[YouTube] Throughout the cold war, the Soviet Union dominated as a supplier of arms to the world, rivaling, and sometimes exceeding the United States as a source of global arms exports.
With the fall of the Union, the former Soviet arms industry struggled, but the Russian Federation steadily rebuilt its share of the global market, resting on a reputation as a reliable seller of 'rugged, reliable and affordable' weapons to those in the world without the diplomatic alignment, cash, or desire to purchase Western made equipment.
By 2014, Russian arms exports started to suffer reverses, damaged by sanctions and being cut off from industrial integration with Ukraine. But the industry survived.
Then February 2022 came, and an avalanche of import restrictions, banking and financial sanctions were joined with very public images of missile failures, turret tossing tanks, and an under-performing air-force. With the worst marketing one could hope for, this video explores the potential future for the Russian arms export sector, and its vital role in supporting the sustainability of Russian research and production efforts
#1
Their market share is tyrants who only need to keep the peasants down and not make an unwelcome visit with the neighbors. For that, the Russian equipment is good and cheap enough to meet requirements.
#2
If I were a rat-bag dictator shopping for implements of destruction, my checklist would look like this:
* Simple enough to operate that my uneducated peasant soldiers can use it.
* Comparable equipment to what my semi-hostile neighbors, local hard boys, and any prospective rebels use. Most of them have Soviet/Russian kit already. (btw, did we ever trade Basketball Girl for Victor Bout?)
* Reliable supply. Buying arms is investing in weapons systems. Even the lowly AK-47, which is common enough to become its own currency, is a system of rifles, ammo, spare parts, and training. It's like PC vs Mac. Whatever choice you make involves vendor lock-in.
What happens if you are in the middle of a minor war and your vendor decides it is sanctions time? The reason does not matter. Maybe you are evil. Maybe you are bothering some endangered minnow or still using plastic grocery bags. The result is the same - no more stuff for you!
Based on the above, Russian arms are a viable choice.
[YouTube] Kings and Generals animated historical documentary series on Modern Warfare continues with the aftermath of the first phase of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (https://youtu.be/yBZPE9o2gHU). Previously we talked about the build-up to the new stage of the Russo-Ukrainian War, how Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine continued, and covered events between February 24th and April 7th, as we saw how Ukraine managed to win the first phase of the war. This set up the second phase of the war - battle of Donbas. In the previous video we covered the events of April of 2022 (https://youtu.be/K2N_fHKrWIg) including the sinking of the rocket cruiser Moskva - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvB2C..., and how the conflict turned into the war of attrition in May (https://youtu.be/D-93q4GMFT0) and continued with Russia's best month in June (https://youtu.be/SIm4mQihHdA). In this video dedicated to July - the 5th month of the war, we will talk about the arrival of the HIMARS systems which strengthened Ukrainian positions and changed the war.
[AmericanThinker] In response to the long-planned Taiwan visit by the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China once again flexed its trade muscle to show Taiwan who is dominant in the cross-strait relationship, using both intimidation and retribution to halt imports of food from Taiwan.
Taiwan has been under China’s economic, political, and military threats for at least a decade. How did Taiwan get itself into this situation, and what is the way out?
[Breitbart] A report from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has claimed that around 300,000 non-Ukrainian migrants have arrived in the EU among those supposedly fleeing the conflict in Ukraine.
The IOM, an agency of the United Nations, released a report this week stating that around 13 million Ukrainians have been displaced since the Russian invasion in February and that 6.6 million Ukrainians have fled the country due to the fighting.
Among the wave of Ukrainian refugees who entered the European Union was around 300,000 non-Ukrainian nationals, not including European Union nationals — roughly over half of the non-EU foreign population of Ukraine prior to the war, the EU-funded website InfoMigrants reports.
How many of these foreigners were genuinely resident in Ukraine before the Russian invasion and how many might be exploiting the country as a back door to the West is unclear, however.
