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Bulletins and News Discussion from March 17th to March 23rd, 2025 - The Kafue River Dies - COTW: Zambia

Image is of the breach in the tailings dam near Kitwe.

On February 18th, 50 million liters of acidic waste from a copper mine was accidentally released into the Kafue River after a tailings dam collapsed. The Kafue River stretches for a thousand miles across Zambia and a majority of the country - millions of people - rely on it, for both the economy and drinking water.

The results have already been catastrophic. The water supply for the city of Kitwe, home to 700,000 people, was completely shut off. As the wave of contamination moved downstream, a wave of death accompanied it as dead fish dotted the river surface. The government is dropping lime into the river to try and counteract the acid with an alkali and neutralize the water, but the tailings also contain toxic heavy metals that will undoubtably seep into the nearby environment and affect the area for years to come.

A considerable portion of the media attention to the accident has been devoted to the fact that the mine was Chinese-owned, as well as China's broader influence and investment in the region. Western anti-China propaganda aside, it has been clear to those in the know that these mines have been badly managed and needlessly dangerous for years now, and it is disappointing - to say the least - to see disasters of this magnitude occur from Chinese businesses. Hopefully this prompts a wave of investigations into China-owned mine managers all around the continent, who will then hopefully face real consequences for their actions.

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443 comments

  • The first footage has been released, Xcancel mirror of the US Air Force, Navy or Marine Corps using APKWS laser guided rockets to shoot down Ansarallah (known as the Houthis in western media) drones and cruise missiles. I was talking a few days ago about how this was already happening, but now it's confirmed by video footage from CENTCOM themselves.

    What is APKWS? To put it simply, APKWS is a conversion kit that turns unguided Hydra-70 rockets (of which 5 million exist) into laser guided short range missiles. Similar to how a Paveway kit turns an unguided bomb into a laser guided bomb, or a JDAM kit turns an unguided bomb into a GPS guided bomb, APKWS turns unguided rockets into guided missiles. APKWS was first designed only to be used against ground targets, but the Ukrainians, when firing them from their VAMPIRE ground and sea based launch systems, proved that it can be used successfully against cruise missiles and drones, and as a result the US military is doing the same, and even planning modifications to APKWS to make it even more effective against air targets, such as adding infrared terminal guidance.

    Ukrainian VAMPIRE system taking out Russian cruise missiles and drones

    Xcancel mirror

    Why is this significant? For two reasons: cost and magazine size. APKWS is very cheap, the guidance section only costs $15 000, and the warheads and rocket motors, of which millions are currently in US stockpiles, only cost a few thousand dollars each, for a total cost of between $20 000 - $25 000 per missile/guided rocket. In comparison, an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile launched from US fighter aircraft costs upwards of $400 000 each, and the ship launched SM series of interceptors cost anywhere from $2 -$9 million, depending on the model. So this is a very significant cost saving for the US, the APKWS guided rockets might even be cheaper than the drones and cruise missiles they shoot down.

    The second is magazine size. While a fighter aircraft can only carry a handful of sidewinders and other air to air missiles at a time, it can carry dozens of APKWS rockets at a time, as these rockets can be fitted on seven shot rocket pods, which only take up one hardpoint each. This F/A-18 has 14 APKWS guided rockets on one wing (two 7 shot launchers), for a total of 28 guided rockets if the loadout is replicated symmetrically on the other wing. Note with the adaptor, that two seven shot rocket pods are only using a single hardpoint.

    These two factors make defending against drone swarms a possibility, both in terms of being cost effective, and in terms of the amount of guided rockets available at a single given time for intercept missions. This could be why drone and cruise missile attacks on US Navy ships are not as effective as before. While in Ukraine the use of APKWS guided rockets is limited to their ground and sea based launching systems, such as technicals and fastboats, the United States does not have such limitations and can fit these to aircraft, enabling defence over a much wider area. The APKWS guided rockets themselves have a very short range, only a few kilometres/miles, meaning that they can only defend a very limited area from ground/sea based launch platforms. So mounting them to a fighter aircraft vastly increases the area that can be defended by them, and detection capabilities for drones out of range of the APKWS (fighter aircraft have their own radar).

    Make no mistake, the US military is learning their lessons when it comes to the Ukraine war, the confrontations with Ansarallah in the Red Sea, and defending against Iranian ballistic missiles.

    • This is a pretty important development. The cost of interceptors is less important than their availability. Good catch.

