#Afghanistan Blast

[worldspotlightnews]

Taliban governor of Afghanistan's Balkh province killed in blast - SUCH TV

The Taliban governor of Afghanistan’s Balkh province was killed in a blast at his office on Thursday, police said. “Two people, including Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the governor of Balkh, have been killed in an explosion this morning,” the province’s police spokesman Asif Waziri told reporters. He said it was unclear what caused the blast. According to international media reports, the incident…

[bharatlivenewsmedia]

Afghanistan Blast : अफगानिस्तानमधील एका मदरशात बॉम्बस्फोट, १५ जण ठार; २७ लोक जखमी

Afghanistan Blast : अफगानिस्तानमधील एका मदरशात बॉम्बस्फोट, १५ जण ठार; २७ लोक जखमी

Afghanistan Blast : अफगानिस्तानमधील एका मदरशात बॉम्बस्फोट, १५ जण ठार; २७ लोक जखमी Bomb Blast in Afghanistan : अफगाणिस्तानमधील एका मदरशात बॉम्ब स्फोट करण्यात आला. या स्फोटात कमीत कमी १५ लोक ठार झाले आहेत. यामध्ये १० विद्यार्थ्यांचा समावेश आहे. Bomb Blast in Afghanistan : अफगाणिस्तानमधील एका मदरशात बॉम्ब स्फोट करण्यात आला. या स्फोटात कमीत कमी १५ लोक ठार झाले आहेत. यामध्ये १० विद्यार्थ्यांचा…

[abandonedography]

The 6th century Buddha of Bamiyan in Afghanistan Before the Taliban blasted it into rubble.

[merfolkplantgay]

Tyria Pride 2024 is coming June 22 and 23!

Hello one and all! Tyria Pride is returning to Tyria for the 9th time! Join us any time next Saturday and Sunday, June 22 and 23, on both EU and NA for an awesome event that takes us all the way from Ebonhawke to Rata Sum, while we raise money for a good cause!

You can also watch it on my twitch at twitch.tv/lelling!

More info below the cut

What is Tyria Pride?

Tyria Pride is a two-day in-game pride march from one corner of (core) Tyria to the other to show support both LGBTQ players and devs, and a fundraiser for Rainbow Railroad, a non-profit organisation which helps queer people escape state-sponsored persecution and violence around the world.

It's tons of fun every year, a ton of streamers join in so there are many ways to follow along even if you're not in game, music guilds hold concerts, and we have some pretty legendary giveaways! It's always blast!

For more info, check out the post on the official forums at tyriapride.com/2024

Fundraiser

Rainbow Railroad is a non-profit that helps LGBTQ+ people get to safety from countries where their lives are at risk. They've done tons of work all over the world, working tirelessly in places like Russia and Afghanistan, and have already sprung into action as a response to the death penalty laws in Uganda, where you could even get up to 10 years in prison if you don't tell the police your child is gay. Rainbow Railroad works tirelessly to save lives, and we're honored to support them in this cause!

To check out the fundraiser, go to tyriapride.com/donate

How to get involved?

There are so many ways you can help out - spread the news, tell your friends and guildies, if you use any social media, share the information, let people know where and when to find the event!

Another way you can help out is by donating in-game prizes! We incentivize donations to the fundraiser by raffling off legendaries, black lion skins, and even artists give away commissions! If you can spare donations, both in-game or out, let me know! My in-game name is Lelling.6795

You can also join us on the Tyria Pride discord for more resources and information: tyriapride.com/discord

[gunsandspaceships]

Tony was disabled and suffered from chronic pain

Tony may not have looked like a disabled person, but not all disabled people need wheelchairs, canes, or hearing aids. Some simply live in constant pain, cannot breathe properly, cannot sleep due to nightmares, or may die without medication or a medical device. All this applies to him.

Tony has suffered from many conditions, many physical and mental traumas. I will describe the most important here (in chronological order), but some things like broken bones, cuts, bruises, etc. happened to him regularly and their impact on his health is unknown.

Blast injuries

You can find details here.

This type of injury has happened to Tony many times, as explosions are not uncommon for superheroes. In his case (he's not an enhanced Homo sapiens, we remember that, right?) they were more harmful than for many others, like Thor, Hulk or Steve.

