Rheinmetall has a new “GameChanger” drone (so they say) with an official “Rheinmetall Combat Drone” moniker that only a German company could love. I don’t see it as an actual gamecharger, but it is pretty interesting: a fixed-wing drone that can drop three other quadcopter drones (or, technically, loitering munitions), each of which can then be guided to the target.
The Rheinmetall Combat Drone is based on the German arms maker’s Luna NG reconnaissance drone and can carry the Hero-R type loitering munition.
“The Rheinmetall Combat Drone is the game changer for protecting your troops and fighting tactically relevant targets,” the company stated.
“Effectors as payloads transform the multipurpose drone from a sensor-to-shooter system into a highly efficient means of reconnaissance with com/network relay and SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) capabilities.”
The NG is the latest in the Luna family of reconnaissance drones, with an endurance of 12 hours and a data link range of 100 kilometers (62 miles). Satellite Communication would provide it with increased range.
The robust fiberglass composite drone has a take-off weight of 40 kilograms (88 pounds) and a service ceiling of 5,000 meters (16,404 feet).
The runway-independent vehicle can be launched with a rope hoist catapult and landed with a parachute and has stealth features with low acoustic, thermal, and radar signatures.
There’s an official video, but Rheinmetall has disabled embedding. So here’s a random Ukrainian guy (judged entirely from the trident on his hat) who’s evidently offering commentary on the drone, and has thus embedded most of the Rheinmetall video into his own. The relevant portion starts around 1:42 in.
Rheinmetall is a very solid MilTech company, but they tend to publicize things well in advance of commercial availability. (They’re hardly alone in this.) As such, I wouldn’t expect released versions to show up in the Russo-Ukrainian War. But they might send a few there for field testing.
I can see use cases for this weapon, especially for hunting down high value targets deep behind enemy lines. But this is sort of like the Cadillac Escalade of drones, while Ukraine’s flying yeet of death is more like an electric scooter: much shorter range, much more annoying, and much more cost effective for their intended task.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is probably cramming decades of drone development into white hot years of combat evolution (as wars tend to do), and every world military needs to be paying attention.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has laid out the devastating results of runaway government spending on the middle class and why it’s so important to claw back lost ground for the average American, who has “received a pay cut for 24 consecutive months … as inflation has persisted.”
He also noted the average American family has lost the equivalent of more than $7,000 in annual income.
There is a direct link between spending, borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, and these disastrous results for Americans.
President Biden has spent trillions of dollars the nation didn’t have.
These unchecked costs drove the deficit to record highs and pushed the debt over $31 trillion.
A former Connecticut Planned Parenthood honcho took his own life days after police failed to arrest him on child pornography charges — botching the raid by knocking down the door of the suspect’s New Haven neighbor.
Tim Yergeau, 36, the former director of strategic communications at the Southern New England branch of Planned Parenthood, died by suicide on Tuesday amid a child pornography investigation in Connecticut last week.
The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a proposal that would prohibit schools from instituting policies that “categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.” The policy would allow schools to implement certain limitations in the interest of fairness or safety, however.
The proposed rule, which would impact any school or college that receives federal funding, would expand Title IX protections to include gender identity. Under the proposal, a “one-size-fits-all” ban on transgender athletes playing on teams that match their stated gender identity would be a violation of Title IX. The rule, which is likely to face challenges, will face a lengthy approval process.
This is, in fact, the exact opposite of the text of Title IX, which provides special protection for biological women, not men pretending to be women.
Under the radar, a package of bills is ramming through sweeping changes that will reorient our public schools around a new paradigm — subordinating academic basics to an obsessive, politicized preoccupation with race and social justice activism.
“Critical Social Justice” ideology (CSJ) — the vehicle for manipulating our young people into adopting this worldview — is laced strategically through a variety of bills, including “ethnic studies” (HF 1502), “Teachers of Color” (HF 320) and now the House and Senate omnibus education bills (HF 2497/SF 2684).
