Author: openjargon

• Russian forces reportedly used a deadly 3.3-ton glide bomb for the first time earlier this month.
• Video footage appeared to show the FAB-3000 M-54 destroying Ukrainian targets in Kharkiv.
• The new massive bomb's destructive capability and range make it a dangerous threat to Ukraine.

The Russian Aerospace Forces are using a new munition in Ukraine that might change the situation on the ground.

In June, Russian aircraft deployed for the first time the FAB-3000 M-54 glide bomb. Weighing thousands of pounds, the munition can prove quite destructive for Ukrainian military and civilian targets. Ukrainian outlets reported the use of the glide bomb against Ukrainian troop concentration points in Kharkiv Oblast in eastern Ukraine.

Although the bombing itself appears to have been inaccurate, the FAB-3000 M-54's destructive capability is such that even munitions that do not hit their specific targets can be deadly because of their greater destruction radius. The fact that this is a glide bomb and it can be released outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses makes the munition even more dangerous.

"Russian forces used the new FAB-3000 M-54 bomb with a unified planning and correction module (UMPC) to strike Ukrainian positions in Kharkiv Oblast for the first time, representing a new Russian capability with a high potential for destruction if Russian forces continue to be able to use such weapons uninhibited," the Institute for the Study of War assessed in a recent operational update on the war.

Ukrainian Air Force officials, however, noted that they couldn't provide a final estimate on the exact type of munition used by the Russian Aerospace Forces.

The FAB-3000 M-54 is a conventional, or "dumb," bomb that can be converted into a glide munition with the addition of the UMPC.

In March, Russian officials first announced the mass production of FAB-3000 M-54 munitions. Previously, the Russian military had trouble attaching the heavy munition, which weighs almost 7,000 lbs, to tactical aircraft. However, Russian technicians seem to have found a solution.

"The fact that Russian forces have figured out how to launch FAB-3000s is a significant development and will increase the destructive potential of Russia's ongoing glide bomb attacks against Ukrainian forces and infrastructure," the Institute for the Study of War added.

As the conflict continues, the Russian Aerospace Forces have increasingly been relying on guided and unguided glide bombs to hit Ukrainian targets. These munitions are released from long distances and travel or glide to their targets while the aircraft launching them is safely away.

"Russian forces have already increased guided and unguided glide bomb use against Ukraine, particularly in Kharkiv Oblast, to devastating effect, and should Russian forces be able to launch massive barrages of FAB-3000s (or even heavier guided glide bombs), they will be able to cause even more widespread damage to Ukrainian frontline positions and critical infrastructure," the Institute for the Study of War stated.

The performance of the Russian Aerospace Forces

The Russian Aerospace Forces have largely failed in the conflict so far. When it comes to air superiority, although more numerous and with better quality, Russian aircraft have not established control over the skies. Ukrainian pilots have been putting out a stalwart resistance, and there are also too many antiaircraft systems of all ranges on the battlefield.

When it comes to strategic strikes, they have faired only slightly better. Relying on a combination of stand-off and glide munitions, Russian aircraft have been targeting Ukrainian critical infrastructure and urban centers.

However, the questionable quality of these munitions, in conjunction with the powerful — but depleting — Ukrainian air defenses, have largely ensured that these strikes haven't been as consequential to the course of the war as the Kremlin would want.

Finally, in terms of close air support, the Russian Aerospace Forces have done better but their performance is still far from altering the battlefield.

Using fixed- and rotaty-winged attack aircraft, the Russian military has been able to gain tactical superiority during some times and in specific areas of the contact line. But beyond causing some additional casualties to the Ukrainian forces, Russian tactical aviation hasn't made a difference.

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• The immunity decision will delay and diminish Jack Smith's two Trump prosecutions, experts predict.
• In the documents case, Trump can claim that "declassifying" them,  back in DC, was an official act.
• In the J6 case, he can seek immunity for allegations involving talking to another federal official.

