WW3 Countdown

General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
4 hours
The estimated total combat losses of the enemy
from 24.02.22 to 26.03.26 were approximately /
The estimated total combat losses of the enemy
from 24.02.22 to 26.03.26
personnel – about 1,292,170 (+1,210) persons
tanks – 11,807 (+1) units
armored combat vehicles / troop-carrying
AFVs – 24,278 (+4) units
artillery systems – 38,795 (+49) units
MLRS – 1,698 (+2) units
anti-aircraft systems – 1,337 (+1) units
aircraft – 435 (+0) units
helicopters – 350 (+0) units
UAV operational-tactical level – 198,389 (+2,038) units
cruise missiles – 4,491 (+0) units
warships – 33 (+0) units
submarines – 2 (+0) units
vehicles and fuel tanks – 85,352 (+201) units
special equipment – ​​4,100 (+2) units

ChuChu Rocket wrote: Wed Mar 25, 2026 11:25 pm

Are we heading into Covid 2.0? Energy lockdowns?

Very good question. Energy and fertiliser shortages are radiating out from the center of the disputed region chiefly in Asian countries first who have much smaller storage infrastructure. You don’t tend to bother when the dealer is right next door.

But the tsunami is radiating out and will soon reach Europe and the Americas.

In the UK there will be physical oil shortages within 2-3 weeks and talk is starting of a coming need for energy rationing which will accelerate deindustrialisation which started with the introduction of sanctions against Russia in 2022.

US and Jeff Currie, chief strategy officer at Carlyle Energy Pathways,
says that we are going to have a horrific oil shortage in America, ‘The physical market is really going to bite sometime in the next couple of weeks.’

And not just oil but fertiliser too, the US Carnegie Foundation have warned of global food shortages coming and are recommending a relaxation of sanctions on Russia fertiliser exports to match the postponement of Russian oil sanctions.

But the lack of any discussion by political leaders throughout western Europe shows a real wish to bury heads in the sand and pretend we are not facing a very serious dilemma.

In Japan the government seems to have agreed to comply with Iranian demands to either pay a fee or pay in Chinese currency or do both, whatever, the price is small compared to the devastation that would occur if no shipments come through.

I wish the European governments would wake up and do the necessary to secure emergency shipments from Russia before there is major hardship here. But our leaders seem to be too weak to bite the bullet, the reality is that without Qatar LNG and if the US decides to reduce exports western Europe will suffer severe shortages.

STOP PRESS: Ursula van der Crazy has just said yesterday that perhaps it's time for the EU to rethink its ban on Russian energy products. WOW.

An AI summary of the current global situation:

Countries with Active Rationing or Usage Curbs;

Sri Lanka:
Utilising a National Fuel Pass QR code system to strictly limit weekly petrol and diesel allowances for vehicles.
Public officials have every Wednesday off as a holiday to reduce transport demand.
Schools have moved to a four-day week.
Bangladesh:
Enforcing fuel rationing and five-hour rolling blackouts for households.
Universities, coaching centres, and colleges have been shut down to conserve electricity.
Pakistan:
Implementing a four-day work week and two-week school closures.
Official government fuel allowances have been slashed by 50%.
Myanmar:
Acute fuel shortages have led to strict rationing for transport and businesses.
Drivers are restricted by "odd-even" vehicle usage rules.
Slovenia:
The first EU member to impose rationing, limiting individuals to 50 litres of fuel per day and businesses to 200 litres.
Philippines:
The government has declared a National Energy Emergency.
Local governments have shifted to four-day work weeks to save fuel.
Egypt:
Ordered early closure of malls, restaurants, and government offices.
Illuminated billboards have been switched off to cut power usage.
Mauritius:
Recently announced energy-saving measures due to low heavy fuel oil stocks.
South Sudan:
The capital, Juba, is facing planned electricity rationing.
Kenya:
Imposed fuel rationing and halted exports to protect dwindling domestic stocks.
Countries with Conservation Orders or Price Measures
South Africa: Introduced controlled fuel allocation measures to prevent panic buying.
Thailand: Ordered civil servants to avoid overseas trips and use stairs instead of elevators.
South Korea: Lifted limits on burning coal for power and is encouraging voluntary fuel conservation.
United Kingdom: Considering emergency contingency plans that include cutting speed limits to save fuel.
Vietnam & Cambodia: Encouraging remote work, rotational shifts, and promoting electric mobility to ease pressure on supply chains.


Meanwhile, back to the Trump problem.

Trump issued a 15 point plan demanding Iran did this and that which the Iranians immediately rejected saying Trump was just negotiating with himself.

We saw Trump do this a dozen times with the Russians, each and every time the Russians just said no.

