Lina Hidalgo’s Continued Contempt for Transparency

May 4th, 2023

Remember Democratic County Judge and de-facto Queen of Harris County Lina Hidalgo, she of the numerous staff corruption charges? There have been a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests coming her way over all the alleged crooked dealings, so she went to her legal counsel to thwart transparency.

With the state’s largest county already facing at least one lawsuit over refusal to comply with public records requests, a leaked memo from Harris County officials appears to outline a strategy for avoiding the release of documents related to County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s travel and taxpayer-funded expenses.

Investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino reported this week on a leaked chain of emails that began with a January 25, 2023 open records request from Houston Chronicle reporter Jen Rice seeking travel records for Hidalgo and “her entourage” between January 2019 and January 2023.

After requesting clarification, Hidalgo’s legal counsel Kathryn Kase forwarded the request and instructions for handling it to several Hidalgo staffers and Glenn Smith of Affinity Dynamics. The county auditor’s office lists payments totaling $35,000 to Smith’s company in 2020, but none this year.

“The law does not require us to create documents in response to this PIA request and I ask that you not create such documents,” wrote Kase. “For example, if we do not have a list of the Judge’s trips outside Harris County that the County paid for in whole or part between 1/1/ 2019 and 1/25/2023, then the law does not require us to create such a list, nor do I want you to create one.”

Kase also stated that staffers do not have to ask other departments for documents responsive to the request.

“If, for example, the Auditor or the Treasurer have copies of reimbursements to Judge Hidalgo, do not ask the Auditor or the Treasurer to provide them to you.”

Rice’s request likely stems from reports of Hidalgo taking private security, paid for by Harris County taxpayers, on her personal vacations to Mexico, Columbia, and according to sources familiar with the matter, Thailand, earlier this year.

Until last April, the Precinct 1 constable’s office provided security for Hidalgo, but in a 3 to 2 vote the commissioners court approved a no-bid contract to private security company XMi Protection at a price of $121,524 for three months. The commissioners later approved a budget of up to $500,000 for XMi, although reportedly Hidalgo’s security is now provided by the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office while XMi continues to cover other employees.

Remember that Queen Lina’s previous legal troubles stemmed from handing out contracts to connected Democrat firms and not wanting public scrutiny for that either.

As far as I can tell, XMi Protection seems to employee exactly one person: Cortez Emilio Richardson. (Maybe he hires temps to round out his team?) Also strange: The listed address for XMi protection is 9900 Spectrum Drive, Austin, TX, 78717, which is the address of Integreon, a “global outsourcing partner” that doesn’t list “executive protection” among its services, as well as LegalZoom, which seems to be a “one stop set-up-your-business” shop. (Maybe he set up his LLC through them?) However, Richardson’s LinkedIn profile says that he’s in Houston, and XMi Protection is based in nearby Spring. Two other LinkedIn accounts that show XMi Protection entries are a Paquita Bailey who lives in Detroit and is evidently working four different jobs at the same time (lot of sidehustle they’ve got going on there), and the following private listing:

Which is for a pharmacy technician from Anna, Texas (which is north of Dallas), both of whom would seem to be deeply unlikely to be working a protection detail in Houston.

$40,000 a month is an awful lot of cheddar for one guy.

Back to the story.

Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale and Dolcefino have also filed a lawsuit against the county, seeking access to public election records that the county has refused to release on the grounds that they are related to litigation and a criminal investigation of Tatum and the elections department.

In response to multiple complaints over delay and evasion tactics employed by government agencies across the state, Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) has pushed legislation that would punish those using the appeals process to delay compliance. His Senate Bill 1579 has been approved in committee, but it has not yet been scheduled for a vote on the Senate floor.

According to attorney Bill Aleshire, public information requests must be carefully tailored so as not to offer any loopholes. Aleshire opined that instead of asking for a “list,” Rice should have requested specific documents and included multiple departments in her original demand.

“Having said that, a public office devoted to transparency would not quibble with a requestor seeking travel records; it would just provide the records they’ve got, in good faith,” Aleshire told The Texan.