It's been a pretty bad day for Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Both of his prosecutions of Donald Trump — the Mar-a-Lago documents case in Florida, and the insurrection case out of Washington, DC — will be delayed and diminished by Monday's United States Supreme Court's immunity decision, legal experts predict.

The SCOTUS decision found that former presidents are presumptively immune from prosecution for acts they took while in office. It leaves it to lower courts to decide whether Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

That review of the insurrection case — by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and, likely, the Supreme Court once again — will take many months.

Meanwhile, Trump can be expected to use his new immunity superpowers to also challenge the documents case, including by reviving his claim that he somehow "declassified" the papers back in DC, in what was an "official" act.

"With the January 6th case, the one that was at issue here, this makes it absolutely clear there's no way this is going to trial before the election," said Cliff Sloan, a Georgetown University law professor and constitutional law expert.

"For the Florida case, the decision has no direct impact," noted Michel Paradis, an attorney who teaches national security and constitutional law at Columbia Law School.

"But it is likely to disrupt and complicate the prosecution, in so far as there will be a new round of arguments on how the Supreme Court decision affects the transportation of documents, etc.," he said.

Sloan said that it's possible that Trump's attorneys make new arguments in the classified documents case based on the SCOTUS ruling, but explained, "It'll be more difficult because the core of that case has to do with actions he took when he was no longer president with regard to classified documents."

Still, Trump can now argue that before he left office, he somehow "declassified" the documents, an official act that now cannot be challenged.

Prosecutors say Trump broke federal law when he took documents with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida, estate and private club.

The Florida litigation will be all the more complicated, Paradis added, "because the Supreme Court also held that you can't inquire into a president's 'motives' for taking any official act. And so precisely how that will work is up in the air at the moment."

According to Monday's decision, "In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the president's motives."

The court continued, "Such a 'highly intrusive inquiry would risk exposing even the most obvious instances of official conduct to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose."

Circling back to the January 6 case, one of that indictment's allegations is almost certain to now be challenged as an official act for which he is immune from prosecution, said Paradis.

Trump is accused of trying to pressure his acting attorney general and the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Those discussions "are readily categorized" as official acts, Monday's decision states.

This is true even if Smith's claims are correct, and Trump's efforts were improper, the decision said.

"Because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials, the decision said.

"Other allegations — such as those involving Trump's interactions with the vice president, state officials, and certain private parties, and his comments to the general public — present more difficult questions" that will now be argued over, the decision also states.

"The biggest difficulty will be proving that something is not an official act," noted Paradis.

"The way the Supreme Court set up the new rule is that most everything the president does is 'presumptively immune,'" he said.

"It then falls to the prosecution to show that the 'presumptively' official act was in fact 'unofficial.' However — and this is where Justice Barrett broke with the majority — prosecutors can't inquire into the president's motives and are also largely prohibited from inquiring into the president's communications," he added.

"So you have to show what the president intended while being forbidden from proving what was in his mind," Paradis said.

By that new measure, any communication Trump has with another federal official is, for all practical purposes, immune from prosecution, he said.

In its decision, Sloan said, the Supreme Court was "unwilling to say that even a single allegation in the indictment" against Trump over his over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election "was an example of an unofficial act."

"It was willing to say some things were clearly official acts, but it was unwilling to give a single example of something that was unofficial," said Sloan, adding, "Courts would have to sort out what's official and what's unofficial, and if it's official, what kind of official action is it?"

"In addition to everything else, it's a kind of complicated structure, is very unpredictable, and it just puts it in the hands of courts to make these judgments," Sloan said.

• The Houthis have stepped up their attacks and intimidation efforts with their drone boats.
• In their latest messaging, the rebels shared a new video of a previously unseen system in action.
• The uptick comes as the US Navy lacks an aircraft carrier in the region.

The US Navy is in the middle of changing up its forces in the Middle East. An aircraft carrier that spent months in the counter-Houthi fight heads home, leaving a gap as another one makes its way toward the region to take over.

It has been over a week since the US last had an aircraft carrier on station in the Red Sea, meaning the Pentagon can't depend on the routine combat air patrols and immense firepower having a carrier in the region has provided over the past seven months.

