Posts Tagged ‘Russo-Ukrainian War’

Texas Helps Solve Ukraine’s Shell Problem

Tuesday, September 19th, 2023

Many observers have been shocked at the furious rate of ordinance expenditure seen in Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine. Much attention has been focused on smart munitions like Stingers and HIMARS, but plain old dumb artillery shells are also being used up at a furious rate.

  • “Recently, the COO of Lockheed Martin said that Ukraine consumes a year’s worth of production for some munitions in just one month.”
  • “In March 2023, the Ukrainian minister of Defence Oleksiy Reznikov said that Ukraine uses on average 110,000 units of 155mm caliber shells per month. But he stressed that Ukraine can fire 594,000 shells per month, if the ammunition was available.”
  • “This discrepancy between what is actually fired and what could be fired means that over 300 western artillery systems that Ukraine has are sitting unused 80% of the time. That’s why Ukraine wants 250,000 artillery shells per month from the European Union alone.”
  • “According to the Ukrainians, in order to achieve their battlefield objectives, they need at least 60% of the full ammunition set, or 356,000 shells per month. If the EU were to provide 250,000 shells, the other 106,000 would have to be supplied by other western partners, primarily the United States.”
  • “But there’s a problem. The United States is currently producing only 24,000 155mm artillery shells which is up from 16,000 shells produced in February 2022, prior to the Russian invasion.”
  • America isn’t into grinding artillery duels, we’re into speed, precision munitions and air superiority.
  • “The unguided shells have been the cornerstone of the 18-month old conflict, since each day, thousands of shells are fired from both sides.”
  • “Since the Russian invasion began, the Pentagon has invested billions of dollars to produce record levels of artillery shells, not seen since the Korean War in the early 1950s. By 2024, the United States wants to produce 80,000 shells per month. That would be a 500% increase from prior to the invasion.”
  • Part of the solution to that problem is coming from Mesquite, Texas. (For those outside Texas, Mesquite is part of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, and is east of Dallas and south of Garland.)

    Earlier this year, the Mesquite City Council approved the construction of a manufacturing facility for military manufacturer General Dynamics and Tactical Systems.

    The 240,011-square-foot building is expected to employ 50 salaried and 75 to 100 hourly employees after the city approved the new $60 million industrial campus in 2021.

    “This unique opportunity is a direct result of our strong partnership with the U.S. Army and a very responsive and collaborative Mesquite, Texas, community,” said Steven Black, vice president and general manager at General Dynamics. “We are very excited to grow our company in this region.”

    Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley echoed similar sentiments, saying he is “excited” to have Mesquite become a “robust commercial center” so that residents “no longer have to leave” the city to work.

    “Once the installation is complete, the manufacturing facility will effectively produce 20,000 units per month for the Department of Defense, which will contribute to the inherently necessary defense capabilities of the United States and our allies abroad,” General Dynamics said in a letter to the city.

    According to The New York Times, those “20,000 units” refer to 155-millimeter artillery shells for howitzers. The U.S. government is planning to increase its production of 155-millimeter shells from 15,000 to 90,000 per month to keep up with the need in Ukraine.

    “We don’t want to say we’re profiting off of a conflict like that — we’re not feeling any of the effects of war,” Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley told the Times regarding the war in Ukraine. “But at the same time, it’s a global scale of the economy, and that generates a need.”

    My guess is that the shells manufactured in Mesquite will be used to backfill U.S. shell stock sent to Ukraine.

    It’s not complete solution to Ukraine’s shell problem, but it’s a start. But Ukraine is going to need a lot more help than that to supercharge its current grinding counteroffensive.

    LinkSwarm for September 15, 2023

    Friday, September 15th, 2023

    The Biden economy continues to batter ordinary Americans, CIA’s bribing experts to protect China and the deep state, Ukraine makes Russian ships and air defense systems in Crimea go boom, UAW goes on strike, and sanctuary city chickens come home to roost. Plus a personal update at the end. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Joe Biden continues to work his special brand of magic on the economy: “Real household income suffers biggest drop since Great Recession.”

    Nominally, households earned more money in 2022 than they did in 2021. But thanks to inflation caused by Bidenomics, real household income (that is, income adjusted for inflation) not only fell, but fell by an amount not seen since the Great Recession.

