I don’t have to fight an f15. The mechanics, fuel haulers and other ground squirrels are fair game.
Those who support a tyrant and turn their weapons on their own deserve the shit show that comes their way.
Any bets on how quickly the Taliban would be tweeting tips and tricks? Would be unimaginably ugly for all involved but would not want to be associated with fedzilla if they start bombing runs on “insurgents”
Or even worse “reprisal actions” as demonstrations.
“Any bets on how quickly the Taliban would be tweeting tips and tricks?”
We have several hundred thousand veterans of the ‘War on Terror’ spread across this great land, I bet they have seen things in the ‘sandbox’ durin their deployments that would make some folks recoil in horror… 🙂
It is that thought that gives me pause at the treatments given by several VA centers for vets of the last 20 odd years. Not all of them mind you but enough to make me wonder.
The Taliban learned from the VC and Charlie. Technology is worthless in an asymmetric war. Especially when the fear of human collateral damage keeps it from being used effectively. Which is why the United states hasn’t won a conflict since WWII.
…………didn’t we train what later became the Taliban back in the 80’s? I know damn well I trained at least a few that later joined the Taliban (if they weren’t Taliban to begin with and there for the free education). Although given how everything is learned yeah we did learn a lot from VC and Carlie to later be taught so I guess it works.
Vietnam Cong = Victor Charlie
AKA just “Charlie” for short as in “Charlie don’t surf!”
As for training Taliban—not exactly. We armed and trained the Mujahideed to fight the Russians, but they were a mix of tribes…primarily Pashtuns in the Southeastern portion of Afghanistan and elements that would later become the Northern Alliance (under Ahmad Shah Masood the Lion of Panjshir). The Taliban were largely outsiders that moved in and embedded with the Pashtuns. They would later become indistinguishable over the years.
Harassing fire on the ground crew. Even a sufficiently powerful sling shot could do some damage. If the plane is parked and can be accessed there’s all sorts of sabotage to inflict. Good old tire deflation and slashing. Superglue some coins to the compressor blades. Contaminants in the fuel and lubrication. Or take inspiration from a British WW2 commando who disabled a Ju87 Stuka by forcibly removing the instrument panel.
We don’t have to fight the plane. The pilot can be targeted when they’re on the ground. Without pilots the planes are just very expensive lawn ornaments.
Besides all that, a lot of the pilots, mechanics, and fuel haulers are on the side of the Americas, not the globalist psychopaths.
About 35% of the criminal migrants crossing the border look overweight. Zero sign of malnutrition within or among groups. O fudge, was that a non-sequitur? So solly…
In Vietnam there were a lot of fast movers that collected small arms fire on a regular basis. Usually wouldn’t bring them down, but it did normally require repairs which kept them out of action for days or weeks. Put a few bullets in the compressor section of a jet engine and there’s a real good chance that engine will explode, or at least shut down. And it’s not that hard to do if you’re sitting just outside the fence at the end of the runway.
gunny,
True, but . . . (and isn’t there always a big but???). The problem with “strategic” aircraft/bombings is that they are mostly ‘area weapons’. Close ground support aircraft are all about jumping on the guys who have . . . conveniently bunched up to attack their guys, on the ground.
I’m not even SLIGHTLY worried about the gummints F-15s, or F-35s (if they can even find them). While both tactics and technology have (far) advanced from ‘Nam . . . didn’t that teach them ANYTHING????? Apparently not.
Biden didn’t that’s for sure. In DaNang we had pretty regular incoming mortar and small arms fire even in ’65 & ’66, and infiltrators of various sorts including women that the command hired to do laundry, etc. for the troops. I caught one once who was very deliberately pacing off distances between hooches that she’d report to the guy with the make-shift mortar in his house or store outside the gate. There was other stuff that happened at night. So, yeah, there’s lot’s of ways to raise hell with an airbase that doesn’t take a human wave attack.
How do I defeat germ warfare?
“How do I defeat germ warfare?”
Easy, stock up your burrow with supplies for at least 2 years.
The epidemic burns out on its own.
Strangely, the more lethal the bug is, when it runs out of hosts it exterminates itself… 🙂
Tell it to the Taliban.
If guys with guns cannot win against a modern military, why did we surrender $85 billion in military equipmentin Afghanistan?
Playing the long game.
We decimate our military strength while handing billions in modern equipment over to them.
