First Down, Many More To Go.

As was expected, the first Project 22800 Small Missile Ship (Karakurt-class) was floated out on the eve of traditional Russia's Navy Day celebration (last weekend of every July). It is the first ship, traditionally named after wind calamities, Uragan (Hurricane), of the large series--13 similar boats are in a different state of completion over several Russia's shipyards. First three ships of this class will not have a navalized version of the famed Pantsir AD complex, all following those first three will have it. This will give these 800 ton displacing ships an immense bang for a buck in surface warfare scenarios. 

getting ready

 

Stern view

afloat

Thus Russian tradition of building serious littoral forces, now with a very impressive reach to a strategic depth, once one considers 3M14 capabilities, continues. This is not to speak of pure anti-shipping punch these boats pack. Unlike now globally known Project 21631 Buyan-class missile ships, Karakurts have better sea keeping properties which, most likely, will allow them to venture painlessly into Mediterranean in anti-shipping (and, of course, land-attack) role in support of Russian fleet operating near Syria. This will be serious addition considering the fact that with navalized Pantsir installed Karakurts will provide a superb short-range (up to 20 kilometers) air defense cover. 

Operational and strategic implications of this Mosquito fleet actively entering its In Being  phase, are immense, way out of proportion with the modest size of these ships. With such ships counting in dozens and packing such a punch one can only guess how this all may play out in the nearest future.

Jeff, You Have No Right To Die.

One of the greatest rockers of all time with his most underrated band of all time inducted, finally....

Yes, it is Friday...

Evil Allen Dulles Plans.

OK, Allen Dulles did have evil plans. But we all live in meme-driven reality today and once in a while some of those memes are too good to ignore. Knowing Russia's eternal struggle with her soccer national team, especially on the eve of the domestic World Cup 2018, I found this to be extremely funny.

The caption says this: we will deliberately grow and groom such soccer players, who will embarrass Russia in a front of the whole world. How 'bout this level of evilness. Check and mate, America--your plans have been exposed. 

Now on a more serious note: in a Soviet cinematographic masterpiece  of 17 Instances Of Spring, tastelessly and ignorantly compared by Western media to James Bond movies, Allen Dulles was portrayed by a superb Soviet actor (the whole cast of 17 is stunning) Vyacheslav Shalevich and here how he looked as Allen Dulles:

You don't need any comments to recognize who is Allen Dulles (portrayed as cold intellectual) in this screenshot from that legendary Soviet series. The likeness was rather startling, especially in motion. And I believe this photo is exactly from the moment of discussion of Dulles' evil plans for grooming Russian national soccer team for a strategic embarrassment of Russia at the World Cup 2018... Nah, it is a first meeting of Dulles and his people with Karl Wollf (Operation Sunrise) in Switzerland.    

Timber Sycamore No More.

Scott Ritter published today an outstanding piece in The American Conservative about CIA's dirty dealings with ME "clients" and their jihadist offsprings. Ritter's piece is an excellent illustration to the level of insanity (Operation Timber Sycamore) which afflicts majority of American political class and it fits extremely well (not to mention partially explains) Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's statement today. Lavrov, who served as the Russian envoy to the UN for 10 years, confessed he “could never imagine that US politicians may be exposed to this kind of mass hysteria.”

Well, neither could I, but here we are. But Lavrov's comments went much much further than merely describing the insanity. He openly accused outgoing Obama Administration of sabotaging Russian-American relations.

“We inherited a bulk of problems, ‘time bombs’ and simply undermining decisions from the Obama administration,” Lavrov said. He added that those decisions had been made “in the period of agony when the outgoing administration …chose to do nasty things to undermine US-Russia relations in the first place.”

American political class degenerated to a collection of egocentric, spiteful, narcissist  and incompetent hacks long ago but it was on Obama's watch when the very fabric of American society began to be literally shredded to pieces--from destroying already fragile interracial relations, to closing eyes on real danger from jihadism, to supporting Islamic militants to deliberately wrecking US-Russian relations. Obama and his circle, of which HRC was a direct political and ideological globalist off-spring, were stunned by real America's vote in 2016 Presidential Elections and as spineless and spiteful self-centered children (most of them are about this level of maturity) they took their revenge by further wrecking what's little was left of US foreign policy. In this respect, Obama was an ultra-liberal reincarnation of W. Moreover, he went even further. 

