A Thousand Words...

 h/t Daily Timewaster

VAERS Finger-counting

 

VAERS is the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

They just released new numbers for all adverse events related to the COVID Vaxx injections, from Dec 2020 to April of this year.

1) They report, among other outcomes, a total of 12,672 U.S deaths alleged to be causally related to the vaccine.

2) Reports are not necessarily correct, as allegation does not equal causation, but the trend generally supports that conclusion, which is why we have a VAERS in the first place.

3) For historical reference, VAERS generally only gets reports filed on about 1% of actual incidents.

You would then be justified, based on that ratio, in extrapolating that the COVID vaxx has probably caused 1,267,200 deaths in the US in 2 years. U.S. Covid deaths are reported, per the Johns-Hopkins ARCGIS site, to be 993,588 since the outbreak began.

(And with milder strains and far better outcomes than the initial outbreak, the CFR of COVID has fallen now to 1.2% of the 81M cases, about 12 times worse than annual flu, but less than half of the initial CFR running near 3% with the initial strain.)

How much overlap there may be between the numbers dead from COVID vs. dead from COVID Vaxx, God alone knows.

Even assuming no overlap, it's safe to say that the cure was literally worse than the disease.

Like nearly 30% worse.

Which even hard-core vaxxholes are starting to mutter about, sotto voce.

This doesn't even get into the permanent disabilities reported, which are four times as frequently reported as are actual deaths. That's over 5M people with permanent disabilities from that poison. (E.g., if you think Bruce Willis' sudden "aphasia" was spontaneous, rather than a likely vaxx-caused stroke, I have a Nakatomi Tower to sell you, cheap.)

For historical comparison, when they rush-released a vaccine for Swine Flu in 1976, it was pulled from further use after a mere 32 deaths, and 500 cases of Giullain-Barre Syndrome.

Data Points

 h/t Rollory

From Russian troops in the field in Ukraine, now:

Top: current Russian Army issue first aid kit, med technology circa 1939.

Bottom: current Ukrainian forces issue kit, med technology circa 2019.

Source 

Draw your own conclusions on which one will work better. The Russian troops were apparently a tad bitter:

"This is what Putin and Shoigu have brought us to."

This Is Your Wake Up Call

 This is a stock photo of just the instrument set-up trays for one open heart surgery.

It also requires a dedicated sterile OR. And a sterile pre-op prep area. And a Post Anesthesia Care Unit. With ICU monitoring abilities, and a full Code Blue stocked crash cart and defibrillator. And an ICU. And a cardiac telemetry step-down unit. And one to three board certified cardiothoracic surgeons. And an anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist. And all the medicines and anesthesia drugs (and their reversal agents) required for that surgery. And all the IVs. And oxygen. And suction. And a central supply unit. And a sterile supply unit. And a circulating nurse or two. And a scrub nurse or two. And the PACU nurse, the ICU nurses, the Tele nurses, and about another baker's dozen techs, from lab, CT, OR, ICU, Tele. And the cardiac rehab folks. And metric f**ktons of antibiotics. All just waiting to take care of one patent.

Got a second patient?

You get to replicate half of that all over again. (I'll spot you the other half, since they're already there.)

Got a third patient? Now you need double everything in the first batch, because you'll need a whole another support pipeline for more patients than one ICU nurse can safely care for.

You can cut corners. That fills body bags, but hey, it's your party.

That's fairly similar to the kind of things you're going to need for one gunshot trauma chest wound.

Guerrilla Hospital? More like Gorilla Hospital. As in run by apes.

You can't just swap a few words and think you're going to replicate the military medical system, let alone the civilian one, for a "partisan" medic, and a "guerrilla" hospital.

Those are based on medical systems you couldn't shoot out of your tailpipe if you ate that whole surgical tray above, and grunted and squeezed for a lifetime.

A military CLS depends on there being a MEDEVAC (which you don't have) to take a casualty to a battalion aid station (which you don't have) or an EVAC trauma hospital (which you don't have), and once stabilized, to transfer them to an out-of-combat-theater tertiary care hospital (which you don't have), followed by ultimate travel to a stateside recuperation and rehab system, (which you don't have). Clever readers will spot a trend here. 

What you can  do is good initial first aid. But short of massive planning and preparation, you don't have any of that second aid, third aid, or rehab. And unless you recognize that, and start to make actual alternative arrangements, what follows your first aid, will be last aid.

I do not recommend leaving things at this stage, but if all you're going to do is stock your IFAK, without even planning for what happens the second time you need that, you're planning to fail. In a Forest Lawn sort of way. Or, far more likely, a Boot Hill sort of way.

Delusional people build castles in the sky, and psychotic people try to live in them. I wasn't being snarky about the OP, but when you start talking about your wonderful ocean liner plan, and all you're missing is, y'know, the BOAT part of that, I'm going to call you on it, 11 times out of 10. And if it stings, that's Reality slapping you in the back of the head.

You want an underground partisan health care system, or a guerrilla hospital? Great.

Why not start with telling me how you're going to do THAT, and do it first, before you tell me the frilly and far less important details at the weed level.

And while you're up, tell me about your partisans, before you start worrying about partisan medics.

If you can't get over your delusions long enough to do that, don't complain when people point and laugh. And if I just pointed and laughed because you share those delusions, maybe it's time to stop smoking mad bongloads of Hopeium, and come back down to planet earth for a spell.

