Yep - as predicted: interceptor drones

 

Some months ago, speaking about "Ground combat in an age of drone warfare", I said:

I predict we'll see new drones designed to do nothing but hunt down the other side's drones.  Think World War I.  Initially, aircraft were used only for reconnaissance, finding out what the enemy was up to.  In due course, the first bombs were dropped, to disrupt what the enemy was doing.  To stop both activities, fighter aircraft were designed to stop enemy aircraft from doing their thing.  I think we'll see "fighter drones" coming down the pike, to do precisely the same thing in modern terms.  I'll be very surprised indeed if they're not already being developed, along with weapons to equip them for that task.

Just one week later, I wrote about two Western interceptor drone systems that are being tested.

It seems that Russia has now developed its own interceptor drone technology, according to this video clip on Bitchute.  I'm sorry about the noisy advertisement embedded before the actual video:  I can't prevent that, but after only a few seconds you can select an option to skip the rest of the advert.  I recommend doing that.

I've no idea what drone system that is, but it certainly seems to be effective against relatively slow-moving quadcopter-type drone systems (those most often encountered over the Ukrainian battlefield).  If any reader knows more, please let us know in Comments.

We're seeing a much faster, rapid development environment in drone warfare than we have in most past "conventional" wars.  That's partly because the computer technology involved has become over-the-counter.  One no longer has to specially develop a chip or control system:  something already developed for other purposes can be re-programmed to do what one wants.  It's no longer necessary to spend months and millions of dollars designing a solution tailored for a single purpose.  Also, commercial components for light drones are freely available at very low prices.  Those developing them can buy what they want almost anywhere, and for not much money.  (For example, Ukraine has developed many different models, including this innovative - and very low-cost - "kamikaze" drone, costing between $5,000 and $10,000 apiece.  If one of those hits a battlefield vehicle like a tank or armored personnel carrier or artillery piece, any of which will cost many times as much, it's an economic victory every time as well as a tactical win.)

Sheer economics made interceptor drones inevitable.  If it takes a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar shoulder-fired missile to take out a ten-thousand-dollar drone coming towards one, it soon becomes impossible to afford such exchanges.  On the other hand, a ten-thousand-dollar drone intercepted by another ten-thousand-dollar drone is a much more affordable solution - and the much more expensive installations and vehicles protected by those interceptor drones will still be intact and able to operate.  It's a no-brainer.  I'm sure we'll see many more interceptor and fighter drones in the very near future.

Peter

Don't play with knives!

 

I was reminded of this (in)famous Shop At Home advertisement during a conversation with a friend recently.  It happened the best part of two decades ago, as I recall, but it's still funny (to the audience, at any rate - the presenter might disagree).

That'll teach them not to make cutting remarks about their competitors . . .

Peter

State of the writer (ouch!)

 

Several readers have asked lately when I'm going to publish more books.  Following my mention last Saturday of being in a lot of pain and awaiting surgery, those questions have increased.  I figured I owe my fans (thank you for being there!) an explanation.  If it's TMI, I apologize, but it won't make sense without a certain amount of detail.  (This isn't a pity party, and I'm not looking for sympathy:  I'm just laying out the facts so readers can understand why I haven't produced much lately.)

Basically, what I'm enduring at the moment (and have been for the past couple of years) is a coming together of hard wear and tear over many years, plus injury.  As regular readers will know, I had a fairly adventurous life in Africa before coming to the USA almost thirty years ago.  That put a lot of strain on the moving parts, so to speak:  as so many military veterans are known to say, "It's not the years, it's the mileage".  That's very true.  I was "rode hard and put away wet" for a while, and sooner or later that catches up with one.

The other is my injury on the job two decades ago.  That left me with a fused spine and nerve damage to my left leg and hip, and I've been in constant pain (as in 24/7/365) from then onward.  That just plain wears on a man, I'm here to tell you.

