Gunsmith Cats!

Shame it was just a 3-episode OVA

https://xcancel.com/BrianJBerletic/status/1862865293284192720

Regarding Syria:

1. Maintain perspective - as bad as the worst case scenario may seem, Syria had previously been almost entirely overrun before Russia's intervention in 2015 including fighting in and around Damascus itself;

2. This is going to shape Russia's calculus regarding Ukraine - clearly any deals made with Western proxies to freeze a conflict toward "peace" will only be used to prepare for more war;

3. Russia/Syria still maintain an advantage in military aviation, taking a heavy toll out on advancing US-backed terrorists - a factor that played heavily in their defeat leading up to the long-standing freeze in the first place;

4. Escalation in Syria is going to stretch Russia, Syria, and Iran, but also the US and its allies;

5. Only time will tell how this plays out, no one should assume one way or the other unless compelling evidence emerges - opensource information only gives part of the picture;

https://xcancel.com/BrianJBerletic/status/1863068727337710071

• be very careful with information coming out. US-backed terrorists use disinformation as a weapon. Believe nothing until it is confirmed;

• That doesn't mean the situation is not dire, but wait for reliable information before drawing conclusions;

• AGAIN - be VERY careful with "opensource" photos/videos which do not provide a full picture of the situation;

• It is very easy to stage a scene and then post it making claims that do not reflect reality, if the Ukrainians do this, surely US-proxies elsewhere can;

• Do not panic. Much of the US' success depends on psychologically overwhelming opponents. Panic aids terrorists and their US sponsors;

• Criticizing the Syrian military for withdrawing is easy to do from a comfortable desk chair. Unless you are on the front holding your part of the line, don't complain about those who are not;

• There are many legitimate reasons why the Syrian army would withdraw from certain areas, just as the Russian army withdrew in 2022 from Kharkov and Kherson, it does not signify the end of the war;

https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1858019192370507904

Wow, looks like Xi was extremely straightforward during his meeting with Biden, probably the most he's ever officially been in a meeting with a US president.

According to the Chinese readout (https://www.guancha.cn/internation/2024_11_17_755645.shtml) here's what he told Biden were the 7 "lessons of the past 4 years that need to be remembered":

1. "There must be correct strategic understanding. The 'Thucydides Trap' is not historical destiny, a 'new Cold War' cannot and should not be fought, containment of China is unwise, undesirable, and will not succeed."

2. "Words must be trustworthy and actions must be fruitful. A person cannot stand without credibility. China always follows through on its words, but if the U.S. side always says one thing and does another, it is very detrimental to America's image and damages mutual trust."

3. "Treat each other as equals. In exchanges between two major countries like China and the United States, neither side can reshape the other according to their own wishes, nor can they suppress the other based on so-called 'position of strength,' let alone deprive the other of legitimate development rights to maintain their own leading position."

4. "Red lines and bottom lines cannot be challenged. As two major countries, China and the United States inevitably have some contradictions and differences, but they cannot harm each other's core interests, let alone engage in conflict and confrontation. The One China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués are the political foundation of bilateral relations and must be strictly observed. Taiwan issue, democracy and human rights, development path, and development rights are China's four red lines, which cannot be challenged. These are the most important guardrails and safety nets for China-US relations."

5. "There should be more dialogue and cooperation. Under current circumstances, the common interests between China and the United States have not decreased but increased. Whether in areas of economy and trade, agriculture, drug control, law enforcement, public health, or in facing global challenges such as climate change and artificial intelligence, as well as international hotspot issues, China-US cooperation is needed. Both sides should extend the list of cooperation, make the cooperation cake bigger, and achieve win-win cooperation."

6. "Respond to people's expectations. The development of China-US relations should always focus on the wellbeing of both peoples and gather the strength of both peoples. Both sides should build bridges for personnel exchanges and cultural communication, and also remove interference and obstacles, not artificially create a 'chilling effect.'"

