It is interesting, and alarming, the degree to which Europe - after watching the war in Ukraine for 3 years, and the rapidly escalating conflict in the Middle East - have been caught with their pants down when it comes to their own defense.

Got a great deal on my flight from Little Rock to Jacksonville. Yeah, it *does* connect through Tashkent but hey, can't beat those prices!

Everyone's saying it but I really love the idea of Uzbekistan Airways having 23000 airplanes, thereby equalling the number of commercial airlines in operation worldwide. There are now twice as many airliners flying, and half of them are Uzbek. Yashasin O'zbekiston.

If Erdoğan successfully doms Trump into re-approving F-35 transfers to Turkey, then we will likely not add an Israeli strike on Turkey. As soon as those F-35s arrive, Israel loses its trump card (heh). Especially since (unlike Israel) Turkey actually has a real military industrial base.

Correction: apparently this is an electromagnetic catapult demonstrated here, and I believe the only other such system is on the USS Gerald R Ford... Which currently can't operate the F-35, and "future ships of its class" will allegedly have such capability. Meanwhile Type 003 Fujian:

Just 15 years ago, China retrofitted a retired Soviet ski-jump aircraft carrier, originally bought to be a casino in Macau, as their first foray into carrier ops. Now they are operating indigenous 5th Gen fighters off an indigenous steam catapult aircraft carrier.

Thread of The Myth of Israeli Military Independence: you want to know how much Israel needs the active, constant, and unquestioning support of the United States, and how that relationship is unique and irreplaceable? Read on (and more coming, as there's so much to talk about!)

This would obviously be an enormous improvement over the current situation and dramatically reduce Israel's destructive capability, but equally important imo is logistical sustainment and intelligence support, not simple munitions. Make Israel build their own fucking airbases, for example.

This is two of the three non-US sources of modern military aircraft publicly yelling at Israel in the last week (with China a few days ago) And Russia, well... Russia's a little preoccupied.

"If the US doesn't sell weapons to Israel, they'll just go to China!" says the clueless liberal. Meanwhile, politically connected and influential Chinese international relations experts:

Oh my God! More White House press/media censorship! Reporter Sam Husseini DRAGGED away by armed police for asking basic questions of the Regime!

White House planning to spend another $6 billion of US taxpayer dollars (this is a "sale" using US money, not Israeli money) to send Apache helicopters and vehicles to Israel - a country that the UN says is commiting genocide and has bombed 🇵🇸🇱🇧🇸🇾🇾🇪🇶🇦🇹🇳 all in the last month.

We are cooked on a level never before thought humanly possible

I could be misunderstanding something about how the IDF operates, but apparently 3 of the IDF soldiers killed in Gaza this morning were cadets in Officer Training School, and the fourth was their commanding officer. Either it's standard to constitute infantry units from officer cadets, or...

Chuckling at the fact that the production of fighter aircraft in the United Kingdom is being saved by... Turkey ordering EuroFighters. The sun truly has set on the British Empire, the Turk lusts for Vienna once again, and the British will sell him the weapons to do so.

US Navy AEW&C aircraft with Iranian/Houthi drone/missile kill markers, indicating their role in intercepting those weapons. To be clear, Israel does not have the quantity and capability of AEW&C aircraft to push them out over the Red Sea or Iraq/Jordan for interception missions at scale.

Pakistani Air Force pilot Saif-ul-Azam was deployed to fly planes for the Jordanian Air Force in 1967, during which he engaged in combat with the Israeli Air Force, alleging shooting down between 3-4 IAF jets. Pakistani pilots serving for Syria and Jordan suffered no losses of their own.

It was Israel or America and all the serious Democrats picked Israel

While we're talking about censorship, I'm just remembering drafting a condolence letter to a USAID partner org in Gaza who had staff killed by an an Israeli airstrike and a Biden USAID appointee removed reference to Israel so it was an "I'm sorry your staff died randomly that sucks tho" letter

We have a tech industry that produces no technology, car companies that don't make cars, real estate companies deliberately not developing property, and now media companies that don't make any media What even is the US economy at this point?

The Rafale is a great aircraft, no question. But it takes on average about 4 years from contract signature to first batch delivery. J-10C to Pakistan? 8 months.

These challenges are boring, it's just a "point to Iran on the map" challenge.

Semi related but I just have to repeat how Samantha Power's last big town hall at USAID before disappearing into the sunset was her talking about "ending lead poisoning" and "beating China in Angola (??)" no mention at all of Gaza of course.

China is the world leader in so many sectors of the economy, including basically every crucial element (energy, steel production, shipbuilding, electronics) that it's genuinely insane that so many people think they won't outpace American military power in a very short period of time.