      • It's quite a depressing development from a resistance perspective (which I guess almost all of us share) because it means now that the US Carrier Strike Group (CSG) only needs to remain out of range of Ansarallah's anti ship ballistic missiles(ASBMs), (max range 500km for Tankeel/Raad-500, maybe 700km if Iran gives them Zolfogar Basir), and that the CSG can just absorb the long range drone and cruise missile attacks, the few that get through the air patrols can be dealt with by the ships themselves. While remaining outside of the range of ASBMs is blunting the CSG's attacks and US airstrikes as the US fighter planes have to fly longer distances, airstrikes are still happening, and the CSG is not being driven to the extreme north of the Red Sea or anything like that anymore (aside from maybe day two of this lastest conflict).

        Editing to say that satellite imagery from the 19th March 2025 has confirmed this, the USS Harry Truman is operating off of the coast of Jeddah, around 700-800km from Yemen. So outside of ASBM range (Zolfogar Basir has a 700km range), but within the range of cruise missiles and drones. This explains why Ansarallah did not launch any ASBMs over the past two nights, the CSG was out of range.

        The solution is probably to give Ansarallah longer range ASBMs, but that's an idea with its own big issues. The short range ASBMs Ansarallah currently use don't have any midcourse guidance updates, they fire them at the general location the enemy ship is expected to be at, the Manoeuvrable Re-entry Vehicle (MaRV) of the missile does a pull up manoeuvre and performs a short glide phase, in which it's terminal guidance systems (EO/IR sensors or radar) locate the target and dive down to it. This all happenes in a handful of minutes, the Tankeel/Raad 500 has a burnout velocity of Mach 8 (2.7 kilometres per second), and an impact velocity of probably around Mach 1.5-2. A ship can't move that far in that time, which is why this approach works, from missile launch to glide phase, the ship can't move out of the effective range of the terminal guidance systems on the MaRV. Once you start trying to hit ships over longer ranges, the ships can move further, and you need midcourse guidance updates to ensure that the MaRV arrives in a close enough proximity to the target for the terminal guidance systems to work. Who is going to provide that midcourse guidance? Iran with their own ships, or Iran giving Ansarallah long range radars that datalink to the ASBMs? I think the US would consider that an act of war. I also don't think Ansarallah has this capability themselves. China's ASBMs use AWACS aircraft to provide midcourse guidance updates for instance. That's a capability not currently in the possession of Iran or Ansarallah.

        Another solution would be really fast (Mach 3+) cruise missiles or really stealthy subsonic cruise missiles. But I don't see Russia or China giving these weapons to Ansarallah.

    • The only recourse Ansarallah has that I can see given their current technological limitations would be to increase the quantity of missile deployments (any missiles or drones), screen attacks through decoy maneuvers to confuse and distract radar teams/aircraft and stagger attacks to disrupt sleep/rotation schedules on US naval ships.....keeping all this up continuously day after day

      And most importantly threaten critical infrastructure across the Peninsula to increase the scale of the zone of engagement, every time the beast turns its head or wanders over to a decoy it burns calories

      • And most importantly threaten critical infrastructure across the Peninsula to increase the scale of the zone of engagement

        Abdul-Malik al-Houthi gave a speech yesterday specifically calling out all the Arab regimes for collaborating with Israel, so I guess striking them is an escalation option they are considering, and it makes sense given their capabilities. A lot easier to hit a static oil field or refinery than a moving ship.

  • Yanis is throwing Die Linke in the bin.

    https://xcancel.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/1903411093071876601

    • Die Linke should have been thrown in the bin over a year ago after their "Rosa Luxemburg Foundation" published this horrific piece on Palestine - Israel.

      https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/51112/against-the-logic-of-violence

      ::: spoiler full article, warning: both sides nonsense The horrific images of murder, hostage-taking, and destruction in Israel and Palestine bear witness to an inhuman brutality that deeply disturbs us. We are shocked by the attacks of Hamas on innocent civilians in Israel. We are also shocked by the closure and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which primarily affects a defenceless civilian population. More death, suffering, and a humanitarian catastrophe are the consequences.

      The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation mourns all the victims of the massacres, bombings, and acts of violence. Our thoughts are with the families and friends of the victims.

      The renewed escalation of violence in Israel and Palestine is an expression of the political failure to find a just and lasting peace solution to the conflict that has lasted for decades. This political failure is also a failure of the international community. If the escalation of violence cannot be contained quickly, the conflict threatens to become internationalized with unforeseeable consequences.

