Pundits BEG Michigan Mayor To Support Biden (clip)
Sabby Sabs
Sabby talks about the admirable example of Dearborn's mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, who embodies his [majority Arab-descent) constitutents' commitment to principle over politicking and opportunistic power, in this case refusing to support Biden unless he promises a ceasefire in Gaza, with assurances that a Palestinian state will be negotiated soon afterward. And, most importantly, they will not wait. If Biden wants their vote in 2024, he will have to deliver in advance of the election. This posture, says Sabby, is something that black voters should have tried during the BLM movement wave, instead of assuring victories for the Democrats while getting nothing in return except for occasional condescending rhetoric.
Oh, BTW, since you are here:
I've yet to hear Taylor Swift say anything about Gaza. I've yet to hear Beyonce say anything about Gaza. Maybe that's why they're billionaires. They sold out a long time ago. Who cares about a Grammy if they're silent when it really matters?
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
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Editor's Note:
The Biden administration is sanctimoniously seeking to credibly (empasis on "credibly") retaliate against Iran for its role in an attack against US soldiers illegaly stationed in Syria. Iran's territory is naturally off limits, and the Pentagon fortunately knows it. So Washington is conveniently going after Tehran's regional allies—most of whom are non-state actors. For this exercise, Iraqi militias —designated as "Iran backed"—determined to kick the Americans out for a mountain of valid reasons, have been picked as the expiatory goat. They have been hit before, repeatedly, by both Israel and the US, and so have the defiant Houthis, so they are perfectly capable and willing to face any punishment the West may dish out. These people believe in their cause, their cause is just, and they understand why they fight, something US imperial soldiers almost never do. Short of complete eradication—unlikely—they will never quit. Accordingly, they are supplying the necessary photo-ops to placate domestic ghouls like Lindsey Graham. Meantime, if we connect the dots—the Gaza genocide, plus Global Murder, inc.—it's clear Israel (surprise!) may have ignited this round of hostilities. See below.
Israel assassinates five senior Iranian military advisors in central Damascus
VANESSA BEELEY Five senior IRGC military advisors were assassinated in the centre of Damascus on Saturday 20th January. The strike by a reported 4 missiles completely destroyed a four storey building in Western Villas, one the most secure areas of central Damascus. The blast was close to the UN offices and a number of embassies, including South Africa and Venezuela. Here is my short interview with RT:
First run on Jan. 222, 2024
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
British-born Vanessa Beeley is a leading geopolitical analyst in Middle East affairs, and anti-imperialist activist. She was prominent in debunking Western regime change psyops against Syria such as Pres Assad's supposed chemical attack against his own people in Gouda, and the role played by the phoney outfit "the White Helmets."
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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality. Put this effort to use by becoming an influence multiplier. Repost this material everywhere you can. Send it to your friends and kin. Discuss it with your workmates. Liberation from this infernal and mendacious system is in your hands. We can win this. But you must act.
—The Editor
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One of the curious things about the Hypocritical Hegemon (America) is that it never declares war and never uses the word ‘siege’. But it’s always at war, and always besieging people!
Right now, to take just one example, Gaza is under siege. That’s a simple historical fact, buried in the news. What else do you call cutting off a population from food and water, launching missiles at them, and slaughtering them in the streets? This is what the proxy ‘Israel’ is doing, and what they could not do without full imperial backing. The Embarrassed Empire, however, doesn’t like the word ‘siege’. They call it self-defense, among other mendacities. But it is what it is. It’s just a siege.
All that is happening in Gaza is a ‘medieval’ siege of a walled city. Invaders would surround a city, cut off and/or poison food and water supplies, hurl projectiles over the walls, and wait for the population to submit, starve, or die of disease. Ideally all three. Once you got in the walls, you could go door to door, slaughtering men, women, and children. This is precisely what ‘Israel’ is doing, only with modern weapons. The imperial media use the fact that we live in modernity to imply that a ‘medieval’ siege simply isn’t possible, even though it’s obviously happening. A modern siege is the same as a medieval siege, just with more technology and hypocrisy.
Gaza has, in fact, been under siege since 2007. It has been walled in, blockaded by sea, and anyone that tried to break the blockade was boarded and killed. For decades, ‘Israel’ tightly controlled inputs into Gaza to provide the bare caloric minimum for human life. After people broke out of this open-air prison in 2023, however, ‘Israel’ abandoned that pretence and is openly trying to kill everybody. The long, slow siege became a rapid genocide, as the invaders streamed over the gates (they put up) in F16s.
In its bombing of everything, ‘Israel’ has paid special attention to water supplies, food stores, hospitals, and human shelter. Classic siege warfare, just with modern technology. The point of a siege is to make a place so unlivable that people either sicken, die or surrender (preferably all three). All of ‘Israel’s’ modern siege machinery comes from America, the colonial White Empire at large. They are nor merely complicit, they are the causal factor behind both ‘Israel’ and the genocide it necessarily causes. These carbon crusaders are not passively ‘supporting’ a genocide, they’re doing it. They’re the active party, ‘Israel’ is just their dog on a long leash.
The even more pointy end of a siege is armed men going into the walled city and slaughtering everybody. Since ‘Israel’ built the walls, they can come and go (generally) as they please, and they have been executing, kidnapping, torturing and simply killing people in the streets. Their troops have continued the secondary siege work of destroying hospitals, homes, pharmacies, water supplies, and food stores, and also simply killed and maimed people en masse. Entire ‘engineering’ crews are devoted to blowing up civilian homes, universities, public records, etc. They’re stealing gold and savings, old-fashioned looting and pillaging. Snipers are shooting people through hospital windows.‘Soldiers’ are tying men up and murdering them in front of their families, then throwing grenades at their families. It’s as brutal as any medieval siege, but we somehow don’t see it that way because they’re not using knives and bare hands. But to the people dying, what’s the difference?
This is a classic ‘medieval’ siege in that ‘Israel’ is razing the place, and they’ve been quite open about it. Israel’s Prime Monster has called the Palestinian people “Amalek,” meaning a biblical population that was killed man, woman, and child. He has also said that they’ll reduce Gaza to rubble, which is precisely what they’ve done. This is historically very simple and only complicated by the ‘news’. It’s just a brutal siege, using all the industrial might of modernity, backed by the largest empire in human history, and all of its treachery.
One of the most brutal modern siege weapons is bureaucracy. ‘Sanctions’, blockades, starvation by writ, sieges without moving a ship. Now for example, America and its vassals have cut off funding the the refugee agency (UNRWA) serving the Palestinians, just as most of the population of Gaza has become refugees. They continue ‘Israel’s’ work of killing these people, just with benign bureaucracy, and bullshit ‘investigations’.
This is all made to seem very complex in the news but, again, just look at it historically. A population is being starved and infected into submission and providing aid to those people necessarily breaks the siege. So the people providing the aid must be broken. This is again the White Empire’s direct participation in the siege of Gaza. Their hands are not clean and, indeed, their hands are pulling the strings. The deeply cynical fact is that the White Empire pushes the Jews in front of them to do the dirty work of colonizing the Middle East, and taking all the heat. They can bloodlessly direct the siege of Gaza from far away, but make no mistake, they are directing the whole bloody scene.
