​I don’t usually break the Sabbath, the Biblical one which I follow, to comment on world events but I am asked by readers about the Royal Navy’s status after the recent events in the Persian Gulf / Strait of Hormuz. For those not knowing, the war mongrels in Washington (dual Israeli / American John Bolton and the obese “exceptional” Third Temple believer Mike Pompeo) were pushing at Iran for more than a year now to get a reaction that may lead to war on behalf of the Jewish State. Yes, a short summary but if you should read my recent books you will find dozens of pages on why the summary reads as is. It is a war that the US and NATO (the aggressors, war criminals under international law & the Nuremberg Principles) should win. However, it will cost dearly in human life and equipment lost (see my blog at https://www.georgemjames.com/blog/who-will-win-usa-or-iran). And with an election coming up this is the last thing that Donald J Trump can afford. Now the UK, the US lapdog since World War Two, got themselves in a mess by seizing an Iranian oil tanker next to Gibraltar. Since they did so on behalf of the US (they say EU sanctions against Syria but we know better) the Iranians responded by seizing two British flagged oil tankers in the Persian Gulf / Strait of Hormuz – one was released and one is still being held. Note please that it is not even debatable if the British action in Gibraltar was legal or not – unless international sanctions are approved by the UN Security Council it is unlawful under International law and of no effect. You cannot rely on them as justification – the Iranian tanker seizure was an act of piracy. Thus, the Brits are standing on the wrong side of international law here as do the Americans but they never cared much about such things since 1999 when Kosovo was bombed, also unlawfully and without UN authority – air piracy thus. And so the Iranians, and this is actually legal under international law or can be defended, by doing the same, quid pro quo. In plain English, “tit-for-tat.” Right, what can the Royal Navy do now to get that ship released and I mean from a conventional viewpoint, not a Special Forces raid to snatch it back.

It was Winston S Churchill that stood out as the statesman that understood naval power more than anyone else. In all his books he has the same message. “The navy is what keeps enemy soldiers away from the mainland.” Before him, one George Washington had the same idea, “Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive.” As I warn in numerous books, the only thing that stands between the Chinese Navy (and they have excellent weapons, see Code Name Ghost, Code Name Lucy and American Military Might – Debunked) and the US mainland is the US Navy (in a deplorable state). Also note what is being built in Chinese dockyards, big carriers and quiet nuclear attack boats – both are offensive weapon systems, not defensive and you must wonder why. Then you look at the way they are going about it and it should frighten you. They test systems and standardize, then they build them at a scale no one can match. Which means that their navy is well-balanced. They have standardised weapons that are new and working better than what the West can produce (read my non-fiction books where this is dealt with). The Royal Navy is not at all like that, not at all, it is Mickey Mouse because of bad planning and even worse faith from the turd brigade (politicians, they float in what they talk, are smelly too besides being slimy).

I wrote something in Intelligence Briefing: “The Royal Navy is a zero on a contract these days. They have almost no ships operational and most of those are terribly old and outclassed. Their entire nuclear deterrent is dependent on US equipment and they lost the ability to operate fleet size carriers, the last such fleet carrier went out of service in the mid-1970s – their Parasite-known-as-Prince-Charles, flew on them as a young man, with the McDonnell Douglas Phantom II. Now they need to be trained by the US Navy on carrier operation or perhaps France or even Brazil. That is how far the once respected Royal Navy is behind the times, close to fifty years, half a century. It is ridiculous but also so terribly sad. The Royal Navy is completely unbalanced. We are reminded of Hitler’s unbalanced Kriegsmarine of 1939… where the capital ships were not built as planned, thus making sure that those existing were fed piecemeal into the action and suffer defeat time after time. The problem is this and it is serious enough to be never printed in mainstream media. God knows why, everyone in naval circles knows about it. The new Royal Navy Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers will only have 12 to 24 F-35Bs on them simply because Whitehall bought only a total of 48 such aircraft whereas the ships could have carried 50 each. Logic thus would have demanded at least 150 aircraft to be bought or manufactured to ensure that some are spare etc. One third are usually down for maintenance, another third is used for training. Thus, and this should shock you, the operational Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier steaming out to meet the enemy has less than half her designed allocation of aircraft on board or if a full load, then only one carrier can be operational, the other one is without fighter protection, lol. This is because that what is available, the miserable 48 F-35Bs (which they don’t even have, and they got rid of their effective Harrier fighters), are split between the two ships and because training must carry on, maintenance etc., almost certainly only 12 F-35B aircraft will be on such a carrier where there should have been four times more by design. There is no excuse, it is outright a pathetic attempt. A US carrier, for instance, will never leave harbour without 60 to 90 aircraft on board and in a carrier group of 3 to 4 destroyers and guided missile cruisers, a nuclear submarine or two, and several supply ships because the carrier alone is extremely vulnerable. Unless you have layered defences around the carrier, other ships spreading out and adding much needed defensive and offensive firepower, the attackers will get that carrier every single time as is proven in war. The Royal Navy carriers, with half their allotted aircraft on board, do not have the required frigates and guided missile cruisers for escorts. The Kriegsmarine problem of World War Two repeating once again. They just don’t have them and so they will, I suppose, join an American task force for mutual protection and be subjugated to American command. With that goes all the remaining prestige the Senior Service had left. In every possible way, the Royal Navy has become a joke and is not reckoned much of a threat by the Chinese or the Russians. The new carriers cannot even claim quantity because their chief offensive and defensive weapon, the F-35B fighter, is in its totality a failure of design concept, that aircraft will lose any fight against a Fourth-Generation aircraft. What is more, the Queen Elizabeth carriers will never be able to keep up with the Yanks, being diesel powered, not nuclear and short ranged. They are further, this is interesting, in the same size and category as the much-ridiculed current Russian and Chinese carriers. For some reason, the Russian and Chinese carriers are seen as the joke but the Queen Elizabeth class is not. There is no doubt who will win the dogfights if such a clash ever takes place, the Sukhois will destroy the F-35B easily, it is proven in tests, and then what? How long before the aircraft carriers are sunk? It is a mess created entirely by the British turds.”

