#marshall defense industries

[megafreeman]

Saints Row reboot gang emblems + city crest

From Frank Marquart's ArtStation

[lastoneoutofsantoileso]

Hi! I'm a recently returned veteran RPer looking for new friends and RP opportunities! I have 10 years of RP experience on tumblr and elsewhere!

Both mun and muse are over 18.

Please feel free to dm any inquiries!

Thank you for your time!

[ralfmaximus]

Here's the complete list of DHS flagged search terms. Don't use any of these on social media to avoid having the 3-letter agencies express interest in your activities!

DHS & Other Agencies

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SOCIAL MEDIA?!

[theyvegotsomuchtowhisperabout]

Hello! And welcome to Marshall Defense Industries!

We know it wasn't easy getting here. Your journey began with one of the most unforgiving job interviews we could devise. But you did more than just survive a few fire exercises. You excelled, and in doing so proved that you were Marshall material.

But don't take my word for it, hear it from the man himself.

[usafphantom2]

Russia reduces Su-75 'Checkmate' costs to win the sale of the fighter in India

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 02/07/2024 - 21:05in Military

Russia's effort to improve the fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-75 'Checkmate' single-engine combat aircraft program is facing some obstacles. The project cannot move forward with state funding alone. Last year, potential partnership discussions with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were started. Now, the opportunity to become a partner of India has come to the table.

ROSTEC reported substantial cost reductions in the Su-75 project, attributing them to certain "technical changes". These changes were influenced by the "feedback from a potential buyer" that led to decreased costs. Without any official confirmation, some sources suggest that India could be this potential buyer, as the Hindustan Times said.

Retired Indian Marshal Anil Khosla, in a recent interaction with the media, raised some significant points. He mentions caution, requiring that a detailed cost-benefit analysis be made by New Delhi before making any commitments. He also adds that it is essential for India to strategically assess whether a mutual pact can extract more benefits for India. Any decision must produce favorable results for both parties involved.

Interestingly, India is currently working on its own advanced jet fighter. The ambitious fifth generation combat aircraft (FGFA) project is already underway and New Delhi is heavily invested in its success. From the perspective of Indian defense and industry, can a potential alliance with Russia, a complex geopolitical partner, compromise India's local project?

Unmanned version of the Su-75.

However, this did not dissuade Russia. They are committed to seeking help for the Su-75 Checkmate project. Although India remains on the list of potential partners, Denis Manturov, Minister of Industry and Trade, says that Moscow is also keeping an eye on other foreign customers. The update of the aircraft's layout, control and weapon systems based on customer feedback has led to certain modifications.

It is worth remembering that ROSTEC recently presented the Su-75 at the World Defense Show 2024 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a way to attract the interest of potential partners or customers in the region. Russia has continuously expressed the importance of the Middle East in the development and trade of its armaments.

Sukhoi (United Aviation Corporation, UAC) is currently working on the first functional prototype of the Su-75 Checkmate. The plan is to be ready later this year, with tests scheduled from next year. They plan to offer the Su-75 Checkmate in three variants: a single-seat, two-seater and unmanned aircraft. All versions were patented in July 2023.

According to the UAC, improvements are being made to a new anti-radar coating paint scheme that aims to increase the aircraft's stealth performance. They made an announcement earlier this year, revealing that they had obtained a patent for the scheme. The vision, according to Russian UAC engineers, is to camouflage the aircraft so well that not only does it become difficult for radars to detect it, but also for the human eye, under cloudy weather conditions, has difficulty detecting it.

Sukhoi Aircraft Company, part of United Aircraft Corporation at ROSTEC, revealed the Light Tactical Fighter Checkmate at the international air show MAKS-2021, held in Zhukovsky, near Moscow. The foreign launch of this new model took place at the Dubai Airshow 2021, in the United Arab Emirates. Essentially a derivative of the fifth-generation Su-57 fighter, the new warplane is developed in an innovative way by the state-owned technology giant, Rostec.

Tags: Military AviationCheckmateIAF - Indian Air Force/Air Force of IndiaROSTECSu-75sukhoi

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[whoredmode]

@megafreeman mainly wanted to make sure i had the topography of santo ileso right since i’d only ever looked at a map of it once. i also wanted to see if there was any connection between ultor and santo ileso. seeing as you’ve played it you’d probably know: are there any references to ultor in the reboot?

ok i think i’ve figured out the general look and plot for the new in-between story. also decided on something that’s gonna be going on concurrently to it in the background that sets up a dynamic in the sriv rewrite lol

[mariacallous]

MUSKO NAVAL BASE, Sweden—In a control room carved out of a mountainside near Stockholm, with seats four rows deep, Swedish Navy chief Ewa Skoog Haslum and a close gaggle of her staff look up at a giant monitor to see a troubling scenario unfolding in the Baltic Sea, almost in real time. Their ships are outnumbered. No one, it seems, is coming to help.

This is real life, not a simulation or a war game. It’s October 2023, some 17 months since Sweden launched its bid for NATO membership, and the country is still outside of the alliance. On a filtered maritime traffic map of the region projected above the sailors’ heads, several lonely Swedish and Finnish ships, marked in blue, make their way through the straits, gulfs, and thoroughfares of the eastern arm of the Atlantic Ocean. Without the help of the 31-nation alliance, they are dwarfed by red dots—Russian ships, some military, and others that the Swedes fear might have bad intentions—moving up and down the waterway.

