Something interesting is unfolding in the skies over Ukraine’s south-central front. Over the last ten days, Ukraine has managed to shoot down no less than 12 Russian military aircraft:
First the shootdown list:
“17th of February: Two Su-34s and a Su-35.”
“18th of February A Su-34”
“19th: A Su-34 and a Su-35”
“21st: A Su-34.”
“23rd: A Su-34 and an A-50.”
“27th: A Su-34 and a Su-34.”
“And today the 29th: another Su-34.”
For what it’s worth, Livemap says that Ukraine shot down two Su-34s today.
The Russian air force lost another Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber on Thursday, the Ukrainian air force claimed. If confirmed, the Thursday shoot-down would extend an unprecedented hot streak for Ukrainian air-defenses.
The Ukrainian claim they’ve shot down 11 Russian planes in 11 days: eight Su-34s, two Sukhoi Su-35 fighters and a rare Beriev A-50 radar plane.
But those 11 claimed losses are worse than they might seem for the increasingly stressed Russian air force. In theory, the air arm has plenty more planes. In practice, the service is dangerously close to collapse.
Exactly how the Ukrainians are shooting down so many jets is unclear. It’s possible the Ukrainian air force has assigned some of its American-made Patriot missile launchers to mobile air-defense groups that move quickly in close proximity to the 600-mile front line of Russia’s two-year wider war on Ukraine, ambushing Russian jets with 90-mile-range PAC-2 missiles then swiftly relocating to avoid counterattack.
But the distance at which the Ukrainians shot down that A-50 on Friday—120 miles or so—hints that a longer-range missile system was involved. Perhaps a Cold War-vintage S-200 that the Ukrainian air force pulled out of long-term storage.
It also is apparent the Ukrainians have moved some of their two-dozen or so 25-mile-range NASAMS surface-to-air missile batteries closer to the front line. After all, the Russians found—and destroyed with a missile—their first NASAMS launcher near the southern city of Zaporizhzhia on or before Monday.
He also suggests Russia may be flying more sorties close to the lines to follow-up on its costly victory in Avdiivka.
This surge in Russian sorties presents Ukrainian air-defenders with more targets. So of course they’re shooting down more Russian planes.
It helps the Ukrainian effort that Russian pilots increasingly are blind to Ukrainian missile-launches. The Russian air force once counted on its nine or so active A-50 radar planes—organized into three, three-plane “orbits” in the south, east and north—to extend sensor coverage across Ukraine.
In damaging one A-50 in a drone strike last year and shooting down two more A-50s this year, the Ukrainians have eliminated a third of this sensor coverage, and created blind spots where Russian pilots might struggle to spot approaching missiles.
In any event, the consequences of the Ukrainians’ recent kills, for the Russians, are dire. The Russian air force is losing warplanes far, far faster than it can afford to lose them. Russia’s sanctions-throttled aerospace industry is struggling to build more than a couple of dozen new planes a year.
Escalating losses, exacerbated by anemic plane-production, almost certainly are increasing the stress on the surviving planes and crews. The Russian air arm isn’t yet in an organizational death spiral. But it’s getting closer.
The numbers tell the story. On paper, the Russian air force has acquired 140 of the twin-engine, two-seat, supersonic Su-34s. Counting this year’s unconfirmed losses, the air force has lost 31 of the Su-34s.
But 109 Su-34s still is a lot of Su-34s, right?
Wrong, according to Michael Bohnert, an engineer with the RAND Corporation in California. Shoot-downs represent “only a portion of total losses” of Russian fighters, Bohnert wrote back in August. “Overuse of these aircraft is also costing Russia as the war drags on.”
“In a protracted war, where one force tries to exhaust the other, it’s the total longevity of the military force that matters,” Bohnert added. “And that’s where the VKS”—the Russian air force—“finds itself now.”
Bohnert assumed the air force went to war two years ago with around 900 fighters and attack planes and, in the first 18 months of fighting, lost around 100 of them to Ukrainian action. The problem for the Russians—besides the losses—is that the requirement for fighter and attack sorties hasn’t decreased even as the fighter and attack inventory has decreased.