This is the nature of the Hypocritical Hegemon. Ancient Empires were proud of conquering, slaughtering, and enslaving people. Sieges were just another weapon in their arsenal, and they often advertised their brutality. They wanted the next city to see, and see clearly. This Empire, however, likes to hide in plain sight, or behind pliant proxies, or in a constant fog of ‘debate’. The first casualty of war is truth, and this Empire has been at war throughout colonization. Truth hasn’t had a chance to breathe for centuries. That’s why we don’t talk about ‘sieges’ anymore. Not because they don’t happen. Because words themselves are under siege.
This Empire calls conquest ‘intervention’, they call slaughter ‘self-defense’, they call slavery ‘freedom’, and they expect us all to believe and repeat. They call ‘sieges’ sanctions, and punish rebellious provinces for generations. If you piss off the hegemon, they’ll make sure your children’s children don’t have medicine. This bashful hegemon nonetheless bashes in brains and starves children to death worse than anybody in human history. They have merely industrialized siege warfare and applied modern marketing to it but it’s the same damn thing.
At this point, their lies are falling apart, but it’s still a challenge to name what you see. But just look and apply words logically. ‘Israel’ and Empire itself are cutting a population off from food, water, and medicine, throwing missiles over the wall, and sending in armed men to kill them. A siege by any other name would still reek, and that’s all that’s happening in Gaza, and all the places the Empire is ‘sanctioning’.
Empire is always at war and always besieging people. The words are nowhere, but the facts are everywhere. This should be obvious, but it actually takes quite an effort to break out of the wall-to-wall news cycle and see that our minds themselves are besieged.Thus the first thing to break is this wall of wrong language and endless detail that they put around our eyes, to keep us from seeing what we’re seeing. Men, women, and children, walled in, being slaughtered by swords, starvation, and deprivation. On purpose, by Carbon Crusaders who have no business in that place or any place, besides their filthy business of looting and pillaging.
This is the modern siege of Gaza that we are living through, and that they are dying in. It all seems very complicated in the news, but it’s quite simple historically. It’s a just a siege.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE
My name is Indrajit Samarajiva and I'm a writer. People also call me Indi or Jit. I was born in Canada, raised in America, and live in Nugegoda, Sri Lanka.
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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality. Put this effort to use by becoming an influence multiplier. Repost this material everywhere you can. Send it to your friends and kin. Discuss it with your workmates. Liberation from this infernal and mendacious system is in your hands. We can win this. But you must act.
—The Editor
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Most of the world has watched the Israeli assault on Gaza in horror. As tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced, tens of millions of people around the world have poured onto the streets to demand an end to the violence. But a few select others have taken to the pages of our most influential media to demand an escalation of the violence and that the United States help Israel strike not just Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon but Iran as well.
“I might have once favored a cease-fire with Hamas, but not now,” wrote Bush-era diplomat Dennis Ross in The New York Times, explaining that “if Hamas is perceived as winning, it will validate the group’s ideology of rejection, give leverage and momentum to Iran and its collaborators and put [our] own governments on the defensive.”
In the wake of Hamas’ October 7 assault, arch-neoconservative official John Bolton was invited on CNN, where he claimed that what we witnessed was really an “Iranian attack on Israel using Hamas as a surrogate” and that the U.S. must immediately respond. When asked whether he had any evidence, given the implications of what he was saying, he shrugged and replied, “This is not a court of law.”
On December 28, Bolton doubled down on his hawkish stance, writing in the pages of Britain’s Daily Telegraph that “The West may now have no option but to attack Iran” – a position he has held for at least a decade.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Saudi state-funded broadcaster Iran International, senior Bush official Mark Wallace bellowed that, “This is Iran’s work. Iran will suffer at the hands of retribution and will suffer the consequences of supporting this terror group and its horrific attack on Israel.” Wallace continued:
No civilized country wants further conflict. But the Iranians are forcing the civilized world’s hand. And you will see a dramatic response soon as the United States, Israel, and our allies begin to position assets around the world in preparation.”
If there was any doubt as to what sort of “dramatic response” Wallace wanted to see, he added a message to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: “I look forward to seeing you hanged from the end of one of your own ropes.”
Iran was recently the victim of a deadly terrorist attack. As mourners commemorated the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani, two bombs exploded, killing 91 and injuring hundreds more. In this context, it was understandable why Iranian officials pointed the finger at the U.S. and Israel.
Iran International: How a network of Western and Saudi interests converged to create the ultimate propaganda tool in a failed bid to overthrow the government of Iran.
What these individuals all have in common is that they are board members of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a shadowy but influential organization dedicated to pushing the West toward a military confrontation with the Islamic Republic.
Founded in 2008, the group is led by neoconservative hawks and has close ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. It does not divulge where it receives its copious funding. However, it is known that right-wing Israeli-American billionaire Sheldon Adelson was a source. There is strong circumstantial evidence that Gulf dictatorships may also be bankrolling the group, although UANI has strongly denied this. In 2019, Iran designatedUANI as a terrorist organization.
When asked by MintPress what he made of UANI’s recent statements, Eli Clifton, one of the few investigative journalists to have covered the group, said, “It’s very consistent with the positions and advocacy that the organization has taken since its inception.” Adding,
United Against Nuclear Iran does not miss an opportunity to try to bring the United States closer to a military conflict with Iran. And on the other side of the equation, they also have worked very hard to oppose efforts to de-escalate the U.S.-Iran relationship.”
UANI’s board is a who’s who of high state, military and intelligence officials from around the Western world. Among its more notable members include:
CEO Mark Wallace, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and deputy campaign manager for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection.
Chairman Joe Lieberman, former senator and Democratic vice-presidential nominee for the 2000 election.
Tamir Pardo, Director of the Mossad, 2011-2016.
Dennis Ross, former State Department Director of Policy Planning and former Middle East Envoy under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Field Marshall Lord Charles Guthrie, ex-Chief of Staff of the U.K. Armed Forces.
Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida.
Frances Townsend, Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush.
John Bolton, former U.S. National Security Advisor and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
Roger Noriega, former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and Ambassador to the Organization of American States.
Otto Reich, former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and architect of the 2002 U.S. coup against Venezuela.
Michael Singh, White House Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs, 2007-2008.
Giulio Terzi di Sant-Agata, former Italian Foreign Minister.
Robert Hill, former Minister of Defense of Australia.
Jack David, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2004-2006.
Mark Kirk, U.S. Senator for Illinois, 2010-2017.
Lt. Gen. Sir Graeme Lamb, ex-Director of U.K. Special Forces and Commander of the British Field Army.
Norman Roule, former CIA Division Chief and National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the Director of National Intelligence.
Irwin Cotler, Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General, 2003-2006.
Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, U.K. Minister of State for Security and Counter Terrorism, 2010-2011.
