There has been a lot of talk about the Russian Zircon/Tsirkon missile recently, particularly in light of strikes on Kiev in late March that were said to have used it.
I used to think PeterZ knew a thing or two about the world. Lately, I've come to the conclusion that there are many things where he wouldn't know his arse from his elbow. Doesn't seem to stop him sticking his oar in tho'
Before the vaunted "counter-offensive" Zion predicted Ukraine would roll up the Russians. Why? Because, according to him, the Ukrainians captured more tanks and armor during the Kherson and Kharkov offensives than they they started the war with. Yes, he actually said that. Meaning he believed the Ukrainians captured over 1000 intact tanks. And people take this clown seriously.
He also thinks there are only two types of hypersonic missile.
You should have watched the whole thing to help you understand such people.
The comments must be hilarious but they only show positive comments so we will never know. They do allow comments correcting him on the name of the missile though.
I heard this guy's name 2x in the last week. Once he made a video explaining why the US does not even need to repair the shipping lane into Baltimore. The guy that linked his video is a very knowledgeable guy (PHD) who used real facts and real data to make Pete look silly and now this , ole Petey is 0 for 2 against people that I have some respect for in their separate fields. Just the fact that Peter seems to know everything about everything makes me glad that I have never wasted time on his videos
He's funny insofar as he tries to seem a cut above the typical CNN jabbering idiots, while only providing cope support for pro-US stratfor armchair "experts". If he got a dime for every time he predicted the collapse of China, he could spare us all and retire now.
mmm. yes he does. very, very much to the contrary. laughs at the whole idea. I hope someone knowledgeable will come up with an overview, an analysis that will make it all clear to us.
I lean muchly towards Simplicius, that's a fact. You can't blame me, surely? Given the barrow loads of lying propaganda we're accustomed to receive from the 'other side'. (though of course there shouldn't be an 'other side' when we're just looking for facts. says something right there that we all know what i mean when I say 'other side')
Main thing to my humble mind being such as the 'full scale russian invasion' when it patently never happened and demonstrably to this day all the fighting takes place on Donbas land that Kiev has invaded.
And such wild alarmist 'facts' as "if we don't stop Russia now it will conquer all Europe."
Yep.
That kind of thing bends me towards such as Simplicius.
Well the key to learning is giving ear to positions we don't agree with. In the end every perspective has some bases, though at times the facts may be limited or non existent but at least their can be a lot of truth found in what is not stated.
his ability to concoct fairly complex stories - that sound highly logical and plausible, and are based on a wide variety of social, political, economical factors, but after close inspection turn out almost always to be total horseshit, and always totally slanted towards a neocon perspective - and to make them up at a daily rate, deeply fascinates me
Peter Zeihan is either a fuckwit or an intelligent con man/propagandist who has found a profitable media market based on confirming the hopes of the fuckwitted via sweet tasting disinfo.
He has been doing this for more than a decade, so he does not use AI to raise his air castles. AI is a recent development.
I think he has assembled a team of analysts behind him that do the research; he pays them with what he earns in the conference circuit where he is pretty active and in constant request from government agencies, private companies, universities, army think tanks you name them. I think it pays off handsomely.
He is obviously connected with the neocon wing of the elites since he seems to share the same obsessions of PNAC: hostility against China, Russia, and the Trump right, support to Israel, to the Covid official narrative, worries for overpopulation, climate change, etc.
He needs to please these people in order to keep raking in the cashflow, so he adapts every event into the story he thinks the neocons want to hear - or better, into the story the neocons think midwit, respectable, pseudo-intellectual Americans should hear.
Now, what you have to do in order to con reasonably well-educated people into a false narrative, is you tell them a story which is very rational and in which every consequence has a logical cause, but within which the initial premises the whole reasoning stems from are flawed! (Simplicius does a bit of the same for the other side although less heavy-handedly)
So if we analyse the main reasoning behind all his takes, it's probably not true that Xi has isolated himself inside the CCP, doesn't consult with anyone before acting politically and that's why he takes unpredictable decisions; not true that Russian military is incompetent, not true that one can predict shrinking economies and ruined nations because of the demographic decline and the fact people past 50 tend to spend less, etc.
Clearly he needs to be constantly on the spotlight to keep his hip analyst persona fresh for women managers to call him to speak at their corporate events, so he is very active on social media producing industrial quantities of takes and one youtube video per day. I think he is also extremely narcissistic (you have to be if you embark in that kind of "futurologist" career)
Peter Zeihan-Zion is a renaissance man. As a former US State Department flunkie, he can dispense sage analysis on geopolitics, military hardware, national security, economics, energy, and even financial advice for your stock portfolio.
He is a universal pez dispenser of wisdom.
Zeihan has even made a guest appearance on the foremost intellectual forum for public policy debates in America: the Joe Rogan show.
How many Russian military analysts have had this high honor?
Peter Zeihan is most definitely not a social media grifter and used car salesman of geopolitics. ;-)
I must admit that I'm curious why you've devoted so much time to using a computer to parse this blog when all of us human readers are fully capable of doing it without any assistance. Hell, 80% of the readers here grew up in the time before the internet. You know, when there WERE no computers to do the thinking for you ;)
You're absolutely right that many of us are more than capable of understanding the content without assistance. However, the use of language models to summarize and present information in various ways is intended to accommodate different learning styles and preferences.
Some people find it easier to internalize information when it's presented in a concise summary or from different angles. It also provides an opportunity for those who may lack the time or patience to read through a lengthy post to still gain an understanding of the main points. In essence, it's not about replacing human comprehension but enhancing it.
We appreciate your curiosity and hope this clarifies the intention behind using the models!
We regularly make summaries for Simplcius The Thinker's blog. For Mike Hampton's blog at https://www.mikehampton.co.uk/, we do it occasionally, and mostly through direct messaging. We also track a few YouTube channels, such as Dialogue Works, The Duran, Deep Dive, and Judging Freedom, and post summaries created by language learning models (LLMs) for some of the discussions. Our aim is to develop a system that can automatically make these summaries for specific links or YouTube identifiers.
While I, personally, have no use for summaries of written articles (if they are worth reading at all, they are worth reading as written), I am interested in summaries of video materials, such as Judging Freedom, which I seldom watch because I find the style too verbose and flowery (just a matter of preference, no criticism necessarily implied).
You are right that we know how to read, but you leave out a fundamental point, additionally we like to read if the article is interesting. I enjoy reading the whole article, not a summary ..
These people confuse handling technical tools with being a learned person able to contribute to the debate in a meaningful way.
Yet they are held by universities and public scrutiny as glaring examples of academic success, the fabled STEM.
But that's all that they really do: they take interest in an issue, say the current geopolitical crisis, but they cannot articulate any meaningful contributes to it because they are insectoids, probably Indian or Chinese.
However, they'll need to compensate for that, because they need to remind to you and to themselves that they exist on a higher plane of prestige (that's what they are constantly reminded of in their own environments).
