RED SEA, 12.12.2023, 1100hrs CST – The Japanese-owned, Norwegian-flagged general oil and chemical tanker MK STRINDA was struck by a missile fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen, while transiting the Bab el Mandeb strait, late on the 11th. the ship reported damage and a fire, but reported no casualties.
The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Masonresponded to the tanker’s distress call, and is rendering assistance as of press time. The Mason, along with other US Navy warships, have engaged Houthi missiles and drones fire at Israel as part of the Houthi’s
The Houthi group is a religious sect that is the main party in a civil war that has raged since 2014. Although the hard-line Shi’a Muslim group is reported to be receiving assistance from many corners, no state has recognized them as a legitimate state. They were, and remain, a group of bandits, pirates and terrorists.
The Freedomist will continue to monitor the situation.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
In the last week or so, many people have been sharing images of what they feel are alarming amounts of military air traffic culled from various online tracking websites, purporting to show a “highly unusual” increase in air traffic throughout the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean (a.k.a., “The Levant”).
For those who are exploring a new landscape on the internet, such as aircraft and ship tracking websites, these images can, in fact, look incredible. Most of the online maps are indeed very cluttered, to such an extent that many computers have a hard time keeping up with the running updates, unless a user “drills down” to a very narrow region.
And to be fair, given the recent events within the region, with terrorist massacres in Israel, leading to brutal counterattacks by Israel, and the hysterical responses from throughout not just the region, but the threat of this new “Yom Kippur War” expanding to include most of the region – something that the few sane leaders of the world ‘body politic’ is desperate to prevent – is certainly making many people terrified of anything new and strange, that is presented with either incomplete, or flat-out wrong context, deliberately or otherwise.
The short answer to the “unusual increase” in aircraft activity in the Middle East is that it is a giant “nothingburger.” The long answer is far more mundane…but not so the reason behind it.
The fact is that Israel has severely neglected its defenses, both internal and external, for at least twenty years. Externally, Israel fell into the complacency trap of “Victory Disease” (the laziness and complacency resulting from too many victories), in that it felt that its “Iron Dome” missile defense system was mostly unbeatable, while its more conventional forces could easily handle anything that “Iron Dome” could not.
Internally, this dangerous complacency was compounded by Israel’s disastrous moves, beginning in 2012, to restrict the ability of Israeli citizens not on military or police duty, to owning or possessing military style firearms.
And on October 7, 2023, Israel and its citizens were given a stark wake up call as to why you should never beat your swords into plowshares before the right time.
As a result, Israel suddenly found itself in a desperate, grueling and bloody war against an implacable and bloodthirsty enemy at one end of its country, while facing another potential – and much more dangerous – foe to their north. While this is certainly not an unusual circumstance for Israel, Israel the state, as well as Israeli citizens, now finds itself being rudely forced to reorient its mental perspective on reality.
All-out war, as should be clear to anyone who has read an article on the Russo-Ukrainian War in the last almost two years, consumes people, ammunition, vehicles and supplies at a ferocious rate. While the scale and pace of the war in Israel may not currently be at the same overall scale as what is happening in Ukraine, when adjusted for scale, Israel is not much better off than Ukrainians.
In answer, the United States – long Israel’s only truly reliable ally – has doubled down on US support to Israel in the current conflict, complete with sending two complete carrier battle groups to the region, potentially committing US forces to direct combat in the conflict.
Obviously, no matter the Reader’s feelings – one way or another – about the current conflict, the United States has to supply Israel with weapons, ammunition and much else, exactly as it has for Ukraine. Normally, such supplies are sent by ship, and then by rail or road. The reason is simple: it is vastly more efficient than air transport.
Sometimes, however, speed is essential. Relatively small and light supplies, like ammunition and medical supplies, can be rushed to a conflict zone relatively quickly, as these are always the most critical supplies that would be needed early on in a conflict. In the case of any sudden uptick of military air traffic, however, there is currently another factor:
Volcanoes.
In 2010, a series of volcanic eruptions from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in April of that year completely shut down all air traffic in Europe outside of Spain and a tiny portion of France. That was, obviously, a very annoying situation for many travelers, as it up-ended flights throughout the world.
Military planners, already struggling to juggle the delivery of supplies to multiple active and potential combat areas, now have no choice but add the potential of a natural disaster shutting down European airspace for an unknown period. The only real option is to start drawing supplies from existing bases in the region, and sending those to Israel…by air.
At the same time, however, those supply bases will need to be restocked, and fast, given the potential for regional escalation. This problem can be solved via a surge in sending war materials and equipment to those bases via conventional shipping…that seems to be happening.
The Ready Reserve Force ship MV Cape Orlando is currently underway from Tacoma, WA, crossing the Pacific Ocean. The Cape Orlando, originally berthed in Oakland, was actually boarded by pro-Palestinian protesters on November 4th, delaying its departure for Tacoma. (The protestors were not charged.)
While the MV Orlando is certainly the most public of the ships potentially carrying supplies to the combat area, it is also certainly not the only one.
What is happening is clear: a giant “shell game” is underway, with supplies being shuffled as quickly as possible, to cover as many holes as have been left open by shockingly poor military policies by the West and its allies over the preceding c.30 years…But such circumstances cannot endure forever.
