Вот такое письмо пришло от вице-президента Никарагуа Росарио Мурильо:
'Когда же США поймут, что акты агрессии, которые они беззастенчиво именуют санкциями (будто у них есть божественное право назначать наказание), означают не что иное, как попытку утвердить свои притязания на роль мирового диктатора?
Когда же они поймут, что наш мир изменился и что у них нет ни моральных, ни политических оснований выступать в роли вселенского прокурора, судьи или полицейского?
Справедливость восторжествует! Потому что гордыня и высокомерие превратят в пыль тех, кто считает себя богами, будучи в действительности колоссом на глиняных ногах, жалким в своем абсолютном невежестве и безрассудстве!
Единомышленники из RT, Sputnik, «России сегодня», еще раз выражаем вам свое признание и уважение за вашу работу и за творческий, вдумчивый, обоснованный, чуткий и проникновенный подход к освещению событий, благодаря которому вам удается тронуть сердца аудитории.
Ключевая роль RT заключается в том, чтобы продвигать и провозглашать новую культуру духовной силы человека. Это так и никак иначе. Еще раз примите наши поздравления за ваши знание, веру и силу. Победа будет за нами!'
И добавить тут нечего. Только бесконечная благодарность.
Analysts say Mossad likely hid explosives in pagers before they reached Hezbollah
Israel has scored a major intelligence success by apparently infiltrating a supply chain to cause the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of Hezbollah pagers in a blow for the Lebanese terror group and its Iranian backers, analysts say.
At least nine people were killed and some 2,750 wounded, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, when the pagers exploded in Hezbollah strongholds across the country in an unprecedented simultaneous attack.
With Hezbollah appearing to prefer the use of pagers for internal communications over smartphones for security reasons, analysts said it appeared Israel had corrupted the devices before delivery, allowing them to explode at a specific time.
A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, told AFP that “the pagers that exploded concern a shipment recently imported by Hezbollah of 1,000 devices,” which appear to have been “sabotaged at [the] source.”
Sky News Arabia quoted sources saying that the Mossad spy agency got hold of Hezbollah’s communication devices before they were handed over to the terror group.
The Israeli spy agency placed a quantity of PETN, a highly explosive material, on the batteries of the devices, and detonated them by raising the temperature of the batteries from afar, the source said.
A Lebanese security source quoted by Al Jazeera said an explosive weighing less than 20 grams had been placed in each pager.
A video circulating on social media purports to show the moment that a pager used by a Hezbollah operative exploded in Lebanon. According to Lebanese media, dozens were injured after Israel allegedly hacked the devices and detonated them.
The pagers that exploded had been newly acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using cellphones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand the group had not used before.
“Mossad infiltrated the supply chain,” said Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute, referring to Israel’s intelligence agency.
“A small plastic explosive was almost certainly concealed alongside the battery, for remote detonation via a call or page,” he said.
Officials with the group initially suspected overheated lithium-ion batteries may have caused the pagers to explode, but images of the destroyed devices seen Tuesday showed signs of detonation, said Alex Plitsas, a weapons expert at the Atlantic Council.
“A lithium-ion battery fire is one thing, but I’ve never seen one explode like that. It looks like a small explosive charge,” Plitsas said.
Paul Christensen, an expert in lithium-ion battery safety at Newcastle University said the level of damage caused by the pager explosions seemed inconsistent with known cases of such batteries failing in the past.
“What we’re talking about is a relatively small battery bursting into flames. We’re not talking of a fatal explosion here. I’d need to know more about the energy density of the batteries, but my intuition is telling me that it’s highly unlikely,” he said.
SMEX, a Lebanese digital rights organization, told Reuters that Israel could have exploited a weakness in the device to cause it to explode. It said the pagers could also have been intercepted before reaching Hezbollah and either tampered with electronically or implanted with an explosive device.
Yehoshua Kalisky, a scientist and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank, noted the possibility of an electronic pulse “that was sent from afar and burnt the devices and caused their explosion.”
“It is not some random action; it was deliberate and known,” he said.
‘Their big comeback’
Hezbollah has blamed Israel for the explosions. Israel, which traditionally does not comment on security operations outside the country, has yet to confirm or deny its involvement.
It remains unclear whether the action could tip the region into a regional war between Israel and Hezbollah that the West has been battling to avoid ever since Hamas’s October 7 massacre on Israel sparked the war in Gaza.
But the images captured on camera of pagers exploding are a major security blow for Hezbollah and an illustration of Israel’s reach even into the terror group’s members’ pockets.
The action comes after senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike on July 30 that indicated Israel had precise information about his whereabouts.
Just a day later, the political leader of Hamas, Ismael Haniyeh, was killed in a residence in Tehran, reportedly using an explosive device that had been placed by Israeli operatives weeks before. Israel has not confirmed or denied its involvement in the assassination.
French defense expert Pierre Servent said the latest action against Hezbollah would help Israeli intelligence services restore their reputation, which was badly dented by the October 7 massacre when Hamas-led terrorists rampaged across southern communities on October 7, murdering some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to Gaza.
“The series of operations conducted over the past few months marks their big comeback, with a desire for deterrence and a message: ‘We messed up but we’re not dead,'” he told AFP.
‘Classic sabotage’
Former CIA analyst Mike Dimino of the US-based Defense Priorities think tank said that judging by images of the injuries a “very small explosive” implanted inside the devices was the most likely cause, rather than an overheating battery.
“This was a classic sabotage operation,” he said on X, adding such an operation takes “months if not years” to orchestrate.
Dubai-based analyst Riad Kahwaji said that Israel had taken advantage of Hezbollah’s move away from smartphones to pagers.
Israel intelligence had conducted a “most professional operation,” he said.
“Without a doubt, one of the factories it (Israel) owns manufactured and shipped these explosive devices that exploded today,” he said.
Цитата:
Цитата:
Цитата:
4000 ливанцев получили ранения в результате взрывов пейджеров, 400 из них находятся в критическом состоянии. Немыслимые цифры.
Mocarstwa szykują się na nowy konflikt zbrojny. Ta broń może odegrać w nim kluczową rolę
...
Obrona Ukrainy pokazuje, że można zniszczyć dużą flotę tanim sposobem
Ukraińcom, praktycznie nieposiadającym floty morskiej w tradycyjnym tego słowa znaczeniu, udało się zatapiać potężne i bardzo drogie jednostki rosyjskie za pomocą opracowanych wedle własnego pomysłu małych, bardzo szybkich, zdalnie sterowanych jednostek.
Obrona przed morskimi dronami stwarza Rosjanom potężne problemy, chociażby dlatego że są one bardzo ciężko wykrywalne przez radary.
Koszt wyprodukowania takiej jednostki to zaledwie ok. 200 tys. dol., a dzięki swojemu stosunkowo bardzo taniemu pomysłowi strona ukraińska zniszczyła już jedną trzecią rosyjskiej Floty Czarnomorskiej, w tym duże okręty desantowe wyceniane na miliardy dolarów.
Jak zauważa we wtorek Reuters, te wydarzenia, a także podobne (bo niewymagające sporych nakładów finansowych) sukcesy w utrudnianiu ruchu morskiego w regionie Morza Czerwonego przez wspieranych przez Iran rebeliantów Huti, skłoniły Amerykanów do myślenia w kategoriach "masy dostępnej cenowo". Chodzi o to, żeby w razie konfliktu mieć duże ilości stosunkowo taniej i łatwo dostępnej broni, z której w prosty sposób mogą też korzystać sojusznicy.
Otwarta konfrontacja USA z Chinami w regionie Morza Południowochińskiego to prawdopodobny scenariusz
To, do czego Amerykanie się szczególnie przygotowują, to neutralizacja floty chińskiej, co - jak sugerują opracowania tematu - byłoby warunkiem koniecznym, aby skutecznie obronić przed chińską inwazją Tajwan.
To Tajwan, który ma gwarancje ze strony USA, że staną w obronie wyspy, jest postrzegany jako najprawdopodobniejsze zarzewie otwartego zbrojnego konfliktu mocarstw, do którego może dojść nawet w perspektywie najbliższych lat, czyli przed zbliżającym się stuleciem Chińskiej Armii Ludowo-Wyzwoleńczej, które przypada na 2027 rok.
Taki scenariusz ma stawać się coraz bardziej prawdopodobny ze względu na to, że Komunistyczna Partii Chin w ostatnich latach zaostrzyła agresywną retorykę, a "dołączenie Tajwanu do chińskiej macierzy" uważa za kluczowy krok na drodze realizacji planu przywrócenia Chinom należnego im - w jej opinii - centralnego miejsca na mapie świata. Chiny nie wykluczają przy tym agresji zbrojnej, której warianty ćwiczą zresztą od dekad.
Równocześnie w ostatnich latach Chiny zbudowały flotę, która pod względem liczby statków przewyższa flotę amerykańską. Chińskie statki - jak podkreślają eksperci - są mniejsze i gorsze technicznie, a chińska flota ma ograniczone możliwości operowania na pełnym morzu. Jednak bitwa o Tajwan rozegrałaby się jednak głównie w najbliższych okolicach wyspy Tajwan, położonej zaledwie od 130 do 250 km od kontynentalnych Chin.
W przeprowadzonej przez amerykański Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) na początku 2023 roku symulacji chińskiej inwazji na Tajwan, która zakłada, że do ataku miałoby dojść w 2026 roku, starcie skończyłoby się przegraną Chin i m.in. całkowitym zniszczeniem chińskiej floty, jednak przy sporych stratach także ze strony USA.
Problem otwartej konfrontacji z Chinami na bieżąco rozważają też amerykańscy wojskowi i współpracujące z nimi spółki z sektora przemysłu obronnego.
Odpowiedzią na chińskie zbrojenia ma być "tania masa" bomb Quicksink
Jak zauważa cytowany przez Reutersa analityk think tanku Australian Strategic Policy Institute Euan Graham, "tania masa" to "naturalna kontra do tego, co teraz robią Chińczycy", czyli budowy w regionie arsenału statków i konwencjonalnych rakiet balistycznych, w tym tych przeznaczonych do atakowania statków.
Jak zauważa Reuters, Stany Zjednoczone w tym kontekście przyspieszyły testy broni Quicksink. To niedroga i potencjalnie łatwa w produkcji na masową skalę bomba wyposażona w stosunkowo tani zestaw nawigacji GPS i moduł umożliwiający śledzenie poruszających się obiektów.
W ramach testów przeprowadzonych w Zatoce Meksykańskiej, Siły Powietrzne Stanów Zjednoczonych użyły wyposażonego w Quicksink bombowca B-2, aby zaatakować statek.
W razie konfliktu Chiny będą nadal miały dużą przewagę pod względem liczby pocisków przeciwokrętowych, a także będą mogły je wystrzeliwać z własnego terytorium. Jednak zwiększenie produkcji Quicksink zmniejszyłoby tę przewagę, podczas jakiegokolwiek przyszłego konfliktu narażając flotę około 370 chińskich okrętów wojennych na większe ryzyko, niż mogła się ona tego spodziewać do tej pory - ocenia Reuters.
Quicksink, wciąż w fazie rozwoju, to efekt współpracy notowanych na giełdzie spółek Boeing i BAE Systems.
Szczególną zaletą tego rozwiązania ma być, że Quicksink, może być używany z zestawami ogonowymi amunicji ataku bezpośredniego (JDAMs), które można zrzucić z amerykańskich lub sojuszniczych samolotów bojowych i w ten sposób zamienić "głupie" bomby o masie ponad 900 kg w broń precyzyjnego rażenia.
Według anonimowych źródeł cytowanych przez Reutersa Amerykańskie Dowództwo Indo-Pacyfiku chce mieć tysiące sztuk broni Quicksink, szacując, że wycelowanie wystarczającej ilości takiej "taniej masy" w kierunku chińskiej floty przeciążyłoby jej systemy obrony.
W takim scenariuszu armia amerykańska używałaby rakiet przeciwokrętowych dalekiego zasięgu (LRASM) lub rakiet SM-6, aby uszkodzić chiński okręt wojenny i jego radary, a następnie bombardowałaby statek tańszą bronią, taką jak Quicksink.
Już teraz USA gromadzą arsenał w regionie Morza Południowochińskiego
Reuters przypomina również, że Stany Zjednoczone już gromadzą w regionie Morza Południowochińskiego różnorodne rodzaje broni przeciwokrętowej. I tak w kwietniu armia amerykańska rozmieściła na Filipinach nowe baterie rakiet mobilnych Typhon, które zostały w tani sposób opracowane z istniejących już komponentów i mogą wystrzeliwać rakiety SM-6 i Tomahawk przeciwko celom morskim.
Taka broń, stosunkowo łatwa w produkcji na bazie istniejących już zapasów i projektów, które istnieją od dekady lub dłużej - jak zauważa Reuters - może pomóc Stanom Zjednoczonym i ich sojusznikom bardzo szybko nadrobić zaległości wobec Chin w regionie w trwającym wyścigu zbrojeń.
Chiny uznają 90 proc. Morza Południowochińskiego za swoje terytorium, ale sprzeciwia się temu nie tylko Tajwan, ale także pięć innych krajów regionu - Brunei, Indonezja, Malezja i Wietnam. Aby wyrównać ich szanse w ewentualnym starciu z chińskimi komunistami, Amerykanie starają się rozmieszczać w regionie swoje jednostki, w szczególności broń przeciwokrętową w takich miejscach, jak Filipiny. Chińczycy z kolei próbują im te działania utrudnić, jednocześnie stosując strategię zastraszania wymierzoną w szczególności w Filipiny i Tajwan.
Cabin pressure issue on Delta flight causes bloody ears and noses for passengers
...
