revelation before Congress, former San Diego Sector Border Patrol Chief Aaron Heitke accused the Biden-Harris administration of covering up a sharp rise in encounters with suspected terrorists at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    During a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing titled “A Country Without Borders: How Biden-Harris’ Open-Borders Policies Have Undermined Our Safety and Security,” Heitke said he was muzzled from releasing critical information on the number of Special Interest Aliens (SIAs) — individuals with known or suspected ties to terrorism — apprehended in California.

    “I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIAs or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke testified. “The administration was trying to convince the public there was no threat at the border.”

    According to Heitke, arrests of individuals with terror ties skyrocketed under President Joe Biden’s watch. The former Border Patrol chief revealed that before 2021, his sector had apprehended between 10 to 15 SIAs annually. By 2022, that number had shot up to over 100, with even more recorded in 2023.

    “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, well over that in 2023, and even more than that registered this year. These are only the ones we caught,”

  • Scott Adams lays down some truth bombs:

    You’ll need to click on that to expand it. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “US Secures Convictions, Guilty Pleas As CCP-Directed Spying Exposed.”

    For years, Beijing has been deepening its hold on America, drawing intelligence from the U.S. government while silencing critics with the help of agents embedded in U.S. society.

    The United States is now hitting back—and seeing results, according to experts.

    In early September, prosecutors arrested Linda Sun, former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, accusing her of acting on behalf of Beijing in exchange for gifts and payouts valued in millions of dollars to her family.

    There has also been a marked increase in the rate of convictions or pleas in recent months. The Justice Department has brought forth dozens of CCP-directed espionage and foreign agent cases in the past four years, resulting in at least 13 convictions or pleas, with more than half of those taking place this year—including three in the past month. an Epoch Times review of the court records show.

    On Aug. 6, a Chinese American scholar posing as a pro-democracy activist was convicted by a jury for spying on dissidents for the CCP.

    On Aug. 13, a U.S. army intelligence analyst from Texas pleaded guilty to selling military secrets to the CCP.

    On Aug. 23, a software engineer who worked two decades at Verizon pleaded guilty to gathering intelligence on countless dissidents and organizations targeted by the CCP since 2012.

    Case documents reveal a broad range of criminal actions taken by agents, often different from what most may imagine to be spying. Beyond industrial espionage and covert influence campaigns, the regime has directed hacker rings, including a group that was charged and sanctioned this year for waging a 14-year campaign on the United States.

    “I feel that our nation must take every opportunity to stop these threats,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), chair of the cybersecurity subcommittee for the House Armed Services Committee, told The Epoch Times, noting that the U.S. intelligence community has identified Beijing as the number one threat to the United States.

    Bacon has experienced Chinese espionage attempts firsthand. Last year, he was hacked by CCP-linked hackers who also broke into email systems of State and Commerce department officials and dozens of other groups.

    “Can we ever say that whatever actions we are taking are enough? I don’t believe so as the threats are increasing in frequency, sophistication, and national security impact,” Bacon said.

    The CCP has long targeted people of Chinese descent—of whom there are more than 60 million people outside China—as potential assets in its intelligence operations.

    Among those charged by the DOJ in the foreign agent cases are officials of the CCP’s top intelligence gathering agency Ministry of State Security (MSS), Chinese citizens traveling to the United States under false pretenses, hackers residing in Asian countries; as well as asylees, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens of Chinese descent.

    Some reside in the United States while dozens of others charged are known to reside in China, and will now face arrest if they ever set foot on American soil.

    There are also many who are U.S. citizens that aren’t of Chinese descent. They include active military members, former law enforcement, and experts in competitive fields.

  • “Israeli Strike Kills Hezbollah Commander behind 1983 U.S. Embassy Bombing.”

    An Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed senior Hezbollah military official Ibrahim Akil on Friday, Israeli Defense Forces announced. Although Hezbollah has not confirmed the reports, Lebanese officials said earlier in the day that the strike killed at least eight and wounded 59.

