Thanks for the note

tracking agency called WindwardAI

we really gotta have AI shoe-horned into everything I guess

Windward is the leading Maritime AI™ company, delivering an all-source operational picture of the maritime domain. Windward fuses behavioral analytics and multi-sensor data into explainable, unclassified and shareable mission-grade intelligence.

what the fuck does "mission-grade intelligence" even mean, fucking Felix bit ass company description

edit: see Marmite's comment below, the tanker being marked as carrying oil seems to have been wrong

https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2108965319335387216 (privated account)

There are two ways to read this chart:

1. The Ukrainians finally managed, after multiple years of drone campaigns against Russian refineries, to take out the majority of Russia's refining capacity and force them to restrict exports
2. The Russians saw this situation coming, restricted exports for a few months to build up a stockpile and drive diesel prices higher, and now they're going to sell off that stockpile at sky high prices, sanctions free

The answer could also be somewhere in the middle of course. The signal that it's more likely to be the latter than the former, three weeks ago the Russian government extended its export restrictions to the end of October. Earlier today they abruptly cancelled the restrictions at the same moment Trump announced he was lifting sanctions. If they were actually constrained by domestic needs, this wouldn't make sense.

The tanker currently in route to the US carrying Russian diesel left port on the 22nd of September. Its deadweight tonnage is 53,000t, so it's carrying around a sixth of the diesel Trump said Russia would be releasing immediately. In barrels it's approximately 375,000-400,000bbl. This plan has clearly been in the works for weeks, and yes, Russia does have diesel to export, despite the claims from various observers that this would be impossible.

Interestingly Putin met with Pezeshkian in the interim so the Iranians certainly knew about it

I suppose it might also be possible the tanker was header for another location and got diverted when the deal was announced, but I dunno, kind of a suspect situation with regards to the timing

https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/Ajonai6/status/2108969948920070480

Iranian fuel - Caspian Sea - Russia - USA - F-16s back to Iran. Typical fuel life cycle.

honestly, going to need an entire stadium row at this point

more on this https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2108564373505523725

Ok more detailed summary statistics for the Lincoln's deployment have been published in the US media since yesterday, so let's do a breakdown comparing the Lincoln to the USS Saratoga in the Gulf War. First, some caveats. We don't know if the bombs dropped figure painted on the Lincoln is just gravity bombs, or if it includes air-launched cruise missiles too. We'll also need to compare the Saratoga's two F-18 squadrons to the Lincolns two F-18 squadrons plus its ten F-35s and its EA-18G Growlers, because we have much more detailed statistics for the Saratoga's F-18s than we do for its full air wing. What we see is that the Saratoga's F-18s heavily outperformed the entirety of the Lincoln's air wing by 100% in terms of ordnance delivered even though:

• The Lincoln has almost 2x the strike aircraft in this comparison
• The Lincoln's aircraft flew more combat sorties (these are supposedly ground strike sorties, not air defense sorties, so the comparison is valid)
• The Lincoln has 2x the potential sortie rate
• The Lincoln's strike aircraft can carry a heavier payload
• The Lincoln had more days of combat operations

The mitigating factors for the Lincoln are:

• The share of precision guided munitions it dropped is probably much higher
• Its aircraft had to sortie much further from their targets because of the danger of Iranian anti-ship cruise missiles

Possible explanations for this:

• Casualty aversion led CENTCOM to fly fewer missions over Iran
• Logistics difficulties in keeping the Lincoln stocked with munitions
• Difficulty in locating targets

I've seen people defend the idea that the carriers deployed to the Arabian Sea during this war have a greater combat potential than the larger fleet of naval assets deployed during Desert Storm, and that should be true, but the statistics don't bear that out. This is total napkin math but just for comparison, Russia drops 9,000 glide bombs a month on Ukraine. Almost all of those sorties are flown by the Su-34, and the Russians operate ~150 of them. That's 2 bombs per airframe per day. Let's assume the Lincoln had 80 days of "combat operations" during the entire war (the real figure is probably much higher than this). That's 0.42 bombs per airframe per day. And the airspace over Ukraine is probably less permissive than the airspace over Iran. The Lincoln's air wing was heavily constrained by distance. Even if we assume all of the Lincoln's bombs were delivered within the initial 40 day phase of the Iran War, and its aircraft then sat around doing nothing for the rest of its deployment, the Russian Air Force is 2.4x more efficient, aircraft per aircraft

https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/WithLabor/status/2108566695845806170

6 and change hour average sortie time vs 3hr 45min on the Saratoga shows you how fucking scared and stood-off we were compared to Iraq1...75min transit time each way covers a lot of miles even in a dirty F/A-18 on the way there

https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2108400390098072015 (privated account), https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/mhmiranusa/status/2108385508170530830

USS Abrham Lincoln kill marks during operation Epic Fury include

• 103 drones (most of them likley Shahed-136)
• 23 Anti Ship missiles
• 10 submarines (mostly Ghadir class midjets)
• 34 warships (likley include fast attack crafts)
• and use of 1463 bombs (mostly Mark series).