The Houthis have been stepping up drone boat operations, employing small watercraft that can be packed with explosives and detonate on impact. These weapons can be used to strike merchant vessels and cause catastrophic damage, which has already been the case in at least one instance in recent weeks.

Drone boats are not a new capability for the Houthis. They have employed them in years past and throughout their ongoing campaign of attacks on merchant vessels and commercial shipping lanes.

During the first few months of the year, US airstrikes in Yemen destroyed the drone boats nearly every time the Houthis tried to send them into the water. But in June, the Iran-backed rebels managed to launch well over a dozen crafts — far more than they had in any previous month. Last month, one of the Houthi drone boats struck a commercial vessel, the MV Tutor, for the first time since the campaign began in November.

In the June 12 attack, the Houthis used a small, slow-moving boat staffed with two dummies, appearing to disguise the crude-looking weapon as a common fishing craft. Hours after the initial strike, the rebels hit the Tutor with a missile, causing it to later sink.

More than a week after the Tutor attack, on June 22, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, which spent more than seven months battling the Houthis, finally left the region to head home, bringing with it the carrier Ike and dozens of fighter aircraft.

The Ike's eventual replacement — the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group — won't arrive for some time. And in the meantime, the Houthis appear to be taking advantage of the decreased US Navy air patrols and employing more drone boats.

United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, an element of the British Royal Navy, has reported multiple incidents over the past few days that appear consistent with such attacks.

On June 27, for instance, UKMTO cited one threat as a "waterborne improvised explosive device," and on June 30, it said a merchant vessel was approached by "a mixture of fast boats and smaller kayak-type boats," adding that "some were observed as uncrewed."

On June 30, the Houthi rebels revealed what they said is a highly advanced drone boat that can travel at speeds of 45 nautical mph and deliver an explosive payload of up to 3,300 pounds. The group claimed to have used the drone boat in a June 23 attack on the MV Transworld Navigator and published footage purporting to show the unmanned craft strike the much larger merchant vessel.

Business Insider was unable to immediately verify the Houthi claim. US Central Command said at the time that the Transworld Navigator was hit by a "suspected uncrewed aerial system" and did not mention a drone boat.

In the June 30 video, the Houthis also showed the drone boat going through various maneuvers and training exercises. At one point, rebels can be seen manually operating the craft before they dive off the side into the water and allow it to be remotely piloted.

The newly revealed drone boat is far more sophisticated-looking than the one that struck the Tutor and appears notably larger than unmanned crafts that the rebels publicized and tested earlier in June, underscoring the different capabilities that the Houthis have in their arsenal.

Experts have said that the uptick in drone boat attacks and the Houthis' newfound success in striking commercial vessels with such weapons indicates that they're learning from their many months of attacks and are able to adjust their operations accordingly.

• A Florida man admitted to shooting a Walmart drone last week, law enforcement officials said.
• For the past decade, gun owners have been shooting at UAVs — in violation of Federal regulations.
• Now, as more retailers use drones, armed Americans may add further complication to delivery by air.

Retailers have had to solve a long list of technological, regulatory, and commercial challenges in order to offer deliveries by drone.

But one complication remains especially difficult to predict: US gun owners.

In the latest episode, the Lake County Sheriff said last week that Dennis Winn admitted to shooting a Walmart drone with a 9mm pistol as it flew near his home in Florida.

According to the arrest affidavit, Winn told officers he had prior experience with drones flying over his house and believed the aircraft to be surveilling him.

He then went inside, got his gun from a safe, came out, and fired one shot at the drone, which was roughly 75 feet in the air, the affidavit said.

"I then told him that he had struck a Walmart drone," the Sheriff's deputy said in the affidavit. "The defendant looked in disbelief and questioned, 'Really?'"

The Sheriff's Office said a bullet hole was found in the payload area of the drone after it flew back to a nearby Walmart.

The office said Winn was taken into custody and faces three charges, including "shooting at an aircraft."

