An URGENT to do list for free Europe

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I hate having been correct so much with my Cassandra warnings about Americans turning Fascist and against Europe. I hate having been correct with my warnings that small wars are bollocks and alliance defence & deterrence are getting too much neglected inf ace of Russian aggressiveness.

I erred on the side of caution and overestimated Russian military and military-technological prowess (which still pointing out that they weren't as strong as they pretend and are widely believed to be).

 

So here's a list of things we need to URGENTLY do now, exploiting that the mainstream finally woke up to 'security policy' being something deserving attention:

 

1. Harden ourselves against American economic sabotage through Microsoft, Cisco and the likes
2. Harden ourselves against other American economic sabotage such as cutting us off from SWIFT.
3. Quickly create an alternative to Starlink and an alternative to SpaceX's reusable rockets for low satellite lift costs. 
   
4. Kick Russian & American intelligence and most "diplomats" out, especially stop tolerating them snooping on our telecoms. This includes closing the "Russian House"s.
5. Stop relying on NATO, for it's compromised by Americans, Hungarians, Slovakians and possibly Turks
6. Stop relying on the EU for security policy because it's compromised and blocked by Hungary and Slovakia.
   
7. Establish a new alliance that's designed to neutralise 5th column (Americans, Hungarians, Slovakians, Turks and whoever might turn to the dark side) sabotage & betrayals. 
8. Improve nuclear deterrence based on the French arsenal (though American BMD is turning this into an elevated challenge).
9. Establish conventional deterrence against the Americans (vs. American threats of naval blockade, naval air attacks and missile attacks)
10. Kick American troops out of Europe.
11. Effectively counter propaganda networks (Transatlantiker in Germany, Putin's stooges, European unification ideologues, Murdoch media, TikTok, Twitter) in order to create freedom of political action.
12. Understand that most European nation states are capable of great efforts, not impotent.
13. Reorient our armed forces to focus 99% on deterrence & alliance defence.
14. Force our armed services to become more efficient (liberally fire generals & admirals), including breaking the 'miniature balanced forces' bollocks. The armed forces shall not be permitted to follow self-interest; they exist to serve!
15. This includes focusing on mobilised strength, not peacetime active duty personnel strength & structure. 
16. Stop relying on the arms industry. Create arms & munitions production capacity outside of the sluggish established arms makers, just as we did to nowadays unfathomable success in both world wars. The artillery munition production efforts so far are scandalously inept compared to 1915ff and 1939ff.
17. Understand that Putin's regime has to lose its war of aggression beyond reasonable doubt (no efforts to help them saving face!) and support Ukraine accordingly, including direct intervention. Start by telling the Russians that they have already lost now that we decided so and enact a naval blockade as a first step.
18. Get ready for a new Cold War, this time against Russia and the U.S.. This goes beyond the pure defensive on the European continents and its peripheral seas.
19. Stay out of East Asian great power games.
20. Seek India as defensive ally to add mass and economic potential to the bloc, but be wary of them turning full (Hindu-)Fascist, for we might find ourselves in need of allying with the PRC in the worst case scenario!
21. Establish a "Stay out of Europe" doctrine vs. the Chinese AND the Americans and enforce it

Please not I did not pretend that huge military spending increases are necessary or in any way central to free Europe's successful deterrence & defence!

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Air-to-air missile categories

(I advise to first read this blog post. You'll later see why.)

Air-to-air missiles have commonly been grouped in short, medium and long range missiles. Short range was and is dominated by passive infrared seekers, medium range was dominated by semi-active radar seekers until AMRAAM (active radar seeker), which also blurred the distinction between medium and long range with its D version. Long range missiles have radar guidance (infrared seeker windows would be blinded by heating up much during long flights).

I believe that such categories are by now of little use. I propose a different system:

• Pursuit missiles
• Counter-Pursuit missiles
• Close-In missiles
• Low cost missiles

 

Pursuit missiles have the speed, range and seeker to reach hostile tactical combat aircraft even if they try to avoid the hit by running. Their no-escape zone is great. It happens that they also threaten and thus push back hostile support aircraft (AEW, ESM, ElInt, tanker, MPA, air/ground radar planes).