We burn our economy down while China builds up theirs mining rare earth metals.
The next time we fight we’ll be the homeless illiterates camping in mountains and they’ll be the first world power with a modern military.
Then we win.
Check and mate.
Maybe the girls will finally be happy.
I dont think I could fly a fighter bomber jet.
I had a hard time figuring out how to turn off the heater on my girlfiends SUV.
Damn it was hot, thought ,”Well if I can drive one of them beat up straight trucks to the grain elevator I should be able to suffer this.” Nope, getting old sucks.
Most governments, even tyrannical ones, don’t like the optics of deploying full-on military assault against their own people.
Much more common is for the regime to deploy unofficial forces to commit political violence on their behalf, but with plausible deniability. Think of the way the Klan was used to terrorise freedmen in the Reconstruction era. Or the Brownshirts in 1930s Germany. Or Interahamwe in Rwanda. Or the Chavista street gangs in Venezuela.
These gangs are unofficial enforcers of the ruling power, and they are almost always armed. If the law allows everyone to be armed, then they will themselves like everyone else. But the power behind the gangs usually arranges for their victims to be disarmed, under the guise of public safety. Their gangs are armed regardless, the state either supplying them openly, supplying them covertly, or merely turning a blind eye to them arming themselves.
That’s why the mainstream media went absolutely ape feces over Kyle Rittenhouse successfully defended himself against the reports rioters they incited and sponsored. They don’t like it when their victims fight back.
“Much more common is for the regime to deploy unofficial forces to commit political violence on their behalf, but with plausible deniability.”
Antifa, ‘Black Bloc’, etc…
Don’t need to fight the heavy equipment. A little thermite on the pump station or control valve for the fuel pipeline to the base will shut down aircraft. A few well placed IED’s will cut rail lines for at least a few days. A few rifle rounds can shut down the electrical grid for as long as it takes to ship in new transformers. All things that can be repaired, but are not usually kept on hand in the numbers to be replaceable across large parts of the country.
Start large scale reprisals or gang attacks on civilians and families of suspected insurgents and they open themselves for like attacks on their families. How many soldiers, sailors or airmen are going to be willing to go out and attack their own countrymen if they know doing so puts their families at risk? How many LEO’s will be willing to go kick in doors or hunt down dissidents if they know their families are unprotected?
Should it come to civil war the majority of food and other essentials come from very conservative portions of the country. The majority of the progressives/liberals are bunched up in the cities. Cut off the food, fuel and water supplies for a few weeks and the cities destroy themselves.
“How many soldiers, sailors or airmen are going to be willing to go out and attack their own countrymen if they know doing so puts their families at risk?”
The US military has a policy of moving servicemen all over the damn place every few years.
China could exterminate 10,000 people in Tiananmen Square because the soldiers used weren’t from the big cites, but from the rural areas. That won’t fly over here…
10000? 10000 came over just at one place yesterday and the day before – taller than average, confident, wellfed muscular people of military age. Then there’s the 40 some males who are downright fat, but have an air of authority. And of course, lots of plump children. The images are quite striking.
I think we could have a whole new military real soon. That will have zero problems firing on the likes of you and me.
Not to mention LE.
OAL,
Transformers are the weak link in the power grid. We no longer make the big ones here.
You are talking literally YEARS to replace say, a dual input 14kv to 115kv, 230kv or higher voltage 300 MVA transformer that are used throughout the power grid in the US.
Even the smaller substation 10, 15, 25 or 30MVA units are VERY difficult to come by, again because WE NO LONGER MANUFACTURE ANY OF THEM IN THE US.
People don’t realize just how perilous the grid is in the US. Trust me, our enemies are VERY aware of it, and will have NO qualms about exploiting the weakness should push come to shove some day…
(Do you REALLY want to know how I KNOW this? Maybe another day…)
I’ve posted this in another thread, but for any new readers on here, take a look at a short story that in my mind, is VERY plausible…
Semi spoiler alert… Near the end of the story, the many “Militias’ of One” are one of the main reasons the ‘plans’ finally fall apart…
Stuck in Pugetopia,
I am well aware how fragile and vulnerable our electric grid is in the United States. And while that is disconcerting, note how many other vital aspects of our modern day are fragile and vulnerable such as chemical plants, petroleum refineries and pipelines, natural gas pipelines, and our municipal water systems. Just about anyone with extremely limited and crude resources could easily cause catastrophic damage to any of them.
