The Last Wunderwaffe

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William Schryver
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F-16s, Romanian bases, and NATO pilots

I shall return yet again to the prospect of “Made in the USA” F-16s sallying forth boldly into eastern Ukraine to "teach the cabbage heads what Airpower(capitalized) really means."

From what information I've been able to glean in recent weeks, it does in fact look as though the US is aggressively setting up air ops housekeeping in Romania, very near the Black Sea coast — ostensibly to serve as the base of F-16 operations against Russia.

I submit that the preparation of this base is implicit proof that they have long-since assembled and, likely for many months, been honing the skills and teamwork of a few squadrons of "NATO-affiliated contractor pilots" — and the plan must be to use them.

You see, if the “true plan” were to put a dozen woefully undertrained Ukrainian apprentice kamikazes behind the wheel of 1980s vintage F-16s, and then wave them off on a glorious one-way mission into the wild blue yonder ... well, you don't need much of a logistical hub for that operation.

So, if they're really working to prepare what is reputed to be the "largest NATO base in Europe", the logical conclusion is that it is intended to house, maintain, and sustain at least a couple squadrons of NATO "volunteer" pilots flying much later F-16 models than the European boneyard relics Ukraine has long been promised.

Hey, I say field five full squadrons, and outfit at least a couple of them with the latest model F-16 Vipers.

Go big or go home.

Make it the last “all in” roll of the wunderwaffe dice.

Never mind that literally no one in the US air fleet, at any level, has any experience whatsoever in high-intensity air combat operations against an enemy that:

- can match or exceed you with high numbers of superior air frames

- will be flying from interior lines, with well-established logistical infrastructure

- backed by high numbers of the finest layered air defenses on the planet

- with far superior magazine depth

- and will significantly outrange NATO platforms in almost every plausible scenario.

Oh, yeah. And I almost forgot: anyone (including the perpetually catastrophist Russian murmurers) who believes for a moment that Russia will not act to obliterate a NATO base in Romania under such circumstances ... well, that's just silly talk.

Of course, they will. They'll hit it hard. Really hard — with a strike package that exceeds anything ever thrown at a Ukrainian target over the course of this war.

It could well become the most intensely pressure-packed moment in modern times — a situation exceptionally fraught with the possibility of catastrophic miscalculation.

Every time I stop to think about these things, I just shake my head at the obvious stupidity of it all.

If the Imperial Masters of War actually attempt such an air campaign against Russia, not only will the entire operation almost certainly end up being a logistical debacle of truly epic proportions, but the combat results will be shockingly one-sided — disastrous to the point the US will very likely feel compelled to cease operations after just a few days, and try to spin it into some sort of "bold statement” that "achieved its purposes".

But it will be ugly. Exceedingly ugly. And everybody that is anybody of consequence in power structures around the world will know the score and understand exactly what it means.

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ADDENDUM BY THE EDITOR
The rationale for a fierce Russian attack on a new Romanian air base can be read in the document below.

With little publicity and less democratic discussion, the US has been training NATO pilots for a nuclear strike on Russia.

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GLOBAL RISK

New Nuclear Bomb Training At Dutch Air Base

12.13.23|3 MIN READ|TEXT BY HANS KRISTENSEN

The Dutch air base at Volkel appears to have started integration training with the new U.S. B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb in 2021, even before the bomb went into full-scale production and entered the U.S. stockpile in 2022.

An image included in a Sandia National Laboratories video from early-2022 that snapshots accomplishments from 2021 shows what appears to be a B61-12 training shape hanging under the right wing of an F-16 (see image below).

F16 with nuclear bomb

The Dutch air force apparently started training for the new U.S. B61-12 guided nuclear bomb in 2021.

posted on a public forum shows the outline of a vault inside a Protective Aircraft Shelter at Volkel Air Base (see below).

Eleven aircraft shelters at Volkel are equipped with an underground nuclear weapons storage vault.

