Image is of a protest in San Diego against ICE.
On January 7th, 37-year-old Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. While a considerable amount of the discussion online has been about the direction her wheels were turning and things like that, truthfully, I think it’s just fundamentally bad to shoot a person to death with a gun if you happen to be a state mercenary enforcing an incredibly racist federal policy, regardless of the circumstances.
The murder has since prompted a wave of vigils and protests, not only in Minneapolis, but also in virtually every major city in the country. The demands are justice for Good in particular, and the abolition of ICE in general, to avenge its many victims. The Trump administration has done all they can to inflame the situation, designating Good a “domestic terrorist” and saying that the agent who shot her will be immune from prosecution.
Protests and resistance to this administration’s policies have, encouragingly, had an element of international solidarity - not only are flags from countries throughout Latin America (and also Palestine) present, but speakers in protests have even been actively condemning the recent imperialist actions against Venezuela. For it is, of course, one joint struggle. The imperial boomerang always returns - and in the modern day, it returns rapidly.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
On US military buildup in the Middle East against Iran: it has started now, an additional 12x F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft have been forward deployed to Jordan, and logistics flights involving C-17 Globemaster III aircraft have taken place towards both the Middle East and Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian ocean known for hosting US Air Force strategic bombers. No bombers have been deployed as of now. This brings the total amount of F-15Es up to 36.
Source, F-15E movements
Source, Logistics flights
As for the rumours on an aircraft Carrier Strike Group (CSG), the USS Abraham Lincoln CSG is now confirmed to be on its way to the Middle East/West Asia, redirected from the South China Sea. It transited the Strait of Malacca today. It is probably a week away from being operational in the region.
As for the capabilities this brings, the F-15Es are often used for the Defensive Counter Air (DCA) mission, as they can carry up to 42 APKWS laser guided rockets each, in addition to 4x AIM-120 AMRAAM and 4x AIM-9 Sidewinder series air to air missiles. This allows a single F-15E to shoot down up to 50 targets (cruise missiles andone way attack drones) without needing to reload on the ground. F-15Es can also carry up to 5 AGM-158 JASSM series stealth cruise missiles each, which have a range in excess of 500 nautical miles. They can also be used as “bomb trucks” in scenarios where air superiority has been achieved (like Syria currently), carrying large amounts of guided bombs for a tactical fighter. However, it must be noted that aircraft with external weapons stores rarely sortie with a maximum loadout, due to the drag penalty.
F-15E with 42x APKWS, 4x AIM-120 AMRAAM and 4x AIM-9X Sidewinder;
F-15E with 5x AGM-158 JASSM, one on the centerline barley visible:
The USS Abraham Lincoln’s air wing does operate both F-35C 5th generation stealth aircraft and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft equipped with the latest AN/ALQ-249 Next Generation Jammer - Mid Band (NGJ-MB) pods, which are used to suppress and destroy air defence systems, enabling overflight of airspace by other aircraft. The F-35C can also carry out strikes of it’s own with guided bombs, up to 2x 2000lb bombs each for stealthy bunker buster/penetrator missions that the F-117 previously performed. The F/A-18s that make up the majority of the air wing can also be escorted to carry out deep strikes, or be used to carry stand-off weapons, such as glide bombs and cruise missiles.
Eventually some country is gonna pre-emptively strike the fleet during the build up phase because there’s never a time where they do a build up and don’t carry out action.
Tricky part about that is the US, for these kind of operations, usually stations their forces out of range of the majority of the strike capabilities of the adversary, making it either impossible for the adversary to strike, or forcing the adversary to resort to increasingly exotic/rare methods of strike. The US can do this thanks to their mid air refueling capabilities, this is why the Soviet Union and now China want to target those mid air refuelers and other rearward US air assets like AWACS. Hitting Jordan, Diego Garcia or an aircraft carrier around Oman accurately is vastly more challenging than doing the same in Qatar or the Persian Gulf for Iran, Iran has exactly one model of ballistic missile that could maybe do this for Jordan and the aircraft carrier around Oman (Qassem Basir), they have one model of one way attack drone and ballistic missile that could do this for Diego Garcia, with questions on accuracy.
If the US starts to station forces closer, say at their base in Qatar instead of evacuating it, then that’s a whole other matter.
The jets can be out of range yes, the ships can’t be. Not to a country like Iran with many submarines anyway.
The only thing preventing this from happening is the belief that if they do it things will become worse, but if the goal is regime change then there is no reason not to do it in my opinion.
