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Last week, NATO began firing long range missiles into Russia and in response the Russians fired something entirely new at Ukraine. There is not much data on what it was and what it did, but the Russians claim it was their Oreshnik system, which is a type of intermediate-range missile. The Ukrainians, of course, claim it never happened and Western media is saying it was a ballistic missile. Whatever it was is serious enough to warrant an emergency NATO meeting this week.
From independent sources, the most likely answer is that the Russians demonstrated the first combat use of a hypersonic glide vehicle in this attack. The word “hypersonic” gets tossed around quite about by online “geopolitical analysts” because it is a cool sounding word that is often used in video games. There is nothing all that new about hypersonic missiles, as many long-range ballistic missiles reach or exceed Mach 5 as they descend toward their target.
In fact, there is nothing new about hypersonic glide vehicles. The Russians started working on this technology in the 1960’s. America also had a program testing this technology for weapons. Both sides of the Cold War figured out that traditional ballistic missiles were good enough for the job of terrifying the other side with the prospect of nuclear annihilation, so the technology never went into use. The cost of hypersonic vehicles was simply too high for the task.
There was another problem with hypersonic glide vehicles. Traveling through the atmosphere at those speeds made them impossible to hide. Satellites would be able to track them as soon as they were launched and ground radar would then also be able to track them, even if they have some maneuverability. A pretty good rule of air defense is that if it can be tracked it can be killed. At the minimum, the other side sees it coming and has time to get its own missiles in the air.
That is a bit of the arms race that has been forgotten. It was not just the race to have the most devastating warheads, but also a race to have the best detection systems and the best cloaking system. If the other side could not anticipate your launch or see it coming right away, you had an obvious advantage. This is why both sides eventually banned intermediate range missiles in Europe in 1987. The United States unilaterally withdrew from the treaty in 2019.
The intermediate range missile presents a big problem if your goal is to avoid wiping out mankind in a nuclear war. Because it can hit its target in less than thirty minutes, there is no way to respond, short of mag-dumping your ICBM’s. By the time the launch is detected, the missiles are closing in on the target. Missile defense in the nuclear scenario depends on hitting them in their boost phase or as they leave the atmosphere to prevent them from exploding over your territory.
It is unclear when the Russians resumed their intermediate missile program, but it was probably not long after the U.S. withdrew from the treaty. It is not all that clear when the Russians resumed working on hypersonic glide vehicles either. There is growing evidence that they have been collaborating with the Chinese on this project, because last year the Chinese demonstrated a hypersonic weapon. It combined a hypersonic glide vehicle and a fractional orbital bombardment system.
That last bit is another clue that the Chinese have been working with the Russians on this project, as the fractional orbital bombardment system is technology that dates to the Soviet Union. The Russians first developed this technology in the 1960s for its nuclear program. Unlike a ballistic missile, the FOBS only reaches low-earth orbit and can then deorbit over the target. This makes it very hard to track, because the warhead does not follow a predictable path.
When the Chinese demonstrated the combined use of FOBS and hypersonic glide vehicles, American military planners had a panic attack. General Milley famously compared it to Sputnik, by which he meant a moment when the West suddenly realized it had fallen behind the Soviets in space technology. Everyone dismissed his comments, because he is a notorious liar, but he may have been right. The possible use of this type of weapon by the Russians likely proves it.
The Russians have not said much about this system, other than stating that the West has no defense against it. The usual suspects are claiming that it is just an old intermediate missile system, and the Ukrainians say it was an ICBM. What we know is that minutes after it was launched, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles slammed into targets in Ukraine at speeds above Mach 5. Some claim Mach 10, but that is probably an exaggeration, but Mach 5 is still very fast.
What this means is that the Russians, if sufficiently provoked, could remove any European city from the game board in a matter of minutes. There is no defense and not much of a warning to the target country. If France, for example, starts firing SCALP missiles into Russia, Paris could cease to exist within a few minutes of someone telling Macron that he better say his prayers. It is easy to see why the deployment of such a weapon is so terrifying to fans of human civilization.
