Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“The fact that the House of Representatives has not had a vote on aid to Ukraine is the most successful military operation of this war. Nothing compares to the fact that the United States is not voting on giving Ukraine $60 billion of aid, which has passed the Senate and has the president’s approval…That is now shaping the battlefield more than anything else.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MUmtxeTyy8
“The US Navy has a missile problem. A shortage of its best SM-6 missiles – multipurpose weapons that can sink ships, hit targets on land and intercept aircraft and other missiles – could doom its fleet. Missiles are being expended at a high rate in the current Red Sea fighting against the Iranian-backed Houthis of Yemen. What good are the Navy’s 85 destroyers and cruisers if they can’t shoot?
A little industrial ingenuity could end the crisis, however. Defense firm Lockheed Martin is proposing to arm Navy ships with a missile that normally launches from land: the US Army’s Patriot.
The Patriot is a deadly accurate munition, as Ukrainian and Russians forces have learned. The hard way, in the Russians’ case. But its main advantage over the Navy’s best SM-6 missile is that Lockheed makes a lot of them.
On paper, the US fleet is a giant floating missile magazine. Each of 72 destroyers sails with as many as 96 vertical missile cells. A cruiser – the Navy has 13 of them – has 122 cells. Each cell can fire various weapons such as an SM-2 surface-to-air missile or a Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile. But the best weapon that fits in the so-called “vertical launch system” is the SM-6.
The 22-foot, 3,300-pound SM-6 is the Navy’s only omni-role missile. Thanks to its sensitive built-in radar, it works equally well against targets on the sea, on land and in the air out to a range of 150 miles or farther. It’s even able to offer a defense against incoming hypersonic weapons.
But the SM-6 is complex. For a decade now, the Navy has been paying Raytheon to build 125 of the missiles per year at a cost of slightly more than $4 million per missile; the fleet has around 600 in stock. The production rate should increase slightly in the coming years.
Even taking into account the fleet’s large arsenal of less-capable SM-2s, there’s a real danger it could get overwhelmed by enemy missiles, drones and warplanes during, say, a war with China over Taiwan.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-navy-missile-problem-red-134529869.html
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/chinese-hackers-spent-5-years-194131308.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQLI8xnINqk
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/24047940/china-us-war-taiwan-japan-key-role-explained
“Lawmakers are warning a “catastrophic situation” in Haiti may worsen the migrant crisis as a loose alliance of armed gangs threaten to seize control of the nation, where the acting leader is missing.
Gang violence has plagued the Caribbean nation for more than two years since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. But the crisis has escalated in recent days, when armed gangs overran two of Haiti’s biggest prisons, released thousands of inmates and tried to take control of the country’s main airport.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/05/united-states-worried-haiti-crisis-migration-00145080
“Forty-five percent of Americans now think the U.S. is spending too much money helping Ukraine, according to an AP-NORC poll from November. Ukraine aid is especially unpopular among Republicans, 59 percent of whom said the U.S. had spent too much. Disapproval may be especially high among supporters of former President Donald Trump: Only about a third of Trump supporters favored ongoing Ukraine funding in an Ipsos/Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll from Sept. 7-18, while 59 percent of anti-Trump Republicans favored it.
At the same time, a plurality of Americans, 43 percent, think the West should support Ukraine until Russia withdraws, and 46 percent think the West is not doing enough to support Ukraine, according to a YouGov/EuroTrack poll from Jan. 5 – Feb. 4.”
https://abcnews.go.com/538/years-war-american-support-ukraine/story?id=107488095
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pUZK_J6cL0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tXvLJXkFFg
“The US is helping convert Israel’s bombs into precision weapons in an attempt to limit the heavy civilian casualties during its military campaign in Gaza.
High-tech Spice (smart precision impact cost effective) kits worth $320million (£252million), which allow unguided dumb bombs to hit their targets with a much higher degree of accuracy, are being sent to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Although the IDF insists it avoids collateral damage where possible, Israel has been heavily criticised for the high civilian death toll in Gaza.
Bombs equipped with the guidance kits use a scene-matching algorithm to strike targets matching a pre-loaded image.
It can correct its trajectory if it is drifting off course and can operate in fog or darkness. It is not affected by GPS jamming equipment which can neutralise other guided weapons.
Analysis by CNN in December found that almost half of the air-to-ground munitions Israel has dropped in Gaza have been dumb bombs, which pose a greater risk to civilians.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/high-tech-warheads-turn-israel-160232484.html