    Israeli Defense Forces reportedly targeted two residential buildings in southern Beirut. Akil is the head of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force and Jihad Council, and is sanctioned by the U.S. Department of State for playing a role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, in which a suicide bomber murdered 63 people, including 52 embassy employees. The State Department designated Akil a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2019, and offered a reward of “up to $7 million for information” about the Hezbollah leader.

    Good. Burn in Hell, terrorist scumbag.

  • Despite Israel’s recent successes against Hezbollah’s command and control, Hezbollah was still able to launch multiple missile attacks against northern Israel today. Indeed, the whole theater is quite spicy:

  • A few thoughts on Operation Grim Beeper.
  • “Two chiefs with the New York Fire Department have been arrested on bribery charges.” Those are Brian E. Cordasco, 49, and Anthony M. Saccavino, the same ones the FBI raided.
  • Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary says that New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and California those states are now “uninvestable.” The taxes are too high and “the regulatory environment is punitive.”
  • American Transit Insurance Company [is] insolvent.” They insure hire cars, cabs, Uber, etc. “As in, ‘can’t pay their bills’ insolvent. As in ‘can’t pay claims’ insolvent.”
  • Ukraine just blew up a Russian ammo dump in Toropets so large that the explosion was visible from space. (More.) (And still more.)
  • Remember Thierry Breton, the eurocrat who got in a slapfight with Elon Musk over Twitter refusing the censor people and knuckle-under? He just resigned. “France’s European Union commissioner Thierry Breton abruptly resigned on Monday amid an ongoing dispute with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. He was slated to serve a second term after being re-appointed by French President Emmanuel Macron, The Guardian reports.” Evidently von der Leyen wants the Commission to be “gender balanced.” Social justice will oft social justice mar…
  • “The mayor of Atlantic City, Marty Small Sr., and his wife [La’Quetta Small] (the superintendent of schools) have both been officially indicted.” Despite both being Democrats, they weren’t indicted for fraud, but for brutally beating their own teenage daughter. Bonus: The daughter told principal Constance Days-Chapman of the abuse, and instead of telling the police, she told the abusive parents. She’s being charged, too.
  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Harris County’s revamped version of their unconstitutional socialist guaranteed income program.
  • Has technology killed bands?
  • Both North Carolina and parts of Europe got hit with some near-Biblical floods this week.
  • New Hobbit game obviously more woke bullshitAfter swearing for months they wouldn’t add AI to D&D, Hasbro to add AI to D&D.
  • “23andMe’s board quits en masse: A former tech darling is in turmoil after all seven of its independent board members resigned. 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki is now the sole remaining member following a disagreement over taking the company private.”
  • ESPN’s NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski retires. He was at the top of his profession, and reportedly walked away from a $30 million contract. But given Disney’s ongoing debacles, it’s quite possible they asked him to take a haircut or let him retire in advance of a layoff.
  • Jane says/Can you taste my fist today? Also, the tour’s been cancelled on the basis of chin music. A shame, really, since Jane’s Addition has a fairly unheralded role as the musical bridge between LA’s “hair metal” scene and the harder alt rock edge of acts like Nirvana.
  • “FBI Tries To Distract From Old Trump Assassination Attempt With New Trump Assassination Attempt.”
  • “FBI Says We May Never Know The Motivation Of The Would-Be Trump Assassin Who Was A Biden-Harris Supporter And Donated To Democrats 20 Times.”
  • “Biden Promises Next Trump Assassin Will Be A Woman Of Color.”
  • “DOJ Warns If Trump Is Elected He Will Do To Them All The Stuff They’re Doing To Him.”
  • “Media Assures Americans The Real Threat Is The Side That Keeps Getting Shot At.”
  • “Kamala Safe And In Stable Condition After Attempted Interview.”
  • “Rashida Tlaib Uninjured After Her Pager Mysteriously Explodes.”
  • “BREAKING: Israel Kills Thousands More Terrorists With Exploding ‘200 Free Hours of AOL’ CDs.”
  • It’s a LinkSwarm tradition to end with an amusing dog clip or story. So here are some pretty Chow Chows…painted up to look like Pandas in a Chinese zoo:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • I’ve now been unemployed for one year, so feel free to hit the tip jar.