Taken together, this legislation will inject reductive, racialized thinking into every classroom in Minnesota’s approximately 500 school districts and charter schools; change the fundamental mechanics of education in our state; and give the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) broad new powers that amount to an end-run around our state’s hallowed tradition of local control.
Here’s a story I missed earlier: “Kazakhstan Impounds Property of Roscosmos Subsidiary.” That’s the Russian company that’s the main operator of Baikonur spaceport. Haven’t seen any resolution to this, mainly because Russia is so broke thanks to mismanagement, sanctions, and an illegal war of territorial aggression.
Jay Leno drives the 1,025 horsepower 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. I have an irrational desire to own something with a Hellcat engine, which I need like I need a hole in my head. Plus I like the look of the Shelby GT-500 Mustang better, and I’m not buying one of those either.
“Disney has proudly employed sex predators for years, and this act of aggression by DeSantis will force thousands of our proud pedo-American workers to leave the park to stay outside the 1,000-foot radius required by law,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger. “This is tyranny!”
That’s the assertion of Reporting from Ukraine, who says that the counterattack is happening in Zaporizhzhia:
Reporting from Ukraine is pretty rah-rah for Ukraine, always putting a positive spin on things (“Ukrainian troops successfully withdrew from northern Bakhmut”), but he’s good on reporting the nitty gritty details of tactical movement and seems to have direct sources in the Ukrainian military.
Takeaways:
He’s seeing Ukrainian forces advance all across the Zaporizhzhia front.
“The freshest reports suggest that Ukrainians breached the Russian defense in the trenches in front of Novodanylivka and got closer to Nesterianka and Kopani from the east.”
“Ukrainian presence was also noted in the southern part of Kamianske, which means that Russians highly likely abandoned Piatykhatky as well.”
“Ukrainian Head of Melitopol reported that Russians announced an urgent evacuation from all settlements between Vasylivka and Tokmak, in fear that this may very soon become the most active battleground.”
“In order to prevent the accumulation of a critical amount of heavy equipment in the region, Russian forces started to actively use guided air bombs. These bombs weigh from 500 to 1500 kilograms and have a range of up to 40 kilometers, which poses a significant threat to Ukrainian plans. The craters from the explosions are enormous and can reach up to 50 meters in diameter.” I’m guessing these might be KAB-1500Ls.
“Ukrainians are trying to reciprocate the damage and are also identifying and destroying Russian warehouses with ammunition and equipment.”
“It looks like the same action is going to take place very soon in the Orikhiv direction because Russian reconnaissance recently reported that Ukrainians are actively demining significant clusters of land. Another indicator of the imminent Ukrainian offensive actions here is the fact that certain elements of the 71st Jager Brigade and 46th Assault Brigade recently arrived at Orikhiv, according Russian sources.”
“[The] Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized Brigade conducted a series of assaults in the vicinity of Vuhledar.”
“The intensification of fighting along the whole southern line has been noted by many analysts, but today, the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense finally confirmed that the counteroffensive operation has started.”
Well, sort of: “She stated that it is incorrect to wait for a specific date because counteroffensive is a long process and it is only the culmination that happens quickly, but no one can predict when the culmination will happen, as it depends on the conditions on the ground.”
“Right now, Ukrainians are testing Russian defenses, letting the newly formed assault units gain combat experience and, for the most part, follow the path of lowest resistance – meaning they push where they can, leaving the strongest positions for later. Russian analysts are predicting that Ukrainians will make at least two huge attacks during the last week of April to test new tactics and then launch a full-scale counteroffensive during the first half of May.” Sounds like probing attacks for now, but I can see Ukraine moving quickly to exploit any gaps or pushing hard if there’s a sudden Russian line collapse.
Institute for the Study of War also has a similar confirmation-that’s-not-quite-a-confirmation: “Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported on April 19 that Ukrainian forces are already conducting some counteroffensive actions. Malyar stated that Ukrainian forces will never preemptively announce when the counteroffensive starts and reiterated that Ukrainian forces aim to liberate all Ukrainian territory.”