Put those factors together and the wear and tear accelerates.  In 2009 I had a major heart attack, leading to a quadruple bypass.  There was no warning that anything was wrong:  it just hit me out of nowhere.  The theory is that all that stress when I was younger had built up in me, and was intensified by the constant pain following my injury in 2004.  Eventually things just came to a head - or, rather, a heart.  Bypass surgery was successful, and I carried on with my life, now popping pills for heart health as well as for pain and what have you.

The cardiologist in 2009 told me that bypasses were "warrantied" for no longer than ten years:  and, sure enough, ten years and one month after my first heart attack, I had another.  This one was smaller, but was a "widowmaker" - a very dangerous one.  My cardiologist here in Texas was able to unblock an artery that had been bypassed ten years before, and inserted a stent, which put me back on my feet with minimal long-term heart damage (for which, thanks be to God).  That was five years ago.  Is there another one on the way five years from now?  Sooner?  Later?  Who knows?  All I know is, according to the doctors, once you've had two you're almost guaranteed at least a third.

All that accumulated pain and stress has led to other systems in my body beginning to break down, slowly but surely.  I lost my gall bladder some years ago, and am now experiencing kidney problems.  I expect at least one surgery to deal with that, fairly soon now.  Adding to that, the neurosurgeon who fused my spine warned me, twenty years ago, that I was at high risk for reinjury, and was certain to face spinal deterioration because a fusion reduces flexibility, causing discs above and below the fusion site to atrophy, creating conditions where arthritis of the spine can develop.  As he predicted, that has now happened.  Unfortunately, Workers Compensation doesn't want to pay for further treatment for a 20-year-old injury;  but regular medical insurance won't touch it because they regard it as work-related.  That bureaucratic impasse is rather frustrating, to put it mildly.  I may have to launch a fundraiser to pay for the spine surgery.  We'll see.

To make matters more interesting, along came COVID-19.  I've had at least two, and probably three bouts with it.  Thanks to Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, I was able to shake them off, but the after-effects linger, as many of you have experienced for yourselves.

So, for the past couple of years, I've faced an accumulation of health problems and increased pain levels that have effectively stopped me producing nearly as much work as I'd like (particularly of what I consider an acceptable quality).  However, I am still working, even though I find it hard in my present state of health to produce creative writing that I consider of a suitable standard for publication.  I discard a lot of work while editing it, because it's just not up to the standards I try to meet.  In an effort to counter that, I put a lot of effort into making this blog relevant, interesting and entertaining, in an attempt to force myself to remain in the "writing groove".

My plans right now are to complete my Civil War naval trilogy, which is making good progress at last.  I plan to release it in rapid succession, one book a month over three months, hopefully kicking off in 2025.  I also have the sixth volume of the Maxwell Saga almost ready to publish.  I hope that will happen later this year (although that depends on surgeries and their aftermath - that may push it out to 2025 as well).  I'm very sorry for the delay (not least because I rely on income from my books to survive!), but I'm doing my best.  I hope you understand.

So, there you have the state of the author.  I'll keep on plugging away, and I truly hope I can get through and past my current health problems to where I can produce more work, more often.  Prayers, as always, are appreciated.

Peter

Er... oops?

 

Apparently the United Arab Emirates has been seeding clouds in its sky in an attempt to produce more rain.  It seems to have worked, not just very well, but perhaps too well.  A storm was brewing anyway, and the seeding appears to have "encouraged" it.  See for yourselves.

I can't believe they taxied that airliner right through floodwater like that!  It'll require major maintenance before it flies again.  The undercarriage will probably need fresh hydraulic fluid, and I think the engines are bound to have ingested rather more water than they prefer.  If I'd been a passenger on that thing, and looked out of the window to see all that spray, I think I'd have been hammering on the cockpit door, demanding to be let off the plane before they tried to take off!  I wonder if Boeing or Airbus offer a water-ski or flotation upgrade to their landing gear?

Oh, well.  I suspect the cloud seeding company can probably apply for some sort of bonus after being so successful - just as long as they don't apply to the airlines!