Examples are Meteor, PL-21, AIM-260 and AIM-174B

Their drawbacks are heavy weight, big size and very high costs.

Counter-pursuit missiles lack a no-escape zone large enough to force a kill. They can kill if the target is unaware, but not if it's aware enough to avoid the no-escape zone and running in time.

Examples are AIM-120, MICA RF and R-77-1

They can easily be carried by strike fighters and their cost is usually in the 1...2 million € range. This category started out as a replacement for the Sparrow/R-27 medium range air-to-air missile category and was the main weapon of fighters for about two decades, but the similar ranges mean that it's difficult to get an enemy fighter into the own no escape zone without getting into his missile's no escape zone. Tail-mounted radars and handing over the missile to another fighter to be able to give midcourse corrections by radio datalink to the missile while flying away from the threat help little if both sides use it. State of the art medium range missile air combat without decisive range (no escape zone size) advantage would likely end up as a Cannonade of Valmy; an expenditure of munition with little physical effect.

So the use for these  missiles in high end air war is likely mostly in a counter-pursuit role - it's defensive.

Close-in missiles were "dogfight"and relatively cheap missiles in the past. Their infrared seekers have become smarter, wider field of view, more sensitive, capable of 'seeing' an aircraft from any angle and capable of lock-on-after-launch. You can now shoot such a missile at a fighter behind your aircraft and hit.

R-73 fired at target behind launching fighter

I do strongly suppose that their primary mission should shift from dogfight shot vs. a platform to hard kill defence versus an incoming missile. Fuse and warhead need to be designed accordingly. They may also be usable as short-time freeflying decoy if equipped properly.

These missiles need to (and short range air-to-air missiles do) cost much less than a million €, but I think so far the short-ranged missiles are still primarily designed to hit platforms. Thrust vectoring permits to minimise fins and rudders, so these missiles could be packed in compact multiple missile launchers.

 

Low cost missiles have recently been introduced to fight cheap drones over the Red Sea and Ukraine. So far they are unguided 70 mm Hydra rockets with a cheap guidance and steering nose section. Some fighters have 30 mm guns (example Rafale) and can make use of the new 30 mm HE munitions with proximity fuse to battle cheap drones, so they would not need a low cost missile for the job.

- - - - -

How do 'stealth' fighters fit in this? They may be very difficult targets for any kind of missile. IR-guided missiles might be main killers in a stealth fighter vs. stealth fighter combat. Or maybe stealth fighters avoid hostile peer ground to avoid detection by hostile long wavelength radars (which usually require big antennas and are thus not installed in fighters). They might end up as 'fleet in being', deterring deep incursions and serving as launch platforms for pursuit missiles (if those fit into missile bays). The Su-57 was meant to be a stealthy-enough fighter with DIRCM (dazzling laser that targets infrared seekers). This might prove to be much more formidable IF THE DIRCM WORKS than the interested public gives credit to the concept. Stealth-DIRCM vs. stealth-DIRCM might require a spam of missiles with seekers that have spectral filters to block out the laser - three missiles with three different filter setups would defeat a Su-57 even if the latter used two different laser wavelengths in its lasers. Then the killing blow missiles would be "pursuit missiles", but their required range would be driven by the demand for a no-escape zone as great as the own platform's (fighter's) effective sensor range against the opposing fighter.

 

I think these missile categories make more sense than the traditional ones. My categories guide attention towards the diminished lethality of AMRAAM et al when both sides have such missiles, guide attention towards the hard kill defence concept and towards the issue of defeating super cheap drones (/cruise missiles) with even less expensive munitions.

 

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Appropriate demands for peace talks in the RUS-UKR war

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I've seen some stupid takes on what Russia and Ukraine should negotiate about. So let's write about that.

 

Appropriate points for negotiations are:

(1) Russian armed forces withdraw from Ukraine's territory (as of 2013) within 7 days

(2) Russia recognises the internationally recognised borders of Ukraine (as of 2013)

(3) Russia hands over all minefield maps regarding the Ukrainian territory

(4) All persons who UKR considers to be POW in Russian hands have to be repatriated within 14 days.