When you are in a fight and winning you might offer terms to stop the fight saying we will take this but you can keep that. You can also offer terms if you are losing and want the fighting to stop.

The Russians and the Iranians say no to Trump every time because Trump always thinks he’s winning when in fact he’s losing. Trump’s not playing 5D chess, his rampant narcissism simply won’t let him believe he’s ever actually not right and not winning.

That must be an incredibly frustrating way to live. But worse, it enforces the constant need to escalate, and as the analysts in the 2 videos from yesterday said, he keeps finding the Iranians escalating right up there with him.

The top of the escalation ladder is a nuclear strike on Iran. Iran already knows this is the big one, confronting the existential threat they’ve spent decades preparing for and they too can make the whole region unlivable for a long time by destroying all the desalination plants and Israel's nuclear reactors, and they will if it comes to it.

The Iranians say they are willing to negotiate but not with the fraudsters Witkoff and Jared Kushner so Trump is proposing Vance and Rubio instead. We shall see.

In the meantime everything is going just fine;

‘’If the war in Ukraine was a wake-up call for the Western defence industrial base, the first 16 days of the Iran conflict are a fire alarm signalling a crisis of endurance.
The intense consumption of advanced munitions during Operation Epic Fury has revealed a critical vulnerability: a strategically ruinous cost-exchange ratio that the West's industrial capacity is not prepared to sustain.’’
(Royal United Services Institute. British think tank).

The US is said to have fired some 11,000 missiles of all types in the 3 weeks so far and are definitely getting close to running out at this rate.

The US makes 90 tomahawk missiles per YEAR, their stockpile was estimated at 4,000 before this current conflict.

And they make about 700 patriot air defence missiles a year most of which were going to Ukraine as soon as they rolled off the production line though there were some stockpiles throughout other allied countries..

And a new development in the Ukraine conflict is an escalation by Zelensky who is now flying hundreds of drones over the Baltic states to avoid Russian air defences to attack the Leningrad region in north west Russia.

The Estonian defence minister noted the event but did not seem to be complaining but was only keen to emphasise they were Ukrainian drones and did not originate from Estonian.

This can only be done with US targeting guidance and is a major ‘horizontal escalation’ risk with the potential to drag the EU Baltic states into the war.

There is ever increasing pressure from within Russia on Putin to really ratchet up this conflict and put an end to the Kiev regime threat sooner rather than later.



IRAN WAR TIMELINES KEEP CHANGING /Patrick Henningsen & Lt Col Daniel Davis




Is Kyiv Dragging The Baltics Into War? New Round Of Escalation In The Middle East MS 2026.03.25




EDIT: forgot to add the pics.

See what happens when your laundry drying off the back of the boat catches fire!!
(some say it's actually missile damage)

General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
3 hours
The estimated total combat losses of the enemy
from 24.02.22 to 27.03.26 were approximately /
The estimated total combat losses of the enemy
from 24.02.22 to 27.03.26
personnel – about 1,293,170 (+1,000) persons
tanks – 11,808 (+1) units
armored combat vehicles / troop-carrying AFVs –
24,287 (+9) units
artillery systems – 38,863 (+68) units
MLRS – 1,700 (+2) units
anti-aircraft systems – 1,337 (+0) units
aircraft – 435 (+0) units
helicopters – 350 (+0) units
UAV operational-tactical level – 200,611 (+2,222) units
cruise missiles – 4,491 (+0) units
warships – 33 (+0) units
submarines – 2 (+0) units
vehicles and fuel tanks – 85,569 (+217) units
special equipment – ​​4,100 (+0) units

More from the report I mentioned Thursday by the Royal United Services Institute in Britain, repeated in the Telegraph, which discussed the state of various inventories of US weapons within the US military.

These are not figures for those which have been allocated for the Iranian theatre, this is total stock and there is no way the US can send them to zero just for this war.

ATCMS missiles stockpile has depleted by 46% and will in effect run out by the 12th of April.

THAD air defence missiles stock has depleted by 40% and will run out entirely by the 17th of April.

JSON's cruise missiles, those mostly used by the US bombers that have been conducting strikes against Iran, the stockpile there has depleted by 26%, and will have depleted to critical levels by the 8th of May.

AEGIS type missiles as used by US Navy destroyers. The stockpile there has depleted by 17%, and will run out by the 8th of June.

TOMAHAWK missile arsenal has depleted by 17% and will run out by the 11th of June.

PATRIOT missile arsenals have depleted by 16% and will run out by the 15th of June.

(Assuming that the current pace of operations continues)


Meanwhile, Trump has extended his ‘deadline’ yet again, adds another 10 days and says talks are going well?

