Oreshnik--stuff that just works

Putin and Steve Jobs

The media are all agog about Russia’s use of its Oreshnik MRBM and its effectiveness. Surprise, surprise. !

Oreshnik is not Debbie Reynolds! But a very sexy missile to celebrate Trump’s victory—with a bang!

Putin is perhaps the most gifted diplomatic strategist in modern times, which means, among other things, he has superb timing. He knows how to get attention at a party and he is creative.

Americans don’t like that kind of surprise, however—especially those who kept (keep) saying: “Oh, the Russians can’t go to war with NATO because that would be nuclear war and everyone dies . So they will have to compromise. They will negotiate”

The Russians tried compromise before. They tried negotiation. The West took it as weakness.

So much for Plan A….

Fortunately, Russia has always had Plan B.

Visionaries, like Putin not only have a Plan B — but a Plan C — and a Plan D. They keep on thinking but they keep it al organized with a Creative Quadrant.

Big Picture

Clarity of message

Engagement and collaboration

Implementation

Yes, that’s Steve Job’s famous quadrant. And it fits Putin exactly.

Jobs made computer systems that “just worked” . Putin’s national and international policies “just work’, too. Jobs changed the world. So has Putin. Both do it with passion, panache, surprise and style!

Not to mention a measure of irony.

Jobs built his system looking at conventional pre-existing systems, deconstructing them, and reinventing them as something new. Putin did the same for Russia — and also for war. Deconstruction. Reinvention. Innovation. Then start all over again. Derrida was a little Hegelian, don’t you think?

So it is that Oreshnik is a quantum leap ahead in the development of a military capability that not only “just works”—but effectively destroys and reconstructs thec oncept of peer-level war in the 21st Century.

As with Apple, it is an ongoing process. Repeated over and over.

Conventional thinking up until now has been that a real peer-level war would be inevitably nuclear. That’s why they call it '“MAD”. “Conventional” likes things that stay the same.

A war between the US and Russia or the US and China is now very do-able. Let us keep in mind that the Nazis had large stocks of chemical weapons, which they never used— and which the Allies had, too, In WWII, only the US used WMDs - at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Oreshnik demonstrated clearly that hypersonic weapons can yield the same results as nuclear weapons, perhaps even better results — with conventional explosive warheads – and even inert warheads. They deliver unstoppable, precise destruction.

But Russia has been developing hypersonic weapons of various kinds, with different uses – Kinzhal, Zircon, Avangard and so on—so war can be fought without need for nuclear weapons. I have detailed these in several articles in the past.

So, just as Apple has a full lineup of products, so too do the Russians.

It often adapts old kit to do something very new. Like the FAB 3000 stand off bomb, using bombs left over from Soviet times. Their creativity is evolutionary—giving new meaning to “build back better”.

The S300 became the S400 which became the S500, each with new capabilities.

Su27s became Su 30s became Su 34s and Su 35s and Su57s.

Then wireless drones became optical wire guided drones immune to EW countermeasures and incredibly accurate. Add to that battlefield AI.

Robots like theUran 5 and the MFP 4 clear mines fast and safely .

Think of all those banned antipersonnel mines and bomblets the Americans are supplying to blow the legs off children. Just as they did in Laos when I was there in the 70s.

The West is top-down. It comes up with grand plans and finds smart people and tells them what to do.

Jobs was top-down too, as far as goals. But he cultivated “bottom-up”. He had smart people to tell him how to do it— and sometimes even to change a goal . It is called “heterarchy”.

Making stuff that “just works”requires all four elements of the Quadrant. Especially the “Big Picture” and engagement and collaboration.

But the West wastes its money on enormously expensive value-added stuff that mostly doesn’t work. The F35, THAAD… its a long long list. There is a difference between Vision and Delusion.

Wait a decade or two and spend a couple of billion and you might get NGAD. What exactly it is supposed to do is anyone’s guess. Kinda like Windows 12.

What would Steve Jobs say?

Russian cats

Russians love cats. This is a “Caracat” — a hybrid between a domestic cat and an African Caracal. The breed was developed in the Ukraine and Russia using Russian domestication breeding techniques, also used for foxes. It is said to be very “dog-like”!

Coffee Time

Ichi and Chappy need help domesticating me. So please buy us coffee HERE!