Meanwhile...

 ... in the world of "stealth". 

A United States F-35 fighter jet recently had a very close call over Yemen. During an operation, rebels fired a missile that came close enough to the aircraft for the pilot to take sudden evasive action. This event made people question how and where the F-35 should be used. The F-35 is considered one of the most advanced fighter jets in the world. It is designed to fly into enemy territory, avoid detection, and destroy important military targets. But in this case, the aircraft was flying in a region where the enemy did not have the kind of large military setup the F-35 was built to fight.

This is a fodder for fanboys and ... stand-up comedians. Houthis, who operate air defense which is, to put it politely, ancient obviously have no issues with detecting, tracking and developing a firing solution (of sorts) against this "stealth" fighter. 

The issue here is not even this, devastating as it is: 

With touted "sophistication" and "stealth" of F-35 being nothing but marketing legerdemain. Nope, it is the fact that this thing is not really a combat aircraft which as of today doesn't meet ANY of six critical combat readiness criteria and is not survivable in the modern air combat of the XXI century. Simple as that, even when one discounts the issue of pre- and deployment of these hangar queens anywhere in Europe. 

Also, about this Istanbul hysteria. I'm getting tired, really, from all this BS from media and media personalities:

When asked about the agenda of the possible talks between Russia and Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied that “all the talking points are on the table.” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov earlier said that Moscow wants to discuss “a sustainable settlement of the situation, first of all, by addressing the very roots of this conflict, resolving issues related to the denazification of the Kiev regime, ensuring recognition of the realities that have developed recently, including the entry of new territories into Russia.” 

For some of the posters on my blog--yes, Putin and Kremlin in general are naive. They will be lured into the the Minsk-3, will stop SMO and Moscow is being evacuated as we speak--the new Russian capital will be in Kazan, but that's not 100%, most likely it will be moved to Vladivostok. Meanwhile VSU forcefully evacuates Liman and other towns now:

You know, because as you can see yourself Russians are desperately grasping at self imposed ceasefire for May 9th. Just look at that--Russian guns fell silent. 

Yep, that's it. Russia is finished. 

They Wanted Kursk Battle.

They've got it. This is for those who get lost in scales and proportions--a reminder. This all has been happening at the small wedge of the Kursk Oblast initially about 400 sq.km (roughly 154 square miles). This is roughly the area half that of the area of NYC. "Brilliant" NATO planners, especially British, who for some reason consider themselves masters in whatever (primarily chicken shit), pumped into this wedge this "thing", which today doesn't exist anymore. Latest from Russian MoD. 

So, NATO losers decided to kill a whole combined arms army (or roughly the whole of British Army by comparison) of Ukrainian and NATO "advisers" cannon fodder and ... they succeeded, Russians took care of it. Here are the numbers. By the time all disjoined (fractured) groups of shell-shocked, panicked and demoralized wandering remnants of VSU will be completely mopped up, the personnel losses may reach 70, 000. But what's more--the thing which Western militaries simply block out, because it really hurts their feelings--these are kill ratios. While Russian forces did sustain losses, the kill ratio in Kursk is not even an average of 1 to 10-12, it is somewhere on the order of 1 to 15-20. It is a slaughter of the elite, most fanatical and the best trained troops NATO could provide (average VSU "elite" combatant is better than any combatant from the NATO armies, the US Army included). They are not there anymore. 

They also excelled at executing their own who didn't want to die under Russian fire. The body of evidence of atrocities not only against own, but Russian POWs and civilians is overwhelming. NATO militaries are forever stained as good only at killing defenseless. This is the end of any kind of "high" (from pot?) moral ground the US Army ("the force for good" like providing ISR for Nazi regime in Kiev and manning its long-range fires against civilians) tries to pretend it occupies--it doesn't. Vladimir Putin was clear--treat ALL of the VSU who committed atrocities as terrorists. Guess what, NATO "advisers" will not have the protection of Geneva, plus--being a de Facto barrier troops (that's where NATO excels too) shooting into the backs of retreating hapless VSU is a war crime and atrocity. So, let's wait and see what Mr. Witkoff tells his counterparts in Moscow this week ... 

