Diagnosing Delusion

There’s been a lot of great alternative media coverage about the war in Ukraine. Since events drive traffic, I try to get an article out on the subject every week. This catastrophe feels like a denouement on a grand scale for a set of things that intersect with my past and current lives (I’m not referring to reincarnation) in both a personal and professional sense, so I do find it fascinating in a macabre sense of the word.

Plenty of great alternative coverage exists which I consume on a broad spectrum, in addition to the Chinese media and briefings from the Russian MOD. I use these variety of sources to draw conclusions and then provide my rightwing dissident take on the situation. I’ve noticed the thread that ties all of the alternative content producers together would be an intense frustration with, as the blacks say, “why you always lyin?”

One I check out regularly is Andrei Martyanov, whom I’ve been following since we were both republished regularly on a different site years ago. He’s a former Russian officer, so his take on the situation tends to be less than objective, which is understandable. Andrei offers one of the only honest English language assessments I’ve come across on Russian missile technology, of which he has first-hand experience. He recently critiqued an article from an Army captain in the Modern War Institute at West Point.

It’s a typically (for the U.S. military) insane review on the Kinzhal hypersonic missile and the May 16th incident where the Russians swarmed a Patriot battery at an airport in Kiev, with either cheap drones and decoy missiles or some sort of EW assault. In turn, it was quickly drained of its interceptors, thus forcing it to light itself up for a Kinzhal strike. Whatever tactic this was, it succeeded. The whole incident could’ve cost us upwards of 500 million dollars. A couple of the interceptors shot back down into Kiev. Quite embarrassing.

There are multiple points of verification for this happening, and a wealth of information from the U.S. military itself, derived from both testing and its combat track record that the Patriot system doesn’t work too well against incoming missiles. However, it has a decent track record of accidentally shooting down NATO aircraft. To be fair, the Russians are also damn good at doing this to themselves.

Notably, the Patriot has a piss poor track record (100%) of protecting Saudi oil facilities from Houthi drones which look cheaper than an undergraduate engineering project in Guatemala. The Russians have a variety of anti-aircraft systems acknowledged to perform better, with a solid track record in combat. For example, against a Tomahawk swarm in Syria and now against HIMARS and Storm Shadows in Ukraine. Foreign countries not totally under the American boot make their purchases accordingly, such as key NATO member Turkey (the coup against Erdogan failed), who bought the S-400 instead and told Uncle Sam to fuck off.

30 US Patriot PAC-3 MSE launch at a cost of $5 million per missile. That’s $150 million gone within 2 mins. At the end the Patriot launch platforms were destroyed by Russian missiles. Why would any military still want to buy Patriot after this failure? pic.twitter.com/JiNr06y0Rt

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 16, 2023

I read the author’s bio and it just triggers everything I know about my former comrades and why they interpret this conflict, which could escalate into World War 3 quite easily, in such an utterly ignorant and idiotic fashion. This expert instructor either lacks critical thinking skills or he knows that telling the truth would end his career and ostracize him from his friends and family, which I admit really sucks. Perhaps he’s trying to bolster his own emotional health. I’ll explain why, but first here’s the gist of his version of what happened:

The Kinzhal was shot down along with everything else sent to distract the battery [*possibility nothing else was flying that night*] just like the first one the Ukrainians claimed to have shot down on May 4th [*The head of the Ukrainian air force actually denounced the first purported event as false*]. A Kinzhal is junk compared to requested capabilities of the US army’s version which is currently being developed [*so it doesn’t exist*]. The “corrupt and inept” Russians have been proven a farce. Here’s a couple spinets that sum up why I find the potential for escalation so unnerving:

With this technical analysis in mind, it appears the Kinzhal is likely to join the Su-57, T-14 Armata, and BMPT Terminator in the dustbin of vaunted Russian weapons that have severely underperformed on the battlefield…

The ability of the Patriots donated by the United States and Germany to detect, track, and defeat this saturation attack coming from all different directions showcases the impressive advancements and upgrades that the venerable system has experienced since the Patriot was first updated for use against tactical ballistic and cruise missiles in the 1990s after its less-than-impressive showing against those threats during the Gulf War. Modern air defense systems have never faced a threat on the level of the current Russians air raids against Ukraine...

The Ukrainian success in utilizing Patriot systems to counter a saturation attack from modern weapons from a near-peer enemy demonstrates the remarkable evolution of defense technology and its ability to adapt to emerging challenges...

