Amid all the shrill backbiting over continuing to flagellate the dying Ukrainian efforts against Russia, as well as the capering of France trying to stave off the disintegration of its African satrapies, as those states internally realign themselves with Russia and China – by force, when necessary – a specter lurks in the background, the proverbial “elephant in the room”: Communist Chinese insecurity over Taiwan.
In this insecurity, lay the seeds of global economic collapse.
At the end of World War Two, Communist leader Mao Zedong led his “People’s Liberation Army” out of their mountain hideouts, and slid in behind Soviet forces occupying Manchuria, swiftly arming themselves with ex-Japanese military equipment captured from the defeated Imperial Japanese Army. Thus armed, the Communists went on the offensive against the exhausted Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) forces, which had born the brunt of fighting against the Japanese for the preceding eight years (1937-1945).
Despite several billion dollars in US aid, and the poorly though-out deployment of the III Amphibious Corps and elements of the 7th Fleet, the sheer exhaustion and demoralization of the KMT resulted in a series of worsening defeats on the battlefield, until, in 1949, the surviving KMT military and government units retreated (for the most part) to the island of Formosa (now, Taiwan), and established a government in exile.
That is the situation as it remains, today.
Communist China, throughout its bloody and draconian history from 1950 until today, cannot abide that a recognized province of the country is not under its thumb. This manifests itself in the news of today, as near-continual violations of Taiwan’s declared air and sea boundaries by Communist military forces. The normal response of the United States has been to occasionally deploy aircraft carrier battle groups into the disputed waters as a dare to the Communists to fire on them.
The question for many, however, is – why? After all, the United States famously showed Taiwan the door in 1972, which made the country a diplomatic pariah state…so, why does the United States constantly go “eyeball-to-eyeball” with Communist Beijing over the island? For that matter, why can’t Beijing just let it go?
Two answers: For Beijing – and particularly for Premier Xi Jinping – Taiwan is a gaping sore for the Communists, as the island rapidly prospered under the KMT’s governance, while Communist China wallowed in poverty, famine and induced technological stagnation under the increasingly mentally unstable Mao…and that, in spite of the extreme brutality of the KMT’s actions in securing the island, beginning in the late 1940’s. As prosperous as Communist China has become in the aftermath of the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the Communist state still lags behind Taiwan by a long distance.
Second, the United States knows a fundamental truth that many around the world (and particularly within the United States), a truth that is the basis of this article:
Any Communist attempt to invade and conquer Taiwan – even if it failed – would collapse the global economy overnight.
The reason for this is brutally simple: microchips.
Circuit board. Public Domain.
Silicon chips, semiconductors, or integrated circuits as the Reader prefers, are what drive modern technology, from the device you are reading this article on, to the CPU in your car, computer chips drive every object of any consequence in your everyday life.
Most of Taiwan’s chips are produced by one company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). Unlike other manufacturers like Samsung and Intel (who manufacture chips for internal products), however, TSMC chips are not proprietary to them. Instead, their chips supply manufacturers of computer-driven hardware around the world, companies like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm, to name just three. Other nations around the world currently hover at less than half of TSMC’s production capacity; the United States currently holds about 12% of the global manufacturing capacity.
Invasions, as proven by the Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, are bloody, messy and highly destructive affairs. Any actual Communist Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan would be no different, the severe problems of a combined arms assault on the island equating to a probable Communist failure aside. To say that such an invasion would “disrupt” TSMC’s operations is a laughable understatement, not least because standard military doctrine virtually guarantees direct attacks on the company’s production facilities, to say nothing of worker attrition from “collateral damage”.
Devastation in Bucha, Ukraine. CC0/1.0, Public Domain.
What would such a circumstance mean for the global economy? Simply, virtually all generalized computer and electronic device production and repair or upgrades utilizing semiconductors would grind to a halt, as stocks of chips dried up virtually overnight. This is due to the phenomenon of “just-in-time delivery”, an outgrowth of the wave of globalization that has been the norm since the 1990’s.
The Reader may recall the term “supply chain disruption” that became popular during the recent pandemic. Workers at both manufacturing plants, but also – critically – stevedores and loading crane operators stayed home, either terrified of catching the disease, by legal order, or both. This ricocheted throughout the global supply and transport system, and was greatly aggravated by what many considered to be a minor event, namely the grounding of the container ship Ever Given in March of 2021. The effects of these body blows to the global economy continue as of this writing.
Container Ship ‘Ever Given’ stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt, March 24th, 2021. Copernicus Sential photo. CCA/2.0 Generic
In regards to a hypothetical – but very possible – Communist invasion of Taiwan, the disruption would be vastly worse, as there is no way for global manufacturers to quickly retool to make up for the loss, even if a ceasefire were quickly closed…And note that this does not address the general disruption of commercial cargo traffic in and out of the Communist nation, in the event of such a war.
But, there is an even greater danger lurking in this very possible scenario: the facts that not only will Taiwan not go quietly, but that they have a plan to take Communist China with them.
Without resorting to nuclear weapons.
The non-Communist Chinese in Taiwan all know full well what a Communist takeover of their country would entail. Given the Communist state’s recent history, to say nothing of its habit of “disappearing” political dissidents and anyone who disagrees with their regime too loudly. Because of this, there lurks a plan that Taipei lets slip every once in a while, to remind Beijing of what the consequences of invasion would be.
The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, China, 2009. CCA/2.0 Generic
Taiwan’s “doomsday” plan (YouTube link) would be a series of strikes against the Three Gorges Dam. If concentrated, such a strike package would collapse at least a section of the dam, releasing the force of 39.3 km3 to pour downstream in a massive deluge.
