on may 1st a really interesting thing happened in the ukraine war
the ukrainians got a chunk of intelligence about where the commanding general one garamasov uh was
in near the city of isiam and actually managed to sneak some explosives into the party via you know
and missed him but got a couple dozen of his senior aides as well as another general so
so far the ukrainians have been really good at popping off uh russian generals and this was the
most successful attack yet now what's interesting about this is there is no way that uh the russians
are going to let geramassaf's information just be out there on the web or anything and he certainly
wasn't going to use an unencrypted phone like a lot of other russian commanders have done
so the only way that i can see that the ukrainians were able to know where he was and what he was
doing with enough detail that they could try to hit him was because the americans were writing the
providing the info we've had an endless cavalcade of american officials from the state department
from the defense department from the nsa even from the cia admit that they are sharing targeting
information with the ukrainians on a real time to target basis and the understanding is some sort of
similar cooperation is what allowed the ukrainians to know how and when to target the muscova
that was the flagship of russia's black sea fleet last month which has been the biggest ship to be
drowned in wartime since world war ii now we're going to be seeing a lot more of this moving
forward the united states has the world's best satellite system so it can easily identify command
post and troop concentration and the united states clearly has the world's best signals
intelligence system so we know for example that the americans have been reading putin's email
and tapping his phone since the beginning of the war with enough reliability that they've been the
americans have been able to share russia's plans with the world before russia can even act on them
now that is important enough as it is the idea that the united states is sharing targeting
information with ukrainians big deal but the ukrainians to this point have been limited to the
weapons that they have themselves plus stingers and javelins and things like that what has changed
and what's about to change in the month of may is that heavy equipment is starting to reach
ukrainian lines specifically howitzers long-range artillery pieces now the americans are being very
hush-hush on the type of ammo and i can understand why but the standard howitzer ammo has a range of
13 to 14 miles and 50 accuracy hit rate of about 150 feet so you use that for area saturation you
use that to attack large troop concentrations and the whole idea is you have a whole bunch
of these firing more or less the same time to get a lot of explosions in a relatively tight circle
but there's another type of ammo called excalibur that has a range of 24 miles
so nearly twice as far and that 50 percent hit circle is only 16 feet now this is obviously
more useful for targeting very specific targets or people and if you marry the excalibur weapon
system and the howls or the fires it to american intel about where the commanders happen to be
the ukrainians are about to have the capacity to execute a complete decapitation strategy
for the entire russian assault if russia is not sorry if ukraine is not going to lose this war
this is how it would happen working with the americans they simply destroyed the russians
ability to have any command and control now as important as that is and it is and it's
critical for the war how this unfolds now over the course of the next several weeks
it's also ethical in a different way the united states is done being involved in regular wars
uh americans got tired of the forever war we're out of the middle east now and we think that's
broadly a good thing and it would really take some interesting and bold changes in what's going on in
the world for the americans to want to deploy a hundred thousand ground troops to another theater
this is a template what's going on with the excalibur and the howitzers and the ukrainians
this is a template for how the united states is going to fight wars long into the future for
at least the next 15 years probably a little bit longer where we choose we actively choose
sides and then we ship an appropriate weapon system and back it up with the appropriate
intelligence support so that it can be an order of magnitude more effective on the battlefield
or even on the political side of things as we're going to see with the ukrainian war this month
and i can see the united states doing this for or against any number of countries out there
now we're entering a deglobalized world where the united states footprint is smaller where american
interests and the rest of the world are lower and where america's tolerance for the fallen for the
violence level in other parts of the world is very very high but can you imagine what would
happen in places like let's just pick one china and taiwan where the americans are providing time
on target information at the taiwanese who already have longer range weapon systems you could talk
about the chinese losing the capacity to operate their ports with less than 72 hours of effort from
taiwan in that sort of environment and you can apply this sort of idea to any conflict out there
all the united states does needs is a sufficiently professional motivated military cadre in the ally
who can then take the fight to whoever the foe happens to be and now we can do it with a range of
more than 20 miles okay that's everything for me uh we've had a big change in the way the ukraine
war and the sanctions regimes from the europeans are dealing with it evolved today which is may 4.
uh the short version is that the europeans have decided that they have installed enough extra
replacement infrastructure and cut enough deals with enough countries around the world that they
can now purge russian oil from their system you're talking four to five million barrels a day of
russian crude that now has to find a new home and more importantly part of this new sanctions regime
targets shipping insurance so quick war story back in the iran iraq war of the 1980s there was
a point in about 1983 where the iranians and the iraqis started throwing missiles at each other's
ship in order to attempt an economic blockade well at some point about 50 ships were hit
and that almost collapsed the global insurance industry because in a world under the order
where the americans protect shipping no one had a loss provision for those ships so the only reason
we didn't have a complete meltdown in first the insurance space and then in the financial space
was that the reagan administration started reflagging tankers and started shooting back
at whoever was shooting at them mostly notably the iranians now that means today that if you are in
a war zone your shipping insurance is null and void immediately so a lot of black sea shipments
especially to russian ports like novorossiysk cannot get ships into the port because no one
can be insured and that's largely shut down russian exports of crude from novorossiysk but
other russian ports such as primorsk on the baltic sea or nakotaka on the pacific are still operating
although it reduced rates because a lot of people want to make sure they never fall off out of the
sanctions but shipping insurance is not a problem well now it's going to be because the europeans
control 95 of all insurance and by revoking that possibility ships can no longer go to the baltic
sea or the pacific coast of russia and load up crude unless they get a sovereign indemnification
that is not going to happen from the chinese because chinese state companies have already been
avoiding russian port because they are too big and their exposure to american sanctions would be too
large they don't want to risk it it's really just smaller non-politically connected chinese
refiners that are taking russian crude right now so that pretty much seals off all exports
from the pacific which is the one part of the russian system that a lot of people thought
was going to continue forever the baltic sea it's even more damning because the baltic sea
port of promorsk is so shallow that you can't get a super tanker in there so you would have
to do a c2c transfer anyway and now you can't get insurance for that either so the insurance
aspect of things is likely to reduce russian oil exports by more in the next couple of months
than this phased in european sanctions on russian oil but it all ends to the same place
very very very little of russian crude can find a home now unless a country comes in and does
that sovereign indemnification and it's really difficult to see any country that is wants to have
reasonable relations with the europeans being able to do that the chinese are out the turks are a
maybe and that's about it india's too far away so the europeans have found a way to have their cake
and eat it too the only question of course is how will the russians now respond i'm sure they're not
going to be happy about this and their next weapon is natural gas but that is a topic for another day
okay that's it for me have a good one stay safe see you soon we're complete with a low
fly at this time passing zero seven zero four one four zero looking rgb lincoln via septum
you