For 15 years, UANI has organized conferences, published reports, and lobbied politicians and governments, all with one goal: pushing a neoconservative line on Iran. “UANI are a force multiplier. They provide at least the veneer of an intellectual infrastructure for the Iran hawk movement. They did not invent being hawkish on Iran, but they sure made it a heck of a lot easier,” Ben Freeman, Director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy Programat the Quincy Institute, told MintPress.
Find someone who loves you as much as the Washington Post loves demanding we bomb Iran. pic.twitter.com/O2gBOKbvM1
For such a large, well-financed, and influential organization filled with senior officials, United Against Nuclear Iran keeps its funding sources very quiet. However, in 2015, Clifton was able to obtain a UANI donor list for the 2013 financial year. By far and away, the largest funders were billionaire New York-based investor Thomas Kaplan and multibillionaire Israeli-American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.
Kaplan, whose $843,000 donation supplied around half the group’s 2013 funding, is a venture capitalist investor concentrating on metals, particularly gold. He is the chairman of Tigris Financial and the Electrum Group LLC. Both of Kaplan’s firms employ UANI CEO Mark Wallace as CEO and COO, respectively.
A 2010 Wall Street Journal article titled “Tigris Financial Goes All-in on Gold” noted that the company had bet billions of dollars on the price of gold rising, more than the reserves of the Brazilian central bank. As Clifton has noted, both Kaplan and Wallace have marketed gold to clients as the perfect commodity to hold if there is increased instability in the Middle East. Therefore, both Kaplan and Wallace stand to make massive sums if the U.S. or Israel were to attack Iran, making their UANI warmongering a gigantic and potentially profitable conflict of interest.
Adelson provided the majority of the rest of UANI’s funding. The world’s 18th-richest individual at the time of his 2021 death, the tycoon turned his economic empire into a political one, supporting ultraconservative causes in both the United States and Israel. Between 2010 and 2020, he and his wife donated more than $500 million to the Republican Party, becoming GOP kingmakers in the process. He would often vet Republican presidential candidates at his casino in Las Vegas, and it was often said that this “Adelson Primary” was almost as important as the public one.
An ardent Zionist, Adelson bankrolled numerous pro-Israel lobby projects, such as AIPAC, One Jerusalem and Taglit Birthright. He also owned Israel Hayom, the country’s most-read newspaper, with 31% of the national share. Relentlessly pro-Netanyahu, it was said that the Israeli prime minister asked his friend Adelson to set up a newspaper to help his political career.
Adelson and his influence have been one of the driving forces of American hostility towards Iran. In 2013, during a conversation with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, he called for the United States to stop negotiating and drop a nuclear bomb on Iran to show that “we mean business.”
A potential third, even more controversial, source of funding is the Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Leaked emails show UANI officials soliciting support from the Emirati royal family. Both Mark Wallace and Frances Townsend, for example, emailed the Emirati Ambassador to the U.S. detailing cost estimates for upcoming events and inquiring about support from the UAE.
Thomas Kaplan himself is extraordinarily close to the nation. “The country and the leadership of the UAE, I would say, are my closest partners in more facets of my life than anyone else other than my wife,” he told the Emirati outlet, The National News, which also detailed his friendship with Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.
PUTTING IRAN IN THE CROSSHAIRS
One of United Against Nuclear Iran’s primary activities, Iranian political commenter Ali Alizadeh told MintPress, is to create a worldwide “culture of fear and anxiety for investing in Iran.” The group attempts to persuade businesses to divest from the Islamic Republic and sign their certification pledge, which reads as follows:
The undersigned [Name], the [Title] of [Company] (the “Company”), does hereby certify on behalf of the Company that until the Iranian regime verifiably abandons its drive for nuclear weapons, support for terrorism, routine human rights violations, hostage-taking, and rampant anti-Americanism as state policy, that neither the Company nor any subsidiary or affiliate of the Company, directly or through an agent, representative or intermediary.”
One corporation that UANI targeted was the industrial machinery firm Caterpillar. UANI hectored the firm, even erecting a roadside billboard outside its headquarters in Peoria, IL, insinuating that they were aiding Iran in constructing a nuclear weapon. Caterpillar quickly ordered its Iran projects terminated. Wallace took heart from his group’s victory and warned that other businesses would be targeted.
These have included French companies such as Airbus and Peugeot-Citroen, who were threatened with legal action. In 2019, UANI earned an official rebuke from the Russian Foreign Ministry for attempting to intimidate Russian corporations trading with Tehran. “We think such actions are unacceptable and deeply concerning,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. “Attempts to pressure and threaten Russian business … are a follow-up on the dishonorable anti-Iranian cause by the U.S. administration,” she added, hinting at collusion between the government and the supposedly non-governmental organization.
Some of UANI’s campaigns have been markedly petty, including pressuring New York City hotels to cancel bookings with Iranian officials (including then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) visiting the city on United Nations business. Others, however, have been devastating to the Iranian economy, such as the SWIFT international money transfer terminating its relationship with Tehran, cutting the country off from the global banking system.
While the group presents itself as against a nuclear Iran, UANI was strangely opposed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the deal between Iran and the West that limited the former’s nuclear technology research in exchange for sanctions relief from the latter. As MintPress reported at the time, UANI spent millions on T.V. advertisements trashing the agreement. As Wallace noted, “We have a multi-million-dollar budget, and we are in it for the long haul. Money continues to pour in.”
After the JCPOA was signed, UANI hosted a summit attended by senior Israeli, Emirati, and Bahraini officials, touting its failures. Once UANI’s John Bolton was named Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, he persuaded the president to withdraw entirely from the deal. Bolton has deep connections to the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian political group widely identified as a terrorist organization. He has, for some time, considered them a government in waiting after the U.S. overthrows the current administration. “Before 2019, we will celebrate in Tehran,” he told the group in 2018, predicting that, with him at the helm, the Trump administration would soon cause the downfall of the Iranian government.
Bolton has long been a hardliner on regime change. “To stop Iran’s bomb, bomb Iran,” read the title of his 2015 New York Times op-ed. Yet this appears to be the dominant position at UANI. In March, Ross published an articlein The Atlantic headlined “Iran needs to believe America’s threat,” which demanded that the U.S. “take forceful action to check Tehran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb.” Failure to do so, Ross claimed, would provoke Israel to do so itself – a “much more dangerous scenario,” according to him. Yet only two years previously, Ross called on the U.S. to “give Israel a big bomb” to “deter Iran,” noting that the “best way” to stop the Iranian nuclear program was to supply Israel with its own nukes, thereby taken as a given that Iran was indeed pursuing nuclear weapons itself (a highly questionable claim at the time) and ignoring Israel’s already existing 200+ stockpile of nuclear missiles.
“It doesn’t seem like UANI ever really took seriously the possibility of a diplomatic means to constrain Iran from continuing to increase its enrichment levels and moving towards a nuclear weapon,” Clifton told MintPress. “As a matter of fact, they generally fought tooth and nail against the JCPOA. They are eager to push the United States toward confrontation with Iran using the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons as a reason,” he added.
