Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Face

Mike Tyson, aged 58, recently fought a man less than half his age, going several rounds with Jake Paul until losing via TKO. Whatever you think of Tyson doing time in prison or his larger-than-life yet softly voiced personality outside of the ring, that's pretty damn impressive for a man in his late 50s. Which is why Mike Tyson not Carl von Clausewitz or even the Italian dark genius Machiavelli or the ancient sage Sun Tzu remains my favorite philosopher of war: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face (or mouth)." This Mike Tyson maxim applies to the 'world's most powerful military alliance', which has spent the last 2 1/2 years operating as if

1) its Ukrainian conscript meat shield is inexhaustible and

2) Russia would never dare strike back directly against the alliance members attacking her via the Ukraine. Both assumptions particularly the first one are proving false.

Russia just demonstrated last week, even if it's not ready to overtly strike NATO country territory, that no disavowed NATO combatant or technician contractor is safe on Ukrainian soil, including inside repair shops and bunkers located underground. To put it in Mike Tyson language, NATO's time of boasting about its invincible punches and not getting punched in the face back--at least inside the borders of Ukraine as well as in the Red Sea (which we talked about in the previous article in this series)--is over. If NATO's leadership is still bent on escalation, it has to start contemplating casualties coming back in numbers that will prove too large to cover up.

Say Hello to My Little Friend Oreshnik

(Which translates as "hazelnut" or "little hazel tree")

Moscow's warning strike rained down at hypersonic speeds (approaching Mach 11 or roughly 3 kilometers a second upon re-entry) 6 warhead clusters each containing 6 independently targeted but inert warheads (for a total of 36 munitions). Scott Ritter has described the distinction between this new Russian type of highly precise warhead package and the structure of a conventional ICBM/IRBM warhead bus here.

Not ‘Rods from God’ But Arrows of Abaddon

The Russians’ target for last week’s strike was the underground sub basement workshops located beneath the Soviet-legacy Pivdenmash (formerly Yuzhmash) industrial complex in the city of Dnipro. At such speeds entering the upper atmosphere four times faster than a rifle bullet and striking the ground at hypersonic speeds, the kinetic warheads of this new and highly accurate intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) can devastate a significant portion of a vast underground complex. A complex that, for all the Kiev regime's loathing of the USSR, it relies upon along with other Soviet-built bunkers and underground factories that the Soviets (who were infamous for their paranoia) constructed under Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk and other cities of the Ukrainian SSR to withstand near-misses from enemy nuclear warheads.

Although Iran has fired salvoes of IRBMs at a U.S. base in Iraq and more recently at Israel, this was the first use of a MIRV'd IRBM in combat. Despite the scale of the destruction at Yuzhmash being heavily censored by Ukrainian authorities and U.S. commercial satellite data conveniently unavailable for limited open source analysis "due to cloud cover", rumors out of Dnipro spoke of people living nearby seeing a bright flash of light followed by what felt like an earthquake. For a few seconds many Dnipro residents likely thought that Russia had indeed, launched a nuclear warhead at their city of nearly one million people.

Here's how Mike Mihajlovic, a Serb who now runs the Black Mountain Analysis Substack, describes the devastation this new hypersonic weapon unleashed:

The impact on the target in this missile attack is astonishing. What is also interesting is that there are no visual signs of explosions typical for surface or near-surface detonations. This means the warheads likely penetrated deep into the ground with incredible momentum and hit the underground locations (workshops) with a force as powerful as if they had “detonated.” The kinetic shock wave will likely be enhanced by the instantaneous expansion of the soil moisture when exposed to the high temperatures caused by the warhead and the friction of intrusion into the ground at such depths.

Looking at the time lapse between the light flash and the reentry vehicle (or the warhead) disappear, and combined with the estimated height of the clouds of cc 600 m as per Ukrainian weather report at 02:00 AM. The warhead hit the ground about 0.15 seconds from the break from the clouds. The calculated speed is about 4 km/s or Mach 11.8. Anyone can play with the time by adding or reducing milliseconds but the calculated speed will be in the range of Mach 10+.

Photo still above: Screenshot from RT.com interview with ExitStrategy.World Eurasia Editor Stanislav Krapivnik, with the clip published to the RT website on November 22, 2024

What this means in practical terms of 'there's nowhere left to hide inside Ukraine except hiding behind civilians' terms is the following:

This means that even the underground command center in Kiev, where Zelensky and his team take shelter, does not provide any significant protection. It will be interesting to see what may happen if Russia launches one missile with only a kinetic penetrator (the same as Pivdenmash) to the Kiev command center just as a warning. With a new nuclear deterrence policy, the option of using it is on the table, and it indicates that Oreshnik can use this type of weapon at any time. Some may ask if these missiles can be intercepted, and the answer is simple: nothing in the Western arsenal can intercept them. So, even if THAAD is transferred to Ukraine accompanied by several PAC-3 batteries, they can only watch idly - these missiles are impossible to intercept; they have no countermeasures.

