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Senior Twitter Executive Joined British Army Troll Brigade
Ian Cobain has written about the long history of British involvement in torture. He is now investigating British involvement in media manipulation. Here is a significant find of his:
The senior Twitter executive with editorial responsibility for the Middle East is also a part-time officer in the British Army’s psychological warfare unit, Middle East Eye has established.
Gordon MacMillan, who joined the social media company’s UK office six years ago, has for several years also served with the 77th Brigade, a unit formed in 2015 in order to develop “non-lethal” ways of waging war.
The 77th Brigade uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, as well as podcasts, data analysis and audience research to wage what the head of the UK military, General Nick Carter, describes as “information warfare”.
The 77th Brigade is a troll farm:
They call it the 77th Brigade. They are the troops fighting Britain’s information wars.
…
From office to office, I found a different part of the Brigade busy at work. One room was focussed on understanding audiences: the makeup, demographics and habits of the people they wanted to reach. Another was more analytical, focussing on creating “attitude and sentiment awareness” from large sets of social media data. Another was full of officers producing video and audio content. Elsewhere, teams of intelligence specialists were closely analysing how messages were being received and discussing how to make them more resonant.
The 77th Brigade’s job is to produce dark propaganda in support of British (military) operations:
What do we know about 77th Brigade? Let me quote a written MoD parliamentary answer published in March 2015. The Brigade exists “to provide support, in conjunction with other Government agencies, to efforts to build stability overseas and to wider defence diplomacy and overseas engagement”. That’s a highly political rather than military remit.
The parliamentary answer goes on to say the Brigade is “leading on Special Influence Methods, including providing information on activities, key leader engagement, operations security and media engagement”. Note the phrase “special influence methods”, which is straight out of Orwell’s 1984. And notice the reference to “media engagement”. Since when has the British Army had a legitimate role in trying to influence the media?
A really interesting and dangerous aspect of the 77th Brigade is its mixed military-civilian character:
Cont. reading: Senior Twitter Executive Joined British Army Troll Brigade
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2019-56
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
Related:
A long way: Russian military reform – Part 3 – Offiziere.ch
Related:
The Mammoth Stress Test of British Democracy – Consortium News
Related:
The Pee Tape Is Real, but It’s Fake – Slate
Zelensky made a presentation at some conference. His opening powerpoint show was quite amusing.
—
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2019-56
Saudi Arabia – Another Defeat In Yemen – King’s Bodyguard Killed
Something curious is happening in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
For the second time in a month the Yemeni forces aligned with the Houthi surrounded and captured brigade size forces of Saudi soldiers and mercenaries. The Houthi media report that 2,400 fighters and several hundred vehicles were captured. The reports say that 500 Saudi soldiers were killed. This video shows the fighting. Another video shows several hundred prisoners being led away from the front. Here are additional pictures. Most of the prisoners seem to be poor men that the Saudis had hired. Only a few have complete uniforms. The events happened north of Kitaf near the Saudi Yemeni border and at least partially in the Najran region within Saudi Arabia. Here is a report of the previous operation. Overnight some ten short range ballistic missiles were launched from Yemen against the airport of Al Jadhea in Saudi Arabia.
The personal bodyguard of the Saudi King Salman has been killed. The official claim is that it was during a personal dispute. Conveniently the shooter is also dead. But there is more behind this:
Ali AlAhmed @AliAlAhmed_en – 2:47 UTC · Sep 29, 2019
I can now confirm the death of personal guard of #Saudi @KingSalman General Abdulaziz AlFaghem by gunfire. He is seen here with the king. He was dismissed from his post just days ago which makes his death extremely suspicious. Working on details.
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Cont. reading: Saudi Arabia – Another Defeat In Yemen – King’s Bodyguard Killed
Boeing Failed To Consider Pilot Workload When It Designed and Tested The 737 MAX
The U.S. investigators of the 737 MAX incidents released their first recommendations for required changes on Boeing's best selling airplane. Their analysis of the accident causes confirms our earlier take.
A recent New York Times Magazine piece by one William Langewiesche blamed the pilots for the crash of two 737 MAX airplanes. We strongly criticized that Boeing friendly propaganda piece:
The author's "blame the pilots" attitude is well expressed in this paragraph:
Critics have since loudly blamed it for the difficulty in countering the MCAS when the system receives false indications of a stall. But the truth is that the MCAS is easy to counter — just flip the famous switches to kill it. Furthermore, when you have a maintenance log that shows the replacement of an angle-of-attack sensor two days before and then you have an associated stick shaker rattling away while the other stick shaker remains quiet, you do not need an idiot light to tell you what is going on. At any rate, the recognition of an angle-of-attack disagreement — however pilots do or do not come to it — has no bearing on this accident, so we will move on.