Some Delta Air Lines passengers are recovering after a pressurization issue on a flight from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Portland, Oregon, caused bloody noses and other issues, according to airline and passenger statements.
“We sincerely apologize to our customers for their experience on flight 1203 on Sept. 15,” said a statement from a Delta spokesperson. “The flight crew followed procedures to return to SLC where our teams on the ground supported our customers with their immediate needs,” the airline said.
Flight 1203 passengers were accommodated on another aircraft.
Delta technicians fixed the pressurization issue on the aircraft, the airline said, and the plane was returned to service the following day.
Caryn Allen told CNN affiliate KSL that said it didn’t take very long for passengers to notice something was wrong on the flight. “I looked over at my husband, and he had both of his hands over his ears, you know, kind of leaning forward,” Allen said.
“I looked about a row behind me, over on the other side of the aisle, and there was a gentleman that clearly had a very bad bloody nose, and people were trying to help him,” Allen told the outlet.
Fellow passenger Jaci Purser said it felt like somebody was stabbing her in the ear. “I grabbed my ear, and I pulled my hand back, and there was blood on it,” Purser said.
No serious injuries were reported, but medical personnel identified 10 individuals in need of evaluation or treatment following the flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate.
_________________
С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Putin could make millions of iPhones blow up without warning, if my fears are right, writes MARK ALMOND
...
And there could be consequences for us, too. Western democracies will already be assessing what this novel form of warfare means for them – and how they might be able to copy Israel's methods.
History teaches us that no new military technique remains a monopoly of its inventor for long. How long before Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping works out how to make millions of iPhones around the world burst into flames in the pockets of their foes?
Цитата:
Цитата:
Цитата:
Цитата:
Цитата:
Цитата:
Цитата:
Цитата:
Lebanon is hit by MORE explosions as 'Hezbollah walkie talkies' detonate across country - a day after pager bomb attacks
...
Walkie talkies used by Hezbollah fighters have detonated across Lebanon, killing three and wounding hundreds of people including mourners at a funeral, witnesses and security sources have reported.
The second wave of carnage comes a day after thousands of exploding pagers used by the group left almost 3,000 people injured and a dozen dead, including civilians and children.
Security sources have now confirmed that hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, at around the same time as the compromised pagers.
The latest explosions this afternoon have hit the country's south and the capital Beirut, where dramatic time-lapse video shows multiple plumes of smoke rising above the skyline in different locations almost simultaneously.
Multiple explosions occurred at the site of a funeral for three Hezbollah members and a child killed by exploding pagers the day before, according to reports.
Lebanon's foreign minister has today warned that yesterday's pager blasts are an omen of a widening war.
Hezbollah said on Wednesday it had attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets in the first strike at its arch-foe since pager blasts wounded thousands of its members in Lebanon and raised the prospect of a wider Middle East war.
Israel's spy agency Mossad, which has a long history of sophisticated operations on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters.
The death toll rose to 12, including two children, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday. Tuesday's attack wounded nearly 3,000 people, including many of the militant group's fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut.
A Taiwanese pager maker denied that it had produced the pager devices which exploded in an audacious attack that raised the prospect of a full-scale war between the Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel.
Gold Apollo said the devices were made by under licence by a company called BAC, based in Hungary's capital Budapest.
There was no immediate word on when Hezbollah had launched its latest rocket attack, but normally the group announces such strikes shortly after carrying them out, suggesting it fired at the Israeli artillery positions on Wednesday.
Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.
The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, fuelling fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.
Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pushing the Middle East to the brink of a regional war by orchestrating a dangerous escalation on many fronts.
'Hezbollah wants to avoid an all-out war. It still wants to avoid one. But given the scale, the impact on families, on civilians, there will be pressure for a stronger response,' said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Hezbollah, Iran's most powerful proxy in the Middle East, said in a statement it would continue to support Hamas in Gaza and Israel should await a response to the pager 'massacre' which left fighters and others bloodied, hospitalised or dead.
One Hezbollah official said the detonation was the group's 'biggest security breach' in its history.
Вот статья о взрыве вейпа в самолёте. Представляете, что случилось бы если бы на борту авиалайнера взлетевшего или садящегося вчера в Ливане оказался боец Хезболы или его родственник? Полагаете это остановило бы Израиль?
Цитата:
Terrifying video shows chaos after 'vape explosion' on packed easyJet flight with Brit passengers leaping down emergency slide at Crete airport
...
This is the moment chaos ensued on an easyJet flight from Crete to London Gatwick after a 'vape explosion' forced a hasty evacuation before takeoff.
Terrifying video showed chaotic scenes on Tuesday as passengers scrambled into the central aisle before disembarking via the inflatable slide, surrounded by officials.
Witnesses said 'a very large red flash and flame' caused the commotion before panicked passengers started screaming 'bomb!'
Staff believe e-cigarettes and a power bank inside a carry-on likely caused 'popping noises' and 'thick black smoke' to fill the cabin during boarding.
All 236 on board were forced back off the plane, guided by emergency services, and passengers were left to wait some nine hours for the next flight home.
Video obtained by MailOnline shows a passenger clutching a bag and a phone as they were led to exit the plane at Crete airport via the emergency slide.
Officials in hi-vis jackets stood by to help passengers back off the plane at Heraklion.
Passengers were safely off the plane within 'minutes' but the flight to London was cancelled.
A flight was later chartered, leaving for London after 11pm.
Passengers described their horror as a fire broke out on board the plane, fearing for the worst.
'Fire and acrid smoke billowed from the bag, popping exploding noises, smoke filled the cabin around the bag,' one eyewitness said.
A passenger told MailOnline they heard someone asking 'what is that what is that' as she took her seat, seconds before the explosion occurred.
Passengers were 'screaming bomb and clattering to get out' as panic broke out, with some saying a 'lady with a vape in her bum bag was waving it around as smoke started to come out'.
One said the woman with the bag was British and tried to leave the plane, asking people to get out of the way.
But as her bag caught fire, she dropped it in the aisle as people were still trying to take their seats.
There was a fire scorch mark left on floor, but travellers were later allowed back on plane to collect belongings.
MailOnline understands no customers suffered burn injuries from the explosion, but one passenger suffered a friction burn from the evacuation slide.
'EasyJet have kept us up to date with the replacement flight, which we are boarding now, they gave us a voucher to get food,' another said.
'All the staff have been very helpful and it was as painless as it could be given the circumstances.'
Police forces rushed to the scene to investigate the incident.
A spokesperson told MailOnline: 'easyJet can confirm that flight EZY8216 from Heraklion to London Gatwick was evacuated during boarding prior to departure, due to a fire in a passenger's cabin bag.
'Fire services attended the aircraft and cabin crew evacuated the aircraft in line with procedures.
'Customers are currently being looked after in the terminal and a replacement aircraft and crew have been arranged to fly customers home later today. Safety is our highest priority.'
Is Netanyahu paving the way for all-out war with Hezbollah? How Israeli PM 'widened war goals' hours before pager blasts and is poised to 'sack defence chief who pushed for ceasefire'
...
The Middle East is on the brink after a mass attack on Hezbollah saw thousands of its militants' pagers explode - just hours after Israel's prime minister vowed to step up military action against Lebanon.
While Israel has not confirmed that it was behind the pager blasts - which left some 2,800 Hezbollah members and civilians injured and nine dead in Lebanon and Syria - several security sources have blamed the IDF and Mossad spy agency for the attack.
Hostile rhetoric on both sides was building even before the blasts amid ongoing cross-border fire between Lebanon and Israel over the past year, as Hezbollah continues to pummel Israel in a show of support to its allies Hamas in Gaza.
Meanwhile, reports have emerged that Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to sack his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, who is widely seen as the most vocal government minister pushing for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza to free Israeli hostages.
This means that the prospect of a ceasefire in Gaza appears evermore distant at the same time as tensions on Israel's northern border are spiking, with Netanyahu seemingly pushing ahead for broader escalation.
Over the weekend, Israel's premier called for a 'change in the balance of forces on our northern border,' amid the near-daily attacks by Hezbollah, while pledging to do 'whatever is necessary' to return evacuated residents to their homes.
Israel has been ramping up preparations for a war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, taking on the Iran-backed militant group to improve security in its northern region.
Netanyahu frames it as an existential war for Israel and has argued that now is not the time to show weakness, defying calls for restraint and compromise, including from within his war cabinet.
The PM's office has been putting out the message that while he is pushing for greater confrontation with Hezbollah, retired military general Gallant is against it, according to Israeli outlet Haaertz.
Michael Milshtein, a leading Palestinian studies scholar at Tel Aviv University, said that Gallant 'doesn't want a broad escalation', but that Netanyahu is 'considering' it.
In an expansion of Israel's official war goals on Tuesday, Netanyahu announced that his forces would now aim to halt Hezbollah's attacks in the north to allow tens of thousands of residents to return to their homes along the border.
As news of the plans emerged, Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to the Biden administration warned Netanyahu against initiating a wider war against Lebanon, sources told Axios.
On the same day, Gallant told the United States military envoy visiting the region that 'military action' is the 'only way left to ensure the return of Israel's northern communities.'
...
Цитата:
Israel unleashed pager attack earlier than expected in 'use it or lose it moment' amid fears Hezbollah were about to foil the plot, report claims
…
Israel carried out a pager bomb attack that left roughly 2,800 people injured and 12 dead in Lebanon and Syria yesterday fearing that Hezbollah was on the cusp of foiling their deadly plot, a new report has claimed.
Pager devices recently introduced by the group to beef up security exploded en masse yesterday, causing chaotic scenes and devastation in Lebanese hospitals. Israel is believed to have orchestrated the attack but has not claimed responsibility.
Security sources believe Mossad, Israel's spy agency, intercepted devices en route to Lebanon months ago and embedded explosives to be remotely detonated as part of a plan to cripple the Iranian proxy group.
Still, questions remain as to why the attack was carried out on Tuesday. One American official told Axios it was 'a use it or lose it moment' as Hezbollah were understood to be getting close to uncovering Israeli espionage.
Israel's domestic security agency said only on Tuesday that it had recently foiled a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defence official in the coming days.
Three US officials told Axios that Israel decided to blow up the pager devices carried by Hezbollah members on Tuesday as they feared the group was close to uncovering their operation.
A security source told Reuters that up to three grams of explosives had been hidden in the new pagers and had gone 'undetected' by Hezbollah for months.
One senior Lebanese security source told the news agency he believes the devices had been modified by Mossad 'at the production level' before arriving in Lebanon.
'The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It's very hard to detect it through any means,' the source said.
Hezbollah earlier this year ordered thousands of pagers to conduct communications after leader Hassan Nasrallah declared smartphones would be more susceptible to cyber attacks by Israeli forces.
As many as 5,000 devices are believed to have affected, though not all went off on Tuesday, according to the Lebanese source.
The source claimed Hezbollah ordered the pagers from a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo, but executives there said the devices were actually manufactured and sold under licence by BAC Consulting in Budapest, Hungary.
Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based senior political risk analyst, later said he spoke with Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that failed to explode.
The pagers appeared to receive a coded error message sent to all the devices that caused them to vibrate and beep for some 10 seconds.
When the user pressed the pager's button to cancel the alert, the explosives were detonated - a design that would ensure the pager was being held by the user at the time of the blast to inflict maximum damage.
The months-long operation by Mossad and the IDF represents an unprecedented security breach for Hezbollah, which vowed to exact revenge on Israel and continue its support for ally Hamas amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
'The resistance will continue today, like any other day, its operations to support Gaza, its people and its resistance which is a separate path from the harsh punishment that the criminal enemy (Israel) should await in response to Tuesday's massacre,' a statement read.
Hsu Ching-kuang (L), head of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, speaks to the media outside the company's office in New Taipei City on September 18, 2024. Taiwanese company Gold Apollo on September 18 denied a report that it had produced thousands of explosive-packed pagers.
The string of detonations, which began around 3:30pm local time yesterday and continued for roughly an hour, gave way to widespread panic and chaos across Beirut's southern suburbs, southern Lebanon and even in neighbouring Syria.
Shocking video footage showed how unsuspecting targets reached for their pagers, only to be blown off their feet by an unexpected and violent explosion.
Victims were seen writhing in agony with hideous injuries to their faces, abdomens and even their groins in harrowing images and videos shared to social media and published on Lebanese networks.
Among the 12 people reportedly killed were two girls, aged eight and ten, and several Hezbollah fighters, as well as the son of a Lebanese MP.
Iran later confirmed its ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, sustained injuries to his face and hand.
More than 2,800 people were ultimately injured in the blasts, 300 of whom were rushed to hospital in critical condition.
Early speculation in the wake of the blasts suggested an Israeli hack could have overloaded the lithium ion batteries powering the pagers, which can burn up to 590 degrees celsius (1,100 F) when ignited.
But a slew of security sources and experts have since determined the detonations were caused by an Israeli operation that disrupted the supply chain and inserted explosives into the pagers that were subsequently remotely activated by the coded error message.
A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge.
'A pager has three of those already,' explained the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients on the Middle East.
'You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.'
By the time of the attack, 'the battery was probably half-explosive and half-actual battery,' said Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec.
Security camera footage shared to social media yesterday appeared to show the moment on Israel sent out its deadly message.
A Hezbollah member was seen confusedly lifting his shirt up at a supermarket after his pager, concealed just above his hip, began beeping and lighting up.
The device suddenly exploded, crumpling him to the floor as supermarket workers and fellow shoppers panicked and fled.
'Looking at the video, the size of the detonation is similar to that caused by an electric detonator alone or one that incorporates an extremely small, high-explosive charge,' said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert.
