Ha, Something To Talk About.

I don't read Rod Dreher, nor do I care much what he has to say on any issue and, of course, I can never forget his cowardly smearing of Phil Giraldi after Phil's famous article on Jews for which Phil, who spends his life fighting debilitating influence of Israeli groups on US foreign policy, was banished from The American Conservative. I do not agree with everything Phil writes on the Jewish issue in the US but Dreher is nobody when it comes, however controversial it might be, to life-long service, sometimes very dangerous service, to the United States Phil Giraldi provided. So, in general, Dreher is not a person I would find pleasant to communicate, which is expected when talking to a "writer" without any serious education, profession (B.A. in Journalism is not an education) or experiences, which Dreher's writing proves beyond the shadow of a doubt. Yet, in a surprising move, Dreher posted in his blog at TAC this piece, or rather a letter to him: 

               Cultural Marxism: Enemy Of Real Marxism?

The letter of some Marxist makes some crucial observations and they are dealing with Frankfurt School which is as Marxist as I am Chinese. So, I thought it may interest some of you in trying to figure out what real Marxism is and why it is good only as analytical tool and will never work as intended, inevitably morphing into economic fusionism, but it may also give some ideas of why most "cultural Marxists" would have been and would be beaten in Russia as post-modernist perverts and why many who would be kicking their asses would be those nasty Russian "communists" or Marxists. So, take a look... 

Short Response To Michael Kofman.

Quote by Michael Kofman of Center for Naval Analysis:

"Low observation is far short of invisibility, but if this element of fifth-generation aircraft technology is 'paper fiction,' then why is Russia building the PAK-FA, dreaming about the PAK-DA, and the same can be said of Chinese prototypes in development."

Here, Kofman uses false equivalency and misses the point completely. Here are few things he misses:

1. PAK-FA has an official title and is known as SU-57 and is in series production, with the contract for first 76 aircraft signed few days ago;

2. Being Low Observable while boasting outstanding classic and modern, cutting edge, combat capabilities and performance beyond "Stealth" feature, such as SU-57 has, and having a flying embarrassment, aka F-35, built around primarily LO in radio diapason is not the same. Evidently Kofman does not recognize this crucial difference;

3. Kofman also fails to recognize the fact that in any potential NATO (USA)-Russia conflict, US "Stealth" aircraft would fly against Russia's Air Defense not against American one and here the capability abyss separating the two can not be larger. Kofman, as a "military analyst" should know that;

4. I omit here what I write non-stop about: modern air-defense signal processing and sensor fusion removes most, grossly overstated to start with, advantages of LO in a EW and sensor dense environment of the military peer. In the end, it is known fact that depending on the conditions even SU-35's Irbis radar "sees" F-22 at the ranges of up to 90 kilometers;

5. Finally, it is not a good practice for analyst to defer to the potential enemy, such as Russia, in terms of what she is doing and use it for propaganda, or self-medicating (most likely), purposes. In the end Israeli Air Force still cannot coherently explain what kind of bird damaged IAF's F-35 in Syria, same as why IAF prefers to launch at Syria (allegedly Iranian) targets from the international airspace. 

Moreover, ignoring a dramatic difference between the use of air power in Russia and the United States, especially projected against the background of radical doctrinal differences, is hardly a competent idea, unless, of course, it is used for entertainment of amateurs. But then again, for that--there is a rich and vibrant field of Clancyesque military "literature", where such theses, as Kofman advances, belong.        

And Liberty For All.

On this 4th. Where else but in...Russia;))) 

Rocking Mob! Yeah, America, it used to be you...

Fourteen Russian Sailors Die In Fire.

On what is being reported as a deep-diving station AS-12 aka Losharik. This is GUGI's (Main Directorate of Deep-Water Research) field--a very classified field, I may add. Presently the submersible is back to base in Severomorsk. It looks like the investigation is already in full swing and is headed by Navy's Commander in Chief. Stay tuned, all of it may change completely once more information pours in. 

UPDATE: my personal opinion: from what I gather, the tragedy happened in the base. Norway tried to "throw in" some news (fake, of course) that there was some kind of gas explosion. Russian MoD vehemently denied it.


UPDATE 07/03/19. Pretty much most of it summed up here:

Heroic Russian naval officers sacrificed their lives, saving their colleagues and a civilian, as they battled flames on board a deepwater research submersible in the Barents Sea, the nation’s defense minister has said.The fire on the Navy’s deepwater research submersible had claimed the lives on 14 officers on board on Monday. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu shared some details of the crew’s conduct.“The crew acted heroically in a critical situation. They evacuated a civilian from the compartment, which was engulfed in flames, and sealed the door behind him in order to avoid the spreading of the fire onto the rest of the vessel,” he said.

