LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS: The Biden Classified Docs Special Prosecutor Must Look For Chinese Spies

World War II’s sobering rhyme, “loose lips sink ships,” reminded America that failure to protect national security secrets exacted a blood price. Even minimal negligence could give an enemy enough information to damage the U.S. and allied war effort and kill American soldiers and sailors.

Check it out.

WARPLANES: F-15EX Breaks The Right Records At The Right Time

The F-15EX is cheaper to buy and operate than the F-35 and, for missions that do not depend a lot on stealth, the F-15EX is cheaper and more capable. New versions of the F-35 close that gap but for now the F-15EX is here and the new F-35A Block 4 models have been delayed because of problems with the new software. That has halted efforts to reduce the F-15EX orders from 140 to 80. The F-15EX has met or exceeded all its capabilities.

Lots of data in this How To Make War post.

Related: Photo of an F-15EX at Eglin Air Force Base.

ARMOR UPDATE:Building A Better Defective Tank. Yes, it’s about Russia’s defective tanks.

A Russian language video recently appeared in which the new T-72B3M model was introduced and described. While the official most modern Russian tank is the T-90M, it is not the tank Russian crews prefer. The favorite is the T-72B3, which is as effective as the T-90 and lacks a lot of the additional features on the T-90 that don’t work, complicate operation of the tanks and the crews must maintain. The T-90 is for export customers and no Russian troops use the T-90 in peacetime. The new B3M model was described as having a lot more ERA blocks and other forms of protection. No mention was made of a solution to the T-72 vulnerability to top attack ATGMs that have caused the loss of nearly a thousand T-72s and T-90s in Ukraine.

A deep news dive.

DRONE LOGISTICS: A Tactical Resupply Vehicle 150 “delivers simulated cargo during Combat Logistics Battalion 8’s (CLB-8) drone testing on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Jan. 11, 2023.”

WHAT THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AND CORRUPT MEDIA TRY TO IGNORE: Mexican Crime Cartels Wage Narcotic and Demographic War on USA

STRATEGYPAGE PROCUREMENT UPDATE: Exposing Russian Smuggling

Since February, Russian defense production has been crippled by detailed and regularly updated sanctions based on continuing searches for smuggled Western parts. Such was the case with the Russian Orlan-10 UAV, whose production should have been shut down by 2016 sanctions but wasn’t. Oran-10s then required several Western electronic boards and chips that were not manufactured in Russia and had to be imported. By 2017 it was clear that Russia was not simply using existing stockpiles of now banned components to build new Oran-10s. This was a major problem because Orlan-10 was a key observation asset as it could spot targets for Russian artillery or rocket fire.

The update includes information on the Russian investigative media organization iStories and its role in monitoring internal Russian corruption.

A BIT LIKE THE NY TIMES AND WASHINGTON POST AND ETCETERA: Russia Reports All The News That Fits

…In 2022 Putin’s political fortunes took a turn for the worse when his invasion of Ukraine quickly failed with the loss of thousands of armored vehicles, most of the combat unit officers and such high troop losses that he found a growing number of Russians turning against him. If not stabilized or reversed, that shift in public opinion could prove fatal for his continued ability to rule Russia.

Putin’s solution was to order the dezinformatsiya operation to cooperate with the VGTRK (All-Russia State Television and Radio Company) to convince Russians that the Ukraine operation was not a failure but had succeeded in stalling and exposing a secret NATO plan to weaken Russia and render it unable to rebuild the Russian empire and make Russia great again. Or at least keep Putin in power.

Some Kremlin context for understanding Twitter, the CDC and the FBI in the pre-Musk era.

IT’S GETTING WORSE: The Escalating Space Debris Crisis.

STRATEGYPAGE ANNUAL WARS UPDATE:An Unexpected Near-Peer War. Editor Jim Dunnigan posts SP’s annual summary.

This is our annual summary of current war zones and an overview of where it is all heading. After this overview there is the alphabetical list of the war zones and a quick summary of how the local mayhem has been proceeding. Since we have been covering this sort of thing for over twenty years now there are many war zones that have gone quiet, we left most of those in summary, with a note that those wars had gone dormant, and maybe extinct. History shows that dormant is more common than extinct. Forever wars, or at least multi-century ones, are an ancient tradition.

More: “The unexpected war was the February 2022 Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine. This was the 21st century’s first “near-peer” war between nations armed with similar weapons. This did not go well for Russia…”

Check it out.