Sun Tzu, Author of Art of War. Photo: Gary Todd, 2008. Public Domain.
What follows is an “estimate of the situation”, concerning what may well become known as the “Guns of October”. This is a strategic assessment of the current situation in the Levant, and what the deeper plan[s] may be. Nothing in this article is based on “classified information” or “anonymous sources”, but sober estimates based on training, experience, intuition and “informed speculation”.
Around the world, October 7th stunned many people. Even after over twenty years of continuous warfare, the scenes of slaughter coming out of Israel were stunning, both in their daring, but even moreso for their brutality and savagery. Inevitably, perhaps, some people have began to promote an idea that the Israeli High Command was operating in full knowledge of what Hamas was going to do, because there was “no way” that the vaunted Israeli intelligence agencies could have missed Hamas’ preparations.
The fact is, people are always people, and people make mistakes – often, those mistakes boggle the imagination with their stupidity. There is no real evidence of anything like an intentional conspiracy on the part of the Israeli High Command’s part happening.
In this case, however, there are parties throughout the world, who have been desperate for a crisis like Yom Kippur 2.0 to restore their flagging efforts. This group has been pushing an endless series of wars since the 1990’s, and while their influence is, indeed great, they are masters of the notion espoused by one-time White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s quip, “… you never want a serious crisis to go to waste…”
The people in power, or hanging on to the tailings of power, who espouse such ideas, are known as “neo-cons”…But – what is a “neo-con”?
Foreign Policy Magazine accurately describes neo-cons as “liberal imperialists on steroids”. They are firm believers in the notion of a highly totalitarian vision of the so-called “Pax Americana”, a series of policies that have produced a national debt in excess of an eye-watering $33 trillion, as of 10/18/2023. These beliefs – and the people behind them – also led to the roiling disasters in Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and most of the rest of the Middle East.
Another key descriptor of the neo-cons is that they have no political party, beyond that which is most expedient for them at the moment. Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928 – 2017), one-time National Security Advisor to Democrat party President Jimmy Carter, laid out the neo-con strategy and thought in his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard”. His criticisms of Republican President George W. Bush’s handling of the post-9/11 wars were not one of actual opposition, but complaining about their mis-handling.
Neo-Con thinking is also at the core of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in February of 2022. No matter what side of that conflict the Reader may fall on, the fact is that – like Japan attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941 – the West, led by the United States, goaded Russia into its attempt to dismember the Ukrainian state. Why? Because the neo-cons desperately wanted to initiate Cold War 2.0, because Islamic jihadi’s were simply not working as an existential threat to Western society that justified obscenely massive military spending; terrorists are annoying, but they will never seriously threaten the Western social order.
Russia and China, on the other hand…
In early-to-mid 2022, there was a point where the world held its breath, as it seemed that the major powers of the world might actually enter into direct, large-scale combat with each other, something that has not been seen since 1945. While that danger still looms, the important takeaway, is that these situations have sparked increasingly strident calls to revamp western military establishments, to something resembling “the old days”.
But – how does this relate to the “Guns of October”?
In the aftermath of the seeming failure of neo-con ambitions as the “Global War On Terror” sputtered out in the mid-20-teens, despite the flare-up provided by the so-called “Arab Spring”, the neo-con movement became increasingly desperate for something to revive their plans to continue their series of planned wars, the exhaustion and disgust of the people’s of the West – and Russia – over the never-ending series of wars at the dawn of what should have been a “golden century” for humanity.
The clearest example of the desperation of the neo-cons, including their abject hatred of US President Donald Trump, came when Trump rejected their plans to strike three targets in Iran in response to the 2019 downing of an unmanned US drone. Trump canceled the retaliatory attacks when he was informed that the attacks were expected to kill at least 150 Iranians; Trump did not feel that level of retaliation to be a “proportionate” response to shooting down an unmanned drone.
But now, with a reimposition of sanctions against Russia in April of 2021, leading to a near-war with that state, the neo-cons within Washington DC and allies in several European governments have been awaiting a crisis of an appropriate scale to move the world back into the realm of “forever wars”.
Enter October 7th, of 2023.
With increasing calls in the West to end the open and naked barbarity of Hamas – barbarity that organization happily live-streamed, until it realized how bad the optics were – coupled to the deranged bleatings of the Communist mullahs in control of Iran – handed the neo-cons the golden crisis they have desperately needed to galvanize Western governments into continuing the wars: the United States – even under an “anti-Israel” establishment – cannot oppose Israel in assaulting Gaza, nor in hammering the Iranian-back Hezbollah organization in southern Lebanon, especially in the face of Hamas’ barbarity, without suffering catastrophic political consequences. Similarly, the Western European “street” is fed up with their government’s policies of accommodation and appeasement of “refugees” who spare no expense to tell the world how much they hate their “hosts”, who spared little expense to give them shelter and sanctuary.
Caught in the middle, are the Muslim governments of the region, none of whom want anything to do with this war, but who have enough internal problems that they cannot be seen by their populations to be completely abandoning the Palestinians. But, with more and more US Navy warships being deployed to the region at speed, the possibility of an “incident” occurring that “required” a military response against Iran – one that would make the Iraq war look like a training exercise – is an increasingly likely possibility.