    Israel’s Supply Chain Hack: Manufactured, Not Altered

    September 19th, 2024

    More information about Israel’s pager etc. attack against Hezbollah has come to light, and it appears Israel didn’t intercept and adulterate the supply chain, it was the supply chain.

    Israel has injured thousands across Lebanon, with hundreds in critical condition and dozens more dead, this week in two waves of simultaneous explosions of electronic communications equipment targeting Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists.

    The blasts — which may have killed 19 and wounded 150 of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members — started on Tuesday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. local time when pagers used by Hezbollah started beeping with a message from their leadership.

    After a few beeps, the pagers simultaneously exploded across the country, blinding hundreds, tearing off limbs, and leaving gaping holes in bodies.

    The messages that the devices received were not from Hezbollah leadership; they were from Israel’s intelligence and military apparatus, and they were part of a multi-year plan.

    There was initial confusion as to what happened when the explosions were reported. Various news reports said that malware had potentially been uploaded to the devices, causing the batteries to overheat and explode. Then reports surfaced claiming a small amount of highly explosive material had been placed into each device after Israel intercepted the devices after they were manufactured by a Taiwanese company.

    However, none of those reports were accurate, according to a New York Times report that revealed that Israel never intercepted the pagers — it made them.

    Hezbollah has forced tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes in northern Israel since October 7 as the terrorist group fires drones, rockets, and missiles on a regular basis — having fired many thousands in nearly 12 months.

    Israel has responded with precision strikes, killing more than 300 top Hezbollah commanders and numerous lower-level terrorists.

    Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah pushed for the terrorists to abandon their phones and switch to low-tech pagers to avoid being tracked by Israel. Nasrallah had bragged that his strategy would “blind” Israel.

    However, unbeknownst to Hezbollah, Israel had been secretly manufacturing the pagers that Hezbollah was buying for years.

    The Taiwanese company Gold Apollo had contracted with a company called B.A.C. Consulting in Hungary to manufacture the pagers. B.A.C. Consulting was one of three shell companies that Israel created to mask the true manufacturer of the communications equipment: Israeli intelligence.

    B.A.C. Consulting created real pagers for numerous customers to create the perception of a legitimate company in order to get picked up for the contract to produce the pagers for Hezbollah.

    The pagers manufactured for Hezbollah were separate from those made for other clients, the report said. The pagers that Hezbollah received “contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN” and began shipping in 2022, the report said.

    One of my objections to the “planted explosives” idea was that there was no way for explosives in the battery compartment to access the antenna circuitry to receive the detonation signal, but if Israel designed the pagers from the ground up to go boom then obviously that’s not a problem.

    After the first round of explosions on Tuesday, Israel struck again on Wednesday, detonating Hezbollah’s backup communications equipment: walkie-talkies.

    The explosions from the walkie-talkies were significantly larger than the explosions from the pagers because the devices were larger, meaning they could be packed with more explosive material. Videos posted online showed entire apartment units blown out and numerous cars engulfed in flames.

    My other objection was that Israel would be better off gathering intel from the pagers than making them go boom, but if they manufactured them, they probably have all the intel they need on locations of leadership, warehouses, weapons, etc. It looks like Israel was the one that blinded Hezbollah, not the reverse.

    It may also explain why Israel hasn’t assassinated Nasrallah yet: Because he’s evidently an idiot.

    There’s been much speculation that with Hezbollah’s communications so compromised, Israel will now move decisively against them. And indeed, right now Israel is pounding the snot out of locations in southern Lebanon.

    Plus Israeli F-15s are evidently flying over Beirut with evident impunity. (Lebanon couldn’t take down Israeli aircraft during the Lebanon War in 2006 either, mainly because they’re using old Soviet crap.)

