Two things, technology and diplomacy rub up against each other in this mighty foray to crack the axis of evil. Here we join them together. Kissinger said diplomacy must be backed by force, which is here rigorously satisfied. U.S. technology is being showcased on the world stage. Nevertheless, there is an element of gamble. As Clausewitz remarked, the enemy doesn’t do what you want him to do; he does what he wants to do.

Remarks appear in the press about the ineffective efforts in 1991 to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s mobile SCUD launchers. The current optimism is due to advances in sensor technology. In 1991, digital imaging was present in reconnaissance satellites, but it was primitive. Multiple exposures by low resolution sensors were stitched together by mechanical slewing of the imaging platform. A typical cellphone demonstrates far greater performance; a modern reconnaissance satellite is that much better than a cellphone.

Deployment of satellites to detect missile launches began in 1963 with the Missile Defense Alarm System, but the electromechanical MIDAS sensor could not form an image; it simply pointed in the direction of maximum brightness. This was followed by the Defense Support Program, but most of these satellites used “push-broom” sensors, While modern sensors have the shapes of rectangles, the push-broom sensor was in the shape of a line, with only one dimension. By rotating or pushing the line, a few images per minute could be acquired.

Many readers have heard of FLIR, but few know the origin.  It’s an obsolete acronym for a rectangular sensor, like the one in a cellphone,  that doesn’t need to be physically pushed around to form an image. All modern sensors are “FLIR”; these are used in the current Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellite constellation. SBIRS was developed partly in response to 1991 Iraq, when SCUD launchers successfully hid in the almost featureless western desert.

For the first time, the high availability and precise real time image forming ability of SBIRS permits use of satellites to counter tactical threats, such as finding launchers. complimented by the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, the F35’s AN/AAQ-37 Distributed Aperture System (DAS) IR sensors, the U-2, and similar platforms.

But space-based assets are only part of the launcher kill-chain, followed by ground-based processing.  Computational photography renders details invisible to the human eye-brain system, merging into AI classification, with details useful to the running tally.  With only minutes before a launcher vanishes, the next step is to compute the response. What assets, with what strike packages, are available to satisfy the cost functional? Drone, loitering munition, “bomb truck”, F-35?

This is a global optimization problem, related to  the “traveling salesman problem”. In 1985, Hopfield and Tank solved it “near-optimally” with a neural network, reviving AI from its first winter. The answer comes in a few seconds, because the AI knows the status of every available weapon.

Launchers are being eliminated more rapidly than anticipated. There is no precedent for this; hence the results may be unprecedented, coming a little bit closer to boots on the ground. But the bases are a distinct issue; an undefined percentage of Iran’s rocket bases may be under granite rock, beyond the reach of even the MOP. Even with the mixed sedimentary-metamorphic stratigraphy of Fordow, multiple MOPs were applied in multiple hits to “drill down” existing ventilation shafts. Access to these bases is via adits, a.k.a. horizontal tunnels. Tens of yards of these can be collapsed, but the damage is repairable, compared to Fordow, which undermined the mountain itself. And the terrain outside an adit can be altered to impede guidance of a munition to the most vulnerable point of impact.

Hence a purely kinetic solution to Iran’s missile bases may not be possible.  A trade may be envisioned. Destruction of Iran’s industrial base is feasible. At some point, the surviving power structure may be amenable to sacrificing the bases in exchange for remaining infrastructure. This assumes some minimal commonality of values. Sometimes there is, sometimes not. North Vietnam is most pertinent. This ingenious culture valued infrastructure, yet was completely willing to sacrifice it for a political goal. The self-destructive Taliban are even more extreme.

