Russia’s Greatest Weapon is not a Weapon

December 03, 2021

by Dmitry Orlov, posted with permission of the author

An ultimately very healthy but in the meantime very unpleasant realization is gradually dawning in West—an insight that is simply shocking, that fundamentally alters their picture of the world: that the stronger becomes the hurricane of woke transformations that is raging there, the more attractive Russia becomes for hundreds of millions of Europeans and Americans. What is Russia’s most powerful weapon? Is it nuclear? Is it hypersonic (or “hydrosonic,” as per Trump)? Cybermagic, perhaps? No, Russia’s most powerful weapon is its values. And it grows stronger and more dangerous every day, in direct proportion to the intensifying fire of multiculturalism and political correctness that is raging in Europe and in America.

A recent article in The National Interest summarized various American authors who claim that the Kremlin is gradually developing its strategy of soft power and using it to successfully fight the West, splitting it and undermining it from within. What is the cause of their paranoid hysteria? Could it be that they have accidentally discovered who their true enemy is, and that it is… they themselves?

The simplest and most effective way to knock a geopolitical adversary out of the game is to impose on it a system of values ​​that will split its society and lead the most active part of its population to occupy public buildings, to erect barricades and to support a pretender to the throne that is immediately given support and recognition by the country’s enemies. This is how all color revolutions of the late 20th and the early 21st centuries have been done: broadcast some propaganda, recruit some activists, help them to organize, provide some clandestine financial support, and then at some point this human mass, confident in their strength and their righteousness, surges through the police barriers and goes on to create history by overthrowing some faux-democrat petty tyrant, clearing the path for the next faux-democrat petty tyrant to be installed, with the country growing weaker, poorer and more disordered with each iteration. The process starts with the conversion of some significant part of the target population to “universal human values” with secular proselytizing of the “one true democratic faith.”

To the extent that this could be called a game, the West had a huge head start in it. The tools for fighting the “evil empire” have been honed for half a century. In the course of fighting the Cold War, radio stations, foundations, newspapers and magazines, parties and communities, publishing houses and TV channels have been created. Virtually all of them were then repurposed from fighting against the USSR to fighting against Russia. Collapse of the USSR, it was foolishly thought, was but a first step toward destroying Russia and absconding with its crude oil, natural gas, metal ores, fertile farmland and other natural treasures. And then, just in time, new, internet-based forms of influence appeared, completely controlled from America. For a time, the combination of a huge head start and the newly weaponized internet technologies seemed overwhelming.

But then something miraculous took place.

For a long time the USSR struggled mightily to propagandize socialist ideas in the United States and in Western Europe—to no avail. In the US, from its inception as a quintessential pirate colony, centuries of being conditioned to think that good persons are good by virtue of having goodly quantities of bounty and loot in their coffers has rendered people immune to socialist values. Meanwhile, Europe—its western half after the defeat of Nazism and in its eastern after the demise of Soviet communism—have been reduced to American satrapies where American propaganda reigns supreme and ceaselessly paints Russia as backward, corrupt, despotic and generally evil. No amount of broadcasting by Russia Today and no amount of toil by Russian internet trolls would ever be able to reprogram the consciousness of a Western person. But then suddenly Russia was awarded the supreme prize, giving it attractiveness, charm and influence no one could have dreamed of.

What has suddenly transformed the situation was mass insanity into which the West has been plunged. This group madness has destroyed much of what is infinitely dear to a very significant, if not overwhelming, part of Western civilization. Those conditional “conservatives”—normal people who do not want to be forced to be ashamed of their skin color, heterosexuality, respect for religion, generally accepted morality, and so on, are now humiliated, discriminated against and persecuted by the newest crop of toxic lefties.

Here is a lovely quote from an article in the Daily Beast: “…The Kremlin intends to attract Western converts with… bigotry—turning Russia into the land of ultimate political incorrectness, the world’s anti-woke capital.” Never mind the spurious claim of Kremlin’s intent to make Russia attractive; that is akin to blaming a beauty pageant contestant for being beautiful. Never mind the spurious claim of bigotry when it comes to opposing the West’s gender dysphoria and other psychiatric symptoms; there is a perfectly valid counterclaim of a society-wide psychiatric disorder that has plenty of biological science to back it up. What’s important is that the world has flipped to its mirror image: no longer is the United States “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” Russia now is, in the eyes of the Americans themselves! No longer is it Ivan sighing enviously while dreaming of American blue jeans, Coca-Cola and rock-and-roll; it is John who is wildly jealous of the absence of black-on-white racism, dumbed-down high school curricula, laughable yet lethal accusations of sexual harassment and a rainbow of public toilets.

