Ukraine Needs Air Supremacy To Break Through The Trenches Of The Criminal Tyrant’s Nuclear Rogue State

Ukraine has found it nearly impossible to break through the Russian fortifications, which are dozens of kilometers deep, with millions of mines. 15% of US armor engaged was destroyed. Ukrainians have used sophisticated rocket systems destroying hundreds of mines in one shot, but Orcs come back, reinstall mines. Orcs’ loitering drones (“Lancet”) and attack helicopters have been effective.

We’ve seen this before, in WW1 and WW2. Air supremacy is key. Ukraine must have it. With air supremacy several problems hindering Ukraine will be solved, and Putin’s lines will be pounded (planes carry much higher loads of bombs than missile systems: a French Rafale stealth fighter bomber can carry nine tons of bombs, and an F16 nearly seven tons!)

In 1939, 40 French divisions couldn’t breach the Nazi “West Wall”. That “Wall” even deprived of its heavy guns (sent to coastal fortifications by the Nazis), stopped the Allies for 6 months in 1944-45. 

In central Italy Nazi lines held for years. In particular at the Hitler (later, “Gustav”) line going through Monte Cassino. The Allies found necessary to destroy Monte Cassino, a world famous monastery, and many other monuments.

Formidable entrenched lines are nearly impossible to breach. At Bir Hakeim, in May-June 1942, 3703 French soldiers, carefully buried in the flat desert with mines fields and prepared firing positions, were able to stop the entire Afrika Korps led by Rommel in the front lines, and the entire Italian armor, for 16 days, preventing the encirclement and destruction of the only British (and Allied) army between Britain and India. The French finally evacuated after losing one third of their force, running out of ammunition and accomplishing their mission. Rommel said of his own front line fighting:”The fate of my army depended upon it”. 40 planes were shot down over the battlefield.

As the US force bottled at Anzio showed, air supremacy is crucial. When the black 99th fighter squadron showed up, the beachhead was saved. 

Ukrainians must have air supremacy above Ukraine to block attacks by drones, helicopters and flying bombs dropped from afar. Then they will be able to clear the minefields and trenches in peace. As the Wagner group just showed, in an area without minefields, an armed column can advance very fast with portable anti-aircraft means.

Send F16s!

F16s will not just clear the air, but clear the trenches…

Now, granted a lot of the slow going in providing weapons to Ukraine is that the West… come from the West having no weapons to send. For example, Rafale fighter-bombers would be better than F16s… But there are not enough of them. A bit more than one Rafale a week is produced now (hundreds of suppliers are involved)… The production should be ten times that…  

It takes time to relaunch the production lines. For example, Thales`a giant French military electronics company has decided to relaunch production of Starstreak, which has proven highly successful in Ukraine. Starstreak is an ultrafast anti-aircraft missile with three tungsten darts, a unique conception impervious to jamming and lures. However it will take a year for the new missiles to come out of the Northern Ireland factory. Lockheed suggested restarting the production line of F16s…  

The war Putin launched is a world war: more than 40 democracies are sending weapons to Ukraine, and even the lower assembly of Switzerland, moved by the losses of Leopard tanks trying to breach through the giant Putin fortified lines, has decided to send 25 tanks to Ukraine (through Germany)!

The recently aborted coup of Wagner, the best unit of the Russian army, showed the danger that power in Russia would go from one demented thug who thinks he is an elected president (Putin)  to thugs who know they are thugs and act accordingly. So we are more than ever under the threat of a nuclear exchange, and the more the West dither about winning this war without upsetting who caused it, the greater the risk of nuclear exchange.

So make it so that Ukraine gets air supremacy. Between F15, F 16, F18, Rafales, Grippens and Typhoons, the West has literally thousands of fighter bombers not of the latest generations, but still better than what Ukraine has. They must be sent, and, if anything, the Wagner semi-coup shows that Russia is a nuclear rogue state. 

It needs to be disarmed…

By the way, congratulations to France and Britain for sending SCALP/Storm Shadow stealth cruise missiles to Ukraine. Three French missiles destroyed two bridges (the fourth missile barely missed) between the continent and Crimea.