7. "Demonstrate great power responsibility. China and the United States should always consider the future and destiny of humanity, take responsibility for world peace, provide public goods for the world, and play a positive role in world unity, including engaging in positive interaction, avoiding mutual consumption, and not coercing other countries to take sides."

Funnily, all this is summarized in the official US readout (https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/readout-of-president-joe-bidens-meeting-with-president-xi-jinping-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china-3/) with this short sentence: "The two leaders reviewed the bilateral relationship over the past four years". Talk about an understatement 😅. The language compared to the readout of the last Xi-Biden meeting in San Francisco one year ago is noticeably more forthright, especially on the U.S.'s lack of trustworthiness ("if the U.S. side always says one thing and does another..."). Looks like he's getting very frustrated with U.S. duplicity... The 4 red lines he enumerates are also new (not new individually as they've each been mentioned before, but packaging them together as "four red lines" and explicitly labeling them as such in a president-level diplomatic readout is new)

...

With the red lines on "Democracy and human rights" and "Development path/system", it looks like China is effectively telling the U.S. it will not humor them anymore in discussions about its internal system and so-called "human rights", and that it will consider any U.S. initiative aimed at interfering with China's internal affairs or otherwise shape China as hostile actions on the same level as Taiwan. This is also clear with Xi telling Biden that "neither side can reshape the other according to their own wishes".

On development rights Xi states that "the Chinese people's right to development cannot be deprived or ignored" and criticizes how "while all countries have national security needs, the concept shouldn't be overgeneralized or used as an excuse for malicious restrictions and suppression". He also said that "great power competition should not be the theme of the era; unity and cooperation are needed to overcome difficulties together. 'Decoupling and breaking chains" is not the solution; mutually beneficial cooperation is the path to common development. 'Small yards with high fences' is not befitting of great powers."

In other words, he's telling Biden that he believes the U.S. is attempting to curtail China's development in the guise of national security, but that this is "an excuse for malicious restrictions and suppression" and a red line as China has a fundamental right to develop as any other country. This is all, of course, also signaling to the upcoming Trump administration. The fact these are "red lines" means they're non-negotiable regardless of who leads the US: he's telling Trump too that attempts to "reshape" China or restrict its development will be viewed as hostile actions. And the emphasis on US "saying one thing and doing another" also puts the future administration on notice that China will judge the US by its actions rather than its diplomatic statements.

Conclusion: by framing these positions as "lessons learned" from the past four years, Xi is effectively closing the book on one approach to US-China relations - which he's obviously very critical about - and very clearly signaling to Trump a change is badly needed, particularly around the "4 red lines" and matching words with actions. The language is very confident, telling the U.S. they need to "treat each other as equals" and that they have no "position of strength" anymore. The US readout on this, as usual for the Biden administration, is very illustrative of exactly what Xi is complaining about: a complete disregard for China's stance on these issues and a refusal to engage with them, or even mention them at all. Not sure that "America first" Trump and the team of China hawks he put together will be much better...

https://xcancel.com/JesseJenkins/status/1840773225070158215

critical support to the US in reducing carbon emissions by de-electrifying itself

gommunism no food? capitalism no power!

https://xcancel.com/ArmchairW/status/1839453350854853047

There's actually a critical lesson to draw from this and other Ukrainian fiascos, of which the Bakhmut saga and the Zaporozhie Hundred Days come to mind: Ukraine will have ended up losing this war in large part because it consistently tried to fight beyond its means.

The Ukrainians started this war with an enormous army, well in excess of what the Russians could and actually did commit to the fight in 2022. That huge force (the "First Army") was badly mauled in early 2022, but it was rejuvenated later that year by a combination of ruthless mobilization and massive aid from NATO. This convinced the Russian Stavka to transition to the defensive and consolidate their position in Ukraine, withdrawing troops from more exposed positions in east Kharkov and right-bank Kherson. Any serious assessment of the situation at that point would have been that the Russians had consolidated into a basically impregnable position that the AFU was incapable of breaching (lest we forget in the wake of Russia's totally unhindered withdrawal from the area, their attempts at reducing the Kherson bridgehead by force in mid-2022 were bloody disasters), and the correct course of action was to start digging in and negotiate a peace treaty in the meantime.

