Initial skirmish of World War 3: the Battle of the Black Sea. Hint, we lost.
So you think about what does this mean? First, it means that the missile lobbing contests of North Korea and the US are really a side-show. The US cannot and will not invade or bomb North Korea for many reasons. One of the most potent reasons is the massive loss of life, even if restricted to conventional weapons. Seoul's megacity of 12,000,000 is within easy striking range of standard artillery as well as short range missiles. There is no effective defense of Seoul possible. Secondly the Chinese, despite all the Trump wining and dining of Xi Jinping, will hardly hesitate to bolster their support for their satellite, even though have currently closed the border to North Koreans seeking to flee northward. Finally the US cannot financially afford a large scale war, especially while fighting 6 or 7 or 8 wars now.
But, you might say, what about Syria? Neocons are just fucking crazy enough to think the unthinkable as Herman Kahn said. But even Mad Dog Mattis isn't that nuts to let them get their way. Trump will listen to Mattis. His trust, warranted or not, has already been manifested in allowing Mattis to order another shipment of Soylent Green to the Afghanistan meat grinder. But, whether you like Mattis's politics or not, he is a student of war in the same way George Patton was. Russia and Syria are kicking ass in Syria, taking down ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and whatever mangy outfits are fighting the Assad regime. Americans who know anything about this will be inflamed by tacit support of these "moderate" terrorists. Russia has already sent a strong signal, which hopefully the tone-deaf neocons can hear, that Russia will lock radars on to any aircraft in Syrian airspace. That triggers US coalitions forces' (now minus Australia) airplane radars. Can Trump be that stupid? Maybe. Who knows?
So what about the Black Sea. Russia has essentially controlled that large body of water since driving Army Group South out of it during 1943. By retaking Crimea from Ukraine, Russia secured its grasp on the Sea, making it essentially theirs. Of course, the Black Sea being quite large has significant amounts of "international" waters. But think about a Russian battle fleet perching in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, to get an idea of the geopolitics of that Sea.
Yet, this is exactly what the United States has done repeatedly to one degree or another: sent battle-ready military vessels into what is essentially Russia's lake. These forays don't usually make much news in the US, just as the DNC lawsuit doesn't and Bernie's campaign didn't. Besides being a "show of force", intelligence gathering via electronic means is a major reason for these expeditions.
So, let us turn to the players in the Battle of the Black Sea in which not a single shot was fired nor was anything sunk or shot down. Principal player on the US side was the USS Donald Cook.
The other major player were two 40 year old Sukhoi SU-24 aircraft. Despite its relatively old age, this plane has configurable wing alignment and flies at mach 1.06 for the SU-24MK model with a combat radius of 615 km at low altitude. Pictured below is the SU-24M2 variant. Here are some facts about the SU-24.
Here is a map of the Cook's Black Sea posting in April, 2014:
Then, something extremely unusual happened while the Cook was on routine patrol. The action was so horrific that more than 20 crew members immediately resigned after the cruise. What happened? Without equivocation, it has been learned that the two SU-24's circling the Cook, disarmed as they were, completely disabled the Cook's sophisticated radars, of which there were at least 8 types. The ship was dead in the water, with no means to respond. Not a shot had been fired.
What happened next has to be seen to be believed. After the Cook had been completely disabled, the two Russian jets made 12 mock attack passes around the Cook, totally undeterred and unopposed. Watch the video, shot from the deck of the Cook, even though 20 minutes long to see this extraordinary event.
[video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6JGkPcgV9c]
A new weapon system was unveiled in the Black Sea called Khibiny. Learn this word, because this technology renders almost all of the US Navy's vessels helpless. The more sophisticated the radars, the easier they are to defeat. Khibiny delivers EMP (electromagnetic pulses) to disable ships.
Wikipedia has something to say about Khibiny.:
The system is designed for radio direction-finding and probing signal source irradiation allowing it to distort reflected signal parameters. This helps to
1. Delay aircraft detection;
2. Mask the true subject against false reflections;
3. Cause range finding difficulties, namely in speed and angular positions;
4. Degrading Maintenance Mode "on the aisle" when scanning antenna beam radar;
5. Increase the time and difficulty of capturing an object during real-time active scanning.
But Wikipedia didn't mention its ability to completely shut down a vessel. Wonder why? Here's a picture of an SU-34 (not the 24s actually involved) with Khibiny on the wingtips.
The implications of this are enormous. Our entire Navy rendered useless unless some work-arounds can be developed. With this technology, the Russians could send a rubber boat loaded with explosives to collide with just about any naval vessel. You know, like the USS Cole.
Does this shake your confidence in our vaunted MIC a little bit? You understand why this story never received much play in the press. Well, if this news doesn't shake you, wait for installment 2: Defeat in the South China Sea.
Comments
Thanks.
My alligator brain can handle only one catastrophe at a time. You know swimming from the Black Sea to the South China Sea isn't easy, even for a water-loving reptilian.
bygorry
The article I linked here may help answer your last question.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-06/fitzgerald-when-big-o...
I'm great at multi-tasking. I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at the same time.
Thanks for the link, socialprogressive
I will add it to the burgeoning bibliography.