Meanwhile Iran on Thursday launched 10 separate rounds of multiple missile strikes into Israel in a single day.
Trump said the war was to last 4 weeks, now, between 4 and 6 weeks he says, ‘but is well ahead of schedule’ apparently.

Trump is just making it all up as he sinks deeper and deeper into this quagmire. Iran, same as Russia in Ukraine, is keen for talks as Trump says, but on their terms not Trump’s, and to get himself out of this pile of shit Trump’s going to have to swallow a lot of it.

But is Trump now trying to buy time just to increase his forces? Has he been told they have nowhere near enough to mount any kind of landing force that has any hope of success?

The military genius Hegseth says the US is about to hit Iran with one of four possible actions which will be ‘a hammer blow’. Either land on Khag island, or a different island, or 3, land and seize some nuclear material somewhere. Or 4, block Iranian oil tankers and send the oil price still higher. The incompetence is staggering, you really couldn’t make this shit up.

Meanwhile, the pressure on the US from the rest of the world who are seriously running out of energy reserves is piling up.

And to add to Trump’s troubles the Gulf states coalition is also looking unstable, Qatar and Oman look like they may have made a deal with Iran and have not been attacked for 4 days. Adu Dhabi and Dubai’s plan as future international hubs is looking very vulnerable, and any US ground forces will need a base close by for supplies with Saudi and Bahrain obvious choices and if so will become obvious main targets for Iranian missiles so maybe they’re not so keen.


Linked below 2 latest videos with excellent up to date analysis covering a lot of ground featuring 4 of the best current commentators on Iran;

Both videos are a bit long so save for the weekend;



John Mearsheimer & Trita Parsi: U.S.-Israeli War on Iran – Risks of Wider Conflict





Col Doug Macgregor EPIC IRAN WAR TAG TEAM w/ Lt Col Daniel Davis

General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
2 hours
The estimated total combat losses of the enemy
from 24.02.22 to 28.03.26 were approximately:
personnel – about 1,294,470 (+1,300) persons
tanks – 11,812 (+4) units
armored combat vehicles – 24,297 (+10) units
artillery systems – 38,936 (+73) units
MLRS – 1,707 (+7) units
air defense systems – 1,337 (+0) units
aircraft – 435 (+0) units
helicopters – 350 (+0) units
operational–tactical UAVs – 202,112 (+1,501) units
cruise missiles – 4,491 (+0) units
ships / boats – 33 (+0) units
submarines – 2 (+0) units
automotive and fuel tanks – 85,796 (+227) units
special equipment – ​​4,105 (+5) units

And so the whole world waits while running out of oil for Trump to move forward, only he doesn't know what to do.

He's trying negotiations but seems every day Iran's demands increase. He's threatening to land troops but then what?

Expedition troops might take land but to hold it you need to move in a much larger force and he moves from Prof Pape’s ‘smart bomb trap’ into a ‘Vietnam trap’.

And neither the landing force nor the holding force can stop the missiles and drones raining down or keep the Iranians from targeting shipping in the Straits or stop the world from running out of oil.

So what would they be doing there?

Trump has been played by the neocons and the Israelis into getting into this war that was supposed to destroy Iran and make it subservient but all 3 now find they are completely unable to make that happen.

So the neocons and the Israelis will bail leaving the whole mess for the hapless Donald to try and sort out.

And boy is it going to cost! Possibly the end of US dominance in the Gulf, the end of the Petrodollar, stepwise progression to the ending of the dollar as the reserve currently, and almost certainly the end of Donald Trump.

And they told him not to worry, it would be as easy as Venezuela they said, oh dear.

From here the obvious way out is negotiations along the lines I mentioned in a recent post. The Iranians need to be careful too, it would not take much for Israel and the west to start to consider the permanent hijacking of the Straits as an existential threat and that’s exactly the type of dilemma nukes were made for.

The other alternative is to do nothing, let those who use the Straits for their oil pay the Iranian fees, the west will need to start rationing anyway, oil prices will reach levels making alternative sources such as the more difficult fracking fields and oil wells economically viable as prices head towards $200 a barrel. And obviously new pipelines will be built across Saudi to the Red sea, but it will all take a few years.

No matter what happens, repairing the damage already done to the infrastructure in the Gulf will take a few years as well so get used to more expensive energy, and see Trump deservedly get most of the blame (mostly for just being stupid).


John Mearsheimer: "Iran Holds All the Cards" - The Strategic Defeat of the U.S.




And in Ukraine the Russians continue forward towards Orikhiv in Zaporizhzhia oblast and the 2 cities in Donetsk oblast but they are still waiting for the ground to harden for their Spring offensive.