Why is this important? Put simply, the United States does not have the manpower to fight the wars the neo-cons want the West to fight. As has been pointed out previously at the Freedomist, two decades of no-victory wars – as well as policies to insult and demean the US military’s primary recruiting pool – have turned a generation of potential recruits firmly against military service…so much so, that there has been a quietly increasing spate of military officers “speaking truth to power”, pointing out that the current world strategic will eventually force the United States to return to conscription, the dreaded “D-word”, that has been anathema to both the political and military spheres alike, for fifty years, since peacetime conscription was ended in the US by President Richard M. Nixon in 1973.
The neo-cons have painted themselves into a corner: They have relentlessly pursued aggressive policies that have burned off most of any good will built up by the United States over the past four decades, in pursuit of a strategy of continual conflict that requires a level of military recruitment that is a pale memory. At the same time, their actions have severely damaged the US economy, because markets not under a regimen of centralized planning respond poorly to toxic cycles of borrowing money, then borrowing more money to simply pay the interest, all while expanding the pool of currency by running the printing presses at high speed.
With much of the potential military recruit-base firmly rejecting staggering enlistment bonuses of over $50,000, there will come a point where the United States will be forced to attempt to revive the Draft for 18-to-30 year-olds…and there has been legislation language already draft, that was repeatedly submitted for some thirteen years.
Let us start off by addressing the proverbial elephant in the room.
On October 7th, 2023, the forces of Hamas – the Palestinian terror group with such delusions of legitimacy that they haven’t bothered with elections since attaining power – launched a short, sharp and brutal assault into southern Israel. For the first time since the rise of ISIL in 2011, the world was “treated” to a level of sadistic brutality that beggars the imagination. The acts of savagery – including the live-streamed slaughter, brutalization and kidnapping of mostly under-30 year olds at a literal “peace festival” – stunned the “polite” world as much as the apparent failure of some of the most vaunted intelligence services in the world.
The resulting war, on the fifty-year anniversary of the first “Yom Kippur War”, is now being termed “Israel’s 9/11”.
This article will not go any further into the political situation. Likewise, “sides” are not our purpose, here. This is strictly an examination of Hamas’ military operations, based on published reports and “informed supposition”, from October 7 to October 14, 2023. A much more in-depth examination of the situation will be available to our subscribers towards the end of the month.
OVERVIEW
In the early dawn hours of October 7, Hamas combat units launched a “broad spectrum” attack from its sanctuaries in the Gaza Strip. The assault opened with a massive and concentrated barrage of rocket artillery. The artillery assault was large enough and concentrated enough that it overwhelmed the “Iron Dome” anti-missile system that Israel has relied on for over a decade to defend itself from such attacks.
As the rocket attacks opened, mobile combat groups – some dressed in Israeli Defense Force (IDF) uniforms – infiltrated border checkpoints and massacred or captured the troops within, most of whom seem to have still been asleep. Simultaneously, other units conducted combat breaching operations at several points along the border, using a variety of techniques, ranging from simple RPG-7 rocket, to dedicated breaching charges, to using civilian construction equipment to batter holes in the security fences. Mobil combat groups, mounted on “technicals” and small motorcycles, quickly swarmed through the breaches, and fanned out to assault small town and villages, ultimately capturing and holding these urban areas for up to four days, a circumstance that has not happened since Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
A map of the Gaza Strip showing key towns and neighbouring countries, 2009. Credit: Wikimedia User: Gringer. CCA/3.0
Perhaps most spectacularly, an airborne element assaulted the aforementioned peace festival using “paragliders” to insert a raiding force into the festival grounds, timed to strike shortly before the arrival a relief convoy mounted in technicals.
In both cases, at the peace festival and in Israeli urban settlements, Hamas forces deliberately massacred civilians, and captured as many as possible, carting them off to Gaza to be explicitly used as hostages and human shields against the expected Israeli counterattack. This has resulted in the largest number of Jewish lives lost in a single weekend since the Holocaust of World War Two.
While some Hamas forces held out for as long as four or five days in places, the bulk of surviving Hamas units had retreated into Gaza within seventy-two hours.
ANALYSIS
Hamas’ attack, on the purely tactical level, stands as a masterclass in operational deception, tactical ingenuity, flexibility and maximizing limited supplies on a shoestring budget.
It was also a complete and abject failure.
Way back in 2022, we discussed the emerging phenomenon of small-scale, targeted, and focused military training that was available to the general public around the world with nothing more than an internet connection. And that remains true – anyone who is at least moderately intelligent and educated can learn a very great deal by searching out real military informational guides via the internet.
The unspoken cautionary warning in the last paragraph is that such information, if not presented in a coherent manner, will most certainly not convey the level of competence necessary to fight and win.
Case in point – Hamas.
While Hamas demonstrated a surprisingly level of competence at the commando/light infantry level of warfare, its forces were absolutely no match for their enemy, once that enemy roused itself, and organized a coordinated counterattack. While Hamas’ leadership seems to have understood this, in a strictly tactical sense, it completely failed to tie tactical acumen to a realistic operational or strategic plan.