(5) All UKR-identified abducted children have to be repatriated within 14 days of UKR demanding it (could be years later) 

(6) Russia has to pay reparations equal to UKR loss of GDP relative to trend path PLUS Ukrainian increases of military spending during invasion 2014 - date of peace treaty relative to 2013 military budget PLUS 200 billion € (for damage done)

(7) Russia has to withdraw all armed personnel from Moldova (Transnistria)

Further appropriate (though not necessary) points for negotiations are:

(8) Destruction of the Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22M bombers save for a handful thoroughly demilitarised museum pieces

(9) Demilitarisation of the Russian oblast bordering on Ukraine

(10) Russia recognising the sovereignty and internationally recognised borders of all other CIS countries

(11) Payment of reparations through transfer of seized Russian assets abroad, in USD/EUR/JPY/CHF in annual (inflation correcting) rates for the next 30 years, ten years of steady natural gas deliveries in yearly amount of Ukraine's consumption in 2013 valued at the price it paid for Russian gas in 2013 (no inflation correction)

(12) Russia accepts that the treaty about Russian use of Sevastopol for its navy is voided

(13) Russia  recognises the Holodomor genocide committed by the Soviet government (capital Moscow) against the Ukrainian people 

(14) Russia permits all ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars to move to Ukraine including their wealth

(15) Russia accepts repatriation of all voluntary Russian passport holders in Ukraine

Nice to have:

(16) Demilitarisation of Kaliningrad Oblast

(17) Ban on Russian warships in the Black Sea

(18) Russian withdrawal of armed Personnel from Georgia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia) 

(19) Russia returns all captured heavy equipment to Ukraine (to avoid war propaganda shows)

(20) Russia is banned from having airborne ground forces

(21) Russia is banned from having surface target missiles of 100...5.000 km range for 25 years

(22) Russia reimburses the foreign countries who assisted Ukraine for their deliveries to Ukraine (not for domestic capacity building)

(23) Russia reimburses the foreign countries who had expenses for war refugees due to this war 

(24) Russia joins the cluster ban convention (destruction of all covered cluster munitions within 6 months) and permits international inspections to verify its compliance with it

 

Ukrainian bargaining chips are:

(1) occupied Kursk Oblast territory (though it's of symbolic size)

(2) whether, when and which sanctions of Russia end

(3) when Russian POWs will be released

(4) continuing attacks to collapse the Russian economy (especially attacks on and sabotage of oil refineries)

(5) threat of advance on the ground

(6) threat of commerce raiding Russian maritime commerce with auxiliary cruisers with European help

 

Acceptable locations for the negotiations: Switzerland, Ukraine

 

War losers don't gain territory or  reparations.

Aggressors should not be rewarded with territory or reparations.

The Russian Federation is both aggressor and (soon) loser in this war.

Framing the conversation matters. It's irresponsible to let Russians or American idiots frame the discussion on how a peace settlement should look like.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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The stay out of Europe doctrine

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The Americans created the "Monroe Doctrine", basically the ambition to keep European powers out of messing in the Americas. They weren't able to enforce it until they were. It's a rare example of clear-cut grand strategy, and it kinda worked for a very long time.

Anyone who thinks clearly about the security of free Europe and uses the publicly available (and certainly not very far off) data understands that the Russians aren't able to challenge free Europe in war, certainly not after squandering the Soviet legacy equipment and millions of artillery shells and rockets. The only really troublesome conventional warfare threat to free Europe (understanding that the Fascist Americans are more likely adversaries than allies, but would certainly not engage in much continental land warfare in Europe) is a combination of Russia AND China.

A proper grand strategy for the security of free Europe in the Eastern direction thus has to deter China from coming to Europe with any substantial land forces.