Deep State shows some small recent-ish Ukrainian gains there:
— Geoff' The Frenchy Fella – War News 🇺🇦 (@Geoff_WarNews) April 20, 2023
So it’s hard to say for sure that this push is the much-anticipated Big Spring Counteroffensive. It could be a probing raid, or it could be a faint, with the main blow scheduled to fall elsewhere. Certainly Zaporizhzhia is the front section that has the most promise to split Russian forces in half and cut Russian forces in Kherson and Crimea off from resupply. Russia has to know this, and has been extending defense trenches throughout the area, but continues to throw troops into the Bakhmut meat-grinder rather than (as far as observers can tell) seriously reinforcing the area. Maybe Russia has reinforced it more than we know, but maybe not. It would be very far from the first time Russia made a stupid, obvious mistake in this war.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say that a counteroffensive is underway.
You know that “creating more public roads just creates more traffic” talking point trotted out by people who want to ban your car?
Yeah, not so much.
The first two thirds of the video covers other topics, like how economies of scale don’t necessarily drive down prices uniformly, and as you scale, you incur new costs that might make a product less profitable. (One example is China’s overbuilt high speed rail network.)
The last portion deals with the “roads create traffic” myth, directly delving into the study the anti-road types cite:
“What [building new highways[ doesn’t do is create entirely new demand.”
“New roadways, especially interstates, tend to be more direct, and can take a larger volume of traffic than alternative routes through urban areas.”
“The study itself has also been widely criticized for making assumptions that other economists were not able to replicate in follow-up studies.”
“Its methodology was also questionable. It measured interstate kilometers traveled. Building out more interstates might make people use those roads more, but that doesn’t mean that there are more cars overall, because a lot of that traffic would have been taken away from non-interstate roads, which were not measured in the study.”
“More roads won’t create more congestion unless they are designed very poorly, and reducing the supply of roads won’t ease congestion, either.”
The original study authors didn’t even suggest reducing roads; they were in favor of congestion charges.
Another lunatic leftwing California ecowarrior directive bites the dust.
A federal appeals court on Monday overturned a California city’s first-in-the-nation ban on natural gas hookups in new buildings, saying it violates federal law.
The three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal sided with a coalition of California restaurants, who argued that the City of Berkeley’s ordinance essentially bans gas appliances in violation of a 1975 directive that gives Congress control over restrictions on appliances. The unanimous ruling is a major blow to California Democrats’ green energy push, and could clear the way for legal challenges to similar bans around the country.
Democrats have increasingly moved to ban gas stoves while attempting to downplay their efforts. New York is poised to become the first state to ban gas stoves, and California is working towards a statewide ban of its own. The White House has denied that President Joe Biden supports banning gas stoves while the Energy Department works to restrict their sale. Blue state attorneys general and environmental groups lined up to support the ban in court, in a sign of the case’s national implications.
The California Restaurant Association claimed Berkeley’s ban violated the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act , which gives the federal government final say over restrictions on energy appliances.
Judge Patrick Bumatay wrote that even though Berkeley lawmakers didn’t specifically ban the use of natural gas appliances, they reached the same result “circuitously” by changing their building code to ban gas piping—a policy that renders “the gas appliances useless,” he said.
This preemption would apply to state policies as well, he added.
“States and localities can’t skirt [federal preemption] by doing indirectly what Congress says they can’t do directly,” he wrote.
There’s simply no end to the things ordinary people enjoy that radical environmentalists are willing to ban. Fortunately, there’s still some semblance of the rule of law to at least temporarily keep them in check…
Here’s a video where Ex-LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva discusses how the Homeless Industrial Complex racket works there.
Five people a day die on the streets of LA in the gutter like a dog. Five a day. Like, five on drugs from overdosing overdosing on drugs, from illnesses that are treatable. But if you’re not being treated, like, for example, you’re insulin dependent type one [diabetes]. Without insulin you die. That’s what happens, because these are people are not in a state of mind to actually accept and seek medical care for a problem, so it goes untreated they die, or they overdose and they die, or they do both and they die. I think in 2020-2021, they registered, I think, over 1,800 deaths of that type on the street, which is mind-boggling, but it’s consistent.