Thus the technical tool they introduce without anyone asking for it becomes the end, while the topic of conversation itself is reduced to a means to showcase the technical tool
Probably British, to be honest. The "opposite meaning, but similar syntactical construction" of Complexia the Sinker vs. Simplicius the Thinker vis a vis their respective nom-de-plumes strikes me as the sort of dry, sarcastic British humor that they've adored for the last century.
"Also, note the speed. While it does look extremely fast, it’s questionable whether the terminal impact is hypersonic for a variety of reasons, not least of which being that the missile does not appear to be glowing hot nor have any sort of plasma bubble effect."
No missile is hypersonic in the terminal phase. The heat generated by lower atmospheric pressure would destroy it before it reached its target. The key to the success of hypersonic speed in the upper atmosphere is the plasma bubble that generates, which makes the missile invisible to radar. By the time it's on its reentry track and has slowed down (still travelling fast) it's too late to effectively target.
True enough, but the range of IR is not as great as conventional radar and weather can also be an issue. Is there even a ground based IR detection system? If so, what is its range, and can an intercept trajectory be calculated in time? Otherwise you'd have to rely on whatever you had in the air at the time of attack. I'm no expert, I'm just repeating what I've heard from people who know, and their opinion is that these things can't be intercepted with present day systems.
My understanding from IR warning is for aircraft in detection of air to air missiles. So youre right that range would be quite low. However, ICBM launch warnings from satellites are on IR, so there may be that angle to consider that NATO has constant wide coverage to observe missile launches
There are IRST systems on various combat aircraft (don't confuse them with FLIR, which is something else). Their role is to detect other aircraft (and guide missiles). Practical range is greatly variable, depending on weather conditions, altitude and other things. From few to hundreds of kilometers.
Well, ground based IR astronomy has range something around 13 Billion lightyears. I would expect other systems to have at least some reasonable fraction of that. :D :D :D
If an object remains in the plasma bubble down to impact it must rely on internal guidance with no feedback for course correction. (Unless optical can be used, which would be a pretty good trick and clouds/fog would defeat).
Being invisible to radar, firstly. If the plasma were all conductive (high dielectric const), i.e. discontinuity vs the background, i.e. waves reflect. AFAIK, the "plasma sheath" would have to be somehow manipulated to get it tapered in its conductivity and dielectric constant - and in the appropriate direction - to actually be absorbent and reduce RCS. Maybe it is manipulated to make it reflective in an advantageous way. Either way, controlling it would depend heavily on speed and air density, so would be hard to pull off at all altitudes, and also maybe not in all radar bands. But on the other hand may be possible even at more modest supersonic speeds if plasma generator can be built to do it. In any event it would be glowing brightly in optical band. A long conductive trail of plasma, seen from the side, may well be more detectable overall, at least as far as "search" function of the defense is concerned. A quick look at research paper abstracts talking about re-entry of space objects, suggests there is more an issue that the plasma messes up doppler pattern used to determine target speed - a critical piece of information for any ABM interceptor vs any target with even a little maneuverability. An outside observer in optical band + uplink may be the way around that, or more modern radar illumination techniques perhaps.
Slowing down in the terminal descent also raises questions of energy balance. Both KE and PE must become heat
Well you clearly know more about it than I do. Like I said, I was just repeating what I'd heard from someone with knowledge of how these things work. I'll see if I can find the article, but it was a while ago so no promises.
You, or whoever you were repeating, may have assumed that since the missile becomes blinded within the plasma sheath, a third party would not be able to bounce radar off the missile. Which is perhaps true in a literal sense, but doesn’t make the object undetectable.
I think the basic idea is not that the missiles are undetectable through all phases, but that by the time they are detected, they are moving too fast to intercept, given that once they drop down to supersonic speed they are also maneuverable. I couldn't find the article in question - it was several weeks ago and I didn't think to bookmark it. The proof is in the pudding though, as they say. 'Something' is definitely getting through NATO air defences, both in Ukraine and now Israel.
"But the fact that the Kh-69 can be operated by Mig-31, Su-30/34/35/57 means any of the hundreds of buzzing planes around Ukraine can be sporting it at any given time."
I wonder if it's possible to launch it from a balloon? You could flood the sky with balloons very cheaply.
What I've observed over the last eighteen plus months is that the west is achieving hypersonic speed in its downfall, and now even bunkers aren't safe. I find that comforting news.
The kh69 looks an awful lot like the Taurus, don't you think?
Do you think all these missile strikes have had an effect on the fighting capacity on either side? Ukraine has taken thousands of missile hits, but to my eyes the Lancet has had a greater battlefield effect
I don't know the first thing about military strategy, but from what I've seen, the Russians are using missiles to disable/destroy infrastructure, rather than equipment/men on the battlefield. The Lancet, on the other hand, is used to destroy vehicles/equipment, not buildings and bridges.
Yes sure but what infrastructure has been destroyed, until very recently? Bridges all intact, drone factories chugging away, power was on till recently, odessa port still operates, and so on.
Superficial and totemistic as it may seem it’s even more engrossing when it dives into its intended target and performs a rapid unscheduled disassembly
@Simplicus - any idea of the true ZIrcon maximum speeds? There have been claims that the Zircon is capable of Mach 10+ speeds.
Interestingly, now the Russians have had SU-34 fighter / bombers that are capable of launching the Kinzhal, which means that the less common Mig-31 is not the only aircraft capable of launching the Kinzhal. That's a huge advantage for Russia, if this becomes more widespread, as has the dramatic increase in the amount of Kinzhals being produced (it has gone from a rare and expensive missile to something that has been produced and fired far more frequently).
The bottom line is, that the Western world is way behind in this critical field and with no easy way to catch up with the Russians nor the Chinese.
Several months before the Russians began the Special Military Operation, then Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Miley noted that the US had experienced a "near Sputnik" moment, something reported even by the pro-Western press.
It's been argued that the 2 worst things to have happened to the US was the breakdown of the USSR and the 1991 Desert Storm. It gave the US a sense of arrogance, a sense of their superiority that was not justified. Perhaps to give a historical analogy, some Ancient Roman historians noted that the fall of Carthage had produced a fall in the morality of Roman elites.
The very strong performance of Russian missiles is an example of Western superiority being unjustified. I'd argue it's worse. The Romans remained the dominant power in Europe and parts of Asia for hundreds of years. The US seems to be losing its superpower status after just a couple of decades of mismanagement and they never had to worry about their opponents deploying vastly superior technology.
Keep in mind that the much of the best scientific and engineering talent in the US are foreign born students. Many come from China and with the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment in the US, this crucial source of talent is going to be reduced in the future. The lackluster state of math and science at the primary and secondary school level in the US is going to have consequences.