Russia itself could never have achieved such a high level of attractiveness merely by using its propaganda machinery (all one and a half TV channels of it). It arose by itself when traditional (i.e., white heterosexual Christian) Europeans and Americans began to compare the surrounding Bedlam with Russia’s naturalness and orderliness. And then there spontaneously arose in them a very simple feeling: to hell with past grievances; it is the future which we must make livable for ourselves and our children. In the past, Russia was an adversary, but that past ended thirty years ago, and in the present Russia is safe, secure and happier than ever while we are burning in Hell and have no idea what to do about it. But at least we have Russia to hold up as a positive example.

It must also be understood that there are no other candidates for this role. There is no LGBT insanity, sexual harassment mania or violent reverse racism in North Korea, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or China, but these examples are all far too exotic and come with toxic baggage of their own. What the persecuted white Western Christian conservative heterosexual male needs is a normal European country, full of white people, comfortable for living in, but without any of the things he hates. What other options are there? It is not a competition if there is just one contestant.

And thus we have come to the point where Russia—in all seriousness and without any irony or puffery whatsoever, really—has become the light of the world, a shining city set upon a hill, a beacon of hope, a bastion of righteousness and free spirit and the symbol of a truly free world. This is an almost magical transformation: it was able to win this exalted status outright without even playing the game. It did the barest minimum in standing its ground and in preventing a smallish faction of foreign-controlled traitors and fools from destroying their country. Theirs has remained a wholesome world of brave, masculine men, of attractive, feminine women and of their above-average, non-gender-confused children. In their world, rewards and privileges are based on merit, corrupt politicians and businessmen spend years in jail, and respect for traditional ethics and religious faith is mandatory. In their world, all of history is permanently theirs: none of it will ever be forgotten, falsified or erased—all thousand-plus years of it, including life under the Golden Horde, the serfdom, great victories of the Russian Empire, the revolutionary terror, collectivization, Stalin’s purges, the defeat of Nazism, the destruction of Western colonialism throughout Africa and Asia, the conquest of space, the national humiliation of Gorbachev’s and Yeltsin’s puppet regimes and Russia’s rebirth under Putin.

It is a world to which more and more people in the West want to escape to, leaving behind a landscape blighted by leftist vandalism and enforced repentance for the crime of being of a certain race or of daring to exhale carbon dioxide. They do not wish to subject themselves to the unholy inquisition which doles out punishments to those who remain unenthusiastic about and unsupportive of sexual perversity, gender dysphoria, the destruction of traditional families and the brainwashing of youth. Even if they cannot escape, they can take comfort in knowing that a more normal and less damaged alternative reality exists, and they can secretly sympathize with it.

What makes this transformation particularly remarkable is that ten years ago Russia’s soft power barely existed. At that time, a small but vocal opposition demonstrated in the center of Moscow, chanting “We need a different Russia.” But now hundreds of millions of French, Germans, Americans and others in the West are chanting what amounts to “We need a different West.” To the abject horror of their political elites they look to Russia—the country of extreme political incorrectness—with longing, delight and hope. These people are self-organizing into parties, uniting like-minded people in much greater numbers than the Communist International had ever been able to gather. In many countries they already exert a very significant influence on the political agenda. The more the pandemic of woke madness rages, the greater their influence will become. When this conflagration of mass insanity finally burns itself out, it is Russia that will have the civilizational seed stock with which to re-fertilize the devastated cultural landscape of the West.

In the meantime, this is already shaping up to be a Russian century. This level of soft power is something beyond anyone’s wildest dreams; it is is Putin’s judo mastery taken to the nth level. In judo, one directs one’s opponent’s own force against him; here, the opponent is directing his own power against himself while the judo master merely stands back and watches, nodding in approval. In every country that the liberals attempt to reformat to their liking, Russia automatically gains millions of fans, forcing any possible geopolitical confrontation with Russia to fade into the background before the neutralizing force of a great commonality of traditional values. Remaining passive and risking nothing, Russia has gained a myriad ways to turn the geopolitical situation to its advantage.