    A lot of MSM commentators have shrieked over and over again during the Israel-Hamas War that Israel was in trouble because they would face a two-front war when Hezbollah really got involved. That didn’t happen. Instead, Israel settled Hamas’ hash in Gaza (where it’s now mopping up), then hit a whole lot of militant factions on the West Bank (an under-reported story), all the while withstanding pinprick strikes from the Mullahs and their proxies while carrying out varied strikes in Syria and Iran.

    Having accomplished all that, Israel seems to be moving decisively against Hezbollah. Now Israel is poised to enter a two-front war, but only on its own terms, not Hezbollah’s. It’s almost like Israel had its own Schlieffen Plan to defeat each of its enemies in turn before turning to the next, only competently executed. But with Hezbollah so disorganized, it may not even feel the need to launch a ground incursion into Lebanon.

    The end result of the war Hamas’ terrorist atrocity started will be that Israel will be stronger and its borders more secure, all Israel’s terrorist enemies will be destroyed or weaker, and Iran will be shown, yet again, as a very weak horse using incompetent proxies.

    Now, as a bonus, here’s a Habitual Linecrosser video on the subject.

    Edited to add: “Hezbollah Starting To Think They Shouldn’t Have Gotten Pagers From Levi Goldbraumstein’s Pager Emporium.”

    The Hezbollah Pager Attack: How?

    September 18th, 2024

    By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the epic, ingenious pager attack that Israel carried out against Hezbollah:

    At least nine people were killed and about 2,750 people were injured in Lebanon on Tuesday during the mass explosion of pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah, according to the country’s health ministry.

    A Hezbollah official described the event as the “biggest security breach” the group has suffered since the start of the Israel-Gaza war nearly one year ago, according to a Reuters report. The Shiite terror group claimed that lithium batteries inside the pagers apparently detonated.

    Some members allegedly felt the pagers “heating up” before abandoning them, according to an unnamed Hezbollah official speaking to the Wall Street Journal. Hezbollah officials have speculated that Israeli malware could be behind the infiltration.

    Sky News Arabia, however, quoted sources insisting that Mossad, Israel’s primary intelligence agency, physically planted explosive materials inside the pagers before they were delivered to Lebanon.

    According to the Times of Israel, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah turned to pagers after he directed members to stop using cell phones in February, fearing they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Lebanese security source claimed the devices were imported five months ago, according to Al Jazeera.

    Seven individuals were similarly killed in Syria around Damascus, according to Iran’s IRGC-affiliated Saberin News. This signals a coordinated effort to reach the group in multiple locations across different countries.

    Everyone and their dog has posted this story, so I wasn’t going to note it outside the LinkSwarm, except I think some commenters are making erroneous assumptions about how the attack was carried out. I see three possibilities:

    1. The Sky News Arabia suggestion (also floated in this Washington Post article) that the attack was carried out via a supply chain attack planting explosive in each pager, seems clever and has a certain surface plausibility. But I think it very unlikely, mainly because, if you already have that level of access to their communication network hardware, planting explosives is probably the least rewarding attack you could carry out. No, the real play for a supply chain attack is to compromise the security of the devices themselves so you can use Hezbollah’s own devices to spy on their entire communications network. That’s a whole lot more valuable than a handful of deaths and a larger number of maimings. I also find the idea that they intercepted the batteries and loaded them with Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) even less likely. Just how would these batteries receive the detonate signal if they’re not directly in the circuit to access the antenna to receive the signal?
    2. My guess is that Israel discovered the type of battery and charging firmware Hezbollah’s pagers used, and used a remote exploit to trigger overcharging in the batteries. This also aligns with reports that several Hezbollah terrorists felt the pager getting hot before they exploded. That isn’t the way explosives work, but it is the way Lithium Ion batteries respond to overcharging. Further supporting this hypothesis is that Israel’s previous Stuxnet worm targeting Iran’s nuclear program used a broadly similar attack (a combination software/firmware exploit that caused physical destruction of the targeted system). Such attacks are by no means easy, but dozens of broadly similar hardware hacking exploits are revealed at DEFCON every year.
    3. A third theory I’ve seen proposed by various commenters: Israel was able to explode the pagers because Hezbollah equipped all of them with explosives from the git-go, either to use as improvised explosives or for data security if captured. The first is unlikely because we all know Hezbollah has access to a wide range of explosives to build bombs and IEDs with, and it doesn’t make sense to use something as small as a pager for any significant target. The second strikes me as deeply unlikely from a cost/benefit analysis.