And if all that still goes in your "Too Hard" column, don't you worry none, Snowflake. If you're just going to rely on Turd World/Civil War-era field medicine, you can count on Turd World/Civil War-era casualty levels.

Suture self.

Partisan Medics?

 h/t WRSA

RTWT

Okay, great.

What you've done is tell me about your first aid kit for Apollo 11. (And, don't get me wrong, you've nailed that, as far as it goes.)

What you've forgotten is, you forgot to invent NASA.

Or build a rocket.

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

The wheels all come off right here at Point Four:

• Stay connected with guerilla hospital and any available higher medical care

Um, excuse me, what "Guerrilla Hospital"??

The one you never planned for? Nor built? Nor stocked? Nor staffed?

Look, if this is just for mental masturbation, ROWYBS.

If available higher medical care means "you're going to be turned in to the authorities, and get tortured for information just as soon as you're well enough to tolerate it, and then be executed for sedition", what you're planning for is "shoot the wounded". We've already dismissed that clever plan long since.

So instead of telling us about the glorious flag pole on the skyscraper, humor us by telling us about the foundation, and the 100 floors from that to that flag pole, first. Then you can tell us about how the stars on the flag will be embroidered.

We're kind of sticklers for building things that way, as a recipe for some chance of success.

Just saying.

Hospital?

Where are you going to get your trusted doctors and nurses? (You ain't got those? You ain't got a "hospital.")

Where will you get your supplies, particularly medicines, in quantities of which you have no wild idea? (No medicines, in quantities approaching "metric fuckton"? No medicines, no hospital, even if you had the entire medical personnel available of the United States.)

The other supplies, from food to linens to sanitation to mortuary to consumable supplies (bandages, etc.) that you'll need every single day forever? Like rust, infection never sleeps.

Go to the local big-city hospital. Now, tell me how you'll be hiding that. Show all work.

Now, tell me the supply chain to get all that stuff, and keep it coming. From Wherever to You. Again, show all work.

This is like telling me how to operate the automatic body welder to make a Ferrari, without having a car factory. Or steel. Or tires. Or gasoline. You get the idea.

Amateurs talk tactics. Hobbyists talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.

So, did you really want to talk about the weather, or just make chit-chat?

You wanna get into the real details? Cool. We've gone into it a time or three regarding bare-bones starting points. We've barely touched the tip of the iceberg, but you'd better start off by recognizing that iceberg before you hit it, and we welcome bigger and wider discussions.

Which you'd better have, at least with yourselves, if you want to do something besides kill your own people.

(We leave the greater question of "Partisan Medics? How about you start with some Partisans first?" for another discussion, another time.)

GAZPROM Scores Own Goal

 

You'd think Putin would slow down as he runs out of toes...

Puton (and certain web knuckleheads gargling his junk) are playing checkers.

The rest of the world is playing chess.

(Fortune) A gamble by Kremlin-backed Gazprom to blackmail Europe into paying for gas in rubles shook markets but may have backfired, as Brussels vowed to end its Russian energy dependency.

The stunt was all the excuse EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen needed to justify her decision last month to strike new import deals for liquified natural gas from reliable allies including the United States.

"It comes as no surprise that the Kremlin uses fossil fuels to try to blackmail us," she told reporters on Wednesday. "But Russia is only hurting itself."

Von der Leyen meanwhile warned Moscow it could expect further reprisals as the 27 member-bloc was hard at work on a sixth package of sanctions -- purported to include an embargo of Russian crude oil. 

"The era of Russian fossil fuels in Europe is coming to an end."

Gazprom cutting off supplies in spring has far less effect than it might have had in winter, and gives Europe all summer to come up with alternative supplies, while simultaneously cutting Russia's throat by depriving them of actual hard currency in exchange, just at the time they need the money to pay for Puton's military debacle.

Like we told the Internet Retard Platoon yesterday.

Listening to idiots with the foresight of gnats is always its own reward. They're so proud of saying A will lead to B, they forget to check what happens from B to Z.

And when you cut supplies of something as if you run a monopoly, but you don't run a monopoly, all you do is invite all your competitors to give you a sharp shove in the back, over the cliff. Like every OPEC member has done to their fellows since ever. So here.

GAZPROM demands rubles: Big Oil gains customers.

Well-played.

Remedial Economics For Midwits

 

This will work about as well as China dropping the dollar, which they hold over $1T of in debt, which would effectively be like setting it on fire.

People not bright enough to grasp this in 0.2 seconds, without having it explained to them in pictures, should probably stick to trying to learn how to make balloon animals.

I know: maybe explain to the class how OPEC jacking oil prices crushed the U.S. in 1973, and America never recovered from the blow. I'll wait over here while you do that.

Ditto for the financial fucktards who think the ruble is stronger, when in fact it's worth 9% less now than it was on Jan 1st this year. It's only improved from its all-time bottom value on March 7th, when it was worth only 50% of its value compared to January 1st. In short, the ruble went from being a joke currency (since ever), to being Weimarbux, and has now returned from the abyss to only being joke currency again.

Russia trying to claim the ruble was gold backed (which it isn't, and never will be)? Desperation to stave off total economic ruin. Boob bait for the bubbas. And it still cost them 9% of value in real terms. Before inflation kicked in worldwide.

Well-played, financial soopergeniuses.

In 5, 4, 3, 2...

 

Moar Winning

 

How many times can one guy cleat himself in his own junk?