Provisionally, this action could kill up to 400 million people…And this is not an idle threat, as the KMT has done it before. To say that this could result in a nuclear response is a given…with everything else that derives from that.
Right now, Communist China is desperate to appear tough and capable. The chances of bluster turning into an actual invasion are very real, however.
This fact is something that should be taken seriously by anyone reading this.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
The tool was created in response to the crackdown on protestors and protest organizations by Iran. The fact that the tool was designed by a team working for a company who pushes the DNC-CCP narrative and oppresses users who too impactfully contradict that narrative is a bit of actual irony, but we liberty-lovers will take it and apply it in ways this team probably would never imagine, or support.
The tool itself, while designed to help a preferred oppressed group of people (Iranians wanting to live their own stewarded lives), can help an oppressed group of people Google has clearly demonstrated is not one of their preferred ones, the American people, those of us that also wish to live self-stewarded lives, not lives defined by and for the party, the DNC-CCP.
Jigsaw tweeted, “In times of crisis, internet connectivity is a lifeline, but authoritarian regimes are sophisticated at blocking access. That’s why VPNs are vital to keep people online when they need it most.”
They offered an explanation of what they’ve actually created, “Our team created this toolkit [Outline SDK] for developers. It empowers them to embed circumvention tech directly into their apps. Outline SDK simplifies the process, allowing apps to continue delivering crucial content even when faced with censorship, all without the need for a VPN.”
It would be much better if toolkits like this were developed by open-source liberty groups as opposed to Google, whose founding mantra, “don’t be evil” was long abandoned even before the creation of the parent corporation, Alphabet, who holds more allegiance with Karl Marx than it does Thomas Jefferson, who embraces evil in the name of ending evil, like all “good” leftists do.
X, “the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated” is creating a 2024 election censorship team “supporting people’s right to accurate and safe political discourse on X.” The DNC-CCP-adjacent platform larping at being a free speech platform announced plans to expand its “safety and elections teams to focus on combatting misinformation, surfacing inauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats.”
This seems to be more about attracting anti-Americanist corporate sponsors, such as Disney, the NFL, or even Walmart at this point, rather than trying to serve the general public, the general “American” public.
The old question continues to confound these arbiters of truth, these mavens of misinformation, what is truth and what is misinformation? To the atheist, for instance, claiming God is living and acting in our world even today is misinformation. To the DNC-CCP acolyte, claiming a woman is a woman and a man is a man is an untruth, hate speech even.
Yet, X, under Elon Musk, the man who is building more and more dependence on CCP approval through Tesla, is now going to once again dare dream it can “protect” Americans from wrong-think. The notion, even, that Americans have some sort of right to “accurate and safe political discourse” is far-left thinking in and of itself, paternalism that empowers the few “experts” that are given truth standing by billionaire elites like Musk to “protect” us from our own ignorance.
America is about Americans stewarding their own preferences and beliefs, and equipping themselves to discern fact from fiction, not empowering the few to dictate to the many the terms truth engagement as defined by them, conveniently to the benefit of their own power-mad self-interest.
Elon Musk and his crowd represent a gentler raping of America that seeks to shuttle us into authoritarian traps while wearing American clothes. Their billionaires aren’t as keen on the China model as the DNC-CCP elites are, but they aren’t that keen on facing level-field competition from stewarded Americans who have the power to define and pursue their own happiness while recognizing the rights of others to do the same.
This latest move shows X, formerly Twitter, is still, at its core, the same Twitter Musk pretended to be against, and Musk is as fake as his Hyperloop promises were.
The Taliban government of Afghanistan let the world know that Huawei, China’s CCP-owned digital telecommunications company, is installing a comprehensive surveillance network across the country in the style of the one built in the province of Xinxiang, the home of the ethnic group the Uyghurs, which are being exterminated by the CCP even as we speak.
The Taliban released a series of posts which were later deleted (probably at the behest of the CCP) as they exposed the brutality of the CCP and its CCP-controlled company in aiding an Islamo-Fascist regime in murdering dissenters, conveniently called “terrorists,” a phrase the Chinese government also uses to describe resistance to the brutal regime that the Taliban represent.
Given the nature of China’s regime, it is no surprise the two fascist regimes find such camaraderie with one another.
Bloomberg News claims to have an inside source on what went down with this agreement, stating in their report, Representatives of the Shenzhen-headquartered tech company met with Interior Ministry officials on Aug. 14, the person said, and a verbal agreement was reached regarding the contract. The Interior Ministry initially posted images and details of the meeting on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. In one post, spokesman Mufti Abdul Mateen Qani said the advanced camera system was being considered “in every province of Afghanistan.”
Let’s face it – tanks are sexy. So are “combat vehicles.” We’ve all seen them on television for years: big, brutalist vehicles, racing around a course, firing monstrous cannons, or grinding their way across the desert. Massive engines of war, practically defining the idea of the “warrior ethos.”
A Brigade of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division masses for the invasion of Iraq during the Gulf War, February 1991. US Army photo. Public Domain.
Or, perhaps, they are carrying infantry, dramatically exiting their vehicle, perhaps under fire. These kinds of vehicles fulfill another part of the “warrior ethos” equation, with warriors heading into violent, close-range, face-to-face battle with a dogged opponent. Very Audie Murphy.
US Army soldiers from 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, dismount from a Stryker APC, Mosul, Iraq, 2005. US Army Photo. Credit: SPC Jory C. Randall, US Army.
The idea of “sex” selling military equipment is alive and well, as can be seen by the marketing at any international arms show.