The Ukrainian leadership instead threw a disturbingly large portion of the "Second Army" into Prigozhin's meatgrinder in Bakhmut and then ordered not one but two large-scale counteroffensives into Zaporozhie and the Bakhmut flanks using the post-Bakhmut remains of the "Second Army" and their NATO-supplied "Third Army." Those failed with enormous losses, opening the way for Russia to transition back to the offensive in late 2023 and begin systematically rolling Ukraine out of the Donbass. The correct course of action at this point was, again, to find a tenable defensive line and start digging. Zelensky instead ordered a "Hail Mary" offensive in Kursk with the remnants of the "Third Army" and significant elements from a lightly-equipped "Fourth Army," hoping Russian border defenses were weak despite their having ample warning of Ukrainian designs on the border region (courtesy of several earlier, smaller raids) and plenty of time to prepare. It proceeded to fail with enormous losses - Ukrainian forces breached the border, began to exploit, and ran square into a Russian haymaker counter-punch that stopped them in their tracks. The Ukrainians then reinforced failure, sending massive reinforcements into a death pit in an attempt to keep a sliver of Russian soil under their flag as a middle finger to Putin.

And while this was happening the front in the Donbass started to collapse with Russian troops making large advances and seizing key terrain, in no small part because the AFU's resources had been systematically redirected to a tertiary operation far to the north. We've seen, again and again and again, that when the Ukrainians got resources and generated forces, rather than admitting they are the weaker power here and working to strengthen their positions and conciliate, they instead squandered them on hugely ambitious and equally doomed offensives. In 2023 these offensives were aimed at restoring their pre-2014 borders when Donetsk may as well have been on the Moon for them, while in 2024 their ambitions transitioned to the outright insanity of conquering southwest Russia despite the fact they'd been on the military back foot for the last year. These are the moves of a power setting objectives beyond its means to achieve, and they will probably end up dooming Ukraine as a sovereign state going forward.

https://xcancel.com/maphumanintent/status/1720933055307600231

Fun theoretical exercise I'm currently working on for the @fortisanalysis side of things:

US refineries (total) only store about 40 million gallons of military-grade jet fuel at any given time, or about 36,400 flight hours for an F/A-18E/F Super Hornet launched from an aircraft carrier. For 40 x -18's per carrier, this is about 910 flight hours. A carrier holds roughly 3 million gallons of fuel for its wing, about 68 flight hours per bird. Now consider that a notional mixed complement of 20 x F-35's and 20 X F-15EX's operating out of Kadena AFB would consume about 62,400 gallons per hour combined. Thus, just a single carrier wing and a single AFB wing's complement of fighters (80 combined) theoretically all operating at once would drink 106,400 gal/hr.

So...

The net stores of military jet fuel immediately available from US refiners above the global contingency supplies managed by the Defense Logistics Agency at any time represents about 375 net flight hours for one carrier and one air wing...less than 16 days of high intensity air operations by far fewer assets than the US would throw into an all-out theater conflict in the Pacific Rim. DLA Energy ended FY2022 with 1.68 billion gallons of on hand inventory of jet fuel to serve the entire DOD combined inventory of 14,000+ aviation assets - cargo, fighter, rotary wing, bombers, drones, tankers, and recon. Which begs the question: How fast would two theaters of conflict burn through all contingency supplies of fuel? And what does DOD do when the well runs dry?

