Defense

• Various unsourced¹ rumblings out of China: fuel rationing, requests for food conservation… supply crunch or prelude to war?
• Zerohedge has more – I’m not sure if Zerohedge makes it more or less credible, though.
• Speaking of Twitter randos, this guy has SAR and optical satellite imagery of the 144th Motor Rifle Division’s new camp at Yelnya – Yelnya’s near Smolensk.
• Speaking of Twitter randos with interesting threads, here’s an index of one of parvusimperator’s favorite Twitter authors, on AFV technology – He says he should get a blog. Maybe we should just publish him here? He is, on the other hand, employed by Janes, so he may be a little out of our league.
• A long and extremely detailed article on how the US Navy isn’t in good shape to tackle the modern diesel sub threat – AncientSubHunter on Twitter, I believe.
• If you didn’t click on that, here’s a tale of a Soviet sub trying to sneak through the Strait of Gibraltar, and the American destroyers chasing it – “Our sonars were so powerful that at night they sometimes caused plankton to phosphoresce as a pulse swept over them, producing expanding green concentric circles of light radiating outward at the speed of sound from our enormous bow-mounted 30-foot sonar domes.” Baller.
• Continuing our ‘US is woefully unprepared to fight a naval war’ series, where are all the tenders? – Big Navy’s maintenance depots are overworked in peacetime. They’re not going to handle a war well.
• The Soapbox Endorses: Japanese seaplane US-2 – A PBY for the modern day! I wonder if it could carry some manner of cruise missile under the wing?
• Big Army press release: AI-enabled ground combat vehicles
• Israel tests radar blimp – It’s technically an aerostat, not a blimp, but the goal is to watch for missile threats.
• Sky News security and defense reporter, quoting HMSQNLZ crew on the difference between scrambling against the Russians while transiting the Eastern Mediterranean and scrambling against the Chinese while transiting the South China Sea – I’m tickled by the HMSQNLZ abbreviation, and will continue to use it. Price of Wales gets the somewhat less evocative HMSPWLS on Twitter. I wonder if we can’t do better here.

Grab Bag

• Astronomers find a star system with two planets in polar orbits around the star and one with a standard, equatorial orbit – Now that is a weird star system. Probably a big gas giant tilting things.
• I have too many expensive hobbies to get into Warhammer, but I enjoy watching hobby YouTubers do the building and the painting – This video was a special treat: my favorite among the YouTube hobbyists, building a massive Ork walker-thingy out of cans, boxes, scrap sprues, and such.
• ‘Skimpflation’: the kind of inflation where goods and services get worse while prices stay the same – I think I had an item about this last time, but now Planet Money has a bit on it, which is quite a bit more mainstream.
• New Jersey truck driver Edward Durr spends $153 on campaign, unseats NJ Senate President Stephen Sweeney – The president of the state senate is widely regarded as New Jersey’s second most powerful politico.