But this, of course, begs the question: Is this all there is? Of course, there are other aspects of “militarydom” that news media outlets and “infotainment” channels talk about relentlessly, as long as the public expresses interest in “things war-like.” These include paratroops, Rangers, or commandos, or special forces either stealthily creeping through enemy territory, or storming a “bad guy” hideout to neutralize said bad guys, or to rescue the hostages in dramatic fashion, especially if news cameras are present. Again – we’ve all seen these images and videos repeatedly, either on the news or in popular entertainment…and, for the most part, these all definitely deliver and validate that sort of drama, courage and honor.
This, of course, brings us once again to the question: it that it? In a word – no. Not by a long shot.
Combat troops require support. While combat troops are certainly capable of improvising, they are far better at executing their combat missions when the “non-combat” troops are relentlessly driving food, fuel, ammunition and spare parts forward, and doing the jobs that the combat units do not need to expend time and energy to learn: maintenance, medicine above the 1st Aid level, building (or destroying) structures – occasionally under fire – all of which are things that the combat forces need, but are too busy to spend time doing.
In “the biz,” this is expressed as the “tooth-to-tail ratio”, or, the proportion of combat to support troops. This is a very dense subject to get into, and there are a wide array of opinions on the subject, most of which disagree at one level or another with all of the other opinions. The point, however, is that any group with pretensions to military force is going to have more support troops who are unlikely to see actual fighting, than combat forces intended for straight up combat.
And those support forces need equipment – a LOT of equipment – and the unique supplies and spare parts to keep those running. And a main component of that equipment is armored support vehicles.
Lurking in the background, seldom photographed, and even less talked about or reported on, are the “combat support vehicles.”
These vehicles are not cargo trucks, but the sort of vehicles you can see on your daily commute when passing a construction site – everything from road graders to backhoes, bulldozers. These vehicles frequently have a coat of “military green” paint slapped onto them; hopefully, they have slats of armor plate welded onto them to protect the operator. They are then sent out to build anything from roads, to towns and camps for refugees, to large airfields.
A United States Navy Seabee uses a grader to construct a parking lot during the combined US/Honduran training operation “AHUAS TAR” (BIG PINE), 1983. Photo Credit: TSGT Ken Hammond. US National Archives. Public Domain.
But these vehicles also include highly specialized vehicles, such as minefield breachers and high-speed trenching machines, like the Soviet BTM-3. The BTM, in particular, has made a resurgence in the Ukraine war (YouTube link), as both Russia and Ukraine quickly turned to trench warfare, as the war bogged down into a bloody stalemate. With trench systems resembling those of World War 1, the BTM and its later derivatives and cousins have worked frantically to construct vast trench systems far faster and more efficiently than individual soldiers can. After a trencher slices through the area, troops need to do no more than to expand the position, “filling in” the parts that the trencher vehicle cannot easily do.
Unfortunately, since these vehicles, as highly effective and vital as they are, are rarely given any kind of real consideration…because they are not “sexy.” And, disappointingly, the leaders of most countries have little interest in these vehicles (because they are not “sexy”), so the vehicles sit, rarely used or considered when discussions of “militarydom” occurs…until, of course, tensions suddenly escalate into actual war, and those vehicles – many times, barely running – become a decisive combat multiplier, usually outweighing actual “combat vehicles” in value.
And that’s before we talk about trucks.
If you’ve read this far, I will offer you the following advice: The next time your elected officials start talking about the “defense budget,” spend some time, and look into what they actually want to spend your money on. It’s your tax money, after all, that is spent to “defend” you.
You might want to look into how it is being spent.
The genesis of this article came from a completely different angle, namely, the deployment of laser weapons to the battlefield. However, as things frequently go, that initial idea led to something of much more immediate interest.
Previously, the Freedomist has covered some aspects of “improvised warfare” that some seem to take as James Bond-like fantasy. Yet, as we progress through the third decade of the 21st Century, remotely controlled drones – available in most countries through their local Amazon store – capable of both conducting tactical combat surveillance, as well as tactical air support by dropping small fragmentation grenades, are serious and maturing battlefield threats, threats that military and security forces are struggling to counter.
“Improvised warfare” has been around since the first caveman grabbed the jawbone of his last dinner to bash in the noggin of another caveman trying to muscle in on the first one’s turf. Throughout military history, outside of the heroically vast and sweeping battles of storied yore, there has always lurked the “PBI” – the “Poor, Bloody Infantry” – struggling to make do with usually-substandard weapons and equipment, improvising on the fly, on the idea that “if it looks stupid, but works – it isn’t stupid.”
This is also true in naval warfare. “Suicide boats,” in the form of “fire ships”, go back to at least the 3rd Century AD in China, and the 5th Century AD in the Mediterranean, and those dates are only the earliest we have on record. The use of fire ships in combat has always been problematic, as controlling the vessels after the skeleton crews abandoned them was impossible, and the abandoned vessels could easily come back on the attackers.
Chinese fire ships used by the navy as floating incendiaries, from the Wujing Zongyao military manuscript written in the year 1044 during the Song Dynasty. Public Domain.
As naval technology advanced however, fire ships, as such, disappeared, replaced by explosive-laden boats propelled by early steam engines. These boats had some advantages, not being as subject to winds as the old ships, and their explosive warheads were much more capable of inflicting serious, if not fatal, damage to large warships. Still, the inability to steer the boats remotely left their utility still strictly limited.
As with so many things in the military sphere, during World War 2, everything changed. The intersection of technologies with mass production and sincere desperation, allowed the first tactically useful guided weapons, not simply on land and in the air, but at sea, human control was still the primary aiming method until the last moment.
