Image is of a harbor in Tasiilak, Greenland.
NATO infighting? You love to see it, folks.
The latest incident of America's satrapies becoming increasingly unhappy about their mandated kowtowing involves, of all places, Greenland. As I'm sure most people here are aware, Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark with a degree of geopolitical and economic importance - the former due to its proximity to Russia, and the latter due to the proven and potential reserves of minerals that could be mined there. It's also been an odd fascination of Trump during his reign, now culminating in outright demands.
Trump has called for negotiations with Denmark to purchase Greenland, justifying this by stating that it would be safer from Russia and China under America's protection. Apparently, Norway's decision to not give him the Nobel Peace Prize further inflamed him (not that the Norweigan government decides who receives the prizes). He has also said that countries that do not allow him to make the decision - which not only includes Denmark, but also other European countries - will suffer increased tariffs by June, and that he has not ruled out a military solution.
This threat has led to much internal bickering inside the West, with European leaders stating they will not give in to Trump's demands, and even sending small numbers of troops to Greenland. The most bizarre part of this whole affair is that the US already basically has total military access and control over Greenland anyway, and has since the 1950s, when they signed an agreement with Denmark. There are already several US military facilities on Greenland, and B-52 bombers have famously flown in the vicinity of the island (and crashed into it with nuclear bombs in tow, in fact). Therefore, this whole event - in line with his all-performance, little-results presidency so far - seems to be largely about the theatrics of forcing the Europeans to continue to submit to his whims. I would not be surprised if they ultimately do sign a very imbalanced deal, though - the current European leadership is bound too tightly to the US to put up even half-hearted resistance.
This is all simultaneously occurring alongside the Canadian Prime Minister's visit to China in which longstanding sore spots in their bilateral relationship are being addressed, with China reducing tariffs on Canadian canola oilseeds, and Canada reducing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, as well as currency swaps between their central banks, among many other things. It seems no accident that Canada's reconsideration of their relationship with China is occurring as Trump has made remarks about turning Canada into the next US state, as well as the demand for the renegotiation of the USMCA.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Watching this all happen again is giving me déjà vu. It hasn’t even been a year yet
Yeah
Reading c-17 and stratotanker and f-35 and awacs is sending me into psychosis, watching all the pieces get set up again is a new feature of modern war
How similar / dissimilar are these movements to the prior strikes? Are we in an earlier or later stage in the buildup relative to the past buildup?
Very early stages with only some F-15Es forward deployed currently, but the US is not bound by any artificial timelines on "negotiations" so they can move a lot faster than before if they want to. But they're still bound by reality of course, teleportation does not exist so it'll still take time for everything to arrive, just not months on end. The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is expected to arrive by the end of the week. That's the next big deployment.
F-22s and the EC-130H Compass Call are usually the last military assets to arrive before potential strikes.
The graphic below is helpful in understanding the electronic order of battle for what US air operations look like. Obviously fighter aircraft can employ weapons too outside of jamming.
Digital solid state AESA radar jamming from fighter will also not work well on the digital solid state AESA radar target because of rapid switch beam steer and frequency hop, can not guess, difficult to detect after. Broad spectrum jammer is more needed will degrade friendly radar as well.
Jamming ability on fighter with modern AESA radar is very useful because it will not degrade the fighter own radar very much. Can use deceptive jamming. Limitation is more relevant against modern system. Designed to defeat generation of technology Iran is using.
Iran do have AESA fire control radars for some of their air medium range defence systems, the Najm-804 and 802 for example. But it's quite limited and only for the top IRGC air defence units, the regular army/Artesh gets PESA radars such as Joshan. Both Israel and Iran have released videos showing the destruction of the Najm-804 recently, archived from previous rounds of conflict. Bavar-373, some of the radars are AESA, similar to the HQ-9.