“If you don’t pay attention, people are going to die. So the people, the activists, they want to get in the way. ‘Don’t touch them, you’re criminalizing poverty!’ or this or that. Yet they have no answer. And their solution is just to let people die on the street. That’s not a solution.”
“The [homeless] count is getting bigger, not smaller.”
“There’s a perception in the entire nation that, if you’re homeless and you like to use drugs, go to LA. Until that train stops, it doesn’t matter what you do locally in LA. You can’t defeat 49 other states sending all their homeless their derelicts their drug addicts to LA.” I don’t know, a lot still seem to be going to San Francisco. And we need to do more to spread the word to Austin’s drug addicted transients in hopes they move there.
When he started trying to clean things up, he got immediate pushback from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. They had “no desire whatsoever” to work with him.
“They’re not doing anything about it because the homeless industrial complex is alive and well. Look at the career arc of Holly Mitchell, supervisor. Karen Bass, mayor. Community organizers. Now they’re running non-profits. Now they’re receiving contracts from the county, from the city. Now they’re in public office. Those two in particular prime example of it, and that’s the wave of the future.”
“You’ve got a whole community of people that are in the 501c3s, the non-profits, and uh Boards of Directors, CEOs. The amount of money is pouring into the nonprofits is just incredible. There’s no governance, there’s no oversigh, there’s no accountability on the results. They just keep shoveling money at them, and the problem keeps getting worse and worse.”
“This has become a system for people to to get in and get involved, and actually build a career and build a path to politics. The top 10 CEOs of non-profits eight hundred thousand dollar a year. They were making more than twice what I was making as sheriff, and the size of my operation dwarfed all of them probably combined. But that tells you the influence the money involved.”
“From 2011 to 2021, L.A. County spent 6.5 billion dollars on homeless initiatives. The homeless count went from 39,000 to over 80,000. it doubled in size.”
“It’s engulfing every corner of life in L.A County.”
The big advantage that Carl-Gustav offers is that it’s much cheaper per round than smart munitions like Javelin.
“In the case of Ukraine [they’re] using these things for against everything from guys behind cover to light armored vehicles, soft skin vehicles and, of course, main battle tanks.”
Used by more than 40 countries.
Carl-Gustav can’t fill the top attack role NLAW and Javelin use against tanks. “But it can cripple a main battle tank. And with some of these advanced warheads, it can affect a not just a mobility kill, but an outright Kill, at least from the rear.”
“And if you blow off a track, the thing isn’t moving and it can then be killed perhaps another way, or the crew will simply abandon it.”
There are 15 different types of shells, including smoke and illumination.
They’re also working on guided munitions.
They’re also working on a confined-space munition with reduced back-blast, which sounds really useful for urban warfare.
Models produced are M1 (starting 1946) through M4 (2014).
A wide variety of rounds, including antipersonnel and two-phase charge designed to defeat reactive armor.
Most of NATO uses it, including the U.S., UK, Germany, Poland and all three of the Baltic states.
Ukraine managed to take out a T-90 with it.
Whether it’s better than an RPG-7 probably comes down to training and use case. The RPG-7 looks to be a lot more portable, but I’m betting the average Carl-Gustav build quality is better.
If you’re stressing over your taxes, you might be slightly relieved to know that they’re not due until April 18. Thus week: More Blue City violence and decline, lots of Social Justice Warrior backlash, Facebook shows snowflakes the door, and Budweiser commits brand suicide.
“Ex-ABC Senior Producer Who Rolling Stone Covered For Indicted On Child Porn Charges. Former ABC senior producer James Gordon Meek has been indicted on three counts of child pornography nearly one year after the FBI raided his Arlington, Virginia home.”
Something about the apparently random street murder of Silicon Valley tech executive Bob Lee seems to have overturned a crawly rock in San Francisco’s political scene, suggesting a brewing power struggle on the horizon.
