Exploring

 

 

Bullet Points:

** (h/t Claudio) Ukraine hopes Israel will transfer Russian weaponry recently captured from the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon as Israel is showing much less reluctance about sending Kyiv lethal weapons. If it does so, Ukraine will not become the first country Israel has transferred Russian, and in the Cold War days, Soviet armaments it captured from its Arab adversaries over the decades. Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, recently expressed his country’s hope that an Israeli parliament (Knesset) bill introduced in November advocating the transfer of captured Hezbollah weapons to Kyiv passes. I remember when Israel transferred captured weapons to the Mujhaddin in Afghanistan, fighting the Russians – am I dating myself?

** Far more creativity goes into the marketing of products than into the products themselves, pharmaceuticals, athletic shoes, candy bars, or feature films.

** Regarding the AP’s removal – Wemple said, “Several organizations have issued statements deploring the White House’s actions, including the White House Correspondents’ Association, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and PEN America. The New York Times has backed the AP in ‘objecting to governmental retribution for editorial decisions that the government disagrees with.’ A WAPost spokesperson said the AP’s access is ‘central for all journalistic organizations, including the Washington Post, in serving millions of Americans with fact-based, independent journalism each day.’ ” If AP is so independent, why has it taken $37.5 million from federal taxpayers? I caution readers, though, as the source is AP, an organization well-known for spreading false conspiracy theories and misinformation.

** Personal Note: Happy Birthday, Mother – 94 years on the Third Rock – and wishes for many more. (Photo of Mother and LL after Gulf War 1) – right.

** Russia and the U.S. agreed to start working toward ending the war in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties, the two countries’ top diplomats said after talks that reflected an extraordinary about-face in U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump. In an interview with The Associated Press after the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.”

** Is a US ban on exporting refined fuels (avgas, gasoline, and diesel) a bad idea? It would raise inventories, which would lower prices. True, oil companies would make less profit, but they’d still make a profit.

 

Quantum

“Microsoft today introduced Majorana 1, the world’s first quantum chip powered by a new Topological Core architecture that it expects will realize quantum computers capable of solving meaningful, industrial-scale problems in years, not decades.

It leverages the world’s first top conductor, a breakthrough type of material that can observe and control Majorana particles, to produce more reliable and scalable qubits, which are the building blocks for quantum computers.

In the same way that the invention of semiconductors made today’s smartphones, computers, and electronics possible, top conductors and the new type of chip they enable offer a path to developing quantum systems that can scale to a million qubits and are capable of tackling the most complex industrial and societal problems, Microsoft said.

Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft Corporation:

“A couple of reflections on the quantum computing breakthrough we just announced… Most of us grew up learning three main types of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Today, that changed.

After a nearly twenty-year pursuit, we’ve created an entirely new state of matter, unlocked by a new class of materials, top conductors, that enable a fundamental leap in computing. It powers Majorana 1, the first quantum processing unit built on a topological core. We believe this breakthrough will allow us to create a truly meaningful quantum computer in years, not decades, as some have predicted.

The qubits created with topoconductors are faster, more reliable, and smaller. They are 1/100th of a millimeter, meaning we now have a clear path to a million-qubit processor. Imagine a chip that fits in the palm of your hand yet can solve problems that even all the computers on Earth today combined cannot!”

 

The Arms Game

(Defense News – h/t Claudio) ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates —General Atomics is preparing to offer a package deal to Saudi Arabia to acquire a number of MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones, company executives said in an interview at the IDEX arms fair in Abu Dhabi.

“We are still in the very early stages but are pursuing this hard as there is a huge interest coming from Saudi regarding the MQ-9B — we expect they have significant requirements [for these drones] that could result in many of tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S. if we were to close that sale,” Dave Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, told Defense News.

 

Procurement

(Defense News) During the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have fielded a high volume of new weapons technology that has been invaluable in collecting intelligence, enabling drone strikes, and guiding the removal of landmines.

This came as something of a surprise. Ukraine’s success may have lessons for the U.S. Department of Defense as the government explores new avenues for efficiency.

Before the war, Ukraine’s military acquisition system was slow, opaque, and dominated by a state-owned enterprise, UkrOboronProm (literally, the Ukraine Defense Industry). As late as 2021, experts predicted UkrOboronProm’s imminent collapse.

