HIMARs now in use in Ukraine
And now it's time to scoot...
I googled Caitlin Johnstone and it Took less than 5 minutes of skimming articles about her to find out she’s a far left conspiracy theorist whose journalistic capabilities and integrity are seriously questionable.
Edit: adding source:
Caitlin Johnstone: Anatomy of a Far Left Conspiracy Nut
and I checked media bias of Daily Banter (left, mixed factuality - so admittedly not perfect)
And I am also mystified by pro-Russian sentiment in Europe - and in the US, but here (if I can make a political observation without making a political judgement) it at least makes sense that Trump’s pro-Putin, pro-Orban, anti-Ukraine sentiments are causing it.
For some it isn't so much pro-Russian sentiment, but sentiment against their own government. Some people have so many problems with their own government that anybody opposed to them is a "good guy" while others condemn both. That seems to be the sentiments among the left who are not backing their governments. But the overarching attitude is mostly "cancel all of them!"
Among the right authoritarian instincts are kicking in. They have always been there, but they have been growing in many countries.
The politics of the right in many western countries has shifted from an economic reform argument and sometimes regressive social changes into a nationalism that can be very dark and ugly. As European countries have allowed non-whites in to keep their economies going as the white population declines tensions between the native whites and the immigrants have been building for decades. The pro-Brexit vote in the UK had a lot of anti-immigrant attitude behind it as well as a general anti-foreign attitude.
The US has had a mix of whites and non-whites since colonial times but the fact that non-whites are reaching parity with whites in some areas is freaking out some segments of the white population and right wing politics has been feeding that wolf for years. This segment of the right (and it's not the entire right, it's a largish minority of the right) has turned to authoritarian ideas because that's the only way a minority can stay in power when the rest of the country rejects them. With their authoritarian streak running strong, they are drawn to strong man leaders in other countries who behave like they want to see their leaders behave.
Other countries have different dynamics to their politics, but the authoritarians tend to like Putin because he's a strong man. In reality strong men are really pretty weak people who have to warp everything to their will or they get upset. In Russia it's a 15 year prison sentence for just appearing to be against the war. That's not the sign of someone who is free of fear.
Follow-up - the BEST possible use of these systems right now would be attacking:
1) Command and Control - chop the head off the beast to make the units under their command less effective
2) Russian Electronic Warfare - there have been several reports that Ukrainian drone effectiveness is down very significantly due to the Russian deployment of EWS systems everywhere - target those systems, and you open up many more targets for your drones
3) Russian Aircraft (on ground at their bases in Ukraine)
4) Russian Rocket systems
5) Russian Artillery systems
6) Russian armor
That's the order I would be using HIMARS with if I only had 4 of them right now.
Command and control is a good target, but another weak spot the Ukrainians are aiming for is supply. They have been identifying Russian supply caches and taking them out whenever they can.
It looks like the better anti-radiation missile would be the Phoenix Ghost developed by the USAF. It's similar to the Switchblade, but while the Switchblade is designed to target enemy vehicles, the Phoenix Ghost is an anti-radiation loitering munition. It's designed to look for enemy targeting radar and dive on them whenever they turn on. But it could be used to take out jamming stations fairly easily too.
The US is sending Phoenix Ghost to Ukraine, but apparently there was some top secret tech in them that they need to engineer around first. The ones the Ukrainians get won't be as sophisticated as the USAF model, but they should do the job.
As a side note on Russian aircraft. The shortage of parts from the west might be affecting Russian aircraft. I've seen in separate articles in the last week that there have been a number Russian military aircraft crashes in Russia. I've seen two Su-25s and a transport have gone down. It's possibly just coincidence, but it could be due to the Russians pushing their aircraft in combat for too long without enough maintenance and the shortage of parts could be contributing.
Russia has been very dependent on Europe for parts to keep their infrastructure going. The Nord Stream I is running at lower capacity because a Siemans pump went out, it was sent to Canada for repair, and they now can't get it back. Their oil infrastructure is going to continue to fail as parts break and they can't repair them. They will keep things going for a while with work arounds and possibly taking equivalent parts from less critical areas and applying them to more critical areas, but there will come a point where the stop gap measures wear out.
Russia has had some good engineers who could figure out how to do a fair bit with few resources, but I think a lot of those engineers are retired or in other countries. Russia's education system went down the tubes and they don't have the expertise to replace their older technical workers. But there are probably enough to patch up some of the infrastructure.
The higher tech parts of the military is probably suffering from the same shortages. Making more AKs isn't tough, making more bullets and gun ammunition isn't tough, but making smart weapons, aircraft, anti-aircraft systems, etc. require parts they can't get. As the existing system break down from the abuses of combat, all they can do is work arounds to try and keep things going.
This is not a fast thing, it's a slow erosion of their infrastructure that they can probably keep hidden for months if not years. But it's happening. That's where sanctions do their work.
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cornucopia.se
www.bellingcat.com
www.pewresearch.org