Peter

Interesting posts around the blogosphere

 

Several recent blog posts by friends and fellow bloggers made their way onto my "Blog Fodder" list over the past couple of weeks.  I thought I'd toss them out there for you to enjoy.  They're all useful.

Eaton Rapids Joe brings us a very useful tip on how to put on socks if bending is a problem for you.  It sure is for me, with the "hinge point" of my spine fused, and nerve damage in my left hip and leg.  I tried this trick, and it worked reasonably well.  Thanks, Joe!

Borepatch has two interesting articles.  The first points out that global warming is a politically correct invention, involving falsifying past data to make it conform with the preferred narrative.  The second discusses computer security and online privacy, and provides two recent examples where it was breached.  Money quote:  "OPSEC [operations security] is a stone cold bitch of a problem.  You have to be right 100% of the time, and dropping that to 99.99% means that you lose."

Divemedic points out that "The government is out there trying to 'nudge' people into breaking the law. IOW- entrapping them."  He's not wrong.  Go watch the linked video clip, and realize that this puts us all at risk.

Alma Boykin provides us with a history of spring-cleaning, and why it was very important from both a practical and a cultural perspective.  I didn't know a lot of what she mentions.  Interesting stuff, and it'll feed future novels (I hope).

Finally, SNAFU links to a video clip of a slingshot made with simple PVC pipe, the kind of thing you can buy at almost any hardware or home improvement store.  It shoots arrows.  He provides illustrations of some of the very nasty-looking (and presumably very lethal) arrow heads one can buy over the counter today.  I'd surely hate to be targeted by someone using something like that at night, while I walked or checked my garden.  I'd never know what hit me.  As he points out, "With so many new immigrants coming to our shores we're about to see some different weapons come to the front ... The gangs of thieves from S. America will either stay up north or get rounded up when they head south.  Not so much a worry. Its some of the others that pause me up. New arrivals equal new dangers but the public ain't talking about it yet."  Having seen bows and arrows used in combat in Africa, he's not wrong.  They remain very deadly weapons in skilled hands.  (The full version of the video to which he links, showing how the slingshot is made, may be found here.  There are many other similar videos out there.  Remember, such instruments may also be useful to us as defensive tools;  they're not just threats in the hands of criminals.)

Thanks to all the bloggers mentioned above for their useful information.

Peter

Put not your trust in bureaucracies - Second Amendment edition

 

It seems the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF for short) is bound and determined to put every single firearms transfer through a formal registration process, whether justifiable or not.

The ATF’s background check rule redefines the word “sale” so that private sellers who receive services or barter in exchange for a gun are required to use the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

. . .

... pages 26-27 of the rule equates “pecuniary gain” with “profit,” opening the door for the ATF to redefine the word “sale” so as to require a NICS check when a private seller is “bartering” over a gun.

Beginning with the last paragraph on Page 26 and reading into the first paragraph of page 27, the reader sees clearly that the ATF is defining the terms:  “Defining these terms to include any method of payment for a firearm would clarify that persons cannot avoid the licensing requirement by, for instance, bartering or providing or receiving services in exchange for firearms with the predominant intent to earn pecuniary gain even where no money is exchanged.”

Second Amendment Foundation founder and executive vice president Alan Gottlieb commented on the ATF rule, saying, “This is a continuation of the Biden war on guns. It is another attempt to get around Congress to make new laws without congressional approval.”

There's more at the link.

Never in previous American history has such registration been necessary.  I entirely agree with Mr. Gottlieb:  the ATF is trying to effectively make a new law, which is the prerogative of Congress alone, by arbitrarily redrafting its regulations under existing law to such an extent that they actually change that law.  This is unconstitutional, to say the least:  yet, under the Biden administration, such bureaucratic shenanigans have become routine.  One hopes the Supreme Court will eventually get around to striking down this latest example of ATF overreach.