​So what will the Brits do? They already stated that they will use diplomatic means only and appealed to their Master, the US Navy, to assist. They don’t want war, they say. In fact, they are humiliated here. Their days of gunboat diplomacy are over. Like a proud man reduced to tatters, they stand exposed. It is pitiable to watch. And for the US Navy, why did you not protect those ships since that is what you are there for officially, apparently. This is what happens when you let your foreign policy be run by war mongrels and for the benefit of another State. We can only hope that sanity prevails but I doubt it.

I am at times astonished at what I find when researching a book. When I wrote Code Name Ghost, the South African Navy submarine book, as we refer to it, I came across the following story which I describe in Code Name July 27: “It is claimed that the SAS Maria van Riebeeck, a sister submarine of the Johanna van der Merwe (featuring in Code Name July 27), shot a Cuban helicopter down with a torpedo when trapped close to Luanda harbour. It is a story worthy of a book in itself and surely unique in the annals of sea warfare. Whether it happened or not is not really known with many stating flatly that it is only a story and nothing more. But, according to the rumour, they launched a torpedo which was guided by wire to where the helicopter was hovering and detonated it 41 feet below the surface. The waterspout knocked the helicopter down and that was it for that Mi-8. The submarine then left for safer waters. Whether this happened or not is left for the reader to decide.

Since the Daphne class torpedo warhead consisted of hundreds of pounds of high explosives it is technically possible but only if you could know exactly where that helicopter was hovering which sonar will tell you. We often deal with explosives, military demolitions (including assassination) inside the GMJ Books. Of course, you will not become an explosives expert by reading these books (on purpose, they are written like that) but the historical and technical details are covered. In Code Name Ghost we looked at shaped charges. “What you should remember when dealing with explosives, is that the energy released, the direction, can be controlled by shaping the charge into a beehive. Doing such things increases the effectiveness beyond belief and is used for nuclear weapon detonation, armour penetration and “cutting” through metal or other objects like a bridge span. You can even manipulate water into a shaped charge, it is used with bomb disposal (a water cannon, destroying everything including the bomb’s mechanism, Angelique). There is nothing new about shaped charges either, in science it is called the “Munroe or Neumann” effect. In fact, the idea of hollow or shaped charges was tried out in 1792 by German mining engineer Franz Xaver von Baader. However, they were not true shaped charges as we understand the concept. In those days, they did not have high explosives but used gunpowder, impossible to get the Munroe Effect with, it just does not burn fast enough to do so (modern explosives “move” at 32,808 feet per second, Angelique). The first true hollow charge effect was achieved using nitrocellulose also known as guncotton. In 1888, Charles E Munroe, working at the US Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, as a civilian chemist, noticed the manufacturer's name was edged into a piece of metal after an explosion and wondered why, this was the Munroe Effect as we understand it today. The effect was already known for about five years by then but not why and Mr Munroe gave it his name. Tests showed that you can increase the destructive power of the explosion by 7 to 10 times if you are really good by using a shaped charge and that is the real magic I would say. Shaped charges are the way to go anywhere. (Okay, let me explain practically as I did with Lise and Odette, age five at the time: “Girls, imagine your rifle’s bullet (they shared a rifle then, a SAKO 85, Foxtrot) thrown into a fire at a campsite and you will regret doing so if I catch you doing that so don’t try it, the bullet will cook off but it is not focussed energy and although dangerous, not as dangerous as the following example. Imagine the same bullet coming at you, from a barrel of your rifle, the energy is focussed to get it speeding at you at tremendous speed… accurately also if either myself, your daddy or Uncle Geelslang is doing the aiming. You get? That would be the difference between a shaped charge and a normal charge, one is focused and the other not, but both are dangerous if too close to you. Now shape the C-4 in front of you into a nice beehive for us, Angelique.”)

