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 is of the USS Abraham Lincoln arriving at Thailand, looking worn after a very long deployment to the Arabian Sea.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleTo start briefly with Iran, there's been two significant developments over the last week. First is that Iran is now beginning to put into practice its policy that allows preemptive strikes - a policy which was authorized by the previous Khamenei a while before his death but has so far gone unused - to strike at Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan without a corresponding American aggression immediately beforehand. The second development is that Iran is now taking a firmer stand against the US Navy in the waters of the Arabian Sea, beginning by testing anti-ship ballistic missiles against the US fleet - so far without confirmed hits as of me writing this sentence - as it is obviously disadvantageous for Iran to simply not do anything against the blockade even with US logistics under strain. The US has attempted to dissuade these new strikes by striking Iranian oil tankers, to which Iran has responded by striking oil tankers aligned with the West. This is very much not a shooting war that the US wants to get into as oil stockpiles continue to decline and diesel prices are at all-time highs (though if adjusted for inflation, we still have a little more time before we hit absolute highs). The overall picture is of an Iran growing in confidence.

There's also been some encouraging news out of Yemen, where Ansarallah has been conducting a ground offensive weaken the enemy occupation of the western coast, including some breathtakingly precise drone-drop operations combined with using recon drones to guide ballistic missiles at enemy formations. As far as I'm aware, the blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb to Saudi tankers has been very successful, although stopping Saudi tankers from heading north towards Suez has been understandably trickier. I suppose if push comes to shove, they can continue to strike the very immobile coastal oil facilities rather than trying to hit moving ships at a great distance.

The news out of Russia/Ukraine has been quite miserable for particularly Ukrainian civilians over the past month or two, with Ukrainian strikes on Russian civilian logistics and warehouses being met with much greater Russian responses on Ukrainian civilian logistics and warehouses. Ukrainian ports are now effectively blockaded, making exporting agricultural products in the same quantities as before essentially impossible, and within the cities including Kiev, food suppliers are scrambling to find smaller warehouses to place goods in so that they aren't as easily destroyed like the larger warehouses have been. I find it sincerely upsetting that the war has progressed to this point, though it's always worth noting that, first, Ukraine had a few opportunities to sign pretty good negotiating terms with Russia; and second, in comparison, Western wars begin at the step of making a conflict about hurting civilians, even to the extent of it being a detriment to strategic goals by not solely hitting military targets (most famously in Gaza, but also e.g. during Obama's term by bombing weddings and hospitals).

I will confess to not being as up-to-date on the situation in Europe, and especially Germany, in regards to the Ukraine War as I would like, but as a general statement, nothing I've seen over the last few years has demonstrated to me that Europe is capable of fielding a conventional force which would provide a formidable, let alone existential, threat to Russia at this stage. There's been lots of embarrassing stories about European missile, drone, and shell production being well below standards in both quality and quantity. My thoughts are now that I think the age of the US/NATO posing an existential conventional threat to China, Russia, and probably Iran (and perhaps others like the DPRK?) is now conclusively over, with Western bases proven to be indefensible with existing missile defence programs, their logistics very vulnerable to disruption, and their aircraft not being safe to use over airspace at least as well-protected as Iran's. The US can still do cataclysmic, nation-destroying damage to smaller, less defended countries like those in Latin America and Africa, but for the anti-US squad in Eurasia, the vast majority of the threat from the US is now a combination of financial/debt offensives and covert intelligence. We still have a long way to go on both those fronts, however - a minimum of a decade or two, I believe, even with Trump's inadvertently anti-imperialist accelerationism.

Lastly for this preamble, the annual SCO summit took place on September 1st in Bishkek, with the leaders of China, Russia, Iran, India, Türkiye, Pakistan, and others in attendance. A lot of the usual statements were made: down with hegemonies, down with militarising space, down with unilateral sanctions, up with local currency exchanges, up with cooperation, up with peace, etc etc. The big proclamation this time around was the Bishkek Declaration, which reiterated all those points I just mentioned. Overall, it's one of those documents where the content is mostly cool and indirectly jabs a lot at the US, but I find that paper is a generally ineffective barrier of protection against bombs and missiles, which is a pretty major avenue of... let's say, "international communication" in the current day. And I would like to see some real contenders to the World Bank and IMF taking shape soon if we're gonna truly start fighting hegemonism, but I digress.


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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[–] 70 points 3 days ago (10 children)

and you can probably cross a few more planes off the list after recent events in Jordan catgirl-smug https://archive.ph/yJrZ4

USAF Fighter Fleet Is Below Congressional Minimum

A new Congressional Research Service report highlights the growing gap between the U.S. Air Force’s current fighter inventory, its legally mandated force structure, and the much larger planned fleet.