Post-WW2, the use of explosive motorboats continued, eventually evolving into actual “suicide boats”, where the crews rode the craft directly into their targets. While this was always a danger for the operators of these boats, very few navies outside of WW2 Japan set out with this as their operating profile. Beginning in the 1980’s, this began to change, first with the LTTE in Sri Lanka and with Iran in its “WW1, 2.0” war with Iraq. This is, in fact, what happened to the USS Cole (DDG 67) when it was attacked at anchor in October of 2000, as the suicide crew happily “saluted” the American crew before detonating their massive charge, nearly destroying the ship.
And then – another “sea change” (no pun intended) happened.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, and Communist China finally figured out how mix capitalism with a brutal, totalitarian governmental system, the West welcomed the Communist remnants into a burgeoning world trade system with open arms. As the global economy shifted and changed, the technology sector exploded in its own form of “business as war.” Technology once reserved only to the “Great Powers” became ‘democratized’, available at reasonable prices to the general public. While major nations certainly had far better and more capable – and much more expensive – systems, smaller states (and groups) suddenly had access to technology and manufacturing bases that significantly increased their capabilities versus local opponents (including their own citizens, but that’s another conversation, entirely).
Container port in operation. Credit: Piqsels.com. Public Domain.
All that was waiting was another spate of desperation to drive improvisation.
As the “Global War on Terror” (the “GWOT”) drove on in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the many small, localized wars it spawned drove desperate innovation, once again. Various ethnic and religious factions around the world desperately sought some sort of advantage. This has led to everything from “homemade tanks”, to artillery, to ‘sci-fi’ weapons manufacture.
But now, desperation-induced technological innovation has caught up with the navies of the world.
On January 30, 2017, the Saudi Arabian frigate RSN Al Madinah (FG 702) was struck and seriously damaged by an explosive-laden speedboat. Initially, it was believed that the craft was a piloted suicide boat deployed by the Shi’a Islam Houthi rebels of Yemen, which country has been in its most recent civil war since 2014. Soon, though, it became apparent that the attack craft was actually a remotely- controlled craft.
Speculation immediately turned to Iran. Iran, in addition to being co-religionists to the Houthis, was already supplying the rebels with short-range ballistic missiles and combat drones. In this regard, Iran differs from Ukraine only in that they supply their craft externally.
Ukrainian naval drones, c.2022. Unknown author.
Given the rapid advances in remote-operations technology, it would be no great task to re-engineer common pleasure boats to function as drone attack craft; as well, the issue of a simplified, “standard issue” refit kit (similar in theory to an aircraft JDAM unit) is virtually guaranteed.
But ultimately – what does all this actually mean, in the grand scheme of things?
Simply, insurgents and guerrillas are now much more capable than they were in the past, as they are now capable to extend remote-controlled warfare into the nautical dimension. With the democratization of military training, this opens the ugly possibility of radical forces being capable of enforcing localized (if not regional) combined-arms dominance over all the most capable of national militaries.
The fact that this is an operational possibility worthy of consideration is not something that should alarm only strategic planners – it is something that average citizen needs to seriously consider.
Act accordingly.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
A Highly Unofficial Military Assessment of the UAP Threat
We need to talk. It’s time for “that” discussion.
On April 27th of 2020, the Department of Defense officially released three videos of “anomalous objects” or “unidentified aerial phenomena” (along with some even more shocking revelations in 2022). These videos, recorded as “gun camera” footage by F/A-18 fighters of the US Navy in 2004 and 2015, were leaked in 2007 and 2017, respectively, sparking off furious speculation as to what the objects recorded actually were. For its part, the Navy and the DoD admitted publicly that they had no idea what the origin or nature of these objects actually were.
While that might true for the people issuing the public statements, it is yet another bald-faced lie by the government. If that sounds harsh, or even histrionic, it isn’t – it is an objective truth, as we will show below.
Let’s talk about the videos, first.
Exotic Craft
While the videos may seem pretty mundane at first glance, they are most certainly not…especially when one begins to read more deeply into the situations behind the videos in question. The short answer, based on the testimony of skilled, veteran pilots – people trained in air-to-air combat – is that these craft are performing maneuvers that are not possible within the currently accepted realm of physics.
For you, the Reader, your choice is simple: you can believe the testimony of professional officers and pilots, trained to engage with hostile aircraft, or you can believe the hysterical denials of wholly unqualified rando’s on the interwebz trying to sell you a website membership, a book or a magazine subscription.
Choose one.
The other issue at hand is the number of craft being sighted. In the now-famous “Tic-Tac” video, described in detail (Spotify link) by retired US Navy Commander David Fravor on the Joe Rogan Podcast in 2020, the additional details of the story – not discussed on Rogan’s show – were laid out (YouTube link) by whistleblower Luis Elizondo in 2019. In short, radar and air defense operators aboard the USS Princeton (CG-59) reported tracking up to one hundred objects at once, over the course of the week prior to the intercept by Commander Fravor. According to the operators from the Princeton, these craft dropped down from 80,000 feet, essentially out of nowhere.
Ok…So what?
Seeing a single object doing extraordinary things can be written off as either a mistake or a hoax. Seeing a hundred such objects is neither. The United States Navy – inter-service rivalry jabs aside – is not in the habit of re-tasking extremely-expensive-to-operate aircraft to investigate hoaxes and jokes. It is simply not done in the real world.
Given that reality, why is the number of targets spotted on radar important?
Right now, if the Reader has the money, you can order a “kit car” online. In a couple of weeks, a truck will arrive with several large boxes of components, and you can assemble a fully functional and road-legal automobile in your garage. Doing so, however, does not make one an “automobile manufacturer”. The same is true for aircraft.