Snip.

In another leaked internal Harris County memo, legal fees approved by the Harris County Commissioners Court last March totaling $671,383 are described as covering legal costs for Kase, [County Commissioner Rodney] Ellis, and other county employees related to the investigation of a since-canceled $11 million COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract and allegations that Ellis had stored an African art collection at taxpayer expense.

The memo also includes “talking points” from “GS” that former Justice Administration Director Jim Bethke and other county officials, including Tatum, have been harassed by District Attorney Kim Ogg.

Payments for legal expenses appear to have been approved for McClees Law Firm, PLLC; Rusty Hardin and Associates, LLP; and Khalil Law PLLC. In addition to Ellis, Hidalgo, and other employees, the memo notes expenses were also covered for Commissioner Adrian Garcia (D-Pct. 2).

Something stinks in Harris County government, and there are a whole lot of questions about how Lina Hidalgo is spreading around taxpayer money that she really doesn’t want to answer…

Ted Cruz Draws A 2024 Challenger

May 3rd, 2023

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A short-term-serving Democratic U.S. congressman is running against Ted Cruz for the senate.

With several presidential campaigns well underway for the 2024 election cycle, another office at the top of Texas voters’ ballots will be a contested race with the incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) drawing a Democratic challenger in U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX-32).

A Dallas resident, Allred is a former NFL football player who suffered an injury prompting him to shift his career into law. After serving in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, he entered politics by running for Congress and was elected in 2018 after defeating incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX-32).

Allred benefited from not only the 2018 Year of Beto, but also Sessions caught in the typical “sleepwalking incumbent in a district with shifting demographics near the end of a redistricting cycle” trap.

And yes, Allred was an NFL player. He played four seasons as a linebacker for the Tennessee Titans (strike one for Houston voters), during which he registered 46 tackles. That’s…not good. By contrast Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis managed to score 46 tackles over three games in 1997. (To be fair, Allred was probably never charged (and acquitted) of murder.)

Now in his fourth year in office, Allred announced his campaign challenging Cruz in a video posted to social media Wednesday morning.

Certainly Allred has Beto O’Rourke’s lack of experience, but he doesn’t seem likely to inspire the same Great Southern Hope hype as O’Rourke did. Right now he’s the only even-slightly-recognizable name in the race, and will likely be able to fund-raise well (but not Beto-well) based on the Cruz hatred of the Democratic base. But he won’t be lifted by the anti-Trump wave that helped lift O’Rourke to within 3 points of Cruz. Nor does he seem likely to stem Hispanic defectors to the Republican Party in south Texas…

Score One For Gary Gates

May 2nd, 2023

If you’re a longtime BattleSwarm reader, then you know that I’ve been pretty critical of Republican State Representative Gary Gates of Richmond. Before winning Texas House District 28 to fill the unexpired term of John Zerwas in 2019, Gates was best known as a seven-time loser, his most prominent flame-out being an underhanded, dishonest campaign against Wayne Christian for Railroad Commissioner in 2016. Before that he was behind the suspiciously squishy (and now apparently moribund) Texas Citizens Coalition. More recently he’s played footsie with the social justice set by voting for a bill to create an Office of Health Equity within the Texas Department of Health and Human Services.

So Gates has done little to endear himself to me. But recently he did good by cracking down on “affordable housing” tax giveaways.

Rep. Gary Gates (R-Richmond) took to the back microphone this week to make the case for greater regulation of a controversial state program offering millions in tax exemptions to developers for affordable housing.

One of several lawmakers to propose reforms to the Public Facility Corporation (PFC) program, Gates had introduced a reform bill with tough standards, but allegedly former Speaker Dennis Bonnen repeatedly pressured him to drop his proposals.

Gates told The Texan he was urged by Bonnen to sign on to arguably weaker reforms authored by Rep. Jacy Jetton (R-Richmond) — House Bill (HB) 2071 — and warned that although his own legislation had been approved by the House Committee on Urban Affairs, it would be killed in the powerful Calendars Committee.