    According to Census Bureau numbers released Tuesday, median household income fell from $76,330 in 2021 to $74,580 in 2022, a decline of 2.3%. This is the biggest drop in real household income since 2010, when it fell 2.6%. Even at the height of the pandemic, when millions of people couldn’t work, real income only fell 2.2%.

    The decline in real income was driven entirely by near-record-high inflation. According to the Census Bureau, inflation rose 7.8% between 2021 and 2022, which was the largest inflation increase since 1981.

    Isn’t not being able to feed your family a small price to pay for our elites not having to deal with mean tweets? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • The deep state at work: “CIA Bribed Analysts To Change Lab-Leak Conclusions.”

    A ‘senior-level’ CIA whistleblower has come forward to allege that the agency bribed analysts to change their opinion that Covid-19 most likely originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, according to the NY Post.

    The whistleblower told House committee leaders that his agency ‘ tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans,’ according to a Tuesday letter from the chairmen of two House subcommittees investigating the pandemic response and US intelligence, Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) and Mike Turner (R-OH).

    The pair have requested all documents, communications and pay info from the CIA’s Covid-19 Discovery Team by Sept. 26.

    “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” reads the letter from the House panel chairmen.

    “The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.

    “The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” the letters continue, adding that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”

  • Hunter Biden indicted on federal gun charges. A whole lot of observers think this is just an excuse to avoid indicting him (and his father) on bribery and corruption charges.
  • Ukraine seems to be systemically destroying Russian air defense systems in occupied Crimea and going after all of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
  • Trump supports Paxton.
  • Abbott’s busses won the border battle.

    Washington refused to fully fund construction of a wall along the Mexican border as Congress obeyed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — whom Republicans bow to — and the galaxy of gangs, drug cartels, pedos, Chinese spies, terrorists and Methodists who back Democrats. There are some overlaps. My point is, Democrats cannot destroy the nation without help.

    There seemed to be no stopping the onslaught. What to do? What to do? What to do?

    Well, they were messing with Texas and as Texans say, don’t mess with Texas.

    Its governor’s press office said in June, “In April 2022, Governor Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to charter buses to transport migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C. The Governor added New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia as additional drop-off locations last year and most recently added Denver as a busing destination last month. Since beginning the migrant busing strategy last spring, more than 21,600 migrants have been transported to these self-declared sanctuary cities while providing much-needed relief to Texas’ overwhelmed border communities.”

    Battles are usually fought with horses, tanks or aeroplanes. Greg Abbott used buses. As of June, he shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities. The shipments continue.

    You want ’em, you got ’em.

    It turns out, sanctuary cities don’t want them.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
    

  • Virginia Democratic statehouse candidate Susanna Gibson is complaining that there are videos of her having sex with her husband online. Gee, how did they get online? “Gibson had an account on Chaturbate, a legal website where viewers can watch live webcam performances that feature nudity and sexual activity…The videos show Gibson and her husband, John David Gibson, having sex and at times looking into the camera and asking viewers for donations in the form of ‘tokens’ or ‘tips’ to watch a private show.” It did not take Columbo to crack this case. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might bolt the party that’s trying to screw him over.

    The Democrat Party has a latent disaster on its hand vis a vis one RFK Jr.

    On the one hand, they are fully dedicated to sabotaging his campaign. Under no circumstances whatsoever will he be permitted to win the nomination.

    Even if he had 80%+ support from the electorate, the sick truth is that party leadership (influenced by the consultant and donor classes) would rather lose with Brandon than win with RFK Jr. because of what he’s liable to do to the Deep State and D.C. largesse were he ever to assume office. It would be a proverbial bloodbath for the administrative state and all of the grifters who feed on it.

    On the other hand, they need to keep RFK Jr. within the Democrat Party fold because if he were to go rogue and run third party — which he, frankly, should have been doing all along — it would be a veritable death knell for the Brandon entity’s prospects in 2024, which are wafer-thin as it is.

    Whatever perceived threat Cornel West poses to Brandon’s re-election with his Green Party run, magnify that threat by 10x, 100x and you’re in the ballpark of what RFK Jr. would do to the party. It’s not outlandish to speculate that a strong third-party run by RFK Jr. might literally break the Democrat Party for years or possibly forever. That’s how sick of the party’s BS its own members, not to mention independents and non-voters (the largest, unserviced voting bloc in the country), are.