In the past decade, some US gun owners have shot at unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, but what many may not realize is they are committing a serious crime in the eyes of the federal government.

The Federal Aviation Administration doesn't distinguish between a small drone and a jumbo passenger jet when it comes to attempts to sabotage commercial aircraft: shooting at one is a felony, punishable by a fine and up to 20 years in prison.

Even though the FAA has held this position since 2016, the message doesn't seem to have gotten through to some people. The agency only recently started allowing unmanned commercial aircraft to fly beyond the operator's direct line of sight.

In the past two years alone, incidents in North Carolina, Florida, and California made headlines when individuals with guns targeted drones — two of which belonged to law enforcement.

As more retailers use drones, armed Americans pose a potential complication to deliveries by air.

Two years ago, when Amazon was rolling out a test of its drone delivery service in California, The Washington Post reported that one man at a local archery shop joked that it was "Target practice!"

Now Walmart is expanding its use of drones beyond the initial test markets, where the company says it has conducted over 20,000 safe deliveries. The retail giant's goal is to have the "largest drone delivery footprint of any US retailer."

And Walmart isn't alone. Earlier this year, DoorDash announced a drone delivery test with a Wendy's restaurant in Virginia, and several Chick-fil-A restaurants have tested the tech in recent years as well.

Perhaps if drones become common enough, people will simply stop noticing — or shooting — them.

Democrats are scrambling to control the damage after Biden's poor debate performance. The president says he will stay in the race despite calls to step aside.

• Airbus' A321XLR promises airlines new long-haul market options as it nears certification.
• Boeing's absence at an upcoming international airshow means all eyes will be on Airbus' new plane.
• Thanks to its extra rear center fuel tank, the narrowbody can fly up to 11 hours nonstop.

Boeing's quality control problems following the Alaska Airlines door plug blowout have forced it to scale back production and cut delivery targets for its 737 Max aircraft.

To better focus on cleaning up its latest Max mess, the manufacturer is not bringing any passenger planes to the Farnborough International Airshow this year, one of the aviation industry's biggest and most-attended events.

With nothing commercial to show from Boeing, which usually has its 777X and Max test jets on display, all eyes will be on European rival Airbus. Of particular interest is the planemaker's new, soon-to-be-certified single-aisle aircraft, the Airbus A321XLR.

Airbus has secured over 550 orders for the highly-anticipated "Xtra Long Range" model from American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines, Spain's Iberia, India's IndiGo, Qantas, Malaysian low-cost carrier AirAsia X, Chile-based budget carrier Sky Airline, Czech Airlines, and others.

The XLR plane is the longest-ranged option in the A321neo family, which has outsold Boeing's 737 since 2019, when two fatal crashes grounded the plane's Max variants.

According to Airbus, the XLR is uniquely equipped for long-haul flying, thanks to an extra rear center fuel tank that helps the narrowbody fly up to 5,400 miles (11 hours) nonstop.

It also boasts a 30% reduced fuel burn compared to previous-generation competing aircraft, with half the trip cost of dual-aisle planes, according to Airbus.

The XLR's enhanced range and economics make it a versatile option for airlines wanting to capitalize on niche money-making long-haul markets but without the costs or capacity of a widebody plane.

Historically, Boeing's 757 was the prime transatlantic narrowbody option, but airlines like JetBlue Airways and Air Canada have since shifted to the more efficient A321neoLR and Max, respectively, between the East Coast and Europe.

The XLR's design builds on this growing long-haul trend and is expected to open new city pairs that would otherwise require a layover or wouldn't financially make sense to fly.

Fortunately, airlines and customers won't have to wait much longer.

In May, Airbus announced that the XLR was in the final stages of certification, noting heavy paperwork has prolonged the process beyond the initially expected June timeline.

Still, Unlike Boeing's Max 7 and Max 10 planes — which are sitting in certification limbo — Airbus expects the XLR to enter service as soon as November.

Airbus' new XLR jet will open route options that are otherwise difficult

Spanish national carrier Iberia is the launch customer for the XLR and is selling tickets for the first-ever passenger flight from Madrid to Boston on November 14, according to its website.

