more like thucydideez nuts, gottem

A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like “in Minecraft”) and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of a satellite image from MizarVision, a Chinese firm that has recently shown pride in being sanctioned for showing uncensored images of the Middle East. The West is not allowing up-to-date satellite imagery of the region to hide destruction.

As always, my weekly summary/preamble is in spoilers below.

preamble

Military news remained relatively subdued last week, with the main front continuing to be the Lebanon border. With dozens of vehicles destroyed and many more Zionist casualties, they are now desperately searching for a solution to the FPV drone threat, with certain analysts characterizing the whole situation as the entity stumbling foot-first into a bear trap (hence the megathread title). Unfortunately for them, two better and more resourceful militaries have spent the last year or two also searching for a solution and have generally failed - with anti-drone strategies consisting mainly of 1) build your own cheap drones designed to physically intercept their cheap drones and 2) separate your forces up rather than conducting large frontal assaults WW2-style and accept that you’re gonna have to fight for many months to gain substantial ground. This also explains why they’re so eager to kickstart a civil war in Lebanon, although as I’ve stated before, I don’t personally know whether that would be a silver bullet given how the Lebanese army has been deliberately not allowed to become a threatening force due to Zionist fears, and indeed, I don’t know how many Lebanese citizens and soldiers would fight against the only force in their country fighting against an army trying to annex their territory and which murders hundreds of people at a time in aerial bombings on their cities.

Aside from the ever-worsening global economic catastrophe, the main event has been the US visiting China. Trump clearly intended to time the summit such that it took place after subjugating Iran and perhaps also Cuba. However, with the former goal not even remotely achieved, and the latter goal delayed - hopefully indefinitely, though the US still seems pretty intent on it - it all amounted to a big nothingburger. Marxist economist Michael Roberts has written up a great piece on the current state of the US-China economic conflict, stating among things that, despite the last decade of US sanctions and economic warfare, the Chinese economy has done extremely well, building up their own domestic industries to replace commodities lost from sanctions. China has, up to this point, refused to withdraw its aid from Iran, and seems to be looking to start moving its tankers through the Strait via Iran’s new tolling mechanism.

China obviously continues to maintain its position on Taiwan, and Trump has continued the US tradition of respecting this in words and disrespecting it in actions, but it’s becoming clear to everybody but the most delusional diehards that the US will not be fighting China in and around the Pacific for at least a couple decades, and likely never will. There is little choice. The Ramadan War has definitively proven that the US has been severely militarily and logistically weakened over the decades despite skyrocketing military budgets, and much of their equipment, strategies, and tactics are woefully outdated for the modern battlefield. The prospect of the US fighting a war against China and not immediately losing has gone from “almost implausible” to “hilariously absurd”. Unable to meaningfully impede China, the US will have to content itself to increasingly ineffective sanctions campaigns and bullying/overthrowing nations that do not currently have much of a capacity to resist. In that vein, one hopes that Iran and friends will share their expertise in drone technology and underground fortification around the world. The age of the tunnel is upon us.

Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    56·
    8 hours ago

    threads on the proliferation of cheap precision-guided munitions and its impacts https://xcancel.com/ArmchairW/status/2056504985509126382

    more

    As more and more IDF soldiers are killed and injured by Hezbollah drones, while demolishing buildings in Lebanon. The soldiers are complaining that they are being used irresponsibly and taking a great amount of damage as a result. An article in Haaretz today shed light on this:

    1. Capt. Maoz Israel Rakanti was killed Friday by an explosive drone while securing a tour held at midday despite standing guidelines to minimize daytime movement due to the drone threat. A commander in the division who had argued against the tour put it bluntly: “For what? To secure a visit by the division commander who wanted to see the Litani and the Galilim Bridge. There was no operational benefit to this visit.” He added that the timing made the decision especially indefensible, coming a day after Sgt. Negev Dagan of the same Golani battalion was killed by a mortar in the same area: “The directive is not to move during daytime unless it’s a matter of life and death. This infuriates me to levels I can’t even describe.”
    2. The army’s defense of the decision concedes much of the criticism. A senior military source argued Norkin acted on operational judgment, but acknowledged the security arrangements were inadequate: “Maybe a tank instead of an open jeep. Maybe not staying there 20 minutes after a senior commander leaves.” The justification ultimately fell back on command prerogative: “He’s the commander, and if he thought he needed to see the bridge with his own eyes in daylight, then we execute.” The IDF has not ruled out that Hezbollah identified Norkin’s presence and targeted the location accordingly.
    3. The incident reflects a broader erosion of operational discipline around the drone threat. Commanders and soldiers describe a pattern in which troops are exposed to serious risk for missions that are neither urgent nor essential, often demolition work that could be done at night. As an officer serving in the north described the dynamic: “Forces that are required to hide all day and avoid unnecessary exposure find themselves on missions that could be done at night, without endangering the troops beyond what’s already dangerous.”
    4. The demolition mission itself structurally exposes troops to the drone threat. A central part of IDF activity in southern Lebanon is the systematic destruction of buildings, with commanders required to report daily tallies of structures demolished. This work demands sustained exposure in open terrain, precisely the conditions in which explosive drones are most effective. One soldier captured the contradiction directly: “We stand exposed securing house demolitions while there are drones in the air. There’s no logic to it.” An earlier account from a soldier in the sector framed the deeper problem: “The only mission is to keep destroying.”
    What we are seeing is that the IDF mania to destroy every building in Lebanon is putting their soldiers at risk. But the IDF command would rather put the soldiers at risk in daytime to increase the speed of demolition, than secure the lives of soldiers. Life is cheap for Israel.