Instead, Gates successfully tacked on multiple amendments to HB 2071 during Tuesday’s floor session.

“I’m pleased with these amendments, but I still have my own PFC reform bill, HB 3568, which I hope to get to the floor in short order. It has 69 authors and co-authors, while HB 2071 had only 10.”

Under the PFC program, local government officials may offer a 100 percent tax exemption to developers who build or purchase multifamily housing, as long as some rental units are set aside for “affordable” reduced rent. But both Jetton and Gates acknowledged there have been abuses of the system; in some cases, PFCs have been authorized with only 10 percent of units designated for low-income families.

On the House floor, Gates queried Jetton about whether his reforms set new minimum standards and noted that the current system took tax revenue from public school districts without their approval. He also pointed out that in some cases developers were already charging below-market rents before transitioning to PFC status and were therefore not obligated to demonstrate a public benefit.

“This is hurting our schools, this is hurting our counties and our cities,” said Gates. “This [tax revenue] is being taken from our fire departments, our police departments, our neighborhood schools. They are getting their taxes wiped out and we can’t determine if there’s any public benefit.”

In response to Gates’ questions, Jetton acknowledged that other taxpayers or the state’s general funds would have to make up the loss in revenue to school districts.

Gates’ first proposed amendment, opposed by Jetton, mandates that 60 percent of the developer’s tax savings must be dedicated to reducing rents. It was approved in a bipartisan vote of 87 to 54, with two members registered as “present, not voting.”

Under the formula, 12 percent of units must be set aside for those earning 50 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), 12 percent for those at 60 percent AMI, and 12 percent at 80 percent AMI.

After the House voted for a second Gates amendment requiring approval from counties and school districts for any new PFCs, Jetton gave up his opposition and accepted four more revisions as friendly amendments.

Noting that some PFCs had been granted 100 percent sales and property tax exemptions for up to 99 years, Gates also questioned Jetton about HB 2071’s language setting a minimum tax exemption period of 10 years while removing even the 99-year limit.

Among revisions accepted by Jetton, the tax-exempt status will be limited to 12 years for new construction and 10 years for the conversion of existing properties.

So one cheer for Gary Gates for getting rid of a tax kickback.

Ideally, government should get entirely out of the business of giving different types of tax breaks for different rental housing. Get out of regulating any but the most essential safety and business standards and let the free market come up with solutions. The main obstacles to building actual affordable housing are too many regulations, not too few.

But we shouldn’t disdain even baby steps of reform in the right direction.

Observing 2023 Victims of Communism Day

May 1st, 2023

Today is May 1st, which means that once again it’s time to observe Victims of Communism Day, remembering that a false, brutal ideology killed over 100 million people.

VictimsofCommunismDay

Here’s Jordan Peterson on the crimes of communism:

If you want a candidate for the sin against the holy ghost in the 21st century, the statement “communism, real communism, was never tried” with the underlying idea that if you had been the person implementing it, it would have worked, I think that’s a pretty good contender for something for which you should never be forgiven.

Here’s a list of memorials to the victims of communism.

More information on the Holodomor can be found in Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Conquest estimated that for the entire Collectivization/”De-Kulakization”/Holodomor period (including the Soviet suppression of the Kazakhs and the Crimean Tartars, etc.) some 14.5 million died due to the actions of the Soviet government.

I know that November 7 is also designated as Victims of Communism Day, but the crimes of communism are so vast that there’s no reason we can’t observe Victims of Communism Day twice a year.

Fire Breaks Out In Russia’s Only MLRS Factory

April 30th, 2023

I didn’t mean to do two big “Russian fire” stories back-to-back, but this seems like potentially big news:

A fire broke out on the territory of the Motovilikha Plant defence holding in Perm, Russia.

Source: Kommersant citing Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation and Motovilikha Plant

Details: Photos of the fire were posted by Perm’s social networks. Smoke from the territory of the plant is visible from different locations in Perm.

The Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation stated that a report of a fire on the territory of PJSC Motovilikha Plants was received at 20:08. After arriving on location, it was established that the transformer booth was on fire. 37 people and 10 pieces of equipment from the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia were involved in extinguishing the fire. The previous area of the fire was 10 square metres.

Quote: “Today, a fire broke out at the transformer substation on the territory of the enterprise. The fire was promptly contained by the specialists of the Ministry of Emergency Situations who went to the spot,” the press office of the PJSC Motovilikha Plant reported.

Frankly, those giant plums of smoke don’t look particularly contained.

The transformer station belongs to the VK-2 boiler house (MZ subsidiary – Teplo-M LLC). According to the media sources, the fire did not affect the power supply of the boiler house.

As Kommersant writes, PJSC Motovilikha Plant, Russia’s only manufacturer of multiple rocket launcher systems, has been in the tender process since 2018. At the time of its introduction, the company’s registered debt amounted to about RUB 17.6 billion. The production activity of mashholding is concentrated in its subsidiary structures: Special Design Bureau CJSC is engaged in the manufacture of weapons, and the rest of the production is carried out by Motovilikha – civil engineering, LLC. The PJSC property complex is put up for auction.

Could be shoddy Russian safety protocols. Could be sabotage from anti-war Russian partisans. Could be Ukraine action, though Perm is some 2,300 kilometers from Kiev. Could just be Uncle Ivan torching the place for some Goodfellas-esque debt erasure.

But whatever the cause, MLRS systems are a huge part of “the Russian Way of War,” and having their main factory offline is going to put a huge crimp in Russian field operations.

Fire In The Night

April 29th, 2023

Busy Saturday, so enjoy a couple of Suchomimus videos about a Crimean oil refinery that Ukrainian drones made blow up real good.

Here’s footage of the refinery burning bright in the forests of the night:

  • “This video is showing a burning oil refinery in Depot at Kozaka Bay near Sevastopol Harbor in Crimea.”
  • “This took place at 4:30 AM, and it was said to be a UAV. Given the size of a blaze I would say it seems that multiple UAVs were used here.” Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that refined petroleum products are naturally very sploady and Russian safety standards and precautions suck harder than Kamala Harris.
  • And follow-up footage of the fire mostly controlled, but showing two oil storage tanks totally destroyed and several others damaged:

    “This oil storage facility is one which supplied the Black Sea Fleet, so we’re going to have to wait and see if it’s loss will have an impact on operations from there.”

    It remains an open question how much Russia has actually used its Black Sea Fleet since the sinking of Moskva over a year ago. Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention, or maybe not much news leaks out, but we don’t hear a lot about the black Sea Fleet playing a significant role in the conflict beyond occasionally participating in the missile wave attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

    Also, one wonders how much gasoline and diesel is flowing into Crimea without the Kerch Strait Bridge back at full rail capacity. I see only one other oil refinery in all of Crimea, a tiny one near Voinka Boihka that could just be a storage facility. And given the lack of visible cars and trucks in Google map images, it may not even be active.

    All the more reason to believe that a counterattack taking Melitopol would make Russian resupply of troops in Crimea exceptionally difficult…

    LinkSwarm for April 28, 2023

    April 28th, 2023

    Our Glorious Elites try mightily to keep us peons from expressing #WrongThink, two high profile media firings, and more Blue City decline. Enjoy a short but sweet Friday LinkSwarm!

  • How the Deep State helped rig the election for Biden.

    It transpires that the infamous incident before the 2020 election in which 50 former intelligence officials signed an open letter declared a New York Post expose about Hunter Biden’s laptop to have the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” was instigated at the behest of the Joe Biden campaign. This at least is the allegation in a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken released by Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government.

    In that letter, which is not easy to find, you’ll see three snippets of dialogue from questioning of Morell, who appears to have organized the open letter. In the first snippet, he explains that the idea originated with a call from Blinken, then of the Biden campaign.

  • It looks like every campaign to fight “disinformation” was just a tool to silence dissenting voices.

    I knew things were bad in my world, but the truth turned out to be much worse than I could have imagined.