Looking today at a pathetic exhibit which US political class has become, one has to appreciate the fact that President Trump, for all his massive and easily-visible flaws, increasingly looks more and more as an American statesman whose feet are simply stuck in stinky, sticky rotten swamp of corrupt (and treasonous) American political establishment. This very swamp which can not produce anymore any real statesman, not speaking of simply decent human. US politics urgently needs adults--without them this nation is doomed.       

On US Sanctions on Russia... Again!

US Congress finally "agreed" on measures punishing Russia for her blatant "interference in US 2016 elections" and that was expected from US political body which is corrupt to the core and whose main loyalties are to Israel. Even fake-news outlets are forced to admit that the measure is not much about Russia. After all, US legislators somehow forgot to put under sanctions US-Russian space cooperation--talk about having "firm" principles. No, the measure is about President Trump and of globalist cabal (neocons, "liberals" and so called Republicans) being desperate in trying to prevent any kind of rapprochement between US and Russia. This time, however, those sanctions, to which Russia adapts with unprecedented efficiency, ricocheted into EU. 

EU bureaucracy is even sleazier than Washington's one but, boy, do they get all alert and "principled" when the talk is about money! Now they are all up in arms against US Russia sanctions. Talk about getting hit where it truly hurts. I think they are getting pop-corn out in Moscow. Fascinating, really. Trump, most likely, will be coerced in signing the sanctions' bill but that wouldn't by now make any difference since the picture got clear to everybody who haven't spent last ten years under the stone. US is trying to bully EU to buy natural liquid gas from the US (hence efforts on part of Poland and Ukraine, controlled from D.C., in sabotaging Nord Stream 2), this gas will be much more expensive than that from Russia. 

Well, it doesn't matter much for Russia anymore. As was stated not for once, more sanctions mean stronger Russia. As scandal with Siemens gas turbines in Crimea has shown, Russia does not particularly care anymore about losing key European suppliers for the reasons of:

1. Being able to successfully develop own manufacturing (in Russian);

2. Having a number of other suppliers who would be glad to see Siemens leave Russia's market. 

In other words, Russia has options, plenty of them--EU doesn't and, for that matter, the US doesn't have them either. In the end, continuous sabotage of Russia merely prompts her to move even closer to East Asian markets and Russia's energy, machinery and hi-tech, especially weapons, are a very hot item there. Meanwhile anti-Russian hysteria in the West continues and now it did reach its crescendo with this paranoia--Russians slowly becoming a second class citizens and I will not be surprised that at some point of time they will have red stars sown to their clothes in a good Nazi tradition and will be herded into ghettos, after all, who knows what they mean when state that "lessons learned", never mind that combined West is not capable anymore of learning anything. As long as the world stays away from nuclear conflict, things should be alright.

  

Surprising And Absolutely Beautiful.

Yes, it is Friday. And yes, I do not hold modern art in general in very high regard, yet this is incredibly beautiful and poignant: 

There is also a strong sensual 1970s feel in this. 

 

Aerodynamics? What Aerodynamics?

Ok, by now we all got used to extreme maneuverability of Russian fighters. They do what no other combat aircraft in the world is capable of. I also thought that it was impossible to top what SU-35 or T-50 usually do. But no, I was mistaken. I know, this performance by SU-35 in Moscow at MAKS 2017 yesterday is being discussed now everywhere, but still--forget about me being Russian--I simply was floored from the aerodynamics, or rather a complete ignoring of it, by this performing SU-35 and its pilot. It can be stated without stretch now, they do fly like a UFO. Ridiculous and magnificent. Watch the whole routine, especially from 06:30. How!? Most air-to-air missiles will simply lose the lock on target, if anyone wonders what are pure tactical applications of this insane ballet.

Damned If You Don't!

If true, this could be vindication of some of my personal (admittedly not always correct) views on naval warfare in general and naval aviation in particular. I always loved STOVL, that is why, with all my criticism of F-35 program (and it is rather embarrassing program), I still follow F-35B STOVL development fairly close because it is the concept that is sound. In the end, some of the technical solutions in F-35B were... Soviet/Russian, borrowed from what promised then, in the end of 1980s, to be a revolution in carrier aviation--Yak-141 Freestyle. 