As was suspected from the get go--it was fire and the compartment, as is most of the time the case on subs, was sealed--it is THE procedure--they fought it and got it under control. Out of the crew of 25 + civilians on board, 14 died. Request for people at this blog: please do not refer here to such tabloids as Debka File and other "ANALytical" organizations of this type--their main task is to spread BS, the same goes for Western MSM. As for deceased, they are on the eternal patrol.

I Am Not Sure Yet How To View This.

I mean new think-tank headed by Andrew Bacevich--The Quincy Institute. From the get go one is startled by the names of couple of contributors to what is defined as responsible statecraft institute--George Soros' name definitely makes one to pause. Yet, one has to keep in mind that ideas behind this new think-tank set it in a complete opposition to a majority of the present US think-tanks whose main purpose is justification of disastrous US foreign policy and military adventurism. So, Quincy Institute's intro does make sense:

The foreign policy of the United States has become detached from any defensible conception of U.S. interests and from a decent respect for the rights and dignity of humankind. Political leaders have increasingly deployed the military in a costly, counterproductive, and indiscriminate manner, normalizing war and treating armed dominance as an end in itself. Moreover, much of the foreign policy community in Washington has succumbed to intellectual lethargy and dysfunction. It suppresses or avoids serious debate and fails to hold policymakers and commentators accountable for disastrous policies. It has forfeited the confidence of the American public. The result is a foreign policy that undermines American interests and tramples on American values while sacrificing the stores of influence that the United States had earned.

Attacks by the most vile Neo-cons, such as low-life Bill Kristol, against this new think-tank also make total sense--the whole idea that somebody other than them (Neo-cons) will have a platform when discussing issues of war and peace terrifies them, especially when such a platform is headed by a cadre US Army senior officer with operational experience, especially knowing what a personal tragedy this officer went through when losing his son, US Army young officer in a criminal military adventure in Iraq. Bacevich's voice does matter in this case. 

Larison's comment on this new endeavor is good:

The name of the Quincy Institute for this new effort to promote a foreign policy of peace and restraint is well-chosen. As we are coming up on the bicentennial of John Quincy Adams’ famous July 4th speech in a couple years, we do well to remember what he said to his fellow countrymen. This passage in particular should be repeated as often as possible:

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

It took a long time, but Adams’ warning came to pass. We did enlist under other banners than our own, and we did involve ourselves in the wars of interest and intrigue, and the maxims of our policy have changed to force. There are many that want to make sure that our foreign policy remains this way, and the Quincy Institute offers Americans the hope that it does not have to be that way forever.

Remarkably, the only sensible discussion on America's real and legitimate national interests is possible only within the framework which Quincy Institute wants to establish. At this stage one is only hopeful that establishment of this institute is not one step too few, too late.

Monopoly Crisis?

An interesting piece from  Matt Stoller and Lucas Kunce at TAC with symptomatic title: America’s Monopoly Crisis Hits the Military. It is a fairly long and substantive piece--I mean it makes the case, certainly. Even I somewhere here discussed China's penetration of the US semi-conductor market, including in military field. The authors make this observation:

Who are these stockholders that CEOs are so compelled to answer to? Oftentimes, China. Jennifer M. Harris, an expert in global markets with experience at the U.S. State Department and the U.S. National Intelligence Council, researched a recent explosion of Chinese strategic investment in American technology companies. She found that China has systematically targeted U.S. greenfield investments, “technology goods (especially semiconductors), R&D networks, and advanced manufacturing.” The trend accelerated, until the recent flare-up of tensions between the United States and China. “China’s foreign direct investment (FDI) stock in the U.S. increased some 800% between 2009 and 2015,” she wrote. Then, from 2015 to 2017, “Chinese FDI in the U.S. …climbed nearly four-fold, reaching roughly $45.6 billion in 2016, up from just $12.8 billion in 2014.” This investment runs right through Wall Street, the key lobbying group trying to ratchet down Trump’s tough negotiating posture with the Chinese. Rather than showing concern about the increasing influence of a foreign power in our commerce and industry, Wall Street banks have repeatedly followed Archie Cox down the path of easy returns.

And while I agree to a degree that monopolies are not necessarily good in many respects, the focus should be on what is highlighted in yellow. Yes, one may create and then tweak all kinds of legislative and financial instruments in order to decrease "the influence of a foreign power"--enough to take a look at Russia's program of import substitution. But in the American case we immediately encounter a purely, not just economic capitalist sense with US selling to China the rope by which she is being hanged, to rephrase Marx. The issue is the culture--the United States simply lacks all required cultural pressures to make the whole thing work. Yes, yes, monopolies--I get it. Try now to explain to most US "elites" what the real war is. Good luck doing this--there is no culture of grasping it. Only US military people, and even then, not all of them, can and do contemplate what is going to happen to them, to their families, property, things they love in case of real serious war. US collective memory has no recollection of massive bombing of Chicago, of the rape of women near Boston, concentration camps, and other manifestations of real war. 