This signals involvement of a state actor, Moorhouse said. He added that Israel's foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, is the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack.
A Hezbollah statement said: 'After examining all the facts, current data, and available information about the sinful attack that took place this afternoon, we hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that targeted civilians too.'
Israel has declined to comment on the explosions.
…
_________________
С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Russia's ambassador to the UK hauled into the Foreign Office over Kremlin's 'completely baseless' claims that six expelled British diplomats were 'spying' in Moscow
...
Russia's ambassador to the UK was hauled into the Foreign Office today over 'malicious and completely baseless' claims against British diplomats in Moscow.
The Kremlin last week announced the expulsion of six Foreign Office staff from Russia and claimed to have evidence they were engaged in spying and sabotage.
The move ratcheted up tensions between London and Moscow as Sir Keir Starmer prepared to meet Joe Biden in Washington DC.
The PM and US President held talks on giving the go-ahead for Ukraine to use long-range missiles, including Britain's Storm Shadow weapons, against targets in Russia.
The Foreign Office immediately rejected the claims by Russia's FSB security agency against its staff in Moscow and today announced the summoning of Russian ambassador Andrey Kelin.
It said the action was taken in response to Moscow's 'malicious and deliberate public campaign of aggression against the UK'.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: 'The UK condemns in the strongest terms Russia's unprecedented and unfounded public campaign of aggression against the UK, including the malicious and completely baseless accusations made against Foreign Office staff last week.
'This behaviour is in direct contravention to Russia's obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
'This pattern of behaviour is completely unacceptable, deeply unprofessional, and beneath the standards of conduct between states.
'This is the latest development in a deliberate campaign by Russia to undermine and threaten UK security and democracy and deter our support for Ukraine, through disinformation, acts of sabotage in Europe and direct harassment and restrictions against our diplomatic missions in Russia.
'This campaign will not succeed. Russia must stop this activity immediately.'
The expulsion of six UK diplomats from Moscow is the latest in a series of diplomatic rows between Britain and Russia over the past year.
In May, the UK expelled Russia's defence attache in London, Colonel Maxim Elovik, claiming he was an 'undeclared military intelligence officer', removed diplomatic status from several Russian-owned premises, and placed restrictions on Russian diplomatic visas.
In response, Russia expelled Britain's defence attache in Moscow, Captain Adrian Coghill.
Despite Sir Keir and Mr Biden's talks last week, no decision has yet been reached on giving Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles to target Russian airfields and military bases.
Кто из кандидатов станет президентом США в ноябре?
Тот, который доживет до выборов.
Статья «Politico» - спекуляция, за то каков заголовок!
Цитата:
Trump called for ‘unity’ after the first assassination attempt. Not this time.
…
Цитата:
Цитата:
False reports of explosives found in a car near a Trump rally spread online
...
NEW YORK (AP) - Law enforcement officials on Long Island worked quickly on Wednesday to publicly knock down social media posts falsely reporting that explosives had been found in a car near former President Donald Trump´s planned rally in New York.
The false reports of an explosive began circulating hours before the Republican presidential nominee´s campaign event at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, just days after he was apparently the target of a second possible assassination attempt.
Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said police questioned and detained a person who "may have been training a bomb detection dog," near the site of the rally and "falsely reported explosives being found."
Lt. Scott Skrynecki, a spokesperson for the county police, said in follow-up messages that the person, who police have not yet identified, was a civilian and not a member of a law enforcement agency.
He also said the person was not working at or affiliated with the event, which is expected to draw thousands of Trump supporters to the arena that was formerly the home of the NHL's New York Islanders.
The rally is Trump's first on Long Island, a suburban area just east of New York City, since 2017.
Earlier Wednesday, Skrynecki and other county officials responded swiftly to knock down the online line claims, which appear to have started with a post from a reporter citing unnamed sources in the local police department.
"False," Skrynecki texted the AP as the claims spread on X, formerly Twitter.
"No. Ridiculous. Zero validity," said Christopher Boyle, spokesperson for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.
Цитата:
Cops confirm no threat to Trump's rally after report of 'explosives'
...
Police say there is no threat to former President Donald Trump's rally site on Long Island after 'explosives' were reportedly found in a car near the site. A spokesperson for the Nassau County Police Department confirmed to DailyMail.com that 'there was a suspicious occurrence' on Wednesday ahead of Trump's speech where thousands of MAGA fans are gathering. But there is 'no validity' to a report that there was an 'explosive device found.' 'Reports of explosives being found at the site are unfounded,' said Nassau County Commissioner of Police Patrick Ryder.
He went on to blame a suspect with a 'self-trained bomb-detecting dog' for sounding the alarm about explosives near the rally site. The latest reports of a possible Trump security breach come just three days after a would-be assassin was arrested after stalking the former president with a rifle as he golfed at his Palm Beach golf club. Police working in conjunction with Secret Service remain on high alert in the area hours before the former president is set to take the stage. 'There is a person who is being questioned who may have been training a bomb detection dog near the site,' said Commissioner of Police Ryder.
'The individual with the bomb dog falsely reported explosives being found and that individual is currently being detained by police.' Sources in the Nassau County Police Department had allegedly told journalist James Lalino earlier Wednesday that the rally site 'perimeter was breached and a blue barrel was removed.' In addition, during the K9 sweep they apparently 'found an explosive device in one of the vehicles.' The sources allegedly said the driver ended up running into the woods.
'No one saw if he had anything on him, they just saw him take off running. A lot of cars are now parking, they’re lining up on Hempstead Turnpike, just parking on the grass. Even over at Eisenhower Park, they’re just parking over there,' the source went on to tell Lalino according to a post on X. Thousands of MAGA fans are expected to descend upon Long Island this afternoon ahead of the 7 p.m. ET rally at the Nassau Coliseum. A large crowd has already assembled and many camped out overnight to get good seats in the indoor arena. Doors don't open until 3 p.m. ET, but already MAGA fans have assembled, decked out in Trump gear, hats and buttons and waving large flags.
Nassau County Police told DailyMail.com they are 'working on an email' to send out in response to the alleged security incident. A Secret Service spokesperson also said that reports of 'explosives' found in a car are false. Trump has largely moved to indoor events since the first attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. He was shot in the right ear by would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks as shots rang out at his mid-summer rally after the stunning security failure.
...
Цитата:
Secret Service falsely assured locals they would 'take care of' building where would-be assassin Thomas Crooks shot Trump
…
Цитата:
Report: Secret Service said they'd handle building used by Crooks
…
Lessons from Red Sea and Ukraine’s Black Sea fight help prep Navy for possible conflict with China
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Navy is taking lessons from its combat in the Red Sea over the past year and what Ukraine has done to hold off the Russians in the Black Sea to help U.S. military leaders prepare the service for a potential future conflict with China.
From drones and unmanned surface vessels to the more advanced operation of ship-board guns, the Navy is expanding its combat skills and broadening training. It is also working to overcome recruiting struggles so it can have the sailors it needs to fight the next war.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations, is laying out a series of goals, including several that will be highly challenging to meet, in a new navigation plan she described in an interview with The Associated Press. The objective is to be ready to face what the Pentagon calls its key national security challenge — China.
“I’m very focused on 2027. It’s the year that that President Xi (Jinping) told his forces to be ready to invade Taiwan,” Franchetti said. “We need to be more ready.”
The new plan, set to be released Wednesday, includes what she considers seven priority goals, ranging from removing delays in ship depot maintenance to improving Navy infrastructure, recruiting and the use of drones and autonomous systems.
One significant challenge is to have 80% of the force be ready enough at any given time to deploy for combat if needed — something she acknowledged is a “stretch goal.” The key, she said, is to get to a level of combat readiness where “if the nation calls us, we can push the ‘go’ button and we can surge our forces to be able to meet the call.”
The announcement of the goals comes as U.S. leaders are treading a fine line, pledging a commitment to the defense of Taiwan while also working to keep communication open with Beijing to deter greater conflict.
Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that split from communist China in 1949, has rejected Beijing’s demands that it accept unification. China says it will do so by force if necessary. The United States is obligated under domestic law to help defend Taiwan and give it weapons and technology to deter invasion.
An important element in any Asia-Pacific conflict will be the need to control the seas. Franchetti said the U.S. can learn from how the Ukrainians have used drones, airstrikes and long-range unmanned vessels to limit Russian ship activity in the western Black Sea and keep access open to critical ports.
“If you look at the Ukrainian success in really keeping the Russian Black Sea fleet pushed all the way over into the east, that’s all about sea denial and that’s very important,” Franchetti said. She added that Ukraine has been innovating on the battlefield by using existing systems, such as drones, in different ways.
The Navy’s monthslong battle with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen has provided other lessons.
“I think probably no one is learning more than the Navy, because really, this is the first time we’ve been in a weapons engagement zone for this sustained period,” she said.
She said sailors are watching their attacks and analyzing the data as ships respond.
Earlier this year, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier was stationed in the Red Sea to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from Houthi attacks. The carrier returned home after an eight-month-plus deployment that the Navy said was the most intense running sea battle since World War II.
F/A-18 fighter jets routinely launched off the carrier’s deck to take out Houthi weapons, and Navy destroyers persistently fired rounds of missiles and used on-board guns to shoot down incoming strikes and drones.
On board the USS Mason destroyer, which was stationed with the Eisenhower, Franchetti in August met and promoted one of the destroyer’s fire control sailors who worked on its large, fully automatic artillery gun. Unlike missiles, many of the drones launched by the Houthis were more complicated and challenging to target and shoot down, and he was able to adjust the gun to better defeat them.
“He could see how it was performing against the Houthi threat,” Franchetti said, “and he came up with a different way to use the gun to make it more effective in these engagements.”
She did not identify the sailor and declined to provide details on the exact changes he recommended. But it resulted in new formal military tactics and procedures that were distributed to all other ships.
Another key effort will be to improve Navy development of unmanned and autonomous systems and weapons and integrate them into training and combat. As the military brings on new technologies, including unmanned surface vessels, the Navy needs to ensure it has trained sailors who can use and repair them.
The new navigation plan notes that the Navy is now working on concepts and requirements for larger robotic systems and the artificial intelligence applications they could use to understand and control the battlespace.
Navy leaders also understand the financial restraints they will likely face from Congress — limits that rivals such as China do not have. China outpaces the U.S. in the number of ships and is expected to do so into the future.
Navy officials said that while they would like a bigger naval force, they need to offset that by working more effectively with the Army, Air Force, Space Force and Marines, which is something the U.S. has historically done very well.
A challenge will be eliminating the maintenance overruns that often prevent ships from being able to deploy on time. Getting ships in and out of depots on time, Franchetti said, is critical to having a combat-ready Navy.
“These are the things that we know that we need to be able to do to have the force that’s going to be more ready every single day,” she said.
ABC urged to turn over any communications with Kamala Harris' campaign after network rejected 'whistleblower' claims of collusion
...
Congress is demanding that ABC News and Vice President Kamala Harris hand over any communication with the network and campaign team related to the debate earlier this month.
It comes after a sworn affidavit emerged from a whistleblower claiming to be staffer with knowledge that ABC gave Harris an advantage in the debate by providing her the questions ahead of time.
Donald Trump claimed before the debate that Harris would somehow find a way to cheat since she is close friends with Disney executive Dana Walden.
And Sen. J.D. Vance told DailyMail.com on Tuesday it would be a 'national scandal' if the whistleblower claim is true.
'On debate night, it became abundantly clear that ABC News and its respective moderators had a biased agenda,' Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) wrote to ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic and Harris' Campaign Manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez.
Besides just whether questions were provided to Harris, Marshall is also questioning whether ABC intentionally left subjects off the table to seem more favorable to Harris.
He also pointed to the real-time fact-checking of Trump by moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir and whether that was meant to negatively affect the former prescient's performance on September 10.
'The American people deserve transparency and accountability from the mainstream media and a full accounting of whether ABC News coordinated with the Harris campaign to skew the debate's questions and face-checking in favor of the Vice President,' Marshall wrote.
Asked to respond to preconditions detailed in the sworn whistleblower affidavit, Vance told DailyMail.com: 'If it happened, it's disgraceful. It should be a national scandal.'
Vance, however, said that he will still participate in his upcoming debate with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz hosted by CBS - even if he thinks it won't be a fair showdown.
The Ohio Senator is set for the vice presidential debate with Harris' running mate on October 1. The faceoff will be hosted by CBS News in New York City .
But even if the network cheats and leaks information to Gov. Walz, Vance is remaining committed.
'You know, on my own debate, the attitude that I take – and I know President Trump takes – is we should go anywhere, we should talk to everybody,' Vance told DailyMail.com.
'And if that means that there's going to be a slightly biased debate, I don't care,' he added. 'That's the price of doing business.'
Vance was in Sparta, Michigan on Tuesday for a rally at a barn where he aired the campaign's grievances about the ongoing Democratic rhetoric leading to another assassination attempt on Trump over the weekend.
He told reporters on the tarmac in Sparta that the main issue with Democrats is that they keep calling Trump a 'threat to democracy.'
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did so again on Tuesday.
Democrats 'haven't learned a damn thing' he said at his rally with a few hundred MAGA supporters in the key swing state.
'I think it's time to say to the Democrats… cut it out or you're going to get somebody killed,' the Republican vice presidential candidate said in his remarks.
Vance will debate Walz in their one and only showdown on October 1. It will be moderated by CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell and Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan.
The ABC News whistleblower document in question is allegedly a sworn statement penned by a staffer at the network. It was first published Sunday by an X account with the name 'Black Insurrectionist.'