    RFK Jr. has already proven himself nearly bulletproof from relentless Democrat Party and corporate state media attacks — arguably on the same level in this regard as “Teflon” Don.

  • “Hays County district clerk files petition to remove DA, citing new Texas law.”

    There’s a petition to have the Hays County district attorney removed from office.

    The person who filed it? The Hays County district clerk.

    The petition was filed by Hays County District Clerk Avrey Anderson on Tuesday, Sept. 12. I

    It alleged that Hays County DA Kelly Higgins implemented and executed a policy or policies that refused to prosecute a class or type of criminal offense under state law.

    The petition said DA Higgins has made public declarations that he would not prosecute the following:

    • simple drug possession offenses
    • simple cannabis possession offenses
    • procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case that they are treating transgenders
    • procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case they are performing abortions

    According to the court documents filed, there’s been an excessive amount of felony possession of cannabis, methamphetamine and cocaine cases being declined for “random and nonspecific reasons.”

    I know one of the first questions in your mind: Is Higgins a Soros-backed DA? Answer cloudy. She got $2,000 from Chip Shields in Portland, OR. Shields founded Better People, a pro ex-con thing, but I can’t find a direct Soros link to Higgins. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Things that make you go Hmmmm: “A representative of the Harris County attorney’s office told a district court judge that the county would use all legal means to prevent the deposition of the deputy director of election technology Jason Bruce.”
  • UAW goes on strike over wages, pensions…and mandating electric cars.
  • Let the child sex mutilation lawsuits begin.
  • Goodbye, Mittens.
  • National Review looks back at Simon and Garfunkel. Don’t agree with everything here, but they did make some great music Back In The Day…
  • 14-year-old son died after attempting the ‘One Chip Challenge.’ You don’t want to jump into that sort of thing without building up your resistance first. Me, I’m pretty sure I could do it, especially if I could find a way to make money off it. Maybe I could get 100,00 people to pledge a buck for every one I eat, and then then see how many I can eat on a live-stream…
  • Ever wanted to hear The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz do an album of REM covers? Yeah, me neither, but here’s “Shiny Happy People.”
  • Ooopsie! (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Democrats Complain That Illegal Immigrants Are Destroying Their Sanctuary Cities.”
  • “Experts Believe Aaron Rodgers Ankle Injury A Result Of Being Unvaccinated.”
  • Boing! Boing! Boing!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Also, my most recent job just ended. So here’s the tip jar, if you’re so inclined:





    I don’t usual rattle the jar, because I make good money when employed, and I’m hardly destitute, but every bit helps. If you know of any remote Senior Technical Writer positions, let me know.

    Ukraine Hits Two Ships in Sevastopol Dry Dock

    Wednesday, September 13th, 2023

    A Ukrainian strike hit two ships in dry dock at Sevastopol harbor in occupied Crimea: One Ropucha-class landing ship and One Kilo-class submarine.

    A suspected overnight Ukrainian missile and drone attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol has reportedly damaged a landing ship and submarine belonging to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, in what appears to be the latest blow inflicted by Kyiv against Moscow’s navy.

    The Russian state-run Tass news agency reported that the overnight attack injured 24 people in Sevastopol, with Moscow-installed city governor Mikhail Razvozhaev blaming a “missile attack.” Photos and videos of the port showed a series of explosions and fires raging around the docks. The first strikes were reported at around 3 a.m. local time. Tass reported witnesses hearing around 10 explosions.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said Sevastopol was attacked by three naval drones and 10 cruise missiles. In a statement, the ministry said that all unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed, along with seven cruise missiles. The target, it added, was the S. Ordzhonikidze ship repair plant.

    Razvozhaev posted a photo from the scene appearing to show the side of a Ropucha-class large landing ship that sustained damage, The New York Times reported. The Russian Baza news outlet reported that the damaged landing ship was the Minsk, and that the Kilo-class Rostov-on-Don attack submarine was also hit.

    Video supposedly of the strike and aftermath (with the caveat that sometimes footage from similar strikes gets reused, and the guy’s voice at the beginning sounds strangely familiar).

