Author: Michael

Mechanized warfare is not dead. Observers have been debating this topic since the Ukrainian military and volunteers beat back the Russian assault on Kiev in 2022. The professional discourse that has ensued often devolves into disputes about specific technologies or weapon systems and their perceived value on the future battlefield. Everyone is missing the big picture.Frontlines in Ukraine today present eerie similarities to World War I but with advanced technologies inhibiting mechanized attacks.

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In early November, after meeting China’s defense minister, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth performed a longstanding ritual in military relations between the United States and China: He announced that the two countries would “set up military-to-military channels to deconflict and de-escalate” problems between them. Like most rituals, this one is unlikely to have any practical effect.

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The United States in 2025 continued large scale deliveries of military equipment to modernise the inventories of the Republic of China Armed Forces, following a policy shift under the first Trump administration in 2019 to much more actively support military modernisation efforts. The status of the Republic of China government has left the U.S. as its only significant military supplier, with the government’s lack of international recognition or diplomatic relations with all but twelve minor countries leaving other arms producing countries unwilling to equip its forces.

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The U.S. Air Force is expected to increase the concentrate of deployments of its remaining fleet of B-1B Lancer strategic bombers in the Pacific in for the remainder of the 2020s and into the 2030s, as the integration of the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) has made the aircraft in many respects the most capable in the Western world in its ability to threaten adversary surface fleets. The bombers have been presented as an asymmetric asset that would allow the U.S.

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The Texas-based firm Intelligent Energy has proposed using retired nuclear reactors currently integrated onto the U.S. Navy’s first Nimitz class supercarrier, USS Nimitz, to supply electricity for artificial intelligence data centres at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. First deployed in March 1975, the 50 year old carrier is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2026, with the dismantling and recycling a aircraft expected to unfold across five phases, each taking up to a decade, with total costs expected to exceed $1 billion.

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You can’t turn on the news these days without hearing about the sky-rocketing cases of the seasonal flu. There is good reason why the media is sounding the alarm, this year’s seasonal flu is one for the record books:
The CDC estimates there have been at least 4.6 million illnesses, 49,000 hospitalizations and 1,900 deaths from flu this season so far, according to data updated as of Dec. 19, and experts expect these numbers will continue to rise.
Flu cases and hospitalizations from the flu are skyrocketing in many parts of the country.

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AFP was on-site a few months back at Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
The place was booming as Trump attempts to restore American shipbuilding to its former glory.
From the Huntington Ingalls Industries website:
In 1938, Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation was founded by Robert Ingersoll Ingalls Sr. (1882–1951), on the East Bank of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. It started out building commercial ships until the 1950s, when Ingalls started bidding on Navy work.

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Russia’s Aerospace Forces have shot down a Ukrainain Air Force Su-27 fighter, according to a short statement published by the Russian Defence Ministry. The circumstances o the shootdown remain unclear. The reported incident closely follows a prior shootdown of a Su-27 on December 8, resulting in the death of the aircraft’s pilot Lieutenant Colonel Yevhenii Ivanov, a senior navigator of the 39th Tactical Aviation Brigade. Another Su-27 was destroyed in late April during an engagement with Russian unmanned aircraft.

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