Generally Speaking...

 ... NATO's adventurism at Kursk changed not just operational but whole strategic picture, so much so that it is impossible to cover up anymore. Well, with the exception of imbeciles from London Times (I'll be talking about it in my video). Here is Hindustan Times:

As I repeat ad nauseam--Operational Art is a CREATIVE use of military tools at your disposal which is based on solid foundation of operational-tactical level prowess of staffs and commanders. NATO doesn't have it, Russia has it in abundance. Numbers, numbers, numbers--the dynamics of their change is a story only proficient professionals can read. COFM--Correlation of Forces and Means is in the foundation of it all. NATO doesn't have understanding of it. Those who do, they are not in power. And even this understanding is not enough--NATO doesn't know and doesn't understand Russia. Should it have been otherwise, the US wouldn't have committed a suicidal blunder of getting involved with fighting Russia. The US militarily doesn't even register against the scale and prowess of Napoleon or Hitler armies--all of them destroyed by Russians. Well, now it is a desperate time in Washington... 

Cashback to 404 (c) (Kazmans), delivery by Pyaterochka my means of cruise missiles.

Let Me Remind You...

 ... a passage from my second book:

This is especially true in the field where the United States self-proclaimed to be the most advanced and powerful force in the world: aerospace. All that was done by dismissing the economic, technological and geopolitical reality which formed in front of the very eyes of the American political class, which simply lacked the required orientation and tools to properly assess an unfolding real revolution in military affairs that the United States was neither ready nor willing to acknowledge—the increasing gap between indigenous, grossly propaganda-inflated exceptionalist military capabilities and the military-technological revolution the U.S. “peers” were undergoing. Russia, in the words of Lt. Colonel Watts, indeed adapted to changing conditions better than the adversary. 

This was written five years ago. And then suddenly after 24 months of SMO this:

Considering the fact that Russia is doing it with about 10-15 percent of her available forces and demonstrated an incredible surge capacity of her industry, yes--Russia is doing really well. So, keep in mind Russian MoD's latest update on VSU losses which have been estimated at 444,000. These numbers will grow dramatically the more Russian troops advance into the former 404 territory even without killing more VSU troops, due to uncovering remains of many more KIAs who are often are not evacuated from battlefield, same goes for wounded who are left to die and can only hope for Russians to get to them before it is too late. Ukrainian POWs, many of them surrendering voluntarily, not only report appalling losses, but ask not to include them into lists for POWs exchange. Also, huge number of 404 women now on the front-lines. BTW, VSU "cut" Volga frequencies to prevent VSU from surrender.

Macgregor Talks Some Numbers...

 ... which are crucial for understanding the scale of catastrophe not just for 404 but for NATO. Macgregor, being a serious source on numbers, since he has access to Pentagon's assessments, makes a short quip: who knows how many wounded and VSU having great difficulties evacuating their wounded. 

And this is the key--those 300s are turning into 200s in massive numbers which add to the baseline of around 350,000 VSU KIAs dramatically and while it is clear that the whole number of casualties of VSU is reaching or is pass one million, we WILL BE astonished by the number of KIAs when everything is said and done.

June 17, SitRep.

Prior to this SitRep is my talking head tired of illiterate military technological BS being spread by Western media, especially those from that little insignificant island country which still pretends that it matters. 

I also explain the meaning of horseradish, while the butcher's bill today is on decline, relatively speaking, since VSU lost today under 1,000 KIAs. 

Little consolation for Washington and London, because people there never saw anything like this in their lives. The butcher's bill for June so far is terrifying.