    Suchomimus also has a video:

  • The fire on the Minsk seems so extensive that the ship is likely gutted.
  • The Rostov-on-Don submarine was commissioned in December 2014.
  • If it suffered a direct hit, it’s likely out of commission for the indefinite future.
  • “The dry dock will likely be out of commission for a while. These are pretty sturdy things, so I don’t think it will be fully destroyed. But the one here is now clogged with two destroyed or damaged ships, not to mention damage to various bits of machinery.” But don’t forget that Russia managed to lose a floating dry dock in Murmansk when it sank in 2018.
  • This was one of three military dry docks in Sevastopol. Russia has three civilian dry docks in Novorossiysk (which may or may not be able to handle military ships) and one in Rostov-on-Don, currently occupied by the damaged Sig oil tanker. They’re used for regular maintenance in addition to repair.
  • On the Kilo-class submarine: “Russia has just five active in the Black Sea. These are important targets, as Russia uses these to launch Kalibr missiles, so one of these being destroyed does impact Russia’s capabilities to launch strikes over the Black Sea.”
  • As Suchomimus notes, Russia seems to be losing a naval war to a country without a navy…

    Update: They’re both toast.

    Ukraine Drone Hits Russian Fab

    Thursday, September 7th, 2023

    I missed this bit of news from late August.

    A Russian microchip factory likely producing technology for sophisticated weapons has been targeted in a significant strike, Daily Express US has heard.

    A drone downed over the Bryansk region in Russia this week fell on the Kremny EL factory, dubbed “Silicon El”, according to the Mash Telegram channel.

    Military blogger Romanov Light said a fire broke out at the plant’s 16th building and was extinguished around an hour later – at 1.50am local time. Staggering footage shared online shows the shocking moment the plant was struck.

    Michael Bociurkiw, global affairs analyst and senior fellow at The Atlantic Council, told Daily Express US the microchip factory was a significant target.

    It was one of several Russian sites struck in one of the biggest waves of attacks on Russian soil since Putin’s illegal war began.

    According to Wikipedia’s vaguely accurate list of semiconductor fabs around the world, Kremny EL was running a 500 nm process, which was state of the art…in 1987. This clearly translated from something that’s not English, they seemed to originally be running power supply chips. Lots of military applications for those, and not too demanding as far as chip design goes.

    So it was a military target. Could they use it for smart weapon guidance systems? Yeah, you could build something as powerful as, say, a 386 on it, and that’s plenty sophisticated enough to guide bombs and missiles with.

    How long will the strike set Russia back? Hard to say, but the contamination means the entire fab will need to be decontaminated before they can process wafers again. Maybe a month. Debris may have damaged some of the machines, though the tech is so old that there are probably lots of spare parts for things that can be had despite sanctions. If they hit the power center, the air-handling system, or the DI water system, that could take a while to repair, especially if they need modern western parts. And if they took out the power, all the wafer processing machines will have to be requalified, which is a gigantic pain in the ass and quite time-consuming. But most of the in-process wafers will be safe inside FOUPs, and can probably continue processing, once the fab is up and running again.

    Still, it will be a setback for Russia. It’s just unclear how large a setback.

    The Cardboard Drone Dilemma

    Monday, September 4th, 2023

    As shown by Ukraine, cardboard drones are a very cost-effective way to destroy much more expensive military equipment.

    And you know who has more expensive military equipment than anyone else in the world?

    That’s right: Us.

    Uncle Sam is the operator of billion dollar B-2s and fleet supercarriers. Enemies capable of getting cheap drones within striking distance of those assets could put a world of hurt on the Pentagon, as indicated by this cheap and crude YouTube satire:

    Can U.S. military radar see cardboard drones? Either nobody knows, or only a small handful of U.S. military researchers know. Either way, I have to think they’re frantically researching that question right now.

    Here’s a bit more on SYPAQ’s drones:

    A low-cost “cardboard” drone that arrives flatpacked and is held together with rubber bands is giving Ukraine an unexpected edge on the battlefield.

    It’s called the Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System, or PPDS for short, and is made by the Australian company SYPAQ.

    It has been in Ukrainian hands since March, when the Australian government announced it would send at least 100 per month as part of a $20 million aid package, The Australian reported.

    According to SYPAQ, the drone arrives in a package some two and a half feet long — and isn’t much more complicated than an IKEA product.

