PROWLER IN THE SKY: A USMC EA-6B Prowler refuels while supporting Operation Inherent Resolve. The photo was taken July 1. The USMC will fly this old electronic warrior at least through 2019.

TRUMP’S WARSAW SPEECH: It was a hit. “The West will never be broken.” Here’s the entire transcript.

POLAND ACQUIRES PATRIOTS: Poland will deploy Patriot PAC-3 anti-ballistic missiles. Poland’s defense ministry made the announcement yesterday.

TELL CFAKENN HIS RHETORIC IS MUCH COOLER THAN OBAMA’S BECAUSE HE DOESN’T DRAW A RED LINE: Trump says North Korea will receive “some pretty severe things” for its bad behavior.

President Donald Trump, speaking on Thursday in Warsaw, Poland, said he was considering “some pretty severe things” to respond to the North Korean nuclear threat.

Trump made the comment during a press conference after holding a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda. Pyongyang on Tuesday said it conducted a successful intercontinental ballistic missile test.

“We’ll see what happens — I don’t like to talk about what we have planned — but I have some pretty severe things that we’re thinking about,” Trump said during the press conference. “They are behaving in a very, very serious manner, and something will have to be done about it.”

North Korea is responsible for this very dangerous situation. China has been its silent partner. That makes the dangerous situation even worse.

STRIKE EAGLE IN ACTION AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE: An F-15E pops a flare. Maybe someone can identify the terrain below. I’ll guess eastern Syria.

NORTH KOREA MISSILE UPDATE: This morning at 8:18 AM Eastern Daylight I posted on the latest North Korean missile test. Based on those reports it was highly likely North Korea had test-fired a ballistic missile with ICBM characteristics. NBC reports U.S. PACOM initially thought the missile was an IRBM (inter-mediate range ballistic missile), so there may be some room for doubt. But if the missile was not an ICBM in the strictest definition, it is certainly an IRBM with extended reach.

Reuters is now reporting experts it has contacted say the test shot means Alaska is within range. The fact is, parts of Alaska (western Aleutians) have been within range of North Korean missiles for several years. So has Guam. This missile test indicates Anchorage and Fairbanks are within range.

From the Reuters report:

David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said the flight time and distance suggested the missile could travel about 6,700 km (4,163 miles), bringing all of Alaska into range.

4,200 miles gets very close to Oahu and Pearl Harbor.

I have no first hand data, but given the development program that accelerated in 2011, I think Wright’s estimate is very reasonable. However, I doubt this test demonstrated the missile’s maximum range. I’ve followed the North Korean program as closely as possible. I spent four years as a reservist in the J-3 Operations section of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Like the wiki says, BMDO was the original name of the office guiding the U.S. missile defense effort. The Clinton Administration brought it back in 1993 because it didn’t like Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the name the Reagan Administration used. BMDO is now MDA, Missile Defense Agency.

Reuters says other analysts think the missile has a range of 8,000 km (4,970 miles) and quotes one South Korean by name. Check the map. In that case Pyongyang starts getting in the vicinity of the Pacific Northwest.

So the NorKs have a booster that has ICBM range. It doesn’t mean they can handle operational targeting, doesn’t mean they can mount an operational nuclear warhead on the missile, it doesn’t mean they have a warhead that can re-enter the atmosphere without breaking apart, and it doesn’t mean they can detonate a warhead that does reach the target area. But they are working on it.

It’s also worth noting that the vehicle transporting the missile was a modified Chinese truck built to haul timber. North Korea took a civilian vehicle and turned it into a transporter-erector-launcher (TEL). That sends a message about the limits of sanctions when a regime is intent on acquiring ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

The test in February of a solid fuel IRBM featured a launch from a tracked TEL.

RELATED: Here are some photos of the anti-missile missiles in the U.S. inventory.

The Patriot PAC-3 is for short-range defense. This photo dates from 2014.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) has a much longer range. THAAD batteries are now deplyed in Guam and South Korea.

