Strategic Mindset - 2015

Friday, November 13, 2015

Earth Changes Accelerating, Doomsday Nuclear Torpedo Leak Gives Insight To Russian Strategic Mindset

Earth Changes Accelerate As 12 Major Earthquakes Hit Chile Within The Last 24 Hours

Something strange is happening to our planet.  Over the past 30 days, there seems to have been much more “shaking” than normal, and this is particularly true along the Ring of Fire.  This afternoon I visited the official website of the U.S. Geological Survey, and I discovered that Chile had been hit with 12 major earthquakes within the last 24 hours alone.  

The smallest was of magnitude 4.4, and the two largest both measured magnitude 6.9.  We have also seen dozens of volcanoes erupt recently, including the incredibly dangerous Mt. Popocatepetl in Mexico.  Fortunately we have not seen a major disaster that kills thousands of people yet, but many believe that all of this shaking is leading up to one.  In addition, the weather all over the world continues to get freakier and freakier.  Just today, Yemen was hit by a second major tropical cyclone in less than a week.  Any one of these strange disasters in isolation may not seem like that big of a deal, but when you start putting all of the pieces together it starts to become clear that something really significant is taking place.

So why are all of these things happening?  Well, some experts point to the sun.  In recent years there has been a tremendous amount of hype about “global warming”, but the truth is that evidence is starting to emerge that indicates that our sun might be heading into a period of “hibernation”…

The sun will go into “hibernation” mode around 2030, and it has already started to get sleepy. At the Royal Astronomical Society’s annual meeting in July, Professor Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University in the UK confirmed it – the sun will begin its Maunder Minimum (Grand Solar Minimum) in 15 years. Other scientists had suggested years ago that this change was imminent, but Zharkova’s model is said to have near-perfect accuracy.

And what did we see last winter?  It was a very cold, bitter winter that set new all-time records all over the planet.  Here is more from that same article…

Solar cycle 24 – two cycles prior the cycle that’s expected to bottom out into a Maunder Minimum – was weak. In 2013-14 it reached its maximum far below average. Meanwhile extreme cold-weather anomalies have occurred around the world. Last year “polar vortices” slammed into the central US and Siberia as a third hovered over the Atlantic. All 50 US states, including Hawaii, had temperatures below freezing for the first time in recorded history. Snowfall records were broken in cities in the US, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and elsewhere. Southern American states and central Mexico, where snow is rare, got heavy snow, as did the Middle East.

This past summer the cold didn’t let up, with more temperature records across the US and rare summer snows seen in Canada, the US and China. Birds have migrated early in the last two years. Antarctic sea ice set a new record in 2013 and it was broken again in 2014.

 Our sun has begun to behave very erratically, and yet very few people are paying attention.  But without the sun, life on earth would not be possible.  So the fact that the giant ball of fire that we revolve around is starting to act very strangely should be a huge news story.

And this is not something that scientists have just started noticing.  This has been going on for quite some time.  For example, the following is from a BBC article that was published last year…

“I’ve been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless.

“If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive… you’ve got to go back about 100 years,” he says.

This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awash with activity.

Another thing that many scientists are watching closely is the possibility of a magnetic pole shift.  This has become such a concern that even scientists at NASA are talking about it.  A major news source in the UK recently published an article entitled “NASA: Earth’s magnetic poles are ‘switching’ with catastrophic consequences for humanity“

Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said when the switch does take place, the Earth’s magnetic field which prevents the Sun’s dangerous radiation getting through, would be neutralised for around 200 years.

He said: “When the polar shift happens the Earth will have no magnetic field for about 200 years.”

During that time the Sun’s solar blasts are expected to strip away at our atmosphere as they did on Mars billions of years ago.

Analyst: Doomsday Nuclear Torpedo Leak Gives Insight to Russian Strategic Mindset, Ballistic Missile Defense Anxiety

A proposed Russian submarine launched doomsday weapon — the existence of which was almost certainly leaked by the Kremlin — gives clues to the Russian mindset for the development of new strategic weapons in the face of the West’s increasing ballistic missile defense capability and Russia’s shrinking national assets, a naval analyst told USNI News on Thursday.

The Status-6 weapon was revealed on Wednesday during a Russian broadcast of a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and military leaders in Sochi and a screengrab of the weapon was widely circulated following the broadcast.

The weapon is allegedly a robotic mini-submarine” capable of speeds 100 knots with a range of 6,200 miles, according to state controlled press and designed to “destroy important economic installations of the enemy in coastal areas and cause guaranteed devastating damage to the country’s territory by creating wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time,” according to a translation of the document by the BBC.

Immediately before the reveal of the weapon Putin was discussing how the emerging U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) network in Europe was “an attempt to undermine the existing parity in strategic nuclear weapons and essentially to upset the whole system of global and regional stability,” according to the BBC.

Eric Wertheim — naval analyst and author of U.S. Naval Institute’s Combat Fleets of the World — told USNI News on Thursday the reveal of Status-6 was telling as to the current Russian arms development mindset.

“It shows that they’re thinking about non-conventional weapons in line with Cold War era thinking,” he said.

“The West is developing weapons — like the Small Diameter Bomb — that create a smaller more targeted effect. This type of weapon is exactly the opposite.”

A weapon like Status-6 would play into Russia’s current military strengths and provide the Kremlin with a strategic deterrent that would bypass the growing American acumen at BMD, he said.

The weapon also comes with the benefit of being relatively inexpensive. While Putin has pledged to boost military spending, the last year has seen a massive drop in the value of Russian currency and decline in revenues from oil.

Hezbollah weapons warehouses were the target of Wednesday's Israeli airstrikes in Syria

The target of Israel's alleged airstrikes in Syria on Wednesday evening were Hezbollah weapons warehouses, Arab media affiliated with the opposition to Syrian Preisdent Basher Assad reported Thursday.

Pro-Assad operatives on Facebook said that the strikes, adjacent to Damascus airport, struck "military outposts near the airport, and there is a high probability that it was IDF warplanes that struck."

New portal 'Damascus Alan,' which is affiliated with the Assad regime, reported that heavy damage was caused to army outposts around the airport, all of which went up in flames. The site did not specify what damage was caused to the outposts, but they said that nobody was hurt. 

Israel raises Hezbollah rocket estimate to 150,000

Israeli officials believe that the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah has amassed around 150,000 rockets, including a number of long range Iranian-made missiles capable of striking Israeli cities from north to south.

The estimates represent a 50 percent increase in the group’s weapons stockpiles since May, when a senior Israeli intelligence official put the number at 100,000.

The revised valuation on rockets suggests Hezbollah is ramping up efforts to acquire weapons whose purpose is to attack Israel, despite its deep involvement in the Syrian civil war.

Hezbollah forces have been operating in Syrian territory for over three and a half years. Thousands of the organization’s fighters are thought to be on Syrian soil and hundreds, some say thousands, have been killed there, including at least one senior officer.

The organization has simultaneously continued to amass short- and medium-range rockets from Syria while also increasing its cache of Iranian-made long-range missiles.

Hezbollah has also established a fleet of unmanned combat drones, designed for more than simple intelligence gathering.

The group is continuing its efforts to acquire SA-17 and SA-22 ground-to-air missiles as well as P-800 Oniks air-to-sea missiles. In light of the events in Syria and and the ongoing civil war, as well as the Israeli attacks on weapons convoys en route to Hezbollah, the organization has upped its efforts to bring in more Iranian weapons.

Posted by Scott at Friday, November 13, 2015