And we haven’t even talked about our roadways. Imagine what a few saboteurs could do with a minor step up to very small quantities of high-explo$ives on our bridges. Or even simpler: imagine the effect of a few saboteurs hiding in brush with basic rifles (with suppressors of course) sniping several vehicles on our roadways every day? How long before no one would go out on the roads? This last bit about our roadways would be exceedingly easy for a foreign state to foist upon us.
Maybe more importantly, these very same weaknesses exist in all of our foreign adversaries’ countries as well. That means our nation could do the same to them if they did it to us. And that brings me to a final point: why even bother with any sort of giant military apparatus when you could bring a foreign adversary to their knees via exploiting the weaknesses that I (and many others) have stated above? I am thinking that our modern day militaries and “wars” are theater–a performance for some far less obvious purpose.
i switch 345, 138, 69, 34, 12, 4kv and 480v. this grid has thousands of transformers. each and every one of them was manufactured here or in canada (minimal) with a few siemens (allemagne) and some old swedish oilers. we have a fairly impressive amount of stores.
i’m not saying they aren’t vulnerable, just disputing your statement in regards to origins.
tsb,
Ask your engineering staff where they would get a new 50MVA or larger transformer.
The last new substation I worked on (PLC / relay controls / comm gear, ) a few years before I retired, had a German made 25MVA transformer in it, and I asked our engineers the question about obtaining the larger transmission sized transformers.
Their answers were basically this: If we had to replace one of the generation plant 300 MVA sized units due to a non repairable core fault, it would be YEARS as they were now being manufactured overseas in places like South Korea.
(Yes, we had a few spares stored on site, but even then, swapping them out is a major months long process, even though they are on railroad style tracks.)
And yes, smaller stuff is still made here, and our ‘in-house’ transformer shop was perfectly capable of ‘re-tanking’ distribution sized units along with repairing older oil switches, and even the newer SF6 high voltage units. The US is still a major supplier of distribution sized transformers, but the really big stuff, well it CAN be manufactured here in the US but is it actually available?
Well, just ask around.
One of the outfits I used to work for was in the process of rebuilding the 90 MVA hydro alternators, and guess where the 1/2 turn coil assemblies were manufactured?
Sao Palo, South America…
The manufacturers in the US couldn’t compete with ‘overseas’ low wages, and went out of business.
They got what they paid for too. 30 seconds after spinning up the unit and applying field voltage, it shorted out and filled the powerhouse with smoke. The quality control was CRAP, and the company KNEW it.
BTW, I spent a summer between college classes (40 some-odd years ago,) winding 10 kva “cores” for a small transformer rebulder shop in my home town. They had a contract with BC hydro and set up several shifts just to produce those cores.
That business is LONG gone now, just like other similar small producers across the US that couldn’t compete with large companies and overseas suppliers.
How to defeat germ warfare?
Well, how have we done with covid? Many argue that it was intentional, perhaps even a test run. How did we (the people, not the gov’t) do?
My wife went to a 3 day work conference in IN a couple weeks ago, and she brought home a lot of corporate gift things, some different food stuff, and a dose of covid. She spent a week on the couch, with a spray bottle of sanitizer easy to hand. On “spray” she could keep a bubble of germ killer around herself, and on “stream” she could hit every doorknob and switch in sight. I put a mask on her so she couldn’t spit on me, and I wore one (at home) to remind myself not to touch my face. The infection ran it’s course, and I was able to avoid it with just a few commonsense measures. It won’t always be that easy, especially with something that’s particularly nasty, and if one of those real nasties is released widespread, we’re likely doomed because too many of us will be stupid.
The A-10 Warthog is the one I wouldn’t want to come up against. If there’s an A-10 loitering about I’ll have to tell the boys I’ll see y’all tmrw.
Nice dream. But if you think feeding an AR gets expensive try writing the check for simply fueling up an F-35 for just one flight.
Even if this plane magically landed in your front yard without any damage and you had a spare ejection seat to install into it it would take hours of turnaround time by a skilled aviation mechanic to get it back into the air again. These military monstrosities require ten times as many hours being worked over on the ground than hours in the air under even normal conditions plus good luck knowing anyone qualified to do anything on it beyond the most basic aircraft maintenance tasks. Maybe you get lucky and all your friends are recent vets with experience working on one of these and they all decide to volunteer their labor to the cause.
