Werthead

Qatar is currently the headquarters of CENTCOM, but the operational command centre at the moment is apparently not in Al-Udeid. There's a lot of confusion about this. Trump, Vance and Hegseth are in the operations room under the White House, so I'm sure the response will be sane and measured.

Some sources are reporting a missile strike on the Al-Asad Airbase in Iraq, but no confirmation.

Al-Udeid is apparently empty. US troops have been moved to other bases in the region. Video footage shows at least three ballistic missiles intercepted over Doha. American bases in Iraq are now under attack.

Iran has launched at least 6 ballistic missiles at the US military base in Doha, Qatar. American Patriot batteries have engaged. Iran with nuclear weapons would be more rational and easier to deal with than North Korea with nuclear weapons. That is very much not saying the same thing as saying they would be "rational" and "easy" to deal with overall. North Korea is a low bar. Trump has gone fucking nuts at Medvedev on social media.

My take on The Alters. Damn, 2025 is the year of the "huge game coming kinda out of nowhere to be awesome." Expectations weren't high for Kingdom Come Deliverance II after the first once was only kinda okay and then it smashed it. Clair Obscur, obviously. Blue Prince. The year is delivering.

Some analysts have suggested that China's economy would be so impacted by closing the straits, that they might have no choice but to open the straits themselves by force rather than suffer the damage. However, the US and everyone else's economy is so fragile that even just having 5% or 10% of their oil supply cut off would be enough to damage them, and the US has forces in the area (including a ship in the Gulf itself, which would be cut off) which could respond instantly. China would likely not have to respond directly, could criticise the US and offer consolation to Iran, whilst secretly approving of the US operation.

Ukrainian forces have liberated Andriivka, Sumy and driven Russian forces on the left flank of the salient back. Excellent news, as this sector had been looking flaky for a while. Russian forces operating in Sumy seem to have been denied reinforcements. Ukraine has also destroyed a major troop concentration holding Tyotkino, Kursk, but it appears new Russian (and possibly North Korean) reinforcements have arrived. Tyotkino was looking vulnerable for a while and may yet fall, but it's going to be harder going. Ukrainian intelligence echoing other western agencies that Russia is preparing for "little green men"-style obfuscation operations in Estonia.

Iran's parliament has passed a resolution approving shutting the Straits of Hormuz. The resolution is not binding, but provides additional legal cover to the political and religious leadership if they choose to proceed. Oil tankers have been turning away from the straits all day and been heading for other ports instead.

There we go. Attacks on Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan by American bombers. Trump claims that Fordo is completely destroyed. Simultaneously, multiple American aircraft are apparently in the air over the Gulf and there is massive disruption of Iranian communications systems and radar going on. They're probably looking to interfere with any Iranian targeting for counter-attacks.

This was a reference to Putin's speech yesterday where he seemed to row back on his recent claims to just the 5 oblasts and instead started that Ukrainians and Russians are the same so they have claim to the whole country. Five minutes later he was saying that Russia probably wouldn't try to secure Sumy Oblast (because Russia's forces there have been driven back to the border area), so who knows. His maximalist instinct (he wants all of Ukraine) is warring with what is achievable in a best-case scenario (holding what he has and maybe expanding control to at least all of Donetsk and Luhansk).

Ukraine has (several days ago) destroyed a significant drone factory owned by Kronstadt JSC at Dubna, 115km from Moscow. The factory took nine direct hits, with no air defence in evidence. It appears most of the drones flew straight in through skylights and directly detonated over or on the production lines. This was a production line for Orion drones carrying X-UAV anti-vehicle missiles. Kronstadt JSC is very close to bankruptcy. Ukraine has also damaged an electronics factory in Cheboksary, over 1,000km from the front line. A Russian fuel train has in Donetsk Oblast has been destroyed. Eleven fuel tanks are burning, and the railway track has been severed, possibly in several places. Lukashenko has met Kellogg in Minsk and discussed how to end the war in Ukraine, Belarus's ties to China, and improving US-Belarus relations. Lukashenko also agreed to release 14 political prisoners (several of them are already free and have already left Belarus). A Russian training ground in L'gov, Kursk has been hit by drones, with casualties reported. Uzbek and Tajik citizens have been drafted into the Russian military whilst working as contractors in Russia. Russian forces attacked Kremenchuk, Poltava with cluster munitions. An emergency cleanup operation is underway.

