Caption: H/T PaulM – It speaks for itself.
Bullet Points:
** The Italian Navy steps up while the EU dithers. (It should automatically translate to English for you – originally in Italian.)
** The Federal Reserve raised interest rates. Don’t worry. I’ll still collect 0.25% on my savings account at the bank. I’m fine. Really.
** The Houthis struck Aramco fuel depots near Riyadh International Airport, marking the first Houthi attack on the Saudi capital during the current Houthi-Saudi conflict. The attack is part of the Houthis’ campaign to maximize economic and political costs on Saudi Arabia to force the kingdom to acquiesce to Houthi demands.
** Pres Trump: I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW (who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility!), and Politico (The recipients of an illegal and ridiculous $8 million subscription, an all-time record, directly from the United States Government, under Crooked Joe Biden, in order to keep them alive. Seems like corruption to me!), from the White House as a result of their constant reporting FAKE NEWS! In other but related news, “60 Minutes Premiere Ratings Dropped to 25-Year Low.” – Yeah. Nobody cares about their bullshit anymore (either). The credibility is gone, and it’s getting even smaller than ‘gone’.
** US Aircraft intended for export – US legislation – Section 36(h) of the Arms Export Control Act – establishes that any export/sale of military equipment to a Middle Eastern country must not compromise or weaken Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge. This means the 48 F-35As sold to Saudi Arabia for $24.3 billion (the SA variant) will have reduced capabilities compared to the F-35I ADIR. In addition to the 48 aircraft, the FMS authorization includes the sale of 49 Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engines to the Riyadh Air Force (48 for the fighters and one reserve), along with spare parts, accessories, and support materials. The package also includes support for repairs and returns, modifications, and maintenance, as well as engineering, technical, and logistical support. The sale makes it unlikely that the Saudis will buy a second batch of Eurofighter Typhoons.
** Macron summoned France’s political leaders and presidential candidates to the Élysée amid what his office calls a “rapid deterioration of the international situation.” The agenda covers the Middle East, Ukraine, energy security and the consequences for France. French reporting says the meeting follows a DGSE intelligence briefing earlier this week. One diplomatic source described the situation simply: “We are entering a different world.” This does not mean Paris expects an imminent war or that every recent incident in Europe is connected. But governments rarely bring political rivals and intelligence chiefs into the same room unless they believe the strategic environment has changed enough that everyone needs to understand the same picture. Worth watching very closely. (h/t Claudio)
** M2 vs XM-30 Infantry Fighting Vehicles – thoughts on old and new. Graphic right.
** Drones – YouTube video – It’s somewhat misleading, but still worth the view.
** 75% of the whiskey produced in Canada was sold in the USA. Crown Royal now faces a 50% tax. Jameson whiskey distilled in County Cork, Ireland now faces no taxes.
** Frank advises that he is still convinced that AOC would chase a laser pointer.
** Adios to Hollywood! Movie Studio Paramount is pulling the plug on California. Apparently, they’ll save as much as $500 million a year by relocating to a low-tax state like Texas…and Paramount won’t have to contend with politicians that want to undo the upcoming $110 billion merger with Warner Bros.
** Katie Hopkins reports from Batshit Bonkers Britain.
** After a decade of Justin Castreau apologizing for colonization, Mark Carney wants Canada to be a European colony again. That works.
** Poland is suffering from a shortage of Africans, as noted in this video.
** Nobody saw this one coming – ok, almost nobody. If you saw it, you’re a racist. Public corruption stories always seem to come back to the same question: how did nobody stop it sooner? Former New Mexico state representative and Democratic House leader Sheryl Williams Stapleton has been convicted on all 37 federal counts she faced in a major bribery, fraud, and money-laundering case. Federal prosecutors said Stapleton used her positions at Albuquerque Public Schools and in the state legislature to steer millions of dollars toward a company owned by an associate while secretly receiving approximately $1.15 million from that company. When public money starts moving through private relationships, taxpayers have every right to ask who was watching the books…unless it would make you a racist.