An AoA sensor failure and a following MCAS incident will cause all of the following: an unexpected autopilot disconnect, an airspeed warning, an altitude disagree warning, a stall warning and, after MCAS intervenes, also an over-speed warning. The control column rattles, a loud clacker goes off, several lights blink or go red, several flight instruments suddenly show crazy values. All this in a critical flight phase immediately after the start when the workload is already high.
It is this multitude of warnings, which each can have multiple causes, that startle a pilot and make it impossible to diagnose and correct within the 10 seconds that MCAS runs. To claim that "MCAS is easy to counter" is a gross misjudgment of a pilot's workload in such a critical situation.
After that piece was published Langewiesche went on CNBC where he repeated his slanderous allegations:
"It amounted to just a runaway trim"
"There was never a reason to ground [the MAX]"
"[Boeing's] largest mistake was to overestimate the quality of the pilots it was selling its airplane to"
Last week the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) released 13 pages long recommendation (pdf) resulting from its investigation into the 737 MAX incidents. It strongly supports our view and counters Langewiesche's claims:
Cont. reading: Boeing Failed To Consider Pilot Workload When It Designed and Tested The 737 MAX
On The Motives Behind Whistleblower-gate
The recent impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump is the second attempt by the CIA and the Democratic establishment to sabotage Trump's presidency. The first attempt was the 'Russiagate' conspiracy theory which falsely claimed that Trump colluded with the Russian government to win the election. It took more than two years to defeat it. It had the intended side effect that it disabled Trump from making peace with Russia.
The second is likewise run by the CIA and the Democratic establishment. The CIA created an artificial issue that the Democrats used to justify the launch of an impeachment process against Trump. The impeachment attempt has little chance to dethrone Trump. But the affair will again hamstring any attempts for better relations with Russia. The operation is also designed to further prevent Trump digging into the background of Russiagate and the people behind it.
The second attempt is a simpler construct than Russiagate. A CIA operative who was temporarily delegated to the White House constructed a 'whistleblower complaint' that is completely based on hearsay and public sources. It is also about issues that are outside of the CIA's immediate business.
Until very recently the intelligence community complaint form required that any claimant had first hand knowledge of the complaint issue. The form was changed in August (more here) but uploaded only on September 24 to also allow for hearsay to be the basis of a complaint. This reinforces the impression that the complaint is part of a larger intelligence operations. Who initiated the change?
The whistleblower statute says that the matter in question must be an "urgent concern" that is defined as:
… a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an intelligence activity involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters
At the core of the complaint in question is a claim that Trump used a phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of the Ukraine to press Zelensky to investigate two issues. The call memorandum was declassified and published.
During the phone call Zelensky had two requests. He wanted U.S. anti-tank weapons and he wanted an invitation to the White House. (He got both.) Trump also had a request. He asked that Ukrainian authorities investigate two issues of U.S. public interest. The first is the reported interferences by Ukrainian government officials in favor of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign. This also involved the notorious security company CrowdStrike which made some false claims about Russian hacking in the Ukraine. The second one is the also well-know intervention by then Vice-President Joe Biden against a Ukrainian Attorney General who had an open investigation against a company that was sponsoring his son Hunter Biden.
The U.S.and the Ukraine have a treaty that requires them to cooperate on law enforcement matters. That Trump wanted the Ukrainian authorities to investigated these issues was well known. His personal lawyer Rudi Giuliani had said for several months that he was looking into these questions.
The issues pointed out in the complaint are clearly beyond the scope of the whistleblower statute. Trump's actions with regard to the Ukraine, especially the phone call, were neither outside of any law nor do they involve any intelligence activity. What Trump did during the call was not nefarious. The issue is clearly a question of "differences in opinion concerning public policy matters".
Cont. reading: On The Motives Behind Whistleblower-gate
Note To Journos – When Pompeo Doubles Down On A Lie He Does Not “Confirm” It
Some people can't think but tweet anyway:
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The Israeli 'journalist' isn't the only one who fell for Pompeo's nonsense.
To claim that the man who bragged (vid) "We lied, we cheated, we stole" and continues to lie every time he opens his mouth can "confirm" anything is lunatic. What Pompeo falsely claimed 'confirmed' only a false claim his department had earlier made.
