Joe Biden is interviewed by Ed Gordon of Black Entertainment Television. Image via BET.
By Robert Willmann
The nastiness of national politics is showing up. For the last four and a half years, the press, mass media, and the Democratic Party have continuously proclaimed that Joe Biden has the mental and physical ability to do the job of President of the United States. Suddenly, after a debate with candidate Donald Trump on 27 June 2024, they all turned on a dime and declared that he should withdraw from being the apparent presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. The debate was hosted by the Biden-helping CNN television network with terms and conditions favorable to him.
Biden sat down for an interview on 16 July 2024 with Ed Gordon of the Black Entertainment Television network, which is owned by Paramount Global, very much a White operation. Biden answered a question on his age and fitness. Starting at 3 minutes, 55 seconds into the video [1]—
“Gordon: But you’ve made it clear, by now, certainly you’ve been asked a thousand times, that you have no intention of getting out of this race. Yet there are those who are concerned still about your age and capability because of your age. Is there anything that you would look to, you personally, not anybody else, not other pundits, not even perhaps family members, that you would look to, to say, ‘If I see that, I will re-evaluate?’
“Biden: If there is some medical condition that emerged. If somebody, if the doctors came to me and said you got this problem, that problem….”
At 5 minutes, 13 seconds Gordon asks: “Would you be willing to even look at the idea, that if you get in, perhaps in a year and a half or two, you would look to your — in your words — very capable vice president, to carry it over the finish line?
“Biden: Well look, only if I was told that there was some medical condition that I had. And that’s not the case, so….”
A very literate person, who has authored several books and has been commissioned to do magazine articles, indicated recently that in 2020 he went to a dinner where numerous journalists, a wealthy person, and a physician were in attendance. The doctor was there specifically to give an opinion about Biden, in which he “basically said, guy’s had two major brain surgeries. After that, there is a kind of conventional wisdom that you’re never the same and various things happen, and he seems to be showing that progression already”. Further, the writer said, “I also that year [2020], talked to a major Hollywood figure who had contacts who said, ‘Yeah, it’s terrible. Behind the scenes. He’s in terrible shape’.”
A rumor two days ago was that political operators told Biden’s people that if he did not withdraw as the nominee by this weekend, information about his financial corruption would be leaked to the press starting next week.
Today, the rumor in the wind is that discussions are occurring on what would take place if Biden withdraws, such as ensuring that neither he nor his wife nor any family member will be prosecuted for crimes — financial or otherwise — or face a civil lawsuit. And how much money they will receive now and in the future. And so on. Biden can pardon his son Hunter, but there are a lot of other details to cover.
Richard Nixon resigned as president in 1974 with the understanding that his vice-president, Gerald Ford, would give him a pardon for possible crimes, which Ford did.
Whether the rumors are true in the Biden drama is anyone’s guess, but this is the first big public political turmoil since the Watergate spectacle in the Nixon administration 50 years ago, and the Iran-Contra scandal during the Ronald Reagan presidency.
[1] The interview of Biden by Ed Gordon of Black Entertainment Television in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the time of the NAACP convention.
Time for a change of pace. I’ve sang the praises of the West Mersea duck punt before. Such a marvelously simple and honest craft, whether in its native West Mersea salt marshes of Essex, England or in the tropical waters of the Karamunjawa Islands of Indonesia or closer to my home in the tidal flats of Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina.
Maybe someday I’ll be messing about the Potomac River and lower Chesapeake Bay in such a craft. They seem a joy to both build and sail.
DJ Trump must be pleased his attacker was such a poor shot.
This recent attempt on his life proves, when anyone can obtain an automatic rifle everyone is at risk, even those with a Secret Service detail to protect them.
Trump said today ‘It’s incredible that such an act can take place in our country’ which some might consider further evidence of cognitive decline considering his continued support for the NRA.
The shooter was obviously an amateur. Trump’s head was such an enormous target at close range a pro’ could never have missed with five or six shots. A top class sniper could hit a target the size of Trump’s head at 500m and his body at 1000m given the right weapon, ammunition, view and weather conditions.