Flights to Washington Dulles will follow on January 15. The XLR will replace the Airbus 330 widebody Iberia is presently flying to Boston, while the Dulles route will be a new offering.

According to Iberia, its new XLR planes will feature 182 seats across economy and business cabins, though the plane can carry up to 220 people in two classes.

The premium seating offers lie-flat beds typical to what customers find on long-haul widebody flights, and is likely to be the norm on long-haul XLRs.

JetBlue plans to install its Mint business class, for example, while American plans to install its XLRs with new Flagship suites.

In March, American's managing director of global network planning, Jason Reisinger, said the XLR is favorable because it enables the airline to serve "routes that cannot support a 787 but where we still have a nice onboard product."

He suggested routes like Raleigh, North Carolina, direct to London — meaning passengers wouldn't have to stop in the carrier's Charlotte or New York hubs along the way.

Meanwhile, United's EVP and CCO, Andrew Nocella, said during a 2019 order announcement that the XLR would be a good replacement for the "older, less-efficient aircraft currently operating between some of the most vital cities in our intercontinental network."

IndiGo and Frontier's XLR orders suggest the plane fits into both mainline and budget models.

IndiGo's former CCO Willy Boulte said in the summer of 2021 that the XLR would fill the gaps in flying between Indian cities and Europe and Asia, pointing to options like Beijing, Seoul, and Amsterdam.

Frontier CEO Barry Biffle has suggested that the XLR may allow Frontier to ditch its mostly domestic presence to serve more cities in South America, and launch new services to Hawaii and Europe.

Airbus said the XLR could also be used on already popular routes that may sometimes benefit from a lower-capacity option.

"Even well-established city pairs such as London-Miami or Sydney-Kuala Lumpur will benefit from the year-round sweet spot the XLR offers airlines," Airbus marketing specialist Ludek Jando said in September 2023.

• SCOTUS limited federal agencies' regulatory powers with recent rulings. 
• One legal expert said the high court is clearly "hellbent" on dismantling the administrative state.
• Because of the rulings, the regulation of essentially all major industries will be tougher. 

In two separate rulings over 48 hours last week, the conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old precedent that has been long attacked by the right — and has stripped out some of the Securities and Exchange Commission's financial-fraud enforcement capabilities.

The conservative majority, in another 6-3 ruling on Monday, made it easier for government regulations to be contested.

"At the end of a momentous Term, this much is clear: The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court's holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government," Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent of the court's Monday ruling in the case of Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissent to the Friday decision to strike down the legal precedent known as the "Chevron deference" in the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, called the Friday ruling "yet another example of the Court's resolve to roll back agency authority, despite congressional direction to the contrary."

Legal experts and regulation advocates told Business Insider they largely agreed, with one law professor saying that the nation's highest court is clearly "hellbent on dismantling the entire regulatory apparatus put in place over the course of the 20th century."

"These rulings make it impossible for the agencies that Congress itself created to respond quickly and efficiently to newly emerging problems," said Robert Hockett, a Cornell University professor of law and finance.

Thanks to the recent SCOTUS rulings, the regulation of essentially all major industries, ranging from environmental protection to finance and public health, will be much tougher and could result in a more overburdened court system.

Before Friday's ruling, if the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, identified an oil company practice that unduly risked an oil spill, it would first issue a cease-and-desist letter. The oil company might then claim that the EPA has the facts wrong or lacks the regulatory authority to address the practice, Hockett said.

Then, according to Hockett, the case would be heard by an administrative court. If the oil company disagreed with that administrative judge's ruling, it could appeal and ultimately land in a court — but wouldn't do so if it couldn't point to an obvious error by the administrative law judge, Hockett said.

Now, under the ruling, the case would go right to a federal court.

"No ALJ [Administrative Law Judge]. Straight to federal court. Court with overloaded docket scheduled hearing to the year 2035. Oil spills everywhere and renders North America uninhabitable in the meantime while we wait," Hockett said, offering an extreme example.