There was no possibility that Hamas was going to “win” against Israel in a conventional military sense. Hamas could – and did – certainly bloody Israel’s nose, exposing staggering complacency within the IDF, while also demonstrating the stark reminder that unarmed civilians are nothing but targets in a combat environment. As a result, as of this writing (October 16th 2023), the IDF has eliminated all Hamas forces that remained within Israel after the initial assault…and the IDF is now girding for an all-out assault into the Gaza Strip to put an end to Hamas, once and for all, world opinion be damned.
This also demonstrated the defective strategic thinking of Hamas, as the avowed purpose of taking hostages, to be used as human shields – and joyously live-streaming it via the internet – is something that they allowed themselves to believe would be a viable tool of negotiation with Israel…The problem being, this is not an “intifada” – Hamas’ very success is the agent of their coming destruction, because the State of Israel will now stop at nothing to destroy them.
Put more prosaically, Hamas’ combination of tactical acumen with idiotic and outdated strategic thinking, is effectively the strategy for a “live action” first-person shooter video game, like a combination of “Call of Duty” with “Grand Theft Auto”, where the player gets more rewards for being more ruthless and savage, a view that is being reinforced daily, with the gleeful cheering on of troops in combat zones operating drone that drop grenades on enemy forces…just like in a video game – and if a war crime is committed in the process, that is worth double-XP.
Video games, however, are not real life. They are nothing more than a pale and warped reflection of reality – and basing your military plans on visions of video game victory is not simply a poor strategy, it is a strategy of suicide.
Yours.
Write that on your hand, if you need to.
For a more detailed look at this conflict, subscribe to the FREEDOMIST today for exclusive content
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Fifty years and one to the day of the launching of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 (October 6, 1973) by Israel’s Arab neighbors Hamas has launched a massive attack by air, land, and sea aimed at provoking a final Arab-Israeli war and destroying the state of Israel once and for all. While such goals may be delusional fantasies of deranged extremists, the deadly import of this massive terrorist strike in dozens of locations with over 5,000 rockets fired in 20 minutes is certainly getting all of Israel’s attention.
Dozens of Arab terrorist cells have entered Israeli towns, killing Jews and taking hostages, and engaging in running gun battles with the IDF while rockets hurt and killed Jews across the State of Israel. In some instances, the Arabs have destroyed border fencing and checkpoints with Gaza and Israel, have occupied Israeli terroritory, and even seized Israeli armored vehicles.
While compared to the 1973 war, this onslaught is not major, as compared to all previous terror attacks, but this is a major attack and but is also more akin to a localized but all-out military engagement in a more conventional sense. In terms of the collective Israeli psyche, this has the same clarifying urgency and is eliciting the same kind of unity of outrage as the 1973 attack.
Of note, the conflict inside Israel over judicidal reform, in which a rogue Israeli Supreme Court was subverted by the left to essentially overturn actions by elected leaders, has been set aside. The same leftist groups urging Israelis not to answer call-ups from the military, so-called Refuseniks, have now urged all Israelis to immediately answer the call but their previous meddling in military affairs to protest in favor of judicial dictatorship may have contributed dramatically to the lack of preparation for this attack.
It’s too soon to speak of repercussions and recriminations, but already some are looking at the drama and division caused by the left, all to support judicidal supremacism to wit unelected leftist judges ruled by judicidal fiat, as aiding Israel’s Arab foes whose end is the extermination of the Jews from the Levant. But for now, the leftist opposition parties have united and declared “there is no opposition now” in light of the widely acknowledged fact Israel is at war.
Israel is celebrating Shemini Atzeret, a special holiday at the end of Sukkoth, and was in a mostly stand-down state of being, much as it was on Yom Kippur 50 years ago. A surprise Arab attack back then almost saw Israel overwhelmed. This attack was certainly a surprise, but at present, it has nothing near the same level of threat, though the genocidal intent remains the same. Few in the West, filled with corpostate media propaganda about “oppressed Palestinians” (Arabs by a different name), understand that the entirety of the Arab leadership in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria, are devoted to the removal of the Jews from the Holy Land.
The current American President’s gambit to force the “Palestinian question” into Saudi-Israeli peace talks may indeed come to naught as none of the Arab powers support the “Palestinian” Jihadist aims any more and all seem fully aware that without Iran and Turkey supporting this “Palestinian” uprising it would have been possible for some form of peace between Arabs and Jews in Israel. Saudi Arabia’s response to this fight has been remarkable: they called on Hamas to stop and for cool heads to prevail, instead of just condemning Israel.
Stay tuned here for updates as and when needed as news is revealed. Our focus will be less on compiling events and more on uncovering things not reported and giving more strategic insights than blow by blow coverage, which many news outlets are doing, though we recommend Israelnationalnews.com and Jpost.com for ongoing live coverage.
Early reports indicate possibly dozens of Israelis, including many soldiers, have been abducted and taken as hostages into Gaza, making this an unprecedented attack that is sure to elicit an extreme and unforgiving response toward all Arabs in all of Israel’s territory, without mercy. This could dramatically harm the average Arab living in these lands, who is deluded into thinking the time for pushing the Jews into the sea is at hand. An unwillingness to even countenance the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish country that is also welcoming to its non-Jewish citizens: the goal of most Arabs in Israel is to exterminate the Jewish presence from the Holy Land.