11, 430 KIAs in VSU as of today (for some reason the data for June 8th is still not available). And here is the catch--scaling up the operation and merely linearly extrapolating casualties data from it doesn't work, the larger the scale of operation the more difference there is in the tactical, operational and strategic dynamics. This is for those who still think about "putting boots" of the US Army on the ground. Read my lips:

1. US Army is not prepared to fight such a war because it will be denied practically every single advantage it usually has over mighty Taliban, Grenada or terrorist groups with AK-47s and RPGs. Plus, US Army cannot fight without USAF dominating skies. There will be no USAF in the skies in case of Washington willing to commit a suicide;

2. The US Army simply is NOT capable to take casualties of the scale of VSU. In "boots on the ground" scenario (God forbids) the number of KIAs will grow exponentially once Russia will begin to fight a war, not conduct SMO--two different things. 

3. Much of VSU personnel, unlike it is the case with US Army, are brainwashed and many are, albeit declining in quantity, fight doggedly and have a very real hatred of Russians, which originates from the place no US serviceman has or understands. 

4. NATO "training" is worthless not just because many from VSU are better fighters and themselves can train NATO armies, US Army included, but because NATO fighting doctrines and manuals do not reflect realities of real war. No US Army operational-strategic formation--division, corps, army et al--knows or trains to fight when the whole of command corps is annihilated in decapitation strike. Russia can deliver such strikes consistently in large combined arms conflict, the NATO cannot due to issues with Air Defense and lack of any serious high speed high precision stand off weapons. This doesn't mean that there can be no leakers or even lucky hits--this is certainly possible, but any NATO battlefield C2 asset will be degraded with a much higher speed than the same can be done against Russia. 

And there you have it--this is reality of modern war. Not some BS turkey shoot in Gulf against defenseless opponent. That's the SitRep for June 17th.  Now Pentagon, allegedly, wants to "guard" reputation of its generals. Good luck with that, the only reputation all of them have is in losing wars. Nobody damages their "reputation" better than they do it themselves. And don't tell me that I didn't warn about it--I did.

I Don't Know What's The Deal.

But there is very little doubt that the US illegitimately occupies part of Syria's territory and conducts a favorite business of training terrorists. 

BEIRUT (AP) — A strike Thursday by a suspected Iranian-made drone killed a U.S. contractor and wounded six other Americans in northeast Syria, and U.S. forces retaliated with airstrikes on sites in Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the Pentagon said. Activists said the U.S. bombing killed at least four people. While it’s not the first time the U.S. and Iran have traded strikes in Syria, the attack and the U.S. response threaten to upend recent efforts to deescalate tensions across the wider Middle East, whose rival powers have made steps toward détente in recent days after years of turmoil. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the American intelligence community had determined the drone was of Iranian origin, but offered no other immediate evidence to support the claim. The drone hit a coalition base in the northeast Syrian city of Hasaka. The wounded included five American service members and a U.S. contractor.

I don't know who sent the "message", but this event is a great testament to a military fallacy of the American bases around the world, because not only they will continue to lose the "power projection" value but will continue to increase their value as fat and mostly indefensible targets against modern battlefield delivery systems. Nobody in their own mind would believe that US air defense systems such as Patriot PAC3 can handle a serious salvo of even relatively unsophisticated subsonic means of delivery. 

Meanwhile butt-hurt BSer Sebastien Roblin "reports" based on propaganda doctored "data" from 404 that Russia... finally ran out of tanks and reactivated T-54/55 ones. 

Russia is dusting off the cobwebs from military deep storage facilities in the country’s Far East, for the first time railing un-upgraded Cold War T-54B tanks westward, possibly bound for Ukraine. Now, a video of the T-54s transported by rail has surfaced. 