World leaders might be accused by the more cynical among us, of a lack of sincerity when making ‘diplomatic’ statements about the attack but hey-ho, they really don’t have much choice do they? I certainly do not condone this attack, but I think it is essential to examine the reasons for such acts. Trump will have to take into consideration how his extremist views prompt extreme passions, that provoke easily influenced people.
Combined with easy access to weapons an attempt to ‘save the world’ is simple, people have motive, opportunity and most importantly the means. The MAGA rhetoric and Project 2025 is going to encourage further attempts from like-minded individuals in the coming months. Fear, frustration at the continued failures of the US legal system to hold Trump to account, simply add to the likelihood of copycats taking the dead assassin’s place.
More glass and steel will be erected, perhaps the Secret Service will raise their game, but when a dedicated individual is prepared to sacrifice everything for his or her beliefs against a target that needs to be in the public domain (or play golf) opportunities will arise. A principle target needs to be lucky every time. Trump was lucky – this time. A future assassin only needs to be lucky once.
Many pundits will criticise the Secret Service, such claims are profoundly unfair. They cannot be everywhere, cover every open window, check every tree or putting green, even though they do try to do achieve exactly that. With a client who has to be in the public domain there is no such thing as 100% safe. No one can be more aware of this today than Trump himself.
Those of a historical bent might draw up memories of Claus Von Stauffenberg and the effects of a different failed assassination attempt. Trump, as a consummate showman will use this for self-promotion, but his audience have ultra-short memories. October might have been preferable.
Who Dares Shares Robin Horsfall
Comment: These are the words of Robin Horsfall, a retired British soldier. They came to me this evening through Linkedin. He’s been in the Parachute Regiment and 22d SAS. He’s had five tours in North Ireland, was in the Falklands War and was on the SAS hostage rescue operation at the Iranian Embassy. He qualified as a Royal Marines Sniper Marksman in 1982. After retirement he served as a bodyguard for several notable individuals. He also earned a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. Does that not sound familiar?
His words here are wise, measured and speak of a lifetime of professional soldiering. He could have been conjured up from a reading of Kipling’s “If.” He’s published several books. I already like him. https://robinhorsfall.co.uk
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence where documents were seizedpursuant to a search warrant
By Robert Willmann
The FBI, which is part of the Justice Department, seized documents from the Mar-a-Lago residence of Donald Trump on 8 August 2022 using a search warrant. Some of the documents taken had “classified markings”, and became the subject of court action about the characterization of the documents and a former president’s legal right to possess them. No criminal case was filed at that time. The focus was on the nature of the documents. Col. Lang posted an article about classified information in this context on 29 August 2022—
Later that year, on 18 November 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed John L. “Jack” Smith to be a special counsel, to investigate possible violations: (1) “in connection with efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021,” and (2) regarding the handling of documents at Trump’s Florida residence and those that were seized pursuant to the search warrant. Smith got a grand jury indictment on 8 June 2023 against Trump and his aide, Waltine Nauta, in the classified documents matter, which was filed in the federal Southern District of Florida. A “superseding indictment” replaced it on 27 July 2023, and added Carlos De Oliveira as a defendant. He is described as a property manager and former valet at Mar-a-Lago.
One request to dismiss the criminal case asserted a violation of both the appointments and appropriations clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The order dismissing the case is based only on the issue of the appointments clause. Here is the 93-page order which ends the criminal prosecution in the federal trial court in Florida. Containing a fair amount of history, it is worth reading, given that the whole idea of an independent counsel to investigate cases started with the Independent Counsel Act in 1978, after the Watergate controversy during the time of former President Richard Nixon. That law expired in 1999 by a sunset provision, and has not been renewed by Congress. This whole “special counsel” business then emerged. The order can be displayed in the pdf computer format or downloaded for reading–
Trump at a campaign rally shortly after gunshots were fired
By Robert Willmann
At a campaign rally today, Saturday, 13 July 2024, the week before the Republican nominating convention, gunshots were fired at Donald Trump and a wound was seen in the area of his right ear.