      Together with our colleagues in the offices in Tel Aviv and Ramallah as well as numerous partner organizations, we have camnpaigned on the ground for years for an end to the logic of violence. The people on both sides of the barriers and checkpoints need peace, social justice, full democratic participation, equal rights, and solidarity. For this to happen, an end to Israel’s occupation policy, which violates international law, and the construction of settlements in the West Bank is just as indispensable as the strengthening of a secular and democratic civil society, towards which we work in both Israel and Palestine. :::

      The Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung is affiliated with the «Left Party» [Die Linke] in the Federal Republic of Germany. As is the case with other German party-affiliated foundations, it receives funding from the public budget

  • Lazy Bastards: Danish Cops Admits Closing Cases Without Investigating And Lying to The Public To Fudge Crime Statistics

    The Danish police are embroiled in yet another scandal, this time over the systematic "washing" of criminal cases—deliberately closing investigations without proper inquiry while lying to the public about it. Thirty current and former police officers have come forward, revealing that police leadership routinely pressures investigators to abandon cases under false pretenses. This practice, known as "washing cases," has resulted in violent crimes and large-scale financial fraud being ignored, all to make case backlogs disappear on paper.

  • In this clip, Elon Musk and Ted Cruz inadvertently discovered that what MMT has been saying all along is, in fact, true lol.

    The Treasury simply orders the Fed to create new money out of nothing. The US government doesn’t need to tax before it can spend, nor does it need to “borrow” from private investors or foreign countries via bonds before it can spend.

    • You'd think that as a fucking billionaire capitalist, he would know this. I guess he has financial and legal and tax advisors who know that stuff for him, though. When he bothers to listen to them.

      Still, like, while the meritocracy was always fake, industrial capitalists used to educate themselves reasonably well in order to effectively defend their property. Not hard to do when you have the time and resources and don't really have to do anything else.

      This is so fucking pathetic.

    • Did he just call them magical money computers, lol. His tone was almost like 'this is bad, we should shut these down.'(they will never do that).

    • Well obviously. There are so many people who believe that money literally grows on trees and the government can't spend more money because the money harvest wasn't good this year! Even during the gold standard era that wasn't true, the government and the banks were still allowed to print money out of nothing.

      I find it best to always start the explanation with "so we both agree that at some moment in the past, there was zero [insert currency] on planet Earth, right?".

    • This is not even half of what MMT says but sure. Its like saying Musks discovers Marx was right because he actualy needs to hire workers in order for Tesla/SpaceX to actualy make anything.

    • As someone who's not an expert on MMT, why is our debt so high then? Why do we borrow at all? Just to maintain the illusion?

      Also, how come countries in the past would have super high inflation creating too much money out of nothing? How does that not happen to the US? They destroy enough money they take in through tax to make up for it?

      Been following MMT discourse on hexbear for awhile and am halfway through Randall Wray lecture you posted before, but those are two questions that popped in my head during it.

      • Apart from what the other user has said, let’s walk through this in a manner that I hope is as simple as possible.

        First, bear in mind that “debt” simply means promise. I owe you something. I am indebted to you. It means I promise to pay/give something back to you at some point in the future.

        If you take some money from your checking account and buy a Certificate of Deposit of 2 years to earn, say, 3% interest, you are effectively transferring the money from your checking account to a new savings account. The bank “borrows” from you by safekeeping the money for the next 2 years in the new savings account, then return that same amount of money + interests when it matures. Note that nothing actually changes, except that you cannot use that money for 2 years.

        The government debt functions the same way by “borrowing” from private investors. This used to serve a function in the old days when national currencies were tied to gold, or another currency. This is known as the “fixed exchange” currency regime, as opposed to the “floating exchange” system we have today in the modern financial system where for many countries, their currencies are not tied to anything.

        To understand why government debt matters in the past but not today, we need to learn about the difference between fixed and floating exchange regimes.

        In the gold standard era (or the Bretton Woods era when currencies were pegged to US dollar, and the US dollar itself was pegged to gold), you need to accumulate reserves (e.g. gold) before you can issue the currency of an equivalent amount. That’s because in a fixed exchange system, you are promising that, say, 1 oz of gold can be exchanged for $35. If you do not have enough gold reserves to back your exchange rate of $35 to 1 oz gold, then you have to devalue your currency if you want to print more money.

        This becomes a problem when it comes to government spending. Let’s take a simple example of a small economy with $100M worth of gold reserve. In principle, you can issue $100M of currency into the economy. You have enough gold to support the exchange rate you have set.

        Now, let’s say you want to build a hospital that costs $10M - you can simply print the $10M into the economy, but you would end up with $110M of currency in the system, but only $100M worth of gold reserve.

        To defend that exchange rate, you have to take $10M out of the circulation. There are two ways you can do this: first, by taxation (this is where the myth of “taxing billionaires to fund healthcare” comes from - the government doesn’t need the money itself creates, it simply wants to take the money out so it can defend its own exchange rate).

        Second, by issuing government bonds. Unlike taxation, which collects money from the people and then destroys the money, government bonds act exactly like a savings account - you let the government safekeep the money for you over, say, 10 years while you get to earn interests. This way, you still get to keep your money, you simply can’t use them for 10 years, and you get interest payment every year as a bonus. This is another way to take $10M out of the system - but note that the government “borrows” not because it needs your money, it simply wants to take the money out of the system to defend the exchange rate.