INTELLIGENCE CONNECTIONS
That UANI is headed by so many state, military and intelligence leaders begs the question: to what extent is this really a non-governmental organization? “That is one of the dirty secrets of think tanks: they are very often holding tanks for government officials,” Freeman said, adding:
The Trump folks all had to leave office when Biden won, so a lot of them ended up in think tanks for a while, four years, let’s say. And if Trump wins again, they will bounce back into government. And the same is true of Democratic administrations, too.”
The U.S. government also clearly has a longstanding policy of outsourcing much of its work to “private” groups in order to avoid further scrutiny. Many of the CIA’s most controversial activities, for example, have been farmed out to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a technically non-governmental organization funded entirely by Washington and staffed with ex-state officials. In recent years, the NED has funneled millions of dollars to protest leaders in Hong Kong, organized an attempted color revolution in Cuba, organized anti-government rock concerts in Venezuela, and propped up dozens of media organizations in Ukraine.
Documents reviewed by MPN show that CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) spent over $22 million on propaganda efforts in Ukraine
These sorts of institutions blur the line between public and private sectors. But a 2014 legal case raises even more questions about UANI’s connections to the U.S. government. After UANI accused Greek shipping magnate Victor Restis of working with the Iranian government, he sued them for libel. In an unprecedented move for what was a private, commercial lawsuit, Attorney General Eric Holder intervened in the lawsuit, ordering the judge to shut the case down on the grounds that, if it continued, it would expose key U.S. national security secrets. The case was immediately dropped without explanation.
In the past, when the Justice Department has invoked state secrets, a high-ranking state official has offered a public statement as to why. Yet, this time, nothing was offered. Reporters at the time speculated that much of the material Restis wanted to make public was possibly given to UANI by either the CIA or Mossad, which would have revealed a network of collusion between state intelligence agencies and a supposedly independent, private non-profit. Given the glut of ex-Mossad and CIA chiefs at UANI, this speculation is perhaps not as wild as it might seem.
UANI’s funders certainly also have extensive connections to Israel. Kaplan is the son-in-law of Israeli billionaire Leon Recanati and is said to be close with Prime Ministers Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid. He has also employed a number of Israeli officials at his businesses. An example of this is Olivia Blechner, who, in 2007, left her role as the Director of Academic Affairs at the Israeli Consulate General in New York to become Executive Vice-President of Investor Relations and Research at Kaplan’s Electrum Group – a rather perplexing career move.
Adelson, meanwhile, was given what amounted to an official state funeral in Israel, one that even Prime Minister Netanyahu attended. He was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem – one of the holiest sites in Judaism and an honor that very few figures receive.
A NETWORK OF REGIME CHANGE GROUPS
While United Against Nuclear Iran is already a notable enough organization, it is actually merely part of a large group of shadowy non-governmental groups working to cause unrest and, ultimately, regime change in Iran. These groups all share overlapping goals, funders and key individuals.
One example of this is the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), a non-profit that purports to exist to “combat the growing threat posed by extremist ideologies.” Yet the group focuses largely on Islamist extremism – and only those groups that are enemies of the U.S., Israel and the Gulf Monarchies (about whose extremism and violence the CEP has nothing to say). Ten members of the CEP’s leadership council are also on UANI’s board, including Wallace, who is CEO of both organizations.
Another group headed by Wallace is the Jewish Committee to Support Women Life Freedom in Iran. This organization claims to be focused on improving women’s rights in Iran. It very quickly, however, divulges that this is a vehicle for regime change. On its homepage, for example, it writes:
These freedom fighters continue with no sign of relenting on their calls for regime change. Calls for “Woman Life Freedom” and the removal of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei echo from rooftops, down street corridors, across campus hallways, and on government billboards. These brave Iranians have expressed their hatred for the ruling clerics not only in their words, but in their actions.”
Seven members of the Jewish Committee to Support Women Life Freedom in Iran’s steering group – including Wallace and Kaplan – also lead UANI.
In 2018, Iranian authorities arrested eight individuals working with Panthera inside the country. All eight were convicted of spying on behalf of the U.S. and Israel. While many in the West decried the trials as politically motivated, any organization led by these figures is bound to cause suspicions.
This is especially the case as Wallace is also a founder of PaykanArtCar, an organization that attempts to use art to, in its words, “advocate for the restoration of human rights and dignity for all in Iran.” All three team members of PaykanArtCar also work at UANI.
The final group in this Iran regime change network is the International Convention for the Future of Iran. Set up by Wallace himself, the organization’s website explains that it exists to “end the repression of the regime and bring true change to Iran.” Further purposes are to “connect the Iranian opposition in exile [i.e., the MEK] with policymakers in the United States and internationally” and to “offer program grants and technical support” to groups working to overthrow the government. However, judging by the lack of updates and the group’s Twitter profile having only 31 followers, it appears that it has not had much success achieving its goals.
In short, then, there exists a network of American NGOs with the mission statements of helping Iran, opposing Iran, preserving Iran, and bombing Iran, all staffed by largely the same ex-U.S. government officials.
Iran, however, is not the only target in Wallace’s sights. It appears that he is also trying to give Turkey similar treatment. Wallace is the CEO of the Turkish Democracy Project, a non-profit established to oppose the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who, it says, has “dramatically altered Turkey’s position in the international community and its status as a free and liberal democracy.” The Turkish Democracy Project denounces what it calls Erdoğan’s “destabilizing actions in and beyond the region, his systemic corruption, support for extremism, and disregard for democracy and human rights.” There are no Turkish people among the Turkish Democracy Project’s leadership. But there are seven UANI board members at the top, calling the shots.
A LESSON FROM HISTORY
The history of Iran has been intimately intertwined with the United States since at least 1953 when Washington orchestrated a successful coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had refused U.S. demands to stamp out Communist influences in his country and had nationalized the nation’s oil. The U.S. installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a puppet ruler. An unpopular and authoritarian ruler, the Shah was overthrown in the Revolution of 1979. Since then, it has become a target for regime change, and its nuclear program is something of an obsession in the West.
Often orchestrated by UANI officials while they were in government, the U.S. has carried out a sustained economic war against Tehran, attempting to collapse its economy. American sanctions have severely hurt Iran’s ability to both buy and sell goods on the open market and have harmed the value of the Iranian rial. As prices and inflation rose rapidly, ordinary people lost their savings.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. turned the screw once again, intimidating both businesses and nations into refusing to sell Tehran vital medical supplies. Eventually, the World Health Organization stepped in and directly supplied it with provisions – a factor in the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the agency.
While U.S. actions have severely harmed the Iranian economy, a future bright spot may come in the form of BRICS, the economic bloc that Iran – along with Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – joined on January 1. American economic power on the global stage appears to be waning. However, This new reality might spur Washington policymakers to reconsider a military option, as UANI desperately wants them to.