Although the training B61-12 is mounted on an F-16, the weapon is not yet assigned to the NATO fighter jets. The B61-12 has entered the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, but it is so far only assigned to the B-2 strategic bomber, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The fighter jets (F-15E, F-16, Tornado) have completed integration flights but had, as of recently, not yet been assigned the B61-12 (see table below). The new F-35A that will take over the nuclear strike role at Volkel and other European bases had also not been assigned the B61-12 yet, but U.S. European Command training was scheduled to start in 2023.

The new B61-12 nuclear bomb had, until recently, only been assigned to the B-2 strategic bomber not yet to dual-capable fighter aircraft.

The 312^th Squadron of the 1^st Wing at Volkel Air Base is part of the so-called NATO nuclear sharing arrangement where the United States equips Dutch F-16s (and aircraft of five other NATO countries: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Turkey) and trains their pilots to employ U.S. B61 nuclear bombs in war. During peacetime, the weapons are under the custody of U.S. Air Force units (the 703^rd Munitions Support Squadron (MUNSS) at Volkel).

The location of the USAF nuclear weapons custodial unit at Volkel Air Base is written in tiles.

On December 8, 2023, the 312^th Squadron performed what is known as an elephant walk where 14 F-16s were displayed on the runway at the same time. A similar display was performed in 2021. At least one of the pilots in the 2023 event can be seen wearing a helmet visor with a nuclear weapons explosion mushroom cloud (see image below). It is possible, but unknown, that this is the helmet of the commander of the 312^th Squadron.

One of the pilots in the December 2023 elephant walk at Volkel Air Base wore a nuclear mushroom cloud design on his helmet visor.

The nuclear weapons upgrade at Volkel Air Base is part of a broad nuclear modernization program of U.S. non-strategic nuclear forces in Europe that includes replacement of aircraft, bombs, base infrastructure, nuclear command and control, readiness level, operational planning, and public visibility.

There is no public information that the B61-12 bombs have been shipped to Europe yet but the C-17A nuclear transport aircraft has been cleared and the first shipments could potentially begin next year. If so, they would replace the estimated 100 B61-3/4 nuclear bombs currently deployed in Europe (see figure below).

Additional information:

• Nuclear Notebook: Nuclear Weapons Sharing, 2023
• Increasing Evidence That The US Air Force’s Nuclear Mission May Be Returning To UK Soil
• The C-17A Has Been Cleared To Transport B61-12 Nuclear Bomb To Europe
• NATO Steadfast Noon Exercise And Nuclear Modernization In Europe

This publication was made possible by generous contributions from the New-Land Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund, the Prospect Hill Foundation, Longview Philanthropy, the Future of Life Institute, Open Philanthropy, and individual donors. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

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All for One and One for All

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Russia, China, and Iran have now formed a de facto military and economic alliance — what they prefer to call a “partnership”.

In the case of Russia and China, a comprehensive full-spectrum partnership has emerged: military, economic, and monetary.

Trade between Russia and China has exploded both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Importantly, trade settlement is overwhelmingly denominated in rubles and renminbi. Use of the dollar and its international mechanisms is being aggressively deprecated.

Russia and China now conduct regular joint naval and air patrols of the western Pacific, from Alaska to the South China Sea.

Russia, China, and Iran conduct regular joint exercises in the Arabian Sea. Those exercises have increased in both scope and frequency in recent years.

Both Russia and China are investing vast sums of capital in Iran, much of it in the energy sector and in ambitious transportation projects aiming to construct fast and efficient trade corridors linking China, Iran, and Russia as primary nodes of Eurasian commerce.

Arms and technology transfers between the three countries have reached unprecedented levels.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov just concluded several days of talks with Chinese leaders, including both Wang Yi and Xi Jinping. In its report of the talks, the Chinese government’s flagship media organ, Global Times, summarized (in the words of prominent CPC commentator Li Haidong) the current state of the Russia/China relationship:

"China and Russia will not target any third party, but if hegemonic forces threaten China and Russia, or threaten world peace, China and Russia will stand together and fight to protect their own interests and safeguard world peace together.”

