Israel’s Yemen Front: Iran’s Houthi Proxies Wage War at Sea and in Space
For Iran, Yemen’s instability provides a type of plausible deniability. The ayatollah regime can blame its terror attacks, assassinations, raids on shipping, and missile and drone strikes on indigenous Yemeni insurgents, primarily the Houthis — a Shia group from northwestern Yemen that controls the capital, Sana, and the major port city, Hodeida.
My latest Creators Syndicate column.
B-21 RAIDER BOMBER TAKES OFF: Congratulations to the USAF on the plane’s successful first test flight — yesterday, November 10. But as the Reuters report says, the first test flight was supposed to take place in December 2021. Here’s a close up: the unveiling photo from December 2022.
STRATEGYPAGE DESERVES SOME CLICKS: Time To Strike Ayatollah Iran? Of course it’s time — high time. Long overdue. Should have hit the murderous creeps hard in 1979. But — Jimmy Carter. Then Obama-Biden. Glenn went with the Creators Syndicate link since it went on the web around 1500 hours Eastern Standard.
POWERLINE PODCAST: America Confronts Multi-Front Proxy Wars Steve Hayward and I discuss the current hellscape.
APRES INSTA OPEN THREAD AIN’T ELITIST APRES SKI: Turkey’s Erdogan Applauds Hamas’ Terror: Is Erdo’s ‘Middle Man’ Sham Kaput?
Extract:
March 2022 — Good Face: Erdo claims he’s the go-between for Ukraine and Russia. Oct. 19, 2023 — Bad Bad Face: Erdo ally and notorious antisemite Muhammed Ali Fatih Erbakan calls for the closure of NATO military bases in Turkey. Erbakan specifies the Incirlik Air Base and the Kurecik Radar facility. Reality Question: Is Iran paying Erbakan or is Russia?
Oct. 23 — Happy Face: Erdo sends Turkey’s parliament a bill approving Sweden’s NATO membership.
Oct. 25 — NATO Bad Face but for Islamists a Happy Face: Erdo tells his party faithful: “Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people.”
Oct. 26 Counter-Terror Honest Face: Turkish aircraft and drones on attack Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) positions in northern Iraq. Turkey and Erdo, for good reason, call the PKK terrorists. Turkey claims the strikes killed 10 PKK terrorists. Justification: the PKK’s suicide bomber October 1 attacks in Ankara.
Justified retaliation? Yes. Yet. Hamas propagandists and NATO knee-jerks condemned Israel for justified retaliation against Hamas’ Oct. 7 baby-beheading atrocities.
Check it out.
USMC ROBOT GOAT: It’s a combat robot goat. The four-legged robot in the photo is carrying an M72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon (LAW). In 2014 Israel ordered 25,000 LAWs. As the 2014 update notes, the LAW is “often used against enemy troops inside bunkers and buildings.” It packs a punch and is light enough to be carried by…an infantryman or a robot goat.
LITTLE WARS AND BIG BIG WARS: America Faces Multi-Front Proxy Warfare
Defeat in detail, a classic military stratagem, occurs when a comparatively weaker combatant secures victory over a more powerful opponent through the piecemeal destruction of the stronger force. The weaker combatant never lets the stronger adversary bring all of its power to bear.
Bit by bit the piecemeal attrition degrades the strong to the point the once-powerful retreats.
Published October 25.
THE UKRAINE SUPPLY LINE WAR: Logistics Rules the Battlefield
The four-month-old Ukrainian offensive in southern Ukraine recently achieved a major objective. Ukrainian forces advanced to within GMLRS missile range of the only Russian rail line that carried supplies to occupied Crimea. Ukraine had already disabled the other rail supply route to Crimea, which used the Kerch Strait bridge.