The death toll is climbing as of 10:30 AM Eastern, US time, while at least 7 Israeli communities are at least partially occupied or under immediate armed threat by Arab militants. More than 100 Israelis are dead, and 900 Israelis have been injured in the Hamas rocket and terror assault from Beersheba to Jerusalem, Israel’s Health Ministry said.
The map below shows a potential Gaza invasion route in two phases:
Since 2021, there has been a war simmering between the United States and Iran. The US began seizing – via court-based “arrest” orders – ships carrying cargo (mostly oil) –out of Iran, to various nations that the United States has under economic sanction. The nations under US sanctions, such as Venezuela, have no real method to respond to the United States.
Iran, however, is a different matter.
Iran has begun seizing ships in the Persian Gulf by force, and in earnest, in response to the actions by the United States; the number is now up to twenty vessels. Additionally, some firms in the United States have begun to refuse to unload ships seized with Iranian cargo, fearing Iran seizing their vessels in retaliation.
Because of the clear threat presented to the “freedom of the seas”, the United is now responding to Iran by reinforcing its forces in the Persian Gulf with additional destroyers…and a few thousand US Marines.
While the first inclination of many will be to recall that the United States severely damaged the Iranian Navy in 1988’s Operation Praying Mantis – launched in response to an Iranian naval mine severely damaging the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) – that was some thirty-five years ago.
Iranian frigate IS Sahand (74) burning on 18 April 1988 after being attacked by aircraft of U.S. Navy Carrier Air Wing 11. US Navy photo. Public Domain.
Iran’s naval capability – while still no match for the US Navy in a direct fight – has significantly improved since their defeat, very likely enough to cause serious damage to United States forces in the process. Such a defeat, were it to happen, would almost certainly spark hysterical screams from within Washington, DC, demanding an all-out invasion.
LtGen Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (retired), c.1995. LtGen Van Riper led the “opposing force” in the “Millennium Challenge 2002” exercise. USMC official photo. Public Domain.
This is certainly not a whimsical or marginal threat. There has been a long-standing resistance within the Washington establishment to any rational negotiations with Iran; indeed, this escalated after then-President Donald Trump called off a disproportionate attack in response to Iran shooting down an unmanned US surveillance drone in 2019. In fact, hysterical calls for war with Iran have been a steady feature of US rhetoric for over a decade.
While the reasons for this hysterical behavior by long-serving chickenhawks in the Washington Swamp are unclear, they are nonetheless real. And with the weak, disconnected and floundering administration currently in place in the Swamp, wallowing in failures both domestic and foreign, highly irrational decisions are a serious possibility.
Iran is not Iraq. An irrational and ill-advised war against the current iteration of Ancient Persia – no matter how technically weak it may appear – would be an absolute disaster for the United States in the immediate sense, but also for the wider world, as the impact on the global trade system would not simply be catastrophic, but could swiftly escalate out of control.
For far too long, the people of the United States have bought into the mythology of “American Invincibility”. While this belief was justifiable until about 2010, it is no longer the case. The US Navy currently fields less than 300 vessels; all of the armed services except the Marine Corps have admitted that they expect to fall short of their recruitment targets by at least 20%, if not more. As the Biden administration openly admitted less than two weeks before this writing, US industry has not been able to step up the production of basic artillery ammunition to meet the needs of the administration’s support to Ukraine.
There is nothing left for the United States’ potential need for combat operations, should that happen.
Munitions Production on the Home Front, 1914-1918. Imperial War Museums. Public Domain.
And there are painfully few options available, if any still exist at all. Despite some twenty-odd years of near-continuous combat, neither US industry nor the wider population have been mobilized for the possibility of a major war…or wars. In 1941, as the forces of Imperial Japan were attacking Pearl Harbor, the United States had been girding for war for nearly two full years, mobilizing a “command economy” to increase the production of war materiel to support Great Britain in its war against Hitler’s Germany, and instituting the first peacetime military draft in the country’s history, giving all of the armed services of the day time to bring in and train troops in readiness for war.
None of that has been happening in the last 20+ years. And the cold reality is that it is likely not possible, without twenty years, minimum, of corrective measures: Thirty years of globalism’s industrial and business realities have removed the bulk of heavy industrial manufacturing from within the borders of the United States. Likewise, there is virtually no chance of the Draft being reactivated; while it is certainly still on the books as a legal option, the social policies instituted, promoted and encouraged by the Democrat Party in the last fifteen years have poisoned the recruiting well for the military, encouraging the armed service’s core demographics to pointedly not step forward to enlist. Basic training has been eroded to the point where the vast majority of troops with under ten years service are not psychologically prepared for combat at any level.
And yet – the chickenhawks of the Swamp persist, thinking that their actions to please their vote base have had no impact on military readiness – despite facts to the contrary – because they are so disconnected from the real world…
…Now, if the issue were simply Iran and a shortfall for materiel’s shipments to Ukraine, this might not be that large of a problem. A problem, certainly, but not a critical one.