So those 800 remaining planes are flying more frequently in order to handle taskings the Kremlin once assigned to 900 planes. And that means more wear and tear, deepening maintenance needs and a growing hunger for increasingly hard-to-find spare parts—imperatives that effectively remove airframes from the front-line force.
Given what we know of lax Russian maintenance practices, it’s probably safe to assume that considerably less of those 100 Su-34s are mission capable than would be the case in, say, the U.S. Air Force, which have mission-ready goals of 75-80%, but frequently falls short.
A few more weeks of disasterous losses like this and Russia will be at dire risk of having what remains of it’s air campaign collapse.
And Ukraine still has F-16s due to enter service this year.
I hadn’t intended to use so much of this week talking about Texas elections, but a lot of news is dropping and the primary looms next week, so let’s tuck in:
After mainly remaining on the sidelines ahead of the primary, casino companies seeking to turn Texas into a piggy bank are spending big to back the current House Speaker and his allies.
Chief among these out-of-state interlopers is Las Vegas Sands, giving through its “Texas” Sands PAC. The largest beneficiary of Sands’ money in the latest filing period is embattled House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont).
The casino outfit gave $200,000 to the Speaker, his second-largest donation in the latest filing period. Another gambling behemoth, Penn Entertainment Inc., gave Phelan $20,000. The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma donated $10,000.
Gambling special interests have long targeted Texas but have been rebuffed for decades following failed promises of the Texas Lottery. During the 2023 legislative session, the Texas House advanced gambling measures that the Texas Senate ignored.
In this latest period, Sands gave $1.8 million to Texas politicians. This money went exclusively to members of the Texas House, with Republicans taking $1.34 million and Democrats $457,500. This is potentially a preview of a deluge of money that big gambling may spend in the lead-up to the 2025 legislative session.
State Rep. John Kuempel (R-Seguin), a key proponent of growing the gambling footprint in Texas, received the second-highest total from Sands at $110,000. Like Phelan, Keumpel finds himself up against a field of challengers, including Alan Schoolcraft who enjoys the endorsement of Gov. Greg Abbott and heavy financial backing.
Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi says the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) has paid a company House Speaker Dade Phelan manages three times the market value.
On February 16, 2023, an exclusive Texas Scorecard investigative report examined a lease between HHSC and 3105 Executive, LLC—a company Phelan and members of the Phelan family manage and direct. From December 2017 to December 2023, state taxpayers paid this company $2.3 million through HHSC. The original lease ran from January 2014 to December 2023 but has been extended to August 2029. Phelan was first elected to the Texas House in 2014 and began serving in 2015. He was elected Speaker by fellow House members in 2021.
On February 17, Rinaldi took to social media platform X, noting that the 2023 rent HHSC paid Phelan is three times the market value.
“This looks like a $268,000 windfall to the Speaker’s business paid for money appropriated by the House, which is a big deal,” he wrote. “My next question would be how many other income streams are there like this one?”
Brent Money for House District 2, a seat only recently filled by Jill Dutton in a special election
Joanne Shofner, who is challenging State Rep. Travis Clardy (R-Nacogdoches) for House District 11
Steve Toth (R–Conroe), who is the current representative for House District 15
Janis Holt, who is challenging State Rep. Ernest Bailes (R-Shepherd) for House District 18
Gary Gates (R–Richmond), who is the current representative for House District 28
Wes Virdell for House District 53, which is an open seat following the retirement of State Rep. Andrew Murr (R-Junction)
Hillary Hickland, who is challenging State Rep. Hugh Shine (R-Temple) for House District 55
Stormy Bradley, who is challenging State Rep. Drew Darby (R-San Angelo) for House District 72
Don McLaughlin for House District 80, which is an open seat following the retirement of Tracy King (D-Uvalde)
John Smithee (R–Amarillo), who is the current representative for House District 86
Caroline Fairly for House District 87, which is an open seat following the retirement of Four Price (R-Amarillo)
Barry Wernick, who is challenging State Rep. Morgan Meyer (R-Dallas) for House District 108
Bailes, Darby, Shine, and Meyer all voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton—a close ally of Trump. Gates also voted for impeachment but later apologized and contributed $15,000 to Paxton’s campaign fund.
