The Great White Fleet was a group of 16 United States Navy battleships that completed a global circumnavigation from December 16, 1907, to February 22, 1909, on orders from President Theodore Roosevelt. The fleet earned its popular nickname from the stark white paint on its hulls, which demonstrated American naval power, promoted diplomacy, and showcased the U.S. as a major world power. Has anyone suggested to President Trump that the US Navy reprise the accomplishments of President Roosevelt’s fleet? Of course, we’d need to paint our ships white.
LSP suggested that President Trump’s fleet could be plated gold, and while it would match the theme he prefers, the democrats in Congress would likely prefer it to be called the Great White Fleet because it would give them something to complain about, and we know they love that. It’s every bit as racist as calling Carcharodon carcharias a great white shark.
CDRSAL has something to say about BBs. As usual, he’s an insightful source.
“Remember the canceled CG(X)? It was going to be used as an air defense ship, and before it was killed, there was an attempt to shoehorn in the Zumwalt’s engineering plant, but the hull and energy demands simply were not there. Then, right before it was killed, we were looking at something over 20,000 tons.
For a reference point, the WWII German pocket battleship Graf Spee displaced 16,280 tons.
If the goal here is to design a ship around long-range missiles, then we’re talking about Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) missiles.
So, Zumwalts become battlecruises.
The “Golden Battleships?” Not a bad name, as they will (throws something against the wall), cost 2/3 of a CVN, especially if they are nuclear powered, which they probably need to be as you will need the “white space” in the design for the weapons and radars that are coming, all of which are power hungry.
That’s $8.5 billion a hull, not including the cost of the weapons you’ll put on them.
What does that give you? Well, look at the USS Salamander at the top of the post. It has 31 Advanced Payload Modules (APM). That gives you 31×3=93 CPS missiles. The Zumwalts carry 80 missiles besides CPS, so a battleship should have at least 50% more than that. Let’s call it 120 missiles in MK-57 or MK-41 VLS cells.
So, a nuclear-powered, guided missile battleship. USS Salamander (BBGN-1)…or if we want to simplify things, as the “G” and “N” are just too much unnecessary clutter, (BB 72).
Or, if you want to make it less of a target, it could SUBMERGE—I give you the USS Virtual Mirage (SSBGN-1). Is a 20,000-ton submarine a great idea? No, I don’t think so, but there are only submarines and targets. I’m also not in favor of painting submarines white—black is beautiful. Black submarines matter. (It could become a Republican mantra)
Before we leave the Navy – Pres. Trump dances with the US Navy during his visit to Japan. The dems talk about how much the military loved demented old Pedo Joe Biden…yeah, right.
Bullet Points:
** It’s not a volcano (yet), but I’ve heard it suggested that the Barack Obama Presidential Library and Monument be called “Mordor” for short. Let’s face it, if anyone said to you, “I need to go to Mordor,” you’d know precisely where they were headed. Stephen King’s Dark Tower also works (right). It may be scrapped before it’s built or just left half-completed to deteriorate slowly. I’m not an expert on the subject—just commenting. Chicago must be very proud. Will Pedo Joe Biden ever have a monument built to his memory?
** Sounds like the inflation reduction act didn’t reduce inflation, and the affordable care act didn’t make healthcare affordable.
** G42 is a founding partner of MGX. UAE´s International Holding Company set up a unit to manage Group 42’s China-focused 42X Fund, which holds stakes in Beijing-based JD.com and ByteDance. Group 42 was reportedly the sole registered shareholder of the spying app ToTok.
G42 called allegations from US intelligence officials “defamatory” in a Financial Times article, which described technology transfer from the Abu Dhabi AI firm to Huawei that allegedly helped China extend the range of some missiles. G42 said the US intelligence, gathered in 2022, was from “sources with questionable motive and intent,” and that its relationship with Huawei was limited to cloud services. Huawei (also a Chinese spy company) also rejected the allegations. The story comes at a critical time for the AI firm as it looks to clinch advanced chips from US suppliers, while the Trump administration mulls greenlighting sales to Gulf countries. G42 removed Huawei equipment from its data centers as part of a broader push to decouple from Chinese AI technology and lean on Western — primarily US-made — hardware. The moves culminated in a $1.5 billion investment and partnership with Microsoft last year. The Chinese spy company G42 did not respond to Virtual Mirage’s request for comment.
** Is she crazy? Possibly. But she does call balls and strikes, and I have to hand it to her for that.
** Dobropillia-area Ukrainian defenders report that a mechanised Russian assault was decisively repelled after several armoured vehicles became immobilised in the Kazennyi Torets River and sank while crossing. Precise strikes from M142 HIMARS rocket artillery, drones, and artillery fire then hit the assault force. Ukrainian sources claim at least five armoured units were lost, and the raid was halted. The failure highlights the logistical and terrain challenges facing Moscow’s mechanised push in the eastern Donetsk region.