For a very long time the West had monopolized the dominant discourse, but now Russia has gained control of it. Needless to say, this does not go down well with those who have been accustomed to uncontested dominance. They react hysterically: by throwing around groundless accusations and insults, staging provocations, imposing toothless yet self-defeating sanctions… They will try anything that they think might help to defer the moment when they will be forced to admit the horrible truth: that they have checked themselves into an insane asylum in Hell and they can’t check out. Meanwhile, all Russia has to do is to wait patiently for the fires of Hell to consume them and to burn themselves out; because they always do. Their desperate thrashing about and threatening Armageddon is for Russia to ignore.

[Based loosely on a text by Aftershock’s SKonst published as «Страна крайней политической некорректности»: как Россия обрела «мягкую силу» во всём мире]

Many interesting developments in Russia

THE SAKER • JULY 20, 2021

Su-75 “Checkmate”

The past week has been quite intense in Russia – lots of interesting developments took place, and today I will mention three:

1. Putin wrote a very interesting essay on the history of Russia and the Ukraine, which he followed up with a very interesting interview.
2. Russia just concluded final tests for truly formidable weapons systems like the S-500 and the Mach 8 hypersonic missile Zircon.
3. In its yearly aviation salon MAKS, Russia has just presented a 5th generation, single engine light multi-functional fighter the Su-75 “Checkmate”

These are all truly huge developments for Russia which we need to look into separately.

Putin’s history of Russia and the Ukraine

First, I highly recommend that you take the time to read the full article here and the full interview here (there is no point for me to use the space here to pepper you with excerpts), especially if you are not well-acquainted with Russian history or live in Zone A. Furthermore, being the “Putin groupie and fanboy” which I so-notoriously am (guilty as charged!), I won’t surprise anybody by saying that I agree with almost every word Putin wrote or spoke. And, frankly, all the facts Putin lists are really common knowledge for most people (unless they have been brainwashed by US/Ukronazi propaganda) and there is really no point for me to repeat “yes, this is true” and “yes, he is right” over and over again.

So all I propose to do next is to just to add a few comments of mine about this article+interview (I will assume that readers will have read them both; if not, I suggest completely skipping this section),

1. First, as I just said, there is absolutely nothing new in this article for educated people. But that is not Putin’s target audience anyway. Putin’s target audience are the younger generations (in the Ukraine, the West and even, alas, Russia proper!) who know very little, if anything, about history. And while this is also true of Russia, this is especially true in the Ukraine where people have been massively brainwashed since 1917 (as Putin explains this very well in his article).
2. The real reason why this article caused such a stir in Russia and total hysterics amongst the Ukronazi nutcases (who, again, are now predicting an imminent Russian invasion, what else?) is that while these facts were known for decades, but considered very politically incorrect to mention them lest the Ukrainians get offended: from the late 80s and until now, the Ukronazis taught a very different version of history, which includes coming from the Sumerian civilization, building the pyramids in Egypt, digging the Black Sea, founding the ancient Aryan civilization, etc. Even more crucially, the official Ukronazi narrative claims that Russians and Ukrainians are completely different people (Ukies are true, pure, Aryans while Russians are Ugro-Altaic Mongols). So what Putin did with this article is simply to (finally!) proclaim that the emperor is naked and the clueless Ukies ignorant of their own history.
3. This article also marks a rather dramatic change of tone from the Kremlin. In the past the Kremlin always tried to maintain a polite and respectful attitude towards the Ukies and their Wakanda-like delusions about history. Now this is over, Russia has finally and openly decided to declare to the Ukies (and the rest of the world!) that their founding myths are based on precious *nothing* and that Russia is done treating this utter nonsense as if it has any factual basis in the adult world.

I would like to offer one more commentary on Putin’s statements.

I believe that there has been a “war of words” waged by the Ukrainian nationalists against the Russians for many decades (I remember listening to the Ukie service of RL/RFE and I was always amazed at the completely open hatred – bordering on racist bigotry – of the Ukie propaganda; even when compared to all the other national minority services of RL/RFE which, I assure you, included a lot of bone fide nutcases in many of its services) and the Russian side was mostly quiet and demure lest the Ukies get offended. That is now over, in this war of words Russia will now use her verbal ammunition to debunk the Ukronazi pseudo-historical fairy tales. I very much welcome that!