    (If someone can think of another theory than those three, let me know in the comments below.)

    The heady onrush of the technological revolution has allowed non-state actors like Hezbollah to punch well above their weight by using commercial off-the-shelf technology to strike vulnerable targets (civilians and infrastructure) of larger state actors like Israel. But the downside of not controlling your own supply chain is that a technologically sophisticated state actor like Israel has the knowledge and resources to hack your consumer-grade equipment.

    I just read that Hezbollah radios are now exploding as well, so I’m going to go ahead and post this before Israel manages to remote detonate still more of Hezbollah’s tech.

    Hezbollah, of course, is talking about launching a full-scale war against Israel. Given the destruction of their communication networks, one wonders how long it will take them to learn semaphore to coordinate attacks…

    Texas #1!

    September 17th, 2024

    No, not The University of Texas Longhorns football team being ranked number 1 (though that evidently happened this week as well), but Texas is the number one state for gun manufacturing.

    Gun manufacturing in the U.S. has been increasing steadily in recent years, with a significant spike during the pandemic.

    According to the Violence Policy Center, there are almost five times as many gun manufacturers as there are colleges in the country.

    And these days they’re far less harmful to the Republic than those colleges…

    The data comes from the Violence Policy Center and reflects 2022 data.

    While most production is concentrated in the hands of a few key players, a majority of gun manufacturers actually don’t operate out of big commercial facilities, but instead, out of homes or offices.
    Rank State Number of gun manufacturers Increase (2017-2022)
    1 Texas 2,321 78%
    2 Florida 1,214 59%
    3 Arizona 1,026 55%

    I’m snipping the rest of the chart, but I thought it striking that not only was Texas #1, it had more firearms manufacturers than #2 Florida and #3 Arizona combined. I am surprised that California still managed to rank eighth with 580 manufacturers, giving its Democrat-controlled government’s unremitting hostility to both firearms and the Second Amendment, but it’s 6% increase was the lowest of any state. Yes, every state saw an increase in gun manufacturers.

    Texas, Florida, and Arizona, the three states with the most gun manufacturers in 2022, all have business-friendly policies including low or no income taxes and fewer regulations, as well as strong gun cultures.

    Large firearms companies have also increasingly chosen to move their headquarters and production to red states, especially in the South.

    Other Southern red states are capitalizing on this trend. In Oklahoma, just north of Texas, Governor Kevin Stitt has promoted the state’s “pro-Second Amendment” stance to attract more firearms manufacturers.

    Out of the top five states with the most manufacturers, four (Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Ohio) have constitutional carry laws. These laws allow individuals to carry a firearm without a permit.

    I’m sure a lot of these are small operations, but 78% growth over five years is nothing to sneeze at. The combination of low taxes, low regulation, pro-Second Amendment and lots of available land to build is a power combination.

    Dade Phelan/Texas Speaker Race Update

    September 16th, 2024

    I’ve been needing to post a Dade Phelan/Texas Speaker’s Race update for a few weeks now, because I held off because I needed more information and I wasn’t sure what’s going on. Now a couple of tidbits of news have dropped that pretty much requires a post…but I’m still not sure what’s going on.

  • Now that Rep. John Smithee (R-Amarillo) has joined the race there are five Republican representatives who have declared they’re running for Speaker:
    • David Cook (Mansfield)
    • James Frank (Wichita Falls)
    • Tom Oliverson (Cypress)
    • Shelby Slawson (Stephenville)
    • John Smithee (Amarillo)
  • But wait! It’s not just republicans! Democrat Ana-Maria Ramos has also thrown her hat into the speaker’s race ring.