** Food Stamps for Thanksgiving? Point/Counterpoint
** Ukrainian forces report a successful drone strike on the S‑400 Triumf long-range air-defence radar and a Russian warship in the occupied Crimea region, degrading Moscow’s surveillance and maritime capabilities in the Black Sea theatre. The attack underlines Kiev’s growing drone-strike proficiency and Moscow’s vulnerability in contested waters.
** Yes, I know that it’s 99% CGI, but I still enjoy the Predator series. I enjoy SciFi thrillers more than slasher movies and productions about demonic possession. I think that casting Elle Fanning as the counterpoint in the film was a brilliant move.
** I believe that the Communist Mayor-in-waiting of New York City – Zoltan – is funny at just about every possible level. How can you not eat popcorn while you watch?
** Elsa talks about that one aunt…that many people have.
** Large, in charge, obviously hungry, and entitled – food stamps revisited. What happens when the all-you-can-eat buffet doesn’t accept EBT?
In East China
Taiwan has officially received its first batch of Harpoon coastal defense systems, marking a significant milestone in its coastal defense modernization program. The delivery includes 100 launchers and 400 RGM-84L-4 Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles, which will form the backbone of the new Littoral Combat Command scheduled to begin operations on January 1, 2026. This specialized command will focus on defending Taiwan’s coastal zones and sea lanes, significantly enhancing deterrence against potential maritime threats. The Harpoon Block II, featuring upgraded GPS/INS guidance and advanced software, will enable Taiwan to effectively engage enemy ships and coastal targets even under complex electronic warfare conditions. They hope to sink the Western Chinese Imperialist fleet before it can land and lay waste to the island of East China.
Piracy on the High Seas (Latin America Edition)
I’ve blogged about piracy in Mexico over the years because I encountered it (not firsthand) through reporting. It’s a tangible and growing reality. InSight Crime has provided valuable information about the resurgence.
Weak law enforcement, widespread poverty, and the growing influence of transnational criminal organizations are fueling attacks on fishing vessels, cargo ships, and private yachts. These incidents span Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, and Peruvian waters, often revealing direct links to organized smuggling and drug trafficking networks. This convergence poses strategic risks to ports and international shipping lanes.
The absence of coordinated, well-funded maritime security further compounds losses for the shipping industry and heightens concern among global stakeholders.
A hybrid form of riverine piracy has also taken shape — one characterized by cargo theft, inter-cartel rivalries over drug shipments, and smuggling operations shielded by entrenched border corruption networks. This inland corridor, once viewed merely as a logistical artery, has become a contested zone.
Over six months this year:
• April: A bulk carrier was hijacked by Haitian pirates, who abducted two crew members — likely the captain and navigator — and took them back to Haiti.
• May: Colombian cartel operatives boarded a cargo ship leaving Cristóbal, Panama, to retrieve concealed narcotics.
• July: Off Colombia’s coast, CCTV footage captured another armed boarding, with every cartel member visibly carrying a firearm.
Such events have become disturbingly routine. Captains now routinely receive alerts and updates of these incidents while underway — a stark reminder that modern piracy, both maritime and riverine, is adapting faster than the systems meant to contain it.
Ice Purge?
(Fox) According to four senior Department of Homeland Security & Trump-administration sources, a major shake-up at Immigration and Customs Enforcement is underway — as many as 12 ICE field-office chiefs nationally are being reassigned or removed in a push to boost deportations.
The redesign reportedly is led by Corey Lewandowski, and some of the new leaders are expected to come from U.S. Border Patrol/U.S. Customs and Border Protection—including hand-picked agents by the controversial Commander Greg Bovino.
Reportedly affected field offices include Los Angeles, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Denver, El Paso, San Diego, Seattle/Portland, and New Orleans.
Insiders say the move reflects tension between the ICE leadership (prioritizing arrests of criminal aliens/deportation orders) and a broader push led by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and others to pursue a more aggressive campaign targeting all undocumented immigrants.
An official statement to Fox News via spokesman Tricia McLaughlin says: “While we have no personnel changes to announce at this time, the Trump Administration remains laser focused on delivering results and removing violent criminal illegal aliens from this country.”
Identify the Ship
1
Identify the Aircraft
2
3
Use the correct Navy nomenclature.
4
Parting Shot
End
1 – Turkish By Dawn’s Early Light
2 – Boeing YL-15
3 – Douglas JD-1 Invader
4 – British Fairey Barracuda
1 is TCG Barbaros first of the barbaros class frigates.
2 is a Boeing L-15 Scout
Yes on 1 and 2, RCC, well done.
