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A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image shows a display of Changjian-1000 missiles, which are hypersonic cruise missiles with high manuverability and quick launch times. The linked archived article has several more images and descriptions of Chinese missile technology.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleAside from the virtually daily Iranian strikes on the Oman route, the main threat that the US is facing in this newest phase of the war is logistics. With Bahrain and the UAE unsafe, the closest safest port in the theater is Diego Garcia, which is over 2000 miles away. Either the aircraft carriers would have to go to Diego Garcia to restock, which would be even less planes and missiles available should hostilities restart suddenly, or goods have to be shuttled to the aircraft carriers from Diego Garcia. This latter option appears to be too much for the US to handle, with widespread reports of dwindling supplies and morale on the USS Abraham Lincoln (and, to a lesser extent, the USS George HW Bush). These reports have culminated in the USS George Washington being sent from the Pacific to replace the Lincoln, which was the sole aircraft carrier in that whole theater. There are six more carriers in maintenance, leaving two carriers left that could even hypothetically be called upon should the USS George HW Bush need replacement; both are currently undergoing training, and of these two, the USS Theodore Roosevelt might be available soon; perhaps even as soon as September. I'm unsure whether the Roosevelt will be sent to the Pacific to replace the Washington, or if it'll be sent to the Middle East to replace the Bush. Nonetheless, that the situation has deteriorated to the point where we can speculate on how very limited naval vessels are going to be distributed is yet one more indication among many of the decline of US naval power. The symbolism was too much for me to ignore, hence the title: the last aircraft carrier in the Pacific being forced to leave, and not under military pressure in some hypothetical war against China, but to try and relieve logistical burdens elsewhere in a war of the US's own making.

This joins Trump's statements that the US will only be taking a very limited part in the South Korean military exercises. This is nominally because of the "great ties" the US shares with the DPRK, but this is an embarrassingly transparent face-saving statement. The DPRK is an increasingly major potential threat to South Korea, a major regional power and economy, but are also helping Russia with both manpower and materiel and getting military experience and data on their missiles' effectiveness in return.

The US's Under Secretary of War, Elbridge Colby, recently visited the Philippines. There, he gave a speech that promised to continue the construction of a defensive network that would deny China the possibility of militarily advancing through the Pacific by stationing US forces inside friendly countries. This is the NATO approach: our mere presence will deter the enemy because they would not want to start a direct war with us, and in exchange, you have to hand over billions upon billions of dollars. Colby gave the Philippines that most backhanded of compliments, the "model ally", and stated that the US was “definitely not disengaging from Asia”. My "We aren't pivoting away from Asia" shirt has people asking a lot of questions that are already answered by my shirt.

If you're a US-friendly country in the Pacific and possess even the slightest sense of self-preservation, you are surely feeling nervous. The US is moving its aircraft carrier out of the theater. Overseas, you've seen how Iran - a very strong regional country, to be sure, but not as powerful as the industrial juggernaut and nuclear superpower that is China - has nonetheless crippled several undefendable US bases, has exhausted a very large amount of American air defense missiles, is holding the global economy hostage, and the US can seemingly do nothing to stop them. You have to be looking at your own US bases, likely expensive and unpopular, and all the money you're handing over to the US, and glancing at how the Gulf states are bickering of being betrayed by their ally who promised them protection and immediately retreated. You have to be looking at your economy and its dependence on China. You have to be looking at Ukraine, and the unenviable state of destruction it has been driven to as a puppet of the US. You have to be looking at China itself, and how its military is rapidly developing in all fields, and how it's even catching up on microchip development. In all, you have to be really hoping that China is serious that they only plan a peaceful reunification with Taiwan, and that the US will not do something incredibly, stupidly reckless in their decline.