We can't say exactly how these injuries affected his health, but they couldn't disappear without a trace. What he could have been left with: damaged hearing, vision, brain damage, respiratory system and blood vessels and heart damage, damage to muscles, liver, spleen and intestines.

Shrapnel

And here comes chronic pain, and our first case of overt disability - shrapnel in Tony's chest and most likely right in the heart. Some shrapnel may have remained in other parts of his body, such as his arms and legs, but this was not mentioned in the movies.

Shrapnel can cause harm in two ways:

mechanical (cuts tissue - leads to scarring, puts pressure on nerves and blood vessels, causing pain and ischemia - reduces blood and oxygen flow to parts of the body);

chemical (metal ions can be released from the fragments and travel through the bloodstream, affecting other parts of the body). Many forms of shrapnel contain uranium, which is highly toxic and can lead to health problems, including kidney damage, liver cancer, and bone cancer. It may also cause high blood pressure, autoimmune disorders, and loss of reproductive function.

Other complications may include infections and chronic inflammation around the fragments.

In Tony's case, he received at least three unpleasant gifts from the shrapnel: chronic pain, heart damage, and the constant possibility of death if the medical device that literally keeps him alive stops working or is taken away from him.

So yes, guys, shrapnel is already enough to consider him disabled. But this is just the beginning of the list.

Arrhythmia

Here is a post entirely dedicated to Tony and his arrhythmia.

To summarize: Tony had a severe arrhythmia (most likely Sick Sinus Syndrome) that required a pacemaker and an ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) powered by an arc reactor. Possible causes of this condition include the blast injury, electric damage from water torture with an electromagnet in chest, and heart damage.

This is the second case of disability and constant mortal danger for Tony - just like with the shrapnel, without the pacemaker he would have died, and even sooner than without the electromagnet that stops the shrapnel. And let's not forget the risk of sudden death associated with arrhythmias.

What Tony could experience on a daily basis due to his arrhythmia: exercise intolerance (he stopped running and surfing after Afghanistan), exhaustion, shortness of breath, chest pain, fainting (among all the Avengers, Tony lost consciousness most often), lightheadedness or dizziness, heart palpitations. Arrhythmia is a thing that usually gets worse over years.

Reactor

Hard stuff. Here you can see why.

The damage done to Tony's body in order to implant the reactor was enormous. With all things considered, it is not necessarily a deadly trauma, but certainly a debilitating one.

This case is the third obvious disability and the main source of chronic pain that Tony suffered from 2008 to 2014.

What he definitely experienced every minute of those years: pain, exhaustion and depression due to this, discomfort and pressure in the chest, difficulty breathing (for which his suits contained supplemental oxygen), limited upper body mobility and decreased muscle strength, sensitivity to ambient temperature (the metal would conduct the temperature of the environment and could become too hot or too cold. That's why he would prefer to stay in California until his surgery at the end of IM3 and not move to New York yet - because of the cold winters).

Potential complications that required Tony to constantly monitor his health included: collapsed lung, asthma, chest infections, chest trauma, thoracic lymphedema, blood clots.

He would also be prone to respiratory infections, which could easily lead to complications. For example, a common cold would most likely develop into bronchitis and/or pneumonia. That is why it is very dangerous for him to be around sick people.

The device could also pose a real danger if it encounters another strong magnet (no MRI for Tony!).

Tony always had to be on medications to help him breath (oxygen, asthma inhalers when he picks up a virus or his airway gets irritated, nebulizer treatment), antibiotics due to weakened immune system, painkillers as needed, regular beta blockers to reduce risk of arrhythmias and sudden death.

PTSD

In IM3, we were shown Tony suffering from this mental disorder. In CA:CW we also saw him using B.A.R.F. to ease his trauma over the death of his parents. This is one of the factors that makes me think he had complex PTSD since childhood, not just acute PTSD caused by the alien invasion.

The acute PTSD affected his quality of life, depriving him of sleep, causing nightmares, anxiety and panic attacks from 2012 to 2014. Although it couldn't go away just because Tony became a little more confident in himself by the end of the movie. It takes years of treatment to get rid of this condition, and the VA considers it a permanent disability.