When it happened
I wondered exactly the same thing too.
How could they not have seen it on their radar?
Unless of course it had been disabled.
One would think these ships have sophisticated detection and collision avoidance systems.
Hell nowadays even some cars have these built in.
Certainly a very unusual and inexplicable "accident"
if that's indeed what it was. Too soon to draw much information from it though. I'm waiting to see how tight-lipped the US Navy is gonna be, before I try to draw any conclusions from the incident. Accidental collisions at sea do happen occasionally, but not often with state-of-the-art military vessels.
native
that doesn't sound like a new tech...
sending emp pulses to disable somebody's tracking device is old, isn't it?
or have I just watched too much Star Trek?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
The concept is old, relatively speaking
but is only now gaining operational sophistication. If any of you are old enough to remember the old Flash Gordon movie series, the situation is pretty much evolved from the Emperor Ming's death ray. Where is Professor Zarkov when we need him?
... A new weapon system was
Trust Putin to come up with something purely defensive, as a warning.
The US infrastructure has been left, despite warnings, vulnerable to EMP shut-down, dumping the US into a 'Stone Age' which other, smaller and poorer countries have been bombed into by the order of the US PTB - something Putin could likely do instead of responding only with missiles/nukes to the US/European Psychopaths That Be, who seem so determined to initiate Mutual Assured Destruction of life on the planet. But this alone would also still result in massive, if indirect, indirect loss of innocent civilian life, which Putin seems to prefer to avoid, unlike the US psychopaths, who so blatantly revel in mass murder.
But because Putin 'spends smart', rather than to enrich himself through the MIC and the sale of arms to other destructive psychopaths around the world, Putin has probably other surprises in store for aggressors, while cutting his military spending in order to assure such as pensions for his people. No wonder the US PTB want him replaced with another psychopathic puppet government.
Much as I detest authoritarians, it's obvious that Putin can think circles around the ignoramuses ruining the planet and will attempt as bloodless a defense as is possible against these evils. Not that I think they're smart enough to take their stolen fortunes to some luxury island and leave the rest of us a chance at global survival, rather than continuing the destruction of life they so voraciously pursue.
But I can't wait for that next installment, and continue to yearn for some hope of life's survival beyond this/the next few decade(s).
Should we survive, we must retain the lesson which should have been long since learnt, never again to vote for any evil of any kind, that being how we've wound up where we are now.
Even if you cannot over-come an evil, why the fuck feed it?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Rhyme update
Speak no evil
See no evil
Hear no evil
Vote for no evil.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
That would also make sense since
Russia has said it will never fight another war on its own soil. Launch an EMP and our grid is toast. Can we still launch nukes without it? Probably, but it sure would be nice to think we could not. One simple flick of a switch, so to speak, and our murderous psychopaths are thwarted in nuclear war. Wonder what that might do to Wall Street? Could they too be stopped by losing power? Hmmm.....
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
If things get too hot in our cold war
do not be surprised if Putin makes a demonstration test of massive EMP knocking out a sizable chunk of our electric grid. Such a blow would bring this nation to its knees begging for forgiveness. The populace would no longer tolerate neocons for depriving them of what comforts still remaining to the people.
@lizzyh7
Wouldn't frying electronics along with the grid do that? Might be worth losing our computers/the internet, which is about to be anyway co-opted and ruined, to give some of the world a better change at survival. Keep supplies and cash on hand, if you can, as this would presumably shut banks down, Wall St., corporate activity of all sorts, including grocery stores, heat, light, hospitals, elevators in high-rises... most of us, especially people like me, would die, of course. But so would domestic spying on the general public, or whatever of it remained.
It would be so much better and easier if destructive self-interests could somehow be cleaned right out of politics and policy...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@lizzyh7
Speaking as One Who Knows Nothing, But Speculates A Lot, I'd guess that the US PTB had been counting on using viruses to disable the nuclear and other defences of the countries they were planning to military-mug in sneak-attacks, and have thankfully not achieved this, possibly because the Russian officials and engineers are not stupid enough to fall for phishing attempts? unlike the exceptional US political puppets and various clever schemers associated with these.
And I hadn't realized that these non-reality-based idiots were so stuck in the McCarthy era that they'd apparently expected the Russians to have 1950s technological art...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
The Neocons have never given up loving Joe McCarthy
So the Russians are progressing and the US is regressing--so openly it is for all to see.
An interesting bit of speculation
from Babak Makkinejad at Pat Lang's site:
This is something I had not considered, but it is a possibility.
native
Here is a speculation about what you said, almost a certainty
Just think about this. Russian jets continue to operate while actively deploying EMP (Khibiny). This means that they posses already effective counter measures to neutralize it. Whether or not these EMP countermeasures can be utilized for large scale protection is still an unknown.
Just think about this for a second. What happens when a US jet falls from the sky without a missile or ordnance impact of any kind? How will the neocons admit this without opening the truth doors, ensuring a wide-spread fear amongst the sheeple? Our entire air fleet at silent jeopardy. Oh, Boris and Natasha would be proud!
Hmm. Maybe.