The document, said to be a sworn affidavit signed by a notary public the day before the debate, says the network gave Harris questions ahead of time while agreeing to a series of other preconditions to give the vice president an advantage over Trump.
Prohibited at the debate were inquiries about Harris' stint as California Attorney General, as well as any questions involving her brother-in-law, Tony West, according to claims made in the document.
It includes several other stipulations, as well as redactions protecting the whistleblower's identity.
'ABC News followed the debate rules that both campaigns agreed on... No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates,' the network said in a statement where it did not address the specific claims.
The whistleblower said in the affidavit: 'I have worked for ABC news for over 10 years in various technical and administrative positions.
The alleged staffer, who says they do not support Donald Trump, claims they 'observed significant transformations in the nature of news reporting at the organization' within that span, as well as a 'shift from unbiased reporting to a model influenced by external factors.'
They state the intent of the affidavit is solely to 'address concerns regarding perceived biases within news reporting within my employer's debate.'
Цитата:
Psychologists reveal why Kamala Harris uses 'fake accents' after VP debuts bizarre Spanish twang in latest appearance
...
Kamala Harris has raised eyebrows on the presidential campaign trail for using 'fake accents' that experts suggest could be a result of a confidence issue.
Harris, who was born in California and spent some of her childhood in Canada, has been accused of putting on Midwestern, Southern and even French accents during depending on who her audience is.
And just today, social media erupted after a video of the vice president appeared to speak with a Spanish twang while talking at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual Leadership Conference
Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, who owns a practice in New York, said there are two main reasons people alter their accents, which in psychology circles is known as 'mirroring' or the 'chameleon effect.'
The latest 'fake accent' took Americans by surprise.
Harris appeared to say 'I love you back' with a Spanish twang to a group of her supporters on Wednesday.
Some do it out of empathy, so others find them trustworthy and to show they want to experience another person's emotions.
Others put on different accents to fit in because they feel like an outsider of a group and want to conform.
Alpert told DailyMail.com that he thinks that is the case with Harris.
'Using a fake accent could also be a result of feeling self-conscious around a particular group and feeling like she has to make changes to her baseline voice in order to be accepted - to some extent this a natural and normal way to handle people we might perceive as different than ourselves,' Alpert said.
'There's a possibility she feels like she won't fit in, so she overcompensates by taking this whole accent thing to the extreme.
'I think there could be an element of Harris trying to gain acceptance across these different demographics. But again, I think it's backfiring.'
As well as shaping her accent to suit certain groups, Harris has also been accused of shaping her policy stances to fit what is currently popular.
In 2020, at the height of the George Floyd protests, Harris endorsed the 'defund the police' movement in an interview with the hosts of the Ebro in the Morning show.
This was a stark difference from when she ran for Attorney General of California in 2010, her ad production imitated the tense proficiency of a Law and Order episode.
'Our justice system needs drastic repair,' Harris said as she walked confidently with law enforcement officers, hair blowing in the wind as a helicopter buzzed overhead.
She has also said that she would shut down Donald Trump's border wall project and once called it a 'medieval vanity project' and a 'waste of taxpayer.'
But in August, Harris has allegedly and suddenly vowed to sign a bill that would allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to continue building a wall along the southern border, according to a report.
Harris was a major supporter of the Green New Deal in 2019, which call for public policy to address climate change, but this year she swore of off any prior assertion that she opposed fracking in a bid to win battleground Pennsylvania.
While her shift in policies has come under fire over the years, her 'fake accent' has taken center stage in the last few months and some Americans have viewed it as superficial.
'By altering her accent she might be perceived as inauthentic or manipulative and ultimately could undermine trust if the audience feels she is not genuine,' said Alpert.
'Authenticity is critical in building meaningful connections with the electorate and if people perceive the accent as disingenuous, it could damage Harris's credibility.
'In Harris' attempt to connect with a specific group, there is a risk of alienating other audiences.
'If her accent change is seen as pandering or insincere, it might alienate people who view it as a superficial attempt to fit in rather than a genuine expression of solidarity.'
Harris is not the only human to have put on a different speech, as many Americans have and some experts believe their is a social aspect to the chameleon effect - subconsciously replicating the physical actions of another human.
Dr Nan Wise, a licensed psychotherapist who has appeared on The Today Show, said: 'When you talk to children, you're gonna sound different, right.
'When you talk to old people, you're gonna sound different. And even if you talk to people who are not native language speakers you automatically adjust.'
Dr Wise also noted that Harris' strange accent is something 'we humans do automatically kind of a matching and a mimicry, noting it is done unconsciously.
'Human beings are very social animals, and some of this accommodation goes along with the way we're wired to connect and to unintentionally mimic aspects of our social environments,' she explained.
However, a 2021 study led by the University of Pennsylvania found that code-switching is a thought-out behavior.
Dr Wise also claimed that the accent makes Harris appear trustworthy, but Alpert suggested it could be doing the opposite.
'By altering her accent she might be perceived as inauthentic or manipulative and ultimately could undermine trust if the audience feels she is not genuine,' he said.
'Authenticity is critical in building meaningful connections with the electorate and if people perceive the accent as disingenuous, it could damage Harris's credibility.'
Harris put on the 'fake accent' during a press conference September 17 while speaking to in a discussion with the journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists.
The code-switching, when a person alternates between languages in a conversation, is not a recent behavior for Harris as she adopted a languorous southern drawl during at a Georgia rally in July 2024.
But years before in 2021, she was accused of slipping into a cod French accent while speaking to scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
The vice president is half Jamaican and half Indian, and spent her childhood in San Francisco and Canada.
Danielle Wade, a licensed clinical social worker, wrote in MedicalNewsToday: 'Some perceive it as a negative because it may reinforce stereotypes.'
But she noted that the behavior could be 'a way of preserving one's identity and culture.'
Harris is not the first presidential candidate to switch up their speech as Hilary Clinton came under fire for the same behavior during a 2015 campaign stop in Columbia, South Carolina.
Clinton, who grew up in Chicago, put on a southern drawl during an event with minority women small-business owners.
Dr Yalda Safai, a psychiatrist in New York City, said that Clinton has long tried to use fake accents to appear relatable, but 'it just feel completely flat' among American voters.
On the other hand, Alpert explained how people respect political figures who are more true to themselves.
'Bill Clinton, I thought, was masterful at that,' he continued.
'I thought he just resonated with whoever he was speaking to, from highly educated New Yorkers to poor people, he just he always seemed to be true to himself, and was widely accepted.
'I think the same is true with Donald Trump. We've all heard the description, the Blue Collar billionaire. He just speaks his mind and is consistent across the different speeches and audiences.'
_________________
С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
U.S. deploys soldiers, rocket systems to Alaska island as Russian military activity ramps up in region
...
The U.S. military has moved about 130 soldiers along with mobile rocket launchers to a desolate island in the Aleutian chain of western Alaska amid a recent increase in Russian military planes and vessels approaching American territory.
Eight Russian military planes and four navy vessels, including two submarines, have come close to Alaska in the past week as Russia and China conducted joint military drills. None of the planes breached U.S. airspace and a Pentagon spokesperson said Tuesday there was no cause for alarm.
"It's not the first time that we've seen the Russians and the Chinese flying, you know, in the vicinity, and that's something that we obviously closely monitor, and it's also something that we're prepared to respond to," Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a news conference.
As part of a "force projection operation," the Army on Sept. 12 sent the soldiers to Shemya Island, some 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage, where the U.S. Air Force maintains an air station that dates to World War II. The soldiers brought two High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, with them.
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said the U.S. military also deployed a guided missile destroyer and a Coast Guard vessel to the western region of Alaska as Russia and China began the "Ocean-24" military exercises in the Pacific and Arctic oceans Sept. 10.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command said it detected and tracked Russian military planes operating off Alaska over a four-day span. There were two planes each on Sept. 11, Sept. 13, Sept. 14 and Sept. 15.
The planes operated in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, a zone beyond U.S. sovereign airspace, but within which the U.S. expects aircraft to identify themselves, NORAD said.
The Russian Embassy in the U.S. did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
NORAD has said the number of such incursions has fluctuated yearly. The average was six to seven intercepts a year. Last year, 26 Russian planes came into the Alaska zone, and so far this year, there have been 25.
Often in such encounters, the military provides photos of the Russian warplanes being escorted by either U.S. or Canadian planes, such as during a July 24 intercept of two Russian and two Chinese planes. However, none was released in the past week and a NORAD spokeswoman, Canadian Maj. Jennie Derenzis, declined to say whether jets were scrambled to intercept the Russian planes.
Also in July, the Coast Guard spotted four Chinese military ships north of the Amchitka Pass in the Aleutian Islands in international waters, but also within the U.S. exclusive economic zone.
The U.S. Coast Guard said Sunday its homeland security vessel, the 418-foot Stratton, was on routine patrol in the Chukchi Sea when it tracked four Russian Federation Navy vessels about 60 miles northwest of Point Hope, Alaska.
The Russian vessels, which included two submarines, a frigate and a tugboat, had crossed the maritime boundary into U.S. waters to avoid sea ice, which is permitted under international rules and customs.
Two years ago, a U.S. Coast Guard ship about 85 miles north of Alaska's Kiska Island in the Bering Sea came across three Chinese and four Russian naval vessels sailing in single formation.
In August 2023, the U.S. Navy sent four destroyers to the Alaskan coast after 11 Chinese and Russian warships were spotted patrolling in international waters within the Exclusive Economic Zone.
Ryder, the Pentagon spokesperson, said the recent spike is "something that we'll continue to keep an eye on, but doesn't pose a threat from our perspective."
Sullivan called for a larger military presence in the Aleutians while advocating for the U.S. to respond with strength to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"In the past two years, we've seen joint Russian-Chinese air and naval exercises off our shores and a Chinese spy balloon floating over our communities," Sullivan said in a statement Tuesday. "These escalating incidents demonstrate the critical role the Arctic plays in great power competition between the U.S., Russia, and China."
Sullivan said the U.S. Navy should reopen its shuttered base at Adak, located in the Aleutians. Naval Air Facility Adak was closed in 1997.
Russia has also ramped up its military presence in the Arctic. The expansion includes the recent unveiling of two nuclear submarines by Russian President Vladimir Putin, signaling a major strategic shift in the region.
Netanyahu criticizes British government: They are sending a horrible message to Hamas
In interview with Daily Mail, PM Netanyahu criticizes Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government over its anti-Israel decisions: These misguided decisions will not change our determination to defeat Hamas.
Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper on Wednesday published an interview with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which Netanyahu blasted Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s “misguided” new government and accused it of “sending a horrible message to Hamas” as “shameless antisemitism” is on display across the country.
His comments follow Britain’s decision earlier this month to suspend 30 arms export licenses to Israel, as well as Labour’s dropping of Britain’s objections to an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant being issued against Netanyahu.
“After the October 7 Hamas massacre, the previous British government [under Rishi Sunak] was clear in its support. Unfortunately, the current government is sending mixed messages,” Netanyahu told the Daily Mail.
“They say that Israel has the right to defend itself, but they undermine our ability to exercise that right both by reversing Britain’s position on the absurd allegations made by the ICC Prosecutor against Israel and by blocking weapons sales to Israel as we fight against the genocidal terrorist organization that carried out the October 7 massacre,” he added.
“Most recently,” continued Netanyahu, “the new UK government suspended 30 arms licenses to Israel, days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, sending a horrible message to Hamas.”
“These misguided decisions will not change Israel’s determination to defeat Hamas [which] savagely murdered 1,200 people on October 7, including 14 British citizens, and took 255 people including five British hostages,” the Prime Minister told the newspaper.
Asked by the Daily Mail about his conditions for a ceasefire, Netanyahu replied, “We will destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, return the hostages and ensure Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel in the future.”
“We do not intend to occupy Gaza,” Netanyahu stressed. “After Hamas is destroyed, Gaza will need to be demilitarized and deradicalized and rebuilt by peace-seeking parties.”
Netanyahu was asked whether, in the event diplomacy should fail, he was willing to go to war in Lebanon, and replied, “Hezbollah’s unprovoked attacks on Israel beginning on October 8 have caused 60,000 Israelis to evacuate their homes along our border with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.”
“Israel has eliminated about 650 Hezbollah terrorists, including their senior military commander, and destroyed thousands of rockets. We do not seek escalation in Lebanon, but are committed to return our citizens safely to their homes. That will be achieved diplomatically or with other means,” he added.
In the wake of reports that Iran may have been passed nuclear secrets by Russia, Netanyahu told the Daily Mail that it is high time that Britain woke up to the menace of the mullahs.
“For the past 30 years I have warned the world about the threat posed by Iran, and Israel has acted to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” he said. “Our actions delayed a nuclear Iran by about a decade, but the jury is still out on all of us [sic]. Today, Iran is closer to becoming a nuclear power. This would threaten Israel, Britain and the entire world. Today, more and more countries understand that.”
“What are required are crippling sanctions and a credible military threat to prevent Iran from completing its pursuit of nuclear weapons. What is also needed is a common defense against its aggression in the Middle East,” he continued.
“I was encouraged by the international coalition that helped ward off Iran’s rocketing of Israel in April, and that same coalition is in place now. I appreciate the fact that this policy is continued by the present British government.”
Цитата:
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says Sir Keir Starmer's 'misguided' Labour party has 'undermined' his country: Jewish state's leader tells Mail UK arms embargo 'sends horrible message to Hamas' - as second wave of tech attacks hits Hezbollah
...
Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Labour of undermining Israel as a second wave of booby-traps rocked the Middle East.
In an interview with the Mail, Israel's prime minister attacked Sir Keir Starmer's 'misguided' administration.