        Of course, there are other ways, like increasing your gold supply. You can dig for more gold within your national boundary, you can export goods to other countries and use those revenues to purchase gold, you can colonize another country and steal their gold. Many ways to do that. The government can even choose to devalue its own currency, or simply default when it can no longer keep its “promise” (paying its “debt”).

        The upshot here is that when your currency is pegged to something else (fixed exchange rate), you have limited fiscal space to grow your economy. This is why the Bretton Woods system didn’t last long and, when the US overspent its dollars during the Vietnam War, culminated in the French asking the US to pay them in gold instead of dollars. Nixon ended the Bretton Woods and we have since entered a new phase of fiat monetary system.

        So, what is the role of the government bond in a “floating exchange” system, then?

        First, we need to learn a bit about central banking operations. It’s pure accounting but you will need to understand this to make sense about why the US government still continues to issue treasury bonds.

        The Central Bank (Federal Reserve in the US) has special accounts known as Reserve accounts. These reserves are only accessible to other banks, and not the general public. Commercial banks have Reserve accounts with the Central Bank. The Treasury also has an account (Treasury General Account, or TGA) with the Central Bank.

        When the Federal Government wants to spend $10M to contract a company to build a hospital, the TGA goes into negative $10M at the Central Bank. The Central Bank then creates an equivalent positive $10M at the Reserve account of the Commercial Bank, where the Private Contractor’s deposit account is linked to. The Commercial Bank then creates $10M deposits at the Private Contractor’s deposit account, which it can then spend to hire labor, purchase raw materials etc. to build the hospital.

        Note that the Commercial Bank now still has +$10M in its Reserve account. Because these are dead money, the Commercial Bank will want to lend it out to earn some interests. These reserves are only accessible in the Central Bank (not available to the public), so it will try to lend them out in the interbank market at the Central Bank, where other banks have their reserve accounts linked to.

        What are reserves then? They are what banks use to clear everyday payments! When you take a $1000 check (payer has a different bank to yours) to a bank to deposit the money, Bank A doesn’t have to “send” any money to Bank B. Instead, Bank A (payer bank) subtracts $1000 from its Reserve account and Bank B (recipient bank) adds $1000 in its Reserve account, then creates an equivalent $1000 in your Deposit account. Therefore, the reserves allow banks to clear payments very rapidly (we’re talking about billions of transactions every single day!) and this is an essential component to support a highly efficient modern economy.

        As you can see, by the end of every business day, some banks will have less reserves (because more money is withdrawn from their banks) and some banks will have more reserves. There is a legal requirement to keep a minimum amount reserves relative to the bank’s assets (Reserve Requirement Ratio). To meet this legal requirement, the banks will have to make sure they have this minimum amount of reserves by the end of every day (of course, in reality this is audited over an average of period).

        There are two ways a bank can increase its reserves: it can directly borrow from the Central Bank (Discount Window lending), but because the government doesn’t want to encourage banks to keep borrowing to fill their reserves, they will usually set some penalty. So, the second way to increase reserve is to borrow reserves from another bank via the interbank market within the Central Bank.

        Now we’re back to the above scenario where the Commercial Bank has racked up an extra $10M reserves it wants to lend out via the interbank market. However, many other Commercial Banks also want to lend out their excess reserves, and will compete with one another by lending at a lower rate. Without any intervention, this competition will quickly drive the interest rate down to 0%.

        Usually, this is not a problem if the government wants to run a 0% interest rate policy. However, if the government is targeting, say, 2% interest rate, then it will have to intervene at the interbank market.

        Remember that the Treasury General Account (TGA) went into negative $10M after government spending? This account also needs to be balanced out so it runs a surplus or at zero balance.

        Usually there are laws where the Central Bank is not allowed to purchase bonds directly from the Treasury, so to fix this, the government simply issues Treasury bonds at the target rate it wants (2%) to “borrow” from the secondary market (the Commercial Banks).

        This solves two problems at the same time: first, by setting an interest of 2%, the government has guaranteed that the interest rate will not be driven down to 0%, because every bank with excess reserve will rather lend to the government’s 2% interest. (This is how the Fed rate determines interest rate in commercial banks); and second, the negative TGA account can be filled up.

        Thus, government debt simply soaks up the excess reserve created by the Treasury to finance a $10M hospital in the first place! Government debt = deficit = spending - tax!