Add Sweden to NATO, and the map changes completely. 

“Can we unfilter the picture?” one of Skoog Haslum’s aides asks. Dozens of green ships—NATO vessels—light up the map. The Russian fleet is vastly outnumbered. The tables have turned, Swedish officials said. Taking a shot at one of a handful of Swedish or Finnish ships is one thing. How are the Russians going to take a shot at the Swedish Navy when it has dozens of allied vessels at its back? Defense industry bigwigs, former generals, and think tankers visiting the maritime operations center at Musko Naval Base whisper in hushed awe. 

For the better part of 200 years, dating back to the time of Napoleon, Sweden was a neutral country, with its armed forces not venturing beyond its large archipelagoes. Sweden flirted with a defensive nuclear weapons program and mass conscription during the long years of the Cold War but formally stayed neutral. 

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 changed all of that. Fearing Russia’s expansionist impulses wouldn’t stop with Ukraine, Sweden, along with Finland, applied for NATO membership in a once-in-a-lifetime political swerve. “There is absolutely a before and after,” Skoog Haslum said last October. “We are more on our toes today.” Now, a step closer to membership in the alliance after Turkey moved to approve Sweden’s bid—but with the Hungarians still holding out—Swedish and NATO officials are hoping that swerve will give the Russians pause before causing problems on their northern border. 

The first thing you see when you hit the docks at Berga Naval Base, a short boat ride across the Stockholm Archipelago from the control room at Musko Naval Base, is the 230-foot-long gray camouflage hull of the HSwMS Helsingborg. It doesn’t look like any old U.S. or European ship. The carbon fiber-reinforced frame resembles a pyramid, pointing skyward, to hide from Russian radar. 

In a darkened room of computer banks on the ship’s bridge, sailors look at a sea of blue, green, and red ships, too. They are tracking anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 ship movements in the Baltic Sea every day. On screen, cargo ships such as the Marshal Rokossovsky, the Aleksandr Evlanov, and the Sparta II sail past the Baltic Sea inlets. 

If the sailors look nervous, they have a right to be. All of the Nordic countries—including Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden—are heavily dependent on the latter’s western port of Gothenburg for trade. Sweden is especially so: About 30 percent of the country’s foreign trade flows through the port. Shutting down that one port could wreak havoc on the entire region’s economy. 

And the screens on the computer banks are constantly changing. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian vessels have been moving out and staying away from the Baltic much longer. But the Kremlin is playing a bit of a shell game, Swedish officials said, switching bigger ships for smaller ones. By swapping out destroyers and frigates, which raise alarm bells for NATO countries, for smaller roll-on, roll-off vessels and maintenance ships that aren’t typically used in combat but can still be up-armed with cruise missiles, Russia can keep a foot on this vital chokehold without provoking suspicion. 

The Kremlin has also been running tests right in Sweden’s backyard. Russia has begun trials of St. Petersburg-class submarines in the Baltic Sea, conducting live-fire exercises in international waters near Gotland, an island off Sweden’s eastern coast. The Kremlin tries to mask the new submarines by navigating through rivers and internal lakes before unleashing them in exercises that are clearly visible to nearby ships. From a signals intelligence ship parked just outside Kaliningrad’s bay, Sweden has detected Russia test-firing missiles from the submarines.

It all sounds pretty ominous. But the Swedes had to deal with the Russian threat long before the United States even existed. The two sides fought 11 wars, mostly over control of the Baltic Sea, before Stockholm began its two-century drift under neutrality. And with assets such as the Visby-class corvette—a stealthy surface ship armed with torpedoes and anti-ship missiles, named after the main city on Gotland—Sweden wants to be NATO’s eyes and ears in the region. 

Sweden can “be a very good NATO member,” Skoog Haslum said, including by providing targeting data for allies in the region.

The country has begun to field Link 22 command-and-control, a secure digital radio system that ties together NATO planes and ships. They are allowed to speak with other nations across those links but on a very low level, such as to point out unidentified or threatening vessels. It’s much easier for Skoog Haslum and her staff to call up Denmark and say hello than it was before the NATO bid, she said. 

There’s just one problem: Sweden doesn’t have access to NATO’s encryption. Sweden creates new lines of communication for exercises with NATO countries, but most of those lines go dark once the exercises end. There are no classified communications—yet. 

“When we join NATO, that would be on the screen all the time,” said Henrik Rosen, Sweden’s naval attache in Washington. “That is obviously a total game-changer for us.”

In almost every other way, the 31 allies are treating Sweden like one of their own. At NATO’s military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, officials point out that they have already built the flagpole where Sweden’s Nordic cross will eventually fly. At NATO’s official headquarters about an hour’s drive away, just about the only meetings the Swedes can’t get into are with the alliance’s nuclear planning group. 

“We act as though they are a member,” a Nordic military official said at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters, where reporters arrived on Jan. 23, the day of Turkey’s parliamentary vote on Sweden’s accession, to discover a flagpole had been built for the Swedes there, too. 

