I have a different idea about why Trump reversed course (again) and unilaterally called a cease-fire, before his apocalyptic 48-hour deadline expired. Most ascribe this change to market manipulation, and that's probably part of his reasoning, but I think there is something much larger at play.

Susie Wiles, an ardent Christian Zionist, is still serving as Trump's gatekeeper. Joe Kent was excluded from the decision-making process that led to our joint Israeli-American sneak attack assassination bombing raids on 28 Feb. He would have counseled Trump not to make this catastrophic move.

I'm pretty sure Tulsi Gabbard has also been locked out by Wiles. Meanwhile, neocon war hawks like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, and, of course, Bibi Netanyahu, have unlimited access to POTUS Trump. Ted Cruz said he spent all day of 27 Feb with Trump, advising him to go to war against Iran, using the negotiations as a ploy. Trump has even laughingly referred to Pearl Harbor, bragging about the surprise attack.

But even Susie Wiles can't keep the V.P. and the Secretary of State from seeing Trump in person. I believe his insane 48-hour deadline, to essentially see the entire Middle East gas, oil, petrochemical, electrical generation and water desalinization infrastructure destroyed in the war escalation, has caused Vance and/or Rubio to step in forcefully.

Vance, as a former Marine, must be horrified by Graham's excited call for another Iwo Jima, (26,000 casualties, 7,000 KIA). Rubio must be taking angry calls from world leaders, warning against the catastrophe which will unfold if the Middle East is wrecked. Infrastructure that took 50 years and a trillion dollars to build cannot be rebuilt before the global economy is destroyed and mass starvation ensues. If this infrastructure is wrecked, millions will die of immediate dehydration. And it won't matter if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, as there will be nothing to ship out.

And America will be blamed, with Israel, for starting the war that triggered this unprecedented human calamity.

I believe that Vance or Rubio, or both, have pushed past Susie Wiles to tell Trump to call off his insane 48-hour countdown to Armageddon, or they will resign, and tell the world why. A resignation by Vance or Rubio would make the Joe Kent resignation seem like a tiny hiccup. That's why I believe Trump invented his bogus "Iranian negotiations" story, to call off his 48-hour countdown.

https://x.com/Matt_Bracken48/status/2035669264267419959

"But Matt, we have some A-10s roaming at will over Iran now, taking out their missiles and drones! And Cobra helicopters! Surely we will win now? 🧵
[Let's compare and contrast. Iran is 10X larger than South Vietnam, with 6X its 1970 population. Look at what we put up over Vietnam--and we still lost the war. We don't even have a tiny fraction of that over Iran. The weapons that matter will not be found by A-10s or Cobras etc. They are hiding in their launch positions until a warship tries to pass the Strait of Hormuz.] 2.

Will somebody please explain to me how, with the Strait of Hormuz a no-go-zone for the U.S. Navy, and our warships driven out of the Persian Gulf, we can support a USMC amphibious landing on Kharg Island, 750 miles from the eastern tip of Oman?🧵

Is the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group going to storm into the Persian Gulf, where our Burke-class destroyers won't go? Obviously not. This idea is insane. How about by helo and tilt-rotor? Out of range.

What if they stage in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia for helo and Osprey lifts across the Gulf? Russia and China will tell Iran where to aim their drones and missiles while the force is assembling.

Maybe a mass paradrop? Straight into an "Alamo" siege. Great idea. Not.

What if the Marines just capture some of those "small" islands in the Strait of Hormuz? Qeshm is bigger than Okinawa. Larak is bigger than Iwo Jima. Any idea how many Marines and Soldiers it took to conquer just those 2 islands, at what cost in KIA and WIA?

I keep reading absolute MORONS on X telling how some A-10s are "softening up" an area larger than South Vietnam, so that a few thousand Marines can attack and hold . . . what?

It's as if space aliens studying only still images had no sense of scale of earth creatures, and thought a mouse could eat an elephant. It boggles my mind. 2.

I'm getting a strong feeling of déjà vu with Sec War Hegseth's daily repetition of of our record-breaking bombing raid sortie numbers. We've seen this movie before. It does not have a happy ending. 🧵

Tell us when the Strait of Hormuz is open to shipping at pre-28-Feb sneak attack levels. Until then, even if we level every Iranian city, WE ARE LOSING.

