The Day Before Tomorrow

Blog Post
Larry-Lambert

Bullet Points:

** Yes, the little boy to the left is me at 7 1/2, shortly after I shot my first deer in Arizona’s White Mountains. I’m holding a scoped .22 LR with a bull barrel and a pistol scope that my grandfather made for me. We lived on 8th Place in Mesa at the time, and I attended Thomas Edison Elementary School. That’s back before they started naming schools for minority activists, sexual deviates, and communists. My grandfather said that giving me a BB gun would teach me bad habits. He didn’t want me shooting indiscriminately. Sight alignment, sight picture, peace through superior firepower. The world was a very different place 63 years ago. But some things never change. The enemy diversion you’re ignoring is still — inevitably the main attack.

** The most Arizona man in the world.

** How can women feel unconditional love? Answered here succinctly.

** (right) From Don T: While I’m working on larger projects, I’ll keep posting older works. Here is a British Grenadier of the 52nd Regiment of Foot, 1775 (painted in 2011), watercolors and gouache (with a bit of pen and ink) on Bristol Board. The Dog/Monster-headed sword he was posed with was an original. TO PURCHASE DON TROIANI ART PRINTS, GO TO: https://artofdontroiani.com/

** We haven’t talked much about Epstein’s clients here on VM. Ryan explores the subject with a guest. It may be difficult to tell the difference between a 17 1/2 year old and an 18-year-old, but there is a significant difference between a 13-year-old and an 18-year-old – Bill and Hillary knew the difference, but it scratched the itches that appealed to them.

** Wow – after all these years, I may have value! Who would have thought – yes, three weekends to fix things with cursing is acceptable. And if I am assembling something complicated, there will be screws, bolts, washers, and widgets left over – OK if it still works. There is at least one attractive woman out there who doesn’t think that I’m wasting my time wandering aimlessly through hardware stores.

** Your own personal robot arrives in the mail.

** Greece’s Minister of Migration and Asylum, Thanos Plevris, announced a nationwide crackdown on unauthorized (illegal) places of worship, with a strong focus on closing around 60 unlicensed mosques in Athens. The policy includes sealing these sites and deporting foreign nationals (many from Bangladesh and Pakistan) who operate them.

 

The War of the Roses

Richard III killed Henry Tudor’s standard-bearer with his own hands. Minutes later, he became the last English king to die in battle.

22 August 1485. Bosworth Field. Richard III had the crown, the high ground, and the larger army. Henry Tudor stood opposite him with a borrowed force and a blood claim that most of England barely recognised. On paper, the outcome should have been inevitable.

But the Stanleys would not move. Three thousand men sat on the flanks, watching, waiting — their loyalty balancing the battle on a knife-edge. Then Richard saw his chance. Henry Tudor’s banner was advancing with only a small guard around it — the pretender himself, exposed. Richard did not send men. He went.

He gathered his household knights and launched straight at Henry Tudor. Not a careful manoeuvre, but a king’s gamble. Kill the challenger and end the war in minutes. Richard smashed through Henry’s front line, cutting down the standard bearer with his own hand. He came within a sword’s length of ending the Tudor line before it began.

Then the Stanleys moved. Fresh troops slammed into Richard’s flank. His horse went down. He fought on foot, surrounded, until he could fight no more. The last Plantagenet king was beaten into the mud.

The crown — found in a thornbush — was placed on Henry Tudor’s head before the blood had dried. Bosworth did not just end a battle. It ended a dynasty.

 

 

Think about Drones

At times, funding is available for UAV development. As visitors to VM will know, I had my cracker in that soup for a while, and then I didn’t. Without revisiting some of what I did over a decade ago, it appears to be circling around as life often does. I’m not being cryptic, and I’m still unsure what I will end up doing, but the higher end of the reusable UAV development market has a lot of room.

(h/t Claudio and Strategypage) In late 2024, China stopped selling drones and drone components to Ukraine. Ukraine’s solution was to ramp up production by its domestic drone manufacturers and obtain more drones and parts from the United States and NATO countries. These drones weren’t as rugged as the Chinese Mavic 3 and 4 models, but they could provide an adequate temporary solution. Eventually, China relented and resumed shipments. It was either that or see the non-Chinese drone manufacturers grow even more competitive.

For years now, China has had an edge in the market, selling vehicles that worked even though many of their components were, at best, flawed, because they produced products that were “good enough.” That means if you sourced programmed material from China, you could keep the chips but would need to reprogram them from scratch.