However, as many chickenhawk cheerleaders crow over the recent attack on the Kerch Bridge over the Sea of Azov, Russia’s response was swift and decisive: Russia has abandoned the deal it agreed to previously, which allows the export of Ukrainian grain crops to supply the world’s food needs.
Satellite picture of Crimea, 05-16-2015, with location of the Kerch Bridge in red. NASA. Public Domain.
Russia is now actively targeting the port city of Odessa with long-range missile strikes, and is laying naval mines to close off Ukraine’s remaining coastal regions. Moscow has also hinted at the possibility that it will attack commercial vessels attempting to reach Ukraine.
The real danger in this series of moves lies far to the south, where Egypt is critically dependent upon Ukrainian wheat to feed its population. In the face of this loss, Egypt – already struggling with massive unemployment and the irrational and childish dismissal of its concerns over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dame (GERD) project by the government in Addis Ababa.
This is important, because if Egypt lashes out against Ethiopia in desperation – using an air force largely reequipped by the US – it could easily spark a much wider war, a war that could easily result in the closing of the Suez Canal…an act that, as was demonstrated by the grounding of a single container ship in 2021 for less than a week, would up-end the world trade system.
Which loops us back to Iran.
If the United States tilts that windmill, it will destroy the International North–South Transport Corridor, the decade-old project by Russia, China, Turkey, India and Iran to build a trade corridor designed to drastically shorten the transit of commercial cargo, bypassing the Suez Canal entirely.
This is a hair-trigger environment that is capable of sparking World War 3. This is not hyperbole, in any way.
It is solely the construct of the Swamp – a body that imagines itself as completely immune to anyone it deems “lesser”…which term includes you and I.
Let that sink in.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
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?
Previously, we reported on two conflicts that exploded into reality in less than a month. Today, we will give a brief update on both conflicts.
SUDAN
As the civil war in Sudan enters its sixth week, the fighting is expanding beyond the capitol city of Khartoum, spilling into war-ravaged Darfur, scene of a decade-long, genocidal ethnic cleansing carried out by the factions now fighting each other.
In the swirling morass that is the politics of the region, one of the looming crises – and possible causes – impacting the fighting is the question of Ethiopia’s massively over-sized hydroelectric dam, that the country is constructing to corral the Blue Nile River, with potentially disastrous ecological ramifications, as well as impacting the availability of water and agriculture downstream, which would impact both the forty-nine million people of Sudan, as well as the more than one-hundred million people of Egypt.
PAKISTAN
Following the shocking arrest of ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan on May 9 2023, and his subsequent release at the order of the nation’s highest court, tensions in the unstable and economically troubled Indian Ocean Region state remain high. Military commanders are still feuding, now over an announcement that those arrested – many arbitrarily – after attacks on military and police offices following Khan’s arrest are to be tried under military law, a fact far more worrying than a simple clash over personal issues, because it remains unclear who is actually in control of the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
It remains unclear which direction the current course of events may take, and that is a very worrying situation, especially in concert with events throughout the wider world.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Conflict monitoring is an odd field: You try to monitor the world, and eventually specialize out of necessity. The recent descent into chaos in Sudan, Africa’s third-largest nation by size, is no different.
Beginning on April 15th, a series of armed clashes began in Khartoum, the capital of the African nation. The opposing sides are the regular Sudanese Army, and a paramilitary force called the “Rapid Support Force (RSF)“. The two forces had united in 2019 to oust Omar al-Bashir, the country’s long-time dictator, in a military coup d’etat; two years later, in 2021, the two parties staged another coup to derail Sudan’s return to a democratically elected government.
The situation has deteriorated, in barely a single week, to the point that the United States and other powers (YouTube link) are rapidly deploying forces to Camp Lemonnier, located in the state of Djibouti, on the Red Sea coast, in preparation for a possible evacuation of various embassy’s and foreign nationals – a daunting prospect, given that Khartoum’s international airport is not currently usable, and because the capital city is nearly 800 miles inland.
The source of the current “lover’s quarrel” is the Regular Army dragging its feet over formally integrating the RSF into its force structure, as well as delays in payroll to the paramilitary force, with its leadership claiming that they want to return al-Bashir to power.
Who are the RSF?
In 2003, fighting erupted in Western Sudan as non-Arab (i.e., “black African”) tribes united against the al-Bashir government’s continued campaign of oppression and discrimination against them. The result was the Darfur War (sometimes called the “Land Cruiser War” because of the extensive used of ‘technicals’), a genocidal conflict that killed hundreds of thousands, and created between two and three million refugees.
Map of Darfur within Sudan, July 2011. CCA/3.0
The RSF began life as the so-called “Janjaweed”, a Sudanese Arab tribal militia assembled by al-Bashir’s government to suppress the Black African inhabitants of the region. Supporting this, were the remnants of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s “Islamic Legion”, an openly racist and pan-Arab organization intended to unite the Saharan region by force.
As the Darfur war reached a stalemate (that would ultimately result in a nominal ceasefire agreement in 2020), al-Bashir’s government began using a now-experienced and capable Janjaweed – under their commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – as extra muscle throughout the region, especially in places where the dirtiest of atrocities were needed.
