Author: openjargon

• Ukraine has been targeting Russian oil refineries in recent months.
• The Biden Administration has criticized the strikes, warning of global energy price rises.
• However, some experts say Ukraine should continue the attacks. Here's why.

Ukraine has been ramping up attacks on Russian oil refineries in recent months as it seeks to hamper Russian export revenues and curtail fuel supplies to Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces.

In one of the latest attacks, Ukrainian drones struck an oil refinery in Russia's Kaluga region, setting it on fire, the RIA state news agency reported on Friday, per Reuters.

Ukraine also hit Gazprom's Neftekhim Salavat oil refinery, one of Russia's largest oil refineries, earlier this week, Radiy Khabirov, the head of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, said in a post on Telegram.

However, the Biden Administration has previously slammed such tactics, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin saying in April that it risked impacting global energy markets and urging Ukraine to shift its focus onto military targets.

"Those attacks could have a knock-on effect in terms of the global energy situation," Austin said. "Quite frankly, I think Ukraine is better served by going after tactical and operational targets that can directly influence the current fight."

But some experts believe such criticism is misguided.

Writing for Foreign Affairs magazine, Michael Liebreich, the founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, and Sam Winter-Levy, a doctoral candidate in political science at Princeton University, argued that Ukrainian strikes on Russian refining facilities would not lead to spikes in global energy prices.

The experts said that Ukrainian attacks on oil refineries would only hinder Russia's ability to turn its oil into refined products such as gasoline and would not impact the volume of oil it can extract or export.

"In fact, with less domestic refining capacity, Russia will be forced to export more of its crude oil, not less, pushing global prices down rather than up," they added.

And such strikes will likely continue to affect those within Russia, where prices for refined products like gas or diesel are soaring — meaning Ukraine's attacks are achieving the aims of failed Western economic sanctions, they continued.

The West has attempted to impose a number of sanctions on Russia to limit its income from energy, with the US and the UK banning Russian oil and gas and G7 leaders agreeing to set a price cap on Russian crude oil at $60 per barrel.

But Russia has largely managed to get around such measures, with its Deputy Prime Minister, Alexander Novak, saying in December last year that Russia had shifted almost all of its oil exports to China and India.

Russia's oil revenue in April more than doubled year on year, Bloomberg reported, highlighting its success in rediverting operations.

Its total oil and gas revenue for the month hit 1.23 trillion rubles, up almost 90% from April last year, per the report.

Reuters reported in April that Russia also appeared to be able to quickly repair some of the key refining facilities affected by Ukrainian strikes, reducing impacted capacity to roughly 10% from nearly 14% at the end of March, per the agency's calculations.

Ukraine has since launched a series of new attacks on refining sites, however, and it is as yet unclear how these have affected Russia's repair efforts.

• In early May, reports circulated that Russia had accidentally bombed its own territory in Belgorod.
• It's not the first time Russian forces have made such an error.
• UK intelligence said such instances highlight Russia's struggles to employ munitions on intended targets.

There have been numerous reports over the last year of incidents of Russian aircraft accidentally dropping bombs and missiles on Russian civilian areas around border regions with Ukraine.

Belgorod, a region of Russia close to the besieged northeastern Ukrainian territory of Kharkiv, has borne the brunt of the apparent errors.

Earlier this month, reports circulated that a Russian 1,100-lb FAB-500 bomb fell on a civilian area of Belgorod on May 4. Thirty houses were damaged, and five people were injured.

In April, the Russian independent Telegram channel Astra reported that a Russian Kh-59 missile was dropped on Belgorod city center after it "abnormally" fell around 57 miles from the border with Ukraine. The post said there were "no casualties."

A similar incident is also thought to have occurred in January, when two FAB-250 bombs struck the Belgorod region after being inadvertently released from Russian aircraft, Astra reported, prompting authorities to evacuate roughly 150 residents, per the report.

Such incidents appear to be becoming increasingly common, with Astra reporting that "at least 21 aerial bombs" had accidentally been dropped by Russian forces on Russian or Russian-occupied territory between March and April 2024.

In an update on the conflict on Saturday, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the instances highlighted "Russia's continued inability to successfully employ their munitions on intended targets."

"Such errors have destructive and lethal consequences for the Russian population," the department continued.

