Cunigulus [they/them]
Now that the original line in the Southwest part of Donetsk has fallen, the Russians have a straight shot right to the Zaporizhia Oblast border, all flat fields with 0 obstacles until Ivanivka, basically everything south of that green line is super vulnerable, putting the Russians in position to threaten to roll up the lines either to the West or the North. Logistics for a major offensive might be tough due to limited good roads, but we might be looking at the return of big arrows soon and maybe a precipitous collapse of Ukrainian lines, especially if the Russians are actually already in Kostyantynopil. We’ll see if they’re prepared to exploit their successes further. It’s hard to be optimistic watching this war, but this is the kind of action that might bring it to a more rapid close.
Meanwhile China has reached the cutting edge of microprocessor fabrication science and is planning a superfab utilizing a particle accelerator to try to get down to 2nm. Was this maybe coming eventually anyway? Sure, but I think these sanctions have made the Chinese double-down. They might have temporarily lost some market share by not being able to scale as fast at the cutting edge for the last few years, but these sanctions forced them to move up the supply chain to the kind of fabrication technology ASML had been supplying before sanctions and now they will outcompete the western monopolists. They wanted a quick fix to keep the Chinese behind in semiconductors for another decade, but no one thought to ask, “Well what happens after that? How will the Chinese respond?”
If things really do heat up there it’s a clear tell Taiwan is about to pop off imo. Light too many fires for the empire to put out and there’s no way they’ll be able to square up with the world’s dominant industrial power.
That said, I don’t think Korea is going to heat up too much. There have been much more siginificant flare-ups in the past.
Another option for Iran would be to try to crater the runways after the strike, maybe combine it with one of those slow drone wave attacks to get as much of the Israeli airforce in the air as possible. These missions are at the absolute limit of F-35’s range, even if you don’t force the planes to ditch you can force them to air fields that can’t support them and get them out of action for a few days. There’s a lot you can do to an air force if you can strike their air bases.
If I’m in the Iranian war room I’m pounding my fist on the table right now demanding a pre-emptive strike. They just hit the airbases they’re going to have to launch an attack from, roll out some missiles and hit them again when the aircraft are fueling up and getting ready to go. Then follow it up with a wave of those drones once their air assets are indisposed. That’s how you do deterrence and shut down the escalation ladder.
Nah, looks like they lit a tire fire inside the cooling tower or something. Maybe as some kind of distraction? It’s hard to understand why they would do that. It shouldn’t really damage the cooling tower, and the cooling tower isn’t the part to be worried about. It’s possible it was being used as storage and saboteurs or special forces lit it on fire.