I laughed out loud when my wife showed me this video clip on X.com. It's a lady calling her bobcat kitten (named "Murder", of all things!) to come and play with her. The result is very funny, as well as cute. Cat lovers will enjoy it immensely. Click over there to watch it for yourselves.
No, I do not want to raise a bobcat kitten of my own. My fingers (and other body parts) are shrinking at the thought of those claws!
Peter
I was struck today by the title of an article:
You can read the details for yourself at the link. Of particular food for thought to me was this: if "low-cost cruise missiles" are now a mainstream item, how long can it be before they become cheap enough - and easy enough - to be manufactured almost anywhere? And, if and when that happens, how long will it take renegade religious or tribal groups (e.g. the Houthis in Yemen), or terrorist organizations (e.g. Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc.) to start manufacturing their own equivalents?
It's not as hard as it sounds. Remember Bruce Simpson? More than two decades ago, he designed and built a low-cost cruise missile (LCCM) in his home garage, using off-the-shelf components bought from Internet retailers. He wrote an article about how easy it was to do it, including the following excerpt:
... during the past decade, huge strides have been made in commercializing much of the technology on which the cruise missile is based and it is my firm belief that building a low-cost, autonomous, self-guided, air-breathing missile with a significant payload capability is now well within the reach of almost any person or small group of persons with the necessary knowledge and skills.
Targeting/Guidance
As mentioned above, one of the key components of a cruise missile's guidance system is a mil-spec satellite-based GPS system.
Today, compact, high quality, high accuracy GPS receivers are readily available for just a few hundred dollars. The inclusion of an easily used computer interface in many of these units makes them well suited for use in a low-cost cruise missile (LCCM).
While the GPS provides information necessary for tracking waypoints and identifying the final destination, smaller course corrections (for stability) can be provided by the solid-state gyro systems now readily available for use in model helicopters and aircraft.
Instantaneous measurement of altitude and groundspeed can be provided by a semi-forward looking radar and doppler radar units (possibly built around components such as these and these. This allows the LCCM to fly lower than would be possible if relying solely on GPS and offers a degree of contour-hugging even when the exact nature of the terrain is not available.
The gyroscopic and radar-based systems could also provide an inertial backup guidance facility in the event that the GPS system was lost, blocked or simply turned off when an attack by such LCCMs was imminent or underway.
Onboard Computing
As Moore's law continues to produce a rapid rise in the speed and fall in the cost of computer chips, we've already reached the point where obtaining sufficient number crunching capability is no longer difficult or expensive.
Single-board computer systems are another readily available off the shelf component that can be recruited for use in an LCCM. Even the sophisticated realitime operating systems necessary for supporting the type of software needed to interface the guidance/targeting systems to the control servos are just a download away.
. . .
The total component costs for an LCCM (less payload) could be as little as $6,000 for the smallest, simplest version, with a larger, more sophisticated design still requiring little more than $10,000 worth of parts and materials.
There's more at the link.
That technical data, and those prices, date back to May 2002 - twenty-four years ago this month. In those intervening years, components have become much, much smaller and lighter, much more capable, and much cheaper. They're still freely available as elements of radio-controlled models (aircraft, boats, vehicles, whatever). Plastic sheeting, 3D printed components, and ultra-light structural elements are easy to buy and often just as easy to make yourself. Heck, people have built and flown in ultralight aircraft made out of packaging cardboard! I'd say it's likely the cost to home-build a LCCM today might well be less than $2,000, and at most $3,000. Cargo delivery drones can be even cheaper: for example, a drone capable of delivering 20-odd pounds at a range of 6+ miles costs only a little over $500 in quantity. Longer range? Heavier cargo capacity? No problem. A warhead would be extra, of course, but with the advent of powerful "home-brewed" explosives, a warhead strong enough to demolish the average house - but still small and light enough to be carried by a LCCM or light delivery drone - could probably be assembled in a domestic bathroom or kitchen.