Confounding the comparison is the complete split of Iran between pro-West and theocratic elements. If the theocracy capitulates, they may not survive in a new Iran. The fluidity, and the multiple branches of different futures suggest:

• Multiple U.S. strategies are in play. Rather than define the goal at the outset it is legitimate to allow the goal develop over time.
• Destroy industrial base until or unless an opportunity for a trade for the bases manifests. Thorough destruction of these bases requires either Iran’s accession to boots-on-the ground demolition teams, or radical political change.
• Set the stage for revolution, which involves getting guns to the street. As this is written, there is news that the CIA is working with the Kurds. (CNN) CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran, sources say. Another possibility: Sistan and Baluchestan.
• Although the periphery presents opportunities for pressure by destabilization, a core Persian insurgency would greatly favor a good outcome. It is also hardest to achieve.
• Temporary chaos should not be feared. It is an opportunity.

Opinion variously judges Trump’s gamble by international law, human rights advocacy, risk, exit strategy, and domestic politics. None of these frameworks are adequate for the question. Ultimately, it will be judged by results, and later, by history.

The reason for the timing of the strike, which has begun while negotiations were in progress is this: regime decapitation is more achievable  before the leadership has transferred to the most hardened facilities.

There is also a more general advantage in the reduced readiness posture of the adversary, and the disabling of launch sites before they can fire.

See Iran Protests; Is Revolution Nigh?

and What Are the Mullahs of Iran Thinking?

(CNN) A new problem throws four astronauts’ impending moon journey into uncertainty. Quoting,

Because hydrogen is the lightest element in the universe, it tends to leak out of anything intended to contain it. And after hydrogen seepage plagued the first wet dress rehearsal for Artemis II in early February, the space agency worked to replace two seals around the rocket’s propellant lines in an attempt to better confine the fuel.

This requires some context. All  particles in the universe are either fermions or bosons. Fermions have characteristics of ordinary matter familiar to us. One of these is that two particles of matter can’t be in the same place at the same time. On the other hand, bosons, like the photons that comprise light, have no problem.  Cross the beams of two flashlights, and the beams pass through each other  without colliding.

Hydrogen is the lightest element, but helium is the smallest. Hydrogen has a single electron, which has spin 1/2 or -1/2, which makes hydrogen behave as an obvious fermion. Fermions cannot occupy the same space, which results in an effective “size”. The two paired electrons of helium, have opposite spins, cancelling: 1/2 – 1/2 = 0. This makes helium atoms behave like quasi-bosons, which can be closer together than hydrogen can tolerate, until electrostatic repulsion takes over.

So helium is much “smaller” than hydrogen. Famously, it can pass through the glass of old-fashioned vacuum tubes, ruining them.

The inability to solve these leaks probably stems from multiple attempts to substitute for the extremely high costs of techniques used during the Apollo project almost 60 years ago. It is symptomatic of the thinking that also replaced a known-good heat shield technology with something extremely dangerous. See (CNN) NASA is about to send people to the moon — in a spacecraft not everyone thinks is safe to fly; the Stockton Rush Syndrome.

Since the engineers seem to have forgotten the basic Bayesian statistics that govern how many will live and how many will die, perhaps a rare appeal to the politicians is in order. This is going to look extremely bad for you.

They think they can win this fight. The distinctions  of strategic versus tactical victory allow this possibility. Famously, the U.S. won virtually every battle of the Vietnam War, yet lost. The early victories of Japan in World War II were stunning. The limit of the process, the clock, is defined by limits of material resources or political will. The mullahs know they have fewer of the former, but more of the latter.

With the penetrations of the GBU-57A/B MOP, the mullahs now understand the  difference between soft rock, the sedimentary strata of Fordow, and hard igneous rock elsewhere.

The mullahs judge they can handle domestic unrest with as much killing as required.

The mullahs do not fear invasion. One of the most quoted strategic shibboleths is “Air power cannot win a war.”  The accompanying explanation is that it takes boots on the ground to seize territory.  The recent near exception of Venezuela was a decapitation strike. This was facilitated by what, in retrospect, was a remarkable lack of redundancy in the Venezuelan government.