Bailes, Darby, Clardy, and Shine all voted against Gov. Greg Abbott’s school choice program. Abbott has endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid.
A consensus is forming among a broad front of Republicans (Trump, Abbott, Patrick and Paxton) on who to vote for on Tuesday, and Phalen’s pals ain’t it.
And Paxton is out on the campaign trail supporting challengers to the Phelan-aligned reps who voted for his impeachment.
Ten years into his career in the Texas House, state Rep. Gary VanDeaver (R-New Boston) now faces the very same challenge he mounted a decade ago — a newcomer hoping to unseat an incumbent.
VanDeaver faces two challengers — the Gov. Greg Abbott-backed Chris Spencer and Attorney General Ken Paxton-backed Dale Huls — in his bid for a sixth term in the Legislature.
He is one of 15 House Republicans seeking re-election who voted both for Paxton’s impeachment last May and to strip education savings accounts (ESA) from the House education omnibus bill last November, and for those he’s become a top target. Abbott and the pro-school choice groups wading into Texas House races have an eye toward flipping the seat, and Paxton is bent on exacting retribution.
Snip.
VanDeaver is in a dogfight, primarily against Spencer, the former chairman of the Sulphur Springs River Authority who loaned himself $300,000 at the campaign’s outset and is benefitting greatly from outside money.
According to ad buy data provided to The Texan from Medium Buying, a national GOP placement agency, Spencer and the groups backing him have reserved $116,000 of ad space on cable and broadcast television from Monday through the election next week. That dwarfs the $12,000 spent by VanDeaver’s camp during the same period.
Most of Spencer’s ad space was purchased either by Abbott’s campaign or the School Freedom Fund, a PAC affiliated with the national group Club for Growth.
As of the eight-day reporting period, VanDeaver has $450,000 cash-on-hand after raising $684,000 from January 26 through February 24. During that same period, Spencer raised $257,000 and has $166,000 left on hand. Huls is far behind the other two with $16,000 raised and $7,000 remaining in the bank.
I’m not one to vote for a Republican incumbent just because they’re a Republican incumbent. That, and the fact that the operations of the Texas Railroad Commission are seldom reported on and mostly opaque to me, have heretofore kept me from backing Christi Craddick’s reelection bid, especially since she has four challengers this year.
Nor have her multiple direct mail flyers (with so few competitive races this year, she’s one of the few sending them) saying all the right things, sold me either. Nor did endorsements from the Williamson County Republican Party, or the Texans United for a Conservative Majority PAC, do the trick. (I’m inclined more toward the latter, simply because it agrees with GOA endorsements.)
So I was still looking for a sign. And lo and behold, one was given unto me.
Once upon a time (say 40 odd years ago), the Chronicle, much like the city it was published in, was reliably conservative and Republican. That hasn’t been true for a long time. Today they suffer from the same far left myopia that infects the rest of the MSM, and they seem to have endorsed Matlock for his regurgitation of some well-debunked Gaslands anti-fracking talking points. (Oh, they also endorsed Nikki Haley, because of course they did.)
The fact that Craddick’s most prominent opponent is far enough off-base to be endorsed by the Houston Chronicle is enough to make me back her…
The Black Hornet drone that western nations have supplied Ukraine with has some very interesting tech and capabilities, and is all but invisible to visual and electronic detection. But there’s a catch.
“In Ukraine’s battle for Air Supremacy with Russia, a swarm of tiny black hornet drones might just give it the edge.” I wouldn’t say air supremacy, I would say it’s extending Ukraine’s lead in recon supremacy.
“These drones act as eyes for Ukrainian troops on the ground. And thanks to the US, UK and Norway, Ukraine now has an entire fleet of them ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice.”
