Michael Younger

@JoshMalina I have an aversion to sports, but I thought Sports Night was a great show. And, seriously, I thought you were very good in it.

Sports Night cartoon!

@GrandpaRoy2 @threadreaderapp please unroll

Sources t.me/LandminesAndCo… bulletpicker.com/pdf/German-Tan…

The first anti-tank landmines were urgently developed by the Germans after the first British tanks appeared in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Initially, different improvised variations of projectiles and mortar bombs with modified fuzes were buried vertically in the ground. 1/

@evanhill @threadreaderapp please unroll

What is clear is that the satellite imagery does not show anything that would fundamentally change what we've known about Isfahan and its highly-enriched uranium since June 2025. Which makes the new US intelligence effort, which seems aimed at increasing the urgency around Iran's access to its highly-enriched uranium, all the more interesting, especially amid reports that Trump is weighing sending special operations forces in to seize it: axios.com/2026/03/08/ira….

Interesting timing for this push from US intelligence. Isfahan has been a site of some intrigue so it's worth understanding what we know and don't know about it. (For example, this tunnel and the dirt mounds next to it have been there for years.) 🧵

@WarintheFuture @threadreaderapp please unroll

3/ The really sad thing is that these interceptors have been open, public knowledge for about 18 months, and western military organisations have been too slow to get on board with such a cost effective counter drone solution. We have a systemic learning deficit in that we are learning too slow, and demonstrating insufficient humility to learn from #Ukraine. End

This capability has flipped the economics of drone operations. It is now cheaper to intercept Shaheds than it is to use them. Such capabilities will have many impacts on sustainable air defence systems, particularly in protracted conflicts where massed drone attacks are employed. But there is more… 1/3 🧵

@ka_grieco @threadreaderapp please unroll

12/ And the UAE isn't alone in this math problem. The US faces it too — every Pat battery defending a Gulf base, every naval interceptor fired from a destroyer runs the same equation MILLIONS to stop THOUSANDS. At scale, the attacker's economics win even when their weapons don't.

UAE is shooting down ~92% of everything Iran throws at it. That's extraordinary. Yet the financial toll of sustaining that defense is enormous, raising the prospect that tactical ‘victory’ masks a costly strategic drain. A 🧵👇

@KateMcGonigall Hope your leg is feeling better. Yes, hard to concentrate on anything but the news just now…

Sat 28 Feb 2026 Hebrew YT - 10mins Assimil dialogues - 15mins Anki5 - 15mins French Fluidité podcast - 15mins YT - 10mins Leg sore today. Supposed to be meeting up with my Hebrew class tomorrow. My leg and the Israeli situation may make that difficult. חג פורים שמח #langtwt

@TrentTelenko @JeffGauch @GaryHaubold @threadreaderapp please unroll

Most people who are familiar with 3rd Generation nukes are technologically plumb ignorant of the 4th Generation nuclear technology tree. The eight physical processes which could be used to make low-yield 4th Generation compact non-fission triggers for large scale thermonuclear explosions are as follows: -subcritical fission-burn, -magnetic compression, -superheavy elements, -antimatter, - nuclear isomers, -metallic hydrogen -explosive flux compression generators -superlasers (i.e., ultrapowerful lasers with intensities higher than 1019 W/cm2). Metallic hydrogen has been a fact for about a decade and metallic 3D/AM printing it making really high-power lasers cheaper and cheaper. One of the tells for 4th Gen nuclear tests, besides the small size and decoupled underground testing, is the release of radioactive Iodine-131. For which see: Another tiny measurement of radioactive iodine at Svanhovd Norwegian Radiation Protection Authorities (NRPA) without any suspected source. By Thomas Nilsen March 23, 2017 thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/201…

The size of the blasts and decoupling are consistent with Chinese developmental testing for 4th Generation nuclear weapons. That is, pure fusion nuclear devices which do not use either plutonium or highly enriched uranium fission to start fusion.

@TrentTelenko @threadreaderapp @threadreaderapp please unroll

It looks like my 4th Gen nukes posts here on X shook out data from US three letter agencies. Who belatedly realized that classifying physics was both self-defeating & stupid. The bad news is the FYEO web site is now reporting a _NINTH_ 4th Gen. nuclear tech approach by China with metal nitrogen/nitrogen anion salt. 1/3

@KateMcGonigall Take good care of yourself; get some rest...