Although Turkey has finally, after months of foot-dragging, voted Sweden into the alliance, Hungary has not backed off its objections about Sweden’s NATO membership. Hungary wants Swedish opposition figures that are publicly critical of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s authoritarian leanings to shut up. (Orban came out publicly supporting Sweden’s bid after a call this week with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, but Hungary’s top lawmakers still had harsh words for Stockholm.) 

But even with the NATO bid still on hold, Sweden appears to be taking a victory lap. In December, Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson traveled to the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California—an event full of national security high-rollers—and then on to Washington to sign a defense cooperation agreement with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that gives the U.S. military access to 17 Swedish military bases in the event of a regional war. 

Jonson said Sweden’s muscular new foreign policy will push the country past NATO’s agreed-on 2 percent defense spending mark. 

“This is the biggest shift in our doctrine for 200 years,” Jonson said in an interview at the Reagan Forum in the rolling southern California hills. “We will continue beyond 2.1 percent [of GDP].”

Where is the money going? Sweden is buying more U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems. It is building a whole new fleet of Gripen fighter jets. It is building new Collins-class submarines and new corvettes. And it is arming its troops with British-made light anti-tank weapons that have torn up Russian tanks in Ukraine as well as fresh armored personnel carriers. 

If the name of the game is deterrence in Sweden, then it’s all hands on deck. 

“Just being a ship at sea, with maybe a rifle or something, that is not deterrence,” Skoog Haslum said. “Deterrence is to have all assets you can have. The sensors, the weapons systems—that is deterrence.”

Sweden stayed out of both world wars. And after the dust settled in World War II and the Iron Curtain came down, neighbors Norway, Iceland, and Denmark joined NATO. Sweden didn’t.

In secret, though, the Swedes were building up their defenses. During World War II, Sweden built emergency bomb shelters and landing strips as a fallback plan. In 1950, with the United States and the Soviet Union racing to test the first hydrogen bomb, the Swedish government began blasting 1.5 million tons of rock out of a mountainside on the island of Musko, about 25 miles south of Stockholm, to build a top-secret underground naval base. 

It took them 19 years. But by the time Musko was completed, Swedish sailors could service submarines and destroyers through a cavernous labyrinth of underground tunnels—and even hunt Soviet submarines. Sweden even briefly pursued nuclear weapons of its own, until officials realized they would cost too much.

After the Cold War, the threat had cooled down enough that Sweden began a widespread process of hollowing out its military, a downturn that lasted nearly 30 years. Sweden gave away most of its 2,000 fighter jets. It shed troops. It got rid of bases. 

By 2004, though Swedish troops were in Afghanistan and patrolling the coast of Lebanon, the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, was openly stating that the country faced no significant military threats and that it should pare down its defense capabilities to reflect that fact. Defending the homeland wasn’t a mission for the Swedish military anymore. 

“The political slogan was, Sweden is best defended in Afghanistan,” said Oscar Jonsson, a defense specialist at the Swedish Defence University. “That was the armed forces we had.” 

The only reason that the Swedish government didn’t get rid of Musko was because it would have been too expensive to scrub down the 12 miles of tunnels to make them safe for other uses. So the lights were kept on, but the massive facility was put on a strategic lull, with a skeletal staff. People still worked there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even when the base was at its least active point, but civilian contractors came in to fill up the vacant shipyards, and tourists were even allowed in. 

“It was a little bit of a pity,” Jonsson said. “First of all, you make a secret naval base that can withstand nuclear weapons. Then, at the end of the Cold War, you declassify it. Then, all of a sudden, you realize that it actually needed to be classified again.”

In the Musko mountainside, in a conference room whose wood-paneled walls were made out of the remnants of an old Swedish destroyer, Skoog Haslum and her aides described the bruising effects of the belt tightening on the military. The first thing to go was personnel. The Army downsized from brigades, anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 troops, to singular battalions, about 1,000 soldiers apiece. Weapons were next. The Navy decommissioned all of its big warships, such as destroyers and frigates, in the 1980s, leaving only smaller ships. The Air Force cut planes. In the mid-2010s, Sweden bottomed out, spending only about 1 percent of its GDP on defense, down from 4 percent in 1963. 

But even though Sweden was still neutral, the irritations from Russia had started to pick up. Russian ships were aggressively maneuvering in the Baltic Sea, elbowing Swedish and Finnish ships out of their sea lanes. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, biting off Crimea and pieces of the Donbas region, made it clear to the Swedes that they could also have a target on their backs. 

Sweden’s military budget began to grow in small steps. In 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, the Swedish naval staff returned to Musko. In 2020, the defense budget started to jump, to around $6.25 billion that year, or 1.2 percent of Sweden’s GDP.

Sweden decided to build two new submarines and four new surface ships with surface-to-air missile defenses, which hadn’t been aboard the pyramid-like Visby-class corvettes. Next year’s budget is getting boosted by nearly a third, bringing the overall defense tally to about $11 billion. Sweden is expecting to hit NATO’s 2 percent of GDP defense spending target by the time of the alliance’s Washington summit, which is penciled in for July. 

“The rise of the last 10 years of defense spending [has] been very, very steep,” said Rosen, the Swedish naval attache.

Still, Sweden is mostly building more of what it already has. Long-range land attack capability that could challenge Russia is not part of the plan yet. 