Fresh from having to withdraw half of his invading armies from Ukraine after their failed bid to capture Kyiv, in order to reinforce the other half in the south, going into the fourth week of declaring victory in Mariupol, and the mysterious fire, explosion, and sinking of his capitol's namesake cruiser Moskva (coincidentally right after Ukraine launched two AS missiles at it), this week Vlad's forces turn their winning ways to a major foreign policy win.

After ostensibly starting the war because he believed Russia had the right to dictate Ukraine's foreign policy, and prevent them from joining NATO, because Vlad didn't want NATO right on the Russian border, his willful, ruthless, and wanton destruction of Ukrainian cities has led century-long neutral Sweden, and usual neutral Finland, to seriously consider formally applying to join NATO. Putting NATO forces right on the Russian border.

The last time in world history we saw a leader so ham-fistedly stupid about getting exactly what he didn't want, it was Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait, and getting himself ultimately hung after being pulled out of a hole in the ground, getting his country devastated by a decade-plus war fought in its streets and villages, and seeing tens of thousands of his citizens killed.

We're not entirely positive about this, but it seems pretty certain that Puton's closest adviser on how to succeed is Charlie Sheen.

And for bonus points, one of Puton's generals clarified that conquering Ukraine and dragging it kicking and screaming back into a restored Soviet Union wasn't the full extent of the plan, but that the next target would be to grab Transnistria and Moldova too.

Putting NATO forces on the Russian border.

That should definitely be a great way to calm the fears of NATO nations, and make them happy to welcome back their new peace-loving Russian neighbors.

The main thing thwarting this whole plan from coming to fruition seems to be the continued incompetence of the Russian army, who seems to have misplaced a couple of more generals at the front lines this week, for a total of nine senior commanders transitioning from animal to compost.

Biden Math

 h/t 90 miles

SoCal Man Arrested For Allegedly Threatening Dictionary Co.

 

Over their definition of "female".

It wasn't me.

Dude: decaf. Prozac might not be a bad idea either.

And definitely should be looking up dumbass.

For more serious matters than this, some timeless advice from Tuco:

Sunday Music: Southern Cross

 

Stephen Stills reworked another tune into CSN's Top Twenty hit from 1982 (no one, including the Bloghost, misses Neil Young, and I've also heard a Southern man don't need him around, anyhow), which also features back-up vocals by Art Garfunkel, and Eagles bass player Timothy B. Schmidt. CSN was moving into their third decade of hit-making, which we choose as we begin revisiting acts that rate a second offering for our weekly track selection.

Things That Aren't Happening, for $500, Alex

Elsewhere on the 'net, someone posted a video by Garand Thumb on the "Basics Of Urban Combat Survival" etc.

It's informative, and not wrong at all, except for one thing:

If there's urban combat, and you're there, you already dun f**ked up.

If there's Urban Combat, the survival basics are simple: GTFO. Faaaaaar away.

If you can't get out, survival is going to devolve down to 

1) Got water? Forever?

2) Got metric craptons of food?

3) Got everything else you're going to need, for a decade or longer?

4) Got a place no one can find, for years, and thus not blow up or poison, where you can enjoy 1, 2, and 3?

5)Yes? ROWYBS

6) No? Settle your affairs; you're going to die. Soon.

I just saved you 28:49 of watching something that won't apply to you (at least not long enough to make it interesting). Because there's no do-over, no respawn point, no nothing.

There's alive, and there's dead.

If you're in a military force, there's always urban combat. There are field manuals on that. Urban Survival? Not so much.

Urban combat looks like Mariupol. Stalingrad. Dresden. Hiroshima. The survivors are the ones who left. Early. Or are dug in so deep, no one will ever find them for a decade, when they pop back up. (And if they're really lucky, when that happens, they aren't shot on sight, either on purpose, or by mistake.)

You want to plan for surviving short-term urban unrest for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or so, go ahead on.

But months or more of urban combat? Fuggedaboudit.

You might as well study tsunami survival in Fukushima, or volcano survival in Pompeii.

The survivors GTFO.

This is Commander Zero Survival Rule 1: 

Big problem? Be Somewhere Else.

It's why Ol' Remus told you for years on the Old Woodpile Report "Avoid crowds."

There are definite problems in the country. But it's doable, with some effort.

Think about Sgt. Horvath's final briefing on the LC in Saving Private Ryan: "Five men is a juicy opportunity. One man is a waste of ammo."

In the city? If you ain't the Big Bad Wolf, you're just one of the piggies. And a brick house simply isn't going to cut it.

Related: I read where Russia is still attacking and bombarding Mariupol, which they claimed victory over pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks. Just like we kept attacking and bombing Rome and Paris two weeks after we liberated them in WWII, right? And like the Russians kept shelling Berlin after it fell to them. Oh wait, that never happened. So apparently, though Moscow keeps using the word "victory", it do not think it means quite what they think it means.

Have they shelled most of it into rubble? Unquestionably. It's not moving very fast, so hitting it seems to be within their skillset. Look at this post's header: that's Mariupol.

Are they victorious there? Obviously, not quite as much as they keep saying they are.

Color me shocked.

And we know Moskva won't be docking there for shore leave anytime soon, either.

Bummer.

How many more such "victories" can Russia absorb? Stay tuned.