Then there is trying to fly the darn thing. Massad Ayoob talks about stories where cops have had their service pistols snatched and the goon doesn’t even know how to operate it and can’t make it go bang -especially on a more complicated gun like a 1911. The air force spends thousands of hours teaching their pilots to fly and sending them to combat air school fo become proficient at fighting these things.
Nah, the Vietnamese fighters did just fine with AK’s and SKS’s against the entire US military and they had F-4’s and other high-tech jets at the time too. The Viet Kong fighter didn’t need his own F-4 and we don’t need an F-35 nor even really want one. It would just be a distraction.
If or when the time comes there will be an American Patriot with a rifle behind every blade of grass across this entire nation. The tyrants don’t have enough F-35’s or F-15’s to deal with all of us. Hell, they will likely be having a hard time finding enough collaborators willing to refuel them, or even fly them against their brothers and sons standing up for their Rights.
Thermals will be a sticking point in any such scenario, TFB had a well done series on thermals (drones specifically) and how to beat them/what might work. Also showed that the cheaper digital night vision can sometimes show better contrast on nir treated camouflage even if the range of detection is substantially less. Oh and would not be at all surprised if some version of AI is used in processing drone thermal images to look for potential “hits” that a tired/bored human observer would miss for closer review.
SAFEupstateFML,
I was thinking about this very topic in the last few days. A spread-out guerilla force is formidable–until their opponents start using thermal and/or infra-red vision devices.
And then there is the whole Terahertz imagining thing where a Terahertz emitter “shines” on a person and returns images of the person’s body and bright images of any metallic objects (such as concealed firearms or knives) which are otherwise hidden under their clothing.
It will be next to impossible to move around covertly and employ the element of surprise on a significant force of “enforcers” who have thermal imaging, infra-red imaging, and Terahertz imaging.
Well damn now I have another imaging topic to research. Off hand is it as portable/long range imaging as NIR/Thermal or is it more a stationary setup like xray backscatter?
I’ll just douse myself with mud to avoid thermal. If it worked for Arny in the Predator it must be a sound tactic
Mud would need to be very thick and would rapidly lose effectiveness as it dries. Better off digging a foxhole and making a thick cover with a few inches of dirt.
SAFEupstateFML,
I am not sure how portable Terahertz imaging systems are at the moment. (I have no doubts that they will be significantly smaller at some point in the future.)
I believe their current maximum range is on the order of 50 feet. I could be wrong on that.
As far as I know, the primary use cases for Terahertz imaging are focused on security such as scanning people for concealed weapons at building entrances and security checkpoints as well as general/random crowd screening in “open air” environments (such as a people milling around at a festival).
Similar to the backscatter (with less radiation issues) for initial use it would seem but yeah could see it becoming relatively portable even if just vehicle mounted. Not seeing the developed use for open field/woods but absolutely could be used at various secure choke points in urban regions.
SAFEupstateFML,
“Not seeing the developed use for open field/woods but absolutely could be used at various secure choke points in urban regions.”
Give it 30 years and you (or your progeny) will probably be able to purchase Terahertz imaging devices similar in size/function/performance to quality thermal imaging devices today for about the same price (or less) accounting for inflation of course.
Why do I say that? The Ruling Class will likely consider highly miniaturized/portable Terahertz imaging to literally be their TOP priority going forward once they realize how useful it will be for their enforcers–both against domestic “insurgents” as well as foreign military forces.
Note: I was previously unaware and just read that various elements and compounds produce specific Terahertz “signatures” which differentiates and identifies them. That alone has huge industrial and medical applications beyond security considerations and will likely be another major driving force behind development. That is so compelling, in fact, that I think I just identified the next field where there is major opportunity to achieve astronomical gains on investment. (Now the trick is identifying the right company to invest in.)
Wonder how deep it can sense changes in density/material properties…………well reading to do but neat to see its application in looking at burn tissue. Also yeah 20-30 years for useful sized units re man portable would be my wild assed guess. 10-15 for the fuckhuge early gwot thermal scopes the size of 2 bricks version.
if i’m within range…
Anti gun groups dominate the ATF comment section on outlawing private sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0wV8SNo8fE
Some assembly may be required.
I don’t have to fight an f15. The mechanics, fuel haulers and other ground squirrels are fair game.
Those who support a tyrant and turn their weapons on their own deserve the shit show that comes their way.