In Code Name July 27 we look at the combined 1 & 4 Recce attack on an oil refinery next to Luanda taking place in 1981 (Operation Kerslig, elements of the South African Navy and 7 Medical Battalion were also there). The mission succeeded and much damage was caused. However, some of the explosive charges went of too early. One operator, Captain de Kock, died and another two were seriously injured but made it out. There was a “debriefing” at Speskop afterwards where senior officers shamefully tried to shift blame which is revealed in Code Name July 27 (that debriefing was in plain Afrikaans ‘n uitkak parade, GMJ). What went wrong with the explosives I cannot reveal without spoiling the book for you but the lessons are implemented to this very day.
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Code Name July 27 is due for publishing on 27 July at my website and Amazon.

Many readers will recall, it was major news then, that on 8 July 1981 Mozambican Air Force Lieutenant Adriano Francisco Bomba defected to South Africa with his MiG-17 Fresco C. He was intercepted by two Mirage F1’AZs from Air Force Base Hoedspruit, I believe, that were on a training flight. Bomba landed at Hoedspruit and asked for political asylum which was granted. The airframe was later returned to Maputo by road but not before extensive examination and flight testing. The SAAF, South African Air Force test pilots were not impressed with the maintenance of the aircraft, stating that it should not be on flying status. That is the official version to this very day and might be true. Nevertheless, as I wrote Code Name July 27, due for publication on 27 July 2019, I discovered a few discrepancies… let me quote from the book:

“Okay, nice official view. What really happened?”

If anyone would know, Angelique (the South African Secret Service Head of Counterterrorism and Counterespionage, SASS) would, from her files.
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“There are many odd things about the official version, Foxtrot. Whatever statements the SAAF made regarding the MiG’s flying status they did fly it and so you must wonder if that was a ruse to cover something else. The SAAF long had a tradition to never fly on Wednesdays and use the day as ground training before going to sports days. Thus, the two interceptors ought not to have been flying on that day, it is distinctly abnormal. Also, the Mirages were the ground-attack version of 1 Squadron and not the air superiority CZ which would have been a more logical choice to intercept the MiG. Therefore, some say, they did not expect the incoming MiG to start a dogfight. That particular MiG had the number 21 painted on it leading some to speculate that it was a MiG-21 but it was not. Then, the MiG-17 Fresco C was never a threat to the SAAF and the flight testing done proforma almost. When it was returned by road the wings were removed in such a way that the airframe would never fly again. Many thought then and now that the intelligence agency (that would be National Intelligence, not SASS that came much later, GMJ) was trying to get hold of a MiG-21 in the same way as the Israelis did with their Operation Diamond where an Iraqi MiG-21 defected (1966). At that time the MiG-21 was new and perceived as unbeatable. But no, I doubt if we were involved from the intelligence side but we could have been, I was a junior agent and overseas…”

So we are left somewhat bemused and wondering what really happened behind the scenes. In Code Name July 27 we then looked at the 1966 Iraqi MiG-21 defection called Operation Diamond. That was something else. Several Mossad agents were caught and executed for their efforts. However, they got their MiG-21 and from that came the opening of US arsenals towards the Jewish State. The Israeli Air Force switched to US airframes (the McDonnell Douglas Phantom II) and away from the French Dassault Mirage III that they made famous during the Six Day War by adding two 30mm DEFA 552 cannon with 125 rounds per gun – another story described in Code Name Blue Tang. Yes, we love military history in GMJ Books.

Recently, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA proposed to sell 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, 250 Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles, related equipment and support at an estimated cost of just over $2.2bn to Taiwan. The US Congress must still approve the deal although it is not foreseen that they will refuse. Even according to DSCA the above will change nothing, “(the sales) would not alter the basic military balance in the region…”
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Let us look at another report that I discovered whilst writing Code Name Mel’s Choice, “In fact, the RAND Corporation did, they brought a report out, you can research this as you can with everything I say in my books, that shocked those briefed on it. They stated that as recently as in 1996 the US would have needed 2.1 air wings of between 66 and 72 aircraft each to protect their vassal, Taiwan, from Chinese air superiority. Right? We get that thinking, a MIG-21 is no match for a F-16, F-15 or F-18. But because the Chinese increased their own capabilities so much, the situation turned on its head, by 2003, that number became 10.6 wings, by 2010 you needed 19.6 wings and by 2017, 29.9 wings, 2,000 aircraft. Flatly put, the US don’t have such resources available and probably never will again nor the pilots to fly them. Taiwan is gone. She cannot be defended and mark my words, every country in that region has every reason in the world to worry about China. The RAND Report concluded that the results of their scenario were “staggering.”

