For example the Patriot missiles, technology from the mid-1980s, and at 4 to 7 million dollars each to deploy them against a $30,000 drone is a major self-own (plus they're normally launched in pairs). Against modern hypersonic missiles they're close to useless. The US only recently started training drone operators as integral members of a platoon and has not even started the bidding process for something like the Geranium drone. Abrams and Challenger tanks turned out to be too mechanically delicate and every bit as prone to repeated drone hits as the T-80s which opposed them. They're all gone, I think the last Challenger was seen in Kursk. The sadly obsolete F-16 is the only NATO aircraft involved, and it doesn't dare venture near the front. but anything newer requires paying obscene amounts of money for aircraft with extremely stringent airfield requirements.

I'll stop there.

Delivery wasn't their core competency, but logistics **IS** and they're farming that out now.

My bad, A14, the 2020 version. For a country which has only been developing its own lithography systems for less than a decade it's pretty amazing.

*facepalm*

So has Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Norway and the US. When the Peruvians tried to protect their anchovy harvest Reagan (IIRC) sent warships to protect them.

Circle of life. Sometimes it's good to look at the big picture.

It really is about the only decision that Rump has made that I can actually support.

Sorry to tell you this, but Libertarianism *is* the radical position. Most people want the mega-corporations put back on a short leash, some of us are old enough to remember the Cuyahoga River burning on national television. It took a fairly conservative Republican president to fix that situation.

They're a maze, deliberately confusing to allow punishment or reward their favorite media to frame the debate any way the administration in power wants.

If he wanted Zelinsky gone the Spetsnaz would be happy to do the job. Instead he's doing a great job demilitarizing and depopulating Ukraine, draining NATOs reserves, and demonstrating the poor quality of US/EU weapons to the world. As Napoleon supposedly said, "Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."

Oops, hit Post too soon.

Meant to add that BRICS+ and the SCO have the high mucky-mucks in DC and Wall Street worried. Something over 1/3 of international trade is being conducted in currencies other than the USD, something unthinkable only five years ago. When you lock three of the largest petroleum producers in the world, Venezuela, Iran and Russia, out of the SWIFT exchange (and then steal the funds they had in it) alternatives are going to arise. Now Saudi Arabia, India, China and Brasil are all happy to trade in any currency that is convenient as well.

Yep, those sanctions are working so well! (For everyone but the US, anyway.)

I'm sure the example of Grenada still has the Third World quaking in its boots. Oh, wait, they watched us get our asses kicked for most of two decades by goat herders armed with 40 year old Kalashnikovs, I'm not sure that the fabled "intimidation" is all that forceful now.

"I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that."
  - Britney Spears, truly one of the deep thinkers of our time.

The right wing essentially took over the Democratic Party in the late-'80s/early-'90s, Richard Nixon was too liberal to be a Democratic presidential candidate today.

As I've been saying for years, this is by design. They're giving the true constituents, the mega-corps that make them rich both personally and as a group, everything on their wish list while telling voters, "We can't do anything for you right now because those meanies on the other side of the aisle won't let us. Give us more money so we can help you!"

Heads they win, tails we lose.