It is increasingly evident that Russia, China, and Iran recognize that an attack against any one of them would constitute an existential threat to them all. The strategic interests of all three countries are now inextricably intertwined.

Most importantly, they are united in a single overriding strategic objective: to dismantle the dominion of the long-reigning Anglo-American empire.

Naturally, the rapidly waning global hegemon is not inclined to relinquish its throne without a fight. What form that fight takes remains to be seen. But if the empire attempts to preserve its so-called “rules-based international order” via force of arms, it is essential to understand this incontrovertible reality:

In order for the United States to make war against any ONE of Russia, China, or Iran, it would be necessary to effectively vacate every major US base on the planet in order to concentrate enough military power to undertake the mission.

In a putative war between the United States and Iran, both Russia and China would actively support Iran. I'm not suggesting Russian or Chinese forces would fight alongside Iranians — although that could happen. But it would likely not be necessary. Iran would simply be supplemented with arms and other logistical necessities from both its partners — and quite possibly taken under their nuclear umbrella in an explicit act of deterrence.

Additionally, in consequence of the US weakening its force posture in Europe and the western Pacific in a bid to militarily subdue Iran, Russia and China would be enabled to apply immense pressure to western logistics, trade, and political influence in those regions. This is not to suggest that China would invade Taiwan or Russia would invade the Baltics or Poland. They would need only to exert their dominant influence in what were previously considered to be unassailable American imperial domains in east Asia and Europe.

The empire is stretched so thin and its potential for power projection is so diluted that undertaking even one Big War would be enough to bring the entire house of cards tumbling down.

This is the harsh reality the Masters of Empire are now facing, and no amount of mythologizing about the "limitless" power at their disposal can change it.

There is a vast difference between imagined power and the actual ability to project and sustain power against the adversaries the United States military must now face and defeat in order to prevent or even meaningfully delay the end of American global hegemony.

And, to the extent Russia, China, and Iran are determined to act all for one and one for all, they represent a combination of global military and economic power that cannot be defeated.

Tip Jar

FYI: Over the life of this blog, a few generous people have pledged some money to support it. But I have never required a paid subscription to read my stuff. And I still won’t. However, I have now “enabled” subscriptions purely as a means by which, if people are so inclined, they may support me with whatever amount they so choose. I also include a “Tip Jar” link in every post, if you’d like to go that route. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s purely voluntary. Everyone will still be able to read everything I write.

For all of you who have previously pledged to support this blog, I express my genuine gratitude. I hope my writing has been informative in some small manner and aided you in your quest to understand our crazy world a little better.

— Will Schryver

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The Bitter Pill of Decisive Strategic Defeat

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.

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The Bitter Pill of Decisive Strategic Defeat

WILLIAM SCHRYVER

FEB 28, 2024

Mameyev Kurgan, homage to the motherland, commemorates the greatest battle in history, and the turning point of the war against the invading Nazis. The Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia, cost the nation more than 27 million casualties, a figure so colossal as to defy comprehension. If Americans had lost, in just one brutal war, much of it waged in their territory, the entire population of California, Texas and New York, they might begin to understand how the people of Russia feel about watching new armies massing on their borders again. (CC)

The last two years have produced what is, for most people around the world who ponder such things, one of the most unanticipated and yet astounding geopolitical turnarounds in modern history.

The heretofore reigning global hegemon designed to inflict upon Russia — its long-time nemesis — a decisive strategic defeat that would deliver the greatest spoil ever taken, and thereby consolidate its power base into the foreseeable future and beyond.

The empire imagined Russia to be at its civilizational nadir: weak, vulnerable, and finally ripe for the picking.