Other things that could have long-term effects on his health:

Radiation (cancer, liver failure, infertility, and thickening and scarring of lung, liver, and kidney tissue)

Heavy metal poisoning (palladium is carcinogenic, may damage bone marrow, kidneys and liver)

Repeated concussions (one possible consequence is chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which often begins years or even decades after the last brain injury)

Use of B.A.R.F. (could be the cause of the migraine he experienced at the beginning of CA:CW)

Left arm/shoulder injury

Penetrating trauma (it is unknown whether Carol actually brought Tony the Xorrian elixir to cure him as she promised)

Conclusion: before the attack that changed his life forever, Tony was a healthy, strong man who ran canyons and surfed. Thanks to his health and high exercise tolerance, he was able to survive many serious and even critical injuries. However, he was not an enhanced super soldier, and the injuries that did not kill him left him physically weaker and with disabilities that could not help but affect his well-being. He became immunocompromised, could no longer endure strenuous exercise without his high-tech prosthesis, take a proper deep breath. He also became smaller due to loss of muscle mass (compare IM1 and IM3).

Tony also suffered from chronic pain due to the damage to his chest and the presence of shrapnel.

PTSD gives him another type of disability that affects his mental functions. Unlike the damage from the reactor and shrapnel, this damage was not fully healed in 2014 and remained with him until the end, although the symptoms subsided.

[mobilis-in-mobili]

A thing.

John isn't much of a crier. He isn't given to outbursts of emotion which involve tears. Anger, derision, hope even, but almost never tears. He doesn't even cry when Mary dies. There's a guttural, almost primal scream of rage that echoes through him, but he doesn't cry. A soldier who never came back from the war, holding back emotion for it upsets his conduct with what he used to hold himself.

The first time we do see him cry is at the beginning of the very first episode, where he wakes up from a nightmare about being on the front and is suicidal enough to keep a revolver in his desk drawer. London disinterests him, for he craves the feeling Afghanistan used to get him, and yet, cannot overcome the fact that it incapacitated him in the first place. He cannot let go of it, even though he knows he must, because a part of him died there.

And then he meets this eccentric idiot who could tell that he was a soldier and has a drunk sibling and takes him around town on crime solves and asks his opinion on details that he considers important to the point where he starts a blog to remember what they were, to finding out government toppling seductresses and hounds as big as horses and nearly getting blown up by the most dangerous criminal mastermind the world has seen, to harpooning pigs and late night violin sessions and blasting the shit out of walls, and he finds it back. He finds that part of him that he wanted to be - but he doesn't have to live through the plague of the front.

And then, that man, that man who saved John's life in ways more than one though he himself is said to have credited John with the same, is defamed within twenty four hours by wrapping up many small truths with one big lie, to the point where he has to die to keep what he loves safe because he thinks they're infinitely more worth everything than what he is, and without a doubt, jumps off of a hospital to save John, once again.

They visit his grave, later. Some things, he still cannot let go of, even though he knows he must. It's funny, because that is akin to bidding farewell to the reason you chose to try at all.

The Doctor who never really got back home from the war, and the beautiful Maniac who liked to dance when he thought no one was watching.

"One more miracle for me, Sherlock. Don't be dead."

And that, is the second and only other time John Watson cried.

[ericvelseb]

Do you wanna have a bad time

Do you wish to have an unfortunate experience

I ask you if you are capable enough to engage in a terrible experience for yourself and i being the cause

I sans jr the skeleton wish to ask if you comprehend the fact that i will give you an unfortunate time due to the fact that you ended the lives of whom i care.

"I've been in 8 war combat... Afghanistan...Iraq...survived a nearby missile and bomb blast...got shot 7 times....then got possessed by a dangerous powerful demon...lost my dad to police....dealing with the dangers of the cult....do ya think I'm already having a BAD TIME!?" OH!! THE JOYS OF HAVING MORE!!!" *unhinged and crazed laughter*

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I've seen a lot of folks talk about how in-universe things would be different in a modern AU, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts about how Animorphs and its world building would be if it were being written now in a (post?-) war on terror world rather than a post-Vietnam War world.