But can you mount bazookas on the L-15?
Maybe a recoilless rifle? A very small one.
1 * Is Turkish TCG Barbaros = Old eyes failed visual check
Now you ran the table, excellent.
(1)TCG Barbaros, Turkish MEKO frigate.
(2) Boeing L-15 Scout.
(3) JD-1 Navy A-26 variant.
(4) Fairey Barracuda.
– Kle.
Very Good, nailed them!
“The Great White Fleet……Has anyone suggested to President Trump that the US Navy reprise the accomplishments of President Roosevelt’s fleet? Of course, we’d need to paint our ships white.”
Sounds racist and would upset the libs – Reason enough in my book to set sail ASAP
Black submarines matter – Lets see that running around a NASCAR track
Shouldn’t orange be the most logical color?
Identify the Ship:
1. TCG Barbaros
Identify the Aircraft:
2. Boeing L-15 Scout
3. Douglas JD-1
4. Fairey Barracuda
Thanksgiving, is that the holiday that celebrates arrival by jet or ship (paid by an NGO or others) where one is greeted with free EBT, housing voucher, child care, translation and legal services (paid by others), education for children (mainstreamed into class regardless of language skills or educational level), job assistance (id cards freely provided in most states), and chain migration rights; or is that to celebrate settlers arriving in a wilderness and hacking out a future while creating a new civilization on an new continent sparsely peopled by warring tribes?
If The Magical Mr O’s ‘monument to his ego’ (and aesthetically as fitting) looks like that, then Biden’s would look like a swirling black hole in the ground.
***
Buffet Creatures at The Hungry Heifer: Unreal what EBT card holders demand for their entitled attitudes, doesn’t she know tht bringing Tupperware to such establishments is not a good look (aside from the sweat pants)?
***
#2…I want a Boeing Scout (thx to others who ID’d said craft)…could be a nice commuter.
NYC – Let Zoltan take it Commie/MuslimFanatical/ThirdWorldShithole – Whatever direction he takes it, accept it’s lost. And has been for years thanks to Dems. The voters will get what they want and if those that do not vote wanted something else that’s on them for not voting.
John Carpenter had the right idea back in 1981 with Escape from New York which was set in 1997 – we’re 30 years late but it’s not too late to wall it off. And Snake Pliisken is still alive if Air Force one goes down in the city.
BTW – I have never been to NYC and have never had any desire to visit. Closest I have been is Newark, Patterson & Trenton when I was sent there on a work assignment a couple years back. Other than the pizza I have no desire to return to New Jersey either.
…and…cheesesteaks and pork roll. Having grown up in Bucks County (across the line from those places you cite) have had my fill of what once were great cities. But that is what one gets when voting for “freebies” and the Snake-Oil Salesmen/Woman who profess to be our betters (they are not, often dumber than rocks), stating they have all the solutions to your day-to-day struggles…that they created. Electricity costs will rise…then what? Especially for those who were sold moons ago to go all electric as the cheaper energy (most expensive for heat). 17c/kwh in PA…insane consequences.
I’ve been many places including NYC – for work, on somebody else’s dime. And to the extent that there was slack time, I was on a bus-man’s holiday. Including up-state (which is a different animal from NYC), I think that I may have spent a cumulative three or four months in New York in my lifetime. NYC under Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg were “safe” or were as safe as you could make a city like New York City. For the most part, I enjoyed the time I spent in NYC, but I stayed in the nicest hotels and ate at the nicest restaurants, so to that extent it wasn’t unlike Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, San Francisco Mexico City or any other of the world’s great cities.
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There has been the “liberal entropy” that has made London, San Francisco, Mexico City, Shanghai and Hong Kong cities that I no longer am interested in visiting. Frankly, Baghdad is much nicer than San Francisco and demographically is closer to London than many would like to admit.
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I don’t want to see any of the world’s great cities destroyed from within. I would rather not see China collapse and balkanize. Mexico City has become dangerous as is Guadalajara. I’ve spent a lot of time in those cities too. They all have a culture and people just living their lives as best they can. But Mexico is a failed narco-state. When I worked for CNTPO, which has been re-named more than once since I was the Mexico Program Manager at the Counter Narco Terrorism Program Office, it seemed that we might have been able to turn the corner, but China joined the game. In New York, Zoltan is a sock puppet for people who don’t have NYC’s or America’s best interests at heart. The same could be said of Barack and his husband Big Mike, and Pedo Joe Biden.
Good food can be replicated elsewhere. I have an excellent cheesesteak diner right behind my homestead (I love the smell of onions in the morning, smells like victory.)
So can bad policy. Quarantine them.
“Pres. Trump dances with the US Navy”
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought those were grunts in Camo BDs. That needs to change.
.
