Image is from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ recent article on Kashmir.
It looks like the spat between India and Pakistan could be dying down, due to a new ceasefire. As of the time of me writing this paragraph, it seems both sides want to maintain it (despite some reports of violations here and there).
Both sides have declared victory, which is completely expected given their mutual political parties and nationalist histories. It’s a little harder to say which side has actually won, as both sides seem to have managed to shoot down aircraft and hit military bases. India has, in my opinion, had the more embarrassing moments, but international conflicts aren’t cringe compilations. I feel no good-will towards Pakistan’s comprador government, but it is at least nice to see Modi knocked down a few pegs. Regardless of the final technical victor, it’s obvious that - if the ceasefire is maintained - who won are the hundreds of millions of people who won’t have to live in fear of dying in nuclear hellfire.
This conflict is a good example of what multipolarity will truly entail. Countries that have been previously limited in their nationalist ambitions by American pressure will now take opportunities to revolt, sometimes against America itself, and sometimes against other countries in their regional neighbourhood. It’s also why, as communists, our goals do not stop at multipolarity; it is merely the establishing act of a new era of agitation against peripheral and semi-peripheral capitalist countries that are forming powerful national bourgeoisie classes as the international American capitalists are forced away.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
considering the precision, i would think they probably can deal with graphite foam or some shit, they are no exactly precise nor do they need to be for their goals. do they do terminal guidance at all?
*ah but they likely have to to get to 200m, nvm
Guidance for the Fattah-1 and Kheibar Shekan series is INS (Inertial navigation using gyroscopic sensors) and satellite navigation in GNSS at all phases of flight, which also provides updates to the missiles current position to reduce compounding errors in the INS.
Accuracy from the missiles launched by Yemen is the same as those launched by Iran during Operation True Promise II, if not slightly better, mean error radius (known as circular error probable, or CEP) is probably around 400-500m now, if Iran corrected the overshoot issue during Operation True Promise II. I think the issue is that the INS system is not great, and the missiles suffer from GNSS jamming by Israel, leading to such a high CEP for a conventional weapon. The Iranian solution to this has been to mount electro optical seekers (likely infrared cameras) to their missiles for terminal guidance to improve accuracy, their longest range missile in this series is the recently released Qassem Basir, 1200-1300km range. There is no such version of the Kheibar Shekan or Fattah-1 though, so you’re right, no explicit terminal guidance system, just the GNSS and INS for all phases of flight.
ah so they do have inertial, interesting. cameras, as far as i know, is the most complicated way especially for the hypersonics (don’t think they do it due to blinding from plasma tbh) and on reentry as well likely wouldn’t work, you have to do complicated filters and stuff (not germanium windows, but close enough), as well as much more modern electronics to deal with information inputs.
The camera likely only turns on during the glide phase after the pullup maneuver is complete, due to the plasma blinding and other issues. At that point the MaRV is well within the earth’s atmosphere/below 100km in altitude, and velocity is below Mach 5.
Exaggerated not to scale graphic, but it visualises the phases of flight nicely.
I like how Peru is firing a MaRV at Arkansas in this illustration.
i thought camera was for extreme low altitude guidance tbh, below clouds and radar horizons rockets, as expressed in that french rockets ukrainians were using
Yeah you’d have to perform a very low altitude glide (in the context of ballistic missiles) to get the camera a good enough image, so glide distance will be in the tens of kilometres due to aerodynamic drag. Tens of kilometres of glide distance should be enough to get a cloud free image eventually in most conditions, with the exception of say cirrostratus clouds. I decided to look through the book “Lighting Bolts - First MaRV”, and this is what it said about the heat shield and terminal guidance/glide phase on the Pershing-II :
So with the electro optically guided Iranian ballistic missiles, we’re likely looking at something very similar, but with electro optics instead of radar. A low altitude glide, the electro optical sensor performs it’s scan during this time, comparing it to a stored image, provides an accuracy update and steers the missile towards the target. Iran also uses this system for anti ship ballistic missiles.