Oozing to life in 2013 as an outgrowth of the Janjaweed, the RSF was quickly used by al-Bashir as a kind of “expeditionary force”, sending significant numbers of troops into both Chad and Libya (in the latter case, supporting the Libyan National Army of Khalifa Haftar), and a stunning 40,000-strong corps-sized unit into Yemen to fight against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The main difference between the RSF and the Janjaweed, is in the level of formal support and arms provided to them by the Sudanese government, with uniform weapons and vehicles.
The RSF is not simply large, with over 100,000 men under arms, but is also highly mobile, with an estimated 10,000 ‘technical’ trucks (YouTube link)…and it has developed an impressive economic infrastructure to support itself, thanks to the business chops of its leader and his family.
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as “Hemedti“, locally), who dropped out of primary school in 3rd grade to work to support his family, started out as a well-respected camel herder in the Darfur region. As he positioned himself as the chief commander of first the Janjaweed, and then the RSF, he used the forces loyal to him to help is company, Al Junaid, to corner the gold mining industry within Sudan, as well as a host of other industries, ultimately controlling up to 40% of Sudan’s exports.
And, like most warlords with sufficient resources, he has made life well for his loyalists in the RSF, who now follow his orders without question, helped by him polishing his speaking skills. This, along with a “charm campaign” managed by Western public relations firms to improve Hemedti’s image, has combined to form a kind of “mercenary micro-state” of a type that is highly unusual in the modern day…In many ways, the RSF is the nightmare scenario that world security analysts have been dreading since the rise of the “corporate terror group” model, when al Qaeda appeared in the late-1990’s.
In a very real sense, the leader of the regular Sudanese armed forces and Hemedti’s rival in the power struggle, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, have created a monster they can no longer control.
But, ultimately…who cares? Why should you care?
The current fighting in Sudan will almost certainly determine who will be the next ruler of the nation. As well, major powers – both global powers, and up-and-coming regional states seeking to expand their influence – are all jockeying for position, and that kind of jockeying can swiftly lead to an expanding conflict.
And all of this is happening literally on the banks of the Nile, Africa’s ancient major river system. No matter who wins this conflict, this will pose significant issues to Egypt and its population of over 100 million, already alarmed over Ethiopia’s dam building project that seriously threatens the downstream ecology and climate of the region.
Lastly, is the serious potential for major-power involvement, up to and including combat: Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary company has significant ties to the RSF, and in the region, generally. The Wagner Group has been reportedly guarding some gold mining areas for the central government since at least 2019, with speculation that Wagner-defended gold is being using used to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine. Numerous foreign corporations have major investments throughout the region, and the expansion of the “private military company” market in the last twenty-five years means that there is little incentive to not hire lots of ex-military guns to guard their investments.
And, looming over the regular Western military commands’ psyches is the shadow of 1993’s “Battle of Mogadishu”, but on a far larger scale, with far fewer advantages for the Western powers.
The future does not look sunny.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
With all the recent talk of nuclear war, catastrophic shortages of vital fuels, Europe in complete economic meltdown and Communist China’s stock markets tanking as a dictator is “reelected“, a person could be forgiven for thinking that “The End” really might be nigh. However, there is one thing that most people have forgotten about in all the tumult…and Joe Biden’s Democrat Party is directly responsible for it:
Terrorism inside the United States.
Now, again, the Reader could be forgiven for thinking that this is hyperbole, or some desperate attempt at cashing in on some “counter terrorism” degree, but no – this is quite serious. There is a clear and present terrorist threat to the home territories of the United States, one that was set up (whether by intent or incompetence is irrelevant, now) by the Democrat Party, and that has been exacerbated and accelerated by the Biden Administration since January of 2021. What is the source of this, you might ask?
Illegal immigration.
I can hear the groans in the back rows, already…You would do well to keep reading.
Back in the “good old days,” illegal immigration was tolerated by both parties, because it scored points for the Democrats with the Hispanic Community, and it provided a source of cheap labor for agribusiness and later, for construction, making certain GOP interests happy. While there were occasional scandals, followed by roundups by “La Migra”, it was still tolerated, even though it was beginning to erode the viability of “entry-level” work in the United States.
Over time, however, the Democrats began to change the game: it was no longer about simply scoring fractional points with minority communities, but about actually using illegal aliens as “straw voters”, who could be shuttled to polling stations, posing as dead people to vote…for a certain party, of course. Like most things, it didn’t start out big, but it began to grow unchecked, in the late-1990’s. After 9/11 there was some concern about terrorists infiltrating over the border, but since nothing happened, the Democrats quickly spun the notion as unhinged paranoia, that verged on racism. Meanwhile, the economy – for many reasons – continued to sag.