This is why a bunch of countries have paused F-35 and other essential defense acquisitions, and undoubtedly more will do so as this continues Why base your national sovereignty on... This guy?

BREAKING: Justice Gregory Carro has dismissed the first degree murder charge against Luigi Mangione in his state case, finding the DA put legally insufficient evidence before the grand jury. More TK.

A certain country is carrying out heavy airstrikes in Gaza days after striking Qatar, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Why don't we force them to invest their own money and time into building the planes to do this? They're a new Sparta after all, it shouldn't be that difficult...

Chinese aviation was struggling in the '70s and '80s, crushed under the weight of the Sino-Soviet split and the Cultural Revolution. Domestic designs were floundering, and they were falling far behind their rivals. Something had to be done.

Spain has now cancelled over $1 billion in arms contracts with Israeli firms in the past few months. That's a legitimately significant amount of money, and the loss of a major European NATO member at a time when the EU is majorly increasing arms purchases.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii (1972) Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Stirring Islamophobia is literally Jeffries’ political origin story!

The Palestine Exception becomes the Universal Rule. It is shocking the number of normal nice liberals who, in 2025, do not know what Canary Mission is. What "normies" are experiencing now is what critics of Israel have always experienced.

The Palestine Exception becomes the Universal Rule. It is shocking the number of normal nice liberals who, in 2025, do not know what Canary Mission is. What "normies" are experiencing now is what critics of Israel have always experienced.

It's happening

Semi unironically: we have to join the Belt and Road initiative

I do think it's telling the Egyptian security source specifically said it was a *Chinese* system. Egypt recently wrapped up a joint air force exercise with the PLAAF that featured PLAAF J-10C, J-16, and Y-20B aircraft amidst rumors Egypt is buying the J-10C.

Also noteworthy, mentioning deployment of a "chinese air defense system" to the Sinai to deter Israeli aircraft from incursions into Egyptian airspace. That would most likely be the HQ-9, a Chinese-made version of the Soviet/Russian S-300 system.

If Israel used the same tactics and weapons, they most likely could carry out a successful strike against Ankara without putting any of their aircraft at risk. The problem is that Turkey, as the kids say, matches their freak

Who will be the first F-16 operator to authorize missile release against Israeli aircraft deemed a potential threat?

Notable that (a) Israel appears to have fired air-launched ballistic missiles from Syrian or Iraqi airspace and (b) reports that Turkey and Qatar both scrambled fighters (Turkish F-16s are stationed in Qatar) in an attempt to intercept Israeli aircraft.

New blog post up on Israeli & U.S. missile defense performance during True Promise II I broke up the defenses into midcourse and terminal phases, & looked at how well each performed Come for the effectiveness rates, stay for weird Arrow-3 launch buildings. www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1220...

I always find it interesting how China modernized its military by licensing Israeli and French weapons, particularly missiles. For example, the Israeli Python 3 was license produced in China as the PL-8, helping build Chinese missile experience, and now China is a leader in air-to-air missiles

my reaction every time someone calls a ballistic missile warhead or booster fragmenting and burning up in the atmosphere (due to interception or otherwise) a "cluster missile"

The GCC's assumption has long been that if you normalize with Israel and do whatever America says then you can just develop as you like and do techno fascist corporatism in peace but actually turns out you get bombed anyway. Fell for it again award:

>Israel bombs Qatar and Tunisia in one day >Russian drones entering Poland en masse >Massive protests in Indonesia and Nepal >President confirmed pedo Let's talk temporarily extending Medicare subsidies, that's the key to all of this

Well, I am relieved to hear that Elizabeth Tsurkov is both still alive and has been released by Kataib Hezbollah. That's a particular news story I assumed would just never really come up again, and we'd find out years later that she died.

Found an excellent diecast replica of the exact Imperial Iranian Air Force RF-4E in the photo below! And you *know* I had to do it to 'em (IRIAF F-14A Tomcat in modern blue/gray/beige livery)

What are the choices available to the Middle East? Qatar thought it was choosing between the Axis of Resistance and the Axis of Compliance. But there's only one option - the Axis of Misery. It doesn't matter how compliant you are, anything is fair game for Israeli bombs.

I mean most people who know anything about foreign countries are liberal, but when was the last time somebody with decades of field experience with USAID was appointed to a senior FoPo position? Dems don't want expertise or knowledge, they want sycophantic lobbyists, just like Republicans.

Awkward because it appears they gave it all up and the Israelis didn't even kill the Hamas guys, instead killing a few Qatari police officers. Oops!