The MoD has previously said that such mistakes were likely due to a combination of "poor procedures when arming the aircraft prior to sorties" and "poor execution by aircrew during missions."

It noted that increasing reports of such incidents likely pointed to fatigued troops and poor training.

It comes as Russia launched an offensive on Ukraine's Kharkiv region on Friday as it seeks to make the most of its personnel and materiel advantages over Ukraine before further US aid arrives.

The Institute for the Study of War think tank said in an update on the conflict that the offensive operation around Kharkiv had "limited operational objectives" but aimed "to achieve the strategic effect of drawing Ukrainian manpower and materiel from other critical sectors of the front in eastern Ukraine."

• More than a quarter of US metros are still recovering from COVID-era job losses, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported.
• These are chiefly located in Rust Belt states, the South, and Northeast.
• Today's job market amplifies fears of another recession, which some experts say could hit as soon as this year.

As analysts clash over when the next recession will befall the US, large swaths of the country are still bogged down in the previous downturn.

That's as labor markets continue to struggle in more than a quarter of US metros, having never reversed COVID-era job losses, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported this week. 

"More than four years have passed since the onset of the pandemic, which resulted in one of the sharpest and deepest economic downturns in U.S. history," the bank wrote in a blog post, adding: "Many of the places that have not regained the jobs lost were hit particularly hard by the pandemic, leaving a deeper hole to dig out of."

At first glance, it would appear that US labor has won back its strength: By 2022, national employment undid the whopping 15% plummet it suffered two years prior. And today, unemployment remains below 4%.

However, this recovery has been all but even, with certain regions never regaining the jobs they once had. Often, these are metro areas with slow-growth economies, and the lack of workers has only dampened recovery momentum, the Fed said.

Grouped regionally, that includes the Rust Belt area, as well as sectors of the South, the note said. Delayed recoveries can also be found clustered in California, and Hawaii: 

"In fact, employment is still more than 5 percent below pre-pandemic levels in New Orleans, and more than 3 percent below in Honolulu and San Francisco. Likewise, sizable job shortfalls remain in Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh," the Fed wrote.

But this trend is especially distinct in the Northeast, a region that's home to particularly impacted metros. New York City, which suffered as much as 19% job loss, has now just barely regained its employment levels. But the city's service sector continues to lag.

"Some places in upstate New York were hit by a 'triple whammy' of slow growth leading up to the pandemic that has now resumed, a deeper hole when the pandemic hit, and a declining labor force," the bank wrote.

Timing the next recession 

Today, the eroding labor market is sparking renewed downturn fears. Conditions were most recently illustrated by April's jobs report, when added positions came in well below expectations, and unemployment ticked up.

In fact, one veteran analyst is convinced that a downturn is already here, when measured by unemployment's three-month average. By this indicator, a recession started in October, confirmed further by accelerating job erosion, Danielle DiMartino Booth said.

"There's already been 22,000 job loss announcements in the month of May and it's still a fairly young month. So on a seasonal level, we're seeing a major pickup," the QI Research CEO told Bloomberg.

Shrinking labor is also why analyst Frances Donald is betting on a "proper downturn," which will prompt aggressive interest rate cuts.

"Just about everything in the labor market that explains where we are in the labor cycle is pointing to a deterioration," Donald said last Tuesday. "We're not saying it's a big crisis, we're calling for two quarters of negative GDP — Q3 and Q4, could be Q4 and Q1."

But one expert is calling out a crisis. Wall Street veteran Gary Schilling told Business Insider to expect a coming job losses, as layoffs send the unemployment rate up between 5% to 7% this year.

Meanwhile, he warns that any recession would hammer at overconfident investors, sending markets crashing up to 30%.

• Jhonathan Vazquez moved from Houston to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2021.
• The first-generation immigrant was seeking a more affordable cost of living and less traffic.
• Vazquez said he's fallen in love with Tulsa's thriving entrepreneurial scene and arts offerings.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jhonathan Vazquez, 34, the cofounder and COO of Titan Intake, a healthcare referral startup. He moved from Houston, Texas, to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2021 as part of the latter's incentive program to entice more remote workers.

I'm a first-generation immigrant. My mother came to this country when she was seven months pregnant with me and I was blessed to be born here in the USA. We lived in my aunt's garage for a couple of years until my father was able to get us a small home in Houston.