The USN has several Standard Missiles with anti-missile capabilities. Here’s a Standard Missile 3 (SM-3).

The Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) is the long range interceptor employed in the Ground-based Mid-course Defense (GMD) system.

REAL FIREWORKS: Soldiers conduct a mine clearing exercise at Ft. Greely, Alaska. The troops used a Mine Clearing Line Charge (MICLIC). Heck of an explosion.

THE HISTORY OF FAKE NEWS: A brief history of weaponized information by an assistant professor of military history at West Point.

Not everyone needs to be professionally trained as an intelligence officer or historian to wade through sources, but Hugh Trevor-Roper was both. To apply his craft to approaching a primary source, he listed three questions that should be asked about every document: Is it genuine? Was the author in a position to know what he was writing about? And, why does this document exist? Answers to these questions are the handmaidens of trusting information and halting the malign influence of fake news.

Contemporary universities do a lousy job of improving the critical thinking skills of students — such a lousy job that you might conclude many professors don’t want their students to know how to think.

How to begin to learn how to discern fake news? By rediscovering the broad civic applicability of the historical method. It starts with modifying the national epistemological approach to acquiring knowledge, and, applied across the population of the United States, the impact could be profound.

Quite when America started deviating from critical thinking is unclear, but a test of American college students, the College Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+) shows that, in over half of the universities studied, there is no increase in critical thinking skills over a four-year degree. The reasons for this are far from clear, but the pursuit of knowledge has become more argumentative, opinion-based and adversarial than illuminating. Research papers are reminiscent of watching the prosecutor layout a criminal case on Law and Order.

The whole thing’s worth reading.

NORTH KOREA LAUNCHES ANOTHER MISSILE: The launch is a message to the U.S. Though the UPI dateline is July 3, it was already the 4th of July in east Asia.

North Korea launched a ballistic missile early Tuesday, local time, into the waters along the eastern coast of the peninsula.

Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff stated the missile launched from Panghyon, North Pyongan Province at around 9:40 a.m., could not be identified.

Xihua, China’s state news agency, reports that Pyongyang claims it was an ICBM.

CNN has a similar report.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN CENTRAL AMERICA:

The United Nations’ International Court of Justice on Monday began hearings over a maritime and land boundary dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

Costa Rica presented its case to the court in The Hague on Monday, while Nicaragua is set to present its case on Thursday.

There are two cases — Costa Rica vs. Nicaragua: Maritime Delimitation in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, as well as Costa Rica vs. Nicaragua: Land Boundary in the Northern Part of Isla Portillos.

Circa 1983, this might have sparked a super-power confrontation, with Sandinista Nicaragua bullying army-less Costa Rica. OK, the 82nd Airborne and U.S. Marines in the region are Costa Rica’s military protection corps, but we’re not supposed to say that out loud because, you know…because not having a military makes lefties feel self-righteous…

MORE:

The countries have been at odds for year over territorial disputes, particularly over a construction project near the remote mouth of the San Juan River that marks their shared border in the Caribbean.

In 2015, the court ruled Nicaragua violated Costa Rica’s territory by establishing a military camp in the area.

Stay tuned.

SOMEWHAT COMPARABLE, IF YOU’VE A NARROW DEFINITION OF COMPARABLE: A much more serious territorial clash between Greece and Turkey.

The captain of a Turkish cargo ship said it received warning shots from the Greek coast guard Monday in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Rhodes island.

The M/V ACT was about 3 miles off the coast of Rhodes and carrying steel from the southern port of İskenderun to İzmit in the northwest, Turkey-based Deniz Haber Ajansı reported.

The captain, Haluk Sami Kalkavan, said they use this route regularly and it’s in international waters.

The Greek coast guard warned the ship to divert its course to Rhodes. Kalkavan responded he would not follow the directive and informed Turkish officials.

MORE:

The Greek Coast Guard said the ship was in Greek waters and had reports that it was carrying narcotics.

Stay tuned.