It should be understood that we need to establish and maintain a taboo, similar to how the Monroe doctrine eventually started to keep Europeans from pursuing ambitions in the Americas: Any Chinese ground forces are taboo in Europe and its periphery. This is unlike the Russian thinking that as a great power, it can dictate to small powers around itself ('influence sphere'/Russki Mir): For one, it's defensive and second, it's not about infringing sovereignty. It would just lead to sanctions on China for entering the sphere with ground forces (beyond embassy guards and military attachés). European forces should reciprocate by staying the eff out of East and Southeast Asia with their own land forces, even in regard to temporary military exercises.

It's obvious to me that this needs to be extended to North Korea, which is under Chinese influence and has no business of having troops in Europe.

 

Obviously, this was not what European politicians heeded when North Korea sent its slave-soldiers to help Russia attack Ukraine. 

It wasn't possible to further sanction North Korea and it wouldn't have been prudent to sanction China for this North Korean behaviour, but we could have set up a fund for Ukraine to buy Western weapons and fill it with one million Euros for every North Korean soldier that we believe entered Europe to assist Russia in its war of aggression.

Once again, I diagnose grand strategy incompetence and impotence among the leadership of the major European countries. Somehow it's the smaller countries such as Finland, Estonia and Czech Republic that have MUCH more competent political leadership. Germany didn't have a good chancellor in for four decades, for example.

related:

/2014/08/if-western-great-power-gaming-wasnt-so.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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"Offensives" and Ukraine

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The Russo-Ukrainian War turned into a trench war contrary to my expectations. The Russian ground forces' ability to break through such defences is shockingly and ridiculously marginal - I did not expect that.

This is a shocking display of incompetence in no small part because the recipe for breakthrough has very largely been found in 1917 already (Bruchmüller's artillery tactics and modern infantry training and small unit manoeuvring of Stoßtruppen).  

You don't even need armoured vehicles for it. A skilful and sufficient application of artillery (and nowadays glide bombs) and a simultaneous assault by many infantry sections on a wide-enough sector would do the trick if supported by a few modern ingredients such as barrage jamming in the 0.2...1 kHz band and fragmentation protection vests.

So I decided to write this blog post in order to help readers arrange their thoughts on offensives in an orderly manner:

The forms of attacks are (I rephrase the official lingo a bit here):

1. raid
2. counterattack
   
3. meeting engagement
4. pursuit
5. hasty attack
   
6. deliberate attack with limited objectives
7. breakthrough offensive
   

raid: The usual purpose is to storm one position, take prisoners of war, capture radios, get away without trying to hold any newly gained ground.

counterattack: Can happen from lowest to highest levels. Attackers are particularly vulnerable (position-wise and in terms of morale) to a sudden attack. So often times a company defending a trench system would immediately launch a platoon-sized counterattack when the signal arrives that  enemy assault troops are reaching another platoon's position, for example.

meeting engagement: Both forces are entering battle in a mobile phase of war (does not apply to trench warfare).

pursuit: Similar to meeting engagement, except that one side doesn't want to accept battle other than for purposes of delay at most. Not very relevant in trench warfare.

hasty attack: This is a planned attack with up to a few hours of preparation.

deliberate attack with limited objectives: The Russians do n inept form of this very much. The objective is limited (such as capture this village, eliminate this bridgehead, create a bridgehead, take this hill, take this trench system) and "deliberate" communicates that there was plenty time for preparations.

breakthrough offensive: This is what happens very rarely, mostly by Ukrainians and successfully only against particularly weak Russian sectors (Kharkiv, Kherson and Kursk Oblast offensives).

I wrote before; we know how breakthrough could be achieved. The Russians appear to be too incompetent, the Ukrainians (also quite an 'amateur' army with few peacetime-trained troops) appear to be rather risk-averse and in fear or the consequences of a major defeat in battle.

 

But here's a problem: Breakthrough in itself is of marginal value. Germany broke through the Entente fronts in France in 1918 on unprecedented widths, yet it lost the war months later. The British created a glimpse of how to exploit a breakthrough when they created the "fast" Whippet tank in 1917. Post-WWI they did split up tank development in infantry tanks for breakthrough and cruiser tanks for exploitation. They didn't get much more than that right, though.