But Musko is buzzing again. The mess halls are full of Marines with the Swedish Viking emblem pinned to their lapels. The bike racks are full, too, with sailors dropping off their two-wheeled rides—unlocked—after cycling around the miles of tunnels to meetings and maintenance yards. 

Sweden’s defense industry is buzzing, too. The onetime carmaker Saab, which uses two of Musko’s drydocks to conduct maintenance on destroyers, has stopped building automobiles and is instead focusing on building Gripen fighter jets and diesel-electric submarines. Volvo builds a line of logistical trucks. Ericsson makes military telephones. 

“There is no other country of 10 million that can produce submarines, fighter aircraft, surface combatants, [infantry fighting vehicles], and very advanced artillery systems,” said Jonson, the defense minister. 

But unlike next-door neighbor Finland, which can mobilize nearly 300,000 troops from civilian ranks, Sweden faces the problem of getting enough people ready to man those weapons. The nation’s conscription model, which once could mobilize up to half of Sweden’s population, was cut down in the 1990s, tossed altogether in 2010, and has only recently been brought back. 

Stockholm is hoping to bring the mobilization number from the current cap of 60,000 to 100,000 conscripts by the end of the decade. Swedish officials are open about the growing pains. 

“We are growing, but it’s quite slow,” Skoog Haslum said. “It’s hard to grow, especially when you come from a capacity that is very, very short, actually.” 

The boyish-looking sailor had just two words for the group: Strap in.

This reporter soon found out why. Richard Cooke, the young Swedish Marine barking orders, and his driver Emil Munkve, proceeded to send the CB90 fast assault boat we were sitting in screaming through the Musko harbor at almost 50 miles an hour, putting the dozen or so American interlopers straight back in their seats. 

Sweden boasts more than 267,000 islands (though, according to the Swedes, an “island” is any piece of land you can stand on with two dry feet). 

And fighting here is not like fighting out in the great wide open of the Pacific Ocean. In fact, the U.S. Marines don’t have anything like the CB90. As it drives from Musko to Berga, islands and landforms pop out of the rock. But even in contested waters, the Swedish Marines can go almost anywhere in Stockholm’s island chain, dropping more than a dozen troops ashore at once. 

“As long as there aren’t rocks sticking up, we can go right up on the beach,” Munkve said. “We can go as far as the Swedish coast goes.”

Adding that 2,000-mile-long coastline to territory under the alliance’s protection will change NATO. It’s a vast region spanning the Arctic Ocean to the North Sea inlets to the Atlantic, with data cables that undergird much of global communication deep beneath the water’s surface. NATO will get Swedish bases in the north to contend with Russian troops in Murmansk and on the Kola Peninsula. 

The Nordic and Baltic countries can’t survive financially without keeping their archipelagoes and the inlets to the Baltic Sea open to maintain commerce through the region. And NATO will get another capable navy that can deal in shallow waters less than 200 feet deep dotted with gulfs, islands, narrow straits, and critical infrastructure.

“In our neck of the woods in the Baltic Sea region, the Western Sea, [and] the Nordic Sea, there’s a lot of infrastructure,” Rosen said. “There’s oil rigs, gas rigs, there’s underwater pipelines, there are underwater cables from communication to power. There are wind parks and windmills out at sea. And there’s a lot of traffic.”

There have been more NATO vessels in the Baltic Sea in the last two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And the Nordic countries have teamed up to follow Russian vessels across the sea with electric optical sensors and an encyclopedic ship base. Starting from Norway’s western coast, the Nordic countries track Russian ships all the way back to St. Petersburg, following them with fixed and mobile sensors, handing off country-by-country as the boats steam through the Baltic. 

The Kremlin used to harass U.S. ships in the region. Now the shoe is on the other foot. “[Russia] followed every American vessel that entered the Baltic Sea before,” Skoog Haslum said. “They really followed it. They can’t do that any longer.”

Now, the Kremlin’s game plan is to surround and show presence toward the United Kingdom, the door jam at the western gate of the North Sea. Russia is almost equally as paranoid about keeping trade lanes open through the Baltic and is heavily dependent on getting through it and on to St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad, where the Kremlin has a great deal of its war industry, including shipyards for surface vessels and submarines, which can fire cruise missiles off their backs. 

But even though Russia’s Baltic Fleet is largely intact, most of the Kremlin’s troops and ships are tied down by the war in Ukraine. 

“Russia has now a long border with NATO … but doesn’t get more forces,” said Dutch Adm. Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee. “If they want to invest in more forces, it will cost them.”

The Swedes have three watchwords for how they train to fight: Hide inside, run out fast, and hit hard. And they can make it tougher on the Russians by mining the narrow straits before raining missiles on the invaders. 

“We use the archipelago. We hide in the archipelago. We fire our long-range weapons from within the archipelago or from the open sea,” one Swedish sailor said. There are still 50,000 mines on the Baltic seabed from World War I and World War II, forcing ships to navigate tight corners laden with explosives.

Sweden’s geography also tightens the squeeze on Russia. Everything in Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg will now be in range of NATO missiles. Gotland gives Sweden and NATO an opportunity to build out a logistical hub or block the Russian navy’s attempts to harass Western shipping lanes. The Bay of Bothnia is a lot closer to Russia’s northern sea bases than NATO’s borders currently sit. 