Of course, it is why the treaty banning the development of such weapons was viewed as an important step in deescalating the Cold War. This technology puts the world on a hair trigger with no time to pause for communication with the other side. It is also why the neocons desperately wanted the U.S. to withdraw from the deal. John Bolton was instrumental is convincing American officials to pull out of the treaty. In 2018, politicians still thought listening to psychopaths was a good idea.
The path to this point is a familiar one. The neocons first invent a threat, in this case the threat was that China and Iran were developing intermediate range weapons. There was little evidence of this, but that never matters. This is then turned into a justification for the United States to do something stupid. Famously, the invasion of Iraq was based on the entirely false assertion that Iraq was building doomsday weapons. It turned out that they only had WW1 vintage chemical weapons.
For the next two months, the psychopaths are still in charge of Ukraine policy, so they will no doubt keep poking the bear. It is pretty clear they want the Russians to use nukes in Ukraine. They have been yapping about it since 2022. That means the NATO meeting this week will be about getting the Germans to start launching their Taurus missiles at Russia. The excuse will be that they need to call the Russian bluff, but the real reason is they want a reason to fire the nukes themselves.
It remains to be seen if Trump is up for the difficult task of deescalating the arms race with China and Russia. He fell for every trick Washington could muster the first time, even some tricks they invented just for him. He seems to be set on keeping the neocons out of his administration this time. Even so, he will inherent a world that is now infinitely more dangerous thanks to the reckless behavior of the Biden admin. Simply surviving the next term might be the best he can do.
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One of the greatest issues I had to deal with was acceptance of things as they are.
The neocons are a death cult. Their actions can’t be explained logically. They just want to watch the world burn and laugh with diabolic glee while it does.
I’m just hoping we avoid all of this before Jan. 20 and cooler heads can prevail.
The logic in their actions is psychological warfare and fear as a means of societal control. For many decades they had the threat of global nuclear annihilation to use in order to silence dissent and justify billions and billions of dollars to defense contractors and “foreign aid”. That went away in the 1990s and for a brief period of time there was hope and optimism for the future. They couldn’t tolerate that, so they then demolished two towers and started the “Global War on Terror”. For close to two decades, Americans were told to submit lest they get killed by… Read more »
It’s hard to believe the retards in DC along with a few of their European minion lackey retards are actually itching to pull the nuke trigger – WTF? The idea that hundreds of thousands of people along with beautiful European and Russian cites could be vaporized largely due to the US government bellicosity is as infuriating as it is depressing. I’m still betting (at least hoping) much cooler heads somewhere will prevail.
That might be the best any of us can do.
I moved to Europe a couple of years ago. Should have moved to the Southern Cone instead.
It’s getting to where all of us would be better off as Coneheads…
I know it is absolutely impossible today with the makeup of Congress, but passing a modern version of the mid 1930s Neutrality Acts would do much to restrain the lunatics as well as the power of the President to drag us into military action at will. But since Congress is owned by Bagels and Rayethon, Boeing etc., Getting Congress to curb the appetite for war is impossible. The 1935 act imposed a general embargo on trading in arms and war materials with all parties in a war. The Neutrality Act of 1936, passed in February of that year, renewed the provisions… Read more »
pieces of paper didn’t stop biden and his handlers frim doing exactly as they wanted, regardless.
FDR simply had Congress pass the “Lend Lease Act” and the contradiction with the “Neutrality Act” was ignored. Today, I doubt we’d even need to pass any type of “enabling” Act—we’d just do it and let the Courts sort it out after the fact and when it’s too late to do anything to reverse the damage done.
Kill for gain or shoot to maim, we don’t need a reason…
If you supply weapons and aid to a belligerent, your country becomes a co-belligerent. The next step from there is all out war (e.g., WWII).
I remember sitting in a movie theater cheering when Rocky ends up beating the crap out of Ivan Drago. Forty years later, I now realize that we’ve become the bad guys.
As cute as Top Gun: Maverick was, in reality the roles are reversed. The stubborn brass are the pilots and the drone and missile advocates are the mavericks. Untold trillions have been pissed away on the janky F-35 and sitting-duck aircraft carriers while China and Russia developed asymmetric missile capability, conventional and nuclear. This was a logical response to our conventional aviation superiority. Now we’re in a new reality. So the lunatics in charge respond with provocations that would have gotten any president in our lifetimes impeached.