And the entire world sees it, and blames us for the global economic wreckage. 2.
The part of the Iran map shaded in red is the bare minimum we'll need to clear with infantry troops. It's bigger than South Vietnam, and it's so rugged it makes the South Dakota Badlands look like Central Park. And Iran has thousands of missiles that can zoom over this area from much deeper inside Iran.

I make these maps because I'm convinced most Americans have no concept of scale when it comes to warfare. 🧵
I point to all the folks high-fiving over a single Marine battalion landing team on its way to the conflict zone. An Amphibious Ready Group's BLT means about 1,200 combat Marines going ashore.

By comparison, and please look at the chart and the islands, Okinawa took 4 Army and 3 Marine divisions 82 days to conquer, at the cost of 12,500 American KIA and 36,000 WIA. Okinawa is smaller than Qeshm.

Iwo Jima, smaller than Larak Island, took a month and 6,800 Marine KIA and 19,000 WIA to subdue.

On both islands, US Navy battleships and cruisers spent weeks blasting every suspected Japanese position with 8" to 16" cannons. All the experts were sure no Japs could be left alive. The experts were wrong.

The Iranians have spent decades digging in for this "Big Event." The Iranian IRGC Shia Islam code of martyrdom is as strong as the Japanese code of Bushido during WW2. They will not surrender, IMHO.

It doesn't matter if we turn Teheran (700 miles north) into a parking lot. 2.

https://x.com/Matt_Bracken48/status/2032494597784354842

Sinking this warship over 3,000KM from Iran was a major blunder, IMHO. This is not like sinking smaller Iranian warships at pier side, with their crews ashore.
🧵
As with beginning this war on Feb 28 with a decapitation sneak attack, [during negotiations], this was, in a sense, drawing first blood, at least in a naval warfare understanding. Why?

War has still not been declared. The Iranian warship had just attended the International Fleet Review in India and was near Sri Lanka when it was torpedoed and sunk without warning, 3,000KM from home.

Why was it a blunder? Now, when the US Navy attempts to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, if any of our warships are sunk or set on fire by Iranian anti-ship cruise missiles, the entire world will say, "What did you expect? You drew first naval warfare blood far away from the conflict zone with a submarine attack."

This sinking also paints a "legit target" sign on every USN warship, pier side or at anchor, anywhere in the world. Anybody remember what happened to the USS Cole during a refueling stop in Aden, Yemen?

That can now happen anywhere in the world that swimmer sappers or speedboats can reach a US Navy warship, and successful attacks will be seen as 100% legitimate acts of war, and not acts of terrorism.

Once again, we have set a precedent we may come to regret.

Now Trump says the US Navy is going to force open the Strait of Hormuz, and escort tankers through.
This is insanely stupid. We can't even protect our 5th Fleet HQ and naval base in Bahrain from being attack.
🧵 truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTru…
Effective IMMEDIATELY, I have ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide, at a very reasonable price, political risk insurance and guarantees for the Financial Security of ALL Maritime Trade, especially Energy, traveling through the Gulf. This will be available to all Shipping Lines. If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible. No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD. The United States’ ECONOMIC and MILITARY MIGHT is the GREATEST ON EARTH — More actions to come. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Mar 03, 2026

If we go to war against Iran, the world economy will crash 🧵
by Matt Bracken / Apr 09, 2025
[Substack link in first reply]
In the event of a kinetic war against Iran, all petroleum tankers will be blocked from leaving the Persian Gulf, not only Iranian ships. Iran has hundreds of mobile truck-mounted anti-ship cruise missiles hidden in rugged mountainous terrain on a wide arc north of Oman and controlling the Strait of Hormuz. This arc is 300 miles wide and 100 miles deep. Iranian missile forces may well act under standing orders to attack all shipping once an American attack on Iran begins. Even a total decapitation strike against Iranian communications will not prevent these standing orders from being carried out. Iran will be determined to share their pain across the region and around the world.

Iranian anti-ship missile forces will not fire all their rockets at the beginning of this conflict. Instead, missile teams will have separate standing orders. Teams will be instructed to scout for shipping and fire at anything in the strait on different timelines after the war begins. Their goal will be to prevent the resumption of shipping for weeks or even months. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards in charge of these missiles will not care about the pain being inflicted upon civilians in Teheran. They will follow their orders with the dedication of Japanese holdouts in the Pacific. 2. Substack link
steelcutter.substack.com/p/if-we-go-to-…

AS A BOOMER (b. 1957) who is being blamed for all the ills afflicting subsequent generations: 🧵
1. I did not vote to establish the private Federal Reserve in 1913. I was not born until many decades later.
2. I did not vote to change our real silver coins ("money") for copper coins painted silver. I was 8 years old in 1965.
3. I did not vote to change our Silver Certificate Dollars (which could be exchanged for silver coins) to pure fiat Federal Reserve Notes. I was 11 years old in 1968.
4. I did not vote to "close the gold window" in 1971. Nixon did that. I was 14 years old.

