dorlomin

Russia (GROM 22) and NATO (Steadfast Noon) have some annual nuclear drills coming up in the next day or so. Russia may test a rocket during these. This was published and discussed well in advance. Just getting it in advance in case someone on social media tries to start a panic.

Well that was quick.

Rare for helicopters but they do. Apparently they blades have explosive bolts that allow the pilot to eject. Most combat helicopters rely on hoping the blades remain intact so you can autorotate down. Not seen footage of one working. Ejecting is a brown trousers enough moment without hoping you are not headed into rotors!

There is not a China specific thread that I could find, but events in the worlds second largest economy have been extraordinary over the past week. They are likely to be among the more important for our world in the remainder of the decade. Xi has pretty much purged the last faction counter to his own from serious power. His politburo is mostly hawks on defence and internal security the growth orientated liberals are gone and the clamp down on public statistics has now hit GDP figures that are delayed. Now this: https://www.ft.com/content/3e2376bf-24ef-407f-b0b0-c60bed4ec97b The US enacted new laws forcing all dual citizenship persons employed in the chip industry to either quit China or break US law, i.e. forcing them out of China. This was last week and a huge under reported story. Hard to know with the FT story as to how many and how serious it is. Certainly some will be moving, the collapsing real estate bubble probably marks a good time for many in that sector to retire to sunnier climes under new names. The brewing European financial crisis and US recession are other major events that are in the offing. Demographics dictates stagnation to retraction in GDP for much of the developed world and only really the capacity for follower model productivity gains being a driver for growth in the better developing world economies. Seems the major powers are moving their pieces to be readier for the new world of the 2020s and beyond. Also tangentially related: Putins bid to add 44 million white, Russian speakers is stuck in the mud around Luhansk and Kherson. His 20 something male demographic was only 6 million warm bodies before the war started, so given high end figures for the war he may have lost 1% of that KIA and 5% now in other countries fled the conscription.

And likely the best of its prewar trained pilots. Though I suspect a big portion of them were on the ground as there were a couple of utter shambolic losses of near entire flights to ground action. Rotor aviation is a keystone of western ground forces. They are usually assigned to the army and are seen as the main MBT killer (AH-64). I guess Soviet\Russian doctrine has really confined them to being sort of small fast, MRLS systems. So perhaps not the loss it seems from a western perspective. Edited to add, the low ammunition as a driver for reckless Hokum runs? This ties with a long running theory Russia is starting to see the bottom of its usable stock. That may match with the rise in ground to air Hokum kills over the past week, the buying from DPRK, the shopping in Iran the whole story of the past few weeks. My hot take on mobilisation was it was going to be for one big rush before ammo ran dry. But its been chaotic so far and not produced much in the way of enhanced fighting power. With the renewed nuclear sabre rattling well this may be Xi now in full control or it may be that they are getting real desperate. Horrible world when you are constantly guessing about everything.

It will make zero impact on peoples attitudes towards climate change, either for or against. Decarbonising the economy is a difficult, long term and complex task that will largely be the work of the civil service as it comes up with impact assessments as new government policies are pushed through the system to ensure each policy meets our legal commitments under the 2008 Climate Change Act. Boring and full of details. This is where the real heavy lifting in decrabonisation will take place. These cunning stunts are more like streakers at football. They get the attention they so desperately crave and no one will remember they existed or what they were protesting in a couple of weeks time.

We can still end up with a bad winter if there is an SSW (sudden stratospheric warming) or an omega block (that would be largely UK specific but a high pressure over the UK leading to very cold nights). But for the moment one of Putins key remaining levers is not really working right now. Though consumer prices are very much a lagging indicator of what suppliers paid months earlier. But still less demand is still a saving.