You still need manned aircraft and the Russians’ fleet is no slouch. Carriers are not sitting ducks because they move and are not as easy to find as you’d think. Recon satellites do have gaps in coverage and if you’re trying to find a carrier task force with even a UAV, it’s going to be a very tough job if the task force goes dark (shuts down their radar and comms) and relies on external sensors, such as an E-2 Hawkeye, to keep up situational awareness. In the Cold War, the Soviets expended huge resources on reconnaissance aircraft designed to… Read more »
I would bet that Russian and probably Chinese subs can tract carrier groups just fine.
China’s brand new sub just sunk in port a couple months ago. The Russian navy has been neglected for decades. At the moment, the US still has naval supremacy. Thus far, none of the carrier killers have actually killed any carriers. OTOH, I recon US naval supremacy would not survive contact with the Chinese in a war. Our carriers may be technically better, but we simply cannot compete with numbers. China has the capacity to build dozens of carriers in a short period of time. The US needs longer than WW2 to build one (or 2 in parallel). I seriously… Read more »
It’s not carriers that are the problem. It’s the fact the ChiComs would be the home team, with tons of aircraft at land bases. The DF-21 “carrier killer” ballistic missile doesn’t scare me, but being outnumbered 5-1 with ChiCom aircraft improving daily quality wise does. The big J-20 stealth fighter is likely not as good as an F-22 or F-35, but when you have twice as many of them as we have Raptors, it doesn’t have to be. It’s a big sucker that carries a lot of gas and weapons. The J-10, which is a single-engined non-stealthy fighter, is like… Read more »
I agree. Quantity has a quality all its own. As you mention, the fighting would be there, at least initially. Logistics would be way more difficult for us than for them. While the carriers are nuclear, the aircraft need fuel. The US had an enormous fleet of “oilers” in ww2 just to support all the fighting ships and their onboard aircraft. These would be highly vulnerable.
That is so, but they have to be able to communicate that targeting data real time. If you float the comms buoy, you just ripped the loudest electronic fart in the elevator so to speak. Even if you use extreme low frequency transmissions (the TACAMO aircraft have 2-mile long antennas and must fly a very specific flight profile) that can penetrate the water column, those messages take 30 minutes to an hour to send because it comes in one character at a time. And you forget there are ALWAYS one or two of our submarines working with our task group.… Read more »
the houthis found the Eisenhower just fine
The Eisenhower, despite reports, was never hit by a missile and was likely never found by the Houthis. The Houthis lack over the horizon targeting, so I’m assuming they were just launching and hoping that the on-board sensors on the UAVs would find their targets.
I will agree that that spending $1 million per missile to shoot down a $10k drone is absurd.
then why did it leave station without dealing with the problem it was sent to deal with? why is the red sea still a choke point?
i would say either scenario is possible given what we know (and don’t know).
The personal survival of the unelected Zelensky and the war criminal Netanyahu both seem tied to widening wars and getting Americans to bleed for them.
I don’t know what a glide missile would be, but the Ukrainians say that the Oreshnik intermediate ballistic missile, and subsequently its 6 mirved warheads, hit Mach 11 on the descent, and those 6 warheads each mirved into 6 smaller warheads, so total 36..The effect was to penetrate into the below ground workshops and utterly destroy them, as observers on the scene have said…Simplicius has covered this event in elaborate detail…Yes, the West has no defense against such a weapon, which can reach even London in less than 20 minutes…This missile had conventional warheads, but it’s designed to carry nuclear… Read more »
Oh no! 🙂
Having accurate MIRVs able to be aimed at separate targets takes a lot of technological skill that our idiotic overlords assumed the Russians didn’t have. This is a gamechanger.
Yeah, they’re just a bunch of dumb Slavs, right?
Didn’t the Russians already have subs that can hit London in less than 20 minutes? Or DC? I’m not seeing the big calculus change that everyone is talking about.
I am sure no expert, but I would venture a thought: I think the calculus change is more symbolic than practical. The low orbit (fractional) aspect coupled with the glide capabilities renders detection and then interception essentially impossible. If we are in a new nuclear arms race, this missile is shockingly effective at bypassing putative air defenses.