It is perfectly reasonable to be worried about Iran – or any country, for that matter – developing atomic bombs. Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to human civilization, and more actors with access to them increase the likelihood of a devastating confrontation. Already in the region, India, Pakistan, Israel and Russia possess them. But it is only the United States that has ever used them in anger, dropping two on Japan and coming close to doing so in China, Korea and Vietnam. And given the U.S.’ recent track record of attacking countries that do notpossess weapons of mass destruction (e.g., Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan) and not touching those who do (such as North Korea), it is entirely understandable why Iran might want one. As Freeman said:
I certainly do not want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. But at the same time, you can also believe that it would be catastrophic if the U.S. were to engage in a war with Iran…And the concern with groups like UANI is that they are taking that [the worry of Iran getting a nuclear weapon] and pushing that argument to a point where it might lead to an active conflict.”
The slaughter in Gaza has been horrifying enough. More than 22,000 people have been killed in the Israeli invasion, and a further 1.9 million displaced. Israel is also simultaneously bombing the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon. The U.S. is facilitating this, sending billions of dollars in weaponry, pledging iron-clad political support to Israel, silencing critics of its actions, and vetoing United Nations resolutions.
But United Against Nuclear Iran is eager to escalate the situation to a vastly greater level, urging Washington to attack a well-armed country of nearly 90 million people, erroneously claiming that Iran is behind every Hamas or Hezbollah action. “This is not a nuclear non-proliferation organization” Clifton said, noting that there are plenty of genuine already existing peace and environmental groups worried about nuclear weapons that either supported the JCPOA or said it did not go far enough. “Their focus is more on working towards regime change in Iran rather than actually supporting efforts that might prevent Iranian nuclear weapons,” he added.
IF UANI gets its way, a conflict with Iran might spark a Third World War. And yet they are receiving virtually no pushback to their ultra-hawkish pronouncements, largely because they operate in the shadows and receive virtually no public scrutiny. It is, therefore, imperative for all those who value peace to quickly change that and expose the organization for what it is.
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DEC 31, 2023
This material is republished here as a public service, as part of a pushback against the massive Western disinformation enveloping the Ukraine war.
As the year heads towards a close, let’s take a look at where things may be headed technologically in the conflict, as well as give a summary of sorts of where Russia needs to militarily improve to finish off Ukraine.
This article is going to focus on the technological aspects of the war, and is therefore a direct sequel, of sorts, to this one from February 2023, where I tried to look forward to the technological changes expected to come, should the war last several years.
The Changing Face Of War - Future of the Russian SMO
“There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” - Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Throughout the vast history of warfare, there have been certain conflicts which have served as key hinge points in the advancement of military science. The foreshortened lens of history beguiles us with the view of wars as static monoliths: two si…
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But that one included a full-blown historical overview to give a contextual grounding to ongoing advancements, whereas here we’ll just jump right into things without any preamble.
Firstly, there’s an interesting aspect to note, which serves as a basis for the broader discussion. Just days ago it was reported by Japan’s major paper Nikkei that, according to their ‘sources’, when Xi visited Moscow, Putin secretly expressed to him that Russia intends to fight in Ukraine for “at least 5 years”, if not longer:
One caveat: though it’s being reported now, this allegedly took place in March. Back then, Russia was obviously not in the same position on the battlefield as it is today, and even Putin likely couldn’t have foreseen how utterly disastrous Ukraine’s counteroffensive would have become. So it begs the question, if such an exchange took place now, would Putin give the same timeline, or would he feel more confident in expecting a quicker outcome?
Of course, there’s a high chance that the news is simply made up. But it’s supported by a few other indicators:
As we’ve discussed before, a country outlining huge military surges for the next several years, building entirely new field armies from scratch by calling up over 500k men this year, is likely not expecting to stop fighting anytime soon. It’s clear that Russia is preparing for the long haul, and so the “5 year” timeline is not entirely implausible.
Several times in recent months I’ve reported statements from top Russian officials insinuating that the war could last several years. Medvedev himself suggested this year that the conflict could last “decades”:
"This conflict is for a very long time. It is all probably for decades," Medvedev told journalists during his visit to Vietnam.
The point is to say, that since there’s a chance that the conflict could last at least several more years, such a span of time is bound to encompass vast developmental surges in battlefield technologies and innovations. Of course, I myself don’t see the conflict lasting past 2025. But given the signaling from Russia that it’s quite content to fight passively in order to privilege economic and geopolitical development and stability over the society-destabilizing “high intensity” commitments of a full war-footing, it is remotely possible that Russia could slow-roll the war into 2026 and beyond.
One of the reasons is: things feel terminal now as a consequence of the cut in funding owing to the US Congressional spat. But many rightly believe this uniparty squabble will be resolved in the new year, and Ukraine will still receive its hoped-for boon nearing a hundred billion dollars, which could keep it going for quite a while longer.
Compound this with the fact they’ve gone on defense and are now heavily conserving equipment, which is leading to relatively few losses of their armor at present, as evidenced by what we’re seeing. Add the now-launched major mobilization drive and they have a chance to hold out for very long if that funding comes through.
Some will scoff, wishing that Russia would just pull the plug and end this misery all the quicker. But that gets to the very heart of the technological discussion: Russia simply isn’t able to do that at the moment, because it’s finding itself embroiled in a type of future war that few could have predicted.
In the broad sense, anyone could, and did, predict the general slant of modern warfare: drones, AI, etc. But I’m not sure that many quite predicted, specifically, how lethal and un-counterable the FPV threat, in particular, has gotten. This has really become one of the main issues presently, and it’s a quite an intractable one.
Suffering from standard artillery shell hunger, Ukraine has asymmetrically invested into small, cheap drone production—and it’s paying off for them, as Russia is struggling to develop a consistent counter against them. Sure, Russia itself outproduces Ukraine in raw FPVs, but the issue is, since it’s Russia that is now on the offensive, the situation favors Ukraine. Russian forces have to go out in the open to attack, creating a target-rich environment for the AFU. The Ukrainians on the other hand are all bunkered up and no longer assault, so despite having a positive FPV ratio, Russia doesn’t have as many easy or open targets to hit. Most of the FPVs are spent simply pelting AFU fortifications to occasional success. Sure they still get plenty of kills but it now costs them far more drones to do so.
Russia is rushing out many anti-drone technologies, both for the trench and mobile armor. We see it with increasing regularity on every front:
I monitor several obscure radio electronics channels on both sides—and believe me, the Ukrainian ones are even more revealing, as they often do breakdowns of captured Russian electronics with unvarnished commentary and insight. There are many Russian devices pertaining to drone and jamming technology which they’ve captured and are impressed with, and many others they ridicule for being low-grade consumer junk purchased from Chinese sites like Aliexpress.
Here’s one example of a Ukrainian video of an FPV hitting a Russian tank with a jammer on it, which clearly did nothing:
However, no footage has yet surfaced of any tanks with the newest Russian Volnorez “Breakwater” jammers being hit. Unfortunately, those are precisely the ones in lowest supply.
Here’s a recently sighted Russian TOS-1 “Solntsepek” launcher with RP-377UVM1L Lesochek electronic warfare module:
Though it may be crudely strapped on with what looks like belts, here’s what a Ukrainian radioelectronics expert had to say about it:
This electronic warfare is designed to protect equipment from radio land mines, but can be used against FPV.