Since then the Indian Air Force claimed to have downed a Pakistani Air Force F-16 (which they and the Americans deny) with one of their upgraded MiG-21s, itself shot down. Where did Pakistan get its F-16s from? The story is interesting and came out in Code Name July 27: Most Westerners will not know that numerous aerial engagements took place between the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) and the Soviets during their 1980s Afghan Conflict. That is why the Pakistanis got the then top-notch General Dynamics F-16 from the USA which they are now replacing with a homegrown Chinese / Pakistan fighter. Their elderly MiG-21s could not do the job and they needed better airframes to take the Soviets on. They took Soviet and Afghan piloted fighters on when they crossed into Pakistan to bomb the US supported Mujahedeen. After losing two ground strike aircraft, the Soviets deployed the MiG-23MLD Flogger-K air superiority fighter with look-down/shoot-down capabilities to escort the ground attack fighters. The heat was on with both sides attacking each other at will and without much control from Moscow or Islamabad. The Pakistanis soon lost an F-16 in combat but whether it was shot down by the Soviets as they claimed or themselves with a stray SRAAM is disputed. The F-16 pilot ejected safely. What was worrying and heavily suppressed was the utter failure of the US made Sidewinder SRAAM AIM9L. It turned out to be rubbish – confirmed later when the East German Air Force merged with the West German one – the story of the IRIS-T is explained in Code Name Blue Tang. By the time that the Soviets left, 1989, Pakistan formally credited its F-16 pilots with 10 combat kills during the conflict. The Soviet records confirmed only the loss of three Su-22s, an Su-25 and a single An-26 transport due to PAF efforts. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Pakistan produced excellent pilots that should not be underrated. One, Saiful Azam, holds the record for the most Israeli fighters shot down, 4, by one man whilst “on loan” to the Jordanians, Egyptians and Syrians. If you read Code Name One Alpha you will find the PAF valiantly supporting the Taliban in the 1990s with air strikes directed by Pakistani Army Special Forces, also highly rated by us. They played a major part in establishing the feared Taliban Regime, recognising them with Saudi Arabia, who else. We have a picture of Saiful Azam on the website, http://www.georgemjames.com/weapon-systems.html, he is correctly rated as one of the greatest fighter pilots of his era, GMJ.

Part of the new Taiwan arms deal is the supply of 108 Abrams tanks. What does history say about this tank, shot out numerous times in recent conflicts… let us look at Israel’s Merkava tanks, reckoned to be one of the best in the world, taken from Code Name Swan 53: In 2014, Operation Protective Edge took place in the Gaza Strip. This time the updated Merkava tanks did better. They were fitted with the Trophy Active Protection System which intercepted many of the incoming missiles. They also used smoke and moved fast. Infantry protected the tanks, staying further back than usual, unable to use the tank as a shield as was done for a hundred years since the tank first appeared on the Western Front. Because of this, tank hunters changed their tactics using airburst and anti-material rifles to take out the vulnerable sensors. Once the sensors are out it is back to square one, the missiles will get through. The Trophy Active Protection System also tends to shoot at its own infantry and cannot defeat an incoming tank shell. That is its most visible failure. We also know, don’t ask, that will not stop the South African Makopa anti-tank missile but it did enjoy considerable success against the older RPG 29, and, it is claimed, the newer 9M133 Kornet. Trophy was tested by the US Military and will be used as a stopgap measure as they decided to design and produce their own system for obvious reasons - more bribes are to be paid to whomever.

The world leader in active tank defense systems is the Russian Armata T-14 tank’s Afghanit Active Protection System said to be a generation or more ahead of anything that the West can produce, by whom Israel is included. They claim, and we have every reason to believe them, that the Afghanit System will intercept a depleted uranium tank shell and break it up, reducing its effectiveness enough to not penetrate the highly advanced armour. This is not the same as saying the shell will be stopped or deflected. Unless you use lasers, the kinetic energy is just not available, no, this is weakening the shell enough to destroy its penetrating ability. You must keep something in mind here, if the Afghanit Active Protection System goes onto Arab tanks, it will defeat the Israeli / US anti-tank missiles. In such a case, the engaging tankers are doomed.

So yes, who cares about the US supplied equipment to Taiwan? The place cannot be defended military. China is simply too powerful. But guess who has the best anti-tank missile in the world? South Africa, the Makopa, see Code Name Alphabet 32 where it is discussed fully.