This is a common mistake of journalists. I'm from Russia. Aviation is my hobby. There is not a single photo of the Su-34 with a Dagger. The suspension unit between the engines is limited to a mass of 3 tons. The most that is suspended there is a 3000 liter fuel tank.. It weighs 2700-2800 kg. or a FAB-1500T bomb weighing about 2500 kg. The Dagger weighs more than 4000 kg. In addition, the Su does not have the same altitude and speed as the Mig-31.
There are enough Mig-31s in storage in Russia. A new modification of the Mig-31 for the Dagger has now been made. Now the aircraft again has the ability to refuel in the air. In the previous version, this feature was removed.
Classic definition of hypersonic from the late 60s is a missile using outside oxygen for oxidiser at hypersonic speeds for normal (I e) march engines. Can’t go wrong with that. Under that definition no one has hypersonic weapons yet, but Russia comes close and theirs are good enough, which is the definition of Russian approach to weapons- they have to be good enough.
Elaboration - using outside oxidiser means the missile has to fly quite low, cause up high there isn’t enough air, which means high air resistance at hypersonic speeds, which is the crux of the problem
There is plenty of oxygen at high altitudes. Even mere turbofans can get to 20km altitude and even high bypass turbofans (aka airliners) regularly fly at 10+km. If you fly fast, you get plenty of air. In fact, you want to fly high if you fly fast, to avoid having too much air (called air resistance). There's a reason why faster airframes fly higher.
Sure, you can do arithmetics. No math needed. Power to speed is a cubic function (doubling the speed requires 8x power tule of thumb), oxygen content and air resistance fall exponentially, but oxygen density falls faster.
Unless you got some unobtainium fuel, the answer is kinda clear.
O2 content doesn't fall with altitude up to about 100km, after which it is largely replaced by O (which could be even better - it's more reactive, has more energy, lowers ignition temperature and can be potentially used by airbreathing engines if designed for - at least in theory).
Practical ceiling for simple scramjets as we know them today is about 75km.
And using simple drag equation (let's calculate for Tomahawk missile to validate)
D= Cd x r x (V^2)/2 x A
Cd = drag coefficient = 0.31
r = air density = 1,293kgm^3 for ground level (OK, it flies at perhaps 50m altitude)
V = velocity = 250m/s (quoted cruise speed of about M=0.74)
A = frontal area (cca 0.21m^2, from publicly available dimension)
source for drag coefficient (estimation) - I will use minimum value at 0 degrees AoA which is almost completely unachievable in practice, but let's use it
according to this, Tomahawk uses F107-WR-402 engine with maximum continuous thrust of 3.1kN. That's only 17% above our calculated drag for 0 degrees AoA. So a Tomahawk should have a bit of power reserve up to about 6 degrees of AoA at cruise speed (which sounds about right as it needs to accelerate a bit while climbing).
Now, let's change numbers.
International Standard atmosphere at 30km has relative density of 0.01503 (the important part for our drag equation). That works out to 0.0194 kg^m-3 absolute.
Let's also assume we have a missile similar to TLAM flying at 30km altitude at 1,000m/s (supersonic ramjet of sorts perhaps).
It has a drag of only 631.5N (hence the engine thrust has to be only that much or a bit more).
If only 10% of its frontal area is an air scoop, it will collect 21m^3 of air -> roughly 0.4kg of air each second (or 85grams of oxygen). With ordinary jet fuel (and stochiometric ratio of 15:1 for simplicity), it would have about 26grams of fuel fully utilizable in ideal conditions (around 1130 Joules). Roughly speaking, it would need TSFC of around 16.4 g/KN*s to keep itself flying. That's not very good, because it's in turbofan territory (not great because we're not really getting close to that without moving parts).
But, if we enlarge the inlet to only 50% (much smaller BTW than what a P-800 does as is obvious from just looking at a photo of one), we get to roughly 82g/KN*s.
And I am still only flying a crap ramjet at nowhere close to hypersonic speeds.
Now... Should we make our missile even faster?
For double our speed, we get required thrust of 2.526N and using the same scoop, we scoop 42m^3 of air (or 0.8kg). Getting 13.472g/KN*s of TSFC for 10% inlet and 67.36g/KN*s for the 50% inlet.
WHOA!!! That's almost EXACTLY what various studies say it should be and that is ASSUMING JP-5 (a crap jet fuel which was designed to use on aircraft carriers due to high risk of fire).
Like for example (see page 121 - depicts TSFC for a ramjet using JP-5 with combustion velocity of M=2 to 2.5 - in other words, I fit right into their MIDDLE values ):
In other words, my calculated requirements fit RIGHT into the middle of studies modelling how a scramjet would perform and I used crap fuel, too small inlet (at least for the Waverider's approach), TOMAHAWK's drag coefficient (which is far too high for any supersonic airframe, but I used it anyway for posterity). And I arrived to these numbers starting from the opposite end of what actual ramjet studies started.
Note: if you read a bit through my last link, you will find out why is the Zircon named Zircon.
Note 2: it's clearly obvious you don't need any unobtainium fuel for such scramjet to work. Ordinary jet fuel will work too, but better is the enemy of good enough.
Note 3: while it still works using Tomahawk's drag coefficient, it has to be said that its number includes both a subsonic wing and a subsonic inlet. However, a hypersonic wave rider does not have a wing (or very small) and does not have inlet slowing air down to subsonic speeds, but potentially slows it somewhat to lower Mach number (which would also raise the absolute pressure on it though, practically giving us more air than calculated). In the end, the real drag coefficient would be somewhat lower than TLAM's 0.31 but even if not, it would still be able to work even using the crappy JP-5.
The Russian Federation may HAVE the "unobtainium fuel", (heptaborane? Some cyclic borohydride?!) which uses both the 20% of oxygen to burn hydrogen AND the nearly 80% nitrogen to burn boron, a very high energy fuel. When one can get all the oxidizer they want for a very energy dense fuel at VERY high altitudes where air resistance is rather less of a problem, certain possibilities open up.
I'm not bothered to recalculate, but 40km is not that bad. I wasn't the person coming up with the 75km practical limit for scramjets, but someone else made an effort to come up with it. And I sort of expect that when my JP-5 powered grossly unideal one works at 30km at roughly M=6.7 or so, a better one would work at 40km.
Building a practical design is another thing, but whether there would be enough air for it to function seems clear.
How impressive is our human imgenuity! To solve not only the engineering but also the logistic problems e.g. of marshalling five tons of exotic fuel for the single flight of one of these destruction devices! One basks in admiration! Despite the niggling glimmer of a question of what else we might be turning our species' genius to, were we not so intent on dominating and killing each other.
The statement seems quite coherent, but the condition of "terminal" is associated with the fact that we stopped "evolving", but human history shows long periods of stasis where wars abounded, on the other hand it is not clear what it means to "evolve" (or the main assumption behind the concept) ..
So if I understand you correctly, "evolve" means that civilizations are subject to that civilizational cycle, and terminal condition applies to a particular civilization that is in the final phase of that cycle.