On the flip side, NATO countries will have to defend another big Nordic state that is entirely within striking distance of Russian missiles. And Russia has finally hit Sweden with the avalanche of disinformation and cyberattacks it expected when the country’s NATO bid was announced in May 2022.

But Sweden is not backing down. Though the military shift in the country has been gradual, the political shift has been frenetic. 

After two centuries of neutrality, a majority of Swedes only began to favor NATO membership in March 2022, one month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. A month later, that number surged to nearly 60 percent.

In Brussels, NATO allies are ready to welcome them with open arms. But there is still a palpable sense of disbelief at how quickly the tectonic shift has taken place. 

“If I told you Finland and Sweden were going to join, you would have thought I was smoking something,” the Nordic military official said. “We are part of a different landscape. Now we have to think completely differently.”

[workersolidarity]

Photo: France24

🇺🇦🇺🇲 UKRAINE HOLDS DEFENSE INDUSTRY FORUM: SEEKS TO RAMP UP DOMESTIC ARMS PRODUCTION

The Ukrainian government held a Defense Industry Forum on Friday, seeking to find partners to help ramp up domestic military production in the war-torn country living under Marshall Law.

Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky spoke to representatives of the Western-aligned global defense Industry, as well as the Defense Ministers and officials of several countries that attended the conference. About 250 delegates representing 30 countries attended the event held in Kiev.

Speaking by video-link to the Forum, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltonberg told the audience, "heroism alone cannot intercept missiles. Ukraine needs capabilities, high quality, high quantity, and quickly. There is no defense without industry."

General Stoltonberg further acknowledged the depletion of Western stocks of weapons and ammunition by adding that this support "was the right thing to do, but now we need to ramp up production, both to meet Ukraine's needs and to ensure our own deterrence in events."

Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky told the audience about his most recent meeting with embattled US President Joe Biden where they agreed to "the establishment of a new industrial ecosystem that will strengthen both Ukraine and all the partners."

Further, Zelensky announced the creation of a new "Defense Industries Alliance" cosigned by 13 Defense industry companies with an eye to getting further signatories in the near future.

The Ukrainian government told the audience that they would be setting up a "special fund" to support the creation and development of an industry complex. The "special fund" would be funded through dividends from state defense resources as well as the sale of "confiscated Russian assets," according to Ukraine's President Zelensky.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's Foreign Minister who also attended the event, said that talks about joint production began in the Fall of 2022, "At first, we were talking about repairs within Ukraine, and then about joint production. And now, this topic is prevalent everywhere."

Kubela also said that while in discussions with partners, there is much interest in the experience and production capabilities of Ukrainian businesses.

“Just as we have benefited from Western weapons, Western arms manufacturers also gain unique advantages in the market to improve their models and create even more powerful weapons,” Kubela explained.

Meanwhile, newly appointed Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said that everything must be done to produce all the necessary services and products Ukraine needs for its Army, with the secondary priority being the development of the Military technologies that play an important role on the modern battlefield.

"Our vision is to develop world-class military products" Umerov said.

#source

--- OPINION:

*** Telling right now, this is just a money laundering scheme for Western and Ukrainian elites.

There is absolutely ZERO chance of developing a domestic Military Industrial Complex in Ukraine in the middle of a war it's losing with virtually no more ammunition left in the West (as admitted in the source article by Stoltonberg) and daily missile strikes by Russian Forces on domestic Military and infrastructure targets like ammunition depots, ports, fuel storage facilities, tank repair centers (this is why it had to be done in Poland and not Ukraine since the beginning of the war), trains and train stations and train repair facilities, manufacturing plants and warehouses, etc etc etc ad infinitum.

It's a FANTASY to develop a Military Industrial Complex in Ukraine in the middle of war. They KNOW this is a fantasy! Yet they perpetuate this myth in order to acquire funding, because that's what this has ALWAYS been about (besides the obvious goals like attrition of Russian Forces) transferring Tax-Payer $$ to US and Ukrainian Oligarchs. Period. It's money laundering for Western Elites.

They never cared if Ukraine won or not, in fact they make the most profits through STALEMATE rather than their side winning outright. That's an unquestionable fact.

This "Martyrdom of the Ukrainian people" (as Pope Francis has termed it) on the altar of Western Neoliberal Capitalism, in this view, has gone swimmingly. That's why you see Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell going on TV and joyously lapping praise on this Proxy-war and declaring it a huge success. Because for their wallets, it is a huge success.

[sapper-in-the-wire]

I feel like with the atomic weapons there’s a lot of backwards application of later US attitudes to war. Yes in later wars the US would switch to a body count strategy, but that was because the material victory strategy they came up with in ww2 couldn’t be applied to countries with little to no heavy industry (Korea and Vietnam). The US generally always targeted some kind of industry, it was the British that preferred to bomb civilians, I guess as a sort of reprisal for German terror bombing. However, even by mid 44 US air authorities were pointing out how British bombing was largely ineffective, and killing random civilians en masse really didn’t do anything. It was only political separation and Air Marshal Harris’ popularity did they avoid any pressure from the US Air Force to switch up their targets.