    My name is Andrew Lowenthal. I am a progressive-minded Australian who for almost 18 years was the Executive Director of EngageMedia, an Asia-based NGO focused on human rights online, freedom of expression, and open technology. My resume also includes fellowships at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. For most of my career, I believed strongly in the work I was doing, which I believed was about protecting and expanding digital rights and freedoms.

    In recent years, however, I watched in despair as a dramatic change swept through my field. As if all at once, organizations and colleagues with whom I’d worked for years began de-emphasizing freedom of speech and expression, and shifted focus to a new arena: fighting “disinformation.”

    Long before the #TwitterFiles, and certainly before responding to a Racket call for freelancers to help “Knock Out the Mainstream Propaganda Machine,” I’d been raising concerns about the weaponization of “anti-disinformation” as a tool for censorship. For EngageMedia team members in Myanmar, Indonesia, India, or the Philippines, the new elite Western consensus of giving governments greater power to decide what could be said online was the opposite of the work we were doing.

    When Malaysian and Singaporean governments introduced “fake news” laws, EngageMedia supported networks of activists campaigning against it. We ran digital security workshops for journalists and human rights advocates under threat from government attack, both virtual and physical. We developed an independent video platform to route around Big Tech censorship and supported campaigners in Thailand fighting government attempts to suppress free expression. In Asia, government interference in speech and expression was the norm. Progressive activists in search of more political freedom often looked to the West for moral and financial support. Now the West is turning against the core value of free expression, in the name of fighting disinformation.

    Before being put in charge of tracking anti-disinformation groups and their funders for this Racket project, I thought I had a strong idea of just how big this industry was. I’d been swimming in the broader digital rights field for two decades and saw the rapid growth of anti-disinformation initiatives up close. I knew many of the key organizations and their leaders, and EngageMedia had itself been part of anti-disinformation projects.

    After gaining access to #TwitterFiles records, I learned the ecosystem was far bigger and had much more influence than I imagined. As of now we’ve compiled close to 400 organisations globally, and we are just getting started. Some organisations are legitimate. There is disinformation. But there are a great many wolves among the sheep.

    I underestimated just how much money is being pumped into think tanks, academia and NGOs under the anti-disinformation front, both from the government and private philanthropy. We’re still calculating, but I had estimated it at hundreds of millions of dollars annually and I’m probably still being naive – Peraton received a USD $1B dollar contract from the Pentagon.

    In particular, I was unaware of the scope and scale of the work of groups like the Atlantic Council, the Aspen Institute, the Center for European Policy Analysis and consultancies such as Public Good Projects, Newsguard, Graphika, Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub and others.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Eric Adams Blasts Biden, Says Border Crisis Has ‘Destroyed’ NYC.”

    New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams ripped President Joe Biden’s policies on the southern border Friday, saying that the White House’s position on the issue has turned the Big Apple into a disaster.

    Adams has repeatedly asked for assistance from the federal government as New York City deals with thousands of illegal immigrants who have made their way to the city thanks to Biden’s lax border policies. New York City will spend $4.2 billion to house and care for illegal immigrants by the middle of 2024.

    “The city is being destroyed by the migrant crisis,” the first-term mayor said during a panel discussion hosted by the African American Mayors Association, the New York Post reported.

    The Democrat then said that his city would have seen the biggest financial turnaround in the city’s history if it hadn’t been for the illegal immigration crisis.

    “If you removed the $4.2 billion that have been dropped into my city because of a mismanaged asylum seeker issue, you [would have] probably witnessed one of the greatest fiscal turnarounds in the history of New York City,” he said.

    Adams is delusional if he thinks illegal aliens alone are destroying his city. Graft, corruption, high crime engendered by leftwing Social Justice policies, high taxes, horribly burdensome regulation, and all the other hallmarks of undivided Democratic Party rule all played bigger roles in New York City’s demise. But the extra illegal aliens didn’t help. So how do you think Texas citizens have felt about the crisis all this time?