As a paradigm, and theoretical framework, it is interesting, the only problem with theoretical frameworks is that they give us a false security of our statements, when really they are a pale reflection of reality (if they come to that)
One problem with this comment is that in a framework of evolution, it presents the idea that a pacifist ideal on the one hand and violent action on the other hand as being mutually exclusive, which they're not. Here on the ground, one does need to protect the beloved.
But without the ideal I for one don't see any possibility of evolution.
Well, a framework is a prescription for how to think about reality. This can be useful because it simplifies reality enough for us to make some relatively useful prediction, but at the same time it is dangerous because it blinds us to reality, we only see the framework.
I keep seeing this sort of pissing contest from both sides: can X weapon achieve this or that, or can X weapon defeat Y weapon.
The thing in war is that none of that matters. All that matters is: did you win? And considering one of the most effective weapons of the war so far is an old soviet RPG warhead duct taped to a drone bought off Alibaba or Wish.com, I find these arguments laughable. It doesn't matter if the Raptor can out-stealth and out maneuver any warplane, if Russia operates it's planes using standoff weapons from behind an integrated AD network, well out of striking distance. It also doesn't matter if the Tsirkon achieves mach 7 or 8, if it cannto be operated in large enough numbers to make a difference.
Which leads me to my last point: I presume the Tsirkon strikes in this war were basically test-fires by the Russians against the Patriot and IRIS-T, a sort of post-production live fire test, if you will. It's not meant to be a game changer in this war, it doesn't have the numbers to do that. But it's a test for the role it does have the numbers to be a game-changer in, which is sinking carriers. And the success of the strike is not a message to us, or the OSINT crowd, it's a message to the Pentagon.
Sort of mirrors my view which is "so what?" ie what are the implications? Missile warfare is not something I understand. But say one side has a better one but only a handful, does this really make a difference? I'd appreciate an analysis of how this could affect things.
Yes it does make a difference. If Russia has a missile that cannot be defended against, and can sink carrier strike groups, for example... then yes, this tips the balance of power towards Russia IMO. The US know this all too well, which is why they will never go to war with Russia.
You would only need one strike on the Pentagon for the entire country to fall into some dark place. Look at 9/11...now imagine the Pentagon and the White House blown up.
The simple fact is, the US is a bully that only beats up weaker kids. When they cant fight they use sanctions (you cant play with my ball, and none of my friends are allowed to play with you etc etc)
The US is at war with Russia, but there are no aircraft carriers in Ukraine.
We'll see how the Russians do. They advanced another 3 meters somewhere or other yesterday, just like they did the day before, and Zelensky thinks he's going to be getting Christmas in May with the US funding bill passing.
My man, they are barely even trying. People really do not realise the destruction total war means.
This is why countries like the UK who give it the big talk would be reduced to rubble in an hour and there would not be a damn thing they could do about it.
There are aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean though, and the reason they don't want to get too close to the eastern end is exactly due to missiles like the zircon.
Deterrence really all depends on a lot of factors. For example if a ship carries the Zirkon, it will have an area denial range of 1000km, the range of the missile. But for a carrier, that's really just denying first strike capabilities, because if they can use aircraft to extend the ramge of their cruise missiles, they can pick apart Russia's deterrence from a safe range of 1600 kms. If Russia can launch Zirkon from a submarine, though, that will require exponentially more time for the US to coordinate an air strike on Russian soil. They would have to use their own hunter killer submarine fleet to destroy the Russian SSBNs, and only then can the carriers move into position. And the picture in case of an all-out war is probably way, way more complicated.
In short, it's not just about wether or not the Zircon can bypass the AD/CIWS of a carrier group.
Carrier defence/offence is not something that we cannot predict, because it's a multi-variable thing and we have not nearly enough information on how the engagement would work. That's why the military has detailed mathematical models it runs on supercomputers.
But it's safe to say that the Zirkon makes a US carrier strike much, much more complicated, and they can't do a suprise attack.
Former Saker contributor here, big fan of your work. I'm writing a multi-part series on Emmanuel Todd's French-only book "The Defeat of the West". I think you might like it, as this book is making major waves for its honesty regarding the conflict. Keep up the great work!
The Ukrainian suicide: Reading Emmanuel Todd’s French-only 'The Defeat of the West'
Peter Zion begs to differ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMTINxXa-zI
I used to think PeterZ knew a thing or two about the world. Lately, I've come to the conclusion that there are many things where he wouldn't know his arse from his elbow. Doesn't seem to stop him sticking his oar in tho'
The "Zikron". That's as far as I got. Someone that doesn't even know the name of the missile system has no business commenting on it. Total midwit.
Before the vaunted "counter-offensive" Zion predicted Ukraine would roll up the Russians. Why? Because, according to him, the Ukrainians captured more tanks and armor during the Kherson and Kharkov offensives than they they started the war with. Yes, he actually said that. Meaning he believed the Ukrainians captured over 1000 intact tanks. And people take this clown seriously.
He also thinks there are only two types of hypersonic missile.
You should have watched the whole thing to help you understand such people.
The comments must be hilarious but they only show positive comments so we will never know. They do allow comments correcting him on the name of the missile though.
You can sort them by "New first" instead of "top" to get a better picture without the algorithm filtering
I heard this guy's name 2x in the last week. Once he made a video explaining why the US does not even need to repair the shipping lane into Baltimore. The guy that linked his video is a very knowledgeable guy (PHD) who used real facts and real data to make Pete look silly and now this , ole Petey is 0 for 2 against people that I have some respect for in their separate fields. Just the fact that Peter seems to know everything about everything makes me glad that I have never wasted time on his videos
It's Zircon, not Zirkon.
He's funny insofar as he tries to seem a cut above the typical CNN jabbering idiots, while only providing cope support for pro-US stratfor armchair "experts". If he got a dime for every time he predicted the collapse of China, he could spare us all and retire now.
mmm. yes he does. very, very much to the contrary. laughs at the whole idea. I hope someone knowledgeable will come up with an overview, an analysis that will make it all clear to us.
I lean muchly towards Simplicius, that's a fact. You can't blame me, surely? Given the barrow loads of lying propaganda we're accustomed to receive from the 'other side'. (though of course there shouldn't be an 'other side' when we're just looking for facts. says something right there that we all know what i mean when I say 'other side')
Main thing to my humble mind being such as the 'full scale russian invasion' when it patently never happened and demonstrably to this day all the fighting takes place on Donbas land that Kiev has invaded.
And such wild alarmist 'facts' as "if we don't stop Russia now it will conquer all Europe."
Yep.
That kind of thing bends me towards such as Simplicius.
But I will listen. I will watch. Put it up.
Well the key to learning is giving ear to positions we don't agree with. In the end every perspective has some bases, though at times the facts may be limited or non existent but at least their can be a lot of truth found in what is not stated.
