Today in Defense Procurement

While the Pentagon has been claiming that cost of the F-35 Lightning II is under control, we are seeing continuing rounds of double digit annual price increases.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

The cost of all three variants of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are increasing by as much as roughly 11 percent, according to the Pentagon.

A spokesperson for the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) confirmed to Breaking Defense that the average flyaway cost — a metric that measures when a jet has all the equipment it needs for delivery — of the conventional takeoff and landing F-35A rose to $92 million in the aircraft’s 18th and 19th production lots, which will deliver over the next two years. That’s up from the $82.5 million price tag of the jet’s most recent group of production contracts spanning 2023 to 2026, a growth of 11.5 percent.  

Similarly, the price of a jump jet F-35B rose to $121.4 million across lots 18 and 19, while the carrier-capable F-35C climbed to $110.8 million. For the F-35B, that’s an increase of 11.4 percent compared to a previous price tag of $109 million; the F-35C had the smallest increase of 8.5 percent set against a prior cost of $102.1 million.

Can you say, "Death spiral?"  Good, I knew you could.

The cost of purchasing the aircraft are spiking.

The operating costs are horrendous, being slightly more than the 2 decade old F-15E.

A Foreseeable Consequence

As a result of the US attack on them, Iran is charting a more aggressive and active path in foreign relations, because they have concluded that the US is spent.

The Iran war hawks got their war, and they lost.

Iran has grown more confident in its ability to attack targets in the Middle East and appears determined to continue the conflict for months to frustrate the United States, according to U.S. intelligence reports in recent weeks.

In many respects, the assessments reflect what has been observable on the ground as fighting erupted again after a period of relative calm. In the past week, Iran targeted ships in the Strait of Hormuz and American troops in the region, and U.S. forces struck inside Iran, killing military personnel and civilians.

The new exchanges have been limited so far. But the intelligence reports, according to people who have read them, suggest that Iran’s hard-line government might be contemplating a significant escalation.

Iran has emerged from months of the on-again, off-again war with a far better understanding of its military strengths and is more sure of its capabilities, according to officials briefed on the intelligence.

………

In the coming weeks, Iran could take actions akin to what it did in July, according to U.S. officials. At that time, Iran attacked American military bases in the Middle East, killing three Americans in Jordan; struck shipping in the Strait of Hormuz; and struck infrastructure in Kuwait and elsewhere.

………

There are signs that Iran-linked hackers may have regrouped in recent months after sustaining some losses at the start of the war, according to current and former U.S. officials.

………

Iran’s leadership also appears to have a more precise understanding of how to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz, which carried one-fifth of the world’s oil before the war.

………

Others briefed on the reports said Iran probably believes that the U.S. military will be hard pressed to mount major new strikes as its munitions stockpiles dwindle.

Every other nation on earth concerned about being on the United States' "Naughty List" is taking notes right now. 

Not a Good Look

Click to embiggen







I am referring, of course, to CVN-72, the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has arrived in Laem Chabang, Thailand looking like an extra from the zombie film 28 Days Later.

No wonder crewmen were literately throwing themselves into the ocean. 

The U.S. Navy’s supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln is now in Thailand for a much-deserved and highly publicized liberty port call. The carrier had gone 286 days without making such a stop, with much of that time spent executing grueling combat operations against Iran. The ship has been run very hard, relying on at times a rickety conveyor of sea replenishments to continue operating for months on end, and it has the scars to show for it. The Lincoln looks very much worse for wear, with so-called “running rust” and algae caked all along the sides of the hull, as well as around the edges of the flight deck and sponsons on either side. It’s something of a startling appearance for one of the most powerful ships on the planet and a major symbol of U.S. power projection, but it is also a reminder of what the vessel and its crew have endured for months on end.

The Lincoln arrived in the Thai port of Laem Chabang earlier today. The carrier did make a stop in Guam in December 2025 and reportedly made another one somewhere in the Middle East in July. However, in both cases, these have been characterized as brief logistical stopovers that did not offer any real opportunity for personnel onboard to disembark. Thai media reports say the carrier is expected to remain in Laem Chabang through the end of the weekend.

Great Googly Moogly!

Holy F%$#ing Sh%$

We have a report that a a grad student synthesized dimethylmercury and possibly exposed themselves.

Dimethylmercury makes the Minimata Disease look like a trip to a pre-Amazon Whole Foods.

We had a weird story develop over the weekend here in the Cambridge area (and among organic chemists in general). I’m glad that I wasn’t trying to blog it as it happened, because it’s taken some turns!