Finally, I believe that the Kremlin is already working on “post-Ze” options. Frankly, this also comes not a second too soon! The Ukraine has been in free fall for years already, but even by Ukie standards the chaos and tensions which are taking place now have grown into full scale hysterics which is both truly amazing and very concerning (I will spare you all the details now, I have enough such articles already posted, but I will probably have to revisit this slow agony in the near future). I get the feeling that the Kremlin expects a truly bona fide Nazis leader to come to power by one way or another after “Ze” (Note: while “Ze” did end up catering to the Ukronazis, he himself is most definitely not “the real thing” – he only pretends). Maybe a “President Avakov” next (no Nazi either, by the way, just a man very skilled at using Nazis)?

The bottom line is this: the final collapse of the Ukraine is what the Kremlin is now openly waiting for next. And even if “Biden” wants to force “Ze” to abide by the Minsk Agreements, this will mean the end for “Ze” and a return to full/total power of the Ukronazis. Why? There are roughly three forces in the Ukraine right now, at least apparently:

1. The regime in power (“Ze” and his gang)
2. The opposition (mostly the OPZZh party)
3. The real hardcore Nazis (you can think of them as the Ukie version of the Hutu “Interahamwe” in Rwanda

The regime is in deep agony and simply not viable.

The opposition is divided, often politically discredited and lacks both a clear leader and a clear vision.

In sharp contrast, the Ukronazis gang is small, but very well organized, very well funded and very well led (most of the “street level” Ukronazi leaders are imbeciles like Liashko or, better, Tiagnibok, but Avakov is no idiot, he is good at working with his US patrons and with the truly crazy folks like Andrei Biletskii or Aleksei Danilov.

True, in the long term the political prospects of the opposition look pretty good, as they have a few (very few?) pretty sharp leaders, and their program recommends better relations with Russia, something truly vital (literally!) for the Ukraine. But I don’t see the opposition having the strength to take on the Ukronazis just yet: first “Ze” needs to go, the Ukronazis need to seize full control of power again, and then come up with some truly crazy shit (that all Nazis are good for, as history has shown) which will break-up the Ukraine into various successor states. Only at that point will the current opposition have good political chances in the eastern and southern parts of the Ukraine. But the current situation is too complex and too fluid to take anybody’s guesses and predictions too seriously. Only time will truly show.

The S-500 and Zircon weapons systems have now been fully tested

The quick way to summarize this development is to say that both the S-500 and the Zircon have no comparable competitors anywhere in the world, not even vaguely comparable ones. Both the S-500 and the Zircon missiles are way, waaaay ahead of any other weapons system in their categories. Even better, the Empire has nothing, and really I mean absolutely nothing, it could oppose to either one of these weapons systems. And with not too much hyperbole, it would be fair to say that, once fully deployed, the S-500 will make most of the US/NATO aviation and tactical/operational and even some strategic missiles completely obsolete. As for the Zircon, it does the same thing to the USN’s surface fleet. To say that this is huge would be an understatement, especially since US/NATO force planners must now decide what to do about this, and that is no small task considering that is now becoming obvious that US/NATO force planners made some truly major mistakes in their assumptions about what the modern 21st century battlefield will really look like. Force planning deals with many immense technological and bureaucratic inertia and to “simply change course” is not “simple” at all: it typically takes decades!

I have no doubt that the US MIC propaganda machine will now talk a lot about US ‘hypersonic’ weapons and about 6th generation super-dooper aircraft. But let’s be honest here: the US hypersonic weapons program is in its infancy (at best) and is struggling. As for the USAF, it will take it many years to at least reduce the long list of major problems of the F-35, and even that is not a real solution: while I am sure that, given enough time, the USAF/USN will find a way to use this aircraft effectively (at least against non-peer adversaries), the only real solution to this ugly mess is to not only quickly revive the F-15 (in its F-15X form, which looks promising), but also to embark on the development of a 5++ generation aircraft while at the same time working on a real, truly 6th gen, successor (in the good sense of the word) for the F-35. This being said, if the F-35 proves anything, it is that the Pentagon and the US MIC are corrupt beyond what any words could express (from a purely corruption point of view the F-35 was a stunning success!) and this begs the question: can these guys even develop a halfway decent or even a good aircraft?! Or has the country which developed the superb F-16, A-10. 747 or the F-15 lost its ability to produce truly superb aircraft? I don’t know.