Can a decapitation strike in Iran achieve the goal of regime change? The answer depends on three calculations we may not know how to make:

• Success of the strike, measured against the survival of the target.
• Political implications. See Iran Protests; Is Revolution Nigh?
• Viability of an insurgency.

This last factor has small mention in open source, except for the widely despised Mojahedin-e-Khalq. An insurgency is vital to seize power; otherwise it will simply lapse to surviving elements of the current regime.

As a benchmark, insurgent forces in Iran are far weaker than those fostered in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation; see  Operation Cyclone. Broad access to sophisticated small arms is essential.

The  elevation  of Xi Jinping to effective dictatorship occurred in 2013, with his simultaneous occupation of three offices: general secretary (2012), president (2013), and chairman of the Central Military Commission (2012). In the following years, the relative opacity of China politics became even more completely opaque.

Beginning in 2025, open sources of uncertain provenance stated that Zhang Youxia had encircled Beijing with troops. It was suggested that Zhang had thus won a power struggle. His arrest by forces loyal to Xi Jinping illustrates the danger of apocryphal interpretations.

Nevertheless, since the troop concentrations, the weight of evidence has shifted further towards what some might call regime change, but is more accurately regime restoration. Like Putin, Xi is physically ill, with a slowly growing cerebral aneurysm, which may have been responsible for a mini-stroke, risking catastrophic rupture, as well as generalized cerebrovascular disease. This has resulted extremes of policy driven by Xi’s character, and sense of personal mortality:

• Unsound plans for military adventurism opposed by China’s military.
• Cult of personality.
• The attempt to replace consensus-based governance of the post-Mao years with concentrated personal power.

Favoring a coup:

• Those in the security forces who might place their bets with Xi are forced to appreciate that Xi may not have much life remaining as a high-functioning individual.
• Troops are arrayed with convenient lines of communication that cannot be disrupted.
• Xi has lost political support.
• Who strikes first, wins.

Conclusion. There is a decent probability that Xi will be deposed in the near term. This will occur with a minimum of disorder, as Xi is thought by many to have lost the mandate of heaven.

The Edicarian  Period was peaceful, with rare exception, as primitive, non-sentient organisms grazed on even more primitive organisms. The  Cambrian Period, 538.8 Mya – 486.85 Mya,  with an explosion of complexity, defined the hunter and the hunted. Jaws,  teeth, eyes, and brains inaugurated the arms race that continues to the present day.

All so we can metaphorically eat each other.

The Cambrian Past; Oil on Panel (click to enlarge))

See New Art Series; Traces of the Past; Painting the Ediacaran Period; Att: Larry Gagosian

(CNN) NASA is about to send people to the moon — in a spacecraft not everyone thinks is safe to fly.

Reprising the disaster of Space Shuttle Columbia, some think — including me — there is a significant chance the Artemis capsule will burn up on re-entry. Plagued by delay, NASA is pushed from behind by embarrassment. To say the least, the heat shield has not been tested under actual operating  conditions.

Quoting CNN,

Camarda — who was also a member of the first space shuttle crew to launch after the 2003 Columbia disaster — is among a group of former NASA employees who do not believe that the space agency should put astronauts on board the upcoming lunar excursion. He said he has spent months trying to get agency leadership to heed his warnings to no avail.

Sounds like Space Shuttle Challenger, doesn’t it? Quoting Richard Feynman in his conclusion to the Rogers Report,

“The reason this is such a big deal is that when the heat shield is spalling — or you have big chunks coming off — even if the vehicle isn’t destroyed, you’re right at the point of incipient failure now,” said Dr. Dan Rasky, an expert on advanced entry systems and thermal protection materials who worked at NASA for more than 30 years.

I’m with the above.  Quoting Pam Melroy,

 “program managers sometimes have to make these trades for cost, schedule and performance, and they certainly didn’t undertake that decision lightly.”