And he accused the Prime Minister of ‘sending a horrible message’ to Hamas after the UK Government suspended a raft of arms licences to Israel.
The Jewish State’s longest serving leader also slammed looming arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court (ICC) as ‘preposterous’ in his first British newspaper interview since the October 7 attack.
His responses were given days before thousands of Hezbollah fighters were maimed when hand-held pagers exploded in Syria and Lebanon on Tuesday. Yesterday another 14 people were killed and 450 injured when walkie-talkies used by the terror group detonated across Lebanon.
Israel has not yet commented on either attack – although it is widely believed they were orchestrated by the country’s spy agency Mossad
In an astonishing broadside at Sir Keir, Mr Netanyahu told the Mail: ‘After the October 7 Hamas massacre, the previous British government was clear in its support. Unfortunately, the current government is sending mixed messages.
'They say that Israel has the right to defend itself, but they undermine our ability to exercise that right both by reversing Britain’s position on the absurd allegations made by the ICC prosecutor against Israel and by blocking weapons sales to Israel as we fight against the genocidal terrorist organisation that carried out the October 7 massacre.’
Sir Keir told Parliament at the time that the ‘difficult issue’ of a partial arms embargo was ‘a legal decision not a policy decision’.
He said the decision was taken following a review by the Foreign Office into Israel’s conduct in the war against Hamas. But the timing of the partial arms embargo was criticised – coming days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages.
When his office announced the measure, a spokesman for the PM said this was a ‘proposal by the previous government which was not submitted before the Election’.
But Mr Netanyahu slammed the move, saying: ‘Israel is waging a just war with just means, taking unprecedented measures to keep civilians out of harm’s way and comporting fully with international law.
‘Most recently, the new UK government suspended 30 arms licences to Israel, days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, sending a horrible message to Hamas.
'These misguided decisions will not change Israel’s determination to defeat Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organisation that savagely murdered 1,200 people on October 7, including 14 British citizens, and took 255 people, including five British hostages.
'Just as Britain’s heroic stand against the Nazis is seen today as having been vital in defeating barbarism, so too will history judge Israel’s stand against Hamas and Iran’s axis of terror. Israel will win this war and secure our common future.
The ICC is expected to issue warrants against Mr Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes over the conflict in Gaza which Hamas says has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.
Rishi Sunak’s government had reportedly filed an amicus brief saying it would challenge the court over the decision in June. In return, Britain would get access to the prison conditions of Hamas terrorists held by Israel amid mounting concern over human rights abuses being committed.
But, since coming to power, Sir Keir’s administration has signalled it will no longer challenge any warrant from the ICC – breaking with allies such as the US.
Mr Netanyahu added: ‘The Labour ¬Government decided to drop its challenge to the preposterous ICC arrest warrants that were requested by the ICC prosecutor against the prime minister and the defence minister of Israel.
‘If the arrest warrants are issued against the leaders of the only democracy in the Middle East, it will compromise the ability of all democracies in the world to fight terrorism, including Britain.
'President Biden and others called these arrest warrants 'outrageous'. Britain's General Sir John McColl... said after visiting Gaza, 'I fought in Iraq – I know Israel is doing all it can to save civilians'.
'For the ICC prosecutor to falsely accuse the leader of Israel of deliberate starvation and deliberately targeting civilians is an outrageous slander that can’t be explained by anything other than anti-Semitism and will forever stain the ICC’s reputation.
‘The principle is simple: justice for all nations except the Jews.’
Mr Netanyahu also hit out at rising anti-Semitism on British streets, saying: ‘Britain is witnessing shameless anti-Semitism on its campuses, at its city centres and in many parts of the country. It is worrisome. I trust and expect that the UK leadership will take the necessary steps to root out this scourge.’
A Foreign Office source last night said the government remains 'a friend of Israel'.
But a spokesman said that 'regrettably' Israel had failed to address concerns about alleged human rights violations.
The spokesman added: 'We have been absolutely clear that when taking military action to support its legitimate right to self-defence, Israel must adhere to International Humanitarian Law.
'The UK has raised concerns about these issues over many months, and so have other allies. Regrettably, these concerns have not been satisfactorily addressed.
'Our priority remains achieving a ceasefire in Gaza, the hostages released, civilians protected and aid flood in.
'There is no place in Britain for antisemitism, and we will not relent in our work to root out hatred in all forms. This government is committed to multi-year funding for the Community Security Trust, and working with the Jewish Community and police to ensure that everyone feels safe on our streets.'
_________________
С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
FCC chair rejects Trump call to pull ABC licenses over presidential debate
...
- The chair of the Federal Communications Commission rejected former U.S. President Donald Trump's suggestion that Walt Disney-owned ABC should lose its broadcast licenses over the network's moderating Sept. 10 presidential debate.
"The First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy. The Commission does not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage," FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said on Thursday.
The FCC, an independent federal agency, does not license broadcast networks, but issues them to individual broadcast stations that are renewed on a staggered basis for eight-year periods.
...
Цитата:
Harry and Meghan can't help themselves!' Sussexes decision to speak out on US election is bid to 'harvest' votes for Kamala Harris - and impress 'woke Hollywood elite', Republicans say
...
Harry and Meghan's decision to break their silence on the US presidential election is a thinly-veiled attempt to 'harvest' votes for Kamala Harris and impress the 'woke Hollywood elite', critics told MailOnline today.
The Chairman of the Republican movement in the UK has said that the Sussexes' just 'can't help themselves' when America is in an election year, dismissing their claim they are politically neutral.
Greg Swenson, a London-based financier and Chairman of Republicans Overseas UK, told MailOnline today: 'They can't help themselves. By encouraging people to vote they are essentially ballot harvesting for Kamala.
'You don't have to say it. Like the man sitting in his car, alone, with a Covid mask on: you don't need a bumper sticker, we know who you voted for'.
In 2020 the couple did not endorse a candidate but urged Americans to vote in the 'most important election of our lifetime'. Meghan even cold-called Americans urging them to vote.
This was interpreted by many as backing Joe Biden, including by Mr Trump, who said he was 'no fan' of the former Suits star and Harry luck 'because he's going to need it'.
But it was revealed that with just two months until America goes to the polls, the couple's Archewell Foundation has been sending out personalised letters to unregistered voters and insisting that 'every voice matters', but insist they are politically neutral and they have not mentioned any candidates.
Experts have said that Harry will 'fear' a Trump victory because the Republican nominee has been clear that the British royal could be deported from the US if he lied about taking drugs on his American visa application.
But Greg Swenson believes that their latest political intervention will not influence Americans, but may ingratiate themselves with the 'Hollywood woke elites' they wish to impress.
'Every move Harry and Meghan make is carefully orchestrated to keep them popular among their circle of elites. Most woke Hollywood elites are voting for Kamala - but I'm surprised they haven't outright endorsed her', he said.
'The only thing left for her to do now is to run for office.
'I don't think they would move the needle - they are known as woke celebrities. I don't think there is any mystery regarding their views that are consistent with the progressive left (Kamala). The voters who like Harry and Meghan would probably vote Kamala anyway. I don't think they would change anyone's vote'.
Investigative journalist and biographer of the couple, Tom Bower, told MailOnline it is another attempt to get 'noticed' - and a sign that Meghan's political ambitions are not dead.
Ms Markle is said to have approached California Governor Gavin Newsom about whether he would support her replacing Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Mr Bower said: 'Ambitious to be famous and influential, Meghan Markle yearns to belong to the American political establishment, especially the Democrat party.
'Soon after returning to California in 2020, she approached California's governor seeking an opportunity to secure nomination to a political post, not least as a candidate for Congress.
'However, her endorsement of Biden against Trump in 2020 ended in disaster. Harry's silly contribution to urge Americans to vote was ridiculed because he was a foreigner who was ignorant about American politics.
'And Trump's retaliation was fierce. If elected, he threatened to kick Harry out of America. Not surprisingly, the Sussexes are now more cautious. They can't resist giving an opinion - and Meghan has not given up her political ambitions - but they rightly fear Trump's election.
'Their anodyne message that Americans should vote will be ignored across America but feeds their self-importance, and gets them noticed in Britain, an important marker for Harry'.
The statement has also not gone unnoticed with American academics in the UK.
Thomas Gift, Professor of Political Science at University College London, said unlike other stars, the Sussexes are trying not to be controversial after the row over their backing of Joe Biden.
He said: 'Unlike Taylor Swift and many other high-profile celebrities, the Sussexes apparently don't feel the need to alienate some of their fans by endorsing a candidate, or to provoke even more backlash from critics by doing so.
'Urging Americans to vote is unobjectionable and unlikely to spark too many calls that they're wading inappropriately into American politics'.
The couple marked National Voter Registration Day on Tuesday by getting the Archewell team to take part in a letter-writing activity.
Staff sent out letters to unregistered voters to encourage them to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
The statement read: 'Voting is not just a right; it's a fundamental way to influence the fate of our communities.
'At The Archewell Foundation, we recognize that civic engagement, no matter one's political party, is at the heart of a more just and equitable world.
'By participating in initiatives like this, we aim to amplify the message that every voice matters.'
The Telegraph reported that the letters stopped short of endorsing a particular candidate but instead urged voters to simply use their voice.
The couple invited readers to 'join us in this important effort' and volunteer time to write letters to unregistered voters.
The statement concluded: 'Together, let’s make sure every eligible voter is informed and empowered to participate in shaping America’s future.'
It comes after the couple were accused of endorsing Joe Biden in the last US election, as they filmed a video statement from the garden of their Montecito mansion, which they had only just moved into at the time.
In the video address, Prince Harry told US voters to 'reject hate speech' while Meghan labelled the 2020 presidential race the 'most election of our lifetime'.
The Duke said at the time: 'This election I am not able to vote in the US. But many of you may not know that I haven't been able to vote in the UK my entire life. As we approach this November, it's vital that we reject hate speech, misinformation and online negativity.'
While Harry and Meghan did not name their favoured candidate, many viewers thought it 'obvious' they were backing Joe Biden over Donald Trump. As such, the Sussexes were accused of 'violating' the terms of their 'Megxit' deal.
In September 2020, Trump said that he was 'no fan' of the Duchess after the couple released their video.
In the aftermath, Republicans and other critics called on the Royal Family to strip the couple of their titles, calling the interference of the Duke and Duchess 'inappropriate'.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said at the time: 'We would not comment. The Duke is not a working member of the Royal Family and any comments he makes are made in a personal capacity.'
Unlike last year, the Sussex's statement was this year released through the Archewell Foundation rather than via the couple's private office.
Both the Duke and Duchess are expected to remain neutral ahead of the election on November 5, according to The Telegraph.
They will not make an official endorsement.
David Lammy urges Britons to flee Lebanon as Foreign Secretary warns 'situation could deteriorate rapidly' as Israel launches air strikes
...
David Lammy tonight urged British nationals to flee Lebanon as he warned the 'situation could deteriorate rapidly'.
The Foreign Secretary revealed he had spoken to Lebanon's PM Najib Mikati and 'expressed my deep concern over rising tensions and civilian casualties'.
It came after Israel said its warplanes struck southern Lebanon overnight and sonic booms shook the country's capital Beirut.
The leader of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese movement, today said deadly Israeli attacks that blew up the group's radios and pagers crossed all red lines.
In a social media post, Mr Lammy wrote: 'My message to British nationals in Lebanon is leave while commercial options remain.
'Tensions are high and the situation could deteriorate rapidly.'
The Foreign Office continues to advise against all travel to Lebanon.
Referring to his call with Mr Mikati, he added: 'We discussed the need for a negotiated solution to restore stability and security across the Blue Line.'
The 'Blue Line', drawn by the United Nations in 2000, separates Israel from southern Lebanon.
Lebanon and Hezbollah have blamed Israel for the attacks on communications equipment that killed 37 people and wounded around 3,000.
The attacks overwhelmed Lebanese hospitals and wreaked bloody havoc on the militant group.
'There is no doubt that we have been subjected to a major security and military blow that is unprecedented in the history of the resistance and unprecedented in the history of Lebanon,' Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a TV address.
'This type of killing, targeting and crime may be unprecedented in the world... The enemy went beyond all controls, laws and morals.'
He added the attacks 'could be considered war crimes or a declaration of war.'
...
Цитата:
"Some people are so committed to finding Israel guilty of crimes no matter what" - Daniel Rubenstein
Цитата:
Англосаксонский подход.
Цитата:
IDF determined to secure Israel’s north; UNGA calls for arms embargo on Israel TV7 Israel News 19.09
Цитата:
Начало бомбардировки Ливана.
Цитата:
Пролёт самолётов Израиля над Ливаном во время речи докладчика от Hisbollah..
Цитата:
Формальный повод для начала войны Израиля.
Цитата:
Цитата:
Цитата:
"[The UN Resolution] is dangerous for the future and encourages terrorism" David Mencer
Цитата:
TV7 Israel News - Swords of Iron, Israel at War - Day 349 - UPDATE 19.09.24
В сущности между Израилем и Украиной разницы нет: фашизм и там и там.
Ukraine Wants Long-Range Weapons. Here’s a Look at What They Are.
There are roughly 500 miles between Kyiv and Moscow.
The United States has weapons that can fly much farther than that, but it is unlikely to supply them to Ukraine for fear that an attack on the Russian capital with American weapons might spark a third world war.
So within that 500-mile range the Biden administration has been pushed repeatedly to give Kyiv weapons that can hit targets as far away as possible. Discussion among Ukraine’s supporters often centers on calls for “long range” weapons — a term with no real military definition, but that has an emotional pull Ukrainian leaders have used to pressure the White House for ever more capable munitions.
