Let’s start by doing that most British of all things – talking about the weather. Here in Moscow, we are currently experiencing gale-force winds and unseasonably cold weather. In Dubai, they just got through some really bizarre heavy flooding. And in Orenburg, east of Moscow, there are massive floods that have rendered much of their capital city temporarily uninhabitable, and requiring evacuation of residents.
What is going on?
My guess is: a spot of bad weather caused, potentially, by major magnetic storms originating from that gigantic flaming ball of gas in the sky. Also known as the Sun.
Yes, it is true – Ye Olde Didacte is in fact deeply sceptical of the influence of Man on so-called Global Change Warming Climate Cooling, which I regard as a particularly mentally deficient religious dogma, not as real science.
Suffice to say, the way we are going right now in the West, all we are going to do is to destroy our own most important sources of energy and life – while non-retarded countries, like Russia and China, and their friends (not allies – the rest of the world does not share the Western fascination with alliances), rapidly grow and prosper thanks to their insistence on using actual useful energy sources.
Turning to the global climate – it is hot, and getting hotter. We just learned earlier today that Israel directly attacked Iranian territory – though it appears to have been a symbolic attack only, using long-range drone attacks on the Isfahan region, resulting in no damage whatsoever to Iran’s actual nuclear energy facilities or military installations.
Let us hope that is the end of it. Israel cannot hope to survive a real, serious, sustained assault by the Iranians. What the Iranians did last week – and I hope to have some time to write about it later – was nothing less than a masterclass demonstration of calibrated, precise, restrained, yet EXTREMELY potent force.
The Iranians now know, thanks to their attack, the extent and depth of the Israeli air defence shield. They know where the sites are, and how to attack them. They have everything they need to shut down Israel’s entire infrastructure – not merely military installations, but energy, transportation, utilities, ports, and everything else of relevance and usefulness.
Israel has no defence against Iranian hypersonic quasi-ballistic missiles capable of manoeuvring as they approach the target. Neither the PATRIOT PAC-3, nor the THAAD, nor Israel’s own equivalents, have any hope of stopping such missiles. And that is BEFORE we get to the economics of the situation.
Think what it means to fire off 2 air defence missiles, costing US$1-1.5M EACH, to intercept a single slow-moving drone on a completely predictable trajectory, costing US$20K. Now multiply that cost difference by about 200, and you will begin to get an idea of just how colossally expensive a missile-only air defence system really is.
Those numbers are not sustainable for Israel – or for the FUSA, for that matter. The result of Israeli escalation, beyond what we saw earlier today, will not be a face-saving gesture – it will be an open invitation to a regional power to wipe Israel OFF THE MAP.
Let us hope and pray cooler, saner, and more rational heads than the ultra-crazy ultra-Orthodox types currently running Israel into the ground, will prevail. So far, at least, that seems to be the case, but with the Ultras, we can never take that for granted – nor can we assume such a thing will last.
That is about enough depressing geopolitics for a while. I hope to come back to that subject later on, once I finally have time – I am leaving Russia tomorrow and returning to the West, and will attempt to resume a more sensible poasting schedule by then. Until that time, let us get to the lovely lady of the week.
This here is Polina Mashkova (Полина Машкова), age very roughly 24 from, I think, Moscow. She studied at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, and now works as a model (of course), splitting her time between Moscow and Dubai.
Happy Friday, lads. Stay frosty, things are really heating up out there.
4 Comments
Could be the Sun … could be HAARP.
No, there’s not much the Iranians can do to the Jews, nor vice versa, short of using nukes the Jews have but Iran does not. The size of the very limited strike the Jews used, and that they oriented it not on an Iranian nuke plant but the defenses for that nuke plant, using cruise missiles rather than aircraft, suggests to me that the message they were sending was to the effect of, “Yes, we can hit your nuke plant with ease, and just so you know, we used some primary nuke carriers and can do it again…and not necessarily with High Explosive, next time.”
Why can’t they do much to each other? Logistics. Neither is capable of supporting a conventional force of sufficient size across the deserts. The Iranians can’t send any air power, AFAICT, while the 14 Israeli tankers can’t support much at that range. By way of example, we used 20 times more aerial tankers for Gulf 1 than the Jews have, and over not much more than half the range.
That’s true, EXCEPT… the Iranians have proxies locally, in Lebanon and if they wish in Gaza. Whether they can seize and hold, and I believe they’re getting close, they require real forces to counter them. The Israelis lack anything on that scale. And Israel lacks spatial depth. That means the Iranians have deterrence, and Israel lacks it – short of responses that would have seismic effects on their international standing and future viability.
Now add: “he who can destroy a thing, he controls it.” The Iranians don’t have to wipe Israel off the map. Start with making Israel’s ports places that no insured ship will visit, which can be done with Shahed (IAI Harpy copy, to my eye) drones. What happens to Israel’s economy?
Now add small drones. Once the Palestinians have enough of the small ones, they can enact terrorism anywhere within 15 miles of the border. Start making it impossible to live within 10 miles of their borders, and (as we’ve already seen in this war), you can evacuate significant chunks of Israel as de facto no-go zones. More FPV range starts extending those zones. Looking at a map of Israel, how much of that can it afford?
Israel lived on air superiority/ supremacy as its shield. That term has had its meaning utterly changed, in ways Israel cannot at this point master. Now the Iranians have proven that they can establish deterrence and red lines which Israel must respect, while the Palestinians freely build up the arsenal required to make Israel unlivable.
Israel will need to both innovate out of this operationally and technologically, and put its house in order. It cannot survive as a society where its enemies plot the seizure of their lands, while their army & intel focuses on their role in plots re: the seizure of their government instead of countering their enemies. A seizure that, even if it succeeds, would utterly alienate the majority of their country.
All as the USA and Europe, their current core allies, are unlikely to be any sort of help past 2035. If, indeed, they aren’t outright enemies by then.
The current conflict has deeply, deeply damaged Israel’s long-term strategic prospects, because it was never conducted with that in mind. Their window to fix things is narrowing, at speed.
And, as those proxies reveal themselves, the Jews are fairly forthrightly obliterating them.
Drones are something of a passing fad. A degree of surprise and lack of preparedness has made them more effective than they ought to be. Countermeasures are coming fast.
No, Israel had air superiority. It lived on the military infantilism and imbecility of the Arabs. The Jews are nothing special, just decent citizen-soldier militia. But against the Arabs – and note here that Arab Iraq fought Persian Iran to a standstill for about a decade – that is plenty good enough.
The only real threat to Israel is Turkey, which is both militarily effective and close enough to support a large military force, while also having an air force to contend with Israel and a navy far superior to Israel’s. But the Turks are also not stupid enough to want to be nuked.
The west, less most Americans, has long since turned against Israel. They haven’t lost anything; it’s just become more obvious how few friends outside of the US they have.