This all started last Wednesday night, but most of us only heard something on Thursday when word came of an MIT chemistry building that was being closed off because of a report of someone who had been exposed to hazardous material. It became clear that said material was possibly dimethylmercury, which a graduate student had claimed to have synthesized, and who subsequently reported themselves to a local emergency room. And you can see why that caused a stir (but read on!)

Dimethylmercury is very, very bad news. It is obviously something I will not work with, but it’s never been the subject of a blog post here in that category because unfortunately there’s nothing lighthearted about the subject. Not after the death of Karen Wetterhahn in 1997. That story should be well known to chemists everywhere, but the short version is that Prof. Wetterhahn (at Dartmouth) was accidentally exposed in August of 1996 to a few drops of liquid dimethylmercury on her latex-gloved hand. What she didn’t know (and what none of us really knew) was that this compound rapidly penetrates such gloves, which meant that Wetterhahn was exposed to skin contact within seconds. Toxicologically, it is probably the worst of the organomercurys, which are of course a dangerously toxic group of compounds overall. Her precautions for handling the compound were the standard at the time, it should be noted.

Prof. Wetterhahn began to notice general symptoms within weeks. Early in 1997 she began to show neurological problems, and within weeks she had collapsed into a vegetative state. She was removed from life support in June. She had very high levels of mercury in her blood, and all attempts at chelation therapy to remove it were ineffective. That’s surely because it had spread throughout her body by the time the problem was recognized, but frankly no one can be sure if there were any measures that could have been effective enough after the initial exposure. This horrifying incident led to a complete re-evaluation of the use of dimethylmercury in synthetic and analytical chemistry, where among other things it had been the reference peak standard in mercury NMR experiments.

It appears that there was no exposure to anyone, and possibly that there was no actual synthesis of the ferociously toxic material, but someone was trying to make some.

Whoever they are should be blackballed from chemistry for the rest of their natural life. 

I don't just mean that they should be banned working in ans academic or industrial programs related to chemistry.  I mean that they should be banned from any work with chemicals at all, up to and including working as a pastry chef.

Elemental Geography

I’m wondering if the Trump regime thought through pissing off Canada, including renaming a lake that honors not just the province of Ontario but also the First Nations people who lived there and named it. But there’s the little matter of navigation on the Great Lakes, including the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Welland Canal, which is the only way ships can travel between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The canal is in Ontario and wholly operated by Canada, and no ship can pass through it and the eight locks without permission of Canada. In other words, Canada has their own Strait of Hormuz.

—Bark Bark Woof Woof

Oh Snap! 

The Welland Canal, because you cannot sail a ship over Niagara Falls.

The phrase, "Own Goal," comes to mind here. 

Guck Foogle

We're not changing the name of Lake Ontario. Name it whatever you want at your leisure: https://gulfof.mapquest.com/lakeontario (tag us so we can see your work 🙂)

[image or embed]

— MapQuest (@mapquest.com) August 27, 2026 at 4:14 PM

MapQuest is having none of it 

Once again Google has offered conclusive evidence that it's old motto of, "Don't be evil," is inoperative.

In this case, Google Maps renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America before the ink was dry on Trump's executive order.

Time to switch to MapQuest, I guess.  (Waze is owned by Google)

Google Maps has changed the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America following Donald Trump’s executive order mandating the change amid his trade war with Canada.

On Saturday, two days after the president cited Executive Order 14172 (Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness) to authorize the Great Lake’s renaming, Google Maps was updated to reflect the change for U.S. users.

Google’s sudden name change — the executive order stated the change must occur within 30 days, not 48 hours — was met with anger by Canadians, Lake Ontario-defending Americans, and HOMES mnemonic rememberers, all of whom accused the company of too quickly complying with Trump’s Lake America demand spurred by a trade war over tariffs.

To the degree that a future Democratic administration can dismantle all of the Silly-Con Valley monopolies, they should. 

Pakistan Said This?

While there have been recent movement toward China over the past few years, Pakistan has been in the pocket of the United States.

Not any more, it seems, because Pakistan has stated that it is not bound by unilateral US sanctions against Iran.

Pakistan said it is not “obliged to” comply with unilateral sanctions on Iran unless they are imposed by the United Nations, signaling a willingness to continue trade after the US warned of economic penalties against countries doing business with Tehran.

Islamabad is following bilateral agreements with Iran and while trade between the two neighbors remains robust, “there is a desire to expand,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said at a weekly briefing Thursday.

