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submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Image is of a solar park in Cuba, donated last year by China, sourced from this article.


To be honest, I don't have much to say about ongoing geopolitical events that hasn't already been said in previous threads (e.g. with India/Pakistan, Trump/Putin, and of course occupied Palestine), so this is more of a "news roundup" preamble for this week.

As we all know, the US (and the imperial core generally) has only three permitted international actions: sanctions, color revolution, and war. None of these have been going well lately, but sanctions are in particularly dire straits right now. Three examples from the last week or so:

  • The EU is on its 17th sanctions package, apparently, which is surprising, as I thought they were on their 76th or something. It apparently targets Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers, but I don't think anybody actually gives a shit because we all know it won't achieve anything, so, moving on...

  • The head of Nvidia (as well as many others) have come out and said that the US chip export controls on China have failed, remarking that China's internal motivations to develop alternatives are strong and proceeding rapidly, especially as China's number of skilled scientists is only growing. Nvidia has said that they had a 95% share of China's AI chip market in 2020 or so, but now they only have 50%.

  • Lastly, an interesting one: Iran has received its first set of railway shipment of solar panels from China, and there is hope for accelerating shipments of even more products. Myself and many others have predicted a decoupling of Iran from the West and towards China and Russia (especially if any Western-built product could have Israeli devices implanted into them, such as with the pager terrorist attack on Lebanon's doctors), and having a strong link with China will be a necessary step for Iran and their allies to continue their offensives against Israel.


Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


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[-] [email protected] 36 points 4 days ago

A bit late to the topic here, but I know this was extensively discussed when it happened during the short India-Pakistan conflict: did the Pakistani air force destroy India’s S-400 batteries using Chinese-made missiles?

If so, that pretty much settled the score between Russian and Chinese military equipments? If the Russian S-400s can be so easily destroyed by Chinese missiles, then it’s pretty much game over for Russia as a major arms dealer?

I sort of see this as a “proxy war” between Russia and China in their competition to carve out the share as global arms suppliers. It is one of last remaining major industries for Russia and I can see how losing that market in the world will be harmful to their economy.

[-] [email protected] 37 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Haven't seen any evidence of that. Pakistan claimed to hit the 96L6E “Cheese Board” early warning C band (500MHz to 1000Mhz) radar at Adampur Airbase, using CM-400AKG Air Launched Ballistic Missiles (ALBMs), with their passive radar seekers modified for the anti radiation mission. This radar can be mounted on a wheeled chassis, or on an elevated observation mast that gets towed around for better low altitude coverage.

Satellite imagery showed some movement at Adampur, but no signs of explosions at previous radar sites. India admitted to minor damage at the base, but said that the S-400 system was intact. So it looks like the S-400 survived unscathed, but failed to intercept all projectiles. All in all neither system performed great, but the S-400 did outperform the HQ-9. The ALBM threat to these systems, US, European, Russian or Chinese is very real, even ground launched ballistic missiles like ATACMS have destroyed components of the S-400 system before. To understand this, we must look at the missiles used.

The primary anti ballistic missile for the S-400 is the 9M96 and 9M96E2 missile, a Russian equivalent to the Patriot PAC-3 MSE. A kinetic hit to kill interceptor with a thrust vector control altitude control system (ACS). Think of these missiles as mini Talon missiles from the THAAD system, with a much lower maximum altitude. (20-35km vs 150km). These missiles, like Patriot PAC-3 MSE, are considerably smaller than the blast fragmentation missiles for aerodynamic targets, as seen in the below photographs. Here three 9M96 missiles take up the same space as one blast fragmentation missile.

Patriot adopts a similar solution for a combined loadout, with the smaller PAC 3 missiles taking up less space than the PAC 2:

The problem with these combined loadouts is that magazine capacity is compromised between engaging aerodynamic and ballistic targets. The Russian solution to this is the S-350, an air defence system that just uses the 9M96 missile. South Korea has it's own version of this. The US solution is a Patriot battery armed just with PAC 3. Think of these systems as mini THAAD, just for engaging shorter range ballistic missiles, they can engage aerodynamic targets, but it's not their primary mission. One S-350 launcher can carry 12 9M96 missiles:

Same for this Patriot launcher exclusively with PAC 3 missiles:

Theoretically an S-400 can also be kitted out just with 9M96 missiles:

But ultimately S-400 (initially named S-300 PMU-3) and Patriot were primarily built around engaging aerodynamic targets, their blast fragmentation missiles can engage ballistic targets, but the results are suboptimal. The kinetic hit to kill interceptors were added afterwards to improve ballistic missile interception, but there are still compromises in magazine capacity and in the sensor chain for engaging ballistic targets, especially modern ballistic missiles that can do pull up manoeuvres and so forth. The Soviet Union and Russia nowdays has S-300V, a system built around terminal interception of ballistic missiles and low altitude cruise missiles, using bespoke radars, massive interceptors with a 150kg blast fragmentation warhead to intercept ballistic missiles. But this system is even more expensive than S-400. Some S-400 batteries in Russia have been adapted to use the modernised missiles from S-300V4/S-500 to further improve anti ballistic missile capabilities. Also Russia seems to have production issues with the 9M96 missiles, just look at all the public photographs of the S-400, how many have 9M96 missiles pictured? How many S-350 batteries exist? Russia placed an order for a total of 12 S-350 batteries, for 144 launchers and and 1728 missiles, between 2018-2027. That's around 170 missiles a year, or at best 250 a year if deliveries started in 2021, and only half of this order has been delivered. The USA produces 500-650 PAC 3 missiles a year.

[-] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago

I don't think it's really over unless Chinese hardware is cheaper and more abundant as well. Some countries were using t-34s for decades after they were obsolete just for price reasons.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

a few T-34s saw action in Yemen most recently, iirc. only as static artillery pieces.

[-] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Article here claims that an obituary for an S-400 operator was published in Bihar province. Pakistan claimed to have hit the radar and command post for the system rather than a launcher, which is worth keeping in mind. I wouldn't imagine one instance of a successful hit on the system will hamper Russian military sales though, because:

  • There are a lot of factors that go into whether a strike is successful or not, and the quality of the AD system itself is far from the only one
  • No serious military should be going into a war believing that any of their systems are invulnerable
  • It's not like anyone else in the world makes a significantly better system than the S-400, especially at the price India is able to pay

Overall though it seems like India bit off more than they could chew with this confrontation.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago

I have no idea if it was actually destroyed, but no air defense system is perfect. Even Ansarallah was able to defeat Israel's incredibly dense and sophisticated network with a single missile earlier this month. War between peer countries will always incur losses.

Seems like arms deals are indeed based on vibes and propaganda (see HIMARS and now J-10C), so maybe it will hurt Russia's industry anyway.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago

did the Pakistani air force destroy India’s S-400 batteries using Chinese-made missiles?

According to gloating from Indian Twitter, Pakistan hasn't given real evidence that this happened. Make that for what you will.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

Jokes on them, our planes crash all by themselves.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago

PAF most likely did not destroy any S-400 battery. Any claims that it did arent any more substantiated than Indian claims that Chinese HQ-9 or HQ-17 systems were destroyed. Actualy my understanding is that the S-400s performed quite well and its the one system India immediately approached Russia after the conflict for more orders

this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
125 points (99.2% liked)

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