A Saying By The Roman Marcus Tullius Cicero
Who was a bit of a polymath, being a statesman, philosopher, academic, lawyer, orator and writer. What does he mean? O I thought you'd never ask! The essence here, as true today as is was 2,000 years ago, is that war is a very expensive business, that you need deep coffers to sustain. Art!
This is the AI Art Generator's idea of a 'Messerschmidt 323 Gigant', which I couldn't use in Saturday's blog but didn't want to delete. The upper hull and nose do kind of resemble the Teuton plane in question. Where the legs came from I cannot tell.
ANYWAY if money is the sinews of war, that is, providing the strength, oil is the lifeblood of modern warfare and effectively has been since the end of the First Unpleasantness, when mechanisation really took off. Art!
This is the mordant and telling 'Ruffian Refinery Bingo' scoresheet, which was up to date as of 5th November, but is highly likely to be out of date already, as the Ukrainians simply have not stopped their drone campaign. The Volgograd refinery has, from Friday, ceased operating thanks to damage caused. Art!
The Ruffian port of Tuapse, which is their terminus on the Black Sea for oil products, no longer has any tankers loading in port. Ooops.
This is background information, just to get across that perhaps up to 50% of Ruffian oil is no longer being refined, meaning the higher prices per barrel for petrol, diesel, kerosene, aviation fuel or fuel oil are no longer being paid, only the lower prices for crude - if it can be exported (see above) when exports are not banned, as they are with petrol and diesel. Art!
'Jason Jay Smart' whose vlog I am mining for this info. He quotes 'Fuel and cash drive movement, repairs and morale', which is fair enough, but over-reaches when he states that fuel starvation ends wars. It's rather more nuanced than that, JJ. Art!
He uses the analogy of Nazi Germany in 1944. Conrad would argue that insufficient fuel helped to degrade the Teuton war effort, considerably so, yet did not end the war in 1944. What you see above is a phenomenon that became increasingly common: a panzer abandoned intact when it ran out of fuel. The Teutons had imported oil from South Canada, Venezuela, the Sinister Union and Romania pre-war. The first three of those were eliminated as sources one by one, leaving only the Ploesti oil fields in Romania as a source, which simply could not supply enough. Even making synthetic fuels from coal was insufficient. This not only affected vehicles on the battlefield, it severely restricted training of pilots and general air operations. Art!
You're looking at the Kolovtsey fuel pipelines outside Barad-Dur, which supply petrol, diesel and aviation fuel to the front lines. Or did. This will have a braking effect on Ruffian operations on land and in the air. Not and end to their war effort but a great deal of grit thrown into the works. Art!
Next up is a rather grim-faced Rommel, and JJ claims that his offensives in Libya were severely hamstrung as his fuel supplies were interdicted en route across the Mediterranean. This is absolutely true; thanks to Malta, that unsinkable aircraft carrier and harbour, paired with Ultra decrypts, convoys of Italian shipping and tankers were routinely targeted and sunk. Fuel could only be safely and expeditiously landed at the port of Tripoli in the Italian colony of Libya, and then had an enormous 1,250 mile trip to the front lines, meaning every single gallon of petrol delivered required 8 to get there. Art!
Ruffian fuel train being flammable
The Ukrainians are taking a page from the RAF and RN's 1942 playbook, hitting fuel trains as well as regional fuel depots, starving the orcses occupation forces. Again, not ending the war, just making it much more difficult for the invaders.
JJ also throws in what Conrad considers to be a red herring: Iraq 1991, claiming that the Iraqi forces collapsed when their fuel supplies were cut off in the rear. Art!
I consider this more the effect of absolutely overwhelming Coalition air superiority, in addition to extremely rapid ground advances utilising overwhelming firepower and technology. This is not to say JJ doesn't have a point; if you look at the vehicle column above, there are lots of intact vehicles that have been abandoned, either out of fuel or raw crew terror.
Hmmm so much for including Mordorvian provincial budget problems. Maybe tomorrow. I bet you can hardly wait.
More Of Gigantic Ants
I know, I know, I've really beaten this subject to death and then sucked all the juices out of it, except for couple of points that occurred to me earlier. In 'Them!' we see the monstrous final form of the giant ants and the entrance to their underground nest. Art!
The large conical structure on fire thanks to a bombardment with white phosphorus shells. Well, what happened to the earlier nests established by the smaller ants? Did they move out of them when they got uncomfortably large and burrow out a new home? If so, where are the old nests? Answering my own question, possibly eroded away by the desert environment.
You might quibble about how long the ants remained undetected, each being as big as a car. Doctor Medford explains this in his address to the military and FBI: the ants live in a remote part of New Mexico, near Alamogordo, with no residents and few travellers. They live underground during daytime and emerge at night, when it's a lot cooler. The few unfortunate Hom. Sap. who come across them are immediately killed and eaten. If there had been any Park Rangers stationed there, they might have noticed a decline in local animal populations as they got to be ant chow. Art!
Conrad Cavils!
I have noticed a considerable number of items from 'FactByte' on my news feed, which put up a blurb, accompanied by a completely wrong photograph. The Centurion tank just missing The First Unpleasantness is a case in point. Here is another website continuing shoddy practice. Art!
What's wrong with this picture?
It's from 'The Martian', not 'Project Hail Mary'. The only connection is that both were written by Andy Weir and I've read both of them.
Bah!
A New Drain On My Time
Conrad was idly scrolling through Netflix shows whilst taking a break from binge-watching 'Resident Alien' and came across the following. Art
The plot is right there in the title: an underground refuge for 46 families who can afford to pony up at least €48 million to be part of 'El Refugio Atomico', or 'The Atomic Shelter'. They are expected to adjourn there if things start to get bad across the globe, which happens after 15 minutes and you get the Ruffians trying to take on the 'Atlantic Alliance', presumably not 'NATO' because that would result in legal action.
By the end of Episode One, we realise that there is a verrrry sinister purpose behind this refuge, which is most certainly not for providing protection for the rich and privileged. We are told that it took 7 years to construct and is underneath a lake, which immediately made me wonder about emergency exits.
We shall see. Art!
 |
| The sole entrance, also known as a single point of failure. |
Excitement On The Oldham Line
OR
Do Not Ram The Tram
'Twould appear that bluebottle set out in pursuit of a couple of chavs in a car that failed to stop for a marked police car, surely not an indication of the pair being pure of heart and intent. They gave up the pursuit after a short chase, and then the dimwit due managed to collide with a tram at the Oldham Flyover, a point on the tram route Your Humble Scribe has travelled countless times. Art!
Tram 1 Car 0. After coming to an abrupt stop, the pair were arrested and their reason for fleeing was the discovery of Class A drugs on one of them. Ooops.
That stony silence is Conrad expressing sympathy.
AND WITH THAT WE ARE DONE!
No comments:
Post a Comment