A 1960s VTOL: An XC-142A hovers. The photo dates from 1964. Here’s a pic of some descendants (bumped from yesterday, the Ospreys over Sydney).

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA:

An American warship on Sunday sailed close to a disputed island in the South China Sea occupied by Beijing, as part of an operation to demonstrate freedom of navigation in the waters, a US official said.

The USS Stethem, a guided-missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island, part of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, the official said. The operation was first reported by Fox News on Sunday.

It was the second “freedom-of-navigation operation,” or “fonop,” conducted during the presidency of Donald Trump, following a drill in late May in which a U.S. warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island built up by China in the South China Sea.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement the U.S. ship had made an unauthorised entry into China’s territorial waters.

FONOP. Freedom Of Navigation Operation. What the USN did was perfectly legal. China’s manufactured islets are illegal. But Beijing called the the FONOP a “serious political and military provocation…”

After the FONOP Chinese President Xi and President Trump spoke on the phone.

“Xi Jinping stressed that since his meeting with President Trump, important results have been achieved in China-U.S. relations,” Chinese state media outlet CCTV reported. “Meanwhile, bilateral relations have also been affected by some negative factors, for which the China side has expressed its position to the U.S. side.”

According to the Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration, China’s militarized islets are a very negative factor.

Three more are nearing completion.

Here’s an example of an appropriate diplomatic response.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can we move Earth’s orbit?

FLOCK OF OSPREYS: USMC MV-22B Osprey tiltrotors in formation off the coast of Sydney, Australia. You can see the opera house, though it’s obscured in engine exhaust from the Osprey on the left-hand side of the photo. The photo was taken June 29 by a USMC lance corporal.

REAPER DRONE COMBAT MISSION:

The USAF reported:

…its new Block 5 variant of the MQ-9 Reaper drone has performed its first combat mission against Islamist terrorists.

The recent 16-hour sortie, flown June 23 in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, involved the unmanned aerial vehicle dropping a GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions bomb and firing two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles in support of ground forces in the Middle East.

MORE:

All three strikes met the ground force commander’s intent and destroyed two defensive fighting positions, two vehicles and one mortar tube.”

Good report.

RELATED: Photo of an earlier model on a night mission.

THE TOOL KIT FOR AN INDEPENDENT CYBER COMMAND: The U.S. Cyber Command is supposed to be a war-fighting outfit.

…Cyber Command’s tools would be meant to be attributed to the Pentagon in a war scenario; obfuscating attribution won’t be a necessary endeavor.

“The tools are different. Tools designed to reside and extract information might be different than tools designed to delay, degrade, disrupt and all that,” Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, told C4ISRNET in a recent interview. Hayden also commanded the first military and offensive cyber-oriented organization — Joint Functional Component Command-Network Warfare, CYBERCOM’s direct predecessor.

MORE:

Most agree that CYBERCOM and the NSA will remain closely aligned even after the inevitable split, considering the NSA is still a combatant command-support organization and provides the requisite intelligence necessary to execute cyber operations.

Worth the read.

RELATED: Background on the origins of CYBERCOM, from 2010.

THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF HOUSTON, TEXAS: A preview of America’s future?

From VOA:

Hot, hazy Houston, where roaches fly along Texas’ Gulf Coastal Plain — who would choose to transplant and call the city home? The answer is some of the world’s best doctors, scientists, engineers, chefs, artists, and entrepreneurs – highly specialized immigrants from Africa and Asia as well as an influx of laborers from south of the border.

They come for one reason only, a longtime Houstonian told VOA, the opportunity to make money.

It’s a thoughtful report. The video asking Houstonians what it means to be a Texan is a chuckle but also refreshing.

CARRIER STRIKE GROUP 5: Lovely shot of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan and escorts — the sun low in the sky. Photo was snapped June 29.

FINLAND AND SWEDEN JOIN BRITISH-LED RAPID REACTION FORCE:

Sweden and Finland have joined a British-led military rapid reaction force that can either operate alone or jointly with the United Nations, NATO or the European Union.