Chonhar bridge hole from FRENCH SCALP missile used by the Ukraine Armed Forces. Another bridge close by was also disabled in the same strike by another missile (the Russians to their dismay found metal engraved inside with MBDA FRANCE).

Patrice Ayme

Benedict of Nursia established the very first monastery of his new order on this promontory in 529 CE. In Benedict’s time, the road leading to the monastery was already more than 10 centuries old and led to an ancient temple of Apollo. The Nazis used Monte Cassino as a fortress on the Hitler line, south of Rome. So the US Air Force demolished it. The danger to humanity posed by the nuclear rogue state is greater than the danger posed by the Axis in WW2. We have heard it, from the associates of Putin himself:”A world without Russia is not worth having!” (Russia, their way, with themselves on top…)

Science: Discovery Or Construction? Discovery Of Construction!

In his book “To Explain The World: The Discovery Of Modern Science”, Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg asserts that modern science was DISCOVERED. Modern science was out there, under a bush, and a couple of physicists Weinberg esteem (Galileo, Newton), lifted the bush, and uncovered “modern science”.

This may not look like it, but that subtitle itself, that science was discovered, is a speculation on what reality is. In other words, it is a piece of bold philosophy… which, thanks to modern scientific advances in biology, can be philosophically shown to be, most probably, erroneous.

Indeed: is not the mind constructed? Modern experiments in neurobiology have shown this.

The Eye Is Only All-Seeing Because It Is Full Of Ideas And Theories About What It Sees

A kitten shown only a very distorted version of the world does not learn to see correctly.

(In an interesting case of cecity, Weinberg disparages the inventor of analytic geometry, Descartes, who made modern mathematics possible, including infinitesimal calculus, and Newton’s little activities: no Descartes, no Newton. However, once Descartes had invented analytic geometry, and another Frenchman deduced the correct universal attraction law, the work made by Newton was a matter of at most a couple of decades, since Kepler’s laws were already known. Kepler erroneously thought the attraction was 1/distance, when it’s actually 1/square of distance…)

Weinberg tried to clarify the subtitle of his book (‘the discovery of modern science’): science was not just ‘constructed’ but actually ‘discovered’. In truth, one should be careful. Take agriculture. Was it discovered, or invented? Both. Most agricultural products were not just discovered, but also literally engineered, through domestication. (A process which is still poorly understood: how can one get from a wild tree which could poison a human to death by eating twenty nuts, to a nutritious modern almond tree? Is not that an achievement more awesome than Newton’s? And the fact is, millions, nowadays, know how Newton did it, but none how Neolithic farmers made what was deadly, edible.)

Our apparent discoveries modify our brains, so, in a sense, they are constructions. Neurological constructions.

Now let’s ponder this: when something which has been constructed “discovers” something else, has that something else been uncovered, or constructed?

Are then what we think of the things of our world and the architecture our minds are made of, discovered or constructed?

No doubt, some will say, a bridge is constructed. Clearly so, when it is made by hand (as even Heidegger will understand). But, animating these hands are minds. Not just the ones of the builders, but the minds of those who made the minds of the builders. Because cultures, transmitted by languages, make minds.

Furthermore, what is the difference between a bridge made of stones, and a bridge between two neurons, or two systems of neurons? Philosophically speaking, not much.

The point is that we feel, or think we observed,  that things of the world are some way, and from that, we build bridges between neurons, or systems thereof.

Appearances are not just deceiving. Appearances we perceive lead to constructions of, and in, our minds. Shallow makes deep.

The process cannot be any different with “science”. From appearances, that we call “experiences”, we build explanations, connections between neurons, or systems thereof. So what did we truly discover, when we made a scientific discovery?

What we discovered is that we can build a mind in ways not suspected before. And that, somehow, it fits the real world better, meaning we can increase our powers on matter. This is all what modern science is. The same old same old which has made us evolve ever closer to the gods we are becoming at an accelerating pace. For better or worse.

Patrice Ayme