What happened to all Americans was the planned and structured debasement of our federal reserve currency (it's not real money). The 4 steps listed above allowed the politicians of both parties to print FRNs with no limits at all, always diminishing the purchasing power ("wealth") of the beleaguered middle class. 2. But this currency debasement did not affect all Americans equally. The poor could take advantage of numerous inflation-adjusted welfare programs, with free medical care, food stamps (now EBT), housing assistance, etc.

The most wealthy Americans actually benefited from the currency debasement, because the new FRNs were injected into the top tiers of our society. Banks, hedge funds, mega corporations etc. They received the full value of the new money before prices were inflated throughout the rest of the economy.

Slowly over time the real purchasing power (wealth) of the middle class was diminished. This is why I say the wealth of the middle class was stolen and transferred to the elite class in Washington and New York. I made this Monopoly meme to illustrate how this theft took place.

We can buy Greenland outright by offering direct payments to the relatively few Greenlanders, [57,000 total] granting them U.S. citizenship in the bargain. I wrote a detailed Substack on this last year.
🧵
Most Inuit Greenlanders hate the Danish, who tried to genocide them with a long-term secret IUD program, where Inuit women and young girls visiting Danish clinics for "health checks" were for unknowingly fitted with dangerous coil IUDs that were left in for years, leaving many sterile and in chronic lifelong pain. It was total "Dr. Mengele" stuff. The Inuit in Greenland are ripe for a better offer.

And in any event, Denmark's "claim" on Greenland is a total joke. Please read the whole Substack in the first reply. I'll also do some more screen grabs in an X-thread to whet your appetite. 2. On Purchasing Greenland . . .
At least we won't try to genocide the Greenlandic Inuit with a secret IUD implantation scheme like Denmark did in modern times.
steelcutter.substack.com/p/on-purchasin…

MAP THREAD 🧵
1. I am a visual thinker, and I love maps and charts, so I just put this together. I believe that the Venezuela situation is about a lot more than stopping drug boats.

In my opinion, we are moving from peacetime economic trade war conditions to a quazi-kinetic war for the critical natural resources needed by the major powers in our emerging multipolar world.

This is a tri-polar world if you consider the three greatest military powers, the USA, Russia and China. Or it's a bipolar world if you consider it to be a contest between the USA and its allies, and the BRICS bloc. More maps will follow. Suggestions, additions and corrections will be welcomed. 2. As I said above, the fleet assembled in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific is not really about stopping drug boats. It's about securing the largest oil reserve in the world for the U.S. refineries.

Why you can never ever completely trust any Mohammedan: 🧵
1. Unique among major religions, Islam offers even the worst of its sinners, fallen "bad Muslims," an instant pathway to redemption, in order to enter paradise as a hero.

No matter if a Mohammedan has been drinking, gambling, whoring and hanging out with non-Muslims for years, he can have all the sins of his past forgiven if he dies in the act of killing infidels.

I think we saw one example of this yesterday in Washington DC.
The intentional suicide crash of Egypt Air Flight 990 in 1999 is another infamous example. 2. For reasons of national pride, Egypt Air has continued to deny the reality of what happened in 1999, but the flight data and voice recorders tell the truth. Relief First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti finagled his way into the right seat for the first part of the flight, and when the Captain left the cockpit, he put the plane into a dive while repeating "I rely on God!"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_…