More like a few hours. A flight of six B-2 bombers has left Missouri loaded for bear. There's a military aerial exclusion zone in operation east of Hawaii, where B-2 bombers transiting to Guam will engage in midair refuelling. From Guam the B-2s can hit Iran easily and return. They'd prefer to use Diego Garcia, but that would open Britain to reprisal attacks as well as the United States, and would require the United States to notify both Britain and Mauritius of their intent to use the island for offensive action. Britain is more strongly pursuing the diplomatic option. This might not mean a US strike is imminent, as they may simply be flying the bombers to Guam and hold them in combat readiness there for a couple of weeks, but generally speaking, the B-2s do not fly unless they are ready to attack. And the US is wary of holding irreplaceable strike assets on Guam as, in the advent of a conflict with China over Taiwan, a Chinese missile strike on Guam is likely. The United States has evacuated embassy staff from Tel Aviv, sending a special aircraft to pick them up and fly them to Greece. Martyrdom in Shia Islam is a different kind of thing to the Islamist suicide bombings we've seen a lot of. In Shia, martyrdom is honourable and a likely path to heaven, but only if carried out defensively. Offensive martyrdom, like suicide bombings, is prohibited. This is why Iranian milita groups operating in Iraq and Syria do not carry out suicide bombings, although they doesn't stop them outsourcing attacks to allied Sunni extremist groups. It's a point of strong debate in Shia circles whether nuking a country, knowing 100% they'll nuke you back, is permissible martyrdom; the balance of the argument seems to be no, as you'll get a whole bunch of innocent people killed. This isn't a magic bullet to say that Iran would never use a nuclear weapon; if Iran genuinely 100% believed they could achieve total surprise and destroy Israel beyond any hope of a second strike, or a genuine fear of the US nuking them in response, they might well do that. But I'm not sure how they'd get to that position.

Huh. Big data breach at Sega. They confirm that Total War: Warhammer III has only sold 2.3 million copies, which surprised a lot of people, and it was totally outsold by Three Kingdoms (at over 3.2 million) and has sold less than Warhammer I and II. The other recent TW games, including Thrones of Britannia, Troy and Pharoah, have sold so incredibly badly that they don't even appear in the figures. They also confirm that Rome Remastered sold disappointingly, hence no Medieval II Remastered (ignoring the fact that Rome II Emperor Edition continues to sell really well, and is the preferred choice for people wanting to play Romans in the Total War paradigm; Medieval III famously does not exist, so not a problem for Medieval II), despite Medieval II still being the 4th-most-played TW game on Steam. Those figures strongly confirm why Empire II and Medieval III are just not on the cards, the total engine rebuild to support them would be very expensive and these kind of sales would not support it. The figures also suggest sharply declining sales for the Yakuza series (Infinite Wealth has not yet topped 1 million copies sold), but rising ones for the Persona series, with Persona 5 approaching 8 million sales.

I just started rewatching Classic from Season 7 (1970). It's the first colour season, the first complete season with no missing episodes (and there no more from then until the end of the show in Season 26), and it's, madly the only time in Classic Who that they replace the Doctor and companion simultaneously. They also reduce the episode count per season from ~40 to 24-26 (equal to 13 modern episodes), which is much more palatable. It's also a tonal reboot, with more, mostly shorter stories (not so much in Season 7, with one 4-parter and three 7-parters, but certainly in the following seasons), more action and more focus on gadgets and UNIT. Jon Pertwee is a charismatic, winning performer, even if it takes until Seasons 8 and 9 for the writers to properly find his voice (they wanted the Third Doctor to be more comedic and farcical, which is why they cast Pertwee; Pertwee wanted to use the show as a vehicle to show his more dramatic, theatrical side). Caroline John is also very good as Liz Shaw, but they seem to run into a problem of their own making by having her be a brilliant (human) scientist, but because she's totally outshone by the Doctor, she never really gets to use those skills and is reduced to being kidnapped a lot. Because she's so intelligent, the Doctor also doesn't need to explain as much stuff to her, which led to some viewers complaining that they didn't know what was going on. Katy Manning as Jo Grant in the following season is not as interesting a character, but a better foil for the Doctor to bounce off. Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier also totally owns every scene he's in, and the way he's written versus the Doctor is great. He's not awed by him, he's not in his fan club (as his daughter Kate is in the new show), he'll push back when the Doctor is wrong (and he is sometimes) but he has huge respect for him, and will listen, especially if it keeps the lives of his men out of danger. Huge amount of mutual respect between the two of them, very well-played.