Exploitation requires more than just full motorisation and tanks that are faster than a bicycle. The German army developed the attitude and had the superior idea of what exploitation is good for in its Moltke the Elder's Cannae (encirclement battle) fixation. Blitzkrieg was created, characterised by (in 1940 and 1941) hugely successful breakthrough exploitations.

The Russians have another historical root that should and could have informed them how to do things well in a pursuit (Suvorov's battles-winning obsession with quickness and getting into a fight before the enemy is ready for it, on all levels). Imagine a boxing fight in which one boxer is slow and the other lucky punches him before he's got his cover up the first time, then the quicker boxer goes in up close and the hits keep coming till knockout. That's a form of meeting engagement.

The German Blitzkrieg style used some parts of this as well, most notably there was an understanding that a tank division is not very good in positional defence, it should rather defend the flanks of a breakthrough or a bridgehead by attacking. The aim was to overrun the hostile reserves as they move to attack themselves, but haven't deployed for a fight yet.

 

Both the Russian and the Ukrainian side are INCREDIBLY far from the state of art of warfare of 85 years ago and I'm convinced that this is not technology's fault. Technology does NOT keep them from being more competent on the offence.

We should understand that both sides are fairly incompetent at most things. They know most about the state of man-in-the-loop drone warfare and associated electronic warfare, and that's about all their top competence.

The Russian ground forces has been rotten for decades and the quickly mobillised troops are either old or poorly trained, period.

The Ukrainian army has been rotten till 2014, then it tried to get its act together (also lots of warbands/warlord armies/militias that were later integrated into the regular forces). Its budget and thus its means for training had been small until 2022, though. Now they have lots of old and too briefly trained troops that are nowhere near Western conceptions of proper training levels, though they do have wartime experience. Almost all of that wartime experience since 2014 was about positional warfare and attacks with limited objectives and limited means, though. Both old age of infantry and deep experience in positional defence are rather detrimental to breakthrough efforts.

 

Long story short: We do NOT see the state of art of offence and defence in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast. What we see there is more akin to watching the Iraq-Iran (Gulf) War during the 1980's, a war fought with 1970's equipment but (at most) WWI levels of competence.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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The West doesn't understand nationalism

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My thesis is that the West doesn't understand nationalism (any more). It understood it until about the Second World War. The First World War almost shattered our societies, the second one kind of did.

Back in 1950 when North Korea attacked South Korea 'we' interpreted that as the spearhead of communist world revolution, but it was an attempted war of national unification.

When North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam 'we' interpreted it as the spearhead of communist world revolution, but it was a (successful) war of national unification (with an additional war for small farmer liberation from rich landowners).

When the Russian federation attacked the Chechens 'we' interpreted it as a great power's attempt to avoid fracturing, but it really was part of Russian nationalism/imperialism.

All the troubles that the Russian Federation caused in its periphery; Moldova, Ukraine, South of Caucasus region; it was (and is) all about keeping the independent countries from drifting away so they can once again become part of a Russian empire.

Likewise, China is understood as being a country, but it really is the Han tribe dominating a big bunch of actually different peoples, some of which have actually been convinced that they're the same as the Han. Having a script that can be read in any language helped the Chinese empire for thousands of years and was probably the reason why "China" is now considered to be a country, not a continent or subcontinent like fractured Europe.

We don't properly understand nationalism at home, either. It doesn't matter to many of us whether immigrants are useful for elderly care and other vacant jobs. Immigrants in our nation states feel like squatters in an inherited family home; they don't belong there, why would they get to enjoy what's ours by birthright? So basically, modern immigration policy (and European unification ideology/policy) utterly disregards nationalism, which has been designated as a harmful relic rather than a source of cohesion and strength.

I suppose we won't get much better policies on immigration, deterrence&defence, trade or plain foreign policy until our Western societies learn to understand nationalism again. It's a thing, it won't go away anytime soon and to disregard it only builds up huge internal friction and tension. A failure to understand foreign nationalism leads to failures in immigrant integration and in foreign, deterrence & defence policies.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Cheap cruise missiles

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The Russo-Ukrainian War brought something to public view that wasn't obvious. Even I didn't really grasp it, despite having mentioned it years ago.