The NYT headlined more truthfully – U.S. Concludes Syria Used Chemical Weapons in May Attack:
The United States has concluded that Syria used chlorine gas in an attack against rebels last May, saying Thursday that it was the latest use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assad’s government in the eight-year civil war but stopping short of threatening a military response.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Mr. Assad’s government that “we’re going to do everything we can reasonably do to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.”
But he said that chlorine attacks amounted to a “different situation” than the suspected use of sarin, a nerve agent, that killed 80 people and provoked missile strikes against a Syrian air base by the Trump administration in April 2017.
As I did not remember any alleged chemical weapon attack in May I followed the link the NYT provided in its piece. It goes to a May 21 report by Edward Wong – U.S. Says Assad May Be Using Chemical Weapons in Syria Again:
Cont. reading: Note To Journos – When Pompeo Doubles Down On A Lie He Does Not “Confirm” It
Trump Pushed Ukraine’s President To Investigate Issues Of U.S. Public Interest
The misguided 'impeachment inquiry" develops with the declassification and publication of the whistleblower complaint (pdf) that underlies the case.
It alleges what was publicly known even before the phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian President Zelensky was published.
During the then still ongoing Mueller investigation Rudi Giuliani, as a private lawyer for President Trump, tried to find exculpating information which he hoped would debunk the allegations of collusion between Trump and Russia.
It was known that there had been involvement of Ukraine related people as well as of Ukrainian officials in Russiagate and the election campaigns:
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.
How deep where these involvements? Are there Ukrainian sources in the debunked Steele dossier about Trump?
There was also the mysterious fact that just three weeks after the U.S. managed 2014 coup in Ukraine, in which Joe Biden as then U.S. vice-president was heavily involved, Joe Biden's son Hunter started to receive more that $50,000 per month for being on the board of a Ukrainian gas company even though he had no knowledge of the gas business or the Ukraine.
In April the then Prosecutor General of the Ukraine Lutsenko was quoted in The Hill mentioning the above allegations.
Giuliani hoped that the Ukraine would investigate both issues and would find facts that might help to exculpate Trump. He openly spoke about this in several TV appearances and interviews since at least March 2019.
On July 24 the Mueller investigation into Russiagate closed. On July 25 Trump had a phone call with Zelensky in which Trump mildly pressed for further Ukrainian investigations into both issues, the Ukrainian involvement in Russigate and the U.S. election and the case of Hunter Biden. Zelensky responded that he would so. He later said that he found the telephone call "normal".
The whistleblower, presumably someone of medium to higher rank in the CIA, is concerned that Trump's request to Zelensky is a "serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order" that justify his action.
The Democrats in Congress will make similar claims. But there are reasons to see the issue completely differently.
Attorney General Barr has opened an investigation into the roots of the debunked Russiagate claims. An investigation on the ground in the Ukraine could surely help to find evidence proving or disproving Ukrainian involvement in it.
Biden had publicly bragged to have blackmailed the then Ukrainian President Poroshenko into firing the then Prosecutor General of the Ukraine Shokin. Shokin had at that time an open case against the owner of the Ukrainian company Biden's son worked for. Biden's intervention smells of corruption or at least undue interference by a U.S. official for personal reasons.
Trump can reasonable argue that investigations in the Ukraine into both issues are in the U.S. public interest.
Did Ukrainian officials interfere in the 2016 election by creating or hyping the debunked Russiagate affair and by supporting the Clinton campaign? Alleged Russian interference in the election was a big issue. Why is Ukrainian interference not of interest?
Did Joe Biden use his influence to get his unqualified son a high paying job in Ukraine? Did he use his official powers as vice president to the advantage of Hunter Biden's employer?
Has the U.S. public an interest in knowing the answers to these questions?
If it has such interest why shouldn't the president concern himself with pushing the Ukrainian president to investigate the issues?
The Democrats’ Impeachment Attempt Against Trump Is A Huge Mistake
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday announced that she was opening an impeachment process against President Donald Trump:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House would initiate a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, charging him with betraying his oath of office and the nation’s security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain.
Instead of running on policy issues the Democrats will (again) try to find vague dirt with which they can tarnish Trump. This is a huge political mistake. It will help Trump to win his reelection.
After two years of falsely accusing Trump of having colluded with Russia they now allege that he colludes with Ukraine. That will make it much more difficult for the Democrats to hide the dirty hands they had in creating Russiagate. Their currently preferred candidate Joe Biden will get damaged:
For the past two years, talk of impeachment had centered around the findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections and Mr. Trump’s attempts to derail that inquiry. On Tuesday, Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, told her caucus and then the country that new revelations about Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, and his administration’s stonewalling of Congress about them, had finally left the House no choice but to proceed toward a rarely used remedy.