One result of the Ukraine War was the emergence of inexpensive drones as a decisive weapon and as a reconnaissance and surveillance system. Drones have been around for decades, but they were complex, expensive, and difficult to operate. That changed in the 1990s when General Atomics introduced its one-ton Predator drone. These were widely used by American and allied forces, along with the larger 4.2-ton Reaper. The second stage of the revolution came in 2016 when the Chinese firm DJI introduced the Mavic quadcopter drone. These were cheap, costing from $300 to thousands of dollars, depending on accessories. By the 2020s, most quadcopter drones cost about $500. More importantly, suppliers provided drone components, so you could build—and often design—your own.

In 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainians were building their own drones, often at home or in scattered workshops. By late 2024, Ukrainians were producing over 150,000 drones a month. Ukraine now aims to produce more than 1.5 million drones per month. By purchasing Chinese and other components in bulk, thousands of Ukrainian men and women are building these drones for the armed forces or for someone they knew in the military. Troops at the front also build and modify drones to fit their immediate situations. For the soldiers, designing better drones is often a matter of life or death.

The Ukrainians have stayed ahead of the Russians in drone technology and production. The Russian government discourages or even outlaws individuals from building drones and instead centralizes drone production.

Since Russia invaded in 2022, Ukrainian weapons manufacturers have grown nearly 400 percent. Ukraine produced nearly five million drones in 2025. In 2026, there are expected to be 20 million drones. It’s more than the drones themselves. Ukraine has developed novel ways of using larger drones to attack key Russian industrial targets that are thousands of kilometers from the Ukrainian border. There are also applications of drone technology to ground combat. Ukrainian infantry is increasingly augmented with combat robots to carry out high-risk attacks. In more than one instance, Russian soldiers defending themselves surrendered to the robots.

These technologies are also being used in long-range missiles, driverless ground vehicles to carry supplies in the combat zone, and even bring back wounded soldiers. There will be wider and more effective use of ground combat robots operated by AI/Artificial Intelligence augmented software.

Ukrainian manufacturers also produce artillery, rocket launchers, and most other types of weapons and military equipment. For over a century, Ukraine has been a major producer of weapons, including aircraft and missiles. When Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, it had nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them. A 1994 agreement between Ukraine, Russia, Britain, and the United States had Ukraine getting rid of its nuclear weapons in return for guarantees from Russia that they would never attack Ukraine, and if they did, Britain and the Americans were obliged to aid Ukraine in resisting the attack. This experience complicates any future Russian offers to end the war in Ukraine through a treaty. In short, Russia cannot be trusted. Vladimir Putin did not take control of Russia until 1999 and apparently feels he is not responsible for observing the 1994 agreement.

Putin has more serious problems with Ukraine. While Russia is suffering from four years of increasingly stringent economic sanctions, the Ukrainian economy is rapidly growing. Ukrainian production of military equipment is rapidly expanding and attracting investments from NATO countries, especially the United States. Ukraine currently produces over 70 percent of the weapons it uses to fight the Russians. Since these weapons have proven themselves in combat, they are attractive to other nations seeking innovative, affordable weapons.

There are more than 500 defense-related companies in Ukraine, and most are seeking export customers or co-production deals in which other nations produce Ukrainian-designed weapons. Ukraine regularly demonstrates its ability to rapidly develop, produce, and deploy new systems in combat. Any problems that develop, the Ukrainian manufacturer will quickly fix. Ukraine has become the gold standard for defense production, which has attracted over $100 billion in foreign investment.

 

Identify the Vehicle

1 & 2

 

Identify the Weapon

3

Up to 500,000 were smuggled

4

Effective at 500 yards or at one yard with a bayonet.

5

Fewer were produced – largely carried by Ohio Volunteers.

 

6

Lesser-known .50 breach loader.

 

 

End

Related Posts

Thoughts

  Happening Now I’m taking a break, don’t judge me.   Fast Food Most places that I’ve seen are starting…

Socialism is a Bad Idea

Single Payer Healthcare Four Questions: (1) This is being proposed by the same idiots who couldn’t create a website to…

41 thoughts on “The Day Before Tomorrow”

  1. “Ukraine has become the gold standard for defense production, which has attracted over $100 billion in foreign investment.”: “Attracted”? “Investment”? Democrats giving WTP’s tax dollars to the Ukraine war rat hole is hardly an investment…altho, Democrats did take (create?) this opportunity to ‘invest’ in their own bank accounts.
    I know, I know…semantics…one Democrats investment is another politicians largess.
    ***
    Marry the handy guy: “If the woman don’t find you handsome they should find you handy.” (H/t Red-Green).