        To re-iterate:

        1. Congress passes spending bill, which includes building a $10M hospital
        2. Treasury spends by having the TGA going into negative $10M
        3. Federal Reserve adds $10M matching reserves in the Commercial Bank from the TGA deficit
        4. Commercial Bank adds $10M deposits in the Private Contractor account, which it can then use to build hospital
        5. Commercial Bank still left with $10M reserves, and wanting to lend out these excess reserves
        6. Treasury issues bond to soak up the $10M reserves that itself created in the first place

        Steve Keen has a nice double entry bookkeeping illustration to keep track of how the spending works, if you’re interested in the details:

        The final point to make is that this only applies if the government wants to run a >0% interest rate. If it doesn’t want to target any interest rate, it can simply let the reserves build up in the system. This whole system is inherited from an already defunct financial structure during the gold standard/Bretton Woods era.

  • Hopefully there are severe consequences for the mine owners and operators so we can point to that as an example of how a socialist government holds such egregious failures accountable.

    Either way a bunch of smug libs are going to try to use it as an indictment.

  • Primero

    Cuba makes progress in restoring the national power system

    According to Havana Electric Company, areas of Boyeros, Guanabacoa, Centro Habana, Marianao, Cerro, 10 de Octubre, La Lisa, Playa, San Miguel del Padrón and Arroyo Naranjo in the capital are already supplied and the service is being extended.

    According to recent reports from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Felton (units 1) and Nuevitas (units 5 and 6) thermoelectric plants in Holguín and Camagüey respectively have been synchronised with the National Electricity System (SEN).

    The Ministry said in X that the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas, the island’s largest, as well as Mariel (eight) in Artemisa and Renté (three) in Santiago de Cuba, are in the process of being commissioned.

    “During the day, other units will be connected, as well as the floating generators in Havana and Regla and the Mariel motors,” the source said.

  • For the second night in a row, Ethiopian warplanes drop barrel bombs on villages in the Middle Shabelle region of Somalia.

    • Telegram

  • Defence analyst Decker Eveleth (one of the main people who did the analysis of Iran's ballistic missile attack on Nevatim Airbase in Israel) has just published a new article on Russia's Oreshnik ballistic missile. The article itself states what we've already worked out in terms of the purpose of the weapon, and some of the wording is remarkably similar to my own analysis. Now before I get accused of being a fed again, I promise that I am not Decker Eveleth, and do not work for any Washington DC think tanks. It just seems that with the information available, our conclusions are similar. But I'll link the article from Decker below because it is quite interesting. Also see if you can spot the similarities...

    Russian 'Oreshnik' Missile Is Bad News for NATO - Decker Eveleth, Foreign Policy dot com

    ::: spoiler full article Last November, Russia launched a new kind of missile into Ukraine. Moscow debuted the intermediate-range ballistic missile Oreshnik (meaning “hazelnut tree” in Russian) in an attack on Dnipro. Though it used only inert submunitions, it marked yet another attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to signal his willingness to escalate.

    Footage of the strike and analysis of satellite imagery suggests that the Oreshnik can likely carry six warheads each armed with six submunitions, for a total of 36. As the missile descends toward Earth, it can disperse these submunitions to blanket a wide area with explosives, similar to how a shotgun sprays shot.

    The Oreshnik is also almost certainly capable of being armed with nuclear warheads, and many experts have focused analysis primarily on these capabilities and the role that the missile plays in Putin’s nuclear signaling. But relatively little has been said about the Oreshnik’s conventional capabilities and how it might enable a change in Russia’s targeting strategy in a potential future war with NATO.

    In a conflict where forces are dispersed over large areas, as is the case in Ukraine, an expensive missile like the Oreshnik is a poor choice. But the Oreshnik makes perfect sense for attacking dense targets like air bases, where its conventional submunitions can deal significant damage.

    In a televised interview last December, Putin remarked that with the Oreshnik, Russia was “practically on the edge of having no need to use nuclear weapons.” The Russian leader was exaggerating, but there was a grain of truth to his statement. A mass Russian strike with conventional Oreshnik missiles on NATO strategic sites—such as air bases, command and control facilities, and missile bases—could leave NATO reeling without Putin using nuclear arms.

    In a war with NATO, Russia is likely to attack the alliance’s air bases in the opening days of a conflict. Russia is well aware of NATO’s air superiority, and it hopes to give its forces some breathing room by destroying—or at least delaying—NATO’s ability to respond.

    Modern fighter aircraft—particularly the F-35, which multiple NATO states increasingly use as their multirole aircraft of choice—are too complex to be repaired in the field. F-35s and similar aircraft were designed to be supported by large, sophisticated air bases. Decades of budget cuts have concentrated NATO’s airpower in only a handful of these bases, making them uniquely vulnerable to the Oreshnik’s shotgun-style munitions.