Pakistan relied on its ties with Iran to negotiate the release of oil tankers early on during the conflict. The two countries have also agreed to Pakistan, Iran Agree on Completing Free Trade Agreement Soon a Pakistan, Iran Businessmen Aim to Boost Trade to $10 Billion to increase bilateral commerce by more than threefold to $10 billion. 

Pakistan has been trying to balance its relations with the US and Iran during the war. The country has strengthened its ties with the US during President Donald Trump’s second term, particularly after emerging as a key mediator between Tehran and Washington.

Last week, Pakistan’s army chief was in Iran as part of negotiations to end the Middle East conflict after tensions flared up again.

Iran won the war, and there are consequences of this. 

Headline of the Day

Ex-Barclays boss denies having sex with woman dressed as Snow White after Epstein emails

—The Guardian

There are a lot of ,b.REALLY,/b. sick f%$#s out there.

The former Barclays boss Jes Staley has denied having sex with a woman dressed as Snow White, after being questioned about an infamous email exchange about Disney princesses with Jeffrey Epstein.

The comments were detailed in newly released transcripts from a closed-door interview last month with US lawmakers as part of their investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.

In the email exchange on 9 and 10 July 2010 Staley and Epstein referred to Disney princesses. In those messages, the details of which have been circulating in the media since 2021, Staley tells Epstein: “That was fun. Say hi to Snow White.”

Epstein then asks: “What character would you like next?” to which Staley replied: “Beauty and the Beast.” Epstein responded: “Well one side is availble [sic].”

During his congressional testimony, Staley, who spent more than three decades at JPMorgan Chase before joining Barclays in 2015, was asked: “Did you ever have sex with a young woman in a Snow White costume?

“No, I did not,” Staley said.

Mandy Rice-Davies Applies.  (Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?)

I expect Disney to file a lawsuit against Mr. Staley in the next few days. 

 

Hitting Us Where We Sit

It appears that one consequence of our trade war with Canada is a jump in the price of toilet paper.

Thanks Donnie. 

Using the bathroom or having a cry is about to become more expensive for North Americans as the US and Canada enter a full-fledged trade war that threatens to flush away decades of peaceful trading between the two nations.

After trade negotiations broke down between the two countries last weekend, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, vowed to match US tariffs “dollar for dollar” and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face 25% to 50% tariffs starting on 8 September.

Paper products are among the hardest-hit sectors, with Canada threatening to put tariffs of between 25% and 50% on “toilet paper or face tissue stock” from 8 September in retaliation for a 50% hike from Washington DC.

Though American toilet paper and tissues are often made domestically, they heavily rely on lumber-rich Canada for raw materials. Procter & Gamble, the owner of Charmin toilet paper, said last year that it would have to increase prices amid tariffs that were in place at the time.

Maybe it's time to switch to 1-ply.

Lying to the Court Again

One of the arguments given by the Trump administration to allow the construction of the White House Ballroom is that there will be a nuclear proof bunker underneath that is required by current threats.

The problem here is that there is already such a bunker under the White House, and the Trump Administration has not informed the courts of this.

President Donald Trump has claimed that the White House needs a massive new ballroom because it would provide him and future presidents with a secure, hardened facility. But former officials say the argument fails to acknowledge that the presidential complex already has one.

More than a decade ago, federal officials built a highly protected bunker, embedded deep underground, that can shelter the president and his top aides in a national security emergency, according to three former officials.

The facility, which was secretly completed during the Obama administration, can house dozens of people for up to multiple weeks, two former officials said. It’s buried more than 60 feet underneath the White House complex and built to withstand a nuclear blast, two of the officials said, ensuring the president and his team have a secure command center to run the country in times of extreme duress.

The bunker’s existence, the former officials said, undercuts the Trump administration’s emerging legal argument in the ongoing lawsuit over the $600 million ballroom complex’s construction: that the facility must be completed due to its significance for U.S. national security.

They are lying again.  This is why the presumption of regularity has been going out of the window. 

More History Rhyming

It looks like we are headed for a crackup in the private credit market. (archive link)

Strain is spreading across private credit portfolios, with some of the largest funds taking writedowns and warning about problem loans as the industry faces its biggest challenge in almost a decade.

The value of troubled loans held by some of the biggest private debt investors has reached levels last seen in 2017, when the industry was dealing with a hangover from an oil price crash, an FT analysis of figures from fixed-income data provider Solve has found.

