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 a map of the approximate state of play of the military situation in Yemen, with the main focus being to cut off PLC access to Taizz (in the north of the salient). This map is from @bonzerbarry on Twitter (I would link to him directly but xcancel is down), who I recommend for coverage of the situation in the Middle East in general, and Yemen in particular.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleAs I said in last week's preamble, it remains comically unclear what's truly happening in the strait. The main data point supporting oil tanker movements in the Strait being sufficient for oil flows to be completely restored are a few "independent trackers" including the big kahuna, Kpler, reporting on mostly recovered oil flows. The main data points that contradict this are: 1) satellite evidence of increasing strikes on tankers by Iran, as well as Ansarallah strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure; 2) a 1000% increase in the cost to hire a supertanker out of Hormuz compared to pre-war; 3) elevated and/or rising crack spreads; 4) elevated and/or rising diesel and gas costs in various countries around the world; 5) the new 40M SPR release by the US and the EU emergency diesel release as they bend the knee to the threat by the US to ban diesel exports; 6) PetroChina banning October export cargos to try and prevent domestic supplies from falling further; 7) Russia maintaining their diesel export ban; 8) refineries in India and the US literally exploding from the overwork (and some are now being forced into ~month-long maintenance periods); and 9) bond yields continuing to skyrocket across the Western world to heights unseen since the 2008 Great Recession or even before. So who can truly say?

Anyway. Trump has threatened a return to striking Iran after the midterms, with the aircraft carrier out in the Pacific heading for West Asia (perhaps replacing the USS George Washington? I've gotten mixed news), as well as a new amphibious landing ship which is likely going to relieve the one already present in-theater. The H.W. Bush has been found all the way off in Thailand, meaning that either there will be two or even just one aircraft carrier in the region surrounding Iran soon. As stated by many people many times before, the capacity for large strikes equal to the one in early March no longer exists, with the Navy forced hundreds of miles further away than during the first half of the year in response to Iran's anti-ship missiles, and most bases in the region no longer safely operable with the ongoing interceptor famine. Trump has had trouble articulating exactly why a return to missile strikes would be necessary if Iran has indeed lost control of the Strait of Hormuz and if the blockade on Iran is working, with the only constant being the talismanic phrase "Iran must not acquire a nuclear weapon." Araghchi recently remarked that Iran is prepared for a "doomsday war", which demonstrates that if Trump is bluffing to intimidate Iran, then it's just as unlikely to work as all the myriad other times. Iran is also dramatically expanding its number of battalions, and says they are advancing their missile technology to be able to hit targets further away, as well as moving targets at sea (a genuinely massive challenge for all militaries, not just Iran). The number of US troops soon to be in theater is an order of magnitude less than would be required to occupy a portion of Iranian territory for an extended period, and the threat to destroy the region's fossil fuel infrastructure if Iran's is hit is only more impactful now that global inventories have dwindled.

Ansarallah continues to make gains in their offensive, and are, as of me writing this, cutting off PLC access to the major city of Taiz, attacking the salient there from numerous directions, including both sides of the neck. The Saudi response to the rout of their mercenary groups in Yemen has been a lot of floundering. It's hard for me to personally say to what extent their airstrikes are effective, but it certainly hasn't stopped the advances, and Ansarallah's capacity to respond to them by destroying their critical infrastructure has put them in a major bind. They've recently unveiled a plan to the media to conduct an offensive to retake the Red Sea coast or even all of Ansarallah's territory, though everybody who's been watching the Ukraine War knows that preannouncing your offensives is a bad omen for their actual effectiveness. Not because your enemy will know you're coming, per se - they'd know regardless due to their intel of your mobilizations - but because it indicates that you care more about the optics of being seen to be "doing something soon" than actually conducting a well-planned and well-provisioned offensive. There's also reports that the Zionists are becoming increasingly involved in trying to help the Saudis repel Ansarallah, which is a telling indicator of the value of the recent Mecca Agreement.

As I mentioned in last week's preamble, Brazil's first round has come and gone, and my sense of foreboding was largely vindicated. Polls before the election described a tight race with Lula out in front by 1 or 2 percentage points; this was, incidentally, the same lead by which Lula defeated Bolsonaro 1.0 years ago. Exit polls described a similar state of play. The actual results were the reverse situation, with Bolsonaro 2.0 out in front by 1 or 2 percentage points (47% to 45%). This avoids the catastrophe of a first round victory for Bolsonaro, and the disaster of something unsalvageable like a 49-42 lead, but is still decidedly in the L column for Lula's chances without some major last-minute cavalry coming for the second round on October 25th. The impression I've gotten is that Lula's poor performance is due to the combination of the very recent corruption scandal as a short term influence, the general economic malaise caused by the economic shockwaves of the Iran War as a medium term influence, and the lukewarm social and economic development made during Lula's term as a long term influence. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, escaping the cycle of socdem-comprador-socdem-comprador is the challenge of the current era, particularly in Latin America, and especially when the US is retrenching into Latin America as they gradually withdraw or are kicked out of Afro-Eurasia.