So this'd be speculation, but. But a lot has changed since 1996. We'd probably get YA Animorphs if published today (sigh), and we'd definitely get 6 or 12 oversized tomes rather than 54 slim paperbacks. On the plus side, we'd get canon queer rep, especially Tobias and Marco, and we'd get updated animal facts.

And then there's the War on Terror. Controversial opinion: I think it wouldn't change that much about Animorphs, because it's obvious in hindsight that Applegate saw the foreverwar coming.

Like, look at Marco's speech in MM2 about how the U.S. is "always on the lookout for new enemies... Enemies 'R Us, EnemyMart, J.C. Enemy. Don't worry, we'll find one." Or his point in #46 about how "global warfare is a thing of the past. That’s what people think, anyway" and the inherent danger in war becoming this glorious abstraction to too many Americans. Look at Visser's point about how humans "tear down a living man but revere a dead one" and use tragic deaths to forward the political agenda, whatever that might be. Look at Jake's job in #54, developed because "terrorism had grown... religious extremists... antigovernment paranoids... latter-day racists."

And then look at the andalites. "Police force of the galaxy" (#8), "Meddlers of the galaxy" (HBC), who often do more harm than good to the planets they try to save. They try to use their tech and military advantages responsibly... but not so responsibly that they're willing to give up even an iota of power to save lives. We first meet the andalites as the absolute good guys, and then over the course of the series that foundation crumbles (#8), and crumbles (#18), and crumbles (#19), and crumbles (#38), until Jake and Eva are "making deals with taxxons and yeerks to gain a victory fast enough to keep the andalites from deciding... to blast the entire planet out of existence and take out the bulk of the yeerk race along with the human race" (#53). Sound like any countries you know?

Anyway, Animorphs shows the Afghanistan War wasn't caused by the Sept. 11 murders any more than World War I was caused by Franz Ferdinand's murder. Applegate was writing in a U.S. itching for any moral-looking excuse to go to war, and clearly she knew it.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Brendan O'Neill

Every now and then you see an event and you think to yourself: ‘This will go down in history.’ Last night’s revolt of the Jews of London against a ‘pro-Palestine’ mob is one such event.

Jews and their allies gathered at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley to defend its showing of a film about Hamas’s fascistic massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October. Unbelievably – or not, perhaps – the ‘Palestine solidarity’ set wanted the screening to be cancelled. No way, said the Jewish rebels, loudly and proudly, many of them draped in the Israeli flag. It was truly stirring stuff, a bold act of people’s defiance against cancel culture and the slow, lethal creep of a new anti-Semitism.

Let’s call it The Battle of Phoenix Cinema. On one side there was a motley crew of Palestine flag-wavers, curiously irate that a cinema was showing a film about the evils of Hamas. And on the other side a boisterous gathering of Jews and their supporters. Two thousand of them. ‘I’m still standing’ by Elton John blasted from a loudspeaker. Many young Jews were there, some clearly angry, pushed to their limit by the ceaseless demonisation of the Jewish State and the left’s shameful lack of solidarity with the Jewish community as it has come under attack these past seven months. These people really have had enough.

Some of the younger Jews chanted ‘Terrorists supporters off our streets’. It felt like a brilliant modern twist on the slogan of The Battle of Cable Street in 1936 – ‘They shall not pass’. Back then, Jews and their working-class allies gathered in East London to see off Oswald Mosley’s fascists. Yesterday they gathered to see off that mob that obsessively hates Israel and which seems hell-bent on hiding the truth about Hamas’s fascist-like crimes. You shall not pass, the protesters were essentially saying, as they protected a cinema from the McCarthyite rage of the Israelophobes.

The Phoenix Cinema’s ‘crime’ is that it agreed to host the Seret film festival, a festival of Israeli cinema that is supported by Israel’s culture ministry. This is a mortal sin in the eyes of anti-Israel activists who boycott everything that emanates from Israel; who seem to believe that moral cleanliness entails exorcising every Israeli film, foodstuff, product and even person from your life and your community.