And Another Thing

 

We commented on this at the time, but let it lay. Wholly apart from the facts of why and how it was totally unnecessary and entirely superfluous for Ukraine to get USN help in sinking Moskva (and let's face it, the ham-fisted "explanations" of how the Ukes didn't do it by Russia sound less convincing than your five year old's story about the man who came in the window and tore the house up, then ran away before Mom and Dod got home), Russia has a much bigger problem regarding their Black Sea Fleet.

The Ukrainian Neptune missile system is a monstrously huge pain in their ass, going forward. 

The entire US and allied militaries, with ten times the combat and intelligence resources of the current Russian Army on their best day, couldn't stop Saddam from dropping SCUD missiles in Israel during GW I, try as they might. Two different Special Forces teams, one Brit SAS, and one US Army SF, in epic tales, were compromised and beaten to doll rags trying to hunt down those launchers.*

In a country that's mostly pool-table flat, and barren as the arctic tundra.

The Iraqis evaded the entire US Air Force and American and Brit satellite surveillance, combined. They hid the TEL trucks in wadis under bridge culverts, FFS.

The Uke Neptune system is far easier to hide, in a country far less amenable to recon and air strikes than western Iraq was in 1990.

We dedicated whole air squadrons to doing nothing but SCUD hunting, back when our Air Farce, even just in-country in Saudi, was yuuuuuuuge. And hit damned near nothing for our trouble.

Vlad's got a serious problem on his hands.

If you're wondering, here's the Neptune Danger Zone in the Black Sea, in orange:

All that area, at minimum, can be hit with Neptune missiles fired from land that Ukraine controls.

That means that Russian warships can be hit almost as soon as they sail out of their home port at Sevastopol.

The only limiting factors are naval over-the-horizon (OTH) intelligence, and the supply of Neptune missiles available to Ukraine. 

At the equivalent of $500K@, you want to hit capital ships with them, not patrol boats.

That'd be cruisers and destroyers.

And if Russia pulls those ships outside that fan to safety, they've effectively given up on naval support, and the Black Sea Fleet is a non-issue for Ukraine, UFN. In chess, that's losing a castle or two, in the opening moves.

And if the Ukrainians are the sneaky little shits they've been so far, they bait a couple of decoy launchers, and wait to bushwhack the attacking Russian aircraft when they show up.

In warfare, when properly conducted, there are no fair fights; you want to be the hunter going after baby harp seals with a club.

This is what winning actually looks like when your enemy is not ready for prime time.

*(Side note: both teams were compromised by kids herding goats, much like the SEAL team two decades later in Lone Survivor. You'd think in twenty years' time, someone in special forces would have learned that lesson, and come up with TTPs and ROEs for dealing with nosy kids stepping on your recon team, but you'd obviously be wrong there.)

Every Blogger, Every Day

 

And it's never  a Baby Ruth bar.

I allow Anon posting here, because I generally don't want people to have to register with Gulag or anyone else. But own what you write: sign your posts. The people too chickenshit to do at least that generally don't have anything worth listening to anyways, and are understandably too pigeon-livered to claim it.

Or just go crap in someone else's pool. Trust me: no one will ever miss your input. Or your output.

Butthurt, because that's too spot-on? DLTDHYITAOYWO.

For The Slow Learners

 

If this is what you see every morning in your bathroom mirror,
this post is for you. Anyone else, go ahead on with
whatever you were doing.

Literally out of sheer pity, and so as to not be seen kicking retarded kids, is today's tutorial on maritime search.

We bring this up because of the globally stupid (and largely anonymous) commentary regarding recockulous assertions that the US was fingering Russia's Moskva cruiser for the Ukrainians, who then shot gaping holes in it with a couple of their Neptune AS missiles, which would be their second or third time being used ever operationally, AFAIK.

For those with military, engineering, or DoD expertise, who already realize how unlikely and improbable that scenario sounds, my sincere condolences. I feel your pain.

So, by the numbers:

I. The Pigeon

Russian Federation Cruiser Moskva. Originally the lead ship and namesake of the Soviet Slava class of cruisers. Launched in 1979, 611 ft long, about 10,000 tons, with a top speed of 32 knots. Recommissioned as the Moskva (121) under the re-organized Russian Federation in 2000, after sitting idle at dockside for 10 years, and the flagship of their Black Sea Fleet. Originally designed as something to go after Americanski aircraft carriers, it's armed with air, surface, and subsurface search and attack capabilities, which included 6 Russian CIWS anti-missile gatling gun-style defensive systems, and manned by about 475 officers and crew.

II. The (likely) Hunter

The Ukrainian-developed R-360 Neptune missile is a rocket-assisted subsonic anti-ship cruise missile, derived from the Soviet-era Kh-35 (which was nicknamed the "Harpoonski", being a pretty close copy of the USN Harpoon, in size, weight, configuration, etc.). 

The Uke design added a rocket booster to get increased range, in this case, out to about 190 miles, but the basic missile still hums along at about 30' above the waves. At a programmed point, the active radar-seeker head turns on, locking onto the target at about 20 miles range (at the horizon), whereupon it drops to about 12' over the water, and bores straight in until it hits the target with a 300# penetrating high-explosive fragmentation warhead. (The American Harpoon pops up, and does a terminal dive down into the ship it hits, by contrast.) It's only designed to kill ships up to 5,000 tons, (about half of Moskva's size), which would explain why two of them would have been fired, to ensure sufficient damage for sinking the target.

The Ukes first deployed it only in March of 2021, and it's designed to be fired from heavy truck launchers from up to 15 miles inshore, and out to 175 miles out to sea.