What do you think?

The brand new 5th generation single-engine Su-75 “Checkmate”

This is really THE news of the day! This is nothing short of earth-shattering. Let’s begin with a list of factoids I tried to collect from different sources: (since all this info was only unveiled a few hours ago, there might still be mistakes, so caveat emptor!)

• Name: Sukhoi Su-75 “Checkmate”
• High commonality with Su-57
• Single engine (crucial!)
• Top speed 2400 km/h (about 1500mph or 1300 knots or just under Mach 2)
• Thrust vectoring engines
• 30M dollars typical cost
• 5,5 years development only (using supercomputers)
• 1500km combat range
• STOL (shorter than Su-57’s about 400m)
• Max load: 7.5 tons
• Service Ceiling just under 17km
• Max load: 8+ G
• Ferry range 3000km+ (on internal fuel)
• Low RCS
• Advanced avionics and all glass cockpit
• The Belka N036 AFAR antenna with a detection range of 350-400km
• Long, medium and short range weapons for any targets
• Can engage 6 targets (in air, land, water and air defenses) simultaneously
• Will feature the long-range 30P6 air to air missile (range: about 160km)
• AI support and guidance
• Five air-to-air missiles carried internally
• Onboard advanced EW defenses
• The Su-75 has a cannon carried inside its internal sections
• There will be a pilotless version of the Su-75 (automated and remote-controlled)
• The Su-75 has advanced datalinks allowing it to operate together with other aircraft or drones
• Supercruise (not sure? Probably only in a future engine)
• The aircraft is “open architecture” (so it can be adapted to specific needs)
• Sukhoi expects to sell about 300 Su-75 in the next 15 years or so
• The Su-75 can be adapted for naval carrier use
• The target clients are the both the RAF and foreign clients (but only export versions for foreign clients).
• Its first flight is scheduled for 2023 and adoption by the RAF is, assuming a contract is confirmed, set for 2025.
• Price: 25-30 million dollars depending on specific requirements

What do I make of these characteristics? Here are some of my thoughts (keep in mind that while I did some work with the Swiss Air Force, I am not an aerospace engineer, so take all I say with at least a pound or two of salt and wait for real experts to pitch in!).

First, this is a much needed aircraft for Russia which currently does not have modern single engine combat aircraft. Currently, the “core” aircraft of the (RAF) are all big twin engines: Su-30SM, Su-35, Su-34, .etc. Even the much smaller “F-16 counterpart” has two engines. Even the (comparatively) smaller MiG-35 is a twin engine. These are all superb aircraft, but a single-engine aircraft would be much cheaper, not only to purchase, but even more so to maintain.

Second, Russia’s main weakness when compared to the US/NATO is primarily quantitative: while they are much inferior, US/NATO aircraft are produced in huge numbers the Russian industrial base and finances cannot match, at least not by producing very advanced but also very expensive aircraft a la Su-35S. The RAF needs many cheap but highly effective combat aircraft and the Su-75 might well be “the” dream machine for Russia.

Third, a single-engine 5th generation aircraft for about 30 million dollars is an extremely attractive option, especially with its open architecture. Especially when its only competitor is the truly pathetic F-35 (which is really not much of a 5th gen aircraft, at least for the foreseeable future (especially since it has fundamentally flawed core-design issues, read all about it here).

By the way, the Russians are officially denying that they wanted to make a “Russian response” to the F-35. They say that the F-35 and the Su-75 are in completely different categories and when you look at such parameters are speed, maneuverability, max load or, especially, price, you can see that the Russians are fundamentally correct: it’s not “just” that the Su-75 is a much superior aircraft, it is really in a completely different “punching weight” category.

Fourth, just like a truly effective air defense system requires different weapons systems all integrated into a single network and working together, so does tactical/operational aviation. These are the main categories the RAF needs to fill: CAS aircraft (Su-25M), strike aircraft (Su-24M and Su-34), air superiority and interceptors (Su-30SM, Su-35S), advanced long-range interceptors (MiG-31BM) and a cheap, ubiquitous and very capable “dogfighter” for the frontline aviation which can deal with enemy aircraft while also supporting the ground forces. Russian did built some very good single fighters in the past, including the MiG-23 (criticized in the West, but loved by Russian pilots) and, arguably, the most successful fighter ever built, the MiG-21. So Russians know how to do that, they just have not done that in way too many years and the appearance of the Su-75 comes “not a second too late” for the Russian military which will finally have a truly “full-spectrum” of modern, indigenously built, combat aircraft.

