Edit: I misread the specs; Kinzhal does have terminal guidance. Quoting (AINonline) Putin Unveils Kinzhal Hypersonic Missile,

Terminal guidance is provided by the 9E436 optics correlator or 9B318 active radar head.

This article was written with the presumption that terminal guidance is lacking. There is a way to extract value from the discussion: Consider the possibility that the seeker performs poorly in some environments. While an optical seeker could readily discern the sharp angular contour of a warship, the Ukraine landscape, a gentle plain, may be too difficult. Recognition technology is further stressed by the extreme speed of Kinzhal, about 14X a subsonic cruise missile.

Although unknown to open source, the  intelligence community is aware of whether Kinzhal strikes failed. If so, this discussion offers mechanisms of failure:

***

The death and destruction inflicted by Russia on Ukraine makes the details of a weapon seem inconsequential. Kinzhal is merely a variation on a theme, which has origin in the ground-launch U.S. Pershing II of the early 80’s. The Pershing II remains impressive in current context.

Rather than specific links, just search for “Ukraine Kinzhal”. There is a picture of an intact Kinzhal on the ground, with part of the adapter cradle still attached. It appears that the rocket motor never ignited. The press has done a fair job. Though unable to resist headline hype ala “deadly weapon… cannot be intercepted”, the articles are pretty good.

Citing Alexey Leonkov (2018-05-23). “Hypersonic Dagger Throw: competitors are still in diapers”. zvezdaweekly.ru. Retrieved 2018-05-24.,  Wikipedia  specifications:

• Guidance system: INS with the possibility of adjustments from GLONASS, remote control and optical homing system^[4]
• Flight ceiling 20 km (65,617 ft)^[4]
• Accuracy 1 meter.
• Maximum speed Mach 10 – Mach 12 (12,300–14,700 km/h; 7,610–9,130 mph)^[6]

A closed-loop terminal guidance system, such as a camera or terrain-map,  is not a feature of Kinzhal. While a U.S. cruise missile can fly through a window, Kinzhal relies primarily on the least accurate of all modern guidance schemes, inertial navigation, or  INS. Precision gyroscopes and sensors of acceleration measure position relative to start without outside reference. As short as time of flight may be, INS drifts, so that where the missile thinks it is, isn’t. The specs offer the “possibility” of correction by GLONASS, the Russian GPS system.

The combination of maximum speed and altitude hints at a problem with GLONASS, ionization blackout. Some spacecraft, such as the Space Shuttle, have a cooler upper surface which shortens the duration. Kinzhal has a symmetric body without this possibility.

SPACECRAFT REENTRY COMMUNICATIONS BLACKOUT offers a Saha equation table that suggests the GLONASS satnav signal is blocked in the upper speed range of Kinzhal. At lower speeds, reception is possible. Kinzhal operators are forced to a conscious choice between speed and accuracy. One meter is as ridiculous as Russian claims for their recycled Norden bombsight; see The Russian SVP-24 Bombsight.

One version  of the related Iskander missile has TERCOM, which can serve as a rough form of terminal guidance. It may have been too difficult to implement with Kinzhal, or the spec is in error. The following estimate assumes it is absent.

An informed guess at accuracy is based on the Pershing II; 30 meters (100 ft) circular error probable. Since the Pershing II had closed loop terminal guidance by a radar imaging system, there was essentially no guidance error. The remainder was due small scale,  turbulent hypersonic flow around the small fins and random error in the fin actuators. 30 meters describes a practical minimum for a  re-entry vehicle with small fins.

• Since Kinzhal also has small fins, 30 meters CEP is baked in.
• +30 meters due to random solid rocket thrust variation. The Pershing reentry vehicle  had no engine, hence induced less sensor and actuator noise.
  
• +30 meters from extreme vibration, extremely deleterious to INS.

Double the 90 meters due to sloppy manufacture, for a CEP of 200 meters. If Kinzhal implements TERCOM, 100 meters.

With a U.S. cruise missile, which actually images the target, you can pick the window you want to fly through, or the part of a ship you want to hit.  In the absence of terminal guidance, how could  Kinzhal hit a moving ship? One possibility is that the specifications used for this estimate are incorrect. Or in use against high value naval targets, a nuclear warhead could be used.