** The coming of Blackbeard (the hypersonic missile). The U.S. Navy awarded defense startup Castelion $200 million for the production of its Blackbeard hypersonic missile, a low-cost, scalable weapon that can be fielded across carrier strike groups, the service announced Tuesday. In the near future, it’s the way forward.
** “U.S. Admits It Has Weapons In Orbit.” Nice to see that some of my tax money isn’t being wasted on gender studies in Africa and Planned Parenthood.
** In Florida – Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd (always a favorite on VM) said his office discovered a mom and her son had sex but “only 100 times.” Her husband said he never knew. “They got charged with incest. She got charged with adultery. It’s still on the books.” Never decriminalize anything. You never know when you may need it.
** UK Admirals would have more credibility if they had ships with crews that could clear the harbor mouth before breaking down. “We must know what is happening in the Atlantic, protect what matters, keep open the sea lanes, and convince any adversary that the cost of coercion or aggression would outweigh any possible gain,” Jenkins said, according to a transcript of the speech. “If we are to prevail in the Atlantic again, we must strengthen our warfighting readiness and rediscover what it means to be a maritime nation.” All that’s left to them is their uniforms, and the medals those ample women in naval uniforms wear that mean nothing. Before you strike back at me, let me say that US military personnel should wear the top two rows of ribbons – top three at most. Leave the rest of the meaningless gongs for full dress parade situations. Everybody looks like a Nork General these days – not just the fat British women.
** Seabed Capable – the Sea Wolf Class are aging, and the capacity seems to be a module these days. We need half a dozen of them (See below) (h/t Claudio)
Cables
Identify the Armor
1
A study in bolt-ons.
Identify the Aircraft
2
Identify the Ship
3
End
3 is probably ROCS Kee Lung
The magic 8 ball says, “yes”.
UK admirals: Maybe lend-lease some canoes from the Canookian Navy in the short term?
>Sheryl Williams Stapleton
Honestly, I’m almost more offended by the TASTELESSNESS than by the corruption.
Ghetto fabulous is the style, Mike_C, and if you don’t like it, you’re a racist. It’s like painting the interior of your house purple – the whole house.
The whole house – is that a reference to the joke about the Black Pride fan who got black flooring, black curtains, black furniture, black everything for the inside of his house?
Black is beautiful, Frank
I should send you a picture of our neighbors recently purple house.
Fortunately, it’s a few doors down.
They are different. A young white couple I suspect of being modern hippies.
Too many shrooms.
>black everything for the inside of his house?
A realtor friend was handed the task (junior woman in the office) of selling a house with each bedroom painted flat black. First walkthrough she noticed that each room had at least four phone jacks and 120V outlets. One (or more) phone jack and power outlet in each wall, both at waist height, which was just a bit of extra weirdness. Then it turned out that neither the jacks nor the power outlets were wired to anything. She never did get the story of the reasoning, if any, behind all that.
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> full size aluminum garage door black. It faces due west
Perhaps the owner was running an unlicensed weight-loss program (by dehydration, because that’s so healthy) from the garage? Or it was being used to torture people.
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> that’s not fair Mike
True. I am a terrible person.
/hangsheadinshame
“Perhaps the owner was running an unlicensed weight-loss program (by dehydration, because that’s so healthy) from the garage? Or it was being used to torture people.”
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Dunno. Having stood in the garage before I re-painted the door, I can attest that either was possible. That said, I have serious doubts she was that motivated. One example — during our initial walk through, I noticed rings in the master bathroom sink from standing water. The stopper was all the way down. Moving the handle behind the faucet did nothing. Made a mental note. After we moved in, I found the problem was the connector for the handle had worked loose. All that was needed was to reach behind the drain under the sink and tighten it by hand.
The seller of our house painted the full size aluminum garage door black. It faces due west. In Texas. Draw what conclusions you will from that. It is now painted white (by me). Again, apply labels as you will, though be advised — take a number, the end of the line is over there.