It was a very humble upbringing. I was the first in my family to have a corporate job.

I met my wife in my early 20s. We moved to downtown Houston. Both of our jobs were in the city, so we lived in a high-rise apartment. But there's a big homelessness issue in Houston, and I wanted something a bit safer for my wife to be able to walk the dogs.

So we moved again, this time to a Houston area called River Roads. I started spending a lot of time commuting to work. We wanted to buy a house in Houston, but finding one that suited our lifestyle that we could also afford would have been tough. We would have had to move outside the city.

During COVID, my wife's company went under. I was working in healthcare doing joint ventures and acquisitions, and my boss allowed me to go completely remote.

My wife found a program called Tulsa Remote, which is a $10,000 stipend to bring remote workers to the city. The goal is also to increase diversity in the city's talent pool.

To be honest, we had never heard much of Tulsa before. The extent of my Tulsa knowledge was when Chandler moved there in a "Friends" episode.

I saw the acceptance rate for the Tulsa Remote program was low, but I figured we had nothing to lose.

I went through the interview process and got accepted.

The Tulsa Remote program wanted people who wanted to be a part of Tulsa's community. It isn't just a stipend. It also sets you up with all these events in the city.

My wife and I love going to the opera, soccer, baseball, and basketball games. When we came and toured Tulsa we saw the city had many things we liked, including museums and a great ballet.

We made the move in January 2021.

The cost of living in Tulsa is ridiculously low. The city is a lot smaller than Houston but still has everything a big city has to offer. And there's no commute. Everything's within 10 to 15 minutes of driving.

One of my favorite things is that Tulsa has all four seasons. In Houston, it's just hot and humid. But here, there's a real winter, summer, spring and fall.

Here in Tulsa, we rent a house with a backyard. We just open the door, and the dogs have a yard. My wife got pregnant two years into our Tulsa journey and had our beautiful daughter. We would have had to move outside the city if we were still in Houston. But in Tulsa, we can afford to stay.

We also pay much less for gas because we don't have to drive 20 miles to get anywhere like we did in Houston. We also have noticed big savings in our housing, too. We're really happy where we're renting, but now that we have our daughter, we're looking to buy a house.

The entrepreneurial community in Tulsa is great.

Tulsa Remote helped set me up with the connections to start my company. About a year and a half after we moved here, I saw something special happening in the entrepreneurship scene and wanted to be a part of it.

I met my company's cofounder, and we started Titan Intake in May 2022. We use AI to automate referrals. We've been able to create something special because of the community that exists here. We raised our friends and family around here in Tulsa. An incubator in the city helped us acquire our first clients.

Since then, the sky has been the limit, and we've continued to grow. Thanks to our app, about 76,000 patients have been seen, and more than 100 doctors use it. We recently closed our pre-seed round of $1.3 million.

Tulsa has a lot of programs to help entrepreneurs with non-dilutive capital, from their first idea to the MVP (minimum viable product) phase. That community is really strong here, especially for minority founders like myself. The community is about collaboration and not competition.

Tulsa is also taking steps to become a thriving tech scene. It was designated a tech hub earlier this year. There are a lot of programs that are trying to push it in that direction.

If people want to start an innovative venture, Tulsa is a great place to do that. The city really helps minority founders get their feet off the ground.

We love it here.

In my wildest dreams I never thought I would live in Tulsa and have a startup and a daughter born here.

I definitely miss the cuisine in Houston. It's so diverse, and things actually stayed open past midnight. I miss my family, too. And we miss the easy access to flights. Now, we have to drive to Dallas when we want to visit my family in Mexico.

But we see ourselves staying in Tulsa for at least five to 10 years. We want to continue to grow here.

• A CNN report exposes alleged abuse of Palestinians at an Israeli Sde Teiman detention center.
• The facility operates under Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law, allowing detention without due process.
• Over 9,000 Palestinians are held in deteriorating conditions since October 7.

An Israeli detention center is subjecting Palestinians to abuse, strapping detainees down to their beds, blindfolding them, and holding them in diapers, a new CNN report alleges.

The Sde Teiman camp in the Negev desert in southern Israel is also a military base. It has been the site of abusive conduct against some of the 70 Palestinian detainees, three Israeli whistleblowers told CNN.

