BUFF LEAVES BARKSDALE, HEADING TO CENTCOM: A B-52H assigned to the USAF’s Bomber Task Force leaves Louisiana for a deployment in the Central Command area of operations. Think of it as a message to Tehran.

ANGEL AND RAPTOR: Capt. Eric Doyle, commanding officer of the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, flies in formation with an F-22 Raptor assigned to the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team.

CHINA’S COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP TARGETS AMERICAN CREATIVITY

FOR THE EYES OF ARMOR AFICIONADOS ONLY: Bahrain decides to buy the best. And it’s made in USA.

SCREWTOP LAUNCH: An E-2C Hawkeye early warning and attack aircraft takes off from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

SUDAN’S PROTESTORS NOW CONFRONT THE MILITARY TRANSITIONAL COUNCIL

ACEMAKER: A T-33 trainer banks during an air show at Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina. Per the caption, the T-33 is a two-seat version of the USAF’s first jet fighter, the F-80 Shooting Star.

HEAVY LIFT: A USMC CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter carries an M777 towed 155mm howitzer during an exercise at Fire Base Burt, Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range, California.

HOW NORTH KOREAN COAL ELUDES SANCTIONS:

From VOA:

The North Korean vessel Wise Honest, owned by Korea Songi Shipping Co. of Pyongyang, set sail toward Indonesia after loading about $3 million worth of coal from North Korean Nampo Port in March 2018.

Then the voyage got complicated.

MEET SEA HUNTER: The vessel represents an entirely new class of unmanned sea surface vehicle developed in partnership between the Office of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Sea Hunter recently completed an autonomous sail from San Diego to Hawaii and back—the first ship ever to do so autonomously.

VLAD THE IMPLODER: Vlad the Impaler was the historical figure behind the Dracula legend. Alas, Vladimir Putin’s neo-Soviet imperial dreams are imploding. The StrategyPage podcast discusses why — and includes praise for U.S. fracking.

Here’s some useful background to Vlad’s implosion.

Leon Aron is a scholar and has an op-ed in The LA Times that does a good job summarizing Putin’s neo-Soviet imperialism. In another article linked at RealClearDefense Paul Goble notes the Russian Navy really isn’t capable of supporting Putin’s grand imperial plans.

After Goble quotes a Russian naval expert who says the Russian fleet is in “horrific” condition, he adds a telling sentence: “The Kremlin, for its part, is doing what it can to suggest otherwise via an intense propaganda campaign.” This tidbit follows a few paragraphs later:

But that is not the only problem the Russian navy faces, Timokhin continues. “It is a lie” that there has not been enough money for the fleet. Rather some of it has been drained off by corruption and much of the rest lost because of the absence of a strategic plan and structures capable of adhering to one, rigid plan. He also blames sanctions and unnamed “foreign agents” for undercutting the Russian fleet (Topwar.ru, April 5).

And just why are the sanctions in place? Oh yeah, Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Navy’s misery is a topic StrategyPage has covered for the last two decades. StrateyPage’s latest Russia update discusses other military woes, to include poor morale. It’s a post rich with insights. Here are a couple:

Russia has other problems with its actual military capabilities. Government efforts to project the image of a modern, professional and constantly improving armed forces is proving more difficult to sustain…Russian development and manufacturing efforts are still crippled by shortages of cash and talent. Arms exports are hurt by this, especially with competitors like China continuing to produce Russian designs more efficiently (more effective, reliable and less costly in the long run). New gear that does get produced in significant numbers is usually for export customers who have the cash for procurement that the Russian military still lacks.

This poverty of money and talent is very visible with the Russian military efforts in Ukraine (Donbas) and Syria. Both are being carried out on the cheap and with as much discretion as possible because these operations are unpopular with the Russian people. They see Russian money and Russian lives being wasted on expensive political games that do the average Russian no good at all. Thus government efforts to mask just how much these operations cost in terms of resources and casualties. Hiding the spending is easier than concealing the number of dead.

Read the entire post.

VERY RELATED AND READABLE: Chapter 4, Cocktails from Hell.

RELATED BUT WONKY: A new RAND study discusses ways to “extend” Russia — make the Kremlin pay for meddling. It’s long but despite the wonk a decent reference.

ALLIED AIRDROP OVER ITALY: Paratroopers from Britain and Italy jump with the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade at Juliet Drop Zone, Pordenone, Italy. Photo taken April 16, 2019. (link fixed)

HERITAGE FLIGHT SKYRAIDER OVER FLORIDA: An A-1 Skyraider flies in formation with an F-16. The Skyraider’s nicknamed the Spad (after the WW1 aircraft) and as this post notes was one of the Vietnam War’s most potent ground support planes. It’s still an impressive airplane and the USAF is still looking for a high quality “light attack aircraft” for close air support. (The post at the last link has a lot of data on the A-1.) In 1999 I was at a small airfield in southern California. A Skyraider rolled onto the landing strip then sat there for about five minutes. The pilot slowly increased rpm until the sound split ears 250 meters away. Then he took off with a rush and climbed quickly. The Skyraider was originally a carrier aircraft. I thought the pilot might be emulating a carrier launch. If not, he was still having fun. Several observers, including me, clapped after the takeoff.

BACKGROUND TO SRI LANKA’S EASTER TERROR ATROCITIES

SUPER HORNETS PASS BY: Two F/A-18F Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln fly past the Spanish navy frigate ESPS Mendez Nñez.

