chart of the strikes and which missiles were used.

Noteworthy here is that Russia isn't using as many Shaheds anymore even though the idea was that they'd be ramping up to use more and more. Instead, Russia has been using a lot of extremely expensive high performance cruise missiles like the Kalibr, KH-101, KH-31, Kinzhal, KH-22, and S-300/400 in ground attack mode.

The attack this week (81 missiles) was not the largest in 2023 – the largest was one month ago with 105 total. This attack was different in terms of type of systems used, launch locations, variation of launchers and missile trajectories, making it complex to defend against. /4 It featured 6 Kinzhal hypersonic ALBMs – the largest salvo so far of them in the war and the largest recorded for combat use of this missile. Russia doesn't have large numbers of this system, rumored in the dozens. More on that: /5

Ukrainian officials say they cannot intercept Kinzhal, Kh-22 ASCMs and S-300 (SA-20) air defense missiles repurposed for land attack roles. too fast, trajectory is difficult. They claim Russia has fired 210 Kh-22 since 2022, none of them intercepted. /6 The Kh-22 (AS-4) Soviet-era ASCM was designed to be an aircraft carrier killer. It is not very precise, but it is supersonic. /7

From the info that I have, there is no set pattern to the makeup of the strike packages this year. Many are ASCMs or SAMs purposed for land-attack roles. A few reasons for this in no particular order: experimentation to see what works, stockpile issues, launcher readiness. /8

Note, no SS-26/SSC-7 in quite some time, probably as inventory is low. They are using different combinations of balloons, Shaheds, timing waves of missiles, shifting launch locations, and so on, to reduce interception rates. /8

Not depicted in the chart - each strike originates from slightly different locations. They haven’t launched much from Belarus in the last month, according to Ukrainian officials. It's a mix from Belgorod, Caspian+ Black Sea, Rostov, Kursk, and occupied Zaporizhzhia. /9

While the Russians likely know the limitations and strengths of Ukraine’s soviet/Russian origin SAMs, they are likely trying to probe weaknesses in NASAMS or IRIS-T performance. /10

Back in November, NASAMs had a 100% success rate according to SECDEF Austin. /11

I don't doubt that an AMRAAM can achieve a 100% success rate against cruise missiles. It is extraordinarily capable and intended to engage fighter jets deploying countermeasures and high G maneuvers, so a cruise missile is fish in a barrel for it.

As for overall targets – most of these strikes are continuing to target the power grid, an oil refinery, defense industrial targets – what is called “critical infrastructure” in Russian mil strategy. However, missiles are striking residential buildings. /12

Russia has a decent amount of firepower to throw at fixed targets like buildings, but is extremely bad at hitting moving targets because Russia seriously neglected ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) capabilities. Honestly speaking, the reason Ukraine turned the war around is because outstanding American ISR is being fed to Ukraine. The US identifies the Russian ammo dumps and HQs, then feeds the targets to Ukraine for HIMARS strikes. Russia seriously neglected these expensive capabilities in favor of having bigger firepower numbers on paper, but all that firepower is useless if you can't find targets for it. One of the greatest lessons of this war for any in doubt, is that the American warfighting doctrine of C3ISR which has been around since at least the 90s, won against Russias "just have the most tanks and artillery and throw them at the enemy" doctrine which has remain essentially unchanged from WW2. A handful of HIMARS were able to shut down Russia's offensive operations by taking out ammo dumps and HQs over June/July 2022, and Russia's forced mitigation measures of pulling HQs and ammo dumps further back and dispersing them more, have hampered its ability to mass the force required to break through anywhere, which is why they have to resort to Wagner's human wave tactics which... well, they're going to run out of prisoners long before Ukraine runs out of trenches.

Is Russia following their CONOPs for PGMs? Yes and no. On one hand there is an adherence to striking critical infrastructure, but on the other hand they not found lasting effects from this approach and haven’t switched to a fundamentally different strategy. /15

Ukraine just repairs their grid. Power was up again for something like 90% of people within hours of Russia's latest big attack. Russia can only launch these attacks every few weeks. So these attacks at this point are a strategic failure and only a mild nuisance.

