I cover mostly military topics here at the LI Blog per my charter but on occasion I cover other topics. The Washington State ferry system is in tatters. It continues to get worse barely a week into the new year: Washington State Ferries needs 17 boats to operate at full capacity, but only 14 are currently in service, forcing reduced schedules on three critical routes as the aging fleet faces mounting mechanical problems. The troubled start to 2026 began New Year's Day when a propeller blade broke off the 57-year-old Walla Walla during a Seattle-Bremerton crossing. The problems continued...

The easiest solution to this is stand the entire military industrial complex down until they fix this. But that is far too responsible. The fraud you are seeing in MN, WA and MA is large but the financial mismanagement in the Pentagon is hundeds of billions of dollars and no one ever lose their job or goes to jail. and The Government Accountability Office conducted the report to assist the Pentagon in meeting its timeline for a clean audit by 2028. DOD has failed every audit since it was legally required to submit to one each year beginning in 2018. In fact, the Pentagon is the only one of...

“You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” - Ayn Rand I have said that aircraft carriers are the chariot and crossbow of the 21st century not fit for purpose on the oceans and the tank is certainly a nominee for that notion. Manned tanks are not fit for purpose on the 21st century battlefield. Again, the lack of martial imagination in the Army is breath-taking. A detailed breakdown of M1E3 program expectation is here. The inclusion of an auto-loader and the crew reduction from four to three may cause significant issues but the greater issue is that...

Happy New Year! Block 4 in concert with TR-3 (Technology Refresh 3) is the upgrade to solve all the inherent problems of the bird to include its poor design choices from the beginning of this massive failed program (a 2023 Congressional mandate). According to the GAO, that Block 4 upgrade is delayed until 2031. It will continue to slow shuffle as it matures from the initial 2019 start for the Block 4 upgrades. “The program plans to reduce the scope of Block 4 to deliver capabilities to the warfighter at a more predictable pace than in the past.” The casual reader will be forgiven for...

POTUS revealed the latest US naval ship catastrophe, the Mango Emperor-class battleship. Apparently he and his staff did not get the memorandum from 8 December 1941. The US Navy has not built a successful hull since the Arleigh Burke (early 90s) and has had huge problems with the Zumwalt, Little Crappy Ship and the Ford carrier. Did I mention the latest mercifully euthanized USN Constellation frigate program that got cancelled after the Navy sunk nearly $2 billion into the program before cutting it in late 2025, with costs per ship rising from $1B to $1.4B? Those costs would not have been...

The Chasing Ghosts and WarNotes podcasts are on Christmas vacation, next episode will be published on Monday, 5 January 2026.   See you next year. Stay strapped for Christmas...

I love it that the National Health Service (NHS) socialist medical horror show in the UK uses the handle NHSuk on the X. The United Kingdom prides itself on this crown jewel of medical malpractice & incompetence that is a love child of Benny Hill, Trofim Lysenko and Nikolai Alexandrovich Semashko. Yes, it does indeed SUCK.