Reminder that for the Gulf War's air campaign, the US had nearly 6 months to prepare, move assets into place, build up whole new infrastructure, etc., right next to Iraq without the Iraqis being able to do much to respond. Westerners love to call back on that campaign to justify their belief that the US/NATO could totally destroy any opponent in just a few weeks with their superior air forces, but completely ignore the logistical realities of actually doing so. And today, with the proliferation of long-range precision munitions, actually managing to build up the concentrations of forces and supplies necessary for large campaigns like this is substantially more difficult - we see this already in Ukraine, with Russian deep strikes doing significant damage, taking out ammunition depots and arms shipments, and wiping out various gatherings of Ukrainian troops and mercenaries.

If Iraq had the ballistic missiles that Yemen wields today, things could have gone very differently back then.

a little bit of analysis about Kursk

The only thing I'd want to add to Mikael's excellent analysis here is that the Russians are actually fighting a much more conventional area defense than we've seen in the very static fighting in the Donbass. They're not trying to stop Ukrainian drives at the screen line like we saw in the Hundred Days, they're instead diverting them into engagement areas between their front line of screening troops and the main defensive line 5-10km to the rear and destroying them there. Ergo why we've seen Ukrainian units just go on these long runs in the last couple days - way past where the front line should be - and then get wiped out in what look like complex ambushes. That's... actually just how you do a very normal area defense.

Why have the Russians changed tactics? Two reasons. First, in Kursk they - paradoxically - have space to fight. The Donbass is a cramped theater where real estate is at an absolute premium. They're either backing up into the sea, key lines of communication, or critical urban areas there. There's actual operational space in rural Kursk. Second and relatedly, the "forward" defense we're used to seeing in the Donbass will not inflict crippling casualties on an attacker quickly for the simple reason that attacks often fail in the "cone of fire" in no man's land or even behind the attacker's front line, allowing defeated units to easily withdraw. In a conventional defense the attacker is defeated in a kill zone behind the screen line and it is far easier to annihilate an attacking force. Ergo why we're now seeing huge AFU equipment losses, with entire Ukrainian companies burning out behind the ostensible Russian "front."

Having found themselves in battle with the AFU's strategic reserves, the Russians now very much intend to use the Battle of Sudzha-Korenevo to destroy as much of those reserves as possible. Even if that means scaring some war mappers on the internet.

Soaring US munitions demand strains support for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan

(archived)

The U.S. has transferred tens of thousands of its bombs and shells to Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. But it hasn’t given Israel everything it wants. That’s because the U.S. military lacks the capacity to provide some of the weapons Israel requested, according to Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ... Put simply, the U.S. assesses the health of its own inventories before sending weapons abroad. At times, those stocks don’t have any margin — and in some cases, the U.S. is even dipping below minimum inventory requirements, according to congressional staffers and former Pentagon officials.

an uneasy feeling but nothing specific to complain about

vibes-based performance evaluation

twitter thread

I just got back from Ukraine, where I was visiting some friends. Everything we have heard about what’s happening in Ukraine is a lie. The reality is darker, bleaker, and unequivocally hopeless. There is no such thing as Ukraine "winning" this war.

• By their estimates, they have lost over one million of their sons, fathers and husbands; an entire generation is gone.

Nazis and destroying the demographics of their own people, name a better duo

• Even in the Southwest, where the anti-Russian sentiment is long-standing, citizens are reluctant or straight-up scared to publicly criticize Zelensky; they will go to jail.
• In every village and town, the streets, shops, and restaurants are mostly absent of men.
• The few men who remain are terrified of leaving their homes for fear of being kidnapped into conscription. Some have resorted to begging friends to break their legs to avoid service.
• Army search parties take place early in the morning, when men leave their homes to go to work. They ambush and kidnap them off the streets and within 3-4 hours they get listed in the army and taken away straight to the front lines with minimal or no training at all; it is "a death sentence."
• It's getting worse every day. Where I was staying, a dentist had just been taken by security forces on his way to work, leaving behind two small children. Every day, 3-5 dead bodies keep arriving from the front lines.
• Mothers and wives fight tooth and nail with the armed forces, beg and plead not to have their men taken away. They try bribing, which sometimes works, but most of the time they are met with physical violence and death threats.
• The territory celebrated as having been "won back" from Russia has been reduced to rubble and is uninhabitable. Regardless, there is no one left to live there and displaced families will likely never return.
• They see the way the war has been reported, at home and abroad. It's a "joke" and "propaganda." They say: “Look around: is this winning?”.
• Worse, some have been hoaxed into believing that once Ukrainians forces are exhausted, American soldiers will come in to replace them and “win the war”.