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) July 13, 2024
Update, 7:37 p.m. This is a video of a person interviewed by the BBC news network of England for four and a half minutes who says he saw a person with a rifle prior to shots being fired at the campaign event—
Model rocketry has always taken cues from what’s happening in the world of full-scale rockets, with amateur rocketeers doing their best to incorporate the technologies and methods into their creations. That’s not always an easy proposition, though, as this three-year effort to nail a SpaceX-style vertical landing aptly shows.
First of all, hats off to high schooler [Aryan Kapoor] from JRD Propulsion for his tenacity with this project. He started in 2021 with none of the basic skills needed to pull off something like this, but it seems like he quickly learned the ropes. His development program was comprehensive, with static test vehicles, a low-altitude hopper, and extensive testing of the key technology: thrust-vector control. His rocket uses two solid-propellant motors stacked on top of each other, one for ascent and one for descent and landing. They both live in a 3D printed gimbal mount with two servos that give the stack plus and minus seven degrees of thrust vectoring in two dimensions, which is controlled by a custom flight computer with a barometric altimeter and an inertial measurement unit. The landing gear is also clever, using rubber bands to absorb landing forces and syringes as dampers.
The video [above] shows the first successful test flight and landing. Being a low-altitude flight, everything happens very quickly, which probably made programming a challenge. It looked like the landing engine wasn’t going to fire as the rocket came down significantly off-plumb, but when it finally did light up the rocket straightened and nailed the landing. [Aryan] explains the major bump after the first touchdown as caused by the ascent engine failing to eject; the landing gear and the flight controller handled the extra landing mass with aplomb.
All in all, very nice work from [Aryan], and we’re keen to see this one progress.
Comment: Just because I think it’s cool… and impressive for a self-taught rocketeer in high school. There’s an older guy doing the same thing and even sells flight controllers and rocket motor gymbals. https://bps.space
WASHINGTON — Come 2026, the US Army can begin deploying some of its new, longer-range munitions to Germany under a new agreement the two nations inked ahead of the NATO summit. “The United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force [MDTF] in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future,” the White House announced in a statement today.“When fully developed, these conventional long-range fires units will include SM-6, Tomahawk, and developmental hypersonic weapons, which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe,” it added.
The move comes after Washington withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019 and was freed to develop and field ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 kilometers and 5,500 kilometers.
Over the intervening years, the US Army has been working on several new capabilities within those ranges, but as they come online, Washington needs to pen deals with countries like Germany in order for units to deploy with the new weapons. If the plan proceeds as it is now, at least three new Army weapons could be bound for the European nation in 2026 including:
Lockheed Martin’s Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) initially planned to hit targets within the 500-kilometer range;
A future Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) designed to hit targets 2,776-kilometers away; and
A Mid-Range Capability, now known as Typhon, that uses a ground-based launcher to fire Raytheon’s existing SM-6 missiles and Tomahawk to hit targets between the previous two ranges.
So far, Typhon has been the only known weapon deployed abroad and was first done so with soldiers from the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force on a turn out to the Philippines earlier this year. If all goes as planned, the PrSM could be the next of the trio fielded and make it into soldiers hands later this year. However, the service is working to get hypersonic weapon development back on track and it’s not clear when the missile might be ready for use.
Comment: The title is from a BBC article. It makes this action sound like it was something just decided at this NATO summit. This action was in the pipeline long before Putin launched this invasion of Ukraine. This was in the works almost as soon as DoD began seriously developing its doctrine of multi-domain operations and establishing what would be included in a multi-domain task force (MDTF). But even given all that, I can understand why Moscow would be angered. The long range fires capability of the MDTF is a lot more serious than the EW/tracking/targeting function of the MDTF that’s been in Germany since 2021.
This reminds me of all the drama surrounding the deployment of Pershing II missiles to Europe. That tied the Kremlin into knots, too. For a short stint in the Summer of 1983, I was detached from Group to advise Fort Devens and the Seneca Army Depot (SEAD) on the deployment of those missiles. SEAD was beset by the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Freedom. Not being very enlightened, we referred to them as a big gaggle of witches and lesbians. Once while they were chanting incantations at the perimeter fence, I stood there in my cammies and beret, just me and the witches. I remembered the description offered by Carlos Casteneda of a Yaqui sorcerer incantation in “A Separate Reality.” I did my best interpretation of the movements accompanying that incantation shaking my outstretched hand towards the witches. I must have been close because the witches parted in panic as if I was hitting them with a firehose. I turned and walked away leaving them with the fear of facing a Special Forces sorcerer.