That's the problem--nobody realistically believes that China or Russia will conduct massive amphibious landings at the Pacific Northwest Coast or around Tampa to kill, rape, pillage Americans. There is no land invasion threat to the United States--there never realistically was and that is the factor which plays huge disjointing role in both American mentality and the way business is conducted in military-technological field. In other words, the United States is not really under ANY serious pressure to produce top-notch defensive weapons. Of course, whipping oneself into constant paranoid frenzy of seeing military threat everywhere can work, but only so far, in the end--one has to grow up with shared historic memory of Chicago burning in Japanese bombing raids and Wehrmacht landing on the beaches of South Carolina to really FEEL THE NEED to give it a proper attitude beyond the limits of financial enrichment and bragging. I will quote myself from my first book:

War, a bloody and gory midwife of a nation’s cohesion, largely spared the United States and the American obsession with weapons can be viewed in part as a longing for a missing formative factor of most modern nations. It is in this field of weapons design and manufacturing that the United States ultimately sees the extension of its own self and needs a constant validation of itself as a global superpower. 

So, while piece on monopolies is worth reading and contemplating, the answer lies, to a very large degree, in a cultural field and there is no escaping it. And then, of course, Russia's military does it all through monopolies--Rostec anyone? It does it all and, let's face it, some of the military technologies they produce are amazing and they work because they are produced within militarily totally different cultural environment. Again, quoting myself:

For a nation with such a military history as Russia’s the issue of military technology is an issue of survival. As such, weapons in Russia are sacralized because behind them are generations of Russians who shed blood to make those weapons what they are. They have become a part of the culture to such a degree that commercial considerations take a very distant second place to a main purpose of these weapons—to actually defend the nation. This is absolutely not the case in the United States, with some exception for its Navy, with Americans having no knowledge or recollection of what real war is and what instruments for fighting and winning it are needed. Those things cannot be paid for in money, they are paid for in blood.

Guess what, no nation ever survived the war without state monopolizing it. And that means.... ahem.... monopoly.

S-500 Is In.

As many news agencies reported:

The S-500 Prometey, Russia’s next-generation surface-to-air long-range missile system, has completed most of its trials and is ready to go into series production, according to the Russian industry and trade minister.The development of the system is in its “final phase” after each element of the system was tested individually, Denis Manturov told Interfax in an interview. The current work is focused on checking the S-500’s performance as an integrated system.“All main specifications of the air defense system have been confirmed during the tests and it is now ready for series production,” he said, adding that the hardware will be delivered to the Defense Ministry on schedule.

It is a milestone. I hate speculations, especially filled with all kinds of pseudo-scientific psychobabble with a sprinkle of many cool technical terms. So, I'll leave it to many a "military expert" out there and will add only the fact of which I am certain and spoke about not for once--S-500 is the system to deal with perspective hyper-sonic weapons, which may come out of US military-industrial complex. I know of Russian air-defense professionals who described transition from S-300 to S-400 as being in awe of its capabilities when compared with S-300s. S-500 is something of the same scale when compared to S-400. Recall also that there are few serious issues when trying to detect and track hyper-sonic glider vehicles for radar. I assume that such issues have been resolved in S-500. 

 

Together with combat laser systems, S-500 will constitute the backbone of future Russia's anti-air and space defense and if my hypothesis that S-500 is designed to intercept maneuvering hyper-sonic vehicles with velocities of M=10+, that makes it a system which already has genuine future capability since, except for Russia, and, allegedly, China no such weapons do exist anywhere else so far. The United States is in pursuit here but will it succeed in creating something akin to Avangard is yet to be seen. Per pure anti-ballistic and aerial targets, combination of S-400 and S-500 and combat lasers, supported by short-to-medium range AD infrastructure such as new, greatly up-ranged versions of S1 Pantsir, Tor-M2 and Buk--such an environment is a worst nightmare of any combat aircraft or stand-off weapon in the world. So, at this stage, the shield is winning. It all may change, of course, but I don't see it yet. 

 

So, "the slow blade penetrates the shield" (c). For now this "slow blade" will be, traditional now, propaganda in Western media in a desperate attempt to shift the focus away from military-doctrinal catastrophe which unfolded for the West in a sense that new defensive technologies coming on-line if not make completely obsolete, then blunt weapons, which in the West were considered effective, dramatically, to the point of ensuring that under any circumstances, including any preventive strike scenarios (they do exist) the response will be instant and devastating. It also gives Russia an additional bargaining chip in any geopolitical rearrangement scenario. This also opens significant additional commercial opportunities for export versions of S-400 and there are many, very many takers of this complex. 

 

As I said and wrote--we all are inside Real Revolution In Military Affairs.