    But the low-tech framework is packed with a military-grade guidance system.

    SYPAQ says it’s quick to assemble the drone from its parts: a lightweight board frame, a propeller unit, and an avionics system which soldiers can program with a target location.

    The drone can carry up to 6.6 pounds, making it useful for dropping off medicines or ammunition.

    To adapt it for reconnaissance, soldiers simply “cut a hole” in the drone for a camera to see through, SYPAQ manager Michael Partridge told IT-focused news outlet The Register.

    The finished build has a wingspan of around six and a half feet. It is so light it can be launched by catapult, or literally by being thrown like a giant paper plane, according to Australia’s 7News.

    At a reported cost of around $3,500 each, they’re cheap by military standards.

    That’s maybe not as cheap as the Flying Yeet of Death, but it has a much longer range.

    Depending on its payload, it travels at around 37 miles per hour, and has a range of up to 75 miles. And when it arrives, soldiers can simply retrieve the cargo, detach the propeller and avionics module, and throw away the frame.

    Although it’s known as the “cardboard drone,” there’s conflicting information as to what its main framework is actually made of.

    Partridge told The Register that it’s made of waxed cardboard — a description repeated in nearly all media reporting so far. In a recent announcement the company coyly said it’s “known as the ‘cardboard plane.'”

    But a product specification uploaded on the company’s website, likely in late August, describes it as being made from lightweight foldable foam board, which appears to match some images.

    So the cardboard drone isn’t actually cardboard. C’est la guerre.

    Cardboard is “transparent to radar, so harder to spot,” Oklahoma State University drone researcher Jamey Jacob told Popular Mechanics.

    “The radar will pick up things such as electric motors, batteries, and propellers, but not the cardboard,” Jacob said.

    That potential capacity for extra stealth gained media attention this week when Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia echoed claims by a prominent Russian military blogger that they were used to attack a Russian airfield.

    Several details of the attack remain unconfirmed — including whether Corvo PPDSs were even involved — but the airfield was just within the drone’s reach from Ukraine.

    Per the pro-Russian Telegram channel @fighter_bomber, Ukraine used a swarm-like formation of several unarmed Corvo PPDSs amidst drones packed with bombs, helping the swarm evade radar.

    When you’re airframe only has to last 75 miles to hit a target, all sorts of cheap material possibilities open up: Foam, cardboard, wax-paper, Mylar.

    Hell, maybe even that crappy hemp paper the potheads are always pushing will finally have a real use-case: Make war, not love.

    In any case, the radar guys are going to be very, very busy over the next few months…

    Fast, Cheap and Out of Control

    Saturday, September 2nd, 2023

    If you were worried that the United States military hadn’t picked up on the importance of drone warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War, it appears that someone in the Pentagon was indeed paying attention.

    The Pentagon committed on Monday to fielding thousands of attritable, autonomous systems across multiple domains within the next two years as part of a new initiative to better compete with China.

    The program, dubbed Replicator, was announced by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies conference here.

    “Replicator will galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of U.S. military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap and many,” Hicks said.

    Hicks and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady will oversee the program, with support from Doug Beck, director of the Defense Innovation Unit. Further details, Hicks said, will be released in the coming weeks.

    Replicator rests on two assumptions. The first is that China’s core advantage is mass — “more ships, more missiles, more people,” as Hicks said — and that the United States’ best response is to innovate, rather than match that pound for pound.

    The second is that attritable, autonomous systems are the right form of innovation. Hicks pointed to the war in Ukraine, in which cheap, often commercial drones have proven indispensable on the battlefield for reconaissance, targeting, and attacks. Russia too, she said, appeared to have a similar mass before launching its invasion last February.

    However, this program is squarely focused on China. Hicks called this moment a “generational challenge to American society.”

    ”We’ll counter the [People’s Liberation Army’s] mass with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat,” she said.

    Even so, Hicks noted the Pentagon will remain focused on its core systems. “America still benefits from platforms that are large, exquisite, expensive, and few,” she said. Instead, she said, Replicator is particularly focused on accelerating DoD’s recent investments in autonomous systems.

    Replicator’s goal of fielding small drones in high numbers and on a rapid timeline echoes calls from former DIU director Mike Brown for the Pentagon to better leverage commercial innovation to deliver capability at scale — an approach he called a “hedge strategy.”