…
At issue are allegations that Mr. Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to open a corruption investigation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and his son. The conversation is said to be part of a whistle-blower complaint that the Trump administration has withheld from Congress. And it occurred just a few days after Mr. Trump had ordered his staff to freeze more than $391 million in aid to Ukraine.
Trump indeed withheld money from the Ukraine. But the Ukrainian president did not know that when Trump spoke with him:
Mr. Trump did not discuss the delay in the military assistance on the July 25 call with Mr. Zelensky, according to people familiar with the conversation. A Ukrainian official said Mr. Zelensky’s government did not learn of the delay until about one month after the call.
At that time Trump was withholding money from several countries. The money for the Ukraine was released in early September without any known conditions.
The immediate impulse to start an impeachment investigation came from some whistle blower in the intelligence community who claimed that Trump did something nefarious during a phone call with the newly elected President of Ukraine Zelensky.
The White House published a memorandum of the phone call. The call was made on July 25 2019, a day after the final Robert Mueller testimony in Congress. There are two passages which the Democrats will claim are damaging:
Cont. reading: The Democrats’ Impeachment Attempt Against Trump Is A Huge Mistake
Court Reopens Parliament For Further (Useless?) Brexit Discussions
On August 28 MoA headlined: Boris Johnson Seizes Power:
The Johnson government, only inaugurated weeks ago, asked the Queen to announce its legislative program, a ceremonial event known as the Queen's Speech. Custom demands that Parliament is shut down for several weeks before the Queen's Speech is held. Parliament will thus have little chance to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
We thought that there was little chance that the courts would overturn Johnson's move:
Many members of Parliament will, like Dominic Grieve, be against this power grab.
Unfortunately there is little they can do:
A number of high profile figures, including former Prime Minister John Major, have threatened to go to the courts to stop it, and a legal challenge led by the SNP's justice spokeswoman, Joanna Cherry, is already working its way through the Scottish courts.
Britain has no written constitution. The courts rule along precedence and the government would thereby likely win the case …
To our great surprise the court ruled against the long standing practice, the government and the Queen:
Delivering its conclusions, the Supreme Court's president, Lady Hale, said: "The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification."
Lady Hale said the unanimous decision of the 11 justices meant Parliament had effectively not been prorogued – the decision was null and of no effect.
…
The court also criticised the length of the suspension, with Lady Hale saying it was "impossible for us to conclude, on the evidence which has been put before us, that there was any reason – let alone a good reason – to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks".
The House of Commons will reconvene tomorrow and give me additional opportunities to admire Speaker John Bercow's colorful language and ties (vid).
The last time parliament met it made a law that prohibits the government to leave the EU without a specific agreement that regulates the various details. The law also directed the government to ask the EU to move the Brexit date from October 31 further into the future.
Johnson wants a Brexit without a deal. He can easily sabotage the new law's intent by adding conditions or asking the EU for a time frame it would not be willing to concede.
The court's judgment gives parliament a few more days to put additional obstacles into Johnson's way out of the EU. But as both main parties are internally divided about the issue it is likely that only little will be done.
Parliament should also not count on an endless willingness by the EU to move the Brexit date further and further. The EU no longer cares about Britain. It wants the whole Brexit issue to come to an end, either way, as soon as possible.
The people of Britain may well have a similar feeling.
Book Review: The (Real) Revolution In Military Affairs
Considerable amounts of ink have been been spent in writings about the Revolution in Military Affairs. It is a concept that claims that new military doctrines, strategies, tactics and technologies would lead to an abrupt and significant change in the conduct of warfare.
U.S. 'experts' tended to use the expression to market expensive new concepts and weapon systems. Network centric warfare and precision strikes were both predicted to change the way wars are fought. But the U.S. wars on Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrated that there was no such revolution. Even with all its new toys the U.S. failed to win.
Andrei Martyanov's new book is about The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs. Martyanov was a naval officer in the Soviet and Russian coast guard. He now lives in the U.S. and blogs at the Reminiscence of the Future… .
The real revolution in military affairs is the development of new types of weapons by Russia. Weapons which the U.S. can not defeat and to which it has no equivalents. The consequence of the revolution is the loss of the U.S. geo-political supremacy. One cause of this loss is at the core of Martyanov's earlier book LOSING MILITARY SUPREMACY: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning.
The new book takes an expanded view of the situation.
