“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.

The foreign purchase entanglement and moral hazard of overspending of the F35 is emblematic of making a two trillion dollar purchase over time where the money is simply wasted but driven to completion by the sheer momentum of the insane and imbecilic US military acquisition system. If you have read my blog here at LI, you know I take the F35 to task all the time because it is a warning for today and far into the future on what NOT to do. The F35 fiasco has literally stripped the US military capability to fight in the 21st century peer combat theaters of this century. The military value of a...

The British Army is in the same crisis mode as the Royal Navy; they're a post-imperial military basket case that could not fight an invasion of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models. They would be defeated. Across the board with the possible exception of the vaunted Special Air Service and the Royal Marines, the British military project is a shambles. It can't float submarines that do the right thing, it can't deploy its conventional-fueled aircraft carriers and it has experienced a steady decline in manpower across the board. Per the Ajax Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV): Health & Safety...

So pardon me for a rather technical discussion that points out yet another flaw in the haunted and ridiculously poorly performing F35 program. Why was Shipborne Rolling Vertical Landing (SRVL) EXTREMELY important for the UK carriers? The SRVL capability needs as little as 10% of the F-35B entire fuel capacity during the landing process. During SRVL, the F-35B nose is pitched up and the fighter glides to a landing by friction on wheels only, with no outside assistance. As good as this capability is at conserving fuel, it is very difficult and dangerous, there is no guarantee SRVL will work...