    Russia’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) could certainly make short work of NATO air bases. But when it comes to conventional weapons, Russia’s experience in Ukraine has revealed problems with attacking strategic sites with its existing missiles. Russian missiles that are armed with unitary conventional warheads have failed to disable key Ukrainian air bases and other facilities due to a combination of low accuracy and successful Ukrainian air defenses.

    The Oreshnik helps solve this problem. Based on Russia’s performance in Ukraine, it may take dozens of conventional Iskander missiles to destroy aircraft at major air bases. It would take far fewer Oreshniks to achieve a similar effect. During the Nov. 21 attack, a single Oreshnik missile dropped 36 inert submunitions on the Pivdenmash rocket manufacturing complex. If the submunitions had not been inert, the missile would have done extensive damage over a large area, negating the accuracy problems of Russia’s Iskander and Kh-101 missiles.

    The good news is the Oreshnik’s conventional capabilities will give Russia more non-nuclear options, theoretically lessening the risk that the Kremlin would contemplate using nuclear weapons early in a conflict. The bad news is the Oreshnik’s non-nuclear capacities mean Russia will have more options to significantly disrupt NATO operations at the conventional level.

    Current European defenses will do little to protect against the Oreshnik. Despite many NATO bases being protected by a multilayered missile defense grid, the Oreshnik can fly above the intercept range of most systems and comes down to Earth too fast for most terminal interceptors, such as the Patriot air defense system. The interceptors that can stop the Oreshnik—namely, the Arrow 3 and the SM-3 Block IIA systems—will likely have limited inventories if current procurement trajectories hold. In addition, Russian decoys and other countermeasures may be able to fool interceptors into going after a fake target.

    The Oreshnik is not a technically difficult weapon to make. Russia is well-versed in the technology involved and has been making the rocket engines for missiles similar to the Oreshnik for decades. Russia is already expanding its missile production facilities to rebuild its arsenal in the long term. Notably, some of the facilities being expanded, such as the Kamensky Plant located across from Ukraine’s eastern border, specialize in the sort of large ICBM-sized rocket motors the Oreshnik uses.

    Regardless of how the war in Ukraine ends, in a decade or two NATO may face a rearmed Russia wielding a reconstituted arsenal in which large conventional ballistic missiles like the Oreshnik feature prominently. This new force could defy expectations that Russia will become more reliant on its nuclear arsenal as its conventional capabilities deteriorate.

    NATO should begin preparing for this now by making its major air bases less attractive targets for Russian missiles. This can be achieved by dispersing aircraft to remote locations—minor runways and highways throughout Europe—in a crisis so they are harder for Russia to find, target, and destroy.

    Some NATO states already train and prepare for certain refueling and rearming operations at dispersed locations. But the problem of aircraft complexity remains. Though dispersion can help ensure the survival of the aircraft themselves, the major air bases will remain tempting targets because of how dependent fighter aircraft are on these bases for intensive maintenance. If Russia can attack these larger bases, it will be able to destroy the valuable maintenance tools and parts stockpiles that keep fighter aircraft running in combat.

    To plan for a reconstituted and possibly more dangerous Russian missile force, NATO states should embrace a dispersal plan that allows for longer operations in the field. This plan would require investment in more spare parts and support equipment, as well as the ability to conduct more complicated maintenance operations in the field—such as through mobile units equipped with workstations inside vehicles that would be dispatched to sites to maintain aircraft. This would aid both deterrence and warfighting.

    Two problems stand in the way of this effort, but both can be rectified. The first is parts. Budget cuts across many NATO air forces have reduced the readiness rate of aircraft. This is a problem especially for the F-35 fleet, where parts backlogs are widespread, but it extends to other aircraft such as the Eurofighter Typhoon. NATO states should budget for and invest heavily in not only fixing this parts shortfall but also exceeding it, maintaining depots of aircraft parts across their territory to ensure aircraft can be quickly returned to service from wherever they may be dispersed to.

    The second problem is experience and personnel. The Government Accountability Office has noted in the past that U.S. military personnel lack experience in many maintenance tasks related to the F-35 due partly to the lack of spare parts and support equipment. Given the global state of the F-35 supply chain, other NATO states will also likely face these problems.

    NATO states should regularly practice and perform more complicated maintenance and ensure that they are able to do these tasks on any F-35, regardless of what air force it belongs to. The alliance conducted its first-ever cross-service maintenance exercise with the F-35 last year. Such exercises should be a regular occurrence in all NATO states equipped with the F-35 to ensure jets can easily return to the war regardless of where they have been dispersed. Combined, these measures can reduce NATO’s reliance on a small number of major bases that may be heavily damaged in the opening days of a war.

