A Little Bit Of News...

 ... which seems insignificant but which has everything to do with Douglas Macgregor opening statement in his conversation with Daniel Davies. 

Ah, yes, this Atlantic Ocean thingy and prepositioning of forces. Here is this teeny-weeny news. 

Zvezda shipyard floats overhauled Ikrutsk nuclear submarine. The upgraded Irkutsk will carry over 30 hypersonic Zircon missiles and over 30 Phisik-2 torpedoes. MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/. The Zvezda Shipyard in the Far East has floated the Irkutsk nuclear submarine of project 949AM of the Pacific fleet, which it overhauled and upgraded, a defense industry source told TASS. "The modernization continues at the berth," he said adding the submarine was floated in 2023.

SSGN K-132 Irkutsk is a Pacific Fleet asset, but being nuclear sub she is limited only by the endurance of her crew and food supplies. Usually multi-purpose subs in Russia spend around 90 days at combat patrols--more than enough to deploy anywhere in the world. But that is not it--Irkutsk is a pilot in the program of modernizing this giants into 3M22 Zircon, 3M14M Kalibr and P-800 Onyx carriers. The next in line, is another Pacific Fleet boat K-442 Chelyabinsk, which will be turned into the Zircon carrier. And then there is recently repaired and updated active duty K-266 Orel and K-410 Smolensk of the Northern Fleet and other active hulls. 

Russian Navy is mum on which of them will be turned into Poseidon carriers and which will be modernized to pr. 949AM, but when combined with the firepower of Yasen-class SSGNs, five of them for Northern Fleet (three are active or getting ready), one can correctly assume, that prepositioning of the US forces in Europe for fighting Russia is a very hazardous business already now, not to mention the fact that the US Army simply has no TOE to fight Russia. It is TOE for 1990s "victories" over armies such as Iraqi one, which is not a very high bar, to put it mildly. And even current US advantage in primarily space-based ISR in real war will be reset within a very short period of time. Boy, what I wouldn't give to get to the hull of the newly modernized Irkutsk and look inside.