    House appropriators have backed that idea in their fiscal 2025 defense spending bill. The legislation would allocate $1 billion toward establishing a DIU-managed hedge portfolio made up of low-cost drones, agile communication and computing modes and AI capabilities.

    The Department of Defense requested $1.8 billion for artificial intelligence for fiscal 2024 and was overseeing more than 685 related projects as of 2021. Replicator is intended to pull those investments together and further scale production, Hicks said.

    Insert your own hedge funds and Skynet jokes here.

    The strategy makes a good deal of sense…up to a point. The fast and cheap portion makes a lot of sense, given Ukraine’s use of dirt cheap flatpack cardboard drones we talked about earlier this week.

    It’s the out of control/autonomous portion of description, combined with the aggressive timeline, that I question. As far as I can tell, all of Ukraine’s drones have been human guided rather than autonomous.

    Lots of work on AI has been done over the last few years, and its entirely possible that AI drone tech is farther along than we know, but having been involved in numerous large software projects for multiple companies, I can tell you things always seem to take longer than they should even when the federal government isn’t involved. Long term, having autonomous or semi-autonomous drone will give you a lot of extra capabilities, but I’m very skeptical about that two year timeline.

    Also, unless we plan to launch those drones from Taiwan itself, I’m skeptical that we’ll have suitable naval launch platforms ready. Flying a few drones off the deck of destroyer is easy, flying thousands for a real drone swarm is probably impossible. You don’t want to try running drone and manned planes off fleet carriers at the same time.

    Can you run them off an amphibious assault ship? Probably, as a temporary expedient, but that’s going to limit your helicopter and F-35B takeoff and landing windows. Longer term, you’re probably going to need to construct ships designed with specialized launchers to send a whole lot of drones in a short space of time.

    I’ve been talking about the inevitability of drone swarms in combat for some time. The goal is entirely feasible, I just question the “two years to fight China” timeline.

    I sure hope the Pentagon powers that be have a manned drone swarm program backup on hand…

    Ukraine Now Using Dirt Cheap Kit Drones Made Out Of Cardboard

    Monday, August 28th, 2023

    If you thought the Flying Yeet of Death was cheap, the Ukrainians have announced they just used a drone that looks even cheaper to hit a Russian airbase:

    (A follow-up video suggests they may not have hit much, if anything, but I’m more interested in the drone than the strike.)

    The Australian SYPAQ Corvo UAV is the drone reportedly used. “These drones are made out of cardboard, making them almost invisible to radar. They can carry a four to five kilogram payload have a range of between 40 to 120 kilometers, and a flight time of one to three hours. These are dirt cheap and can be made in the thousands.” It ships in a flatpack kit.

    Here’s a closer look at them:

    I suspect that SYPAQ represents a goodly portion of the future of drone warfare: Numerous and ultra-cheap, but capable of taking out much more expensive enemy vehicles and equipment.

    High tech and low cost is a very cyberpunk approach to warfare.

    Is It Finally Time To Retire The A-10?

    Sunday, August 27th, 2023

    If you’ve been following the A-10 Thunderbolt II (AKA Warthog) saga here, you’ll remember that the Air Force tried to kill the A-10 back in 2015, going so far as to accuse airmen who opposed retiring the A-10 of treason. Then in 2016 the Air Force appeared to give up on the idea, possibly due to congressional opposition to the idea.

    Well, the Air Force is back to wanting to kill the A-10, and this time they may succeed.

