Tag Archives: Shahed drone

Yup, glow in the dark today, so you can have a safe tomorrow. It’s not the Windscale advertisement, but Europe is coming to the conclusion that there is no longer a United States of America. And Al Jazeera is letting us know that there is a new setting in town. The article (at https://aje.news/wza18x) is letting us know that ‘France to increase nuclear warheads, lend nuclear aircraft to Europe allies’ where we see “French President Emmanuel Macron has announced that France will increase the number of its nuclear warheads and allow the temporary deployment of its nuclear-armed aircraft to eight European countries to bolster the security of the continent. His speech at France’s Ile Longue nuclear submarine base on Monday introduced the idea of “advanced deterrence”, a deeper, structured nuclear-security relationship with key European partners that he said was distinct from but complementary to NATO’s nuclear arrangements.” As I see it, it is the “complementary to NATO’s nuclear arrangements” that matters. There is no way that they will ever get close to the 3,700 warheads that America has, but the setting is such that there is now an advanced tactical arrangements with a number of NATO lands and these extra warheads should make all the difference between an adversary seeing the difference between ‘could we’ and ‘should we’ it might be the smallest setting but for those wanting to attack Europe and NATO it means that there will be a number of additional warheads going for their terrain and a player like Russia might take notice that attacking NATO would become severely less than folly. No matter what some ‘claim’ the additional firepower will be noticed and so far Europe has never shown itself to be the aggressor. So as we are given “Macron’s speech, which was scheduled before the widening conflict in the Middle East, was aimed at quelling European security concerns amid recurring tensions with United States President Donald Trump and growing fears of Russian aggression amid Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“We must strengthen our nuclear deterrent in the face of multiple threats, and we must consider our deterrence strategy deep within the European continent, with full respect for our sovereignty,” Macron said.” President Macron is correct and as I see it, with the escalations in the Middle East with the United States, it would be presumptuous that America is not willing to tap into their nuclear arsenal for any reason and that leaves NATO with a rather nasty problem. Even as France and the UK will have enough to turn half the planet to a cinder, this is one situation that is kinda the same as sex, bigger is better and as France is adding to the equation, the bigger is better equation is filled and with the lending of the nuclear aircrafts to other nations, the short term setting for both Russia and China (not accusing either) will become more of a question mark for either. As such it seems that France is playing the ‘safe’ card for NATO and Europe. This is how I see it and I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

And that is seen in the next paragraph where we are given “The eight European countries that have agreed to participate in Macron’s scheme include Germany, Britain, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden and Denmark. They will be able to host French “strategic air forces”, which will be able to “spread out across the European continent” to “complicate the calculations of our adversaries”, he said.”  There is more, but it might be better for you to read the article. The thing of this setting is not ideal. I reckon that France was always ready to do this, but with the attacks by Iran on the whole Middle East and both Israel and the United States attacking Iran a new conflict escalation seems to exist, how far this will go is anyones guess. I reckon that the escalation that Iran called on itself over attacks on Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar has had the counter effect that a desperate Iran could have hoped for. All nations are in support in what either Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Qatar wants to call on Iran. It lost whatever support they had on the world stage and the Iranian regime has launched over 588 missiles and 893 drones at 11 countries across the Middle East. There is some damage, some lives were lost, but as I see it, less than 1% made it through and considering that a Shahed drone is around $30,000 and they fired 893 of them amount to at least $27 million, considering the damage, that was a tremendous waste of money. And the missile damage at the price it cost them to fire these missiles is even worse. What some people tend to forget, there is a limit to what they can fire before depletion sets in and there is a limit they can fire before other nations will take out whatever they thought they would ending up having (it is vague, I know). It all connects, because France is setting the larger powerplay, but Russia who was going after Ukraine now has to realise that Iran is firing whatever they wanted to get and that side is now gone. So there is a link between the two and whilst we see that Russia is staying in touch with Iran, it is likely upset about Iran using what he needed for the Ukraine. As such there is an upside to all this for the Ukraine. 

What is a larger issue is that there are messages getting out there that the Straight of Hormuz would become a problem. I actually resolved that situation in my article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2026/02/01/sinking-a-dilemma/) titled ‘Sinking a dilemma’, the solution isn’t immediate, but it opens up a few settings of commerce for the UAE, Iran out of the picture and additional commerce for the UAE. Should this plan go ahead, there might be some delay on this (no idea how long) but with every knee-jerk reaction from Iran that solution will increase in value (as I personally see it). You can confront an enemy, deflect an enemy or evade that enemy and that was the simple setting I used. 

So have a great day and enjoy your day on route to the upcoming weekend, which is only 80 hours away for me.