In practice, has anything really changed? Not too much. In theory, I guess it shows how antiquated we are and advanced the Eastern axis has become.
Do these people really think they can win a nuclear war? Surely, they must realize that the places they live would be prime targets. They have shocking bravado. Unless they have some magic technology to shut down all Russian nukes this is foolish. Let’s hope we make it through the next two months. Although even Trump is bringing some guys like Sebastian Gorka that were really pushing war against Syria I believe.
These people are worshiping a volcano demon. Destroying the world is normal to them.
I suspect some of them think this will bring about the end times where their people rise into heaven and the rest of us perish in the fires of hell. Many have convinced themselves that escalatory dominance is on their side. Most are simply so full of hatred for Russians that they cannot conceive of a scenario where Russia is not defeated and they get to rule over their ancient enemy to the east.
They can’t even rule over a bunch of goat herders in Afghanistan.
Some of the billionaires pushing this have shelters in far off places like New Zealand. They think they can the jet out of here in time. The rest are insane.
they will be shot by their own security , on the runway, just before takeoff
I occasionally tune in to the warmongers and their thoughts on the conflict and the risks of escalation. Listening to these people is scary. Their thoughts essentially boil down to this: “Putin has warned of escalation risks for almost 3 years without Putin escalating. Therefore, escalation is not a risk because Putin is bluffing and cannot use his nuclear weapons.” In reality, I don’t think this is that wrong. Nuclear escalation is a huge step with little payoff. Putin using nukes in Ukraine is a bad idea from his point of view. Russia probably doesn’t want radioactive particles driven by… Read more »
Well, so much for talking about lighter fare this week like cars and such.
This is light hearted for me.
Oh I’m not complaining. Now I’m ready to take on the day.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine…
Ordered freeze dried food this morning. Won’t matter if nukes fly but better to have it and not need it than…
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but I can’t see a single way that Ukrainians would be worse off being ruled by Putin than by Victoria Nuland’s pet penis piano player and his handlers.
I’d give the whole thing to Putin and be done with it.
For one thing they wouldn’t be able to have sodomy street festivals anymore. Unthinkable!
After Russia fired the long range missiles into Ukraine, I checked the major papers of record, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, to see if they were reporting on it, and if so, in what manner. The Times had a brief story about the test midway down the home page, but the Post had nothing. Shockingly, but not surprisingly, the Post was running yet another article claiming that the Russian military had experienced staggering losses in the war and was on the verge of collapse. I didn’t click through to read their propaganda. I’d like to think… Read more »
Amazing, isn’t it?
“…the Post was running yet another article claiming that the Russian military had experienced staggering losses in the war and was on the verge of collapse.”
Yep, the propaganda in the media could have been written by the Uke’s the day before. Interestingly, if these very large organizations simply sent a reporter to Moscow to ask the man in the street what he thought, they’d (if honest) not publish such crap.
Remember when we actually used to make fun of this guy?
Dude, you are too into Russian propaganda. The shovels the Ruskies invaded with only serve to dig the Russians’ graves.
The fundamental question is why are the neo-cons so obsessed with war? Is this just payola for the MIC? Or do they really think they can rule the world and, of so, why do they want to rule the world?
It was very clear Trump pulled us out of the treaty in 2019 because he was bamboozled by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton.
They’re a death cult. They’re no different than Heaven’s Gate or Jim Jones’ People’s Temple in that regard. They’re lovers of death.
And they hate the Russians with the intensity of a trillion suns.
It also doesn’t hurt that these slimeballs in office have evacuation (escape) plans when it gets too hot to stay in Washington. Not talking New Zealand here, but planned evacuation of government to secure locations by military.
Dr., I suggest that explaining our enemies as a “death cult” obscures their true motivation. I doubt that they want their people and their servants to die, for example.
The state of the world is best explained by the assumption that that the primary goal of those who hold decisive power in the world is the dispossession of traditional whites, whether those whites live in Russia, Europe, or the USA.
It’s hard to believe but the elites would prefer to rule over a world of rubble in which traditional whites are immiserated rather than what has been before.
They don’t think they can rule the world, they already have been ruling the world for a good 30 years. This is what it looks like when that rule is threatened.
