FyldeFan

What the CEO of Rheinmetall said was insulting — yes, shortsighted — yes, but what is more worrying — his words can actually be deadly. In my country, Rheinmetall is a major contractor — tanks, Skyrangers, an ammunition factory, etc. But what is more interesting is that questions about our preparedness for a potential drone war were always drowned in a flood of arguments very similar to Mr. Papperger’s. The military establishment, lobbyists, experts — the whole lot — were telling our people that this drone thing is just a fad which will soon go away. And we should be focusing on legacy war fighting, and therefore legacy equipment. It lead to the acknowledgment that we have almost no ability to detect and to fight the Russian drones. So maybe relying solely on the military advice from a company selling one kind of equipment wasn’t such a brilliant idea. I just hope that by now we know where we went wrong, and we will find sufficient humility to ask for assistance elsewhere. And I sincerely hope that the Ukrainian housewives will share their deadly knowledge with us.

A Patriot missile costs four million dollars. A Ukrainian Sting interceptor drone costs two thousand. Both destroy the same Shahed kamikaze drone. One of them can be manufactured at a rate of 10,000 units per month. The other cannot. And the country that invented the cheap one is now training Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari operators to use it against the exact same Iranian drones it was designed to kill in Ukrainian skies. Ukraine spent three years learning how to destroy Shaheds. Not with expensive air defence systems designed for Cold War scenarios but with small, fast, AI-assisted quadcopters that chase them down at 280 to 450 kilometres per hour, lock on with thermal imaging and computer vision, and ram them out of the sky or detonate a proximity charge at close range. The Sting, built by a volunteer unit called Wild Hornets, has destroyed over 3,000 Shaheds since May 2025. The Bullet, produced by SkyFall and General Cherry, reaches 450 kilometres per hour with AI-assisted terminal guidance. The success rate in Kyiv’s high-threat corridor reached 70 to 90 percent in February 2026, according to Ukrainian Air Force Commander Syrskyi. The mechanism is elegant. Sensors detect an incoming Shahed. An interceptor launches. A pilot wearing FPV goggles tracks the target using thermal imaging while AI handles detection, lock-on, and terminal-phase precision. The interceptor closes the speed gap at double or triple the Shahed’s velocity and destroys it through kinetic impact or proximity detonation. The pilot retains final manual control for jamming resistance. The entire engagement costs less than dinner for two in Dubai. Now Zelensky has turned this battlefield necessity into a geopolitical asset. Under defence pacts signed in March 2026, Ukrainian training teams are actively working with Gulf state militaries on co-production, operator training, and AI guidance module integration. The same drones that protect Kyiv from Russian Shaheds will protect Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Doha from Iranian ones. The technology is identical because the threat is identical: Iran manufactures the Shahed, Russia deploys it against Ukraine, and Iran deploys it against the Gulf. The supply chain of the weapon created the supply chain of the countermeasure. A country fighting for its survival against Russia is simultaneously becoming the Gulf’s primary anti-drone technology supplier during a war between the Gulf and Iran. Ukraine is broke, surrounded, and losing territory. It is also the only country on earth with three years of operational data on destroying Iranian kamikaze drones at scale. That data is worth more to Saudi Arabia right now than any weapons system America can sell, because America has never fought a sustained Shahed campaign. Ukraine has fought one every night for a thousand consecutive nights. Zelensky offered Russia an energy ceasefire. He offered sea drones for Hormuz. And he is selling drone-killing technology to the countries whose oil infrastructure those same drones are threatening. Ukraine is converting its most painful vulnerability, the nightly Shahed bombardment, into a revenue stream, a diplomatic lever, and a security partnership that binds Gulf states to Kyiv’s survival in ways no UN resolution ever could. The molecule meets the machine. The drone that threatens the refinery is destroyed by the drone that learned to kill it over Kyiv. The war that created the threat created the countermeasure. And the country nobody expected to matter in the Gulf is suddenly indispensable to it. Watch the intercept below. This is what a $2,000 drone killing a Shahed at 300 km/h looks like in real time. Read the full analysis - open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Multiple reports now say that the latest paramount objective of Trump’s war with Iran is to open the Strait of Hormuz. So, the mission we may send thousands of our sons and daughters to fight is literally undoing the consequences of Trump and Hegseth’s massive failure to plan for the one consequence we all knew would happen. This alone is impeachable for callous disregard for military advice.