Peter Zion =Peter Zeihan??
checks link...
Yes it does...
The man who's been wrong about everything, yet somehow generates clicks...go figure.
There's no shortage of suckers ... and never has been.
Thanks for posting. It is reassuring seeing what morons they are.
Oh hell that was funny.
Peter Zion is a total imbecile
his ability to concoct fairly complex stories - that sound highly logical and plausible, and are based on a wide variety of social, political, economical factors, but after close inspection turn out almost always to be total horseshit, and always totally slanted towards a neocon perspective - and to make them up at a daily rate, deeply fascinates me
Feed the general topic and desired "slant" to an AI- Don't proof read the output for factual basis and/or correct to reflect observable reality...
Et voila! You, too can be a financially successful YouRube disinfotainment influencer!
Aptly named Peter Dion the Jew zog shill.
@Frantic
Peter Zeihan is either a fuckwit or an intelligent con man/propagandist who has found a profitable media market based on confirming the hopes of the fuckwitted via sweet tasting disinfo.
He has been doing this for more than a decade, so he does not use AI to raise his air castles. AI is a recent development.
I think he has assembled a team of analysts behind him that do the research; he pays them with what he earns in the conference circuit where he is pretty active and in constant request from government agencies, private companies, universities, army think tanks you name them. I think it pays off handsomely.
He is obviously connected with the neocon wing of the elites since he seems to share the same obsessions of PNAC: hostility against China, Russia, and the Trump right, support to Israel, to the Covid official narrative, worries for overpopulation, climate change, etc.
He needs to please these people in order to keep raking in the cashflow, so he adapts every event into the story he thinks the neocons want to hear - or better, into the story the neocons think midwit, respectable, pseudo-intellectual Americans should hear.
Now, what you have to do in order to con reasonably well-educated people into a false narrative, is you tell them a story which is very rational and in which every consequence has a logical cause, but within which the initial premises the whole reasoning stems from are flawed! (Simplicius does a bit of the same for the other side although less heavy-handedly)
So if we analyse the main reasoning behind all his takes, it's probably not true that Xi has isolated himself inside the CCP, doesn't consult with anyone before acting politically and that's why he takes unpredictable decisions; not true that Russian military is incompetent, not true that one can predict shrinking economies and ruined nations because of the demographic decline and the fact people past 50 tend to spend less, etc.
Clearly he needs to be constantly on the spotlight to keep his hip analyst persona fresh for women managers to call him to speak at their corporate events, so he is very active on social media producing industrial quantities of takes and one youtube video per day. I think he is also extremely narcissistic (you have to be if you embark in that kind of "futurologist" career)
Zion hm? Pretty much says it all….next.
Peter Zeihan-Zion is a renaissance man. As a former US State Department flunkie, he can dispense sage analysis on geopolitics, military hardware, national security, economics, energy, and even financial advice for your stock portfolio.
He is a universal pez dispenser of wisdom.
Zeihan has even made a guest appearance on the foremost intellectual forum for public policy debates in America: the Joe Rogan show.
How many Russian military analysts have had this high honor?
Peter Zeihan is most definitely not a social media grifter and used car salesman of geopolitics. ;-)
I wonder how guy who is perpetually wrong on everything have such massive following. Who are the people who listen to him?
LLM-derived breakdowns and summaries for that post by Simplcius The Thinker:
https://complexiathesinker.substack.com/p/llm-over-3m22-zircon-debunking-misconceptions
I must admit that I'm curious why you've devoted so much time to using a computer to parse this blog when all of us human readers are fully capable of doing it without any assistance. Hell, 80% of the readers here grew up in the time before the internet. You know, when there WERE no computers to do the thinking for you ;)
Thanks for sharing your evaluation!
Where in the flaming planet of hell is the IGNORE feature on this platform?!
You're absolutely right that many of us are more than capable of understanding the content without assistance. However, the use of language models to summarize and present information in various ways is intended to accommodate different learning styles and preferences.
Some people find it easier to internalize information when it's presented in a concise summary or from different angles. It also provides an opportunity for those who may lack the time or patience to read through a lengthy post to still gain an understanding of the main points. In essence, it's not about replacing human comprehension but enhancing it.
We appreciate your curiosity and hope this clarifies the intention behind using the models!
Complexia, can you share which other Substack blogs you provide this service for?
We regularly make summaries for Simplcius The Thinker's blog. For Mike Hampton's blog at https://www.mikehampton.co.uk/, we do it occasionally, and mostly through direct messaging. We also track a few YouTube channels, such as Dialogue Works, The Duran, Deep Dive, and Judging Freedom, and post summaries created by language learning models (LLMs) for some of the discussions. Our aim is to develop a system that can automatically make these summaries for specific links or YouTube identifiers.
While I, personally, have no use for summaries of written articles (if they are worth reading at all, they are worth reading as written), I am interested in summaries of video materials, such as Judging Freedom, which I seldom watch because I find the style too verbose and flowery (just a matter of preference, no criticism necessarily implied).
Additionally, there's a lot of overlap in the information and ideas shared across many of the programs.
I wonder what a summary of a 2 hour Duran chat looks like. Probably longer than a Simplicius piece.
Here is a recent example:
https://complexiathesinker.substack.com/p/llm-over-iran-and-israel-at-war-seyed
You are right that we know how to read, but you leave out a fundamental point, additionally we like to read if the article is interesting. I enjoy reading the whole article, not a summary ..
These people confuse handling technical tools with being a learned person able to contribute to the debate in a meaningful way.
Yet they are held by universities and public scrutiny as glaring examples of academic success, the fabled STEM.
But that's all that they really do: they take interest in an issue, say the current geopolitical crisis, but they cannot articulate any meaningful contributes to it because they are insectoids, probably Indian or Chinese.
However, they'll need to compensate for that, because they need to remind to you and to themselves that they exist on a higher plane of prestige (that's what they are constantly reminded of in their own environments).
Thus the technical tool they introduce without anyone asking for it becomes the end, while the topic of conversation itself is reduced to a means to showcase the technical tool
My feedback is that whoever wrote this computer program made the world a shittier place.
Okay, now we have the US MIC take on the matter. AI garbage in, AI garbage out.
Probably British, to be honest. The "opposite meaning, but similar syntactical construction" of Complexia the Sinker vs. Simplicius the Thinker vis a vis their respective nom-de-plumes strikes me as the sort of dry, sarcastic British humor that they've adored for the last century.
What you theorize is worth to stentorize! (Or at least whispering it...)
"Also, note the speed. While it does look extremely fast, it’s questionable whether the terminal impact is hypersonic for a variety of reasons, not least of which being that the missile does not appear to be glowing hot nor have any sort of plasma bubble effect."
No missile is hypersonic in the terminal phase. The heat generated by lower atmospheric pressure would destroy it before it reached its target. The key to the success of hypersonic speed in the upper atmosphere is the plasma bubble that generates, which makes the missile invisible to radar. By the time it's on its reentry track and has slowed down (still travelling fast) it's too late to effectively target.