Over two and half years of war, “long range” has evolved in the public forum to describe a host of increasingly advanced U.S. weapons. The trend began soon after Russia’s 2022 invasion, when U.S. government officials first used the term to apply to …
Artillery
The United States has sent Ukraine the longest-range artillery pieces in its arsenal: 155-millimeter howitzers, which can fire 100-pound shells at targets about 20 miles away. Each shell contains about 24 pounds of explosives.
Since the beginning of the war, the United States has shipped three million M795 artillery shells to Ukraine for the weapon to fire. That model can be fitted with a guidance kit that steers the projectile to its target, though there is no evidence to suggest the Pentagon has sent those devices to Kyiv.
Ukrainian soldiers tend to fire far more shells than U.S. troops do, wearing out the barrels of the weapons comparatively quickly. Replacing them requires specialized equipment and cannot easily be done in the field by the soldiers who use them.
Within months, the discussion about what to give Ukraine moved to the next longer-range, ground-based weapons, which are …
Artillery Rockets
These weapons fly more than twice as far as the shells fired by 155-millimeter howitzers. The American High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, is a five-ton truck that typically carries six rockets on its back called GMLRS, for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, that can launch a 200-pound explosive warhead about 52 miles.
On June 1, 2022, the Pentagon announced that it was sending four HIMARS trucks to Ukraine. Weeks later, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III referred to them as part of Ukraine’s “long-range fires.”
Since then, the U.S. military has sent more than 40 such trucks, and thousands of GMLRS (pronounced “Gimmlers”) to Ukraine. (The United States has also given the country money to buy even more of those rockets directly from the manufacturer.)
The HIMARS can also fire another type of munition.
That brings us to the world of …
Short-Range Ballistic Missiles
Since early in the war, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has pleaded for weapons that can hit even deeper into Russian-held territory, and eventually into Russia itself.
One American example of this kind is the ATACMS, pronounced “attack ’ems,” for Army Tactical Missile System. The State Department described them as “long range” when it announced in April that the missiles had been shipped to Ukraine.
They can hit targets roughly 190 miles away and contain about 375 pounds of explosives.
Ballistic missiles fly much higher into the atmosphere than artillery rockets and many times farther, coming back to the ground at incredibly high speed because of gravity’s pull.
Generally, this class of ballistic missiles can fly to targets 43 to 620 miles away.
The United States does not currently field any weapons in the next two categories, which are …
Medium- and Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles
The United States developed medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles during the Cold War, but it largely got rid of them decades ago.
That was partly because of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or I.N.F., that the United States and the Soviet Union signed in 1987. The treaty banned land-based ballistic missiles with ranges of about 310 to 3,400 miles.
But the treaty died in 2019 after the White House accused Russia of fielding weapons that violated its terms.
The I.N.F. tried to ban particularly worrisome and potentially nuclear-armed weapons that could threaten Moscow from NATO territory and were hard for the Soviets to shoot down.
Aside from medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, that included land-based weapons called …
Cruise Missiles
The best-known example is the Tomahawk, developed in the 1970s for the U.S. Navy. The Air Force adopted an air-launched version, and the Army had a ground-launched version until it was made illegal under the I.N.F. Treaty.
While there are different versions of the Tomahawk, they can generally reach targets about 1,000 miles away while carrying a conventional warhead with the explosive power of about 400 pounds of TNT, or a small thermonuclear device tens of thousands of times more powerful.
Unlike high-flying ballistic missiles, cruise missiles like the Tomahawk have small wings that allow them to fly horizontally low to the ground and use small jet engines to reach distances more than five times farther than ATACMS.
As of yet, there has been no public discussion of providing Tomahawks to Ukraine, but the Pentagon has a smaller and more stealthy air-launched cruise missile under consideration.
It is called JASSM, pronounced “jazz ’em,” for Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile. The most basic version carries the equivalent of 240 pounds of TNT to a range of about 230 miles. More advanced versions can fly more than 1,000 miles.
The only things that fly farther are …
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
ICBMs carry nuclear warheads and can be launched from underground silos or from submarines underwater. They can fly about 8,000 miles to hit targets on the other side of the planet.
Their explosive power can be measured in the hundreds of thousands of tons of TNT.
They are not in the cards for Ukraine, since their use against Russia would almost certainly provoke a global nuclear war.
Hypersonic Weapons
Currently in development by the United States, Russia and China, these are weapons that fly faster than five times the speed of sound and can maneuver sharply to evade an enemy’s defenses.
Some short-range ballistic missiles might meet that definition in the final portion of their flight, but the current buzz over hypersonics is related to a new generation of weapons that quickly achieve those speeds and hold them while flying on the edge of space to cross oceans or continents.
The Pentagon is pursuing two types of hypersonic weapons meant to fly several hundred to a couple of thousand miles.
Unlike most other missiles that carry explosives, their warhead is a solid piece of tungsten — a metal roughly 70 percent denser than lead — that destroys its target through kinetic energy released as it slams into the target at more than 3,000 feet per second.
But the United States has none to give to Ukraine. Even after spending billions on their development, the Pentagon has yet to field a working prototype.
_________________
С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
On YouTube, Major Brands’ Ads Appear Alongside Racist Falsehoods About Haitian Immigrants
...
On YouTube, an ad for the car company Mazda appeared before a video that repeated the racist falsehood that Haitian migrants in Ohio were “eating ducks on the side of the road.” An ad for the software giant Adobe showed up alongside another video that claimed “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
Even an ad for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, was placed ahead of a video that spread the unsupported statement that migrants were “going to parks, grabbing ducks, cutting their heads off and eating them.”
Many advertisers have tried for years to avoid sharing space with content about polarizing politics, pandemics, hate speech or misinformation, for fear of damaging customer perception and risking public censure. That ads appeared anyway on YouTube ahead of falsehoods about Haitian migrants underscores the difficulty advertisers face in maintaining brand safety in an especially volatile election year.
Just this month, researchers discovered advertisements on YouTube for more than a dozen large organizations and consumer brands that monetized xenophobic (and quickly debunked) claims. Advertising dollars flowed both to YouTube and to the commentators it allowed to amplify inflammatory and racist narratives, according to a report by Eko, a group focused on corporate accountability.
The videos that were accompanied by the ads garnered nearly 1.6 million views on YouTube in a 72-hour period after former President Donald J. Trump promoted a falsehood about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, during the presidential debate on Sept. 10, Eko found. The group estimated that the commentators likely earned a few thousand dollars collectively from the advertisements.
Claire Atkin, a co-founder of Check My Ads, a digital advertising watchdog, said that tech platforms were infested this election season with conspiracy theories, false narratives and misinformation.
“We are dealing with information disorder, and advertisers can’t trust it,” she said.
A spokesman for YouTube said videos appearing on its site might be restricted from earning money if they had violated its “advertiser-friendly guidelines” or other policies. The company said it had removed one video flagged by Eko for violating its policies about deceptive content and was reviewing others.
Adobe, the Harris campaign and Mazda did not respond to requests for comment.
Advertisers increasingly rely on algorithms that distribute ads automatically on YouTube and other websites. The practice has been criticized by the United Nations as “opaque” and the U. N. has called on tech companies to scale the practice back to avoid inadvertently funding disinformation or hate.
Advertisements for companies that used digital advertising platforms were 10 times more likely to appear on misinformation websites than on those that did not use the technology: Nearly 80 percent of the most active advertisers relying on such tactics from 2019 to 2021 had ads that appeared on such sites, according to a report published in Nature in June by researchers from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon.
Having an advertisement land next to misinformation can be financially damaging — the share of people who click on such ads is 46 percent lower than for ads that avoid being twinned with toxic content, according to Integral Ad Science, a company focusing on brand safety.
YouTube is far from the only online platform that has sparked advertiser anxiety over the quality of its content. In 2020, more than 1,000 advertisers publicly joined a boycott of Facebook that was organized by civil rights groups protesting the platform’s handling of hate speech and misinformation. Hundreds of advertisers left X last year over similar concerns.
Now, a majority of marketing executives are on edge, as heightened political tensions make consumers especially sensitive to how brands engage with political topics, according to a recent report from Forrester. Analysts at the research company called it “a seemingly no-win situation” for advertisers.
In interviews, many ad executives said they feel that YouTube and other tech platforms on which they advertise are not doing enough to protect against harmful content.
YouTube banned or temporarily restricted a number of accounts after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including banning the account of former president Donald J. Trump. The company appeared to walk back some of those restrictions in 2023 when it reinstated Mr. Trump’s account and reversed a ban on misinformation about the 2020 election. The video platform has also remained a prominent home for a number of right-wing commentators known for sharing misinformation. YouTube also has been accused of profiting from videos that presented climate change as a hoax or exaggeration.
“Frankly, brands are promised a lot of things by the platforms — that platforms are using technology and human content moderators at scale to make sure this doesn’t happen,” said Harriet Kingaby, who co-founded and co-chairs the Conscious Advertising Network, a coalition of advertisers, technology providers and others. “There is a real sense that things aren’t working. The trust has been broken.”
Now, brands are trying to regain more control by dictating specifically where their ads can be placed and demanding more manual audits, Ms. Kingaby said.
YouTube says it allows companies to block ads from appearing alongside certain creators, on certain websites or appearing alongside “sensitive content” like disasters or graphic scenes of combat or war.
“Brands really do want to get it right in terms of appearing in places that are not just safe, but suitable,” Ms. Kingaby said. “But at the moment, it is a very, very, very difficult space to navigate.”
Polskie czołgi w Rosji. Widziano je pod Kurskiem. "Polska ma inne zdanie niż Niemcy"
...
Redakcja "Merkur.de" poinformowała, że zmodernizowane polskie czołgi z czasów Związku Radzieckiego były widziane pod Kurskiem w trakcie ofensywy wojsk ukraińskich na terytorium Rosji.
Jak można przeczytać w redakcyjnym komentarzu, "to dowód, że Polska ma inne zdanie niż Niemcy w sprawie użycia zachodniej broni przeciw Rosji".
Niedawno, przy okazji dyskusji związanych z założeniami do przyszłorocznego budżetu, niemiecki minister obrony Boris Pistorius zapewnił kolejny raz o tym, że Niemcy będą nadal wspierać Ukrainę - dostarczając jej broni tak długo, jak będzie to konieczne.
Zaznaczył jednak, że Berlin nadal się sprzeciwia wykorzystywania zachodniego sprzętu do ataków na cele położone w głębi rosyjskiego terytorium.
Magazyn poświęcony tematyce wojskowej "Defence Express" zwraca uwagę, że Polska przekazując sprzęt Ukrainie, nie nałożyła żadnych ograniczeń na jego użycie.
Oznacza to, że czołgi mogą być wykorzystywane zgodnie z potrzebami ukraińskich dowódców. Wynika to z przyjęcia prostego założenia, że po przekroczeniu granicy broń automatycznie przestaje być własnością Polski.
Jak podają różne źródła, Polska miała przekazać Ukrainie ok. 250 czołgów T-72 M1 oraz kilkadziesiąt czołgów PT-91 "Twardy".
Цитата:
Brytyjski admirał mówi, co musimy zrobić, żeby pokonać Rosję. "Szósta domena"
...
Co - w pana ocenie - jest największym zagrożeniem na Bałtyku?
- Odpowiedź będzie prosta: Rosjanie. Po przystąpieniu Finlandii i Szwecji do NATO niektórzy widzą w Morzu Bałtyckim coś, co nazywają "morzem NATO". To błąd. Z "morzem NATO" mielibyśmy do czynienia, gdyby nie działali i nie operowali na nim Rosjanie.
I w ten sposób wracamy do sposobu, w jakim chcemy to osiągnąć, czyli m.in. posiadać okręty podwodne i zdolności zwalczania wrogich jednostek. Trzeba zastopować rosyjską aktywność na Bałtyku, mając zarówno fregaty "Miecznik", jak i rozwijając zdolności podwodne w ramach programu "Orka". Wbrew pozorom, łatwiej zablokować Rosjan, posiadając zdolności obronne podwodne niż tylko nawodne.
I tu wracamy do wniosków z Ukrainy i Morza Czarnego?
- Jak najbardziej. Ukraińcy, mimo szczupłych zdolności, starają się zablokować działania rosyjskie na tym akwenie - za pomocą ostrzału jednostek w portach pociskami rakietowymi, akcjami sił specjalnych czy w końcu z wykorzystaniem bezzałogowców morskich, właściwie pływających bomb.
To chyba trochę za mało...
- Odpowiem tak: dowodziłem zarówno jednostkami podwodnymi, jak i nawodnymi. Najgorszym koszmarem był dla mnie - jako dowódcy okrętu nawodnego - okręt podwodny. A kiedy służyłem na jednostce podwodnej, największą "zabawę" mieliśmy z kolei z jednostkami nawodnymi.
Wracając do Ukrainy: dopóki Turcja nie pozwoli na przechodzenie jednostek przez Bosfor, dopóty nie będzie przełomu.
Czy Wielka Brytania będzie na to naciskać?
- Nie, ponieważ Wielka Brytania nie chciałaby eskalacji konfliktu na Morzu Czarnym i byłoby to naruszenie konwencji z Montreux, a my nie złamiemy postanowień prawa międzynarodowego.
Dla Ukrainy kluczowy pozostaje transport zboża. To jej linia życia.
W głównej mierze toczyło się to właśnie poprzez Morze Czarne,
ale wojna zmieniła ten szlak - Ukraińcy musieli przenieść transport głównie na ląd.
Przyjrzeliśmy się temu problemowi bardzo uważnie na początku konfliktu. Oczywiście, większość działań toczy się w powietrzu i na lądzie, ale możliwość eksportu i wyjście na Morze Czarne, bezpieczny handel tą drogą, jest dla Ukrainy kluczowy.