The significance:
Russia’s loss of its last rail supply line to the Crimea (which also means rail supply is cut off to much of Russian-occupied Ukraine east of the Crimea) is particularly critical concerning diesel and other liquid fuels because those are necessary for Russian tactical communications, which are largely based on vehicles because Russian man-portable field radios are scarce and insecure due to lack of effective encryption. Russian vehicle-mounted radios and associated electronics, such as computerized sights for tanks, must be charged by the vehicles’ own batteries as Russian military vehicles lack the auxiliary power units (APUs) that Western military vehicles use. So Russian vehicles must run their motors for about an hour a day to charge their batteries even when they are not in action. That burns up a lot of fuel, so the Russian forces in Crimea and just to the east of it will have their combat power reduced by 50-80% in ten or so days. In addition to being out of ammunition.
It’s the latest StrategyPage Logistics Update (Jim Dunnigan’s online How To Make War).
GMLRS = Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System. Here’s a photo of a USMC wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) participating in a live fire exercise. Ukraine fields the HIMARS. This Air Weapons update from 2018 discusses US Army and US Marine Corps use of the HIMARS. GMLRS rocket range varies — newer versions can hit targets 70-90 kilometers away. Longer range variants are in the works.
STEVEN HAYWARD IN THE NY POST: Reaction to Hamas massacre shows it’s time to decolonize the campus
Colonialism, or its parent category “imperialism,” is the all-purpose charge Lenin developed a century ago to explain the failure of Marxist historical predictions and supply a new rationale for whipping up radical enthusiasm for revolution.
In practice it is a means of delegitimizing capitalism and sanctifying resentment of successful groups like Jews, Asians and whites generally (hence the related term ubiquitous on campus, “white supremacy”).
Despite centuries of persecution and repeated pogroms like Oct. 7, Jews persist as a supremely successful ethnic group, “overrepresented” (campus terminology, again) in the ranks of Nobel Prize winners, scientists and most elite professions including, ironically, academia, though this appears to be quickly changing.
The basic premise of our universities today is that if your ethnic group is statistically “overrepresented,” you are a de facto “oppressor.”
Read the entire brilliant essay.
MY LATEST CREATORS SYNDICATE COLUMN: Like Mark Twain’s death, the demise of the tank has been “greatly exaggerated.” Yes, Israeli tank firepower is an antidote for fanaticism.
…An Army buddy told me about a could-be political appointee he escorted through Department of Defense briefings in the late 1970s. The pipe-smoking pontificator kept saying, “The tank’s dead.” My infantry pal finally turned to him and said: “Yes sir, the tank’s a dinosaur, but it’s the baddest dinosaur on the battlefield. You face one.”
It’s 2023. The tank, in the form of Main Battle Tanks (MBT) like the U.S. Army’s M1A2 Abrams or Israeli Merkava 5, is far from dead. Despite media obituaries referencing Russia’s disastrous 2022 tank operations in Ukraine, the 2023 MBT as built by NATO nations and allies like South Korea and Israel remains potent on the battlefield.
That is, if the 2023 tank crews manning the MBTs, and their accompanying infantry in armored infantry vehicles (mechanized infantry), and their operational commanders know how to fight a combined arms war.
Check it out.
RELATED: These are photos of vehicles mentioned in the column. 1- Recent Merkava 5 photo. 2- A Merkava in the field, 2018. 3- A 1st Cavalry Division M1A2 SEPV3, 2020. 4- A U.S M1A2 and two German Leopard 2A6s, Poland 2023. 5- German Leopard 2s in Norway, Exercise Trident Juncture 2018. Very fine photo. And finally 6- An M1A2 with TUSK — Tank Urban Survival Kit. Photo taken in 2010. But all of the equipment is still useful in urban combat. Note the Explosive Reactive Armor tile. TUSK entered service in 2007 with reactive armor panels for the side and rear of the tank, to provide added protection from RPGs. This June 2023 ARMOR update explains.
INSIDE BASEBALL: “You must win every pitch.” Martin Maldonado. Catcher, Houston Astros. October 18, 2023. After game interview on FS1.
CHINA UPDATE: Dynasties
…Economic growth continues to decline – it is now under two percent a year and getting worse. That means more unemployment and lower living standards for most Chinese. A decade ago it became clear that the purported years of ten percent GDP growth were ending, assuming they were ever true at all. Not just because economic growth was slowing but because the central government was finally forced to go public, for the first time, about the false economic data that provincial officials had been sending to the central government for decades.