Loans placed on non-accrual status by the 20 largest publicly traded business development companies (BDCs) — listed funds that invest in private credit loans — climbed to a median 2.8 per cent of their cost in the second quarter, up from 2 per cent at the end of March.

The non-accrual demarcation is one signal of stress in the private credit industry, indicating borrowers have either stopped making payments on their loans or that a fund believes a borrower may soon default on its obligations.

………

Listed vehicles managed by KKR and Blue Owl, as well as one run by Apollo Global known as MidCap Financial, were among the funds in which repayments outstripped new lending in the quarter, with executives at KKR pointing to limited dealmaking and its push to exit certain loans.

The firm’s listed fund, FS KKR Capital Corp, reported that 7.1 per cent of its loan book was troubled in the second quarter, a slight improvement from the prior quarter but still far above the industry average.

The figures underscore the challenge facing the private investment industry, which wagered heavily on private credit as a major source of growth as it looked to invest money for insurers, retirees and wealthy individuals.

………

But many executives across the $2tn asset class believe that the alarmism surrounding private credit’s troubles is overblown, with several blaming the media — including the FT — for the outflows weighing on the asset class.

They would say that it is just alarmism, their paychecks depend on their saying this. 

………

Much of the pain already seen has been centred on investments the funds helped finance between 2020 and 2021, when interest rates were near zero and private equity groups went on a buying binge while valuations were elevated.

Many of those companies are now struggling to service their debt as interest rates have climbed, with executives on earnings calls repeatedly pointing to that cohort as the source of trouble.

Yeah, this is econ f%$#ing 101.  When interest rates go up, loan payments go up. 

………

Mitchel Penn, an analyst at Oppenheimer, noted that the sell-off in BDC share prices meant funds were “priced for death”. His own research showed that on average over the past five years, funds in the bottom quartile were generating returns on equity below the yield on a 10-year Treasury.

“Underwriting wasn’t as good as it should have been,” he said. “They weren’t as picky.”

Gee, apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? 

Professionals Talk Logistics

At Exercises Southern Cross and Pitch Black in Australia the USAF was only able to deploy ½ of the F-35s that they planned, and those jets were delayed by a week.

Once more we have a, "It was a viciously sharp slice of mango, wasn't it, sir," moment for the Pentagon.

The U.S. Air Force’s latest fighter deployment to Australia has revealed an uncomfortable reality: If it wants to get into the fight quickly, it needs support from allies.

The service spent months this year gearing up for a nearly monthlong deployment of 12 Lockheed Martin F-35As from Alaska to Australia to support Exercises Southern Cross and Pitch Black. In the end, only six aircraft arrived and were more than a week behind schedule.

This deployment was planned over a year in advance, and still, it fell apart.

Best Military in the World

General Dynamics got over $½ billion to manage a new factory producing 155mm howitzer shells. It has yet to deliver a single round.

The Pentagon ain't asking for its money back either.

A robot was on fire. Again.

It was the summer of 2024, and the cutting-edge robots inside General Dynamics’ sweltering artillery factory near Dallas were catching fire with startling regularity, according to four former workers there. This wasn’t ideal, as the plant was supposed to be churning out urgently needed artillery shells for Ukraine. The robots, giant metal arms with clamps for hands, would end up drenched in oil, which would then — no surprise — combust as they moved steel blocks heated to 1,800 degrees into and out of a machine that periodically erupted columns of fire. One blaze that summer melted a robot’s cables, putting it out of commission for a week.

Only weeks earlier, defense officials and executives had touted the factory’s innovative new machinery, imported from Turkey, at a gala opening ceremony. But employees were already used to spectacular mishaps, fiery and otherwise. “After the second, third, fourth time, it just became almost normal,” one former worker said. “It got to the point where I was not surprised by anything that happened there.”

Instead of producing shells in an efficient and streamlined fashion, the pricey machines kept failing in bizarre ways. The robot arms would swing out of control, smashing into carefully calibrated equipment, and sometimes they would unexpectedly drop hunks of steel 5 feet down to the floor. The factory’s signature device, meant to precisely stretch the steel for the artillery shells, instead often cracked it beyond repair. Then there were the giant press machines, which required regular pounding with a sledgehammer to function properly but still botched the shaping of nearly every shell. “We really didn’t have any standardized practice,” said Quantel White, a former employee. “It was just a bunch of guys taking turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night.” To workers, even the factory buildings themselves came to feel doomed, with acrid smoke hanging in 100-degree heat over foundations seemingly sinking into the earth.