  • “The US Air Force is charging ahead with plans to retire the old A-10 Warthog attack jet within the next five years, but there’s only one problem: there’s no dedicated close air support platform to replace it.”
  • “In the 2023 version of the National Defense Authorization Act, congress approved the Air Force requests to begin divestment of the current A-10 fleet, citing the aircraft is too old, too slow and too expensive to maintain.”
  • “The Air Force seems to be getting its way this time, with a set timetable to replace the 54 A-10s from Moody Air Force base with F-35a by 2028, and plans to retire the rest of the fleet soon to come.” As Jerry Pournelle once said, “USAF will always retire hundreds of Warthog to buy another F-35. Always, so long as it exists. And it will never give up a mission.” The F-35 is certainly a more modern, capable and flexible aircraft than the A-10, but it also costs about $79 million each, which makes me think that the Air Force is going to be very leery about letting it be used for close air support. By contrast, the lifetime cost of the A-10 is about $14 million per plane.
  • Back when the A-10 was first proposed, opponents argued that the role of close support could be handled by the F4 Phantom II, which brings home just how old the A-10 is, since the Phantom was retired from combat use in 1996.
  • Back when the GAU-8 30mm Gatling gun was developed, guided missile technology was new and finicky tech. That’s no longer the case. “When a laser-guided Maverick can hit a tank more accurately from 22km away, the 1.2 km range of the G8 looks a lot less impressive.”
  • The A-10 is easy to fly but slow, with a max speed of 439MPH.
  • Thick titanium armor provides solid protection to proximity explosions, less to direct hits. (Remember, in 2003 an A-10 managed to make it back to base even though it was missing most of a wing.)
  • The A-10 kicked ass in Desert Storm. “Final tally for the A10 in the first Gulf War was an impressive 987 tanks and 1,355 combat vehicles for only 6 planes lost. Another 14 A-10s were damaged but able to fly back to base, suggesting that the A-10 survivability was keeping pilots alive in that conflict.” Caveats: A lot of those kills were with Maverick missiles, and Desert Storm was 32 years ago.
  • In Iraq and Afghanistan, the A-10 was praised for how well it performed close air support, but also criticized for friendly fire and civilian casualties.
  • “Emphasis on keeping the A-10 and rugged and cheap delayed major upgrades to the plane sensor and fire control systems until the mid-2000s. The $2.2 billion A-10C upgrade program finally updated the
    Warthog’s cockpit from the 1970s era tech it had first flown with.”

  • “The Warthog is almost 50 years old at this point, meaning that aircraft are having to undergo more and more maintenance each year. These costs are adding up, to the point where newer platforms are becoming cheaper to operate per flight hour.”
  • As new technology enables new means of war-fighting, the Air Force appears to have finally convinced congress that other aircraft can do the same job but better. A big part of the argument for retiring the A-10 is a mirror of the original survivability argument from the 1960s: There doesn’t seem to be much room for a big aircraft that flies low and slow in a near-peer conflict, and likely hasn’t been for some time the A-10 has been effective as long as it has thanks to the low intensity of counterinsurgency warfare that U.S. has been fighting for 20 years. Besides a few man-portable launchers, the Taliban and ISIS didn’t have much air defense that could threaten the A-10, and so the Warthog thrived in the asymmetric warfare conditions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts say that won’t be the case against a potential enemy like China.

  • “The gun’s tank busting abilities aren’t sufficient against modern tank armor. The 30 mm API rounds used by the cannon can penetrate around 69mm of steel armor at 500 meters, but modern Russian tanks like T72-B3 have 80mm or more on the hull and sides and way more protection on the front.”
  • As much as I hate to admit it, these arguments are probably correct. The Russo-Ukrainian War has shown that the threat environment is deadlier than ever, with Russia’s air force unable to achieve air superiority over Ukraine, and Russia has reportedly limited sorties to it’s own airspace due to Ukrainian air defenses. Ukraine has shot down at least 30 Russian Su-25s, the Soviet close air support plane most broadly comparable in role and age to the A-10, which is more than they’ve shot down of any other aircraft type. And the Su-25 is over 100 MPH faster than the A-10.

    Also the rise in combat drone number, capability and variety means that the A-10’s close air support role is increasingly being taken over by cheaper, more flexible unmanned vehicles. A-10s would have been perfect for taking out those long convoys strung out on the road to Kiev, but a small swarm of drones with multiple missiles could have done the same thing if they were available, probably at lower cost and without losing pilots. (Some will point to the B-52 as example of older aircraft that are still useful on the modern battlefield, but their mission (high altitude and/or far away using standoff missiles) is the exact opposite of the A-10’s close air support mission.)

    Technology marches on, and there’s no reason you couldn’t have drones half the size and one-tenth the cost of an A-10 armed with 10-12 smart missiles replacing most of the A-10’s mission capabilities. Whether the Air Force will let that happen is another question, as the Sky Warden shows the Air Force never wants to give up a mission, but drones have proven too valuable in Ukraine to shove that genie back inside the bottle.