Any bets on how quickly the Taliban would be tweeting tips and tricks? Would be unimaginably ugly for all involved but would not want to be associated with fedzilla if they start bombing runs on “insurgents”
Or even worse “reprisal actions” as demonstrations.
“Any bets on how quickly the Taliban would be tweeting tips and tricks?”
We have several hundred thousand veterans of the ‘War on Terror’ spread across this great land, I bet they have seen things in the ‘sandbox’ durin their deployments that would make some folks recoil in horror… 🙂
It is that thought that gives me pause at the treatments given by several VA centers for vets of the last 20 odd years. Not all of them mind you but enough to make me wonder.
The Taliban learned from the VC and Charlie. Technology is worthless in an asymmetric war. Especially when the fear of human collateral damage keeps it from being used effectively. Which is why the United states hasn’t won a conflict since WWII.
…………didn’t we train what later became the Taliban back in the 80’s? I know damn well I trained at least a few that later joined the Taliban (if they weren’t Taliban to begin with and there for the free education). Although given how everything is learned yeah we did learn a lot from VC and Carlie to later be taught so I guess it works.
Vietnam Cong = Victor Charlie
AKA just “Charlie” for short as in “Charlie don’t surf!”
As for training Taliban—not exactly. We armed and trained the Mujahideed to fight the Russians, but they were a mix of tribes…primarily Pashtuns in the Southeastern portion of Afghanistan and elements that would later become the Northern Alliance (under Ahmad Shah Masood the Lion of Panjshir). The Taliban were largely outsiders that moved in and embedded with the Pashtuns. They would later become indistinguishable over the years.
Harassing fire on the ground crew. Even a sufficiently powerful sling shot could do some damage. If the plane is parked and can be accessed there’s all sorts of sabotage to inflict. Good old tire deflation and slashing. Superglue some coins to the compressor blades. Contaminants in the fuel and lubrication. Or take inspiration from a British WW2 commando who disabled a Ju87 Stuka by forcibly removing the instrument panel.
We don’t have to fight the plane. The pilot can be targeted when they’re on the ground. Without pilots the planes are just very expensive lawn ornaments.
Besides all that, a lot of the pilots, mechanics, and fuel haulers are on the side of the Americas, not the globalist psychopaths.
About 35% of the criminal migrants crossing the border look overweight. Zero sign of malnutrition within or among groups. O fudge, was that a non-sequitur? So solly…
In Vietnam there were a lot of fast movers that collected small arms fire on a regular basis. Usually wouldn’t bring them down, but it did normally require repairs which kept them out of action for days or weeks. Put a few bullets in the compressor section of a jet engine and there’s a real good chance that engine will explode, or at least shut down. And it’s not that hard to do if you’re sitting just outside the fence at the end of the runway.
gunny,
True, but . . . (and isn’t there always a big but???). The problem with “strategic” aircraft/bombings is that they are mostly ‘area weapons’. Close ground support aircraft are all about jumping on the guys who have . . . conveniently bunched up to attack their guys, on the ground.
I’m not even SLIGHTLY worried about the gummints F-15s, or F-35s (if they can even find them). While both tactics and technology have (far) advanced from ‘Nam . . . didn’t that teach them ANYTHING????? Apparently not.
Biden didn’t that’s for sure. In DaNang we had pretty regular incoming mortar and small arms fire even in ’65 & ’66, and infiltrators of various sorts including women that the command hired to do laundry, etc. for the troops. I caught one once who was very deliberately pacing off distances between hooches that she’d report to the guy with the make-shift mortar in his house or store outside the gate. There was other stuff that happened at night. So, yeah, there’s lot’s of ways to raise hell with an airbase that doesn’t take a human wave attack.
How do I defeat germ warfare?
“How do I defeat germ warfare?”
Easy, stock up your burrow with supplies for at least 2 years.
The epidemic burns out on its own.
Strangely, the more lethal the bug is, when it runs out of hosts it exterminates itself… 🙂
Tell it to the Taliban.
If guys with guns cannot win against a modern military, why did we surrender $85 billion in military equipmentin Afghanistan?
Playing the long game.
We decimate our military strength while handing billions in modern equipment over to them.
We burn our economy down while China builds up theirs mining rare earth metals.
The next time we fight we’ll be the homeless illiterates camping in mountains and they’ll be the first world power with a modern military.