Here is a good image showing how similar the Su-75 and Su-57 are externally:

There were some speculations that the Russians were working on a successor for their Yak-141 VSTOL combat aircraft (which the US Americans tried to copy as a basis for their F-35 and miserably failed), but the Russians have appeared to be content with “only” STOL capabilities. Considering the catastrophic failure of the F-35B (and the non-deployment of the Yak-141) might be the wiser choice. If the Su-75 ever makes it on a carrier of some kind, short catapult-assisted take-offs is probably the wiser solution.

One last thing: for the first time in decades the Russians have (finally!) managed to keep things really hush-hush and there were almost zero leaks about the Su-75, and most of those which did happen were carefully orchestrated by the Russian authorities. I am not talking about the mass media like Argumenty i Fakty or Popular Mechanics. Even the specialized press had only a few good guesses about what this “soon to be unveiled and totally new 5th gen fighter” would look like. There were a few partial photos, some drawings, a few partial photos, all augmented by educated guesses. Not only that, but there is still a lot we don’t know, including on some really important topics like the Su-75 radar and longest range air-to-air missiles.

Conclusion:

This has been a long and important week for Russia which, I think, illustrates a few important things:

• The Russians have clearly lost lost their very last illusions about the Nazi-occupied Ukraine and are now actively preparing the “post-Ze” period.
• Putin feels the popular pressure and is embarking on a PR campaign in preparation for the next elections.
• The Russian MIC is doing better than ever and the recent Russian high-tech successes show that Russia has gone into what they call a “high-quality separation” (качественный отрыв) from the West or Asia.

All in all, this is all good news.

Will This Pandemic Finally Mark the End of the US Carrier Fleet?

THE SAKER • APRIL 16, 2020 

Frankly, I have never considered USN carrier strike groups as a “Cold War capable” element of the US Navy. Yes, in theory, there was the notion of forward deploying these carriers to “bring the war to the Soviets” (on the Kola Peninsula) before they could flush their subs and aircraft through the GUIK gap and into the Atlantic. In theory, it should have been a 600 ship navy too, but that never happened. In reality, of course, US strike groups were the ultimate “colony disciplining” instrument which Uncle Shmuel would park off the coast of a country disobedient to the demands and systematic plundering of the USA. Since most countries in the 20th century could not sink a US carrier or prevail over the comparatively advanced aircraft deployed on them, this was, all in all, a very safe game to play for the USA.

As for “bringing the war to the Soviets”, the truth is that had it ever come to a real war, the US carriers would have been kept far away from the formidable Soviet cruise missile capability (delivered simultaneously by aircraft, surface ships and submarines) for a very simple reason: every time such an attack was modeled a sufficient number of Soviet missiles successfully passed through the protective cordon around the carrier and successfully hit it with devastating results (while sinking a carrier is not that easy, damaging it and making it inoperable does not take that many missile hits).

And that was long before hypersonic missiles like the Kinzhal or the Zircon!

Truly, as an an instrument to deter or defeat the Soviets the USN strike groups were already obsolete in the 1980s, that is long before the the Russians deployed their hypersonic missiles which, as my friend Andrey Martyanov explained in his books (see here and here) and on his blog (see here), basically made the entire US surface fleet obsolete not only to fight Russia, but also to fight any country which possesses such missiles. Such countries already include India and China, but there will be many more soon, probably including Iran!

Today, however, I won’t discuss the missile issue, but what happened recently on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which you probably know about: her captain got fired for writing a letter (according to his accusers, bypassing the chain of command) asking for help because his crew got infected by the virus. His letter was published by the San Francisco Chronicle and you can read it here.

Interestingly, when the captain, Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, left the ship, his sailors gave him a standing ovation:

Next, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly called Captain Crozier “stupid. That also became public, and he had to apologize and resign (clearly, Modly is not exactly a genius himself!). Then even more of the crew of the carrier got sick, including Crozier himself!

This is what is known in the US military jargon as a “clusterbleep”…

There is, however, also a lot of interesting stuff coming out from this story.

First, the obvious: USN carriers cannot operate effectively under a bio-attack (a truly weaponized virus would both be much more transmissible than SARS-COV-2 and it would be far more deadly). This also indicates that they would probably do no better under a real chemical warfare attack either.