Rubio: “Imagine if instead of spending billions on weapons, Iran spent that money on its people. They’d have a much different country.” Imagine if instead of spending TRILLIONS on war the US spent that money on its people. We’d have a better country & the world would have peace.

So, the US, which gave Ukraine a security guarantee when it gave up its nukes after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is telling Ukraine it will give it a security guarantee if it surrenders to Russia, which also gave Ukraine a security guarantee before it invaded Ukraine. Nuts.

NEW: Eight sanctioned Russian tankers are currently in the English Channel but the Navy isn’t seizing them, despite new powers to do so. The Prime Minister insist Britain is prepared to act against Russia’s illicit vessels. But a senior NATO official said the UK is “not entirely ready,” to launch seizures. Westminster’s nervousness about the legality of operations at sea, the risk of interdictions going wrong, and the need for any seizure to require sign off at the highest level are hampering any action. As rhetoric has not resulted in action, Vladimir Putin is calling Downing Street’s bluff. inews.co.uk/news/putin-eig…

Actor John Lithgow reads a poem from his book "Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown" in honor of No Kings Day Trumpty Dumpty wanted a crown To make sure he would never have to step down He wanted a robe made of ermine and velvet The constitution, he wanted to shelve it With impeachment awash his ambition had grown He wanted an orb, a sceptre, a throne Six royal palaces, six royal carriages A church dispensation for six royal marriages Courtiers installed on his own supreme court And royal beheadings if only for sport He craved the occasional royal procession And gasped the eventual royal succession Trumpty Dumpty gets his way Unless the public has something to say If we let him have all of his favourite things We'll have to endure the divine right of king

▪️russia dropped 1,450 bombs, launched 3,000+ drones, fired 40 missiles at Ukraine this week. ▪️Iran? 150–350 drones, 40 missiles. So why is the world quick to call Iran a “terrorist state”… yet buys russian oil and invites russia to peace talks? Hypocrisy has a price.

Karoline Leavitt: "Some of the previous leaders are now no longer on planet Earth because they lied to the United States and they strung us along in negotiations, and that was unacceptable to the president, which is why many of the previous leaders were killed"

Tonight here in Bucha, we are holding a night of remembrance. 561 civilians were killed here over 33 days of fighting and Russian occupation. Across the entire territorial community surrounding the city, more than 1,000 people died during that time. Hundreds were shot by Russian soldiers, and the bodies of many lay in the streets and against walls for weeks, until Russia's defeat and the return of Ukrainian forces to the city, along with the global media. And the name of this comfortable, prosperous suburb of Kyiv among the woods became a shocking symbol of atrocity and inhumanity, images that went around the world. This is the church in the center of Bucha, next to which a mass grave of 67 bodies was found. During the occupation, people buried their dead as best they could -- like this, in a pit beside a church. Every day I can see that church from my home in the distance, and every time, I remember how we were present at the terrible exhumation of that enormous grave. That's something I would want to forget forever. A memorial complex now stands on that spot.

BREAKING: Huge development in the Magnitsky justice case: France to put on trial the alleged Magnitsky Affair mastermind Dimitry Klyuev in absentia today for aggravated money laundering. If found guilty, he faces 10 years in prison and asset confiscation. icij.org/news/2026/03/f…

🚨 White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt today: “Our nation was founded, almost 250 years ago, on Judeo-Christian values.” The Treaty of Tripoli. 1797. Signed by Founding Father John Adams. Ratified unanimously by the Senate: “The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Thomas Jefferson — who wrote the Declaration of Independence — was a deist who literally cut the miracles out of his Bible. James Madison — the father of the Constitution — explicitly warned against the “diabolical hell conceived principle of persecution” by state religion. The First Amendment’s opening words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” They put it first.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on behalf of Donald Trump, expressed regret that the Saudi authorities signed defense agreements with Ukraine without consulting the United States, which had been Saudi Arabia’s main ally. In response, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman noted that the U.S. had failed to fully protect the Kingdom from Iranian strikes, and therefore Saudi Arabia made a decision that could quickly strengthen its defense capabilities. The Crown Prince also stated that his country will continue to be guided by its own national interests when making decisions regarding its defense. This was a slap in the face to Trump from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in response to Trump’s crude and scandalous public statement that “…now let the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia kiss my ass and be polite to me from now on.” Thus, Trump’s reckless and irresponsible remarks have effectively put U.S.–Saudi relations on pause. The Saudi Crown Prince proved to be more diplomatic than the American president and, notably, did not respond to Rubio by saying that Trump should “kiss my ass” and behave politely toward him in the future 😉