    Finally, note that when asked about obtaining A-10s, Ukraine’s own defense minister said they weren’t the right aircraft for the role.

    I have to reluctantly conclude that the time for the A-10 may indeed be drawing to a close.

    Wagner Head Prigozhin Reported Dead In Plane Crash

    Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023

    There are few less surprising stories than when someone who has clashed with Vladimir Putin dies in a mysterious accident. So it is with Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin:

    The internet has exploded with an avalanche breaking reports that Wagner chief Yvgeny Prigozhin’s business jet has crashed over Russia’s Tver region, northwest of Moscow.

    Unconfirmed reports say anywhere from seven to ten people were on board, all presumed dead – but it was initially unclear if Prigozhin himself was on board at the time. Russian media sources are now confirming that he was on board the downed plane, and is presumed dead.

    This has led to immediate speculation that the private plane could have been shot down upon Putin’s orders.

    Snip.

    A private jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed on Wednesday in Russia’s Tver Region. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said all 10 people on board had died. Rosaviation has since said that Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Private Military Company, was listed among the passengers.

    Suchomimus has video of the plane going down:

    I’m not sure we need any more complex explanation than “Man angers Putin, man dies.” The aborted coup certainly gave Putin enough reason to off Prigozhin.

    As far as what effect this has on Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine, who knows? Wagner forces were reportedly the most competent military element in Russia’s forces over the last year, but they lost a lot of troops in the fight for Bakhmut, and it’s unclear just how engaged Wagner was in the war following the abortive coup. But if Wagner were indeed “fiercely loyal” to Prigozhin, his assassination/death could have serious repercussions in various spots around the world where Wagner does heavy lifting for the Russians (like the coup in Niger).

    I imagine there will be an effort to incorporate Wagner troops into regular ussian units, but whether they’re willing to do that is anyone’s guess…

    Ruble Now A Penny

    Monday, August 14th, 2023

    When Russia launched its illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine in February of 2022, many observers thought western financial sanctions would quickly crash the Russian economy. When Russia was cut out of SWIFT, the Ruble plunged to below a penny against the dollar, but quickly recovered, at least a bit.

    Due to various reasons (gas and oil sales, gold transfers, and the many loopholes EU countries have made for their sanctions), Russia’s economy hasn’t collapsed as quickly as many expected, or hoped.

    But just today, the ruble finally slipped back below the penny-parity line again.

    Russia’s central bank called an extraordinary meeting Tuesday after the ruble crashed through the level of 100 to the dollar for the first time since March of last year as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on and international sanctions hit trade.

    Policy makers will publish a statement on the key rate at 10:30 a.m. after the meeting, the Bank of Russia said in a statement, without giving any further details. The central bank hiked its key rate by a percentage point to 8.5% last month, the first increase since emergency measures imposed immediately after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

    The exchange rate has emerged as the barometer of health for an economy battered by shrinking export revenues and its isolation from international financial markets, bringing infighting between the government and central bank into the open.

    The ruble reversed losses after the announcement, traded up 1.8% at 97.6625 at 7 p.m. in Moscow. The currency, which had broken through 101 earlier on Monday, has weakened about 27% this year for the third-worst performance in emerging markets. The central bank had sought to arrest the slump by saying it won’t purchase foreign currency on the domestic market for the rest of 2023.

    Yeah, no one trusts Russia to hold adequate foreign currency reserves a year and a half into sanctions. So that move doesn’t help.

    Lots of meaningless Russian “economy is great” blather snipped.

    Revenues of Russian oil and gas exporters declined to $6.9 billion in July from $16.8 billion in the same period last year, according to the latest central bank data. An easing of restrictions on moving money abroad has also led to accelerated capital flight as Russians race to shift funds into foreign accounts.

    “The weakening of the ruble is the result of the international screws tightening around the Russian economy, but also the cost of keeping the economy going,” said Erik Meyersson, chief emerging-market strategist at SEB AB in Stockholm. “Nobody wants to hold rubles, and the limited supply of foreign exchange from exporters weighs on the currency.”

    Of course, Russia could get out of it’s self-imposed monkey trap by withdrawing its forces from all occupied Ukrainian territory. But I don’t think anyone is hold their breath for that to happen…