RELATED: Sailors test an F/A-18 engine on the fantail of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

THE HELIUM CRUNCH: I first heard this discussed in the late 1990s by a fellow who had worked with the federal helium reserve. As the linked article notes, the reserve is located near Amarillo, Texas. The man told me that at some point the U.S. domestic capacity to supply helium for research would be sorely pressed. He foresaw increased demand world-wide and reduced supplies. He also said — correctly- that helium is a critical resource. It ain’t just for blimps and balloons.

From Physics Today:

“We’re in a crisis mode” when it comes to helium, says William Halperin, a physics professor at Northwestern University. A shortage of the inert gas and a rise in its price are plaguing experimental physicists and chemists whose research requires low temperatures. Although helium prices and availability are perennial gripes in the community (see Physics Today, January 2017, page 26), in recent months the supply has become so restricted by growing industrial demand that users have been forced to decommission superconducting magnets, a measure that could permanently render some useless.

In the last year, there have been three “shocks” to the helium supply, says Sophia Hayes, a Washington University in St Louis (WUSTL) chemistry professor who studies such topics as spin orientation in semiconductors and new materials for capturing carbon dioxide for sequestration. The supply has become so scarce and prices so high that Hayes has shut down two of six NMR spectrometers in her laboratory. The instruments are a standard tool for university chemistry departments, and many institutions have half a dozen or more of them. At the core of each is a high-field superconducting magnet that must at all times be kept cooler than liquid helium’s boiling point of 4.2 K.

If helium levels get too low, magnets will warm to their resistive state. The conversion of stored current to heat could damage the coil irreparably or prevent magnets from reattaining their original field strength. It’s a slow and expensive process to return the magnets to their superconducting mode, and they can require 1000 liters of helium—costing up to $25 000 at today’s prices, says Halperin.

Helium is a nonrenewable resource, and liquid helium has a limited shelf life. But distributors have recently been unwilling to supply it on the usual short notice, says Halperin. Unless, that is, customers are willing to pay an emergency fee of $25–$50 a liter.

A bit sensationalist, echoing eco-disaster and peak oil? Perhaps.

A bit more:

Research makes up a small fraction of total US helium consumption, just 8%, according to Intelligas Consulting, a market research firm. Larger uses include magnetic resonance imaging, weather-balloon and other lifting, electronics manufacturing, materials analysis, and instrument calibration. Phil Kornbluth, a helium market consultant, says total US demand is a little more than 56 million cubic meters (mcm) annually—about one-third of world consumption. With an annual output of about 96 mcm, the US is the world’s largest producer.

Kornbluth estimates the current deficit of supply worldwide at around 10%.

Think of this article as deep background. And stay tuned.

SABRE ESCORT: An F-86 Sabre jet flies in formation with an F-22 Raptor, F-35A Lightning II and an A-10C Thunderbolt II during the Thunder & Lightning Over Arizona air show at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., March 23, 2019.

WW2 HISTORICAL PHOTO: Doolittle Raiders’ B-25 bombers in transit, sometime in April 1942.

CHURCHILL’S THIN GREY LINE: A book review of Bernard Edwards’ Churchill’s Thin Grey Line: British Merchant Ships at War 1939–1945.

An excerpt from the review:

In this work, rather than giving us the “Big Picture”, Edwards tells the story of merchant mariners at was by through the experiences of nearly twenty ships, many of which failed to survive attacks by torpedo, shell and bomb. He uses these stories to throw light on the evolution of ship and convoy defense as well as the development of the tactics by enemy submarines, surface raiders, and air craft, while recounting some desperate fights under often terrible conditions. In the process of do so, Edwards also offers us brief glimpses at many heroic mariners, and even some enemy personnel.

Reviewer Dr. A. A. Nofi notes that Edwards is a retired merchant marine captain.

LEAVING THE BEACH: A USMC amphibious assault vehicle slams into the surf as it leaves a beach in Hawaii. (Good action photo and one I missed. It’s been on StrategyPage for a week.)

VENEZUELA’S SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT STARVES ITS CITIZENS: The Soviet Union did it. Socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro and his government follow suit. It’s my latest Creators Syndicate column.

RELATED: China’s Venezuela venture.

PREPARING FOR ESCORT MISSION: A Bundeswehr Wiesel Armored Weapon Carrier prepares to escort a convoy during a NATO military exercise at Hohenfels, Germany.

SOCIALIST STARVATION IN VENEZUELA: Socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro and his government ought to resign in shame, but caudillos and their cronies inevitably attempt to cling to power, no matter the suffering they inflict.

RELATED: China’s Venezuela venture.

LIGHTNING DOWN UNDER: An F-35 makes a pass over the Melbourne Air and Space Show.

VENEZUELA’S MADURO STARVES HIS OWN PEOPLE: It’s socialism, all the way down.

LEOPARD ON THE PROWL AT HOHENFELS: Perhaps the headline should be “Germany once again has tanks that manage to work.” Except a few months ago I linked to a photo of German Leopard 2s on an exercise in Norway, so we’ve visual evidence that the Bundesweht has at least six or seven in running condition. This Leopard 2 is participating in a large exercise at the U.S. Army’s Hohenfels training center (southeastern Germany). I’ve been there and done that.

BACKGROUND: From December 2017, a StrategyPage update discussing Germany’s woeful tank force and the belated decision to reactivate 104 Leopard 2A7Vs. However, the Leopard 2A7Vs “won’t begin arriving until 2019 and it will take until 2023 to complete the process.” The Leopard 2A7V variant is a fine tank. However, if the Germans really want to help deter Russia I think they need at least 300. Ah — here’s the report I was looking for –an oldie but a goodies from June 2010. This is contemporaneous background on the decision to upgrade the Leopard 2A7. (Dubbed 2A7+ at the time, now the 2A7V.)