"The upshot of this is that all of the country's largest business firms in all of its major industries will go effectively unregulated or de-facto unregulated because Congress and the courts will not be able to keep up with the pace of change in our economy," said Hockett.

The legal expert likened the matter to a "robber baron's dream."

"These two rulings largely amputate the two most important arms that our regulatory agencies use every day in overseeing our industrial economy," Hockett said, referring to the the Chevron and SEC rulings.

In overturning the Chevron doctrine in a 6-3 decision, the high court has hamstrung federal agencies' regulatory powers.

The doctrine, established in the 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, called for courts to defer to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous federal laws and statutes. It has been repeatedly used by the federal government in a wide range of cases.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in his opinion, wrote that the Chevron doctrine "proved to be fundamentally misguided."

"Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron's presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do," Roberts wrote.

The chief justice continued, "Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority."

The overturning of the Chevron precedent and Thursday's SEC v. Jarkesy decision both involve cuts in the regulatory powers of federal agencies, "which means reductions in the power of the executive branch of government and an increase in the power of the judicial branch," said Jonathan Siegel, a professor of law at George Washington University.

As a result, over the long term, Siegel said, "It will be more difficult for the government to enforce many statutes, and therefore, there will be more violations."

"Particularly in terms of businesses, they decide what to do based not only on what's legal and what's illegal, but what is the likelihood that they will actually suffer a penalty if they do something illegal," he said.

Siegel explained that the decision in SEC v. Jarkesy has the "potential to affect innumerable agency proceedings."

Up until Thursday, the SEC had two ways of pursuing fraud cases. It could sue in federal court, or it could bring an "administrative proceeding" in its own in-house court, where it appoints its own judges and the cases have no juries.

Roberts wrote in the decision that the latter method violated the Seventh Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects the right to a jury trial.

"It's certainly the case that the court and some individual justices even more strongly have expressed distaste for the amount of power administrative agencies have, and several decisions that the court has come down within the last few years have the effect of reducing that power and increasing the power of courts," Siegel said.

Rachel Weintraub, the executive director of the regulation advocacy group Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, said that the common thread between the decisions "is that it is the manifestation of a conservative quest to minimize the role of the federal government."

"The public expects government to do certain things. It expects the government to ensure that roads are safe and toasters don't explode, and that the water coming from our faucet doesn't cause our families harm, and that there are protections in workplaces, and that our marketplaces are fair, and that there will be consequences if entities scam us," Weintraub said.

These factors, said Weintraub, "could be at stake if judges replace agency expertise with their own positions."

In the case of Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Supreme Court ruled that a six-year statue of limitations in challenging federal agencies under the Administrative Procedure Act begins "when the plaintiff is injured by final agency action."

"The Supreme Court last week made it all but impossible for federal agencies to accept future Congressional assignments of rule-making authority by overturning its own 40-year-old Chevron decision," said Hockett.

"Today it effectively makes that retroactive, by permitting any newly formed corporation to challenge rules that have been on the books for decades," Hockett said, explaining that before Monday's decision a statute of limitations legislated by Congress "ensured that a rule that had gone unchallenged for six years was settled law."

Now, Hockett said, "every rule, no matter how long it has been in place and no matter how long corporations have been operating with a settled understanding of it, will be up for grabs."

Jesse Panuccio, who served as US acting associate attorney general in the Trump administration, was less alarmed by the recent SCOTUS decisions, saying "agencies still have vast delegations of power."

Panuccio told Business Insider he represents private parties who are in lawsuits against the government, and he believes it's important that there are three branches of government "with interdependent functions."

Panuccio said that he supported the Supreme Court decisions in Loper Bright and Jarkesy and called them "important checks on administrative power."

There is never an "even playing field" between the government and a private party — and having a ruling like this in place is the way to ensure parties are in front of a neutral judge, he said.

"And I think we have gone too far, no matter who the president is, the executive branch wields more power than I think the Constitution really envisions," he said. "And these opinions are important."