There is no ambiguity in these people. The war was for nothing - a travesty. The outcome always was, and is, clear. The people are hopeless, utterly destroyed, and living in an unending nightmare. They are pleading for an end, any end - most likely the same "peace" that could have been achieved two years ago. In their minds, they have already lost, for their sons, fathers and husbands are gone, and their country has been destroyed. There is no "victory" that can change that.

Except the peace offer then (see under the The Objectives and Strategy of Russia section) was incredibly favorable for Ukraine (and naive on Russia's part), basically just security guarantees and no NATO membership, without any territorial changes. That ain't happening anymore.

Make no mistake, they are angry with Putin. But they are also angry with Zelensky and the West. They have lost everything, worst of all, hope and faith, and cannot comprehend why Zelenky wishes to continue the current trajectory, the one of human devastation. I didn't witness the war; but what I saw was absolutely heart-breaking. Shame on the people, regardless of their intentions, who have supported this war. And shame on the media for continuing to lie about it.

also lmao at the fucking community note

um actually the US says that only a few Ukrainians have died (based on propaganda fed to them by the Ukrainians)

I was reading the latest Simplicius post, and holy shit:

The world can see the US terror regime has no clothes. It looks increasingly weak, particularly given the announcement that Raytheon Lloyd helmed the strikes from—I kid you not—his hospital bed. Yes, he pulled the trigger on a laptop while soiling his bedpan: https://www.businessinsider.com/defense-secretary-lloyd-austin-ordered-strike-on-houthis-from-hospital-2024-1

followed up by this great line:

A decrepit regime led by a senile president and debilitated secretary of state, launching illegal massacres from their nursing homes and hospital beds against the poorest nation on earth—virtually on the same day as their own bloc ally faced genocide and crimes against humanity charges at The Hague.

twitter thread (nitter alt) about the deteriorating US situation in the Middle East

They all think it's still 2003, with no notion of constraints, nor any respect for or even knowledge of the US' enemies. ... The Iraqis are at the heart of this crisis, and nobody in the official US sphere is talking about it openly. Every "retaliation" for Iraqi attacks on US bases is taking place in... Syria. Now why is that? Is it because the US doesn't care about Iraq and just wants an excuse to go after Assad again? No. Blinken flew under the cover of night into Baghdad, wearing a fucking flak vest, specifically to try to convince the Iraqi government to do something to stop all these attacks!

The reason the US is attacking "Iranian" warehouses in Syria to deter attacks by Iraqis - without EVER mentioning them by name - is because the US deep state is scared shitless of an Iraqi quagmire. The Iraqis go out and officially declare war on US. The US response? Silence. There's constantly escalating attacks inside Iraq. Rockets, drones, now IEDs against US convoys. The Iraqis are totally open about this, they're saying in public "we're at war with the US! We're gonna kick them out!" and Lloyd Austin goes up and pretends these Iraqis don't exist!

... a core feature of the US army today is that it is basically close to unusable, de facto. The US Army has a couple of massive problems right now: first, it's got a HUGE manpower deficit, especially in combat arms. Second, it can't really move very easily! Moving an army corps is a lot of work: it requires a lot of airlift, or - more preferrable - sealift. But US sealift capacity has atrophied immensely since the 90s. Getting an US armor division to Iraq today is a lot more difficult than it once was, due to lowered capacity.