Infrastruktura krytyczna. Na Bałtyku mamy ogrom interesów, ważnych dla kraju
Zatem wróćmy na Bałtyk. Polska ma na Bałtyku żywotne interesy: tamtędy toczą się główne dostawy. Ale chcemy też rozwijać infrastrukturę energetyczną, na Bałtyku działają nasze platformy wydobywcze, podmorskie gazociągi i elementy systemów zaopatrzenia w energię. Jakie sugestie w ochronie tego może mieć dla Polski Wielka Brytania?
- Wielka Brytania do nadzoru i zabezpieczenia infrastruktury krytycznej przyjęła do służby w RFA (Royal Fleet Auxillary – Królewska Flota Pomocnicza - przyp. red.) specjalną jednostkę, czyli "RFA Proteusz". To uniwersalna platforma, mająca służyć do zabezpieczenia tego rodzaju działań, prowadzonych pod wodą.
Dzięki temu – a dodam, że przyspieszenie tego programu było jednym z moich ostatnich osiągnięć przed odejściem ze służby dwa lata temu – możemy monitorować i przeciwdziałać podwodnym zagrożeniom dla infrastruktury.
Uważam, że wszystkie kraje, które posiadają tego rodzaju infrastrukturę morską, nawodną czy podwodną, powinny mieć własne zdolności w takiej ochronie lub zawrzeć umowę o współpracy z państwem, które takie zdolności posiada. Co więcej: nie widzę powodu, dla którego NATO nie mogłoby mieć wręcz zespołu takich jednostek.
Polska mogłaby w opisywanej kwestii iść w stronę współpracy z Wielką Brytanią,
samemu kupić lub zbudować tego rodzaju platformę albo wywierać naciski w NATO, rozmawiać na ten temat i mówić o potrzebie nabycia takich zdolności.
Nasz kraj ma wiele potrzeb i - niestety - braków w Marynarce Wojennej. Jest jednak i inna kwestia: Wielka Brytania to państwo wyspiarskie, Polska - nie.
- Rozumiem to, wiem, że macie inne uwarunkowania i większe zagrożenie lądowe, szczególnie od wschodu.
Zwróciłbym się jednak do specjalistów z prośbą o oszacowanie, jaki procent towarów zasila wasz kraj drogą morską. Co przypływa do Polski morzem, jaki procent surowców energetycznych, zasilania w energię zależny jest od dostaw takim sposobem? Potem należałoby zacząć dyskusję o ochronie tych szlaków.
Naprawdę uwzględniam wasze uwarunkowania i potrzebę ochrony flanki wschodniej NATO, niemniej
musicie zrozumieć, że jeśli kupujecie pralkę, rower czy awokado, one docierają do waszego kraju szlakami morskimi.
Przypomnę, że II wojnę światowa alianci wygrali poprzez przeniesienie części potęgi gospodarczej i militarnej USA do Europy. Odbyło się to głównie poprzez Atlantyk, szlakami morskimi. Ląd to jedno, a ocean - drugie - i potrzebna jest budowa zdolności w każdym aspekcie.
...
Fact Check: Kamala Harris USSR Communist Party credential is fake
...
A photo of a Soviet Union Communist Party credential has been altered to portray Vice President Kamala Harris as a member. The purported ID can be created using a template available on a website that hosts other versions of the card with the same details but with different identities and portraits.
The image was shared on Facebook, opens new tab with false captions claiming that the Democratic presidential candidate received this document in 1984.
Reuters found various examples, opens new tab of this ID with the same registration number (04094064) that included different names, opens new tab and portraits., opens new tab
Several of these led to a Russian-language website Stalinanavas.net. In one section, opens new tab, there is a tool titled “Party card of a member of the CPSU,” in which web users can create a Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) card, opens new tab by filling in the template and uploading a photograph.
HARRIS’ PHOTO
In the online posts, it is said that Harris received this credential from the CPSU in 1984. However, the image included on the card appears to date from two years later, according to reports.
Harris graduated from Howard University in 1986, opens new tab, according to the university’s website. The photograph of her is available in an online article, opens new tab (page 32) in the university magazine with the caption: “Kamala Harris’ senior portrait at Howard.”
Howard University did not respond to a request for comment.
NYT ‘PUBLISHED NO SUCH ARTICLE’
Social media posts widely suggested that the New York Times reported on the Communist Party credential.
However, a New York Times spokesperson told Reuters that it “published no such article.”
The company spokesperson also pointed to an Aug. 30 statement, opens new tab that said: “Contrary to falsehoods that circulated online, The New York Times did not publish an article validating claims that Vice President Kamala Harris was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union."
The State Archive of the Russian Federation, which published the CPSU credential attributed to the presidential candidate according to the publications, and the Communist Party USA did not respond to requests for comment.
Harris' campaign team declined to comment.
VERDICT
False. The image shows an ID that appears on the internet with different portraits and identities and that can be created using a template on a website.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts.
_________________
С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Secret permission for Ukraine to fire missiles inside Russia could be given in the coming weeks
Secret permission for Ukraine to fire missiles inside Russia could be given in the coming weeks, LBC has been told.
The UK and US are preparing to give the nod in private - with a change in position confirmed only after the first missiles have been fired.
Diplomatic sources said the US is keen to see a plan first from President Zelensky on how it could help see them through the winter months of the war.
A final decision could be rubber-stamped as soon as the UN General Assembly next week.
But there is nervousness in President Biden's top team that the move could harm Kamala Harris' re-election campaign.
At a joint press conference with Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, two drafts of statements were prepared, as the decision was seen on such a knife edge.
Insiders had expected a decision ahead of Keir Starmer flying to Washington to meet with President Biden.
But after two hours of discussions, the PM left with no official announcement.
The UK and France have already sent the storm shadow missiles to Ukraine, but only for use on targets within their own borders
President Zelensky has been pushing for permission for months to use the missiles to strike deep inside Russia in a bid to target ammunition factories and other points.
Mr Lammy and Mr Blinken held talks in Paris this week with allies from France, Germany and Italy.
The Foreign Secretary said last night they were focused on making sure that “Ukraine has all it needs, militarily, politically, diplomatically and in terms of aid to get through what will be a tough winter and into 2025”.
When quizzed on whether the UK was poised to announce permission to use storm shadow missiles, Mr Lammy said: “I haven't got further announcements to make today.”
He added: “We look forward to meeting with President Zelensky in a few days time at the UN General Assembly”.
It came after he said last weekend that NATO allies were keen to move together on any decision.
Last weekend Boris Johnson and five former defence secretaries urged Britain to give the green light on the use of the missiles.
A Government spokesperson said: "There has been no change in the UK’s position. We continue to provide military aid to support Ukraine’s clear right of self-defence against Russia’s illegal attacks in accordance with international humanitarian law.
"We are clear that equipment provided by the UK is intended for the defence of Ukraine."
Цитата:
*‘Private deal’ could let Ukraine fire missiles into Russia
...
Ukraine may be given private dispensation by the UK and US to fire long-range Storm Shadow missiles into Russia without making it public until the first one is fired.
Storm Shadow missiles into Russia without making it public until the first one is fired.
Western diplomats are poised to sign off on the decision but could hold back from making an official announcement at the UN next week.
...
* Статья платная, но там всё понятно из первой строчки.
The rite of burial of Ukrainian F-16 pilot Oleksiy Mes, on the Day of Remembrance for Fallen Heroes, as hundreds attended a farewell ceremony for the deceased tactical aviation pilot in the central square of the city on August 29, 2024 in Shepetivka, in Khmelnytskyi Oblast (province) Ukraine. Oleksiy Mes, an F-16 pilot, died on August 26 as a result of an air crash during one of the largest massive missile attacks on Ukraine. On that day, Oleksiy reportedly shot down three enemy missiles and one UAV. (Libkos/Getty Images)
...
FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. — When Ukraine’s first F-16s finally arrived in country at the start of August, it was cause for much celebration by Kyiv’s supporters. And so the loss of one of those F-16s just weeks later hit especially hard, and immediately launched questions about what went wrong.
Some questioned whether the pilots were rushed through training. Others wondered if the crash showed that the F-16 wasn’t even fit for Ukraine’s mission. Meanwhile, the families and friends of Col. Oleksiy “Moonfish” Mes, the jet’s pilot who had travelled to the US previously to meet with members of Congress and encourage them to send F-16s to Kyiv’s defense, were left to mourn the loss.
Information has been locked down about the incident, given its high-profile nature for the Zelneskyy government. The loss of an F-16 so soon after having received them means the issue is “doubly sensitive, if not more so, and no one is talking officially,” according to one high-ranking defense industry executive.
But some details of the incident have come out, and sources have helped fill in some gaps for Breaking Defense, including around the theory that the loss was the result of shrapnel that hit the plane.
With it comes a picture of an incredibly dangerous mission where the loss of jets may have been more a question of when, not if — a deadly reality that, Ukrainian experts say, is being exacerbated by the patchwork of capabilities Kyiv has been forced to use in its defense.
A Deadly Mission Set
First, some context. Moonfish’s mission, according to several sources and public reports, was to operate alongside other F-16s, in conjunction with US-made Patriot and other air defense batteries on the ground. The assignment was to take down missiles and drones being fired by the Russians against targets in Ukraine.
It’s important to understand how complex that operating environment is. In Aug. 2022, Breaking Defense talked with several pilots and officers from the Ukrainian air force (PSU) who explained how the fleet of aging MiGs and Sukhois have been performing the air defense mission.
They recalled successfully shooting down incoming Russian cruise missiles with the Russian-designed, semi-active air-to-air missiles originally designed to be fired from these aircraft. But, they said, the mission was by its nature a hazardous one.
“You have a split-second, if that much time, to decide to lock on and fire one of the air-to-air weapons against these incoming missiles,” said one of the pilots. “They are coming at high speeds, and they have to be intercepted before they have passed you. Catching them in a tail chase is not possible in many cases.”
In these same meetings the PSU discussed how they specifically needed the F-16 for this mission. The American-made jet comes with more agile flight controls, better radars and fire-and-forget weapons that would in theory be more effective against the Kh-32 and other long-range cruise missiles being launched against targets in Ukraine.
On the night that Moonfish was lost, he and his squadron were apparently engaged in precisely this kind of operation. According to a statement by the Ukraine General Staff “during the aerial battle, the F-16 aircraft demonstrated their high efficiency, four enemy cruise missiles were shot down by airborne weapons.”
What happened next, according to the statement, was “during the approach to the next target, contact with one of the aircraft was lost. As it turned out later, the plane crashed, the pilot died.”
F-16 Fighting Falcons are seen as President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky delivers a speech congratulating the Ukrainian military on the stand in front of the first General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon received by Ukraine on August 4, 2024 in, Ukraine. (Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Integration Challenge
However, the jets are only part of the complex operational sphere.
Ukrainian defense industry specialists, who are closely intertwined with the military and support both the air defense units and F-16s, told Breaking Defense that these missile intercept missions involving fighter aircraft and air defense batteries operating jointly require precision coordination.
Complicating this coordination, multiple sources said, is the fact that neither the PSU fighters nor the air defense units on the ground are using IFF in these engagements. In the beginning of the war, confusion about IFF with both the Russian and Ukraine sides operating some of the same aircraft presented concerns about mistaking one side’s aircraft for another. This practice of not utilizing IFF has been continued with the F-16s now in service. (The MoD and PSU did not return requests for comment on the use of IFF by press time.)
This caused several industry and military sources — and even a member of the Ukraine parliament — to claim the F-16 was a victim of friendly fire. A PSU representative, speaking to multiple outlets, later stated, “different versions [of the crash] are being considered, including the ‘friendly fire’ of their air defence systems, a technical malfunction and pilot error.” (That doesn’t rule out friendly fire, but stops well short of confirming it; a final answer is likely to only come out following a thorough review.)
One scenario floating among the Ukrainian defense community is that the F-16 flew inadvertently through a cloud of debris created by the successful intercept and destruction of one of the incoming Russian missiles. These fragments of the destroyed missile may have caused damage to the engine and other parts of the aircraft, causing the F-16 to break apart and/or the death of the pilot before he could eject.
This version is emerging as one of the more plausible scenarios, due to past precedence, as one of the same industry executives told Breaking Defense that “earlier in the war we lost four other fighters to this same cause of airborne foreign objects disabling the aircraft.”
“There were two MiG-29s and two Sukhoi models lost in this way,” he continued. “It is very possible that this F-16 now makes it aircraft No. 5. The previous losses did not generate this kind of attention because they were not expensive, modern fighters in the class of the American jet.”
Normally, Ukraine gives clear descriptions of what caused jets to be lost, but there are a handful of incidents where the descriptor given is vague and fit what the industry executive described, including the loss of Mig-29s on March 13, 2022 and Oct. 12, 2022, a Su-24 on May 19, 2022, and two Su-27s on June 5, 2022 and March 28, 2023, respectively. Neither the PSU or MOD responded to a request for comment on this claim.
The only way to ensure that a similar tragedy does not occur again, said one military officer, “is to provide us with the additional air defence assets we have been asking to be given for more than two years.
“Until the ground-based air defence network is extensive and redundant enough on its own we will have to keep using fighter jets to protect our cities, our people, our power plants, our hospitals, etc. from Russian missile strikes. It is a dangerous mission, and I fear more aircraft will be lost in this same tragic manner.”
The Training Factor
Supporters of Kyiv have complained about how long the US has taken to train Ukrainian pilots, while the US has in turn emphasized the dangers of rushing pilot training. Moonfish’s death immediately reignited that back and forth, despite the ongoing lack of clarity on what happened in the air that day.
