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Ukraine Is Wrecking Russia’s Oil Refineries. How Much Damage Has It Done, and How Might Putin Respond?: Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign has hit all 11 of Russia’s largest oil refineries and triggered the worst fuel crisis of the war, though how much capacity is truly offline is fiercely disputed, with Kyiv claiming 43 percent and independent analysts estimating closer to a third.

The damage is real and mounting, but Russia has proven able to absorb it.

MSTA-S Russian Army. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Msta-S Russian Army. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

For the crew of a fishing vessel, time was the enemy. A fisherman onboard the Azteca 5, a Mexican-flagged ship sailing in the Pacific, had suffered “traumatic injuries” on Monday, July 6. The Azteca 5 and its sister ship the Franz were out at sea, roughly 700 nautical miles from Cabo San Lucas in Mexico and hundreds of miles from the closest hospital or transport to one. 
That day, Coast Guard District 11 picked up their distress call and alerted members of the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing. A team of aircraft crewmen and pararescuemen or PJs quickly organized.

For the crew of a fishing vessel, time was the enemy. A fisherman onboard the Azteca 5, a Mexican-flagged ship sailing in the Pacific, had suffered “traumatic injuries” on Monday, July 6. The Azteca 5 and its sister ship the Franz were out at sea, roughly 700 nautical miles from Cabo San Lucas in Mexico and hundreds of miles from the closest hospital or transport to one. 
That day, Coast Guard District 11 picked up their distress call and alerted members of the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing. A team of aircraft crewmen and pararescuemen or PJs quickly organized.

Space Force has spent several months building out its idea of “orbital warfare” and now it has one of its first weapons. 
Last month, Space Force Combat Forces Command acquired the Meadowlands, which can blast enemy satellites with electromagnetic radiation to shut them down. Developed by L3Harris Technologies, the new weapon is able to “detect, deny, disrupt, and degrade adversary capabilities,” according to Space Force.
Specifically, the Meadowlands is a terrestrial-based weapon meant to jam enemy systems in space, disrupting transmissions from satellites and ground stations.

Summary and Key Points: U.S. media, citing anonymous sources, reported this week that Israel warned Washington of a new Iranian plot to assassinate President Trump. The claim is serious and comes from credible outlets, but it is also unconfirmed, undetailed, and, according to some U.S. officials, possibly an Israeli effort to influence Trump as he weighs widening the war. Trump has already said publicly how he would respond. The harder question is who benefits from this warning surfacing now.

Summary and Key Points: Vladimir Putin has begun hinting that the war in Ukraine might be “coming to an end,” but a serious body of analysis argues he may not actually be able to end it, and not because of the battlefield. The case runs that four years of war have rewired Russia’s economy and society around the fighting, so a peace that forced ordinary Russians to confront its true human and economic costs could threaten the regime itself.

Marine Corps Compass Points
We may have had the best-equipped, most capable Marine Air Ground Task Forces (MAGTF) in history, but without the dedicated strategic and operational lift needed…

T&P
The new units, based in Quantico, Virginia, and Twentynine Palms, California, will experiment with new technologies and develop training for deploying Marines.

Jonathan Buckland, Modern War Institute
Excess Equipment and the Army’s Regeneration Problem

Global Def.
Two U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers demonstrated rapid hot-pit refueling at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, in a Bomber Task Force operation highlighted by U.S….