Medical personnel at the facility are alleged to have performed amputations on prisoners due to injuries sustained from prolonged handcuffing, with some procedures carried out by underqualified staff. 

Guards are accused of using excessive force as a form of punishment, while detainees endure routine humiliations, including being attacked by dogs and subjected to aggressive searches, CNN reported.

The Israel Defense Forces detained the prisoners during the on-going invasion of Gaza, that began after Hamas militants surged into southern Israel on October 7 committing massacres and atrocities that left 1,200 people dead, and 230 hostages kidnapped to Gaza. Israel's siege of Gaza that followed has killed 34,000, including thousands of children, says the Hamas-run Ministry of Health.

One whistleblower told CNN that beatings were "not done to gather intelligence. They were done out of revenge. It was punishment for what they did on October 7 and punishment for behavior in the camp."

Guards strip them down of "anything that resembles human beings," a whistleblower said.

In a field hospital, wounded detainees were strapped to beds, dressed in diapers, and fed through straws, CNN reported.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Ran, headed the surgical unit at Gaza's Indonesian hospital, a former prisoner in the Sde Teiman camp, told CNN: "When they removed my blindfold, I could see the extent of the humiliation and abasement, I could see the extent to which they saw us not as human beings but as animals."

The facility operates under the Unlawful Combatants Law, granting the military broad powers to detain individuals without due process, raising concerns about transparency and accountability.

The law permits the military to detain people for 45 days without an arrest warrant, after which they must be transferred to Israel's formal prison system (IPS).

Satellite images reveal a significant expansion of the Sde Teiman facility since the conflict began.

Accounts of detainee abuse are not unique to the Negev. In November, Business Insider's Alia Shoaib reported on graphic videos appearing to show IDF soldiers abusing Palestinian detainees in the West Bank.

The videos depict IDF soldiers dragging blindfolded and bound Palestinian men on the ground, many half or completely naked.

Last week, a Palestinian doctor died in an Israeli prison after more than four months in detention, Palestinian prisoner associations said, per BBC News.

Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, 50, was the head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital.

Israeli prison authorities said they were investigating the incident. No cause of death was given.

The UN's stance on the treatment of prisoners entails that "all prisoners shall be treated with respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings."

The IDF responded to CNN's report with the following statement: "The IDF ensures proper conduct towards the detainees in custody. Any allegation of misconduct by IDF soldiers is examined and dealt with accordingly. In appropriate cases, MPCID (Military Police Criminal Investigation's Division) investigations are opened when there is suspicion of misconduct justifying such action."

Business Insider contacted the Israeli government for comment.

Currently, over 9,000 Palestinians are being held in conditions that rights groups say have drastically deteriorated since October 7.

• Warren Buffett is building up cash because he can't find anything better, Ted Oakley said.
• Buffett probably cut his Apple stake to reduce his exposure to the "one-trick pony," Oakley said.
• The financial advisor predicted Buffett would pounce on bargains regardless of the market backdrop.

Warren Buffett is stacking up cash because he's battling a bargain drought — and he likely trimmed Apple because he felt overexposed to the iPhone maker, one expert says.

"You do have to watch and see what he's doing," Ted Oakley, the managing partner and founder of Oxbow Advisors, told Business Insider. "The facts are his cash levels keep going higher."

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway cashed in about 13% of its Apple stock last quarter, fueling a $21 billion increase in its pile of cash and Treasurys to a record $189 billion.

"My guess is they're selling more of it because they have a lot of it," Oakley said.

Apple accounted for half of Berkshire's $354 billion stock portfolio at the end of December. It remained its biggest holding with a 40% portfolio share at the end of March.

The computing behemoth is a "big cash generator," but it's essentially a "one-trick pony," Oakley said. "They depend on one product when you get down to it."

Indeed, Apple made $117 billion — or 55% of its net sales — from the iPhone in the six months to April 1, per its latest earnings.

Buffett and his team bought less than $3 billion of stocks in the first three months of this year, even as they sold $20 billion worth, marking their biggest quarter for selling in years.

"Evidently, he doesn't see anything that jumps off the page at him," Oakley said. But he predicted that a lofty market, an uncertain economic outlook, and geopolitical tensions wouldn't stop Buffett and his team from pouncing once they do find value for money.