According to Cmdr. Fravor’s description, the object he and his flight of F/A-18’s intercepted was about the size of his fighter. Presuming – a loaded term, to be sure – that the other radar tracks were similar in size to the intercepted unknown, a number of craft equivalent in number to the entire complement of a modern aircraft carrier, appeared to descend from orbit, within the engagement envelope of an aircraft carrier battle group, essentially with no warning.
F-18 Hornet of the US Marine Corps. Photo Credit: Pixabay.com Public Domain.
Clearly, if these claims are true – refer to the above comment – the US Navy (at the operational level, at least) has no idea what these craft are, nor who they belong to.
That’s a problem.
The other problem is: Like a kit car or plane, making a one-off craft with a breakthrough propulsion system in your barn is not “manufacturing” said craft. Making a hundred – is. In the “biz”, that is called “serial production”.
So…If the United States is not making these – as the government insists that they are not – then who is? It isn’t the Russians. Nor is it the Chinese. There is simply no nation or organization on Planet Earth that can do so, because (“conspiracy theorists” aside – who have had a pretty good track record over the last few years) no one has the technology displayed by the recorded craft.
The reason this can be stated so conclusively, is that any craft with this range of performance characteristics is a dominating advance – a leap in technology so decisive, any nation on Earth that can place such craft into serial production can and will dominate every other nation on Earth. Yet…no one has done so.
And recall: the first of these videos were recorded in 2004, some nineteen years ago, at this writing.
Prepping the Battlefield
So – if no one on Earth is producing these craft, who is? What are they doing here? Why aren’t they landing in Washington, New York, London, Moscow or Beijing, popping their hatches and say, “Take me to your leader”?
If these sightings are neither hoaxes, drug-addled ramblings, mistaken identities, “ball lightning”, “swamp gas”, “lenticular cloud formations”, “extremely slow-moving meteors that change direction” (my personal favorite) or craft from terrestrial nations…the only other alternative is that they are from “elsewhere”. That is the presumption we will work from in this article, going forward.
“Prepping the Battlefield” is military slang for a directed and wide-reaching survey of a potential battlefield. The purpose is to identify the terrain and nature of the potential opposition, in order to refine a potential battle plan.
US Marines on reconnaissance exercise, 2003. USMC Photo. Public Domain.
Now, there are a large number of people, with…unfortunate…critical thinking skills, who will insist that any species capable of crossing the vast gulfs of space at presumably faster-than-light speeds would have no trouble soundly defeating “puny humans” like us.
People with such tangled thought processes are why there are safety warnings on Pop-Tarts.
History is replete with examples of technologically advanced groups being soundly defeated by peoples well behind them in technology, but that is not the issue here. The issue is that technology is not linear in development. The ability to build a typewriter does not equate to the ability to build a computer. Industrial or mechanical abilities can only define possible technologies; they do not guarantee the existence of technologies.
So – presuming that “aliens” are coming here from outside the solar system, and are neither invading, nor formally contacting us as the “Galactic Brotherhood”…why are they here?
Aside from a few hazy reports from so long ago that most of the witnesses are now long dead, the modern “UFO” milieu began in 1947, with the Roswell Crash.
Roswell Daily Record from July 9, 1947 detailing the Roswell UFO incident. Public Domain.
What is not often discussed, however, is the fact that Roswell was not the only incident in 1947. In fact, there were multiple incidents that year, incidents that led to the United States Air Force to launch not one, but two formal investigations of what was going on in United States airspaces because, to paraphrase the words of former UK Ministry of Defense investigator Nick Pope, countries do not fail to pay attention to uncorrelated targets in their airspace.
Not surprisingly, this pair of investigations, spanning the period from 1948 to 1951, concluded that there was nothing to see, that virtually all of the reported sightings – including those from professional and military aviators – were uniformly either mistaken identity, outright hoaxes, or any number of unusual but natural phenomena, because clouds always look like aircraft, apparently.
So adamantly and rigidly did the US Air Force adhere to this stance that as late as the late-1990’s, that organization issued no less than two separate reports on the Roswell incident directly, both of which did not simply lie and demean the general public, as well as its own officers, but that openly claimed that its own records of major projects were completely mislabeled as happening at least a decade earlier than they did.
…But – why? Why all the secrecy and deception, especially after it became painfully clear to the public that the military and the government were proverbial lying through their teeth? There are two reasons. In reverse order: first, because once you defend a secret as vigorously and for as long as the government has regarding “UFO’s”, you are going to commit more than a few crimes along the way (YouTube link).
Second was the desperate attempt to avoid widespread public panic. One basic mistake made by most “UFOlogists” in the modern day is to equate the attitudes and perceptions of today, to the late-1940’s; this is comparing apples to hydraulic jacks.
In 1947, World War 2 had only been over, in an official sense, for barely a year. In many cases, the military and political leaders at the “sharp end” of this wave of sightings had seen friends, and sometimes family members, killed, seriously wounded or possibly even severely reprimanded and forcibly retired. Additionally, the panic caused by Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast was only nine years in the past. Going on-air, nationwide, and admitting that the government had no idea what or who were responsible for the extraordinary things in the sky would have caused an immediate, worldwide panic.
Given all of the above, we return to the core question: Assuming that these craft are a) real, b) are from and operated by entities that are not native to the Earth – What are “they” doing?
An Unofficial Military Assessment
UFO’s, UAP’s, “flying saucers”, etc., are here. They are not contacting us, at least publicly. Many people – in the tens of thousands – have reported seeing the craft. Some people have claimed various types of contact with the crews of the craft.
Beginning from at least 1947, there has been an intense series of what can only be described as “surveillance flights” began to be observed over the Earth, primarily in the United States, but quickly spreading outside the country. These flights were concentrated in regions near military bases, government centers, “high tech” laboratories, and production and refining facilities relating to the production of both missile systems and nuclear materials.