Yes, “the official numbers were doctored.” And “Xi Jinping hasn’t come up with a workable solution…”
INFORMATION COMBAT: Hamas and the Information War
…defeating Hamas in a city fight or even a village often means killing civilians living in the area. The military term is collateral damage. The civilians were not targets, but they were in the battle zone. In death the dead become Hamas information warfare assets.
The latest How to Make War information warfare update.
MEET THE MERKAVA 5 –HAMAS IS ABOUT TO: Barak Does It Better
A year ago Israel introduced the fifth version of its Merkava tank. The Merkava 5 was quietly developed, built, tested and deployed in small numbers during late 2022. This was ahead of schedule because the original delivery date was supposed to be early 2023. Like the earlier Merkava models, Merkava 5 is an improved version of the previous model and proved to be such an impressive upgrade that it was given a name; Barak.
It’s StrategyPage’s latest How To Make War ARMOR update.
RELATED: (1) 2018 photo of a Merkava on a training exercise. (2) 2005 photo of an early model Merkava. (3) 2017 photo Israeli female tankers in front of a Merkava. and (4) Posted in 2018 but the propaganda imagery dates from 2016. Hamas/Hezbollah terrorists celebrate on fake Merkavas. In the lower left photo the tires of a wheeled vehicle are visible beneath the fake tank.
STRATEGYPAGE’S LATEST INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Hamas Goes Rogue and Beyond : Jim Dunnigan’s “How To Make War” series examines Israel’s intelligence failure.
The lede for Friday the 13th:
The October 7th Hamas attack on Israel was an embarrassing failure of Israeli intelligence services. One reason for the surprise was that the planning did not involve a lot of foreign supporters. It was apparently just Iran, quietly increasing its supply of guided rockets, munitions and training personnel.
Ah but:
The Israeli military is one of the best in the world and not in need of the kind of aid sent to Ukraine. Israel needs more cooperation from its Arab neighbors and further Israeli economic cooperation depends on some Arab diplomatic and intelligence support. The Hamas attack was a major intelligence failure for Israel and the Arab neighbors realize that this was an Iranian intelligence victory. If Iran could do this again it would most likely be used against one of the Arab states that oppose expansion of Iranian influence in the region. Expending Hamas to accomplish this attack on Israel reminds Arab states that it could happen to them. Iran is a common enemy or threat to Israel, Arabs and Turks.
ASIDE: The meaning of “lede.”
STRATEGYPAGE’S LATEST UPDATE ON TURKEY: Erdogan’s government retaliates against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terror attacks. Turkey is retaliating for terror attacks launched in Ankara on October 1. The counter-attacks include airstrikes. PKK base camps are often in or near villages. This is relevant knowledge when you hear critics condemn Israeli airstrikes against terrorists. The update also discusses the Turkey-Israel diplomatic rapprochement that has been in the works for over a year (see Sept. 27 entry). Hamas terror attacks have scotched that, at least temporarily. Tehran’s ayatollahs fear Turkish and Israeli cooperation, and fear is not too dramatic a word. Actually, Israel and Turkey have been discussing several economic projects for quite some time, including major energy-related projects.
BUT THE TIME IS SO RIPE AS LONG AS BIDEN’S IN CHARGE: Beijing, Pay Attention: Don’t Let Ukraine-Gaza Lead to WWIII Taiwan
FACT ONE: A major land war rages in Europe. Twenty months ago, Russia invaded Ukraine without provocation and the horror grinds on with mass casualties and World-War-I-like attrition.
FACT TWO: War in the Middle East. An Iranian proxy army, Hamas, launches a complex and well-planned attack on Israel. Mass atrocity by Islamist terrorists shocks the civilized world — at least what’s left of civilization.
…is war in Asia the next explosion igniting World War III?
If we’ve reached “peak China”, remember “A fading power can become a risk-taking power.” So read the entire essay.