    Russia’s difficulty with long-range strikes against defended military targets in Ukraine should not make Europe complacent about the safety of its forces in the coming decades. The Oreshnik and other systems like it may defy expectations about Russian military posture, and, without action, they will take a toll on NATO’s ability to sustain the fight in a future war. :::

    My own analysis - part one

    My own analysis - Part two

    • Thank you for sharing your analysis comrade. Way to be 4 months ahead of the curve.

      • The article by Decker also outlines another point I've made in the past, that a fighter aircraft designed to fight against the Soviets (and now Russia) independently/without American support needs to be cheap and easy to maintain, quick to re-arm, needs very long range air to air missiles to counter the MiG-31 threat, and able to take off and land from makeshift runways and highways so they they can be scattered around the country, to prevent strikes on airbases taking out an entire squadron.

        The only aircraft that fulfills all these requirements is the SAAB Gripen, because it was the only aircraft designed with all of this in mind, as Sweden was a lot more neutral at the time. A head technician and five assistants can get a landed Gripen combat ready in less than ten minutes, and a Gripen can take off less than 60 seconds after a take off order is received, on short makeshift runways or highways. The Gripen can also be equipped with the Meteor long range air to air missiles, with the largest "no escape zone" of any current missile. American fighters, such as the F-16, F-18 and F-35 do not fulfill these requirements, they are envisioned to be used with US support at sophisticated airbases. European fighters like the Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale fulfill some of these requirements, but not all.

        I've always said that if NATO was serious about countering Russian air power in Ukraine, they'd give Ukraine Gripens with Meteor missiles. Instead they gave them old F-16s with similar capabilities to Ukraine's modified MiG-29s, with the F-16s only being superior on the electronic countermeasures side. This shows that NATO was just preventing Ukraine from losing capabilities in this regard as more and more MiG-29s got taken out by Russia, not giving Ukraine new capabilities.

  • US airstrikes on Yemen are continuing for a third night in a row now. Two rounds of airstrikes, consisting of a bunch of strikes each, were reported in Hodeidah governorate in Yemen at around 19:40 UTC, according to the Yemeni/Ansarallah owned Al Masirah TV. Targets appear to be factories.

    More US airstrikes on Sana'a now, 21:30 UTC.

    Further strikes on Sana'a governorate, 22:10 UTC.

    Important statement from the Yemeni Armed Forces at 00:40 UTC, 8 minutes from now.

    The statement:

    So the Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) have again disappeared from use. This is either because the carrier strike group is out of range of the ASBMs, a change in tactics, or ASBM stocks are running low. Either way these attacks on the carrier strike group in defence of the country appear to be limiting the offensive operations of the US Navy, at least compared to the first day of attacks. Airstrikes are still occuring, but not as much as on the first day.

    Al Masirah TV twitter

    Xcancel mirror

  • Hmm

    “In retaliation to the continued brutal American aggression against our country, on the anniversary of the great Battle of Badr, and as an extension of Islam's march against tyranny and arrogance, these operations by the Yemeni Armed Forces come as

    Over the past few hours, the Yemeni Armed Forces have successfully targeted the US aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman in the northern Red Sea with two cruise missiles and two drones, and targeted a US destroyer with a cruise missile and four drones.

    The targeting of the aircraft carrier is the third in the past 48 hours. The enemy was struck by a state of confusion, which prompted many of its warships to retreat towards the northern Red Sea region, and an air attack that was being prepared against our country was thwarted.

    The US aggressor bears all the consequences of militarizing the Red Sea and expanding the scope of confrontation by continuing its aggression against Yemen, which negatively impacts international shipping traffic.

    The Yemeni Armed Forces affirm that they will not cease targeting all hostile targets in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea until the aggression against our country stops. They are prepared, relying on Allah, to confront any American or Israeli escalation in the coming hours and days.

    The Yemeni Armed Forces salute all our beloved Yemeni people who took to the streets today in response to the call of Sayyid Abdulmalik Badr al-Din al-Houthi (may Allah protect him) on Al-Furqan Day, the anniversary of the Great Battle of Badr, to affirm their faith-based, jihadist stance in support of the Palestinian people and in rejection of the American aggression against our country.

    The Yemeni Armed Forces salute the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and affirm that they will continue to ban the passage of Israeli ships from the declared zone of ​​operations until the blockade on the Gaza Strip is lifted.

    Sana'a: Ramadan 18, 1446 AH March 18, 2025 AD

    Issued by the Yemeni Armed Forces

    http://t.me/army21ye “

  • Maersk shareholders to vote on banning Israel arms transfers over Gaza genocide | The Cradle

    :::spoiler article Shareholders in Danish shipping giant Maersk are set to hold a vote on 18 March for a proposal to cease weapons shipments to Israel for as long as it is waging war on Gaza.