It is a fact that the first known atomic weapons were detonated in 1945, barely two years prior to the wave of sightings in 1947. (NB: There were scattered reports (YouTube link) of “Foo Fighters” among Allied pilots during World War 2, indicating a possible early phase of surveillance.)
With clear interest in terrestrial states’ development of atomic weaponry, it is equally clear from the pattern of observable surveillance that this was a major factor of interest. The implication is that these “visitors” view such systems as a threat.
If that is true, the lack of outright physical attack in the 1947-1950 period makes little sense, assuming that a) the “command authority” of the reconnaissance elements conducting the surveillance viewed such developments as a threat to themselves, and b) that this alien society was significantly advanced technologically over that of post-World War 2 Earth.
Functionally speaking, these points are contradictory, as logical threat response would dictate that some level of direct intervention – the proverbial “landing on the Capital Mall”, if not actual military invasion – would be necessary. Indeed, in 1947-1950, the nations of the Earth were in absolutely no position to effectively resist any such action.
Or…were we?
A Dangerous Place
Referring back to the technology discussion above and considering – with trepidation – the “Ancient Aliens Hypothesis” [sic] in concert with this, it is entirely possible that these alien visitors did not develop weapons technologies in sync with us…And specifically, as regarding firearms.
The “Ancient Aliens Hypothesis” presumes that non-human aliens have been “visiting” Earth – “interfering” is not too strong a term for that hypothesis’ view – for thousands of years. Yet, when one looks back through verifiably ancient works of art, there are no personal weapons identifiable other than swords, spears, slings, and bows and arrows. Certain implications contained in Indian Vedas do indicate the possibility of high-technology weapons – potentially atomic weapons – there is no representation of identifiable firearm-type weapons.
Mesopotamian god. Pixabay.com Public Domain.
Eschatologically and religiously, there are non-Abrahamic scriptural and textual descriptions implying “magical” instruments being wielded by “the gods” that could be taken as various types of directed-energy weapons. Presuming that aliens did visit Earth in the remote past, a non-human alien deploying a laser-type weapon – or even a taser-equivalent – could easily be seen as “godlike”, even leaving aside “miracles” like instant communication, advanced medicine and “talking boxes” (i.e., computers). This is even more true, when handheld weapons such as simple clubs and crude swords would appear helpless in the face of aliens.
This is important, because the vast majority of credible contactee reports indicate that the alien crews are physically far smaller and weaker than the average human. This syncs up with the timing of credible reported contacts, the vast majority of which occur at night. Humans are ‘diurnal’, in nature, meaning that humans operate best in daylight and typically sleep at night, as opposed to nocturnal creatures, which are active at night, and generally sleep during the day.
The implication is that, all other things being equal, the alien ship crews as physically described would likely faire poorly in hand-to-hand/unarmed combat against an aroused and angry human who is unimpressed or unaffected by their high-tech weapons.
However, consider individual firearms. The firearm, as such, is a comparatively ‘brand new’ development in human history, being barely nine hundred years old. And modern firearms – shooting high-velocity, aerodynamically stabilized projectiles – are another matter, entirely over the simple ‘black powder’ muskets of barely two hundred years ago.
While seemingly counter-intuitive, it is entirely possible that the alien race[s] behind the sudden “visitation” campaign that came to public prominence in 1947 never developed firearms, simply because firearms are a unique development in technology, having no relation to any other relational sphere.
There are, however, other possibilities for non-engagement:
One factor to consider is a demographic one – maybe the aliens from Zeta Reticuli have a comparatively low population, or are loathe to losing a good chunk of it in an all-out, D-Day style invasion of Earth.
There may also be logistical concerns: perhaps, while being able to travel interstellar distances, the technology to do so is complicated and expensive in some way, limiting the number, capacity and/or size of ships that can be sent.
Another potential factor could be a ‘near-peer’ threat closer to the alien’s home area, leaving them unable to divert sufficient forces for security reasons.
While there are numerous possible reasons for the non-engagement, at least publicly, there is another intriguing possibility: treaty violations.
Much has been made in the fringe areas of UFOlogy about the “Galactic Brotherhood” or the “Galactic Federation”, concepts dating at least to the 1950’s. More sober and mainstream UFO researchers have uniformly dismissed the very idea, but that may have been hasty.
In recent years, Dr. Joseph P. Farrell, PhD (Oxford) has presented a theory (YouTube link), based on translations (YouTube link) of the Assyrian “Epic of Ninurta”, postulating that a war was fought across the Solar System in the extremely distant past, and that the peace treaty that resulted from the end of that war is still in force at some level. If such a treaty does exist, that would almost certainly be a limiting factor, per Option #3, above.
In support of such an idea, research conducted (YouTube link) by Dr. John Brandenburg, PhD (UC Davis) indicates the distinct possibility that the planet Mars was once bombarded by nuclear weapons at a scale that make the current arsenals of Earth look like firecrackers in comparison.
“Disclosure”, at last…?
Assuming that the above points are even plausible – and especially if they are true – then, what actions would military and political leaders have taken in the period of 1947 and onward?
First, a dedicated study would need to be conducted, both of any recovered objects (biological, as well as technological) as well as a detailed look back through history (“classical education” used to involve far more than simply Greco-Roman writers). The behaviors of alien craft would need to studied, at far more depth than in this article, in order to try to guess at the focus of their reconnaissance, while a deception campaign would need to be deployed to try and confuse the aliens about what our level of knowledge actually was. All of this would have to be coordinated in such a manner, that the operation’s progress would be difficult to impossible to intercept.