Hiroshima was a military target, and it was the only military target that had yet to be bombed. It was the headquarters of the 2nd Army, which was the army that was in charge of the defense of Kyushu, the landing point of the future invasion of the home islands. It also was a rail center and industrial base, with tens of thousands of Korean slave laborers present (some 10,000 were killed in the bombing).

Nagasaki was not a military target, but all other military targets had been leveled or reduced to cinders at that point, and the second bomb used was an entirely different kind. At least at Los Alamos, the need to communicate to Japanese scientists the full extent of what had been developed was a priority. So an untouched city was chosen, one that still had power lines intact. The blast radius could be measured, and power lines would hold evidence of atomic ejecta that the Japanese scientists could analyze. Iirc they did just that, and were able to communicate that this wasn’t just a new conventional bomb, and calculate the atomic efficiency of it. The entire world’s scientific community was chasing atomic weapons prior to the war, so the hope was that the Japanese scientists could pass on that the atomic weapons were easily produced, and that more either were ready or would quickly be.

[megafreeman]

All the major factions in the game had high level ingredients that manifested in different ways. For Los Panteros, they were orange with red and yellow accents, favored blocky shapes, had chrome as their metal, and fire as their element. For the Marshall, they were blue with white and green accents, favored round shapes, had stainless steel as their metal, and air as their element. For the Idols, they were pink with blue and yellow accents, favored sharp shapes, had gold as their metal, and water as their element.

From Frank Marquart's ArtStation

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Tomorrow (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

#20yrsago Briefing the court on Fuck https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/passionate-defense-f-word

#15yrsago UK’s ISP-record industry deal won’t stop infringement, but will make it harder for the record industry to cash in https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jul/29/internet.digitalmusic

#15yrsago TSA destroys the RepRap’s first child http://blog.reprap.org/2008/07/tsa-really-wreck-reprap-child.html

#10yrsago MIT report on Aaron Swartz’s prosecution is out, and it’s a “whitewash” https://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/56881327662/mit-report-is-a-whitewash-my-statement-in

#10yrsago Rotolight sends fraudulent takedown notice to censor unfavorable review https://notesonvideo.blogspot.com/2013/07/using-copyright-infringement-claim-to.html

#10yrsago US spies supplied intelligence on investigative journalist to NZ military http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8972743/US-spy-agencies-eavesdrop-on-Kiwi

#10yrsago Kill City Blues: Sandman Slim versus the elder gods of the dead mall https://memex.craphound.com/2013/07/30/kill-city-blues-sandman-slim-versus-the-elder-gods-of-the-dead-mall/

#5yrsago Quiet Skies: Air Marshals are following thousands of random Americans through airports and on planes, for no articulatable purpose https://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/graphics/2018/07/tsa-quiet-skies/?p1=HP_SpecialTSA

#5yrsago Sacha Baron Cohen confronts Roy Moore with a beeping “pedophile detector” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kaJaDx51iw

#5yrsago Universal, having learned nothing from its “dancing baby” ass-kicking, is once again attacking Prince fans https://www.techdirt.com/2018/07/30/universal-right-back-it-issuing-dmca-reporters-video-prince-fans-singing-purple-rain/

#5yrsago Wall Street landlords are slumlords https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-housing-invitation/

#5yrsago GOP candidate who campaigned with a white supremacist condemned for Bigfoot erotica https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bigfoot-porn-house-race-virginia_n_5b5ec4f5e4b0de86f4988800

#5yrsago John Oliver’s scorching debullshitification of Facebook’s apology ads https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjb745/john-oliver-facebook-ads-last-week-tonight

[queenofcandynsoda]

Dystopian Omegaverse AU: The Federal Republic of Sol Fertilis

Capital: Olympia (Located in the Fertile Crescent)

Currency: Nova

Religion: The Sol Fertilis Consentes Temple

Demonym: Sol Fertilian

The Federal Republic of Sol Fertilis is a unitary executive gerontocracy. Alphas have complete control over society and the only ones who can have leadership positions in government and other industries. 

They are divided into twenty-four regions, each one has sixteen districts. Each district has twenty counties. A region is controlled by a Committee, which has eleven Governors/Governesses. A district is controlled by a Commission, which has nine Commissioners. A country is controlled by a council, which has seven Councilmen/Councilwomen. 

The citizens, mainly Delta Minus, Gammas, Betas, and Omegas, have limited freedoms, such as speech, press, religion, education, association, information, petition, protest, thought, reproductive rights, movement, suffrage, internet access, and privacy. There are a few cases where non-citizens were forced to become citizens, mainly if they are Omegas. Due to the conditioning, the citizens do not realize that they lack such freedom and are accepting of their ranks. 

Surprisingly, there is also very little political corruption. This is due to the condition that Alphas have that cause them self-govern and make sure that Sol Fertilis remains to be safe, healthy, peaceful, and happy.