I don't think it's as simple to say as this will work or not, none of us actually know the specifics of any systems to make that kind of assessment in terms of jammer vs signal strength, how each side performs/uses these systems. Just because both sides have AESA technology and can use low probability of intercept techniques, it doesn't automatically mean a stalemate. The NGJ pods are designed with the new Chinese AESA radars in mind, and the F-35 is getting a completely new AESA array in the Block 4 update. The US is well aware of developments in China, and vise versa, China is well aware of what the US is doing, which is why they continue to update their air defence systems and make new stealth fighters. Hopefully we never find out how it works and we never get a war between the US and China.
Is not about low probability of intercept. Problem is reactive jamming do not work on low latency frequency hopping directed beam. Even if wave is detected, it is too late to jam when it is received. Can not possibly know next frequency. Broad spectrum jam with filter will work but will degrade friendly radar a lot. Broad jam with cycled open frequency in spectrum mask map over network will work (do not know English name for this concept) will degrade moderate amount, but will give information to enemy about next radar hop of friendly jet, and can not do well with limited hardware on fighter without harm the main radar function, better for EW pod. Enemy EW system can respond in cat and mouse game. Physics of modern digital solid state AESA radar are difficult for EW. I do not say it will not work at all. Is more challenging and less effective. Dedicated EW plane is the king.
I do not know enough about Bavar-373. I think Iran is very new to develop AESA? Or use Russian component? Probably software anti-EW not very advanced. Multi-radar network software very difficult. A lot of testing. F-35 front profile is a very difficult target for any. Do you know the band of Najm-804?
I am sorry if hard to understand. Have to look up a lot of technical language in English.
Yes the English terms are very confusing at times.
Iran likely acquired AESA technology with assistance from Russia, Iran has the Falaq, which is an Iranian reverse engineered version of the Russian 67N6E Gamma-D L band (1-2Ghz) AESA radar. How long did Iran have access to the Gamna-D for? It was publicly unveiled in the mid to late 2000s, but Falaq was only announced in 2019. The Najm-802 was around much earlier than 2019.
Najm-804/802 is an S-band AESA radar, frequency is estimated at around 10cm/1dm wavelength, 3Ghz (S band is 2-4Ghz), with 5120 TRM for the 802 prototypes. The 802 prototypes were Iran's first publicly displayed AESA, around the early 2010s I think? The 802 prototype does look similar to Gamma D with the horizontal split down the middle. So around 15 years ago. 804 is considerably smaller, it's designed to be used with air defence systems that can fire the Sayyad 3 series of surface to air missiles like Armran and Khordad-15. The Sayyad 3 has multiple options for terminal guidance, from semi active or active radar homing, to even infrared according to Iran. So it can work as the fire control radar and search radar.
Bavar 373 has the Meraj-4, an S band AESA battle management radar, similar role to the Big Bird radar for S-300/400, but an AESA like the Chinese Type 305A for the HQ-9.
This is what Iranian media says about all these radars, some detailed information
Yes networking and putting the I in IADS is very difficult there was an article about this with regards to air defences at Natanz after an Iranian OPSEC slip up
Very detailed.
Sound like hardware capability is better than software capability and organization. Combination of L band and S band seem like goal is try to develop capability against stealth and non-stealth.
Falaq would be very important piece of network. Could spot stealth plane, but more important how other component will use the information. S band will not find stealth plane at all without a lot of luck or information from other radar. How to interpret the information is most important. Difference between find a needle in the ocean and find a needle in the ocean with close information from multiple source. Najm seem acceptable and missile guidance make sense. Infrared is the best terminal guidance for stealth right now, but need to get close enough.
This plan have the hardware to try in theory but have to solve hardest problems with network and EW. Do not have a stealth plane to test with, so can not refine. Very difficult problem even with more resource, more radar, ability to test. Also have to face the most mature stealth planes.
Very embarrassing. Worse than I expected. I think it is probably very frustrating to work on this systems in Iran and not see the full potential. None of the system will see full potential without integration.