    The vote comes as Israel has renewed its genocidal campaign against the strip, killing over 420 Palestinians since early Tuesday morning.

    Weapons transfers to Israel are “in violation of international conventions, assuming that military equipment, weapons, and components were used in Israeli army operations where international conventions are breached,” shareholder Zen Donen told AFP.

    Yet the shipping firm’s board does not support the proposal.

    “The premise of the proposal is not correct, as the company is not transporting arms to Israel,” the company said, despite recent investigative reports in Danish media claiming otherwise. The reports show that Maersk has shipped armored combat vehicles and other military hardware to Israel.

    The Eko activist group has drafted its own proposal demanding the firm’s transparency – which the Maersk board has also rejected.

    Denmark has not implemented an arms embargo restricting weapons shipments to Israel, like other European nations have.

    UN experts have recently called for countries to impose bans on arms exports to Israel.

    “All States must ‘ensure respect’ for international humanitarian law by parties to an armed conflict, as required by 1949 Geneva Conventions and customary international law. States must accordingly refrain from transferring any weapon or ammunition – or parts for them – if it is expected, given the facts or past patterns of behavior, that they would be used to violate international law,” UN experts said in late February.

    “The need for an arms embargo on Israel is heightened by the International Court of Justice’s ruling on 26 January 2024 that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and the continuing serious harm to civilians since then,” they added.

    Maersk ships transporting goods to Israeli ports were targeted by the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) last year as part of Sanaa’s pro-Palestine blockade. This caused the company to face a significant crash in profits due to expensive reroutes.

    The YAF recently announced a decision to resume attacks on all Israeli ships in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab strait, and the Gulf of Aden in response to Tel Aviv’s ceasefire violations and blocking of aid to Gaza.

    This has prompted violent US attacks on Yemen, which the YAF has responded to by targeting the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman several times.

    The Maersk shareholder vote coincides with a brutal campaign of Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

    According to the director of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, wounded Palestinians are dying “every minute” due to a severe lack of medical resources.

  • I hate this fucking shithole irredeemable fascist world. What is worth saving? What is worth salvaging? Nowadays I actually start thinking about how nice it would be to not be alive, to not be forced to perceive any of this shit.

    How am I expected to believe that the world itself isn't ideologically biased towards the fash?

  • Donald Trump has tightened border controls to stop the trafficking of fentanyl, but immigration agents have seized more eggs than drugs! Since October, there have been 3,768 seizures of poultry products against 352 of opioids. In Texas, seizures of contraband are up 54%, and in San Diego, they've doubled. In some regions, a dozen eggs can cost as much as US$10, forcing consumers to seek out the illegal market. Bodegas in NY sell single eggs in plastic bags, and restaurants have added extra fees to their dishes.

    There have even been large-scale thefts, such as the theft of 100,000 eggs in Pennsylvania. The authorities have stepped up enforcement and now ask drivers directly if they are carrying eggs. Anyone caught can pay a fine of up to 300 dollars. The eggs are then incinerated.

    • Telegram

  • Middle East Eye: UAE lobbying Trump administration to reject Arab League Gaza plan, officials say

    The UAE is lobbying the Trump administration to torpedo a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip that Egypt drafted and which has been endorsed by the Arab League, US and Egyptian officials told Middle East Eye.

    The split is becoming increasingly bitter, with US diplomats concerned that it is harming US interests in the region. It reflects growing Arab competition over who calls the shots in the Gaza Strip’s future governance and reconstruction, as well as different opinions over how much influence Hamas should retain there.

    The Emirati pressure poses a dilemma for Cairo because both the UAE and Egypt broadly back the same Palestinian powerbroker for Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, an exiled former Fatah official.

    “The UAE could not be the lone state opposing the Arab League plan when it was agreed, but they are trashing it with the Trump administration,” the US official told MEE.

    The UAE is flexing its unparalleled access to the White House to criticise the plan as unworkable and accuse Cairo of giving too much influence to Hamas.

    The UAE's powerful ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba, has been lobbying US President Donald Trump’s inner circle and US lawmakers to put pressure on Egypt to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians, one US official and one Egyptian briefed on the matter told MEE.

    Otaiba was previously on record saying that he did not see “an alternative” to Trump’s call earlier this year for Palestinians to be forcibly displaced outside of the Gaza Strip.

    I am once again pressing the "do a missile strike on a comprador refinery" button.

  • Random headline from Danish state media news website:

    The EU started as a peace project. Now the countries have to prepare for war to preserve the peace.

    (It's about a EU commission report saying that if we don't build a Death Star within five years, Putin is going to come and eat our poodles or something. Call me a lib, I'm not linking to this filth)

    I would hate to live in authoritarian "jungle" countries like Russia or China where the media spews regime propaganda in the face of people.

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