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.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist 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 the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists' 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.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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

Sources:

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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[-] Tervell@hexbear.net 43 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2089834411634082276 (privated account), https://xcancel.com/brontyman/status/2089714517894742370

USS Lincoln wasn't resupplied because Hegseth 'hid' that Iran destroyed main U.S. base: Rohde - MS NOW

This headline is manipulative because it makes it sound like Hegseth hid the destruction of NSA Bahrain from the Navy or DoW itself somehow. What Hegseth did is refuse to publicly acknowledge it. The USN absolutely knew that they'd be unable to efficiently resupply vessels operating in the Arabian Sea, and the reason for that is that Iran hit NSA Bahrain with hundreds of missiles and drones in the first week of the war. It was obviously their main target, next to the US radar network. Hegseth's decisions have nothing to do with this, and the carriers are 100% necessary given the loss of airbases in the Gulf. There's no way around any of these problems, nothing Hegseth could have done differently besides resigning the moment the decision to go to war was made. The resupply issue exists because Iran deliberately created it through force.

I don't know if you guys remember how obsessed I was with the non-stop attacks on NSA Bahrain. No one else seemed to make much of it but I was jumping up and down like hey does anyone else notice that Iran seems to have destroyed the headquarters and logistical center of the USN for the entire Middle East? No? Well this is the result. Blaming this on Hegseth is like saying he should have climbed into a time machine and gone back to 1971 to prevent the USN from taking that facility over from the British Royal Navy

https://xcancel.com/PanEllenikMan/status/2089849006889345420

"Left wing" media of the US is doing everything and anything it can to convice the US public that this war is super winnable and the failure is because Trump and Hegseth personally messed up here and there. That's because in 5 years they will be called to sell the same war again

https://xcancel.com/p_feif80/status/2089843276618891270

Indeed, it would appear one big flaw in the Medhurst pivot-to-naval power theory is that those carriers still need some ME land assets (bases) for resupply at some point.

[-] FALGSConaut@hexbear.net 36 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

So fucking funny that no one thought that having your regional naval supply base behind a naval choke point that your main opposition can close at any time would be a problem. I know it was initially built when closing the strait of Hormuz was more difficult than it is now but at no point someone was willing to use some of that bloated military budget to relocate to a less incrediblely vulnerable position?

[-] Tervell@hexbear.net 17 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

The amazing thing is that they wouldn't even need to relocate it that far - this isn't like a Russia situation where the vagaries of geography have left a bunch of their sea access points stuck past straits controlled by unfriendly countries, the US could have simply moved a little bit south over to Oman (that would require various negotiations with the Omanis, of course, but prior to their embarrassment in this conflict they probably could have pulled it off). Plus, they have a base down in Djibouti that they could have worked on expanding (now, in this particular conflict, that would have just ended up with them getting screwed over by the Yemenis instead, but still, before the Ansarallah situation they could have made moves in that direction).

But no, just chill in Bahrain. What could ever happen over there?

[-] FALGSConaut@hexbear.net 17 points 3 hours ago

I guess there is a certain amount of inertia that comes with having any installation in the same place for decades, that combined with the imperial hubris inherent to the modern (last ~60-70ish years) us military (especially the navy) and I guess they straight up thought they'd be fine.

I'm constantly amazed at how little it seems the American military actually planned for a war with Iran considering how often bombing/invading Iran was brought up by various politicians/military officers/talking heads

[-] miz@hexbear.net 13 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

it's even funnier than that. they did plan for it, and then ignored everything their planners said

[-] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 31 points 5 hours ago
[-] Athena5898@hexbear.net 12 points 4 hours ago

No matter what the problem was/is there is always a Cassandra of troy going "hey this is going to be a problem" that is ignored

[-] Self_Sealing_Stem_Bolt@hexbear.net 27 points 5 hours ago

The hubris developed after only fighting against people who couldn't fight back sure is amazing.

[-] scrungus@hexbear.net 23 points 5 hours ago

As a counter example: the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel was specifically made so that if the bridge was attacked and collapsed, it wouldn't block the entire bay so that the Norfolk naval station would still be usable. So someone in the us navy at some point was capable of thinking ahead enough to consider something like this. Idk if it is all that relevant a thought, but it's funny to consider imo

this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
113 points (100.0% liked)

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