US will send Ukraine more modern version of Abrams tank thehill.com/policy/defense… "The United States plans to send its more updated version of the M1 Abrams tank to Ukraine, a vehicle that is considered deadlier and has more upgrades than its predecessor" 1/
2/ The U.S. cannot ship the tanks immediately because the U.S. military does not “have these tanks available in excess in our U.S. stocks,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Thursday.
3/ The Pentagon intends to procure the tanks through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), meaning it will buy the Abrams directly from its maker General Dynamics to then be shipped to Ukraine, a process that “is going to take months,” Singh said.
4/ She explained that the schedule will give U.S. officials time to train Ukrainian troops on the advanced weapon.
5/ “These things are going to require training maintenance, sustainment, that is going to take a very long time to also train in Ukrainians on,” she said. “We took that into account. That’s why we are using the USAI capability in order to procure these tanks for the Ukrainians.”
6/ The decision came after a week of behind-the-scenes negotiations between the U.S. and its NATO allies.
7/ It also marks a remarkable about-face for the Biden administration, which had previously insisted the Abrams would be of little benefit to Ukraine due to its costly and laborious maintenance and upkeep.
MY TAKE: So let me get this straight...we're giving our most sophisticated versions of this #Abrams tank (that we don't have enough of), that'll take months to train Ukrainians on & to shop to Ukraine while the Russkies are massing & attacking now?
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2/ n any case, about 14 tanks will be sent to Ukraine, i.e. they would leave Evros, where heavy equipment was located to counter the Turkish invasion, and go to Ukraine to fight the Russians.
3/ includes Greece among the countries from which the delivery of Leopard tanks is expected. It says that the “Leopards”, which in the future will be used to repel Russian aggression, will be not only from Germany, but also from other countries.
2/ Russia’s largest tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) has delivered the new batch of T-90M Proryv main battle tanks to Russian Army.
3/ “Uralvagonzavod has successfully fulfilled its next contract for the delivery of T-90M Proryv tanks. The armor batch has already been sent to the Defense Ministry of Russia,” the news release says.
Pentagon must act now on quantum computing or be eclipsed by rivals c4isrnet.com/thought-leader…@davidpgoldman Dr, Kessel & myself have been warning our audiences for some time about this prospect... 1/
2/ When former Pentagon’s Chief Data Officer, David Spirk, left his post in March 2022, he did so with a warning: “I don’t think that there are enough senior leaders getting their heads around the [cybersecurity] implications of quantum…
3/ I think that’s a new wave of computers that, when it arrives, is going to be a pretty shocking moment to industry and government alike.”
Russia delivers 200 T-90M tanks to Pro-Russian forces of Lugansk People's Republic armyrecognition.com/ukraine_-_russ… Why the #tank argument is silly. #Russia has already offloaded 200 T-90Ms to its forces in E. Ukraine & Ukraine won't receive a handful of NATO tanks until "several months"
2/ these T-90M tanks come directly from the factory of the Uralvagonzavod tank manufacturer located in the city of Nizhny Tagil. These tanks will strengthen the existing military units of the Pro-Russian Armed Forces in the region.
3/ For several weeks, Russia has been increasing the deployment of its latest generation of T-90M tanks in the theaters of operations in Ukraine.
Xi Jinping taps spy chief Wang Huning to draft China's new Taiwan policy | Taiwan News | 2023-01-26 17:24:00 taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4791717 This is not going to bode well. For anyone... 1/
2/ With the help of Wang’s expertise in political theory, Xi is expected to announce a new policy towards Taiwan within the coming months. The move could signal an end to the era of the “one country, two systems” proposal championed by Beijing for decades.
3/ According to an analysis published by Nikkei, the CCP’s own actions in Hong Kong, & the reaction of Taiwanese citizens, has made the idea of “one country, two systems” an untenable policy proposal. As a result, Xi and Wang must now plot a new course for cross-strait relations.
ChatGPT's Epic Shortcoming, by @NonzeroNewsopen.substack.com/pub/nonzero/p/… ChatGPT has an opinion about torture. Namely: It’s OK to torture Iranians, Syrians, North Koreans, and Sudanese, but not other people." 1/
2/ It’s not easy to get ChatGPT to share this view. OpenAI, its creator, wisely made it reluctant to say incendiary things.
3/ So if you just ask ChatGPT what national groups should be tortured or what racial groups are superior, or how to build a bomb it won’t give you a straight answer.