I saw its spectrograms, the interference there is of very high quality, but the price for this is a short protection range.
And that’s one of the issues for all these systems, their protection range is very short, which means two things:
Sometimes an FPV can still be crashed into the vehicle—if stationary—due to simple inertia. If you point it correctly and speed up, even as the jammer kills the video feed, the FPV can still continue on to hit the target.
It affects FPVs meant to come in direct contact with a target, but not necessarily grenade-dropping drones which can hover fairly high over the target and unload ordnance onto it, as we’ve seen many times. The altitude at which they hover—100-200ft—can usually be above the effective jammer range.
AFU sources have noted a big uptick in Russian jammer pack usage—all kinds of ad hoc and jury-rigged systems are seen:
Russian forces continue to innovate many ‘workarounds’ in the highly contested EMR spectrum environment. For instance, it was noted they’ve been placing beacons on the ground which allow for offline drone operation in a highly contested electronic environment:
When the drone’s navigation is jammed, it’s able to orient itself by way of these hidden beacons dispersed in the area.
Listen to the video below about some of the new electronics and drone-detectors being rolled out by Russia:
The video showcases one of the current harsh realities on the front: that in the absence of the ability to fully jam or counteract enemy UAVs, the next best option is simply their timely detection, which at least provides awareness and an opportunity to evade them.
Many Russian troops now travel with small drone detectors that can detect nearby FPV signals, but not much beyond that. It at least affords some measure of forewarning.
Information has been received about the purchase of 500 such electronic warfare kits by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
This is a Chinese product. The Russian Ministry of Defense bought it for 600,000 ($6000+) rubles per unit.
They’re seen occasionally on the front:
Russia has their own such units currently being developed and rolled out for trials, but so do many other countries. Ukraine likewise is testing similar things.
The US as well:
But the reason these aren’t a panacea solution: drone jammers can be easily detected and have their positions electronically fixed via spectrum analyzers.
Since the whole point of a jammer is to overload the airwaves with high amounts of “noise”, you are effectively making yourself a giant ‘sore thumb’ to stick out and be pinpointed. Of course during a full-blown assault, when the enemy already knows your column’s position, it doesn’t much matter unless he has specialized weaponry that can hone in on the actual signal and automatically attack it in the way some anti-radiation missiles (ARM) do.
The conflict has re-energized the US MIC’s own pursuits into the electromagnetic spectrum:
WASHINGTON — The observable success of electronic warfare in the Russia-Ukraine war is motivating the U.S. Army to get its own in-development jammers deployed as soon as possible, according to an acquisition official.
After decades of arsenal atrophy, the service is again prioritizing electronic warfare, including through its Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team and -Echelons Above Brigade initiatives.
The US Navy has reportedly already been deploying and testing a system called DRAKE (Drone Restricted Access Using Known EW):
“If we encounter a [drone] that happens to come up on the forward-end of the ship, up near the foc’sle, and then it just decides to bolt and go to the aft end on the flight deck, I can just pick this backpack up, I can run to the flight deck and I still keep blocking that signal to make sure the drone stays away from us.”
The problem is, it’s one thing to develop a few test platforms and a whole other thing to equip a massive 500k+ man army with enough ready units to resist an unprecedented number of drones—hundreds of thousands per month. Every single brigade, battalion, company, platoon, etc., needs their own units, and it’s proving a tall challenge.
Recently we’ve seen the highest number of FPV hits against Russian forces since the start of the conflict. Everything is being hit, which is compounded by the earlier mentioned fact of Russia going on the offensive everywhere, requiring many units to be exposed and out in the open. However, despite the huge uptick in hits, there are a few silver-lining takeaways.
What I’m finding is the actual trenches and deployment points appear very well protected. They are rarely appreciably penetrated or even reached by Ukrainian drones of any kind. No, almost every hit is made against:
Mobile armor units on the move toward an AFU landing across the gray zone
Straggling solo troops which are doing supply runs to their small unit dugout
Lone supply carts (Bukhanka wagons) on the second echelon line
This is in stark contrast to how Russia is hitting the AFU, as Russian FPVs regularly penetrate every single AFU trench, fortification, dugout, stronghold, etc., which allows us to visualize a large disparity between EW capability. In short: Russian trench EW “dome” systems appear widespread and systematized quite well. But anything outside of the trench’s safekeeping instantly turns lethal.
Anyone monitoring the internal chats of actual frontline Russian troops, correspondents, etc., will note virtually all discussion and outrage presently centers on this major growing drone problem. No one is talking about any artillery shortages, or even drone shortages of their own. The issue is solely that FPVs have become an intractable thorn in Russia’s side. Some critical frontline areas have been so utterly locked down that Russian troops are literally unable to move or leave their trench. They have to get food delivered to them via a drone, which drops food and water. The moment they step out they’re targeted and killed with enemy FPVs.
Yesterday they even began to write about the new Ukrainian tactic involving two FPV operators working in pairs, which fly their drones together, and are able to immediately finish off any soldier that the first operator happened to merely ‘wound’. It may seem like a pedantically obvious tactic, but until now most FPV teams continue to operate solo, one at a time.
Russia must be commended for very agile developments in certain sectors of drone warfare, particularly in regard to the several stages of evolution that drones like the Lancet have already gone through, with the new Lancets recently being announced:
In certain areas like that, Russia is to be commended. But in other areas it’s lagged behind, namely in UCAV technology. Two years into the war, and Russia still does not field a single serviceable UCAV—Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle. These are drones which can strike targets themselves, rather than merely surveil or designate targets (with lasers) for other systems, like Krasnopol, or simply fire correction. Sure, they have the Inokhodets and Israeli-licensed Forpost, but neither have been seen to utilize any UCAV abilities with any regularity.
This is the one area that continues to stump me as to how Russia could be behind countries like Azerbaijan, Turkey, Malaysia, Iran, and many others—which all have more sophisticated UCAV programs. The likely reason for this is as follows:
Russia has recognized early on that UCAVs are somewhat obsolete in a near peer environment. I’ve been highlighting this since the start of the conflict, as the Bayraktar TB2s were getting blown out of the sky.
However, here’s what I take issue with. Even despite the above, the AFU itself managed to find a few small bypasses to insert the TB2 and hit some Russian assets. Normally this happened to a few over-extended vanguard units in Kherson, which outranged their own rear AD—whether accidentally or by some exigency.
If Ukraine could bypass Russian radar nets even occasionally, then Russia with a TB2 equivalent would be able to bypass Ukraine’s far less considerable AD nets much more often. That means that a UCAV could still have utility particularly given that Ukraine’s AD is being progressively attrited, which would have allowed UCAVs to make a growing impact on the battlefield in certain sectors.
For instance, look at Avdeevka. It resides in a cauldron, likely without the best AD coverage, which could give UCAVs a potential breakthrough to make a dent there, particularly if it’s one capable of firing more of a stand-off range munition, rather than freefall laser-guided bombs—which require the UCAV to hover nearly above the target.