"When things are cheap, they buy them, and it really doesn't make any difference where the market is," Oakley said, pointing to the raft of lucrative deals that Buffett struck at the height of the financial crisis.

The veteran financial advisor also underscored that Berkshire is pocketing a solid return from owning Treasurys. The Federal Reserve's inflation-busting hikes to interest rates since 2022 have boosted yields on government debt.

However, he echoed Buffett's stated concerns about the national deficit and ballooning debt pile, warning the country is careening toward a point when it won't be able to service the interest on its debt. "Warren Buffett knows that," he said.

Reckless federal spending might also be one driver of "de-dollarization" with countries like China, Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia "trying to get away from the dollar," he said.

Oakley sympathized with Buffett's dearth of opportunities. He noted that Oxbow runs stock screens on more than 200 companies that it would like to own, and virtually all of them are expensive now.

• Economic doomers are getting louder as they say the economy is headed for a collapse. 
• There's a divergence between what experts say is a healthy economy and the experience of many individuals. 
• Feelings of economic doom and gloom are tktkt

Daniel, a Reddit user based in Washington, DC, has been browsing the subreddit r/economiccollapse for about four years. He says he isn't a doomsayer, but he sees an economic implosion coming for the US that could mirror the Soviet Union's collapse at the end of the Cold War.

Daniel, who asked to only use his first name to protect his privacy, has taken steps to prepare for his grim vision of the future. He refuses to hold his savings in cash and has all of his money invested in a portfolio of defense stocks, gold, crypto, and other assets he thinks will maintain their value. 

"The one thing that our economy is going to be guaranteed is a wartime economy," Daniel told Business Insider in an interview. "Only time will tell how bad it will truly get."

Observers may be quick to dismiss such talk as conspiratorial or alarmist, but a growing number of people in online communities on Reddit and elsewhere say their unease about the economy and material conditions in the US points to a coming collapse. 

The sentiment has been on the rise amid the frustration and anxiety that came with the pandemic and never seemed to subside, experts say, though most economists agree that the economy is probably fine for now. 

Interest in ultra-bearish takes on the market or the economy is on the up based on raw search data. Google searches for "stock market crash" have jumped 17% over the last quarter, while searches for "economic crash" have surged 15%, according to search analytics firm Glimpse. 

Membership on the r/economiccollapse subreddit has also climbed in recent years, rising by 80% from the end of 2021 to the end of 2023. The broader doomsday message board, r/collapse, has also seen an increase in membership, rising 26% since the end of 2021, according to the analytics site Subreddit Stats.

In both communities, users are sounding the alarm on all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios for the economy, with some predicting a stock market crash, housing market crash, or a total collapse of the US financial system.

One r/economiccollapse member Business Insider connected with, who withheld their identity to maintain their privacy, said they believed the stock market would "plummet" if the Fed didn't continue to raise interest rates, causing a hyperinflation problem to spread through the economy. 

"I have encountered only a small handful of people in person who truly know what's up," they told BI. "I am very pessimistic because I don't have much control over it, and I have not seen any evidence of things getting back on track."

Another user warned the recent run-up in AI stocks could lead to a dot-com-style crash.

"Irrational exuberance and greedy speculation. Big money to be made in the short term, but massive hangover when the party is over," they wrote in a post. "I wouldn't want to be left holding the bag when it all falls in." 

Many doomers say they're just presenting a more realistic version of the situation. Freddie Smith, a Florida-based real-estate agent, says he isn't an alarmist, but regularly posts warnings on the economy on his social media accounts. In one TikTok, he speculates the economy is now even worse than it was during the Great Depression due to the higher cost of living. 

"They're still kind of sucking the money, pushing people to the edge," Smith said of the government's treatment of the middle class. He anticipates rising homelessness and more people living paycheck to paycheck if economic reforms aren't made.

Jonathan Rose, the CEO of the commodities firm Genesis Gold Group, says he's also noticed increasing anxiety among his clients. The number of investors he works with who have bought physical gold specifically as a store of value has surged around 40%-60% since the pandemic, Rose estimated. 

Rose said he believed some of the clients looking to hold onto gold were preppers and homesteaders, people who look to prepare for a major disaster or otherwise achieve a fully self-sufficient lifestyle "off the grid."