The claim that Kinzhal cannot be intercepted holds up. In the world of munitions,  intercepts are rare. Anti-munition systems are plagued by specificity, effective only against narrow ranges of threat. The radar currently in use with the Patriot covers only one hemisphere. A MIG can launch a Kinzhal from outside that hemisphere.

Specificity is why Turkish drones that fly at the speed of a Piper Cub work so well. It is why a Patriot in Israel missed what was essentially an R/C airplane. And why, of 60 subsonic cruise missiles launched at Shayrat airfield in Syria, none were intercepted, in spite of the presence of the Russian S-400 anti-everything missile system.

It has been suggested that Kinzhal was used against the ammo dump because the much greater kinetic energy at impact enabled ground penetration. I suspect the warhead disassembled without explosion before it got too far into the mud.

Kinzhal was a poor man’s choice. We would have used a BLU-116, laser guided by an attached GBU-24 Paveway III, delivered by an invisible F-35. We would now be enjoying secondary explosions.

Suggestion to the  Third World: When the Russian arms salesman comes a’knockin, keep a tight grip on your wallet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Merchant Of Venice Act 3, scene 1, 58–68

Shylock speaks for Ukraine as Russia  crushes innocents under the Russian boot. Just substitute “Ukrainian” for “Jew.”

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Listen.

(CNN) Biden on Putin: ‘I think he is a war criminal’.

By current  Western standards, Putin is. During the Vietnam War, we created war criminals by the bushel, but that was half a century ago. Those were the sins of our fathers. Now, we are enlightened.

Unfortunately, though enlightened democracies have half the GNP of the world, the same is not true of population. Even India, which of the Third World comes closest to Western democracy, refuses to oppose Russia. Nations buy only as much virtue as they can afford. China, which affords at least the Han Chinese a good attempt at ethical government, prioritizes sucking Russia into its orbit.

In 2016, I wrote Peter Van Buren the Apostate, and “Putin the Thug”. It’s fresh as a daisy now.

Note to Vladimir Putin: You risk savage   judgment in future histories.

 

The sanctions against Russia’s central bank and sovereign wealth fund, and disconnection of major banks from SWIFT, make long term economic pressure feasible. If Russia cuts off gas and oil deliveries, Russia’s internal politics become unsustainable.

A more complex scenario arises if Russia chooses to accelerate oil/gas deliveries. Specialists hold that Russia’s economy will eventually collapse due to the many effects of pariah status, disconnection from SWIFT, and currency blockade. Will the desired result obtain? A possible scenario:

• Pumping oil/gas like crazy, a social safety net for the bulk of the population is maintained, if in a somewhat tattered state.
• Oligarchic wealth begins to dissipate. Members of this class react with anger.
• The  oligarchic side of the Kremlin  conflicts with a new power center, with new ideologues, extending into the military.
• The new ideologues re-legitimize Stalin.
• Borrowing from Stalin, the new power center applies harsh methods against the oligarchs.

(The Hill) Russia is shutting down its oldest human rights group. Quoting,

Memorial International, often abbreviated to Memorial, has studied “political repressions” by the former Soviet Union and present-day Russian government since 1992. Its predecessor, an earlier Moscow-based organization also named Memorial, was founded in 1987, according to the group’s website.

The largest part of Memorial’s archives concerned victims of Stalin’s terror. With erasure of memory, internal terror becomes a usable tool. To gain complete control of the Kremlin in the manner of Stalin, it is necessary to abrogate the quid-pro-quo with the Kremlin element of organized crime. This element, and those oligarchs who oppose  dissipation of their wealth, could face execution.  The oligarchs were last dethroned circa 2000.

A possible Neo-Stalinist nucleus now serve as Putin’s “inner cabinet”, displacing more balanced viewpoints. (NYT) The Hard-Line Russian Advisers Who Have Putin’s Ear names Sergey Shoigu, Nikolai Patrushev ,and Sergey Naryshkin. Quoting,

“This is an attempt collectively to form a counter-ideology, since Putin doesn’t have an ideology,” Konstantin Remchukov, a Moscow newspaper editor with Kremlin ties, said of what he called the “conservative-reactionary” worldview of Russia’s security elite. “The key postulate is that everyone is against Russia.”

The Kremlin fault line:

• An “inner cabinet” espousing newly devised ideology, in which practical resemblance to Stalinism may emerge.  Romantics.
• The “outer cabinet”, consisting of civil servants, with an admixture of oligarchic and criminal elements. Pragmatists.