Cost, schedule, and performance? Where is safety? Where is lives lost? Where is end-to-end test, which means flying the capsule in the actual descent profile without a crew? Where is certification instead of guesstimation?

The nut of it: With a correctly functioning heat shield, there is redundancy, two systems, each of which prevents shield failure. If guidance is a little off, the shield takes care of it. If the shield is iffy,  the ship presumably survives if the descent angle is ideal.

The margin of a robust shield is one system. The other is the accuracy of the guidance system, vital to the descent angle. With the shield margin vastly reduced, it falls to a single system, guidance, to keep the ship safe.  That safety is now non-redundant; it may also be imaginary, since it has never been tested, only simulated.

NASA doesn’t need  Stockton Rush to guide them. They have the  Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia to emulate, and the false god of expediency to push them. Columbia was a heat shield failure. This is a bad  time for those of us who idealized NASA as emblematic of the best. This capsule should never fly. It belongs in the Smithsonian.

(CNN) 180 skyscrapers for Gaza: Trump’s son-in-law Kushner unveils ‘masterplan’ for enclave’s reconstruction.

See Israel, Qatar Strike. Quoting,

• • • • As long as the tunnel network remains functional, civil control is impossible.
      • As long as there is civil population on the surface, Hamas fighters can blend with the civil population to sustain themselves underground.
      • When measured in decades rather than years, both sides consider this a fight to the death. This is why, as with Ukraine, the problem  is  one of absolutes, where both sides seek to avoid a negotiated solution.
      • If the tunnels were comprehensively eliminated, the problem of Hamas would be reduced to manageable proportions. The tunnels are the constant of the problem.

The tunnels cannot be destroyed by tactical placement of demolition charges, because mapping tunnels deeper than near surface is beyond current technology.

Comprehensive destruction of the tunnels by conventional explosives, save in sub-nuclear quantity, is not feasible.

Skyscrapers on the Gaza coastal plain require deep foundations; see Value Engineering of Barrette Foundations for Tall Buildings in the Middle East. See Figure 3;  typical excavation for this geology centers on 60 meters.

It may not be coincidence that a Gaza blanketed with deep foundations would seal or collapse most tunnels.

(CNN) Trump claims secret ‘discombobulator’ weapon was used to help capture Maduro.

I wrote an initial version of this post a week ago, and held it back for a dull moment. Before Trump’s mention, the best open-source analysis was provided by Alex Hollings in (YouTube) Did Delta Force using a secret SONIC WEAPON in the Maduro raid?  Quoting,

On Saturday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reposted an alleged account from one of Nicolas Maduro’s security guards during the raid that led to his capture last weekend, and it claims American troops used a secret sonic weapon during their assault.

But is that true? Let’s see if we can’t figure it out.

Trump’s assertion is a second strike against Hollings’ diligent analysis; for the first, read to the end. Hollings exposes the multiple attributes of this story that suggest it is disinformation. Content creators with this propensity are so numerous, and have so many tools at their disposal, fraud has justifiably become the default conclusion. Hollings’ focus is first on the character of fraud, followed by a rundown of extant sonic weapons. None of the declared weapons suffice to support any form of the narrative. All declared weapons use electronic amplifiers to drive ruggedized loudspeakers, power-limited mechanisms that cannot practically cause injuries that, according to the narrative, resembled blast injuries.

So is Trump riding a fictional wave, or a kernel of fact? Apart from Trump’s mention, nothing on the level of information challenges Hollings’ tentative conclusion  that the “secret sonic weapon” probably does not exist. Except for a single word. But could it?

I have written extensively on the possible use of a stealth sonic weapon in conjunction with the “Havana Sonic Attacks.” See Senate Hearings on Havana Sonic “Attacks” and this link. The design of such a weapon is complex because of the need for stealth, with absence of audible sound. But the “victims” of the Maduro raid allegedly — if “alleged” can be used to describe the testimony of a fictional witness — experienced audible sound.