“** Sounds like the inflation reduction act didn’t reduce inflation, and the affordable care act didn’t make healthcare affordable.”
But they did accomplish their unstated goals.
USS Salamander:
*
To be fair, the Zumwalts are big, but not really huge. More of a CL.
Baltimore class CAs were essentially 15,000 tons, and the (shortly post-war) Des Moines
class were 20,000. I think if we’re going to call it a battleship, we really need at least
30,000 tons.
*
Of course, HMS Dreadnought was only 18,000, and the whole pre-dreadnought world
of battleships mostly ranged between 10,000 and 15,000 tons. The size increase 1905 –
1925 really brings home why everyone was interested in the naval limitations treaties.
– Kle.
“prioritizing arrests of criminal aliens/deportation orders”
When I first heard that, I wondered how that works internally.
Is it a Trump directive? If so, I imagine he would have conveyed his desires to Noem before Lewandowski.
Somebody’s got to figure out the org chart (or CoC), and I don’t want to see anyone get hurt.
Leftist mayors of Large Blue City-States (are there any other kind?) insist they are being unfairly targeted instead of more rural areas (food processing plants?).
I’ve heard complaints about the optics of picking up someones abuela who’s been here quietly for 30 yrs (social services recipient?) vs rapists and child molestors.
Gonna have to clean house eventually.
We’re 2,000,000 down on illegals now. that’s a big dent. A lot of those were the easy kind, self-removed.
18,000,000 more to go.
Eh, I figure the targeting decision was pretty easy: 1.) Most bang per buck in a limited time, and 2) How to get your political enemies to beclown themselves.
.
1) Trump’s got 4 years at most. Of that, unless he manages to keep up the shock and awe campaign, he’s got 2 years before the feet get cut out from under him in midterms. (Historically speaking, that’s how it’s gone.) So if he wants to do the most good in the least amount of time, getting rid of 20,000 Tren or MS-13 men will do a lot more good for all the potential victims they would have created and the neighborhoods nearby than getting rid of 20,000 abuelas.
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2) We all knew enemies domestic were going to hit the same hysterical levels of screaming whether ICE was deporting child molesters and murderers, or sweet little grandmas and cute children. By focusing on criminals, he was able to far more easily puncture The Narrative of Maryland Dad. How much political capital built from “the Democrats are trying their hardest to keep Illegal Alien Criminals here, at the expense of Americans” has carried into this shutdown, where unlike last time he still has public support a month later?
.
I figure his method of cleaning house with illegal aliens is just like his method of draining the swamp – multiple battle fronts to keep the enemy from being able to focus, and picking the targets in what looks like a scattershot method to prevent effective counter-strategies… but every one builds on selling the public to stay behind him as he turns up the heat and gets institutional firewalls against sunlight built over decades, not just Biden, to collapse.
Coaling the Great White Fleet. Well, as told to me as a young lad.
—–
Before the fleet was to sail, there was some resistance in congress to allocating funds for the needed coal. Teddy Roosevelt ordered the fleet to sail funds or no, which potentially could have left them stranded mid-ocean. The funds were allocated.
—–
Coaling a ship was long, hard, filthy labor. As an incentive, a prize (booze?) was offered to the coaling crew who could load coal fast enough to get the ship to list to their side.
How are they going to cook a thanksgiving dinner? By firing up tiktok or youtube, heading to “Dollar Tree Dinners”, and see how to cook a three course Thanksgiving dinner for $20.
The critical step is sitting yourself down and deciding that there must be a way to pull it off, and you’re going to figure out how. Without the will, the way will never be found.
They like the idea of stealing it better.
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But I hear you. I’ve cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for $20 – but maybe $20 then, I don’t know about $20 now. It would be more of a trick. If you grow your own vegetables, it’s a lot easier to pull it off. The protein then becomes the cost item. Inner city people don’t seem to have a clue that growing your food can be done with some effort. Maybe not all of the food you eat, but certainly some of it.
USS Virtual Mirage.
YES.
Then there’s piracy. It’d seem we’ve reentered the 18th century but without the talent.
Without the panache of the old pirates.
I camped in the South Dakota Badlands often and while I encountered some predators I wasn’t lucky to experience those, would have made an interesting stay.
That small scout plane… I would have been embarrassed to even fly as a passenger! What a ass-ugly plane.
Being as ugly as the small scout plane, I would have been proud to be your pilot.
But what percentage of say Israeli households make up the general population in the United States?
What nobody commented on the Barracuda was that the photo shows it set up with a droppable lifeboat.
–
Not an original idea, the US Navy’s B-24 and B-17 variants were also sometimes fitted out with lifeboats, though much bigger than the Barracuda’s version.
–
As to the EBT bullscat, I expect the Dems to cave late Friday afternoon, maybe early evening.