    State Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos has filed to run for Speaker of the House, becoming the first Democrat to do so in what is becoming a crowded race against incumbent Speaker Dade Phelan.

    Snip.

    With Republicans expected to maintain or even grow their current majority in the Texas House, Ramos is unlikely win her bid for speaker. It does, however, add to the ever-growing consensus that Phelan will not be speaker next session.

  • In theory, the Republican caucus will determine their speaker nominee by secret ballot.

    The vote for Speaker of the House will take place on the first day of the legislative session on January 14, 2025.

    The decision may be made long before that as part of the Republican Caucus’ nominating process.

    The process of Republican legislators nominating a unified speaker candidate ahead of the official vote at the start of the session in January was adopted in 2017, in an attempt to prevent Republican speaker candidates, like then-Speaker Joe Straus, from courting Democrat support for the position.

    In the years since, however, both the former Speaker Dennis Bonnen and the current Speaker Dade Phelan have released lists containing Democrat supporters ahead of the caucus vote, making the exercise a formality.

    This year appears to be shaping up differently as Phelan has already gained four challengers who have promised to appoint only Republicans as committee chairs and gain Republican support first. For the first time, the caucus nomination process could be significant.

    The caucus vote will take place in December as part of their retreat ahead of the session. To clench the caucus’ nomination, multiple rounds of voting can take place during a secret ballot. The winner must receive 2/3 support during the first two rounds of voting. If that does not occur, the threshold then drops to 3/5.

    The widespread disillusion with Phelan over the Paxton impeachment, the school choice vote, and so many Phelan loyalists getting slaughtered in the primary, plus the vocal opposition of Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and Senator Ted Cruz to Phelan continuing as speaker, plus a secret ballot, would seem to doom Phelan’s chances of being the Republican caucus choice.

  • But Texas speaker election rules run things on a top-two runoff basis, not round-by-round elimination, and the process is overseen by the Secretary of State. In combination with Ramos’s run, this would seem to eliminate Phelan’s chance to be elected speaker, as Democrats would presumably support Ramos on the first ballot, while Republicans would support whatever non-Phelan candidate gets the official GOP House Caucus nod, which means Phelan is left out of the top two.
  • Maybe Ramos is getting high on her own supply, actually believing that Democrats are ready to “turn Texas blue,” perhaps thanks to the Democratic Party’s relentless importation of illegal aliens. But since Ken Paxton has been hypervigilant in cracking down on potential voting fraud, that outcome seems…remote.
  • But since the cabal backing the Straus-Bonnen-Phelan speakership line is unlikely to go gently into that good night, I must be missing something. There must be some scheme to either keep Phelan in the speaker’s chair, or elect another cabal toady in his place, that I’m just not seeing.
  • Phelan shows every sign of trying to finagle another term, even going so far as to declare that now he he really is for school choice after working so hard to kill it last session. I don’t think anyone believes those new spots are genuine.
  • Another sign that Phelan is working to win is the announcement that former Republican Governor Rick Perry has hired as a senior advisor.

    Perry’s new position follows the announcement of Phelan’s new chief of staff, Mike Toomey, whose campaign finance records show numerous donations to Democrat lawmakers since 2015.

    Toomey, who previously served as chief of staff to Rick Perry, has been a casino lobbyist, which garnered him between $3.4 and $6.7 million this session alone. One of Toomey’s largest clients is the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which seeks to legalize monopolistic casino gambling in Texas.

    Toomey has also represented Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the group that advocated for Phelan’s impeachment of Paxton last year. Notably, Perry’s name was on the by-line of a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for Paxton’s impeachment and conviction; the article was ghost-written by TLR.

    As of 2022, Perry has warmed up to the expansion of gambling, becoming a spokesperson for Sports Betting Alliance, a group lobbying to legalize mobile sports gambling in Texas.