Final thought - Russia is facing PGM inventory issues and is experimenting with what it has left. These attacks strain Ukrainian air defenses and this is a problem over time. The attacks come every few weeks. thanks for reading/end.

It has already been said that Russia's stockpiles of missiles are gone, and now Russia is just relying on how fast it can produce more. In the longer term I'd assume that Russia will be able to pump out Shaheds, but who knows how long they'll take to get their new factory set up and what its capacity will be. Using their Cold War era higher end cruise missiles is a waste, since those missiles are meant to sink carriers, not be thrown at heavy concrete buildings.

source: https://twitter.com/MassDara/status/1634300311744438272

The main reason the Left has been winning is that they have been far more willing to sacrifice their own personal interest for their sake of their ideology. Right wingers generally are not.

The Left was at its nadir in the 1980s, after having run amok in the 1960s and 70s. The backlash came in the 80s and crushed the Left for a generation. The 90s were a Leftist period of rebuilding and recovery, with the LGBT movement being the most energized, active, and growing tip of their spear. It wasn't blacks: Rodney King led to an immediate chimpout which set back any sympathy for blacks + OJ Simpson getting off made blacks cheer but hurt their image.

Which is why in the 2000s, the Left rallied around the LGBTs. They were not successful most of the decade and got overshadowed by 9/11.

But when the 2008 financial crisis hit + American war weariness with the Iraq/Afghanistan wars + "libtard messiah" Obama, the Left got extremely aggressive to counter-attack, and it worked for a short time, until the Tea Party movement blocked it in 2010.

But by this point the Left was in "all gas, no brakes" mode and it had a very, very effective war machine radicalizing college kids and then weaponizing them to infiltrate corpos.

The Right's Tea Party quickly failed as a movement. It was taken over by loser grifter candidates and the public simply didn't give a fuck about fiscal responsibility.

As the Tea Party fell, the libtards roared into nonstop attack, with occupy wall street followed by BLM.

The Right BARELY squeaked a victory in the 2016 election with Trump, and Trump proceeded to radicalize the Left even more, while also giving them TDS. Trump actually made the Left stronger in many ways, since he kept making them angry constantly. Long term this might help the Right by getting the Left to drop their mask, but it also means in the short term we have to put up with a lot of extremely aggressive libtards pushing their bullshit as hard as they can.

We are now in a situation similar to the late 1970s where the libtards have seized and held power, and ruined the US economy with inflation, while also causing a huge increase in crime. This iteration, the Left has also added a morally disgusting LGBT angle trying to openly destroy children with tranny shit. Therefore, while we should expect that a backlash is coming, it just isn't going to happen by itself. We on the Right need to make it happen.

Jon Stewart's sanctimonious argument goes like this:

• Trannies doing drag shows for kids = free speech!

He then baits the evil Republican into saying we need to protect children.

• The "leading cause of death among children in this country" is firearms! more than cancer! more than car accidents!

• You don't mind infringing free speech, but you don't give a flying fuck about dead children!!!!!!!!!!

As always, liberal arguments are lies, and designed around emotional manipulation. Take a good hard look at this chart showing the causes of death of "children and adolescents age 1-19" since it is Stewart's source.

1. 19 year olds are not "children". Nobody thinks when you say "children" you are including people age 18 & 19, and most people see "children" as more like ages 1-12. Stewart's source does not say "children" it says "children and adolescents" but even then, it has to explain how it defines the term because its wrongly roping in 18 and 19 year old adults. Let me assure you that the vast majority of gun deaths were from 18 and 19 year olds, and almost none were from 1-12 year olds.

2. Existing studies show that street crime and gang violence peak at ages 17-19.

3. Gun deaths were not the leading cause of death until a sudden spike in 2020.

4. You will notice that firearm deaths were declining until 2014, when they started to rise, then SPIKED in 2020. Why did this happen? BLM. BLM caused liberal Democrat DAs and politicians to stop their cops from doing their jobs, and to stop prosecuting black violent criminals. This meant a large spike in crime which began to build in 2014, and spiked hugely in 2020 and 2021. And the source proves this hidden in an appendix, which shows the vast majority of these gun deaths are blacks.