The situation never improved. The U.S. Army, which funded the factory, ordered work halted on two of its three production lines in August 2025. By then, General Dynamics had blown eight deadlines. Work on the third production line continued, but the facility never produced a single usable shell, according to a report from the Department of Defense’s inspector general in July.

The fiasco has cost American taxpayers $533 million, according to the Army. But the Army has not held General Dynamics or a key Turkish subcontractor — which provided the factory’s much-hyped but little-proven equipment — publicly accountable for the failures. Nor has it made General Dynamics pay a penny back.

 To quote Samuel L. Jackson, "Motherf%$#er!"

Speaking of Political Malpractice………

Trump's disastrous and incompetent Iran adventure is deeply unpopular, and it's getting less popular by the day, but the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) refuses to come out against the war.

To quote (not) Tallyrand, "This is worse than a crime, this is a mistake." 

There’s definitely something uncanny about this: We’re five months and 10 days into Donald Trump’s war of choice with Iran, and it’s been about five months and five days since he lost it. Trump won’t end the war because he can’t accept terms that make clear how badly he fucked this up, and we’re all captive to his narcissism. The result is that U.S. credibility is in tatters. Everyone’s mad at us for creating a global energy crisis, and rightly so. Nobody trusts Trump to honor his word, because he’s a liar. Nobody trusts him to make good on his threats, because he makes them endlessly but never follows through. He’s depleted U.S. munitions stockpiles badly enough to leave service members, and allies that rely on our preparedness, vulnerable to adversaries.

It’s a cockup of world historic proportions. And yet… it’s often not among Trump’s biggest day-to-day political liabilities. The war is slow-bleeding support from the GOP. But there are no sustained calls for Trump to resign in disgrace, or face impeachment, or any consequences that match the scale of the failure. And yet we know, because we weren’t born yesterday, that presidents and cabinet officials have been mired in damaging controversy for much smaller military blunders. Remember Barack Obama’s redline in Syria? Or Benghazi?

………

What do you think would happen to Democratic Party approval ratings if Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries wrote up an agenda like the one I proposed here, including a promise that if Democrats win the election, they’ll defund Trump’s war against Iran? Would they go up or down?

What if they were able to communicate, unabashedly, that Trump had humiliated America. That through his own foolishness, megalomania, and dishonesty, he had made the United States seem weak and feckless to the world. That this is, for the pendency of his regime, a disaster for U.S. strategic power—but also that it’s fundamentally aberrant. Something Democrats will set right once Trump is gone.

What if Democrats told the electorate, but also the world, that American renewal could begin early, but only if voters gave Democrats enough power to dog walk Trump to the end of his term. No more threats to invade or occupy enemies or allies on a lark. No more denial about the failure of his foreign policy. He might serve his last two years in full—Republicans could still ensure his acquittal on impeachment—but he’d be muzzled and on a tight leash?

People are disinclined to vote for careerist coward hypocrites.

Useless as Tits on a Bull

I am referring, of course, to the dead eyed leader of the House Democratic Caucus Hakeem Jeffries.

He decided that it would somehow be a good thing to come out in opposition of Medicare for All, because lobbyists gotta write those checks.

If the Dems take over the House and Senate this November, it will be in spite of mooks like Jeffries, not because of them.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) announced his opposition to Medicare for All on the same day a CBS News poll found 90 percent of Democratic voters support the idea — and 72 hours after a Yale University study showed the program would save 114,000 American lives and $1 trillion every single year.

Here’s some important context: Jeffries has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign cash from healthcare PACs in the 2026 election cycle and didn’t face any primary challenge holding him accountable to Democratic voters’ desires, despite him representing a deep New York City blue district.

If you think what I’ve just described is so cartoonish that it must be an overstatement, think again — it’s all too real and all too emblematic of Democratic politics.

But the good news is that other prominent Democrats are starting to speak out more forcefully against their party’s direction and this kind of betrayal.

The very epitome of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Nostalgia

Somali pirates are back.

It’s Groundhog Day in the Gulf. I use an American reference as it’s an American-made calamity. After weeks of stop-start progress, 14,000 of the estimated 20,000 seafarers who had been stuck in the Strait of Hormuz since Donald Trump began bombing Iran have made their escape. Having heard that good news, you could be forgiven for thinking that things had been on the up, at least as far as shipping is concerned.