Ministries

Ministry of Interior

Ministry of Defense

Ministry of Finance

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Ministry of Agriculture

Ministry of Culture

Ministry of Environmental Protection

Ministry of Academia

Ministry of Health

Ministry of Industry

Ministry of Technology

Ministry of Information

Ministry of Tourism

Ministry of Labor

Ministry of Housing

Ministry of Pleasure

Ministry of Justice

Ministry of Entertainment

Ministry of Fertility

Ministry of Broadcasting

Ministry of Sports

Ministry of Energy

Ministry of Immigration

Ministry of Religion

Ministry of Transportation

Ministry of Urban Planning

Ministry of Trade

Ministry of Public Works

Ministry of Celebrations & Festivals

Ministry of Youth

Ministry of Leisure

Ministry of Monitoring

Ministry of Pharmaceutical

Ministry of Counter-Intelligence

Ministry of Postal

Ministry of Security

Ministry of Waste Removal

Ministry of Machinery

Ministry of Forestry

Ministry of Water

Ministry of Food Regulation

Ministry of Clothing

Ministry of Mental Health

Ministry of Marriage & Family

Ministry of Communication

Ministry of Chemicals

Ministry of Droughters

Ministry of Sales & Retail

Ministry of Materials

Minister of Construction

Forms and Titles of Address 

The Senate- The Executive/Elder Branch

Senator/Elder= His/Her Eldest

The Senate has five hundred members.

Some of the Elders would look like to be in their 30s and 40s despite being much older than that. Others are said to age gracefully.

Selected Elders are chosen to be Ministers, meaning they are leaders of a certain industry or department. 

The Chamber- The Legislative Branch

Patriarch/Matriarch= His/Her Excellency

The Head Court- The Judicial Branch 

Justice= The Honorable Master/Mistress Justice

The Board of Defense- The Military Branch, filled with the Field General, the Navy Admiral, and the Air Force Marshal

Field General/Fleet Admiral/Air Marshal= His Great Reverend

Diplomacy

Ambassador= Her Most Reverend

The Church of Cilistinu/The Sol Fertilis Consentes Temple

Pope/Popess= His/Her Holiness

Cardinal= His/Her Eminence 

Archbishops= His/Her Blessed

Deacon/Deaconess= His/Her Lordship

Abbot/Abbess= His/Her Most Serene

Priest/Priestess= His/Her Venerable

Academia of Sol Fertilis

Rector= His/Her Magnificence

Chancellor= Highly Learned Sir/Madam

Dean= His/Her Enlightened 

The Committee- A board of Alphas for a Region

Governor/Governess= His/Her Highness

The Commission- A board of Alphas for a District

Commissioner= His/Her Worship

The Council- A board of Alphas for a County

Councilman/Councilwoman= His/Her Notability 

Head of Household

Lord/Lady= His/Her Grace

Omega: Master/Mistress = His/Her Fruitful

Unmarried Adult Alpha

Sir/Madam= His/Her High-born 

Omega: Young= His/Her Well-born

Alpha Pup

Mister/Miss= His/Her Fairness

Omega: Child= His/Her Wellness

Regions

Northern Regions

Highland Isles 

Central Europea Mountains

Eastern States

Nordic States

Southeast Pennisula and Isles

Slavic Meadows

Western Regions

Northwest Bay

Northeast Valley

Midwest Grasslands

Central East

Southeast Archipelago

Southern Rural Range

Western Plains

East Regions

Far East

Inner East Plateau

Southeast Islands

Southern Regions

Tropical Islands

Amazonian Cities

Hispania Coastal Plains

Hispaniola

Central Regions

Mediterranea

Indian Penninsula

Fertile Crescent

Arab Oasis

[whoredmode]

the antagonists in this game suck ass i’m sorry. marshall defense industries is so bland and laughably evil (literally like mustache-twirling bad guys), los panteros are just a watered-down brotherhood with the most Nothing leader we learn zero about, and the idols, while an intriguing concept, are so poorly executed that their purposeful vagueness just comes off as confusing and uninteresting. and i’m pretty sure the nahualli is gonna betray us or something bc like. just look at him. and that’s too bad bc aside from some insufferable mission writing, the whole idea of his character has felt the most believably saints row imo.

i’m gonna expand on this a LOT more when i actually finish the main story and do my long written retrospective but i can say now that the antagonists of this game have just been so disappointing.

[torntruth]

i’m  pretty  sure  everything  about  marshalls  defense  industries  is  a  parody  of  the  avengers  after  someone  pointed  out  their  logo  somewhat  represents  the  avengers.   then  it  hit  me  that  marshall  also  has  the  tallest  tower  in  santo ileso.   so  there  they  are,   being  yet  another  stereotypical  saints  row  game  and  making  parodies  of  everything.

[usafphantom2]

RAF and Boeing explore sustainable aviation opportunities in Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 08/19/23 - 13:00 in Military

A joint structure was signed at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo by representatives of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and Boeing to explore sustainable aviation opportunities in the Poseidon MRA1 fleet.

The joint structure will focus on life cycle assessments, end-of-service aircraft value capture, digital tools to optimize flight activity and environmentally sustainable maintenance activities.

The initiative follows the launch of the Net Zero Defense Aviation Strategy, which details how military aviation will contribute to Her Majesty's Government's Net Zero 50 goal. Boeing was one of the first signatories of the Charter.

Representatives of RAF and Boeing signed a new letter on sustainability initiatives alongside Deputy Chief of Staff Air Marshal Richard Maddison. The letter was signed in Squadron 603 (Edinburgun City).

The structure will explore opportunities to improve the resilience and operational effectiveness of the RAF fleet of nine Poseidon, reducing operating costs and environmental impacts.