Carrier strike groups usually have their own attack submarine as escort, and anti submarine warfare capabilities. The US also has anti submarine warfare aircraft that can patrol the Persian Gulf and also operate around aircraft carriers. Any Iranian diesel electric submarine trying to get close to a carrier to launch torpedoes, or Diego Garcia to say launch one way attack drones or cruise missiles, is on a one way trip.
I’m well aware of the anti submarine capabilities but the fact of the matter is that they’re deeply unreliable, if China can surface a diesel submarine in the middle of a carrier battle group on exercises specifically where they would be practicing anti submarine activities then these submarines can slip by and take offensive actions.
Submarines are not to be underestimated and the US absolutely does not have the same capabilities to prevent them as it does for air domination. If someone with these subs wanted to they absolutely could sink a carrier or more. When they know they’re there they have the ability to roughly track them but even that’s not particularly reliable and they can be lost. Tracking a submarine that’s deep enough becomes as large a problem as trying to track a dude hiding in a tunnel with 50m of rock between him and the surface. To avert this one of the primary tactics of fleets is to stick to shallower waters forcing the subs to riskier depths where they’re more easily tracked.
Diesel subs are extremely quiet when they are moving very slowly but they are built for littoral (coastal) defense and have limited range.
The way you sneak a sub right beside a carrier battle group is to ambush them by going very slow and attempting to intercept the projected navigation path of the fleet before they even arrive, and then wait with patience.
Believe it or not, shallow waters is where submarines are the hardest to detect. Active sonar gets very noisy return from shallow seafloor which easily masks the presence of a sub, besides the fact that you don’t want to be blasting active sonar around coastal areas with civilian fishing/shipping activities anyway.
The shallow seabed also reflects way too much noise (and again especially with civilian fishing/shipping activities nearby) for passive sonar to pick up the presence of a quietly waiting sub. Not saying it’s impossible, but it’s substantially more challenging than in deeper waters.
In deeper waters, and depending on the regional characteristics, you have what’s called thermal layers, which is an interface at which water temperature rapidly changes, and allowing sound to bounce off the layer interface instead of penetrating through one. Thus you have two layers of sound propagation and if a sub is hiding below the thermal layer, they have a good chance of avoiding detection from the surface fleet’s sonars above the layer.
However you still have to be careful with the full ASW capabilities of a carrier battle group, which will have attack subs and sonobuoys dropped from ASW planes scanning below the layer.
Diesel subs are not capable of such blue water operations. Their biggest asset is their stealth when moving very slowly, and is best when positioned for ambushing fleets at coastal defense.
The hard part about anti-submarine warfare is the vastness of the ocean/sea to scan for their presence - it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. But once a submarine is exposed, it’s very difficult to lose track of them again as the search space is narrowed substantially and they cannot really run away at high speed without making significant noise themselves.
Sort of true for sonar, untrue for magnetic anomaly detectors which is the primary method the US fleet uses to search the area around the fleet. They have helicopters and light aircraft that fly around the vicinity of the battlegroup performing sweeping scans.
Going back to it only being sort of true for sonar - You’re talking about the thermocline, which only really exists in very deep waters anyway. A submarine can hide directly below the thermocline and be practically invisible to sonar, and being deeper is actually disadvantageous because you’re less hidden in the distortion of noise in this line. But in shallow waters there is no thermocline.
There are some geographical problems related to this. The depth of the Persian Gulf is very shallow, 50-100m, once ships are within it they are not particularly vulnerable to submarines. The only waters that are going to have a thermocline are out in the Gulf of Oman, which have a depth up to 4000m. It is quite possible for a US battlegroup to hug the coast and avoid these areas while relying on magnetic detection at shallower waters.
They can also just straight up use radar and lidar in shallow waters. Radar will penetrate water up to 100m. What I think the US has been doing too with lidar and other light-based systems is accurately mapping the seabed so they know what the seabed is supposed to look like, then they check it against their data when out on operations and use AI to flag any anomalies or discrepancies with the data. AI use in sifting sound and signal data is a very recent thing but I would guess that it significantly improves human operators that would miss certain discrepancies.
MAD has very limited range compared to sonar. The biggest problem is still the search space - most people have little idea how vast the sea/ocean is, even for coastlines. You have to have very extensive coverage in order to find that needle in the haystack. There simply aren’t enough air assets to provide that sort of coverage, unless you have additional intel that narrows down your search perimeter.
There have been advances in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) where AI accelerated signal processing can help, but we are still very far from the deployment of these systems in the real world.
A lot of what you’re seeing these days are merely academic papers that are cool ideas but as with everything being translated into real world usage, a lot of them will run into practical issues that render them less effective than were initially thought.
:inshallah:
F-35C can carry this internal?
Yes, F-35A and C can. B cannot, only 1000lb class munitions