After doing my own research, it's my considered opinion that the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage was a joint US Navy-Polish endeavor. American Seahawk helicopters landed and refueled at a Polish base on the Baltic. I'm going to make a thread with some of the graphics I created at the time.🧵

https://x.com/Matt_Bracken48/status/1977991241989017814

Imagine a $45 minimum wage, with full employment. Families living on one salary, with housewives staying home to raise their kids. That was America, before we were robbed blind.
1963: JFK is assassinated.
1964: Millions of silver JFK half dollars are minted.
1965: Silver coins are changed to painted copper.
1968: Silver certificate dollars redeemable in silver are changed to bogus "federal reserve notes" redeemable in nothing.
1971: America closes the gold window.
1971-2025: Budgets are blown sky-high to infinity with the private federal reserve printing trillions of federal reserve note "dollars" out of thin air backed by nothing. Well-connected banks and financial institutions benefit the most by the "Cantillon Effect." New money creation is actually a wealth transfer from the middle class to the most wealthy and politically connected.
2025: The U.S. federal debt stands at 38 TRILLION dollars, and is growing at 180 BILLION dollars per month. A crash and collapse worse than the 1930s is now inevitable.
This is why the prices of gold and silver are soaring. Banks and knowledgeable investors are buying all the physical, delivered gold and silver they can get their hands on. They know what's coming, even while they assure Joe Sixpack that all is well, so just keep watching sportsball . . .
They don't want to compete in a panic stampede to the lifeboats, not until they are already motoring far away from the Titanic in their own megayachts. Grok: What is the economic theory that holds that when new money is created by central banks, it mainly benefits the first ones who get it? Can you explain this theory?

Inflation is planned theft from the working class on a massive scale.
A short pictorial thread.
🧵 In 1963, John F. Kennedy was murdered.
- In 1964, millions of commemorative silver Kennedy half dollars were minted.
- In 1965, American silver coins were replaced by silver-painted copper coins.
- LBJ had to fund both "guns and butter," the massively expanding Vietnam War (that Kennedy was against) and his "Great Society" program at home.
- The timing over 3 years is amazing.

Please watch the video and ponder what is coming.
Their weapons are already in place and ready to be passed out.
🧵 thread

https://twitter.com/ricwe123/status/1898701086124363962

2/ The escalation of the phases of jihad conquest may appear random or confusing to non-Mohammedans, but they are not. First, they will infiltrate a target nation in the "Dar Al Harb" (the House of War, that is, a non-Muslim nation) while posing as "moderate Muslims fleeing war and disorder."

There will be periodic small and large terrorist actions, from singleton stabbers up to Bataclan and Mumbai attacks, but these are just warmup acts to get the pot boiling. Mohammedans also have their own "accelerationists" striving to move the timetable to full jihad conquest forward.

[Importantly, every jihadist who dies while killing infidels gets a free pass to the perpetual 72-virgin orgy in Mohammed's sick paradise.]

Why is Trump so focused on Greenland and Panama?
If you have played the board game RISK, then you understand.
> by Matt Bracken / Feb 20, 2025
Right or wrong, there is a geopolitical school of thought that follows the logic of my highlighted RISK board.

In the classic board game, a frequently winning strategy is to control North America, (and South America when you are strong enough to take it), and then to build your forces internally. You then sit back and watch the other 4 or 5 players slaughter each other from Britain to Kamchatka while they are trying to conquer all of Eurasia.

Sometimes Oceania can hold out, but it usually falls to whoever controls Eurasia. South America and Africa are "spoils zones" that fall to the last 2 players. But a strong plan is to hold North America, build your forces, and wait for the other players that are spread across Eurasia to weaken and destroy one another in constant battle. That's in the board game of Risk, when the players are rolling dice and moving little plastic armies from country to country. 2/
In the real world, North America, dominated by the USA, is nearly resource independent. It had defensible external and internal borders. Profitable sea trade can be conducted with countries on the other continents when conditions are favorable, but when the War Zone erupts in conflict, as it does a few times every century, North America can just lay back and wait. It's large enough to form its own internal trading bloc, and has enough natural resources to be self sufficient.

The CW2 Cube: Mapping the Meta-Terrain of Civil War Two
Matt Bracken / Feb 19, 2025
(I wrote the CW2 Cube in 2010. How does it hold up today, considering what has happened over the past fifteen years, across the administrations of Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump again?)

A second civil war in the United States would be an unparalleled disaster. Nobody who is sane and who has studied modern civil wars from Spain to Lebanon to the Balkans and beyond would ever wish to see one occur. But if political, cultural and demographic trends are sweeping us toward that unhappy destiny, it would be wise to at least cast a weather eye over the possible terrain.

First, a caveat. I am not going to waste your valuable time making politically-correct genuflections after every controversial sentence, because this essay is meant to be read by mature and rational adults.