Once the war began, Ukraine abandoned this old system and embraced commercial technology. The Ukrainians have purchased drones on the commercial market and affixed them with explosives to target Russian forces. In one example, Ukraine used Soviet-era RKG-3 anti-tank hand grenades, which traditionally required the user to be close to the tank to employ. But by using domestically developed drones, Ukrainians could drop RKG-3 grenades modified with tail fins onto Russian tanks and other armored vehicles.

Perhaps Ukraine’s most innovative solution to rapid fielding during conflict has been its standup of Brave1—an organization charged with quickly linking warfighter demand to foreign and domestic technology developers. Brave1 has made over 400 grants to developers, totaling over UAH 800 million (about $19 million). Brave1 has also supported the development of AI systems like the Swarmer drone and the Griselda intelligence system.

Of course, context matters: Ukraine’s processes, organizational models, and rules cannot be exactly replicated in the U.S. or elsewhere. But there are still at least two valuable lessons here for the Pentagon.

First, the U.S. Defense Department might benefit from aggressively leveraging commercial technology. Commercial technology is more advanced and less expensive in many domains than military tech. Ukraine’s experience suggests that the advantage of adapting commercial technology may be decisive during an ongoing conflict when capability gaps appear suddenly, and urgency precludes undergoing traditional acquisition processes.

For example, DoD might consider adopting parts of Ukraine’s drone acquisition approach, especially the acquisition of cheaper commercial drones that can be modified quickly for specific mission needs. Such systems could provide DoD with more affordable methods of collecting intelligence or executing strikes.

Various policies have been proposed to leverage U.S. commercial innovation. These include greater enforcement of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, establishing a new agency within the Defense Department focused on rapid technology development and deployment, and increasing the reprogramming cap. Late last year, Sen. Roger Wicker, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, introduced the FoRGED (Fostering Reform and Government Efficiency in Defense) Act, which proposes extensive changes to streamline the Pentagon’s acquisition of commercial tech. While Ukraine’s success in deploying commercial technology during the war does not suggest which of the myriad policy options would work best in the United States, it highlights that the rationale behind such proposed measures is sound.

 

Historical Musing

Chiang Kai-shek’s tenuous alliance with the CCP, which, on the morning of April 12, 1927, broke when his secret police and Green Gang elements raided their offices and hideouts, slaughtering thousands of communists.

Tensions had been brewing between the Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Communists, but now the break was entirely in the open. With his surprise attack, Chiang decimated much of the CCP organization and gained a seemingly insurmountable upper hand. Those communists who survived the purge fled from the KMT-controlled cities into the mountainous terrain of nearby Jiangxi province.

Once hidden away in the remote countryside, the communist fugitives got a short reprieve: The KMT’s final annihilation of the CCP was put on hold.

Readers may recall that by 1927, the Northern Expedition to unify all of eastern China had only reached Shanghai. Chiang continued north to wrestle Beijing and Manchuria from warlords like Feng Yuxiang and Zhang Zuolin. Once the Northern Expedition was complete, he would mop up the scattered remaining communists.

While Chiang advanced northward, the path of the now devastated CCP was being remapped in the remote countryside.

With so many CCP officials killed in the purge, Mao Zedong rose to prominence and linked up with another famous communist named Zhu De (pronounced “zhew duh”). Zhu, trained as a cadet at the Qing Dynasty’s Yunnan Military Academy, reorganized the party’s military wing.

Zhu De proved highly competent in guerilla warfare and, in later years, was elevated to the hero of the Chinese Civil War of 1945-49. Zhu was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the early PRC years. American and UN forces were pitted against his nearly three million PLA troops in Korea.

With Mao handling political and ideological affairs and Zhu skilled in warfare, the two became a formidable alliance that would soon burst into open disagreement with the CCP’s visiting Soviet Comintern advisors.

The Soviets wanted to follow the standard Marxist credo, which predicted that the communist revolution would constantly be fomented by exploited industrial workers in large cities. They urged the Chinese communists to return to Wuhan and Shanghai—now entirely controlled by the KMT and its secret police—to agitate strikes and socialist uprisings.

Mao and Zhu, both children of farmers, broke with orthodoxy and pinned their hopes on the rural peasantry to spur revolution. The CCP took control of remote villages and large swaths of rural Jiangxi and Hunan provinces.