POWERLINE: The World According To Tom Cotton. I think this was posted on Instapundit yesterday but it’s worth a re-link. In Scott Johnson’s discussion of Senator Cotton’s book and Walter Russell Mead’s recent commentary on the book, you’ll find a link to this 2015 Powerline post: Nine years later, Tom Cotton’s letter to the Times. Well worth re-reading.

FUN PHOTO: Santa Helps With At Sea Replenishment An ensign and lieutenant (jg) bring the North Pole to the Arabian Gulf.

RELATED: A USAF lieutenant-colonel plays Santa with C-130s for “reindeer.” Or are they sleds? Whatever. It’s Operation Christmas Drop 2022.

Seven C-130 aircraft from the U.S. Air Force, Royal Australian Air Force, Japan Air Self-Defense Force, Republic of Korea Air Force and Royal New Zealand Air Force delivered 209 bundles weighing a total of more than 71,000 pounds as part of Operation Christmas Drop, an event meant to assist remote island communities in the Federated States of Micronesia and Republic of Palau.

Diplomacy by C-130. Photo snapped at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.

MY 2023 STRATEGIC CHALLENGES COLUMN: 2023’s Strategic Challenges: Introducing Big Debt

An extract for Instapundit readers:

Challenge No. 4: The pervasive corruption of influential but venal individuals and venal institutions in democratic nations. The corruption is so internally corrosive to these nations that timely and effective political and military response to Challenges Nos. 1 through 3 is systemically delayed, undermined or immobilized.

2023 comment: 2022’s Twitter revelations exposed extraordinary corruption in the U.S., in the FBI, the so-called legacy media and the Biden family in particular. Hunter Biden’s laptop is not Russian disinformation; it is hard and detailed evidence that exposes corruption tainting the highest levels of American governance.

Major 2023 U.S. Diplomatic Penalty for Corruption: Hunter Biden’s blatant corruption has real-world national security costs. If defending Ukraine is a U.S. security interest — and I think it is — then the Biden family’s corrupt activities and the government’s failure to penalize their corruption undermines American efforts to address Ukrainian economic corruption.

Read the entire essay.

BATTLE OF THE BULGE, DECEMBER 1944: Ukraine’s current winter war is in the headlines. 78 years ago the U.S. Army was fighting a bitter winter battle — The Bulge. Six selected photos from the StrategyPage archive. ONE – An M-36 tank destroyer moves to the front. Date is December 20. TWO- U.S. tanks and 82nd Airborne paratroopers move through snow in Belgium. THREE – German Tiger 2 (aka Tiger B, King Tiger, or Bengal Tiger/Royal Tiger). This one was abandoned in Stavelot, Belgium. FOUR – A classic. “False flag” — a German Panther tank disguised as an American tank destroyer. FIVE – Another classic. Three exhausted GIs after a night fending off German counter-attacks. SIX – Bazooka guard. 101st Airborne paratrooper defending the road to Bastogne.

RELATED: A 14th Cavalry Surgeon’s Battle Of The Bulge. When The Bulge began on December 16 the 14th Cavalry Group was in the Losheim Gap.

U.S. WW2 cavalry fielded scout jeeps with machine guns, small self-propelled 75 mm howitzers and armored cars with 37 mm guns. At Losheim, the Cav provided “economy of force” — a small unit substituting for a larger formation.

Sixth SS Panzer Army deployed King Tiger tanks (88 mm guns), Panther tanks and Panzer grenadiers in half-tracks. According to Adolf Hitler’s plan, panzers would split U.S. and British forces and seize Antwerp’s port. In Hitler’s strategic fantasy, the shaken allies would then negotiate a separate peace with Berlin. Germany would turn on Russia.

Dec. 16 — German artillery slammed the Ardennes as infantry and tanks attacked the Gap, the assault shattering 14th Cav and surrounding 106th ID. German units crossed the Our River, heading west, toward Bastogne.

A battle against the SS and winter.

THE LATEST STRATEGYTALK ON CHINA: The Emperor Backed Down: The COVID Lockdown Explosion And Fallout. Runs 28 minutes. Includes new theme music!

VERY RELATED: Xi’s China faces push back from everyone and everywhere. The December 9 China update — background for the podcast.

XI JINPING TAKE NOTE: The Year Putin’s Imperial Dream Became a Nightmare of Destruction

We know why Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine. Once upon a time (as recently as late February 2022), Vlad dreamed a splendid dream of imperial Russian glory restored.