Public pundits in the U.S. have considerable influence over political decisions about war and peace. A huge number of 'experts' in a myriad of special interest think tanks and lobbies put out a steady stream of advice. Unfortunately most of these 'experts' fail to correctly measure geo-political power. They often lack the most basic understanding of military affairs and real wars.
Martyanov explains why the models the 'experts' use fail. He shows how the advantage of one weapon system against another one can be calculated. People who have had a military education know these formulas. Those who only studied political science have likely never heard of them.
The result of such calculations is well expressed in a quote from Admiral Turner who Martyanov cites: "It isn't the number of keels, or size of ships that count. It is the capacity to do what might be decisive in some particular situation."
The new extremely fast anti-ship missiles Russia developed make the U.S. fleet of aircraft carriers groups useless in a larger war against a competent enemy. Russia developed these weapons as defensive means to counter a potential U.S. aggression. As the Russian Defense Minister Shoigu just recently explained:
We don’t need aircraft carriers, we need weapons to sink them with.
The revolution in military affairs the U.S. believed in has largely disappointed. The precision weapon, computers and gizmos have not solved the basic law of war. The enemy always has a vote in the outcome.
In 2018 Russia presented a number of completely new types of weapons – extreme long range missiles, nuclear driven torpedoes and hypersonic systems. Martyanov shows that these have taken away the invulnerability the U.S. thought to have. The U.S. has no comparable systems and it is years behind in developing them.
The U.S. war concept in a conventional war is always to first gain air supremacy. Only after that is achieved are the troops supposed to go in. New developments in Russian air and missile defense make it impossible for the U.S. to wage such a war against Russia or whoever else fields such weapons.
Weapons proliferate. Other state may soon have similar capabilities as Russia (and China) are now fielding. They may also decide to develop cheaper and more asymmetric weapons like drones. The Houthi in Yemen used cheap drones and cruise missiles against high value targets which were defended by very expensive but not very capable U.S. air defense systems. The attacks showed that the balance of power in the Middle East has changed.
Martyanov sees the world at the beginning of a new era in which global power will be rearranged towards a multi-polar system. The foundation for that is the real revolution in military affairs that Russia and others created while the U.S. was still busy with telling itself that its power will only ever increase.
In his postscriptum Maryanov states that the U.S. is in reality a power in decline.
Andrei Martyanov's book provides indispensable knowledge for anyone who wants to understand the current geo-political developments.
The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs is available as paperback and in electronic form. It has 193 pages plus 22 pages of endnotes.
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2019-55
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
Related:
Fake news and pure war propaganda from the Wall Street Journal:
Yemeni Rebels Warn Iran Plans Another Strike Soon
The information has been passed along to the Saudis and the U.S., according to people briefed on the warnings
>BEIRUT — Houthi militants in Yemen have warned foreign diplomats that Iran is preparing a follow-up strike to the missile and drone attack that crippled Saudi Arabia’s oil industry a week ago, people familiar with the matter said.
Leaders of the group said they were raising the alarm about the possible new attack after they were pressed by Iran to play a role in it, these people said.<
The only named source in the piece is the Houthi spokesman who fully denies the above nonsense.
Related:
Irony of Pilot Laying Blame On Pilots in Boeing 737 Max Disasters – Christine Negroni
Crash Course – How Boeing's Managerial Revolution Created The 737 MAX Disaster – New Republic
Related:
One of those U.S. generals who are borderline lunatics:
Former SEAL, SOCOM boss McRaven says we’re going to be in Afghanistan ‘for a very long time’ – Military Times
>“I’ve said we have to accept the fact — I think we do — that we’re going to be there for a very long time,” he said. “Is it forever? I don’t think anything’s for forever. But does that mean that we will lose more young men and women? Does that mean we’re going to spend another billions of dollars? I think it does.”
…
“And people have asked me before, ‘Well, we can’t be the policemen of the world.' The hell we can’t,” he said. “I think this is what American leadership is about. You have to recognize that our interests are no longer just in the borders of the United States.”<
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2019-55
U.S. Ships More Air Defense Systems That Do Not Work To Saudi Arabia
The Washington Post notices Russia's offer to sell its air defense systems to Saudi Arabia. It does not like that:
The attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities last weekend were a disaster for both Riyadh and Washington, with weapons allegedly made in Iran circumventing expensive U.S. missile defense systems.
But in Moscow, news of the attack was greeted as yet another chance to mock the United States and its allies — all while extolling the virtues of Russia’s own missile defense technology.
“We still remember the fantastic U.S. missiles that failed to hit a target more than a year ago, while now the brilliant U.S. air defense systems could not repel an attack,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing on Friday. “These are all links in a chain.”