So, if our armed forces are talking about buying thousands of low-cost cruise missiles, what are the odds that terrorist and/or extremist groups aren't planning on doing exactly the same thing? How would we defend against such simple, terrifying weapons if a wave of them were launched into the average American city? It could be done by driving a rented truck or trucks to a suitable launch site, a few miles from the target zone (e.g. a park or golf course, particularly at night, or putting them onto a boat a couple of miles offshore); erecting a wire or wood frame to hold the missiles at an appropriate angle for launch, and aimed in the right direction; and setting them off at the chosen time. Unless the perpetrators were seen during the preparation phase, it's doubtful they'd be detected in time to stop them; and once the missiles had been fired, they'd simply abandon the trucks and drive away in other inconspicuous vehicles. For that matter, they may not care about getting away. They may have a martyrdom mentality that would welcome a final shootout with the cops (on television, of course, for the whole world to see).
That scenario is entirely feasible and practical. I think we've got a whole new threat to our security to consider. What we can do about it (if anything) remains to be seen.
Peter
I hasten to note that the United States is likely to experience rather less severe economic consequences from the Iran war than most other parts of the world. We produce much of our own raw material needs, and export a great deal to other nations. First World nations and those with large financial reserves will still be able to get much of what they need, but Third World countries that can't afford higher prices are likely to be outbid for the available supply. They're going to find themselves in a very difficult situation.
The problem is not just fuel, but also the raw materials made from (or using) fuel that are in turn used to manufacture the refined and/or manufactured products that the world wants to buy. In two recent articles, Jay Martin sums up some of the problems. First, he looks at fuel and related products.
The International Energy Agency has called [the closure of the Strait of Hormuz] the greatest global energy security threat in history.
The consequences are spreading like cracks in a windshield. Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex - the largest liquefied natural gas plant on Earth, responsible for supplying fuel to dozens of countries - has suffered extensive missile damage, knocking out 17% of Qatar’s LNG export capacity for up to five years.
Taiwan, which relies on LNG for 40% of its electricity, has an eleven-day emergency stockpile.
Australia has lowered its diesel quality standards and watched hundreds of petrol stations run dry.
Slovenia became the first EU state to introduce fuel rationing.
South Korea is enforcing a five-day vehicle rotation system.
Michael Haigh, the Global Head of Commodities Research at Société Générale - one of the largest banks in Europe - said last week that the final vessels carrying jet fuel to the UK were arriving, and that “there is no more after that.”
Let that sink in. No more jet fuel for the United Kingdom.
Dow Chemical - one of the world’s largest chemical companies, whose products end up in everything from food packaging to medical supplies - doubled its polyethylene price overnight.
Why does that matter?
Polyethylene is in your grocery bags, water bottles, food packaging, medical equipment, and much more. If you bought it at a store, there’s a good chance it touched polyethylene before it reached your hands.
Polyethylene is made from petroleum-based feedstocks, and when Hormuz closed, about 50% of the global polyethylene supply was affected.
They say that when the price of energy goes up, the price of everything goes up. You could say the same thing about polyethylene.
This is how a war in the Middle East shows up at your grocery store. Energy doesn’t stay in the energy sector. It flows through everything you buy, everything you eat, everything you build.
There's more at the link. He goes on to discuss financial aspects of the crisis.
Second, he shows how supply chain problems "cascade" from Hormuz to the rest of the world.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow stretch of water between Iran and Oman through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil, a third of its seaborne natural gas, and the refined fuels, fertilizers, and industrial chemicals that power factories and farms on four continents flow every single day.
What [observers] might miss, is the cascade.
How a fuel tanker that can’t leave the Persian Gulf becomes a factory that can’t run in Korea.
How a factory that can’t run in Korea becomes a product that doesn’t land on a shelf in Seattle.
How your iPhone alone pulls materials and components from five different continents.
. . .
The modern economy is not a collection of countries. It is a single machine. Every country is a gear inside it. And the first gears to jam are usually not the ones people are watching.
In this case, everyone is watching oil.
No one is watching sulphur.
Most people have no reason to think about sulphur. It does not show up in presidential speeches. It does not trend on Twitter. Nobody builds an investment thesis around yellow rocks sitting in a port warehouse.
But sulphur is one of those boring industrial inputs that quietly hold the world together.
