Jumping nimbly-bimbly from tree to tree

your honor I am not a cat

I’m talking about HARM and friends because in terms of quickly executing a kill chain against a transmitting radar, antirad munitions are the gold standard. Sure, it can be done other ways. But it generally involves a lot more systems with relatively complex integration.

The system being discussed is not explicitly or exclusively useful in military contexts. There are a LOT of places where advanced beam forming and radar capabilities could be useful outside of that. Not to mention: in military applications, this is pretty definitely a defensive system.

So, one of the really interesting things to me about this approach is that it offers the same asymmetric value proposition that cheap attack drones do to modern pre-drone IADS.

That is: this is a platform that costs 10-15k, and an AGM-88 of modern manufacture costs almost 900k, and a Kh-31 costs about 550k - and, just as importantly, both require a long time to manufacture. So, you could theoretically make a moderately large distributed array sprinkled over a few square kilometers, and even if they’re ALL turned on, it quickly becomes logistically infeasible to knock them all out without spending a silly quantity on antirad munitions, as well as massively attriting your stocks of antirad munitions. And if you turn like 10-25% of them on at a time and cycle through your array, the problem becomes even harder for the attacker. And if you have some sort of process or mechanism - like, oh I don’t know, figuring out how to do light aerial transport with cargo drones, or even figuring out how to mount these distributed array nodes on the drones themselves, and some sort of lightweight tether for providing power - the problem becomes a MASSIVE pain in the ass for an adversary (especially that last idea, which introduces z-axis and immediate maneuverability, such that the array could feasibly detect and altogether avoid an incoming antirad munition).

And that’s the paradigm of modern warfare - not just drones, but also networked and attritable systems that maintain functionality when elements are taken offline

I mean, considering the political climate there… it’s very karmic

As in: you agree with the article’s assertion?

lol shut the fuck up NYT

Depends on the color, these days

Iran is incapable of

Kash fucking Patel disbanded the team that looks for credible threats from Iran right before we started bombing the shit out of them. That’s a blatantly, obviously dangerous action and context. The only reason it’s not a straight up false flag attack is essentially a technicality, and because Iran hasn’t actually tried anything (yet).

allowed

You’re, uh, paying attention to the whole bit where the regime doesn’t fucking care about rules and laws and court orders, and that nobody enforces them against the regime anymore, right?

Apparently, back in January, a State Department official made a reference to the Avignon Papacy to the Vatican’s chief diplomat.

For those not familiar with the geopolitical history of Europe and the Catholic Church, this was a period in the 1300s where the French monarchy did their level best to basically co-opt and strong arm the church so they could squeeze money out of them, and led to a schism for a time.

Put another way: that is by far the most thinly-veiled direct threat I’ve ever heard anyone make to the Vatican in my life.

Lmao ok sure buddy

At his press conference yesterday, Magyar was extensively asked about his views on Russia and called for “pragmatic” relations between the countries (Europe Live, Monday).

Hmmm

He argued that Hungary “cannot change geography” as it still relied on energy supplies from Russia, even as he suggested he would push to diversify these sources in the future.

Well, yeah. And the reason Ukraine has been so (justifiably) obstinate about wrecking energy supplies that go to Hungary is because Orban was refusing outright to explore alternatives, with predictable consequences.

I think it’s too soon to tell, tbh, but it’ll surely be an improvement from Orban - though that is really not a high bar.

In actuality, it’s more accurate to say that this is how uncritical and self-deceptive his followers are. The followers we are talking about here are Christian Dominionists (aka adherents of the 7 mountains mandate).

They largely don’t care about his insanity because they genuinely believe orangeboi and the regime are a means to an end - and, you know, they’ve finally got a shitload of Christian Dominionists in the regime’s leadership now. Them caring about the initial post was a rare outlier of them actually caring about this shit, because it began to tread - and reflect very poorly and obviously cultishly - on their messianic worldview.

To be fair, it was likely by accident

If you think that’s the only thing China cares about, you are deluding yourself. What do you think the belt and road initiative is for, and why do you think China was willing to put up with it being deeply unprofitable for them for so long?

Frankly I’m just happy some progress was made, and that Hungary wasn’t so far gone that Orban became president for life.