“In July 2023, the United States announced that it would deliver $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine. Beyond the typical armored vehicles and air defense missiles, that package would also include Black Hornet drones made by Teledyne FLIR defense. A month later the UK made a similar announcement. Working with Norwegian manufacturers it would spend $9 million on these microdrones, sending them over to Ukraine for use as covert surveillance tools.”
“All told, Ukraine now has over 1,000 of these drones at its disposal, and they’re helping Kiev slowly turn the tide against Putin’s invading forces.” Hopefully, but I think that remains to be seen at this point.
“In Ukraine’s case, they’ve received shipments of the Black Hornet 3, which measures just 6.6 inches from nose to tail, and weighs only 1.16 ounces. In other words they’re tiny. So tiny, in fact, that the,drones are easy to hide among foliage and trees, making them almost imperceptible to opposing troops.”
“Further more, the drones are designed to be practically silent when in operation.”
It’s a tiny helicopter outfitted with several high definition cameras, limited autonomy, a radio range of a bit over a mile, about 25 minutes of flight time (and takes about the same to recharge). It can actually penetrate into buildings and trenches.
I’m skipping over the idea the video floats of these things spying on Russian planes, since the size/speed/distance equation simply isn’t there.
But all these high tech capabilities come at a price: “$195,000 per unit.” You can buy an awful lot of RPG drones for that kind of money…
The drones are not brand-spanking new, and were used in Afghanistan. However, I’ve got to think the Russian’s insistence on extensive defensive fortification are going to make them ideal for the sort of atomized conflicts we’ve seen thus far in the war, and they should be great at spotting targets for artillery and weapons drones.
I can see having one of these per infantry platoon. But the high per-unit costs precludes the idea they discuss of each member of the platoon having one, at least until that cost comes way, way down…
Hillsboro is a large town/small city of some 8,000+ people that most Texans have probably driven through at some point. They’re a county seat, sit smack dab in the great plains agricultural belt and have some light manufacturing, but their main economic advantage is being right where I-35E and I-35W join/split to I-35 traveling south to Waco, Austin and San Antonio. Hillsboro is perfectly positioned to be a road trip snack and restroom break stop.
For years one of Hillsboro’s most notable features was its outlet mall, with a variety of national brands. I bought a Fossil watch from their store many, many years ago.
Well, I traveled through there to and from the Metroplex for a funeral, the outlet mall is dead. Though the two open air mall segments have space for some 86 stores, there’s now precisely one open, a Bath and Body Works. The Hillsboro outlet mall was already ailing before the Flu Manchu lockdowns, but that seems top have accelerated the decline. (San Marcos outlet malls, also on the I-35 corridor, seem to done a much better job weathering the economic headwinds.) This would suggest Hillsboro has entered a period of economic stagnation and decline.
This is the point where I’m supposed to insert some pithy “when one door closes another opens” aphorism. But I rather strongly suspect this particular mall closing scenario plays out very differently in a blue locale like New York or California, where everyone with the means to do so is moving away from those failing high-tax, high-crime states as fast as they can.
A year after its censorship programs were exposed, the Global Engagement Center still insists the public has no right to know how it’s spending taxpayer money…
The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the Washington Examiner:
The State Department tells Congress, which controls its funding, that it will only disclose where it spent our money “in camera”
A year ago the Examiner published “Disinformation, Inc.”, a series by investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky describing how the State Department was backing a UK-based agency that creates digital blacklists for disfavored media outlets. Your taxes helped fund the Global Disinformation Index, or GDI, which proudly touts among its services an Orwellian horror called the Dynamic Exclusion List, a digital time-out corner where at least 2,000 websites were put on blast as unsuitable for advertising, “thus disrupting the ad-funded disinformation business model.”
Mega-bank JP Morgan has officially left a $68 trillion investor coalition that is “focused on pressing the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to decarbonize,” according to Bloomberg.
In other words, the “fight” to decarbonize is imploding.
JP Morgan said it is leaving the Climate Action 100+ because it has “made significant investments in developing its own climate risk engagement framework”, the report says. The bank claims to have 40 professionals now focused on sustainable investing.