Ken Loach and Mike Leigh resigned in a huff as patrons of the Phoenix in response to its hosting of Seret. Loach, of course, gets funding for his films from the British Film Institute, which itself is government-funded and distributes lottery cash. So he’s happy to get cash from an organisation backed by a government that waged catastrophic wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya but he’ll run a mile from a cinema showing films backed by the Israeli government? Make it make sense, Ken.

[simply-ivanka]

The rest of the story......

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

The U.S.-commanded military alliance called NATO includes the armed forces of the U.S. and all other countries in the alliance, including Britain, Germany, and France.  

NATO has undertaken eight military actions, all since 1990. The alliance did not undertake any military operations during the Cold War. Since 1990, NATO has engaged in two actions related to the first Gulf War, two in the former Yugoslavia, and military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya.

Stoltenberg then said that NATO’s primary focus now is targeting China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. He called them threats to NATO’s dominance. He didn’t talk about the war threats that have come from NATO and the “Asian version of NATO.”

The specter of war will loom large over the NATO summit in Washington.

[simonxriley]

WIP Wednesday/Last Line

I was tagged by the wonderful @cassietrn @imogenkol @josephseedismyfather and @voidika, thank you! 💜

I've only been working on the next chapter (very slowly) to 'when the world falls' and i have a decent amount to show you.

‘Unless you want me to be again?’ ran through her head multiple times. In a twisted way she wants him to be, she wants to relapse. She wants to feel that way again, the calm, not scared Liz. But times have changed and she’s no longer with her former squad. She doesn’t need those drugs anymore. 

“I’m gonna have to pass. I’m with a new squad now, I’m happier; I don’t need those drugs anymore.” 

“You know what?” He took a deep breath and smiled. “I’m happy for you, Liz.” 

Out of everything that has happened today, this has shocked her the most. He was happy for her? That didn’t seem true to her. “Really?” 

“What? I’m not dumb, I knew you were miserable before.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And I can tell something has changed in you, you’re a lot happier.” 

Liz could feel the heat on her cheeks rise, she looked down at her feet making sure he couldn’t see her blushing face. Which was embarrassing, she never liked blushing around people. 

“Well, I am.” She looked up with a small smile and sighed. “It’s nice being a part of a new team, it’s like a brand new start or a second chance.” 

“Like I said before, I’m happy for you!” 

“Thanks Asher, I appreciate it!” 

He gave her another warm smile and placed his hand on her head. “No problem. I won’t keep you any longer.” 

Her eyes moved to his hand that was on her head. “You know I’m not a kid right?” 

Asher’s smile slowly faded from his face as he took his hand off her head. “Right, sorry.”

“And to think I used to buy drugs from you,” She shook her head, chuckling. “I should probably get to Logan before he has a fit.” 

“Alright, I’ll see you later.” 

She waved goodbye and they went their separate ways. As she was walking towards the pit she thought to herself that he wouldn’t be seeing her later, she won’t be here after tomorrow, she probably should’ve told him that. Oh well, he should’ve already known that after she told him she was a part of the 141 now. 

Opening the door to the outside she got blasted by some warm wind. The only thing she was thankful for right now was not being in full gear. Afghanistan is already hot enough, now add about fifty pounds of gear and it’s hell. It makes her very happy that she’s stationed in the UK now. Where it’s cooler. 

As she made her way down the stairs to the pit she saw Logan sitting on one of the weapon cases fiddling with a knife. “Be careful or you might hurt yourself.”

“So, you decided to come after all.” He slid the knife back into its sheath and crossed his arms. “I thought you’d stay inside with Simon.” 

“Well.” she shrugged her shoulders. “He said it would be good for me to spend the last day or so with you. Since we don’t know when we’ll see each other again.”

taglist (opt in/out) @playstationmademe @sergeiravenov @alexxmason @carlosoliveiraa @leviiackrman

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[infiniteeight8]

ironstrange prompt: enemies to lovers?

Obviously I can only do a tiny little piece of enemies to lovers, so you get my very favorite part of my very favorite version of the trope. 😀

-

Tony has been here before. Not literally, of course. He’s honestly not sure he’s even still on Earth. But held prisoner? Tortured? Yeah, he’s been here before. 