There's a huge range of targets for small, cheap cruise missiles with a rather small (~ artillery grenade size rather than aircraft bomb size) warhead. 

The embodiment of this kind of cruise missile is the Shaheed-136. 

 

Shaheed-136 (c) alexpl

Hobbyist-grade propeller propulsion and navigation.

~ 200 kg total mass

~ 50 kg warhead

2,500 km claimed range (more likely less than 2,000 km)

It's obvious that this can be improved on, but the fact that a cruise missile costing low six digits (EUR or USD) would not just be a decoy, but actually a severe threat is a huge deal. Air defences are not prepared for this, albeit there was someone arguing that our air defences should include cheap missiles to intercept munitions rather than platforms.

Most air defence missiles are more expensive than such a cruise missile. The cheaper ones could largely be avoided by flying very low on well-planned (and varying) routes.

The attacker has the advantage because it can funnel a salvo of a thousand cruise missiles through a 10 km wide corrider within minutes, while defenders with cheap missiles would need to have them spread out over a defensive belt because those cheap defence missiles will have poor range unless they are very similar to their targets (a kind of unmanned kamikaze interceptor plane). Being too similar leads to an insufficient or no speed advantage, so there's stills some advantage of the attacker. Moreover, the defender may suffer damage on critical infrastructure, military equipment or economic installations on the ground, while the attacker doesn't (save for accidents).*

Aircraft on the ground are vulnerable high value targets, but they may be moved during the hours of flight of such a drone. Infrastructure and certain industry installations are more interesting and more reliable (backup?) targets. 

There are about 300 high voltage transformer stations in the German power grid; a rich country of approx. 82 million people. Several thousand more transformer stations are in the medium and low voltage grid (source, more here and a list here). One of the largetst German cities, Hamburg, has only three major transformer stations.

The sizes of such transformer stations range from small & elegant to huge. Permanent damage is particularly easy to inflict when you can hit the control building with a warhead, such as a single 50 kg high explosive warhead. 

A handful of such transformer stations can be switched to simplistic controls or be repaired, but hundreds or thousands hit within hours or weeks would vastly exceed the short-term repair capability of the entire Western world.

The locations and network are published. Aerial photography is available (Google Maps and similar) as well and everyone can do a bit of aerial scouting with a cheap consumer drone. The damage potential of even tiny payloads such as a molotov cocktail was shown to the public when the power supply of the new Tesla factory near Berlin was cut for days with a small fire.

So basically a wave of 5,000 drones costing each less than 200,000 € (total value 1 bn € only!) would stand a near-100% chance to destroy the German economy with little chance of repair within months or even one or two years. The damage could be trillions of Euros. Quadruple that budget to a mere 4 bn € and you can switch off the European economy.

We aren't even close to having any defence against that. Most likely we couldn't even tell our own Galileo global positioning satellites to stop providing service in time.

 

The electrical grid isn't the only essential asset that could be targeted and ruines by small payload cruise missiles. The entire chemical and petrochemical industries including oil and gas pipeline pump stations, oil refineries, oil storage sites, airport kerosene tanks is extremely vulnerable.

It's an enduring mystery why the Ukrainians don't apply the main effort concept and knock out one sector - railway, power grid, gas grid or fuel supply of Western Russia. They could, but they're sending their drones out as if all they were mentally capable of was spray & pray (most likely the damned "escalation manager" scum in Washington, DC and Berlin are at fault for this).

Such cheap and light cruise missiles aren't the only kind of cruise missiles that was neglected until recently. The old V-1 would be very much viable if equipped with hobbyist-grade computer, navigation and altimeter equipment. 850 kg warhead to 250 km or 250 kg to 500 km? That's clearly feasible, and all you need for survivability is distraction, flying extremely low (accurate navigation, accurate route planning, calm weather and an accurate altimeter suffice for flying between treetops) and saturation. The price of a V-1 was about the price of a sedan car at its time (with forced labour). We could produce such missiles in a car factory by the ten thousands in a year. The supply of enough explosives would be the only actual challenge in my opinion.