In Vlad’s grand reverie, the architect, commander and instrument of this repair of the Russian Empire’s Soviet Union-era crackup would be… Vlad.

As grandiose, narcissistic hallucinations go, Vlad’s brain fever empire did have self-serving calculations and semi-informed parameters. I’m sure he’s read the great historical theoreticians or, since he was an intelligence agent, at least had an aide give him the bullet points.

Was that last sentence a shot at big ego intel officers? You bet it was. Look at all the U.S. intel types who called Hunter Biden’s laptop disinformation. Sneaky usually aligns with sleazy and that goes triple in the so-called intelligence communities.

Read the entire essay to get the theoretical gist.

PUTIN’S LATEST BAD BET: STRATEGIC BOMBING: Russia’s missile war on Ukraine – the historical record indicates it will fail.

The essay mentions strategic bombing theories formulated after WW1, discusses WW2 strategic bombing campaigns and also mentions the Iran-Iraq War’s “war of the cities” (air and missile attacks on civilian populations).

I wrote this Tuesday and didn’t have a link up until today. Zelensky’s speech to Congress and the Biden Administration’s latest support package has made a couple of grafs less speculative.

The Ukrainian government warns that Russia still has a very large missile stockpile and bombarding cities demonstrates why NATO and EU nations must provide Ukraine with modern and plentiful air defense weaponry that can intercept missiles and aircraft.

The American-made Patriot PAC-3 is a proven system that can intercept aircraft and both ballistic and cruise missiles. In my opinion, Ukraine should have received Patriot batteries months ago. Several NATO nations deploy it. Zelensky has specifically asked for the Patriot.

Note I wrote “batteries.” We’ll see how many the U.S. provides.

Bottom line:

Putin is employing strategic air attacks on Ukrainian cities because Ukraine’s air defenses are weak and Ukraine cannot retaliate in kind. With threats of nuclear war failing to frighten the world, Putin thinks strategic air attacks are his winning card.

However, as the war grinds on and the Russian military’s death toll mounts, it may be his only card.

Putin bets cold, hungry and bombing terrorized Ukrainians will surrender, even if the British, Germans, Japanese, Ethiopians, et al. did not.

I think that’s a bad bet.

Check it out.

UPDATE: Russian artillery units have big problems. Ammo shortages, old ammo, depleted stockpiles, troubles on the Trans-Siberian railroad. And mercenaries and “penal battalion men” aren’t doing well in a winter war.

FIGHTING THE WAR CHINA STARTED: Time to Rid the World of China’s Trojan Horse Communications Gear.

For two decades we’ve had evidence that equipment manufactured by several Chinese corporations are potentially “dual use” systems.

At one level their equipment does what it’s supposed to do: connects communications systems like phones and computers. However, the systems have “backdoors” that give Chinese spies access to steal classified government secrets and your personal email.

Conceivably, the Chinese systems are offensive weapons: Trojan horses with intercontinental power. The CCP could use these pseudo-civilian systems to launch a cyber-Pearl Harbor attack on an adversary possessing them. The attack could damage the adversary’s economy (e.g., shut down banking). If executed quickly and pervasively, the sneak attack could disrupt military communications channels and disable high-tech sensors.

Check it out.

AFTER LAST NIGHT: Scott Johnson at Powerline assesses the Georgia Senate election.

According to the left-wing media, a star is born. Warnock for president! According to me, Warnock is a ludicrous, America-hating figure with the gift of gab. He’s a Jeremiah Wright kind of guy whose time has come…

Read all of Scott’s commentary.

XI JINPING UNMASKED: The Tiananmen Tiger Stalks the Chinese Communist Government.

Throughout the country protesters — some wearing surgical masks– stand before cellphone cameras and raise blank sheets of white paper.

Right — white empty space. To paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, sometimes nothing is a real cool message. The blank sheets simultaneously satirize and defy the CCP’s malignant state censorship.

My translation of the blank: “We Chinese citizens say nothing yet you CCP tyrants fear our thoughts.” The empty page attacks the CCP’s systemic truth denial.

Check it out.

UPDATE: A death in the family took me away for awhile. Here’s a column from last week I should have blogged. Rubio and Roy Challenge the Woke Pentagon.

3RD CAVALRY REGIMENT ON A STARRY NIGHT AT FORT IRWIN: I should have put this photo up several days ago. A machine gunner spins a light with the Milky Way above. The staff sergeant who took it has a fine eye with a sci-fi feel.