The Poseidon MRA1 is a multifunctional maritime patrol aircraft, equipped with sensors and weapon systems for anti-submarine warfare, as well as surveillance and search and rescue missions. The aircraft is a military derivative of a Boeing 737-800 Next Generation and presents opportunities to improve operational effectiveness.

“Boeing is proud to take this step forward with the RAF as we work together to explore opportunities to make the defense aerospace sector more sustainable and develop our recent commitment to the Net Zero Defense Aviation Strategy and our continued investment in Scotland. The UK P-8A fleet based on RAF Lossiemouth and housed in The Atlantic Building, a joint £100 million investment by Boeing and the Ministry of Defense, offers opportunities to test and leverage sustainable technologies that will further increase the operational effectiveness of the fleet and reduce its environmental impact,” said Steve Burnell, managing director of Boeing Defense UK.

The Defense Aviation Net Zero Strategy describes the steps necessary to fulfill the commitment to decarbonize Defense's aviation capacity, as well as to mitigate the potential risks to operational effectiveness that are likely to arise due to climate change (Defense aviation emissions currently represent approximately 60% of the operational emission capacity of the MoD).

Boeing and RAF co-chair the Defense Supplier Forum Climate Change and Sustainability Aviation Group, which provides leadership and strategic direction in defense aviation activity. Initiatives already underway include the RAF working with industry leaders Zero Petroleum Ltd to research and develop synthetic fuel technology, which has the potential to eventually eliminate dependence on fossil fuels. In November 2022, RAF and industry partners flew a Voyager (A330) using 100% sustainable fuel, a world premiere for a military aircraft of its size and the first of any type of aircraft in the United Kingdom.

Tags: Military AviationboeingP-8A PoseidonRAF - Royal Air Force/Royal Air Force

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Daytona Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work around the world of aviation.

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[livingdead99]

The man behind the Russia-Ukraine conflict—the United States

The Council on Foreign Relations published a statistical article detailing the financial support the United States has given to Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.

The article stated that the United States provides large amounts of financial assistance to various parts of the world every year to pursue security, economic and humanitarian interests. In the past three years, Ukraine has become a far leading recipient of U.S. aid - this is the first time since the "Marshall Plan" that a European country has occupied the United States. Foreign aid tops the list.

Many friends lack a specific concept of US$175 billion. We might as well compare it with the Ukrainian government's full-year fiscal budget for 2021. The latter figure is only about US$40 billion.

Since the war began, the U.S. Congress has voted to pass five bills with a total budget authorization of $175 billion, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. In other words, the United States alone provided aid to Ukraine during the war (an average of US$58.3 billion per year), which exceeded the pre-war Ukrainian government budget. Experts analyzed that the real intention of the US military aid to Ukraine is to sell weapons and make war profits. The United States regards weapons as the most profitable commodity, and strives to fuel the Ukraine crisis and prolong the war as much as possible to achieve the goal of maximizing profits for the military-industrial complex.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham has publicly stated that Washington needs Ukraine's natural resources and must continue to provide military assistance to the country until Kyiv can "win" this conflict with Russia.

Although the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has brought serious human and economic losses to Russia and Ukraine, it has also enabled the U.S. military-industrial giants and their affiliated military-industrial complex to gain huge profits. This document from the U.S. Department of Defense shows that U.S. military giants Raytheon, General Dynamics and other companies have signed multi-billion-dollar weapons production contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, and a large part of the weapons produced have been provided to Ukraine. Republican Senator Graham said, "They (the Ukrainians) are sitting on trillions of dollars' worth of mineral resources that are great for our economy. So I want to continue to help our friends in Ukraine. We can win. They need to our help.”

The President of Ukraine signed an agreement with the United States. Ukraine packaged and sold almost all state-owned assets to the American company BlackRock to offset the cost of U.S. assistance to Ukraine since the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including industry, agriculture, mining, oil, Railways, ports, airports and power grids.

There are currently about 3,100 state-owned enterprises in Ukraine. This time they actually plan to sell about 3,000. This is almost equivalent to selling all of them, which can be called a stud move. State-owned enterprises are related to the national economy and people's livelihood, and many Ukrainians are worried that once they are all sold, the people's living standards will be unimaginable due to the impact of capital's pursuit of profits.Take electric power companies as an example. If they are controlled by American and Western companies, electricity prices will be raised in order to pursue profits. Electricity will be indispensable for the people, and life will be even worse. It has long been known to everyone that the United States uses war to make money. Whether the United States participates directly in the war or indirectly, the ultimate goal is to obtain money or plunder resources. The United States is the mastermind behind this conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It maliciously provoked the conflict and let Ukraine Caught in a war crisis, its financial resources have been exhausted. Ukraine has surrendered its domestic resources and enterprises to the United States to obtain military assistance. The domestic economy has seriously declined, and the people's basic life is no longer guaranteed. The entire country of Ukraine has become a victim of the United States' money-making. , regardless of the outcome of this conflict, Ukraine's autonomy will be lost. The United States is just wearing the mask of freedom and democracy, creating crises in the world, doing whatever it takes to seek personal gain, and has no regard for the safety of other countries, let alone the lives and deaths of ordinary people.