Before we move on to the cube, let’s begin with the CW2 Square. The cube is best tackled in another step. Draw the square and label one axis Poorer to Richer. Label the other axis Darker to Lighter. Darker, for brevity, includes African-Americans, Hispanics and so on. Lighter refers to those of European ancestry. The two opposed meta-groups are the poorer and darker versus the richer and lighter, or whiter if you wish to be blunt. The richer/whiter have the power of their wealth, but counterbalancing that advantage is the fact that the poorer/darker have succeeded in wresting control of much of government power. This is so, even if most of their elected leaders are anything but poor or dark.

Now, before you scream out your exceptions, yes, there are rich black cattle ranchers and poor whites living in blighted urban areas and so on. However, to focus on them is to miss the critical centers of gravity of Civil War Two for the over-study of interesting but insignificant outliers. Filling one corner of the CW2 Square will be the poorer and darker, who primarily are liberal and progressive Democrats who believe in a malleable “living Constitution.” And in the other corner will be the richer and whiter, who mainly are conservative or libertarian Republicans who believe in the original intent of the written Constitution. Again, keep your eyes on the two meta-cores, not the exceptions.

Now, let’s add the third dimension and shoot another axis out from the square to form the CW2 Cube. Label the third axis Urban versus Rural, or City versus Country if you prefer. This axis gives a geographical dimension to the meta-terrain, but there will be no convenient dividing line between the opposed sides as there was during the first civil war. It has frequently been observed that today’s red-blue political map is better understood at the county than at the state level. Even blue states like Illinois, California and New York are rural-red outside of their blue urban cores. Obviously, these urban cores are heavily populated but geographically small, with all that means to the electoral process today and to a possible civil war later.
[continues at 2/] 2/
So the opposing corners of the CW2 Cube can be seen as the poorer, darker cities versus the richer, whiter rural areas. Again, don’t quibble about the outliers. Yes, there are a few rich, conservative African-Americans living in Wyoming, many poor white liberal Democrats in rural West Virginia, some rich conservatives in San Francisco and every other exceptional case imaginable.

Most of us live in the mushy, mongrel middle, far from the tips of the two opposite corners. But the centers of gravity of Civil War Two shall be as I have described: the relatively richer, whiter and more rural against the poorer, darker and more urban. One can also propose many more axes of conflict than can fit on a cube, such as the religious versus the non-believers, socialists versus capitalists, statists versus individualists and so on. However, after you reflect upon the CW2 Cube, I think you will find that most of these extra axes can be overlaid parallel to one of the three already posited.

So, of what use is the CW2 Cube, other than in providing a conceptual map for Civil War Two? In my research as a novelist who attempts to write realistic fiction about the coming years, I have long been a student of modern civil wars. One repeated lesson of modern civil war is that there is inherently dangerous, even fatal terrain. Some of this predictably-dangerous terrain is often highly desirable and even advantageous before the outbreak of civil war.

To begin: you do not want to live as a trapped and cut-off minority in what might become “enemy territory.” If you live amidst your future civil war enemies, as defined and located within the CW2 Cube, you will be in mortal danger even if your immediate neighbors know, love and respect you. Those persons who have a stake in fanning the flames of CW2 (and their number shall be legion), will intentionally target those remaining “holdouts” who may be respected minority neighbors. (In this essay, minority means “the minority within a given group or area.” Blacks are the majority in some areas, and whites are the minorities in others, and so on.)

Frequently in modern civil wars, roaming armed groups (in or out of uniform) will even force people to kill their own beloved and respected minority neighbors as an ultimate loyalty test. If they refuse, they may themselves be killed as “traitors.” Besides pre-conflict racists and radicals, there will be an ever-increasing pool of persons attempting to expel minorities from their homes. Those embittered unfortunates who have already been ethnically cleansed will be seeking new living quarters, and the homes and property of “enemy” minorities still living in majority territory will be the first on the chopping block. (Not the auction block, because payment of any kind is rarely offered.) This process of minority eviction becomes a self-perpetuating feedback loop.

Often, those members of minorities who escape as refugees are the lucky ones who do not lose their lives during the back-and-forth of escalating violence. The fact that they may have been loved, admired and respected for many years by their majority-population neighbors will not protect them. This is a clear lesson of modern civil war. Another is that while the rich or the well-to-do can sometimes hide their wealth and pass as proles, the same cannot be said about concealing one’s racial or ethnic identity. Religious affiliation and political leanings can also be hidden, but outward appearance cannot. Civil War Two may begin on purely political grounds, but it will devolve into something worse.