At first, Tony wasn’t even worried. He may be alone in his prison, but he has the Avengers now. They’ll come after him. And while Mordo’s faction of Sorcerers are powerful, the Avengers go toe-to-toe with Strange on a regular basis, and he’s far stronger. And if the Avengers have trouble with Mordo, it’s usually not very hard to split his forces by maneuvering Strange into a battle with him.

So Tony doesn’t worry at first. But days pass and no one comes. Then weeks.

He’s working on his own escape, of course, but magic isn’t his forte, and these captors haven’t been stupid enough to hand him any kind of tech. Much as Tony hates to admit it, he could use an assist. When the third week rolls into the fourth, he has to accept that the assist isn’t coming. The Avengers aren’t coming. 

Three days later, Tony’s cell jumps and shakes like an earthquake has struck. The whump and boom of explosions follow. There’s no door to his cell, but Tony closes his eyes and strains his ears. There’s no ringing of shield on metal or stone. No roar of the Hulk. No crackle of lightning. Instead, he hears the hiss of portals forming. The hair on his arms stands straight up the way it always does when the magic gets heavy in the air. 

The battle lasts for hours. When the noise dies down and the magic dissipates, he wonders if they even know he’s here. Is he going to starve to death, a forgotten casualty of sorcerous infighting?

But no, a portal flares to life just minutes later. Tony pushes himself to his feet, even if he is unsteady. When Strange steps through, Tony realizes he isn’t even surprised. 

“Tony,” Strange says, as warmly as he ever does, even when he’s blasting Tony off his feet. “You’re looking well, for a dead man.” Despite his words his mouth tightens as he looks Tony up and down, taking in the thinness of his frame and the magical burns.

“I always look good,” Tony shoots back. “It’s a gift.” He swallows hard. “So everyone gave up on me?”

Stephen sniffs. “You’d think they’d know better, after Afghanistan,” he says. “I could be standing over your corpse and I’d be wondering if I hadn’t missed something.”

Tony cracks a smile. “Time to go home, then?”

“Of course,” Strange agrees. The portal he opens doesn’t lead to the Avengers Compound, or to any more neutral location. It leads into Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. A private bedroom. Perhaps Strange’s own. If Tony steps through that portal, will he be any less of a prisoner?

Strange steps close enough for Tony to feel the heat radiating off his body. “Tony,” he murmurs. “I will never give up on you. I promise.”

Tony closes his eyes. Tries to think of Rhodey, of Pepper, of all the people he left behind. (The people who left him behind.)

A warm, trembling hand presses against the small of his back, urging him towards the portal.

Strange’s shoulder bumps into Tony’s. Then their hips collide. He’s walking next to Tony. Not leading him, not pushing him from behind. He’s at his side.

Tony steps out of his prison cell.

[mariacallous]

The Greeks had their chariots. Patton had his tanks. Now, a handful of soldiers are riding into combat in one of the most unusual-looking vehicles in the history of warfare: an armed Cybertruck.

In a video posted to messaging platform Telegram last week, Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region, showed off a pair of Tesla’s distinctive boxy electric pickup trucks painted forest green and armed with what appear to be Soviet-era DShK 12.7 x 108 mm heavy machine guns—vehicles he claimed had been sent to fight alongside Russian forces taking part in the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The footage shows the vehicles patrolling down a dirt road as part of a four-vehicle platoon, with several soldiers manning their weapons mounted on their truck beds and blasting airborne targets out of the sky.

“Mobility, convenience, maneuverability: such qualities of an electric vehicle are in great demand here,” Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.

The new footage came just over a month after Kadyrov published an initial video to Telegram showing off a Cybertruck armed with a Russian Kord 12.7 x 108 mm heavy machine gun. That Cybertruck, Kadyrov claimed in a separate Telegram post made the day before unveiling the fresh pair of vehicles, had recently been disabled “remotely” by Tesla chief Elon Musk, who had previously denied gifting the notorious warlord the vehicle in the first place, likely because it’s prohibited under US sanctions on Russia.

“This is not manly,” Kadyrov seethed on Telegram over the remote shutoff. (Tesla did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.)