You do not need sulphur because it is rare. You need it because modern industry runs on it. Sulphur is used to make sulphuric acid, one of the most important industrial chemicals on earth. Think of sulphuric acid as the solvent, cleaner, and processing agent that helps turn raw materials into usable products.
Farmers use it to make fertilizer. Miners use it to separate metals from rock. Manufacturers use it in everything from batteries to chemicals to refined fuels.
Every economy needs sulphur and the industrial chemicals it helps create. And China manufactures roughly 45 percent of the world’s industrial chemical supply.
China imports much of the sulphur it needs from the Persian Gulf, turns it into the industrial chemicals used in mining, agriculture, and manufacturing, and then sells them to the rest of the world.
That means when the Strait of Hormuz is threatened or closed, China’s access to a raw material it needs to produce the chemicals that the rest of the world depends on becomes compromised.
And when a country runs short of a critical industrial input, it does not behave like a polite global supplier. It acts in self-interest.
First, it protects its own farmers, because fertilizer is food security.
Then it protects its own factories, because factories are employment, exports, tax revenue, and national power.
Then it protects its own strategic industries - batteries, electronics, defence, infrastructure, and energy.
Whatever is left can be sold to the rest of the world.
That is where the cascade begins:
The war in Iran disrupts shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
China runs short on sulphur.
Chinese chemical production falls.
Foreign buyers are pushed to the back of the line, as Beijing has less to share with the global economy.
Mining companies in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia lose access to the chemicals they need to produce metals. And then the price of everything that depends on those metals starts to rise.
. . .
Chile, the world’s largest copper producer...
Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer…
Peru, the third-largest copper producer…
Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper producer…
Every one of them runs on Chinese chemicals - and every one of them is seeing orders slowed, cancelled, or repriced.
That is what “one nation’s shortage is everybody’s problem” looks like in practice.
A war in the Persian Gulf becomes a sulphur shortage in China. A sulphur shortage in China becomes a chemical shortage in the Congo. A chemical shortage in the Congo becomes a copper and cobalt shortage everywhere. And a metals shortage everywhere means higher prices for the battery in your phone, the copper wiring behind the drywall in your house, and the data centers running your favourite AI tool.
That is the cascade.
And we are barely into it.
Again, more at the link.
This is a very real issue. It will most certainly affect the USA, although, as I said earlier, possibly not so much as other countries. Some states will fare worse than others. To name just one example:
The arrival of the last oil tanker carrying crude from the Middle East to California this week has state lawmakers on edge, and an energy expert warning of a gas price “crisis” ... America’s war with Iran has closed off the Strait of Hormuz, and that tanker was the last to depart the region for California before war broke out. The state has no interstate gas pipelines and is heavily reliant on imports.
California will probably have no choice but to suspend its very restrictive fuel refining standards, because refineries in other states aren't set up to support them. Furthermore, it'll have to buy diesel, gasoline, aviation fuel and any other fuel it needs from anyone who has it, because it has too few refineries to process its own fuel needs. That fuel will have to be imported on tankers, because there are no interstate fuel pipelines to California: but with literally hundreds of oil tankers locked up in the Persian Gulf, unable or unwilling to transit the Strait of Hormuz, enough tankers may not be available. Even if they are, California will have to outbid other states (and foreign nations) who want US refinery output, which will lead to a concertina-like shortage in those states, who will in their turn outbid others, and so on, and so on. Thus, a California gas problem will rapidly become a US-wide gas problem. I'm pretty sure prices will go up significantly, and there may be shortages severe enough to require some form of (hopefully temporary) restriction on when, where and how much fuel one can buy.
That's just one example, from one state. Do your own reading in the financial and industrial media, and you'll find many more. Yet - we're probably living in the most fortunate nation in the world, in terms of our national ability to cope with an economic crisis of this magnitude. Spare a thought for those who are less fortunate, particularly the Third World nations that are unlikely to be able to afford enough fuel for their needs, enough fertilizer for their farmers, and even enough food to feed their people. If they buy food for their people, they won't have the fuel to distribute it. If they don't buy fertilizer, their crops for the next growing season will be drastically diminished - meaning they'll have to find even more money (that they don't have) to import more food (that they can't grow) . . . and so on, and so on, ad nauseam.