    “The directive is not to move during daytime unless it’s a matter of life and death.” For decades, the American military, and its allies and proxies, operated with the certainty that anything that can be seen could be killed. This was what the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) that began in the 1970s had promised and had delivered. American dominance on the battlefield was evident and US adversaries were only able to fight US forces asymmetrically, mostly through guerrilla or insurgent campaigns, emphasizing concealment from observation by operating at night, in forbidding terrain or dense urban areas, or among populations. US surveillance and firepower prevented enemies from massing and rarely were US forces in danger of being tactically defeated in combat. American bases were secure, and, while harried by indirect fire, US bases were, by and large, safe and never in any danger of being overrun (with some exceptions in Afghanistan). IED attacks did greatly hamper and hinder US force and logistics movements but US freedom of movement was never fully denied, and the US was always able to mass forces, set the tempo of operations and take initiative at the tactical and operational levels of war.

    Now that advantage is gone. The US, allied and proxy dominance of the enemy through surveillance and applied firepower has been equaled. Whether through Iranian drones and missiles damaging and forcing the evacuation of nearly all US Gulf bases, the inability of US carriers to get closer than 1,000km from the Iranian coast, or the IDF unable to move in daylight in Southern Lebanon, the great advantage US forces and their allies once had has been met. Now, with certainty, if US and allied forces can be seen, they too can be killed. I cannot overstate how dramatic this is for an American empire that depends upon the conquest and control of terrain to achieve, demonstrate and report success and victory. An American military unable to openly operate without challenge upends decades of American warfighting on all levels: tactically, doctrinally, industrially, psychologically, politically… The 1970s RMA brought about the high tech weaponry that provided American dominance at the tactical and operational levels of war. This dominance allowed the US to not suffer battlefield defeats while garrisoning terrain and cities. No enemy could fight the US symmetrically and US forces could not be forced to retreat or hunker in their bases (at least not at the tactical level of war, but certainly so at the strategic and political levels). Now nearly any American adversary enjoys that same “if we see it, we can kill it” guarantee.

    The Americans are incredibly inept at the strategic and political levels of warfare. Their technological dominance has allowed them to succeed tactically and operationally, at least measured in the sense of avoiding battlefield defeat and holding terrain. Now that dominance has been equaled. This doesn’t just offer the prospect of battlefield defeat and inability to hold terrain/bases, but seemingly ends the entire construct of American military success and victory as understood through such paradigms. Bad days ahead for the Empire and its armies.

    The IDF is facing a tiny fraction of the drone threat in southern Lebanon that exists in Ukraine, from a non-state militia with sketchy funding and aspirational logistics, and it’s getting absolutely hammered. Ukraine has spawned entire categories of weapons unknown in the West.

    • jack [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      36·
      6 hours ago

      Our boy at Inside China Business did a video on drone warfare that’s pretty good at demonstrating the technological and industrial gap between the US and China, but that’s nothing new to anybody here. What was really interesting is what he said at the very end:

      Iran is friendly with China and Iran has a lot of drones. And that is all that matters because drones cannot be stopped. And that could be very good news. Instead of transforming warfare, drones may just end it completely.

      Such a grand proclamation obviously causes a bit of eyerolling in an absolute sense, but as indication of a trend it actually kinda passes the smell test. Just like nuclear MAD really does prevent nuclear states from going to open warfare with each other, drones can act as a sort of lower-level MAD that makes any war too costly to actually carry out. That might be in the form of the Iran war being financially impossible for even a massive imperial hegemon like the US to wage or the Russo-Ukraine war being a nightmarish slog where progress on either side is almost impossible. It’s moving slower than fucking WWI!

      Now, this doesn’t prevent war in cases of extreme assymetry, where the US can bomb a distant undeveloped country with impunity, but it lowers the threshold of costly war substantially. If Cuba weren’t so incredibly strangled, it could develop the tunnel network and drone production capacity to make a US war against it far too costly just like Iran is.

      • dylan_g [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        17·
        3 hours ago

        This is something I’ve been thinking about as well… it seems like modern drone warfare and tunneling levels the playing field and basically ensures a costly near-stalemate war. If drone warfare doesn’t get solved it seems like it could potentially be enough to have a deterrent effect like MAD but for places where the requisite military and nuclear spending are simply out of the question. Of course there’s much more complexity to this but as a general trend this would be a hopeful development. The alternative is war goes on undeterred and becomes a terribly costly long haul where millions upon millions are sent to die by drones on the front lines or return with crippling PTSD.

        Also: Imagine every buzz sound triggers a feeling of an explosive laden drone honing in on you personally. For vets up to now it used to be the rare kid popping a balloon caused them to drop to the ground thinking of mortar fire etc, now it’ll be every random buzz from a power tool, lawn mower, random appliance, overhead plane, etc.

    • tocopherol [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      23·
      6 hours ago

      One commenter:

      there are people still screaming “we got jammers” as if fiber optic drone doesnt exist, or just handwave it away with “a counter will be developed”

      Then a few comments down “Kyle” says just “I have no doubt the idf will figure it out.” soleimani-amused

      It really seems like a new era of anti-imperialism, I’m sure they will find a way to mitigate it a bit though, or just end up hiding in tunnels more, but it’s good to see positive developments in multipolarity.