If the treaty was being upheld by the Russians, 5 years from start to successful operations use is phenomenal for a weapons system such as this. We’ve not seen something comparable since the Germans brought jet fighters into use in WWII.
This of course brings to mind what else the Russians have in store for us. Specifically, if they’ve found a way to track and neutralize our Ohio-class submarine fleet—and how would we know until too late? At that point there would be no deterrent (MAD doctrine) from the West to prevent an all out “launch on detect” response.
They were tracking the Ohio class subs in the 1970s and 80s using good old fashioned espionage, no technical wizardry was required
Tracking include ability to attack and sink via killer sub’s.
they have definitely been working hard on sub technology, while we have not. our naval yards can’t even ensure proper welds. and given all the rust evident on our surface ships, i would not want to vouh for how well our existing subs are maintained.
How’s Uraguay sound to everybody? Surprisingly european in some areas., Swiss in fact. We’ll do an Amren type conference there but keep it open ended.
Uruguay is fine, but comparing it to Switzerland is a massive stretch. Argentinians like to buy properties in Punta del Este and some have bank accounts there, but that’s about it. Uruguay is more like a sleepy Spanish colonial backwater. It’s pleasant, slow and safe by South American standards.
‘Even so, he will inherent a world that is now infinitely more dangerous thanks to the reckless behavior of the Biden admin.’ Nothing reckless about the latest U.S. provocation. It was calculated for a purpose, possibly to delay or annul the Trump inauguration. But for a purpose, in any case. And of course the ‘Biden Administration’ didn’t make the determination to launch. Well above their pay grade. They’re just the announcers. Once the ‘Biden Administration’ decided to tank the U.S. economy in favor of the NWO Build Back Better scam, the green light was lit for Russia and China to… Read more »
I was in a ELINT/SIGINT unit in Germany in the 80s that could listen far into East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Our primary focus was to figure out the precursor electronic and communications traffic to an intermediate range ballistic missile launch. That would give an increase in warning time to prepare. That was serious stuff back then.
These fools are playing with fire. FIFO.
With all due respect for taxonomic distinctions, I’m not sure there is much functional difference between Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz and John Bolton. I realize both have nodded in a less bellicose direction recently, but I am skeptical that when push comes to shove, they will find an excuse to keep the Ukraine war going. Same for Hegseth.
Kristi Noem, on the other hand, is dumb enough to actually be a Dispensationalist.
Without the Russiagate Hoax, cooked up by Hillary and the FBI, Trump might have made some nuclear deals with Putin. Instead, Trump had to go hard-core anti-Russia, pulling out of the nuke treaty and arming Ukraine.
The Left sure loves to kill European Christians. They’re addicted to destruction.
I guess after all there is the change the world ends with the boomer.
The USA withdrew from the missile treaty in 2019 under Trump. His current cabinet is full of warmongers. Draw your own conclusions.
just looking at all the pieces on the board, and it isn’t inconceivable that the biden people (including the neocons) are being manipulated into creating the justification for a military coup, ala Pinochet. he came to power as a reaction to the chilean leftists planning for some sort of mischief. same with suarto in indonesia.
The Russians will look to Donald Trump to give them a fair deal early in his administration as regards Ukraine. That means regions with Ethnic Russian majorities join Russia, Ukraine lays down it’s arms, and Ukraine stays out of NATO. The problem is the European powers are persistent. Willing to wait until Putin is gone, they’ll try again (to lure Ukraine into NATO) tomorrow. Locked on a course of “defensive-aggression” in the East, France and Germany will murmur supportive lined to one another, goading the opposite to go on. And they will. I don’t think Russia’s threats to fire off… Read more »
All European “powers” are vassals the United States. They don’t have any independent policies beyond the boring domestic stuff.
That certainly seems true, but what use are these vassals? Countries that are bankrupt with unwilling citizens seems worthless in conflict.
Ukrainian peasants are unwilling too and yet they are being sent to the meat grinder. As long as there is a willing “elite”, the empire will be useful.
Also worth noting it that while Europeans are vassals of the US, the US is just a golem. The golem is also bankrupt and sick, but it’s still big, obedient and powerful.