    1. Ukraine; The laundromat$ were part of it. Yes. Noticing the weapons R & D as well. How much Ag or Industrial productivity and profit is being made is a good question. Bio labs? Crickets.
      –
      The battle lines and territory taken over a decade ago seems stalemated. Meanwhile deep strikes i.m.o. beta test new tech. Are sanctions an effective bridle in the Bears mouth? Is E.U. NATO stepping up or sitting on one hand with the other barely raised?
      –
      Comparing Bush Senior’s march to Bagdad with 2 yrs in Gaza, and the Uke – Ruskie chessboard makes me wonder.

      1. Reality matters, unless one is a politician, where the ends justify the means, usually at the cost of ‘the people’.
        THIS exchange encapsulates taking down the bravo sierra narrative being pushed by the political sloganeers…and it’s Clarkson, which makes it even more epic:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZBbPkVu6Zc
        He destroys the politician feel-good propaganda that ultimately has government hamstringing farmers with regulation on one side while demanding farmers become more efficient on the other coupled to these idiots believing their own diversity enviro pap. (PDJT’s actions yesterday are a prime example of undoing government idiocy).
        Clarkson’s video is Covid on a different subject: You MUST stay home…but pay your property taxes. The two are mutually exclusive, except the ruling class are blind to the facts because they are always beyond short-sighted to unintended consequences. Ukraine was a massive grift, but if one says ‘no more money’ and remove your lapel pin the haters demand your head for being insensitive to the plight of the Ukrainian people.

          1. Thanks for elevating ‘the commentary’, altho Clarkson’s undeniable Citizen Truth v. Government Fiction was pretty good on its own. (Lee Zeldon would approve, and Red-Green’s handyman fix all – a case of duct tape – would greatly assist in to muzzling the ruling class who wouldn’t know Kipling from Big Bunny.)

          2. I use rigger’s tape. Better than duct tape. Bailing wire and 550 cord round out the essentials. I don’t know what I’d do without spools of parachute cord handy.

  2. 1.M1120 HEMTT (Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck)
    2. HMMWV M119 Hummer
    3. P53 Enfield
    4. Springfield model 1861
    5. Springfield model 1842
    6. Galleger Carbine

  4. Identify the Vehicle:
    1. Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT)
    2. Humvee
    Identify the Weapon:
    3. Pattern 1853 Enfield
    4. Springfield Armory Model 1861/1862 Percussion Rifle Musket
    5. ?
    6. Gallagher carbine

    1. #5 was not a trick question, but it was tricky because of the production.
      .
      The Joslyn Model 1861/1862 was the first mass-produced breech-loading rifle produced at the Springfield Armory, but not all were made there.
      .
      Benjamin Franklin Joslyn was known as one of the most interesting gun designers during the War of Southern Independence. In 1855, Joslyn designed a breech-loading carbine. After successful tests, the U.S. Army ordered 50 of these rifles in .54 caliber in 1857. The Army quickly lost interest in the rifle, but in 1858 the U.S. Navy ordered 500 of these in .58 caliber. 150 to 200 of these rifles were delivered in 1861.
      .
      In 1861, Joslyn designed a modified version using a metal rimfire cartridge. The Federal Ordnance Department ordered 860 of these carbines, which were delivered in 1862. Most went to units from Ohio. In 1862, Joslyn received an order for 20,000 carbines. Delivery of these weapons began in 1863, but by the time the war ended, only about half had been delivered.
      .
      A correct answer as to caliber would be both .54 and .58.

  5. Personal robot; she came with wardrobe option. Removable nipple/ camera covers, or the seamless breast plate for cooking, and turning wrenches?
    –
    A while back commenter’s mentioned after an owner’s driver changed a flat, the verbal scene showed the owner left stranded as the P.R. went sentinent, driving off.