"People are looking to prep with metals," Rose said. "There's always a steady influx of people who are always looking to protect and diversify. But I think the past couple of years, there's definitely been an uptick."

Perception and reality 

The economic reality doesn't quite square with what many on these forums say they're preparing for. 

 The US has avoided a recession that's been predicted for the last two years. The labor market also remains relatively robust, with the unemployment rate remaining near historic lows in March. 

Rose speculates that pessimism over the economy has surged since the start of the pandemic. That experience of uncertainty and fear has made people more aware of risks facing the economy, he says, which include high government debt levels, rising geopolitical tensions, and stubbornly high inflation.

"I think that there are just more problems today than we had 10 years ago. So people are concerned about these problems, and people are saying we are due for something to happen. And I'd agree with that," Rose said. 

Many people may also be reacting to the fact that their lived experience of the economy may not be matching up with the strength of the data that's been reported.

A higher cost of living has begun to sting the US middle-class, and a survey from Northwestern Mutual found that financial anxiety among Americans is hovering at its highest level since 2012.

"I certainly notice the higher prices and living costs that inflation has given us at restaurants and grocery stores," Richard Sylla, a financial historian at New York University said. "Others may not be as lucky and could be constrained by them, and that could color their outlooks for the stock market and the economy."

Smith said he makes videos both to educate people about the economy and to air out his frustrations about the working class. 

"I look at these 23-year-olds online talking about how they're working 40, 50 hours a week and living with their parents," Smith told BI. "The whole world has changed in the past 10 years … I guess the frustration is the lack of recognition of a broken system," he said.

• On Friday night, the Northern Lights put on a spectacular show for US and European star-gazers.
• The lights, Aurora Borealis, were triggered by a huge geomagnetic storm headed toward Earth.
• High-energy particles from the sun interacting with Earth's magnetic field cause geomagnetic storms.

Skies over the US and Europe were transformed into shades of interstellar pink, purple, blue, and green on Friday night as the Northern Lights produced a dazzling display.

Aurora Borealis lights were triggered after America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its first severe solar storm warning since 2005 as a huge geomagnetic storm headed toward Earth.

The NOAA said the G5 geomagnetic storm, which is considered extreme and the strongest level of a geomagnetic storm, brought with it the risk of affecting communications, GPS, and power grids.

Geomagnetic storms occur when high-energy particles from the sun reach Earth and interact with our magnetic field.

But the sun is 93 million miles away, so these particles have to get a major boost to reach us. That boost comes from solar storms.

Solar storms happen when the sun shoots powerful explosions of highly energized and magnetic plasma called coronal mass ejections toward Earth.

The lights were seen in the US as far south as El Paso, Texas, and across Europe in Germany, Spain, the UK, and Ukraine.

Here's a look at 10 of the best pictures captured by stargazers.

• The Israeli Air Force achieved an unmatched air combat victory in the 1982 Lebanon War.
• The battle, known as Operation Mole Cricket 19, saw over 60 enemy aircraft eliminated without a single Israeli loss.
• Israel's aircraft, weapons, training, and strategic adaptations led to the historic win.

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) accomplished a feat unmatched in modern military aviation in June 1982, shooting down over 60 Syrian combat aircraft in the largest air battle of the jet age and destroying 29 of 30 surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries without losing a single one of its fighter jets.

Operation Mole Cricket 19, as the famous engagement was designated, was aimed at destroying the Syrian SAMs positioned in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley. The operation took place during the first week of the 1982 Lebanon War that saw Israel and its Lebanese allies face off against Syria, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and their allies in Lebanon.

The battle, which marked the first time a Soviet SAM battery was destroyed by a Western aircraft, had such an effect that the Soviet Union, whose aircraft Syria primarily used, sent military officials to investigate how Soviet aircraft and SAMs were defeated.

Many different factors came together to produce the stunning air combat victory.

Better aircraft, weapons, and training

At the time, the Syrian Air Force was mostly flying the outdated MiG-21, which had been introduced in 1959, and some Su-20 and MiG-23 export models. The MiG-21 fared well during the Vietnam War against American F-4s, but by 1982, it was significantly outclassed by the fourth-generation fighters of the IAF.

