A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like “in Minecraft”) and comments containing it will be removed.

Image depicts the aftermath of a Saudi airstrike on a crowded market in Taiz, Yemen, in which dozens were killed and injured. Since the Saudis reignited the war in July, 270 civilians have been killed and 640 injured in Yemen due to Saudi strikes.

My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

As we’re all aware, the Republicans losing major ground in the midterms is relatively insignificant in the wider geopolitical sense. While many voters cited their dissatisfaction with the Iran War as a critical motivator for coming out to the polls (not out of any humanitarian impulse, but because, gasp, a foreign war is actually impacting them), the Democrats not only won’t do anything substantially different - they haven’t even pretended to promise to do so. They’ve merely been thrust into a position of power under the assumption that the Blue Team must, by definition, do the opposite of what the Red Team is doing. The situation inside the Zionist entity is relatively similar - Netanyahu and his government is outgoing, but replaced with a government that shares most of the preceding government’s ideology where it most matters. While some Iranian officials (including Araghchi) have attempted to pander to the idea that American voters have ‘voted to stop the war’ and that the US government would be betraying its base by continuing, the view by the current Khamenei seems to be more lucid, and I thankfully don’t get the sense that Iran has lowered its guard by a single iota.

What comes next in the war is now difficult to fathom. Any prediction of an immediate post-midterms strike has obviously not come true, which could be due to a combination of: such threats were always just a bluff; the Trump administration being in turmoil as it self-purges non-believers; and/or a simple lack of readiness (the third aircraft carrier, which may or may not be replacing one of the existing aircraft carriers, is still inbound to the region). Nonetheless, there are still signs that the US is trying once again to shape the battlefield. Over the last few days, there have been several - albeit limited - strikes on Iranian military equipment, particularly on Qeshm Island, as Iran brings down drone after drone and strikes tanker after tanker. They’re also meekly attempting to put the screws on land routes into Iran, but this isn’t really a viable strategy. Trying to outright stop trade between Iraq and Iran will only ignite a firestorm there with the myriad resistance groups. Meanwhile, Pakistan is critically reliant on Iranian fossil fuels and is already in an unstable situation. And finally, Russia has zero motivation to accede to US demands and stop their growing trade with Iran over the Caspian Sea.

To do a lightning round on geopolitical news: Ansarallah recently rejected a Saudi offer of 1 billion dollars to end the war, which is a lowball so insulting that Ansarallah responded by sending drones and missiles into, among other places, the Saudi Aramco HQ (and the widely distributed claim that Ansarallah demanded $51 billion doesn’t seem to be real, as far as I can discern?). Russia has been hammering Ukrainian infrastructure in a few large waves of missiles and drones, exacerbating water and power outages; Russia has also been gradually getting its Starlink competitor, Rassvet, in the sky. China held its Fifth Plenum in late October (for those unaware, there are seven plenums over each National Congress period, and each National Congress lasts five years), and this plenum was notable for having an abnormally high number of absences (~25%) - which, from what I can gather, is mostly due to purges, though it’s always hard to sift through the layers of propaganda - as Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive continues. Over the last few months, Algeria and the Alliance of Sahel States have buried the hatchet on their former misgivings and are now significantly cooperating in both the economic sphere (with new oil infrastructure being constructed in Niger) as well as militarily. Paraguay’s right-wing president, Santiago Peña, has been ousted due to the collapse of Ueno Bank - which about 2/3 of the population used - and into which his government funneled hundreds of millions of dollars. And France held a general strike involving 1.6 million people on November 5th, as anger against Macron’s feckless political, social, and economic governance continues to build. I’ll stop here or I’ll never get this megathread out.

Last week’s thread is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    37·
    4 hours ago

    https://archive.ph/DtyEl

    Key Space Force satellites can’t talk to each other, likely requiring $1B solution: Sources

    To translate between the SpaceX-built SDN Backbone and other Pentagon communications and missile tracking satellites, sources said the Space Force is eyeing 12 or 13 Space Exchange Point birds.

    more

    The Space Force’s multibillion-dollar effort to build a satellite network that rapidly moves data over high-speed laser links will require an entirely new set of satellites and significant extra funding to connect with other military space systems, Breaking Defense has learned. In effect, this new group of satellites will serve as translators between different sets of optical waveforms — two or three missile warning/tracking constellations in the short term, and others in the future — in order to ensure multiple systems can talk to each other. That connectivity is a vital part of supporting Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative that the network is supposed to help speed into existence, multiple sources said. The Space Force plans to orbit an “operational prototype” of the Space Data Network Backbone being built by SpaceX by 2027. The large constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) will serve as the data backhaul layer — essentially, the central communications traffic router — of the service’s planned SDN architecture, a space-based network of networks designed to connect sensors to shooters. The Space Force envisions the SDN as a hybrid constellation comprising military and commercial communications satellites that eventually will be able to share data across missions, including missile warning, tracking and targeting as well as both air- and ground-moving target indication. As a top priority, the SDN will focus on connecting to the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tracking Layer satellites for detecting and tracking missiles to be stationed in LEO and Space System Command’s (SSC) similar Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking- Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) birds.