I don't want to dive too deeply into army-specific problems in this thread, so I'll just get to the upshot: the US doesn't have enough men to really put "boots on the ground" in a serious conflict, nor the transport capacity to do so. It's not just a lack of political will. ... the US is basically down to a small garrison presence. You can back that up with air power, but on the ground, the US posture is a few islands of hundreds or thousands of Americans... in a sea of hostile arabs. These arabs have modern small arms. Some of them have night-vision equipment. But most of all, they have heavy stand-off weaponry: Burkan ("Volcano") rockets, used to great effect in Syria, Iranian suicide drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and iranian SAMs.

To further complicate the fairly terrible ground situation, American airpower in the region is very vulnerable. Most Americans still think they have this factory-fresh, high tech air force, but that's not been the case for decades. The workhorses - F16, F15, F-18 - are ancient ... the same kinds of planes used by Saudi Arabia against Yemen. And the Houthis have shot down a lot of Saudi jets. So even the Yemenis - the second most poor country in the region - can now realistically challenge US airpower, using iranian-made SAMs. Today, America has neither the fiscal space or the productive capacity to really deal with airframe attrition ... US bases in the region can now be attacked by stand-off weaponry, and it's long been a known problem that the USAF has never seriously adapted to the idea that airfields can simply be contested by enemy stand-off weaponry from afar. F-35 stealth doesn't work on the ground. ... the entire dynamic of the US actually using airpower in the region has now potentially changed, and changed in a very ominous, depressing way. Carriers can now be hit by anti-ship cruise missiles and drones, which are becoming widely available in the region. Are they guaranteed to work? No. But they're not guaranteed to fail either. Airbases can be hit with cruise missiles and drones; just ask the Americans at Al-Harir!

All of this means that Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon and Tony Blinken at State are in a very, very shitty position right now, to say the least. The openly declared war against the US in Iraq is basically being shoved under the rug, because the US can't afford to admit it exists! To uninformed Americans, the US is still a completely dominant, invincible force. America only loses because it gives up; its planes are invincible, its technology supreme, its forces, untouchable. But this fantasy is a product of the US military's isolation from civilian life. For people inside the military, the view is very different ... Thus, if Lloyd Austin goes up there and says "okay, the Iraqis are attacking us now", he is going to be inundated with calls from moronic GOP politicians and uninformed US civilians to "unleash the American magic!!!" or "teach the arabs why we don't have healthcare lol!!!".

But in reality, that moment in time has passed, and it's not coming back. If Austin goes up there and admits that, admits that the US is now severely limited in what it can do and how much it can fight, he'll lose his job. What's worse, the US will lose imperial prestige! That prestige is fantastically important, for many reasons. Partly, it serves as deterrence against people picking further fights with the US. Partly, it makes the current - completely unsustainable - budget deficits somewhat manageable in the short term. I could go on, but I hope I've made my point by now. The Iraqis are, as the American saying goes, pissing all over the American pant-leg right now. The Iraqis themselves are saying "we're pissing on you, America!", but America is forced to say "No no no, it's just raining!"

It's perhaps somewhat exaggerating how bad things really are, but there's still a lot of interesting points, especially the stuff about air power. Back in the olden days, you did need to actually fly your own planes over the enemy airbases to disable them, but this is no longer the case thanks to advances in missile technology, and the proliferation of cheap missiles among even militia groups means that forces which normally couldn't maintain their own airforce can now still manage to strike at far-away targets, and do so with munitions significantly cheaper than what they'll be destroying. And of course, there's the important logistical reality that Western commentators systematically ignore - how capable is the US, really, at deploying a large ground force, and doing so quickly? Not supplying another military, not flying around and bombing the occasional target, not sending in some special forces team to do a raid, but a proper army corps, of several divisions, the way they were once able to do in Iraq? Even back then, there was still a lot of preparation involved, the invading force didn't just materialize in Kuwait one day, so how capable of repeating that would they be now?