On the one hand, we have a very vocally angry Silicon Valley tech community speaking out about the out-of-control crime situation in the city, with the valued and talented Lee’s untimely death from some night creature who crawled out from some sewer or encampment and stabbed him to death, quite possibly in a drug-addled haze. That’s expected if you live in a place full of bums and criminals, but Lee didn’t live in a place full of bums and criminals. He had actually fled the city for Florida based on its engulfing crime and come back only for a brief business trip.
On the other hand, we have a soggy, entrenched political establishment seeking to assure that there’s really no crime problem at all. This is evident enough in the “crime is down” coverage seen in the political establishment’s house organ, the San Francisco Chronicle, and in the surreal statements of the city hall power establishment, which is rooted in special interests, particularly the most powerful one, the homeless industrial complex. I wrote about that here. San Francisco currently spends about as much on homeless “services” as it does on police, and by some studies such as the one cited below, actually more.
Not surprisingly, as per Thomas Sowell’s observation, you can have all the poverty you want to pay for, and San Francisco pays a lot.
The Hoover Institution’s Lee Ohanian has noted:
Spending $1.1 billion on homelessness is just the latest installment in San Francisco’s constant failure to sensibly and humanely deal with an issue that it chronically misdiagnoses and mismanages about as much as is humanly possible. Since fiscal year 2016–17, San Francisco has spent over $2.8 billion on homelessness, and the city’s politicians remain seemingly baffled, year after year, as the number of homeless in the city skyrocket, as opioid overdoses kill more than COVID-19, and as the city has become nearly the most dangerous in the country. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-rid….
Since 2016, the number of homeless in San Francisco has increased from 12,249 to 19,086, which comes out to about $57,000 in spending per homeless person per year. With a total population of about 860,000, roughly 2.2 percent of San Francisco residents are homeless, which is over 12 times the national average. There is little doubt that as San Francisco spends more, homelessness and its impact on the city worsens.
Do the homeless get that $57,000 being spent on them? Of course not. The princelings of the NGO establishments got that money — for themselves. That’s what’s made them politically powerful, enough to call the shots at city hall.
Democrats and Social Justice Warriors view homelessness as a huge profit center, and seek to increase the ranks of the homeless at every opportunity.
Also, an arrest was made in the Lee case and it was a fellow tech guy who knew him. “A tech executive named Nima Momeni was arrested by San Francisco police Thursday morning in the April 4 killing of Cash App founder Bob Lee…Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4, they were purportedly driving together through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to the suspect.” So not a random gibbering drug-addicted transient.
Speaking of San Francisco street crime, a Whole Food closes one year after opening due to violence and theft.
A St. Louis judge sanctioned St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office last week for allegedly withholding evidence in a double-murder case, while allowing the suspect out on bond, amid rising criticism about left-wing prosecutors allowing crime to flourish in major U.S. cities.
Alex Heflin, 23, was held without bond since January after he was initially charged with two counts of second-degree murder and armed criminal action, local media reported. But those charges were recently reduced to involuntary and voluntary manslaughter before he was released, while his April 17 trial has been postponed until June 12.
Judge Theresa Counts Burke ruled in favor of Heflin’s lawyers after they filed a motion accusing a prosecutor under Gardner of violating discovery rules. They alleged that her office did not turn over evidence, including a 911 call recording and DNA evidence.
“The court finds that there have been repeated delays by the state in obtaining discovery and providing it to the defense,” Burke wrote, according to local reports.
“There has been a lack of diligence on the part of the state in following up and providing discovery to the defendant in a timely fashion. As a result of the state’s actions and lack of diligence, the court grants defendant’s second motion for sanctions.”
Under Burke’s order, Heflin will have to remain on GPS monitoring. She also ordered the circuit attorney’s office to hand over their list of witnesses within 24 hours, provide DNA test results within 24 hours, or ask a crime lab for the DNA results.
“Molotov balloons are a ball filled with sulfuric acid, but white strips are a type of paper treated with potassium chlorate and a sugar mix. When the balloon breaks, the acid reacts with the potassium chlorate and sugar, which causes ignition.”