    SpaceX won a $2.29 billion contract in May to fast-track development of the SDN Backbone to meet President Donald Trump’s 2028 deadline for implementing Golden Dome. The Space Force has not publicly disclosed how many satellites the backbone will include, but the effort is a restructured version of the earlier MILNET constellation, which a Space Force official said last year would comprise more than 480 satellites. The SDN Backbone’s central feature is the use of lasers for satellite-to-satellite communications. Laser links, which function via optical communications terminals (OCT) on board satellites, allow the transmission of bigger volumes of data faster and more securely than the radio frequency links carried by traditional communications satellites. However, SpaceX is using proprietary OCTs on the SDN Backbone satellites, dubbed by the company as “Plasers,” that cannot directly exchange data with those equipping both the SDA and SSC missile warning/tracking satellites, according to multiple industry, former government and current Space Force sources. To complicate matters, these sources said, the OCTs used by SDA and SSC also are incompatible.

    To address this lack of connectivity, the Space Force is considering a constellation of 12 to 13 additional satellites that could allow otherwise incompatible OCT payloads to exchange data, two industry sources and one former Space Force official said. The proposed satellites, known as Space Exchange Points (SEPs) or “translator satellites,” are expected to cost somewhere $12-14 million each, these sources said. That means the satellite project itself would cost north of $100 million, but the sources said that the overall cost of the wider overhaul could reach up to $1 billion — quite the price tag especially at a time the Pentagon is expected to get less funding than it asked for from Congress. Even aside from the extra costs, however, several sources expressed frustration with the situation with regard to the Space Force’s two new missile warning/tracking constellations, saying it could have been avoided had the Pentagon focused on standardization at an earlier date. Instead, the service is now having to scramble to fix a problem that, the sources emphasized, never needed to happen. An SSC spokesperson declined to comment on the compatibility of its MEO birds with SDA’s LEO satellites or SpaceX’s Plaser and also declined to comment on the SEP program’s end goals and projected costs. SpaceX did not respond to a detailed inquiry from Breaking Defense.

    Different Standards Block Connectivity

    The crux of the connectivity problem is that the SpaceX, SDA and SSC OCTs are based on different technical standards governing the precise optical waveforms used, and thus how many gigabits of data per second the laser links can transmit, sources explained. Part of the reason for the standards mismatch is the decision made some time in 2025 by the Department of the Air Force to flip from using SDA’s Transport Layer of data relay satellites as the SDN backbone to instead relying on SpaceX’s constellation — at the time dubbed MILNET and already in use by the National Reconnaissance Office. By that time, SDA already had been developing both the Transport Layer and the Tracking Layer satellites based on its own open-source OCT standard, a first version of which was published in 2022. “The optical waveform/terminals on SDA’s Transport Layer and Tracking Layer satellites, which carry the SDA OCT Standard, are not directly compatible with the Plaser waveform,” an SDA official confirmed. The disconnect between SDA and SSC on OCTs is harder to justify, one former Pentagon official said, given that both developmental programs began at roughly the same time in 2019 — and thus could have worked together to develop compatible OCTs. However, one industry source said, a possible argument for the differences is that SDA has been focused on developing OCTs optimized for its LEO-based satellites, whereas SSC is concentrating on operations in MEO where satellites are farther from the Earth and farther from each other than in LEO.

    The Space Force is not unaware of the challenge it faces. G.P. Sandhoo, head of both SDA and the Space Force’s new Missile Warning and Tracking Portfolio Acquisition Executive office, on Oct. 28 told a panel at Silicon Valley Space Week conference in Mountain View, Calif., that his shop will eventually need to figure out how to integrate data from sensors carried by satellites in different orbits, according to an article in Space News. The SDA official added that “interoperability” between the OCTs for the LEO and MEO missile warning/tracking constellations is currently “being evaluated” by the Space Force. One solution is simply for the SEP satellites to carry both SDA and SSC standard OCTs, along with software to transmit their data to the SpaceX Plaser and the SDN Backbone satellites. Another potential solution is for both the LEO and MEO constellations to use a new version of SDA’s optical waveform standard, called v.4.0.0, that potentially could resolve the problem in the future, according to current and former Space Force officials. That standard was developed in consultation with SSC, the former Space Force official said, and has “two modes:” the first essentially is the same standard SDA is using for “LEO to LEO and LEO to ground” communications; the second would allow LEO to MEO optical data transmission. Thus, it could be used to directly link LEO and MEO missile warning/tracking satellites, and avoid having to add a third OCT payload onto the SEPs. The SDA official said the version 4 standard “is not yet on contract to be fielded in any SDA Tranches, but is in consideration for Tranche 4.”

    Translator Sats To The Rescue?

    …

    The concept of a translator satellite is not a new idea. SDA in 2022 was working on the idea to allow data from commercial satellites eventually to flow into the Transport Layer. But questions remain about how difficult it will be to implement. “Reasonable people will disagree on how difficult it is,” one former Space Force official said. “[T]he technical challenges from the hardware side are pretty straightforward. … But there is some networking translation that has to happen in addition to just the hardware configuration.” In addition, the official said, the SEP satellites as currently designed are not compatible with either SDA’s Tracking Layer satellites or the Transport Layer, which is being transferred to SSC for further development as a separate so-called enclave of the SDN specifically focused on connecting to legacy military platforms such as fighter jets. Which raises the question of whether yet more development and funds will be needed.

    …

    As for the Transport Layer, the shift of the program to SSC has thrown the program’s scope, schedule and funding up in the air. The Pentagon’s 2027 budget request shows funding continuing for the Transport Layer’s first two tranches, but no funding for SDA’s earlier planned Tranche 3 and beyond.