250...850 kg warheads can thus be deliverd to several hundred km depth at about Mach 0.4 for very little cost. The biggest expense of an accurized treetop altitude flight V-1 would probably be the explosives, which could be plain TNT or even cheaper Amatol. A quantity production on a conveyor belt assembly line could keep the cost per missile without explosives below 15,000 € even if we install a Starlink interface, a thermal camera, good intertial navigation, radio or laser altimeter and a military grade GPS/Galileo receiver.

The cruise missiles as we know them since the 80's, but in conventional form especially by Americans bombing Muslims since 1991 are based on a nuclear cruise missile paradigm. The high cost of a nuclear warhead and the need to deter by credibility did lead to that kind of cruise missile. Some later tactical aircraft-launched cruise missiles were essentially the same with less fuel and thus less range.

To leave this high end paradigm allows for cheap small warhead good range cruise missiles and for cheap big warhead short range cruise missiles. Both could be launched in saturating attack waves of hundreds of missiles and could be built to be very resilient to electronic countermeasures.

There's no lack of important yet vulnerable targets for such missiles.

I really wonder why anyone thinks we should invest in expensive strike packages, expensive stealth bombers or pays attention to nonsense such as Oreshnik. Luxembourg could afford airpower that could bring Russia to its knees within weeks!

BTW; it takes three freighters (cost less than 300 million dollars) loaded with three billion dollars worth of such cruise missiles in Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean to crash the U.S. economy in a strategic surprise attack. The ANG could not stop enough of them. Even a shadowing USN destroyer would not be able to do much, as the rocket-assisted launches could be compressed into a minute or less.

three 2,000 km radius circles

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Here is an explanation why a belt is usually superior to point defence.

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To understand things sometimes requires appropriate training

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So he doesn't understand why, and I suppose that's because his training never equipped him to understand something like this even with benefit of hindsight. 

It's an issue in which figures and calculations are very important, and in abstract ways that are simply not taught in preparation of most professions.

 

So being a merchant mariner by heart and profession, he thinks the Suez Canal is super important. A "most important lifeline", even. That's quite some prose.

An economist isn't satisfied with such prose. An economist asks "How important?", and expects figures with currency symbols as answer. "How many $ would the average American lose by a closed Suez canal?" "What would be the reduction of U.S. GDP in short term, in long term in %?" 

And then an economist would be tempted to do at least a quick & dirty first order approximation calculation (or for the scientifically inclined, a full text search in a scientific paper database).

 

The result looked like this about a year ago:

/2023/12/the-suez-canal-issue.html

0.03% GDP or a meal at McDonald's was my answer THEN.

WITHOUT the advantage of nearly a year of hindsight.

(To be honest, I wasn't able to do a quick&dirty short term calculation and actually agreed that in short term the blockade would be "troublesome".)

Even today, he does not appear to be inclined to check his assumptions about the Suez Canal's importance. Maybe you can help him and point out the de facto blockade's effect on inflation?

source https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi

(The current Red Sea Crisis began on 19 October 2023).

 

Long story short; those 99.9% of Americans who don't care according to him are correct to not care.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Anti-tank lessons from Ukraine

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It appears that drone teams greatly complemented ATGM teams and Panzerfaust/Bazooka/RPG style short range weapons in anti-tank missions in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Anti-tank mines proved essential to prevent breakthroughs through well-fortified sections of the frontline.

Military history showed that heavy weapons (anti-tank guns, assault guns, tank destroyers, tanks) destroyed by far the most tanks. Even millions of Panzerfausts didn't change that outside of the urban battlefield of Berlin. ATGMs and MBTs were expected to be the big tank killers during the Cold War and justified this expectations in 1967, 1973 and 1991. The small infantry weapons such as Panzerfaust/Bazooka/RPG were rather repelling weapons that served to keep tanks at a distance and that kept tanks from moving through closed terrain (forestry roads, streets).