BREAKING: Zelensky just landed in the UAE and signed a defence cooperation agreement with President MBZ. The deal on the table changes everything about this war. Ukraine is offering Gulf states 1,000 drone interceptors per day. Each Sting interceptor costs $2,100. Each Patriot missile it replaces costs $3.9 million. In exchange, Ukraine wants the Patriot missiles the Gulf states are burning through, because Kyiv cannot get enough of them to stop Russian missiles. Read that again. The country America refused to arm fast enough is now arming America’s allies with a weapon that costs 1,857 times less than the one America cannot produce fast enough. The National reported on March 27 that Zelensky told reporters: “We’d like to quietly receive the Patriot missiles we have a deficit of, and give them a corresponding number of interceptors.” AFP confirmed the UAE agreement on March 28. Eleven countries have formally requested Ukraine’s drone defence expertise per Zelensky’s own count. Over 200 Ukrainian military specialists are already deployed across the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan. Here is the arithmetic that should terrify every Pentagon procurement officer on earth. The United States fired 943 Patriot interceptors in the first four days of the Iran war per a US Congressional study cited by the Jerusalem Post. That is eighteen months of Lockheed Martin’s annual production consumed in 96 hours. Each of those 943 shots cost $3.9 million. Total expenditure: $3.68 billion in four days on defensive interceptions alone. Iran produces 10,000 Shahed drones per month per Reuters. Each drone costs $20,000 to $50,000. The cost exchange ratio is 114 to 1 in Iran’s favour per Military Times. Ukraine’s Sting interceptor inverts this arithmetic entirely. At $2,100, the cost ratio flips from 114-to-1 against America to roughly 10-to-1 against Iran. Ukraine can supply 1,000 per day. That is 30,000 per month against Iran’s 10,000 Shaheds per month. For the first time in this war, the defender’s production rate exceeds the attacker’s production rate at a fraction of the cost. And the country that built this weapon is the same country that Trump publicly rejected. “No, they are not helping. We do not need their help. We know more about drones than anyone else” per Fox News. He doubled down: “The last person we need help from is Zelensky.” Meanwhile the Pentagon notified Congress of plans to redirect $750 million in Ukraine-bound Patriot missiles to Gulf states per House of Saud reporting. America is simultaneously refusing Ukraine’s cheap solution and cannibalising Ukraine’s expensive one. Zelensky framed this explicitly. He told The National: “No matter how many Patriots, THAADs, or other air-defence systems are in the Middle East, that alone is not enough for fully effective air defence.” He told the UK Parliament: “When it comes to shooting down massive Shahed attacks, only Ukrainian experience can really help with this today.” The Pentagon is spending $3.9 million per interception, raiding Swiss fighter jet accounts to cover shortfalls, and diverting Ukraine’s own Patriot supply to the Gulf. Zelensky is offering the same result for $2,100 and producing 1,000 units per day. The market has a word for this kind of disruption. The $2,100 drone is the most important weapon in this war. And the country that built it is the one America said it did not need. Full analysis - open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