And the damage for the Climate Action 100+ may only be getting started. Lance Dial, a Boston-based partner at law firm K&L Gates LLP, told Bloomberg: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more defections, especially given that there’s now a cost, such as potential litigation, that wasn’t there when companies joined.”
He added: “Attorneys general have subpoenaed firms about their membership of these groups.”
Remember that Chinese invasion we talked about earlier in the week? Republican U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales thinks it uses Sinaloa cartel.
In FY 2023, over 37,000 illegal Chinese aliens were encountered at the porous southern border, with an additional 20,000 having crossed since October when FY 2024 began. The federal data shows that the United States is seeing foreign invaders from more countries than ever before.
According to Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas), he believes the illegals crossing into California may indeed be staying there, he told the Daily Mail.
“As I’ve spoken to different agencies about why some communities [groups of migrants] to one place and others go another, one: it depends on what cartel controls that pipeline,” Gonzalez said.
‘It’s very clear that the Sinaloa Cartel is the one controlling that operation and sending Chinese more toward the California corridor…California/Arizona corridor that they control. That’s half the equation.’
Another theory: “[Oriel Ortega], the former director of Panama’s border patrol told The Epoch Times that the United Nations’ migration agenda is behind the chaos at the U.S. southern border and that U.N. partners are making things worse instead of better.”
More “refugees” behaving badly, with Eritrean, East African, gangs battling it out at an opera house in The Hague.
Results: “Six of Ohio’s eight largest cities experienced a drop in gun crime after the state allowed its citizens to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.”
Another dispatch from one of China’s ghost city developments, but this one with a twist: All the homes were theoretically designed for rich people, but I’m having a hard time figuring out why they would want them.
More than 100 uncompleted McMansions sit in Shenyang City some 400 miles northeast of Beijing.
They were “built by Greenland Group, one of the more than 50 housing developers that have defaulted on their debt in recent years.”
“Construction in 2010 but came to a halt a few years later.”
I know that China is a very different country indeed, but I can’t figure out why the developers thought that these McMasions, all made on the same floorplan and jowl by jowl next to each other on pretty small plots of land, would be appealing to the wealthy in the first place. They houses themselves are big and stylish enough in the 19th century French style they were aping, but the rich want land, space and differentiation, not to live between two houses exactly like their own on a small plot of land.
Yet another example of China’s inexplicable, wasteful policies…
As early voting begins in the Republican primary election in Texas, former President Donald Trump has issued a series of endorsements of candidates running for the Texas Legislature.
In a series of posts on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump revealed the endorsements, which included four challengers to incumbent members he called “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only).
Those candidates include:
Mike Olcott, challenging State Rep. Glenn Rogers (R–Staford) in House District 60
Helen Kerwin, challenging State Rep. DeWayne Burns (R–Cleburne) in House District 58
Alan Schoolcraft, challenging State Rep. John Kuempel (R–Seguin) in House District 44
Liz Case, challenging State Rep. Stan Lambert (R–Abilene) in House District 61 [Note: This is typo. Case is running in District 71. — LP]
Trump gave his “complete and total endorsement” to each candidate, citing their opponents’ votes to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton and opposition to school choice as reasons for doing so.
Additionally, Trump endorsed Brent Hagenbuch for the open Senate District 30 being vacated by retiring State Sen. Drew Springer (R–Muenster).
After I post this, I’m going to go back and add the Trump endorsements to yesterday’s roundup.
So here is a list of every contested Republican state House race, whether the incumbent voted to kill school choice or impeach Paxton, and who their challengers are:
District 1: Gary VanDeaver:
Voted to kill school choice? Yes
Voted to impeach Paxton? Yes
Dutton is listed as the incumbent because she won the special election for the seat of the expelled and disgraced Bryan Slaton. But she wasn’t in office to vote for or against school choice or the Paxton impeachment.
As Speaker of the House, Phalen voted Present on the school choice gutting and Paxton impeachment votes, but is known to be the motivating factor behind both.