The two non-NATO members joined the Joint Expeditionary Force on Friday when Sweden’s Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist and his Finnish counterpart Jussi Niinisto signed a deal in Stockholm in the presence of British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, who called it “a force of friends.”

And Moscow howled. Well, it’s what you get when you invade Ukraine.

RELATED: From March 2014. Putin’s Three Cold Facts. Remember, Obama was the one who was “flexible” with Putin.

HONG KONG PRO-DEMOCRACY MARCH:

Au Nok-hin helped organize and lead the march:

Au described the freedom of assembly in Hong Kong as being under threat, pointing to the detention of a dozen pro-democracy activists for staging a rally during the just-concluded three-day visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Another marcher said that he “continued to come out every year to remind people that the mainland government made promises about the city’s autonomy, but he said the political situation was getting worse.”

Beijing is violating the spirit and the letter of the autonomy agreement it made with Britain and Hong Kong.

THE TRUMP-MOON, U.S.-SOUTH KOREA UNIFIED FRONT: Against Kim Kong Un’s violent North Korea.

President Donald Trump on Friday declared the U.S. has run out of patience with North Korea, as he met with his South Korean counterpart at the White House.

Speaking in the Rose Garden alongside South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Trump vowed a “determined response” against Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.

“The era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed,” Trump said, referring to his predecessors’ approach to the North. “Many years and it’s failed, and frankly, that patience is over.”

Trump and Moon differ over exactly how much to pressure the North into giving up its weapons programs. Both leaders also have criticized certain aspects of their countries’ defense cooperation.

But on Friday the two leaders presented a unified front.

MORE:

After a discussion that lasted about 30 minutes longer than scheduled, Moon praised Trump’s “determination and pragmatism” and said they were able to build a “broad consensus” on issues ranging from defense ties to the North Korean nuclear issue.

Good report. Trump’s amazing. In ten years we’ll be reading histories examining how he could simultaneously cooperate with a threatened U.S. ally while giving arrogant poseurs in the mainstream media a taste of their own silly poison.

RIGHT ON!: Court rules U.S. can seize Manhattan skyscraper from a sanctions-violating Iranian “charity.”

A New York jury has ruled that the U.S. government can seize a Manhattan skyscraper worth as much as $1 billion from an Iranian-American charitable foundation accused of violating sanctions against Iran.

The U.S. federal court on June 29 ruled that Alavi Foundation, the majority owner of the 36-story office building at 650 Fifth Ave., knew and helped hide the fact that the building’s 40 percent partner, Assa Corp., was a front for the Iranian government.

Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim said the tower “secretly served as a front for the Iranian government and as a gateway for millions of dollars to be funneled to Iran in clear violation of U.S. sanctions laws.”

Remember, Obama basically agreed to let the ayatollahs have a nuclear bomb. Don’t let CNN and other fake news mongers tell you otherwise.

SEMI-RELATED: Iranian terror connections in South America. OK, maybe not so semi.

DROPPING IN ON ITALY: Colorful photo of a recent 173rd Airborne Brigade parachute exercise in Pordenone, Italy.

BUFF MOTHERSHIP: A true blast from the past. A B-52 carries an X-15A-2 rocket plane. I want to say it was in 1959 or 1960 (third or fourth grade) I read an article about X-15 pilot Scott Crossfield. The article had a title something like “I fly the X-15.” It wasn’t very long but it was totally cool.

ROGUE SWISS: “A roguish charmer, a lover of wine and women and an escaped convict…”

Obviously you should read this.

Back to the BBC article: “The people in the Swiss canton of Valais are rightly proud of their home-grown products.” Joseph-Samuel Farinet “was a 19th-Century counterfeiter and a legend in these parts, even if the myth that now surrounds him is more colourful than the reality.”

More colorful than reality. The same could be said of the colorful myths surrounding Ed Driscoll.

The entire article is a chuckle.