    Perry will advise Phelan in a “voluntary capacity” until the start of the 89th Texas Legislature in January, according to an official press release.

    Perry’s support of Phelan may seem inexplicable to Texas Republicans who remember him as a conservative stalwart, but Perry has long gone off on ill-advised tangents every now and them, from backing the Gardasil mandate for pre-teen girls to his love for expensive high speed rail subsidies to derailing his presidential campaign by debating while hopped up on goofballs for back surgery.

    Plus, I suspect that gambling money pipeline jets out a pretty lucrative stream…

  • Finally, I note for the record this Texas Scorecard “Speaker Phelan Used State Jet for Campaign Activities” article.

    A new investigative report revealed that House Speaker Dade Phelan used a state jet for campaign activities.

    KHOU 11 has reported that members of the Texas House have used TxDOT’s executive-style jets for activities that crossed the line between “official state business” into personal or political business.

    According to state law, the jets cannot be used for attending “an event at which money is raised for private or political purposes.”

    When Phelan (R-Beaumont) used the jet in September 2022 to attend a speaking engagement at the leftwing Texas Tribune Festival, he didn’t stop there. He then used the jet to attend a University of Texas versus Texas Tech football game in Lubbock.

    In a statement to KHOU 11, Phelan’s office said the trip was to meet with Tech officials and paid for by university donors.

    However, campaign finance records show that he accepted a $2,500 in-kind contribution for “food and beverage for campaign event” the day he got to Lubbock. He also had an $880 charge at a hotel for “staff lodging for political fundraiser.”

    KHOU 11 estimated that he raised at least $37,522 for his campaign on the trip.

    Yeah, probably a violation, but it seems pretty smallball stuff compared to Phelan’s other shenanigans…

  • Why The Army Wants The M1A3 Abrams

    September 15th, 2024

    Or, more specifically, why they decided to do the M1A3 rather than than M1A2SEP4. And the main reason is weight.