He’s typical of everyone I’ve heard from Gen. David Petraus on down about the superiority of America’s arsenal and how we’d swiftly mop the floor with the Russians if that’s what we decided needs to be done. Just like the rest of them, he offers zero real world scenarios where this has played out or plausible technical details, just a laughable misinterpretation of what’s actually happening.

The underlying premise he gets dead wrong is that the U.S. has a military designed to fight a war against a modern opponent with an MIC capable of sustaining combat for any extended period of time. Since Vietnam, it’s been an anti-poor people force, whereas Putin wields an implement designed specifically to confront NATO on the periphery of Russia in a massive conflict that could span years. Just because Russia can’t project power anywhere in the world to crush a poor country on behalf of Israel doesn’t make the bear a lame beast. Nobody I know with this dilettante’s background seems capable of fathoming the most basic principle of how the two opponents have prepared for a confrontation: only one side has genuinely bothered.

In fact, this means the bear can specialize in confronting the best systems Uncle Sam could deploy to defeat it. Uncle Sam doesn’t concern himself much with the bear’s capabilities, which is why a missile like the Tomahawk performs so poorly against Soviet-era Syrian AAs built to intercept it. This is the same reason the Serbs, despite the overwhelming odds against them, were able to use another such “obsolete” system to take down a vaunted stealth fighter in 1999 while only turning the radar on for less than 20 seconds. Russian missiles have long been designed to take out or fly past the Patriot system, which has been in service since the 1980s.

The battery hit in Kiev was the latest and greatest version. The fact that it was stationed there demonstrates that officials in the U.S. believe their own nonsense. If they were getting good information, they’d never have set themselves up for this humiliation.

What does this mean in terms of the author lying? Well, I don’t think that he’s lying if he’s interpreting the situation according to the point he’s trying to get across in his article, which everyone else tells me as well, that the Russian incompetents are fighting with junk. On the screens of those Patriot operators, it could’ve easily looked like they shot down one or multiple Kinzhals. Let me explain:

Kinzhals appear to be an air launched version of an Iskander-M. If one wanted to design a missile to take out American assets, he’d opt to outfit this thing with capabilities that would be a giant waste against the Taliban. It would need to fly faster than our interceptors, detect threats in real time, be equipped with the ability to take evasive maneuvers, and launch decoys to spoof our systems multiple times if a threat is detected on a long journey to the target through defended airspace.

Due to the anti-NATO mission of their military, the Russians have a vastly superior arsenal of various cruise missiles, along with vastly larger stockpiles and production capabilities. America’s military industrial complex is boutique by comparison. The Russians have been launching more cruise missiles in a few strikes than the total of Tomahawks fired since their inception. Cruise missiles are a colossal waste of money against Jihadists so one can make sense out of our MIC from that angle.

As it turns out, the Iskander-M (Mach 5 to 7 from a truck) can deploy 6 decoys from the rear of the missile. So, to the contractors operating the battery, it could look like they hit 6 Kinzhals if it also has this capability, which it does in all likelihood.

That’s what the Ukrainians claim happened. Their MOD tells crazy lies all the time and will even publish cut scenes from video games and claim it’s real footage, but perhaps these missile interceptions they’re always claiming were achieved look like real interceptions on a screen due to decoys. Apparently, some Kaliber variants can launch them as well.

This author’s bio shows that he’s got a good amount of international experience. However, dealing with one’s counterparts isn’t like dealing with foreign civilians or the other side’s military personnel. Most of humanity doesn’t like the U.S. military and considers it a force harnessed for malevolence. To the extent they do support it, that’s not because they approve of its overall global mission. For example, the Poles I know are cheering it on because they have a seething hatred for the Russians, but these same Poles will denounce everything else that it’s done since World War 2.

American military professionals are in a media and organizational environment where counterpoints don’t get raised, the group think is intense, and everybody making a career out of it congratulates themselves as the good guys and thanks each other for their service. I’m not trying to denigrate anyone’s combat heroism or military service in general, what I’m saying is that this is a huge problem as the boat sails towards the top of the waterfall which ain’t on Captain Crunch’s map.

I suspect part of this is the mentality of a man trying to make a career out of the modern U.S. military. Again, there’s also the consequences’ part he’d experience immediately for deviating from the narrative. However, I’m sure that on an emotional level, leadership has to double down on the moral righteousness of their cause and the superiority of their equipment and capabilities because reality is just too unpalatable to acknowledge, and the potentialities are downright unnerving.