  • “Dem Bigwigs Caught Hobnobbing With Secret Chinese Police Mole.” “New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was recently caught on video rubbing elbows with one of two men arrested for running a secret — and illegal — Chinese police station in New York City’s Chinatown. The hobnobbing occurred at a gala for the Fukien American Association.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Bud Light’s Marketing VP Takes a Leave of Absence and Will Be Replaced.” Not good enough. Alissa Heinerscheid needs to be fired for cause for destroying billions in shareholder value.
  • Taking the next two in the order they were announced, not order of importance: Don Lemon fired from CNN. Also:
  • Tucker Carlson fired from Fox News. The problem with pairing these is that Don Lemon had one of the lowest rated shows on cable news, while Tucker Carlson had the highest, and ten times Lemon’s ratings (albeit evening rather than morning). Lemon was fired for naked partisanship and low ratings; Carlson was fired for wrong partisanship despite extremely high ratings. Carlson’s own statement after his firing:

  • Least surprising headline: “‘Drag Mom’ who mentored 11-year-old at Satan-themed pub sentenced to 11 months in prison for 11 child sex felonies.”
  • San Francisco Stops Boycotting 30 States With Conservative Laws Because it Had Little Impact.”
  • Remember those brand spanking new littoral combat ships the navy had built over the last decade or so? The navy is now wants to sell off six of them.
  • Weird, disturbing story that suggests a woman was set up for something very unsavory and scary under the guise of a fake job interview.
  • Happy ending.
  • A more efficient rotary engine?
  • Game engines have gotten really good.
  • The working military airport with a public road that runs across the runway.
  • “Revised Hospital Chart Has Patients Rate Pain On Scale From Zero To Watching ‘The View.'”
  • Fundraiser Convicted Of Funneling Foreign Money To Obama Campaign

    April 27th, 2023

    I previously covered this case while it was ongoing. Now Obama bundler Prakazrel “Pras” Michel has been convicted.

    A Fugees rapper accused in multimillion-dollar political conspiracies spanning two presidencies was convicted Wednesday after a trial that included testimony ranging from actor Leonardo DiCaprio to former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

    Prakazrel “Pras” Michel was accused of funneling money from a now-fugitive Malaysian financer [Low Taek Jho] through straw donors to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, then trying to squelch a Justice Department investigation and influence an extradition case on behalf of China under the Trump administration.

    So a Democratic Party bundler committed a felony to channel millions in illegal foreign donations to the Obama campaign and the mainstream media can barely be bothered to cover the story. We all know that if the amount had been mere thousands, and the words “Trump” and “Russia” appeared in the story, the mainstream media would still be talking about it…

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

    Russia Finally Sends T-14 Armata Tanks to Ukraine

    April 26th, 2023

    Remember the T-14 Armata, the next-generation Russian main battle tank that’s had numerous, well-documented teething problems?

    After much delay and speculation, Russia is finally fielding them in Ukraine.

    Russia has begun using its new T-14 Armata battle tanks to fire on Ukrainian positions “but they have not yet participated in direct assault operations,” the RIA state news agency reported on Tuesday, quoting a source close the matter.

    RIA said that the tanks have been fitted with extra protection on their flanks and crews have undergone “combat coordination” at training grounds in Ukraine.

    The T-14 tank has an unmanned turret, with crew remotely controlling the armaments from “an isolated armoured capsule located in the front of the hull.”

    The tanks have a maximum speed on the highway of 80 kilometres (50 miles) per hour, RIA reported.

    In January, British military intelligence reported that Russian forces in Ukraine were reluctant to accept the first tranche of the tanks due to their “poor condition.”

    It also said that any deployment of the T-14 would likely be “a high-risk decision” for Russia, and one taken primarily for propaganda purposes.

    “Production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat,” the British military said.

    “Eleven years in development, the programme has been dogged with delays, reduction in planned fleet size, and reports of manufacturing problems.”

    Here’s a brief overview video:

    The T-14 has had more than its share of developmental problems, and there are plenty of articles and videos detailing its shortcomings. Lazer Pig’s “The T-14 Armata tank sucks” is a long example of the genre.