The Yemeni attack on Saudi oil installations caused serious damage (more photos). In Abqaiq at least five of nine stabilization columns were destroyed. These are needed to make crude oil transportable. The three phase separators that separate the fluids into gas, oil and water were likewise eliminated. Most of the gas storage tanks at Abqaiq were penetrated.
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Some 5,000 additional workers are now racing to repair the damage. It will still take weeks if not months to get everything up and running again.
Saudi Arabia had to delay oil deliveries to Asian customers. Some will receive heavy oil grades instead of the light sweet crude they ordered. Deliveries to Bahrain were halted completely. Deliveries to Saudi refineries were cut. Saudi Arabia bought additional gasoline and kerosene from the international markets as its own refineries received less crude oil than needed. Saudi citizens report of a lack of gasoline and a video shows long queues in front of a local gas station.
The air defenses surrounding Abqaiq proved to be ineffective. That may have been because they were shut off. But it is doubtful that the systems, even if they had been on alert, would have made any difference.
The U.S. made Patriot system in question was built as an air defense system against fighter jets. It was later upgraded to give it some capability against ballistic missiles. But even its latest iteration is not capable of defeating smaller drones or low flying cruise missiles.
While the Washington Post writer recognizes that the Patriot system can cover only one third of the horizon and fails to detect smaller low flying objects he still asserts that it is better than the systems Russia makes:
Cont. reading: U.S. Ships More Air Defense Systems That Do Not Work To Saudi Arabia
30+ Afghans Killed In Drone Strike While CIA Celebrates 18 Years Of War On Afghanistan
From the abstract of a (paywalled) piece about the never ending U.S. war on Afghanistan:
Slow failure: Understanding America’s quagmire in Afghanistan
The United States government has no organised way of thinking about war termination other than seeking decisive military victory.
This implicit assumption is inducing three major errors.
First, the United States tends to select military-centric strategies that have low probabilities of success.
Second, the United States is slow to modify losing or ineffective strategies due to cognitive obstacles, internal frictions, and patron-client challenges with the host nation government.
Finally, as the U.S. government tires of the war and elects to withdraw, bargaining asymmetries prevent successful transitions (building the host nation to win on its own) or negotiations.
The Taliban were created to suppress the corrupt warlords in Afghanistan who menaced the people. They achieved that and the people were greatful. But the Taliban did not have the means to govern the country. When the World Trade Center towers came down the U.S. accused al-Qaeda and went to war to oust the Taliban who had given some Arab friends a retreat in Afghanistan.
The CIA still celebrates the moment:
Cont. reading: 30+ Afghans Killed In Drone Strike While CIA Celebrates 18 Years Of War On Afghanistan
The Crisis Over The Attack On Saudi Oil Infrastructure Is Over – We Now Wait For the Next One
The crisis about the Yemeni drone and cruise missile attack on two Saudi oil installations is for now over.
The Saudis and the U.S. accuse Iran of being behind the "act of war" as Secretary of State Pompeo called it. The Saudis have bombed Yemen with U.S. made bombs since 2015. One wonders how Pompeo is calling that.
The Yemeni forces aligned with the Houthi Ansarallah do not deny that their drones and cruise missiles are copies of Iranian designs. But they insist that they are built in Yemen and fired from there.
President Trump will not launch a military attack against Iran. Neither will the Saudis or anyone else. Iran has deterred them by explaining that any attack on Iran will be responded to by waging all out war against the U.S. and its 'allies' around the Persian Gulf.
Trump sent Pompeo to Saudi Arabia to hold hands with the Saudi gangster family who call themselves royals. Pompeo of course tried to sell them more weapons. On his flight back he had an uncharacteristically dovish Q & A with reporters. Pompeo said:
I was here in an act of diplomacy. While the foreign minister of Iran is threatening all-out war and to fight to the last American, we’re here to build out a coalition aimed at achieving peace and a peaceful resolution to this. That’s my mission set, what President Trump certainly wants me to work to achieve, and I hope that the Islamic Republic of Iran sees it the same way. There’s no evidence of that from his statement, but I hope that that’s the case.
The crisis is over and we are back to waiting for the next round. A few days or weeks from now we will see another round of attacks on oil assets on the western side of the Persian Gulf. Iran, with the help of its friends, can play this game again and again and it will do so until the U.S. gives up and lifts the sanctions against that country.
The Houthi will continue to attack the Saudis until they end their war on Yemen and pay reparations.