Certainly, there are numerous differences in its overall design of the F-16 compared to the Mikoyan MiG-29s and Sukhoi Su-27s that have been the mainstay of the PSU fighter force. These represent “challenging hurdles that have to be overcome in the course of a training regime,” said a NATO member-nation test pilot who spoke to Breaking Defense in response to the event.
Some of the more significant among these are:
The Russian-designed, Soviet-era MiGs and Sukhoi aircraft utilize previous-generation, hydromechanical flight control systems (FCS) with a center-stick cockpit. Therefore, the pilot literally can “feel” the stick loads of the aircraft manoeuvring as he moves the controls. That manner of haptic feedback does not exist on the same level – if at all – with the F-16, as it is equipped with a fly-by-wire computer-controlled FCS connected to a side-stick controller. It requires a different and almost delicate style of piloting technique from the control authority of the older Russian models.
The F-16’s pilot vehicle interface (PVI), particularly the newer models, is characterised by multi-function displays (MFD) and other digital instrumentation associated with “glass” cockpits. The PSU MiG-29s and Su-27s and the Russian-design aircraft subsequently donated by other former Soviet bloc nations have cockpits modernised to differing standards, but still have their fair share of “steam gauge” instrumentation.
Both aircraft are fitted with mechanically-steered array (MSA) radar sets, but the US radars have far fewer problems with false targets and reliability, compared to the MiG-29’s N019 and the Su-27’s N001 models. Additionally, the F-16s can fire active radar-homing, fire-and-forget air-to-air missile, the AIM-120 AMRAAM, but the PSU Russian-made aircraft are not equipped with the Russian analogue, the R-77/RVV-AE. Modifications have been made to the PSU aircraft to allow them to use the US air-launched weapons, but it is less than a perfect match-up.
Despite these difficulties, however, the record to date was that the Ukrainian pilots had acquitted themselves well in learning to operate the F-16, and despite regular sorties in the month since Moonfish’s death, there have been no reports of pilot difficulties. An unnamed source who spoke to CNN and other media stated, “the Ukraine Armed Forces do not believe pilot error was behind the incident.”
The lack of experience with the F-16 could certainly have contributed in a situation where the pilot, unused to the intricacies of flying the American-jet, was unable to react as he would have with another jet. But the reality is the answers may never be found as to what role, if any, the speed of training had on the mission’s deadly outcome.
Speaking this week at the annual Air and Space Forces Association conference outside Washington, Gen. James Hecker, the head of US Air Forces in Europe, said that “As far as the aircraft accident with the F-16 and unfortunately losing a pilot, there’s an ongoing investigation that Ukraine is conducting. We’ve offered our help in that investigation. We’ll see if they take us up on that offer.
“But anything that comes out of that, and any preliminary things that we’re taking a look at to develop into training, both in Denmark as well as the US, to see if there’s any changes that we need to make to the training to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
The first General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcons received by Ukraine fly on the Day of Ukrainian Air Force on August 4, 2024 in Unspecified, Ukraine. At the event for the Day of Ukrainian Air Force with the participation of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the first General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcons received by Ukraine were demonstrated. (Photo by Vitalii Nosach/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
The Big Takeaway
If there has to be a top-level “lesson learned” from this loss, it may be that integrating a new platform into a military that is engaged in a high-intensity conflict needs to be understood as a gradual process.
There are specific examples in the past of post-Soviet militaries operating both western and Russian-designed fighter aircraft, but where they differ from the Ukrainian approach is that those air forces tend to employ those new aircraft in complementary, but distinctly different, missions. Most new F-16 users would not want to immediately put the aircraft into a role that has been filled for more than two years by the MiG-29 and Sukhoi models, as the PSU did when it put the F-16 aircraft into a missile-hunting assignment.
More broadly, the situation also serves as a reminder that the F-16s are not a cure-all for the ongoing conflict. But this downing also doesn’t mean the F-16 is a failure.
Speaking at an event in July, Hecker stated that it would be unrealistic to expect the F-16s to have an immediate and dramatic impact in the air power dimension of the war.
“It’s not going to be the … golden bullet, that all of a sudden, they have F-16s, and now they’re going to go out and gain air superiority,” he said. What will make a difference in the long run, he explained, is the ability to more effectively employ US air-launched weapons.
Up to now the PSU has been “dropping them off MiG-29s and Su-24s. Now they’re going to have the opportunity to actually drop them off of an airplane that they were designed to come off of, which will give them more capability to change the targets in flight and things like that.”
Цитата:
Lasers on ships by 2030: Rheinmetall and MBDA launch joint bid
Germany’s Rheinmetall and MBDA have unveiled plans for joint development of a naval based laser weapon (Rheinmetall)
...
BELFAST — Germany’s Rheinmetall and European missile firm MBDA announced a laser weapons cooperation agreement today, in a bid to jointly develop a maritime-based system and bring it to market “within the next five to six years.”
Rheinmetall provided the timeline in a company statement and added that the future solution “opens up new possibilities, particularly in relation to drone defence on ships.”
Both industry partners, “are convinced that their complementary skills in the field of laser weapon technology will enable them to successfully develop a military laser weapon system,” said Rheinmetall.
The cooperation agreement builds off steps taken by both parties in September 2023 to set “prerequisites” for the development of a “first laser weapon,” including a commitment to make “internal preparations” for the new platform’s development phase.
The companies have previously teamed for a demonstration onboard the German navy’s F124 air defense Sachsen frigate, which fired over 100 test shots.
The demonstrator delivered on “all aspects” of “combat effectiveness” ranging from, “detection and tracking…the interplay of sensors, command and weapon engagement systems and effectors; possible rules of engagement,” through to target engagement, according to Rheinmetall.
Laser weapons are considered a cost effective alternative to naval based missiles being expended to shootdown cheap drones, with the UK’s in development DragonFire high energy laser, for example, said to cost £10 ($13) a shot. There are obvious applications for that given what is happening in the Red Sea over the last year, where US ships are using expensive rounds to take down small cruise missiles or drones.
Though the promise offered by laser weapons is clear, they typically have long research and development phases, largely because of design challenges involving beam stability and power sustainment, both of which are critical to stay on target and destroy it. There’s a reason there’s an old joke in defense circles that “lasers are the weapon of the future, and always will be.”
US Navy Rear Adm. Fred Pyle, Director of the Surface Warfare Division, or N96, and responsible for managing the service’s laser technology weapon efforts, said in January that the US Navy and industry should be more “intellectually honest” with one another about capabilities of laser systems. He also criticized a “tendency to over promise and under deliver.”
Still, there is a growing sense that lasers are becoming real utility, particularly for missile defense. For instance, Israel’s Rafael, manufacturer of the 100kW class Iron Beam ground-based laser air defense system, told Breaking Defense in March that the new system is expected to be fielded “by the end of 2025.”
The company claims, there is “almost zero cost per interception” when employing the high energy solution, which is also said to be capable of destroying a “wide array of threats from a range of hundreds of meters to several kilometers.”
Washington and the West struggle for a way forward with Putin’s Russia
In the United States and Europe, there is growing uncertainty about how to counter Putin’s aggression without stoking a direct conflict with Russia.
Moments after he greeted Americans newly released from Russian prisons last month, President Joe Biden was asked if he had any message for Vladimir Putin. “Stop,” he replied.
But whether Biden meant jailing innocent foreigners, persecuting Russian dissidents, invading Ukraine, violating international law or challenging the U.S.-led global order, Putin has shown no sign of backing down.
And that means one of the most deeply vexing questions facing Western leaders — including Biden and whoever succeeds him next year — is what to do about it.
On each side of the Atlantic, there is uncertainty about how to counter Putin’s aggression without stoking a direct conflict with the man who controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
That fear — and the inability, even of Western diplomats with decades of experience dealing with the Kremlin, to see a viable path forward — has revived calls for Cold War-style containment: restricting contacts with Moscow to essential issues and bracing for conflict by boosting Europe and Ukraine’s military capacity.
Current U.S. policy is “more of a reaction and an outgrowth to events,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has advised multiple administrations on Russia policy and was President Donald Trump’s top Russia adviser at the National Security Council. “We haven’t had a holistic approach,” Hill said.
As Putin builds a militarized Russian society geared to confront the West for decades — revamping the education system, monopolizing culture, reshaping women’s roles and indoctrinating youth — he regularly boasts of a victory in Ukraine that would signal the defeat of American global power.
But Washington, while arming and financing Ukraine, has yet to define a longer-term strategy to deal with a resurgent Russia, which, for more than 20 years, a succession of presidents hoped to befriend or to write off as irrelevant.
In interviews, foreign policymakers and diplomats — including leaders and former leaders, current and former U.S. officials — as well as analysts and exiled Russian politicians warned that the West has consistently underestimated and misplayed Putin, and is at risk of misreading him again, potentially responding too timidly because of his repeated threats of escalation.
“The level of risk, the level of uncertainty is extremely high,” said former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski, who met with Putin at length and witnessed what he said was his “imperialistic” obsession with re-creating Russia as a great power.
“It means that we are closer to a war,” Kwasniewski said. “I hope not. But we are in a world which is much more risky, much more unpredictable, much more complicated.”
Even as Putin faces Western efforts to isolate him, he seems increasingly invincible at home. Putin’s most formidable challenger, Alexei Navalny, died in prison in February. Any sign of political dissent is quickly crushed. What is left of the Russian opposition is now largely in exile. And even embarrassing military setbacks, such as Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, have not weakened Putin’s grip on power.
Some officials and analysts say containment is a wrongheaded approach that increases the risk of global conflict. Some politicians in the United States and Europe, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, say the West should respect Moscow’s view of Ukraine as part of its core security interests and push for an immediate cease-fire. Still others say the West should end Ukraine’s hope of joining NATO, persuade Kyiv to surrender territory and potentially offer Russia sanctions relief.
But even those who have long advocated engagement with the Kremlin to end the Ukraine war, say a long period of hostility — a new cold war — is inevitable, and argue against giving way to Moscow’s demands.
“There are no good choices here — it’s just degrees of bad going forward,” said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at Rand, adding that “accepting Russian conditions that are unacceptable” would be a mistake. Instead, he urged “a combination of deterrence and potential negotiations.”
Putin’s objective of weakening the United States by aggressive global measures across “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres,” and an “offensive information campaign,” was spelled out in a secret Russian foreign policy document reported by The Washington Post in April.
The war in Ukraine crystallized the Russian threat, but some leaders say many governments still do not fully appreciate the sweep of the challenge posed by the Kremlin, not just militarily but also to the Western values of freedom and democracy.
“The biggest danger that we have is not military might or the economy,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said in an interview. “This penetration that those regimes are still good at, and addressing the core values of our societies, that’s where our strategy is not very well thought out and successful.”
_________________
С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Уровень доступа: Вы не можете начинать темы, Вы не можете отвечать на сообщения, Вы не можете редактировать свои сообщения, Вы не можете удалять свои сообщения, Вы не можете голосовать в опросах
Как не ошибиться с выбором формата обучения и предстать перед будущим работодателем успешным специалистом. Директор по маркетингу ведущего IT-холдинга Fplus Ирина Васильева рассказала, на что теперь смотрят работодатели при приеме на работу, как нестандартно можно развиваться в профессии и стоит ли действующим маркетологам обучаться на онлайн-курсах.
Эксперты ЮKassa (сервис для приёма онлайн- и офлайн-платежей финтех-компании ЮMoney) и RetailCRM (решение для управления заказами и клиентскими данными) провели исследование* и выяснили, почему пользователи не завершают покупки в интернет-магазинах. По данным опроса, две трети респондентов хотя бы раз оставляли заказы незавершёнными, чаще всего это электроника и бытовая техника, одежда и товары для ремонта. Вернуться к брошенным корзинам многих мотивируют скидки, кэшбэк и промокоды.
За пару недель создать ажиотаж вокруг фильма, чтобы все писали о смелом промо, а зрители сметали билеты на премьеру? Маркетинг впечатлений — это искусство, которым Голливуд владеет в совершенстве. Как использовать его принципы в рекламе, рассказывает генеральный директор Mera (by Okkam) Мария Силкина.
Владимир Нерюев, заместитель Генерального директора коммуникационного агентства АУРА (в составе Газпром-Медиа Холдинга) поделился мнением, как искусственный интеллект (ИИ) стал неотъемлемой частью многих сфер нашей жизни, включая рекламу.
Чего не хватает радио, чтобы увеличить свою долю на рекламном рынке? Аудиопиратство: угроза или возможности для отрасли? Каковы первые результаты общероссийской кампании по продвижению индустриального радиоплеера? Эти и другие вопросы были рассмотрены на конференции «Радио в глобальной медиаконкуренции», спикерами и участниками которой стали эксперты ГПМ Радио.
Деловая программа 28-й международной специализированной выставки технологий и услуг для производителей и заказчиков рекламы «Реклама-2021» открылась десятым юбилейным форумом «Матрица рекламы». Его организовали КВК «Империя» и «Экспоцентр».
28 марта в Центральном доме художника состоялась 25-ая выставка маркетинговых коммуникаций «Дизайн и реклама NEXT». Одним из самых ярких её событий стал День социальной рекламы, который организовала Ассоциация директоров по коммуникациям и корпоративным медиа России (АКМР) совместно с АНО «Лаборатория социальной рекламы» и оргкомитетом LIME.
На VII Международном форуме «Матрица рекламы», прошедшем в ЦВК «Экспоцентр» в рамках международной выставки «Реклама-2018», большой интерес у профессиональной аудитории вызвала VI Конференция «Интернет-реклама».
RSS