III. The Unlikely Bird Dog (?)

As introduced yesterday, the P-8 Poseidon, USN's land-based ASW/maritime patrol plane, since 2020.

Based on Boeing 1994 upgrade of their 1969 design 737 jetliner, flies to a service ceiling of 41,000', with a working range of about 1300 miles.

It took off from Italy, proceeded to the Romanian Black Sea coast, and could be presumed to be doing long slow racetracks of that 100 miles length, safely within NATO airspace, observing the Show to the east and northeast.

It can spot a sub periscope with its surface search radar at 29 miles, and see targets the size of a full container cargo ship (radar cross section of 10,000² meters), or the supercarrier USS Nimitz, at 220 miles. The Moskva, with an RCS about 1/3rd that size, would have to be commensurately much closer in to be identifiable, probably something more like 65 miles, under best conditions (i.e. search a/c at max altitude, and Moskva broadside). Degrade either or both those conditions, and the detection and tracking range to the target gets shorter still.

If radar abilities were a simple line graph (and they're not) the graph for the P-8's abilities would look like this:

But they're not, and that line is a curve. not a flat plot, meaning it's even worse than that, even with the new high-speed low-drag whizbang radars now deployed by Poseidons.

The actual plot of that curve, i.e. how deep the fall-off is and what ranges, I leave to practical physicists: Raytheon is looking for you.

If you can and do name the actual plot for the Poseidon's AN/APY-10 radar, the FBI, DIA, and CIA would like to have a chat with you.

The other problem is those ranges are based on max altitude; the lower the flight, the worse the capabilities of the radar to see anything. And the P-8 operates anywhere from 1000' to 41,000', and everywhere in between. Lacking a MAD boom, it doesn't need to get down in the surf spray like the P-3 Orion did, but at some point, like certain weapons or sonobouy deployments, lower than 41K' is going to be their go-to choice.

Which degrades the radar's visibility. Which also pushes the detection zone on the earlier graph down as well.

Flying a racetrack surveillance pattern from well back inside Romanian airspace, so as not to be misidentifed by either side as a hostile aircraft adjoining an active war zone, the Poseidon's radar acquisition and tracking range would be further degraded, and spotting Moskva would have been iffy in the best case, and simply beyond its capabilities for much of that track.

Open sources pinpointed her (him to Russian ship conventions) on satellite imagery after the explosion, at 45°10'43.49" N, 30°55'30.54" E.

That location is miles away from where the WSJ reported the ship was when it exploded.

And the WSJ report also fits the suggested operating area available to anyone on the internet after April 7th, at the same prior source. (Which would rather obviously include the entire Ukrainian military and intelligence establishments.)

This information is provided so that people who read one sales brochure and stay at a Holiday Inn Express once, and then think that a P-8 can detect troops in the open and sub periscopes at 250 mile ranges, can helpfully pop their heads out of their asses, and unfuck themselves. Surface search radar doesn't work like that.

This is the difference between IRL, and your XBox and PlayStation games.

To date, Russia maintains that the Moskva had an unexplained fire and explosion in a ship's magazine space, and sank while being towed back to port in a storm, which all worldwide weather reports have failed to identify as ever existing. (Two Neptune AS missiles up your ass will bring about a similar result, btw.)

And the Neptunes could have been aimed out to sea "to whom it may concern", or using drones to relay targeting information, or even just nothing more timely than that Naval News open-source report, and simply locked onto the biggest target out there, sailing around fat, dumb, and happy, and totally oblivious that they were meat on the table.

Apparently, the chaff decoy launchers and 6 CIWS mounts on Moskva performed just about as well in actual combat as any other component of the Russian forces have done since this war began. Sux to be Vlad. Or worse yet, one of his military minions. "Russian Warship, go f**k yourself!" turned out to be rather prophetic, in the event.

Thus obviating any need for the US Navy to see things beyond its ability, explaining why they had no explanation for a sea-skimming missile attack, or what happened to make Moskva explode, and therefore absolving the entire US chain-of-command from the command-and-control and liaison nightmares inherent in trying to get real-time maritime surveillance intel captured, verified, downlinked, translated, and funneled to the guy in the truck pushing the red button on those missiles, which task is one helluva lot harder than it sounds. Ask anyone who's ever done anything in the actual .Mil that's even 1/10th that complicated, or anyone who's ever worked with the government at pretty much any operational level.

Yet Again: Nope.

h/t WRSA 

Smoking gun, or smoking crack?

Yeah, no.

Natzsofast, Guido.

The referenced Mail article gets most of its exercise by making YUUUUUGE leaps of assumption to get from A to Z.

Facts:

1) A US P-8 was monitoring events from within NATO airspace on the Romanian Black Sea coast the day Moskva went all explodey.

2) Its detection range on ships is "over 100 miles" per the article. (Per the Navy, its radar can see Nimitz-class targets broadside from 222 mi. away. But Moskva is only a third of that size even from broadside, so the P-8's ability to see it would be appreciably much shorter range. IOW, it would have trouble picking out the Moskva at even 70 miles even under ideal conditions, let alone average field conditions.)

That's it. That's all the Mail knows, and from which it extrapolated (from somewhere deep in its underpants) the whole "US aircraft targeted Moskva for Ukrainian forces" fairytale. Which is how the sausage gets made.

Outright Lies In The Mail

1) Despite the Mail's recockulous claims, Russia has made no such "admission" that enemy action took out Moskva. Any such claim is pure bullshitting on their part.