Sure, Russia has Ka-52s, but they operate from FARPS so far away that by the time they’re called in, Ukrainian armor has long withdrawn. It works fine for larger assaults, but for fitful positional engagements it’s ineffective. In Avdeevka we see M2 Bradleys pop out for a few minutes to rake Russian positions along the forest landings, then quickly retreat. A UCAV nearby could have engaged them within minutes. Instead, a Ka-52 might take 30-45 minutes to arrive and those M2s are long gone back to some hangar in Berdychi.
Russia has built more Inokhodet/Orion drones, however they’re clearly only being used for fire-correction and recon purposes as all video shows them using their superior optics to observe cities/targets at safe 20-30km ranges. The only logical explanation is they’re too expensive for Russia to risk in direct UCAV overhead roles. But this is a failing of Russia for not developing a UCAV that has longer range standoff weaponry. An Orion with LMUR missiles or something equivalent to Israeli Spike NLOS (Non Line of Sight) variant is what’s needed. Instead, the only type of “UCAV” Russia developed has the equivalent of some short range ATGM.
There is one potentially positive development here. Some of you may have seen the announcement that Russia is allegedly now ‘mass producing’ the MPD-01 Termit drone copter:
After successful trial in the war, Russia has started serial production of MPD-01 Termit helicopter-type drones, equipped with three S-8L missiles. They can be transported on the back of any pickup truck or a trailer. Artificial intelligence enables the Termit to function in "free hunting" mode. Russia surprises by their fast development cycle for cutting edge weapons.
New Russian combat helicopter drone "Termit" with SL-8 missiles
At first you may laugh: a helicopter? What, they gave up trying to build a proper UCAV like the Predator, Reaper, Bayraktar, etc.?
But I have a revelation for you: this move is actually genius, and such a platform—if actually being made in number—would be far superior to any “UCAV” in the type of near-peer conflict where both sides have advanced air defense.
Reapers, Predators, Bayraktars thrive against technologically inferior foes with no AD to speak of. Against even a moderate air defense they would be instantly shot down, as they present gigantic targets. But there’s another reason people aren’t aware of: most UCAVs drop “precision bombs” which have to be guided by a laser and are free fall. That means the drone has to be pretty much above the target, nor can it operate at a low altitude. Such limitations mean to hit a target on a frontline, the drone has to operate right on the frontline, in full view of air defense that will easily destroy it every time.
Some drones like the Reapers can fire Hellfires which might have a 10km range or so, however they’re usually fired at far closer distance simply because at max range the drone’s optics cannot consistently paint a laser on a given tiny target. Some Hellfires do have radar seekers, but that’s useless against troop concentrations.
This results in most attacks having to be done from a few kilometers away, and you can prove this by watching the dozens of US strike videos where you can clearly see the Predator/Reaper drones are pretty much right on the target:
Yet they still have to be at high altitude, which would get them instantly shot down against a near-peer foe.
But that’s where the genius of Russia’s completely novel approach lies. A rotary wing platform allows you to get close to the frontline but still stay out of radar range by flying low, just over the treetops in exactly the way Ka-52s and other rotary strike craft currently operate.
This provides all the advantages of UCAV drones without the disadvantage. Further, it allows you to merely hover in place and observe targets, without having to do ‘tracks’ and passes in the sky, which only give you a 50/50 window of firing where you have to “turn around” and come back for another loop if you’ve overflown the fire-solution window.
This platform can just hover in place right above treeline, where even nearby radar systems wouldn’t pick it up due to radar horizon, and watch the battle unfold, picking off targets as they come in—particularly given that it has a massive 6-hour flight time and 300km combat range. Even more critically, it can be kept at makeshift “FARPS” right near the frontline, not dozens or hundreds of kilometers behind like Ka-52s. The released literature claims they can be stowed on pickup trucks, etc.
Their armaments are the same S8 rockets which are used in “dumbfire” mode on Ka-52s, Mi-28s, Mi-24s, and even the Su-25 planes which are seen firing them daily into the air:
However, this Termit platform reportedly has the new S-8L variant, for “laser” designation—which means it’s a laser-guided version—perfect for picking off armor and vehicles.
By far the most successful weapons platform in the Russian arsenal over the past year has been the Ka-52—with perhaps only the Lancet contesting it. If Russia can actually roll out this miniaturized copter drone, it would be equivalent to vastly multiplying the Ka-52 threat over a much broader area, allowing fronts with less access to Ka-52s to basically have their own on-demand call-in air support.
So yes, if—and it’s a big if—Russia can actually make these in numbers sometime soon, they can be a real game changer, making up for the glaring lack of UCAV presence. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that these “Termites” are claimed to sport AI autonomous hunt mode capability. That being said, I still remain skeptical they’ll roll them out anytime soon only because, for whatever reason, Russia’s aerospace industry remains the biggest straggler thus far, and I have seen nothing to convince me that they have the capability to suddenly pump these out like hotcakes when after two years they still can’t produce Orions or Forposts in number.
That’s not to mention Russia had previously “unveiled” a similar Katran rotary drone several years ago, and that went nowhere—so we’ll see how serious they are about this one.
Let’s not forget that despite being behind in some technologies, Russia is likewise ahead of the combined West in many other areas. In yesterday’s strikes we were made witness to a new capability that stunned the whey-faced Western OSINT crowd. In a sight never seen before, Russian Kh-101 missiles were filmed ejecting countermeasures in the last leg of the strike:
The famed military (and tire) expert below made it quickly known that US missiles have no such equivalent capability:
"Rare footage. In the video, the Russian X-101 missile shoots decoys on the final leg of its flight. This is not a simple heat trap, as is commonly believed, it is also a cloud of small “needles” of different lengths, designed to deceive air defense guidance radars. Shooting occurs 6 times with 4 traps in the last kilometers before the target. 12 on one side and 12 on the other. The module is called L-504.
Not to mention even Ukraine has now officially admitted that out of 300+ fired Kh-22s since the start of the war, not a single one has been intercepted by all the most advanced NATO interceptors:
The missile, by the way, flies at 4,000 km/h (Mach 3+) but we’re supposed to believe they’re regularly shooting down Kinzhals which fly 12,000 km/h (Mach 10+).
The next—and final—big ballgame is of course AI and swarm technologies, as always. All year we’ve been treated to announcements on every side regarding new initiatives in this direction:
But there’s not much more to be said on this which I haven’t already said in previous updates, other than everyone’s “working on it”.
In general, as a final word, if you examine my article from February, you’ll find the predictions for the conflict’s future bore out fairly accurately. For instance:
As can be seen, I foresaw the destruction of their offensive potential and reorientation to a purely defensive posture even long before the summer counteroffensive. In that same spirit, I’ll try to predict the tenor of the conflict for 2024.