In that last regard, the Earth establishments of 1947 had a distinct advantage over their descendants of today, since the use of human couriers carrying locked briefcases was far more common than it is, today. Such a communications method would force the aliens to physically intercept every single person with a briefcase, something they simply would not be able to do. In the modern day, virtually every communication passes through some form of digital interface – and as anyone who has had their computer hacked knows well, attacking a digital signal is almost comically easy. Hand-carried information? Vastly harder.
As the decades passed, information and technologies would be gleaned and exploited, albeit slowly. But, if the deception operations against the aliens were successful, the nations of Earth could eventually reach a level where it was not viable to actually invade or even attrit human capacity with a “main force” attack, by making direct military action too expensive to contemplate.
But.
In the world of terra firma, maintaining such a dire body of secrets means that governments and agencies are going to do a lot of highly illegal things (YouTube link) to wholly and completely innocent – even patriotic – people. The people who carry out these kinds of operations have a vested interest in keeping these secrets for as long as possible, because if the secrets are released without ironclad guarantees of legal immunity to those who willingly carried them out, those people will be lucky to spend the rest of their lives in prison, if they are not lynched, first.
Is the United States government finally admitting, “we are not alone”? Given both the official recognition of leaked gun-camera footage, and the recent “whistleblower” testimony of USAF intelligence officer David Grusch, it seems that an admission may – after over seventy years – be coming…
…Because at some point, the big secrets have to come out.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Researchers from Oxford University published a study in nature that claims to have developed a technique to scan EV batteries at details that will allow scientists to fine-tune material to greatly enhance the capacity to store power, as well as extend the shelf life of the battery at exponential levels. If proven true, the breakthrough could change the whole dynamic for the EV and Electric Aviation industry, both of which are significantly limited compared to their fuel-based counterparts.
In this latest study, the group used an advanced imaging technique called X-ray computed tomography at Diamond Light Source to visualise dendrite failure in unprecedented detail during the charging process. The new imaging study revealed that the initiation and propagation of the dendrite cracks are separate processes, driven by distinct underlying mechanisms. Dendrite cracks initiate when lithium accumulates in sub-surface pores. When the pores become full, further charging of the battery increases the pressure, leading to cracking. In contrast, propagation occurs with lithium only partially filling the crack, through a wedge-opening mechanism which drives the crack open from the rear.
This new understanding points the way forward to overcoming the technological challenges of Li-SSBs. Dominic Melvin said: ‘For instance, while pressure at the lithium anode can be good to avoid gaps developing at the interface with the solid electrolyte on discharge, our results demonstrate that too much pressure can be detrimental, making dendrite propagation and short-circuit on charging more likely.’
The breakthrough could also potentially greatly reduce the current high demand on resources for EV batteries, especially for lithium.
We would like to express our thanks to naval OSINT analyst H I Sutton, of Covert Shores, for his kind assistance with this article.
Illness is an odd thing. One rarely pays close attention to outside events unless those events have a direct and immediate impact on the ill person. In the case of your humble author, 2022 was a rough year. As a result, I completely missed this article when it came out, and didn’t think clearly about the implications of using larger vessels in a DIY Navy when that article was written.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…Consider this to be Part 2.
For small national navies, as well as “guerrilla” navies, Part 1 is still absolutely true: limited funds and resources limit options when building a naval force of any kind. However, for the nation-state that is in the “middle sea” [sic], so to speak, those have more options.
As described in a previous article, a nation desiring to construct a navy needs to first decide on exactly what kind of navy they need – not want, but need. To briefly recap, there are three basic choices: Blue, Green & Brown:
A “blue” navy is basically the kind of navy used by the United States, Great Britain, and France, the kind of navy that Communist China aspires to: a naval force to maintain the “Sea Lanes of Communications” (the SLOC). This is the hardest kind of fleet to build, and far and away the most expensive.
A “green” navy is mostly a coastal force, whose main job is to facilitate amphibious operations, i.e., landing troops ashore. Still expensive, but the better choice for nations like the Republic of the Philippines.
A “brown” navy operates almost solely along rivers and close in to coastlines. These naval forces are comparatively cheap, but are very limited in range and capabilities, compared to the other two types of fleet.
Obviously, there is a good deal of overlap between the various types: brown and green navies complement each other well, where their environments meet. Likewise, green and blue navies can have a very great deal of overlap when projecting state power at a long distance. While there is little overlap between blue and brown fleets, blue water units can benefit from the lightweight/high-speed boats of the brown squadrons.
Iran, however, has taken the path of outside-the-box thinking to a different level.
Beginning in 2021, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commissioned the building of at least two “drone carriers,” former “Panamax” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panamax] box-carriers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship] refitted to operate combat and surveillance drone aircraft, “Shahid Mahdavi” and “Shahid Bagheri”. In form, the two ships initially looked like their recent sister ship, the “forward base ship” “Makran”.
Unlike Makran, however, Mahdavi and Bagheri are apparently focused solely on drone craft operations. The Bagheri is being fitted with an overhanging deck extension on their port (left) side. While visually similar to US Navy carriers of the last c.65 years, this seems to have been designed in order to launch and recover heavier drone craft on an angle, from port to starboard, due to the container ships’ superstructure at the aft (rear) end, which cannot be easily modified. This seems to be confirmed, as Iranian state news is showing pictures of a “ski jump” being installed on the Bagheri. The “ski jump” flight deck has been used to aid in flight operations since at least the 1970’s, when the UK’s Royal Navy used them for their “Harrier carriers”, HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible, during the Falkland Islands War of 1982.