CNN — The NATO summit was long planned to celebrate the alliance’s 75th anniversary, to lock in longterm military support for Ukraine and even to future-proof the West against a possible second term for Donald Trump. But no one expected the meeting in Washington this week to turn into a public test of 81-year-old President Joe Biden’s health and cognitive capacity with his reelection campaign facing an existential moment after his disastrous debate performance.
Biden’s leadership of NATO and lifeline to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion make him the most significant presidential trustee of the alliance since President George H.W. Bush. But his achievements, including Sweden and Finland’s entry into the group, will be eclipsed at the summit by his battle to save his political future. Every step Biden takes, every gesture he makes, and every word he utters will be under intense scrutiny, especially in unscripted moments after the image of an aged and at times incoherent commander in chief was burned into the minds of 50 million viewers at the CNN debate in Atlanta late last month.
A president who is older than the alliance itself will be under enormous pressure to show vigor and mental clarity at a solo news conference on Thursday. Any hint of confusion or weakness could spark a fresh round of panic among Democrats and derail Biden’s aggressive effort to quell talk of him abandoning his campaign. The president can expect a volley of questions about his health, his medical records and whether he has been hiding the true details of his condition from journalists infuriated by the White House’s handling of the debate fallout.
The press conference will also be a must-see event for Democrats who are demanding he do far more to prove he is fit to serve a second term that would end when he is 86. Sen. Patty Murray, for instance, warned Monday evening, “We need to see a much more forceful and energetic candidate on the campaign trail in the very near future in order for him to convince voters he is up to the job.” It was a strikingly strong statement by the Washington state Democrat that underscored the vulnerability of Biden’s position. She added: “At this critical time for our country, President Biden must seriously consider the best way to preserve his incredible legacy and secure it for the future.”
Biden will also have an important audience overseas. The effects of the president’s advancing age are not just an issue for his political future; they are now the West’s problem given that he is the last defense against a stunning comeback by Trump, who spent his first term berating NATO allies and cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has suggested he would let Moscow “do whatever the hell they want” and would not honor NATO’s sacred Article 5 mutual defense principle if he considered that a member state had not met the alliance’s defense spending guidelines.
Comment: Awful lot riding on this summit for an awful lot of people. This CNN article is totally focused on Biden, but NATO faces many more challenges than Biden being too old to win reelection. I don’t see any change in the UK stance. France is still up in the air. Italy’s Meloni has proven that a right wing government in Europe does not have to be a lapdog to Putin. The US future in NATO is unknown. European NATO is taking steps to “Trump-proof” the alliance, but I don’t know how effective that will be in the short or long run. Nor do I know how pragmatic a President Trump would be in a second term if that comes to pass. I believe the party with the biggest stakes is Ukraine. The Ukrainians won’t be offered NATO membership at this summit, but will there be an unambiguous and solid pledge to stand by the Ukrainians until victory? And will victory be defined?
Johnson, Giuliani, the Kraken, etc. are all mostly nonsense. Highly unprofessional hacks, going off half-cocked. I say “mostly” nonsense because they were intuitively correct that there is something systematic occurring. From what I can see, it must be originating from a centralized cheating team (as in federal – see below). The study I am referring to is based on source data (state voter registration databases) and the findings have now been thoroughly vetted.
My involvement for the past three years has been to work at hypothesis testing, playing the skeptic and, mostly, attempting to debunk the findings; to identifying alternatives that don’t involved a cleverly engineered election cheating scheme. I have surrendered. There are no viable alternatives to the presented proof. There is something centrally organized, illegal and well concealed happening in the voter registration rolls for the states that have been studied.
BTW, Just because you don’t like my position on Hamas, Israel, Muslims and Ukraine doesn’t mean I’m not a well respected professional in the area of big data analysis, scientific study design and statistics. You make the assumption that anyone who doesn’t see things your way must be stupid, evil and/or crazy. That is the height of arrogance and unchecked ego.
