Russia, Iran, and India are speeding up efforts to complete a new transport corridor that would largely cut Europe, its sanctions, and any other threats out of the picture. The International North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) is a land-and sea-based 7,200-km long network comprising rail, road and water routes that are aimed at reducing costs and travel time for freight transport in a bid to boost trade between Russia, Iran, Central Asia, India.
Amidst all the talk about defunding the police, notice something important: No one talks about defunding the military. That’s because the military establishment is too powerful and has come to be accepted as a permanent feature in American life. Except for libertarians, everyone treats the military as their god.
On November 9, 2022, Sergey Surovikin, the military commander of the special military operation for liberation of Donbass, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, reports publicly to Sergey Shoigu, Russian defense minister
[…] Kherson cannot be fully supplied and function. Russia did everything possible to ensure the evacuation of the inhabitants. Kiev strikes at the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station and creates a threat of flooding of vast territories. The most expedient option is to organize defense along the barrier line of the Dnieper River. It is proposed to take up defense along the left bank. Keeping a grouping of troops on the right bank is futile […]
Oct 23, 2022 – Update on Russian operations against Ukraine for October 23, 2022
– Russian missile and drone strikes continue targeting and crippling Ukraine’s power grid,
– Ukraine is attempting to target a major dam at Nova Kakhkovka to flood the Dnieper River and disrupt Russian supply lines to Kherson city;
– Western analysts admit Ukraine is in a critical situation and risks being completely cut off from its Western sponsors;
– The US is putting pieces in place to set up a buffer zone in Ukraine to prevent Russian forces from taking western Ukraine and perhaps even Odesa to prevent what’s left of Ukraine from becoming landlocked.
To more conflict, more confrontation, higher prices, lower standards of living and, eventually, a disintegration of the prevailing order. That much is certain. The problem, of course, is that the China hawks now control the levers of power in Washington which means that the attacks on China will intensify, decoupling will accelerate, and a massively-destabilizing international crisis will soon follow.
In recent weeks, the level of 155 mm combat rounds in U.S. military storage have become “uncomfortably low,” one defense official said. The levels aren’t yet critical because the U.S. isn’t engaged in any major military conflict, the official added. “It is not at the level we would like to go into combat,” the defense official said.
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In the U.S., it takes 13 to 18 months from the time orders are placed for munitions to be manufactured, according to an industry official. Replenishing stockpiles of more sophisticated weaponry such as missiles and drones can take much longer.
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Speaking on an earnings call July 19, Jim Taiclet, chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp., said the Pentagon has yet to put the contracts in place or coordinate with industry to buy more supplies, a process that often takes two to three years.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 