Then we win.
Check and mate.
Maybe the girls will finally be happy.
I dont think I could fly a fighter bomber jet.
I had a hard time figuring out how to turn off the heater on my girlfiends SUV.
Damn it was hot, thought ,”Well if I can drive one of them beat up straight trucks to the grain elevator I should be able to suffer this.” Nope, getting old sucks.
Most governments, even tyrannical ones, don’t like the optics of deploying full-on military assault against their own people.
Much more common is for the regime to deploy unofficial forces to commit political violence on their behalf, but with plausible deniability. Think of the way the Klan was used to terrorise freedmen in the Reconstruction era. Or the Brownshirts in 1930s Germany. Or Interahamwe in Rwanda. Or the Chavista street gangs in Venezuela.
These gangs are unofficial enforcers of the ruling power, and they are almost always armed. If the law allows everyone to be armed, then they will themselves like everyone else. But the power behind the gangs usually arranges for their victims to be disarmed, under the guise of public safety. Their gangs are armed regardless, the state either supplying them openly, supplying them covertly, or merely turning a blind eye to them arming themselves.
That’s why the mainstream media went absolutely ape feces over Kyle Rittenhouse successfully defended himself against the reports rioters they incited and sponsored. They don’t like it when their victims fight back.
“Much more common is for the regime to deploy unofficial forces to commit political violence on their behalf, but with plausible deniability.”
Antifa, ‘Black Bloc’, etc…
Don’t need to fight the heavy equipment. A little thermite on the pump station or control valve for the fuel pipeline to the base will shut down aircraft. A few well placed IED’s will cut rail lines for at least a few days. A few rifle rounds can shut down the electrical grid for as long as it takes to ship in new transformers. All things that can be repaired, but are not usually kept on hand in the numbers to be replaceable across large parts of the country.
Start large scale reprisals or gang attacks on civilians and families of suspected insurgents and they open themselves for like attacks on their families. How many soldiers, sailors or airmen are going to be willing to go out and attack their own countrymen if they know doing so puts their families at risk? How many LEO’s will be willing to go kick in doors or hunt down dissidents if they know their families are unprotected?
Should it come to civil war the majority of food and other essentials come from very conservative portions of the country. The majority of the progressives/liberals are bunched up in the cities. Cut off the food, fuel and water supplies for a few weeks and the cities destroy themselves.
“How many soldiers, sailors or airmen are going to be willing to go out and attack their own countrymen if they know doing so puts their families at risk?”
The US military has a policy of moving servicemen all over the damn place every few years.
China could exterminate 10,000 people in Tiananmen Square because the soldiers used weren’t from the big cites, but from the rural areas. That won’t fly over here…
10000? 10000 came over just at one place yesterday and the day before – taller than average, confident, wellfed muscular people of military age. Then there’s the 40 some males who are downright fat, but have an air of authority. And of course, lots of plump children. The images are quite striking.
I think we could have a whole new military real soon. That will have zero problems firing on the likes of you and me.
Not to mention LE.
OAL,
Transformers are the weak link in the power grid. We no longer make the big ones here.
You are talking literally YEARS to replace say, a dual input 14kv to 115kv, 230kv or higher voltage 300 MVA transformer that are used throughout the power grid in the US.
Even the smaller substation 10, 15, 25 or 30MVA units are VERY difficult to come by, again because WE NO LONGER MANUFACTURE ANY OF THEM IN THE US.
People don’t realize just how perilous the grid is in the US. Trust me, our enemies are VERY aware of it, and will have NO qualms about exploiting the weakness should push come to shove some day…
(Do you REALLY want to know how I KNOW this? Maybe another day…)
I’ve posted this in another thread, but for any new readers on here, take a look at a short story that in my mind, is VERY plausible…
https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/09/bracken-what-i-saw-at-the-coup/
Semi spoiler alert… Near the end of the story, the many “Militias’ of One” are one of the main reasons the ‘plans’ finally fall apart…
Stuck in Pugetopia,
I am well aware how fragile and vulnerable our electric grid is in the United States. And while that is disconcerting, note how many other vital aspects of our modern day are fragile and vulnerable such as chemical plants, petroleum refineries and pipelines, natural gas pipelines, and our municipal water systems. Just about anyone with extremely limited and crude resources could easily cause catastrophic damage to any of them.
