Today is the 82nd Anniversary of D-Day.
Remembering the 22,540 servicemen and women who made the ultimate sacrifice on D-Day and during the Battle of Normandy.
Watch the Service of Remembrance live from 9.30am BST: https://t.co/f0dRIp4Ryo
#DDay82
The mission and the price paid.
Today, in 1944, these men were en route to Normandy to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany.
Sword, Gold, Juno, Omaha, Utah.
🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇨🇦
May they rest in eternal peace.
There is going to be a really important drone learning curve in Lebanon.
Ukraine is the crucible of drone warfare but it is not the model for us. The Russia-Ukraine war reached the point it is at today through hot evolution in contact. They show where you get to when you’re at peak capacity. The war moved from armoured battle, to trench warfare, to a kind of drone parity that we see today. It’s not where we will be at the start of any future conflict. They’re in the middle of the race.
The IDF’s experience in Lebanon is the model. It’s a superior army experiencing drone warfare by a weaker opponent, from a cold, standing start. Emergency orders of drone nets, rapid deployment of new counter-drone technology. Fortunately, Hezbollah is not yet producing at the scale of Ukraine-Russia. They will certainly try.
It’s a gold-plated lesson for us of what start-line procurement and tactical development looks like for an army in the face of an FPV threat.
If we look at where Ukraine is now, the evolution of drone warfare happens so fast that it’s almost impossible to have a full suite of defences ready to go in case war happens some time in the future. Those stocks might well be outdated by the time war comes along. What is needed is industrial and procurement capacity to produce fast, and adapt fast, and produce fast again. That’s the IDF’s test now. The lessons they learn from this will be vital in informing our doctrine going forward.
After 88 days of silence, the internet, although heavily filtered and monitored by the IRGC, is back online inside Occupied Iran.
Those who have been carrying water for the Islamic Regime will be getting a rude awakening from Iranians who manage to secretly access social media.
Spanish Flotilla members arriving in Bilbao airport were blocking the arrivals gate posing for photos and police tried to move them and they got violent. So police DRAGGED them out. This is who they are. They have cause chaos everywhere.
Eurovision keeps revealing widening gap btw Europe’s public and cultural establishment.
Year after year, country juries downgrade Israel while televote strongly supports it. Millions of Europeans clearly far more open to Israel than Europe’s left-wing media and cultural elite.
The common counterargument, often driven by anti-Trump narratives, is that because the United States has not seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, it therefore cannot, and that Iran is somehow demonstrating a lasting strategic advantage it will carry forward. That logic is deeply flawed. The absence of a U.S. operation to fully secure the Strait is not evidence of military incapability. It is evidence of political restraint and strategic calculation.
Just because the President has not ordered a combined air, naval, and ground campaign to seize and secure the Strait does not mean the U.S. military lacks the capability to do so. It means there are economic, diplomatic, escalation-management, and broader strategic reasons such an operation has not been ordered.
The United States has spent decades building the exact naval, airpower, logistics, ISR, mine-clearing, amphibious, and strike capabilities required to dominate chokepoints like Hormuz if directed.
Confusing political decision-making with military capability is a common uniformed mistake. Iran’s threats to shipping, harassment operations, mining efforts, or missile attacks do not demonstrate that the United States is unable to secure the Strait. If anything, they reinforce why freedom of navigation operations and deterrence have been central pillars of American power for decades.
The question has never been whether the United States could impose control over the Strait. The question has always been whether the political leadership believes the costs, escalation risks, and global economic consequences of doing so outweigh the benefits at a given moment.
I’m increasingly puzzled by the hantavirus data.
Happy to have a conversation.
In terms of the human-to-human data, it’s not behaving like an airborne virus AT ALL.
So why the confidence it is airborne?
Today we celebrate the first anniversary of the election to the Papacy of our President Pope Leo XIV.
With gratitude for his compassionate & faithful service, we give thanks for a year of walking together in the spirit of synodality, listening, discerning, & journeying ahead.
Vamos lá então falar do "estrondo". Quando um avião acelera para ultrapassar a velocidade do som o ar à sua frente é fortemente comprimido dando origem a uma onda que se forma à sua passagem. É a chamada onda de choque. Essa onda propaga-se pelo espaço e quando atinge o solo provoca o tal estrondo e uma variação momentânea da pressão atmosférica. Esta propagação pode ser afetada para melhor ou pior pela temperatura e humidade existentes na atmosfera. Isto não é perigoso mas em muitos casos assusta e pode provocar danos ligeiros nas habitações, nomeadamente quebra de vidros. Por isso é proibido voar supersónico nas proximidades de zonas habitadas salvo em condições excecionais. Ontem a Força Aérea desmentiu qualquer envolvimento no "estrondo" ocorrido na zona centro do país mas hoje acabou por reconhecer que dois F16 tiveram que voar supersónico por razões confidenciais. Segundo a NAV, que controla o espaço aéreo português, nos últimos dias não foi detetada qualquer intrusão ou situação de emergência com aviões comerciais a exigir a intervenção dos F16 mas poderá ter havido outra razão qualquer, nomeadamente no âmbito da NATO. Não sabemos
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the tragic Chernobyl incident, which left a lasting mark on the conscience of humanity. It serves as a warning about the inherent risks in the use of increasingly powerful technologies. We entrust those who died and all who still suffer from the aftermath of the disaster to God’s mercy. I hope that discernment and responsibility will always prevail at every level of decision-making, so that every use of atomic energy may be placed at the service of life and #Peace.
Relieved to hear that @POTUS Donald Trump and @FLOTUS Melania Trump and everyone attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner are safe.
Violence has no place in politics, ever.
With thanks to the swift action of the police and responders for ensuring the safety of the guests.