We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
📖 🇮🇱 🇮🇶 Middle East military briefing: Battle for Mosul points to IDF’s ‘fiendish’ task in Gaza
🔶️ The mission to clear the city of jihadist militants was ultimately successful. But the fighting was intense, took three times longer than planned, left 10,000 civilians dead, and killed more coalition soldiers than expected.
🔶️ It also offers a cautionary tale for the Israeli troops massing for the widely expected attack.
“It’s going to be fiendishly difficult,” said David Petraeus, a former US general who led Iraq’s allied forces during the 2007 “surge” and then Nato and US forces in Afghanistan. “I just can’t imagine more difficult circumstances.”
🔶️ “There is also no limit to the troop requirements,” he added. “Even if Israel sent 10mn soldiers into Gaza, it would still take a long time. And that’s just taking the territory; holding it is another matter.”
🔶️ The battle for Mosul — which is similar in size to Gaza’s urban areas and had a comparable population of about 2mn when the city was occupied by Isis — began on October 16, 2016.
Inside the city were roughly 8,000 Isis fighters, compared to Gaza where Hamas has an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 fighters and Palestinian Islamic Jihad another 15,000 men under arms.
🔶️ Ranged against the militants in Mosul was an attacking force of 100,000 US-led Iraqi forces, compared with more than 160,000 troops in Israel’s standing army and 360,000 newly-mobilised reservists.
In the skies above Mosul, international coalition planes provided constant surveillance and air strikes — similar to the Israeli fighter jets that have been hitting hundreds of Hamas targets. “Intelligence soaks”, by drones and other forms of surveillance, provided a detailed set of targets for them to hit.
🔶️ Half-destroyed buildings surrounded by rubble meanwhile provided the jihadists with what one US commander described as ideal bombproof shelters.
“Cities have thousands of hiding places,” said the special forces officer. “If you want to remove an enemy, you have to clear the area house by house. But that puts you in 360 degrees of danger. You can’t just sweep through.”
🔶️ The battle for Mosul claimed the lives of 8,000 soldiers from the US-led coalition, and a fight expected to take three months ultimately took nine.
“Hamas knows Gaza far better than [Isis] knew Mosul,” Petraeus said. “Moreover, it took us nine months [to capture Mosul] and Israel does not have that time . . . They know that international public opinion is going to shift . . . as the damage accumulates, and innocent civilians are killed.”
https://www.ft.com/content/32bc687b-1385-401b-a60a-7320848ceb16
Ukrainian forces have begun training and testing exoskeletons for battlefield use. Soldiers from the 147th Separate Artillery Brigade are using them in the Pokrovsk sector for both logistics and frontline operations. The goal is to reduce physical strain, especially when loading heavy artillery shells into howitzers without automatic loaders. Artillery crews can handle up to 1200 kg of ammunition per day, and early tests show that exoskeletons help them work faster and with less fatigue Above all, by improving the conditions for those soldiers on the front lines who handle such heavy loads, plus the stress of work. Seeking to reduce overall fatigue in the troops
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🇮🇷🇮🇱 - 14 wounded in Iranian missile strike in central Israel, according to Israeli media.
🇬🇧🇮🇶 - A drone struck British Castrol oil warehouses in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, causing extensive damage.
🇮🇷🇮🇱 - Iran launched 9 missiles towards Israel this morning alone, with at least 3 of them being cluster missiles.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - Over the past 12 hours, Hezbollah launched counterattacks in Khiam and Qantara, in the Nabatieh direction, southeast Lebanon. Hezbollah recaptured northern Khiam, with fighting ongoing for the south of the town. Hezbollah units also re-entered Qantara; frontline sources reported clashes in the center of the town last night.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - 48 IDF soldiers have been wounded in clashes with Hezbollah over the last 24 hours in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli Army.
🇱🇧🇮🇱 - "The Israeli army is barely catching its breath in southern Lebanon, and its resources are less than in the previous round of fighting," - Haaretz....
🇺🇸 Blue Owl Capital just disclosed that investors tried to pull 40.7% of one fund and 21.9% of another in a single quarter, and both funds gave the same answer, you can only have 5% back, and everyone else waits in line.
This is a bank run, not a normal withdrawal.
Wall Street spent the last decade selling millions of investors on something called semi-liquid private credit, higher yields, steady income and the promise you could get your money back every quarter if you needed it. What they buried in the fine print was what happens when too many people try to leave at the same time.
Analysts who have covered private credit for decades say nothing on this scale has ever been reported before at any major private credit manager.
These funds do not hold stocks you can sell on a Tuesday afternoon, they hold private loans to mid sized companies that cannot be liquidated quickly without destroying the price for every investor still trapped inside.
This product was originally designed for ...
🇺🇸 President Trump wants to switch to war economy in 2027 with massive increase in military spending and massive cuts to healthcare and other domestic agencies
Once a deficit hawk — he said in 2016 that he thought he could balance the budget in five years — Trump ended his first term with $7.8 trillion in added debt. His 2027 proposal is expected to give an update on 10-year deficit projections currently estimated at around $16 trillion.
The GOP's message for the Midterms will be focused on the "need" for a massive defense build up while the Democrats' message will be focused on affordability.
The fiscal 2027 budget will be the first time Trump puts his second-term governing agenda into one comprehensive document — with the numbers to back it up. The budget he released last year lacked detailed line-by-line spending targets and the economic assumptions necessary to project the long-term cost of his proposals.
Investors in US Treasuries will be looking to see if the debt and ...