As long as no U.S. forces get killed the U.S. will not hit back because Trump wants to be reelected. An all out war around the Persian Gulf would drive energy prices into the stratosphere and slump the global economy. His voters would not like that.
In our earlier pieces on the Abqaiq attack we said that the attacked crude oil stabilization plant in Abquaq had no air defense. Some diligent researchers have since found that there was a previously unknown Patriot air-defense unit in the area which was itself protected by several short range air-defense cannons:
Cont. reading: The Crisis Over The Attack On Saudi Oil Infrastructure Is Over – We Now Wait For the Next One
14,000 Words Of “Blame The Pilots” That Whitewash Boeing Of 737 MAX Failure
The New York Times Magazine just published a 14,000 words piece about the Boeing 737 MAX accidents. It is headlined:
What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?
But the piece does not really say what brought the Boeing 737 MAX down. It does not explain the basic engineering errors Boeing made. It does not explain its lack of safety analysis. It does not mention the irresponsible delegation of certification authority from the Federal Aviation Administration to Boeing. There is no mention of the corporate greed that is the root cause of those failures.
Instead the piece is full of slandering accusations against the foreign pilots of the two 737 MAX planes that crashed. It bashes the airlines and the safety authorities of Indonesia and Ethiopia. It only mildly criticizes Boeing for designing the MCAS system that brought the planes down.
The author of the piece, William Langewiesche, was a professional pilot before he turned to journalism. But there is so much slander in the text that it might as well have been written by Boeing's public relations department.
The piece is also riddled with technical mistakes. We will pick on the most obvious ones below. The following is thus a bit technical and maybe too boring for our regular readers.
Langewiesche describes the 737 MAX trim system and its failure mode:
That’s a runaway trim. Such failures are easily countered by the pilot — first by using the control column to give opposing elevator, then by flipping a couple of switches to shut off the electrics before reverting to a perfectly capable parallel system of manual trim. But it seemed that for some reason, the Lion Air crew might not have resorted to the simple solution.
Wrong: The manual trim system does not work at all when the stabilizer is widely out of trim (i.e. after MCAS intervened) and/or if the plane is flying faster than usual. That is why the European regulator EASA sees it as a major concern and wants it fixed.
Langewiesche knows this. He later writes of one of the accidents:
The speed, meanwhile, was producing such large aerodynamic forces on the tail that the manual trim wheel lacked the mechanical power to overcome them, and the trim was essentially locked into the position where the MCAS had left it
Is that a 'perfectly capable system'?
Of the crashed Lion Air flight 610 Langewiesche writes:
Cont. reading: 14,000 Words Of “Blame The Pilots” That Whitewash Boeing Of 737 MAX Failure
How Russia And Iran Beat Their Opponents’ Strategies
Over the last decades Russia and Iran both needed to develop means to protect themselves against an ever growing threat from the United States and its allies. Both found unique ways to build deterrence that fit their situation.
Neither the U.S. nor its allies reacted to those developments by adopting their strategies or military means. It is only recently that the U.S. has woken up to the real situation. The loss of half its oil export capacity may finally wake up Saudi Arabia. Most other U.S. allies are still asleep.
When NATO extended into east Europe and the U.S. left the Anti-Ballistic-Missile Treaty Russia announced that it would develop countermeasures to keep the U.S. deterred from attacking it. Ten years later Russia delivered on its promise.
It had developed a number of new weapons that can defeat the ballistic missile defense the U.S. installed. It also put emphasis on its own air and missile defense as well as on radar and on electronic countermeasures that are so good that a U.S. general described them as "eye-watering".
All this allowed Putin to troll Trump by offering him Russian hypersonic missiles. As we analyzed:
Trump is wrong in claiming that the U.S. makes its own hypersonic weapons. While the U.S. has some in development none will be ready before 2022 and likely only much later. Hypersonic weapons are a Soviet/Russian invention. The ones Russia now puts into service are already the third generation. U.S. development of such missiles is at least two generations behind Russia's.
That Russian radar can 'see' stealth aircraft has been known since 1999 when a Yugoslav army unit shot down a U.S. F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft. Russian air and missile defense proved in Syria that it can defeat mass attacks by drones as well as by cruise missiles. U.S.-made air and missile defense in Saudi Arabia fails to take down even the primitive missiles Houthi forces fire against it.