With conversion of the problem from a  non-lethal, stealth gadget to a lethal or “less lethal” non-stealth gadget, the problem is vastly simplified. Gone are the complex electronics and fragile loudspeaker, replaced by something much more elemental, based on pure physics, the Lauren Bacall Machine.  It is so easy to do, it actually re-balances a little of Hollings’ justified skepticism.  Your clue is a single word, which appears in the accounts, and somewhere in this blog. 

***Let Lauren Bacall tell you***

(CNN) Pentagon bought device through undercover operation some investigators suspect is linked to Havana Syndrome. Quoting,

Officials have long struggled to understand how a device powerful enough to cause the kind of damage some victims have reported could be made portable; that remains a core question, according to one of the sources briefed on the device. The device could fit in a backpack, this person said.

I have written about this extensively; see (CNN)’Sonic attacks’ suffered by US diplomats likely caused by microwave energy, government study says.  This post adds a napkin calculation based upon a formerly common cellphone protocol. GSM was world-dominant from the late 90’s to  circa 2012. If you are in the U.S., and your carrier was AT&T or T-mobile, you had a GSM phone.

Unlike other standards, GSM emission was “bursty”, which  means that the microwave emissions came in narrow-band pulses. More than any other protocol, it had a tendency to interfere with nearby electronic equipment. It was the bane of hospitals, where a user in the hallway could interfere with an MRI. In recording and broadcast studios, the GSM burst would break into shielded cables, audibly contaminating broadcasts and recordings.

All this havoc was wreaked by a handheld microwave gadget, with a maximum power of perhaps 3 watts, perhaps an inch from the user’s skull. Apart from the laments of “electrosensitive” individuals, no credible reports of brain injury from these phones exist. In how many ways could this phone-gadget vary from the purported Havana attack machine? Three:

• Frequency, which determines Specific absorption rate (SAR). The amount of absorption is significant to injury.  Bands in wide use are near optimal for brain absorption
• Power, which, along with frequency, determines SAR.
• Modulation. Everyone, including me, has considered how pulsed microwave could be much more damaging than CW (continuous wave.)

In what follows, we assume that, for a given power level,  the GSM phone burst has an effect on the brain similar to a purpose-built weapon. Any microwave pulse shakes brain tissue at least a little. And it has been established that cellphone emissions activate heat shock proteins in the brain. We offer no other justification. This is a napkin calculation, to make you think.

Assume that the Havana brain-buster has an effective range of 60 feet. What power would be required to deliver a dose to the brain equivalent to a GSM phone held 1.2 inches from the head? The answer has two parts. The first is the inverse square law:

(power of brain-buster)²  ÷ (power of cellphone) ² =

(distance of brain-buster)²  ÷ (distance of phone) ² =

(60 feet)²  ÷ (0.1 feet) ² =3.6*10⁵ = 360,000

Since the cellphone emits 3 watts, the brain-buster must emit 360,000*3 watts, about a million watts. This is not entirely accurate. While the radiation pattern of a cellphone is broad, the brain-buster would have an antenna that radiates in a cone towards the victim, so it does not need to be quite so powerful. For a 10^◦ cone, multiply by 0.075, to get 27000 watts.

But what have we actually shown? Since a GSM phone does no damage at all, we now  know that the brain-buster must emit more than 27000 watts. If you’re on a conference call with five cellphones, are you destroying your brain? Multiply by 10; the brain-buster must emit at least 270,000 watts for an extended period of time. And if it is located exterior to the building, multiply by 4: one million watts in a device the size of a backpack.

This suggests that the device  purchased by the Pentagon is unsuited as an explanation for the Havana events. It is more likely a torture device, used for interrogation, and to degrade the mentality of a detainee before release.

GSM is still present as a backup protocol on modern phones. You could concentrate the energy towards your own head with aluminum foil. Let us know what you find out.