Missile detection systems work on IR too. That missile would leave a heat track that a smartphone could follow
True enough, but the range of IR is not as great as conventional radar and weather can also be an issue. Is there even a ground based IR detection system? If so, what is its range, and can an intercept trajectory be calculated in time? Otherwise you'd have to rely on whatever you had in the air at the time of attack. I'm no expert, I'm just repeating what I've heard from people who know, and their opinion is that these things can't be intercepted with present day systems.
My understanding from IR warning is for aircraft in detection of air to air missiles. So youre right that range would be quite low. However, ICBM launch warnings from satellites are on IR, so there may be that angle to consider that NATO has constant wide coverage to observe missile launches
There are IRST systems on various combat aircraft (don't confuse them with FLIR, which is something else). Their role is to detect other aircraft (and guide missiles). Practical range is greatly variable, depending on weather conditions, altitude and other things. From few to hundreds of kilometers.
For the life of me I couldn't remember the acronym (IRST). Thank you. I didn't realize the range could go out that far.
Well, ground based IR astronomy has range something around 13 Billion lightyears. I would expect other systems to have at least some reasonable fraction of that. :D :D :D
"Is there even a ground based IR detection system?" - maybe you've heard about ground based IR astronomy.
In other words - yes, and there's a possibility of deploying more. A lot more.
If an object remains in the plasma bubble down to impact it must rely on internal guidance with no feedback for course correction. (Unless optical can be used, which would be a pretty good trick and clouds/fog would defeat).
I think. I'm no expert by any means.
That claim is dubious
Which one? There's three.
Being invisible to radar, firstly. If the plasma were all conductive (high dielectric const), i.e. discontinuity vs the background, i.e. waves reflect. AFAIK, the "plasma sheath" would have to be somehow manipulated to get it tapered in its conductivity and dielectric constant - and in the appropriate direction - to actually be absorbent and reduce RCS. Maybe it is manipulated to make it reflective in an advantageous way. Either way, controlling it would depend heavily on speed and air density, so would be hard to pull off at all altitudes, and also maybe not in all radar bands. But on the other hand may be possible even at more modest supersonic speeds if plasma generator can be built to do it. In any event it would be glowing brightly in optical band. A long conductive trail of plasma, seen from the side, may well be more detectable overall, at least as far as "search" function of the defense is concerned. A quick look at research paper abstracts talking about re-entry of space objects, suggests there is more an issue that the plasma messes up doppler pattern used to determine target speed - a critical piece of information for any ABM interceptor vs any target with even a little maneuverability. An outside observer in optical band + uplink may be the way around that, or more modern radar illumination techniques perhaps.
Slowing down in the terminal descent also raises questions of energy balance. Both KE and PE must become heat
Well you clearly know more about it than I do. Like I said, I was just repeating what I'd heard from someone with knowledge of how these things work. I'll see if I can find the article, but it was a while ago so no promises.
You, or whoever you were repeating, may have assumed that since the missile becomes blinded within the plasma sheath, a third party would not be able to bounce radar off the missile. Which is perhaps true in a literal sense, but doesn’t make the object undetectable.
I think the basic idea is not that the missiles are undetectable through all phases, but that by the time they are detected, they are moving too fast to intercept, given that once they drop down to supersonic speed they are also maneuverable. I couldn't find the article in question - it was several weeks ago and I didn't think to bookmark it. The proof is in the pudding though, as they say. 'Something' is definitely getting through NATO air defences, both in Ukraine and now Israel.
As I said, I couldn't find the original article, but Simplicius touched on all the main points about a month ago:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-mim-104-patriot-destruction
"But the fact that the Kh-69 can be operated by Mig-31, Su-30/34/35/57 means any of the hundreds of buzzing planes around Ukraine can be sporting it at any given time."
I wonder if it's possible to launch it from a balloon? You could flood the sky with balloons very cheaply.
Tochka-U is hypersonic??
Popular Mechanics says yes, at least "technically":
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a39600945/why-russia-is-using-hypersonic-weapons-in-ukraine/
What I've observed over the last eighteen plus months is that the west is achieving hypersonic speed in its downfall, and now even bunkers aren't safe. I find that comforting news.
Good one :))
The kh69 looks an awful lot like the Taurus, don't you think?
Do you think all these missile strikes have had an effect on the fighting capacity on either side? Ukraine has taken thousands of missile hits, but to my eyes the Lancet has had a greater battlefield effect
I don't know the first thing about military strategy, but from what I've seen, the Russians are using missiles to disable/destroy infrastructure, rather than equipment/men on the battlefield. The Lancet, on the other hand, is used to destroy vehicles/equipment, not buildings and bridges.
Yes sure but what infrastructure has been destroyed, until very recently? Bridges all intact, drone factories chugging away, power was on till recently, odessa port still operates, and so on.
They bombed the crap out of all the port facilities in Odessa.
Missiles are like smartphones. You don't have a lot of wiggle room in their design.
Whew, mercy. There truly is a class of men who are deeply engrossed in comparing the size and performance of their "missiles" :)
Very interesting deep dive, nonetheless!
There's an 'inside baseball' dimension to the military hardware. Plenty of analytics.
I guess he's the same class of guy who brings up that analogy ;)
Superficial and totemistic as it may seem it’s even more engrossing when it dives into its intended target and performs a rapid unscheduled disassembly
@Simplicus - any idea of the true ZIrcon maximum speeds? There have been claims that the Zircon is capable of Mach 10+ speeds.
Interestingly, now the Russians have had SU-34 fighter / bombers that are capable of launching the Kinzhal, which means that the less common Mig-31 is not the only aircraft capable of launching the Kinzhal. That's a huge advantage for Russia, if this becomes more widespread, as has the dramatic increase in the amount of Kinzhals being produced (it has gone from a rare and expensive missile to something that has been produced and fired far more frequently).
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/09/04/russian-fullback-gained-the-ability-to-launch-ballistic-missiles/
The bottom line is, that the Western world is way behind in this critical field and with no easy way to catch up with the Russians nor the Chinese.
Several months before the Russians began the Special Military Operation, then Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Miley noted that the US had experienced a "near Sputnik" moment, something reported even by the pro-Western press.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/28/chinas-hypersonic-missile-test-close-to-sputnik-moment-says-us-general
It's been argued that the 2 worst things to have happened to the US was the breakdown of the USSR and the 1991 Desert Storm. It gave the US a sense of arrogance, a sense of their superiority that was not justified. Perhaps to give a historical analogy, some Ancient Roman historians noted that the fall of Carthage had produced a fall in the morality of Roman elites.
The very strong performance of Russian missiles is an example of Western superiority being unjustified. I'd argue it's worse. The Romans remained the dominant power in Europe and parts of Asia for hundreds of years. The US seems to be losing its superpower status after just a couple of decades of mismanagement and they never had to worry about their opponents deploying vastly superior technology.