In the early days of the conflict, reports emerged of migrants from countries in Africa and elsewhere that had been seen among the Ukrainians arriving in Western European countries, such as France.
Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Nicholas Bay commented on the phenomenon in March, claiming that migrants from outside Ukraine were attempting to exploit the crisis in order to enter France.
“[T]oday a third of the refugees who pass through Ukraine who do not come from Ukraine, but… come from sub-Saharan Africa in particular… [they] use this new migratory route to come to Europe,” Bay stated.
“There are those who come for economic reasons, who weigh down our public accounts and our social accounts, and the Ukrainians towards whom we have a duty of European solidarity, of course,” he added.
While many Ukrainians who fled the war still remain abroad in countries like Poland, Romania, and elsewhere, many Ukrainian refugees have returned to the country in recent months.
A July report from the European Union border agency Frontex claimed that’s many as half of the Ukrainian refugees who came to the EU to escape the conflict had already returned to their home country.
European Union home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson stated in July that the situation had largely stabilised and crossings between the EU and Ukraine had returned to levels seen prior to both the war in Ukraine and the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
[PJ] Top American counterintelligence officials sent a memo that warned every CIA station around the world about a troubling number of intelligence assets who had been killed, disappeared, or captured in recent years. The memo actually gave a specific number of agents — a highly unusual inclusion but one that demonstrates the seriousness of the situation.
The CIA is an agency in transition with the focus of intelligence moving from rooting out terrorism in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan to concentrating on our enemies in Russia and China. But the loss of agents is particularly troubling because there doesn’t seem to be a major intelligence leak. The problem is with the agents themselves.
The New York Times:
Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft; being too trusting of sources; underestimating foreign intelligence agencies, and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing "mission over security."
The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of C.I.A. officers in order to discover their sources.
With all our satellites, sophisticated listening devices, and "Gee-Whiz" technology, our best intel is still gathered the old-fashioned way. Human intelligence or "HUMINT" is the best way to give meaning to the raw data that streams into Langley’s supercomputers. That idea was challenged in the late 1970s by Jimmy Carter’s choice to lead the CIA, Adm. Stansfield Turner.
Turner was an unmitigated disaster for the CIA. Admittedly, he took over in 1977 right after the Church Committee discovered CIA abuses and law-breaking. But Turner went to work dismantling the clandestine service, believing that "National Technical Means" like satellites and signals intelligence could do the job of people.
He was proved spectacularly wrong. Turner fired 800 clandestine service officers and reorganized and downgraded the entire CIA operations bureau. It took more than a decade for the agency to recover.
#1
The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of C.I.A. officers in order to discover their sources.
Emphasis added.
Anyone operating out of an embassy, enjoying diplomatic immunity (US black passport), must be assumed to be (by the host nation) an official cover operative. Any communications, contacts, or travel they may have may also be assumed to be intelligence related.
Non-Office Cover intelligence operations require long-term commitment. Their development requires very careful recruitment, extensive training, considerable financial expenditure, and decades of development.
#3
/\ Yes, extraordinarily difficult, hence the trend toward short-term, paid sources within the host nation. Such assets can be unreliable, working both sides of the fence, or both.
Losing global credibility and respect, coupled with asset betrayal, as you might imagine, buggers things on many levels.
#4
And I do wonder if the old timers at Camp Peary and AFCITC have long gone, either from just being 'old' or simply disgusted by how things are nowadays.
And given the "entitled" woke snowflakes and their stress cards, I don't have a good feeling that things will get much better.
BLUF:
[American Thinker] See The Daily Signal "The Mar-a-Lago Raid: What Happened and What’s Next," and Kash Patel (See bio), a former Assistant US Attorney who has extensive experience in this unique area of the law:
"Nothing these guys do is inadvertent. Everything they do is intentional, including this intentional raid on President Trump's home," argues Kash Patel.
"Jurisdiction is supposed to be blind," says Kash Patel. "They are selectively applying federal jurisdiction by going to a magistrate judge that they know hates President Trump as much as they do, and applying their political bias to what's supposed to be an apolitical investigation."