How do you play something like this? The romantics will not respond to external pressure. They may respond to pressure from the pragmatists, by accommodation or liquidation. All we can do is amplify the anxiety of the outer cabinet, whose pragmatism shows in a “quant” mindset.

This is best done by  deployment of future sanctions with anticipatory advertisements, providing the oligarch with a forecast of wealth dissipation  that is both worrisome and predictable. If Russia chooses to pump all-out,  friendly production must be encouraged with a  quota for Russian sales that decreases over time.

For more elaborate schemes, see

• Advice for a New Secretary of State, Part 6; How to Use a Skinner Box
• Advice for a New Secretary of State, Part 7

 

 

 

 

 

Our reveries are always a bit more vivid than reality. We don’t fault them for this. Whatever piece of a reverie comes to life could not have happened had our thoughts been restricted to the day’s reality. Joe Biden’s dreams, blazing with optimism,  lit up the House Chamber. I heard one word, over and over, though it was never spoken. Love.

Biden is obviously in accord with Les Brown, who says,  “Most people fail not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit.” Thank you Joe. Keep aiming for a better world.

***

The dreams of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have galvanized the Free World. In childhood, my grandmother, Sarah Briscoe, told us  of our relative,  Irish gunrunner and politician Robert Briscoe, who sought to prove that a Jew could be as good an Irishman as any other, and succeeded.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian Jew,  you have filled a lifetime  with courage and conviction. No one doubts it. You have nothing left to prove.

***

A note to Vladimir Putin. An empire forged in fire will melt like ice in the summer sun. In at most 20 years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(CNN) The latest on the Ukraine-Russia crisis – Roughly 75% of Russian conventional forces deployed against Ukraine, US official says. Quoting,

According to the latest US intelligence assessment, Russia now has close to 75% of its conventional forces postured against Ukraine, a US official with direct knowledge of the intelligence told CNN.

You have a window of opportunity during this engagement: Join NATO NOW!  The normal political process must be compressed into a few days. NATO tripwire forces must urgently be deployed. Impressive as your armies are, they are no match for Russia.

Your internal enemy is ironically known as the Stockholm Syndrome. Zelensky had a bad case of it. Germany is getting shock therapy.

Act with haste. Otherwise, the Bear may well take a bite out of your apple.

Intel9 is a specialized blog. I was tempted to do a series on the process of editing  political opinion. I collected mediocre examples to dissect. I ultimately concluded it would cost readership. You don’t read Intel9 for politics.

This reticence may have resulted in a missed opportunity. It does allow me to expose without fear how my approach to the political editorial would differ from the norm. There are two basic choices: Show how one would fix badly written examples, or, with a well written piece, explore what is wrong with the genre, and how to fix it. A genre example follows.

In narrative reporting, a news team attempts to integrate many separate sources, separated by time, space, and perspective,  into a coherent story: who, what, when, where, why. Too often, the result falls short, but it would fall much shorter without this propulsion.

The op/ed is something entirely different, in which the author is encouraged to frame an opinion, with an implied story, in a few hundred standalone words. For any issue of real-world complexity, this is impossible. What results is either juvenile simplification, or the single facet of the deep-diving specialist. Both make it into print. With rare exception, the political op/ed makes the splash of a pebble thrown into a pond, ripples quickly disappearing from view.

In On New Year’s Eve, Goodbye to the Future; Politics Part 3, I wrote,

Of ancient origin, neoteric political thought, disconnected from material conditions, excluding time itself,  has the result of ingrown political literature. We will explore this.

For  fixing the genre, the example is a very well written piece, (CNN) The LBJ delusion about Biden. My apologies to author Timothy Naphtali.  The writing is excellent, yet there is a genre problem. It is ingrown, and due to conventions, it doesn’t build to a potentially actionable climax. This is  not a recognized op-ed goal. Sometimes it can be, and should be.

With an editorial POV and quick initial scan,  these questions/thoughts arise:

• Who thought Biden could be the next LBJ? Not me.
• The audience for this is those to be disabused of the illusion, and those who are interested in the deluded.
• The deluded are left wing Dems. I knew they were deluded. Do I need this article to tell me?
• The infrastructure fight has been so well covered, I don’t need to see it again. It is nevertheless required by the format of this op/ed.
• Am I interested in left wing Dems? They were marginalized before publication of this piece.
• LBJ was both the product (see 1948 United States Senate election in Texas) and  practitioner of machine politics. Biden is neither, and there isn’t enough money for pork barrel.
• The Dem hold on the south, dating to post-Reconstruction, was recharged in the 60’s by disproportionate flows of federal money. Loyalty lasted until the 1994 Republican Revolution.