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The U.S. Air Force is currently operating below the fighter inventory minimum established by Congress, even as the service is seeking to dramatically increase the size of its combat-coded fighter fleet over the next decade. The issue is highlighted in a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, Air Force Fighter Force Structure: Background and Issues for Congress, published on Sept. 4, 2026. The report mentions a 1,558-aircraft objective by 2035, although it does not introduce it to the public for the first time. In fact, that number comes from the Department of the Air Force’s (DAF) Long-Term USAF Fighter Force Structure report submitted to Congress in October 2025. Instead, CRS provides a detailed assessment of the plan almost a year after its publication, examining whether the Air Force can actually achieve the proposed force structure and what Congress may need to do to either support or modify it.

The Air Force is already below the statutory minimum

Under Title 10, Section 9062, of the U.S. Code, the Air Force is required to maintain a primary mission aircraft inventory (PMAI) of at least 1,145 fighter aircraft. Yet on May 5, 2026, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink notified Congress that the service had 1,098 fighters, putting it 47 aircraft below the statutory requirement. The discrepancy becomes more interesting when compared with the Air Force’s October 2025 report, which offers a different way of counting the fleet. On that occasion, the service proposed the introduction of a Combat-Coded Total Aircraft Inventory (CC TAI), which would include backup aircraft inventory and attrition reserve aircraft. The service argued that PMAI omitted approximately 15 percent of aircraft assigned to combat-coded units. It should be noted that the 1,145-aircraft congressional requirement is still based on PMAI. The CC TAI would put the inventory for FY 2026 at 1,271 fighters, compared with a PMAI of 1,098. The report prospects for FY 2030 a CC TAI of 1,304 fighters and a PMAI of 1,146.

Achieving the 1,558-fighter requirement

The Air Force’s 2025 analysis concluded that it would need 1,558 manned, combat-coded fighters by 2035 to achieve what it considers a low-risk operational posture. An interim objective of approximately 1,369 fighters by 2030 was also established. These figures refer to CC TAI, says the service. The Air Force plans to continue retiring older aircraft while increasing procurement of newer platforms in order to achieve the objective. As we already reported last year, the 2025 Air Force report identified potential maximum procurement rates of approximately 100 F-35As and 24 F-15EXs per year by 2030. The CRS report repeats those figures but adds an important qualification: achieving the desired inventory would require both sufficient funding and sufficient industrial capacity. The service states is however not projected to have sufficient obligation authority to afford the increased production rate. The F-35A is expected to remain the backbone of the Air Force’s tactical fighter force, while the F-15EX provides a complementary capability based around range, payload and the ability to carry large numbers of weapons. The two aircraft also occupy very different positions in the future force. The F-35 is a fifth-generation stealth fighter designed around survivability, sensors and networking, while the F-15EX provides a large, non-stealthy weapons platform capable of carrying a substantial payload. Together, they are expected to provide much of the force required before the Air Force’s next-generation F-47 becomes available in meaningful numbers.

The fleet is also getting older

The challenge is not limited to procurement, as the Air Force operates a heavily used fleet with an average aircraft age of approximately 27.4 years. Notably, the report further mentions that the Air Force operates the oldest fighter fleet of any service and many partner nation, saying that it is twice as old as that of the U.S. Navy and three times older that the Royal Australian Air Force’s fighter fleet. This has obvious implications, as older aircraft are increasingly expensive and difficult to sustain, while spare-parts shortages and maintenance problems can reduce the number of aircraft actually available for operations. The report further mentions that a “near perfect correlation” was wound between the increasing fighter fleet’s age and the decreasing aircraft availability rates. The Air Force’s modernization plan thus depends heavily on retiring older aircraft, such as the legacy F-15C/D and A-10C and the oldest F-15E and F-16C/D fighters, while increasing procurement of the F-15EX and F-35A. However, Congress has repeatedly intervened in fighter-retirement plans because lawmakers are concerned about losing capacity before replacement aircraft become available. The current statutory framework, for example, restricts the retirement of F-22s and F-15Es, while Congress has also imposed restrictions on A-10 retirements. The service will have to minimize disruptions to operational readiness as it recapitalizes the fleet.

The F-47 and CCAs

The future force will eventually be reshaped by the F-47, the sixth-generation fighter being developed under the Next Generation Air Dominance program. The aircraft is intended to provide capabilities beyond those of the F-35 and F-15EX, particularly in highly contested environments against advanced peer adversaries. However, the F-47 is not an immediate solution to the Air Force’s fighter inventory problem. The service still has to operate its existing fleet while the new aircraft moves through development, testing and eventual production. The Air Force’s fighter plan also introduces another question about how Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) should be counted in the new fighter force structure. In fact, as mentioned earlier, the 1,558-fighter objective applies to crewed aircraft, while CCAs are excluded. The Air Force’s 2025 report explicitly describes CCAs as a force multiplier rather than a replacement for manned fighters. That approach remains unchanged in the latest CRS report, although it mentions that CCAs allow for a larger overall force for a given budget.

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  • [–] 47 points 3 days ago (7 children)

    seems like you could fix this overnight by passing a law declaring there are more planes

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  • [–] 29 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    1 plane + 1 plane = 48 planes, because that's how you count planes

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