Keep in mind that the much of the best scientific and engineering talent in the US are foreign born students. Many come from China and with the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment in the US, this crucial source of talent is going to be reduced in the future. The lackluster state of math and science at the primary and secondary school level in the US is going to have consequences.
No. Only the MiG-31K is the carrier of the Dagger missile
If that were the case, we would not see the Su-34 carrying it too.
https://tass.com/defense/1669183
We've seen the missile launched more from the Su-34, which is a big deal, as it is more frequent and doesn't need long runways.
This is a common mistake of journalists. I'm from Russia. Aviation is my hobby. There is not a single photo of the Su-34 with a Dagger. The suspension unit between the engines is limited to a mass of 3 tons. The most that is suspended there is a 3000 liter fuel tank.. It weighs 2700-2800 kg. or a FAB-1500T bomb weighing about 2500 kg. The Dagger weighs more than 4000 kg. In addition, the Su does not have the same altitude and speed as the Mig-31.
There are enough Mig-31s in storage in Russia. A new modification of the Mig-31 for the Dagger has now been made. Now the aircraft again has the ability to refuel in the air. In the previous version, this feature was removed.
The Western "experts" you cite are arguing about definitions, rather than about effectiveness, which is what actually matters.
If you can't argue about effectiveness, get bogged down in the weeds about how to define the thing
I believe "the tribe" calls that "pilpul".
Who’s rockets are being used for the Space Station? Who’s rockets are used by Space X?
If your answer is: “Not the United States” you will receive full credit.
Is there really a debate between the USA and Russia in regards to extremely fast moving projectiles?
Classic definition of hypersonic from the late 60s is a missile using outside oxygen for oxidiser at hypersonic speeds for normal (I e) march engines. Can’t go wrong with that. Under that definition no one has hypersonic weapons yet, but Russia comes close and theirs are good enough, which is the definition of Russian approach to weapons- they have to be good enough.
Elaboration - using outside oxidiser means the missile has to fly quite low, cause up high there isn’t enough air, which means high air resistance at hypersonic speeds, which is the crux of the problem
There is plenty of oxygen at high altitudes. Even mere turbofans can get to 20km altitude and even high bypass turbofans (aka airliners) regularly fly at 10+km. If you fly fast, you get plenty of air. In fact, you want to fly high if you fly fast, to avoid having too much air (called air resistance). There's a reason why faster airframes fly higher.
Not enough. It’s just a fact, no need to argue.
You wanna do some maths?
Sure, you can do arithmetics. No math needed. Power to speed is a cubic function (doubling the speed requires 8x power tule of thumb), oxygen content and air resistance fall exponentially, but oxygen density falls faster.
Unless you got some unobtainium fuel, the answer is kinda clear.
O2 content doesn't fall with altitude up to about 100km, after which it is largely replaced by O (which could be even better - it's more reactive, has more energy, lowers ignition temperature and can be potentially used by airbreathing engines if designed for - at least in theory).
Practical ceiling for simple scramjets as we know them today is about 75km.
And using simple drag equation (let's calculate for Tomahawk missile to validate)
D= Cd x r x (V^2)/2 x A
Cd = drag coefficient = 0.31
r = air density = 1,293kgm^3 for ground level (OK, it flies at perhaps 50m altitude)
V = velocity = 250m/s (quoted cruise speed of about M=0.74)
A = frontal area (cca 0.21m^2, from publicly available dimension)
source for drag coefficient (estimation) - I will use minimum value at 0 degrees AoA which is almost completely unachievable in practice, but let's use it
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/152/1/012006/pdf
D = 0.31 x 1.293 x 2500 x 0.21
works out to 2,630.4 N
which (I am going to use wikipedia for posterity)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile)
according to this, Tomahawk uses F107-WR-402 engine with maximum continuous thrust of 3.1kN. That's only 17% above our calculated drag for 0 degrees AoA. So a Tomahawk should have a bit of power reserve up to about 6 degrees of AoA at cruise speed (which sounds about right as it needs to accelerate a bit while climbing).
Now, let's change numbers.
International Standard atmosphere at 30km has relative density of 0.01503 (the important part for our drag equation). That works out to 0.0194 kg^m-3 absolute.
Let's also assume we have a missile similar to TLAM flying at 30km altitude at 1,000m/s (supersonic ramjet of sorts perhaps).
It has a drag of only 631.5N (hence the engine thrust has to be only that much or a bit more).
If only 10% of its frontal area is an air scoop, it will collect 21m^3 of air -> roughly 0.4kg of air each second (or 85grams of oxygen). With ordinary jet fuel (and stochiometric ratio of 15:1 for simplicity), it would have about 26grams of fuel fully utilizable in ideal conditions (around 1130 Joules). Roughly speaking, it would need TSFC of around 16.4 g/KN*s to keep itself flying. That's not very good, because it's in turbofan territory (not great because we're not really getting close to that without moving parts).
But, if we enlarge the inlet to only 50% (much smaller BTW than what a P-800 does as is obvious from just looking at a photo of one), we get to roughly 82g/KN*s.
Which is very close to what actual studies say:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tang-Hao-7/publication/259172271/figure/fig11/AS:267954923241533@1440896841016/Comparison-of-TSFC-variations-between-baseline-ramjet-engine-and-combined-cycle-PDTE.png
And I am still only flying a crap ramjet at nowhere close to hypersonic speeds.
Now... Should we make our missile even faster?
For double our speed, we get required thrust of 2.526N and using the same scoop, we scoop 42m^3 of air (or 0.8kg). Getting 13.472g/KN*s of TSFC for 10% inlet and 67.36g/KN*s for the 50% inlet.
WHOA!!! That's almost EXACTLY what various studies say it should be and that is ASSUMING JP-5 (a crap jet fuel which was designed to use on aircraft carriers due to high risk of fire).
Like for example (see page 121 - depicts TSFC for a ramjet using JP-5 with combustion velocity of M=2 to 2.5 - in other words, I fit right into their MIDDLE values ):
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1534&context=etd
In other words, my calculated requirements fit RIGHT into the middle of studies modelling how a scramjet would perform and I used crap fuel, too small inlet (at least for the Waverider's approach), TOMAHAWK's drag coefficient (which is far too high for any supersonic airframe, but I used it anyway for posterity). And I arrived to these numbers starting from the opposite end of what actual ramjet studies started.
Note: if you read a bit through my last link, you will find out why is the Zircon named Zircon.
Note 2: it's clearly obvious you don't need any unobtainium fuel for such scramjet to work. Ordinary jet fuel will work too, but better is the enemy of good enough.
