
Just a Random Donk
51.6K posts

Just a Random Donk
@RandomDonk
I'm a jackass. Its a Pittsburgh sports world. We're just lucky to live in it.



I've lived this. Let me tell you where this is going. When I was flying F-18's around the Gulf decades ago, the Strait of Hormuz was first and foremost in planning sessions from Washington to my ready room. And here is what we knew. It could not be secured then. Not truly secured. 100% secured. And that was the key. Today that is more true than ever. The nature of war changed forever in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and got its ass kicked in the first 2 months. Drones and cheap missiles revolutionized warfare, and gave small nations an assymetry in power projection they had never possessed. What should get everyone's attention is the Iranian attack on Lars Raffan, the world's largest LNG processing facility. After 3 weeks of complete air superiority and saturated bombing that "ran out of targets" Iran managed to launch 5 ballistic missiles at that field. The Shahed 131 and 136 drones cost between $10-50k and can be transported in small pieces in a pickup, assembled onsite in hours and launched. Most intercepts on our side cost $4M for the Patriot and up to $12M for the THAAD. And here is something that should get your attention. We will not be able to rebuild our inventories without China's cooperation. Full stop. They have us by the balls due to one thing: Rare Earth minerals, magnets, and most importantly, the refining needed to process them. If this conflict continues things are going to break in the system. Severely break.








👀 Here's what we know about the proposed project -> wkyc.com/article/news/l…



There are moments in war that pierce through the abstractions of strategy and power. The sinking of the Iranian warship Dena in the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean is one such moment. A ship far from its home waters, sailors far from their families, suddenly consigned to the deep, dark silence of the sea. Whatever the legality of war, the image is haunting: young men swallowed by an ocean that knows nothing of geopolitics. The Indian Ocean has always been, for me, a space of memory, trade, music, and human exchange — not a graveyard of sailors lost to distant rivalries. That an Iranian vessel returning from naval exercises could meet such a fate so far from its shores feels like something from another age, almost like a War of the Worlds moment where the machinery of war intrudes upon the human world with brutal indifference. One cannot help but think of the families waiting for news that will never come, of the letters unwritten, of lives ended beneath cold waters thousands of miles from home. Strategy may justify such acts. Law may permit them. But the ocean keeps its own counsel. It reminds us that every war, however rationalised, leaves behind human sorrow in its wake. The question lingers uneasily: for what purpose were these lives lost in the depths of a faraway sea? #IndianOcean #WarAndHumanity #RememberTheSailors


Bish was upset this morning about his friend's gas station in Ashburn being held up at gunpoint the other night!


Fetterman: "I'm not afraid of my base"





Trump: The lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties — that often happens in war.
