5. Therefore the real issue here is that Democrats and their soft on crime embrace of BLM & refusal to prosecute blacks, caused a large increase in black gang violence. Gang violence peaks in the group included in this chart, and it's no wonder why this age range was chosen to lend itself to precisely the kind of misrepresentation committed by Stewart here.

6. Gun control would do nothing to stop older teen gang violence since the guns used are always illegal to begin with.

7. Drag shows being considered adult and thus not being allowed for children is not a free speech issue. The 1A allows for "time, place, or manner" restrictions. Pornography is free speech, and yet we all know porn can't be sold to minors. Same thing.

8. Many liberals take this a step further and like to argue or imply that this bodycount is the result of school shooters when it's really suicide and gang violence. School shooters, while they get all the headlines, barely kill anyone and don't even show up on the statistics if you tried to put them there. Typically lightning strikes kill more people per year than school shooters.

9. Drag shows are not presently illegal but gun crimes already exist. It's unclear what Jon Stewart thinks the hypocrisy is or what he thinks the solution is, but we all know what he wants: total gun confiscation along the Australians & European models. All because libtard politicians and DAs let their black gangs run amok.

I know this isn't the 1st time I've debunked this trash. It isn't a new argument. It's been around since at least May 19, 2022 based on that misleading propaganda article.

If you don't know what this is, Hershey in canada made a stupid ad for "women's day" with a tranny in it. The Daily Wire hosts made a lot of fun of this, and rolled out a rapid response offering to sell a "Jeremy's Chocolate" supposed alternative to "woke chocolate". This was modeled to look like a repeat of their "Jeremy's Razors" company, which they made to spite a razor company that loudly quit advertising on Daily Wire as a woke virtue signal. They used the same ad style with Jeremy Boreing doing his little "wannabe god king" routine.

So this is their product page. It's $7 for a 1.5oz bar of chocolate. So how much does the same product from Hershey's cost? Only $1.20. That's an insane markup. I just put a single chocolate bar into checkout. It's USD $12.53. For something I can get for $1.20 at the store. It's more than 10x the price.

1. Asking conservatives to pay $7 for a product that widely retails for $1.20 is just taking advantage of and cheating your customers. I haven't priced out Jeremy's Razors, but I'll assume they are competitive. This is not. This is an exploitative short term cash grab, not an attempt to build a new brand or make a competing product. It's just trying to get themselves rich by exploiting a political movement. That's grift.

2. The Daily Wire is not a public company. It's a private for profit corporation owned by Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Boreing, Caleb Robinson, and Farris Wilks. Giving them lots of money doesn't "support the cause" it just boosts their net worth. If the company was taken public, that would be a different story, but as long as it's a private for profit company, it exists to make its owners rich more than anything else. Nothing wrong with that as long as they offer an actually competitive product.

3. I think the whole "Jeremy Boreing as god king" bit is stupid. I think they put him as the front man on these side hustles because he has nothing to do, unlike Shapiro who is churning out content. Jeremy Boreing comes across as effeminate to me to the point of almost seeming homosexual. Him trying to act like a cross between James Bond and Donald Trump doesn't work at all.

4. If you don't know the logistics of how Daily Wire can launch a chocolate product in 24 hours, it is simple. You know how Costco has the Kirkland brand, and how supermarkets have their own "store" brands? Factories that produce products will wholesale those products out with the buyer's branding. China is famous for this especially since nobody wants to buy Chinese branded shit. (though China got better at fake branding and now dominates Amazon, for example) I would bet that all the chocolate factories in the US are already owned by brands. So basically all the Daily Wire did was contact a chocolate wholesaler and set up a contract to buy chocolate in bulk for a discount where the factory will print and package using the Daily Wire's branding. We have no way of knowing what the source of this chocolate is unless they admit it. It could be coming from China for all we know. It should be pretty obvious that DW is paying much less than $1.20 per bar, though.

The Right has to put up with a lot of grifters because the "establishment" doesn't serve us, and for now, we are a niche market which lacks the ordinary competitive checks and balances are more highly competitive market would have.

My main problem with Jeremy's Chocolate is that it is fundamentally disrespectful to charge people an insane markup 583% over Hershey's retail price, and then try to market it as "stick it to the wokes! support conservative business! we're building alternatives!" No you aren't. Stop lying. You're taking advantage. Fuck you.