Notwithstanding the now proverbial failures of the empires that preceded it, the current masters of the Anglo-American empire, in tandem with its European vassal states and a willing proxy force in Ukraine, believed “things are different this time”. They convinced themselves that the power differential between the latest iteration of western empire and its putative Russian adversary was so pronounced as to assure victory over “the gas station masquerading as a country”.

Having previously fashioned for themselves a logically fallacious metric they named “Gross Domestic Product” in order to measure the relative strength of nations, they deluded themselves into believing their imaginary superior “wealth” would guarantee invincibility in all the realms of endeavor that, in aggregate, constitute real power.

If the current war has done nothing else, it ought to have once and for all disabused the shallow minds of the western intelligentsia that an economy based on the financialization of EVERYTHING is not stronger than an economy based on actual production of stuff.

A two-year-long high-intensity conflict has revealed in unmistakable terms that deindustrialized nations are utterly incapable of prosecuting modern industrial warfare.

Of course, the deindustrialization of the so-called “western democracies” took place over the course of several decades, leaving behind the myth of “The Arsenal of Democracy” instead of its material substance. It produced immense profits for a steadily diminishing few even as it hollowed out a prosperous and socially stable middle class and inaugurated an oppressive neo-feudalism that is now well on its way to deconstructing all of western culture.

In entirely unforeseen ways, the increasingly evident failure of the empire’s ill-conceived plan to divide and conquer vast Russia has brought into stark relief the internal contradictions, ideological incoherence, and vast endemic corruption of a capitalist civilization gone irredeemably awry.

In its hubris-fueled determination to prove it could do what no western hegemon had been able to accomplish over the past five centuries, the rapidly eroding Anglo-American empire will now be compelled to swallow the bitter pill of decisive strategic defeat on the same eastern European steppes where its predecessors were served their own banquet of consequences.

And the Russians, as is their wont, will pass down new hymns of victory to their children’s children’s children, for generations to come.

Tip Jar

FYI: Over the life of this blog, a few generous people have pledged some money to support it. But I have never required a paid subscription to read my stuff. And I still won’t. However, I have now “enabled” subscriptions purely as a means by which, if people are so inclined, they may support me with whatever amount they so choose. I also include a “Tip Jar” link in every post, if you’d like to go that route. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s purely voluntary. Everyone will still be able to read everything I write.

For all of you who have previously pledged to support this blog, I express my genuine gratitude. I hope my writing has been informative in some small manner and aided you in your quest to understand our crazy world a little better.

— Will Schryver

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The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.

Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.

Unfortunately, most people take this site for granted.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

The Last Wunderwaffe

William Schryver With additional materials by Patrice Greanville

F-16s, Romanian bases, and NATO pilots

Subscribe to imetatronink

Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

All for One and One for All

WILLIAM SCHRYVER imetatronink

In order for the United States to make war against any ONE of Russia, China, or Iran, it would be necessary to effectively vacate every major US base on the planet in order to concentrate enough military power to undertake the mission.

The empire is stretched so thin and its potential for power projection is so diluted that undertaking even one Big War would be enough to bring the entire house of cards tumbling down.

This is the harsh reality the Masters of Empire are now facing, and no amount of mythologizing about the "limitless" power at their disposal can change it.

There is a vast difference between imagined power and the actual ability to project and sustain power against the adversaries the United States military must now face and defeat in order to prevent or even meaningfully delay the end of American global hegemony.

Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. And that's a fact.

No Comment

Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.

Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

The Bitter Pill of Decisive Strategic Defeat

WILLIAM SCHRYVER imetatronink

The Bitter Pill of Decisive Strategic Defeat

For all of you who have previously pledged to support this blog, I express my genuine gratitude. I hope my writing has been informative in some small manner and aided you in your quest to understand our crazy world a little better.

— Will Schryver

Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.

Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

William Schryver
With additional materials by Patrice Greanville

WILLIAM SCHRYVER
imetatronink

WILLIAM SCHRYVER
imetatronink