JUST IN: Iran gave Russia its Shahed drones. Russia improved them in Ukraine. Now Western intelligence says Russia is shipping the upgraded versions back to Iran. And the country that learned how to kill those drones on the battlefield just sent 228 experts to the Gulf to teach five countries how to do the same thing. The full circle is extraordinary. Iran supplied thousands of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones to Russia starting in 2022 for use against Ukraine. Russia rebranded them Geran-2 and, over three years of combat, upgraded the navigation systems, added anti-jamming capabilities, improved the engines, and refined the payload delivery. The Financial Times and AP reported on March 26 citing Western intelligence that Russia is now in the final stages of shipping those upgraded Geran-2 drones back to Iran’s IRGC, along with medicine and food supplies. Kremlin spokesman Peskov called the reports “lies” and “fake news dumps.” Meanwhile, Zelensky arrived in Saudi Arabia on March 26 for an unannounced visit, met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, signed a defense cooperation deal focused on air defense and drone expertise, and departed Jeddah on March 28. Ukraine has deployed 201 to 228 military drone specialists to five Gulf and Middle Eastern countries: the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan. Another 34 are ready per Zelensky’s statement on March 17. These specialists are not there as a symbolic gesture. They bring the single most effective counter to Shahed drones that exists anywhere on earth. Ukraine developed FPV interceptor drones that account for roughly 70 percent of all Shahed and Geran-2 shootdowns in Ukraine per Forces News and Atlantic Council reporting. The method: radar and acoustic sensors detect the incoming drone at 20 to 50 kilometres. A cheap, fast quadcopter or fixed-wing interceptor launches from a mobile platform. An operator pilots it at high speed toward the target. It destroys the Shahed through kamikaze collision or a small explosive payload on impact. Cost per intercept: a fraction of what a surface-to-air missile costs. Militarnyi reported on March 22 that Ukrainian teams have already confirmed multiple Shahed shootdowns in the Middle East. The arms race running through this war is now a closed loop. Iran builds the drone. Russia tests it, improves it, and allegedly sends the improved version back. Ukraine learns to kill it through three years of battlefield iteration. Ukraine exports that knowledge to the Gulf states Iran is attacking. The Gulf states pay Ukraine in money, technology, and diplomatic support. Russia denies everything while the drones fly in both directions. This is not a bilateral conflict. It is a global drone ecosystem where every improvement by one side is studied, countered, and re-exported by the other. The Shahed that hits a refinery in Bahrain tonight may carry Russian-upgraded navigation. The interceptor that destroys it may be piloted by a Ukrainian operator trained in Zaporizhzhia. The defense deal that funded the deployment was signed in Jeddah while the war it was designed to address raged 1,500 kilometres to the northeast. SpaceX’s Starlink provides the communications backbone for these teams in contested environments where terrestrial networks are degraded by the same war. The same helium shortage threatening semiconductor fabs and quantum computers is threatening the rocket launches that put Starlink satellites in orbit. The same strait carrying the oil carries the data cables that the drones are trying to protect. Every domain connects through the same 39 kilometres of water. Full analysis - open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

BREAKING: The United States just took over $126 million from Switzerland’s fighter jet account to cover missile shortfalls in the Iran war. Switzerland did not approve this. Switzerland did not consent. Switzerland had already frozen its Patriot payments after learning deliveries would be delayed four to five years. The US circumvented the freeze. SRF, Switzerland’s national broadcaster, reported on March 26 that Washington redirected Swiss funds originally allocated for 36 F-35 fighter jets to cover Patriot air defence shortfalls using the Foreign Military Sales pooled trust fund, a structure that allows the Pentagon to reallocate payments across a buyer’s contracts without that buyer’s permission. Swiss armaments chief Urs Loher confirmed the diverted amount is a “low three-digit million” Swiss francs and called the situation “very unsatisfactory.” The money Switzerland paid for jets is now subsidising a war Switzerland refused to participate in. Bern halted new arms exports to the US on March 20 citing the Iran conflict. Switzerland rejected two US military flyover requests linked to Iran operations. Two hundred years of armed neutrality, and Washington reached into the account anyway. Here is why. The United States fired 943 Patriot interceptors defending Gulf states in the first four days of Operation Epic Fury per a US Congressional study cited by the Jerusalem Post last week. Lockheed Martin and Boeing produce 620 Patriot interceptors per year combined. In four days, America burned through eighteen months of global Patriot production. The war has consumed roughly one-third of the entire THAAD missile stockpile. Annual THAAD production does not exceed 100 units. The cost asymmetry is what makes the depletion irreversible at current production rates. Each PAC-3 interceptor costs $3.9 million. Each Iranian Shahed drone costs between $20,000 and $50,000. The cost exchange ratio is 114 to 1 in Iran’s favour per Military Times. Iran manufactures an estimated 10,000 Shaheds per month per Reuters. America produces 620 interceptors per year. Iran builds more drones in a single week than the United States builds interceptors in an entire year. Every interceptor fired in the Gulf is one that cannot be delivered to Switzerland, Ukraine, Taiwan, Japan, or Poland. The State Department warned allies on March 27 that Patriot deliveries to Ukraine would face disruptions as the Pentagon prioritises Iran per Quiver Quantitative. Senator Chris Murphy said on record: “We’ve been told again and again one reason we can’t provide interceptors for the Patriot system for Ukraine is that they’re in short supply.” Lockheed signed a framework to quadruple production to 2,000 units per year. That capacity will not arrive for six to seven years. The Pentagon has asked Congress to shift $1.5 billion from other programmes to accelerate procurement per Bloomberg. None of this helps now. The interceptors are depleting now. The allied accounts are being raided now. Switzerland is considering reducing its F-35 order from 36 to 30 jets and accelerating evaluation of European alternatives per Bluewin and Global Defense Corp. Swiss parliamentarians have called the redirection “an unacceptable violation of procurement sovereignty.” The Swiss parliament is preparing formal hearings. Switzerland is the canary. A neutral country with two centuries of armed neutrality just had its fighter jet money taken without consent to feed a four-week-old war that burns 18 months of interceptor production every 96 hours. Every US ally with a pending defence contract should be asking one question: whose account is next? Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