How Oreshnik may be intercepted? Certain circles may say that PAC-3 and THAAD can do that and that is the reason why the Ukrainian leadership immediately requested THAAD. One thing is sure: there are only 7 batteries - Guam, South Korea, Israel and the rest in the Continental U.S. So there is no chance that anytime soon or ever THAAD will be supplied to Ukraine. Full stop.

Why Did Russia Wait Until Now to Unveil This New Weapon?

After coordinated NATO announcements that U.S. ATACMS ballistic missiles and Anglo-French Stormshadow/SCALP cruise missiles would be fired into pre-war Russia, with the lame duck Biden Administration handing its successor a major escalation on its way out the door, the Russians decided they had to respond with their ‘bolt from the blue’. Not only did the Kremlin feel compelled to act because these weapons especially the air-launched terrain-hugging cruise missiles are capable of inflicting painful blows to Russian bases or logistics in the pre-war border regions of southwestern Russia, but due to the undeniable fact that NATO personnel--primarily American, French and British officers--will be entering the missiles targeting coordinates. This was admitted by German military officers caught on an audio recording leaked to the public earlier this year.

The majority of the people in NATO countries can still bury their heads in the sand, of course, but for 150 million Russians the thin veil of Western plausible deniability is gone. There is no longer any denying that the leading nations of the Collective West are directly involved in attacking Russia, which for many Russians makes the conflict existential. Indeed, according to former USMC officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, it's impossible for the Ukrainians to operate the ATACMS on their own due to the built-in system encryption without a direct hands-on American military officers' presence for entering launch codes. According to ExitStrategy.World's Eurasia Editor Stanislav Krapivnik, this has already been the case for Ukraine's use of the HIMARS system, which relies on the same satellite guidance for targeting.

Disavowing Direct NATO Involvement in Ukraine is No Longer Possible, But NATO Can Still Hide Its Casualties

Consequently, when these systems are struck by Russian counter-battery fires in the form of Iskander or Tornado-S tactical ballistic missiles or Russian glide bombs that explode with much greater force than a Lancet loitering munition striking the missile containing truck, American contractors supervising Ukrainian crews are almost certainly getting killed or wounded. These combat deaths are subsequently covered up by strict NDAs for the survivors of the sheep-dipped contractor ex-servicemen. That is, if the military technician's spouse goes public with her anger and grief about a loved one's death as a disavowed combatant in this war, they will receive no death benefits.

From NATO's perspective, this all-important contractor silence clause has minimized the risks of 'Vietnamization' of the conflict, reducing the creeping escalation risk of blowback and a rebirth of the 1960s-70s anti-war movement due to increasing numbers of advisors coming back in caskets--for now. But as of last week, there can be no doubt that the pretense of waging #WW3byProxy is gone, we're now entering an active phase of WW3 with the Ukrainians being used as meat gloves for the NATO fist waging war on Russia.

Trump's Base and Most Outspoken Supporters Condemn the Latest Escalation in Ukraine

The response to this depressing if unsurprising development for any one who has followed this conflict from the beginning (not 2022, but back in 2014 when Russia re-absorbed Crimea and the Donbass revolted against a NATO-backed coup in Kiev) has been intense. Multiple alt-media outlets and commentators who helped get President Trump re-elected have been outspoken in condemning the Biden Administration as well as U.S. allies in London and Paris for their recklessness: Benny Johnson has called the Biden Administration's move 'suicidal', Joe Rogan has asked how is it possible a lame duck Administration can drastically escalate this war on its way out the door, and Tucker Carlson has described the decision as the most evil thing the Biden team has ever done.

But will the louder volume and greater number of prominent Americans speaking out make any difference to a trans-Atlantic deep state that cannot take a damn L and look for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine? Especially when the hard liners around Trump will start squawking for him to completely betray the vast majority of his voters, "We tried to negotiate but Putin was intransigent, therefore it's time for MAGA to get in line and be ready for our boys to fight and die for Ukraine". Certainly, the neocon Senator and fair weather Trump ally Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has not been shy about saying on TV that the U.S. must claim Ukraine's mineral resources otherwise the Russians will sell them to the Chinese. Blood for the neocon blood god and lithium!

After asking ourselves whether these recent missile exchanges will lead to nuclear war in Europe (mercifully no, not yet, there are still two or three rungs left on the escalation ladder) the next most important question is: who made this decision? To quote George W. Bush's language from the run up to the invasion of Iraq, who is 'the decider'?

Who Behind the Collective 'Joe Biden' is Driving This Escalation? Why Now?

No one believes senile old Joe Biden did anything more than a perfunctory sign off on a pre-determined decision in between scoops of ice cream and daydreaming about post-presidential retirement. President Trump's incoming National Security Advisor the former Florida Congressman Mike Waltz told the U.S. network Sunday talk shows that he met with his predecessor Jake Sullivan and no foreign adversary will be able to exploit the transition between Administrations. This is spouting standard 'let's reassure allies' rhetoric, but maybe there’s more to this Waltz statement.