Videos from Ukraine showed that sometimes tanks and IFVs fight against infantry at incredibly short distances such as 50 m. Maybe the enemies were known to be poorly equipped, but the commonly deployed poor prenetration or poor effect man-portable anti-tank wepaons may explain this as well.

Most tank killing is done by multi-kilometre anti-tank systems such as ATGMs and FPV drones, as was to be expected. Hardly any MBT vs. MBT fights were documented, they appear to be exceedingly rare at least since the fronts became fortified. This may be different in a more mobile phase.

FPV drones have vastly more opportunities to engage enemy tanks than the in-service milspec ATGMs and tanks because they don't rely on a line of sight between user and target. We had this approach with rocket or turbojet motor missiles decades ago (EFOGM, Polyphem), few such missiles were introduced and instead the imaging infrared seeker missile approach (Javelin, Spike etc.) became the fashion that achieved the big sales.

My longtime insistence that we shouldn't trust even the best ATGMs because they're too easy to counter was rebuffed by Russians not having fielded ANY improvements over 1980's Red Army tank protections. They even lack simple things such as digital camera-based missile approach sensors and red phosphorous (shorttime opaque in infrared spectrum) smoke munitions. In short; the Ukrainians are lucky that the Russians are so stupid.

Attack helicopters played almost no role whatsoever against tanks in this conflict.

 

This greatly questions the whole (very expensive) approach of NATO's anti-tank efforts.

We could make do with fibreoptic and thermal camera-guided FPV drones. Simply use these sub-1,000€ drones to saturate whatever defences exist against them, then engage any tank in 5-10 km radius. Such drones can safely touch down and lie in ambush for a while without losing radio commlink or requiring an airborne radio repeater. An approaching tank company could be faced by a hundred fibreoptic thermal cmaera FPV drones lying in wait at its route, having arrived there just in time.

What anti-tank weaponry does the infantry still need? Whatever portable anti-tank equipment they could have would be heavy or of little use.

It may be that the section or platoon leaders' radios deserve to be not just the main but even the only anti-tank capability in infantry platoons. So that radio link needs to be reliable and not cut by emissions control orders.

This frees up weight carried by the infantry. This in turn can be used either to lighten the burden and/or to increase the firepower against "soft" targets (which includes buildings, by the way). The ability to blast open a door (maybe even create a wall hole to crawl through) at 30 m or to badly injure an enemy in a 100 m distant room with closed window is still very desirable. Greater ranges are of little relevance and no necessity IMO.

This opinion is an advance on my previous opinion that the infantry should only carry anti-BMP weapons rather than anti-MBT weapons most of the time and be issued anti-MBT weapons rarely. The German army disbanded the anti-tank branch and left the use of ATGMs to infantry (and Panzergrenadiere, often not considered to be infantry).

It appears that a return of the anti-tank branches is superfluous. We should probably build up a PGM branch for up to battalion level instead.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Blog posts about American fascism (summary)

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https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/11/leaving-nato.html (edited in 2025, initially I forgot about this blog post)

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2019/12/lets-open-our-eyes-to-ugly-reality-as.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/07/threat-country-ranking-for-germany-top.html 

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2022/08/it-security-for-real.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2024/07/free-europes-security-challenge-if.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2024/07/free-europes-security-challenge-if_8.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2024/07/free-europes-security-challenge-if_19.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2024/07/free-europes-security-challenge-if_29.html

The sitting POTUS is a weakling in foreign policy and too undisciplined in regard to domestic spending. His predecessor and potential successor is a lying demented moron who is a caricature of a Fascist. A village idiot on the grandest stage because of filthy rich daddy, corrupted media and an already rotten political party.

The European politicians are almost all useless, weak minded people with insular competence at getting into power. None of them prepared properly against the threat of a Fascist America that we may face very soon. I don't mean preparing for facing Russia alone; anyone who pretends that Free Europe couldn't stop Russian military might without American help is a fool. The Russians can't even defeat the Ukrainians who receive a little help. Their Soviet heritage arms and munitions stocks are almost exhausted. No, the issue is that we are not prepared to at least mitigate what harm a Fascist POTUS would want to inflict on us, much less deter any such aggression.

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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