SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FIREFIGHTER: A C-130 drops fire retardant on a scorched hill above Santa Barbara.

ANOTHER BAD YEAR IN CONGO: The situation is tragic. Note on December 7 in Congo’s North Kivu province the deadliest attack UN peacekeepers occurred since 1994 when 24 Pakistani peacekeepers were killed in Somalia. The militant Islamist Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) terrorist group conducted the criminal attack. The ADF is a psycho outfit that is nominally Ugandan. It has bases in eastern Congo.

TRUMP’S NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY ACKNOWLEDGES REALITY OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION: The Obama Administration didn’t. Remember Obama’s hot mic moment where he told Medvedev to tell Vlad he’d be more flexible after the election? (If you’ve forgotten, this will remind you.)

BUFF IN WINTER: No, not baring it all in the snow. But the B-52 has been called a symbol of naked power.

HILLARY CLINTON CAMPAIGN AND DNC ACCUSED OF “CORRUPT” MONEY SCHEME:

A new legal complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission alleges that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee used state chapters as strawmen to circumvent campaign donation limits and laundered the money back to her campaign.

The Committee to Defend the President, a political action committee, filed its complaint with the FEC on Monday with the allegations that the Hillary Victory Fund (HVF) solicited cash from big-name donors, including Calvin Klein and “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane — money that was allegedly sent through state chapters and back to the DNC before ending up with the Clinton campaign.

Well well well. Of course, at this moment in time, it’s just an FEC complaint. But, heh.

F-22 REFUELING OVER IRAQ: With serpentine river below.

END OF GOVERNMENT FM RADIO IN NORWAY: The government stations have gone to digital audio broadcasting (DAB).

However:

Some radio stations in Norway are maintaining an FM presence in protest of the government conversion.

Stay tuned?

BREACHER HITS THE BEACH: A USMC M1A1 assault breacher vehicle (ABV) rolls off a landing craft in exercise Steel Knight 2018. (The ABV is a M1A1 Abrams tank modified for combat engineer missions such as breaching a minefield. Here’s a basic description of the vehicle.)

VERY RELATED: The Orange County Register describes the full-scale USMC Steel Knight exercise. It is an annual exercise — but this year remember Inchon.

THE REAL CHALLENGES FOR AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES.

RED HOT ENGINES, COLD WHITE SNOW: A B-1B takes off from Ellsworth Air Force Base in snow-covered South Dakota.

CRASH DRILL ON THE NIMITZ: Dig the motto stenciled on the crane: “No air support without ground support.” That’s direct and effective. On the Nimitz “flight deck support” might be more accurate but no doubt the crane crew’s sending a message to plane crews every where.

COMBAT HAMMER TRAINING EXERCISE: The targets are “swarming” small boats. The attacker? A USAF A-10.

THE FLIGHT HOME: An electronic attack squadron completes a deployment.

B-1B BELOW THE RAINBOW: The rainstorm that struck Guam didn’t stop the ground crew. A well-composed photo.

THE TWO BIG WARS AT ONCE REQUIREMENT RETURNS WITH A VENGEANCE

LIVE ORDNANCE EXERCISE IN THE PACIFIC, WITH THE USS NIMITZ IN THE FOREGROUND: Strike aircraft from the Nimitz air wing drop live munitions. Impressive splashes mark the dozen or so holes in the sea. The photo was taken December 1. It had to be a great show for the guys on the flight deck.

OFF THE COAST OF CRETE: A Stinger missile live fire exercise — an Avenger air defense vehicle launches the missile from a seaside position on the island of Crete.

CAESAR INVADES BRITAIN UPDATE: Archaeologists find first archeological evidence for Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain.

The first Roman invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar in 55BC is a historical fact, with vivid accounts passed down by Tacitus, Cicero and Caesar himself.

Yet, despite a huge landing force of legionaries from 800 ships, no archaeological evidence for the attack or any physical remains of encampments have ever been found.

Good read.

THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTING OFFICE LOOKS AT SECURITY SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGIES DEPLOYED ON THE SOUTHWEST BORDER: This is a detailed pdf. The title is a fair summary: “Southwest Border Security: Border Patrol Is Deploying Surveillance Technologies but Needs to Improve Data Quality and Assess Effectiveness.”

One of the conclusions:

Since 2005, Border Patrol has spent more than one billion dollars deploying technologies to the southwest border, but is not yet positioned to fully quantify the impact these technologies have on its mission.

The pdf includes background information on border surveillance operations.

ROPE DESCENT FROM A HOVERING OSPREY: If an infantryman can do it from a helicopter, why not do it from a MV-22B? The photo was taken November 28 in Okinawa.

WAITING FOR THE FOG TO LIFT: An MQ-9 Reaper UAV prepares for take-off. Air National Guard units operated the Reapers in this exercise.

NORTH KOREA’S THIRD ICBM TEST:

At roughly 2:47 AM Pyongyang Time (6:17 PM GMT) on November 29, North Korea test fired a ballistic missile from the Sain-ni area.[1] North Korea has since claimed that this launch was a new Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Initial reports from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff indicated that the missile reached an apogee of about 4,500 km, and traveled 960 km downrange before impacting in the East Sea, within Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).[2] The total flight time was reportedly 53 minutes. Without additional flight data, photographs, or video of the launch, it is difficult to estimate the exact range of this new missile with complete certainty; however, preliminary calculations place the range from 13,000 km on the high-end with light to no payloads to 8,500 km with more standard 500 kg payloads.

More:

However, it is important to note—as Dr. Wright does in the last paragraph of his post—the Hwasong-14 and -15 missiles which were tested likely carried very small payloads, which exaggerate the range that can be achieved with a North Korean nuclear weapon. Indeed, the engineering model used for this analysis indicates the missiles were tested with a 150 kg payload. It is doubtful North Korea can fashion a nuclear weapon that weighs less than 100 kg. It is also unlikely that North Korea has enough experience developing, testing and validating the technologies needed to build a 50 kg re-entry vehicle capable of protecting the warhead during the high-temperature, high-stress environment experienced during descent through the atmosphere. As the figure below indicates, a Hwasong-14 or -15 fitted with a 500 kg payload (weapon plus re-entry vehicle mass) and flown on a standard trajectory has a maximum reach is roughly 8,500 km. This means Kim Jong Un’s nuclear bomb must weigh less than 350 kg if he expects to strike the western edges of the US mainland. A 600 kg payload barely reaches Seattle.

Hey, Seattle — does “barely” in range give you confidence?

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN UPDATE: Attention, cryptozoologists. Yetis are real — except DNA analysis says they’re bears. Rare Himalayan brown bears. The article is a fun read.

LIVE FIRE EXERCISE IN THE PHILIPPINE SEA: A Navy five inch gun at work.

NORTH KOREA FIRES ANOTHER BALLISTIC MISSILE: The pause is over. At this point the type of ballistic missile fired is not known.

RELATED: Japan reports the missile crashed in its maritime Exclusive Economic Zone.