It was only a matter of time before some enterprising combatant somewhere slapped a machine gun on a Cybertruck. Both regular militaries and irregular forces around the world have been whipping up “technicals”—or “nonstandard tactical vehicles” improvised from civilian rides—for more than a century. While the general concept of armored cars outfitted with firearms presaged the outbreak of World War I by at least a decade, the conflict accelerated their production and fielding—and, in moments of necessity, innovation. In one of the earliest documented manifestations of the technical, French navy lieutenant Maxime François Émile Destremau prepared a defense of the strategically important coaling station in the city of Papeete in Tahiti against a pair of German cruisers in September 1914 by tearing six 37 mm cannons off the warship under his command and mounting them on six Ford trucks to repel potential landing parties, according to the 2004 book On Armor. As long as the automobile has existed, so has the technical.

The technical as most defense observers know it, built on commercial flatbed pickup trucks like the rugged and reliable Toyota Hilux and Land Cruiser, became a fixture of modern irregular warfare during the so-called “Toyota War” of the 1980s that saw militia forces from Chad achieve a decisive victory over the Libyan military thanks to the superior mobility and maneuverability afforded by their lightweight vehicles. (Chadian forces discovered that, at an appropriately high speed, technicals could traverse open areas mined with Soviet-era munitions without risk of setting them off.)

Since then, technicals have become a fixture of conflicts like the US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Syrian and Libyan Civil Wars, and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And those conflicts continued to prompt a flurry of novel innovations when it comes to improvised fighting vehicles. Examples include Libyan militants mounting a S-5 rocket pod meant for an aircraft on the back of a truck and a Land Cruiser outfitted with a Russian-made 14.5 mm ZPU-2 antiaircraft gun that American soldiers traded two cans of chewing tobacco for to secure Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021—the latter of which is now in a US military museum. (Does a DShK on a shopping cart count as a technical? That’s up for debate.)

All of those innovations open up the question: Will an armed Cybertruck actually make for a good technical on the battlefield?

Despite the many issues that have plagued the Cybertruck since its release, the vehicle isn’t necessarily the worst option. While the Cybertruck currently has a maximum range of 340 miles (or 500 miles with an extra battery pack)—well behind the roughly 570- to 700-mile range of the Hilux—the former is actually quicker, capable of accelerating up to 60 mph between 2.6 and 3.9 seconds, depending on the model, a noteworthy achievement given the vehicle’s size and weight.

In terms of safeguarding its occupants from external threats like small arms fire, the Cybertruck’s steel “exoskeleton” offers purportedly superior protection to that of the conventional pickup truck, a feature that Tesla has been quick to flaunt on promotional materials. Finally, the Cybertruck, as an electric vehicle, is freakishly quiet, offering an element of stealth that the US Defense Department in particular has eyed in recent years compared to other fossil-fuel-powered ground vehicles.

“There are some attributes that work,” David Tracy, a cofounder of the car website The Autopian and a former auto engineer, tells WIRED. “It’s off-road capable and has big 35-inch tires and good ground clearance. It has stainless steel panels that can take some amount of abuse. From a defense standpoint—as in, ‘How safe am I in the vehicle?’—if you were to take a stock Hilux or a stock Cybertruck, the Cybertruck would probably be the better choice in a firefight.”

If technicals are built for speed and maneuverability, then the Cybertruck “offers significant benefits over the Hilux,” Tracy says.

“It is absolutely, absurdly quick,” he says. “In a drag race between the two, the Hilux would be an ant in the Cybertruck’s rearview mirror. If you need speed and agility, and it isn’t necessarily going through rigorous off-roading or being fired upon regularly, then it could actually work fine.”

Despite these potential tactical benefits, defense analysts aren’t convinced the Cybertruck has a place on the modern battlefield. As retired Marine colonel Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, tells WIRED, the armed vehicles flaunted by Kadyrov on Telegram “are totally cool and totally useless.”

“They are cool because they look like something out of a video game and portray Kadyrov as a sort of futuristic warlord,” Cancian tells WIRED in an email. “They are useless because they don't provide a new capability, except perhaps a bit of stealth.”