Perhaps aware of the anger among Trump's base about the escalation, Waltz had previously criticized the Biden Administration's policies and vowed to carry out his boss Donald Trump's promise to swiftly bring the two sides to the negotiating table. That said, Waltz has previously suggested giving Ukraine free reign (in reality, NATO escalating for the encrypted launch codes reasons explained above) to fire missiles deep inside Russia, as a way to bring Moscow to the negotiating table. It doesn't help that Waltz like some other Trump appointees, particularly the Hungarian-origin Russophobe Sebastian Gorka, has a history of denigrating Russia, using the catchphrase of the late Russophobic U.S. Senator John McCain's rhetoric of the Russian Federation being just a gas station with nukes. Fortunately, Gorka is going to be on the new Administration's counter-terrorism desk and will likely have no role in shaping Trump's Russia policy.

So what are we seeing, in reality? Typical bipartisan BS and bravado? Good cop incoming Trump team vs. bad cop Biden and British Anglomaniac mind games? A resurgence of Nixon-ian 'Madman Theory' diplomacy, wherein Nixon and Kissinger infamously discussed in the subsequently released White House tapes the U.S. dropping a nuke on North Vietnam to bring Hanoi to heel? Who is really calling the shots in Washington during this interregnum? More importantly, how far is the pro-escalation faction ready to go to sabotage any peace plan in Ukraine before it can be properly presented?

NATO is Losing the Missile War as Well as the Ground War of Attrition

However reckless their in-your-face watcha gonna do about NATO personnel firing them deployment is, and however much NATO talking heads including a substantial chunk of "miltwitter" revels in the illusion of easy escalation dominance over Russia and its Eurasian allies, these NATO weapons are not magical wunderwaffen. And Ukraine does not have a lot of time left before the abandoned trench lines around their fortress towns stretching from occupied Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region in the north down through Kupyansk, and from the Donbass down to Zaporozhe oblast in the south, compound into a general collapse. Meanwhile, a high percentage of the NATO-targeted rockets that are supposed to turn the tide or at least slow the Russian onslaught, especially the more predictable trajectory ballistic ATACMS, are routinely shot down by Russia's world-leading Pantsir, BUK and S350+/S400 air defenses.

The Stormshadow/SCALP and the reportedly in the pipeline JASSMs, while more stealthy due to their low-altitude flight profiles, still have to be launched from Ukrainian or NATO 'volunteer' piloted jets. As these aircraft are lacking aerial refueling aka tanker support they have to be flown from somewhere in the western Ukraine. With Kiev running out of Soviet-legacy SU24 bombers from both its prewar stocks and those planes NATO managed to purchase on the international arms black market from ex-Soviet states to act as cruise missile trucks, the Ukrainians will have to fly their European-donated F16s (and possibly in 2025, French Mirage jets) for these missile launch sorties. And those sorties are tracked on Russian radars with the origin air field of the F16s difficult to conceal for more than a sortie or two from Russian satellites, drones and human intelligence assets on the ground.

NATO has found a solution for this problem of its vaunted jets being highly vulnerable when caught on the ground to Russian hypersonic missile strikes on their base hangars and munition bunkers that come with only a few minutes warning, by operating these planes from bases on NATO-protected Polish or Romanian territory. This sanctuary tactic the U.S. learned from the North Vietnamese, along with steady replenishment of Kiev's downed aircraft, is the mundane explanation for the 'miraculous' survival of a Ukrainian Air Force amid Russia's air and missile strikes superiority extending nearly three years into this war. But Russia has demonstrated that its advanced SU35 and SU57 jets have air-to-air missiles capable of out-ranging any AMRAAMs carried on F16s for self-defense, and the S400 can also kill low-flying jets if the AD missiles have AWACS or fighter radar guidance.

The newest Russian hypersonic weapon the Oreshnik, unlike the Khinzal rocket whose MiG-31 carrier sorties can be detected by U.S. satellites and electronic intercepts, reduces the Russian missile raid warning time for any NATO personnel operating inside Ukraine from several hours to a few minutes. With Moscow's new Oreshnik missile, this means the risks of the disavowed ex-NATO servicemen American, Dutch, Norwegian or Belgian F16 contractor ground crews (who are the ones keeping the Ukrainian Air Force flying) getting killed or wounded by an incoming Russian hypersonic warhead have substantially increased. So too, has the potential devastation Russia can inflict on Ukrainian air bases as well as underground vehicle repair shops and drone factories, as a preview of what the Oreshnik is capable of inflicting on NATO bases across Europe. Because make no mistake, the intended recipients of the Oreshnik's first use demonstrating Russia's devastating intermediate-range conventional strike capabilities weren't so much located in Kiev as in Mons, Ramstein, Berlin, London, Paris and Washington.

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-- James Smith

Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, ExitStrategy.World

November 25, 2024