    If your interest level doesn’t support viewing a full hour of Armata-bashing, here are some takeaways:

  • “The T14 combines all the ultimate Russian technology previously introduced onto NATO tanks 25 years ago in a way that only a country trying to inflate the share prices of Raytheon would understand.” (Raytheon makes Javelin.)
  • “It does away with all the unnecessary ERA systems of the T90, which cannot protect the tank against missiles that were invented in the 80s, and instead replaces them with an active protection system that can almost defend the tank against missiles that were invented in the 90s.”
  • “An auto loader famous for jamming that now cannot be accessed and cleared when it does jam, is somehow heavier and slower than the tank it has replaced, and comes combined together in a package so expensive the company that made it immediately went bankrupt. The country that bought it cannot afford it and it has about as much export potential as English whiskey.”
  • “For a while, every idiot with even the vaguest sense of military interest was banging on about this tank as if Stalin had come back to life and had personally forged the hull from his own ball sack. And that all tanks across every nation in the world had just been rendered obsolete.”
  • Sections on repeated post-Soviet tank design failures, like the T-95 and Black Knight, and coverage of Russian brain drain, omitted.
  • The weird, Tiger-2 derived engine is unreliable.
  • The driver’s vision sucks.
  • No crew access to the turret internally.
  • The autoloader is slower than the manual fire rates on T-80s, T-72s and Abrams.
  • “The qualifying time for [an Abrams] loader to pass training is seven seconds, and the best crews claim they can reload in about four to five seconds. Meaning a good Abrams can fire twice before the T-14 has reloaded.”
  • “Ukrainian hackers found that most of the electronic systems on board, including the digital sights, the night vision, the infrared, were all in fact western imports. Most notably, these were last generation French optics from Leclerc MBTs left over from when they were all upgraded to ICONE in 2009.”
  • Current Russian tank optics are actually available to the general public. “They’re not even the best that are currently available. If you’ve got a spare five grand, you can go into any high-end spy gadget store and buy a drone that will give you better night vision and IR tracking capabilities than the latest generation of modern Russian tanks.”
  • China reportedly found out that none of the tank’s systems actually worked. “The soft kill defense systems were simply smoke screens, and the hard kill systems designed specifically to stop the Javelin and the TOW missile could not detect if either of these systems had been fired at the tank, and relied entirely on the crew being able to notice a missile traveling at the speed of sound flying towards them.”
  • “To top it off, there was no evidence of the supposed electronic warfare systems that could render guided missiles and mines inert.”
  • “Nothing in the Armata is new.”
  • The idea that western tanks need to catch up to the Armata is laughable. “By the time the Armata enters service, it will already be outdated.”
  • “Everything the Armata is has been done before, and in many cases has been done better.”
  • “Russia is not an equal to the United States and NATO, it’s an equal to North Korea, both technologically backwards nations.”
  • Will all those problems still be present when the Armata engages enemy armor in Ukraine? Some certainly will. I doubt Armata electronics or optics can compare to those on western vehicles, and I bet that its active protection package is miles behind Trophy (which I don’t think will be on any Ukrainian tanks anyway). But I do suspect they’ve had enough time to improve the reliability of the engine, and I’m guessing the armor and autoloader improvements will improve survivability for the tank crew.

    Can the Armata take out Ukraine’s legacy Soviet tanks? Almost certainly. Can it take out Challenger 2s, Leopard 2s, and M1A2 Abrams? If it’s able to close in and get off the first shot, probably. But I’m guessing it will find the opportunities to do so few and far between.

    Brit-Turned-American On the Glories of Suburbia

    April 25th, 2023

    British-born Laurence Brown has a YouTube channel dedicated to documenting the differences between Britain and the USA. In the last year, he’s become and American citizen and bought a house in the suburbs (Chicago’s, alas), and has some observations, mostly positive, about American suburbs, including the community of dog owners, immaculate lawns, and America’s love affair with rectangles.