Nevertheless, the bureaucrats can't close every door.  I note, for example, that to give someone a firearm one has already owned for some time as a gift (where no money or other compensation, in cash or in kind, changes hands) is still entirely legal, and does not require a background check.  I would imagine that if Joe Bloggs gives John Smith such a gun as a gift one month, and John Smith gives Joe Bloggs such a gun at a suitably later date (so that there's no obvious link between the gifts), that would still be arguably outside the new regulations.  Furthermore, if one does not receive any "pecuniary gain" for a firearm by selling it (in other words, for less than one paid for it), I would imagine that would be a suitable defense against any charge under these regulations (assuming, of course, that one did not do so regularly, thereby "conducting a business" in the trade in firearms according to the bureaucratic definition).  In the old days, that used to be more-or-less loosely defined as selling more than five firearms per year.  Now, who knows?  The regulations have not yet been tested in actual court cases.  I imagine that can't be far away.

There's also the question of "swap meets", which have been conducted for some time.  A group of friends might get together and swap firearms with each other, so that two people might swap identical models of (say) Glock pistols, each ending up with a gun that was not registered in their name.  Doing that once would still leave a traceable chain, in that a rigorous investigator might uncover links between the two individuals, and be able to follow them;  but if a gun has been swapped several times between different people on different occasions, it becomes very hard to trace everyone who's owned it since its original owner bought it.  I suspect that will be declared illegal under the new regulation, in that the ATF will probably argue that receiving an identical gun in exchange for one's own constitutes "pecuniary gain" (even if that can't be measured in dollars and cents, because no money or other "trade goods" has changed hands).

Older regulations are likely to cause some problems, and raise legal questions.  For example, it used to be entirely legal (according to the ATF's own official instructions interpreting the law, which many of us have saved in downloads and screen shots) to buy a firearm to give as a gift to someone else, and put oneself down on the ATF's Form 4473 as the actual owner or purchaser of that firearm.  Yes, they said that in black and white, and it was in effect for years.  That advice is no longer to be found on the ATF's Web page - but it has never been formally withdrawn.  I suspect it will be an interesting moment in court (if the agency chooses to pursue the issue) when the accused points out something like this:

"I did something that was entirely legal under a previous ATF interpretation of the law, but am now charged with a crime for doing exactly the same thing under a later ATF interpretation.  The underlying law has not changed - only the official interpretation and regulation.  It makes no sense for conduct under the same, unchanged law to be legal one day, and illegal the next.  That is nothing more or less than an arbitrary bureaucratic decision.  It is not a change in the law."

I'm sure we'll see and hear a great deal more about this in future.  Meanwhile, if it's important to you to own a firearm or firearms that have not been officially linked to your name through a background check, you have only a very short time available (before the new regulations are implemented) in which to buy it/them from a private seller without going through the official background check process.

Peter

Victor Davis Hanson: "This will be the end of us"

 

This may be the most important video you'll watch in weeks, possibly months.  It's only 8½ minutes long, but it encapsulates the disastrous situation in which our country now finds itself.  I can't emphasize too strongly that you should not only watch this yourself, but circulate the link to your family and friends, because this is what's coming unless we turn our country around in very short order.

The following article, also by Mr. Hanson, isn't a transcript of the video above, but touches on some of the same points.  I highly recommend that you click over to it and read the whole thing.

Why are those controlling President Biden using him to advance so much of a destructive agenda that it will likely end America as we know it? If someone wished to destroy America, could he do anything more catastrophic than what we currently see and hear each day? What would an existential enemy do that we have not already done to ourselves?

1. Wipe out a 2,000-mile border. Allow 10 million foreign nationals to enter unlawfully. Have no audit of any; nullify all federal immigration laws. Let in toxic drugs that kill 100,000 Americans a year. Give free support to those millions who broke the law. Smear any objectors as racists and xenophobes.

2. Run up $35 trillion in national debt. Keep adding $1 trillion to it each 100 days. Defame anyone wishing to cut wild spending as cruel and inhumane.