I reread the article. It offers no insights new to me, but it is a rich seed bed. Though these strands are not the outline of a single follow-on op/ed, each is the seed of a  single facet deep-dive piece by the author who can bring the most to that facet. And so a story develops, spanning multiple, connected opinion pieces. The story may have a meaningful conclusion, or it may become part of the national debate.

I continue to think on the title question. In an idle moment, vote bank flashes into my head. Though I’ve never seen it used for U.S. politics, the politics of India is full of it. A vote bank is a block of votes that can be reliably delivered. Indistinguishable from a political machine, it is too soiled a notion to be useful for punditry. Yet in the 60’s, for which we may have misplaced nostalgia, vote banks existed.

They were called Big Labor. In the 60’s, the blue collar work experience was still heavy, hard, and hazardous, with a real blue/white collar class divide. Big Labor was a Dem vote bank, yet Big Labor was culturally conservative; think Archie Bunker. The Democratic Party was far to the right of where  it is today.

In my tentative, editorial fashion, I speculate that the close cultural convergence of the Democratic and Republican parties may be at the root of the LBJ phenomenon. Re-convergence is not personally an attractive idea.. Big Labor comes with some nasty memories of paralyzing strikes and stagflation. Are there other models of stable, collaborative two-party systems?

I would supplement the amnesiac format of the standalone op/ed, to  explore these and other questions in depth. This is a new editorial model, the conversational, in which pieces chain together in a careful balance of referential and novel.

CNN or NYT, now you have the program. Hire me.

 

 

 

 

 

(CNN) Unspooling the latest twists in special counsel John Durham’s investigation.  Quoting,

One dataset possibly linked the Trump Organization to Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Moscow.

…

The FBI investigated the underlying data and ruled out any improper cyber links, according to the Justice Department inspector general. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report said in 2018 that it accepted the FBI’s conclusions, but the report also pointed out that the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank gave contradictory explanations for the “unusual activity.”

My suspicions were not allayed, so I developed a hypothesis. The Trump campaign was running NationBuilder  software, or something like it. The Russians wanted the donor database for future espionage.

The challenge for the Russians was, how to access the NationBuilder database without detection? NationBuilder is remotely monitored by the company, so it’s a hard target. A virus risks detection. The answer is the minimally invasive technique known as the screen scraper.

This is actually a family of techniques. The camera of a Russian cellphone, pointed at the NationBuilder screen, could be triggered or synchronized by a sequence of simple pings between the NationBuilder server and the Alfa server. The data is captured as a sequence of .jpgs, analyzed by OCR.

 

 

 

 

(CNN) The latest on the Ukraine-Russia border crisis- . Quoting Blinken,

“First, Russia plans to manufacture a pretext for its attack. … We don’t know exactly the form it will take. It could be a fabricated so-called terrorist bombing inside Russia. The invented discovery of the mass grave, a staged drone strike against civilians or a fake, even a real attack using chemical weapons,” he said.

For one scenario, exploited in a previous conflict, see Russia’s Ukraine Provocation; Informed Speculation, an Apartment Bombing?

What follows is speculation informed by history, not current information.  This is the rare occasion when speculation could impede a plot. Because of time urgency, this is a preliminary, to be followed in more detail.

The centerpiece is a staged apartment bombing.

• Corpses are sourced from the Russian prison system, to play the parts of deceased bomb squad personnel.
• Inert or unfused bombs, portrayed as live and dangerous, are “discovered” in the basement(s) of an apartment building.
• The occupants are evacuated.
• A large cordon is set up around the building.
• A bomb squad of actors responds, smuggling the corpses into the basement in heavy transit cases.
• The actors are smuggled out in the transit cases.
• A low order explosion mangles the corpses, now “heroes” who died trying to defuse the bomb.
• This may be augmented by live actors just close enough for fake superficial wounds.
• The event is documented in a form suitable for mass consumption.
• Public outrage results in Russia, the only place where it counts.

Real, not fake apartment bombings, probably committed by Dagestanis, were exploited to jump-start the Second Chechen War.