Everyone was all over this NYT story about those vanishing cargoes of guns in Iraq. It’s nothing new if you’ve been reading this blog; we’ve been concerned about this ever since 2005. And, unlike Spencer Ackerman, we’ve got the whole supply chain; those guns didn’t come on no C-17, Spence, but on JLI and Aerocom…
Read More Belated Bad Logistics BloggingWhat was a small British company doing importing vast quantities of arms from Bosnia? More importantly, what was it doing telling lies about their destination in order to clear Bosnian customs? What was it doing contracting with Tomislav Damjanovic, possibly Viktor Bout, and disgraced Iraqi minister Ziad Cattan to ship them to Iraq when the…
Read More 58,000 AKs in a Nottingham basement?The International Herald-Tribune has an interesting article about a Serbian gun-runner and colleague of Viktor Bout’s, one Tomislav Damjanovic. For some reason it’s in the Style section; most photos of Viktor would seem to rule that out, but the one of Damjanovic they supply does have a certain Balkan sharpness. Anyway, the report is based…
Read More Fascinating Report out on Viktor Bout & CoI’ve recently been experimenting with various ways of automatically gathering information about Viktor Bout’s airlines; you’ve probably noticed the resumption of Pathetic Python Blogging. Anyway, though the project is far from ready, enough of itnow works to produce some useful results. For example, who the hell are “Asia Airways”, who regularly fly between Sharjah and…
Read More Political Pathetic Python; and some mystery jetsThe story that Israeli satellite TV viewers have been experiencing constant interference for several weeks is an interesting one. As has been pointed out, it can’t be the jamming presumably employed during the Deir ez-Zor raid, which would have been over weeks ago. According to the Israeli government it’s all the fault of the Germans!…
Read More The jamming signal increases its humI don’t think this means what Thomas Barnett thinks it does. He argues that the demand for armoured patrol vehicles in Iraq is an example of conflict between the objectives of his “SysAdmin” force, and the Washington-cented, tech-heavy “Leviathan”. Of course, it’s an example of conflict between the centre and the front line, but that’s…
Read More Built-In StupidityI don’t know why Danger Room is so surprised about this; apparently one of the Hungarian Air Force’s new Saab Gripens managed to claim a shootdown of a Eurofighter Typhoon during an exercise (is that the first encounter between 4th generation fighters?). The first point is that the Gripen isn’t second-rate at all, as DR…
Read More Gratuitous Dogfight BloggingAnbar? Here’s your salvation. This frankly terrifies me; didn’t anyone think to restrain the commander guy? This was about the only counterinsurgency success they’ve had, and it’s been pissed away for the sake of a good TV picture-with-the-sound-off. Seriously. Once Bush shook hands with him on live television, he was as dead as if he’d…
Read More WhackedA question that the Chinese-hacker thing brought to mind: why are so many countries that censor the Internet for political speech also riddled with commercial, or just vandalistic, network abuse? Russian Business Network, the well-known all-purpose dodgynet, is a case in point. My own theory is that, especially in China, this may reflect a choice;…
Read More Communication of the unconsciousMichael Hodges’s new book on the history of the Kalashnikov assault rifle is clearly a work that fits in with this blog. And we can say that it’s also well worth reading; not just for the knockabout, although there are some good stories (the brothel in the Izhevsk arsenal; Mikhail Kalashnikov’s special elk soup). As…
Read More Review: “AK47: The Story of the People’s Gun”