2) The US Navy has made no admissions regarding supplying weapons targeting information to Ukraine, nor would they confirm nor deny any such thing, this side of anyone finding snowballs in Satan's underpants. The US hasn't even said it's supplying any intelligence information whatsoever, nor has any other NATO member. The is the dog that isn't barking.

Obvious Problems

1) No one (who's telling) knows exactly where Moskva was located when it exploded. Which is kind of vital.

2) Reports vary: one puts Moskva "roughly 60 miles south of Odessa" and sailing east after the explosion, another puts it "roughly 75 miles away from Odessa".

3) That's a lot of blank blue real estate. 75 miles from Odessa to Sevatopol on a straight line puts it east of where the US Navy P-8 could probably even have detected it. 60 miles directly south of Odessa puts it at the edge of that possible detection range.

4) Neither the ship nor the A/C in question, before nor after the attack, was just sitting there like a duck in a bathtub, nor hovering stationary in the sky. Moskva was moving at anything between 10 and 30 knots. And presumably under some Russian variation of EMCON, to limit its electronic signature.

5) Ditto for the converted Boeing 737-800ERX that's the basis airframe for the P-8. Even at a slow loiter, it would be doing racetracks towards and away from the war zone, at anything near 200 knots (230MPH). Meaning within twenty minutes when headed away from point of nearest approach on the downstream leg, the Navy P-8 couldn't see Moskva even if it had beached itself on the tip of the Romanian coast. And at best detection location, it would be moving away a 4 miles/minute at least 50% of the time. (And realistically, any surveillance aircraft with squawk turned off isn't going to cut right up to the limit of the border of a nation that's an active war zone unless they want to try out their parachutes and life rafts. So figure they were already pulled back 10-20 miles for bare common sense reasons, which limits their target detection range even more.)

Speculation, Recockulous Speculation, And Wild ASSumptions

1) It's possible, and not unlikely, that the US and NATO are sharing some degree of intelligence with Ukraine. We stayed officially neutral in the Falklands War, but we were absolutely supplying satellite intel to Britain the entire time. It's presumptive that we're doing the same or similar with Ukraine now, though no one anywhere has admitted to any such thing. Nor will, for some years to come, unless they've got a hankering to see federal SuperMax prison from the inside.

2) It's highly unlikely we're supplying real-time targeting information, down to bearing and range, to the minute-of-cruiser standard, with any kind of near zero time-lag necessary to achieve hits. We have trouble doing that now between our own aircraft and our own troops on the ground. There's almost no way in hell we're doing it from the US Navy to the Uke Navy or ground command in real time, with the requisite degree of accuracy.

3) The ocean area of uncertainty in question is over 2000 square miles of flat blue water, 45 degrees apart from each other at the extremes. Surface-to-surface anti-ship missiles like the Neptune have a narrow cone of targeting success, and this on a target likely maneuvering at 20 knots or more. IOW, you could point one a mile or five off, and still get acquisition and hits. But you can't be shooting a missile from Scranton PA at Philadelphia, and get a hit on a target that's actually in NYFC, which is an exactly comparable degree of 1:1 scale.

4) Even if we were sending real-time intel, and dead-on balls-accurate targeting information to the Ukes at the speed of light to enable a successful attack, this is absolutely NOT tantamount to an act of war upon Russia.

a) US aircraft have been monitoring the situation since Feb. 25th. It's a little late to blow the rape whistle now, given the total dearth of any other such sinkings to try and prove a pattern. And you don't just wake up one day and decide to sink a cruiser, because somebody got a wild hare up their ass; neither in the US Navy, nor the Ukrainian defense forces. The very suggestion breaks the world record for the long jump by its very suggestion, and requires a level of inter-operability we have trouble pulling off with Canada or Great Britain in peacetime exercises, under ideal conditions, let alone with a non-NATO member amidst a war of survival.

(It might be exactly what happened, despite the extremely long odds against, and will make a fascinating never-before-revealed story in 75 years or so, but right now, on the merits, it's like inventing an entire dinosaur out of whole cloth after finding one bare tooth, or pulling globull warming out of your underpants, or Biden votes out of suitcases.)

b) Russia has categorically denied any enemy involvement on the conversion of Moskva from cruiser to submarine. No crime, no victim. QED

c) From 1966 to 1975, Russian surveillance "trawlers" sat 50 feet outside the coastal ADIZ of Guam, on a direct bearing from Andersen AFB to Hanoi, and radioed the departure of every B-52 headed to North Viet Nam, including heading and speed information, to give the NVA AA gunners and missileers exact time-of-arrival of US airstrikes headed to (then) North Viet Nam.

They did the same exact thing around the clock with trawler surveillance of every carrier sortie at Yankee Station launching air strikes from the ocean into the North for the entire duration of the war.

US pilots knew this 24/7/365, inclusive, for that entire conflict.

We lost 17 B-52s in combat over North Vietnam, and 102 aircrew killed, captured, or MIA, and literally hundreds of Navy and Marine Corps carrier-based aircraft were lost as well, with commensurately larger numbers of American aircrew killed, captured, or missing in action. At no point did anyone, anywhere seriously suggest that what the Russians were doing was casus belli, nor WWIII, nor did we increase our DEFCON level even one step in response. The Russians can eat shit on this: sauce for the goose is good for the gander. And they'd first have to trot out a new explanation for how their precious cruiser got all explodey, and then prove a causal link, which neither the USN nor Ukraine is inclined to hand them on a platter.