IRGC ship “Bagheri” under construction in shipyard near Bandar Abbas, 2022, showing angled flight deck. Diagonal arrows show the non-standard flight deck. Photo credit: H. I. Sutton, Covert Shores
IRGC ship “Bagheri” under construction in shipyard near Bandar Abbas, c.early-2023, showing the ‘ski jump’ nearing completion on the flight deck. Photo credit: H. I. Sutton, Covert Shores
Harrier Jump Jet, Farnborough Air Show 2014 by Christine Matthews. CCA/2.0
This modification opens the possibility of launching much heavier drone craft, capable of carrying much heavier ordnance than other drones. While certainly incapable of handling heavier, manned craft, this bodes ill for anyone Iran chooses to focus on.
Bayraktar TB2 on the runway. Credit: Bayhaluk, 2014. CCA/4.0/Int’l.
There has not been a direct, “force on force”, aircraft carrier battle since WW2; the aforementioned Falklands campaign nearly resulted in one, but that turned out to be a false start. While there have been thousands – if not tens of thousands – of carrier-launched fighters and bombers attacking land targets and land-based aircraft, these were not “carrier” battles, in the naval sense. The concern, here, the nightmare of rational naval planners since the 1970’s, has been the “improvised aircraft carrier.” The naval dimension of the Falklands War, once again, informs on the problem.
SS Atlantic Conveyor, approaching the Falklands. About 19 May 1982. Photo: DM Gerard. CCA/2.5
A combination roll-on/roll-offcontainer ship, Atlantic Conveyor was used primarily to ferry aircraft for the British invasion force. When the vessel arrived in the combat area, the Harrier ‘jump jets’ she carried were launched from her, and flown off to the aircraft carries. On May 25th 1983, during the ferocious air attacks by Argentine air forces during the Battle of San Carlos, Atlantic Conveyor was struck by two Exocet anti-ship missiles, killing twelve of her crew, including her captain; gutted by fires, the ship sank three days later, while under tow, joining several other vessels in becoming the first Royal Navy vessels lost in action since World War 2. The loss of all of the remaining aircraft aboard (all of them helicopters) would severely hamper British operations ashore for the remainder of the campaign.
But note the first part of that story: Atlantic Conveyor was able to at least launch manned fighter jets while underway. What the Royal Navy – long starved for funding for ships and manpower (HMS Hermes was scheduled for decommissioning – without a replacement – when the invasion happened) had built a “jack carrier”, effectively equivalent to a WW2 “escort carrier”, at very short notice, with the potential – had she not been destroyed – of being able to conduct combat operations at some level.
This capability had been recognized with helicopters for many years, but this was the first time it had been proven valid for manned combat jet aircraft. Although conjectural, this is likely the real reason why the US and UK defense establishments buried the Harrier’s proposed follow-on aircraft, the supersonic version of the Hawker Siddeley P.1154, cancelled in 1965. No serious attempt was made to perfect a supersonic-capable VTOL until the introduction of the F-35B by the United States in 2015. As there are few carriers in the world capable of operating conventional jet aircraft, this ensured the naval dominance of those states that possessed these massive and expensive weapons.
F-35B Lightning taking off from a ski-jump, from HMS Queen Elizabeth, 2020. Photo: LPhot Luke/MOD. UK/OGL v1.0
Now, however, we find ourselves in the 21st Century, and technology has significantly progressed, across the board. Long-range drone craft, capable of carrying heavy ordnance, and armed – presumably – with anti-ship missiles and capable air- and anti-ship missile defenses, have now changed the structure of naval “battle calculus.” This is because the world’s second- and third-line military forces have relearned the fundamental truth of national military strength: it doesn’t matter how strong a nation’s military is overall, but how much of that force can be brought to bear against a particular target.
Iran’s naval deployment of ersatz carriers may seem laughable to many in first-line forces, but no one in second- or third-line navies are laughing. Iran has demonstrated that they are perfectly capable of worldwide naval cruises and deployments, and while their carriers and other vessels almost certainly stand no chance against a US or UK task force, they are more than a match for most of the other navies in the world. This is especially true for their “forward base ship” concepts, which are capable of deploying commando units via helicopter and speedboat, in a manner similar to first-line navies.
The deployment of these three vessels, the Makrun, Mahdavi and Bagheri, marks the first time since 1976 (in the days of the Imperial Navy of Iran) that Iran has had a truly capable naval arm for its military forces. Given the country’s friendly relations with Russia and Communist China, the possibility of joint fleet operations with at least China, if not Russia, along with their recent truce – brokered by the PRC – with Saudi Arabia, means than Iran can easily conduct far more complicated and wide-ranging power projection operations than they were able to in the past.
Much more worryingly, these ship commissioning’s are being done in public, and there are plenty of nations in the world at Iran’s tier who can take inspiration to boost their own naval capabilities.
The foundations of the world economy are set on the concept of the “freedom of the seas”, a concept enforced since World War 2 by the United States, Great Britain and France…but all three states are in financial trouble, and their navies are down to razor-thin numbers, in both ships and sailors. It will take careful, resolute and competent leadership to navigate through this.
The question is: is that leadership in place? Or even on the horizon?
In a move that has caused many to question Elon Musk’s alleged commitment to make Twitter the American platform for free speech, Linda Yaccarino, an Ad Marketing maven and former high-ranking member of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, was announced as the new CEO to take over Twitter from Musk. The elites who favor hate speech laws and sexualizing children as early and as often as possible are accusing Musk of hiring a woman to do a job that she’s doomed to fail in carrying out. One such person, a business professor at Santa Clara University who advocates for the Woketarian agenda, complained that “Her credentials are impeccable and she’s been extremely successful so far. But she’s also been in settings where her success was achievable. I mean no disrespect to her or to diminish her in the least. I just think that this is an impossible situation for basically anybody.”
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