The plant has been regularly visited by the IAEA. The only possibility is spent reactor fuel on site and that will be one of the first things they will look at. So we are very confident Ukraine did not have the kind of mass of uranium available from Zaporizhzhia before the war. If something comes from there its will be a very strong Russian finger print. Uranium is not like coal or iron, it is very very closely monitored and logged globally. I am pretty sure Ukraine was full IAEA compliant at the time of the invasion. Getting rods out the reactor is a huge job for specialists. That is not going to happen and not going to be faintly convincing.

If you take a lump of uranium and do an analysis on its isotope concentrations, then cut it in 1/3 2/3rds. A year later you will be able to tell if a new sample came from one or the other of the lumps due to the different rate of radionuclide decomposition. You would need to precisely match the life of the Ukrainian uranium, including how often it was in the reactor for.

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2015/ja/c4ja00354c With Uranium there are ways to estimate where it come from. You can do a very fine analysis of the rare earth elements in it (for example). Takes time mind you and I really struggle to see the current kakistocracy is Russia being able to pull it off in a manner that did not look obviously staged. The problem is "how to respond". It would be such a large escalation that any counter escalation would likely push near where Russia considers it now a nuclear matter. With the looming US election, Xi taking complete control of the CCP and now Shoigu making this bomb threat\hint of a false flag, it feels like the pages of a dystopian novel.

Apparently Shoigu has been telling people Ukraine wants to let of a subcritical nuclear device.

Dashcam of the Su-30 crash earlier today. 2 recent crashes of Russian air over Russia. I suspect they are being pushed into a higher cadence than their maintenance crews can cope with. They had a well known low rate of flight hours so if they are being pushed to train more to support the ground forces, ground crew may be under resourced and unused to the fast turn arounds expected. (Purely my speculation, Justin Bronk is the open source specialist on Russian and Chinese air power he will likely have a comment up soon)

Not much. Its a brigade and its light infantry (about 5000 troops). Everything NATO land forces do is composed by brigades, its sort of the lego blocks of the alliance ground forces. Light infantry has become a catchall to describe everything that is not in IFVs/APCs (tracked armoured carriers of people). But in advanced armies they are usually elite units designed to go in early and prepare the ground. In less developed armies it usually means everyone they cannot afford IFVs for (this is a very simplified explanation). So its a small formation of relatively lightly armed troops. And 101st get deployed to Europe all the time. This brigade was announced deploying to Romania a couple of months ago. https://www.army.mil/article/258008/101st_airborne_division_arrives_in_europe_to_support_nato_allies This deep into a conflict, its time to pay attention when its a couple of armoured divisions being put on boats with all their toys and the airbases are being flooded with fighters and bombers (the later mostly Lakenheath in Suffolk).

RAF Joint Rivet flights now have friends.

Could be for training but most likely that a unit was slated to move to Belarus and it has bridging equipment on its inventory, so by the book its loaded up and moved. Had they been deploying to a desert it would have been loaded up and moved.

Once the bridge is within range of M-777 then the ferries that replace it will be and retreat could become bloody. M-777 is the main western artillery system that we have donated. To be fair you usually want your artillery a bit behind the lines, but this could be valuable enough to lose a few systems for.

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2022-10/A-77-533-AUV-EN.pdf I hope these scum burn in hell for eternity.

Seem to reassert the previous powers the military had under occupation. There is talk they are dismantling the borders in Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-63296107 Just a couple of days ago a Chinese diplomat was dragging a protester into a consulate to assault them. There has been a very bizarre and massive shift in Chinese diplomacy, to the undiplomatic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_warrior_diplomacy There is a lot more going on beneath the covers.

Quick over view on Belarus. Likely the troops are going their to get trained. The markings have been on the Belarussian army vehicles for months.

Wagner aligned telegram channel pushing the Russian version of the replacement theory and predictions of civil war. Grim. But I have heard quasi apocalyptic pronouncements from senior figures in the Russian regime before. Putin really is not the worst case scenario for Russia.

Russia apparently planning to buy Iranian SRBMs. Quick google and the Zolfaghar is an IRBM. If true then it against does suggest Russia is critically low on battlefield rockets at the moment.