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
Yanis Varoufakis (former Greek Minister of Finance) describes AI as a new form of capital that produces not goods, but behavioral modification. This is achieved by engineering perceptions.
The answers provided by ChatGPT, or the images rendered by StableDiffusion — as these increasingly inform our perceptions, they in turn define the reality we experience.
This is what makes AI so powerful — he who controls the AI, defines the reality of tomorrow.
⚡️🇺🇸 Some more things coming out for the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Under the preliminary drafts of the bill, the USAF is requesting a release of $57,000,000 USD ($57.0 Million) to retire all remaining 162 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs in current service. Apart of the 2023 NDAA, there was a clause for a few million dollars to be released every so often to gradually retire the (then) 250 airframes by 2034; however due to the push by the Dept of Defense to ‘shed’ obsolete or obsolescent airframes that cannot be overhauled or upgraded further without a whole new airframe, it appears the USAF wants to retire all 162 remaining A-10s by the end of 2026.
The USAF plans to fully divest the 340-total remaining A-10s entirely, including those that currently serve in a handful of Air National Guard units in some states; which will be replaced by F-15EX Eagle IIs (like what is already happening with the Michigan State Air National Guard’s A-10s), or F-35A/Bs.
Included ...
My older sister lives in the country in between Velma Oklahoma and Duncan Oklahoma near the Fuqua Lake area, this story was told by a rural mail delivery woman who delivers the mail in the country.
The incident happened while she was on her route, when she came upon to the mailbox a male Chinese nation came out brandishing a, AK-47 rifle being very hostile,
I don't know if he pointed it at her since it is against the law to do so but she was terrified and said she was never going back and that the location that had a guard tower. Was the sheriff department notified, I don't know, did she notify her supervisor, don't know. But word is from the country folk who live in the area they have seen the guard tower at the pot place;
I refuse to call it a farm because it is an insult to farmers.
And yes she was traumatized by that ordeal