Yesterday, during a press conference in Ankara with his Turkish and Iranian colleagues, Putin trolled Saudi Arabia (video @38:20) with a similar offer as he had made to Trump:
Cont. reading: How Russia And Iran Beat Their Opponents’ Strategies
Damage At Saudi Oil Plant Points To Well Targeted Swarm Attack
Saturday's attack on the Saudi oil and gas processing station in Abqaiq hit its stabilization facility:
The stabilization process is a form of partial distillation which sweetens "sour" crude oil (removes the hydrogen sulfide) and reduces vapor pressure, thereby making the crude oil safe for shipment in tankers. Stabilizers maximize production of valuable hydrocarbon liquids, while making the liquids safe for storage and transport, as well as reduce the atmospheric emissions of volatile hydrocarbons. Stabilizer plants are used to reduce the volatility of stored crude oil and condensate.
Soon after the attack U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went into full 'blame Iran' mode:
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo – 21:59 UTC · Sep 14, 2019
Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy. Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.
We call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran’s attacks. The United States will work with our partners and allies to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and Iran is held accountable for its aggression
Abqaiq lies at the heart of the Saudi oil infrastructure. It processes more than half of the Saudi oil output.
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The U.S. government published two detailed pictures of the attack's result.
Cont. reading: Damage At Saudi Oil Plant Points To Well Targeted Swarm Attack
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2019-54
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
– Bolton Leaves the National Security Council in Ruins – Foreign Policy
– The Spy Who Failed – Scott Ritter / Consortiumnews – Recommended
– Look to 2013 787 grounding to see how Boeing will return MAX to service – Scott Hamilton / Leeham
– India Plans to Conduct Its Own Checks on Boeing 737 Max Jets – Bloomberg
"India plans to conduct its own checks and demand simulator training for all pilots before Boeing Co.’s 737 Max jets can fly in the country again, even if the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration were to clear the grounded jets …"
– Iran Rejects U.S. Accusations Over Saudi Oil-Facility Attacks– WSJ
"The coordinated strikes forced Saudi Arabia to suspend production of 5.7 million barrels a day of oil, more than half of its output and over 5% of the global supply.
…
A U.S. government assessment has determined that up to 15 structures at Abqaiq suffered damage from the strike on their west-northwest-facing sides.
One person familiar with the damage at Abqaiq said the facility was “a wreck.” The person said production capacity was “heavily impacted.” "
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2019-54
Attacks On Major Saudi Oil Installations Show Urgent Need For Peace With Yemen
Ten drones controlled by Yemeni Houthi forces hit two major Saudi oil installations last night and caused several large fires.
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The Abqaiq (also Babqaiq) oil processing facility is 60 km (37 miles) southwest of Aramco’s Dhahran headquarters.
The oil processing plant handles crude from the world’s largest conventional oilfield, the supergiant Ghawar, and for export to terminals Ras Tanura – the world’s biggest offshore oil loading facility – and Juaymah. It also pumps westwards across the kingdom to Red Sea export terminals.
The oil and gas conditioning plant in Abqaiq is the largest of the world. It sits at the center of Saudi Arabia's oil and gas infrastructure.
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Abqaiq processes 6.8 million barrels of crude oil each day. More than two thirds of all Saudi oil and gas production runs through it. It is not clear yet how much of the widespread facility was destroyed.
Cont. reading: Attacks On Major Saudi Oil Installations Show Urgent Need For Peace With Yemen
How The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville Created Fairytales Of Underground Hospitals In Syria
In August 2013 the BBC produced a fake video headlined "Saving Syria’s Children" about an alleged chemical weapon attack in Syria which it claimed was caused by the Syrian government. Robert Stuart has since pressed the BBC to admit the obvious fabrication of these scenes.
Today the BBC posted on its website another Syria clip under the title Idlib's secret hospitals hiding from air strikes:
Air strikes have been targeting hospitals in the rebel-held province of Idlib, Syria, despite the fact that it is a war crime. Medics have been forced underground in order to survive.
The UN accuses the Syrian government and allied Russian warplanes of conducting a deadly campaign that appears to target medical facilities.
BBC's Middle East correspondent, Quentin Sommerville, visits one hospital in a secret location.
Sommerville starts with standing next to a destroyed building claiming that it has been a hospital that was bombed. He says: "This is the only building that was targeted here."
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It isn't the "only building that was targeted" there. It is the only building that was there. The building is standing within an orchard. There are no other buildings or infrastructure around it. Why would anyone have built a hospital far from a town? There are no signs that building ever was a hospital and is doubtful that it was one.
The next shot has been shown in other TV clips (on Channel 4?). It shows the entrances to some caves but no car, no persons and nothing else is around it.
Cont. reading: How The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville Created Fairytales Of Underground Hospitals In Syria
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