3. Appease or subsidize enemies like Iran and China. Demonize allies like Israel. Allow terrorists to attack Americans without adequate response. See Islam as either similar or superior to Christianity. Make amends to leftist governments for supposedly past toxic American international behavior. Follow the lead of international agencies like the U.N., ICC and WHO to atone for past American neocolonial and imperialist behavior. Recede to second-tier international status, befitting American decline.

4. In a multiracial democracy, redefine identity only as one’s tribal affiliation. Ensure each identity group rivals the other for victimhood and the state spoils it confers. Reboot all political issues by race and sex oppressors and oppressed. Destroy all meritocratic standards of admission, retention, promotion and commendation.

5. Recalibrate violent crime as understandable, cry-of-the-heart expressions of social justice. Ensure no bail and same-day release for arrested, repeat violent felons. Empathize with the violent killer and rapist; ignore their victims, especially if they are slain police officers.

There's much more at the link.  Essential reading, IMHO.

Folks, we need to listen to Mr. Hanson's warnings, and pay attention to what's going on in our country, and do something before it's too late.  Even if we can't affect things on a national scale, we stand a better chance of doing so in our states, and an excellent chance in our local towns and counties.  However, if we do nothing, that tide of nihilism will wash over us, and history will say that we committed suicide by cooperating with those who set out to destroy us.

I hope my readers are listening - and willing to act, each of us as best we can in our own lives and circumstances.  In particular, we should be prepared to defend our lives, our loved ones, and our property in the face of a burgeoning crime rate committed by "migrant" aliens.  (As per our previous post this morning, ignore those who claim that aliens aren't contributing to crime, or that crime rates are actually going down.  They're lying.  Read the first link in this paragraph for the facts.)  Secure your premises, get armed and trained in the tools you need to defend yourself, and stand ready to assist police and others who are fighting against the criminal tide.

Peter

"Murders down 20%" versus "The Collapse in Law Enforcement". Who's right?

 

I (and many other independent observers) have been complaining that crime's getting worse - much worse.  Liberal and progressive commenters, on the other hand, are insisting that it's getting better.  Their view may be typified by this article, which I'm posting just as an example.

Homicides Are Plummeting in American Cities

Nationwide, homicides dropped around 20% in 133 cities from the beginning of the year through the end of March compared with the same period in 2023, according to crime-data analyst Jeff Asher, who tabulated statistics from police departments across the country.

. . .

The declines so far in 2024, on top of last year’s drop, mirror the steep declines in homicides of the late 1990s.

“There’s just a ton of places that you can point to that are showing widespread, very positive trends,” said Asher, co-founder of criminal justice consulting firm AH Datalytics. “Nationally, you’re seeing a very similar situation to what you saw in the mid-to-late ’90s. But it’s potentially even larger in terms of the percentages and numbers of the drops.” 

There's more at the link.

Sounds great, doesn't it?  Well . . . until one looks at the reality behind the numbers, that is.

The Collapse in Law Enforcement: As Arrest Rates Plummet, People Have Been Less Willing to Report Crime

The American news media has been working overtime to convince people that violent crime is dramatically falling.

. . .

But, there is a big problem with using the FBI Uniform Crime Report data on crimes reported to police because victims don’t report most crimes ... More importantly, the number of crimes reported to police falls as the arrest rate declines. If people don’t think the police will solve their cases, they are less likely to report them to the police ... This divergence arises for several reasons. In 2021, 37% of police departments stopped reporting crime data to the FBI (including large departments for Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York), and others are underreporting crimes. But also because of the dramatic decline in arrest rates.