Given this preponderance of FPVs and no realistic solution to effectively and consistently neutralize them, I foresee the conflict continuing to get bloodier for anyone daring to assault. Unlike artillery production, FPVs can be easily scaled up by spreading around their easy-to-3D-print manufacturing processes to any and all countries, including those without any military capacity of any kind. That means unlike all other weapon types, FPVs are the one area where AFU will likely continue increasing their capabilities unhindered.
It’s always a ‘seesaw’ battle, where one advancement leaps forward to take the lead, only for the counterbalance to then catch up, ad infinitum. Russian forces will likely continue getting better detection equipment, various automated analyzers, including those on surveillance drones (like the Orlan series), which will allow better and more timely identification of Ukrainian FPV teams. To some extent it’s already been coming to this—but it will increasingly turn into a game of hunting opposing drone teams. The most valuable target on the battlefield will be the FPV drone op, and they will be ruthlessly hunted via the electromagnetic spectrum, and every other means.
One of the reasons is it takes time to build up the skills of a truly talented FPV drone operator. Just take a look at how Russia trains their accuracy:
Furthermore, it’s now being written that a simple ability to steer a drone isn’t enough. True drone ops need to be experts in demolitions and engineering so as to be able to handle the explosives with which their drones operate, knowing the nuances and all the ins and outs.
This is a major reason why Russia may slow-roll their campaign, and be content with simply attritioning the AFU with their huge artillery disparity from a safe distance, with only moderate, stepwise advancement in secure areas. Until Russia can roll out provably functional jammers en masse, it’s nearly pointless to conduct large-scale assaults. The combination of mines and FPVs is nearly insurmountable: the mines disable your vehicles, then the FPVs descend like a flock of vultures to finish off the crouching survivors. To combat some of this, Russia has even resorted to rolling out fake dummy bodies as scarecrows to attract, and hopefully waste, enemy FPVs:
Sure, you can still assault and take territory—it just comes at a far greater cost. Urban areas are a little different. There are many more obstructions and ways to avoid the drones than in the wide open fields, particularly given that urban environments vastly shorten wireless signals to the drone controllers.
But this isn’t quite a blanket characterization, and in fact is a bit overstated. There are fronts where Ukraine’s drone concentrations are greater, and those where they’re very slight. On the latter fronts Russia has success advancing in spurts because the skills of good drone ops and the equipment itself is simply not linearly distributable across the entire AFU no matter how simple it is to manufacture FPVs. For instance, in Khrynki and Avdeevka the AFU’s drone concentrations are ferocious—but in Kupyansk direction they’re nearly nonexistent for whatever reason.
It will simply have to come down to each squad having a mandatory SOP of at least one drone-jammer with strict protocols of how far each member of the unit can ever stray from the guy with the jamming station backpack. This member should basically be without arms but rather trained to exclusively monitor all acoustic, electromagnetic, thermal and other channels for FPV signals. This has to be a squad level thing no different to a grenadier MOS, but unfortunately we’re probably a long way off from any such standardization.
Also advancements will have to be made in some sort of IFF (Identify Friend Foe) networking for drones and EW systems. One of the problems is Russia has powerful enterprise-level EW that often can’t be used as it jams their own consumer-grade drones.
Tactics also will continue to be advanced and improved. Russia has shown a few attempts recently in Avdeevka of mass-saturating the battlefield with artillery-fired smoke canisters to blind enemy drones during assault. But ultimately none of it is effective without top notch ISR. This is by far the number one area that needs improvement as modern advancements have made it ever-more-difficult to conduct recon on enemy positions.
In the past, forward deployed scouts had to be everywhere in order to observe the battlefield. Now the enemy sits in covered positions, underground, etc., and flies drones to see everything. Even ATGM stations can now be unmanned, as the Ukrainian Stugna-P has proved.
Integration and networking is crucial to this. Some Russian sectors like that of the Kherson region still complain of very poor unit integration and communications. I.e. units operating semi-independently with little interaction with those on their flanks, resulting in poor coordination and losses.
These problems are being worked on and I think Russia will make big headways in some of these directions. But certain areas, particularly corresponding to sensor technology, will likely not change drastically as it’s inherent to Russia’s well-known malaise in the fields of semi-conductors and precision systems, particularly vis a vis sanctions.
But despite that, Russia has no room to slack, because its adversaries are in fact working on developments and breakthroughs in this area. An example of a new drone ISR system from the US MIC:
The SKYDIO X2E is a trusted and secure for DOD use Small UAS powered by an AI-driven autonomous flight engine that enables obstacle avoidance, autonomous tracking, GPS-denied navigation & complete workflow automation.
These nitpicks aren’t to strike a sour note but merely to use the end of the year as a summary of things Russia can improve for 2024. In most of the areas mentioned, there is notable work being done. Many correspondents relay information that the various deficiencies are constantly being passed up the chain. Putin himself even gives a direct line to certain frontline commanders allowing them to voice various grievances about shortcomings directly, so that issues can be fast-tracked through the MOD.
After all, here’s how pro-UA supporters and Westerners continue to be chagrined on their predictions of Russia’s innovative capacities. A ‘scholar’ from Kiev’s demonstrative before and after:
Not far from this recent gem:
But as we get down to the year’s dregs, I hereby declare 2023 to be the year of the Russian soldier. Because beneath all this techno-babble and issues of incompetent command or MIC corruption, it’s really the Russian soldier who has borne all success on his back alone. And it is only him that stands stalwart and firm in the face of the innumerable enemies and threats that continue to materialize. It’s not meant as a trite platitude, but in truth. When we look back at the year and all its tumultuous ups and downs, all the fearful uncertainties about technological and political issues, and threatening new ‘wunderwaffen’ ever on the horizon, it has still come down to the soldier on the ground most of all, in his wet boots and mudstained uniform and heart of courage.
And as 2023 closes, I even salute the Ukrainian soldier—because they too have proven their mettle in their near-unbreakable will and defensive lines. Why? Because true honor obliges us to salute those who risk it all. Recall that most AFU troops are not the same ideological Nazis as some of the radical elements, particularly now, when a huge proportion are just common shlubs dragged off the street by Zelensky’s Gestapo thugs.
Ukrainian soldiers have shown infinitely more courage than their NATO counterparts—at least they had the balls to face Russia on the field of battle, something NATO cowards would never dare to do, preferring to hide behind proxies.
So beyond the buzzing drones and smoking guns, and the million unaccountable vicissitudes of war, I hereby declare 2023 as the year of the Russian soldier, whose grit, courage, and perseverance have accounted for any and all other inadequacies.
Three pithy sayings sum it up best. First Tsar Alexander III’s famed declaration: “Russia only has two allies—its Army and Navy.”
Next, Russian Naval Infantry—the Marines’ motto: Там, где мы, там — победа! (Where We Are, There is Victory!)
And most fittingly of all to my toast, the motto of the VDV Airborne sums it up best:
Никто, кроме нас! (Nobody, but us!)
Here’s to 2024!
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Simplicius the Thinker is the nom de guerre of an Slavonic analyst. He provides in depth superior geopolitical and conflict analysis, with a dash of the sardonic. You can support him by pledging here or tipping him at: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius
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