Does this mean that all white city-dwellers should head for the hinterland, or that dark-skinned folks living in the country should move to the city? It’s not for me to say. We all hope and pray that there will never be a second “hot civil war” in America, instead of merely the “cold civil war” we are engaged in today. But the immutable lessons of modern civil wars should not be ignored. Another lesson is that it will take tremendous moral courage to defy the hot-heads and radicals, and shield your minority neighbors from harm.

"The Great Game: Arctic Edition"
Now that the potential acquisition of Greenland is big news, it's time for a map break to give visual reference.
More related maps in the replies.

Russia is facing a strategic calamity in Syria.

Russia has had naval forces in the port of Tartus since 1971. Tartus was Russia's external "warm water port" on the Mediterranean. The Black Sea fleet is under extreme pressure during the SMO, and in any event it can only enter and leave with the good graces of Turkey, which controls the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits. (Maritime treaties notwithstanding.)

And now, after half a century, the Russian Navy has sortied from Tartus. From the Russian perspective, this is a strategic disaster. And in the era of drone warfare, the Russian Air Force will not risk leaving its planes undefended on the ground at its air base at Khmeimim southeast of Latakia. It's too close to the approaching HTS forces, which are now taking Hama and nearly taking Homs, cutting Syria in two, and leaving Damascus land-locked and isolated.

Turkey initiated the current HTS military offensive in Syria, so it also goes without saying that Turkey controls Russian naval movements in and out of the Black Sea (maritime treaties be damned) unless Russia wants to force the issue kinetically, and go to war with Turkey and NATO.

Where will the Russian naval forces departing Tartus go? They can't refuel indefinitely in the Med, a "NATO Lake." The Black Sea is very tricky during the SMO, and it's a long, long way to the Baltic and Kaliningrad (on another NATO Lake) and even further to Murmansk.

Once again, geography plays its tricks on Mother Russia. The Great Game goes on. Stay tuned.

Please see some maps and links in the replies. Syria live tracker: Maps and charts

Here’s what the situation on the ground looks like as of December 4, 2024.
aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/3…

The "Rogue Ukrainian Diver" story is a laughable cover story.
This was a state level operation. Please scroll this thread I'm posting. I made these memes right after the pipeline was sabotaged.

1/ President Biden made the direct threat.

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1823970430685749563

The US Navy conducted "mine countermeasures" training in the Baltic. Including the ability to lay demo charges alongside anti-ship mines . . . or pipelines. This is called "cover for action."

NEWS | June 19, 2024
U.S. and NATO Allies conduct MCM during BALTOPS24
By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jordan Klineizquierdo
PUTLOS, Germany  –

U.S. and Allied forces are conducting mine hunting and mine detonation exercises in the Baltic Sea as part of Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) 2024, the premier maritime-focused annual military exercise in the Baltic Region. Mine countermeasure (MCM) exercises, conducted by personnel at Truppenübungsplatz Putlos and Hohn Air Base in Germany, commenced June 7 and culminated in an MCM combat rehearsal, June 18.
The Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC) directs all MCM exercises within BALTOPS, including surface MCM vessels, MCM capable aircraft, and explosive ordnance disposal. About 700 personnel, more than 20 surface ships and units, and 20 unmanned systems, including unmanned surface and underwater vessels, and two MH-60S Seahawk helicopters are involved in BALTOPS mine countermeasure efforts.

“This is our chance to flex our MCM muscles and show what we have been practicing and working towards,” says Capt. Scott Hattaway, director of SMWDC. “During BALTOPS24, we put all the chips on the table and lay our cards down, and show that we know what we're doing and that we're good at it.”

Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron TWO ONE (HSC-21) Detachment THREE, based in San Diego, California, under U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), provided two MH-60S Seahawk helicopters configured with Airborne Mine Neutralization Systems.

“HSC-21 is executing multiple BALTOPS24 events to advance helicopter tactics in offensive mine countermeasures,” said Lt. Cmdr. Rob “OG” Swain, HSC-21.3 Officer-in-Charge. “These include employing the Airborne Mine Neutralization System (AMNS), working with U.S. Navy and NATO nation special forces, and closely integrating with our German host nation allies. The participation of HSC-21 in BALTOPS24 demonstrates cross-combatant command operational readiness and the joint forces’ ability to rapidly move strategic mine countermeasures assets from the Indo-Pacific to anywhere in the world ready to execute with agility, reliability, and aggression.”

[rest at link]c6f.navy.mil/Press-Room/New…