Last week's thread 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.


you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 6 points 16 hours ago*

The biggest factor is the use precision guided munitions (PGM), much bigger than most realise. The JDAM only entered service in 1999, 8 years afterwards. The entire US Navy air wings only used 330 to 340 PGMs during the entire Gulf War! 205 laser guided bombs (Paveway II), 120-130 TV guided glide bombs (AGM-62 Walleye), and 3 AGM-84 SLAM. That's it!. Sourced from PBS frontline, this excludes the Walleye and SLAM, and Hellfires are not fired by tactical fighter aircraft. The vast, vast majority of ordinance dropped by the US Navy's tactical fighters was unguided during the Gulf war, over 10 000 MK-82, over 10 000 MK-83, almost 1000 MK-84, and almost 7000 MK-20 Rockeye cluster bombs. All these are unguided "dumb bombs". That means that just over 1% of munitions employed by US Navy tactical fighter aircraft during the Gulf war were precision guided. The US Air Force had more access to PGMs. Those 2200 bombs dropped by F-18C/Ds, 98-99% of those were unguided, just dropping multiple bombs on a single target hoping for a hit, and having to re-attack these targets if unsuccessful. With these unguided munitions, you need multiple stories just to destroy a single target. With PGMs, you destroy multiple targets in a single sortie. These days, 99% of ordinance dropped consists of PGMs. It's an inversion of the numbers now on multiple levels.

On munitions used, there's little need to guess what the US Navy used now that we have pictures of the aircraft, and knowledge of what they use. For example, the GBU-39 SDB is an Air Force weapon, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet with it's canted pylons cannot quad rack the weapon currently. The US Navy uses the JSOW. Same with the APKWS, the triple ejector rack used to fit the 7 shot launchers is difficult to fit on the canted pylons. (This means that the US Air Force was performing CAPs for the Navy, obviously not great). This also means that the Navy can't daul rack 500lb class JDAMs like the Air Force can (again, canted pylons), only one 500lb JDAM per pylon. JASSM is an Air Force weapon, the Navy operates the anti ship LRASM version, which has a different multimode seeker used for anti ship targeting. The Navy uses the Tomahawk cruise missile for land attacks.

Looking at one squadron from the USS Abraham Lincoln, VFA-41, this was the air to surface ordinance employed:

  • 173x GBU-38 500lb JDAMs.
  • 52x GBU-31(V)4/B 2,000lb JDAMs
  • 48x GBU-54/B 500lb Laser JDAMs
  • 41x AGM-154 JSOW stealth glide bombs with multimode guidance.
  • 30x GBU-31(V)2/B 2,000lb JDAMs
  • 27x GBU-32 1,000lb JDAMs
  • 10x AGM-84K SLAM-ER cruise missiles with multimode guidance, including human in the loop guidance.
  • 1x GBU-12B 500lb Paveway II.

382x PGMs by a single squadron, and of those, only 51x were standoff weapons, 41x glide bombs and 10x cruise missiles. 13% standoff. However for a true analysis, you'd need the total ordinance dropped by the whole air wing (can't rely on original image which is not specific enough excluding certain munitions, would need to go aircraft by aircraft), and then add Tomahawk cruise missile numbers from the Lincoln CSG. I guess this would put standoff numbers higher, anywhere from 20-35% with Tomahawks, JSOW and SLAM-ER included, depending on how inaccurate this initial image is. If you wanted to be really biased the other way, you could say a single squadron dropped more PGMs than the entirety of the US Navy during the Gulf War. However that is not helpful either, and very biased.

Risk tolerance is another factor. From the Saratoga, an F-18 was shot down by a MiG-25 on the first night of the war with the pilot killed, and an A-6 was shot down with the crew captured by Iraq. The US was trying to avoid this as much as possible, look at the effort put into recovering a single WSO from the F-15E shoot down over Isfahan.

Russia is another story entirely, their glide bombs are not comparable to dropping JDAMs, where the aircraft is close enough that the target can be viewed by the aircraft itself using the targeting pod. Time to target is also multiple times greater. The way Russia uses these glide bombs is to shell the frontline, almost like airborne artillery. Russian aircraft aren't plinking tanks/aircraft on the ground or groups of Ukrainian troops, Russia uses the man in the loop guided Geran drones for that. Now why Russia doesn't fit man in the loop guidance to glide bombs, I have no idea. If the infrastructure exists for drones, surely it can exist for glide bombs. Also, the Su-34 is their only glide bomb dropper, and can't escort itself vs Ukrainian aircraft and air defense, it needs Su-35 SEAD and CAP escort for glide bomb strikes.

  • source
  • parent