That’s how you get the most absolutely stupid quote from the entire article: “the Kinzhal is more akin to a giant lawn dart loaded with explosives.” At the outset of the war, this thing punched through over 100 feet of rock into a bunker designed to withstand a nuclear attack and detonated the munitions stored inside. The blast shook buildings miles away. Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country, come the fuck on. Right, so a weapon with an established combat record is shit compared to ours, which we haven’t even mastered a prototype for yet. It’s so typical of everything I’m hearing, and it just makes me wish we could just get to the nuke part already because that would be the gentlest ending for all involved.

The Kinzhal isn’t the most advanced hypersonic in the Russian arsenal. That would be Avangard and the naval Zircon. These have yet to be seen in action, but if the conflict drags on it’s a good bet we’ll see them used both for the Russians to gain operational experience and demonstrate to the U.S. the recklessness of getting further involved, not that it would matter.

"The Russians are dying… it's the best money we've ever spent"

-Lindsey Graham, US senator#buitenhof pic.twitter.com/xOO1e9iyc9

— Richard (@ricwe123) May 28, 2023

Moreover, and contrary to the “expert analysis” that the U.S. has nothing to fear in a modern war with Russia, consider this: the Kinzhal was designed as a carrier killer. Putin has political considerations in this war. His base is boomer Russians getting riled up watching television news talk shows. They’re pissed, they want blood, and there’s only so many drone attacks on Moscow or incursions into Belgorod he can ignore before he has to mollify them somehow.

A carrier sailing around in the Mediterranean or Persian Gulf (where it can’t hide) could become an attractive option. Will the American public really want war when it sees a carrier wrecked? I have no idea what goes on in Putin’s head but it’s troubling because these are logical retaliations and I’d guarantee he’s got advisors floating just these sorts of scenarios. At least 20,00 Russians have died in this war that we started on their doorstep. Killing 2,600 American sailors doesn’t sound like such a stretch in this context. Russian boomers get pumped up with this sort of stuff all the time on television.

The reality is that the Russians have possessed the ability to locate and take out a carrier with missiles since the 1970s (at least). It’s long had missiles, which are currently slamming to Ukraine, that are designed to get past a carrier’s defensive screen, shoot upwards, and come down vertically on it at hypersonic speeds thereby plunging through the ship to detonate the magazine. Maybe some would be intercepted, but they’d be launching more than “some.”

This is a factor any American officer seeking a career should know. It used to be common knowledge which is why American plans for World War 3 all had the carriers near Europe heading south of the GIUK Gap as fast as possible, and then into the open Atlantic where they’d be difficult to find, and their defensive screen would have lots of space to deal with incoming threats.

Test firing of a Zircon missile from the Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov pic.twitter.com/Se9D1rYisu

— RT (@RT_com) May 29, 2022

From reading this article, it’s obvious that the featured analysis followed the Pentagon’s playbook in assessing what transpires in Ukraine: believe whatever they tell us. That’s hard to blame because this happens at the highest level, which is how you get Kirby doing press conferences asserting the Russians lost 100,000 men in Bakhmut. The Ukrainians say something ridiculous happened, then it’s taken in good faith no matter how implausible without apparently any independent attempt at verification. As a military, the Ukrainians have a track record of telling the most buck wild lies imaginable and somehow we keep believing them. It’s quite surreal.

The other thing to note is that the author of this work of sheer delusion is the kind of officer who’s been climbing the ranks to the point where he’s the one advising the politicians, academic psychopaths, and State Department people of our capabilities compared to the Russians. This is how the suits then come up with these idiotic plans under a totally faulty premise. Nobody would come up with a plan for something as horrifically stupid as what we’re watching right now if they simply had an honest appraisal of the situation.

To use an analogy, a thug may wish to do a robbery. So, that’s part of why the attempt gets made. Still, if someone informs him that his target is a large man with a gun, he’ll probably desist from his desire. However, if he’s misinformed that his target is a weakling who can’t shoot straight, well that’s the distance between his desire and his death.

Indeed, what we’re watching is the dirty work of office workers who believe the bullshit and make decisions accordingly. They don’t understand what’s going on with the military situation in any technical, tactical, or strategic sense. This country is so far gone there’s nobody in uniform ranked high enough to get into that conference room and tell them. Anything could happen because over a year of failure doesn’t seem to be cluing these ghoulish idiots into reality.

Putin has a multi-decade track record of making threats and then pulling the trigger on these threats when they fail to deter. Ukraine is his fourth significant military intervention. The previous three were successful because he assessed the situation and wagered correctly based on real facts. Our string-pullers have done the opposite during his entire tenure. Nobody of any importance on this side of the equation seems to notice a pattern. Honestly, I’m far more frustrated than alarmed. Like I said, the nuke thing doesn’t really bother me.