1,463 bombs is significantly lower than even I would have expected considering the length of the deployment. For comparison, the USS Saratoga's two F-18 squadrons dropped ~2,200 bombs during Desert Storm in just 43 days. The comparison is particularly bad for the Lincoln because modern carriers can achieve nearly double the sortie rate and the Lincoln has a full extra squadron of ground attack aircraft and those aircraft can carry a much heavier payload.

Just so I'm not misunderstood, what I'm saying here is that this war, even in its earlier phases, is not as high intensity as it's been portrayed. Whether its casualty aversion, munition shortages, or politics, the fury isn't epic. There have been far more than 43 days of "high intensity" combat operations for the Lincoln during this war. It should have been able to triple or even quadruple the number of strikes the Saratoga achieved. Instead it only dropped 66% of the bombs the Saratoga did over a much longer timespan.

Could the ratio of standoff weapons used vs glide bombs used account for the Iraq vs Iran disparity?

These are likely standoff munitions too (glide bombs). It would be a little weird to tally up bombs dropped but not include ALCMs in the number. Hard to say. I've been working on a piece that will try to prove this though, and all the data I've gathered so far suggests the US military has severely underperformed in strike rate.

for comparison, Russia, a country which has far less resources to invest in its airforce: https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2108389914018472055

Cockpit footage from a Su-34 delivering four #FABs UMPB D-30SN guided aerial bombs being dropped.

According to the Ukrainians, the Russians are dropping 9000 of these on Ukraine a month, or around 300 a day. The Russian Air Force has set a new record in glide bomb strikes every month for the past four months in a row.

https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/MarhelmData/status/2107472405027254615

A 20-year-old VLCC [Very Large Crude Carrier, a really big oil tanker] sold for $60.5m in April has now been sold again for $117m, a 93% jump. Lila Global reportedly captured a staggering $56.5m uplift on the asset.

Or the Fallout timeline, where a global oil crisis (wait a minute ) means oil-derived products have to be substituted with alternatives like wood, or resin-based polymers like the ones the Soviets used IRL (like the famous "bakelite" AK magazines, which are technically made of a different bakelite-esque material), which give off a kinda wood-ish vibe anyway. The P90 is even in Fallout 2, so one could imagine a post-apocalypse gunsmith having to replace the original polymer stock with a wooden one after it was broken and there were no spare plastic parts to be found.

https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/danriversitv/status/2107162522679713972

Scoop: I have heard from a source familiar with the RAF Fairford story that the US feared a drone a attack similar to Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb last year which destroyed 10 Russian aircraft. They fear Iran might copy the tactics and that drones might even already be in UK, hence abrupt departure of B1s.

https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2107191786670092672 (privated account)

Debasification is accelerating at geographic distances I failed to anticipate

https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/BrettErickson28/status/2106866676788810002

Hidden in a Treasury press release of sanctions designations is a clear admission that Iran IS getting PAID by some countries and companies for transit: “Since June of this year, OFAC-designated Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority has used BitBank to transfer payments it received to the Iranian regime.”

Link to the full September 17th Press Release from OFAC for those of you depraved enough to read: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0632/

European rearmament going well, I see... https://archive.ph/vevEn

Germany's Tomahawk-Typhon Budget Balloons From €1.37B to €3.4B, But Won't Buy a Single Extra Missile or Launcher

Hartpunkt analysis shows initial €220M launcher estimate was half real cost while fire control and maintenance add €1.2B, leaving 400-440 Tomahawks at best

would you look at that US military buildup

(followup to https://hexbear.net/post/9605989/7487779) https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2106715547597435355 (privated account)

Turns out they were standing off 3000mi away

Note for a moment the news cycle about imminent escalation, three carriers in the Gulf, 2000 (!!!) marines headed to the area, when in reality one of the two carriers slipped away and the force in the region is the smallest it's been since the start of war. The Washington, the only remaining carrier in the region, hasn't been seen in weeks.

https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/MoloWarMonitor/status/2106705705134674051

Footage shows several U.S. B-1B "Lancer" strategic bombers taking off from RAF Fairford, UK. They are most likely returning to the U.S. and it is not yet known if they will be replaced anytime soon.

https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/DefenceGeek/status/2106708256982704232

OK so this looks like a major draw-down! 6 B-1Bs have departed so far this morning, and 2-3 more are preparing to fly shortly!! The fleet of bombers was at 12 aircraft last night, so this is a big deal!!

ALL 12 ARE DUE TO LEAVE TODAY:

Why are they suddenly going back? Is this rotational

It doesn't look rotational, as the jets that have departed all arrived at different times of the year... some not all that long ago... this looks like a withdrawal now

https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/JavierBlas/status/2106659930535293294

CHART OF THE DAY: The cost of hiring a supertanker to ship oil from the Persian Gulf to the Far East has climbed further, reaching ~$1.3 million per day. (It was less than $50,000 a day before the war started; and ~$1.1 million when I first published the chart in September). Poten & Partners, a shipbroker, estimates that freight accounts today for >25% of the cost of a barrel of oil when it lands at the refinery gate, up from %3 pre-war.