……… 

In Hormuz, ships have no protection either. They are easy prey. With the Western navies preoccupied, the Somalis have opportunistically reappeared in the Arabian Sea and western Indian Ocean and now hold hostage four ships and 67 seafarers. The pirates have issued a £3 million demand for the release of MT Honour 25 and released a chilling photo of the crew sitting on the floor of the bridge, with masked pirates and AK-47s as a backdrop.


When Honour 25 was first taken hostage, one of its crew managed to send a voice note to his family in Karachi, Pakistan. His son Muzammil Ahmed Ansari told Al Jazeera what his father, 53-year-old Mehmood, had managed to say. “He said, ‘We are hijacked, reach out to the company, to people, to the government.’ He said there were pirates on the ship, all armed. He panicked, but he said, ‘Don’t worry, ask the government to deal with it.’”

More blowback from Trump's disasterous Iran war. 

A Complete Sh%$ Show

Things have gotten so bad on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln that sailors are literally jumping overboard to get off the ship.

Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran.

Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.

Not to worry.  I'm sure that once Hegseth's plan to give testosterone shots to sailors will fix everything.

……… 

The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended. 

At this rate, we are going to start seeing a return of officers being fragged sooner rather than later.

Mom! History is Rhyming Again!

It looks like non-bank lenders are in the process of slowly collapsing.

Seems a lot like 2009.  Things move slowly, and then all at once. 

Private credit is showing increasing signs of stress, despite comments to the contrary from some of the largest fund managers that are trying to put a year of turmoil behind them.

Recent quarterly reports from funds overseen by the industry’s big players showed that loan health and investor returns are worsening, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.

………

The percentage of defaulted loans in Blue Owl’s fund hit 2.8% in the second quarter, its highest level in at least five years. Nonperforming loans at the three other funds also hit five-year highs, exceeding levels reached in 2023 when the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates, squeezing the finances of corporate borrowers and triggering a wide stock and bond market selloff.

 Not only have the lessons of 1929 been forgotten, the lessons of 2009 have been forgotten.

When Your Realize Your Partner is Unreliable

European countries are looking for alternate sources for weapons because they are concerned about the misuse of ITAR regulations by the United States.

The use of American subsystems has always been complex for European defense contractors, since it gives Washington a veto over potential exports, and even before Trump, these limits were frequently applied more for industrial protection rather than security concerns.

Today, there is absolutely no trust remaining.

US firms seeking to tap into ballooning European defense budgets are finding a new roadblock emerging: a desire by European capitals to avoid US control of weapon sales.

There have long been concerns about how American International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) restrict foreign governments’ ability to sell or transfer domestically built weapons that contain components originating in the US. And that concern is becoming harder to ignore as skepticism surrounding US and European relations has led to a serious push on the continent to move away from buying weapons with US-controlled parts, according to a half-dozen people who talked to Breaking Defense.

………

In its simplest terms, ITAR is a set of US government rules to regulate the export and import of defense and military items on the United States Munitions List (USML), including services and technical data. 

Scott Wise, a partner at Crowell & Moring and a member of the law firm’s international trade group, said the bulk of foreign governments’ concerns on ITAR is the “see-through rule.” That rule, he told Breaking Defense, means ITAR regulators track the US-made components inside a foreign-built weapon system and control where those parts go and what they’re used for.

 Consequences.

Headline of the Day

Tesla Cybertruck Risks Becoming the Ford Edsel of the EV Era

—Bloomberg on the piss poor sales numbers for Musk's folly.

Elon's Swasticar is not selling well

Ford Motor Co. introduced a car almost 70 years ago widely viewed as the greatest automotive flop of all time. Tesla Inc.’s Cybertruck may well be on its way to claiming that title.

Ford’s Edsel, unveiled in 1957, was pitched as an entirely new kind of car, with an oval-shaped front grille likened to a horse collar. The company predicted it would sell 200,000 units in the model’s first year on the market. Ford ended up selling less than one-third of that target, and the Edsel’s design became the butt of jokes.

Tesla started delivering its unusually angular Cybertruck in 2023. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk called it the company’s best product ever and estimated the carmaker might build more than 250,000 annually, depending on demand. Tesla sold less than one-sixth of that number in its first year, and the truck’s blocky looks became a punchline.

Edsel sales dropped each year the model was on the market, and Ford discontinued the car in 1959. Cybertruck sales are off to an even worse start. Only 7,133 have been registered in the US this year through May, according to S&P Global Mobility data provided to Bloomberg News. That count is buoyed by Musk’s other companies, with SpaceX building out a fleet of Cybertrucks.

 Even with the self-dealing and fraud, the tiny penis truck is not selling well.