Figure 1, presented at the top of this post, illustrates the dramatic drop in arrest rates for violent crimes reported to the police. If you compare the last five years before COVID-19 to 2022, the arrest rate for violent crime across all cities fell by 20%. But for cities with over one million people, it fell by 54%. The drops in arrest rates by type of violent crime ranged from 15% to 27% for all cities and from 38% to 58% for cities with more than one million people ... Comparing the five years from 2015-2019 to the arrest rate in 2022 shows a drop of 33% for all cities and a 63% decline for cities with more than a million people ... only 14.6% of violent crimes result in an arrest ... only 8.4% of all violent crimes resulted in an arrest. For property crimes, the numbers are even worse. With 31.8% of property crimes reported to police and only 11.9% of those reported crimes resulting in an arrest, that means that only 3.8% of all property crimes result in an arrest. For large cities with over a million people, only 1.4% of all property crimes result in an arrest.

Again, more at the link.  Plenty of statistics are provided in graphic form to illustrate the problem.

As to why people are reluctant to report crimes, the answer's obvious.  Left-wing District Attorneys and public prosecutors are minimizing prosecutions, reducing charges, eliminating cash bail, and generally making life as easy as possible for the criminals, rather than the cops.  It's not unusual in a big city to see criminals commit multiple crimes a day, because every time they're arrested, they're out on the street again within a couple of hours.  Here's one example.

Given that reality, store security often doesn't report shoplifting, because the penalties have been reduced to no more than a slap on the wrist.  Police don't bother arresting offenders that they know will be out on the street within hours, or at most a day or two, after being charged.  Citizens don't bother reporting crimes that they know won't be dealt with by police.  All that makes criminals bolder, and boosts the chances that they'll graduate from low-level, non-violent crime to more aggressive offenses.  They develop an attitude of invincibility ("The cops can't touch me!"), and proceed to test it on more and more serious crimes.  I've heard them boast about it in jail (that used to be my job, remember?).  

The same applies even to homicides.  There are plenty of them that are never reported as such.  I know cops who are quite blatant about it.  To paraphrase one of them:  "Look, I find a body on a street in the hood. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, and if I try to pin anything down, everyone who lives there will get aggressive.  That leads to the precinct boss coming down on me for causing a fuss, and him having to send cops he can't spare to sort it out, and do all that extra report writing and explaining to his bosses.  I just can't win.  So, I call it in as a body I found, without mentioning anything suspicious.  The coroner comes and collects it, and I go on my way.  The coroner won't make a fuss, even if he finds a gun or knife wound.  He's got too much work as it is, and he knows most of those cases are never solved.  Result is, it'll just be filed as another random fatality - anything simple and believable to enter into the books.  I recall one case where a cop and the coroner agreed that a gunshot killing would be entered as an overdose.  Nothing criminal was reported, they both had minimal paperwork, and the precinct was happy because our statistics still looked good.  What, you think someone might dig up the body five years later to check?  Doesn't happen."

Murders involving someone with a family who cares, or someone of influence, will be investigated.  The rest?  There'll be a token effort, but it won't get very far, because detectives can't get very far with such investigations in big cities.  They each have too many cases to start with, and that means their attention is spread so thin that it won't be enough to resolve many of them.  What's more, many poorer families (and those who may not speak English very well, if at all) regard the police as their enemy.  Why would they report a murder of one of their family members when it means they have to deal with the enemy?  Even worse, if a gang is involved, it'll deal harshly with any family that implicates it or its members.  Simpler to just bury their dead, mourn as a family, then move on.  Again, I speak from experience, having dealt with rather a lot of such people.

If anyone tells you crime rates are down and big cities are safer, you know at once that they're either misinformed or lying.  Don't believe them.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 205

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

How many of you remember a British pop/rock group with the unlikely name of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich?  They were never as popular in the USA as other British invasion bands such as their contemporaries the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, but did very well in the British, European and colonial markets.  A couple of their songs made it onto US charts as well.

Here's their best-known song, from 1968:  "Xanadu", complete with electronic whip-cracking.

From 1966, here's "Hold Tight".

From the same year, "Bend It".

And perhaps their most quirky hit, with incomprehensible, nonsensical lyrics:  1967's "Zabadak!".

You'll find more of their music on their YouTube channel.  The "Swingin' '60's" indeed!

Peter