We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
⚓️ 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 2023 EOY review of commissioned surface combatants by both numbers & tonnage of USN vs. PLA/N.
🔶️ The USN numbers in the past 5 years are 2/3 LCS. Based on decommissioning rate of LCS, some of these won't be in the 2024 EOY review
🔶️ Avg age of surface combatants still in commission by year, USN v. PLA/N. We're twice as old.
🔶️ PLA/N has built nearly 3x the number of USN surface combatants in the past decade.
🔶️ Population pyramid of the two fleet's surface combatants by year commissioned (of those that haven't been decommissioned)
🔶️ Total tonnage of USN Surface Combatants commissioned 1987-2023 by class (still active)
🔶️ This will look worse next year as more CGs and LCSs are decommissioned.
🔶️ Total tonnage of PLA/N commissioned surface combatants since 1987, still in commission.
🔶️ Comparative tonnage of surface combatants commissioned since 1985 that are still active.
🔶️ Comparative total tonnage of commissioned surface combatants since 1985, still active.
🔶️ comparative of total tonnes of surface combatants commissioned in past 10 years that are still active.
📎 Claude Berube
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