    2. He suffered from severe scoliosis, such that wearing armor while on foot would have reduced his ability to breath effectively. Yet he, on foot, cut his way to the standard bearer and almost to Henry Tudor himself. What a dude. He was the man. Known for being lenient on the families of to criminals to the point of allowing the families of arrested nobles to remain on the nobles’ lands and with pensions. So nice he pardoned people who actively hated him.
      –
      He was smart, well-educated, considerate, well spoken and level-headed. And a hell-of-a great soldier and warrior.
      –
      And it’s been known for centuries that he had nothing to do with the death of his brother’s children (the two princes.) Records show the children were alive after Richard died, which makes him killing them kind of difficult unless Richard’s specter was as much a bad-ass as Richard alive. So who killed the two princes? Well, even being bastards, the two princes had more legal right to the Crown of England than… Henry Tudor. Hmmm…

      1. Household product idea. (Design patent incoming.)
        Meat thermometer (you know, the spike thing that you stick into a roast). Instead of a needle on a dial, or a digital readout, a little, er, flag (yeah, let’s call it flag) that starts out hanging straight down but goes up toward vertical proportional to the temperature of the meat.
        Because guidelines suggest different temps depending on the kind of meat (145 degF for whole cuts of beef, 165 degF for poultry, etc) we could sell different models. One for beef, another for roast chickens. Color-coding would add visual appeal and facilitate rapid identification of which thermometer to use. A big red thermometer for beef. A smaller yellow one (ahem) for chicken.
        —
        Advertising tag line: The angle of our dangle shows you the heat of your meat.
        —
        You’re welcome.

  10. President Trump repealed the Obama-era 2009 greenhouse-gas “endangerment finding” in what they’re calling the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history, eliminating key greenhouse-gas emissions standards for vehicles and other sources and triggering criticism and expected legal challenges.
    .
    Finally!

      1. All it takes is a pen and no cell phone, just someone with the guts to see things with common sense…because he isn’t owned by anyone.
        Next is Diesel Extortion Fluid, then the EPA altogether…and while he and the A-Team are at it, the IRS.

  11. Hunting. Didn’t successfully bag my first deer until my early 30’s, and that on a hunting trip to the ancestral family grounds in west Texas. Your photo brings back memories. During high school, lived on my uncle’s ranch at the south east corner of the Tulelake basin. Out the back door into open Juniper/sagebrush country. Spent most of my spare time tromping around out there after furry varmints with my Remington 581 .22 w/4X scope.
    —
    Handy. Some might politely say “frugal”. True. I would also add self-sufficiency. One example–I routinely dismount the ceiling vent fans in our bathrooms, vacuum out the dust bunnies, and lube the bearings. Here in Texas at least, Lowes, Home Depot, and ACE offer 10% discount for veterans.

  12. A YouTube video examined the vast tangle of fiber optics from drones littering the ground in Ukraine. Does Ukraine have the capability of manufacturing all their fiber optics needs? An internet search suggests they can supply about 25% of their needs domestically.

  13. Incidentally, nice opening picture…The Ghost in the Forest allowing us to see him…but only for a second, then wisp, gone like vapor.

    1. The elk in my part of Arizona are very much like those in Estes Park, CO. You see them wandering down city streets in Pine, Strawberry, and Payson. Sometimes in Flagstaff and Williams. The White Wolf Mine has them passing through daily. They have grazed the winter grass (dry) down to the nubs.

      1. Elk and deer, the ultimate ‘sustainable free range green’ lawnmowers, you should get enviro points.

  14. Richard III took a chance. He lost, but he tried, which is what was expected in battle at the time. The Spencers did literally change England’s history that day!

    Re drones- There are many types and ‘many’ uses. There are also many ways to ‘defeat’ said drones… Just depends on which side one is on.

    2. The Stanleys. Who were known as back-biting cowardly losers who were easily bought by the highest bidder, even during battles.
      –
      One of the greatest things Richard did was to bring the Stanleys into his brother King Edward’s army at the battle that ended the war between the Yorks and Lancasters. Which gained great amounts of money and privilege to the Stanleys. Who affirmed their continued support of Richard after Edward died and Richard became king.
      –
      The Stanleys. What a pile of feckless a-holes. Well France got what they paid for, as the bribes Henry Tudor bought the Stanleys with came from the French King’s coffers.
      –
      Now, the Spencers, well, they’re a border/midland Scottish clan descended from Henry Attentot, who was William the Conqueror’s dispenser (quartermaster, basically.) And, yeah, being border Scots they were kind of feckless and not to be trusted either. Not in the same league as the Stanleys, more amateur league to the Stanley’s major league.
      –
      And… Henry bought them very well. They served the Tudors until the Tudors turned against them, because the only people more feckless and less trustworthy than the Stanleys were the Tudors.
      –
      England would have prospered very well under Richard and the House of York. Not to mention Richard would have not produced a diseased line of ill or psychotic children like Henry did.
      –
      Under the Yorks, England would have probably remained Catholic, and not suffered under the English Civil War.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to top