RUSSIAN NAVY VIOLATES DANISH TERRITORIAL WATERS: And of course denies it. This report is from Reuters:

A Russian warship early on Friday twice violated Danish territorial waters north of the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm where a democracy festival attended by senior officials and business people was taking place, the Danish Armed Forces said.

Denmark called the action an unacceptable provocation. The Russian embassy in Copenhagen said the Danes provided no evidence.

The report has more details but this factoid deserves attention: “Ukraine’s defence minister said last month that Ukraine had started receiving Harpoon missiles from Denmark…” The report also notes two Harpoon missiles struck a Russian tug in the Black Sea.

For historical context, review my 2015 column The Bluff Attack On Bornholm: Kremlin Tests NATO Solidarity. The column discusses a mid-June 2014 “bluff” attack on Bornholm by Russian aircraft armed with live missiles.

The Bornholm faux-attack reprised Soviet Cold War “tests” of Danish defenses and is but one of a score of serious Russian military probes since 2008 designed to rattle Northern Europe.

Fake attack by armed Russian aircraft in mid-June 2014, sea violations by a Russian warship in mid-June 2022. An island folk festival was occurring in 2014; this year Denmark billed it as a folk festival celebrating democracy. A festival insures there’ll lots of civilians to frighten and extra media as well.

The 2015 column noted: “…Putin-era Kremlin belligerence has sparked a sea change in Sweden. When regional powers make political demands, smaller nations always react. Often they accommodate, perhaps appease. However, when a regional power actually pulls its sabers — and especially when the bully makes territorial threats — good golly, sometimes the small nations don’t cower.”

Putin has become more vicious — and Sweden and Finland want to join NATO.

More on Bornholm’s location and importance: “Located in the Baltic Sea east of peninsular Denmark, north of Poland’s coast and to the rear of what was East Germany, Bornholm gave the Free World [an] outpost north of and behind Warsaw Pact lines.”

UPDATE: The Mirror has a picture of the Russian naval vessel off Bornholm.

TESTING NAVAL HELLFIRE: The USS Montgomery launches a naval Longbow Hellfire at a land-based target. The USS Montgomery is an Independence-variant Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Here’s a photo of the USS Independence. The Independence trimaran LCS variants have fewer problems than the monohull Freedom-variants but all told the LCS program has proved to be an engineering and budget fiasco — “little crappy ships” with engine problems, hull cracks and corrosion. Once upon a time the Navy was going to build 55 of them, then the order declined to 35. Now the Navy’s trying to decommission several LCSs and quit throwing good money after bad. However, Congressional appropriators want to keep some of those in the fleet. Note the USNI article (at the link) says Congress wants “a report on alternate uses of these vessels.” In part that explains the Longbow Hellfire test launch –the Navy is looking for missions for the LCSs its being forced to keep. It’s still up in the air how many will be in the fleet by the end of 2023. This StrategyPage update from January 2022 reviews the entire LCS program, with particular attention to the Freedom-variant’s serious flaws.

A MAJOR REASON HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP MUST BE INVESTIGATED AND THE CROOKS TRIED AND CONVICTED: Political Corruption and Injustice Threaten U.S. National Security.

Bottom line: The sellout of fundamental American values by U.S. political and scientific elites for Chinese cash does strategic damage to America just as Pearl Harbor and 9/11 did psychological and operational damage. Professors; political creeps; the universities that debase and ignore American constitutional, political and cultural values — these craven actors betray the values that underpin the free and productive system that spurred and supported their individual and corporate successes.

They also undermine the sources of America’s domestic defense and international security.

Check it out.

STRATEGYPAGE INTEL UPDATE: Ukrainian Treasures.

The war in Ukraine has produced another bonanza of Russian weapons for the U.S. Air Force to scrutinize. For over half a century the U.S. Air Force has been on the lookout for Russian aircraft, missiles and electronic systems that were operational or could be made operational for testing. Ukraine is currently providing everything but aircraft to evaluate. That’s fine because Russia hasn’t produced any scary and mysterious combat aircraft since the Cold War ended. Electronics and missile systems are another matter.

The post has a short history lesson about U.S. efforts to obtain captured or stolen enemy aircraft and equipment

THE ENDLESS ECHOES OF BIDEN’S AFL-CIO SPEECH: Powerline’s Scott Johnson continues the deconstruction of Biden’s world disorder as he examines James Bovard’s New York Post debunking of Biden’s lies and a relevant Byron York column on Biden’s inflation and Jimmy Carter’s.