Hey, that’s not fair Mike, she has her own style and believes she is a star player and entitled to siphon taxpayer ‘revenue’s’…who are we to criticize?
This one certainly personifies the political grifter slight of hand distractive profile: ‘Look at ME, not what I am doing.’ Sandy Cortez is similar, from the BU T-shirt dance routines to haute couture and a Tesla (even though she hates Musk the EV virtue signaling is necessary to maintain appearances, altho a Chevy Leaf is more her speed).
Imagine what Stapleton could do to spruce up her prison jumpsuit, just needs a Sparkler and Rhinestone kit (yours for the low price of $29.95 plus S&H, or 4 E-Z payments iffn in jail and need to spread the cost).
We here in Florida had Corinne Brown, who had a district constructed just for her, from dark Jacksonville to almost wOrlando, conveniently swerving around various white enclaves.
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Needless to say, she got caught screwing over her constituency. Big time caught.
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But the City of Gainesville still named its new bus depot for her. Only took a few years to change the name to Rosa Parks (who wasn’t as sweet and innocent as everyone makes her out to be.)
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Grifters gonna grift. It’s so amazing that the bad grifters are always Dems and almost always from a certain population.
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Now, growing up, my parents didn’t allow any bigotry or racism. Dad was one of those guys who’d ferret out the best restaurant and we’d all go there, even if it was in the wrong place and wrong time, and we’d have an enjoyable time and we’d get out safe (one Cuban restaurant he ate at in Miami after the commies took over Cuba blew up after he left and was half a block away.) We were scared of his staff sergeant, not beause the guy was black but because said SSgt took some damage as a Marine in Vietnam and transferred to the AF. Really big guy. About as wide as a door. about as tall as a door, black as midnight, really cool dude. But don’t get him riled…
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Now now? Am I bigoted and somewhat racist? They, the powers that be, have created a bigot and a somewhat racist. I didn’t do it, they did it.
“I’m fine. Really.”. Never doubted it. Pissed, but fine. Between interest rates and fuel prices in California, have seen reports that some truckers there are parking their rigs. Given the state’s emission standards, I’m surprised there are any truckers left.
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Ribbons. To this day, I remember when our one star boss came through our maintenance company in West Germany. (Then) BG John K. Stoner. He took time to speak to the crew in every section, looked you in the eye when he shook your hand. He wore his khaki short sleeve uniform, with one ribbon, the NDSM.
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https://home.army.mil/wood/units-tenants/USACBRNS/CBRN_units/HQs/DMC/JohnStoner
I don’t recall his name – Navy Captain at CTF 168.1 (I could look his name up on an old FITREP if anyone cared) wore one row, and he had a substantial rack. I respected that and did the same.
I only wore one row. Primarily for two reasons: (1) I knew, and those that mattered knew, and (2) it saved a lot of unnecessary questions from those that didn’t.
I saw GDLS’s version of the XM-30 a few weeks ago, interesting offering.
** Katie Hopkins reports from Batshit Bonkers Britain
Sperm weasel? The mind boggles wwhile applauding.
She has a repertoire of phrases that she applies liberally and descriptively.
what advantages does a manned submarine offer over a fleet of underwater drones?
having demonstrated the positive results of drone warfare in the Ukraine/Russia kerfuffle, shouldn’t maritime strategic considerations have changed as well?
Men in the loop that can troubleshoot.
Also, pretty hard to communicate with a drone on the seabed, and autonomy isn’t
really there to the extent of this mission yet.
*
Drones are useful and need to be considered, but they are also the latest iteration of
the Jeune Ecole, and that hasn’t really worked yet. They are not the be-all and end-all.
*
A very large factor in the Ukraine’s success with naval drones against Russia appears to
be that Russia really stupendously sucks, especially their navy.
— Kle.