And we haven’t even talked about our roadways. Imagine what a few saboteurs could do with a minor step up to very small quantities of high-explo$ives on our bridges. Or even simpler: imagine the effect of a few saboteurs hiding in brush with basic rifles (with suppressors of course) sniping several vehicles on our roadways every day? How long before no one would go out on the roads? This last bit about our roadways would be exceedingly easy for a foreign state to foist upon us.
Maybe more importantly, these very same weaknesses exist in all of our foreign adversaries’ countries as well. That means our nation could do the same to them if they did it to us. And that brings me to a final point: why even bother with any sort of giant military apparatus when you could bring a foreign adversary to their knees via exploiting the weaknesses that I (and many others) have stated above? I am thinking that our modern day militaries and “wars” are theater–a performance for some far less obvious purpose.
i switch 345, 138, 69, 34, 12, 4kv and 480v. this grid has thousands of transformers. each and every one of them was manufactured here or in canada (minimal) with a few siemens (allemagne) and some old swedish oilers. we have a fairly impressive amount of stores.
i’m not saying they aren’t vulnerable, just disputing your statement in regards to origins.
tsb,
Ask your engineering staff where they would get a new 50MVA or larger transformer.
The last new substation I worked on (PLC / relay controls / comm gear, ) a few years before I retired, had a German made 25MVA transformer in it, and I asked our engineers the question about obtaining the larger transmission sized transformers.
Their answers were basically this: If we had to replace one of the generation plant 300 MVA sized units due to a non repairable core fault, it would be YEARS as they were now being manufactured overseas in places like South Korea.
(Yes, we had a few spares stored on site, but even then, swapping them out is a major months long process, even though they are on railroad style tracks.)
And yes, smaller stuff is still made here, and our ‘in-house’ transformer shop was perfectly capable of ‘re-tanking’ distribution sized units along with repairing older oil switches, and even the newer SF6 high voltage units. The US is still a major supplier of distribution sized transformers, but the really big stuff, well it CAN be manufactured here in the US but is it actually available?
Well, just ask around.
One of the outfits I used to work for was in the process of rebuilding the 90 MVA hydro alternators, and guess where the 1/2 turn coil assemblies were manufactured?
Sao Palo, South America…
The manufacturers in the US couldn’t compete with ‘overseas’ low wages, and went out of business.
They got what they paid for too. 30 seconds after spinning up the unit and applying field voltage, it shorted out and filled the powerhouse with smoke. The quality control was CRAP, and the company KNEW it.
BTW, I spent a summer between college classes (40 some-odd years ago,) winding 10 kva “cores” for a small transformer rebulder shop in my home town. They had a contract with BC hydro and set up several shifts just to produce those cores.
That business is LONG gone now, just like other similar small producers across the US that couldn’t compete with large companies and overseas suppliers.
How to defeat germ warfare?
Well, how have we done with covid? Many argue that it was intentional, perhaps even a test run. How did we (the people, not the gov’t) do?
My wife went to a 3 day work conference in IN a couple weeks ago, and she brought home a lot of corporate gift things, some different food stuff, and a dose of covid. She spent a week on the couch, with a spray bottle of sanitizer easy to hand. On “spray” she could keep a bubble of germ killer around herself, and on “stream” she could hit every doorknob and switch in sight. I put a mask on her so she couldn’t spit on me, and I wore one (at home) to remind myself not to touch my face. The infection ran it’s course, and I was able to avoid it with just a few commonsense measures. It won’t always be that easy, especially with something that’s particularly nasty, and if one of those real nasties is released widespread, we’re likely doomed because too many of us will be stupid.
Philadelphia Sheriffs Department Loses 185 Guns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQUGVE-zMx4
Brady’s Astroturf Campaign To Skew The ATF Comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfPzwfzm_Fk
The A-10 Warthog is the one I wouldn’t want to come up against. If there’s an A-10 loitering about I’ll have to tell the boys I’ll see y’all tmrw.
Nice dream. But if you think feeding an AR gets expensive try writing the check for simply fueling up an F-35 for just one flight.
Even if this plane magically landed in your front yard without any damage and you had a spare ejection seat to install into it it would take hours of turnaround time by a skilled aviation mechanic to get it back into the air again. These military monstrosities require ten times as many hours being worked over on the ground than hours in the air under even normal conditions plus good luck knowing anyone qualified to do anything on it beyond the most basic aircraft maintenance tasks. Maybe you get lucky and all your friends are recent vets with experience working on one of these and they all decide to volunteer their labor to the cause.