  • “This list of proposed capabilities for the new design that include:
    • An autoloader
    • New main gun new turret
    • Hypersonic gun launched missiles that maneuver in midair
    • The ability to pair with robots
    • Masking capabilities to reduce thermal and electromagnetic signatures
    • AI systems that detect incoming fire and prioritize return fire
    • Hybrid electric drivetrain
    • Reduction of crew from 4 to 3.
    • Reduction of weight from 75 tons down to sub 60 tons.
    • But the coolest thing is it’ll likely get a brand new sleek hull for the first time in 30 years.”
  • “US Army leadership [is] reversing course on decades of tank design philosophy to do a last minute complete overhaul from the ground up based on new lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.”
  • The gun-launched anti-tank guided missile is something the army has worked off and on for a long time. The Soviet’s had one, but mainly because their main guns were inaccurate at longer ranges. U.S. had a prototype ATGM that hit a T-72 at 8,600 meters. “But the Army never invested in it to go full rate production. Part of the reason for this might be because it’s also true that tank-launched ATGMs have a smaller warhead and they don’t perform as well against modern composite armor compared to the 1970s.”
  • So why does the army want it now? Line of sight studies in Latvia and Lithuania (i.e, the border with Russia) shows a whole lot of areas where it would be useful.
  • Tank optics are also a lot better now.
  • The new XM 360 cannon uses the same 120mm diameter, but save a full ton of weight by using composites, and delivers the same 17 megajoules of energy to the target as a conventional 140mm cannon, thanks to more efficient plasma ignition.
  • The Russo-Ukrainian War reveals a much more deadly threat environment for tanks. Drones are a huge threat.
  • “They’re going to link the new cannon to a remote-controlled, optionally manned turret by switching to an autoloader and making the turret interior smaller. That’s a lot less volume that has to be protected by heavy armor, which equates to a lot less tons of armor.” When we last checked with western tankers looking at the T-14s autoloader some six years ago, they were skeptical of both smaller crews (“all we do is maintain tanks, and they still break down”) and autoloaders (Abrams tank crews currently put shots on target faster than Russian crews with autoloaders). But since then, the Russo-Ukraine War happened and technology galloped furiously, and presumably higher crew survivability will make the tradeoff worthwhile.
  • M1A3 almost certainly wouldn’t have the cassette design that gives the T-72 its turret toss reputation. “Newly designed autoloading tanks can have all of their ammo secured behind a bulkhead blast shield and can work with blowout panels to prevent detonation from cooking the crew.”
  • “We’ve also seen from combat in Ukraine that the Abrams engine deck with it air intakes and radiators is a popular target point for drone swarms, so the army is looking at unique ways to keep the engine better protected from above without sacrificing cooling performance.”
  • “The new M1A3 Abrams tank would also upgrade from that puny 50 caliber machine gun to possibly the 30mm chain gun remote weapon station. The big advantage there is that it could fire specially made 30mikemikes that provide air burst capability for shooting down drones.” That sounds both awesome and the makings of an extremely complex turret with multiple automatic-feed weapon systems.
  • “We have to remember that systems enhancement packages was always supposed to be a stopgap temporary band-aid solution for the Abrams, because the service thought that they would do with that until a full replacement vehicle was chosen that’s how we ended up with like a dozen different variants of Abrams tanks with various levels of advanced features in the early 2000s.”
  • “The main difference between the M1A1 and A2 is its electronics. However, with this new M1A3, it’s now likely to have a whole brand new hull and turret. There’s conflicting reports on that, but I can’t see any other way that we get the kind of weight reductions that they’re looking for without a whole new hull.”
  • “The first version of the Abrams tank weighed 54 tons. The SEPV4 that was cancelled was on track to weigh over 75 tons. Add in a mine plow and it was going to break the scales at 83 tons.”
  • In May this year, an expert analysis board came to some sobering conclusions. “The M1A2SEP3 and 4 upgrades will improve effectiveness, but not restore dominance. Near transparency in all domains will significantly increase the lethality our forces will experience. We will continue to have to fight outnumbered, exacerbated by a low MBT operational readiness rate and aging fleet.”
  • “Lessons learned in Ukraine is that tanks are sometimes dead meat if they’re too heavy. They get stuck in the mud, they’re too slow not nimble enough to fire and then escape from drones that are searching for them.”
  • That same Latvian-Lithuanian study showed lots of no-go zones for Abrams due to their weight in muddy conditions. “From a tactical perspective a defending Force could easily mine trafficable routes, destroy bridges to complicate Abram’s combat operations during the wet season and funnel them into choke points.”
  • “The study recommends new band tracks to lower the ground pressure to help fix that problem along with the lighter weight.”
  • SEPV3’s heavier weight lowered operational range from 300 miles down to 264.
  • He references the role of tank in the army’s current FM3-0 Operations Guide, which you can read at the link.
  • Transcom says that SEPV3 is too heavy to transport for a lot of roles.
  • Meantime between failure for current tanks is 200 miles, which does seem worrisome.
  • “It will likely have the hybrid electric drivetrain that reduces fuel consumption by 50%.” He calls it the Prius of tanks, but it’s not ugly enough for that.
  • More stealth.
  • More active protection.
  • “The future of armored warfare, the way the army envisions it, is that they’ll be preparing for a major change to tank tactics unlike anything we’ve seen since the introduction of the Abrams in 1980 …they all seem to believe that the future will be a combination of manned and unmanned platforms that are integrated with aerial UAVs. The M1A3 is the first step in that direction.”
  • A major Abrams redesign was probably slightly overdue anyway, but the torrents of real-world information coming out of the Russo-Ukrainian War forced their hand to make more radical changes.

    Dumbest Criminals Of The Decade

    September 14th, 2024

    For your feel-good Saturday video, Daily Dose of Internet has complied a video of the dumbest criminal of the decade (or at least those caught on camera).

    The guy who thought he could escape from the police while also towing his mobile home is an all-time classic.