I think Putin has made (another, bigger) mistake here. Trump offered him a ludicrously generous, wholly unearned offramp that would have left him with three of his five target oblasts and about half the others. He could have sold that as a pretty solid victory (Russia keeps everything it's taken on the battlefield), taken the win, seen sanctions ended and the economy probably improve after a short transition period. Instead he's doubling down and making wholly unreasonable, impractical and unachievable demands, and ultimately potentially risking losing at least some (and maybe most, though all is probably unlikely) of his gains. If the Russian economy collapses, soldiers stop being paid and they just up sticks and go home, and decide not to stop on the frontline in Donbas, Ukraine could recapture wide swathes of its fallen territory very quickly. It does appear that the Russian willingness to endure horrendous hardships on the front is approaching exhaustion point, with these larger numbers of surrenders going on.

First Russian case of front-line cannibalism reported. A starving Russian soldier shot his comrade and ate his remains over two weeks. He listed his comrade as missing in an attack before the truth was uncovered. The head of the Duma's Budget Committee Andrey Makarov has sounded an alarm bell at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, stating that the Russian Federation is following the same path as the USSR. The economic requirements of working-class Russians are increasing at a rate that the economy cannot meet, as it is focused on war production and the underlying foundations are not strong enough to support it. The Ministry of Finance also confirmed that Russia's National Welfare Fund is less than a third of what it was when the war started, and could be depleted this year. Russia's debt crisis is now growing, with 15% of all Russian businesses now in default, or about to get there because they cannot cover their interest payments. Andrey Kostin, head of VSB (Russia's second-largest bank), and Alexander Shokhin, head of the RSPP, both backed up the assessment of an impending crisis. This seemed to annoy Putin, who simply said that a recession "can't be allowed to happen." He also made comments suggesting that he wants to see all of Ukraine surrender, rather than just the annexed regions so far. Ukrainian fighters from the 65th Mechanised Brigade carried out a tactical strike using drones, destroying a Russian Garmon radar system on the Zaporizhzhia front. 22 Russian soldiers on the Pokrovsk front apparently just gave up and surrendered, in a pattern we've seen previously on the Lyman front. Some Telegram comments about Russian soldiers recently released from Ukrainian captivity looking very fit and healthy (unlike some Ukrainian POWs looking like they've just stepped out of a Jewish internment camp in 1945) may have convinced serving soldiers that surrender is preferable to get blown to pieces on the front. Current analysis is that Pokrovsk is making up the majority of Russian combat operations, roughly a third in January-June. Kursk was the second-heaviest area of fighting, following by Novopavlivka, Lyman and Toretsk.

According to a few different reports, the directors pitching for the next Bond film include Denis Villeneuve, Edgar Wright, Paul King, Edward Berger & Jonathan Nolan. I think that's the wrong Nolan brother. Denis is busy for ages, but he might clear a space for Bond. Edgar Wright I think is the most interesting choice. A few years ago I'd have said no, but I think with more restraint and tighter plotting, he'd be a very capable candidate, and might freshen up the tone. A lot of people making the traditional request for a period movie, but I saw an interesting response that the risk mitigation for a Bond movie hinges on product placement, and a 1960s-set movie can't sell you the latest state-of-the-art Aston Martin or watch. Meanwhile, we already have a Nolan Bond movie sneak Peak:

The lost of 30-40% of Iran's launch vehicles is a major problem, although it appears that the majority of those were destroyed on Day 1, and the Israeli Air Force has had more limited success tracking them down since then, though still hitting a couple per day. The main weakness for Iran is that to hit Israel requires its absolute longest-ranged missiles, and it never had tons and tons of those, and they are very expensive. The question mark for the US is its quantities of medium and short-range missiles capable of hitting, say, its bases in Kuwait that are less than 100 miles from the Iranian border. We know those stockpiles were much vaster and, though Israel has taken out quite a few of them, Iran has tons to spare. Israel's high-end interceptors are also extremely expensive and not infinite in number. Clearly Israel was not expecting the numbers to get through the screens that got through today.