Then there is trying to fly the darn thing. Massad Ayoob talks about stories where cops have had their service pistols snatched and the goon doesn’t even know how to operate it and can’t make it go bang -especially on a more complicated gun like a 1911. The air force spends thousands of hours teaching their pilots to fly and sending them to combat air school fo become proficient at fighting these things.
Nah, the Vietnamese fighters did just fine with AK’s and SKS’s against the entire US military and they had F-4’s and other high-tech jets at the time too. The Viet Kong fighter didn’t need his own F-4 and we don’t need an F-35 nor even really want one. It would just be a distraction.
If or when the time comes there will be an American Patriot with a rifle behind every blade of grass across this entire nation. The tyrants don’t have enough F-35’s or F-15’s to deal with all of us. Hell, they will likely be having a hard time finding enough collaborators willing to refuel them, or even fly them against their brothers and sons standing up for their Rights.
Thermals will be a sticking point in any such scenario, TFB had a well done series on thermals (drones specifically) and how to beat them/what might work. Also showed that the cheaper digital night vision can sometimes show better contrast on nir treated camouflage even if the range of detection is substantially less. Oh and would not be at all surprised if some version of AI is used in processing drone thermal images to look for potential “hits” that a tired/bored human observer would miss for closer review.
SAFEupstateFML,
I was thinking about this very topic in the last few days. A spread-out guerilla force is formidable–until their opponents start using thermal and/or infra-red vision devices.
And then there is the whole Terahertz imagining thing where a Terahertz emitter “shines” on a person and returns images of the person’s body and bright images of any metallic objects (such as concealed firearms or knives) which are otherwise hidden under their clothing.
It will be next to impossible to move around covertly and employ the element of surprise on a significant force of “enforcers” who have thermal imaging, infra-red imaging, and Terahertz imaging.
Well damn now I have another imaging topic to research. Off hand is it as portable/long range imaging as NIR/Thermal or is it more a stationary setup like xray backscatter?
I’ll just douse myself with mud to avoid thermal. If it worked for Arny in the Predator it must be a sound tactic
Mud would need to be very thick and would rapidly lose effectiveness as it dries. Better off digging a foxhole and making a thick cover with a few inches of dirt.
SAFEupstateFML,
I am not sure how portable Terahertz imaging systems are at the moment. (I have no doubts that they will be significantly smaller at some point in the future.)
I believe their current maximum range is on the order of 50 feet. I could be wrong on that.
As far as I know, the primary use cases for Terahertz imaging are focused on security such as scanning people for concealed weapons at building entrances and security checkpoints as well as general/random crowd screening in “open air” environments (such as a people milling around at a festival).
Similar to the backscatter (with less radiation issues) for initial use it would seem but yeah could see it becoming relatively portable even if just vehicle mounted. Not seeing the developed use for open field/woods but absolutely could be used at various secure choke points in urban regions.
SAFEupstateFML,
“Not seeing the developed use for open field/woods but absolutely could be used at various secure choke points in urban regions.”
Give it 30 years and you (or your progeny) will probably be able to purchase Terahertz imaging devices similar in size/function/performance to quality thermal imaging devices today for about the same price (or less) accounting for inflation of course.
Why do I say that? The Ruling Class will likely consider highly miniaturized/portable Terahertz imaging to literally be their TOP priority going forward once they realize how useful it will be for their enforcers–both against domestic “insurgents” as well as foreign military forces.
Note: I was previously unaware and just read that various elements and compounds produce specific Terahertz “signatures” which differentiates and identifies them. That alone has huge industrial and medical applications beyond security considerations and will likely be another major driving force behind development. That is so compelling, in fact, that I think I just identified the next field where there is major opportunity to achieve astronomical gains on investment. (Now the trick is identifying the right company to invest in.)
Wonder how deep it can sense changes in density/material properties…………well reading to do but neat to see its application in looking at burn tissue. Also yeah 20-30 years for useful sized units re man portable would be my wild assed guess. 10-15 for the fuckhuge early gwot thermal scopes the size of 2 bricks version.
Lucky but able and po’d Grandpa versus Thug.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNVP0iBjcOo
MIGRANT MAYHEM: Biden’s border falls apart as cities are flooded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oqgwMSw_rk
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