The Trap Around Orikhiv Is Closing — Russian Forces Suddenly Surge 10 km and Launch Assault!

General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
2 hours
The estimated total combat losses of the enemy
from 24.02.22 to 29.03.26 were approximately /
The estimated total combat losses of the enemy
from 24.02.22 to 29.03.26
personnel – about 1,295,830 (+1,360) persons
tanks – 11,820 (+8) units
armored combat vehicles / troop-carrying
AFVs – 24,313 (+16) units
artillery systems – 39,001 (+65) units
MLRS – 1,707 (+0) units
anti-aircraft systems – 1,337 (+0) units
aircraft – 435 (+0) units
helicopters – 350 (+0) units
UAV operational-tactical level – 204,060 (+1,948) units
cruise missiles – 4,491 (+0) units
warships – 33 (+0) units
submarines – 2 (+0) units
vehicles and fuel tanks – 85,977 (+181) units

The US has been persistently underestimating Iran since the Islamic revolution 30 years ago. The west had set up the Shah, the people were rejecting him, seeing they were losing their grip the US helped install the Ayatollah who was at the time living in exile in Paris.

Jimmy Carter sent the CIA to vet him and they pronounced him relatively western friendly and so the change of power went ahead.

But the Ayatollah decided to go full on anti west and took the hundred US embassy staff hostage. The situation was eventually resolved after a year but the result was Iran living under harsh western sanctions ever since. It didn’t have to be that way and many commentators say the Ayatollah’s actions were a catastrophic mistake for Iran.

Whatever your own personal view Iran paid dearly and for a very long time but the result was also a belief in the west that Iran was just another dirt poor backward country, but it never was.

Iran has a very rich and very long history and Iranians have always been a people of learning and culture, which is why they are able to confound the US and are winning this military confrontation.

A lot has been said of the Iranian preparations over the last 30 years for this conflict and many in the west can’t believe that the Iranians built huge underground missile complexes but they have.

And they were able to do it because their universities turn out 233,000 engineers a year compared to the US's 141,000 and the UK’s 91,000.

(apologies for the long ramble just to get to that one very important statistic)

Western military analysts say that Iran has so far not used a third of their drone and missile supply while the west is scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Worse still is that Iran can rely on China to supply as many as they need if they run short, that’s what happens when the US has spent the last 5 years threatening war with China, but that’s hindsight, if only there was someone in the US who could have foreseen it, Lyndsey Graham certainly didn’t.

And so the US has only just discovered these impenetrable missile complexes hidden inside whole mountains that even their biggest bombs can’t touch.

They have been reduced to dropping land mines by drones around the entrances which are clearly not really going to solve the problem.

Iran is fighting a WWIII drone and missile war while the US is trying to fight a WWII war with ships and planes and troops and is losing very badly. The West’s own missile and drone production is decades behind leading countries such as China who has gone full robotic and is turning out 1000 missiles a day.

And so here we are, Trump ignored the advice from his military and intel agencies but instead relied on his own team of real estate business grifters and golfing buddies, what could possibly go wrong?

Trump is getting desperate, his deadline countdown clock only has 3 spaces and he’s used them all up, so he’s now demanding that Iran give up all the tools they have that are causing them to win or Trump will move his ships and planes and troops into Iranian missile and drone target range.

This is a ‘Naked Gun 3’ movie script ffs.

The reality is that Iran could always have closed the Straits anytime just by laying mines but never did until now because they never felt threatened existentially til now.

The only real solution is to negotiate away that threat which is really all Iran ever asked for.

The real fly in the ointment is Netanyhu’s ‘Greater Israel’ and total middle eastern hegemony dream of the last 30 years. He only needed a US president stupid enough to be talked into enabling it and he finally found one.



Trump's Iran retaliation ‘shock’ exposed | Wargame expert analyses irreversible mistakes

General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
1 hour
The estimated total combat losses of the enemy
from 24.02.22 to 30.03.26 were approximately /
The estimated total combat losses of the enemy
from 24.02.22 to 30.03.26
personnel – about 1,296,700 (+870) persons
tanks – 11,824 (+4) units
armored combat vehicles / troop-carrying
AFVs – 24,317 (+4) units
artillery systems – 39,049 (+48) units
MLRS – 1,708 (+1) units
anti-aircraft systems – 1,337 (+0) units
aircraft – 435 (+0) units
helicopters – 350 (+0) units
UAV operational-tactical level – 206,531 (+2,471) units
cruise missiles – 4,491 (+0) units
warships – 33 (+0) units
submarines – 2 (+0) units
vehicles and fuel tanks – 86,160 (+183) units
special equipment – ​​4,105 (+0) units