What's quite striking is the degree of apathy, and even some hostility, that's greeted The Devils in some places like r/fantasy (previously only rapturously laudatory of his books). There seems to be a feeling it's a bit Abercrombie-by-the-numbers at best, and awful at worst. But Joe did sell (at least) 6 million books before The Devils came out, so I'd be startled to see him abandon the First Law universe to focus on this series. The First Law definitely feels like it's had two chapters so far (the rising action and then the middle point in Age of Madness) and is lacking a final act (Bayaz vs Glokta, or his descendants).

Ukraine appears to have taken more territory in Kursk Oblast, south of Tyotkino. Unconfirmed and wild report that a Ukrainian sabotage group has crossed the border from Kazakhstan into Orenberg Oblast, using drones to launch a surprise short-range attack on a Russian Strategic Missile Forces base (probably not an actual nuke silo). Russia has proposed new talks with Ukraine in Istanbul after June 22nd. Presumably this date is related to the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Heavy fighting near Kostyantynivka, Donetsk Oblast. A Ukrainian defensive position eliminated 18 Russian armoured vehicles and 13 motorcycles. Russian Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov has reiterated that Russia is now on the edge of a recession.

Israel's Iron Dome is for slow-moving drones, cruise missiles and short-range rockets. To intercept ballistic missiles, it needs David's Sling and Arrow-2 and Arrow-3. These are astronomically expensive systems in comparison to Iron Dome, with each shot costing millions to tens of millions of dollars (especially for extraatmospheric interception). Israel's defences thus monitor incoming missiles and plot their flight path. If the missile is going to hit open ground but miss its primary target, the system may hold fire on a cost/benefit ratio. Israel has said that it will always fire if the flight path intersects with a building, but there's questions being raised about that. The higher-value interception systems also don't have thousands of interceptor missiles in storage. I don't think Israel was expecting Iran to be able to hit them with this many missiles, the interceptor stocks may be starting to look questionable (if not now, then looking several weeks down the road of this kind of exchange of fire). Extreme high-value ballistic missiles can now glide in the descent phase, allowing them to throw off predictors and confuse them, usually stopping them firing because they think they're going to miss before acquiring the final target milliseconds before impact, well outside any interception window. This is more of a concern with Chinese missiles than either Russian or Iranian at the moment.

The Alters is brilliant. Very clever, atmospheric game with a tremendous soundtrack. It's basically Moon: The Game. There are entire live-action movies inside the game to watch (only 8-10 minutes long, but still). The one about the guys on the spaceship having to find out who's the alien infiltrator is very funny.

The effort itself might not be contestable, but the blowback is. So far Iran has been hamstrung by its missile inventory: only its longest-ranged missiles can hit Israel (its very longest-ranged can hit Europe, but are being used on Israel in a pinch). It still has many thousands of short-range missiles that can very easily strike US and allied bases and interests along the Gulf, in Iraq and in Syria, and though American bases have Patriots, only a couple have THAAD. Theoretically they are much more vulnerable to ballistic missile strikes (though upgraded Patriots have had some success against them in Israel and Ukraine). This has to form an important part of the calculus of any attack. Iran hitting a hospital is probably not helping the don't-act side of the argument on Trump's side.

There's some sort of Viserys Shahgaryen joke to be made, but I can't do it.

The Alters is out and reviewing very well. I might take a look after payday, it looks different enough to be interesting (it's a sort-of management strategy game with a core narrative, with you creating clones of yourself as a workforce). Recently listened to the Rest is History's take on Hannibal and it occurred to me there wasn't a good Hannibal video game. I got the Hannibal DLC for Rome II and, although it seemed promising, I couldn't get to grips with it. The way Rome II handles the Total War formula is just something I despise. Might return to Oblivion Remastered. I was developing my plan to knock off every single quest in the game, which is Herculean but doable. I think I'm about 50% of the way there, and still need to do Shivering Isles (for the first time ever!).