The most absurd part is this: when Europeans refuse to get involved in a war with Iran, Trump throws tantrums, hurling insults and threats. When Europeans agree to cooperate with him, Trump still throws tantrums, hurling insults and threats, and declares he doesn’t need anyone. When Ukraine -- despite all the shovelfuls of dirt that Trump throws at it daily -- chooses not to be a dick about the situation and immediately offers help, along with its specific technologies and frontline experience, Trump still throws tantrums, hurling insults and threats. And his exhalted fans online shout that Ukraine is “ungrateful” (to whom?? to Trump??) and isn’t eagerly licking his boots hard enough. He’s now publicly smearing even Mohammed bin Salman with crude insults. In this sea of erratic behavior, there are simply no rules for navigating it correctly. No matter what you do, the outcome is the same. Apparently, the only winning strategy is to behave like Putin and directly and openly support the Iranian regime. Then Donald Trump will be the one tiptoeing around you, brushing off dust, and kissing your hands.

When I travel outside of Ukraine, I get daily intelligence updates online. This morning, I was briefed that U.S. military facilities in the Middle East and the Gulf region were photographed by Russian satellites in the interests of Iran. On March 24th, they imaged the U.S.–UK joint military facility on Diego Garcia located in the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. They also captured pictures of Kuwait International Airport and parts of the infrastructure of the Greater Burgan oil field. On March 25th, they took pictures of the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The Shaybah oil and gas field in Saudi Arabia, İncirlik Air Base in Türkiye, and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar were all imaged on March 26th. There are no Ukrainian facilities on this list. But who is helping whom when sanctions are lifted from an aggressor that earns daily revenue and provides intelligence for strikes against American, Middle Eastern, UK, and U.S.–UK bases and so on? When surveillance is carried out over facilities in Ukraine, we always understand that they must be protected, since plans are in motion to destroy them – energy and water infrastructure, military facilities, and so on. Everyone knows that repeated reconnaissance indicates preparations for strikes. How can sanctions be eased if this is what the Russians are doing? There must be pressure on the aggressor. And lifting sanctions is certainly not pressure. It looks strange. Sanctions are being lifted, while the aggressor is providing intelligence to strike facilities, including those of the countries that are discussing or have already lifted sanctions. From my conversation with journalists (3/3).

Many congratulations to @SheffieldRUFC on being promoted to @Natleague_rugby Div 1. An outstanding season from a very good squad, totally deserved!

🚨Do you understand the irony of what just happened.. the FBI spent two years investigating Hillary Clinton for using a personal email for government work.. it dominated every news cycle.. it decided an election.. "lock her up.." the man they put in charge of the FBI.. just got his personal email hacked by Iran.. the DOJ confirmed it.. Iran-linked group "Handala" breached FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email and got his data.. think about the timing.. America has fired 850 Tomahawk missiles at Iran this month.. spent billions.. and Iran didn't fire back with a missile.. they walked through the front door of the FBI.. and here's what nobody wants to say out loud.. the FBI Director was using a personal email in the first place.. the same thing the FBI called a national security threat when Hillary did it.. the agency that decides what's a crime.. doesn't follow its own rules.. The rules only apply until you're the one making them.