@makizdat Out of hospital but not ready to study. Thanks for your warm wishes

Friday 6 February 2026 No real study I still feel ropey. Hoping to avoid hospital and IV antibiotics. Cancelled all my convo partners for the foreseeable. Just can't concentrate #langtwt

@languagediary1 Отлично! :-)

I'm dabbling in Italian, so I thought, why not dabble in Russian as well? 🤪Makes perfect sense to me! #langtwt

@KateMcGonigall Merry Christmas to you, too. I appreciate your language updates! Helps me to stay motivated!

@makizdat Thanks, I still feel my progress is glacial. Pimsleur all the way over the Christmas period where possible. Merry Christmas!

Sat 13 Dec 2025 Hebrew Pimsleur3 unit 4 - 30mins Duo - 30mins Total 19h 20mins French YT - 20mins Total 9h 45mins Bought some gifts. Must buy more gifts must buy more gifts #langtwt

@pati_marins64 @threadreaderapp please unroll

And again, some people say: “Drones don’t have the range to hunt submarines.” They absolutely do. There are already UUVs with ranges up to 6,000 km, and some nuclear-powered ones able to stay years hunting subs, and there are others with next-gen solid-state batteries and small generators, they’ll soon be able to hunt subs for months, surfacing for less than an hour to recharge. The real bottleneck remains underwater communication, but as AI advances, these drones operate almost fully autonomously and only receive new orders while recharging on the surface. New UUV/UUUV technologies are emerging almost every day.

The era of monsters like AUKUS is over. When the AUKUS program – which I will discuss in the coming days – was designed, it was already obsolete. Its most likely future is cancellation as many US programs during the last years. Just as drones in Ukraine dominated the battlefield in Ukraine, and proved that anything big and slow becomes vulnerable and almost useless, the same fate now reaches submarines. Hundreds of underwater drones will hunt submarines for hours or days until they find them, and China leads these breakthrough technologies. Two stand out: - Magnetic Wake Detection: developed by Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), it tracks magnetic disturbances left by moving submarines, even stealth Seawolf-class ones. Chinese UUVs already integrate this with existing MAD systems, mapping persistent wakes in real time. In 2025 tests, it merged with acoustic networks and AI to form a vast detection grid. - CPT Atomic Magnetometer (quantum sensor): the most promising, it eliminates low-latitude blind spots with extreme precision. Initially tested on tethered aerial drones, it is now being adapted for submerged UUVs using rubidium for omnidirectional anomaly detection. CASC researchers are miniaturising and mass-producing it; in simulations, AI-equipped UUVs distinguished real targets from false positives (e.g. whales) with 95% accuracy. None of this is theoretical – it is already part of China’s Underwater Great Wall, a mobile sensor network fusing magnetic, passive sonar and AI data. This is exactly why Japan’s new submarine - using lithium batteries- program draws so much attention: excellent cost, real innovation, and units entering service before 2032 will also be modern long-range (1,000-3,000km) missile platforms even for hypersonic missiles. They are cheap enough that the AUKUS budget could hypothetically buy hundreds of them. The future lies in smaller, cheaper, more numerous units – never the opposite. Modern warfare is entering the age of decentralisation, and programs like AUKUS are its exact antithesis.

@vcdgf555 @threadreaderapp please unroll

End complaints. Soundtrack is tense. Spirals are dismal. Massive props on tech details. Kathryn Bigelow does for nuclear tension what she did with Zero Dark Thirty and the hunt for UBL. 4.5/5 as a film 3/5 on premise and 4/5 on believability on disposition of forces.

Watched House of Dynamite. My opinion in my replies.

MOTHERLAND, says the @washingtonpost, is "riveting." washingtonpost.com/books/2025/10/…

@GrandpaRoy2 @threadreaderapp please unroll

A Russian decoy UAV with a Luneburg lens as payload, in the form of a 3D printed plastic sphere wrapped in metal foil. The device acts as a a radar reflector to increase the drone’s radar signature to imitate larger targets and draw off Ukrainian air defenses. 1/2

@DVKirichenko @threadreaderapp please unroll

Sea drones can just lurk out there for long periods of time and then strike. x.com/Tendar/status/…

1/ Ukraine just changed naval warfare again. New drone carriers are launching unjammable fiber-optic FPVs — drones that fly without radio signals and can’t be jammed by Russian EW. This is the world’s first known sea-launched fiber-optic drone system that has been deployed.

@ArturRehi @threadreaderapp please unroll

toward isolationism in the United States also does not add much optimism. Europe is facing an existential threat, but it still hopes to return to the pre-war years, waiting for things to somehow resolve themselves. That is a dangerously naive way of thinking. 18/18

Europe still does not fully understand the threat posed by Russia. There has been growing talk of a possible attack on the Baltic states, but in reality, this threat is minimal - and the real danger lies elsewhere. Putin has found a grey zone, and so far it brings far 1/18