Think about this – if you’re going to create fake ballots and votes for your preferred candidate you cannot do so in excess of certain externally imposed limits; like the number of people in the geography, like the number of people registered to vote.
So the key to rigging an election is based more on voter registration than it is on creating the fake ballots. Fake ballots is the easiest part, especially when there is massive mail-in voting (as there was in 2020). You need to have the right number of fake voter registrations; a number that corresponds to the number of fake votes.
The good news, for cheaters, is that not all Americans register to vote and of those registered to vote, not all actually vote in a given election. So fake registrations and fake votes can be created in numbers large enough to sway elections.
However, for various reasons I’m not going to delve into here, you need to keep track of fake registrations. Which of the registration records are fake? Which have been used to create fake votes? Which fake votes? and more…..
You can’t create a new field (column) in the voter registration tables that contains that info because those are public records. So how could you do it? You could covertly imbed the information in otherwise straightforward and required data elements. Your cheater crew can run query code containing the algorithm (imbedded info) any time they want on your database to tease out the fake registration records and create a fake registration dataset that can the be used for nefarious purposes.
Such an encrypted code has, indeed, been applied to subsets of the state voter IDs. By “subsets” I mean volumes sufficient to throw any election, except a complete landslide, in favor of the cheaters’ candidate. The encryption is straightforward once it has been identified – and indeed has been verified by independent parties with expertise in that area. However, the encryption was very well hidden. It is not applied to all registration records. Rather, records have been partitioned into groups (via a separate partitioning algorithm) and the encryption only applied to some groups. It is 100% present for records in the applied group. Again, this has now been independently verified. This is NSA level work.
Worse, from the perspective of election integrity and security, virtually all registrations to which the algorithm that have been physically canvased have proven to be fake. There are approximately 2 million impacted voter registrations in NY state. Obviously, there is no way to go knock on 2 million doors. A representative sample was selected and, again, all canvased impacted records turned out to be fake registrations. Worse yet, for election integrity, all of those phony registrations voted in the 2020 election.
That said, we do not know for whom they voted. The point here is that someone went to the trouble of creating, encrypting and imbedding a fairly advanced algorithm into state voter registration databases. That is a crime in itself. Someone then used the algorithm to create and, presumably track, fake voter registrations; fake registrations that then somehow voted.
I do not believe that state boards of election are involved, at least not directly. That represents too many people who would need to keep quiet and there would be a lack of conspiracy continuity when there are personnel changes. I believe that the work is being done by consulting companies who are actually fronts for a certain federal agency (or agencies) in conjunction, possibly, with the DNC – but that is speculation on my part.
There’s more, and you will soon enough be hearing about it publicly as there is going to be a legal and media campaign around the topic in the near future.
and view the Albany Election Committees Presentation
What the woman has to say is disturbing, but the what the gentleman presents is more so. He is a friend of mine and “the algorithm” is what I have personally reviewed closely. It’s real. It is not an artifact of some innocent process as far as I and various other experts can tell. It is sophisticated programming that is highly suggestive of NSA level. With the algorithm and mail in ballots, rigging an election is absolutely possible. The state refuses to address anything presented. The same issues – including the algorithm – are present in other states’ registration records.
There is more and it will be landing hard, soon.
Comment: This is from a few comments by Eric Newhill from a conversation between Eric and LeaNder. Eric pointed out the work of a group called the New York citizens Audit (NYCA) in identifying the presence of unauthorized algorithms in the New York State Voter Rolls. Eric said he worked on this project and should have good knowledge of what was found. I have not yet watched the NYCA videos on their findings, but I have no reason to doubt they found something anomalous in the New York systems. What I am skeptical of is both Eric’s and the NYCA’s supposition that this has already led to rigged elections. But I think Eric is more sure of a potential for a rigged election rather than actual evidence of a rigged election. I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong.