Short answer: Wild assumptions that any such thing took place are only missing one key thing: any evidence whatsoever to make it not only likely, but inevitable, that the story the Mail pulled out of their underpants is not only possible, but inevitably and necessarily likely.

Not. Happening.

None of that means Vlad isn't going to go all WWIII unhinged at any point (he'e pretty fucking far from sane as it is). But he'll have to be doing it out of pure unadulterated paranoia, without a shred of proof, nor even likelihood). But that's been the case every day since February 24th, and it says more about Puton's raging fulminant psychosis than it does about what's actually happened.

I don't just throw darts at a board to come up with this. That's analysis based on the facts in evidence. If you've got a counter-argument that's more than gainsaying, and not mined from pure-grade diaper spackle, trot it out, and let's see how it sounds.

Sunday Music: Christ The Lord Is Risen Today

 

It's not about bunnys and chocolate eggs. Bigger things are afoot.

Revell Releases New Moskva Model Kit

h/t Every Blade Of Grass

I don't care who you are, that's funny. 

Tired Of All The Winning

 

"Hey, Vasily, what's that buzzing?"

"I don't hear nothing, Alexei, is probably just your imagina-" 

FOOM! FOOM! KABOOM!!

Always beware the FOOM.

We bring this up, because Someone, over on Peter's BRM blog and here, assured all and sundry most earnestly, from their fund of subject-matter expertise, that this was utterly unpossible, ELEVENTY, forever. Just a couple/three years back, if we recollect correctly. (And this isn't the first such video from Ukraine on the topic; it's more like about the tenth one we've noticed.)

We share it now because by all evidence, we still live on in someone's head, rent free, in perpetuity, and we hope he likes the piss taste this news will impart to his cornflakes.

I guess the Ukes didn't understand that arming OTS prosumer drones with AT grenades was unpossible, so they just went ahead and did it.

When Mohammed does it with a thermite grenade - milspec or homemade - on a POL tank, that will be unpossible too, apparently.

Despite the fact we told you it was going to happen.

We think that such soopergenius-level prognostication is akin to a Chinese fireworks maker in the First Century A.D. thinking "Why would anyone ever want to use this powder as a weapon of war?" But we're cynical like that.

Get in on the betting pool: place your markers in Comments.

When will common sense and obvious logical progression overcome "It can never be so"?

RELATED

Spring Is Sprung

 

The area nearby, far from the nonsense and stupidity of Lost Angeles, is blessed with abundant parks, and this morning I took advantage of beautiful springtime weather to enjoy one such.

Birdwatchers and waterfowlers alike will be happy to know that the next generation of Candian Geese is secure, with multiple breeding pairs shepherding herds of 3,4, or 5 quail-sized goslings, fuzzy and yellow, all over the lawns until they're big enough to fly off and return home for the summer.

Wood ducks (our personal favorite, for their brilliant plumage) and mallards were in abundance too, though no ducklings among them as yet, but a number of hens nested points to their imminent arrival. 

And a pair of khaki Campbell ducks apparently stopped off here to bring up quite the large brood, which mini-flock was patrolling the lawns for insects, and the occasional leftover picnic fare.

I came upon a painted turtle hurriedly mounding sand over her nest eggs in a sunny spot, so provided the skunks and raccoons don't find it first, the ponds thereabouts will also be well-supplied with turtleage for some years to come. 

And saw a large smooth softshell turtle out of the water sunning itself; I didn't even know they had introduced those there until today. I had to look it up to even identify it, and it's probably not native to the area.

I hated to leave, but it's refreshing to note, when one spends far too much time amidst concrete, that nature has her own rhythms and seasons, and takes little notice or account of the manifest foolishness of the human race.

We Wuz Robbed

 h/t Odd Job

Send shirt size and $1400 to this blog for your own shirt.

Paranoia Will Destroy Ya

 

1) Moving nukes closer is bluster. All they do is change the flight time - for the tactical nukes - from 4 minutes to 3 minutes. Big whoop.

2) When the entire rest of the continent, and most of the world is convinced you're dangerously batshit crazy, waving a loaded gun around and megalo-maniacally threatening them with it isn't likely to calm them down. It is likely to confirm all their worst fears about you, down to their marrow. And Russian military and territorial aggression, coupled with manifest military ineptitude, (which wasn't the case in 1950, or even 1980), is making that decision an easy one to make

3) When threatening your neighbors is your go-to response for everything you don't like, they're going to devote every waking moment to doing the opposite of what you want, and the first chance they get, they're going to throw a net over you, disarm you for good, forever, and lock you in a lunatic asylum until you die. True for people, true for nations.

4) Russia's less-than-proficient military performance is liable to let everyone in on that secret, and make generals everywhere think that attacking Russia to depose Putin is a lemon worth the squeezing.

5) Defending those additional borders saps more military resources Russia doesn't have to spare even now. Go Vlad, go! Shoot your other foot: it's got bells on.

Putin's ambitions to re-establish the "glory" of Russia under International Socialism is blowing up in his face. Figuratively today, and literally tomorrow. The sooner someone in Russia shoots the sonofabitch in the head and unloads the entire magazine there, the safer the world gets for the next 50 years. And if the Russians won't do it, the West is inevitably going to step up to the plate, and they're going to hedge him in with a fence of swords and spears against which he cannot prevail, and so formidable he'll never dare try. Russia is going to become the Carthage of the 21st century, and it's all because of Putin. China is going to dine on Russia's entrails, from Siberia halfway to Moscow. And Moscow's future? To become Mariupol.