Another girlboss indicted: “Penn grad Charlie Javice, founder of Frank, charged with fraud over $175M JPMorgan deal.” Seems the heart of the indictment is fake users.
Prosecutors and the SEC allege that Javice orchestrated a scheme to deceive JPMorgan into believing that Frank had access to valuable data on 4.25 million students who used the company’s service when in reality the number was less than 300,000.
Prosecutors said when JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) sought to verify the number of Frank users and the amount of data collected about them, Javice fabricated a data set. She is alleged to have an unnamed co-conspirator who first asked Frank’s director of engineering to create an artificially generated data set. Prosecutors said the director of engineering declined the request after expressing concerns about its legality.
Javice, according to prosecutors, then approached an outside data scientist and hired him to create the synthetic data set — which was then provided to an agreed-upon third-party vendor in an effort to confirm to JPMorgan that the data set had over 4.25 million rows.
Based on that alleged fraudulent data, prosecutors said JPMorgan agreed to buy Frank for $175 million. As part of the deal, the nation’s largest bank hired Javice and other Frank employees. Prosecutors said Javice received over $21 million for selling her equity stake in Frank and, per the terms of the deal, was to be paid another $20 million as a retention bonus.
Prosecutors said as the fabricated data set was being created, Javice and her co-conspirator sought to purchase real data for over 4.25 million college students to cover up their misrepresentations.
Treading the fine line between “fake it until you make it” and “interstate wire fraud.”
Bud light tranny pander wrecks brand. “I’ve never seen such little sales [as] in this past few days.”
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has been out of the public eye for weeks, following a serious fall that hospitalized him. Now multiple sources confirm that Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota are actively reaching out to fellow Republican senators in efforts to prepare for an anticipated leadership vote — a vote that would occur upon announcement that McConnell would be retiring from his duties as leader, and presumably the Senate itself.
One source says that Cornyn has been particularly active in his preparations, taking fellow senators with whom he has little in common to lunch in attempts to court them.
Requests are being targeted at a plethora of conservative senators, including the sixteen who voted to delay the leadership election earlier this year, a proxy for opposition to McConnell’s leadership. Rick Scott, the Florida senator and former NRSC head who challenged McConnell, ultimately received ten protest votes. These members could prove key to determining the next Republican leader. Queries are also being made internally about the rules regarding replacement, and how the contest would be structured given the lack of an obvious heir apparent.
McConnell fell at a dinner event for the Senate Leadership Fund on March 8 at the Waldorf Astoria, formerly the Trump Hotel, in Washington, DC. He suffered a concussion, and only after being treated at a hospital and at his home did murmurs begin that he might be unable to return to the Senate. These discussions increased in volume based on the inability of other senators to do their jobs — with California’s Dianne Feinstein missing votes due to a shingles diagnosis and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania’s hospitalization for depression.
McConnell has guided the Republican Senate since 2007, and his role at the top of the party has been enormously significant.
Indeed.
This link comes from Ace of Spades, who is quite enthusiastic about McConnell being shown the door. “You need to spend some more time with your Chinese donors and corporate bagmen, Mitch.”
I’m a bit more sanguine.
The job of the Senate Majority/Minority leader is to be the hated asshole. (Lyndon Baines Johnson is widely regarded as the most effective Senate leader of the 20th century, and he was an absolute fucking tool.) Herding cats in the Senate requires the leader to be the heavy, and the balancing act means that partisans will always be disappointed in a leader’s actions. After all, disappointment is steeped into the Senate by design, as the cold saucer to cool the hot tea of the House.
Cornyn is one of my senators, and I’m not enthused about him taking office. Scott would be better. Thune used to be solid but has turned squishy. I don’t know much about Barrasso, but his Heritage Action rating (a quick-and-dirty rating, but better than nothing) is 85%, which seems low for Wyoming.
Whoever does replace McConnell as GOP leader in the Senate, it’s almost a certainty that we’ll be comparing him unfavorably to McConnell within a year.