The IAF was primarily flying the recently introduced air superiority F-15 and F-16s fighters that would form the strike arm of the operation. It also had a smaller contingent of F-4s and Israeli-made Kfir jets that took on auxiliary roles.

The F-15 and F-16s were more maneuverable and could accelerate faster than Syria's jets. They had better radars that allowed them to fire missiles outside the detection range of the Syrian radars. The fourth-generation Israeli jets were also made much more lethal by the AIM-9L Sidewinder missile that could be fired from any angle. The Sidewinder accounted for most of the kills.

In contrast, Syrian jets used older K-13 missiles that had a much shorter operational range than Israel's AIM-9L. And the MiG-21s' warning systems could only pick up incoming missiles approaching from their nose and tail, leaving them otherwise "blind."

Furthermore, Israeli pilots and ground crews had significant combat experience. They had been practicing attacks against SAMs, and Israeli pilots had been flying over Beqaa Valley for some years becoming familiar with the area.

In contrast, Syrian SAM crews performed horribly. They hadn't moved their SAM batteries in months, allowing the IAF to pinpoint their locations before the battle, and they had placed them in vulnerable locations. On the day of the fight, the Syrians used smoke to conceal their batteries rather than camouflaging them, which, instead, made their locations more visible to Israeli jets. They also deployed the mobile SAM systems in a fixed configuration.

But Israel's technological edge and the training its personnel had received weren't the only deciding factors, and the IAF had to learn from past mistakes to achieve victory.

Adapting to win

During the Yom Kippur War nine years before, Egyptian SAM batteries shot down 42 Israeli aircraft, 14% of the IAF's fleet, in the conflict's first two days. The loss led the IAF to recognize the importance of suppressing and destroying enemy air defenses.

For Operation Mole Cricket 19, it used UAVs to identify the Syrian batteries' radar signatures months before the battle. Day of, Israel used UAVs to mimic the radio signature of Israeli jets, thereby tricking the Syrian batteries into activating their radars to take them down. This allowed Israeli jets, with targeting assistance from UAVs, to destroy the SAMs using anti-radiation missiles.

Additionally, Israel had superior Command, Control, and Communications (C3) capabilities.

Israel boosted its own C3 abilities with Grumman E-2C Hawkeye airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft. Operation Mole Cricket 19 ­was the first time modern AWACS were used in combat, assisting Israeli fighters with targeting and battlefield control.

And it actively degraded Syrian C3 capabilities by employing aircraft with jammers to disrupt Syrian radar and communications. This further reduced the effectiveness of the SAF's older aircraft by preventing them from receiving targeting assistance and battlefield updates from the ground.

Highlighting the effectiveness of Israel's tactic, a Western observer, cited by a RAND Corporation report on the battle, said, "I watched a group of Syrian fighter planes fly figure-eights. They just flew around and around and obviously had no idea what to do next."

Lastly, Israel protected its own communications by equipping its fighters with electronic countermeasure pods and developed a variable frequency radio system to prevent Syrian forces from identifying and jamming it.

The outcome of the battle was a total Israeli victory, and due to its one-sided outcome, Operation Mole Cricket 19 came to be known as the "Beqaa Valley Turkey Shoot."

IAF would go on to destroy approximately 20 more Syrian jets in the days following the operation, bringing the total to more than 80. Though it lost no jets during the operation, it suffered losses later, but those only amounted to one F-4, one old A-4 Skyhawk, and two helicopters during the entire conflict.

• Ukrainian pilots fly dangerous "wild weasel" missions to suppress Russian air defenses.
• Advanced US-supplied missiles have played a critical role in these missions.
• The arrival of F-16 fighter jets will help level out Russia's air superiority.

Pilots in Ukraine's Soviet-era airforce, a fraction of the size of Russia's, are using a tactic first developed by the US Air Force to contest the skies above the 600-mile frontline.

Videos in recent months appear to show Ukrainian pilots conducting so-called "wild weasel" missions.

The strategy involves jet pilots luring enemy antiaircraft defenses into targeting them with their radars. The radar waves are then traced back to their source, and the Ukrainian pilots retaliate with weapons like the US-made AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARMs) before the Russians van lock onto them with surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).

