As cold tendrils and dark nights oove into the no-oath one’s thought may turn toward warm blankets that won’t fall onto the floor when one sleeps. Maybe blankets should have magnets that attach them to 24” wide plywood bed where one dreams counting sheep jumping over a fence.
Maybe not. It could be that warm winter quilts should be upgraded to de frappe temperatures of minus zero better. What if quality space blankets were sewn into a quilt sandwiched between layers of polar guard insulation. In contemporary America one’s though easily drifts into other applications for the body heat reflecting and trapping blanket; like its possible utility in concealing one’s location from infrared imaging infrared sensing drones.
Today NPR related that the Ukraine government said its ‘special forces’ had killed a Russian Black Sea fleet naval commander and 35 of his or her senior staff. That made me think of the Al Baghdadi hit coordinated with surveillance drones. Predators and hellfire missiles might well cluster on a heavily defended Russian naval HQ. better than ground troops advancing through lines of perimeter defenders. Can the Pentagon be regarded as a Ukrainian special force?
The Ukraine-Russia conflict reminds me a little of the American civil war battle on the western front and especially the battle of Chickamauga where Sherman’s troops were nearly routed in battle because of a confederate breakthrough union lines that sent union troops pell mel into retreat and a disaster saved only by General Walton’s stand in the middle of the surge of confederate forces that provided enough rear guard defense to let union forces slip away. I suppose Ukraine and the Pentagon are hoping for a breakthrough that would send Russian forces into retreat or otherwise have them overwhelmed and suppressed in order to allow an eventual N.A.T.O. build up on far eastern Ukraine borders with Russia.
That N.A.T.O./Biden fantasy aside, the interesting point meaningful to Americans is Russia’s ineffective missile attacks on Kiev and other salient Ukrainian position that recur about every week. It is as if Russia is field testing modern technology against American air defense systems. Providing Russia with the opportunity to innovate and upgrade ways to sort out missile defenses isn’t too helpful for the prospect of reducing defense spending and paying down U.S. public debt. One might want to sleep soundly at night free of concern of a muscle twitch sending a swarm of hypersonic missiles to vaporize the neighborhood if an A.I. millisecond speed launch decision system gets hit by a cosmic ray on the quantum circuit host. It might have been better to invest in systems to let rural African farmers grow drought and terror-resistant crops.
Traditionally missile designers regard point targets and how to send missiles accurately there. Anti-missile designers consider ways to identify and intercept incoming missiles. Offensive missiles usually are blind to anti-missiles on intercept courses attacking them. With so many ineffective Russian drone and missile attacks it is obvious that people are thinking about how to change the relationships in order to make drone and missile attacks more effectively overcome air defenses.
Even missiles designed to attack air defense missiles are dedicated single purpose systems. In the future missiles launched at point targets probably will have artificial intelligence and or limited capability virtual intelligence guidance that will have anti-missile batteries as their primary target and other targets as secondary targets in case no anti missiles are launched upon them. As American designers invented MIRV and MARV capability for ICBMs during the late stages of the Cold War multiple independent re-targeting vehicles may brake off from primary missiles to seek multiple different targets each with A.I. guidance to select from multiple targets. Some MIRV units can be used as decoy or release spoofing and chaff to disorder or distract anti-missiles such as Patriots from finding a primary target. Other MIRV vehicles could be purposed to detonate the Patriot for-themselves.
One of the problems with anti-missile systems is that even hypersonic missiles and gliders released from MIG-31s flying up high could find multiple targets with different purposes released from the primary hyper-sonic package. Some of those MIRV packages might be adapted to hunting Patriot batteries themselves after the Patriot batteries have given have identified their location by launching on incoming primary missile delivery packages. Hypersonic missiles can deliver force packages to a region and release them for distribution to local enemy hubs inclusive of attacking patriot batteries. Apparently speed is involved in punching, step hook counter-punching and an ability to circle an opponent to deliver jabs and even knock out strikes on opposition force command sites.
If one is a simple soldier trying to stay warm in the trench or an unemployed homeless American on the plains in cold continental winter winds the heat-reflecting and polar guard heat-absorbing quilt may have another value when the sky is filled with surveillance seeking prey.