Indeed, the Cybertruck is not totally suited for hostile and chaotic environments like the front lines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. First, the EV’s exoskeleton actually consists of steel panels attached to a standard “unibody” frame that’s more akin to the chassis of a conventional car rather than the “body-on-frame” design of most pickup trucks like the Hilux. This design, according to Motor Trend, makes the former a weaker and less resilient vehicle. Second, while the Cybertruck is certainly off-road capable, it’s still significantly heavier than Hilux, which can make maneuverability and traction on rough terrain a challenge. Third, while its armor portends to offer at least some additional coverage compared to the conventional pickup truck-based technical, the vehicle’s bulletproofing only appears to work with subsonic rounds like the .45 ACP ammo used in Tesla’s tests and not the ubiquitous NATO-standard 5.56 mm round or, say, a shot from a .50 caliber rifle. (Though, to be fair, aftermarket armor packages for the vehicle do exist.)

Beyond design and engineering challenges, there’s also the critical matter of maintenance and logistics, the lifeblood of any motorized conflict. As Tracy points out, the Cybertruck’s unique complexity and software-forward design (like the lack of a physical connection between steering wheel and wheels) means a distinct lack of spare parts and higher potential for catastrophic system failures, challenges that all but guarantee that the vehicle is unable to operate reliably and ensure consistent uptime—not necessarily ideal for troops whose lives may depend on them.

“Simplicity is everything; simplicity and parts availability,” Tracy says. “If you’re driving a complex vehicle and there’s a failure of some sort and you need someone to flash it with a computer, you’re hosed if you’re in the middle of nowhere. The beauty of the Hilux is that they’re very tough, for one, but they can be repaired with simple tools and fairly ubiquitous parts. The Cybertruck does not really make a whole lot of sense in that regard.”

“It’s great that it is safe in a crash and can take a bullet,” he adds. “But if you break a control arm and can’t get the part, it’s pretty useless.”

Plus, the Cybertruck’s reliance on charging stations would make a fleet of armed vehicles “likely impossible to support” in any sort of protracted conflict like that taking place in Ukraine, according to CSIS’s Cancian.

“I doubt there are garages or mechanics near the front lines who can fix these complex devices, which are so unlike the fossil fuel vehicles that the region is accustomed to,” he says. “Further, I doubt there are many recharging stations in the battle area. Unlike with fossil fuel vehicles, where the fuel can be brought to the vehicle if necessary, the Cybertrucks must go to the recharging point.”

How the Cybertruck will actually perform in a combat situation remains to be seen. But if the Kadyrov video is any indication, it’s only a matter of time before an armed Cybertrucks makes the transition from YouTube sensation to tried-and-true, battle-tested technical.

[dertaglichedan]

Trump Honors Afghanistan Troops as ABC, CBS, NBC Morning Shows Ignore Anniversary

President Donald Trump paid his respects to the 13 U.S. troops who were killed three years ago during President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan — while the morning shows on the major networks ignored the anniversary.

Monday, August 26, 2024, marked three years since the day a suicide bomber affiliated with the local branch of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) killed 13 American service members and wounded dozens more at Kabul’s airport — while also murdering roughly 170 local civilians who were trying to flee the country.

Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, laying a wreath alongside Marine Corporal Kelsee Lainhart, who was partially paralyzed by the blast.

NewsBusters.com noted that ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored the three-year anniversary on their Monday morning shows:

Monday marked three years since the deadly Islamic terror attack in Kabul, Afghanistan at Hamid Karzai International Airport that murdered 13 American soldiers, 170 Afghans, and left over 150 people wounded. Instead of even briefly acknowledging this painful day for American families in what became the symbol of the Biden-Harris’s administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, ABC, CBS, and NBC completely ignored it on their flagship morning news shows. To repeat: not a word from ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, and NBC’s Today about the sacrifice of the brave Americans standing guard at Abbey Gate. The networks shamefully adopted the mold of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in being radio silent (aside from paper statements released from their handlers). In contrast, cable news shows that aired during that same block — Fox Business Network’s Mornings with Maria, Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, Newsmax’s Wake Up America, NewsNation’s Morning in America, and even CNN News Central — all mentioned it multiple times.

Neither President Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris visited Arlington, though both issued statements.