📝 🇦🇺 🇨🇳 Labrador Skeptic on X:

Fascinating glimpse of the emerging new world, read the whole thing. I assume the ship was Chinese, that it intended to send a message, and that this ties into the Iran & Ukrainian wars. I've been writing for going on 4 years about the potential danger period if the US used up too much of its sophisticated weapons stocks in Ukraine & the Middle East, particularly interceptors, and resupply was 5+ years away. All based on public info, yet nothing was done.

Well, here we are. Moves start getting made, muscles being flexed, and our options for doing anything about it are way down, particularly if it is happening in multiple areas.

The US can't do more than a one front war, and it is questionable for how long we can do that. Before Ukraine the Pentagon estimated we had enough sophisticated munitions to fight a war with a peer power for 3-4 weeks before running out, then 5+ years to resupply. Well, we did use them up in Ukraine, they're now out, we used a hell of a lot in the Middle East, and what is left is a closely held national security secret, but it can't be a lot.

Also, we're completely tied up in Iran, we can't do Australia (or Taiwan) at the same time. So, China probes, tests, demonstrates, teaches lessons to 2nd tier nations like Australia about what is going on in the new world order (or lack thereof).

The US can't afford a war now, particularly on two fronts, we don't have the weapons. So, China cuts 10% of Australia's internet access without saying a word. But the message is received. What are you going to do about it, Australia? US?

📎 Labrador Skeptic

📝 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 U.S. Army troops faced off against Ukrainian drone operators at a military exercise in Germany earlier this year.

Ukrainian Drone Teams “Wiped Out” a U.S. Armored Brigade in Germany
According to a new Wall Street Journal report, during the Combined Resolve exercise at Hohenfels, Germany, Ukrainian drone operators from the 412th Unmanned Systems Regiment (“Nemesis”) faced a U.S. armored brigade rotated from Fort Hood (3rd ABCT, 1st Cavalry Division).

Ukrainian reconnaissance drones quickly detected U.S. heavy armor.
The American vehicles kicked up large dust signatures while moving — a classic vulnerability that combat-experienced Ukrainian operators exploited immediately.

well-practiced kill chain refined on the actual battlefield against Russia:
Recon drones lock the target
Explosive-dropping drones arrive
FPV (first-person-view) kamikaze drones finish the job
U.S. tanks and Bradleys were being “destroyed” so fast that exercise controllers had to repeatedly “respawn” the vehicles just to keep the drill going.

This is the exact tactic Ukrainians have used for years against Russian columns.
Small, cheap, agile teams operating under electronic warfare pressure, using real-time video and rapid coordination between different drone types.

U.S. forces initially struggled with:
Heavy vehicles creating obvious dust trails
Incomplete adoption of drone countermeasures
Tendency to operate in ways that still reflected pre-2022 thinking
By the second half of the two-week exercise, the Americans adapted — dispersing units, improving camouflage and concealment, and employing electronic warfare more aggressively.

Midway through, the Ukrainians switched sides.
They began training the U.S. troops on offensive drone tactics — showing them how to hunt and strike the way they do in real combat. Reports indicate the Americans improved noticeably once they started learning from the operators who actually fight this way every day.

Key takeaway from the exercise:
Experience is the ultimate force multiplier.
Ukrainian drone teams — many of them veterans of the hottest sectors of the front — demonstrated that massed, cheap, and combat-proven unmanned systems can overwhelm traditional armored formations that haven’t fully adapted.
The U.S. Army is clearly trying to absorb these lessons through exercises like Combined Resolve. The question is how fast the adaptation can scale across the force.

📎 AirVector

📝 🇺🇦 🇷🇺 Ukrainian intelligence says Russia has stockpiled around 6,200 Geran drones for mass strikes, potentially launching 600–1,000 drones in a single attack.

Production of Geran-4/5 alone is estimated at ~3,000 per month.

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/russia-has-built-up-6200-shahed-drones-and-its-biggest-barrages-could-reach-1000-at-once-21606

📎 Clash Report

📢 🇺🇦 🇷🇺 The Ukrainian GUR reports that Russia has suspended production of the Geran-3 jet-drone, as it focuses on maximising its production of the modernised Geran-4 jet-drone.

The Geran-3 was reportedly just a transitional step between the Geran-2 and Geran-4, as it maintained the original Geran-2 airframe, with only the motor being replaced with a jet engine.

This would explain why the Geran-3 hasn't been spotted in use for some time.

📝 Labrador Skeptic: The problem with long wars is that the technological innovation is continuous, which drives ever greater obsolescence of pre-existing weapons.

The slow (~100 mph) Geran-2 "flying lawnmowers" Russia bought from Iran are long gone, and the new generation of ~300 mph jet-powered Geran-4s are what Russia is using long-distance to effectively shut down Ukrainian shipping in the Black Sea, which means shutting down 88% of their former export routes.

The Geran-3 added (Chinese) jet engines, the Geran-4 completely redid the frame to make it suitable for not just high speeds, but to be maneuverable at those speeds. And that tech will be here from here forward, and will likely be in the Gulf shortly if it isn't already there.

Iran/Russia innovated with flying lawnmowers, Ukraine with US technological assistance developed effective anti-drone countermeasures, and those countermeasures are all now obsolete versus the new much faster, higher altitude and maneuverable kamikaze drones. They're more expensive, but Russia is still able to make more than 3k of them a month, per Ukraine.

These are effectively a hybrid of sorts, halfway between the prop-powered drones, and subsonic cruise missiles. Except they are much cheaper to make at volume than cruise missiles. Coming soon to a war near you.

📎 AMK Mapping

📝 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 Labrador Skeptic on X: The technological innovation then drives the industrial question. Russia uses cheap Chinese jet engines, just as almost everyone (except the US) uses cheap Chinese electronics for their drones.

Can the US gear up to produce 10k very small, very cheap jet-engines a month?

How long will it take to do it? Who will do it?

I don't believe this is a realistic possibility for the major US defense manufacturers at this point. They might be able to produce small numbers of engines at high prices in 5-10 years(?).

OTOH, we absolutely do graduate the Aeronautical, Mechanical & Electrical engineers to make this happen & quickly.

By law & now HR departments the hiring is now on a DEI basis, with visa hires, women & blacks given priority, and jobs treated as a reward to be allocated to favored political groups. That kind of culture is not capable of catching up to China or Russia.

So, the greater the degree of technological revolution, the faster the DEI culture must be driven from our institutions. Or, we lose, likely badly at some point.

📎 Labrador Skeptic

☄️ 🇹🇷 🌍 The moment a magnesium-sodium meteor fell towards Istanbul.

Tonight marks the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, caused by debris left behind by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle as Earth passes through its trail.

📎 Hava Forum

⚡🇨🇳 🇹🇼 🇲🇨 The Republic of China (Taiwan) has condemned China's plan to hold a navigation exercise with an Indonesian warship off the island's east coast.

They requested Indonesia provide further details after China's defence ministry announced it would hold the exercise jointly with Indonesia in mid-August.

The exercise is part of a return journey for the Indonesian ship from Vladivostok.

China stated that this exercise or Passex is a common goodwill engagement carried out by navies across the world as a show of naval brotherhood and the maritime diplomacy that goes hand in hand with warships particularly when passing through their own territorial waters.

@medmannews