Eric surmises that these are NSA level algorithms and further surmises that the NSA might be working with the DNC to rig elections using this algorithm. But unless there’s something more in the NYCA work, I think a more likely scenario is that the New York State Voter Rolls have been hacked by the Russians or Chinese. As far back as 2017 we were informed that the Russians managed to hack the voting systems in 39 states before the 2016 election. Obama even used the red phone to warn Putin off when this was discovered. In 2019 “the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Thursday that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, an effort more far-reaching than previously acknowledged and one largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time.” I do wonder if Eric or the NYCA address this possibility. Beyond that, I find New York State’s failure to address the NYCA finding, if it is a refusal, to be the height of negligence. And what is DHS going to do with these findings?
A pair of inert air-launched SM -6s missiles on a US Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet from VFA-192 at Inouye International for RIMPAC 2024. Its designation is XAIM-174B, so clearly the focus is on air-to-air rather than air-to-surface
The two missiles sport the designation XAIM-174B (or NAIM-174B) and were carried by Super Hornets belonging to the VFA-2 and VFA-192 taking part in RIMPAC 2024 exercise.
On Jul. 2, 2024, an F/A-18E Super Hornet belonging to the VFA-192 “Golden Dragons” deployed with CVW-2 aboard USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier was photographed taxiing at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, carrying two AIM-174B missiles, the air-launched variant of the SM-6 missile. The shots taken by photographer @aeros808 who told us that at least one Super Hornet from two flights of two aircraft from VFA-2 and VFA-192 flew with the new (inert) AIM-174Bs.
The Super Hornets are among the assets currently taking part in Rim of The Pacific 2024 (RIMPAC 2024), the world’s largest international maritime exercise hosted by the U.S. Navy and started on June 27, 2024. The drills involve 29 nations and more than 25,000 personnel, set to run June 27 to Aug. 1, in and around the Hawaiian Islands.
This is the first time we got a confirmation that the air-launched variant of the Standard Missile 6 (SM-6) surface-to-air missile designed to be used on Navy ships in conjunction with the Aegis Combat System and also known as the RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missile (ERAM), has been developed for the air-to-air role. In fact the designation XAIM stands for eXperimental Air Intercept Missile (once the weapon completes testing and is fielded, it will be known as AIM-174B).
Actually, it could also be NAIM as the N prefix is used for special tests and modifications: “used for vehicles, which are modified so extensively for special tests, that a reconversion to the original configuration is neither planned nor feasible at reasonable costs.” Here’s a photo we received from Instagram user the_808_airspace who shot a VFA-2 F/A-18F taking off with the AIM-174B clearly visible under the left wing.
A F/A-18E Super Hornet from VFA-113 onboard USS Carl Vinson loaded with a CATM-174B, a captive training round, during a ship tour for RIMPAC 2024. All three F/A-18E/F VFAs of CVW-2 attached to USS Carl Vinson have apparently received AIM-174B.
Previously, on Apr. 17, 2024, a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet most probably from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 9 was spotted with with the same missile about 60 miles north of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake during testing that preceded the delivery of the AIM-174B to the squadron likely to carry out Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E), a testing phase conducted on production, or production representative weapons, to determine whether systems are operationally effective and suitable to support a Full-Rate Production (FRP) decision.
The very first sighting of a Super Hornet carrying an SM-6 variant dates back to 2021, when an F/A-18F from VX-31 was photographed with the same missile under its wing: this means that the U.S. Navy is working on an air-launched version of the SM-6/RIM-174 from at least three years.
Comment: I didn’t know this was in the works. I know there are other long range air to air missiles in development. We sorely need them since Russian and Chinese air-to-air missiles are purported to outrange anything we have. The SM-6 in the air-to-air mode seems like a no-brainer. It’s a proven missile and a proven airframe. The RIMPAC tests will probably test the integration of the SM-6/Super Hornet with other airborne and shipborne sensor platforms, perhaps even satellite platforms. Should be interesting, although I doubt we’ll hear any specifics.
I have to admit, my first thought was that this would be perfect to take out those Russian aircraft launching glide bombs into Ukraine, but we will not be giving our F/A-18s and especially our SM-6s to Ukraine. We’ll see Meteor equipped Gripens before we see SM-6s in Ukraine. Until then, Ukraine may have to try their Patriot ambushes although we’ll probably raise a stink about that. We did the first time they did that. Or maybe those F-16s with AIM-120s could do this, but they would be vulnerable to Russia’s R-37s operating that close to the front.