Since mid-2022, the US has supplied Ukraine with HARMs, which have provided Ukrainian pilots with Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) and Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (DEAD) capabilities.

The US Air Force pioneered SEAD tactics in the Vietnam War. So-called wild weasel aircraft were tasked with destroying enemy air defense radars to clear the way for attack aircraft to fly through.

The wild weasels had radar receivers to locate enemy air defenses and were initially armed with bombs and later special missiles that could target radar.

The term "wild weasel" originated from Project Wild Weasel. This US Air Force anti-SAM strategy used direct attacks to suppress enemy air defenses, according to the National Museum of the US Air Force.

These missions, originally called "Project Ferret" — a reference to the small predatory mammal that enters its prey's den to kill it — were renamed Project Wild Weasel so as not to be confused with the code-name "Ferret" that was used during World War II for radar countermeasures bombers.

HARM is the latest of these air-to-surface missiles: a projectile of around 770 pounds, with a range of some 90 miles. These missiles can locate and strike enemy radar even after the radar systems have been turned off.

HARM has been used in wars in Libya, Iraq, and former Yugoslavia, The Economist previously reported.

This experience is being put to use in Ukraine.

"Ukraine clearly is learning from Western military thought," Frederik Mertens, a Strategic Analyst at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, told Business Insider. "Ukraine is putting great emphasis on SEAD and DEAD missions."

These missions can be "very dangerous," especially for wild weasels, he said. But the Russian air defenses are a "key target."

"This game is worth the candle," Mertens said.

But, he added Ukraine's tactics "go far beyond the classic wild weasel missions of Anti-Radiation Missile equipped aircraft."

From special forces raids to land-launched missiles like GMLRS and ATACMS as well as UAVs of all sorts, "Ukrainians use all weapons, troops, and systems they have at their disposal to suppress and destroy Russian air defenses," Mertens said.

Adapting Western weapons for use in Ukraine

The difficulty of adapting HARM for Ukraine is due to the incompatibility of old Soviet-era jets, such as the MIG-29 and the Su-27 fighters, with modern Western technology.

Last month, US Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante told reporters at a Washington DC conference that Ukraine had been using iPads in an attempt to make Ukrainian jets compatible with Western weapons.

He described how Ukraine's aging fighter planes could now take many Western weapons and get them to work on their aircraft as they were "basically controlled by an iPad by the pilot. They're flying it in conflict like a week after we get it to him," he said.

Since making the necessary adaptations, Ukrainian pilots have fired hundreds of HARMs at Russian air defense radar systems. However, their technique has changed, Justin Bronk, Senior Research Fellow for Airpower & Technology at the London-based think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told BI.

"While they initially achieved a number of successful kills against Russian SAM systems and radars when first introduced; Russian SAM operators quickly adapted their tactics," Bronk said.

Now, HARM launches serve "a suppressive rather than a destructive purpose."

When launched, "the missiles force Russian SAM operators to turn off their radars and relocate to avoid being hit by them," Bronk said. "This leaves a short window within which other strike systems like HIMARS rockets or Storm Shadow missiles can get through to nearby targets with much less risk of being intercepted by the Russian SAMs."

Awaiting F-16s

While modified Soviet-era fighter jets allow Ukrainians to use HARM missiles, the modifications do not allow Ukrainians to make the most of all their features.

"It doesn't have all the capabilities that it would on an F-16," Gen. James Hecker, commander of United States Air Forces in Europe, said previously during a roundtable at the Air Force Association's Air, Space Cyber conference.

Therefore, the delivery of F-16s will be crucial for increasing Ukrainian air superiority.

Earlier this week, the Netherlands announced plans to start delivering its F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine this autumn, Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said during a press briefing in Vilnius.

Denmark previously said it would begin transferring its aircraft in the summer,

"Dealing with Russian GBAD [Ground Based Air Defense] will be crucial to enable future Ukrainian air strikes once the F-16 fighters arrive," Mertens told BI.

While the delivery of such a small number of F-16s should not be overestimated, Mertens believes they could significantly impact Crimea.

"Crimea is vulnerable: the Russians have relatively limited maneuver space on the Peninsula, resupply is dependent on the Kerch bridge, and here Putin has a lot to lose both politically and militarily," he said.

"If a limited number of fighters can have a real impact, it is here."