In the chaos of 2016-2022, however, illegal immigration began to skyrocket out of control, as the US descended into a low-key civil war. Inside the US Government, loyalists of President Donald J. Trump and bureaucrats trying to simply do their jobs, attempted to carry out the directives of the President, as they are legally obligated to do, while others actively worked to undermine the President, sometimes verging close to sedition, if not treason. While the Trump Administration accomplished many things, those within the government structure who decided that their personal political beliefs were more important than their oaths deliberately hindered many more. Dangerously, this rose to the point of Democrat loyalists declining to comment on open support for waves of illegal immigration openly being supported by the United Nations, even given the extreme dangers faced by migrants, themselves, on the journey north
Once President Trump’s reelection bid failed – again, whether legitimately or by malfeasance no longer matters – and Joe Biden entered office, the proverbial floodgates were opened: the numbers of illegal aliens being detained by the Border Patrol are the highest ever recorded in the 97 year history of the agency, with nearly 2 million being reported by the agency in the first nine months of the Biden presidency. As of the end of October 2022, the cross-border flood continues.
While this is clearly a massive problem on many levels, for security professionals, this is particularly worrying, because a very large percentage of the border-crossers fall into the dangerous category of “military-age males”, or, those males between the late-teens and mid-30’s, who are suitable for military service. Further, increasing numbers of border crossers are from African countries.
Why is this important?
Simply put, while the mainstream media decided that terrorism was passé, the actual terror groups out there have very much ignored that pronouncement. As well, while many people, and especially many in the under-30 year old demographic within the United States, have been fed a steady media diet of the concept that “terrorist” equates only to “Middle Easterners” and “straight, white males,” the truth is that many of the radical Islamist groups since 2000 have recruited far and wide, and are just as diverse as either the US military – or the Leftist protestors of North America and Europe who lack the education or worldly experience to understand what is happening.
So – is this just hysterical paranoia? After all, there have been no major terror attacks inside the United States since 9/11, right? (We’re not going to talk about Las Vegas today, because you’re not ready for that conversation.) So why marginalize ‘migrants’?
Because, as the second President Bush said: They hate us. And they will not stop.
Assuming – for the sake of argument, to placate the naysayers – that the last sentence is true, how does that relate to immigration/migration?
In 1974, R&D Associates – a think tank in Santa Monica, California – working under contract for the Department of Defense, produced a document titled A Soviet Paramilitary Attack on U.S. Nuclear Forces – A Concept (PDF link). The paper sketched out a threat concept to US strategic nuclear forces, wherein Soviet Spetznatz special forces could potentially infiltrate sabotage teams into the US to attack ICBM, bomber and nuclear submarine bases, simply by walking in over the borders from Mexico and/or Canada. It goes into detail of then-current estimated numbers of illegal aliens crossing the US border, who were not intercepted by the Border Patrol, and pointed out that enough four- to six-man teams could be infiltrated and housed by ‘illegal’ KGB agents just long enough to sabotage US nuclear forces in preparation for a Soviet first strike.
A group of about ten terrorists (it may have been a smaller team) slipped into the seaside megacity, and launched a brutal assault on the city’s tourist district, killing at least 166, and wounding over 300 over the course of a 3-day battle, doggedly holding out against elite Indian Army commandoforces and troops from the crack Jat Regiment to the bitter end.
Those are the facts that most people who know anything at all about this incident know.
Much less well known, is how the terrorists got to Mumbai.
The terrorists were given advanced military training by elements of the Pakistani army and intelligence services, including boat training. The terrorist team headed out into the Indian Ocean on November 21, 2008, and motored along for two days, until they hijacked the Indian fishing trawler Kuber, killed four of the crew, and forced the captain to sail for Mumbai. Arriving off Mumbai at dusk on November 26, the terrorists dropped anchor, killed the captain, and headed into Mumbai Harbor in three inflatable boats. Shortly after, the terrorists begin attacking civilians, and took up positions in various locations.
And, to top it all off, the terrorists were in constant communication – via cell phone – with an internet-capable “tactical operations center” (TOC) that had been set up on the fly in an apartment in Pakistan.
Very James Bond, yes?
So, how do illegal immigration, a moldy study from the 1970’s, and a terrorist attack in 2008 track with each other?
Mumbai was not a “hardened” target; quite the opposite – it was a treasure trove of “soft” targets: train stations, hotels, nightclubs, hospitals and a religious school.
Just like American cities.
For a well-financed terror group, slipping 200 to 300 ‘actors’ into the United States by simply hiking over the border is not a difficult challenge. Potentially, they could slip in as a single group. It’s not as if anyone would notice, amid the throngs moving over the border. Arming them? Also not hard – they don’t need to actually try and purchase weapons legally; AKM’s and M16 and M4 carbines abandoned in Afghanistan are light enough to fit into a backpack, and making homemade hand grenades can be done by a simple shopping trip to a hardware store (no, we will not discuss “how to”).
And all of this, if before we start talking about attacks on the power grid, as winter arrives.
Now, am I implying that the Democrat Party set this up deliberately? Certainly not – I don’t think they are smart enough, to be perfectly frank. I am, however, absolutely certain that there are plenty of terror groups out there who are smart enough to figure this out. Nothing talked about above is “classified”, and really doesn’t take much to figure out.
Security professionals – the real ones – rarely sleep well, knowing that these threats are out there…much less, when they know that significant elements in Washington, DC are actively creating the permissive environment necessary for all of this to happen.
Stock up now. Arm up now. Talk to your neighbors now. If you don’t – you will be very much on your own.
Good luck.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
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