But I haven't seen proof of any such clear Russian superiority yet. The proof will be in the pudding, if it comes to that. Let's hope it won't.
native
I am pessimistic. There are no limits to US stupidity
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UlkOPrTzhA]
Well, I am an incurable optimist.
A very cynical optimist, but an optimist just the same. There may be no limits to US stupidity, but there definitely are limits to US ability.
native
Cynical optimist = glass half full
cynical pessimist - glass half empty with a leak in the bottom.
@native
I'd suspect that the rather lengthy list of US PTB-targeted countries would be so on edge that, after all of the posturing, threats and previous examples of US military/corporate/political pathological cruelty (White Phosphorus? Terrorists? Nuclear weapons? Torture? Mass engineered famines killing millions? Against civilians?) in invasion and attack, every one of them would be poised ready for that instant where they must act in defense, before it's too late to try, while a crazed Freddy Kruger-avatar capers in lunatic circles around the world striking at whim. If nothing else, somebody's nerve will go at some bizarre gesture, and the lot of them will have to strike North America in unison.
I can't believe that people are not taking this aspect into consideration...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Well, the world does seem to have
taken on an almost surrealistic aspect. It's advisable not to let your nightmares get the better of you.
native
I worked in defense for too
I worked in defense for too many years. One of the problems is that there is a need to keep advancing the technology but, by the time a system is developed, the quantities get cut back in the interests of budget/deficits, and much of the military and the defense contractors already have their sights set on the next program or the next big technology advancement. And that's aside from the truly repulsive amount of money wasted just in R&D, designing and building systems, and administering contracts. I worked in defense when, under Reagan, the MX missile was renamed the Peacekeeper. Wikipedia claims it was always intended to be called that, but I started my job just as it was renamed and our company alone spent millions of dollars changing every document, document number and part number. After the program started.
Liz
Deep state elites have decided to reindustrialize USA
Back in January 2017, Pepe Escobar posted a highly interesting article, Here’s how the Trump presidency will play out. I think there might have been some discussion of it here, or I might be thinking of Naked Capitalism. I know ZeroHedge linked to it, because I just found that link.
The gist is that IN USA the Deep State is fighting with the Wall Street / hedge fund Masters of the Universe over imposing a new strategic direction on USA. Here are some quotes -- out of order -- to give you a taste. I highly recommend you go read the entire Escobar article.
- Tony Wikrent
Nation Builder Books(nbbooks)
Mebane, NC 27302
2nbbooks@gmail.com
@Tony Wikrent
Now that certainly explains Trump! The Clintons would have nuked the whole mess too quickly for the Deep State so the monsters are fighting over which profitable means suit them best in destroying life on the planet for - faster, by radioactivity and nuclear winter, or a little slower, by rampant military/corporate destruction, unlimited industrial pollution and climate chaos. I wonder what they imagine that all of the money in the world will buy them when there's no more living world or economy to produce what they need?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Tony, thank you for this article
The tactics of reindustrializing the US is laudable. The strategy to preserve our exceptionalism is not.
In my economically-ignorant brain, I always wondered by the essential, truly capitalist ideas of Henry Ford were discarded. Pay people a living wage; they are happier and more productive. Plus they can buy your products as well as anyone else's. By supporting the general economy you support the country.
The net result of off-shoring industrial jobs and industry made no sense in a country trying to project supreme military power, even if one supported that idea. Become dependent on foreign suppliers of parts and actual subassembly of military grade weapons made no sense to me when Bubba free-traded us into poverty and dependence. This neoliberal folly has grown with every presidency since. Again, even if the goal is military superiority (read: international bullying), the current neoliberal way to accomplish this is inherently self-defeating.
Perhaps it would have been good for the country to have experienced even a fraction of what the Soviet Union had to endure during WW2. Then we might cherish our own industry and resources as opposed to gross aggrandizing of the richest. Indeed a rising tide lifts all ships--when many are not on a shorter anchor line than others.
Your model
is of all Americans having a decent standard of living. But the cartel running our government has a model of super rich and desperately poor, which they are familiar with in other parts of the world. They want to have the kind of wealth that determines a need for brute force. There's no advantage for them in paying for everyone's healthcare, education, infrastructure and legal protection. And if they can get the working poor to pay for the brutality and weapons used to oppress labor, there's the added joy of laughing at our gullibility.
Truer words have never been written
and the megarich are
Pepe Escobar is a brilliant
and extraordinarily well-informed analyst of global affairs. He is a highly original thinker, and a real treasure in an era dominated by journalistic group-think. However, IMO he is prone to following various theories and interpretations down various rabbit holes, in his zeal to create a unified picture of global relations at the Deep State level.
This is a laudable and necessary effort, and I think Pepe often gets a remarkable amount of it exactly right -- but this is necessarily a somewhat speculative endeavor, and his conclusions may or may not be entirely accurate. They may on occasion, even be quite wrong. In this particular article I think Pepe might be over-reaching a bit, possibly mistaking tenuous relationships for firm connections. Nonetheless, the article is well worth a read, as is nearly everything Pepe Escobar writes.
native
'Preciate the compliment Linda.
Our minds seem to run along similar channels.
native
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