What uneducated hack Roblin doesn't know, because with degree in "conflict resolution" and "social and global studies" you can not know anything of value, is that Russia was using older T-54/55 since War in Chechnya not for tank operations but as a very helpful  artillery units for... drum roll... block posts, thus increasing their combat stability and as a good caliber response in case of attacks on numerous block posts. Generally Western pseudo-academic fields in "strategic studies", "conflict resolution" or "foreign relations" produce unemployable office plankton with minimal skills even for 7/11 janitor, but when you are also getting paid by Ukies, what kind of "reporting" one provides becomes abundantly clear. In general, SMO exposed all, without exception, US MSM and popular "alternative" media as uneducated hacks and unprofessional losers, including a large portion of the US "military experts" with hefty C.V.s in "fighting" in Iraq and Afghanistan, but with minimal expertise in modern wars and combined arms operations of scale. 

But that brings us to issue of military education in the US and the new crop of America's present and future military leaders. I wrote about it before and quoted Tim Bakken:

Academic standards are also nonexistent. I believe this trend started approximately ten years ago, and it has continued to get worse. West Point has stated standards for academic expectations and performance, but they are ignored. Cadets routinely fail multiple classes and they are not separated at the end-of-semester Academic Boards. Their professors recommend “Definitely Separate,” but those recommendations are totally disregarded. I recently taught a cadet who failed four classes in one semester (including mine), in addition to several she had failed in previous semesters, and she was retained at the Academy. As a result, professors have lost hope and faith in the entire Academic Board process. It has been made clear that cadets can fail a multitude of classes and they will not be separated. Instead, when they fail (and they do to a staggering extent), the Dean simply throws them back into the mix and expects the faculty to somehow drag them through the academic program until they manage to earn a passing grade. 

And this is one of very many testimonies of a collapse of professional military education in the US. 

In related news, I spoke today with Vera and famous Russian REAL war reporter Marat Khairullin--the rough estimate of just wounded in and around Bakhmut is roughly 20,000. As Marat says, who spends most of his days at the front line and communicates with serious tactical and operational level officers, they all are unanimous--combat medicine in VSU ceased to exist several months ago, and just inside Bakhmut today there are more than 2,000 wounded who still cannot get even stabilization procedures. That means they will be dead in a day or two. Reality of the 404 "offensive" is absolutely not what is being portrayed by Western media. This is not from some shitty TG channels, this is from people of repute and first hand operational (forget tactical) knowledge of the combat zone. Yes, Marat is a constant presence,  from the front lines, on Russian major TV networks. So, here is your SitRep of sorts for Friday.

Larry Did A Good Summary...

...on the "offensive", including video of Russian soldier counting KIAs (he counted 39) from ill-fated saboteur group (one of two) by VSU which tried to take Zaporozhie NPP. 

The Ukrainian offensive near Kherson in the south and Kharkiv in the north is failing. That explains why Ukrainian President Zelensky imposed restrictions the other day on what news western correspondents could report from the front. In fact, many of these reporters were pulled from the front lines. Do you think Ukraine would do that if they were pounding the hell out of the Russians and forcing the Russians to retreat? No. The west would be flooded with videos of triumphant Ukrainian troops celebrating victory. Instead of celebrations, there are videos surfacing showing Ukrainian losses in the aftermath of their failed attempt to capture the Zaporhyzhia Nuclear Power Plant (aka NPP).

While Alex and Alexander are visibly appalled by the scale of waste of human life by Kiev Regime and its puppet-masters from D.C. and London. 

I totally understand their rejection of what amounts to a criminal actions on part of Kiev and its "allies", but that is war, a real one, and when the final tally of this "counter-offensive" will be published, the Western public, the part which will decide to get real news, will be appalled. Not only by a scale of casualties of VSU, which are huge, but also by a complete military insanity of those who conceived this whole ordeal. 

As Larch provided the translation from TASS and... Kiev's own VSU people:

Ukraine's losses during the special military operation amount to hundreds of thousands of people, and the authorities did nothing to avoid casualties, former Deputy commander of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, ex-Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council General Serhiy Kryvonos said on the Ukrainian Media Network YouTube channel. "[We have] the right to say to the authorities: 'Why didn't you do anything, why < ... > hundreds of thousands of people died – why did they die? What did you do to save their lives? Stories about how it is untimely, it is an attempt to blur the memory, to erase history. And how can you erase the blood of the dead, who already number in the hundreds of thousands? Who will be responsible for this?" - TASS quotes the words of the general.