Mining the Cornucopia of Fail is something Putin can continue to do for some good amount of time. But not without consequence. And not forever.

Introducing the Poopypants-bot 2022

h/t Weasel Zippers

You have to see this to believe it:

Watch The Whole Thing

Poopypants turns to shake hands with no one, then has a conversation with his Imaginary Friend and the Voices In His Head until, after multiple aborted tries to find the exit, blabbering to No One all the while, he wanders off the stage and into the sunset...

Ongoing showdown with Russia.

Nuclear launch codes.

"Leader of the Free World".

Fraudulently installed illegitimate occupant.

Full. Blown. Advanced. Alzheimer's.

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?!?

Sleep tight, kids.

Napkin Barf-Bag Math

 h/t BCE twice

For the Common Core math grads, inflation like that is cumulative month-over-month, versus trending against an annual baseline.

Think moon launch, not jet take-off.

Assuming that meme is accurate (we have little reason to doubt it), this is a crash warning.

(If it's overstating things because whoever made it misstated the reality, it's rampantly recockulous. We advise you to check it against facts, and see for yourself. We suspect it's spot-on.)

That means that something that cost $1 last Oct 31st, isn't now going for $1.08½ , it's actually now running at $1.44.

(Which accords with companies like Kraft Foods jacking all prices up 30% and announcing another 30% jump, not to mention gasoline going from $2.50/gal to over 5.00/gal.)

IOW, inflation for the last five months is 43.8%. Which trendline predates the opening of hostilities in Ukraine, for the historically moronic, by some nearly four months. Biden didn't do this. FDR did this. Truman did. Eisenhower did. Kennedy did. Johnson did. Nixon did. Carter did. Reagan did. Daddy Bush did. Clinton did. Dubbya did. Obozo did. Trump did. Biden and Puton just gave the car a last little push over the cliff.

And note the trend: 

inflation is getting bigger, with every passing month.

That's the difference between sliding over the edge, and falling to terminal velocity.

Annualized, that means that by next year, what you bought for $1 this January 1st, will cost you $2.74 by next January. Every dollar you're holding now will be worth 37¢ in a year.

That's Weimar rates, headed for Zimbabwean rates, of inflation. If the monthly rates increase, think MOAR! Bigger! Faster!

(Assuming it doesn't stop. And it probably couldn't, even if we wanted it to.)

It's unlikely your salary is going to go up 274% this year.

If you need to run off to the bathroom to vomit, we understand.

That collapse, and the attendant problems everyone said would never come? 

And this penny still hasn't dropped in Normieland. 

Meaning you still have a brief moment or two to not go down in flames, before everyone figures it out.

Do you want to buy at things at $1.44 now, or wait for $2.74 (or worse; remember the monthly jumps are trending bigger each month, nor staying the same) later?

Suture self.

 

Special Underwater Operation Underway

 

(BLACK SEA) In what Russian military spokesholes would certainly describe as a "special underwater deployment", the Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, and one of the largest ships in the Russian Navy, had a fire in one of its ammunition storage bays, exploded, and reportedly sank off the coast of Ukraine.

Per Russia, all hands (500 or so) managed to miraculously escape the flaming coffin, with no loss of life.

Ukraine, meanwhile, which has no navy, reports that they fired two home-developed Neptune anti-ship missiles at Moskva shortly before its new underwater deployment, which may have had a wee bit to do with its subsequent explosion, and new permanent duty station, several hundred meters below the surface of the Black Sea.

So apparently, during all that "winning" the Russians were doing when they were shelling defenseless civilians and their cities into rubble, nobody on the Russian staff thought that taking out Ukraine's anti-shipping missiles with airstrikes was a good idea. Or more likely, they simply couldn't function at that level of competence. Yet again, oversights like that underlines the Turd World-amateur status of the entire Russian military machine.

Remember this level of Baghdad Bob silliness from Russian spokesholes the next time they withdraw half their army and march home with their tails between their legs, after declaring "we meant to not capture the capitol of Ukraine despite 40 days of trying with over 100,000 90,000 troops, and almost no one has died in this operation".

Putin fanboys will be dismayed to learn that the Russians have admitted that the cruiser Moskva has, in fact, been completely abandoned after the fire and explosions.

Dear Russian squids: Welcome to the major league.

So you can either believe the Russian navy is so spontaneously stupid and incompetent that they managed to set fire to their own ship's onboard ammunition and sunk it; or you can conclude that they couldn't defend their flagship from two incoming Ukrainian missiles. Dealer's choice.

Maybe it was just pining for the fjords.

UPDATE:

It sunk. Like we told you.

Like the RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY told you:

Russian state news agency TASS reported Thursday evening that the guided-missile cruiser Moskva had sunk, citing a statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense.

“During the towing of the cruiser Moskva to the port of destination, the ship lost its stability due to hull damage received during a fire from the detonation of ammunition. In the conditions of stormy seas, the ship sank,” the statement said, according to TASS.

If anyone out there is finding it hard to speak intelligently, maybe remove Putin's genitals from your mouth. For a start. Then pull your heads out, and remove the clown shoes and parti-colored bejingled fool's cap. Unless you were going for comedy relief from the get-go.