Considering that in reality USN carriers are a instrument of colonial repression and not ships to be engaged against the USSR (which had real biowarfare capabilities), this makes sense (while most university labs & the like could produce some kind of virus and use it as a weapon, truly weaponized viruses, the kind effectively used in special delivery systems, can only be produced by a limited list of countries). However, in theory, all the formations/units/subunits/ships/aircraft/armor/etc of a military superpower should be trained to operate in case of a nuclear, chemical and biological attack. Clearly, this is not the case with US carriers, most likely because nobody in the USA really expected such an attack, at least not during the Cold War.

For the current situation, however, I think that the lesson is clear: the USN simply does not have an effective capability to operate under NBC attack conditions.

By the way, this appears to also be true of the French, whose only carrier has 30% infected sailors!

Second, I agree that going outside the chain of command is wrong, but let’s also consider the following here: the fact that the USS Theodore Roosevelt was having a large number of infected sailors is not something which could have been kept secret anyway, especially while in port. Not only that, but how do we know that Capt. Crozier did not write other memos through the regular chain of command before he wrote the one which became public? After all, any such memos could very easily be classified and never made public.

Finally, I will admit that my sympathies are squarely with the man who placed the lives of his man and women above all else, and not with the bureaucratic drone who put procedures and ruffled feathers above the lives of sailors and called the real officer “stupid” for his actions (wait! a USN carrier captain stupid?! Somehow I don’t think so…..).

At the time of writing (April 14th) there have been 600 sailors from the Theodore Roosevelt who contracted the virus and one death.

Finally, over 4000 sailors have now been evacuated from the ship (1000 are still onboard to operate the nuclear reactor and other key systems).

In other words, the USS Theodore Roosevelt is now completely inoperable!

The quoted CNN article concludes with:

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten told reporters Thursday the US military needed to plan for similar outbreaks in the future as the Defense Department works to cope with the virus’ impacts. “I think it’s not a good idea to think the Teddy Roosevelt is a one-of-a-kind issue. We have too many ships at sea, we have too many deployed capabilities. There’s 5,000 sailors on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. To think it will never happen again is not a good way to plan. What we have to do is figure out how to plan in these kind of Covid environments,” Hyten said.

Yet more proof that the USN never took a bioattack threat seriously.

To be honest, it seems that the US Army has similar problems, here is a map of affected US bases I found on Colonel Cassad’s blog:

It appears that the US-based forces never expected any real attack (other than maybe one by terrorists equipped with small arms) so NBC security was never a priority.

Note, in Russia, at least so far (April 14th), there are zero cases of servicemen infected with the virus. This will almost inevitably change in the future, but for the time being, this is true, in spite of having Russian military units helping to fight the virus both in Russia and outside. Just saying…

However, this is not a fair comparison. First, bases located on land have far more interactions with the outside world than ships, even ships in port. Second, and much more importantly, in case of a pandemic or chemical/biological attack, bases located on land can better isolate those affected, bring in more resources or quickly disperse the personnel to better protect them. You can’t do that on a ship. In fact, the bigger the ship, the more it looks like an “armed cruiseliner” which, as we now all know, is a gigantic Petri dish.

Questions such as those above will only increase in number as the pandemic finally shed a much-needed light on the shocking reality about “the best! most powerful! best equipped! and best trained military force in the Galaxy!”: it can’t even protect itself from a relatively weak virus, never-mind defeat a competent enemy.

Will we get answers? Eventually, probably yes. But for the time being, the US is all about covering your ass while pointing fingers and blaming others(especially China, Russia and even the WHO!). This strategy has been an abject failure for the past decades and it will be an abject failure in the future.

Trump’s latest decision to defund the WHO (to whom the US already owes a ton of money anyway) is arguably his worst act of “international PR seppuku” which will further increase the disgust the USA already inspires worldwide. As for our Israeli friends, they are proud that their Mossad actually steals medical equipment from other countries: after all, every Israeli know that Jewish blood is sacred, while goy blood is worthless. Another case of self-inflicted “international PR seppuku” for “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

But since that is all US politicians know how to do, this is not stopping anytime soon. Likewise, what is known as the “carrier fiction” will be upheld for as long as possible, especially since there is a lot of money involved for the US ruling classes.