Unmanned submarines have specific use advantages such as “Travel to this geocord and drop a mine. Then travel to that geocord and drop a mine.” They’re also good as ROVs operating under human direction at depth, with grappler arms and tools they can use. Three is a LOT they can’t do, as KLE points out above. Given years of AI development, that will change, but I think it’s still some time off.
just thinking:
were Iran/aggressive Islam in general considering strategic, long-term maritime/shipping disruption, it would be forming “cells” at the tip of South Africa, Madagascar, on the islands throughout the Indian Ocean, as well as Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Is this already happening?
The P.I. is changing. And not all of Islam looks at the world through an Iranian lens.
The Philippines are still fighting the same group of muslim terrorists that we fought when we owned the Philippines. The Moros. Been a pain in the pimple of the world since becoming muslims.
Yeah, Stapleton was found guilty on all counts, but where is the MSM coverage??? Crickets…
The Houthis are playing with fire when they start hitting Aramco facilities. That is going to get a big league response!
I hope it’s on PPV. Popcorn.
(1) Is a Bradley, IDK which model but looks newer.
(2) Looks like an He 111E, IDK which operator. I like the diving bird art though.
(3) Is one of the former Kidds, now in Taiwanese service, as noted above by RCC.
– Kle.
Outstanding
CNN et al ban: Gotta play nice or you get to sit at the kids table and be treat like the red-headed stepchild. Sorry…[smallest of violins playing in the background]
***
Houthis struck Aramco fuel depots: Exxon in Illinois, grid goes down unexpectedly and no one knows why. Did another Chinese Spy Ballon get launched?
>discovered a mom and her son had sex but “only 100 times.”
Yeah. So apparently genetics researchers participating in the UK BioBank [1] study found extremely high rates of father-daughter incest (producing live births, yet) among a certain community in the United Kingdom. These researchers have been “gently discouraged” from publishing these concerning findings. This surprises me not at all. While this sort of thing has not exactly happened to me (my area is difficult to make sociopolitical [2]), I know well several persons who have been either officially threatened, or at the least, strongly advised by senior colleagues in their field with “You will kill your research career, and quite likely get fired from your clinical job as well, if you make this public.” Medical research, and science in general, is highly influenced by “outside factors” that have nothing to do with actual science, but rather political agendas. And to autistically state the obvious, the field slants strongly left, especially at the top and administrative levels.
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[1] UK BioBank: this is a large (500,000 person) distributed study across the United Kingdom that measures clinical, laboratory, imaging, and genetic data from community-dwelling volunteers. (Community-dwelling is a term of art and basically means “regular folks” who are living at home leading their normal lives; this is in distinction to studies that recruit people already in hospital, like persons who had a recent heart attack for example. If you are seeing only known-to-be sick people, it’s harder to figure out the prevalence of disease, and harder to figure out which potential risk factors lead to future disease.)
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[2] Difficult but not impossible to politicize my areas of work. I used to go to a subspecialty conference that was very quantitative and statistics driven. Over the last 20 years, it’s become a leftist, grievance-based, political advocacy festival. The demographics of attendees has correspondingly changed, now favoring high prevalence of “under-represented minorities”. (The change was NOT driven by said minorities; I know, and in several cases am friendly with, the persons most responsible. They are straight, white, goyish men. Personally decent, mostly nice, even, but they’ve destroyed the conference in particular, and the scholarship in their area generally.) Even without going to the conference physically, one could tell by the language. Twenty years ago a paper comparing the prevalence of disease X between blacks and whites would have probably said something like “Racial differences in prevalence of X in …” Now the paper would certainly be titled “Racial DISPARITIES in …”.
That sort of thinking has me declining all inoculations at this point in my life.
x100
Re threats:
Back in the day, I had a client that was a chemist for the EPA. He developed an allergy to organic solvents. The EPA set him.up.with a computer and access to Government Labs and to top research Universities, and gave him the job of researching special or unusual projects.
He approached me one day with a perplexed expression and said, “I just received the oddest assignment. They want to know the most efficient way to dispose of millions of dead chicken.”
Several.months later the first Bird Flu made its appearance,
Oh, you bulldoze trenches and do mass burials.
Old ways are often still.the best ways.