Even if the Iran war is resolved tomorrow, it'll take three to four months at a minimum - more likely six months or even longer - to refill the oil and feedstock supply lines and resume full-scale production. Don't expect any early relief from the stresses this will place on economies worldwide.
Peter
CDR Salamander noted yesterday that the Iranian Shahed-136 drone was based, at least in part, on a joint US-West German development from the 1980's. He quotes Wikipedia's description.
In the early 1980s, the United States and West Germany began developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to detect and engage enemy radar systems. The aircraft was also intended to mimic larger aircraft, acting as a decoy to divert enemy fire from manned aircraft. On the German side, Dornier, and later its successor company DASA, was working on the project for the German Air Force.
During the project’s development, a workable seeker head could not be developed, limiting its suitability for the intended anti-radar mission. This, along with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, led to the project’s eventual termination. Following the end of the project, details of the system’s design were sold to Israel, which would develop its own IAI Harpy.
There's more at the link.
That's true, of course, but there was an additional drone being developed at the same time that was also sold to Israel. It was a South African project known as the Kentron ARD-10 Lark. The following image and report date from the early 1990's.
At the time, South Africa was becoming increasingly sophisticated in its use of the relatively primitive unmanned aerial vehicles of the time. I had some peripheral involvement in the electronics being developed for them. An account of the period includes the following:
Various use must have been made during the following years after 1983, however the next open mention was during the 1987-88 raids into Angola (Operations Modular/Hooper/Packer) in which extensive use was made of UAV's for surveillance, reconnaissance, artillery spotting and more interestingly to lure Soviet SAM batteries out of hiding so that our long range G-5/6 guns could hit them. Two Kentron Seeker systems were lost to the last mentioned tactic, although it was apparently more than worth it - many expensive SAM-8/9/13 were fired attempting to shoot the Seeker's down, in doing so not only did they waste valuable ammunition - but also revealed their positions and many of their Soviet SAM sites were then promptly destroyed by G-5/6 artillery fire (apparently one Seeker survived between 16-17 SAM-8 missiles being fired at it before it was finally shot down).
The latter engagements were during 1987/88. As a direct result of those engagements, the ARD-10 was developed as a more advanced surveillance and reconnaissance platform, with particular emphasis on forcing enemy radars and air defense ordnance to reveal their position. However, during the same period South Africa embarked on the process that was to lead to democratic elections in 1994, and the ARD-10 was one of many military projects (including the Carver strike fighter) that were canceled due to the peace conference and the end of the Border War. Its design was sold to Israel for a relative pittance, probably at about the same time that the US-West German project found the same destination. There seems little doubt that both of those designs were used as input to Israel's Harpy drone, shown below.
It achieved wide international sales and was prominent in a number of smaller wars. It was later developed into the much more sophisticated Harop drone, shown below, which in modern versions is pretty much state-of-the-art in its field. It became prominent due to its success in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020.
Information available about the Kentron ARD-10, Dornier DAR, and Israeli Harpy drones was undoubtedly studied in Iran, and that country's subsequent Shahed 136 bears an unmistakeable resemblance to them all. All of those aircraft are relatively backward and primitive compared to modern designs; but then, for a simple strike drone that can be bought cheaply in large numbers and launched in "swarms" to overwhelm enemy defenses, one doesn't need great sophistication.
Russia manufactures the Shahed 136 under license as the Geran-2, and has apparently developed a jet-propelled version of the drone that flies much faster and higher. This will be harder to intercept, and if its cost can be kept low enough to afford mass production, may make air defense's job much more difficult. As long as the cost to intercept the drone can be kept higher than the cost to build and operate the drone, the attacker will have an economic advantage. We'll have to see whether that remains the case as drone technology advances. If "stealthy" attack drones can be made cheaply enough (something I'm sure many nations are working on), they may pose a grave threat to almost all air defense systems.
Peter
Gathered from around the Internet over the past week. Click any image for a larger view.