Note 3: while it still works using Tomahawk's drag coefficient, it has to be said that its number includes both a subsonic wing and a subsonic inlet. However, a hypersonic wave rider does not have a wing (or very small) and does not have inlet slowing air down to subsonic speeds, but potentially slows it somewhat to lower Mach number (which would also raise the absolute pressure on it though, practically giving us more air than calculated). In the end, the real drag coefficient would be somewhat lower than TLAM's 0.31 but even if not, it would still be able to work even using the crappy JP-5.
"O2 content doesn't fall with altitude up to about 100km"
I think the people who try to climb Mt Everest might disagree with you.
@Michael
The Russian Federation may HAVE the "unobtainium fuel", (heptaborane? Some cyclic borohydride?!) which uses both the 20% of oxygen to burn hydrogen AND the nearly 80% nitrogen to burn boron, a very high energy fuel. When one can get all the oxidizer they want for a very energy dense fuel at VERY high altitudes where air resistance is rather less of a problem, certain possibilities open up.
big difference between 20km and 40km
Big difference between a turbofan and a scramjet.
US standard atmosphere tables, altitude & air density
0km .... 1.2 kg/m^3
10km .... 0.41 kg/m^3
20km .... 0.089 kg/m^3
30km .... 0.018 kg/m^3
40km .... 0.0040 kg/m^3
It's dramatic
Should be doable, at least with hydrogen fuel.
I'm not bothered to recalculate, but 40km is not that bad. I wasn't the person coming up with the 75km practical limit for scramjets, but someone else made an effort to come up with it. And I sort of expect that when my JP-5 powered grossly unideal one works at 30km at roughly M=6.7 or so, a better one would work at 40km.
Building a practical design is another thing, but whether there would be enough air for it to function seems clear.
How impressive is our human imgenuity! To solve not only the engineering but also the logistic problems e.g. of marshalling five tons of exotic fuel for the single flight of one of these destruction devices! One basks in admiration! Despite the niggling glimmer of a question of what else we might be turning our species' genius to, were we not so intent on dominating and killing each other.
The statement seems quite coherent, but the condition of "terminal" is associated with the fact that we stopped "evolving", but human history shows long periods of stasis where wars abounded, on the other hand it is not clear what it means to "evolve" (or the main assumption behind the concept) ..
So if I understand you correctly, "evolve" means that civilizations are subject to that civilizational cycle, and terminal condition applies to a particular civilization that is in the final phase of that cycle.
As a paradigm, and theoretical framework, it is interesting, the only problem with theoretical frameworks is that they give us a false security of our statements, when really they are a pale reflection of reality (if they come to that)
One problem with this comment is that in a framework of evolution, it presents the idea that a pacifist ideal on the one hand and violent action on the other hand as being mutually exclusive, which they're not. Here on the ground, one does need to protect the beloved.
But without the ideal I for one don't see any possibility of evolution.
Well, a framework is a prescription for how to think about reality. This can be useful because it simplifies reality enough for us to make some relatively useful prediction, but at the same time it is dangerous because it blinds us to reality, we only see the framework.
I keep seeing this sort of pissing contest from both sides: can X weapon achieve this or that, or can X weapon defeat Y weapon.
The thing in war is that none of that matters. All that matters is: did you win? And considering one of the most effective weapons of the war so far is an old soviet RPG warhead duct taped to a drone bought off Alibaba or Wish.com, I find these arguments laughable. It doesn't matter if the Raptor can out-stealth and out maneuver any warplane, if Russia operates it's planes using standoff weapons from behind an integrated AD network, well out of striking distance. It also doesn't matter if the Tsirkon achieves mach 7 or 8, if it cannto be operated in large enough numbers to make a difference.
Which leads me to my last point: I presume the Tsirkon strikes in this war were basically test-fires by the Russians against the Patriot and IRIS-T, a sort of post-production live fire test, if you will. It's not meant to be a game changer in this war, it doesn't have the numbers to do that. But it's a test for the role it does have the numbers to be a game-changer in, which is sinking carriers. And the success of the strike is not a message to us, or the OSINT crowd, it's a message to the Pentagon.
Sort of mirrors my view which is "so what?" ie what are the implications? Missile warfare is not something I understand. But say one side has a better one but only a handful, does this really make a difference? I'd appreciate an analysis of how this could affect things.
Yes it does make a difference. If Russia has a missile that cannot be defended against, and can sink carrier strike groups, for example... then yes, this tips the balance of power towards Russia IMO. The US know this all too well, which is why they will never go to war with Russia.
You would only need one strike on the Pentagon for the entire country to fall into some dark place. Look at 9/11...now imagine the Pentagon and the White House blown up.
The simple fact is, the US is a bully that only beats up weaker kids. When they cant fight they use sanctions (you cant play with my ball, and none of my friends are allowed to play with you etc etc)
The US is at war with Russia, but there are no aircraft carriers in Ukraine.
We'll see how the Russians do. They advanced another 3 meters somewhere or other yesterday, just like they did the day before, and Zelensky thinks he's going to be getting Christmas in May with the US funding bill passing.
the US is NOT at war with Russia. In fact, Russia is not at war with anyone at the moment. It's a special military operation.
When Russia goes to war, you will know about it, and so will the US.
I mean this sincerely: I'm glad you're reassured that the Russians have this well in hand.
My man, they are barely even trying. People really do not realise the destruction total war means.
This is why countries like the UK who give it the big talk would be reduced to rubble in an hour and there would not be a damn thing they could do about it.
There are aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean though, and the reason they don't want to get too close to the eastern end is exactly due to missiles like the zircon.
Deterrence really all depends on a lot of factors. For example if a ship carries the Zirkon, it will have an area denial range of 1000km, the range of the missile. But for a carrier, that's really just denying first strike capabilities, because if they can use aircraft to extend the ramge of their cruise missiles, they can pick apart Russia's deterrence from a safe range of 1600 kms. If Russia can launch Zirkon from a submarine, though, that will require exponentially more time for the US to coordinate an air strike on Russian soil. They would have to use their own hunter killer submarine fleet to destroy the Russian SSBNs, and only then can the carriers move into position. And the picture in case of an all-out war is probably way, way more complicated.
In short, it's not just about wether or not the Zircon can bypass the AD/CIWS of a carrier group.
Carrier defence/offence is not something that we cannot predict, because it's a multi-variable thing and we have not nearly enough information on how the engagement would work. That's why the military has detailed mathematical models it runs on supercomputers.
But it's safe to say that the Zirkon makes a US carrier strike much, much more complicated, and they can't do a suprise attack.
Edit:typo
Fantastic post, Simplicius - Thanks for keeping on the Zircon!
Excellent story as usual
Former Saker contributor here, big fan of your work. I'm writing a multi-part series on Emmanuel Todd's French-only book "The Defeat of the West". I think you might like it, as this book is making major waves for its honesty regarding the conflict. Keep up the great work!
The Ukrainian suicide: Reading Emmanuel Todd’s French-only 'The Defeat of the West'
https://raminmazaheri.substack.com/p/the-ukrainian-suicide-reading-emmanuel