Eventually, an archipelago of loosely connected CCP territories formed, although they weren’t formally founded as the Chinese Soviet Republic (CSR) until 1931. For the few short years it lasted, the CSR acted as a nebulous, disjointed Marxist “nation within a nation.”

At its peak, the CSR’s territory encompassed perhaps 9 million people, and it was officially declared a “democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants.” But just like other communist regimes, the real power lay at the top, in this case, the Central Executive Committee, which Mao chaired.

True to communist principles, the Chinese Soviet Republic (CSR) confiscated land and farms from landlords and redistributed them to peasants in exchange for political support. Uncooperative landlords and other bourgeoisie were outright murdered along with “wrong thinking” prisoners who were worked to death. Estimates of deaths at the hands of the CSR lie in the hundreds of thousands, which, within the context of a peak 9 million population, represents a high rate of death.

Of course, hundreds of thousands would later prove to be a mere rounding error compared to the many tens of millions who would die once Mao’s CCP controlled all of China (1949-1976).

With some territory under marginal CSR control, Soviet Comintern advisor Mikhail Borodin urged communist forces to expand outwards and launch retaliatory frontal assaults against KMT forces. This strategy ultimately proved futile, even disastrous, for the outgunned and outnumbered rebels, and it strengthened the Mao-Zhu alliance’s case for smaller-scale guerilla warfare. Of their new tactics, Zhu famously declared:

-When the enemy advances, we retreat

-When the enemy halts and encamps, we harass them

-When the enemy seeks to avoid battle, we attack

-When the enemy retreats, we pursue

At first, these guerilla tactics were effective. They provided some reprieve from KMT forces in CSR-controlled territory, partly because Chiang Kai-shek was still distracted by his campaigns against the remaining warlords.

By the end of 1928, Chiang declared the Northern Expedition over, but it wasn’t.

Two powerful warlords with whom he had reached power-sharing agreements rebelled later that year. Feng Yuxiang, whom Chiang had appointed as Vice President of the legislature, and Yan Xishan, now Minister of the Interior and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the army, joined forces in revolt.

Once again, Chiang was distracted by his quest for unification and defeated the rebelling warlord armies by 1930.

Now, Chiang could turn his attention back to the Communists, this time with a pair of military “annihilation campaigns” in 1930 and 1931. Both were surprisingly ineffective against the communists’ newly adopted guerilla tactics. Using rapid mobility and stealth, the Communists captured many KMT weapons and prisoners.

Chiang planned a third annihilation campaign in 1931 but was forced to call it off due to another distraction: the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

Japan planned to provoke China into an all-out war in which its modernized military would rout the Chinese, but Chiang didn’t take the bait. Instead, he employed negotiation and diplomacy, buying time to snuff out the communist rebels while enlarging and modernizing his armies.

This policy of “first internal pacification, then external resistance,” effectively appeasing the invading Japanese while ridding himself of domestic rebels, would prove increasingly unpopular with the Chinese public and eventually caught up with Chiang. Hence, in 1932, Chiang was again free to focus on the Communists, and he attempted a fourth “annihilation campaign,” where he was also unsuccessful against guerilla tactics.

After so many failures using conventional frontal warfare against a swift, mobile, and elusive enemy, Chiang knew he needed a change in strategy, and he found one…

***

Labor Secretary – The Democrats will vote for her.

“While Donald Trump has made multiple excellent choices for his cabinet and agency heads, his choice for Labor secretary is opposed to a key part of his platform (making America prosperous) and is endorsed by the most woke, dictatorial, and radical of teacher union heads.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s Senate confirmation hearings began on Wednesday.

The former Planned Parenthood employee and loyal union stooge needs to be replaced — Trump should never have chosen her. She’s an absolute gift to the most leftist and most corrupt unions. It is one thing to appeal to union membership, as Trump undoubtedly did in the last election and another thing to place a radical union ally in a position of high federal authority.

***

Identify the Aircraft

1

two built – “roadable aircraft”

I’d guess you wouldn’t want to have to fly IFR

2

512 built

Since it’s a US Navy aircraft, please use the Navy designation for your identification.

3

1000 built

The Turkish version saw combat missions during their 1974 invasion of Cyprus

Trivia: Operational aircraft carried two GAR-11/AIM-26 nuclear

Falcon missiles in the center bay to be used against Soviet bombers.

***

Parting Shot

h/t Frank

End