Now, Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov drops a bomb today when revealed (in Russian) that discussion on development and production of a brand new Yakovlev STOVL (based on the ideas of Yak-141) aircraft is in a full swing and that this new aircraft must enter series production in 2025. Oh boy! This is sensational and without going too deep at this stage into the details of why these are exciting news, I will present here a single (there are many more, of course) pro argument:

Modern naval combat is already deep into the missile paradigm in which any aircraft carrier, including classic American CATOBAR mastodons, are not immune from hyper-sonic weapons. But here is the thing, especially for those who intent on fighting Sea Control/Sea Denial battles--the essence of any aircraft carrier is its flight deck and all infrastructure immediately underneath it which make it so vulnerable--catapults, arresters etc. Once one of those elements is gone, and the probability of a deck suffering a major damage in real modern combat is very high, CATOBAR carrier becomes merely a huge pile of steel incapable to launch or receive its air wing. Well, this issue is mitigated on STOVL carriers--their decks are simply more "survivable": 

Now, considering a level of modern aerospace technologies where it is possible to make parameters of STOVL aircraft comparable to their CATOBAR colleagues, it becomes only natural to explore the venue of much less expensive than CATOBAR, STOVL carriers which in Russia's case would fit really well into her strategic and operational requirements. Knowing what Russians do with aircraft, it could be really fascinating to see what could be accomplished in this field. After all, Yak-141 was so ahead of its time and that is why Gorbachev rushed to close this program. Now, it seems, it is being reincarnated on a completely new technological foundation. We'll see, but this is exciting, after all, US Navy is flying F-35B, despite all of its failures. 

Does Ralph Peters Need A Psychiatric Help?

I think he does. The guy completely went off the rails sometime ago--he fancies himself to be an "expert" on Russia--but his latest sharing of his "expertise" on FOX at Tucker Carson's excellent (one of very few remaining) program is a tour de force' of a complete insanity. 

In this sense, Peters is not just himself mentally unstable--he is an excellent embodiment of a symptom of an affliction prevalent in one small American locality in and around Washington D.C. Many people there, while not as openly bizarre and downright crazy, harbor much what Peters exhibits in this video. Judge for yourself. I will address major reasons for this behavior by Peters more in depth later.  

Some Australian Imbecile Offers His Insanity/Supidity As Analysis.

I have no comments to this, but with all respect to Aussies, they better start looking at the creeps who run their country. After all, they want to start the war with North Korea. I will abstain from commenting on this imbecility--judge for yourself. 

                   North Korea: The Case For War.  

An excerpt: 

North Korea is hit by a massive cyber-attack that disables communications, shuts down the power grid, and cripples command and control chains. Minutes later the sky lights up with massive ordinance as MOABs detonate over North Korean nuclear facilities and launch platforms.

Yes, moron, and Russians will sit idly... Yes, my friends, this is a level of "analysis" and insanity. 

It Finally Happened.

Yes, they finally met and this is the only way it is supposed to be. Without going into still unclear details of what was discussed--they will emerge later--it is the way things are done: leaders of powerful nations meet in person and talk. Everything becomes important: the tone of voice, a general disposition, even the touch during handshake--those things may often convey things better than words themselves. Rephrasing Sir Bernard Pares:"And knowledge alone is not enough without understanding, which is much more hardly won. To no countries does this apply more than to Russia and the United States....This gap has to be filled, or will it cost us dear."

That is how responsible adults behave.

I am no idealist, I stressed it many times, and I do not expect much from Trump presidency but what I do expect is that the world must be moved away from global confrontation and this can be done. The very fact that Trump-Putin meeting lasted almost five times longer than it was settled between parties (initially--half an hour) is a very good sign--yes, there is a lot what Presidents must discuss and personal relations will matter. Now that the first step is done--let CNN and the rest of cabal of media and Democratic Party activists have a seizure. 

The 4th.

I thought, what can possibly best describe what we all today are living thr....  and then it came to me, of course! 

That is how we all are living today--on a prayer. Happy Fourth, my friends...