"It’s the same individuals that ran Russiagate [Author’s link]. It's the same individuals that said Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. It's the same individuals [FBI DC Field Ofc] that falsified FISA warrants. These people are running this investigation. When is it going to be enough?" [My emphasis - the Epoch Times transcript]
#1
I'll say it once again. There appears to be a special element or Task Force embedded within the Bureau that is dedicated to the destruction of 'Deep State' threats. I suspect they are a 'three letter agency' hybrid with well established foreign intelligence tentacles.
'Crossfire Hurricane' was simply an unclassified project name. Who is the host, and where are they located ?
#3
The Five Eyes connections link to Crossfire Hurricane for example, all those UK intel players. In particular I remember the resignation of the guy in Charge of Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, (the intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence) and the suspicious timing at the start of the Trump Administration, almost as if he knew what an attempted coup would look like and what his risks were.
#6
Not only are all of the above comments on target, but were we not promised a paperless society? My list would start with the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times and I sure you all can add to the list, but by eliminating just these few -- Zap...the black ink/toner shortage would be over tomorrow morning.
#7
Paper and ink records, like cash and actual photographs, are the enemy of the tech state and fungible history/records/transactions/credit/wealth.
When you exist only as electronic records, you exist at the whim of those who create them.
Cui Bono?
#10
You guys will be laughing out the other paper tray when HR decrees that 20% of all corporate documents must be printed on colored paper. Sorry, printed on paper of color.
[PJMEDIA] There it is. He said it out loud. Joe Biden thinks you’re a fascist. And the difference between this and the last epithet conservatives were called around election time is that this time Biden has an armed FBI and Antifa to act as his punishing squad. Gladly.
Here’s what the president told a Democratic Party fundraiser near the White House on Thursday.
"What we’re seeing now is either the beginning of the death knell of the extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism," he said, according to a pool reporter. "This is not your father’s Republican Party. This is a different deal."
Pool reporters didn’t note if he used one, but, if past is prologue, he was speaking with a teleprompter—as he almost always does. Someone would have written those words for him and he spoke them.
I don’t want to overstate the case, but these words appear to be a declaration of war on half the country.
His words are worse than Trump’s message to those at his January 6, 2021, speech: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard...."
Since Trump’s gatherings had never been violent affairs, no one predicted what followed.
Not so with Biden’s words. By calling Republicans who agree with Trump "semi-fascists," he gave his followers permission to — gee, what does one do with "fascists," anyway? Oh, yes, in Portland, Antifa murdered a man they labeled a fascist. Two billion dollars in damage from rioting was done to reject "fascism," more than 50 people died, and hundreds of police officers were wounded in the "antifascist" "peaceful protests."
A crackpot with a Chinese semi-automatic rifle nearly killed Congressman Steve Scalise and wounded other Republicans at a practice for the Congressional baseball game based on his nutty devotion to Bernie Sanders and the crackpottery of Rachel Maddow conspiracy theories.
Haters have "swatted" the home of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in hopes of getting her shot by a cop.
The president just activated the crazies in his party — who are legion — to treat his political opponents as "fascists."
Even Hillary’s "deplorables" comment wasn’t as bad. While it may have prompted the feminists to screech at the mention of Trump’s name, it wasn’t a call to action like these words are.
#2
..been for decades. They're just upset that too many are no longer turning the other cheek like so many country club Judases Trunks have done for those decades.
#3
The GOPe is firmly entrenched in the "they (us) have nowhere else to go." Trump showed them it does not have to be like that. They are kidding themselves if they think Trump will be the last to offer a meaningful alternative.
The removal of 8/10 pubs who voted to impeach Trump is something they can't pretend didn't happen / doesn't mean anything.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/28/2022 12:01 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Experts are predicting a National Black Printer Ink and Toner Shortage given the recent events and high demands.