There are already some terrifying lesson for... NATO. This is the scale of daily losses the combined West armies will have to deal with if they decide to commit a suicide and get involved directly in Ukraine--no NATO country, especially the United States can face such level of losses in case of full-scale conventional war with Russia. The US Army (not to speak of US lapdogs in NATO) is simply not equipped for that kind of war and attrition rates. But I learned it from Alexander today when he mentioned that there is a period of mourning for killed around Kherson in Transcarpathia, which tells you that there is a desperate situation with mobilization reserves in VSU. More and more people from Western Ukraine are being drafted, barely trained and sent into the meat grinder. Well, they wanted to kill Russians, that was their best chance.

Didn't Want To Do That...

But I was reviewing some things related to my videos and decided to answer the "criticism" (primarily trolling from IPSO losers from 404 and other trolls) about me "promising"  that Russia will not "invade" Ukraine. Well, because I am a fairly busy man, I didn't have the chance to address this, as well as other BS and justified "criticisms". So, allow me to bring you back to December 2021(that is why I love internet--preserves a lot) and remind you that I also was very active, not any more, at the Aftershock News--a popular Russian resource until I stopped writing there due to "Podolyakization" and decline of the level of this site during SMO. I have my renome to uphold and there is a lower limit below which I simply cannot afford to stoop. So, here is what I reiterated on 22 December of 2021 and that was from the original forecast made by me in November 2021. 

Возможность им говорить с Лавровым дали, они не поняли--пришло время говорить с Шойгу, а это, да, это очень неприятно. Но как бы там ни было, по 404 решение похоже приняли и это всё называется военно-дипломатическим сопровождением. Я ещё раз обращаю внимание--доминирование эскалации. Россия обладает полным доминированием эскалации в Европе. Ни НАТО в целом, ни США в частности, оным не обладают от слова совсем и в своём арсенале имеют только ОДИН инструмент--эскалацию к ядерному порогу. Всё. Все остальные силовые элементы только у России. Ну а чё--выбор огромен, от полноценного обнуления 404, до физического истребления "Азова", до ударов по НАТОвским объектам, да мало ли чего ещё.  

Translation: They (US and 404) were given the opportunity to speak to Lavrov, they did not understand - the time has come to speak with Shoigu, and this, yes, this is very unpleasant. But be that as it may, in regards to 404 the decision seems to have been made and this is all (Lavrov's statements) called military-diplomatic accompaniment. Once again, I draw attention to the escalation dominance. Russia has a complete escalation dominance in Europe. Neither NATO as a whole, nor the United States in particular, possess it at all and have only ONE tool in their arsenal - escalation to the nuclear threshold. That is it. All other power elements are only in Russia's possession. Well, what - the choice is huge, from a full-fledged zeroing of 404, to the physical extermination of "Azov", to attacks on NATO facilities, but who knows what else.

The reason I didn't express this in this blog (albeit I did hint on a number of occasions), I didn't want to be explaining myself constantly. So, good that I waited. Time did put everything in its place. Plus, at that time I was especially busy. So, it was clear that military action is coming already in early Autumn of 2021, the main question was the scale and it is clear now that the scale is "a full-fledged zeroing of 404". And then "discussions" of Russia's December 2021 ultimatum will commence. 

In related news, here is Larry talking to Steve Ericsson about many things like SMO, NATO, Russia what have you. As always, Larry does a great job.  Also, there were other 150 corpses of Nazis and VSU found in refrigerator (which was broken) in the deep recesses of Azov Steel, those remnants will be returned to Ukrainian side. We will not have realistic figures of Ukie losses for a while and most likely they will grow, not decline. It is clear that they are horrendous and Ukie propaganda is having a very difficult time hiding them from own people.